by Ann Charles
“Are you loco?” Quint grinned. “That’s a waste of good soup.”
“You’re darn right it is,” Juan said, taking Pedro’s bowl from him and pretending to dig in with his spoon.
Pedro laughed and grabbed it back. “Stealing María’s soup from a man will get you into a fight to the death.”
“I’ve seen you punch.” Juan winked at Quint, and with an exaggerated whisper he added, “He learned to fight from his little seester.” Juan emphasized that last word with a Spanish accent, throwing fake girly punches in Pedro’s direction.
Pedro laughed even harder. “I’m going to unleash my seester on you the next time you come over for dinner, old man.”
“I wouldn’t piss off any of Pedro’s sisters, Dad,” Angélica said from behind Quint. “Catalina in particular has a wicked uppercut.”
“Not to mention her roundhouse kick,” Pedro added. “She’s a black belt now, you know.”
Angélica squeezed Quint’s shoulder. “Did you leave me any soup, Parker?”
“Sure.” He slid his bowl over and moved his beer next to it. “All for you.”
“That’s yours. I can get my own.”
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down onto the seat next to him. “Sit and eat, boss lady. I’ll go grab some more soup and tortillas.” When she hesitated, he pointed at the bowl. “Eat. I’ll be right back.”
Daisy was up at the soup pot filling a bowl. He waited for her to finish before picking up a clean bowl.
“How was your afternoon?” he asked, grabbing the ladle.
She smiled over at him, her eyes alight. “We found something.”
No shit. That seemed to be yesterday’s news with Daisy, who seemed to be equipped with some kind of internal treasure radar.
“What did you find?”
“Angélica told me to let her explain.” She grabbed a cup and filled it with water from the pitcher sitting next to the bottles of beer. “I’ll see you back at the table.”
Quint didn’t dally getting more soup and tortillas. He returned to Angélica’s side, setting his bowl and bottle of beer down and then stacking several tortillas on the table between them.
Pedro reached for a tortilla and Angélica slapped his hand away. “Don’t make me take you down again, Montañero.”
“You need to teach her to be nicer to men,” he told Juan.
“That’s not my job anymore.” He pointed at Quint. “It’s his.”
“I don’t want her being nice to other men.” Quint shot Pedro a smirk. “How am I supposed to keep her pining for me if there are a bunch of other guys around thinking she’s nice?”
“True,” Juan said. “But nobody takes abuse better than you, Quint.” He leaned his elbows on the table. “And while we’re on the subject of abuse, how about you and I head back to the mine tomorrow morning after breakfast with your fancy camera? I’d like to get some pictures of that hole in the wall.”
Quint groaned. “I’d sooner hunt more rattlesnakes.” He took a swig of warm beer.
“Well, if you take some good pictures in the mine for me, I’ll let you go hunting alone with Angélica after we’re done.”
Pausing in the midst of ripping up a tortilla, Quint looked over at Juan with one raised eyebrow. Was that code for Juan agreeing to disappear for a couple of hours, giving him time alone with Angélica inside their tent?
Juan’s mouth twitched below his smiling brown eyes, which didn’t answer Quint’s unspoken question one way or another. His focus moved to his daughter. “You owe me a boot, gatita.”
Angélica smirked. “Which one? Right or left?”
“Left.”
“You’re not even wearing a shoe on that foot yet.”
Juan’s fiberglass-cast boot was taking a beating in place of his hiking boot, requiring nightly cleanings with a toothbrush, which he claimed belonged to Pedro.
“I will be after we finish this dig.”
She looked up at him, her brow pinched. “Why do I owe you a left boot, Dad?”
“Because your pig ate mine.”
“Rover?”
“Are you the owner of any other pigs you haven’t told me about?”
“He’s a javelina, not a pig.”
“He’s a menace, not a javelina.”
“What makes you think Rover is the guilty party?” She returned to her soup. “There are plenty of other animals roaming this jungle that might like the taste of your foot sweat.”
Juan’s upper lip wrinkled. “Because out of all of those animals, your pig is the only one able to open tent zippers and steal boots from under my cot when he’s supposed to be locked up in his pen.”
“What proof do you have that it’s Rover?” she challenged, barely holding back a grin.
“Don’t get smart with me, young lady.” His tone was more playful than stern.
Her grin slipped free. “I thought I was playing dumb.”
“Don’t think you’re too old to be grounded to your tent.”
Quint pointed his beer bottle at Juan. “That’s a great idea, Juan. Lock her up. I’ll guard the key.”
“I wouldn’t trust Quint within a mile of her.” Pedro’s smile was too big for his face.
“He seems like the perfect gentleman,” Daisy said from her seat next to Juan. She winked at Quint, joining in the banter.
“ ‘Gentleman’?” Angélica teased, knocking his knee with hers under the table. “More like the perfect rogue. You know, the kind of guy local villagers hide their daughters from.”
“Unless their daughters are well-seasoned and need to settle down and produce a grandchild or four for their dear old dad.”
Angélica shot Quint a worried glance before turning back to her dad with a scowl. “You have a one-track mind, Dad.”
“That’s not true. I have two tracks—grandkids and María’s cooking.” Juan picked up his coffee cup. “Where were you and Daisy this evening, gatita?”
Angélica shrugged. “We found something in the Chakmo’ol Temple. Actually, Daisy found it. I just helped with the rubbing and sketching to make sure we got several good replicas of it before we left for the evening.”
“What did Daisy the bloodhound find now?” Juan asked, winking at Daisy, who blushed in response.
Angélica sipped another spoonful of soup before answering. “Several glyphs that tell a tale about Yum Cimil.”
The name alone elicited a frown from Quint. Pedro crossed himself.
“You mean besides what you found that depicted him in a cave?” Juan asked.
She nodded. “It started with a date that I’m almost positive is pre-Classic Maya.” Grabbing a tortilla, she dipped it into her soup. “The glyphs read that there was a long battle between the Maya warriors and Yum Cimil. Then it tells that he took fifty-seven warriors captive in his Underworld lair and ate them.”
Quint looked at Angélica, trying to read if she was serious. “Is this sort of horror-filled tale typical for temple glyphs? I thought they usually focused on accolades for the leader of the time.” The leader who was typically buried in said tomb.
“There are a lot of stories of war in the glyphs at Maya sites, often touting the lord or king’s conquests. In the post-Classic period, the leaders of two civilization groups would sometimes stage battles for the purpose of collecting captives, who they’d use for sacrifices because they didn’t want to kill their own people.”
“Does it say anything else about Yum Cimil and these warriors?” Pedro asked.
“There’s a carving that goes with the block of glyphs that shows Yum Cimil in his skeletal glory eating a human leg bone.”
Quint grimaced. “Why couldn’t they tell stories full of sunshine and lollipops?”
“Or pretty girls in sexy loincloths,” Pedro added, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Tell them about the final glyphs,” Daisy urged.
Angélica stared down at the bottle of beer in her hand. “The last few glyphs are hard to read. They were scratched u
p and partly worn away. From what I can tell based on Mom’s syllabary, it’s a warning.”
Shit. Another warning. Quint took a swig of beer to wash that news down.
“It says that Yum Cimil would return when the twin scribes arrived. It lists a date near the end of the Classic Maya period for the scribes’ arrival.”
“Is there anything after that? Something left by the Classic Maya when they lived here?” Juan asked.
“Not that I can tell, but there are so many glyph blocks on that wall that there could be a continuation somewhere, and I just haven’t had a chance to decipher it yet.”
Silence held the table in its grip for several beats as they each soaked up Angélica’s story.
“It’s like a curse,” Juan said.
Angélica scoffed. “I knew you’d say that, but a curse would say something like, ‘If you trespass on this site, a giant feathered serpent will devour you.’ “
“Giant feathered serpents were more Olmec style and you know it,” her father said. “However, there are lots of serpents near that temple with rattles on their tails.”
“They aren’t trying to eat us, though.”
“That’s probably because we haven’t kick-started the curse yet.”
“There is no curse,” Angélica snapped. “Don’t start with that crap again, Dad.”
Quint had déjà vu from the last dig site. “What is it with the Maya and curses?”
Juan rubbed his chin. “They were huge believers in the supernatural. Every day they would pray to gods, offer tributes and sacrifices, and live within a supernatural world with the goal of continually appeasing the many beings that ruled above, on, and below the earth’s surface.” He lifted his coffee cup to his lips, pausing to add, “I’m not surprised you found those glyphs, gatita. I have yet to find a Maya site that doesn’t come with at least one token curse.”
“It’s not a curse.” Angélica ripped off a piece of tortilla with her teeth. “It’s an old story, that’s all.”
“If it’s just an old story,” Juan challenged, “then why did you spend the time recording it so well before coming to supper?”
She chewed on the tortilla, holding her father’s gaze. “Because I haven’t seen a tale like it told in glyphs before. I wanted to make sure I have it all down in case something happens.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. The temple wall caves in and ruins the block of glyphs.”
“There are a lot of cracks in that room,” Quint said.
“I’m glad I wasn’t in there with you,” Pedro said, standing with his empty plate in hand. He headed off toward the trash.
“Tell me more about the carved image that went with these glyphs,” Juan said.
Angélica looked at Daisy. “Why don’t you tell him? You’re the one who sketched it.”
While Daisy was talking to Juan with a lot of fluttering hand movements, excitement making her cheeks pink, Angélica leaned over to Quint and whispered, “It was almost as if she knew right where to find it.”
“What do you mean?”
“On that whole wall covered with glyphs, she went right to that section shortly after I returned from moving those stones with you.”
“Maybe she saw it while we were working.”
“I had her rubbing a different section of glyphs while we were gone. When I returned she’d obviously been busy following my instructions.”
“Angélica,” Daisy interrupted. “What do you call that bird on Yum Cimil’s shoulder?”
“A muan.”
“That’s it.” Daisy’s face was bright with excitement. Juan’s full attention was locked on the woman as she continued with her tale of discovery.
“There’s something odd about that block of glyphs,” Angélica told Quint quietly.
Pedro, who’d returned with a second beer, overheard her. “Besides some pissed-off death god eating his captives?”
“Yum Cimil looked different than usual. He was his decomposing self, but his body was shaped differently and larger than usual, with hair on the back of his head and neck along with pointy ears, like some kind of cat-human-skeleton mix. Plus his teeth were extra long and sharp.”
Wonderful, Quint thought, taking another drink. What was next down here in paradise? Zombie monkeys?
“What do you think it all means?” Juan asked Angélica after Daisy finished her account.
“I don’t think the carvings mean anything beyond an artist showing off his skills and horror-edged imagination.” Angélica finished her soup and wiped the corners of her mouth. “For all we know at this point, Yum Cimil could represent the king at the time and all of the sacrifices he demanded. The eating of the captives could be a metaphor for something dark that the king liked to do, like eat their flesh for strength or drink their blood for courage.”
“Or it could be a visual representation of the curse at this site,” Juan threw back at her.
She let out a loud sigh and then stood. “This discussion is over for tonight.” She gathered her dirty dishes and half full bottle of beer. “I’m going back to our tent to look at the rubbings some more and continue trying to decipher the glyphs.”
“You can deny it until you’re blue in the face, gatita, but you cannot change what was carved into the stone.”
“It’s not a curse, dammit.”
Quint wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince—her father or herself.
* * *
The next morning, Quint stood in front of the mine entrance as Juan pulled gadgets from his duffel bag of tricks in preparation for heading inside the dark throat leading to the belly of the mine.
The sun beat down on them. The damned ball of fire was a relentless bully. In spite of the sizzling heat, the birds were singing, the monkeys were screeching, and the flies were buzzing. Quint, however, wasn’t feeling nearly as energetic, and today he couldn’t blame it on the heat. A night of tossing and turning in his cot had left him feeling hungover.
When he’d returned to the tent last night after his shower, Angélica had been sitting on her cot staring at the tent wall with a frown etched on her forehead. She’d gone with Daisy to take her shower immediately after supper since she’d kept the other woman longer than usual in the Chakmo’ol Temple.
Quint had hung his towel on a peg and joined her on the cot, his hands dangling between his knees as he looked across at the tent wall, too. When he’d offered a penny for her thoughts, she’d told him something that still gave him chills in the light of day.
“Are you going to stand there all morning and let the bugs eat you, son?” Juan asked, watching him with narrowed eyes.
Quint shoved his dark thoughts aside and hid them behind a grin. “You lead the way inside, diablo. I’ll follow.”
“I’m the devil?” Juan laughed, sliding his good leg through the opening, carefully maneuvering his walking cast through after him. “You’re the one who blew in like a whirlwind at our last site and spun everyone into a tizzy, especially my daughter.”
“Causing chaos is my specialty.” Quint eased into the mine, pulling out his flashlight as he joined Juan. “Besides, Angélica needed some mayhem in her life. You weren’t getting the job done.”
Juan nodded. “She’s a hard girl to rattle. But you’re off to a good start.” His cane creaked with every other step, his flashlight beam bouncing off the walls and ceiling. “Although I got the feeling last night something about those glyphs isn’t sitting well with her. Did you notice how quiet she was later in our tent?”
Yes, especially after she’d filled Quint in on what she’d found when she’d applied her charcoal rubbing skills to her mom’s notebook. When she rubbed the back of the only page with notes about the stela glyph and a blank area in the same spot on the next page, the impressions didn’t line up. Quint had been right. There was at least one page missing, if not more, about that stela and this dig site.
But Juan didn’t need to know about that until Angélica was ready to
share the idea that Marianne may have indeed been murdered. “I was too wiped to notice much more than my pillow and my cot.”
“Hmmm,” was Juan’s reply.
Quint had the feeling Juan wasn’t buying his tall tale. Angélica’s father was too shrewd to fool, but he didn’t prod Quint for anything else … not yet, anyway.
A few creaks of the cane later, he said, “Yesterday after lunch when I was resting my leg I read through some of the structural diagrams from the last archaeologist at this site and noticed a side note he made about the Baatz’ Temple.”
Quint glanced at him, but said nothing.
“He had an interesting theory based on some carvings that he found on the walls in there.”
“What’s that?”
“That this was an Olmec site before the Maya moved in and built over it.” Juan paused to shine his light on a crack that ran from the middle of the ceiling to halfway down the wall. “That would explain the mask we found there and a broken jade piece that Daisy found a few days ago in the ballcourt that looks like an Olmec rain baby.”
So, rather than the Olmec traveler theory he had discussed with Angélica, there may have been a group of Olmecs living here? Was that a rare occurrence on Maya sites?
“There’s something else,” Juan continued. “Something I noticed in one of the crappy pictures you took the other day through the hole in the wall.”
“I can only work so much magic with your dime-store camera.”
“That’s why I wanted you to bring yours along today. From what I could see, it looks like there may be petroglyphs on the cave wall above that altar, but until we have a clearer picture, I can’t be sure.”
“And you think these petroglyphs are Olmec?” Quint connected the dots.
“Yes.”
“How can you tell from a shitty picture?”
“Because there appears to be a dragon, which happens to be the Olmecs’ principal sky god, in one of the drawings next to an open-mawed, toothless image that usually represents a personified image of an entry into the earth. In other words, a cave, like the one we’re standing in right now.”
“So a mine is the same as a cave to the Olmecs?”
“Maybe. Or maybe the Maya group that came after the Olmec people found the cave and recognized it as a limestone source. Needing the mineral to make plaster for their temples and roads, they dug deeper and turned it into a mine. I need a clearer picture of those petroglyphs to make sure that the eyes on the toothless image have crossed bands and that the exterior of the maw has foliage sprouting from it. Both of these would align with other images that archaeologists have found of the Olmecs’ other personified cave carvings and petroglyphs.”