Jeff shouted something to them, but Eric and Stacy just waved and kept walking. Pablo was waiting for them on the trail. He’d opened his pack, taken out the tequila. The cap was off; he offered the bottle to Eric, who—despite himself, knowing better—took a long, wincing swallow and then passed it on to Stacy. Stacy could be an impressive drinker when she put her mind to it, as she did now. She threw her head back, the bottle tilted at a perfect vertical, the tequila goingblub-blub, blub-blub as it poured straight down her throat. She surfaced for air with a cough that became a laugh, her face flushed. Pablo applauded, slapped her on the shoulder, took back the bottle.
The two Mayan boys were still with them. They’d approached a little closer but hadn’t yet left the jungle’s shade. They’d climbed off their bike and were standing side by side, the larger of the two holding it by its handlebars. Pablo raised the bottle toward them, calling in Greek, but they didn’t move; they just stood, staring. The dog was right beside them, also watching.
Jeff and Mathias and Amy had reached the far wall of the jungle, directly across the field from them. They were just beginning to move along it now, parallel to the trail, searching for the mysterious path. Pablo returned the bottle to his pack, and the three of them stood for a while, watching the others make their way along the muddy field. Eric didn’t believe they were going to find the ruins. He didn’t, in fact, believe that the ruins even existed. Someone was lying to them, or playing a prank, but whether it was Mathias or Mathias’s brother or Mathias’s brother’s perhaps imaginary girlfriend, he couldn’t decide. It didn’t matter. He’d been having fun for a while, but now he wanted it to be over, wanted to be safely back on an air-conditioned bus to Cancún, drifting into sleep. He wasn’t certain how he was going to accomplish this; all he knew was that he wanted to get there, and that the first thing he had to do was finish walking back to the road on the shortest route possible. This didn’t involve tramping through a muddy field.
Eric started forward along the path. They could wait for the others in the shade on the far side of the clearing; perhaps he’d even be able to nap a little. He and Stacy held hands as they walked.
“So…” Stacy said. “There was this girl who bought a piano.”
“But she didn’t know how to play it,” Eric responded.
“So she signed up for lessons.”
“But couldn’t afford them.”
“So she got a job in a factory.”
“But was fired for being late.”
“So she became a prostitute.”
“But fell in love with her first client.”
This was an old game of theirs, the so-but stories. It was nonsense, the purest form of idleness; they could keep at it for hours at a time, ping-ponging back and forth. It was their own invention; no one else understood it. Even Amy found it annoying. But it was the sort of thing Eric and Stacy were best at: silliness, play. In some deep, not entirely accessible part of his mind, Eric realized that they were two children together, and that someday Stacy was going to grow up, that it was already, in fact, beginning to happen. He didn’t think he himself would ever accomplish this; he didn’t understand how people did it. He was going to teach children and remain a child forever, while Stacy advanced implacably into adulthood, leaving him behind. He could dream of them getting married someday, but it was just a story he told himself, yet another example of his inherent immaturity. There was a good-bye lurking in their future, a breakup note, a last painful encounter. This was something he tried not to see, something he knew, or suspected he knew, but before which he reflexively closed his eyes.
“So she asked him to marry her.”
“But he was already married.”
“So she begged him to get a divorce.”
“But he was in love with his wife.”
“So she decided to kill her.”
The dog began to bark, startling Eric. He turned, peered back down the trail. The two boys and the mutt had emerged from the jungle; all three were standing there in the sunlight now. They weren’t looking in Eric’s direction, though; they were staring off across the open ground at Jeff and Mathias and Amy. Mathias was lifting a large palm frond away from the tree line, tossing it out into the field. As he bent to pick up another one, Jeff turned, shouted something indecipherable, waved for them to approach.
Eric and Stacy and Pablo didn’t move. None of them wanted to walk out into the mud again. Mathias kept picking up palm fronds and tossing them aside. Gradually, an opening was revealed in the tree line: a path.
Before Eric could quite absorb this, he noted a flurry of movement back along the trail. It drew his gaze. The larger of the two boys had climbed onto his bike and was pedaling away now, very rapidly, disappearing into the jungle, leaving the smaller boy alone on the trail, watching Jeff and the others with an unmistakable air of anxiety, rocking side to side, his hands clasped together, tucked under his chin. Eric noted all this but couldn’t make any sense of it. Jeff was waving for them to come, shouting again. There seemed to be no choice. Sighing, Eric stepped back into the muddy field. Stacy and Pablo did, too, and together they began slogging their way toward the tree line.
Behind them, the dog continued his steady barking.
It had been Mathias who noticed the palm fronds; Jeff had walked right past them. It was only when he’d sensed Mathias hesitating behind him that he turned, following the German’s stare, and saw them. The fronds were still green. They’d been artfully arranged, with the ends of their stalks pushed into the dirt, so that they looked like a bush growing there along the tree line, hiding the entrance to the path. One of the fronds had tipped over, though, pulling itself free from the soil. This was what Mathias had noticed. He stepped forward, yanked another one free, and, in an instant, everything was revealed. That was when Jeff turned and called to the others, waving for them to come.
Once they’d cleared away the fronds, they could see the path easily enough. It was narrow and it wound off through the jungle, moving gradually uphill. Mathias and Amy and he crouched at its entrance, in the shade. Mathias took out his water bottle again, and they all drank from it. Then they sat for a stretch, watching Eric and Pablo and Stacy move slowly toward them across the field. Amy was the first to mention what was surely on all their minds.
“Why was it covered?” she asked.
Mathias was sliding his water bottle back into his pack. You had to ask him a question directly to get him to answer; whenever someone addressed the group, he seemed to pretend not to hear. This was fair enough, Jeff supposed. After all, he wasn’t really one of them.
Jeff shrugged, feigning indifference. He tried to think of a way to distract her from this topic, but he couldn’t, so he kept silent. He was afraid she’d refuse to venture down the path.
He could tell she wasn’t going to let it go, though. And he was right. “The boy rode off,” she said. “Did you see that?”
Jeff nodded. He wasn’t looking at her—he was watching Eric and the others plodding toward them—but he could feel her gaze resting on him. He didn’t want her to be thinking about this: the boy riding off, the camouflaged path. It would only frighten her, and she became obstinate and skittish when she was frightened, which wasn’t a particularly helpful combination. Something strange was going on here, but Jeff was hoping that if they could just ignore it, it might not amount to anything. He knew this probably wasn’t the wisest course, yet it was the best he could come up with at the moment. So it would have to do.
“Someone tried to hide the path,” Amy said.
“Seems that way.”
“They cut palm fronds and stuck them in the dirt so that it looked like a plant was growing there.”
Jeff was silent, and wishing she was, too.
“That’s a lot of work,” Amy said.
“I guess so.”
“Doesn’t it seem strange to you?”
“A little.”
“Maybe it’s not the right path.”
“We
’ll see.”
“Maybe it’s got something to do with drugs. Maybe it leads to a marijuana field. The village is growing pot, and that boy went back to get them, and they’re gonna come with guns, and—”
Jeff finally gave in, turned to look at her. “Amy,” he said, and she stopped. “It’s the right path, okay?”
It wasn’t going to be that easy, of course. She gave him an incredulous look. “How can you say that?”
Jeff waved toward Mathias. “It’s on the map.”
“It’s a hand-drawn map, Jeff.”
“Well, it’s…” He floundered, wordless, waved his hand. “You know—”
“Tell me why the path was covered. Give me one possible scenario where it’s the right one, and there’s a logical reason for someone to have camouflaged its opening.”
Jeff thought for a minute. Eric and the others were nearly upon them. Across the field, the little Mayan boy still stood, staring at them. The dog had finally stopped barking. “Okay,” he said. “How’s this? The archaeologists have started to find things of value. The mine isn’t played out. They’re finding silver. Or emeralds, maybe. Whatever they were mining in the first place. And they’re worried that someone might come and try to rob them. So they’ve camouflaged the path.”
Amy spent a moment considering this scenario. “And the boy on the bike?”
“They’ve recruited the Mayans to help them keep people away. They pay them to do it.” Jeff smiled at her, pleased with himself. He didn’t really believe any of it; he didn’t know what to believe, in fact. Yet he was pleased nonetheless.
Amy was thinking it through. He could tell she didn’t believe it, either, but it didn’t matter. The others had finally reached them. Everyone was sweating, Eric especially, who was looking a little too pale, a little too drawn. The Greek needed to hug them, one by one, of course, wrapping his damp arms around their shoulders. And, just like that, the discussion was over. After all, what other option did they have?
A few more minutes of rest, then they started down the path into the jungle.
The path was narrow enough so that they were forced to walk single file. Jeff led the way, followed by Mathias, then Amy, then Pablo, then Eric. Stacy was the last in line.
“But her lover told the police,” Eric said.
Stacy stared at the rear of his head. He was wearing a Boston Red Sox hat; he had it on backward. She tried to imagine that this was his face she was staring at, covered in brown hair, his eyes and mouth and nose hiding behind it. She smiled at this hairy face. It was their game, she knew, and she thought the words,So she fled to another city, but she didn’t say them. Amy had made fun of her enough times, mimicking her and Eric saying “So” and “But,” that Stacy didn’t like playing the game in her presence anymore. She didn’t say anything, and Eric kept walking. Sometimes this was just how it worked: you threw out a “So” or a “But” and the other person didn’t respond, and that was okay. That was part of the game, too, part of their understanding.
She shouldn’t have gone at the tequila so aggressively. That had been a stupid idea. She’d been trying to show off, she supposed, trying to impress Pablo with her drinking. Now she felt light-headed, a little sick to her stomach. There was all this green around her—too much, she felt—and that didn’t help things: thick leaves on either side, the trees growing so close to the trail that it was hard not to touch them as she walked. An occasional breeze pushed past her down the path, shifting the leaves, making them whisper. Stacy tried to hear what they were saying, tried to attach words to the sound, but her mind wasn’t working that way; she couldn’t concentrate. She was a little drunk, and there was far, far too much green. She could feel the beginning of a headache—flexing itself, eager for a chance to grow. And the green was underfoot, too, moss growing on the trail, making it slippery in places. When the path dipped into a tiny hollow, she almost fell on the slickness. She gave a squawk as she caught her balance, and was dismayed to see that no one glanced back to make sure she was safe. What if she’d fallen, hit her head, been knocked unconscious? How long would it have taken them to realize she was no longer following in their footsteps? They’d have doubled back eventually, she supposed; they’d have found her, revived her. But what if something had slipped out of the jungle and taken her in its jaws before this happened? Because certainly there were creatures in the jungle; Stacy could sense them as she walked, watchful presences, noting her passage along the trail.
She didn’t really believe any of this, of course. She liked scaring herself, but in the way a child does, knowing the whole time that it was only pretend. She hadn’t noticed the boy riding off on his bike, nor the fact that the path had been camouflaged. No one was talking about any of this. It was too hot to talk; all they could do was put one foot in front of the other. So the only threats Stacy had with which to entertain herself were the ones she could think up on her own.
Why had she worn sandals? That was stupid. Her feet were a mess now; there was mud between her toes. It had felt nice, walking across the field—warm and squishy and oddly reassuring, but it wasn’t like that anymore. Now it was just dirt, with a vaguely fecal smell to it, as if she’d dipped her feet in shit.
Green was the color of envy, of nausea. Stacy had been a Girl Scout; she’d had to hike through her share of green woods, clad in her green uniform. She still knew some songs from that time. She tried to think of one, but her headache wouldn’t let her.
They crossed a stream, jumping from rock to rock. The stream was green, too, thick with algae. The rocks were even slipperier than the trail, but she didn’t fall in. She hopped, hopped, hopped, and then she was on the other side.
The mosquitoes and the little black flies were so persistent, so numerous, that she’d long ago stopped bothering to swat them. But then, abruptly, just after she crossed the stream, they weren’t there anymore. It seemed to happen in an instant: they were all around her, humming and hovering, and then, magically, they were gone. Without them, even the heat felt easier to bear, even the implacable greenness, the smell of shit coming from her feet, and for a short stretch it was almost pleasant, walking one after another through the whispering trees. Her head cleared a bit, and she found words for the rustling leaves.
Take me with you, one of the trees seemed to say.
And then:Do you know who I am?
The trail rounded a curve, and suddenly there was another clearing ahead of them, a circle of sunlight a hundred feet down the path, the heat giving a throbbing, watery quality to the view.
A tree on her left seemed to call her name.Stacy , it whispered, so clearly that she actually turned her head, a goose-bump feeling running up and down her back. Behind her came another rustling voice:Are you lost? And then she was stepping with the others into sunlight.
This clearing wasn’t a field. It looked like a road, but it wasn’t that, either. It was as if a gang of men had planned to build a road, had chopped away the jungle and flattened the earth, but then abruptly changed their minds. It was twenty yards wide and stretched in either direction, left and right, for as far as Stacy could see, finally curving out of sight. On the far side of it rose a small hill. The hill was rocky, oddly treeless, and covered with some sort of vinelike growth—a vivid green, with hand-shaped leaves and tiny flowers. The plant spread across the entire hill, clinging so tightly to the earth that it almost seemed to be squeezing it in its grasp. The flowers looked like poppies, the same size and color: a brilliant stained-glass red.
They all stood there, staring, shading their eyes against the sunlight. It was a beautiful sight: a hill shaped like a giant breast, covered in red flowers. Amy took out her camera, started snapping pictures.
The cleared ground was a different color than the fields they’d crossed earlier. The fields had been a reddish brown, almost orange in spots, while this was a deep black, flecked with white, like frost rime. Beyond it, the path resumed, winding its way up the hillside. It had grown strangely quiet, Stacy sudd
enly realized; the birds had fallen silent. Even the locusts had stopped their steady thrumming. A peaceful spot. She took a deep breath, feeling sleepy, and sat down. Eric did, too, then Pablo, the three of them in a row. Mathias was passing his water bottle around again. Amy kept taking pictures—of the hill, the pretty flowers, then of each of them, one after another. She told Mathias to smile, but he was peering up the hillside.
“Is that a tent?” he asked.
They turned to look. There was an orange square of fabric just visible, at the very top of the hill. It was billowing, sail-like, in the breeze. From this distance, with the rise of the hill partly blocking their view, it was hard to tell what it was. Stacy thought it looked like a kite, trapped in the flowering vines, but of course a tent made more sense. Before anyone could speak, while they were still peering up the hill, squinting against the sun, there came an odd noise from the jungle. They all heard it at the same time, while it was still relatively faint, and they turned, almost in unison, heads cocked, listening. It was a familiar sound, but for a few seconds none of them could identify it.
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