Aztec Odyssey

by Jay C. LaBarge

  Well, I remember every little thing

  As if it happened only yesterday . . .

  Soba gleefully rocked back and forth in her sitting position, exclaiming, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light, I love it!”

  Nick did a rousing acoustic rendition to his audience of one and to the nighttime sky, the animal spirits in them both stirring, Soba enthusiastically belting out the female part of the lyrics. The song ended with a flourish, and Soba immediately sat atop Nick and wrapped her legs tightly around him, kissing him eagerly. As passions flared, clothes flew off in heaps, some landing on the surrounding cacti, slowly dancing in the slight hint of an evening breeze.

  Giggling and now naked, Soba pounced on top of Nick, her dark hair shimmering from the barely visible crescent moon. Pinning him down, she swayed her long hair over his face, tickling him back and forth.

  “What’s it gonna be boy? Yes or no?”

  Nick laughed out loud as he grabbed her by the shoulders and rolled back on top, mesmerized by those dancing, deep green eyes. Later, their passions finally played out, he lay down beside her. Still gently panting, he closed his eyes, perfectly content. He felt like he was floating in space, but there was no peyote required this time.

  “Let me sleep on it,” Nick gently sang. “And I’ll give you an answer in the morning.”

  Soba softly chuckled. “Figures.”

  They lay, hand in hand, letting the heat dissipate, until the nighttime air cooled their shimmering bodies. Finally chilled, Soba pulled the sleeping bag up under her chin and lay across him.

  Nick looked dreamily at Soba in the nook of his arm, then turned and gazed under his truck into the distance as he drifted off into a deep sleep. In an endorphin fueled dream he and Soba were driving wildly in his pickup, chased by some unseen, ominous foe. He couldn’t quite make it out, but the dark foreboding presence was drawing ever closer, gaining on them, about to overtake and descend upon them. The words to the song he had sung were now screaming in his mind, looping faster and faster. Paradise by the dashboard light, by the light, the light, light, light, light.

  Down the road they went, rapidly accelerating and picking up reckless speed, veering around slower cars, screaming toward an intersection with a bright red flashing light and traffic flowing everywhere. Just as he was about to blow through the intersection and crash he instinctively put his arm out to shield Soba and closed his eyes tight.

  When he awoke with a start, he realized it was still night, the cicadas softly singing in the cottonwood and willow trees by the stream bed, and it had all been just an intense Technicolor dream. But he couldn’t shake off the vision of the flashing red light, nor the song ringing in his head.

  As he closed his eyes again to compose himself, Nick could swear he still saw the flashing red light. He slowly opened them and turned his head slightly. There it was, a slight red reflection blinking off one of the struts of the running boards of the Chevy. Nick gently pulled his arm out from under Soba, put on his glasses, and carefully edged his way under the truck.

  “I’ll be damned,” he whispered to himself, as he reached out and pulled off a small black box with some type of antenna and a faint LED activation light, blinking red. “That sure as hell isn’t paradise by the dashboard light.”

  Chapter 27 – June 28

  It was early Monday morning, and they were only about an hour drive from Cuernavaca. Soba wanted to get there and register for her conference before noon, so she was up gathering wild edibles for a quick breakfast. No need to kill anything this morning, this would be a simple harvest meal.

  Nick debated in his head whether or not to tell her what he found the prior night under the truck, but ultimately decided not to, or at least not yet. No sense in worrying her until he knew more.

  Nanook was playfully following Soba around, nipping at her heels, looking for a little attention. He proudly dropped the coati’s skull at her feet and backed off and crouched down, the universal sign for wanting to play. Viscera hung where the neck had been, and the one unblinking eye looked back up at her. Soba deftly put her toe under the other empty socket, flicked it up in the air and in one smooth motion caught the skull and then sent it spinning wildly into the distance.

  “Funny,” Nick remarked to Soba as he shook his head in bewilderment. “You sure don’t throw like the girls I knew back home.”

  In a bound Nanook was off after the crazily twirling skull, his heavy feet kicking up dust and thumping on the dry stream bed of the arroyo. Nick smiled to himself as he watched, thinking how idyllic the scene was, except it was an oversized white wolf instead of a dog, and a desiccated skull instead of a ball. Oh well, when in Rome.

  Nick carefully hid the still blinking device in back of the front seat of his pickup, a nascent plan evolving in the background of his mind. If someone was tracking him, better to not let them know he was on to them. The little voice in the back of his head had been right all along, he would do well to heed it in the future, for all their sakes.

  On the quick ride to the convention center in Cuernavaca, Soba gave Nick the background on why she was so excited to attend this First Nations Tribal Council gathering.

  “Not only will there be representatives of tribes from the states, but also from Canada, Mexico and Central America, and right on down through South America. There have been smaller gatherings over time, but I am so excited to have so many different peoples together at once!”

  Nick could feel the passion in her voice and couldn’t help but get caught up in her enthusiasm.

  “So if this all goes well, if you as a group accomplish what you set out to, what exactly would that be?” Nick inquired.

  Soba excitedly patted his leg, as she obviously wanted to rehearse this pitch on someone.

  “Well, we can share best practices, build on what works, and enable one another. And that will take a common agenda, something we have struggled with. We need to take small steps first, but we all suffer from the legacies of colonial division. We didn’t make the borders, but the tribes live in isolated pockets scattered across continents, sharing common problems.”

  “Yeah, you can thank the Pope for that shortly after Columbus landed. He divided the Orbe Novo, I mean the new world, into spheres of influence between the Spanish and Portuguese. Couldn’t have the Christians tripping over each other and fighting, instead of enslaving the natives,” Nick sarcastically observed.

  Soba rolled her eyes at that one. “Well, what we found in the smaller gatherings and by video conferencing was we tended to share the same challenges, regardless of location or former colonial master. That is why we need to get on the same page, to come up with a common agenda. And if we can achieve acceptance and recognition of that, then we can perhaps gain some momentum. Our collective voices will ring louder than any one tribe, and we can then really work to preserve our languages, our stories and legends, our collective heritage. I feel being able to pass that down to our descendants would be a noble endeavor. That is my quest, Nick LaBounty.”

  A short time later they arrived in Cuernavaca and made their way slightly south of it to the Congress Center Morelos, the site of the convention. Nick smiled as he pulled up, suddenly feeling his battered pickup truck fit right in among the Volkswagon vans covered in hippie graffiti, the rusted Toyota trucks, and other various vehicles held together with equal parts Bondo and duct tape.

  “Not exactly Monaco, is it?” Soba smiled cheerfully. “But it’s not how you got here, it’s that you are here.”

  Suddenly a high-pitched call from across the parking lot, one that would have made a Conquistador shudder, made Soba jump out and run to its sender.

  “Colel, how are you? It’s been too long!” Soba yelled as she embraced her friend and picked her up and twirled her around and around.

  Nick parked the truck and let Nanook out. He waited patiently for the white wolf to mark his new territory, and then looked up to see Soba and Colel laughing like schoolgirls and come trotting towards him
.

  “Colel, I want you to meet Nick, and of course you remember Nanook. Nick this is Colel, whose name means goddess of the bees. Usually it’s the boys who are buzzing around her.”

  Colel meekly put out her hand, which Nick reached for. But once she grasped his hand, she pulled him in tight and gave him a surprisingly hard hug, giggling. Then she abruptly pushed him away with both hands and looked up at him appraisingly.

  “Hmm, didn’t sting you, did I? So what do we have here Soba? I see you’re not going native, you’re turned to the dark side. Or should I say the lighter side?” Colel raised a conspiratorial eyebrow to Nick and smiled, then kneeled down and gave Nanook a deep hug as well, which earned her a nuzzling and wet face lick.

  Soba grinned and looked at Nick. “I think you’re meeting my counterpart to your friend Killian, my hell raising alter ego. If you couldn’t tell Colel is Mayan, we met at one of those earlier, smaller council meetings I was telling you about.”

  Colel stood up next to Soba, noticeably shorter than her Navajo friend. Putting her arm around Soba’s waist and pulling her tight, she looked at Nick and said, “Ah, the stories I could tell you. Two young girls, sneaking away from their elders and chasing two-legged game, those were the days!” At which she did her high pitch shout again, to which Nanook raised his head and howled along.

  “They sure were,” Soba enthused. “Turns out not only is this one good at climbing out of windows and an expert at evasion, but she also has the gift of tongues. We could always find a mutual language no one else knew to come up with our schemes in private.” They giggled knowingly between themselves, with Nick shaking his head in amusement.

  After Colel said her goodbyes, Soba gathered her things to review her presentation for the conference, and Nick grabbed his backpack. He made sure he had Grandma Ingrid’s copy of the family history, and instinctively touched the link on his necklace, a habit he was forming, like rubbing a worry stone.

  Soba looked at him expectantly, reminding him of a kid whose friends were waiting outside for them to come play. “I don’t present until tomorrow, but I have a full agenda for this afternoon and a group mixer after. I’ll keep Nanook with me, he won’t lack for attention. More likely he will be the center of it. What will you do, think you will be able to survive without me?”

  “Oh, I’ll manage to muddle by. Think I will find the business center, all I need is an internet connection to get some research rolling.”

  Nick absentmindedly gave her a peck on the cheek, which she returned with a hardy slap to his backside and a laugh as she waved to Colel across the parking lot and scurried away.

  “See you tonight,” she called over her shoulder, which Nick barely heard, already lost deep in his own thoughts.

  The sun was now at its zenith, the sky cobalt blue, the air devoid of any trace of humidity and searingly hot. Nick wandered inside to the business center, an air-conditioned oasis of dark wood and cubicles with sleek computer screens and was greeted by a well-dressed attendant who correctly guessed Nick was American.

  “Welcome to the City of Eternal Spring, sir,” he said in perfect English. “How may I be of service?”

  Nick pondered the nickname given to Cuernavaca by Alexander von Humboldt in the nineteenth century for a moment. It certainly was appropriate given how temperate the area tended to be, although the current heat wave belied it. He procured the password for the wireless network and thanked him.

  He then noticed an elegant bar across the hallway, and self-consciously dusted himself off before grabbing a tall Dos Equis draft in a frosted mug and a bowl of tortilla chips and salsa. Nick then made his way out to the empty veranda and sat in a well shaded corner near a power outlet, shielded by the beamed terracotta roof. A series of elegant ceiling fans, all artfully interconnected by pulleys and gears, provided a welcomed breeze. There were not many people around on a Monday, save for the conference attendees that continued to trickle in. Nick connected the power to his nearly drained laptop and logged onto the network.

  Time to catch up and then break things down into an executable plan before I hit Mexico City, he thought.

  First, Nick sent an email to his old professor, Dr. Storm, at the University of Chicago, to see if he had received what he had mailed to him earlier in the month. His insight was always perfectly objective and welcomed and tended to keep Nick centered and able to see the forest through the trees. More than once he had gotten lost in the details of a research project or dig, and the good doctor had shown him that with professional methodology and good deductive reasoning the answer was often right in front of him, hidden in plain sight.

  He also realized it had been a while since he had talked with Charlie, and dialed him at his office, his call immediately going to voice mail.

  “Hi brother, just touching base. Made it to Cuernavaca with Soba, we’re here for a couple of days for her First Nations Tribal Council. I’m going to get some research done while she is presenting and hobnobbing with all the natives. I’m a little outnumbered here man, I feel like Custer riding into Little Big Horn. Anyway, give me a call back and we’ll catch up in real time, hope all is well with Sophie and the kids. Buenos días hermano, talk soon.”

  Nick hung up and smiled, envisioning Charlie at work at his hedge fund, diligently making people’s retirements a little more secure, bit by bit. “I shouldn’t complain,” he mused. “He’s managing my future too.”

  Nick took a long slow drink of his beer, the frosted mug perspiring onto the ceramic tabletop. If he was to maximize his research time at the archives in Mexico City, he needed to formulate a plan here, while he had the time to focus with a clear head. But where to begin? Ever since the Spanish had subjugated the indigenous peoples of the Americas, untold adventurers had sought treasures, both real and imagined. A pang of doubt started sounding in the recesses of his mind, gnawing at the depression hidden just below the surface. What did he possibly possess to unlock one of these undecipherable mysteries that they had lacked, was his even trying just hubris?

  He again rubbed the pendant that hung around his neck, seeking inspiration. After another pull on the beer with his eyes shut tight in contemplation, he shook his head slowly and opened them, a look of steadfast determination now etched on his countenance. He realized he had everything any conquistador or adventurer had lacked, especially the purest of motives. His wasn’t gold lust or treasure for his own benefit, it was to solve a long-held family mystery, now inextricably intertwined with solving the murder of his father. He had the professional training and experience of an archeologist, cutting edge research tools and the latest in technology, and most importantly the conviction of his cause. But now that he knew others also had an interest in his quest, he also had competition. The clock was ticking, louder and louder. He was determined to get to the bottom of this, come what may.

  There was only one place to start, and that was at the beginning. Right in Tenochtitlán, immediately after the conquest. Maybe even before, he pondered. While Nick knew others had gone through the exercise he was about to undertake, he wanted to do it himself, from ground zero, with a virgin perspective. He didn’t want to fall into the trap of missing what others had missed by simply following their footsteps and research and wandering down the same dead ends. Because all of that had led to very little new discoveries or knowledge being added to the academic record. “Ah, the definition of insanity,” he smiled. “Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”

  He opened a spreadsheet, titled it Known Southwest Expeditions, and started labeling a series of columns with Date, Legend Pursued, Expedition Leader, Origin, Destination, Artifacts Recovered, Provenance and Where Now. Nick sat back and scratched the stubble on his chin, contemplating. In one long slow pull he drained the rest of his beer, and then added a last heading, Documented Research Links, to the spread sheet. Finally satisfied with the template, he spent the afternoon fleshing it out and filling in the blanks with detail.

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nbsp; Completely engrossed in his task, Nick didn’t notice the slowly dimming sky, cooler evening air or the soft cadence of the singing of the cicadas. It was only when Nanook’s damp nose nudged under his elbow that he looked up and saw Soba sitting across from him, an impish smile on her face.

  “Miss me gringo? Or did you not even notice I was gone,” she inquired in her sing song accent.

  Nick took a moment to come back to the present, stretched out the stiffness in his neck, and found the favorite spot behind Nanook’s ears and stroked deeply.

  “Buenas noches, señorita,” Nick lazily replied. “Frankly I’m not sure how I ever got through the day without you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, likely story. I see you’re still tuning up your Spanish, best not to quit your day job,” Soba teased, gently kicking him under the table. “Did you make any progress during my painfully prolonged absence?”

  “Yeah, I’ve framed things out,” Nick replied, the focus in his thinking sharpening. “To decipher anything complex in archeology, you first need to deconstruct it. That’s what I am doing, so I can reconstruct things in a way that makes sense. I’m not trying to solve every hair brained, wild assed treasure quest in northern Mexico and the Southwest States. I just want to narrow it down to those that pertain to the trail Alexandre, and eventually my father, left. So I am working out what I know, but more importantly, what I don’t know. And that is where the archives in Mexico City will come into play.”

  Soba closed her eyes and fake snored, obviously not too engrossed in his academic ramblings. “Fascinating, really edge of your seat stuff. I guess I’m just not convinced you really missed me. Well I gotta go to the conference mixer, it’s a great chance to mingle with those I didn’t get to talk with this afternoon. You sure you’re good for the evening?”

  Nick smiled at her and leaned over to give her a real kiss. “Yes ma’am, I’ll be just fine.” His stomach grumbled, and he looked down at the empty bowl of tortilla chips, not even remembering eating them. “I’m gonna grab a bite, do a little more research, and crash. Give me a nudge when you get in.”