– Bro, do you believe in angels?

– Angels? No, no I don’t think I believe in them, my friend replied directly. Why? Do you?

– No, not really… Well, I don’t know. It’s just… there’s a story.

– What? Did someone tell you a story about angels?

– No, no one told me. It happened to me—or rather, to some friends and me—a long time ago. I need to tell it. Will you listen?

– Yeah, go ahead.

– So, as I was saying, a long time ago, we were coming back from visiting some friends who lived in a place where you had to leave the highway and travel about half a kilometer down a dirt road to reach.

– On either side of the road, there wasn’t much—mostly vegetation and a few scattered houses.

– It was already dark, and we were in a large truck—I think it was a Silverado. Three of us were in the cab when, about 300 meters from the highway exit, a drunk man asked us for a ride.

– Feeling cheerful as we were, we stopped to let him get in the bed of the truck. The drunk man tried to get into the front, but we stopped him.

– “No, if you want a ride, you’ll have to sit in the back.”

– He climbed into the bed, and we took off, still talking and laughing, when suddenly, just 10 or 20 meters ahead, in a place where there was nothing around, smoke started pouring out from under the hood.

– Scared, we got out and opened it, only to be even more terrified when we saw flames in the wires near the fuel filter.

– Without thinking, I took off my chompa* and…

– Your what? said my friend, who isn’t from Ecuador.

– My chompa, my jacket, my coat, whatever you want to call it.

– Ah.

– So, as I was saying, I took off my… well, whatever you call it, and threw it over the fire to put it out. The result? A burned jacket and the fire flaring up even more.

– In our panic, we hadn’t noticed that the drunk man had gotten out of the truck and was standing with us. We only remembered him when he threw himself at the wires, bare-handed, and put out the fire.

– Not knowing what else to do, almost in a panic, we started checking if there were fires in other parts of the vehicle. Once we were sure there weren’t, we turned back to our savior to help him…
– …but he was gone.

– We called for him, searched, and waited, but we never saw him again. And to this day, I still wonder how someone with burned hands could vanish in such a desolate place, knowing there were three people nearby who would have done anything to help him—especially after the sacrifice he made for us.

– I feel like there’s something else you want to tell me.

– Even now, so many years later, when those of us who were there occasionally meet, after hours of laughter, we always end up sitting quietly, looking at each other, remembering him in silence—grateful not just for what he did, but for how he changed us all.

– So, are you suggesting he was an angel?

– Well, I wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t been there. Would we still be meeting up and telling this story? Would I even be here telling you this right now? Do I believe he was an angel, you ask? I don’t know… Well, yes, I suppose I do. 

But what about you? What do you think?

*Chompa is the word people use for a jacket in Ecuador. The original story was written in Spanish.