by Ann Charles
His own mask now off his face, Quint looked around the mine. He couldn’t imagine the daily hell of having his pregnant wife working in a place like this. Every night he’d lie awake in his cot, tossing and turning about a temple caving in on her or a wild animal attacking her. There were too many ways to end up dead in this jungle.
“Don’t worry. She’s strong,” Juan said, a knowing glint in his eyes. “Like her mother.”
Quint didn’t play dumb with him. They both knew why he’d come back to this hot and miserable jungle for round two. “Physically or mentally?”
“Both. Angélica will keep working as long as she can while pregnant and there’s nothing you or I can do about it.”
Pregnant? Quint rolled that idea around in his head, wondering what it would be like to have her carrying his child. Was Angélica even interested in taking things that far with him? Her worries about his traveling probably made her want little to do with him when it came to a family.
Not to mention the secret from her past that she hadn’t told her father. Only two people knew about the child from her ex-husband that she’d lost early into her pregnancy, and Quint had promised her to keep it that way. Would she want to risk the possibility of losing a child again? Would Quint want to deal with her working at dig sites where she wasn’t the top species on the food chain while pregnant with his kid?
Juan creaked onward along the dirt-packed floor, his voice loud in the cottony silence there under the earth. “My daughter is no fool. She’ll be careful if there’s a child in the picture, just as her mother was.”
“I’m having trouble imagining Angélica letting someone else clear out rattlesnake dens or lead the way through crumbling cracks in the temple walls.”
Juan poked at the ceiling again with his cane. “She is a bit daring at times, which was also one of Marianne’s traits.”
“Right.” Quint grabbed Juan’s cane, putting an end to his constant poking. “Marianne’s trait, you say?” Growling under his breath about Angélica and her father, Quint slipped around Juan and led him into the larger room. He stood aside as the older man inspected the mine’s ceiling and walls, keeping silent to give Juan time and space to concentrate on his task.
Juan pulled his digital camera from the side pocket in his cargo pants. He took several pictures, including a closeup of the limestone granules mixed in with a handful of dirt. When he finished, it took Quint’s eyes a few seconds to adjust again after all of those flashes.
“Where’s this stone and grout wall gatita told me about?”
Quint took a deep breath and then squeezed into the cramped tunnel, leading with his light. His pulse pounded in his ears by the time he reached the wall. The urge to claw his way back to the surface tugged at him, but he’d solemnly sworn to the boss lady that he’d make sure Juan made it in and out without damaging his leg, so he stayed put.
Juan tapped on each of the stacked stones in the wall with his cane, stepping back to size it up from floor to ceiling. Then he opened his notebook and jotted down something while holding the flashlight in the side of his mouth. When he finished, he pocketed the notebook. He plucked his flashlight from his jaws and turned to Quint. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Remove this stone right here.” He pointed his flashlight at the top center of the wall.
Remove the stone … What!? Why? “You want me to pull stones out of a wall that may be supporting the ceiling back here?”
“Only this one.” He tapped the stone. “Look, it’s already loose. It should come right out with only a little wiggling.”
“Why that one?”
“Removing it will not affect the stability of the wall or ceiling back here. Plus, the grout around it is rotten and crumbly.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Mostly.”
That wasn’t very reassuring. “But not one hundred percent?”
“Certainty is overrated.”
“You’re not making me want to do this favor for you.”
Juan shone his light at the bottom of the stone wall, directing the beam along the base. “If you’re going to keep hanging around these dig sites with me, son, you’re going to have to learn to take risks without squealing so much.” He tapped his cane on the floor in several locations in front of the wall, his head cocked to the side. After listening for several seconds, he added, “I’m beginning to think you’ve been taking diva lessons from Pedro.”
The old man’s taunting made Quint laugh. “Between your daughter and you, my ego is taking one hell of a beating this trip.”
“It’s a tough job, but someone has to keep you humble.” He stopped tapping and frowned at the wall. “Time has taught me that if I can be one hundred percent sure of two or three things each day, then I’m doing well.”
“Name something you’re certain of today.”
Rubbing the back of his neck, Juan turned to Quint. “The sun will cross the sky and rise again tomorrow.”
“That’s an easy one.”
“Not for the ancient Maya civilization, at least not the rising again part. They had their doubts about the sun making it through the Underworld’s nightly obstacles and terrors as it passed through on its way back to the eastern horizon.” He focused on the wall again, skimming his fingers along a line of grout at eye-level. “Have you ever seen images of their lord of death, the ruler of the Underworld?”
“Ah Puch?”
“That’s one moniker for him. God A is another or Yum Cimil. The name changes depending on what area of the Maya world you’re visiting, but the images and fears are similar.”
“I haven’t seen any pictures, only read and heard bits about him.” Quint didn’t explain that Pedro was his teacher, or why the god’s doom-and-gloom messenger owl had been a topic of discussion between them. Juan probably wouldn’t be thrilled to hear they were trying to figure out if his wife had been murdered or if she was merely the victim of an accident.
“He’s not a very handsome devil,” he told Quint.
“I imagine living in the lowest level of the Maya version of hell can be rough on a god’s appearance. All that nasty death and terror business down there probably clogs the pores and inspires a few wrinkles over time.”
Juan shot him a quick grin. “Most images show him with a skeleton head and black patches of rotting flesh on his torso. Sometimes his figure is bloated, like a decaying corpse.”
He grimaced. “He sounds a bit sloppy.”
Pulling a screwdriver from his pants pocket, Juan pointed it at Quint. “He’s not someone you’d want to meet in the dark of night, that’s for sure.”
“I don’t think running into him in the light of day would be much better from the sound of it.”
“An owl’s head sometimes makes up part of his headdress.” Juan’s handkerchief appeared, catching some of the grout he was now chiseling free. “Periodically he has a collar made of eyeballs dangling from optic nerves.”
“Golly gee, those Maya folks had quite the imagination.”
“Oh, and he usually wears bells.”
“Bells? Like the jingle-all-the-way kind?” Why would a monster wear bells?
Juan nodded, tying the ends of his handkerchief together, securing the grout inside the cloth. “And then there’s his odor.”
“I’m guessing he probably doesn’t mix lavender oil into his bath water most nights.”
Stuffing the handkerchief into his pocket, Juan wrinkled his nose. “Some call him ‘the flatulent one’ due to the stench that surrounds him.”
“He must have been popular at parties.”
“I’ll have to show you a few pictures of him sometime.” Juan turned, holding up a finger. “Wait, I think Marianne might have an image of him sketched in her notebook.”
A red flag flapped in Quint’s mind. “You mean an image she found here at this site?”
“I believe it’s from down in the Chiapas area. Now about this stone �
�”
Quint wasn’t ready to move that stone yet. He’d pulled a stone out of a wall for Angélica at the last site and the damned temple had almost caved in on top of him. He needed a few more minutes to change into his balls of steel for this task, especially with the lack of surety Juan had about the outcome. “What else are you certain of today?”
“That you’re going to remove that stone.”
“Besides that possibility.”
Juan grinned, but played along. “Let’s see. I’m sure that María’s supper tonight will be as delicious as usual.”
“Because of her famous sauce?”
“Because Teodoro brought her back some dried mangos from the store in Coba to use in her famous sauce.”
Quint licked his chops. “That gives me something to live for today in spite of your attempts to snuff me out in an old mine. What else?”
“You know the layer of white, flakey stuff I pointed out this morning on Angélica’s neck?” At Quint’s cautious nod, he continued, “That wasn’t dried skin. It was dried soap.”
Her father had hit the bull’s-eye on that one. “You’re sure about that?”
“Positive. For some reason, she didn’t wash it off last night when she went with you to take a shower.”
“That is curious,” Quint replied, trying not to fidget under Juan’s narrowed gaze.
“I’m guessing that something or someone interrupted her mid-rinse. You wouldn’t happen to have an answer for me on that, would you?”
Juan had asked Angélica about the dried soap in front of everyone. Her red cheeks had probably mirrored Quint’s, but he was too busy focusing intensely on his plate to see for certain. She’d mumbled a response, claiming she’d been pretty tired and must have forgotten to rinse everywhere.
“We did hear a large cat prowling around in the trees while down at the showers. It was making all sorts of hair-raising noises.” He purposefully left out the part about Rover’s return. That was Angélica’s task. “We didn’t hang around long after that. In our rush to leave, she was probably too distracted to rinse.”
Several times before falling asleep last night, while lying on his cot listening to the sound of Angélica breathing, Quint had replayed that moment in the shower. The word “distracted” didn’t really cut it, especially when it came to his feelings about touching her wet, soft skin that had been so slippery with soap. That fell more along the lines of “utterly bamboozled.” Damn that javelina’s timing! If Rover could have given them just ten more minutes.
“A large cat, huh? Is that the story you’re sticking to for now?”
“Pretty much, yep.”
“Fine. I’ll let that set, but I’m not done digging yet.” He pointed at the wall. “How about you pull out that stone some time before I keel over from old age?”
Quint hesitated still.
Juan crossed his arms. “I’ll make a deal with you.”
“Name it.”
“You pull out that stone and I’ll disappear for a while this evening. Let you have some time in our tent all alone with my daughter.”
The stone popped right out.
There was no rumbling from the other stones in the wall, no sprinkling of pieces of ceiling falling on Quint’s head. No problems at all, thank the Maya wall makers.
He set the stone down on the floor next to the wall and wiped the sweat streaming down his face with his shirt. “Can we go now?”
“Not yet.” Juan handed him his light. “You have a few inches on me. Tell me what’s on the other side.” He handed Quint his camera next. “And take some pictures while you’re at it. The flash is on.”
Bracing himself for whatever waited on the other side of the wall, Quint raised the light and directed it through the hole. He peeked in after it, wincing in anticipation of something with a skeleton head and black patches of rotting flesh popping up on the other side and making googly-eyed faces at him. Damn Juan for filling his head with ideas.
What he saw left him scratching his head.
“What do you see?” Juan asked, his voice high with excitement. “Any pot shards or jade statues or human remains?”
“I’ll show you.”
“Are there at least some critter droppings on that side of the wall?” Juan pressed.
“Not that I can see.”
“That is just odd.”
Quint held the flashlight with one hand and snapped several pictures with the other, tilting the camera up and down and left and right. “Here.” He handed it back.
The camera’s digital screen lit up Juan’s face as he flicked through the pictures, his eyebrows drawing into a series of Vs piled within each other like Russian stacking dolls. “An altar stone? Why would they wall that in? Look at the artifacts spread out on it. What god were they petitioning?”
Quint peered over Juan’s shoulder at the screen. “Was there a god of mining?”
“Not specifically.”
“What’s that white stuff spread on the ground around the altar? It’s bigger than the limestone granules out here.”
“Hard to tell. Let me see if this helps.” Even after Juan enlarged the image, Quint couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The white pieces looked blurry and pixilated. “They look like pebbles of limestone spread around.” Juan scratched his jaw. “Maybe we should take a few more stones out.”
“You mean make the hole bigger so you can see through it yourself?”
“I mean make it wider so you can crawl through it and take a closer look.”
Quint stepped back, shaking his head. “That’s not happening.”
“What if I offered to spend a whole night in Pedro and Fernando’s tent instead of an hour?”
“I thought you said you’d leave for a few hours.”
“I never gave a time limit.”
Quint looked at the hole, still shaking his head. “I’m nuts about your daughter, but I’m not wiggling through a hole in an unstable wall. Especially this crumbling wall in this ancient mine that has no visible support beams. The ceiling will fall and smash me flat.”
“Fine, Chicken Little,” Juan taunted.
“I’m not a chicken. I’m a rooster who wants to live long enough to get out of here and chase your daughter’s tail feathers around the tent.”
He valued his life more than sex these days—even hot, soapy shower sex with the woman he’d fantasized about for weeks. What good would Juan’s deal be to Quint if he were crushed to death before he got to enjoy the payout? “How about you make a few educated guesses based on that picture and call it good.”
Juan sighed, pouring on the drama. “Okay, I’ll wait until I can get someone in here without small-space issues.”
“There is no amount of manipulation that will sway me on this.”
“Angélica would probably—”
“Don’t even think about suggesting it to her.” She’d climb on her father’s shoulders to get through that damned hole in the wall.
Chuckling, Juan clapped him on that back. “Good answer, son.”
An idea popped into Quint’s mind. “You know,” he told Juan, “I might be able to get a clearer shot of the altar stone and that white stuff with my telephoto lens and a stronger flashlight.”
“Did you bring your camera with you to the dig site?”
“Yes, it’s in my duffel bag with my … Shit! I brought my camera but I left that lens locked away in Pedro’s office back in Cancun.” He hadn’t figured he’d need that particular lens since they were in the trees. “We could still give it a try with my regular lens.”
“You think it will take better pictures than this one?” Juan held up the small digital camera.
“It’d better. It sure cost a hell of a lot more than that one.”
“Okay. We’ll give it a shot, rooster.” Juan pointed at the stone from the wall. “Can you slide that back into place? We should put it back to be safe. This grout is pretty loose in spots, and the ceiling is extremely fractured back here. I don’t
like how it’s flaking off like slabs of slate.”
“Now you tell me that.” Cursing the damned hole in the ground, Quint lifted the rock.
“Hold on,” Juan said, shining his light on it. “What’s that?”
“What?” Quint flipped the rock over.
“That.” Juan pointed at several long parallel gouges in the rock. “This was on the other side of the wall, right?”
“They look like scratches.”
He lifted his camera and snapped a shot of the rock. “Okay, you can put it back now.”
“Good.” Quint carefully slid the stone back into place, sweating out a gallon of water in the process. He blew out a huge breath of relief after taking a step back, his ticker banging in his chest. “Now can we get the hell out of here?”
Juan led the way out to blue sky. The heat of the direct sun was a welcomed relief, the mugginess of the jungle not so much.
“Something wasn’t quite right in there,” Juan said, frowning back at the cave entrance.
“Are you talking about the lack of critter evidence?”
“Well, yes, but there was something else.” After a few more seconds, he shook his head. “I’ll figure it out later. We should head for the tent.”
“Why’s that?” Lunch wasn’t for another hour.
Juan patted his shirt pocket where he’d stuffed his handkerchief. “I want to take a look at this grout under my microscope.”
“What do you think you’ll find?” What could Juan deduce about the Maya from their grout?
“Well, I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect flakes of dried blood.”
Quint stopped in his tracks. “Did you say blood?”
“Yep.” Juan kept on walking. “From what I could tell, the wall appears to have been coated in it at one time.”
Chapter Eleven
Calakmul Biosphere Reserve: The largest tropical forest reserve in Mexico. Slightly larger than the US state of Delaware, the reserve gives refuge to a large mixture of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and birds (oh, and insects). Crocodiles, snakes, and jaguars are just a few of the predators living there.