The Ruins

by Scott Smith

  Stacy shifted her gaze toward Amy. The sunglasses were hooked into the collar of Amy's T-shirt. Her hat had fallen off, was lying a few feet away-mud-stained and misshapen and still damp from the rain. Stacy didn't move; she just sat there staring, and finally Jeff rose to his feet. He stepped forward, picked up the hat, carefully plucked the sunglasses from Amy's shirt. He offered them to Stacy. She hesitated, seemed about to refuse, but then slowly reached to take them.

  Jeff watched her put on the glasses, adjust the hat on her head. He was pleased; it seemed like a good sign, a first step. He returned to his spot, sat down again. "One of us ought to go and watch the trail soon. In case the Greeks-"

  Mathias stood up. "I'll go."

  Jeff shook his head, waved him back down. "In a minute. First we need to-"

  "Shouldn't we, you know…" Stacy pointed at Amy's body.

  Amy's body.

  Jeff turned to her, startled. Despite himself, he felt a strange mix of hope and relief. She's going to say it for me. "What?" he asked.

  "You know…" She pointed again.

  Jeff waited her out, wanting her to be the one, not him. Why did it always have to be him? He sat watching her, willing her to speak, to say the words.

  But she failed him. "I guess…I don't know…" She shrugged. "Bury her or something?"

  No, that wasn't it, was it? That missed the point entirely. It would have to be him; he'd been a fool to imagine any other possibility. He inclined his head, as if nodding, though it wasn't a nod at all. "Well, that's the thing," he said. "Sort of. The thing we need to talk about."

  The others were silent. No one was going to help him here, he realized; no one but him had made the leap. Like cows, he thought, examining their faces. Perhaps the orange had been a bad idea-maybe he should've waited, should've spoken at the height of their hunger, with the smell of bread in the air, or meat.

  Yes, meat .

  "I think we're okay," he began. "Waterwise, I mean. I think we can count on the rain coming often enough to keep us alive. We can maybe sew a big pouch even, out of the nylon." He waved across the clearing, toward the scraps from the blue tent. The others followed his gesture, stared for a moment, then turned back to him.

  Like sheep, he thought. He was waiting for the right words to arrive, but they weren't coming.

  Stacy shifted, reached, picked up Amy's hand again, held it in her own, as if for reassurance.

  There were no right words, of course.

  "It's all about waiting, you know," he said. "That's what we're doing here. Waiting for someone to come and find us-the Greeks, maybe, or someone our parents might send." He was having trouble holding their eyes, and he felt ashamed of this. It would be better if he could look one of them in the face, he knew, but somehow it didn't seem possible. His gaze drifted from his lap to Stacy's sunburned feet to the puckered wounds on Eric's leg, then back again. "Waiting. And surviving through the waiting. If we can maintain a supply of water, that'll help, of course. But then it becomes a question of food, doesn't it? Because we don't have that much. And we don't know…I mean, if it's not the Greeks, if we have to wait for our parents, it could be weeks we're talking about, weeks before someone comes and rescues us from this place. And the food we have, even if we ration it, it's not going to last more than a couple days. If we could hunt, or snare things, or catch fish, or dig up roots, or search for berries…" He trailed off, shrugged. "The only thing besides us on this hill is the vine, and obviously we can't eat that. We've got our belts, I guess-and we could figure out a way to boil them, maybe. People have done that sort of thing, people lost in the desert, or adrift at sea. But it wouldn't really change much, would it? Not when we're talking weeks."

  He girded himself for a quick scan of their faces. Blank, all of them. They were listening, he could see, but without any sense of where he was headed. He was trying not to startle them, trying to creep up to the thing that needed saying, and in this way give them the chance to anticipate it, to prepare themselves for it, but it wasn't working. He needed their help for it to work, and none of them was equal to the task.

  "Fifty, sixty, seventy days," he said. "Somewhere in there, I can't remember-that's as long as anyone can last without food. And even before that, long before that, things start to go wrong, start to fail, break down. So let's say we're talking thirty days, okay? Which is what? Four weeks or so? And if it's not the Greeks, if it's our parents we're waiting for, how long will that take? Realistically, I mean. Another week before they expect us home, maybe a week beyond that before they really start to worry, then some calls to Cancún, the hotel, the American consulate-all that's easy enough. But then what? How long to trace us to the bus station, to Cobá, to the trail and the Mayan village, to this fucking hill in the middle of the jungle? Can we really depend on it being less than four weeks for all that to happen?"

  He shook his head, answering his own question. Then he risked another glance at their faces-but no, they weren't understanding him. He was depressing them-that was all-frightening them. It was right in front of them, and they couldn't see it.

  Or wouldn't, maybe.

  He gestured toward Amy's body, kept his arm out in front of him, pointing, long enough so that they didn't have any choice. They had to look, had to stare, had to take in her graying skin, her eyes, which refused to stay shut, the burned, raw-looking flesh around her mouth and nose. "This-what's happened to Amy-it's terrible. A terrible thing. There's no way around it. But now that it's happened, we need to face it, I think, need to accept what it might mean for us. Because there's a question we have to answer for ourselves-a really, really difficult question. And we have to use our imagination to do it, because it's something that'll only start to matter as the days go by here, but which we have to answer now, beforehand." He scanned their faces again. "Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

  Mathias was silent, his expression unchanged. Eric's eyes had drifted back shut. Stacy was still clasping Amy's hand; she shook her head.

  Jeff knew it wasn't going to work, but he still felt he had to raise the issue, felt it was his duty to do so. He plunged forward: "I'm talking about Amy. About finding a way to preserve her."

  The others took this in. Mathias shifted his body slightly, his face seeming to tighten. He knows, Jeff thought. But not the others. Eric just lay there; he might even have been asleep. Stacy cocked her head, gave Jeff a quizzical look.

  "You mean, like, embalm her?"

  Jeff decided to try another approach. "If you needed a kidney, if you were going to die without it, and then Amy died first, would you take hers?"

  "Her kidney?" Stacy asked.

  Jeff nodded.

  "What does that-" And then, in mid-sentence, she got it. Jeff saw it happen, the knowledge take hold of her. She covered her mouth, as if sickened. "No, Jeff. No way."

  "What?"

  "You're saying-"

  "Just answer the question, Stacy. If you needed a kidney, if you-"

  "You know it's not the same."

  "Because?"

  "Because a kidney would mean an operation. It would be…" She shook her head, exasperated with him. Her voice had risen steadily as she spoke. "This…this is…" She threw up her hands in disgust.

  Eric opened his eyes. He stared at Stacy with a puzzled expression. "What're we talking about?"

  Stacy pointed toward Jeff. "He wants to…to…" She seemed incapable of saying it.

  "We're talking about food, Eric." Jeff was struggling to keep his voice low, calm, to contrast it to Stacy's growing hysteria. "About whether or not we're going to starve here."

  Eric absorbed this, no closer to comprehending. "What does that have to do with Amy's kidney?"

  "Nothing!" Stacy said, almost shouting the word. "That's exactly the point."

  "Would you take hers?" Jeff asked, and he waved toward Amy. "If you needed a kidney? If you were gonna die without it?"

  "I guess." Eric shrugged. "Why not?"

  "He's not talking abo
ut kidneys, Eric. He's talking about food. Understand? About eating her."

  There was no more hiding from it now; the words had been spoken. There was a long silence as they all stared down at Amy's body. Stacy was the one who broke it finally, turning to Jeff. "You'd really do it?"

  "People have. Castaways, and-"

  "I'm asking ifyou would. Ifyou could eather. "

  Jeff thought for a moment. "I don't know." It was the truth: he didn't.

  Stacy looked appalled. "You don't know?"

  He shook his head.

  "How can you say that?"

  "Because I don't know what it feels like to starve. I don't know what choices I'd make in the face of it. All I know is that if it's a possibility, if it's something we can even agree to conceive of, then we have to take certain steps now, right now, before much time passes."

  "Steps."

  Jeff nodded.

  "Such as?"

  "We'd have to figure out a way to preserve it."

  "It?"

  Jeff sighed. This was going exactly as he'd anticipated, a disaster. "What do you want me to say?"

  "How about her?"

  Jeff felt a tug of anger at this, without warning, a righteous sort of fury, and he liked the sensation. It was reassuring; it made him feel he was doing the right thing after all. "You really think that's still her?" he asked. "You really think that has the slightest thing to do with Amy anymore? That's an object now, Stacy. An it. Something without movement, without life. Something we can either rationally choose to use to help us survive here, or-irrationally, sentimentally, stupidly-decide to let rot, let the vine eat into yet another pile of bones. That's a choice we have to make. Consciously-we have to decide what happens to this body. Because don't trick yourself: Flinching away from it, deciding not to think about it, that's a choice, too. You can see that, can't you?"

  Stacy didn't answer. She wasn't looking at him.

  "All I'm saying is, whatever our decision might be, let's make it with open eyes." Jeff knew that he should just let it go, that he'd already said too much, pushed too hard, but he'd come this far, and he couldn't stop himself. "In a purely physical sense, it's meat. That's what's lying there."

  Stacy gave him a look of loathing. "What the fuck is the matter with you? Are you even upset? She's dead, Jeff. Understand? Dead. "

  It took effort to keep his voice from rising to match her own, yet somehow he managed it. He wanted to reach forward, to touch her, but he knew that she'd recoil from him. He wanted both of them to calm down. "Do you honestly think Amy would care? Would you care if it were you?"

  Stacy shook her head vehemently. Amy's mud-stained hat started to slide off, and she had to lift her hand to hold it in place. "That's not fair."

  "Because?"

  "You make it seem like it's a game. Like some sort of abstract thing we're talking about in a bar. But this is real. It's her body. And I'm not gonna-"

  "How would you do it?" Eric asked.

  Jeff turned toward him, relieved to have another voice involved. "‘Do it'?"

  Eric was still lying on his back, his wounds seeping those tiny threads of blood. He kept pressing at his abdomen, probing-a new spot now. "Preserve the, you know, the…"Meat was the right word-there wasn't any other-but it was clear Eric couldn't bring himself to say it.

  Jeff shrugged. "Cure it, I guess. Dry it."

  Stacy leaned forward, openmouthed, as if she might vomit. "I'm going to be sick."

  Jeff ignored her. "I think there's a way to salt it. Using urine. You cut the meat into strips and soak it in-"

  Stacy covered her ears, started shaking her head again. "No, no, no, no…"

  "Stacy-"

  She began to chant: "I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you…"

  Jeff fell silent. What choice did he have? Stacy kept chanting and shaking her head; her hat slid sideways, dropped to the dirt. Watching her, Jeff felt that weight again, that sense of resignation. It didn't matter, he supposed. Why shouldn't this be as good a place to die as any other? He lifted his hand, wiped at the sweat on his face. He could smell the orange peel on his fingers. He was hungry enough to feel the urge to lick them, but he resisted it.

  Finally, Stacy stopped. There was a stretch of time then, where no one had anything to say. Eric kept probing at his chest. Mathias shifted his weight, the jug of water making a sloshing sound in his lap. Stacy was still holding Amy's hand. Jeff glanced toward Pablo. The Greek's eyes were open, and he was watching them, as if he'd somehow, despite everything, managed to sense that something important was being discussed. Looking at him, at his ravaged, motionless body, Jeff realized that the discussion didn't necessarily end here, that Amy's death almost certainly wasn't going to be the last. He pushed the thought aside.

  They were all avoiding one another's gaze. Jeff knew no one else was going to speak, that he'd have to be the one, and he knew, too, that whatever he said would need to sound like a peace offering. He licked his lips; they were sun-cracked, swollen.

  "Then I guess we should bury her," he said.

  It didn't take long to realize that burying Amy wasn't a possibility. The day's rapidly growing heat alone would've ensured this. Even if it hadn't, there was still the problem of a shovel; all they had to dig with was a tent stake and a stone. So Jeff dragged one of the sleeping bags out of the tent, and they zipped Amy inside it. This involved a struggle of a different sort; Amy's corpse seemed intent upon resisting its enshrouding. Her limbs refused to cooperate-they kept snagging and tangling. Jeff and Mathias had to wrestle with her, both of them beginning to pant and sweat, before they finally managed to shove her into the bag.

  Stacy made no attempt to help. She watched, feeling increasingly ill. She was hungover, of course; she was dizzy and bloated and achingly nauseous. And Amy was dead. Jeff had wanted to eat her body, so that the rest of them might, in turn, keep from dying, but Stacy had stopped him. She tried to feel some pleasure in her victory, yet it wouldn't come to her.

  There was an odd moment of hesitation before the boys zipped shut the bag, as if they sensed the symbolic importance of this act, its finality-that first shovelful of soil thumping down onto the casket's lid. Stacy could see Amy's face through the opening; it had already taken on a noticeable puffiness, a faintly greenish tinge. Her eyes had drifted open once again. In the past, Stacy knew, they used to rest coins upon people's eyes. Or did they put coins in the mouth, to pay the ferryman? Stacy wasn't certain; she'd never bothered to pay attention to details like that, and was always regretting it, the half knowing, which felt worse than not knowing at all, the constant sense that she had things partly right, but not right enough to make a difference. Coins on the eyes seemed silly, though. Because wouldn't they fall off as the casket was carried to the graveyard, jostled and tilted, then lowered into its hole? The corpses would lie beneath that weight of dirt for all eternity, open-eyed, with a pair of coins resting uselessly on the wooden planks beside them.

  No casket for Amy-no coins, either. Nothing to pay the ferryman.

  We should have a ceremony, Stacy thought. She tried to imagine what this might entail, but all she could come up with was a vague image of someone standing over an open grave, reading something from the Bible. She could picture the mound of dirt beside the hole, the raw pine of the coffin bleeding little amber beads of sap. But of course they didn't have any of this, not Bible nor hole nor coffin. All they had was Amy's body and a musty-smelling sleeping bag, so Stacy remained silent, watching as Jeff leaned forward, finally, to drag the zipper slowly shut.

  Eric pulled his hat back over his face. Mathias sat down, closed his eyes. Jeff vanished into the tent. Stacy wondered if he was fleeing them, if he wanted to be alone so that he could weep or keen or bang his head against the earth, but then, almost instantly, he reappeared, carrying a tiny plastic bottle. He crouched right in front of her, startling her; she almost backed away, only managed to stop herself at the last instant. "You need
to put this on your feet," he said.

  He held out the little bottle. Stacy squinted at it, struggling to decipher its label. Sunscreen. Jeff's khaki shirt was stained through with perspiration, salt-rimed around the collar. She could smell him, the stench of his sweat, and it gave strength to her nausea; she was conscious of the chewed fruit in her stomach, those scraps of peel, how tenuous their residence within her body was, how easily surrendered. She wanted Jeff to leave, wished he'd stand up again, walk off. But he didn't move; he just crouched there, watching as she hurriedly squirted some of the lotion onto her palm, then leaned forward to smear it across her right foot, careful to avoid the thin leather straps of her sandal.

  "Come on," Jeff said. "Do it right."

  "Right?" she asked. She had no idea what he was talking about; all her attention was focused on her effort not to vomit. If she vomited, the vine would slither forth and steal those slices of orange from her, those pieces of peel, and she knew there'd be nothing to replace them.

  Jeff grabbed the bottle from her. "Take off your sandals."

  She clumsily removed them, then watched as he began to massage a large glob of sunscreen into her skin. "Are you angry with me?" she asked.

  "Angry?" He wasn't looking at her, just her feet, and it frightened Stacy, made her feel as if she weren't quite present. She wanted him to look at her.

  "For, you know…" She waved toward the sleeping bag. "Stopping you."

  Jeff didn't answer immediately. He started in on her second foot, and a drop of sweat fell from his nose onto her shin, making her shiver. Pablo's breathing was worsening again, that deep, watery rasp returning. It was the only sound in the clearing, and it took effort not to hear it. She could sense Jeff choosing his words. "I just want to save us," he said. "That's all. Keep us from dying here. And food…" He trailed off, shrugged. "It'll come down to food in the end. I don't see any way around that."

  He capped the bottle, tossed it aside, gestured for her to pull her sandals back on. Stacy stared at her feet. They were already burned a bright pink. It'll hurt in the shower, she thought, and had to fight back tears for a moment, so certain was she, abruptly, that there wasn't going to be a shower, not for her, not for any of them, because it wasn't only Amy; no one was going to make it home from here.