"Love Transforms Character. —To those who know not the truth, let the love of Jesus be presented, and it will work like leaven for the transformation of character."7
As Henry and Hans set out on their hopeless
and forlorn journey the next morning, fortified with a thermos
of hot coffee, several sweaters, a bag full of sandwiches and
the prayers of Beth and Grace, Easteban Montoya drove his old
Datsun pickup onto the Gulf port dock, ready for another day of
work.
he Lord had answered his fervent prayers
for deliverance from the storm. Emerging from what was left of
their garage, 18 hours after the storm broke upon them, chilled,
hungry, bone tired, and incredibly thirsty, they found their house
unscathed except for several broken windows and other miner damage,
while all about them the storm had reeked havoc on houses, buildings,
vehicles, and utility lines. Flooding was wide spread, power was
out for nearly 72 hours, sewers were backed up and the health
authorities warned everyone to boil their water before drinking,
bathing, or even washing their clothes. Listening to his car radio
as the news media reported outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, and
typhoid from using contaminated water and food, Easteban praised
the Lord for his protection. A state of national emergency was
still in effect, a reporter told him, while national guardsmen
patrolled the streets and highways to prevent looting until home
owners could reclaim their property.
Despite the damage, life must go on. Therefore
Easteban found himself, five days after the most harrowing experience
of his life, returning to his job as assistant customs inspector.
Easteban was old for his forty odd years,
gray at the temples while acquiring a slight bulge around the
waste line so common with men his age. His gray eyes, square jaw,
large ears, low forehead, and flat cheeks were the principal features
of his small head that surmounted large shoulders. A former marine
drill instructor, he still favored a crew cut, although he had
mellowed in the last two decades of civilian life. He contemplated
growing a beard but had given it up when his wife said it would
look silly in contrast with the light complexion of his face and
neck. Short, stocky, and powerfully built, he could handle himself
in any situation that erupted around the docks, as several rowdy
stevedores could attest.
He liked his job, although he disliked the
never ending paperwork. He was incessantly on the look out for
illegal drugs and other smuggled goods. He prided himself on his
flawless record of nearly fourteen years on the job. During that
time he had been instrumental in apprehending several drug shipments
and one especially troublesome shipment of exotic snakes that
were on the Department of Agriculture’s quarantine list.
Otherwise, his career was uneventful.
He fit in well with his collages and the
ship captains and crewmen with whom he came in contact on a daily
basis. Not outstanding, he was generally well liked around the
docks. Not officious in his enforcement responsibilities, as others
were occasionally want to be, he thought of himself as reasonable,
yet firm in enforcing the customs regulations.
Surveying the storm damage, he was impressed
with the ferocity of the window. Sheds were blown down, several
dock side cranes had broken loose from their hawsers and toppled
over, one had even fallen into the bay. That would take some salvage
work to recover. Several office buildings were severely damaged,
the communications antenna on top of the customs building was
gone, probably also in the bay, and the area was littered with
an enormous amount of trash of every description, not to mention
felled power and telephone lines, splintered trees, shattered
vehicles, and twisted metal railings. Several power company crews
were busy at a nearby transformer, stringing new lines and erecting
a power pool.
Eastiban sat for a moment in deep thought,
awe struck at the tremendous power of the storm as he slurped
his hot coffee nosily. He remembered the night of fear and terror
as the hurricane raged at the corners of their house, the thunder
and lightening, the torrential rain. Easteban thought of himself
as fearless, but that night and the next day terrified him, not
so much for his own safety as for that of his wife and children.
At the thought of his wife, Ismini, his
mind wondered to a hospital room many miles away, to a beloved
woman, suffering the terminal stags of pancreatic cancer. Ismini
loved her mother with an intensity that surprised and humbled
him. She was deeply disturbed over her illness and desperately
desired to spend the few remaining days with the older woman comforting
her and being comforted by her. Mother and daughter were inseparable
in love, in friendship, and respect for each other. They shared
a most unusual mother/daughter relationship that Easteban envied.
The tears in his wife’s eyes, as she
related the details of their nightly telephone conversations and
her hopes of being able to visit her hospital room in the next
several days, overwhelmed Easteban with the strongest desire to
grant her request.
The doctors had pronounced her mother’s
condition inoperable, giving her only six to eight months to live.
Several days earlier, Candace had taken a turn for the worse,
Ismini was informed, over the phone and was not expected to live
more then four or five days. As her only surviving relative, Ismini
desperately wanted to be with her.
Easteban loved his wife and desired, above
all things, that she could spend the last few days of her mother’s
life with her. However, he was flat broke and they just could
not afford the plane tickets, motel rooms, and meals for the trip.
His job paid well but family expenses had recently depleted their
savings, and now this storm, he just did not have the extra cash.
Easteban was a reasonable man and his conscience
bothered him. Perhaps he could borrow the money, he thought as
he took another slurp of hot coffee from the paper cup, but, alas,
their credit was exhausted, also. He had applied for a loan but
it would certainly be delayed for several weeks with the pressing
need for home repairs and other storm related damage. He was confident
of securing the loan but it might not be approved in time. Ismini
needed the money quickly, or she would not need it at all.
As he sat ruminating over his personal problems,
he noticed a small freighter, the “James Appleton” out
of Argentine, bound for the United States and Canada with a load
of assorted freight. She was still sitting at her birth where
she had ridden out the hurricane after scuttling into port just
hours before Fay struck that part of the cost. Remarkably undamaged,
her skipper was demanding immediate permission to finish unloading
so he could be on his way north.
That was not an unreasonable request, Easteban
know, as time meant money for ocean freighters which were under
charter, and unnecessary delays in port with loading or unloading
meant lost revenue for her owners or shippers.
He did not have the responsibility of examining
her cargo, that had fallen to Lars Swenson but he was curious
what was taking so long to discharge her cargo of bananas from
Honduras.
Having nothing to do just then he walked
the short distance to berth 24-B where the James Appleton was
swinging gently at her moorings. On the wharf, near her rear gangplank,
were gathered a knot of men, intent upon several large crates
lying on the dock. Strolling up, he over heard Lars, his junior
by several years, disputing with the ship’s master.
What seems to be the problem, Lars,”
he inquired, as he politely pushed his way into the center of
the group of five men. Lars he knew, but the other four were strangers.
One was obviously the captain, another was the first mate, the
fourth man was a stevedore, whom Easteban had seen working around
the docks for several weeks. Stocky and powerfully built, he looked
like a hundred other union dock workers, scruffy around the edges,
smoking a particularly foul smelling cigar, Easteban preferred
the milder ones, he was sitting impassively astride his fork lift
waiting to move the dozen crates sitting in front of him.
The fifth man Easteban had never seen before.
Tall and slender with short cropped hair, dark completed, wearing
overhauls and a blue and white striped shirt, he seemed to be
some type of delivery man. Just off the dock, to his right, sat
a typical 17 foot bright orange and gray U-Haul truck with a slogan
emblazoned on its side that read “Adventure in Moving.”
“Good morning,” Lars said, looking
at Easteban. He was holding a clip board to which he had been
referring when the older man walked up.
“Sure was one awful powerful storm
we had over the weekend,” he commented as he slurped the
rest of his coffee, stuffing a soiled napkin into the empty cup.
“Did you and Peggy have any damage to your house?”
“Sure did,” Lars replied, as he
scuffed his heal in the dirt while removing his genuine leather
cowboy hat to scratch his head. Relaxing and taking a sip of coffee
from a white paper cup that sat on the nearest of the crates,
he looked concerned despite a visible effort to maintain a neutral
expression. “The roof blew off the guest room, and a tree
fell on the garage. Its going to cost thousands of dollars to
repair the damage, if we can find a repair man who is willing
to do the work,” he said. He scuffed a heel in the mud of
the dock as he glumly contemplated the repair bills to his home.
“You got insurance,” the captain
asked in a Panamanian accent?
“Sure,” Lars replied, “but
the insurance adjustor won’t be around for maybe several
weeks and then I’m not sure he’ll settle the claim for
what it will cost me to repair it.”
Eastiban tossed his empty coffee cup into
a trash container while Lars and the captain conversed.
“Why not,” the stevedore asked,
in mild interest as he contemplated the end of his cigar, for
he had storm damage to his house, also, as had just about everyone
in the area.
“You know how those companies are,
never want to pay full damages. And besides,” Lars continued,
“some of the damage may have been flood related, and they
don’t pay that type of claim, unless you have flood insurance,
which I didn’t. But what about you,” he asked, looking
at Easteban?
“We had a lot of miner damage, nothing
major happened to the house or car, but the garage sure is a mess.
Several trees down, power lines all over the front yard, didn’t
have any power for three days, and the sever backed up into the
basement. Smelled awful,” he grimaced, wrinkling his nose
in disgust.
The unnamed crewman laughed, shifting his
feet nervously.
“So,” the blue and white striped
shirted delivery man said, speaking for the first time, “both
of you had damage but,” he paused in reflection, “any
body hurt?”
“No,” they both responded in unison,
and Easteban added, “thank God.”
“Got a terrible flight, though,”
Easteban commented. “Ismini, that’s my wife,” he
offered gratuitously to no one in particular, “she prayed
a lot during the storm, and I guess I sort of did to.”
Easteban Montoya was a devout man. Every
one who knew him thought he was a good, honest man who endeavored
to practice his faith, as best he knew how. Never one to force
his religious faith upon others, he would not hide it either.
Breaking into his reverie, the delivery
man, appraising the situation of the two customs officers and
their needs, asked, in an innocuous sounding voice, or at least
he hoped it sounded innocuous, “can we get on with the inspection,
I’m running late and my family is expecting me home. We have
some damage, you know, downed trees, broken glass, wife’s
car smashed by a fallen tree, that stuff.”
“Sure thing,” Lars replied,
“Then what’s the problem,”
the captain asked impatiently, glancing at the delivery man, who
was now leaning against a post, smoking a thin cigarette.
Lars gestured at the twelve crates lying
at their feet. They were identical, twelve feet long, four feet
wide and two feet high, made out of stout oak planting, and bearing
all the proper identification seals and entry stamps, they were
totally nondescript. Both Lars and Easteban had seen thousands
of them over their careers. Increasingly, however, in the last
several decades, such cargo was usually shipped in sealed containers
by specially designed container ships, but these create had come
into port in the hold of an ordinary freighter and had to be handled
separately, which made them prime suspects for customs inspection.
Rex, the drug sniffing dog, had sniffed
them and pronounced them free of illegal drugs. All the documentation
appeared to be in order, and yet, Lars wasn’t satisfied.
“Something’s not right here. It feels kinda of funny,
you know, Easteban,” he said appealing to the older man.
“What’s the problem,” the
delivery man hiccupped as he removed his cigarette to gesture
toward the crates. “If everything’s in order, why can’t
we get on with it?”
“Patience, fellow,” Easteban said.
He didn’t like the looks of the man, Iranian maybe or from
some other part of the middle east. “What’s your name?”
The delivery man eyed Easteban narrowly.
Bluish gray eyes peered at him from sunken eye sockets. He had
a short pointed beard at the edge of his chin with a fringe that
extended to the center of his bottom lip and a short bristly mustache,
a scaly rash resembling a butterfly over his nose and cheeks and
a dark middle eastern complexion. He appeared to be in his thirties,
was short and thin with surprisingly delicate fingers and smooth
hands that he perpetually ran through his hair, Easteban noted
with curiosity. Quite uncharacteristic for a delivery man.
“Abdual Farukh Ibrahim,” he lied
as he hiccupped three times. “My parents emigrated from Egypt
in the sixties, just after the war. They settled in Chicago.”
Hiccup!
“Your a long way from home,” Easteban
said.
The delivery man shifted nervously. “Hay
man,” he replied hiccuping, “there’s no work up
there. Man’s gotta earn a living.”
Easteban grunted his ascent, then returned
his attention to Lars who was scuffing his heel in the dirt, squinting
at the crates, but saw nothing suspicious. “Lars has the
authority to order them opened if he suspects they might contain
contraband or drugs,” he needlessly pointed out to the captain
with the Panamanian accent.
The blue and white stripped delivery man
shifted his position against the post and eyed Easteban suspiciously
from behind another freshly lit cigarette.
“Look here,” he said without a
trace of a hiccup while maintaining just the right degree of authority
in his voice as he supposed a busy delivery man would take toward
two officious government officials. “Lets just get this stuff
loaded so I can make my delivery.”
“What do they contain,” Easteban
asked Lars, as he tried to ignore the man at his elbow, but something
about the man’s bearing made that difficult to do.
“Says they contain machine parts for
the Glaston Machine Company of Akron Ohio.” That sounded
reasonable to Easteban. “Lots of tires made there,”
he offered, “and I suppose they need lots of machine parts.”
Both officers hesitated. Easteban didn’t
want to pull rank on his junior and Lars was uncertain about his
gut instincts. He had not been on the force long enough to trust
his gut feelings. These crates did seem ordinary enough.
“I’m going to open them,”
he said to the group, having gained some measure of resolve by
Easteban’s presence. “I have probable cause to believe
they contain contraband.”
The delivery man stepped in front of Lars
as he headed to a storage locker for a hammer and crow bar.
“Wait a minute now,” he said with
a smile which barely canceled a snarl of rage and three hiccups.
“You ain't got no such cause.”
Lars was intimidated by the man’s demeanor
despite his silly hiccups. No threat had been uttered, but he
was effectively under the control of this strange man, as if he
held a gun to his temple. Some men have the power to compel instant
compliance by their presence and force of will alone. This was
just such a man.
The delivery man stared impassively at Lars,
but with unmistakable meaning in his voice and bearing. “You
ain’t going to do that,” delivery man said with only
slightly canceled anemias.
Easteban, fearing an incident, sought to
defuse the situation. “Lars, just let it go, it seems harmless
enough and we do have other things to do today.
Momentarily quailing before the stronger
man, Lars regained some part of his manhood. Turning toward Easteban,
“I think it should be opened,” he stated again, as his
foot scraped the dirt, but with a note less assurance in his voice
then before.
The delivery man noted the sudden surrender
of the younger man’s authority to that of the older and seized
the moment.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he extracted
a large wad of hundred dollar bills. Carefully peeling off bill
after bill, watching Lars' eyes grow larger with each bill, he
counted out one hundred bills.
Both Lars and Easteban watched the delivery
man with fascination as he calmly counted his wad of money. Momentarily,
both were tempted to refuse this blatant attempt at bribery and
report the incident but they both needed some extra money just
then, and, after all, there weren’t any illegal drugs in
the create, they appeared to be in order, so why not. Thus both
officials reasoned as delivery man offered first Lars then Easteban
each their fist full of money.
Easteban’s conscious bothered him as
he eyed the wad of bills. Why would this man give him and Lars
nearly twenty thousand dollars to expedite the shipment of these
twelve crates into the country? Momentarily his curiosity was
aroused as he wondered what was so valuable, but he would never
learn their secret.
He had never taken a bribe, not really,
he thought, but now, he paused, if he took the money he could
afford to send Ismini to visit her mother. He could afford the
plane ticket and all the rest of the expenses associated with
the trip.
He struggled with his consciousness, an
inner voice warning him away from the bribe while another voice
urged him to take it. Not only could his wife have her trip but
he could afford a new truck, perhaps a 1999 Datsun pickup. That
would be nice, he thought. He hadn’t had a new truck in eight
years.
That did it. Easteban reached out and took
the money, pocketing the bills and turned away from the group,
Lars followed his example, and thus the deal was sealed. Behind
his back delivery man smiled at the captain who nodded imperceptibly
to the stevedore astride his fork lift. The motor whined into
life, and in less then five minutes the crates were loaded into
the U-Haul which immediately accelerated away from the dock. The
captain and first mate boarded their ship preparatory to departure,
the stevedore vanished among the piles of freight, Lars turned
to other duties and Easteban, congratulating himself with his
new found wealth, resolved never again to take a bribe. His conscious
would never allow him a second indiscretion. He would retire shortly
to go into another line of work and would leave with an honorable
record. Never again would he violate his conscious, at least not
in this fashion, he assured himself. He would confess his sin
that evening in his private devotions and would experience no
undue guilt over this miner transgression of his faith.
On the way home he stopped at the airport
to purchase a round trip ticket for his wife. Leaving tomorrow
morning, she would arrive in Chicago at 10:45 A.M. She would be
pleased.
Turning left onto the highway outside of
the port facility, the delivery man stopped for coffee at a 7-eleven
and fell into conversation with a man wearing a gray sweater and
blue jeans, with a Mediterranean complexion, and driving a two
toned brown van.
“Everything go all right,” he
inquired laconically”
“No problem,” delivery replied,
after hiccuping twice, also without expression or emotion. Both
men looked satisfied as each drove away in different directions.
Several hours later, Easteban handed Ismini
the round trip ticket to her surprise and delight. Cautioning
her not to look gift horses in the mouth, he quelled her questions.
His heart thrilled with happiness when he saw her smiles and joy.
How radiant she looked tonight, he thought.
He would never know that he had just signed
her death certificate.
