The Ruins (7 page)

 At
first, it appeared that there was no one in the village, that everyone
was out working in the fields. Their footsteps sounded loud on the
packed dirt, intrusive. No one spoke, not even Pablo, for whom silence
had always seemed so unattainable. Then there was a woman, sitting in
one of the doorways, with an infant in her arms. The woman had a
withered quality about her, gray streaks in her long black hair. They
were moving down the center of the dirt road, ten or so feet from her,
but she didn't glance up.

 "
¡
Hola
!
" Jeff
called.

 Nothing.
Silence, averted eyes.

 The
baby had no hair to speak of, and a raw, painful-looking rash on its
scalp. It was hard not to stare at the rash; it looked as if someone
had spread a layer of jam across the infant's skull. Stacy
couldn't understand why the baby wasn't crying, and
it upset her, inordinately, though she couldn't say
why.
Like
a doll
, she thought—not moving, not
crying—and then she realized why its stillness bothered her:
there was the sense that the infant might be dead. She glanced away,
calling up those words again, forcing them into her
head:
It's
not true
. Then they were past, and she didn't look
back.

 They
stopped at the well, in the center of the village, peering about,
waiting for someone to approach them, not certain what to do if this
didn't happen. The well was deep. When Stacy leaned over its
edge, she couldn't see its bottom. She had to resist the urge
to spit, or pick up a pebble and drop it in, listening for the distant
plop. There was a wooden bucket on a slimy coil of rope; Stacy
wouldn't have wanted to touch it. Mosquitoes hovered in a
cloud around them, as if they, too, were waiting to see what might
happen next.

 Amy
took some pictures: the surrounding shacks, the well, the two dogs. She
handed the camera to Eric and had him take one of her and Stacy
standing arm in arm. There'd be a whole series of these by
the time they got home, the two of them gripping each other, smiling
into the camera, pale at first, then sunburned, then peeling. This was
the first one without matching hats, and it made Stacy sad for a
moment, thinking of it—the boys running off along the plaza,
the shock of that tiny hand squeezing her breast.

 The
dog she'd named Creepy, with his brown and blue eyes, went
into a crouch, and a long string of shit spooled out of him onto the
ground beside the well. The shit was moving; it was more worms than
feces. Pigpen sniffed at it with great interest, and this sight finally
jarred Pablo into speech. He began to exclaim in Greek, gesturing
wildly. He stepped over to peer at the squirming pile of shit, his lip
curled in disgust. He lifted his head to the sky and kept talking, as
if speaking to the gods, all the while gesturing at the two dogs.

 "Maybe
this wasn't such a good idea," Eric said.

 Jeff
nodded. "We should go. We'll just have
to—"

 "Someone's
coming," Mathias said.

 A
man was approaching down the dirt track. Coming from the fields, it
seemed, wiping his hands on his pants, leaving two brown smudges on the
white fabric. He was short, broad-shouldered, and when he removed his
straw hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead, Stacy saw that he was
almost completely bald. He stopped twenty feet away, appraising them,
taking his time. He put his hat back on, returned his handkerchief to
his pocket.

 "
¡
Hola
!
" Jeff
called.

 The
man answered in Mayan, with a question, it appeared, eyebrows raised.

 It
seemed logical to assume that he was asking them what they wanted, and
Jeff struggled to answer him, first in Spanish, then in English, then
in pantomime. The man showed no sign of understanding any of this.
Stacy had the odd sense, in fact, that he didn't want to
understand, that he was willing himself not to comprehend what had
brought them here. He listened to Jeff's words, even smiled
at his foray into mime, yet there was something distinctly unwelcoming
in his bearing. He was polite but not friendly; she could tell that he
was waiting for them to leave, that he'd rather
they'd never come.

 Finally,
Jeff seemed to realize this, too. He gave up, turned to them with a
shrug. "This isn't working," he said.

 No
one argued. They shouldered their packs, started back toward the
jungle. The Mayan man remained by the well, watching them go.

 They
passed the woman who'd refused to acknowledge them earlier,
and, once again, she kept her gaze averted, the baby, with its mottled
cap of red jam, motionless in her
arms.
Dead
,
Stacy thought, and then, as she forced herself to look
away:
It's
not true
.

 The
dogs followed them. So did two children, which was a surprise. There
was a squeaking sound, and when Stacy glanced back, she found a pair of
boys coming up the trail after them on a bike. The bigger of the two
was pedaling, the smaller rode perched on the handlebars. Relative
terms, these—
bigger, smaller
—as
neither of the boys was very large. They were hollow-
chested
, slope-shouldered, with
knobby knees and elbows, and their bike was far too big for them. It
looked heavy; its tires were fat and bulging; it had no seat. The boy
in back had to pedal standing up, and he was panting with the effort,
sweating. The chain needed oil—that was the squeaking.

 The
six of them stopped, turned, thinking to ask the boys where the ruins
were, but the children stopped, too, forty feet back, scrawny,
dark-eyed, watchful as two owls. Jeff called out, waved for them to
approach; he even held up a dollar bill to tempt them forward, but the
boys just waited there, staring, the smaller of the two still perched
on the handlebars. Finally, they gave up, started walking again. A
moment later, that steady squeaking resumed, but they paid it no mind.
In the fields, the weeding continued. Only the man by the well and the
two boys on the bike showed any interest in their departure. Creepy
dropped away as soon as they entered the jungle, but Pigpen persisted.
He kept rubbing against Stacy, and she kept pushing him away. He seemed
to think this was a game, and threw himself into it with greater and
greater enthusiasm.

 Stacy
couldn't help herself; she lost patience. "No," she said, and gave the mutt a slap across his
snout. The dog yelped, jumped back, astonished. He stood in the center
of the trail, peering at her with what looked like a painfully human
expression. Betrayal—this was what his eyes communicated. "Oh, honey," Stacy said, and stepped toward him,
holding out her hand, but it was too late; the dog backed away, wary
now, his tail tucked between his legs. The others were continuing
forward along the shadowed path, striding into the first of the curves;
they'd vanish from sight in another moment. Stacy felt a
tremor of fear, a childish, lost-alone-in-the-forest sensation, and she
turned, broke into a jog, hurrying to catch up. When she glanced back,
the dog was still standing in the center of the trail, watching her go.
The boys pedaled past him on their squeaking bike, almost brushing
against him, but he didn't move, and his mournful gaze seemed
to cling to her as she vanished around the curve.

W
alking back along the trail,
Amy tried to think of a happy ending for their day, but it
wasn't easy to come by. They'd either find the
ruins or they wouldn't. If they didn't,
they'd end up back on the dirt road, with eleven miles or
more between them and
Cobá
,
and night falling fast. Maybe they'd received the wrong
impression of the road; maybe there was more traffic on it than they
thought. That was a happy ending, she supposed, them hitching a ride
into
Cobá
.
They could arrive just as the sun was setting and either find a place
to spend the night or catch a late bus back to
Cancún
.
Amy wasn't able to muster much faith in this vision, though.
She pictured them walking along the road in total darkness, or camping
in the open, without tents or sleeping bags or mosquito nets, and
decided that perhaps it would be better after all if they could somehow
find their way to the ruins.

 There'd
be
Henrich
and his new
girlfriend and the archaeologists at the ruins. They'd speak
English, probably; they'd be welcoming and helpful.
They'd find a way to transport them back to
Cobá
, or, if it was
already too late in the day, would happily offer to share their tents.
Yes—why not?—the archaeologists would cook dinner
for them. There'd be a campfire and drinking and laughter,
and she'd take lots of pictures to show people when she got
back home. It would be an adventure, the highlight of their trip. This
was the happy ending Amy kept in her mind as she made her way back down
the trail, with the clearing opening up ahead of them, a circle of
sunlight, blinkingly intense, into which they'd soon have to
walk.

 They
paused in the last shadows before the clearing. Mathias took out his
water bottle, and they passed it around again. They were all sweating;
Pablo had begun to smell. Behind them, the squeaking came to a stop.
Amy turned and there were the two boys, fifty feet back, watching them.
The mangy dog was there, too, the one who'd taken such a
liking to Stacy. He was even farther down the trail, though, almost
lost in shade. He, too, had stopped, and was hesitating now, gazing
toward them.

 Amy
was the one who thought of the fields. She felt a flush of pride as the
idea surfaced in her head, a childhood feeling, leaning forward in her
tiny desk, hand raised, waving for the teacher's attention. "Maybe the path opens off the fields," she said,
pointing out into the sunlight.

 The
others turned, stared toward the clearing, thinking it through. Then
Jeff nodded. "Could be," he said, and he was
smiling, pleased with the idea, which made Amy even more proud of
herself.

 She
unlooped
her camera from
her neck, ordered them all into a loose group. Then, with her back to
the sun, she framed them in the viewfinder, goading them into
grins—even
frownful
Mathias. At the last instant, just before Amy pressed the button, Stacy
glanced over her shoulder, back down the trail, toward the boys, the
dog, the silent village, turning away from the camera. But it
didn't matter. It was still a nice picture, and Amy knew it
now: she'd thought of their solution, the path to their happy
ending. They were going to find the ruins after all.

A
fter the packed-down firmness
of the trail, the field proved to be a difficult hike. The dirt seemed
to have been worked with a harrow in the recent past. It was
uneven—turned and furrowed—with sudden,
inexplicable patches of mud. The mud stuck to their shoes, gradually
accumulating, and they kept having to stop to scrape it off. Eric
wasn't in any shape for this sort of adventure. He was
hungover
, weary from lack of
sleep, and beginning to feel the day's heat in an unpleasant
way. His heart was racing; his head ached. Waves of nausea came and
went. He was just beginning to realize that he wasn't going
to make it much farther, and was deciding how he ought to announce this
revelation, when Pablo saved him from the indignity by stopping
suddenly. The mud had sucked his right shoe straight off his foot. He
stood there in the field, balanced,
cranelike
,
on one foot, and started swearing. Eric recognized many of the
obscenities from the lessons the Greeks had given him.

 Jeff
and Mathias and Amy had already pulled ahead—they were
walking with what appeared to be a baffling effortlessness along the
jungle's margin—but Stacy had tarried alongside
Pablo and Eric. She stopped with Eric now to aid the Greek, holding him
by the elbow, helping him keep his balance, while Eric crouched to free
his shoe from the field's grasp. It emerged, finally, after
several strenuous pulls, with a suctioned popping sound, making them
all laugh. Pablo put the shoe back on. Then, without a word, he began
walking back toward the trail. Stacy and Eric glanced toward the
others, who were a good fifty feet ahead now, moving methodically along
the tree line. A silent debate followed, very brief, and then Eric held
his hand out to Stacy. She took it, smiling, and the two of them
started back across the field, following in Pablo's
footsteps.

 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
going
blub-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.