by Scott Smith
"What did he want?" Stacy asked. She'd already been sprayed. Her skin was shiny with it, and she smelled like air freshener. The mosquitoes were still biting her, though; she kept slapping at her arms.
"He said we shouldn't go."
"Go where?"
Amy pointed down the path.
"Why not?" Stacy asked.
"He said it's no good."
"What's no good?"
"Where we're going."
"The ruins are no good?"
Amy shrugged; she didn't know. "He wanted fifteen dollars to drive us somewhere else."
Jeff came over with the can of repellent. He took the map from her and began to spray. Amy held out her arms, then lifted them above her head so he could get her torso. She turned in a slow circle, all the way around. When she was facing him again, he stopped spraying, crouched to put the repellent back in his pack. They all stood there, watching him.
A disquieting thought occurred to Amy. "How're we getting back?" she asked.
Jeff squinted up at her. "Back?"
She pointed down the road after the vanished pickup truck. "To Cobá."
He turned to stare at the road, thinking on this. "The guidebook said you can always flag down a passing bus." He shrugged; he seemed to realize how foolish this was. "So I assumed…"
"There aren't going to be any buses on that road," Amy said.
Jeff nodded. This was obvious enough.
"A bus couldn't even fit on that road."
"It also said you can hitch-"
"You see any cars pass, Jeff?"
Jeff sighed, cinching his pack shut. He stood up, slung it over his shoulder. "Amy-" he began.
"The whole time we were driving, did you see any-"
"They must have a way to get supplies in."
"Who?"
"The archaeologists. They must have a truck. Or access to a truck. When we find Mathias's brother, we can just ask them to, you know, take us all back to Cobá."
"Christ, Jeff. We're stranded out here, aren't we? That's, like, a twenty-mile walk we're gonna have to do. Through the fucking jungle."
"Eleven."
"What?"
"It's eleven miles."
"There's no way that was eleven miles." Amy turned to the others for support, but only Pablo met her eyes. He was smiling; he had no idea what they were talking about. Mathias was digging through his pack. Stacy and Eric were staring at the ground. She could tell they thought this was just her complaining again, and it made her angry. "Nobody else is bothered by this?"
"Why is it my responsibility?" Jeff asked. "Why am I the one who was supposed to figure this whole thing out?"
Amy threw up her hands, as if the answer were obvious. "Because…," she said, but then she fell silent. Why was it Jeff's responsibility? She felt certain it was, yet she couldn't think why.
Jeff turned to the others, gestured toward the path. "Ready?" he asked. Everyone but Amy nodded. He started forward, followed by Mathias, then Pablo, then Eric.
Stacy gave Amy a sympathetic look. "Just go with it, sweetie," she said. "Okay? You'll see. It'll all work out."
She hooked arms with her, pulled her into motion. Amy didn't resist; they started toward the path together, arm in arm, Jeff and Mathias already vanishing into the shadows ahead of them, birds crying out overhead to mark their passage into the jungle's depths.
The map said they had to go two miles along the path. Then they'd see another trail, branching off to their left. This one would lead them gradually uphill. At the top of the hill, they'd find the ruins.
They'd been walking for almost twenty minutes when Pablo stopped to pee. Eric stopped, too. He dropped his pack to the trail, sat on it, resting. The trees alongside the path blocked the sun, but it was still too hot to be walking this far. His shirt was soaked through with sweat; his hair clung damply to his forehead. There were mosquitoes and some other type of very small fly, which didn't sting but seemed to be drawn to Eric's perspiration. They swirled around him in a cloud, giving off a high-pitched hum. Either he'd sweated all the bug spray off or it was worthless.
Stacy and Amy caught up with them while Pablo was still peeing. Eric heard them talking as they approached, but they fell silent when they got close. Stacy gave Eric a smile, patted him on the head as she went by. They didn't stop, didn't even slow, and after they got a little ways down the trail, he heard them begin to speak again. He felt a little flicker of disquiet, the sense that they might be gossiping about him. Or maybe not. Maybe it was Jeff. They were secret keepers, though, whisperers; it was something Eric still hadn't grown accustomed to, their closeness. Sometimes he caught himself scowling at Amy for no good reason, not liking her: he was jealous. He wanted to be the one Stacy whispered to, not the one she whispered about, and it bothered him that this wasn't the case.
The Greek had an immense bladder. He was still peeing, a puddle forming at his feet. The tiny black flies appeared to find urine even more alluring than sweat; they hovered over the puddle, dropping into it and taking flight again, dimpling its surface. The Greek pissed and pissed and pissed.
When he finished, he pulled one of the tequila bottles from his pack, broke its seal. A quick swallow, then he passed it to Eric. Eric stood up to drink, the liquor bringing tears to his eyes. He coughed, handed the bottle back. Pablo took another swallow before returning it to his pack. He said something in Greek, shaking his head, wiping his face with his shirt. Eric assumed it was a comment on the heat; it had the proper air of complaint to it.
He nodded. "Hot as hell," he said. "You guys have a phrase like that? Everybody must, don't you think? Hades? Inferno?"
The Greek just smiled at him.
Eric shouldered his pack, and they started walking again. On the map, the path had been drawn as a straight line, but in reality it meandered. Stacy and Amy were a hundred feet ahead, and sometimes Eric could glimpse them, other times not. Jeff and Mathias had started up the trail like two Boy Scouts, all business. Eric couldn't see them anymore, not even on the longer straightaways. The path was about four feet wide, packed dirt, with thick jungle growth on either side. Big-leafed plants, vines and creepers, trees straight out of a Tarzan comic book. It was dark under the trees, and difficult to see very far into their midst, but now and then Eric could hear things crashing about in the foliage. Birds, maybe, startled by their approach. There was a lot of cawing, and a steady locust-like throbbing underneath it all that could suddenly, for no apparent reason, fall silent, sending a shiver up his spine.
The path seemed to be fairly well traveled. They passed an empty beer bottle, a flattened pack of cigarettes. There were tracks at one point, too, some sort of hoofed animal, smaller than a horse. A donkey, maybe, or even a goat-Eric couldn't decide. Jeff probably knew what it was; he was good at things like that-picking out constellations, naming flowers. He was a reader, a fact hoarder, maybe a bit of a show-off at times: ordering in Spanish even when it was clear that the waiter spoke English, correcting people's pronunciation. Eric couldn't decide how well he liked him. Or, for that matter-and maybe this was more to the point-how well he was liked by Jeff.
They rounded a curve and descended a long, gradual slope with a stream running alongside the trail, and then suddenly there was sunlight in front of them, blinding after all that time in the shade. The jungle fell away, beaten back by what appeared to be some sort of aborted attempt at agriculture. There were fields on either side of the trail, extending for a hundred yards or so, vast tracts of churned-up earth, baking in the sun. It was the end stages of the slash-and-burn cycle: the slashing and burning and sowing and reaping had already happened here, and now this was what followed, the wasteland that preceded the jungle's return. Already, the foliage along the margins had begun to send out exploratory parties, vines and the occasional waist-high bush, looking squat and somehow pugnacious amid all those upturned clods of dirt.
Pablo and Eric fumbled for their sunglasses. In the distance, the jungle resumed, extending l
ike a wall across the path. Jeff and Mathias had already vanished into its shadows, but Stacy and Amy were still visible. Amy had put on her hat; Stacy had tied a bandanna over her hair. Eric called to them, yelling their names, and waved, but they didn't hear him. Or, hearing him, didn't glance back. The little black flies remained behind beneath the trees, but the mosquitoes continued to accompany them, unabated.
They were midway across the open space when a snake crossed the path, right in front of them. It was just a small snake-black, with tan markings, two feet long at the most-but Pablo gave a shout of terror. He jumped backward, knocking Eric down, then lost his own footing and fell on top of him. He was up in an instant, pointing at the spot where the snake had disappeared, chattering in Greek, dancing from foot to foot, a look of horror on his face. Apparently, he had a fear of snakes. Eric rose slowly to his feet, dusting himself off. He'd scraped his elbow when he fell, and there was dirt in the cut; he tried to brush it clean. Pablo kept spewing his Greek, exclaiming and gesturing. All three Greeks were like this; sometimes they tried to mime their meaning or draw something to explain themselves, but mostly they just held forth, making no attempt to clarify what they were saying. It was as if the uttering of it was all that mattered; being understood was beside the point.
Eric waited for Pablo to finish. Toward the end, it seemed as if he were apologizing for knocking him down, and Eric smiled and nodded to express his forgiveness. Then they continued on, though Pablo proceeded at a much slower pace now, nervously scanning the edges of the trail. Eric spent some time trying to picture their arrival at the ruins. The archaeologists with their careful grids, their little shovels and whisk booms, their plastic bags full of artifacts: tin cups the miners had drunk from, the iron nails that had once held their shacks together. Mathias would find his brother; there'd be some sort of confrontation, an argument in German, raised voices, ultimatums. Eric was looking forward to it. He liked drama, conflict, the rush and tumble of other people's emotions. It wasn't all going to be like this, the drudgery of walking through the heat, his elbow throbbing in time with his heartbeat. Once they found the ruins, the day would shift, take on a new dimension.
They reached the far end of the open space, and the jungle resumed. The little black bugs were waiting for them here in the shade. They hovered around them in a humming cloud, as if joyful in the reunion. There was no sign of the stream anymore. The trail curved to the right, then to the left, then became straight again, a long corridor of shade, at the end of which appeared to be another clearing, a circle of sunlight awaiting their approach, so bright, it felt audible to Eric, like a horn, blowing. It hurt to look at it-hurt his eyes, his head. He put his sunglasses back on. Only then did he notice the others clustered together there-Jeff and Mathias and Stacy and Amy-crouching in a loose circle just short of the clearing, passing a water bottle back and forth among themselves, and turning now to watch as he and Pablo went slowly toward them.
The map said that if they reached the Mayan village, they'd gone too far, and there it was, down the slope from where they crouched. Jeff and Mathias had been watching for their turnoff as they walked, but somehow they must've missed it. They'd have to double back along the trail now, moving more slowly this time, looking more closely. The question they were debating was whether or not they should investigate the village first, perhaps even see if there might be someone there who'd be willing to guide them to the ruins. Not that the village appeared very promising. It consisted of perhaps thirty flimsy-looking buildings, nearly identical in size and appearance. One- and two-room shacks, most with thatch roofs, though there were several of tin, too. Dirt-floored, Jeff guessed. There were no overhead wires visible, so he assumed there was no electricity. Nor running water, for that matter: there was a well in the center of the village, with a bucket attached to a rope. As they crouched there, waiting for Eric and Pablo to reach them, he saw an old woman fill a pitcher at the well, turning a wheel to lower the bucket into its depths. The wheel needed oiling; he could hear it squeaking even from this distance as the bucket dropped and dropped, then paused, filling, before its equally clamorous ascent. Jeff watched the woman balance the pitcher on her shoulder and move slowly back down the dusty street to her shack.
The Mayans had cleared a circular swath of jungle around their village, planting what appeared to be corn and beans in the open space. Men and women and even children were scattered across the fields, bent over, weeding. There were goats about, chickens and some donkeys and a trio of horses in a fenced corral, but no sign of any mechanical equipment: no tractors or tillers, no cars or trucks. When Jeff and Mathias first appeared at the mouth of the trail, a tall, narrow-chested mutt had come trotting quickly toward them, tail aggressively raised. It stopped just short of stone-throwing range and paced back and forth for a few minutes, barking and growling. The sun was too hot for this sort of behavior, though, and eventually it fell quiet, then lost interest altogether and drifted back toward the village, collapsing into the shade beside one of the shacks.
Jeff assumed that the dog must've alerted the villagers to their presence, but there was no overt acknowledgment of this. No one paused in his work to stare; no one nudged his neighbor and pointed. The men and women and children remained bent low over their weeding, moving slowly down the rows of plants. Most of the men were dressed in white, with straw hats on their heads. The women wore dark dresses, shawls covering their hair. The children were barefoot, feral-looking; many of the boys were shirtless, dark from the sun, so that they seemed to blend into the earth they were working, to vanish and reappear from one moment to the next.
Stacy wanted to push forward into the village, to see if they might find someplace cool to sit and rest-perhaps they could even buy a cold soda somewhere-but Jeff hesitated. The lack of greeting, the sense that the village was collectively willing away their appearance, filled him with a feeling of caution. He pointed out the absence of overhead wires, and how this would lead to a lack of refrigerators and air conditioners, which, in turn, would make cold sodas and cool places to sit and rest seem somewhat unlikely.
"But at least we might find a guide," Amy said. She'd removed her camera from his pack and had started to take pictures. She took some of them crouched there, then one of Pablo and Eric walking toward them, then one of the Mayans working in their fields. Her spirits had lifted, Jeff could tell; Stacy had brought her out of it. Her moods came and went; he assumed there was a logic to them, but he'd long ago stopped trying to fathom it. He called her his "jellyfish," rising and falling through the depths. Sometimes she seemed to find this endearing; other times she didn't. She took a picture of him, spending a long moment peering through the viewfinder, making him self-conscious. Then the click. "We could just end up walking back and forth along this trail all day," she said. "And then what? Are we supposed to camp out here?"
"And maybe they'll be able to drive us back to Cobá afterward," Stacy said.
"See any cars or trucks?" Jeff asked.
They all spent a moment staring down into the village. Before anyone could say anything further, Pablo and Eric were upon them. Pablo hugged everyone, then immediately began chattering in Greek, very excitedly, extending his arms full length, as if describing a fish he'd caught. He jumped up and down; he pretended to knock into Eric. Then he held out his arms again.
"We saw a snake," Eric said. "But it wasn't that big. Maybe half that."
The others laughed at this, which seemed to encourage Pablo. He started all over again, the chattering, the jumping, the bumping into Eric.
"He's scared of them," Eric said.
They passed the water bottle around, waited for Pablo to finish. Eric took a long swallow of water, then poured some on his elbow. He had a cut there; everyone clustered around him to examine it. The wound was bloody but not especially deep, three inches long, sickle-shaped, following the curve of his elbow. Amy took a picture of it.
"We're going to find a guide in the village," she said.
&nb
sp; "And a cool place to sit," Stacy offered. "With cold sodas."
"Maybe they'll have a lime, too," Amy said. "We can squeeze it on your cut. It'll kill off all the nasty things inside."
She and Stacy both turned from Eric to smile at Jeff, as if taunting him. He didn't respond-what was the point? Clearly, it had already been decided: they were going to the village. Pablo finally stopped talking; Mathias was putting the cap back on the water bottle. Jeff shouldered his pack. "Shall we?" he said.
Then they started down the path toward the village.
There was a moment, just as they emerged from the trees, when the entire village seemed to freeze, the men and women and children in the fields, everyone pausing for the barest fraction of a second to note the six of them approaching down the trail. Then it was over, and it was as if it hadn't happened, though Stacy was certain it had, or maybe not so certain, maybe less certain with each additional step she took toward the village. The work continued in the fields, the bent backs, the steady pulling of the weeds, and no one was looking at them; no one was bothering to observe their advance along the path, not even the children. So perhaps it hadn't happened after all. Stacy was a fantasist-she knew this about herself-a daydreamer, a castle builder. There would be no cool rooms here, no cold sodas. And it was equally probable that there'd been no moment of furtive appraisal, either, no veiled and quickly terminated collective glance.
The dog reappeared, the one who'd been barking at them earlier. He emerged again from the village, but with an entirely different demeanor. Tail wagging, tongue hanging: a friend. Stacy liked dogs. She crouched to pet this one, let him lick her face. The tail wagging intensified, the entire rear half of the mutt's body swinging back and forth. The others didn't stop; they kept walking down the path. The dog was covered in ticks, Stacy noticed. Dozens of them, like so many raisins hanging off his belly: fat, blood-engorged. She could see others moving through his pelt, and she stood up quickly, pushing the dog away from her, but to no avail. That brief demonstration of affection had won the mutt over; he'd adopted her. He pressed close to her body as she walked, winding himself through her legs, whimpering and wagging, nearly tripping her. Hurrying to catch up with the others, she had to resist the urge to kick at the animal, smack him across the snout, send him scurrying. She felt as if the ticks were crawling over her own body now, had to tell herself this wasn't true, actually form the words in her mind: It's not true. She wished, suddenly, that she was back in Cancún, back in her room, about to climb into the shower. The warm water, the smell of shampoo, the little bar of soap in its paper wrapper, the clean towel waiting on its rack.
