The Traveler's Gift

by Andy Andrews

  As the doctor went on about what to expect as he healed and which medicines would be prescribed and why and how long he could plan on staying in the hospital, David watched his wife and child. He was a lucky man, he knew, but a curious disappointment settled over him like a fog. A dream. It had all been a dream. A confusing dream, the doctor had called it.

  “. . . and of course, we just take our time with these things,” the doctor was finishing. “So, why don’t we leave for a little while and let your dad get some rest?” he said to Jenny.

  “I’ll take Jenny home, honey,” Ellen said. “Mom and Dad have come in to help so they’re at the house. As soon as I drop her off, I’ll be back.” Ellen carefully kissed David on the cheek and turned to leave. “I love you,” she added.

  David saw that the doctor had already slipped out of the room. A tear rolled down his cheek. “I love you, too, Ellen. I’m sorry for all this.”

  She moved back to the bed and positioned herself over him so that she could look directly into his eyes. “David, you have nothing to be sorry about. Jenny and I love you and trust you and want you back home. Do you remember telling me a few minutes ago that our family was going to be okay?” She smiled. “Well, you were right.”

  David lay alone in the small hospital room. Ellen had kissed him again before she left. He listened to the click of her heels and the squeak of Jenny’s tennis shoes fade away down the hall. A dream, he thought. He sighed deeply.

  He wasn’t sleepy. His body throbbed and his head still hurt, but he wasn’t sleepy. He looked above the sink beside the bed to find the source of a quiet beeping. It was a monitor of some kind. On the other side of the bed, a tube snaked its way from a plastic bag of solution hanging on a pole down to his arm, where, David was certain, a needle meant for some large animal had been mistakenly inserted into him.

  There was a small cot over in the corner. Had Ellen been sleeping there? How long had he been here? A television was attached to the wall across from him. There was an extra door that led to what he assumed was the bathroom, and except for a chair under the television, that was it. Nothing to look at, he thought. So he looked at the ceiling.

  It had all seemed so real. He had been there! He just knew he’d been in Potsdam. He had been in Amsterdam and with Columbus on the Santa Maria. He hadn’t been in a car accident—he’d been in two! But no one would ever believe him, David knew, and considering his surroundings, he wasn’t sure he believed it himself.

  Anyway, David thought, it wasn’t the experience that was important, was it? What did I learn? Even if it had been a dream, did the Seven Decisions for Success have less value? David smiled when he realized that by concentrating just a bit, he could recall the key phrases and basic philosophy of each principle.

  Not trusting himself to remember them for long, David found a pen and writing pad on the small table beside him. He raised himself into a sitting position and wrote:

  1. The buck stops here. I am responsible for my past and my future.

  2. I will seek wisdom. I will be a servant to others.

  3. I am a person of action. I seize this moment. I choose now.

  4. I have a decided heart. My destiny is assured.

  5. Today I will choose to be happy. I am the possessor of a grateful spirit.

  6. I will greet this day with a forgiving spirit. I will forgive myself.

  7. I will persist without exception. I am a person of great faith.

  David reread what he had written and nodded his head. He was tired. He would work more on this later—remember more later. He placed the pen and paper on the table next to him. David intended to reconstruct every decision and commit them to his heart as Gabriel had told him to do. He took a deep breath, sighed, and corrected himself . . . as he had dreamed Gabriel had told him to do.

  No matter, David thought as he stared at the ceiling. My family will be fine. Our future is assured. I will make it so. The pebbled surface of the ceiling, reflecting tiny points of light, reminded David of stars. He closed his eyes. Maybe he was sleepy, after all.

  Just as he was about to drift off, David heard the slight whoosh of the door opening. A nurse entered. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “No problem,” David said. “I wasn’t really asleep.”

  “You just keep resting then,” she said kindly. “I’ll leave this right here and get out of your way.” She had a dark plastic bag in her hand, and she moved to place it in the chair.

  “What is that?” David asked.

  “Personal effects. Wallet and stuff. Shoes. Everything you were wearing when you had your accident. They brought it up from Emergency.”

  “Could I have the bag over here, please?” David asked. “I’d like to put on my watch.”

  “I can do that,” the nurse said as she put the bag on the edge of the bed beside David. “And your watch is in here,” she smiled. “We have to inventory everything, you know, and I saw it myself.”

  “Thank you,” David said as she left the room.

  He opened the bag and pulled out his shoes. His socks were stuffed in one and his boxers in the other. They were resting on his sweatshirt and jeans, which someone had neatly folded. David dropped the shoes and clothes to the floor on the other side of the bed.

  David’s wedding band had fallen out with the clothes and was resting on the white sheet. He placed it on his finger and reached back into the bag for his watch, found it, and stretched the band onto his wrist. His key ring was in the bag. And his wallet. Wasn’t my wallet on the seat beside me? David tried to remember. Oh, well, he thought. Thanks to someone for getting it out of the car. He put the wallet on the table.

  Lifting the plastic bag to move it from the bed, David felt a slight heaviness. Realizing he’d missed something, he stopped and reopened it. At first, he didn’t see anything. But there, stuck in the corner, was a small dark object, almost the color of the plastic bag.

  Scarcely daring to breathe, David felt his heart pound as he reached through the folds of plastic and removed a small tobacco pouch. Tears welled up in his eyes as he held it up in the light.

  It was navy blue and had been sewn from stout cloth, but the rough treatment it had received had worn the pouch to a moleskin softness. It was beaten and threadbare, but it was still handsome, regal in a sense, the possession of an officer. The two gold buttons that closed the flap were metal, engraved with the image of an eagle. And there, just above the buttons, embroidered on the flap, were crossed swords—the symbol of a fighting man.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I WOULD LIKE TO THANK POLLY, MY WIFE AND BEST friend, for the patience shown during endless conversations about this project; David Brokaw for his support and belief in me; Scott Jeffrey for his creative presentation strategies; Mike Hyatt, Pamela Clements, Blythe McIntosh, and the team at Thomas Nelson who didn’t just contract for a book, but caught a vision! Thanks to Jenny Baumgartner for her editing skills, and the people skills she used on me as she edited! An extra measure of gratitude to Belinda Bass for the extra time and care she took in designing the cover.

  Special thanks go to Sandi Dorff, Isabel Garcia, Alex McCurley, Susie White, Paula Tebbe, and Julie Plato—the people who, in support of my life, made this book possible. And finally, a very special thanks to Danita Allen, who shaped the story and my words from the beginning.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  America’s Civil War. Leesburg, VA: Primedia Enthusiast Publications History Group, January, 1999.

  Becker, Walt. Link. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. NY, 1998.

  Chamberlain, Joshua Lawrence. Bayonet Forward, My Civil War Reminiscences. Gettysburg, PA: Stan Clark Military Books, 1994.

  Chamberlain, Joshua Lawrence. Through Blood and Fire at Gettysburg. Gettysburg, PA: Stan Clark Military Books, 1994.

  Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia. Cambridge, MA: The Learning Company.

  Desjardin, Thomas A. Stand Firm Ye Boys From Maine. Gettysburg, PA: Thom
as Publications, 1995.

  Dyson, John. Westward with Columbus. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc. New York: 1991.

  Encarta. Redmond, Washington: Microsoft Corporation, 1997.

  Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. New York: Doubleday, 1995.

  Gies, Miep. Anne Frank Remembered. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1987.

  Hobson, Alan. One Step Beyond. Banff Alberta Canada: Altitude Publishing, 1992.

  Mason, John. An Enemy Called Average. Tulsa, OK: John Mason, 1990.

  Mason, John. Conquering An Enemy Called Average. Tulsa, OK: Insight International, 1996.

  Mason, John L. You’re Born an Original Don’t Die a Copy. Altamonte Springs, FL: Insight International, 1993.

  McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1992.

  Muller, Melissa. Anne Frank—the Biography. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998.

  Persico, Joseph E. My Enemy My Brother, Men and Days of Gettysburg. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1977.

  Phillips, Donald T. Lincoln On Leadership. New York: Warner Books, 1992.

  Pullen, John J. The Twentieth Maine. Dayton, OH: Morningside House, Inc., 1957.

  Shaara, Michael. The Killer Angels. New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1974.

  The Living Bible. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1971.

  Wills, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg, The Words That Remade America. New York: Touchstone, 1992.

  World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago, IL: World Book, Inc., 1993.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Hailed by a New York Times reporter as “someone who has quietly become one of the most influential people in America,” Andy Andrews is a best-selling novelist, speaker, and consultant for the world’s largest corporations and organizations. He has spoken at the request of four different United States presidents and recently addressed members of congress and their spouses. Zig Ziglar said, “Andy Andrews is the best speaker I have ever seen.” Andy is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Noticer and How Do You Kill 11 Million People? He lives in Orange Beach, Alabama, with his wife, Polly, and their two sons.

  An Excerpt from The Noticer Returns

  I FOUND HIM.

  I wasn’t looking for him, but there he was, real as life. It was only a glimpse at first, but he stopped and turned, almost as if he felt my gaze upon him. The instant we locked eyes, he grinned. And it was like the old man had never left.

  But he did leave. He had disappeared several years ago without so much as a good-bye, and like the old man himself, the circumstances of his departure had been odd. Leaving our tiny, coastal community without being seen by a single person was strange enough—small-town folks don’t miss much—but tucking a cryptic message inside a beaten-up suitcase and abandoning it in the middle of a parking lot . . . well, the whole thing had been perplexing. It had also been the number-one topic of conversation in our town for weeks.

  In time, however, the residents of Orange Beach came to believe he was gone for good, and a mourning of sorts had settled over the whole community. It wasn’t a tragedy. We had suffered through hurricanes and oil spills—we knew what tragedy felt like. It was more of an emptiness we couldn’t quite define.

  So in lieu of anything specific, we talked endlessly about what we did remember. We discussed his clothes and wondered why we had never seen him in anything other than jeans and a T-shirt. Besides the leather sandals on his feet, that particular ensemble typified his entire wardrobe. We had seen him at a wedding on the lagoon, in restaurants, and even in church a time or two, but never dressed in anything other than jeans and a T-shirt.

  No one had ever known where he lived or even where he slept at night. To our knowledge, he had never so much as spent a rainy evening at anyone’s house. He didn’t own property in our county—we all have friends working at the courthouse, and they checked.

  Neither, we all agreed, could he possibly have had a tent in the small brown suitcase that never left his side. And about that suitcase . . . until the day of his disappearance, none of us had ever seen him without it. It was an early weekday morning when Ted Romano, the owner of Pack & Mail, found the old, scuffed-up piece of luggage sitting by itself in the middle of an almost empty parking lot.

  Yes, we all had stories about watching the old man struggle through a door with it or carry it with him as he filled a plate from a local salad bar, but as far as we could tell, no one but the man himself had so much as touched that suitcase until the day he vanished.

  There was also the age thing. We were almost obsessed with the subject of how old the man might be. We had conceded long before that it was impossible to know his age for sure. His appearance yielded no real clues. “Old” was as close as we could guess. His hair was longish—not long enough for a ponytail, but longish—and as white as polished ivory. Usually only finger-combed, his hair was casually worn and almost beautiful. But his hair was only the first thing about him anyone noticed.

  It was the old man’s eyes that stopped people in their tracks. Sparkling as the laughter of a child and imbued with a color I can describe only as tranquil blue, his eyes verged on luminescence. Set against the brown skin of his face and framed by that snowy hair, his eyes would hold a person as long as he cared to talk. And he could really talk . . .

  None of us had ever had the opportunity to listen—truly listen—to anyone like him before. It wasn’t that he talked a lot. He didn’t. It’s just that when he did talk, the words that tumbled from his mouth were so precise and significant that folks drank in every one.

  You may think I am exaggerating, but there are more than a few of us in Orange Beach who credit this old man with changing our lives. In fact, I might be at the top of that long list. But then, my relationship with Jones has spanned more years than anyone else’s.

  He found me at a particularly tough time in my life when I was twenty-three years old. For several months he was a friend when I didn’t have one and told me the truth at a time when I didn’t want to hear it. Then he disappeared for close to thirty years.

  The next time I saw him was a few years ago when he arrived, as he had the first time, seemingly out of the blue. One awfully curious thing I became aware of during that time was that the old man had apparently been in and out of our town for years. Maybe for decades.

  Remember how I said we didn’t know how old he was? Well, I talked to some people who were pretty old themselves, and they said the old man had been around when they were kids. And they swore up and down that he had been an old man then. Of course, that doesn’t make sense to me even now. When I first heard it—and I heard it a lot—I ignored all the talk. Still, I had to admit that he didn’t look much different from the first time I had seen him.

  His age wasn’t the only strange thing about the old man. His skin color was another. He was deeply tanned. Or dark brown. No one could agree on whether his pigmentation had been determined by genetics or a lifelong aversion to sunscreen. As for me, I simply didn’t care.

  It was curious, however, that African Americans seemed to take it for granted that the old man was black, and Caucasians assumed he was white. I saw it happen so often that I thought it was funny. I even asked him about it once. His answer didn’t have much to do with the question, though, and I was not surprised.

  I loved the old man, and I was not the only one. And I already told you how much of a difference he made for many of us. But I would be remiss if I did not submit this for consideration as well: there were people in our town who thought the old man was crazy.

  It was all very strange . . . how he was mocked and ridiculed by some and the way he just grinned and took it. Some folks—right to his face—even called him names.

  Me? I just called him Jones. Not Mr. Jones. Just Jones.

  The story continues with The Noticer Returns by Andy Andrews

  The Traveler’s Gift Journal

  As the perfect companion to The Traveler’s Gift, this journal gives you the opp
ortunity to record your own experiences as you internalize these decisions—just as David did in his travels. Filled with quotes from the book and guided questions to direct readers, The Traveler’s Gift Journal is a powerful tool for all who seek success.

  ISBN: 1-4041-0131-4

  The Traveler’s Gift

  NOW AVAILABLE ON AUDIO!

  ISBN: 0-7852-6138-9

  The Young Traveler’s Gift

  In his senior year of high school, Michael hits rock bottom. Facing the bleak future ahead, he sees no way out and wonders if life is really worth living. But with some divine intervention, he’s given a second chance when he’s offered a once-in-a-lifetime journey of discovery.

  Written to engage the minds of teens and tweens, The Young Traveler’s Gift is sure to encourage and enlighten young men and women as they prepare to face the journeys that lie ahead.

  ISBN: 1-4003-0427-X

  Enjoy the next inspiring book by Andy Andrews:

  The Lost Choice

  A Legend of Personal Discovery

  When a young boy finds a mysterious object in the creek near his home, his parents launch an investigation that will eventually link the ancient object to such remarkable figures as George Washington Carver, Oskar Shindler, Joan of Arc, and Alfred Vanderbilt. Separate pieces of the artifact—with different but similar inscriptions—shape the lives of those who possess the object.

  With each new discovery come new questions: What is the connection between these objects? Is there is another piece? And, if so, how might this final piece complete the object and its message? Could it change the world with its power and wisdom?

  A dramatic epilogue reveals not only the origin and fulfillment of this amazing artifact, but also the guiding principles behind this story that can be applied directly to readers’ lives.