Joe Stevens Mocks a Llama

by David D Hammons

  Ivan pointed to the enormous mountain that stood behind us, its summit hidden in the clouds. As he did, the llamas broke apart from Freddy, one turning away from Freddy, the other turning toward the second llama.

  “And so you see,” Ivan continued, “That is story Maju…”

  “Gah!” Freddy shouted as one llama leapt over his head and started humping the other.

  “Not interrupt end of Ivan speech. Is Ivan favorite part!”

  “Gah! Get it off!”

  Freddy was barely able to roll away from the humping llamas as the crowd parted laughing in their wake. The Americans chuckled lightly at the sight, along with the British and Australians, while the Peruvians and other Spanish speakers pointed and laughed with uproarious delight, while any Asian present silently watched with unreadable expressions.

  “Llamas! Not with llamas again, interrupt Ivan speech!” Ivan said and charged the humping llamas with his stick held like a club, swinging it above his head and striking one of the llamas hard on the back, “Ivan hate llamas break Ivan concentration!”

  The llamas broke apart and tried to run away from Ivan. But Ivan chased after the one who’d delivered the humping, stick held high. “Llamas not good for nothing!” he shouted, “Ivan break llama legs! Make table out of llama. Llama table! Is good for health!”

  With one last strike to the backside of the llamas, the animals were properly chased away. And we were properly in stitches from laughing. So Ivan, returning his stick to his undisturbed bundle, walked back toward us. “Okay. Llamas gone. Ivan take you into city now,” he said, “Follow Ivan for tour.”

  We stumbled down toward the city on the wet rocks lining the path, laughing as we went into stone buildings and passed beneath the smooth stones of the city’s wall-lined streets. With the llamas no more nearby and the city crowded with other groups of non-English-speaking tourists, we finally calmed down enough for Freddy and I to pay attention to Ivan again.

  We came upon the tallest part of the central city, where the most worked and polished stones had been used. Here Ivan informed us of the triple nature of a small, three-tiered stone. It resembled three steps. A window in a nearby stone temple-like building let light through to shine on the stone. Ivan explained that two days a year, on the summer and winter solstices, the shaped stone would make a perfect mirror image of itself with its shadow. This was the metaphorical representation of the earth, underworld, and heavens. It was a pretty nifty way of keeping track of the calendar too.

  Next we came to a room inside what had to be a temple complex. As we walked into a narrow, smooth-cut chamber, Ivan said, “Not know if is temple. But stone smoother and take more time build than other parts of city. So must be important. One building temple, one building maybe palace. No one know. What know is, this room special.”

  The narrow room had several box-shaped holes cut in the walls. Ivan stuck his head in one of these walls and spoke in a low voice. “Heeeelloooo,” he said, his voice echoing loudly throughout the room, “Iiiivaaan liiiike thiissssss roooooooooom.”

  Something in the way the holes were carved turned them into microphones, echoing a speaker’s voice throughout the room. Immediately everyone ran to the closest hole and began speaking into them as if they were children first discovering a megaphone.

  I stuck my head into a hole and said, “Feeee fiiiigh fooooo fummmmm,” my voice bouncing off the walls.

  Freddy tried to say something into the hole adjacent to mine, but his voice didn’t sound any louder than normal. “What’s with this?” Freddy asked, stepping back, “I think mine’s broken.”

  “Let me try,” I said, sticking my head into Freddy’s spot, “Noooo it’s noooooot.”

  “Shut up, Joe.”

  “You just have to speak with enough resonance. Like playing a saxophone.”

  “Why would they build these things anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s religious? Or maybe they wanted to show off.”

  “There’s a myth that the statue of Zeus in Greece could talk, but that it was just a priest working some contraption. Maybe this is like that, a way to fool worshipers in another room.”

  “Maybe they thought it made their prayers sound more special or something. Either way, the tour’s moving on.”

  We shelved our discussion about the logic of building such a room and rejoined the tour.

  Machu Picchu the city is built on two opposing hills with a grassy valley between. Temples and what was thought to be the palace were built on the slightly taller hill, with more residential style buildings on the lower end. The valley was thought to be a schoolyard or worship center of some kind.

  Ivan led us through the temples and palace. One temple was thought to be for snakes or for the sky, but Ivan didn’t properly explain it because he had a bad experience with the snake temple one time involving a tourist from Canada. No clue what the temple was about or why this experience made Ivan so angry, but it distracted him enough he was still complaining about an “ugly Canadian” till we had completed our trip through the residential areas.

  All was cut stone and aged dwelling. The ruins seemed so distant, surreal, the cloud-capped landscape and sheer greenery transforming a ruin into a floating resting place for mythical beings. I expressed this sentiment to Freddy and he said it was just an empty city. He also disagreed that there was any possibility the people who lived here were the long-lost citizens of Atlantis. And while my Atlantian-migration theory could be plausible if I were to illustrate it in the same detail that I shared it with Freddy, you’re not present to enter a boring, yet more likely, alternative like Freddy did so I’ll spare you the banter.

  The last place we saw was what Ivan called the temple of the eagle. Jutting out from a short, steep hill of stone, the Inca had carved the spread wings of a bird into the wall. The wings went down to the stone body on the floor. It led to a cave and “Shows three parts of heavens, earth, and underworld together,” Ivan explained as we exited the tiny cave. On the other side of the cave, he made sure everyone was once again assembled. “That is end of tour. Thank you very much. If like, you can climb Maju Piju mountain itself. Thank you.”

  We applauded, and Ivan told us to stop; but he did accept our generous tips.

  “You can climb hill behind Ivan,” Ivan said, pointing to a high mountain top at the edge of the ruins, “Is smaller mountain, and need ticket go up. The record for quickest climb is fifteen minutes. The record for quickest go down is fifteen seconds.” Then Ivan made a whistling noise and slapped his hands together, an image that elicited a dark chuckle from the group.

  “Maju Piju is not name of city,” Ivan reminded us, “Since Spanish never find, no one know what call city. When photographer team came, they ask local settlers what call city. They not know either; they only know name of mountain.” Ivan then gestured with an outstretched stick to the towering mass in front of him, a mountain of green that faded invisibly into the clouded peaks.

  “Remember, Maju Piju means Big Hill. Is name this mountain. It take three hours go up and down. And there is no line,” Ivan said.

  Freddy and I glanced at each other and had one of those moments where we knew exactly what the other was thinking.

  “Never change, Ivan,” I said in farewell to our baseball-capped friend.

  “Bye Joe and Freddy. Bye other tour group. Now go. Tour all done. Ivan go make table.”

  Chapter 8

  Confident in our livened endurance and our shoes (mine worth about $20) Freddy and I strolled past the disassembling tour group to hop on the trail.

  We passed the single building and field where the llamas had been. The llamas were perched on the stair step gardens and stared at us as we passed, as if they were confused about what we were doing. In retrospect, a lesser man might have asked the same question.

  At the start of the path that led up the mountain, Freddy and I discovered a little wooden hut. It had been built to house a large book. “It’s a guest book,” Freddy
said, when he saw the lines of names written on the wrinkled pages.

  “Cool,” I said, noting the list of scribbled signatures and the many nationalities of those who had come before.

  “Uh, Joe, there’s only ten names on this list for today.”

  “So?”

  “There’s like, what, several thousand people a day that come to this park?”

  “Probably.”

  “And only ten of them climb the mountain?”

  “I see that,” I said, signing my name, “As a challenge.” Giving Freddy the pen that was strung to the guestbook, I walked toward the trail, not bothering to see if Freddy would follow. It made me laugh to see that Freddy did join, and that there had been no Americans on that list beside us.

  With eager steps we climbed. Each inclining step up the slope thickened and flattened to large boulders that were separated by jagged cuts just big enough to slip through. Vegetation threatened to strangle the sides of the path as the dirt and grass gave way to what became basically stairs of partially cut stone. Freddy and I had both brought our jackets, fearing for sudden storms and harsh winds that would turn this South American summer to a bitter chill, but tore them off moments after beginning our ascent.

  We didn’t talk, not at first. I think the beauty and harshness of the jungle cut us from thinking about conversation. And the taxing steepness of the climb silenced us so that we considered very carefully whether we’d have the ability to actually complete this ascent. I was worried that if I talked, perhaps Freddy might suggest we turn around. Perhaps Freddy thought the same of me.

  The musty air added a slippery layer of moisture to the rock, and at times we had to step lightly to avoid sliding down narrow traverses. But the wet rocks were easy to spot and the path laid out clearly. We had trees on one ledge and the steep mountain itself to protect our sides. The trees, however, gradually began to grow shorter, the tops of trees that would normally be covered by the new-found bottom trunks at higher elevations going un-replaced till we took a hard turn and looked out eye level with the canopy.

  Freddy spoke, and I was worried he’d say he was done. But he simply said, “Joe, we should stop here for a rest. Lot of mountain left to climb.”

  “Good idea,” I agreed and found a large rock to sit on. The high-stepping and stair climbing was starting to wear on me as well, so I didn’t complain for the stop. I didn’t say anything about being tired but I didn’t complain either.

  “Taking a break from it?” a skinny man with glasses, in his middle years, asked as he passed Freddy and I. He spoke with a British accent, and a blonde girl who was fairly attractive, his daughter I guessed, trailed him.

  “Yeah,” Freddy said with a breathing laugh.

  “How farther along is the top?” the blonde girl asked, her accent also revealing her British heritage.

  “Couple hours maybe,” I said.

  “Wow, really?”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “Our guide said it took three hours up and down. I figure two hours up, one down, and we haven’t been going very long.”

  “Did you hear that, dad? Can we make it that far?”

  “We’re not going to stop now, certainly,” the British man said.

  Freddy and I didn’t worry about letting them pass. We figured the older man would tire quick enough and we’d pass on, our slow and steady pace less likely to weaken us. Not that we were pride-stricken by seeing a man in his forties pass us or anything.

  It wasn’t long after that, that we got up and started walking again. Sure enough, about ten minutes later we came upon the British father and daughter. They had decided to take a rest on a steep cluster of rocks. They laughed as we approached and the father said, “Two hours, eh?”

  “Yup,” I said as I passed.

  “Can you do it, dad?” the blonde asked.

  “Oh sure.”

  We walked along the steep steps that grew sporadic and unpredictable. One step would be three feet taller than the previous and jutting out to a point. The next would be a rounded, miniature cliff edge no more than a few inches in depth. Pretty soon Freddy and I decided to come to a rest once more and sat chuckling at how breathless we’d already become.

  Shortly after we sat down, the British father and daughter came up the trail. They marched up to us and paused, standing and breathing hard as we were. “Doesn’t seem to be getting any easier does it?” the British man said with a smile.

  “Not at all,” Freddy admitted.

  We stood there smiling and breathing at each other as we tried to keep our exhaustion in check. It was a few minutes after this that I stood, then Freddy, then the Brits started following, and we sort of fell into a group.

  The next length of time was spent in relative silence, the four of us trying to get our mountain legs and growing ever more used to the torture of rising and falling and rising and pressing upward and forward in a constant taxation of the legs and lungs. Talking seemed a distant thing. But as we got used to the height and strain we started talking.

  “I’m Joe by the way,” I informed the people behind me. For some reason, perhaps because I was the first to move from our rest, I had taken up the group’s lead position.

  “Don,” the gray-haired, skinny British man said with a smile. We didn’t shake hands. You don’t shake hands when you’re climbing a mountain. It’s enough to just share names.

  “This is my daughter Shelly,” Don continued, pointing to the blonde girl behind him.

  “Hello,” Shelly waved, panting a bit.

  “I’m…Freddy…” Freddy said, huffing and puffing and sweating behind us. He took up the rear of the suddenly formed group. I could barely see him, but even though he was about three times Shelly’s girth he was still able to keep pace with her.

  “What brought you to Peru?” Don asked.

  “Llama tacos,” I explained.

  “Revolution in Egypt,” Freddy explained.

  “Neither of those make sense,” Shelly noted.

  “Freddy’s is probably closer to the truth. We were going to Egypt, but then the riots started happening. So we took a last minute flight to Peru instead,” I said, parting a thin-leafed tree branch that hung over the path.

  “Why would you do that?” Don asked.

  “That’s where the llama tacos come into play.”

  “I’m not altogether sure they have llama tacos here.”

  “That would be a tragedy.”

  We paused for a bit on a sharp bend. The rocks were becoming more jagged, the foliage near empty of plant life thicker than my wrist. Each of us selected a nice rock to catch our breath on and sort of chuckled at our inability to see the summit for the steepness of the climb still to come.

  Two hikers came by as we sat, heading down the path and toward the bottom.

  “How much farther is it?” Freddy asked.

  “Oh, about an hour maybe,” one of the two said as he passed by, not pausing to explain further.

  At about this time we entered what looked to be a rainforest jungle of thin trees.

  “This would be the perfectly appropriate time for us to get mauled by a tiger,” I noted, looking through the lush growth in search of wildlife.

  “Tigers? You mean jaguars right? Or bears – they don’t have tigers here right?” Shelly asked.

  “I don’t know if a jaguar would be much better, honestly,” Don noted.

  “Joe’s being dumb. There aren’t large cats in South America,” Freddy noted.

  “I wasn’t being dumb. I was saying that this would be the appropriate time for us to be mauled by a tiger. Not that it would actually happen. I should probably not think in terms of cinematic conflict should I?”

  “No, you should not.”

  “So there are no bears either?” Shelly asked.

  “No. They aren’t native to this part of the world. No large predators. And I don’t even see any small animals, or even birds in there,” Freddy said, peering into the jungle.

  “Yeah,” I
agreed, “This is the jungle wilderness of the unknown, a green and sunny equivalent of Odysseus’s plunge into the underworld, where no life exists beyond that of those brave enough to travel.”

  “Stop trying to add dramatic tension.”

  “I thought it was quite eloquent actually,” Don noted, “Could you say a soliloquy if one of us fell off the mountain?”

  “Dad!” Shelly exclaimed.

  “I have poetic verses kept in store for nearly every circumstance. I’m particularly fond of my limerick-driven ode should any of us spontaneously combust,” I noted.

  “Let’s hear it,” Don said, chuckling.

  “Not until one of us is on fire. And I can’t volunteer, mind you, that would be cheating.”

  None of the foliage was thicker than a pool cue. It stretched as if weaving a trap around us. I think we all felt it as we passed into the enclosing canopy. You could no longer see the clouds swirling over the mountain tops. You couldn’t even see very far in front of you for the curving nature of the trail. All you could see was the tunnel of green in which you traveled and your companions walking immediately behind or in front.

  The thick greenery softened our footsteps as we walked, adding to the mystery, as if the mountain itself was whispering.

  “You think the natives climbed this mountain?” I asked, soft as possible.

  “Don’t know. Can’t imagine why they wouldn’t,” Don noted.

  “Machu Picchu is a religious pilgrimage,” Freddy said, his words in staccato rhythm with his huffing, even steps and the soft wind that silenced all other sounds, “It’s possible that this was a rite of passage, an ascent to manhood, or membership in the tribe.”

  “Risk death to climb a mountain and prove your worth,” I said, “This would be the place to do it.”