Inclusions

by Emily Duvall

  “I’ve waited a long time to meet you.” Brent grinned the smile of a man stuck on himself and didn’t waste a beat. “How’s your brother these days?”

  Laughter shot out of Melanie’s mouth. “Interesting choice of words for our very first introduction.”

  “Interesting choice to get on a plane with a bunch of strangers.” He grinned in a way that mimicked Luke. “I hope you don’t mind sleeping with bugs the size of rats crawling all over you.”

  She sat up a little straighter, refusing to let Brent get to her. “I don’t mind at all. I used to sleep with your brother.”

  “Touché.”

  Luke entered the cabin. The attractive stewardess welcomed him instantly with a kiss on the cheek. They stood together for a few moments and spoke quietly.

  “There’s my brother,” Luke finally said, noticing Brent and Melanie. He clapped Brent on the shoulder. “I see you’ve met Melanie.”

  “She’s charming, really.” Brent shook his brother’s hand. “Good to see you. Are you sure about…” He glanced at Melanie. “I thought you were kidding about bringing her.”

  “I asked her to come.” Luke nodded solemnly at her. “You’re to give her the same respect as anyone else traveling with us. She’s my guest.”

  Relieved at Luke sticking up for her, Melanie flashed Brent a victorious smile and closed her eyes until the purr of the engine sounded in her ears and the subtle movement of the wheels gliding on the tarmac rippled under her feet. The plane took off and flew into the night and all remained quiet as Brent and Luke spoke in hushed voices and Melanie drifted off to sleep.

  The rest of the flight Melanie slept. They arrived in Honolulu and she shuffled her feet like a sleepwalker to the next plane, taking in the people and airport around her, but not really fully awake. Someone looked at her ticket and ushered her through a flight gate. She followed Luke and Brent to another terminal and she kept yawning and fighting off the need to sit down and sleep more. The scent of caffeine didn’t entice her tongue. The tiredness saddled onto her back onto the next plane. The cushioned seats helped her settle in and someone threw a blanket over her. Another engine rattled off…a voice came over the loudspeaker…the pilot drove the plane on the runway…Luke whispered something to her about blue garnets…one of them would be for her…and then she slept some more.

  “We’re in New York,” Luke announced abruptly and turned on the cabin lights over her seat.

  “Already?” Melanie came around and stretched her arms. The other passengers formed a line and retrieved their carry-on luggage from the compartments above the seats. They wore anxious expressions to get off the plane and get on with their lives. “I feel ten years older.”

  “You’ll feel thirty years older by the time we’re done with this trip. We have an hour layover. Brent’s already off the plane.”

  Melanie took his advice and they parted ways after entering their terminal at JFK. She purchased toothpaste and a toothbrush from a kiosk and found a bathroom where she washed her face and brushed her teeth. When she emerged from the restroom, she found Luke holding a single cup of coffee and he did not look like somebody willing to share.

  “Brent needed to make a few calls,” he said and removed the tab on his coffee lid. “Do you need to call anyone?”

  “Where’s my cup of coffee?”

  “They only had one left and I bought it for myself.”

  “At least you’re consistent.”

  “So, do you need to make a call?”

  “I should call my sister. My mother doesn’t know I’m in Maui. I mean, in New York, or wherever we are now.” Guilt stifled Melanie’s good mood at the truth she’d kept hidden from her mother.

  “I thought you lived with her.”

  “I do.”

  “She doesn’t know you’re across the country and about to be off the continent?”

  “I’m sure Jessie has told her by now I’m working for you.”

  “She doesn’t even know that I hired you?” Luke stuck out his neck and turned up his palm. “Why the hell not?”

  “Because,” Melanie seethed and grabbed the phone out of his hand, “my family’s been through enough thanks to you. She wouldn’t understand. I would rather die than having her know I’m here with you. Give me a minute, okay? Let me call my sister.”

  She waited until he’d gone and she called Jessie. Voicemail was such a beautiful invention in times like these, when she could outline her plans, her location, and end with a message without ever getting the backlash of their outrage at her decision. “There,” she said and ended the message. Melanie handed the phone back to Luke. “Phone call handled.”

  Luke wasn’t placated. The mood on his face read more interested than ever. “Do you ever talk to your father anymore?”

  “I email with him occasionally.” Melanie shrugged. “He calls on my birthday and sends me a check each year or a gift card to a store I don’t shop at anymore. I’m not ungrateful for his kindness. I’m just over trying to tell him about myself. He can’t get to know me through a phone call twice a year or a few emails.”

  “At least he’s trying.” Luke waved his hand at Brent walking towards them. The tanned skin and layer of dust breathed excitement in every one of his steps.

  Like some enigma bearing coffee and a sexy grin, Melanie saw the way people passing by looked at Brent and then their gaze lassoed over to Luke and they tried not to stare. One of the women passing by gave Luke a long glance and then she whispered to her friend. Melanie flashed Luke a harsh glance. “Oh look. Here comes Brent. The brother I’ve finally met after seven years.”

  Luke laughed. “I bet you’ve been waiting all night to say that.”

  “Accept that I’m right about you purposefully keeping me from learning about your family.”

  “Should I come back later?” Brent said, handing Melanie a cup of coffee. “Sorry, I got distracted with a phone call. I put sugar in your cup. Maybe it will get rid of the perpetual frown on your face. You two look ready to get in a ring together and fight it out.”

  “Nonsense,” Luke answered happily, “Melanie was telling me how impressed she is with you.”

  Brent laughed hard. “No chance in hell.”

  They spent the next hour drinking coffee and getting food at a sandwich shop near their gate. Luke spent most of the time on the phone, with whom, she would never know. They boarded the plane without excitement and took their seats in first class. Luke stretched out his legs and closed his eyes, which left Melanie to occupy her time with Brent. They took out their frustration on each other by playing Hangman. Melanie won seven out of ten times and I-Spy, which Brent won more than lost and when they’d grown bored of playing child games, they sat back and began talking.

  Brent ordered champagne. “Would you like a glass?” he offered.

  “No thank-you. Alcohol might put me to sleep again.” She drew the blanket over her shoulders.

  “I’m glad my brother is joining me on this trip. His face is too clean-shaven for what we do. The two of us, actually, the three of us when Damon first left home, we used to fly all over the world living out our backpacks and running from one mine to the next.” Brent rested his head on the headrest. “This one time we were in Thailand looking for rubies. We’d gotten a tip. Our tips are often good leads as we give a cut to our contact. The three of us set out to get to the mine before any of the other buyers. We ended up getting to a dead-end and the mine was a trap to rob buyers. We got everything taken from us and I mean everything. They let us keep our underwear and shoes. You should have seen us when we came back to town, dehydrated, sunburnt, and wearing only underwear.” Brent laughed to himself. “We consider ourselves lucky they didn’t shoot us right there.”

  Melanie sank lower in her seat. The dangers for a woman might be far greater out there, but she didn’t voice her opinion. She wanted to be on this trip. Whatever came next she could handle. Her traveling companions excelled at this business. They knew how to keep
each other safe. They would watch out for her, even if she didn’t trust her heart to one of them.

  The pilots landed the airplane in Bekily early in the morning. The heat hit Melanie as she stepped off the plane along with dry, dusty, air that coated her skin and baked her simultaneously. They grabbed their backpacks and supplies, headed to the interior of the airport to use the restroom and buy some water.

  Melanie and Brent waited outside on a street corner juxtaposed by traffic and a rickety fence on a small plot of sidewalk. The landscape, more modern than Melanie had expected, bustled with people going about their day. Old t-shirts covered their backs and worn jeans enclosed their legs. The women swayed rather than walked in their long skirts and dresses tied around their necks. A vendor selling spotted brown bananas waved at Melanie. The rows of buildings and houses weren’t of the hut variety Melanie had imagined. Cars and people moved up the street with abundant noise. Their entire group stuck out by way of light skin color, healthy faces, and glowing white smiles. Melanie clutched the strap of her backpack, feeling protective of her belongings.

  “You look out of place,” Brent commented.

  “At least I don’t look sketchy,” she quipped.

  “I fit in more than you.” The sly Harrison grin rode up his cheeks and he elbowed her playfully. “Don’t worry too much about your safety. You’re a woman in a foreign land. What could go wrong?”

  Melanie tried to think of other topics. Fear rode up her spine, but she wouldn’t admit this to Brent or Luke. Thankfully, the rental car appeared around the corner with Luke at the wheel. His bulky frame filled the driver’s side and his shoulders hunched a little. The rusted exterior, broken door handle, and roll of paint missing on the hood elevated the status of Melanie’s car back home.

  She got into the back seat holding her bag while Brent took up the front seat. Luke pulled away from the street corner without much notice by the people around them. “Where are we going?” Melanie asked, once Luke drove the car back in the stream of traffic.

  “The friend of a friend I told you about. His name is Andry and he’s expecting us. He lives about an hour south of the airport.” Brent angled his head back. “I’ve worked with Andry before. He’ll translate for us and show us the way to the mine, unless you speak Malagasy and know your way around the southern terrain.”

  Melanie snapped her fingers. “I knew I should have taken Malagasy in high school.”

  The engine gave an unpromising gurgle and sputter. Luke’s hand hit the wheel and the car settled. “You look nervous,” Luke said, looking at Melanie through the rearview mirror.

  “There’s the observation of the year.” Melanie clutched her bag close to her chest. The gaze in his eyes was enough confidence for both of them. She saw the corners of his mouth creep up to grin.

  The geography unfolded the further away from the airport Luke drove. She remembered very little about the actual, physical whereabouts of gemstones from what Luke had told her so many years ago. The term Metaphoric Rock stuck out; found miles within the Earth where the pressure is too great and gemstones are borne.

  But there weren’t many mountains around, at least none liked she’d imagined. The city transformed into countryside consisting of bush, brush, rocks, and a landscape overlooked by no one other than God himself. The desolate place wasn’t inviting even to a stray cat. An elderly woman carried a basket on a dirt road. A mangy dog chased something in the distance. Puny fences teetered over to divide property and the dirt swirled up from the road and gave everything a dusty, forgotten layer. Melanie couldn’t see the potential beyond the poverty and desolation. She couldn’t fathom how something worth so much money came out of this place; came out from the nothingness they drove through.

  “The community Andry lives in is near the Menarandra River,” Brent commented. “They are mostly farmers. They raise cattle. This is their land.”

  “Why aren’t we meeting Andry in the city?”

  “He doesn’t like the city. He’s a family man and he likes to stay close to his land. He’ll meet us out in the country because it saves him time. Competition is fierce. We’re not the first to visit this land and we won’t be the last. There could be any number of our competitors out there trying to steal Andry. Someone else might offer him more money for his help.”

  “He’s scaring you,” Luke interjected. “Don’t look like you just drank poison. Staying out here, looking for treasure is nothing more than high-risk and high-reward.”

  “If you survive,” Brent joked.

  Melanie saw no humor in the moment.

  They traveled a bumpy dirt road that constantly knocked Melanie’s knees together. The car held up, though she swore one of the tires would blow at any moment. They moved farther away from the city until she didn’t see any sign of human activity. They could have been on a different planet with all the dust and wide open space.

  The plateaus in the distance grew nearer after some time on the road. Shrubs appeared in bigger clusters and the dry grass became fuller and thicker closer to the road. Luke pulled off the road at a section of dried up trees and low bushes. A plastic shopping bag clung to a bush and flapped like a flag in the wind. Luke veered the car to another road, one with bigger dips and more rocks. The car bounced and sputtered before Luke came to a stop in front of the tree with the bag. Both Brent and Luke cast furtive glances through the windshield.

  “We’re meeting him at the plastic bag,” Brent said and pointed to a large tree with a large circle etched in the tree. He looked out every window and squinted. “He’ll be here.”

  Luke turned off the engine. “We’re all getting out of the car.”

  The bag in Melanie’s arms slid. They had arrived in the middle of nowhere, without any resources except the little food and water they’d stocked up on at the airport shops. Melanie opened the car door and caught sight of a dark-skinned man appear from behind the circle of shrubs. “Andry,” she heard Brent say. “This is my brother, Luke.”

  “Welcome, welcome,” Andry said in return and slapped Brent’s hand like an old friend.

  “This is Melanie,” Luke said and looked around for her. “She’s a friend of ours learning the gem business.”

  “Hello,” she said and shook his hand.

  Andry smiled with a mouthful of stained, overcrowded teeth. “We have much work to do.”

  “Tell us about this garnet,” Luke got right to the point. “Is this the real deal or have we flown all this way to chase a rumor?”

  “The garnet is real. We’ll go there now. We take the car close to four-hundred kilometers and then walk to the entrance of the mine. The mine is too remote for a car to go.”

  “Then we’d better get moving.” Brent slapped Luke on the back. “Daylight’s burning.”

  “Yes, yes,” Andry replied with his thick, enthusiastic accent. “We must move quickly.”

  They all piled back in the car with Andry sitting next to Melanie. His strong body odor filled the back seat and she could see sweat breached the fabric of his shirt collar. The kindness in him outweighed the physical nuances and they quickly began chatting about their homes.

  Andry, a father of three daughters and two sons, grew up in the same farming community his family owns today. Their community had started a school a couple of years ago and up until recently they were too overcrowded for girls to attend. This year an unexpected cash flow came in the form of his brother selling a large blue garnet he’d been hiding for years and he’d used the payout from this deal to hire a second teacher for the girls. They passed the time in small talk and every time Melanie glanced out her window, everything looked the same dirt, spacious, and parched landscape.

  They’d been on the road for close to the length of their trip when black smoke puffed out the engine. “No, no, no!” Brent yelled as Luke pulled the car over.

  “Why did you pick this car?” Andry asked. “You should have bought bigger.”

  “I thought we’d be more discreet in this one.�
� Luke turned off the engine. “Now we might get robbed regardless.”

  “There’s nobody on this road to rob us,” Melanie said, strained from the long day of travel.

  “We will get robbed,” Andry said, “at some point, I assume. There’s a group of rebels that roam around these roads and they stay close. They like to stay hidden. They ambush your car and they take what they want. There’s little you can do to prevent such an attack. There’s too much land to control. Madagascar is not like your California. There’s no Mickey Mouse.”

  Disneyland? Melanie scrutinized shrubs around her, wondering if she hadn’t already seen the faint movement of someone crouching behind or in the tall, dry grass. She gulped and held her bag closer.

  The hood popped up and Luke inspected the engine. He came back and stuck his head through the open window. “She’s toast. We’re done.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Melanie said.

  Andry opened the door. “We walk.”

  “We have to get moving,” Luke said, sticking his head through the open window. “Melanie, keep your eyes open.”

  Luke’s warning didn’t console Melanie. She stepped out of the car and went around to the trunk where Luke and Brent worked to divide up the supplies. Andry unzipped his long, army green bag and pulled out a gun, small enough to fit into a spare back pack brought by Brent. Luke slammed the trunk closed and they got moving on foot.

  The soles of her shoes wore out faster than she would have liked. Soon, she began to feel the stabs of the pebbles on her feet, the thin layer of rubber keeping her skin from touching the ground grew soft and stretchy. The path in front of her she had to watch carefully. Lizards darted out across their path; snakes slithered in the trees and around the rocks. The spiders and scorpions owned the land. There wasn’t another car, person, or house in sight as far as Melanie could see. The sun beat down and drained her energy. Tired and hungry, they all sort of stopped at the same time near an area semi-protected by boulders.