Jeff was the one who finally put a name to it. “A horse,” he said.
And then Stacy could hear it, too: hoofbeats, approaching at a gallop down the narrow trail at their back.
Amy still had her camera out. Through her viewfinder, she watched the horse arrive; she took its picture as it burst into the clearing: a big brown horse, rearing to a stop before them. On its back was the Mayan man who’d approached them beside the well in the little village. It was the same man, but he seemed different now. In the village, he’d been calm and distant, even aloof, with something that felt almost condescending in his approach to them, a weary parent dealing with un-mannered children. Now all this had vanished, replaced by an air of urgency, even panic. His white shirt and pants were splashed with green stains from riding so rapidly through the trees. He’d lost his hat, and sweat was shining on his bald head.
The horse, too, was agitated: lathered, snorting, rolling its eyes. It reared twice, frightening them, and they backed away, retreating farther into the clearing. The man began to shout, waving his arm. The horse had reins but no saddle; the man was riding bareback, his legs clinging to the big animal’s flanks like a pair of pincers. The horse reared once more, and this time the man half-fell, half-jumped to the ground. He was still holding the reins, but the horse was backing away from him, jerking its head, trying to break free.
Amy took a picture of the ensuing tug-of-war, the man struggling to calm the horse as the animal pulled him, step by step, back toward the trail. It was only when she stopped peering through the viewfinder that she noticed the gun on the man’s belt: a black pistol in a brown holster. He hadn’t been wearing it in the village; she was certain of this. He’d put it on to come chase them. The horse was too frantic; the man couldn’t calm it, and finally he just relinquished the reins. Instantly, the animal turned, galloped off into the jungle. They listened to it crashing through the trees, the sound of its hoofbeats gradually diminishing. Then the man was shouting at them again, waving his arms over his head, pointing back down the trail. It was hard to tell what he was trying to say. Amy wondered if it had something to do with the horse, if he somehow blamed them for the animal’s frenzy.
“What does he want?” Stacy asked. Her voice sounded frightened—like a little girl’s—and Amy turned to look at her. Stacy was holding Eric’s arm, standing a little behind him. Eric was smiling at the Mayan, as if he thought the whole encounter must be some sort of joke and was waiting for the man to confess to this.
“He wants us to go back,” Jeff said.
“Why?” Stacy asked.
“Maybe he wants money. Like a toll or something. Or for us to hire him as a guide.” Jeff reached into his pants pocket, pulled out his wallet.
The man kept shouting, pointing vehemently back down the path.
Jeff removed a ten-dollar bill, held it out to him. “¿Dinero?” he said.
The man ignored this. He made a shooing motion with his hand, waving them out of the clearing. They all stood there, uncertain, no one moving. Jeff carefully folded the bill back into his wallet, returned the wallet to his pocket. After a few more seconds, the man stopped shouting; he was out of breath.
Mathias turned toward the flower-covered hill, cupped his hands around his mouth. “Henrich!” he yelled.
There was no answer, no movement on the hillside except the gentle billowing of that orange fabric. In the distance, there was the sound of hoofbeats again, coming closer. Either the man’s horse was returning or another villager was about to join them.
“Why don’t you hike up the hill, see if you can find him?” Jeff said to Mathias. “We’ll wait here, try to sort this out.”
Mathias nodded. He turned, started across the clearing. The Mayan began to shout again, and then, when Mathias didn’t stop, the man pulled his pistol from its holster, raised the gun over his head, fired into the sky.
Stacy screamed, covering her mouth, backing away. Everyone else flinched, instinctively, half-ducking. Mathias turned to look, saw the man aiming the pistol at his chest now, and went perfectly still. The man waved at him, yelling something, and Mathias came back, his hands in the air, to join the others. Pablo, too, raised his hands, but then, when nobody else did, he slowly lowered them again.
The hoofbeats came closer and closer, and suddenly two more horsemen burst into the clearing. Their mounts were just as agitated as the first man’s had been: white-eyed and snorting, sweat shining on their flanks. One of the horses was pale gray, the other black. Their riders dropped to the ground, neither of them making any attempt to hold on to their reins, and the horses immediately turned to gallop back into the jungle. These new arrivals were much younger than the bald man; they were dark-haired, leanly muscular. They had bows slung across their chests, and quivers of thin, fragile-looking arrows. One of them had a mustache. They began speaking with the first man, very rapidly, asking him questions. He still had his pistol pointed in Mathias’s general direction, and as they talked, the other two men unslung their bows, each of them nocking an arrow.
“What the fuck?” Eric said. He sounded outraged.
“Quiet,” Jeff ordered.
“They’re—”
“Wait,” Jeff said. “Wait and see.”
Amy pointed her camera at the men, took another picture. She could tell it wasn’t capturing the drama of the moment, that she’d have to back up to do this, so she could get not only the Mayan men with their weapons but also Jeff and the others, standing there, facing them, everyone looking so frightened now. She retreated a handful of steps, peering through her viewfinder. It felt safer like this, more distant, as if she were no longer part of this strange situation. Four more steps, and Jeff was in the frame, and Pablo, and Mathias, too, with his hands still raised. All she had to do was go a little farther and Stacy and Eric would appear; then she could take the picture and it would be exactly what she wanted. She took another step backward, then another, and suddenly the Mayans were shouting again, all three of them, at her now, the first man pointing his pistol, the other two drawing their bows. Jeff and the others were turning to stare at her in surprise—yes, there was Stacy now, on the right-hand side of the frame—and Amy took another step.
“Amy,” Jeff said, and she almost stopped. She hesitated; she started to lower her camera. But she could tell she was nearly there, so she took one last step, and it was perfect: Eric was in the frame now, too. Amy pressed the button, heard it click. She was pleased with herself, still feeling weirdly outside the encounter, and liking the sensation. It was as she was lifting her eye from the viewfinder that she felt the odd pressure around her ankle, as if a hand were gripping it. She glanced down, and realized she’d backed completely across the clearing. What she felt was the flowering vine. A long green tendril was coiled around her ankle. She’d stepped right into a loop of it, and now somehow had pulled it taut.
There was a strange pause; the Mayan men stopped shouting. The two bows remained drawn, but the man with the pistol slowly lowered it. She could feel the others watching her, following her gaze toward her right foot, which had sunk ankle-deep into the vines, as if swallowed. She crouched to free it, and was just rising back up when she heard the Mayan men begin to shout again. They were yelling at her, and then they weren’t—they were yelling at one another. An argument, it seemed, the two men with the bows turning against the bald man.
“Jeff,” she called.
He raised his hand without looking at her, silencing her. “Don’t move,” he said.
So she didn’t. The bald man was clutching his right ear with one hand, tugging at it, frowning and shaking his head, his left hand still gripping the pistol, pressing it against his thigh. He didn’t seem to want to hear what the other two had to say. He pointed to Amy, then the others; he waved down the trail. But there was already something halfhearted in his gestures, the prescience of defeat. Amy could tell that he knew he wasn’t going to get his way. She could see him being worn down, see him giving in. He fell si
lent; the men with the bows did, too. They stood staring at Jeff and Mathias, at Eric and Stacy and the Greek. And at her, too. Then the bald man raised his pistol, aimed it at Jeff, at his chest. He made a shooing motion with his other hand, but now it was in the opposite direction, toward Amy, toward the hill behind her.
No one moved.
The bald man began to shout, waving toward the hill. He lowered his pistol slightly, fired a bullet into the dirt at Jeff’s feet. Everyone jumped, started to back away. Pablo had his hands in the air again. The other men were shouting, too, swinging their bows back and forth, aiming first at one of them, then another, herding them, step by step, toward Amy. Jeff and the others were walking backward; they weren’t watching where they were going. When they reached the edge of the clearing, they hesitated, each of them, feeling the vines against their feet and legs. They glanced down, stopped. Eric was beside Amy, on her left. Pablo was to her right. Then the others: Stacy, Mathias, Jeff. And beyond Jeff, the path. This was where the bald man was pointing now, gesturing for them to start up it, to climb the hill. His expression looked oddly stricken, close to tears—no, he’d actually begun to cry. He wiped at his face with his sleeve as he waved them onward. It was all so peculiar, so impossible to comprehend, and no one said a word. They moved to the path, Jeff leading the way, the others following.
And then, still silent, all in a line, they began the slow climb up the hill.
Eric was in the rear. He kept glancing over his shoulder as he walked. The Mayan men were watching them climb, the bald one using his hand to shield his eyes against the sun. There were no trees on the hill, just the vine growing over everything, thick coils of it, with its dark green leaves, its bright red flowers. The sun was pouring its heat upon them—there was no shade anywhere—and behind them, down the slope, stood three armed men. None of this made any sense. At first, the bald man had tried to tell them to go back; then he’d ordered them forward. The men with the bows had had something to do with this, clearly; they’d argued with the other man, changed his mind. But it still didn’t make any sense. The six of them climbed the trail, sweating with the exertion, walking in total silence, because they were scared and there was nothing for any of them to say.
At some point, they’d have to come back down the hill and cross the clearing, take the narrow path to the fields and then the wider path to the road, but how they’d manage to do this, Eric couldn’t guess. It was possible, he supposed, that the archaeologists might be able to explain what had happened. Maybe it was even something simple, something easily solved, something they’d all be laughing about a few minutes from now. A misunderstanding. A miscommunication. A mistake. Eric tried to think of other words that began withmis, tried to remember what the prefix meant. He was going to be teaching English in a few weeks, and this was the sort of thing he ought to know. Wrong, he guessed, or bad—something like that—but he wasn’t certain. And he’d need to be certain, too, because there’d probably be students who would know; there were always two or three like that, ready to catch their teachers in an error, eager for the chance. There were books Eric had meant to read this summer, books he’d assured the head of his department he’d already read, but the summer was essentially over now, and he hadn’t even glanced at them, not one.
Misstep. Misplace. Misconstrue.
That last one was a good one. Eric wished he knew more words like that, wished he could be the sort of teacher who effortlessly used them, his students straining to understand him, learning just through listening, but he knew this wasn’t who he’d ever be. He’d be the boy-man, the baseball coach, the one who winked and smiled at his students’ pranks, a favorite among them, probably, but not really much of a teacher at all. Not someone from whom they’d ever learn anything important, that is.
Mischief. Misanthrope. Misconception.
Eric was growing a little less frightened with each step he took, and he was glad for this, because for a moment or two there, he’d been very frightened indeed. When the bald man fired into the dirt at Jeff’s feet, Eric had been glancing toward Stacy, making sure she was all right. He hadn’t seen the man lower his aim; he’d heard the pistol go off, and for an instant he’d thought the man had shot Jeff, shot him in the chest, killed him. Then everything had happened so fast—they were herded backward, prodded up the trail—and only now was his heart beginning to slow a bit. Someone would figure something out. Or the archaeologists would help them. And all this would come to nothing.
Misrepresent. Mislead. Misguide.
“Henrich!” Mathias called, and they stopped, staring up the hill, waiting for a response.
None came. They hesitated a few more seconds, then started to walk again.
It was a tent. Eric could see it clearly now as they climbed higher, a bright traffic-cone orange, looking a little worse for wear. It must’ve been there for quite some time, because the vines had already managed to grow up its aluminum poles, using them like a trellis. A four-person tent, Eric guessed. Its doorway was facing away from them.
“Hello?” Jeff called, and they stopped again to listen.
They were close enough now that they could hear the breeze tugging at the tent, a flapping noise, like a sail might make. But there was nothing else, no sound at all, nor any sign of people. In this quiet, Eric noticed for the first time what Stacy had realized earlier: the mosquitoes had vanished. The tiny black flies, too. This ought to have offered him at least a small sense of relief, but for some reason it didn’t. It had the exact opposite effect, in fact: it made him anxious, bringing back an odd echo of that fear he’d felt in the clearing as he’d turned, expecting to see Jeff’s body lying there, the gunshot echoing back at him from the tree line. It seemed strange to be standing here, sweating, halfway up a hill in the midst of the jungle, and not be harassed by those little insects. And Eric didn’t want to feel strange just now; he wanted everything to make sense, to be predictable. He wanted someone to tell him why the bugs had vanished, why the men had forced them up the hill, and why they still stood down there at the base of the trail, staring after them, their weapons in their hands.
Miserydidn’t count. Normiser . Eric wondered briefly if they had the same root. Latin, he guessed. Which was yet another thing he ought to know but didn’t.
The cut on his elbow had begun to ache. He could feel his heart beating inside it again, a little slower now, but still too fast. He tried to picture the archaeologists, all of them laughing over this strange situation, which would turn out to be not so strange after all, once everything had been properly explained. There’d be a first-aid kit in the orange tent, Eric assumed. Someone would clean his wound for him, cover it with a white bandage. And then, when they got back to Cancún—he smiled at the thought of this—he’d buy a rubber snake, hide it under Pablo’s towel.
The vines covered everything but the path and the tent’s orange fabric. In some places, they grew thinly enough that Eric could glimpse the soil underneath—rockier than he would’ve expected, dry, almost desertlike—but in others, they seemed to fold back upon themselves, piling layer upon layer, forming waist-high mounds, tangled knoll-like profusions of green. And everywhere, hanging like bells from the vines, were those brilliant bloodred flowers.
Eric glanced back down the hill again, just in time to see a fourth man arrive. He was on a bicycle, dressed in white, like the others, a straw hat on his head. “There’s another one,” Eric said.
Everyone stopped, turned to stare. As they watched, a fifth man appeared, then a sixth, also on bicycles. The new arrivals all had bows slung over their shoulders. There was a brief consultation; the bald man seemed to be in charge. He talked for a while, gesturing with his hands, and everyone listened. Then he pointed up the hill and the other men turned to peer at them. Eric felt the impulse to look away, but this was silly, of course, a “Don’t stare; it’s rude” reflex that had nothing to do with what was happening here. He watched the bald man wave in either direction, the clipped gestures of a mi
litary officer, and then the men with bows started off along the clearing, moving quickly, two one way, three the other, leaving the bald man alone at the base of the trail.
“What are they doing?” Amy asked, but nobody answered. Nobody knew.
A child emerged from the jungle. It was the smaller of the two boys who’d followed them, the one they’d left behind in the field. He stood next to the bald man, and they both stared up at them. The bald man rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder. It made them look as if they were posing for a photograph.
“Maybe we should run back down,” Eric said. “Quick. While there’s just him and the kid. We could rush them.”
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