by Farris, John
The man in the wheelchair peered at me, and didn't seem convinced he was mistaken. "Another daughter? Oh, yes, lovely. But let me refresh your memory. I can recall almost word-for-word our conversation about the dynasty of Smoking-Squirrel. You were extremely well informed for a layman, and I am sure your name will come back to me—"
"Just get out of my way, you old fool," Daddy said. This time he wasn't loud, but his voice made my heart skip and the man in the wheelchair stopped smiling. Without hesitating he backed his chair out of Daddy's way and Daddy stalked out. The man in the wheelchair looked around at his colleagues at a nearby table, threw up his hands and made a face. They laughed.
Veronica said in my ear, "Vámanos, Sharissa."
"He's not like this," I said to Glen. I had to bite my lip, hard. I was desperate to explain. "My mother died a few months ago, and Daddy—well, he's been holding it in too much, I think, we both have."
"I'm sorry, Sharissa. Listen, it's no problem, really. Why don't I give you a call later?"
"I hope you will," I said, and followed Veronica and Benito to the door.
The man in the wheelchair gave me a friendly glance as we went by. He was saying to his friends, "Have you ever known me to make a mistake about someone? Names, yes, I forget names! But I have been coming to Ken Petén forty years, I could look it up in my diary. The day we spoke. Remarkable, he looks just the same after so many years, not like us, old—"
"Excuse me," I said.
He looked over his shoulder at me again. "Yes?"
"That was my father, and I'd like to apologize—"
He stared, then turned his chair with a quick stroke of one hand on the right wheel, still staring as if he were trying to compose what he was going to write in his diary tonight, about me.
"Then you are a sister—or perhaps, half-sister of the girl I remember?" He smiled encouragingly, but I must have looked awfully blank. "Hmm. She was blonde, not tall as you but with larger cheekbones, such a lovely humorous mouth and—yes, gray eyes?"
He was asking me if he had described her accurately. "I don't have a sister," I said. "I only wanted to—"
Veronica's hand was on my arm, fingers sliding to the soft place inside the elbow. She pressed hard with two fingers, not pinching, but her grip was painful. I shot a look at her. Her expression wasn't hostile; she looked sad and sort of remote. She smiled politely and said, to me and to the others, "¿Por favor?"
Then Veronica took me away from the man in the wheelchair. It was obvious I was being led like a donkey out the door. One humiliation after another, but I didn't know what else I should say to him. And the crazy thought hit me, like the sun through the glass as the door swung open: What if it was true?
Daddy was walking fast. He was already across the plaza, not waiting for us. I put my sunglasses on. I felt as if what I'd eaten for lunch, some rice with red peppers and chicken, wasn't going to stay in place for long. I was dizzy from the thick, wet heat, and apprehensive.
He was waiting in the Land Cruiser when we got there. He was reading his pocket New Testament and had a handkerchief in one hand, to blot the perspiration on his forehead and throat. I got in, leaving space between us, and looked again at what I could see of Kan Petén from the parking lot.
"Were you talking to that nut?" Daddy asked me, not looking up from his page.
"What? I don't think he's a nut! I can't talk to people? What is the matter with—"
He glanced at me, looking pained, and misunderstood.
"You have to be careful who you talk to down here. There are legitimate archeologists, and a lot of fakes, adventurers, criminal trash. Who knows what some of them are capable of. You're a beautiful girl, Sharissa, and—you've been more or less sheltered, is what I'm saying. We're not rich, but we could be taken for rich. That's all I'm trying to say—"
"You're not saying anything! You mean you're afraid I might be kidnapped?"
He nodded. His mouth was tense in an expression of apology, but I wouldn't let him touch me. My arm still hurt from Veronica's grip. She drove away. I looked back and felt as if there was something coming after me, something black and cold from the old tombs. The sun seemed to grow darker. It was probably nausea. I yelled at Veronica and when she pulled over to the side of the narrow road I got out and sprayed my lunch around.
The rest of the afternoon I stayed in our bungalow at the hotel, flat on my back and with a cold cloth on my head, rinsed in water from a plastic ice bucket. Whenever I dozed off my legs or arms would give a jerk, which woke me up. I felt hollow and headachy and awful, very PMS but even murkier than that. Worst of all, I felt so alone. A call to Grammer and Grampa might have cheered me up, but I didn't know what to say to them: I'd been so gung ho about coming down here, and now I wished I could get on a plane and fly home—for a little while, anyway.
We'd been gone since before Christmas—celebrated the holidays on a cruise ship. I understood why Daddy hadn't wanted to stay in Sky Valley. It was a big family thing at Christmas, Mom's family, and he was suffering so much he couldn't face them all. I thought I felt the same way. He was fine on the cruise, making an effort for both of us. We gave each other a lot of hugs and smiled too much, I guess, and kept busy with aerobics and swimming and shuffleboard.
After Christmas there were the seminars and training programs for our mission, which were held at a big camp near Caracas, Venezuela. I tried to be careful about what I ate but got a parasite anyway. Daddy seemed to be having a hard time keeping up his spirits, even though he still assured me he was fine and that the mission was the right thing to do. He stared at me sometimes in a way that made me feel so sad for him; other times he just wanted to hold my hand.
Daddy came into my room a couple of times during the afternoon to see how I was getting along. Maybe he wanted to hold my hand again, work up an apology for the way he'd treated me. But I was still mad and pretended to be asleep. Then I didn't hear him around our bungalow for a couple of hours.
I had Chilly-Willy, my lifelong stuffed penguin, with me, but I was past the age where I could talk to him without feeling self-conscious. I listened to the macaws and howler monkeys in cages on the grounds, and their noise made me more and more edgy. The tennis courts were full, the sounds of rackets stroking balls more soothing than the wildlife. I thought about good old C.G. Butterball, which is what Bobby had called him. I certainly owed him a letter. Probably should have phoned to say good-bye, but once I had permission to leave school early, it was a hectic three days getting ready to go. He had such a crush on me. Really a sweet guy. I got melancholy thinking about C.G., as if I missed him. Maybe I did. It was easy to miss everything about home, because everything was so different, and strange, in Guatemala. As strange as the fat archeologist in the wheelchair, greeting Daddy like an old friend.
Maybe that's all he was, a nut, saying I had a sister with blonde hair and gray eyes. But I couldn't believe anything was wrong with him. Some men can make you cringe with a glance, you know exactly what's on their minds, but I hadn't minded him staring at me. I felt appreciated. He seemed like somebody I could talk to, wanted to talk to, before Veronica dragged me away with her version of the Spock pinch.
I needed to get up and go to the bathroom. It was almost dark outside, the sky an incredible deep blue shade. The bungalow had screens and we burned mosquito coils in every room, but still I had a couple of more bites near one of my bubbies. I had learned to dab Merthiolate on every bite; a little sweat and they itched like crazy, and scratching bred infection. Both of my breasts and my bottom were freckled with the orangey stuff.
When I came out buttoning my shorts Veronica was in the living room of the bungalow turning on a lamp. She wore her usual boring paramilitary stuff, but with a bright Maya neck scarf for accent. She had propped her Uzi upright on a cushion in a high-backed rattan chair. She sat in an identical chair a few feet away with her hands on her knees. She had a way of being so still that it seemed unnatural.
"I don't want any com
pany right now," I said crossly, and went back into my bedroom to look for my hairbrush. "Your father say I should stay with you. So I stay."
"Where is he?"
"I doan know."
"He went somewhere without telling me?" I complained, crosser than ever.
"Would you like something to eat, there is cold chicken in the fridge, some plátanos fritas."
"I'm not hungry."
"Do you have the runs?"
"No. Sort of." I found my hairbrush under Chilly-Willy in a tangle of bedclothes and went back to the living room. "I took some Lomotil. I'm not really sick. It's just when I get nervous."
Veronica nodded, sat back in the creaking chair, stared at the ceiling fan, and closed her eyes for a few seconds. Instantly she looked as if she'd fallen into a trance.
I sat on the edge of the couch opposite her.
"You're sure Daddy didn't tell you where he was going?"
She opened her eyes. The blades of the fan were turning about half as fast as an airplane propeller, humming almost too softly to hear.
"He'll be back."
Something hit one of the window louvers outside, a soft thud. I reacted; when I looked at Veronica again she was half way to the window, moving quickly in spite of her limp, the Uzi in her hands.
"If you're going to shoot something, make it one of those damn monkeys," I said. I was in a really bad mood, swearing like that.
"The howlers are protected here. They are becoming extinct." She peered through the louvers from the side of the window, then adjusted them.
I had a cramp. I fell back on the couch with my hair half-brushed, my knees up.
"It was probably a bat," Veronica said.
"Could you leave the louvers open? I like looking at the moon. It's almost full."
"Yes, in three days." She cranked the louvers again, a little farther apart. "There is an eclipse this month." She glanced at me, then limped across the room to the refrigerator.
"What happened to your foot?" I asked her.
"It became infected when I was a child. They almost cut it off." She took a can of Sprite from the refrigerator. "Would you like one?"
"Yes. Thank you."
Veronica brought me the Sprite, and I sat up again. Her hands smelled as if she'd been cleaning her rifle. But her nails were clean, and so was her hair. She started back to her chair but I said, making an effort to be pleasant, "No, why don't you sit with me."
She hesitated, then parked her Uzi where it would be handy in case a vampire bat flew in to the bungalow. I'd heard they had them down here.
"Veronica," I said, "do you honestly think anything's going to happen to me?"
"You doan know this country. Or what war is like. We have war since I am a little girl. Maybe nothing happen here. My cousin Francisco now wears the Bird of Omen, the jade harpy. But anyway I am esposed to stay with you, and that's what I am doing."
"How did you get those scars on your face, did someone shoot you?"
"At me," she corrected. "I didn't run fast enough. So part of a wall, a mortar destroyed it, splinters struck me in the face. My husband was not as fortunate. He was cut deeply, here." She put a finger across the jugular in her throat, then jerked it away savagely, with a hard, desperate expression.
"I'm sorry."
"Well, I doan want to talk about it."
Silence. I drank some of my Sprite, and she drank a little of hers. Bubbles went up my nose and I giggled, and she looked at me as if I were stupid.
"Do we just sit here and not say anything to each other? That gets on my nerves."
"Then you will have to go to the toilet again, I suppose."
"Oh, the hell with you, Veronica." I had never said anything like that to anybody. "I don't know who you think you are or where you get off with your superior attitude. No, I don't know your country and I've never been shot at, so I guess that means I haven't lived, which makes me a child in your eyes."
Her expression didn't change until she swallowed, then she looked bunched and bitter around the mouth; a familiar expression which I'd seen on the faces of two maiden aunts of my mother's who lived together in their shacky old house in Austell, Georgia, for thirty years without saying a word to each other: it was a screwed-up mouth that really savored resentment. I wondered if Veronica has just singled me out to dislike, or if her resentment covered all gringas.
"Yes, I think you are a child; and no I doan think you have lived."
"Well, you just listen." I was doing it again, flooding with tears, but I could still talk. "My boyfriend was killed. I mean murdered. One hundred thirty-two days ago. No reason. Somebody smashed his head in with a rock while he was out jogging. He would've been co-captain of the football team. And—I'll never know who, or why. My mother—" I had to stop for breath. Each breath was hot and hurting, like something jagged moving in my chest. "My mother died a week later in a car crash. I never got to say good-bye to her! Both of them! Everybody says, be strong—but I'll never get over this. You want to know something else? God is not good. It's a—a joke that I'm down here to be a missionary because—I don't believe in His mercy anymore, I've lost faith."
Veronica crossed herself automatically, then caught both my hands and held them. I would've had to fight her to get away, but I didn't have the strength.
"Don't hurt me!" I sobbed. "Don't ever try to hurt me again!"
"No, no, Sharissa! I doan want to hurt you! I only want to protect you. Believe me. I am afraid for you."
I was trembling and so emotionally conked that what she had said didn't sink in right away. Then, while she was holding me, not letting me pull my hands free, something passed between us—I don't know how to describe it. But I began to calm down. We looked at each other and it was as if we'd changed into the other's skin; a sisterly kind of thing. I felt friendship, concern.
"What do you mean, Veronica? What's the matter?"
"This place—I wish you were not here—such a bad time—"
"You said the guerillas wouldn't attack the hotel!'
"No. That is not what I mean." Now she wanted to let me go, but I was the one who clung to her. Veronica's eyes narrowed as if she were in pain, and I couldn't see her pupils, only whites. The scars on her cheeks stood out, as white as her eyes. "It is something else. Not only superstition—more than that, I am sure. In three days, the eclipse. Like before, when the Marquise—I doan know how to esplain. Por favor, let me go!"
I couldn't hold her any longer anyway. She got up, snatched the Uzi, and started for the bungalow door.
"I think—I should look around outside."
"Veronica, wait. What do you mean? What about the eclipse?"
She looked back, confused.
"My cousin ask me to be with you—few days only, he said. A favor to him."
"I know that. Till the Randalls drive up from Usumucinta."
"Saturday they will be coming."
"Yes."
"One day before the eclipse."
"So what?"
Veronica shook me off and was through the door and across the little porch before I could blink. It seemed to me that she was running away. I scrambled off the bed and slipped into huaraches.
She let me catch up to her on the stone walk that made a figure-eight around the bungalows in the torchlit garden. There was no need, that I could tell, for her to do any patrolling; the hotel employed armed guards, and it was a quiet evening. So far. I looked at the rising moon, nearly full, pale orange with shades of pale crater blue—amazing how close it seemed in the clear black sky. Close enough to give me goose bumps. Eclipses were supposed to be unlucky, or something. I'd never seen one back home in Sky Valley.
We walked together past a waterfall. A chilly breeze was rattling the palm fronds. My goose bumps began to feel like pebbles. I wished I had brought a sweater with me.
"Are you afraid of eclipses?" I asked Veronica.
"It is foolish to be frightened of fate. I am Catholic, but—I know it is the movements of the l
ights and planets that rule our lives. The stations of the eclipse cycles are especially important in Maya numerology and calendars."
"What's an eclipse c-cycle?"
"The sun and the moon joining—or opposing each other—at a time and place in the heavens that can be mathematically determined for centuries in advance. The solar and lunar eclipses that occur nineteen or twenty years apart have been occasions of renewal, or defeat. Birth or bloodshed. The Popol Vuh, our sacred text, says that the wurl has been created, then destroyed, many times. The gods of the cosmos desire beings who will honor their greatness. They have so far made us out of mud, and wood, and maize in their efforts to perfect us. Now we are flesh and blood. Better, but still we are not perfect. We do not honor them correctly; we worship ourselves instead. So there must be another time of destruction."
I was shuddering again. "I guess I know what you m-mean by that. But I don't hate God. And he knows. He knows my heart just goes dead when I think about what happened to Bobby."
"I understand your grief. My husband work for the government, but he was not of the military. An agronomist. Why did they fire on our harmless little van? Because of the license plate only. We were 'of the government.' For their atrocity I despise the guerillas. I fight against them. Fighting, killing, for so long. But the eclipse can bring bad things—ancient things—worse than the fighting. That is why I think it is bad for you to be here. I doan say this to anyone else. But I say to you, leave, Sharissa. Do not be in Cobían at the station of the eclipse. It may be difficult for me later, because they will know what I have done. But I will help you to go."
"Veronica, look, I'm sorry, you're—you aren't making any sense."
"How can I say more clearly, there may be great danger for you here!"
"If I'm not safe, then Daddy—"
"You doan need to worry about him. Only yourself, for a little while. After that—"
We passed a tall cylindrical cage filled with blue and orange parrots. They were restless as we went by them. "After that, what?"