Sacrifice

by Farris, John

  "Good luck," I said, wishing he'd invite me to go along. All I had to look forward to was some sleepless hours and an Anne Rice horror novel I didn't want to read right now—not after Veronica and the grim spooky spell she had cast that was still making me uneasy.

  The lobby was less crowded when I left the coffee shop. On the mezzanine of the hotel there was a shimmer of cymbals and a woman with a husky voice was singing a sad love song in the terrace lounge. On my way outside I ran into Francisco Colon coming out of his office. He looked preoccupied, but he smiled at me.

  "Good evening, Miss Walker."

  "Who won?" I asked him.

  He glanced down at a sheaf of faxes in his hands, then over his shoulder, as if waiting for someone, then back at me.

  "Who won—?"

  "The chess game."

  Francisco shook his head, looking blank. "I don't play—" He looked back again; a stocky woman in a pinstriped gray suit had come out of the office. She was an assistant manager. He said something to her so fast I couldn't catch any of it, then remembered me standing there, handed the faxes to the woman, stared at me for a few moments as if he dimly remembered I had spoken.

  Then he brightened. "Not very good chess," he said. "If you'll excuse me—we are so busy tonight—"

  I left the hotel, wondering about the look he'd given me. He had started to say, "I don't play chess." I was sure of that. Then he changed it, as if he knew he ought to. I didn't think it was all that important, but it bothered me a little—that Daddy had said he was playing chess with the man, when he wasn't. I couldn't think of any reason why he'd make up a lie to explain where he'd been. Maybe he had visited a woman after all, and she had sent him a pornographic love note. Which would account perfectly for the expression on his face . . .

  There was a security guard outside our bungalow, not one I remembered seeing before. He nodded and smiled at me. I went up the steps and inside.

  "I'm back."

  Daddy didn't answer. For some reason I'd had the feeling he wasn't going to be there. His Bible was open on the seat of a rattan chair in the living room. I looked around, but he hadn't left me a note. I went outside and called to the security guard from the porch: "Have you seen my father?" He smiled as if he didn't understand my Spanish. I repeated it. "¿Has visto mi padre?" This time he shook his head.

  Nothing to do but wash my hair and watch satellite TV. The water was lukewarm and my hairdryer wasn't doing well on the converted voltage. In a few days I wouldn't be able to use a hairdryer at all. I hoped the Randalls would be okay; walking with the Spirit was one thing, but I'd met missionaries who were so churchy you couldn't tell a joke around them, or wear a Guns 'n Roses T-shirt. The hotel's dish brought in stations from Denver and Los Angeles, ESPN and HBO. Ice hockey and western movies. I turned the set off, picked up Daddy's Bible and glanced at the chapters he had been reading. Like most of the pages in his Bible, they were marked up, passages underscored with different colors of Hi-Liter. I couldn't remember a day when I hadn't seen him take advantage of a few minutes to sit down and read, to meditate.

  "Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs?" I wondered what was on his mind tonight, what solace he was looking for; but I was miffed that he'd suddenly taken off again without telling me.

  It rained for a while. Dad came back about midnight. I was finishing a letter to Grammer and Grampa. He looked dead-tired, hollow-eyed, but he smiled.

  "Still up?"

  "Not sleepy. I wish you'd let me know when—"

  "Oh—I went to church."

  "Catholic church? That's all there is here except for the Charismatics, and I know how you feel about them."

  "Didn't matter. I just—sat there for a while. The candles, shadows, incense, the Stations of the Cross, voices murmuring everywhere, it was—exalted, in a way I couldn't explain. I took a taxi into town. I mean to say something to you, but you were with that red-haired archeologist in the coffee shop, so I—what was his name again?"

  "Glen Hazen. It wasn't a date, I just ran into him. He invited me to lunch tomorrow, at a place called the Parador Libertad. If it's okay."

  "I don't know, Sharissa. Look, I don't want you to feel suffocated here, but there was an incident outside of Cobían tonight, government troops blockading the road—"

  "Not again," I said dismally. He watched me for a few moments, sympathetically I thought, or maybe he was just too tired to argue. He sighed and nodded.

  "If you've already accepted, then I suppose—but not just the two of you, I want Francisco to send somebody along. And you're to be back before dark."

  "Not Veronica, please. Because it is a date, and I think Veronica and Glen used to have something going, although he didn't want to tell me."

  "Okay."

  "Thanks, Dad." I got up from the writing desk to hug him. He took his hands from the pockets of his safari jacket and held me. He bit his lip suddenly. "What's the matter?" I said.

  "Want to hear something dumb?" He showed me his right hand, which looked swollen across the knuckles. He couldn't flex it very well. "I slipped in the shower, whacked myself against one of the handles."

  "Put ice on it," I said authoritatively. I'd had more than my share of sports injuries, between tennis and volleyball.

  "Twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off. That'll take the swelling down. But you might have broken one of your knuckles."

  "No, I don't think so. I mean, I know what that feels like, I did break a knuckle once, on the other hand. Ice is a good idea. And a couple of those painkillers I bought this morning." He glanced at the photos I'd been sorting through to send home. "Give the folks my best," he said.

  "I'll wrap some ice in a towel for you."

  "Thanks, baby."

  He went into his room to lie down. When I had chipped enough ice out of the small trays to give him some relief I found him stretched out on top of the bed, eyes closed, already asleep. He trembled when I put the wrapping of ice on his sore hand; there were tremors in his eyelids, too. I sat beside him and held his other hand.

  He muttered something. There were the usual rustlings of palm rats in the thick mat of the pitched roof overhead, sounds that had kept me awake most of the first two nights we spent at the Itzá Maya. But the rats were shy and harmless. After a while his shallow breathing became deep and slow. I kissed his hand and cheek and went to my own room, and said my prayers there. Prayers for my mother and for Bobby, that I always hoped they would hear. Then one for Daddy—I prayed that his suffering would end, and he would find peace for his mind and soul in Usumucinta.

  I didn't have much peace myself—at least while I was sleeping. My dreams were cluttered and strange, sometimes terrible.

  I also dreamed that I was with Bobby, and we were making love in the family room of my house. Not all the way, but close. All the lights were on. I knew Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, talking. They didn't seem to realize what was going on, or did they? But I didn't want Bobby to stop what he was doing. That was the good part of the dream. Holding Bobby again, kissing him. Between my legs he felt like a warm plum. Pushing, pushing, but I was wearing underpants and it wouldn't go in. His heartbeat was drumlike, powerful. His pain, his ecstasy, had me in a frenzy of my own. Then he stopped, all of a sudden. There was no more family room, comfortable couch, it was all dark and unfamiliar, a starlit landscape of ruins. We were lying naked on hard ground. In place of his heartbeat I heard the howler monkey gasping, like the last breaths of a dying man.

  I held Bobby in my arms, my thighs were trembling from the effort, I knew he was dead. His face was composed, like the faces of tree stones, but the back of his head was a crushed egg. I woke up tingling, as if I'd been playing with electricity in a lab experiment. Hearing voices. Mom and Dad, like it had always been, talking in the kitchen late at night. I heard my name, but I didn't understand what they were saying about me. When I moved my legs my underpants were w
et and clinging along the labia. I thought I'd peed a little while I was asleep, like sometimes happened when I was three years old. But this was a different wetness, and I felt turned on, not disgusted with myself. When I touched with my fingers where I'd imagined Bobby's plum had been, it was slick as bath oil and I twitched all over. I pulled my pants down below my knees with one hand, then rubbed lightly the flesh-pea between my index finger and thumb, and quicker and harder with my thighs open wide and the next thing I knew it was like having a heart attack and going over a waterfall at the same time. Or a series of waterfalls. I was swamped by the sensation, breathless but safe from drowning. And I thought, Shouldn't have. But I don't care.

  As I lay there, the voices continued in conversation, and I thought I recognized the language: Mayan, different from Spanish, filled with explosive k's and ch sounds. I didn't recognize the speakers. Didn't matter. My heartbeat was almost back to normal, but my belly burned, my breasts were hot around the nipples. It was a lot of sensation to have to sort out, and cope with. When I could move I took my pants off and dried myself between the legs with them, then got up to look for a clean pair to put on.

  The louvered door to my room was open an inch. I looked out and saw Dad on the daybed with his back to me, and Francisco Colon in one of the wicker chairs, leaning forward, hands on his knees, frowning, speaking in Mayan. My father listening, then answering, and I thought, what is this, the middle of the night, he's having a language lesson?

  "Daddy?" I said, behind the door.

  He turned, startled. "Sharissa? Did we wake you up?" Francisco rose from his chair.

  "No. It's all right. What're you—"

  "Learning to ask directions. I thought it might come in handy. Sorry if we were bothering you."

  "I should go," Francisco said.

  "I'll walk out with you. Can I get you something, Sharissa? A drink of water?"

  "No, thanks. I'm going back to bed." I was feeling light-headed, disoriented, and I thought, Wow, if that's what an orgasm does to you—

  Thirty seconds later I was huddled under the sheet, shivering, biting my lip, so sad and depressed I was almost choking. Thinking about Daddy asking directions in

  Mayan, only it hadn't sounded like a question, more of a command. But I didn't know the language, so how could

  I tell? I didn't know a lot of things. I only knew I was in love with a dead boy and afraid I would never ever get over him.

  That was my big problem: in grieving for Bobby I was really feeling sorry for myself. Concentrating on the self made me a poor excuse for a Christian. I was denying the Spirit, shutting Jesus out of my life, which was not going to get any better without Him.

  I slept better than I had in weeks, woke up early and went jogging. At breakfast I asked Daddy about his language lesson. He smiled and said Francisco was trying to teach him a few words of the Kekchi Indian dialect, one of thirty-five Mayan languages. The mission we were assigned to ministered to a large Kekchi population.

  Mr. Colon was a busy man, as he had said, and his hotel was full, but he seemed to have a lot of time to be with Dad. In fact, he treated both of us like royalty, providing security on and off the hotel grounds. I hadn't given much thought to these arrangements, but I knew that all the weeks we'd spent away from home had to be costing Dad a lot of money. Which was something he'd always been cautious about. Half of the insurance money had gone into a trust fund for me. Ten percent of the remainder he'd given to the church, which was not paying any of our expenses to and from Usumucinta.

  "We're a long way from being broke, honey," he explained when I sounded worried about it. "I took a little money out of the business when I sold to Bisco, and there's the savings we had, some equity in the house. With conservative investments, inflation way down, I—we could live for a long time just on the income."

  "What are you going to do, Dad?"

  "Do?" He looked a little startled.

  "Somehow I don't see you spending the rest of your life as a missionary."

  "Oh—you mean, what am I going to do with myself after—?" He looked away from me. From where we sat on the terrace the moon was still visible but dissolving like a wafer in the pale blue of the brightening sky. "Haven't got that far yet in my thinking. I have faith that—something will come along."

  Francisco Colon had come up with two men in a red Jeep to keep Glen and me company. At least they weren't riding with us. I didn't know what kind of guns they had with them, and didn't want to know. Both men wore guayaberas and dark glasses and looked, I guess, businesslike. In a way I missed Veronica.

  "Didn't have time to go by and see her," Glen explained as we drove around the south shore of the lake on our way to the Parador Liberdad. The red Jeep stayed about a hundred feet behind us. The road was narrow but paved, and there was more traffic than yesterday: it was a market day in Cobían. Glen looked back at the two men riding shotgun for us. He called them Heckle and Jeckle.

  "Your father must be a man of considerable influence. Is he in politics?"

  "No."

  Glen smiled. "Then you have to be a movie star. Have I seen any of your pictures?"

  "Oh, come on. I told you—he just worries about me."

  "I wish I could tell you who the bad guys are down here, but I'm not sure myself. We've lost cameras and a couple of wallets, but I've never heard of anyone being kidnapped, and fortunately they don't hunt archeologists for pleasure or profit. It wouldn't be hard. This time of year I think we outnumber the locals in the Petexbatún." He yawned. "Sorry. Stayed up to three o'clock this morning."

  "With that congresswoman?" He nodded. "What's she like?"

  "Well—" he said, guardedly.

  "Did she put a move on you?"

  "You're talking about a pillar of our democratic society. Yes, she did."

  "But you—"

  "Fast on my feet when I need to be."

  "What other sports do you play?"

  He smiled and leaned on his horn to discourage a minibus that was trying to edge onto the pavement ahead. The Jeep pulled closer behind us.

  "You know something, I really like you. Too bad I'm old enough to be—"

  "My older brother. I'll be eighteen in June. And I'm going to Vanderbilt next fall."

  "Good choice. Where're you spending the next few months?"

  I told him. He said, "Usumucinta's maybe seven minutes by helicopter from Dos Pilas—"

  "You're kidding!"

  "And a bad day's drive on roads that disappear come May. I'll figure something out, since we don't have a helicopter on a regular basis."

  "You mean you'll come and see me? How old are you, brother?"

  "Twenty-nine last Thursday."

  "I guess the mustache makes you seem older."

  Glen was easy to talk to, to kid around with, and not pretentious for someone who had already published a book while he was still a graduate student of anthropology, which apparently had a lot to do with archeology. I couldn't be sure, because Glen talked so fast about a lot of subjects—ethnohistory, zoology, university politics (which he claimed was a branch of zoology), skydiving—that I wasn't able to ask a lot of questions. Usually I was laughing. He'd been born in Princeton, New Jersey, where his father was an Episcopalian minister ("I come from a long line of De-Caf Catholics," Glen said) and his mother taught prep school mathematics. He admitted that he was not much of a teacher himself.

  "Grubbing away in old tombs with a two-by-four holding up the ceiling may seem like a strange way to spend your life," he said while we were having lunch. "But I never liked school. Who was it said, 'Brilliance in the young is most easily cured by a dose of compulsory education'? Maybe I did. Anyway, I was lucky enough to be born with a mind that operates intuitively and rejects the formulaic, and I managed to fall in with teachers who had the patience or the foresight to indulge me. Like the Chair of my department at Vandy. Too few of those around. The ranks of college professors should be thinned every so often, like a herd of deer too large for t
he food supply."

  The restaurant at the Parador was built out over a cove of the lake; it felt like being in a large treehouse, with the forest of the biotopo just behind the lodge building. Glen knew the menu by heart. He said the venison was safe but if I was feeling adventurous I should try a dish of tepezcuintele. After I made him admit that tepezcuintele was a species of jungle rat, I had the venison.

  The walls of the restaurant were slabs of untreated mahogany, and there were a couple of uncaged toucans in the rafters. We were at a table away from the toucans and close to the water. There was a swimming beach below the campground next to the Parador, and a boat dock.

  Heckle and Jeckle sat at a table near the entrance. Each of them had a beer and one of them read a newspaper. They didn't seem to be paying attention to us, and after a while I forgot about them.

  Glen showed me dozens of pictures of Dos Pilas. "We're just getting started, actually. Already we have evidence that Dos Pilas was to Central America, in terms of territorial expansion, what Britain was to the world in the nineteenth century. But so much of it is still completely covered by forest it'll be years before we have a restored site to compare with—"

  "Glen? Hi." It was an urgent-sounding greeting. We both looked up. I recognized the woman from the coffee shop of the Itzá Maya, an archeologist from Texas. Her hair was short and going gray and she wore a paisley bandana around her neck. Glen introduced us, but she barely glanced at me.

  "Guess you've heard the news," Rita Hawkins said. Her lips were thin anyway, but she was pressing them together so tightly from tension they disappeared. Glen shook his head warily. Rita took a deep breath. "Dr. Lagerfeld was killed last night. In his field office at Kan."

  "Good Lord." They stared at each other for a few seconds. "Does anyone know—"

  "It must have been terrorists. His office was torn apart, as if they were looking for something to sell."

  "How—"

  "He was struck in the back of the head with a machete. Poor man. Totally helpless in his wheelchair, a wanton act of murder and nothing more."