John thought he knew. Perhaps Matt’s crime spree was an act of rebellion against his former employer. It was very possible he was willing to do anything to make BYU regret letting him go. Finding the very first Long Count Calendar would certainly accomplish that goal. John hoped revenge was all his strange behavior was about, but even more so, he hoped the incriminating details of this whole venture would work themselves out in the end and everyone would realize this was all just a mistake—one twisted mistake after another.
John was pondering his involvement in this unfortunate predicament when he walked face first into Anthony Peet’s back. Anthony barely moved a muscle.
“What are we stopping for?” John asked, adjusting his bifocals over the bridge of his nose.
Anthony lifted a finger to his lips. Everyone held very still.
“We’re being followed.”
No sooner had the words escaped Anthony’s lips when John heard another footfall in the woods behind them. He scanned the sinking shadows, suddenly wishing they were nowhere near Tacana. He didn’t like being exposed in a wilderness he didn’t know, especially when their only means of defense was the rifle passively slung over Matt’s shoulder.
“Let’s keep moving,” Matt said. “It’ll be dark soon and I want to have camp set up somewhere before that happens.”
“Guys?” KC interrupted in a slow, haunted tone. “Where’d my pack go?”
“What do you mean, where’d it go?” Matt asked.
KC huffed irritably as she searched the ground immediately around her. “I mean I set it down right here and now it’s gone.”
“Now how can that be?” John asked as he and Father Ruiz joined in the search. “You must have stepped away from it after you set it down.”
KC braced her fists upon her hips. Her face was red from their hike’s exertion, glowing with sweat and now tense with anger. “I’m not stupid,” she spat. “I set the damn thing right—”
The brush suddenly shuddered behind her, startling both KC and Father Ruiz. John was also taken by surprised, shocked to see the vegetation move away from them in a wave, like water shook from a dog’s coat, from head to tail.
“Something’s got my pack!” KC shouted, springing after the receding brush.
“Careful, KC!” Anthony called, as he chased after her. “You don’t want to corner the local wildlife.”
John feared what might spring out of the vegetation. His mind went through the list of animals that could be large enough to drag off a pack full of camping gear. A monkey perhaps, or a wild boar. Worse yet, a jaguar.
“Don’t get too close!” he warned, but it was too late.
With an impressive leap, KC managed to jump ahead of the creature’s path, cutting off its hasty retreat through the brush. The animal backtracked, its movement still detected solely by the swaying of vegetation. Perhaps blinded by its own cover, the creature changed course once again after nearly bumping into Anthony, fleeing straight toward Matt who’d joined in the chase.
Matt lifted his rifle. “I’ll put a stop to this,” he said.
But his prey abandoned its course again. For a moment it seemed they had it trapped within a dense patch of vegetation. John would catch a patch of fur here, the flip of a tail there. Then, it suddenly made a desperate break, springing straight out of the brush in a reddish-brown streak that collided with John’s face!
Horrified, John reached for the furry body clinging to his head. John’s foot slipped over a moss-choked log and caught in the crook of an exposed root, painfully twisting his ankle as his weight collapsed over the snare. John groaned as he felt something pop in his ankle but there was no catching his fall. As a final insult, he felt two hot, padded feet pushed off of his chest and before he even hit the ground, the animal was scaling the trunk of a tree.
“Stop that damned monkey!” KC ordered as John crashed into the jungle growth.
Holding his leg and groaning in pain, John tried to assess the situation from the ground. The only man capable of performing such a feat was Matt who, with rifle still pressed into his shoulder, had swung around to follow the monkey’s path. He stepped around another tree for a clear shot. In that brief moment, as if fully aware of what it held in its possession, the monkey reached into KC’s bag and withdrew a can of beans.
“Get him!” KC demanded. “He’ll eat up all my food!”
Matt fired but the monkey shifted just as he pulled the trigger. The beans exploded in the primate’s hand. With a wild shriek it sprang from its limb and began swinging from tree to tree, escaping into the canopy and dropping a trail of food stuffs and camping supplies at Matt’s feet as he picked up the chase.
The jungle erupted into panic. As Father Ruiz helped free John’s leg, the air erupted with the screaming monkey and screeching birds. The canopy swayed in the monkey’s wake while below, Matt led the charge with Anthony and KC crashing through the vegetation below.
“We best go after them,” Father Ruiz said, helping John to his feet. “Can you walk?”
John tested his weight and pain shot up his leg. “It’s not looking good,” he said, gritting his teeth. He cursed silently to himself. This was just what his old body didn’t need, not in the middle of a God-forsaken jungle!
With Father Ruiz supporting his weight, they waded and stumbled after the chaos ahead. The staccato blasts of Matt’s rifle punctured the noise like opening beats to a symphonic allegro. A colorful wave of exotic birds burst from the canopy as a lone body fell to the ground.
“Is it dead?” John asked as they drew closer.
The three hunters stood before them, none of them bothering to approach the spot where the monkey fell. None of them dared to rest another pack on the ground either.
“You’re not gonna believe this,” KC said.
John had drawn near enough to hear them panting from their chase, but he still couldn’t see anything on the ground. It wasn’t until he stood beside Anthony that he saw the monkey.
It wasn’t dead.
In fact, it was very much alive and clinging like a toddler to a near-naked child. Beside him stood a little girl, holding KC’s empty pack and looking bashful and frightened all at the same time.
For an extended moment they all simply stared at each other, five adults as uncertain about the situation as the two children and their pet monkey. When someone did finally move it was the monkey who squatted to scratch at its bare rump where one of Matt’s bullets had just grazed it.
Father Ruiz turned to KC. “And you’d rather claim that to be your evolutionary relative?”
Quiché
Darkness dropped into the jungle like lead in a pool of water. It had settled itself heavily upon the village by the time Father Ruiz and his companions followed the children in. The going had been painfully slow helping John through the jungle, even with KC co-supporting his weight.
At first nobody noticed them arrive. The entire village was engrossed with a giant tree standing at the center of their pitiful collection of crateboard and corrugated metal huts. A bonfire was ablaze near the base of the tree where the villagers appeared to have lost themselves in some primitive ceremony of supplication, prostrating themselves before the tree and tossing offerings into the fire.
“This should have been converted out of them long ago,” Father Ruiz muttered beneath his breath.
The day had not gone at all to Father Ruiz’s liking. From the moment they were shot down by the Zapatistas, he observed that Dr. Peet seemed to have lost sight of the purpose of their mission. The missing reliquary cross seemed far removed from the professor’s mind, due primarily by the distractions presented by the very man they were looking for – Matt Webb.
Ever since Matt came into the picture, the focus had turned to some lost calendar—apparently the very first Mayan calendar ever recorded. Father Ruiz could care less, but he couldn’t expect that from an archaeologist. Now, with three archaeologists anticipating this bogus treasure and an agnostic woman opposed to anythi
ng related to the church, Father Ruiz was outnumbered. He was on his own.
But that didn’t mean he’d given up.
They’d found their museum thief. In fact, Matt readily admitted to stealing the pillar ball. That meant he took the Effigy of Quetzalcoatl on his way out – a detail strangely overlooked by Peet. Father Ruiz hadn’t forgotten it. If Matt took the Effigy, he must have been the one to have exchanged it for the reliquary cross. He’d yet to see any sign of the Talking Cross in Matt’s possession, so Father Ruiz chose to wait and see where this trail might lead.
He had no idea how quickly his patience would be rewarded.
“Quiché Maya,” Matt said as they drew close enough to feel the bonfire’s heat.
Father Ruiz wasn’t a linguist like Matt, but given the traditional colors and patterns of the women’s clothing, he suspected the remote clan had been displaced from Guatemala, forced to live a squatter’s existence in the deepest jungle. Whatever the case may be, he silently admonished their tree worship.
He followed Matt right to the center of the ceremony where the villagers finally took note of their presence. Silently, one by one, the Maya recognized them for the strangers they were and their ceremony was shortly abandoned. For a moment, they only stared.
Matt slung his pack to the ground and reached into the main compartment. “Just so they don’t get the wrong idea, we better show them that we come peacefully.” An ironic statement considering the rifle still slung over his shoulder. Nonetheless, Matt dug into his pack and withdrew a peculiar wooden cross.
Father Ruiz held his breath.
The Talking Cross!
It was all Father Ruiz could do to keep himself from abandoning John for the opportunity to snatch the cross away. Every nerve inside him pulsed with electricity. Matt Webb did in fact steal the cross! And now he was about to hand it back to the Maya!
The villagers brightened upon seeing the cross. Father Ruiz was ready to pounce. He couldn’t let the Talking Cross fall into Maya hands. The Zapatistas would surely catch wind of this and they’d come for it. They might even kill for it. They were tiptoeing around the edge of another revolution.
The people closed in around them, led by two men who approached with friendly, inquisitive smiles.
“Great,” KC groaned, apparently unaware of the danger. “I suppose they’re going to beg for money now.”
“They’re not interested in your money,” John rebuked as he lowered himself to rest on the ground. “Do you see a Walmart around here where they could spend it? We come from the outside. It’s our experience they’re after.”
Fortunately, there wasn’t a fanatical rush like Father Ruiz expected. The villagers’ eyes shined with familiarity, certainly, but there wasn’t the hunger for militaristic power as they beheld the cross. There was a reverence to their countenance that at least set Father Ruiz’s mind at ease. These were farmers and family men who weren’t out to start a revolution. Perhaps they knew nothing of the cross’ history any more that Matt did as he stood there ignorantly holding it out for all to see.
Could it be that even Matt didn’t realize just what exactly it was that he was holding? Had he simply mistaken the Talking Cross for nothing more than a Catholic crucifix, a symbol universally accepted throughout the country?
Father Ruiz was no anthropologist, but even he knew the natives placed great importance upon cross symbols long before the first Spanish explorers stepped foot into the New World. The natives’ cross didn’t arise from a savior’s death. Instead, the Mayans recognized a heavenly cross created whenever the sun’s path intersected the Milky Way – the Great Cross, also known to them as the Tree of Life; two familiar concepts that the church once manipulated in order to conquer and convert.
It was the symbol of this Tree of Life that Father Ruiz realized the Quiché village thought Matt was holding in his hands.
“Perhaps they’d like to hear the Gospel, Father Ruiz?” Matt said, invitingly.
Father Ruiz shook his head with a relieved grin. This Mormon boy truly had no comprehension of a cross’s significance here. However, he certainly recognized an opportunity to spread the word of the saints. But just to be on the safe side, Father Ruiz took hold of the ribbed shaft of the Talking Cross. Matt readily released it and Father Ruiz clutched it tightly to his chest.
Safe at last! Cardinal Balbás would be pleased.
“Father?” Matt said, waiting expectantly.
Father Ruiz cleared his throat. “Of course.” After all, he still had to get the Talking Cross back to the cathedral. He turned toward the crowd looking eager to hear what he had to say. How this small group managed to escape the true religion was beyond him, but surely they weren’t too rural to have learned Spanish as their secondary language. After all, their clothes were all modern textiles.
Still clutching the Talking Cross tightly to his chest, Father Ruiz started for the bonfire. “Let us begin with the Virgin,” he said.
Center Of Darkness
KC wasn’t made for primitive life. She was a high-flier, a woman born of steel and mechanization, of screaming jet engines opened full throttle. Yet, behind all the metal and mechanics that made her tick there was still a woman inside that could be touched by a rare, armor-penetrating moment.
Such a moment was threatening to come on.
The Maya eagerly hosted them beneath the great tree which had been de-limbed clear up to the dark, choking canopy hungrily consuming any open view of the night. In fact, the tree appeared to be nothing more than a large pole, a praying pole with offerings of ribbons and trinkets that littered the hanging bark.
There, between the pole and the glow of the communal bonfire, she and the others were showered with food and ritual that only an anthropologist would find fascinating. John was one such person who’d settled right in with all the attention he was receiving, particularly from a cluster of women who attended to his injured ankle while children vied for position to listen to Father Ruiz preach, aided tremendously by Matt Webb and two Spanish speakers among the crowd.
Tuning out the priest’s sermon wasn’t difficult, even if KC did understand Spanish or Quiché. Uncivilized cultures may be what made anthropologists and missionaries tick, but she wasn’t an anthropologist, and she sure as hell wasn’t on a mission for God. Unfortunately, that left KC sitting politely amongst a mob of strangers who had much more interest in her than she did of them.
But she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t paying attention.
Across the communal fire, not three feet away from the silently enthusiastic John sat Peet, surprisingly glum and unresponsive to the curious villagers. In fact he didn’t even seem to notice that his position was getting swallowed up by an encroaching crowd of children. Peet was detached, his guard down and his eyes an open window to his thoughts as they stared distantly into the flames. Even a nudge from the jittery children couldn’t rattle him from his inner distraction. KC felt his display of vulnerability strumming her feminine fiber.
Finally, as two young boys elbowed their way to the front of the crowd, they managed to shake Peet from his consumption. He shifted his outstretched legs to give them room, and then, he simply slipped away from the crowd, his departure noticed by nobody.
Nobody but KC.
After a moment, she too stole away from the fire and quietly stalked Peet to a muddled woodpile around which the villagers had allowed them to pitch their one-man tents. Peet crouched into his tent and KC patiently waited. Neither a light came on, nor did Peet come back out, and she debated whether or not she should join him.
Her mind struggled over her last conversation with Father Ruiz. His instruction had been to simply sit with a mourner while her own reasoning told her to leave Peet alone. And yet, something deep inside yearned to be alone with him, secluded within the confines of his tent.
But what would Peet do? Would he toss her out, or would his own exposed yearning receptively comply to a similar languish boarded up inside her?
He
would understand, she decided. Peet needed somebody. He needed her.
She’d convinced herself to make her move when suddenly the tent flap opened and Peet slipped back out. KC pouted, having missed her opportunity, but to her surprise, Peet didn’t leave. Instead, he pulled a chunk of wood from the woodpile and seated himself on it just outside his tent. There, he seemed content to resume the thoughts that had been plaguing his mind as he rested his elbows upon his knees and toyed with a cord strung between his hands. Something dangled from the string and softly glinted in the distant firelight.
Now was the time.
KC tenderly approached. Before he even realized she was there she could tell he wanted to be alone but she couldn’t bring herself to leave. Her own armor was pierced and she was too far drawn to him.
* * * *
Peet was caught like a man spotted with his pants down and he felt suddenly awkward as he clumsily regained himself. His hands fumbled the necklace they’d been holding, failing to coil the chain away and instead dropping it to the ground between his feet. He reached down, hoping to retrieve it before KC saw it, but she moved fast and snatched the silver Kokopelli pendant from his groping fingers.
“Men don’t wear chains this light,” she observed.
Peet hated the way she said that. He hated the awkward way she stood over him. To her credit, she must have sensed his discomfort and chose Matt’s unpacked bag for a seat which she pulled up right in front of Peet. Too close for his liking.
There was something different about KC, something softer. Her movements had lost their edge and when her eyes shifted back from the necklace, they revealed something he didn’t expect—a deeply genuine concern.
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