That evening, while we were standing on the beach, I told her.
“I have to. With Jose down for a week, Eric needs me. I know what he’s going through. I’ve been there. If I can help him, I will.”
Pepper nodded. “I knew you would even before.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“That you’re doing what you have to do? What you want to do? No. I’m just going to miss you.”
“I’m not gone yet. And it’s only to the end of December.”
“Yes.”
“What he said about getting me on at his university is just talk. I may not even be interested. All I’m thinking about now is helping to get him through this.”
“I understand.”
“Tell you the truth, this isn’t that interesting a site,” I said. “I mean, he hasn’t found all that much. I can think of ten other sites I’d rather excavate before this one.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared out over the lake.
“You’ll do a good job,” she said finally. “Eric’s lucky you’re here.”
“I’ll do what I can.” I kicked at a piece of shell, crushed by the heels of people coming and going across the beach. “I guess I ought to call David, though. He needs to make arrangements. By the way, has anybody heard from Paul? He was going to call Eric when he got to the hotel in Mérida. He should be told about Jose.”
Pepper shrugged. “I haven’t heard anything.”
I put an arm around her waist. “Look, I’ll fly back a couple of times. You can fly down a couple of times. It won’t be that bad and we’ll have Christmas together.”
“I’m happy for you,” she said.
Later, after dinner, I knocked on Eric’s door.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
His face broke into a huge smile and he jumped up to take my hand with both of his. “Alan, you don’t know how good that makes me feel. I have the budget page right here in my computer. I was just waiting to fill in the figures for your salary. Look, I don’t know what you’re used to getting, but this is what I had in mind.” He pulled a sheet out of his briefcase and I saw, to my surprise, that my name was neatly typed out, with a summary of my credentials, and the title Assistant Project Director. Under this was a salary figure substantially larger than what I paid myself at home, when there was work.
“That’s fine,” I said.
“You’re sure?” He asked. “I mean, I could do some more finagling, maybe squeeze out a few more dollars.”
“No, this is fine,” I repeated.
He stuck out his hand again. “Great.” He delved in a backpack and came out with a bottle. “Black Label Jack Daniel’s,” he said. “I’ve been saving it for the end of the field season. But I think this is a better occasion. We’ll toast the success of the project.”
I took the glass and lifted it.
“Salud,” he said.
“By the way,” I asked, “has anybody heard from Paul?”
Blackburn shook his head. “No. I told him to give me a call when he got to Mérida, but you know how he is. He probably got involved in his research and forgot all about it. He’ll be back Monday or Tuesday.” He started toward the door, looping an arm around my shoulders. “Now I need to get this budget revision in the mail and call the graduate dean.” He chuckled. “He won’t like getting a call at home on Sunday until he hears about the money. Jesus, college administrators are such whores.”
I laughed. “Nothing new about that.”
“Well, thank God things turned out okay,” he said as I walked out into the failing light. “Jose wasn’t hurt too badly and April can spend all her time watching over him. That way she won’t be wandering away or getting in anybody’s hair.”
“I think it’ll take a while for Geraldo to calm down,” I said. “He’s convinced this fracas has wrecked his business.”
I walked out, leaving him to his work. The decision was made.
The Xtabai was waiting for me when I crossed the plaza of the tiny village. All around, the thatched huts were dark and people were asleep. I wondered why I was here, because there was no reason for me to be alone in this village at night. I should be somewhere else, but with whom?
The witch beckoned, smiling with crooked teeth.
“Felicia?” I called.
But Felicia had beautiful, even teeth
“You’re not Felicia,” I said, but no words came out.
“Coten uaye,” the spirit said. “Come.”
“No,” I said, but again no sound emerged, and my feet moved as if they had their own mind.
She opened her arms and I saw dead leaves on her huipil.
“Stay away,” I warned soundlessly.
She was coming forward now and I knew what would happen.
Terror seized me and I knew I was going to die, crushed into the bosom of the creature.
“Coten. A kat dziz ten uetel?”
She was inviting me to make love to her and all I wanted was to turn and run.
The other man saved me. Just as her arms were reaching for me, he rushed into her embrace and her branch-arms closed around him. He screamed in pain as she drew him against her, his flesh rending, and I saw blood spurt from his ears and then from the pores in his body. His bones snapped with a crackling sound and his body went limp. The Xtabai released him and he collapsed onto the rocky ground.
The moon cast the only light in the plaza and, against my will, I stepped forward and looked down at his face.
It was Jose.
The next morning, Monday, after we’d arrived at the site, Eric took Santos and me on a hike across a burned field and away from the site of the excavations. The trail led across an open expanse of red earth with limestone poking up through the soil. The sun beat down like a hammer and bounced back at us from the rocks.
“This was the cornfield of one of the village men a couple of years ago,” Eric said as we walked. “It’s fallow now and just as well, with this drought. It’s a good thing the government’s put in irrigation programs. At least they have some fruit trees.”
But there would always be corn, the giver of life, I thought. When there was no longer any corn, there would cease to be Maya.
I saw a copse of poplar trees half a mile ahead of us, an oasis in the island of sun. When we got near I realized they were surrounded by high weeds, and Santos pulled out his machete to clear a path.
“The south group begins in the trees,” Eric explained as we followed the guide. “But we’ve never really determined how far it extends. Hell, it may go on forever. That would be a discovery.”
We reached the shade of the first trees and Santos waited for us to catch up. “Aqui está,” he said, pointing.
Within the trees was a circular depression a hundred yards in diameter and as I looked down I saw a trail winding its way along the sides of the sinkhole to the bottom of the pit. I stood transfixed and Eric chuckled under his breath.
“I thought you’d like it. There’s a wall in the bottom that closes off a cave entrance and a few crude pictographs on the sides of the cave. I took some pictures when we discovered this during the first season and I’ve always meant to get back here. But we had other work to do first.”
“This is part of the south group?” I asked.
“Yup. And it’s all yours.”
“I want to go down there,” I said.
Eric slapped my shoulder. “Then we will. And afterwards I’ll take you to some of the other ruins just south of here. You can decide for yourself how much you think you can do in two months. I say two because I have two months of catch-up on the rest of the site but this needs looking at. It’s been here for a thousand years, but with so many sites being looted, we had to document it while we can.” He motioned to Santos and the Mayan started down the narrow trail, hacking at vines in some places, and grabbing nearby roots to keep from falling. We followed, earth sliding from under our feet as we picked our way down. Finally, at the bottom, Eric took out his canteen an
d handed it around. When we’d all drunk he pointed to a wall of limestone blocks that extended from one side of the overhang to the other, with just a couple of feet between the top of the wall and the roof of the cave.
“There’s some wax on the rocks in front of the wall,” he said. “Santos told me people still came here until fairly recently to pray to the gods of the underground. Lord knows how long they’ve been doing that here.” He stepped under the limestone overhang and I smelled the dankness of the cave. He kicked at the ground. “Ought to be some deposits here. A test unit where we’re standing might show some interesting things.”
“If this place isn’t sacred,” I said.
“He says they don’t come here anymore,” Eric said. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
I examined the wall. It was solid. Someone had wanted to keep people out of the cave. Or else, I reflected, they’d wanted to keep something inside the cave from coming out.
“The pictographs are just inside, on the side of the cave,” Eric said. “I scrambled over the top of the wall when we found this place and looked around, but there’s debris blocking the inner part of the cave.”
I measured the wiggle space at the top of the wall with my eyes. “I think I can make it.”
Eric laughed. “Hey, it’s your site now. I say go for it.”
The two men made stirrups of their hands and hoisted me to the top of the wall. Eric handed up a small flashlight and winked. “I had a feeling we might need this, so I brought it with me.”
I lay on my belly atop the narrow wall and transferred the light from my left hand to my right. I flicked it on and scanned the wall.
The pictographs were crude, all right, nothing like the spectacular, multicolor murals of Bonampak. Instead, these were stick figures, smudged into the wall by fingers dipped in ochre and charcoal.
“Well?” Eric called. “You see ’em?”
“Yeah.” I handed him the flashlight and then lowered myself back down. “I wonder when this wall was built.”
“Who knows? Maybe you can tell us in your report. When you write it. By the way, as editor-elect of the Mayan Journal, I get first dibs on publications.”
“Understood.”
I turned to Santos. “Yan mas muulob ti nohol?” I asked. “Are there more ruins south of here?”
“Yan,” he said. “There are.”
Eric frowned and I realized he hadn’t understood.
“I was just asking how far south this all goes.”
“Ask away. Maybe you’ll get a different answer in Mayan than I do in Spanish.”
“How far south do they go?” I asked Santos. “More than a kilometer?”
“Ma tech,” Santos said. “One kilometer. That’s all. Not much past the end of this field.”
My spirits started to fall and then I caught myself. What was I thinking? A kilometer—over a half mile—of scattered mounds which had once been temples and pyramids. Not to mention this cave, which might hold archaeological materials of incredible richness. It was an area almost as large as what Blackburn’s team had excavated in bits and pieces over the last two field seasons.
“I can give you four workers,” Eric said. “I can free up two and I talked to Santos and he knows two villagers who need work. He says they’re good men. One of them we used last year and he’s reliable. The other I don’t know, but you can probably train him. What do you think?”
“Can I use your total station and the EDM to map?”
“You don’t have to ask.”
“Because that’s all we’ll be able to do this year, make a good map of this area. Then maybe a controlled surface collection of certain areas if we have time, to supplement the collection you made earlier.”
“Keep talking.”
“What about processing? Who’s doing that?”
“My contract with INAH is for them to do the final analysis, cataloging, and curation. That way the artifacts don’t leave the country and there’s no offended national pride. We do the initial processing in the field lab and then I take the artifacts to Mérida every couple of weeks for the final processing and cataloging. I spot-check their results at that time to satisfy myself they’re on track and we try to reconcile any differences. It’s worked pretty well.”
We climbed back out of the hole and I followed them through the trees to the south edge of the field. I stared across half a mile of moonscape, with the green fringe of jungle shimmering in the distance. Here and there were scattered humps of stone, where houses, temples, and pyramids had once been. Not much now, I thought, but once this was the site of a teeming metropolis with artisans, kings, priests, and the ever-present peasants who raised the food and paid the taxes.
I didn’t feel the pounding sun then, because I was thinking beyond this moment, both to a thousand years in the past and years into the future. It was mine. Eric had promised. I could direct the investigations here, mapping and collecting this year and then, in the next field season, do test units, strategically placed one- and two-meter-square excavations that would tell us the story of different portions of the site. And then, in a year or two or maybe three, I could be back with a full crew, excavating large blocks, reconstructing, gathering the million tiny bits of data that would tell the story of this place.
I reached down, picked up some of the rich red earth in my fingers and then let it drift back to the ground as dust.
This was where I belonged and I didn’t want to leave. But finally I turned around and saw the other two men waiting in the shade of the trees.
“Seen enough?” Eric asked.
“For now,” I told him.
“I thought you might be interested,” he said. “Well, back to the grind.”
We were halfway back to the main group when Eric stopped to wipe his forehead with a bandanna.
“I’m worried about Paul,” he said. “Last night, late, I called the hotel where he usually stays and he hadn’t checked in.”
“Maybe he’s staying somewhere else.”
“I hope so. I’m going to try again tonight. I’ll call somebody I know at the museum and see if he’s turned up. Hell, he’s supposed to be back today or tomorrow.”
“Is there anywhere else he could be?”
Eric chortled. “With Paul he could be any-damn-where. You saw what happened when you came down here. There’s nothing I can do—he’s old enough to be my father and he’s helped me in the past, so I can’t very well order him around. But the man worries the hell out of me. He’s not in good health and he drives like a bat out of hell.”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” I said.
But he didn’t. No one at the museum had heard from him. Eric told us he’d give it another day, because Paul Hayes was capable of appearing as if from nowhere and asking why people were concerned. But on Tuesday, by late morning, thick clouds drifted over the area and thunder began to rumble in the north.
“Old man Chaac,” I said. “The rain god.”
The farmers would be glad the drought was ending, but rain would turn the back roads into sloppy mires. Our progress would come to a halt, because with the onset of the rains we’d lose every afternoon and the next morning we’d have to bail out our units. And if Hayes was in some remote village …
“So are you going to dig at the cave first?” Pepper asked, carefully sketching the floor of the excavation unit on the paper in her clipboard. There were a grinding stone, a flint blade, and several fragments of colorful pottery spread throughout the one-meter area and we’d mapped in the locations of each, using distances from the north and east walls of the unit. Not a treasure to the popular imagination, but enough to tell an archaeologist that a family had lived here a thousand years ago and had carried out the mundane tasks of grinding corn and preparing food.
“I have to do mapping first,” I said.
“I mean after that. Next year.”
“That’s a long way off. I’m not thinking that far ahead.”
“Yo
u’re not?” She looked me in the eyes and I blinked.
“Well, maybe.”
She stooped with the tape and remeasured the distance from the north wall to the flint blade. Reassured, she started to draw it on her graph paper.
“Have you called David?” she asked.
“I was going to, but all this business with Jose and then Paul …”
“You know I have to leave Saturday. You want me to tell them?”
It was a barb and she knew it. “I’ll take care of it.”
“What do you think’s in the cave?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Probably artifacts from ceremonies. More pictographs. That’s what they found at Loltún and Balancanché. But there could be a burial or two.”
“It’ll make a nice publication. It could even become a tourist attraction.”
“I can’t control that. If the government decides …”
“None of us can control anything,” she said.
“It’ll work out.”
“I know it will,” she said and went on sketching.
Ten minutes later Minnie O’Toole appeared at the edge of the unit and ducked under the canopy. “Alan, I’m so excited,” she said. “Eric just told me.”
I jerked around. “What?”
“That you’re staying and the project’s being extended for four months. That’s great. I told him if that was the case, I’d stay on, too, if I’m not too much of a bother.”
“That’s great,” I said without enthusiasm.
“I’m sorry,” Minnie said. “Did I talk out of turn?”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t your fault. I just didn’t know things were set yet.”
“He said he’d gotten his dean’s approval and he said there was a promise of a lot of money from an anonymous donor. And we can get the permit extended, I know.”
“Yes.”
“Not that it takes any intelligence to figure out who that donor is.”
“I’ll be glad to have you here, Minnie,” I said.
“Thanks. And Pepper …” Then she saw the look on Pepper’s face and understood. “Well, I better get back to my own little excavation. Your floor here looks so pretty. I feel like such a klutz. It takes me half a day to just clean up the thing for photographing.”
The Last Mayan (The Alan Graham Mysteries) Page 13