The Snake

by J A Kellman

  That night they let him in on their plans. There was a cave with murals, north of Santa Elena, Guatemala, the Mayan leader, a guy named Kan, said—fantastic images of a pre-Columbian Mayan lord of an unknown early city-kingdom holding court, a woman offering a pot of chocolate, warriors standing guard, a Vulture Lord ancestor hovering over the scene in a cloud of incense. They needed a Mayan art expert. Wanted Polop to explain the figures, to give them a date, to verify the murals as a document of their ownership of the Petén and surrounding lands. They wanted an anthropologist to read a document, too. See how those fit in. Great. There were endless ways he could fail.

  The rack and arrows hovered at the end of it all like a gate to hell no matter what he did.

  Eleven

  Tikal National Park, Guatemala, Early November

  At the end of the rainy season in Guatemala, people in Flores and Santa Elena began to plan for the Christmas holiday, but Ochoa had something other than the holidays on his mind. Ever since Ruston’s death, hoping to find something that would explain the professor’s murder, he’d continued to comb the area behind Temple IV, a dense expanse of understory that had seen little activity for the last twenty years. That afternoon he’d pushed further than usual into the region of unidentified stones and ancient building materials. It was hard going and Ochoa was sweating. If it hadn’t been for his heavy boots, he would have turned his ankles a half dozen times.

  Suddenly, he tripped over something hidden under the vegetation and fell on his hands and knees in the thick tangle of foliage. He muttered as he pulled himself up, brushing off his pants as he stood. Whatever he had fallen over was substantial. He crouched down in the undergrowth to investigate, pulling back the plants. He’d caught his toe on a stone—the size of a German shepherd—half buried in the jungle duff. Using the small trowel he carried on his belt for just such occasions, Ochoa carefully removed the earth from around its base; then he rocked back on his heels.

  “Madre de Dios! Es el mismo! Es el mismo que tiene Ruston,” Ochoa said as he carefully dusted its surface with his handkerchief. The ancient carving was the twin of Ruston’s. The date was in the upper left, the lord’s name in the upper right, but at the bottom where the earlier stele had been broken, a seated lord stared up into the face of a vulture leaning out of a cloud of incense rising from a brazier near his feet. A pectoral in the form of a vulture hung from the lord’s necklace of large jade beads.

  What are the chances? Ochoa asked himself as he pulled out his camera and set to work documenting his find. Two stele, the same lord?

  “There’s a lot to do before I go home—record the new stele back at the office, lead a tour of visiting academics, reread the reports on the possible relationship between Tak’alik Ab’aj on the coast and Tikal around six hundred BCE.” Ochoa muttered as he covered the stele with vines. After all, Grandfather Vulture was the lord of Tak’alik Ab’aj at that time. Maybe the vulture imagery was connected with him in some way.

  First I have to tell Ríos about the stele. Everything else can wait. He barely heard the howler monkeys calling in the distant jungle as he flipped on his radio.

  ~ * ~

  Captain Ríos, director of Tikal National Park, a short, heavy man in a brown park service uniform that befit his role as director, even if it did strain over his stomach, responded immediately. Never restrained, he began talking before Ochoa finished his second sentence. “Jesús! We’ve got to get someone out there as quickly as possible. Rope the site off. Post a guard. Tomorrow morning at the latest, before someone steals the thing. Start digging. Did you cover it?”

  When Rios stopped to breathe, Ochoa assured him that the site was invisible. The wheels of Tikal National Park had begun to turn.

  ~ * ~

  By the time Ochoa pulled up in front of his house six hours later, not only had he finished his other tasks, he’d also learned enough to begin formulating questions about the stele and its seated lord, K’in A’jaw and to begin to worry. Ruston hadn’t lived long after finding the first stele. Ochoa didn’t like his chances with the second one. He’d keep his concerns from Esperanza as long as possible, but it wouldn’t take her long to put two and two together.

  Even before he unlocked the front door, the odor of wood smoke and baking tortillas reminded him he was hungry, distracting Ochoa from his pre-Columbian considerations. There was something simmering, too, maybe frijoles with meat. Once he was inside, he locked the door and padlocked the chain for the night, hung his jacket in the dark hall, and headed for the kitchen, just as Esperanza poked her head out of its doorway, her face flushed, wisps of black hair pulling out of her thick braid.

  “I thought I heard something. I’m glad you’re home. What is going on now? Is someone else dead? And you said something about another stele.”

  “I’ll tell you the whole story while we eat. It’s amazing,” Ochoa said, following her back into the warm, fire-lit kitchen. “Something smells good. I’m starving.”

  Over bowls of steaming frijoles and a basket of fresh tortillas at the tiny table near the hearth, Ochoa described what he had learned in the library that afternoon—the vulture pectoral that gave K’utz Chman his name, the city he’d ruled, and the fact that the city had existed for two thousand years.

  “Tak’alik Ab’aj was on a ridge in the jungle near the Pacific—they had trouble with erosion in the city center, so water control was an issue just like it was in Tikal,” Ochoa said, spooning a piece of beef out of his frijoles. “Ancient people always had trouble with water—too much, too little, wrong place, whatever. The lord, in this case K’utz Chman, was responsible for dealing with water.”

  “But why the name Grandfather Vulture?” Esperanza asked, refilling Ochoa’s coffee mug.

  “Because the vulture was associated with moisture and agriculture, its image shows up in a lot of places—Tak’alik Ab’aj and elsewhere. It reflects the lord’s water-related duties. Makes sense if you think about it. Vulture equals water, lord equals vulture, crops, prosperity.”

  He paused a moment to watch Esperanza fuss with the fire and pat more tortillas before he continued. “On the stele I found today, K’in A’jaw of Tikal is wearing a vulture pectoral and looking into the eyes of a vulture rising from the smoke of a brazier. Maybe his spirit animal, maybe something else. So, right there we have the vulture as a holy being or maybe an ancestor in an interaction with K’in A’jaw himself.

  “I’ve begun to wonder if Grandfather Vulture and K’in A’jaw were related in some way, if the figure in the smoke and the vulture pectoral indicate their relationship, that we’ll find a connection between the two.” Ochoa scooped frijoles out of his bowl with a tortilla. He knew it was bad manners, but he didn’t care. “We have to dig.”

  Esperanza looked concerned as she stirred sugar into her coffee. “I don’t like it. You know what happened to Ruston after he found the first stele. A year later he was dead. Are the same people going to come after you?”

  “I don’t know, but I figure there are a couple of things in my favor—I’m not a gringo for one thing, and for another, I’m not taking information or anything else out of the country. Everything stays here where it belongs, where it’s protected from looters, dealers, and wealthy collectors, and I’m not researching the stele, either. All I did was trip over the thing.”

  Esperanza didn’t look convinced. “Still, be careful. Who knows what motivated the people who grabbed Ruston?”

  Ochoa tried to steer the conversation to family matters and the Christmas season to get her mind off ugly possibilities. “What are the family holiday plans?”

  “Mother’s volunteered to have everyone at her house,” Esperanza began, knowing full well that he would have preferred to remain at home with her eating chicken instead of tamales with the entire family, but there you have it. Her mother hadn’t held a celebration since Esperanza’s father died three years ago.

  Ochoa grunted to show he was listening.

  “This will be good
for her,” Esperanza said, perking up. “All the women in the kitchen making tamales just like the old days.”

  Ochoa nodded in agreement, half listening, absorbed in the problems of traversing several hundred miles of jungle between Tikal and the southwestern Pacific coast community a thousand years or more ago and the mounting evidence of an ancient link between the two.

  “She’s going to roast a turkey in the patio oven for you and Uncle Roberto, and I’ll make tortillas to mop up the sauce.” Esperanza was getting excited, despite Marta and Pedro, their two grown children, being elsewhere—Pedro at Stanford and Marta in Spain with her husband. “It’ll almost be like it was before the kids left home.”

  Ochoa nodded again, pleased that Esperanza was more cheerful, but his mind was elsewhere. Water. Vultures. Jade. Two lords. Two cities. Ruston hanging on a rack buzzing with flies. There was more to the situation than these several facts, some level he was missing, something that might mean the difference between life and death. Ochoa only half heard Esperanza’s remark about the turkey.

  Twelve

  Guatemala City, Guatemala, Late November

  “Half the trip completed and everything is fine,” Zoila said that Monday evening before Thanksgiving as the dense Guatemala City traffic smoked and roared fifteen floors below Enrique Otzoy’s apartment. She took a handful of cashews from the bowl on the table at her elbow. “We still have our luggage, nothing bad happened, and Luis is holding up. What more can we ask?”

  “And tomorrow will be a short day,” I said, sipping my wine. “It’s only an hour flight to Flores.”

  “So, what’s new on the missing scholar’s front?” Otzoy asked Luis as he handed him another beer.

  Luis shook his head. “Nothing.”

  We sat in silence then, sipping our drinks, contemplating what the complete absence of information might mean.

  ~ * ~

  The flight to Flores early the following morning was rough. The Avianca thirty-seven-passenger, twin-engine Embraer ERJ 145 dropped and shuddered in the turbulent air. Bottles and cans rolled down the aisle, clattering against the seat legs and bulkheads at either end. The seat belt sign glowed the entire time. By the time we reached Flores, several people were queasy, if the gagging sounds around the cabin were any indication.

  The pilot must have been sick of flying because he dumped the airplane at the end of the runway like he never wanted to see it again. The impact brought down a rain of coats and bags from the poorly secured overheads, and cries of fear from the passengers. They grumbled as the plane turned toward the terminal and nosed into an empty bay. Once the pilot cut the engines and the door was open, though, they didn’t care about the quality of the ride…they just wanted to get the hell out.

  Exiting the plane proved to be the hardest part of the trip—Luis, the steep airplane stairs, the collapsed chair, the walker, the carry-ons—the three of us struggling on the metal stairs to stay upright and to get Luis safely in his chair at the bottom. I was sweating by the time we headed toward the terminal. Luis and Zoila went ahead, weaving through the baggage carts and airport workers who were servicing the plane for its return to Guatemala City. I trailed behind, intent on retrieving our remaining luggage.

  ~ * ~

  Guatemala’s terminals are interfaces between worlds, I thought, resting my arms on the handle of the luggage cart as I waited for our bags. They’re where my familiar self is replaced by someone else. Maybe part of my sense of stepping through a looking glass is that I don’t look like most Guatemalans, and I’m aware of not fitting in. I’m taller, for one thing, lighter—a white giraffe in a herd of gazelles. I smile at the image.

  The flashing red lights and blatting horn of the lurching conveyer pulled me out of my musing. Backpacks, cardboard boxes tied with twine, baby carriers, shopping bags with handles roped together, battered suitcases emerged from the far opening, circled around the central island, exited through the door on the other side, to return a few minutes later accompanied by additional cargo. I grabbed our luggage as it juddered past, heaved it on my trolley, and headed for passport control. Luis and Zoila waited for me near the beginning of the line.

  Despite the crowd, we were through the process in no time.

  “Looks like the shuttle has arrived,” Zoila called as she shoved their bags onto a luggage cart and began to push Luis toward the door. She nodded her head toward the green Ford van parked at the curb, sending out a cloud of exhaust.

  Tikal National Park, Guatemala

  The Tikal Inn, a ten-minute walk from Tikal’s Central Plaza, is a collection of low brown thatched bungalows around a swimming pool and tropical garden and two multistory buildings, the largest with a dining room and bar. We’d opted for rooms in the main building, easier for Luis.

  We met later for dinner in the glassed-in dining room, an airy space with flowers on every table and a view of the jungle. Next to the hostess’s desk, a scarlet macaw, shifting from foot to foot on his perch in the center of a wirework cage, watched over the area with beady eyes...periodically remarking on his job as a hotel mascot. While we waited for our dinner of beef grilled over a wood fire with plenty of salt, we discussed our plans.

  “I want to see that stele for myself,” Luis said, putting down his beer. “Get a sense of where it’s located in relationship to the rest of the site. Get a better idea of the stele as a boundary marker, the direction of a line of demarcation, the scale of a possible enclosure. And I want to know what has been written about the ancient peoples, the early preclassic history of Tikal. See if I can develop an idea of who might have erected it, and why Ruston is dead because he found it.”

  Zoila nodded as she sipped her wine. “I keep thinking that water lies at the heart of the whole Ruston thing. Let’s face it…the vulture imagery is about water and elite power, too. Water’s always been a big deal. The lord would have to provide rain through rituals and maybe oversee the engineering of hydro projects. Look around. People in the Petén still have to depend on rain, retention, storage, bringing water in. Somehow Ruston touched that ancient nerve and then—”

  “Poor guy,” I said. “He probably stepped into what amounts to a two-thousand-year-old wasp nest. I wonder if I followed through on his scholarly plans, if I could uncover anything about the stele or the pectoral. The pectoral has to mean something, or why else did he bother to mention it in his notes, or steal it for that matter? Where the hell did he get it? Why is it important?” I sloshed my wine in my excitement. “Surely there is information that will shed light on it.” I pulled my drawing from my purse and spread it in the center of the table as if it might help me think. “It isn’t just an ornament. It has to be more than that, and it’s bound to tell us something about Ruston’s inquiries.”

  As dinner arrived, a dark shape fluttered toward us from an elaborate cage in the corner of the room. The inn’s resident toucan was eager to introduce himself. He settled in the center of the table, moving his blue feet carefully among the dishes, peering hungrily at our food, fluffing his yellow bib. I handed him a piece of papaya. He took it in his graceful red-tipped beak, tossed it down, clacked his bill for more.

  On the porch later, watching the evening mist rise in the jungle undergrowth in inky shadows, the soaring canopy fading into darkness as stars powdered the sky, I started to relax. Luis sagged in his chair. Even Zoila, who usually had energy to spare, looked worn out. We went to bed early. Maneuvering Luis’s chair around Tikal tomorrow wasn’t going to be easy.

  Thirteen

  Tikal National Park, the Following Day

  The roar of howler monkeys jolted me awake the next morning. They sounded as if they were about to attack the hotel. I slid out of bed and crossed to the window. No dark forms headed toward the buildings through the mist, only ferocious howling indicated the monkeys’ presence. They were probably just telling one another their plans for the day. They didn’t care about the hotel—or humans, either. We were nothing.

  The strangely inorganic
cries of other jungle creatures—sounding like steel strings struck with tiny mallets or tinkling glass chimes—and the drone of insects followed me into the dining room.

  Before we sat down the toucan hurried over, taking over the middle of our table. When our fruit plate arrived, he clattered his bill in enthusiasm, eyeing the slices of pineapple, papaya, mango, and bright magenta pitaya. He poked the tiny red bananas with his thick beak as if to ascertain their ripeness, and then he arranged himself, tail and wings tucked as if he were in his nest hole, waiting to be served. I handed him a large piece of ripe papaya as a reward for his good manners. His bill felt like plastic as he gently lifted it from my fingers and tossed the entire slice down his throat in a single swift motion. He made a couple of passes at the breadbasket, too, so I ripped off pieces of sweet bread to round out his breakfast.

  ~ * ~

  When Captain Ríos gave Miguel Ochoa the letter from the internationally known anthropologist, Luis Velasco, requesting a private guide and describing his interest in seeing the unusual stele discovered last summer, neither was aware of Luis’s special travel requirements. All Luis indicated was his current interest in early Mayan cultural interactions, his wife’s research in hydrology, and their companion’s particular focus on vulture imagery and its social implications.