by M. S. Karl
At two o’clock we pulled into a little anchorage on the Guatemala side. The man who came down from the house walked with a limp and hobbled partway down the bank. He looked me over without interest, as if he were seeing another missionary, archaeologist, or explorer.
Yes, the guerrillas had been at San Marcos but they were gone. The soldiers were there now. A small Mexican patrol. He had been up there late yesterday to see what had happened because his sister was married to a man who lived there. No, the guerrillas had not done anything, really. Took a few shots at the patrol and ran. A soldier had been grazed in the arm. The strange thing was a gringo who had come while he was there. From downriver, like ourselves. Yes, another gringo. Nobody seemed to know what he was doing. While the man was there the soldiers had asked the gringo for his papers and he seemed not to have any. When he left the gringo was being held.
I turned and looked off at the Mexican shore. So the circle had closed on him. Only it wasn’t a circle, but a whirlpool that would draw him under. I heard the little lapping of the waves and felt the sun’s molten weight on my arms and chest. Without papers he would be taken back, his prints run, and then … This time there was no escape for him. Unless … I sighed and pushed the old hat down to shade my eyes.
The thought was a crazy one, but there was no way around it: I suppose I’ll have to break him out.
Chapter Sixteen
The dugout nosed into a portage a half kilometer south of San Marcos. I told the boatman to wait there. I said I might be an hour or a day, or even two. He said he would wait and to follow the path that led along the river’s edge. Three-quarters of the way there I found a hollow log and placed my briefcase behind it. If I were searched, I did not want them to find the gun.
The forest smelled damp and rotting after the river and the mosquitoes were bad. Here and there I saw bits and pieces of stones jutting out of the ground, covered with thin coatings of lichen. I realized that the whole area was an archaeological site and I guessed San Marcos woud be the center of it. I passed an immense mahogany that someone had cut halfway through and then given up on. The jungle did that to people, I thought. I was still thinking about the tree, in one of the trances that comes from a deluge of sensorily uniform signals, when the sentry called for me to halt. I halted and let him come forward. He was small and dark with Indian eyes. I guessed he probably came from Oaxaca. He wore green fatigues and held a M-1 carbine at the ready. I had prepared my story to tell him, but it wasn’t necessary. He decided that when a gringo came strolling through the jungle without a knapsack or hiking boots it was time to see his commanding officer.
The CO was a lieutenant. It was a small patrol; besides the lieutenant there was a corporal and four others. The lieutenant was talking on a field radio when I was brought into the little clearing. I looked around me. San Marcos was like Crucero, but with a little more shade. Maybe six huts, a barking dog, and that was it. Except for the stones. Because I had been right, and once, a thousand years or so ago, the Maya had built a small city here, or a fortress or a temple complex. No one could say which by looking at it, but the stones that remained were everywhere. A small carved jaguar held open the door of the hut where the lieutenant had established his command post. “Bueno, bueno,” he kept saying into the microphone, and from the static it sounded like he was not having much luck. He looked up as I approached. I stuck out my hand, he looked at it for a second, and then took it, without commitment. He was maybe thirty with a thin moustache and eyes that revealed his curiosity.
“Papers,” he said in Spanish.
I handed him my passport and tourist card and he compared them, and then looked from the passport photo to my face.
“Den-ee-son,” he pronounced. “That is you?”
“Sí, señor.”
He looked me over carefully and did not hand the documents back. Instead, he laid them on the table that served as a base for his radio. “What are you doing here?” he asked with a wave of his hand, as if any story I might tell would strain his imagination.
I smiled. “I’m a magazine writer. I’m doing a story on Mayan ruins. I’ve heard there was one here.”
“The ruins are at Yaaxchilan,” the lieutenant curtly corrected. “Those are the ruins. At Bonampak.”
“Yes, but everybody goes there. I mean little ruins. I want to do a story stressing Mexico as an archaeological treasure house.”
It was clear that he thought little of the idea. “Where are you coming from?”
“Tenosique,” I said and watched him write it down on a pad. As soon as the radio started to work, he would check me out.
“You flew?” he asked.
“With another man. I left him at Yaaxchilan.”
“Yaaxchilan is downstream.”
“Yes, I know. I came from there.”
“No baggage, no knapsack?”
“It was to be a short expedition.” I scratched my head. “I was told downstream there had been trouble. They said there were soldiers here and you could tell me if it was safe to go any farther. I don’t want to get shot.”
The lieutenant nodded. He had seen just enough crazy gringos to believe this one, but he would check out the story anyway. He emphasized it by putting a small stone on top of my papers.
“There is not trouble,” he said.
“I’m glad to hear. I was told there were some guerrillas.”
“No. guerrillas. Tomb robbers. People stealing artifacts. It happens frequently. Many are Americans.”
“A man told me there was an American here,” I said.
At first I thought he was not going to answer, but he finally nodded.
“Was he one of those robbers?”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“I doubt it. But if he’s under arrest for something, he might want me to carry a message to his wife or friends.”
“He was traveling without papers. He had no tourist document.”
“May I speak to him?” Again a long period of silence while the officer made his decision.
“Very well.”
He and the guard led me to a hut before which another soldier sat. The soldier got up slowly as we approached. I guessed that the fine points of military courtesy were not important in the jungle. The hut was a square business of poles and mud that must have belonged to a family here. Obviously the family had been told to go elsewhere. A few good kicks could get a man out, but the kicking would make noise. My escort moved an upright platform of tied poles that served as a door.
He was sitting in the corner as I came in. I wondered if they caught the look of surprise in his eyes as he saw me. I stuck out a hand.
“My name is Dennison,” I said. “I heard you were being held here.”
His own hand came out slowly to take mine and his eyes looked for an answer in my face. “We’ve played this record once before, haven’t we?” he asked in English.
“Shut up and listen,” I said, talking fast so that if any of them knew any English at all it would be hard for them to follow. “I want to get you out of here.”
“Why?”
“We’ll talk about that later. In the meantime, let’s just say I’m impressed. I couldn’t have done better myself.”
I like the irony, but he didn’t seem to catch on.
“You mean getting caught twice in a row? Look, these bastards are holding me for an identification check. I told them the boat overturned and I lost my documents in the river, but they won’t let me go till they check it out. You know what that means.”
“That’s why I’m here. Later on tonight, when they’re all asleep …”
“No, listen. First, there’s something you have to do.”
“What?”
His eyes darted to the faces of the soldiers and then back to me. “There’s a temple group about a kilometer west of here.”
“A what?”
“A ruin. Ask one of the natives to show you to it. When you get there you’ll see there’s a collapsed templ
e with a stela, a slab of stone that used to be upright, in front of it. To the right of the temple entrance is a trail that goes up a hill. You go a quarter, maybe half a kilometer on that trail and you come to a cave. You got that?”
“I think so.”
“Don’t just think. Anyway, there’s a big piece of rock in the cave, that fell from the ceiling. Bring what’s under the rock.”
“Are you serious?” He was, and I could tell the soldiers were getting itchy.
“Do it. Before you try to get me out.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I promised, and gave him my hand again. “He says all his papers were lost in the river when his boat overturned,” I told the lieutenant in Spanish, my tone apologetic. “I believe him.”
The lieutenant said nothing and I followed him out and watched the sentry close the doorway again.
“He’s afraid,” I said. “He says he wants to know what you’re going to do. He’s only a tourist.”
“Then he has no reason to worry,” the officer said and went back to his radio set.
“May I have my papers back? If you’re finished, I mean?”
He gave me a narrow look, then picked up the passport, placed the tourist card inside it, and handed them back.
“Thank you. I’m told there’s a small ruin just west of here. Any objection if I take a look at it?”
The lieutenant shrugged. “If you wish.” He picked up his microphone. “Bueno, bueno.” I took it as a dismissal.
When he made contact he was not only going to ask about a man with no papers, who resembled a wanted felon, but also about a writer who came into the jungle with a camera.
But then only a spy thinks of such things, and now I knew that I was not a spy.
A young boy who lived in a house at the edge of the settlement, and was busy throwing grain to the chickens when I walked up, knew the ruin. I offered him ten pesos and he agreed to take me. His name was Raymundo. The ruins were not well known because they were in bad condition. But who could tell? Maybe some rich gringo archaeologist would come to dig, and the government would decide to restore them. Then others would come here, tourists, and the settlement would grow rich. He wondered if I were that gringo archaeologist. I told him no, and he sighed It was all right, though, he said, because maybe I would tell someone else who would tell the gringo archaelolgist. That had happened with Bonampak. Had he ever seen Bonampak? No, but he had heard about it. In the days of his uncle, the paintings on the walls were so pure they might have been done yesterday. Maybe if someone just looked carefully they would find painted walls at this ruin. It was the same thing he had told the other gringo last month. I stopped in the middle of the little path. “He’s been here before?”
“I am almost certain. But he did not have the beard. But it may have been someone else with glasses.”
I ducked a heavy vine that curled down over the trail. I had several ideas about what might be under the rock in the cave, but one possibility was fast outdistancing the others.
“There, ahead.” The boy pointed and I saw a jumbled mound of stone and dirt with trees growing out of it. The jungle had been cruel to the Maya stonemasons and priests. I pretended interest while swatting the mosquitoes. The boy told me an English archaeologist had been here a year ago to look for carved stones, but had found none. He and his helper had even lifted the fallen slab that lay in what had once been a central plaza. I looked to the side of the ruin and saw a thinning of the grass that might be taken for a trail.
“Where does that go?” I asked the boy.
“Nowhere. Just to the cave.”
I scrambled up it, small stones coming loose as I sought footholds. At the top of the hill the little path wandered off through the trees. Already my arms were coated with blood from the mosquitoes whose hum never stopped. It was a rotting, dank place, where the malarial chills were a part of life.
The cave was a black abscess in the side of the limestone cliff. Someone had scraped it out ages ago and now it stood staring at the jungle like an empty socket.
I stepped into it, smelling the odor of dust and bat dung. My foot kicked something and I saw that it was a piece of jagged rock. I turned around to the boy.
“Nothing here,” I said. He nodded, and we started away. When he was halfway down the trail, I shouted after him, “I have to urinate,” and turned back to the cave.
The rock was a job to move and I had white dust on my hands and arms, and skinned knuckles by the time I had finished, but I managed and stood looking down at the white ground under it. Except that it wasn’t ground; it was a white coating of dust on something else. I picked it up and beat the dust off it. I was holding a plastic zipper bag, closed with a small padlock. It was not heavy; just the right weight for some money and documents. I stuck it into my pocket, pulled out my shirt to cover it, and caught up with the boy.
It was dusk now. I could smell the cookfires in the little settlement. A dog barked and children played, and over it all came the static of the radio. But with night the air would cool and transmission would be easier. So we did not have long.
I asked the boy where I could find a hammock and he ushered me into his family’s hut. Stretched across it was a rotting net of henequen fiber, too short for me by a foot. They wanted me to be their guest, but I forced five pesos on them and sat down. The hammock squeaked with the rocking and I caught barred snatches of the life outside through chinks in the wall. I did not know if what I was going to do would work, but I had to try. There was no justice in the world and so there was no reason that it had to work. It was a warning I used to keep my mind steady. But I knew I would try it anyway, as surely as the river flowed outside. It had something to do with Harold Bassett, and his value as a human being, and the meaning of his life. And it had something to do with some other people who had tried to rob that life of meaning.
So much for values. Now I had to figure the logistics of the thing. First, there was the river. Once across it the patrol was powerless. Unless they wanted to take a chance that nobody would ever find out. Relations between Mexico and Guatemala had not been cordial; Guatemala had been claiming not only Belize, under British protection, but part of the Mexican territory between the border and Comitán. The odds were no Mexican lieutenant would risk an incident. But he might try calling the Guatemalan army. So that made the radio a factor even after we left. Then there was leaving: with the patrol here I would have to use surprise. Surprise worked better at night, but that cuts both ways, because if they can’t see you, it’s also hard for you to see around yourself, especially in the jungle.
The terrain was unfamiliar and we were poorly provisioned. All we could do would be to hope to make the other bank and stay until daylight. Then, with luck, we might make it to Sacrificios and past the border guards. The odds were not good. But if we waited until daylight to try, the odds were not worth computing. So it had to be at night.
I hid the zipper bag under a sack of corn, and left the hut. The lieutenant had given up on the radio for the time being and was poring over a topographic map by the light of a Coleman lantern. He raised his eyes as I went by, but said nothing. I started down the path on which I had entered. The sentry was sitting on a log, looking slightly bored. He shifted as I came up. Once again I said that I had to urinate. I turned a bend in the trail, reached beside the hollow log and retrieved my briefcase. I took out all the money and stuffed it in my pockets. Then I took the pistol, put it through my belt, in the small of my back, and made sure the shirt covered it. In the twilight nobody was likely to notice.
I went back to the hut, stuck the gun where I had hidden the plastic pouch, and lay down to wait. The ideal time was in the early hours of morning when the sentries would be sleepiest. But the damned radio did not allow that luxury. It would have to be sooner, before the ionosphere cooled from the day’s heat.
Someone was doing all right with a transistor radio. They had strung a line to a pole in the front yard and now I heard music coming in from San
Cristobal on the other edge of the highlands. It made me nervous. But it did cover noise.
I shared a plate of beans with Raymundo’s family. His father said the life here was a hard one: a few fish from the river, a little corn, and occasionally they slaughtered a pig. The visit by the bandidos had been the first time there had been real violence, though, except for years ago when a man upriver killed another over his wife’s favors. The bandidos were crazy, bad men. Were they after the stones? He didn’t think so. But you never could tell. I asked if there was news of soldiers on the other side of the river and he shook his head. “¿Quién sabe? Who knows?”
It was seven o’clock and night had come to the jungle. I decided it was time.
He lent me his flashlight, and I felt bad about taking it, because he would never get it back unless the soldiers were faster and better shots than I hoped. I went inside the hut, stuck the pistol under my shirt, along with the pouch, heaved a deep breath, and walked out into the night.
I walked casually past the temporary headquarters to the water’s edge. A soldier turned and I greeted him. “Refreshing out.” I didn’t know if he agreed because he didn’t answer, but it didn’t matter because I had seen what I needed. There was a boat tied at the bottom of the trail and it had a motor. Whether the motor had gasoline was, of course, an even bet. But I had decided that trying to make it down a jungle trail whose contours I did not remember well enough to trust, at night, with a pistol of soldiers after me, in the hopes that a man I had told to wait was still there, was another unacceptable risk. Even with the acceptable risks the odds were a little less than even. I heard the radio again now and this time the static had resolved into voices. The lieutenant was getting through.
There was a house I had noticed on the way to the ruin, a structure with a caving roof and gaps where the thatch had fallen away. No one seemed to live there and I guessed it served someone for storage. I thought, as I walked toward it, that if the whole plan proved a fracaso, I would want the soldiers to capture me and not the villagers, because what I was about to do was not going to make me very popular with them, and maybe afterward they would reconsider about having the government establish a center for tourists.