The River of No Return

by Jon Voelkel

  “Stop worrying, Uncle Ted,” said Max. “We’re not children. We’ll be fine.”

  Uncle Ted sighed. “I hadn’t realized how stressful it is to be a parent. Look, whatever happens, just promise that you’ll stay together and look after each other?”

  They nodded earnestly.

  “That’s settled then! Lola, grab a pizza, and let’s you and me go talk to Och’s family. Max, you find Eusebio and ask him how much he wants to take you two upriver in the morning. If he says a hundred dollars each, tell him to forget it. And you’re only going one way, so don’t let him charge you for a round trip.”

  In the event, Eusebio—evidently ashamed of his earlier rapaciousness—agreed to take them to Limón for nothing. He even offered them all a hammock for the night.

  “This is very kind of you,” said Lola, stretching out.

  “I just want to be sure you wake up early,” said Eusebio gruffly. “My passengers will be angry if we don’t leave on time—they get their pay docked if they’re even one minute late for work.”

  “Sounds like the hotel has strict management,” replied Lola. “Death Lords,” she mouthed to Max.

  Max rolled his eyes at her and turned over in his hammock. There was no way that Filth, Pus, and their cronies had enslaved the people of Utsal just to run a tourist hotel. That was ridiculous.

  Wasn’t it?

  But hotel or no hotel, the fact remained that unless he and Lola could think of a way to stop it, the whole human race would soon be enslaved by the ancient Maya Lords of Death.

  He fell asleep imagining a monochrome world where blank-faced humans, their spirits broken, trudged to their joyless work like robots.

  And that was exactly the scene that greeted him on the dock next morning.

  It was still dark when the passengers filed aboard, most of them looking half asleep. No one said a word as the boat filled up and Eusebio started the engine.

  As they roared upriver in a cloud of evil-smelling smoke, the sky turned slowly from grayish black to grayish pink.

  Max chewed on leftover pizza and watched the forest go by. “I keep looking for Lord 6-Dog in the trees. I thought he’d be here by now.”

  Lola smiled. “There’s an old mango orchard between here and the Black Pyramid. He probably got distracted.”

  “Just as well,” said Max. “There’s nothing for him to eat here.” He pointed to a grove of black, leafless trees. “It’s as bare as fall in Boston.”

  “I’d like to see your famous fall. Rainforest trees don’t do that synchronized leaf-dropping thing.” She squinted at the trees. “That looks like a blight to me.”

  “And where are all the animals? Last time we came up this river, there were monkeys, iguanas, turtles, crocodiles … remember?”

  “Hey, Hoop, for a city kid, you’re beginning to sound like a nature lover.”

  “I am? Yeah, I guess I am. It’s just kind of sad, seeing the jungle all empty like this.” He clapped his hands to catch a mosquito and missed. “Still lots of bugs though.”

  “Even more than usual,” agreed Lola, waving away a cloud of blackflies. “It must be all the trash.”

  He followed her eyes and saw, bobbing like ducks on the oil slick in the boat’s wake, a flock of fast-food containers, plastic bags, and soda bottles. The wind was getting up, and for a while Max and Lola watched a candy wrapper dancing on the breeze, before it, too, was sucked into the oil slick.

  The closer they got to Limón, the more trash floated in the water.

  By the time they reached the landing stage, the magnificent Monkey River, main highway of San Xavier, had been reduced to a liquid garbage can.

  “I wonder,” said Lola, “if the river will ever get so clogged that one day it will just stop flowing.”

  Limón itself was equally trashy.

  Neon lights flashed through the early-morning haze.

  Everywhere billboards promised gastronomic excess: BELLYBUSTERS BURRITO BUFFET! TRIPLE-STUFFED TACOS! NACHOS-A-GOGO! Normally that kind of thinking would have got Max’s juices flowing, but when he saw the HOME OF THE TEN-FOOT TAMALE, he knew that even he was beaten.

  They waited for the workers in front of them to disembark.

  “Look at that old guy with the big bag. He looks like Chan Kan, but even nuttier.” Max was pointing at a hunched figure in a long white tunic, with an elaborate shawl arrangement on his head and a large woven tote bag across his chest. The bag weighed him down and, combined with a cane that seemed to indicate impaired vision, made it difficult for him to step off the boat. The passengers behind him grumbled impatiently, but no one offered a hand. Eventually someone pushed him from behind and he launched himself onto the quayside, grabbing blindly at a wooden post to stop himself from falling. A squawk of protest erupted from his bag.

  “What … who …?” murmured Lola distractedly, still mesmerized by the neon signs.

  “He’s gone now.” Max watched as the old man disappeared, tip-tapping with his cane, into the crowd of workers, hawkers, and beggars who thronged the quayside. “So did you get to say good-bye to Chan Kan this morning?”

  “I went to his hut, but it was empty. He was probably out looking for dewdrops or spiderwebs or something. Shamans are always collecting weird ingredients.”

  “Well, he can’t be on his deathbed if he’s still getting up at dawn and doing that kind of stuff.”

  Lola nodded happily. “I hope you’re right.”

  By the time Max and Lola finally stepped ashore, Eusebio, too, had vanished.

  “So which way to the bus station?” asked Max.

  “I’m not sure,” replied Lola, looking anxiously around. “Everything’s so new. I don’t recognize this town anymore.”

  A man wearing an old-fashioned box camera around his neck approached them. With one hand he made sure that his straw hat didn’t blow off in the wind; in the other he cradled a long, shaggy green animal that looked like a creature from a Doctor Seuss book.

  “Picture?” asked the man, trying to pass the hairy beast over to Max.

  Max jumped back in alarm. “What is that thing?”

  Lola waved her finger and shook her head at the man before muttering to Max: “It’s a sloth.”

  The sloth looked at him with sleepy eyes.

  Max eyed it back suspiciously. “Why’s it green?”

  “That’s algae. It grows in the sloth’s fur.”

  “Gross.”

  Lola rolled her eyes. “It’s not gross, it’s symbiosis. They’re helping each other out. The algae gets a place to live, and the sloth gets some excellent camouflage. Plus, if the sloth gets hungry, it can lick the algae for a snack.”

  Max looked at the sloth with new respect. “Wow! That’s genius! It’s like I carried popcorn in my hair.”

  “Except that would make you more visible to predators.”

  “I’m top of the food chain. I don’t have any predators.”

  Lola raised an eyebrow. “You can’t think of anyone who wants to kill you?”

  “Oh,” he said. “You mean Ah Pukuh.”

  “And …?”

  “The Death Lords?”

  “And …?”

  “Stink Pig?”

  “Correct. And I’m sorry to break this to you, but covering yourself in popcorn is not going to save you from any of them. Come on, let’s find the bus station.”

  They walked along the riverfront, still closely followed by the sloth man. A man with a snake wrapped round his neck stepped in line and was soon joined by a man with a parrot on his head. Every time Max and Lola paused, the three men would crowd around, jostling each other and urging them to pose for photographs.

  “No photo!” Max exclaimed. “Where is the bus station?”

  The men pointed down a side road, and Max and Lola set off again, followed by the little menagerie.

  They came to a large, trash-strewn square, lined on three sides with banks, fast-food restaurants, and souvenir stores—every one padlocked and sh
uttered. In the middle of the square were parked three tourist buses, all silent and empty. On the fourth side sat a small yellow adobe structure shaped like a Maya pyramid. The sign over the door read:

  “That’s it?” said Max. “That’s your big, scary hotel run by the Death Lords? It’s tiny! It looks like it’s run by two little old ladies and a pet parrot.”

  “Looks,” announced Lola mysteriously, “can be deceiving. But I wonder why everything’s closed around here? It’s like a ghost town.”

  “The hotel’s open,” Max pointed out. “We could check it out.”

  “No! We’re not going anywhere near that place. Let’s go and find our bus.”

  An electronic billboard behind the hotel spewed out a loop of red neon ticker-tape letters:

  “Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about it?” asked Max. “It doesn’t look big enough to have all that stuff inside.”

  Lola looked at him in mock surprise. “You’re not suggesting that the Death Lords would tell lies, are you?”

  “But you still haven’t explained why you think they’d want to own a hotel. I’m sure they have enough to do, plotting the end of the world, without trying to run the world’s biggest pizza buffet.” Max licked his lips. “That does sound good, though. I wonder if it’s thin crust.”

  The ticker-tape letters began to flash:

  “Infinite? Oh, come on!” exclaimed Max. “We have to try it!”

  “Really, Hoop? You had pizza for dinner last night, and cold pizza for breakfast this morning, and now you want more pizza? Boy, the Death Lords really know how to reel you in.”

  “Have you ever been to Las Vegas, Monkey Girl?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there are tons of places like this in Vegas, and I promise you that not one of them is owned by the Death Lords.”

  “How do you know?”

  The wind blew a small piece of paper over Max’s eyes, blinding him for a second. He peeled it off and looked at it. “It’s a flyer for the buffet! ‘Scratch here to release the irresistible fresh-baked aroma of our award-winning gourmet pizzas!’ ” He scratched and sniffed, almost burying his face in the paper. “Oh, that is good. Here, try it.”

  Lola grabbed the flyer off him, scrunched it up, and threw it in the nearest trash can. “Let’s find the bus to Puerto Muerto and get out of here.”

  She set off toward the parked buses. “You’ll be hungry later,” Max called after her, before giving in and following.

  Trash blew like tumbleweeds across the deserted square.

  The three would-be animal photographers gave up pursuit and hunkered down with their creatures against a wall in front of the hotel. They sat there, watching.

  Lola headed for the large double-sided blackboard that listed the day’s bus trips but, before she reached it, it blew over with a crash. As she struggled against the wind to pick it up, a little boy ran out to help her.

  When the board was upright, she stood back to read the options:

  “What time is the bus to Puerto Muerto?” Max asked the boy.

  He shook his head.

  Lola asked him in Mayan.

  He shook his head again.

  Before they could press him further, he took a rag from his pocket and wiped the blackboard clean. Then he produced a bit of paper and a piece of chalk, and began to copy down what was written on the paper. Max and Lola watched in horror as the words took shape: NO BUS TODAY.

  Lola exchanged a few words in Mayan with the boy before he ran off again. “He said they’ve canceled all the buses. The hurricane’s hitting land sooner than expected. That’s why the stores are shuttered. He said the hurricane warning will be sounding any minute.”

  “It is getting very windy.” Max caught his Red Sox cap as it was about to fly off his head. “What should we do?”

  “We’ll get a boat back to Utsal and try again tomorrow. Unless you have a better idea?”

  Max kicked the wheel of the nearest bus. “Rats!”

  “There’s no point getting mad about it.”

  “No, two big rats! They were under the bus. They ran out when I kicked the wheel.”

  Lola wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Let’s go back to the dock.”

  “Can we get something to eat first? I’m starving.”

  “No.”

  “Why are you being so bossy?”

  “We need to get out of here. For one thing, there’s a hurricane coming. And for another thing … don’t laugh at me, but the Death Lords are near. I can sense it.”

  “Oh come on. Just one quick slice of pizza.”

  “It’s too risky.”

  “But we’d be safer inside the hotel when the hurricane hits than out here in the storm.”

  “So you’d take that chance? You’d walk into enemy territory?”

  “Think of it as reconnaissance. As Lord 6-Dog would say: Know thine enemy.”

  “I don’t like this, Hoop. It feels like a trap.”

  Around the square, sirens rang out to alert the populace to the incoming hurricane.

  “You’re overthinking it. We need to take shelter.”

  “Let’s find somewhere else then.”

  “There is nowhere else. Look, we’ll just go into the hotel, grab something to eat, and find out what’s happening. I mean, I assume you don’t think the Death Lords are working in the lobby?”

  “No, but—”

  “So they must have a tourist-information desk. We’ll ask how long the hurricane will last and when the buses will start running again. We could even phone Uncle Ted.”

  Lola looked torn. “Okay, you win. I guess we’ll be all right if we act like ordinary tourists and don’t call attention to ourselves.”

  “Deal! Let’s go! That pizza smelled so good.…”

  As they approached the hotel, the three photographers jumped up and posed their creatures appealingly. The sloth’s green fur rippled in the wind.

  “Picture! Picture! Picture!” they cried.

  “Let’s do it!” said Max. “We’re supposed to be acting like tourists!”

  It was impossible to choose one photographer over the rest, so Max gave a little money to each of them. Then, after some minor bickering about who took what, Lola held the sloth, the parrot perched on Max’s finger, and the snake looped over both their shoulders, with Max being careful to make sure that Lola got the end with the head.

  The sloth man handed Max a piece of paper. “Collect your photograph at the concierge desk,” he said.

  “You work for the hotel?” said Max, surprised.

  “Everyone works for the hotel,” said the sloth man. As he spoke, thunder rumbled in the distance and a light rain began to fall. “You should go inside. There’s a hurricane coming.”

  As the automatic glass doors parted for them, Max and Lola were hit by a blast of icy air that made them gasp.

  As they went in, a group of tourists came out—a mother chivvying her reluctant family, all kitted out in yellow rain ponchos. “Hoods up!” she piped with false jollity. “It’s only a shower. A drop of rain never hurt anyone!” She proceeded to force her offspring to pose for a photo with the animals. “Smile, everyone; say cheese!”

  The children remained sullenly tight-lipped and refused to touch any of the animals, so that the resulting pose showed the inanely grinning woman just visible under a sloth, a snake, and a parrot, while her family scowled all around her.

  Laughing, Max pointed out the scene to Lola. “What is it with parents on vacation? Did yours ever force you to …?” His voice tailed off as he remembered that Lola had never been on vacation with her parents, had never even met her parents.

  Idiot! he said to himself.

  “Fatso!” said a woman’s voice.

  He turned to see the owner of the voice, a small woman with frizzy bleached blond hair. Incongruously in this jungle setting, she wore a tight business suit, high heels, and shiny red lipstick. “Fatso?” she repeated, pen poised over her clipboard.

&n
bsp; “Fatso yourself,” said Max, offended.

  The woman forced a smile, showing a smudge of lipstick on her teeth. “No, it’s F-A-T-S-O,” she said, spelling out the letters. “It’s short for Forest Asset and Tree Stripping Operations. Clever, isn’t it? We’re the new strip-mining and logging consortium that’s going to put this place on the map. We’re having our annual conference here today. But if you haven’t heard of us, I assume you’re not attending?”

  Lola put her hands on her hips. “So it’s F.A.T.S.O. who’ve been cutting down all the trees around here?”

  The woman nodded. “We’ve done a great job, haven’t we? Leave nothing behind, that’s our motto. Here, have a button.” Lola grabbed the button and threw it back at her.

  “Sorry! She has a button phobia!” Max called over his shoulder to the woman as he hurried after Lola and pulled her to one side. “What was that about? We’re supposed to be not calling attention to ourselves, remember?”

  “So you expect me to smile sweetly while that woman and her stupid buttons destroy the rainforest?”

  “She’s just doing her job.”

  “You could say that about the loggers, too. It’s no excuse.”

  “Well, you better calm down, or you’ll get us thrown out of here.”

  “Good. I hate this place.”

  It was cold and dark in the lobby, lit only by flickering candles. Black-clad figures moved like wraiths behind the reception desk. Sheets of water trickled artistically down the sloping black walls, to be reflected in the polished black tile floor. There was a sitting area with wooden stools and low stone tables; on each table stood a vase containing one bare twig.

  “It reminds me of a Japanese restaurant,” said Max. “All they need is a sushi bar and a—” He was going to say “fish pond,” but his musings on interior design were interrupted by a blast on a conch shell.

  A hand gripped his shoulder.

  “Congratulations!” squeaked a voice in his ear. “You are our octillionth visitors!”

  Max turned around to face a thin, rat-faced man in a shiny black suit. In place of a shirt and tie, he wore a black hotel T-shirt, emblazoned with the words I LEFT MY HEART AT THE GRAND HOTEL XIBALBA.