“If you were going to die soon and only had one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?”

Stephen Levine

In an instant, Pip’s life changed again. Daro didn’t call her into his office, there was no time for that. He went and got her. She was in the kitchen. He took her into the Great Room and sat her down on one of the plush leather chairs. 

“You’re going on a trip,” he said. “So am I, but you aren’t coming with me. The next step in your education is going to start today.”

“Where am I going?”

“Into the jungle to learn about life on the hard side. You know life here in the lap of luxury, now it’s time to learn how to look after yourself. It will be hard. You might die, but it has to be. You won’t see me for a long time. Just in case I don’t see you ever again, I’ve set some funds and other assets aside for you. They are in a safety deposit box in Port of Spain in Trinidad and in a storage locker in Medellin. The identifiers are your tattoo and my brand. It’s all set and paid up for the next 30 years. If you haven’t claimed it by then, we can assume that you and I are both dead. Pedro will tell you and show you more. He will know how to find you when the time is right. You have to go now.”

The tears started to flow. At no time had El Heledaro ever had another person cry at the thought of being deprived of his presence. He was overcome himself, though he tried not to show it.

Esmeralda watched them from the kitchen. She was crying. She loved Pip, too.

Pip heard a noise behind her and turned to face it. A beefy-looking man in casual clothes approached. “Pip, meet Alfred. He will be escorting you to your new life for the next few years.”

“But where am I going, really?”

“You’re going to join the guerrillas. The man you will serve is called Carbonell. He’s a commandant in southwest Colombia. It’s pretty remote. You’ll learn there how to look after yourself. I’m sorry I can’t be with you. I’ve come to love you as my own Pip. I’m sorry I’m not your real parent, but sometimes we just have to play the hand we’re dealt.

Esmerelda appeared with a black knapsack. Lunch, clothes and toiletries, she announced, then bent over and kissed Pip with tears streaming down her face.

“Okay, now go. Don’t let me down, Alfred. This is my daughter. Treat her as if she were yours. Don't forget to see Pedro on your way out. He's in the courtyard. He has some things for Pip.”

“Yes, boss. Good luck!”

Alfred took her by the hand and out to the courtyard. Pedro was waiting. "Excuse us, Alfred, for a moment. Come with me, little miss. He took her through a gate and a few steps beyond the verge and into the jungle. No path led here. 

"Turn around and get your bearings through the trees." She did. "Now turn around and look down. She did. She could see a rusty metal plate at her feet about two feet square. She would never have noticed it if it weren't pointed out. 

"What's that?"

"It's a vault. Only you, me and the boss know it's here. Have you ever noticed little numbers in your brand?"

"Yes. I wondered what they were."

"Those numbers are the combination that will open the safe hidden under this plate. What is in it is for you. It's all documentation. No money. It's sealed against water. It's your future if the boss can't get back here. Somehow, all of us on this estate are tied into what is in that safe. The boss made me examine all of the contents. I don't understand any of it because it's all in English. No one will tamper with it before you return. So never forget this. You have to come back and use what is concealed here. Have a look around again. Make sure you don't forget where we are."

She peered through the trees. Alfred was leaning against the wall, reading a paperback. She could see the door to the kitchen. She looked up at the roof. A gargoyle hung over the corner. It grinned down at her with a conspiratorial smile. 

A few minutes later, she was crying, kissing Pedro and shaking his hand goodbye, then she joined Alfred. They walked in a different direction across the pavement, across the lawn and into the trees. Pedro wondered at his boss’s decision to send her to Carbonell and the war. 

…

Work at the Hacienda required plenty of physical activity on her part but it didn’t equate to a forced march through the jungle. She was in friendly hands. She knew that, but she had no idea where they were going or when they were going to stop. Her future was a blank. 

“Okay, Alfred. You can let go of my hand now.” He did so. “Now tell me for real. What’s going on?”

“Well, Miss Pip, we are being raided by the army." As he said that, the sound of helicopters could be heard in the distance. "To keep you safe, I’m taking you to a trusted friend of the boss. To get there, we have to travel the length of the country.”

“Walking?”

Alfred chuckled. “No, we’re just cutting through here until we get to a road where I left my truck. After that, we’ll drive to a rendezvous where you’ll meet a man called Carbonell. He will direct your future and your education. It won’t be like home at the Hacienda, but you’ll come to appreciate it.”

She ignored him and wondered if there would be telephones along the way. She hadn’t used one since leaving Canada, but she still remembered her home phone number, and she thought she could still use a cell phone if she could get her hands on one. The only phone she’d seen at the hacienda had been Daro’s cell. He kept that in his pocket. She’d never touched it. 

Right now, Alfred was focused on delivering her. Pip was focused on getting his phone. She was on high alert.

The walk through the jungle took an hour. It wasn’t hard. The canopy was dense, so there was little undergrowth. She knew to watch for snakes, having spent plenty of time in the jungle around home looking for them. She enjoyed working with them and appreciated their cold beauty. 

The truck was an old, white, nondescript pickup. She climbed in, dropped her knapsack behind the seat back and asked if she needed to wear the seat belt. That was a yes. “We’re going to my home first. I need some things. I wasn’t expecting to be going away today. I have a few dogs, and they need to be fed and watered before I leave.’

“I like dogs,” she told him, and before long, they were chattering about dogs and hunting. Pip had never hunted, but she could appreciate the tales. 

Alfred had a small farm at the end of a dirt road. It was quite a modern-looking place and didn’t seem to lack anything. There were a couple of expensive-looking cars off to one side of a pretty-looking house painted in pleasing pastel blue, green, orange and white. "You can wait inside where it’s cool," he said. "I’ll be quick. Don’t touch anything, please. I’ll be back shortly." He disappeared behind the house. She could hear the dogs barking, happy to see him. 

In the house, she looked around for any sign of a phone. She found one in a study. It was an old rotary phone. She choked. She’d never used one. Still, she picked up the handset and put it to her ear. She could hear a dial tone. On impulse, she put her index finger into a hole in the dial where the number one was. She pulled it down towards a stainless steel hook folded over the dial. She held it there for a moment, then released it. She could hear it chatter a bit through the headset. Her heart was in her mouth. She looked at the numbers and letters around the dial to find where 4 was. She selected that and released it. Then one, then six. An R, then U. Then three, a one again, then five, zero, zero. 

When she released the dial for the last time, she could hear strange noises from the headset. It sounded like Outer Space. Eventually, she could hear a phone ring. It kept ringing. She was beside herself. An answering machine spoke up with a generic voice. “Hello, we are not home right now. At the sound of the tone, please leave your name and number and we will call you back as soon as possible.” A pause then a beep, “Mummy, Daddy? I miss you. I’m alive. I’m in a country called Colombia. Do you know where that is? I don’t know where I am here, but I’m heading into the jungle to live. I miss…." the message ended.  She started to redial, but she could hear Alfred returning to the house. She hung up and stepped into the kitchen.  

“Okay, done. Let me just grab a few things for the trip, then we’re out of here.”

“It’s getting dark. Are you going to know where you’re going?”

“No problem, I’ve made this trip many times. I want it to be dark. No one bothers you.” What he meant was no police and no army to catch him with a young girl who was not his. It might not matter but why take chances? Besides that, Daro had emphasized that he didn’t want Pip to know where she was going or she’d find her way out and end up with the authorities who would question her about him and maybe even torture her to find out more. 

On the road, Pip tried to imprint where she was going in her mind. She soon realized it was hopeless. The road seemed never-ending, and it was pitch black. There were no street lights. The trip, he told her, would take three nights, maybe more, depending on road conditions. He said he hoped to make Medellin by morning. All stops were strictly side-of-the-road affairs. She thought briefly of escaping but came to the conclusion that while she might indeed escape, the next man she encountered might and probably would be more dangerous than anyone she was about to meet by staying with Alfred.

Alfred turned out to be a fun guy to talk to. Pip enjoyed the ride. Since it was a four-day drive, Alfred asked her if she’d like to learn to drive. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Nine.”

“Do you know what? I learned to drive a tractor when I was only five. I was pretty short but my papa put blocks on the pedals and that worked. It was even easier to drive a car. The only hard part is reaching the pedals. We can fix that easy enough. What do you say?”

“I love it. How do we start?”

“Let’s pull over. I’ll have to put blocks on the pedals for you.”

“You have blocks?”

“Oh yes, I’ve been planning this ever since the boss told me you’d be going to Carbonell.”

Suspicious, she asked, “How long ago was that?”

“Oh, about a month ago, now I guess.”

“Hmmm. He never told me.”

“He wasn’t sure he was going to make a run for it or let them take him.”

“Let who, take him?”

“The DEA. The American Drug Enforcement Agency. He’s going to prison in the States. He won’t be back for years. He’s hiding you with the guerrillas so that they don’t get you or so that rival cartels don’t get you. He didn’t want you, killed or sold as a slave either. It was the best he could do.”

“What was wrong with just returning me to my parents? I would have been okay with that.”

“No Señorita, that would not have worked. The Army would have picked you right out of the departure lounge at the airport even if your parents came to escort you home. You would never have been heard of again.”

She mulled that over. “Does that mean I’ll be stuck in  the jungle forever?”

“The deal is that you stay there with Carbonell for ten years. By then you will be 19 and should know how to take care of yourself. At that time, Carbonell is to bring you back to the Hacienda.

“That sounds like a lot of trust is involved.”

“Si,” Alfred agreed. “A lot of luck too. You have to stay alive for it to happen. It’s a 50/50 bet. El Heledaro is betting a fortune on you. So is Carbonell. He is responsible to a degree on you being still alive at the end of it. Mind you, he has to be alive himself and that will be an achievement in itself.”

…

Learning to drive was easy, once she mastered the old truck’s clutch. Doing that while leaning back on the seat and standing up took some skill at balancing on her right heel to maintain pressure with her toe on the gas pedal while simultaneously lifting her left foot and pushing the clutch pedal to the floor, using her right hand to change from first to second, release the clutch pedal, the doing it all again right up until she hit fourth gear and cruising speed at 50 mph. Then, to slow down she had to do it all again in reverse order. They had an empty highway to themselves and lots of time to practice. She was a quick learner, well-coordinated, and she was fairly adept.. She mastered the sequence in twenty minutes or so, then practiced until she could do it smoothly. The truck bucked a bit starting from a standstill and getting into motion, but Alfred was patient with her and there was no traffic. She soon found she enjoyed it. Alfred did too. Soon enough, he was fast asleep. There were few turn offs and the road was mostly straight. With standard steering, turns would have been awkward, but Alfred’s truck had power steering, she was soon at home behind the wheel and enjoying herself. Anyone coming from the opposite direction, if they’d looked might have thought their truck was driverless.

It took four days to cover the distance. They slept in the truck, she with her head on Alfred’s lap. Alfred wished he’d bought a newer truck with reclining seats. Oh well, next time. He had shields for the glass, so it was dark in the daytime and reasonably cool under the trees. If she’d been older, she’d have known Alfred had done this countless times. 

Pasto, the small city they were going to, was the end of the line. They awoke one evening to a rap on the driver’s side window. Alfred lifted the sun shield. Outside was the biggest man Pip had ever seen.