The Ruins (6 page)

 The
path seemed to be fairly well traveled. They passed an empty beer
bottle, a flattened pack of cigarettes. There were tracks at one point,
too, some sort of hoofed animal, smaller than a horse. A donkey, maybe,
or even a goat—Eric couldn't decide. Jeff probably
knew what it was; he was good at things like that—picking out
constellations, naming flowers. He was a reader, a fact hoarder, maybe
a bit of a show-off at times: ordering in Spanish even when it was
clear that the waiter spoke English, correcting people's
pronunciation. Eric couldn't decide how well he liked him.
Or, for that matter—and maybe this was more to the
point—how well he was liked by Jeff.

 They
rounded a curve and descended a long, gradual slope with a stream
running alongside the trail, and then suddenly there was sunlight in
front of them, blinding after all that time in the shade. The jungle
fell away, beaten back by what appeared to be some sort of aborted
attempt at agriculture. There were fields on either side of the trail,
extending for a hundred yards or so, vast tracts of churned-up earth,
baking in the sun. It was the end stages of the slash-and-burn cycle:
the slashing and burning and sowing and reaping had already happened
here, and now this was what followed, the wasteland that preceded the
jungle's return. Already, the foliage along the margins had
begun to send out exploratory parties, vines and the occasional
waist-high bush, looking squat and somehow pugnacious amid all those
upturned clods of dirt.

 Pablo
and Eric fumbled for their sunglasses. In the distance, the jungle
resumed, extending like a wall across the path. Jeff and Mathias had
already vanished into its shadows, but Stacy and Amy were still
visible. Amy had put on her hat; Stacy had tied a bandanna over her
hair. Eric called to them, yelling their names, and waved, but they
didn't hear him. Or, hearing him, didn't glance
back. The little black flies remained behind beneath the trees, but the
mosquitoes continued to accompany them, unabated.

 They
were midway across the open space when a snake crossed the path, right
in front of them. It was just a small snake—black, with tan
markings, two feet long at the most—but Pablo gave a shout of
terror. He jumped backward, knocking Eric down, then lost his own
footing and fell on top of him. He was up in an instant, pointing at
the spot where the snake had disappeared, chattering in Greek, dancing
from foot to foot, a look of horror on his face. Apparently, he had a
fear of snakes. Eric rose slowly to his feet, dusting himself off.
He'd scraped his elbow when he fell, and there was dirt in
the cut; he tried to brush it clean. Pablo kept spewing his Greek,
exclaiming and gesturing. All three Greeks were like this; sometimes
they tried to mime their meaning or draw something to explain
themselves, but mostly they just held forth, making no attempt to
clarify what they were saying. It was as if the uttering of it was all
that mattered; being understood was beside the point.

 Eric
waited for Pablo to finish. Toward the end, it seemed as if he were
apologizing for knocking him down, and Eric smiled and nodded to
express his forgiveness. Then they continued on, though Pablo proceeded
at a much slower pace now, nervously scanning the edges of the trail.
Eric spent some time trying to picture their arrival at the ruins. The
archaeologists with their careful grids, their little shovels and whisk
booms, their plastic bags full of artifacts: tin cups the miners had
drunk from, the iron nails that had once held their shacks together.
Mathias would find his brother; there'd be some sort of
confrontation, an argument in German, raised voices, ultimatums. Eric
was looking forward to it. He liked drama, conflict, the rush and
tumble of other people's emotions. It wasn't all
going to be like this, the drudgery of walking through the heat, his
elbow throbbing in time with his heartbeat. Once they found the ruins,
the day would shift, take on a new dimension.

 They
reached the far end of the open space, and the jungle resumed. The
little black bugs were waiting for them here in the shade. They hovered
around them in a humming cloud, as if joyful in the reunion. There was
no sign of the stream anymore. The trail curved to the right, then to
the left, then became straight again, a long corridor of shade, at the
end of which appeared to be another clearing, a circle of sunlight
awaiting their approach, so bright, it felt audible to Eric, like a
horn, blowing. It hurt to look at it—hurt his eyes, his head.
He put his sunglasses back on. Only then did he notice the others
clustered together there—Jeff and Mathias and Stacy and
Amy—crouching in a loose circle just short of the clearing,
passing a water bottle back and forth among themselves, and turning now
to watch as he and Pablo went slowly toward them.

T
he map said that if they
reached the Mayan village, they'd gone too far, and there it
was, down the slope from where they crouched. Jeff and Mathias had been
watching for their turnoff as they walked, but somehow they
must've missed it. They'd have to double back along
the trail now, moving more slowly this time, looking more closely. The
question they were debating was whether or not they should investigate
the village first, perhaps even see if there might be someone there
who'd be willing to guide them to the ruins. Not that the
village appeared very promising. It consisted of perhaps thirty
flimsy-looking buildings, nearly identical in size and appearance. One-
and two-room shacks, most with thatch roofs, though there were several
of tin, too. Dirt-floored, Jeff guessed. There were no overhead wires
visible, so he assumed there was no electricity. Nor running water, for
that matter: there was a well in the center of the village, with a
bucket attached to a rope. As they crouched there, waiting for Eric and
Pablo to reach them, he saw an old woman fill a pitcher at the well,
turning a wheel to lower the bucket into its depths. The wheel needed
oiling; he could hear it squeaking even from this distance as the
bucket dropped and dropped, then paused, filling, before its equally
clamorous ascent. Jeff watched the woman balance the pitcher on her
shoulder and move slowly back down the dusty street to her shack.

 The
Mayans had cleared a circular swath of jungle around their village,
planting what appeared to be corn and beans in the open space. Men and
women and even children were scattered across the fields, bent over,
weeding. There were goats about, chickens and some donkeys and a trio
of horses in a fenced corral, but no sign of any mechanical equipment:
no tractors or tillers, no cars or trucks. When Jeff and Mathias first
appeared at the mouth of the trail, a tall, narrow-
chested
mutt had come trotting
quickly toward them, tail aggressively raised. It stopped just short of
stone-throwing range and paced back and forth for a few minutes,
barking and growling. The sun was too hot for this sort of behavior,
though, and eventually it fell quiet, then lost interest altogether and
drifted back toward the village, collapsing into the shade beside one
of the shacks.

 Jeff
assumed that the dog must've alerted the villagers to their
presence, but there was no overt acknowledgment of this. No one paused
in his work to stare; no one nudged his neighbor and pointed. The men
and women and children remained bent low over their weeding, moving
slowly down the rows of plants. Most of the men were dressed in white,
with straw hats on their heads. The women wore dark dresses, shawls
covering their hair. The children were barefoot, feral-looking; many of
the boys were shirtless, dark from the sun, so that they seemed to
blend into the earth they were working, to vanish and reappear from one
moment to the next.

 Stacy
wanted to push forward into the village, to see if they might find
someplace cool to sit and rest—perhaps they could even buy a
cold soda somewhere—but Jeff hesitated. The lack of greeting,
the sense that the village was collectively willing away their
appearance, filled him with a feeling of caution. He pointed out the
absence of overhead wires, and how this would lead to a lack of
refrigerators and air conditioners, which, in turn, would make cold
sodas and cool places to sit and rest seem somewhat unlikely.

 "But
at least we might find a guide," Amy said. She'd
removed her camera from his pack and had started to take pictures. She
took some of them crouched there, then one of Pablo and Eric walking
toward them, then one of the Mayans working in their fields. Her
spirits had lifted, Jeff could tell; Stacy had brought her out of it.
Her moods came and went; he assumed there was a logic to them, but
he'd long ago stopped trying to fathom it. He called her his "jellyfish," rising and falling through the depths.
Sometimes she seemed to find this endearing; other times she
didn't. She took a picture of him, spending a long moment
peering through the viewfinder, making him self-conscious. Then the
click. "We could just end up walking back and forth along
this trail all day," she said. "And then what? Are
we supposed to camp out here?"

 "And
maybe they'll be able to drive us back to
Cobá
afterward," Stacy said.

 "See
any cars or trucks?" Jeff asked.

 They
all spent a moment staring down into the village. Before anyone could
say anything further, Pablo and Eric were upon them. Pablo hugged
everyone, then immediately began chattering in Greek, very excitedly,
extending his arms full length, as if describing a fish he'd
caught. He jumped up and down; he pretended to knock into Eric. Then he
held out his arms again.

 "We
saw a snake," Eric said. "But it wasn't
that big. Maybe half that."

 The
others laughed at this, which seemed to encourage Pablo. He started all
over again, the chattering, the jumping, the bumping into Eric.

 "He's
scared of them," Eric said.

 They
passed the water bottle around, waited for Pablo to finish. Eric took a
long swallow of water, then poured some on his elbow. He had a cut
there; everyone clustered around him to examine it. The wound was
bloody but not especially deep, three inches long, sickle-shaped,
following the curve of his elbow. Amy took a picture of it.

 "We're
going to find a guide in the village," she said.

 "And
a cool place to sit," Stacy offered. "With cold
sodas."

 "Maybe
they'll have a lime, too," Amy said. "We
can squeeze it on your cut. It'll kill off all the nasty
things inside."

 She
and Stacy both turned from Eric to smile at Jeff, as if taunting him.
He didn't respond—what was the point? Clearly, it
had already been decided: they were going to the village. Pablo finally
stopped talking; Mathias was putting the cap back on the water bottle.
Jeff shouldered his pack. "Shall we?" he said.

 Then
they started down the path toward the village.

T
here was a moment, just as
they emerged from the trees, when the entire village seemed to freeze,
the men and women and children in the fields, everyone pausing for the
barest fraction of a second to note the six of them approaching down
the trail. Then it was over, and it was as if it hadn't
happened, though Stacy was certain it had, or maybe not so certain,
maybe less certain with each additional step she took toward the
village. The work continued in the fields, the bent backs, the steady
pulling of the weeds, and no one was looking at them; no one was
bothering to observe their advance along the path, not even the
children. So perhaps it hadn't happened after all. Stacy was
a fantasist—she knew this about herself—a
daydreamer, a castle builder. There would be no cool rooms here, no
cold sodas. And it was equally probable that there'd been no
moment of furtive appraisal, either, no veiled and quickly terminated
collective glance.

 The
dog reappeared, the one who'd been barking at them earlier.
He emerged again from the village, but with an entirely different
demeanor. Tail wagging, tongue hanging: a friend. Stacy liked dogs. She
crouched to pet this one, let him lick her face. The tail wagging
intensified, the entire rear half of the mutt's body swinging
back and forth. The others didn't stop; they kept walking
down the path. The dog was covered in ticks, Stacy noticed. Dozens of
them, like so many raisins hanging off his belly: fat, blood-engorged.
She could see others moving through his pelt, and she stood up quickly,
pushing the dog away from her, but to no avail. That brief
demonstration of affection had won the mutt over; he'd
adopted her. He pressed close to her body as she walked, winding
himself through her legs, whimpering and wagging, nearly tripping her.
Hurrying to catch up with the others, she had to resist the urge to
kick at the animal, smack him across the snout, send him scurrying. She
felt as if the ticks were crawling over her own body now, had to tell
herself this wasn't true, actually form the words in her
mind:
It's
not true
. She wished, suddenly, that she was back in
Cancún
, back in her
room, about to climb into the shower. The warm water, the smell of
shampoo, the little bar of soap in its paper wrapper, the clean towel
waiting on its rack.

 The
path widened as it entered the village, became something that could
almost be called a road. The shacks lined it on either side. Brightly
colored blankets hung over some of the doorways; others were open but
equally unrevealing, their interiors lost in shadow. The chickens
scampered, clucking. Another dog appeared, joining the first in his
adoration of Stacy, the two of them nipping at each other, fighting
over her. The second dog was gray,
wolflike
.
He had one blue eye and one brown, which gave his gaze an ominous
intensity. In her head, Stacy already had names for them: Pigpen and
Creepy.