by Tom Rich
Now, on this night in Guatemala—Aly assumed they were still in Guatemala—the stars gave her a sense of freedom she hadn’t felt since being on the run. Sleep was trying its best to overtake her. But she fought to keep her eyes open and continue gazing.
Then Tencho surprised her by saying, “This is where the wedding took place.”
Aly’s eyelids fluttered. She propped herself on one elbow. Tencho was sitting fifteen feet away, his profile visible from the small fire he tended. “Oh?”
Tencho stared into the fire, looking sorry he’d spoken. “Many years ago.” He pulled a twig off a small branch and threw it in the fire. “That was many years ago.”
“Oh.” Aly pulled her sleeping bag over an exposed shoulder. “Well, I mean, why way out here?”
The fire crackled.
“They had no choice.”
“They were on the run?”
“They were part of the Guerilla Movement hiding in these mountains and fighting the army whenever they could.”
“That sounds really romantic. I mean, I’m sure it was a hard life. Dangerous. But, gosh, falling in love with all that going on. Or were they always in love, like childhood sweethearts?”
“They had no childhood.”
“Shew. Yeah.” Aly leaned back to take in the stars. “But on their wedding night? I’ll bet their comrades made a nice wide circle out in the woods to guard them while…you know.” Aly realized the couple would have been looking at the same stars from the same angle as she now was. And the couple would have been floating in the warm sea of serenity from their lovemaking. Maybe if they never thought so during the rest of the time they fought that war, on that night they thought all things were possible.
Aly heard Tencho kick apart the burning sticks. The light went out.
“She died three days later in the fighting.”
Aly closed her eyes. “Oh.”
~ ~ ~
The next morning they decamped and got under way with little discussion.
Aly assumed Tencho was the groom in the story he’d told. He had a wife waiting for him in El Estor, and he probably loved her, but he could never tell her about his first and truest love.
Late in that morning’s hike Aly decided the time had come for her and Tencho to discuss their situation. She was in deep herself and needed to be in on the decision making process. The women who fought as guerillas were probably treated as equals. Why shouldn’t she? She’d insist they talk on their next break.
Twenty minutes later Tencho stopped. He raised his hand for Aly to be still. He stood motionless for a moment, then signaled Aly to follow him into the trees. They hunkered down and sat quietly. They were close to view the trail from their hiding place.
“Won’t they be able to see us?” Aly whispered.
Tencho made no move to take his pistol from his knapsack.
A faint metallic clanking ricocheted through the trees. It grew louder. A terse bang bang bang startled Aly. She tensed to run. “Tencho. Your pistol.”
Tencho remained still.
bang bang bang
The clanking grew louder, and was interspersed with the bang bang bang every half minute or so.
A sudden burning in Aly’s stomach suggested Tencho had changed his loyalties since his remembrance of the dead bride.
bang bang bang
The next bang bang bang was so close that Aly’s stomach plunged. She nearly fell forward from dizziness.
bang bang bang
A small boy with a grin as wide as his face passed through an opening in the trees. He held a cooking pot in each hand. A flash of red, yellow and white flowers caught Aly’s eye. The embroidered sleeve of a native costume? The blue sleeve of a man’s jacket passed, then the red and purple of a serape braided in black and gold.
Aly stood.
A line of burros was strung along the trail, each laden with dozens of pots and pans: a small caravan moving through the forest. Even the children walking the trail carried cookware. The boy banging his pots together provided a beat for the march.
Tencho made no gesture to greet the party. He merely waited for them to pass. Aly thought him ashamed to be seen in the forest with a gringa.
Or was his caution vital?
Tencho led Aly back to the trail.
Aly passed the next hours wondering about the caravan. Were they on their way to put on a feast? She imagined them going to the spot Tencho had said the wedding took place. Wouldn’t that be beautiful if they were returning to do the wedding over as a tribute to their fallen comrades? And maybe Tencho wasn’t that groom after all, but this was close to the anniversary of that wedding, and he couldn’t attend, but had stopped to pay tribute.
Late that afternoon they again ducked off the trail when Tencho sensed someone coming. It was a similar caravan, without the clanking. This one carried bowls and jugs made of clay and wood, and many more carved from gourds. Every item was brightly painted, which fueled Aly’s fantasy of a wedding tribute taking place, because passing before her was a train of festive gifts.
That night Aly put off having her conversation with Tencho. She had the stars again, and her wedding fantasy, and for the moment she didn’t care where they were going and hoped it would take forever to get there.
She dreamed of the snowy egret she saw when stuck in the strangler fig several days earlier. A lucid awareness of the egret’s white form against the limitless blue made the vision seem as real as waking life. Dreamtime expanded and there was only the soaring, gliding, dipping of the bird in its flight. Something beckoned Aly to soar with the bird. The earthbound part of her existence told her that was not possible. Yet there was a wedding do-over taking place—there had been no music for the first wedding—and this bird had no song, so it was necessary for Aly to join with the bird for a second chance to provide a song.
Aly awoke with a deep heartache. The dream wedding never took place. She tried to hold on to the bittersweet pain. It faded like a vapor trail on a windy day.
She fell back asleep.
The dream picked up. The bird was no longer on its way to a wedding. It searched the currents high above the earth. Its loneliness grew as expansive as the sky, an overwhelming vastness colored by some great darkness rising from below. The bird grew weary and plunged toward Earth, only to find it consumed by flames. Pained beings cried for release from the fire. Aly awoke to the fading of these pleas, wondered if she hadn’t been granted her wish of swapping the tear she’d dropped into the ol for experiencing the hell of her own culture.
~ ~ ~
All during that morning’s hike Aly wracked her brain for a way to get Tencho into a dialogue. Around noon they reached the crest of a mountain where the trail dropped out of sight. Twenty feet of forest, then nothing. Once again Tencho raised his hand. From Aly’s position it looked as if he’d stopped her from plunging off the edge of the world.
Something beyond that edge bounced into view; went away. Four posts evenly spaced? Whatever it was it looked entirely out of place.
A man emerged onto the top of the trail carrying a chair on his head. A second chair was strapped to his back.
Aly stumbled backward. “What the…?” She looked back and forth from the man to Tencho. A woman reached the top of the trail carrying the same cargo. Tencho stepped aside. This group had no burros, but even the small children carried stools. Some of the adults nodded hello to Tencho. Some smiled as they streamed around Aly.
The caravan passed. Aly threw up her hands. “That was just too fucking weird. I’ve been imagining all these people are having a party out in the forest. There’s no way I’m right about that. Is there?”
“What you saw is nothing unusual. It is common for the people of each village to specialize in a particular craft.”
“Ohh. So these people are on a kind of roving swap meet? The chair people are on their way to hook up with the pot and pan people, then it’s on to the jug people, and sometime today we’re going to see the shoe cobbler peop
le, and everybody keeps circulating until all the goods are evenly distributed?”
Tencho said nothing.
“Ri-hight. That’s silly. There’s probably some central location where they all meet.” Aly wanted a “Yes,” or a, “No.” Even a nod. Anything but Tencho’s refusal to elaborate.
They were on the descent now. The first part was so steep the soles of Aly’s boots slapped the ground. She grabbed his shoulder. “Tencho, stop!” He turned. “Look, I know you’re probably in more trouble than I am. Dammit, I don’t even know what kind of— Maybe those were bad guys. Do you even know? Maybe shooting them was a good thing. But you have to start telling me what’s going on. Where we’re going. What we’re up against. Cripes, the people back in our village must know something’s up with me and Dr. Arbanian being gone. For all I know they think I killed him.”
Tencho was looking up at her. “You can wait a few hours more? You can wait until this evening?”
Aly raised her hands. “I have a choice?”
“A few more hours.”
She let out an exasperated sigh.
“Unless you can no longer continue,” said Tencho. “I will find a place to—”
“No. No. I’m fine. The walking is doing me good. It’s keeping my mind off…” whoever’s chasing us…“what happened back there.”
Tencho examined her eyes. He turned, continued down the mountain.
Aly told herself that tonight was it. Tonight Tencho had to tell her what he knew, or what he thought he knew, then both of them would work out a plan.
Aly was too restless to remain quiet. “It’s not like I mind walking,” she said.
Tencho paused, looked over his shoulder.
“I’m okay,” said Aly. “Really.”
Tencho continued.
Aly let the distance between them grow. He didn’t need to hear. She only had the need to speak. “It’s not like everyone where I come from relies on cars to get around. Take me, for instance. I walk everywhere. And these mountains? No more challenging than the hills back home.”
Tencho didn’t look back.
“Yeah, I had a car. And I wish I could say I made the conscious decision to get rid of it. Truth is, I had to sell it after I got swindled. See, there was this guy, Rafe. He was from Europe. I met him at a Bluegrass concert. Bluegrass is the traditional music of people called Appalachians. They’re quite a bit like you.” Aly slowed to let Tencho get further ahead. “They’re people who went deep into the mountains to get away from so-called civilization. Yeah, and they developed their own music and art. Their own way of talking, even. But extreme poverty forced some of them into the cities.
“Anyway, this European, Rafe, who never told me what country he was actually from, which should have made me suspicious right off, got interested in what I told him about the Appalachians. See, I’d made this observation that all the other social groups in my neighborhood—the Gays, the Goths, the Yuppies. Bohos and Bobos. Whatever else—all have their bars and coffee shops and boutiques to gather in and be themselves. Shoot, even the odd homeless person who plays the bongos or spouts street poetry gets adopted by the others. It’s not like the Appalachians are being pushed to the margins. It’s more like they’ve made the choice to withdraw in plain sight.” Aly thought for a moment. “They’re in touch with something more genuine than what anyone can see. When I told that to Rafe, he said if those people weren’t flourishing, then they were alienated from whatever it was they needed to be in touch with. And since I could see that, maybe I should be the one to help them. So we came up with the idea of raising money to start Cultural Integration Services, a nonprofit organization meant to help—”
Aly stopped short. She blanched at her thoughtfully crafted Urban Mountain Girl Chic image casually leaning in Night Town. “Shit! How could I be so presumptuous to think I could tell those people who they are.”
~ ~ ~
For the first time since their flight Tencho and Aly continued hiking after dark. They came to a large, crescent rock next to the trail. They squeezed between the boulder and the trees to another trail. After thirty minutes of steep climbing they came upon a clearing occupied by twenty natives sitting around a fire.
Aly noticed the party had only basic traveling gear: no special craft items.
Tencho had Aly sit at what she surmised to be a distance of respect.
An ancient man on the far side of the fire was speaking. He sat higher than the others. Possibly on thin air, he was so frail and caved in on himself. There appeared to be less of him present than was needed to be alive. Even so, his voice carried over the fire to Aly.
“How old is that man?” whispered Aly “He looks a hundred and forty.”
“The people believe he is beyond aging. That he has been to the Underworld and embraced the Lord of Death and is returned to tell stories of Creation and destruction.”
“Whatever he’s telling them seems to be scaring the hell out of the children.”
Tencho nodded. “He tells them about the sun being bitten.”
Aly thought for a moment. “An eclipse?”
“It has to do with Oxlahun Ti Ku; Thirteen-deity of the Celestial Plane.”
“Thirteen-deity,” mused Aly. “Thirteen steps on that pyramid.”
“Numbers are sacred. Numbers are often part of the names of gods. Thirteen-deity is seized by Bolon Ti Ku, who is Nine-deity of the Underworld.”
“Nine steps under the pyramid into the Underworld.”
“Nine-deity cracks the head of Thirteen-deity, which causes the sun to be bitten. The darkness caused by Thirteen-deity’s devastation falls to the plane of man: the earth. Four ceiba trees then rise from the ground in each of the four cardinal directions. If four birds rise to perch in these trees, the cycle of life will continue. But should a time come when the sun has been bitten so deeply that the white bird, the yellow bird, the birds of black breast and red cannot find the trees from the darkness of human corruption, all life ends.”
“Tencho?” Aly pointed. “Would those children know about December 21st, 2012?” She remembered the smell from the ol in the small pyramid, imagined an underground hellfire spewing smoke to cause nuclear winter: the ultimate bitten sun.
“My people have always feared the bitten sun,” said Tencho. “For people tied to the land, interruption of sunlight means interruption of life.”
The party around the fire stood, turned their backs to the flame, and moved away in small groups. Aly thought each family must have their own sleeping spot in the woods. She remained still. A couple with two small children approached. She smiled, nodded. The family passed without making eye contact.
Aly heard yelling from the other side of the fire. Only the old storyteller remained. He pointed and screamed at her. Firelight danced on his milky eyes. There was no way he could see her, yet his finger was on her. People behind him disappeared into the darkness.
Aly spun when realizing the old man screamed in English.
The flickering firelight put the trees into motion.
The people in the trees? Positioning themselves to stop me from running? “Tencho! What is this? I’ve been set up?” She looked around the camp. “Did these people empty out that pyramid? They let Arby find it, then killed him? Then Hernandez and Fishhook?” She covered her chest with her arms. “Now it’s my turn?”
Tencho held out a hand. “There is nothing to fear.”
“Goddamit! He’s yelling at me!” She turned and pointed at the old man. “He’s calling me sad chick! What the hell is that?”
“He would not address you in English. Not even in Spanish.”
The old man yelled what sounded to Aly like, “Sad chick! Sad chick!” several more times, then lowered his voice. He spoke the two words softly. He opened his right hand. He smiled and gestured with his left hand to a spot near the fire.
Aly took Tencho’s shoulders. “Can we leave? Now?”
Tencho pointed. “You should sit by the fire. I will sit next to
you.”
“These people. They’re the ones who carried everything from that pyramid? Is that what this is all about?”
“These people have only had things taken from them. Let us sit by the fire.”
Even if she could break through the perimeter she imagined the others to be maintaining inside the trees, Aly knew she could never make it in the forest on her own. If they had her, they had her. She dropped her hands from Tencho’s shoulders. He led her to the fire.
The old storyteller smiled and nodded as they approached. He kept his face toward Aly. When they sat he looked pleased. He turned his face to the sky, as if the stars were visible to his blind eyes from being so numerous. An ash rose in the updraft over the flame. It could have carried him to where he gazed, he was so slight. He cocked an ear to the sky, then slowly lowered his arms.
A woman holding the hand of a pubescent girl emerged from the darkness. Without introduction they sat across the fire from Aly and Tencho.
The old storyteller folded his hands together. He nodded vigorously.
14 : Ukit Took
The flame leapt between Aly and the girl. The small figure, seated on the ground, cast a tall, wavering shadow against the trees. Aly glanced around to see her own shadow moving in sync on the trees opposite. The flame diminished, as did Aly’s shadow.
Aly watched the embers draw the flame down to nothing. For a moment, she forgot where she was, who her companions were.
A high voice speaking perfect English broke the trance. “When the light dims, one feels compelled to follow the flame to its source.”