“Please tell me what we did that was so wrong,” his father said.
“It’s too late,” Adam said. “I’m getting my GED. I’m trying to learn how to be a grownup and take care of Stephen. I’m trying to forget what you guys, and those other parents, and those tablets, tried to do to us. I’m trying to remember what Mr. and Mrs. Bradley taught us about God and the Bible.”
Adam walked away from his father and left the ballroom. Keith was very glad Adam was sharing a room with Tom and another boy and not his parents.
“Isn’t there anything you can do to help me?” Mr. Gregory asked, spreading out his hands to Keith and Talia. “I just want my sons back.”
“We’ll pray for you,” Talia said. “But you need to talk to your wife, or maybe Mr. Sheldon. But your wife’s the one who most likely has the answers you’re looking for. Please be careful, though. We’ve run into some danger trying to help these kids.”
“Danger?” Mr. Gregory repeated. He swiveled to face Keith again. “Is that how you got hurt? I thought my wife said you were injured by accident at an archaeological site around here somewhere?”
Keith met his questioning gaze by standing up again. “That’s not what my wife was talking about. We’re pretty sure that was an accident. But people have attacked us and tried to kill us.”
“Okay, my wife told me that was a lot of nonsense – these supposed threats and attacks we’ve heard about. I heard that Tim was talking about crazy things happening –”
“Maybe your wife has convinced you it’s nonsense, but there are people who can corroborate some of what’s happened. Go talk to Clark Johnson when you get back to the states. Talk to somebody. Try to find out the truth, and maybe you’ll find a way back to a relationship with your sons.”
Chapter One Hundred and Two – Layers of Truth
The next day Keith and Talia came out of the hotel to meet the bus and the convoy of Drew’s guards for the day’s excursion. Naddy and Sophie planned to visit San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán. Keith realized he had seen almost nothing outside of the ball court and the pyramid, neither of which they planned to visit with the kids in tow, or, depending on when she decided to show up, to reveal to Jenny Kaine.
“Finally, we’re going to chocolate town,” Talia said.
“Chocolate town?” Keith repeated. He made his way onto the bus, still clumsy with the cane but hopeful he wouldn’t need the wheelchair stored under the bus. David had grabbed him at the hotel breakfast buffet around dawn and pulled him into the fitness room to fix his shoulder hitch, as expected. Keith hadn’t realized how much pain it had been causing him and how much better his mobility became afterwards. He felt better than he had since the accident; hardly full strength but newly energized.
“Recently they found cups and bowls containing evidence of theobromide,” Talia said.
“Theobromide? Oh, yeah. That’s in other things besides chocolate, though.”
“But they named it ‘food of the gods’ because of chocolate,” Talia replied.
“Yeah, true. I guess some woman picked the name. Chocolate is okay, but give me coffee anytime. Especially your coffee.”
“Good save. Otherwise I’d have to sock you for that ‘named by some woman’ crack.”
“You wouldn’t sock a hobbling invalid that you promised to love and protect,” Keith teased.
“Mr. Bradley, you sound all better,” Jayna said, turning around in her seat to smile at him. “It was so hard when we heard about how you kinda like died.”
“Not quite all better, Jayna, but better every day, finally,” Keith replied. “I heard about all the folks praying for me, and wow, that ton of cards I got from everybody filled the walls in the hospital.”
“All my brothers had to send their own,” Jayna said. “My family could have been dead for real, if it wasn’t for Mrs. Bradley letting us come with her.”
“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Sheldon demanded. She stared at Jayna from her seat behind Keith. “What does that mean – her family came with you?” She shifted her gaze to Talia. “You mean, when you took Lisa and Gail away from us? When you started that nightmare, and turned them against us? Where did you take them, anyway? They won’t tell us! They will barely talk to us!”
“Leave Mr. And Mrs. Bradley alone,” Lisa said from across the aisle. “If I could have stopped you from coming on this trip, I would have. They said to give you a chance and so did Gail. Don’t blow it the second day, or I will call the lawyer and he will get you thrown out of the country.”
“Look at what you’ve done,” Mrs. Sheldon said. “How can people who are supposed to be teachers live with themselves when they teach children to hate their own parents?”
“Stop it!” Gail said. She wiped her eyes. “We don’t hate you. We love you. But you make everything about you. Don’t blame them for what you did yourself.”
“What do you want?” her father asked. “I’m listening.”
“Is mom?” Gail demanded.
“This is outrageous,” Mrs. Sheldon snapped.
“No,” Lisa said. “She’s not.”
“Carol, you said you wanted to talk to them,” their father said. “This is going to be a three-and-a-half hour drive. Please.”
“I want them to listen to reason,” Mrs. Sheldon said. “They’re children. They don’t know what they want or need. That’s why they have a mother. You always let them do whatever they wanted. You were the one who let Lisa sign up for that ridiculous class. That’s where all the trouble started. Gail always wants to do everything Lisa does. And Lisa never listened to me. I thought I had a chance with Gail.”
“Maybe the best thing to do is just listen to my aunt and uncle,” Talia said. “They’re going to tell us some things we’ll need to know before we get to San Lorenzo.”
“We have to listen to them for three hours?” sneered Mrs. Sheldon.
“No,” Gail said. “They can stop the bus and you can get off.”
Mrs. Sheldon crossed her arms and turned away.
Naddy picked up the microphone for the bus PA system. “The Olmec civilization may have existed as long ago as four thousand years,” he said. “The evidence of their customs and lifestyles is fragmentary and most difficult to interpret. Among archaeologists there is a tendency to attach religious significance to anything they find. We would prefer, however, to present the facts and allow you to draw your own conclusions about their significance.”
“Many have said that the first and oldest evidences of the Olmec were found at El Manatí,” Sophie continued. “The site is a bog where certain artifacts – wooden sculptures, rubber balls, axes, and bones identified as those of infants, were found. From this scant evidence the site was presumed to have religious significance and the artifacts to be sacrifices. The question we have is, why would people make sacrifices to gods by throwing them in a swamp? Is it not possible that this was simply a garbage dump?”
“If it’s just a trash dump, why did they find baby bones in there?” Adam asked. “People didn’t throw away their babies.”
“We will answer your question in a few moments,” Sophie said. “First, we must address a problem that has plagued archaeologists since the beginning of the study of the past. I’m sure many of you understand that people tend to choose where they live based on good conditions – water, soil, the lay of the land – people need to be able to be build things, to grow food, and they need to defend themselves.
“So it comes about that entirely different people can move into and settle on land where others lived before. When this occurs, the artifacts of these peoples can become intermingled – those who try to study a site can be confused about what is and isn’t true about it. What was a garbage dump to one people – an innocent place simply used for disposal, can later become a place where great evil is done and terrible crimes are covered up.”
“I thought I had heard that archaeologists found different civilizations in layers, one on top of the other,” Tim Holden said
. “They could tell the people apart by the ages of things in the layers – by dating them.”
Naddy said. “Dating of artifacts is hardly such an exact science. You would be astonished to know how many claims are presented as fact that are simply suppositions based on comparisons with other artifacts and judgments made without any real evidence. Anthropologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists all depend on tidy layers to date things. But these layers with specific dates to neatly and absolutely organize time are simply not a part of reality.”
“Artifacts found in a bog are automatically suspect as to the dating,” Sophia continued. “This is only one kind of medium that can completely alter the rate of decay, just as very dry or very cold conditions can. We cannot know for certain what the past tells us when there is no independent authority. We can only determine a possible range of time and try to learn the truth about what people did at a certain time in a certain place.”
“One last point we must make clear,” Naddy said. “Sometimes what we take to be the evidence of a civilization could be simply the evidence of its demise. The bog at El Manatí could represent the decline of the Olmecs into corrupt practices. It could be their attempt to keep invaders from misusing what was precious to them as they fled attackers. It could also be their conquerors polluting and desecrating their memory and disposing of their remains.”
“But if they only found baby remains in the bog –?” Tom said, but clearly didn’t know how to continue.
“Somebody killed their babies and threw them away?” Gail asked. “Didn’t we hear someplace that these might even have been unborn babies? How could they do that way back then?”
“My dear child, they have slaughtered the unborn for millennia,” Naddy said. “Sadly, children throughout time have been discarded before they are ever born. Many, many times it has been sanitized by calling it a religious ritual, a sacrifice to the gods. It is nothing of the kind. It is the removal of the inconvenient. It is a sacrifice to selfishness – to the god of irresponsibility. These children were treated like garbage.”
“How dare you?” Mrs. Holden stood up. “You have no right to judge people about their personal choices. It’s none of your business!”
Naddy raised his eyebrows. “Madame, we are speaking of deeds done thousands of years ago. If you choose to apply it to the present time … well … you are the one who did so, not I.”
Mrs. Holden sat back down, deathly pale.
“You mentioned that they found rubber balls?” a parent asked. “Do you mean children’s toys?”
“The name Olmec means ‘rubber people,’” Sophie said. “Later civilizations gave them that name because they made use of the rubber from trees that grew near where they settled. They even had a process similar to vulcanizing. The balls that have been found were anywhere from five to ten inches in diameter. Such balls have been associated with a game sometimes called Ōllamaliztli, played in elaborate brick courts.”
“The ball game!” A ripple ran through the students.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bradley were telling us nobody really knows how they played that game,” Rikki said cautiously.
“This is true,” Naddy said. “It does seem possible that it had many variations over time, and was something participated in by people of all ages, and women as well as men.”
“What about the giant stone balls?” Lisa asked. “How could they make them so big? And I guess they couldn’t just roll and bounce those around.”
“Huge balls have been found,” Sophie said cautiously, catching Keith’s eye, “that are not made of rubber. They are sometimes ordinary stone, and sometimes materials like hematite. Archaeologists have not officially determined either how they were made or what their purpose was.”
“What about the giant stone heads?” Jayna asked. “We’re going to see some of those today, right?”
“Yes, we will see some of those,” Naddy replied. “The site has many sculptures, including the stone heads. One of the defining features of the Olmec culture is their curious sculptures and statuary. We take exception, however, to the insistence that all of these are worship images – gods and paeons to supernatural powers.
“Consider how fond modern people are of decorating their homes with unusual items,” Sophie said. “What will future generations say about the goddess worshiped by hanging a straw hat decorated with flowers on one’s door? Is the scarecrow in the farmer’s field the god of the harvest? Is the bulldog adorning the Mack truck a deity of drivers? Do you begin to see the absurdity of calling every object a god or an offering?”
Giggles broke out around the bus.
“Those people were primitive,” Mrs. Gregory protested. “To them, everything had a spirit or was a god. We are more advanced. You can’t toss aside accepted knowledge and claim experts are stupid just because you disagree with them.”
“We never claimed people were stupid for advancing these theories,” Naddy replied. “We must question the dogma of primitive to advanced, though. You will see architectural and technological wonders today. The students who went with us last year saw even older works of extraordinary complexity that could not have been created by simple, primitive people. We assert that people were far more advanced in the past than the best we have attained to today. Excepting some waves of rediscovery or insight, overall we are declining from what ancients were capable of. How were the pyramids of Egypt made? We still do not know. Ancient cities and artifacts we cannot explain dot the landscape. We are savages and brutes by comparison with the technological giants who emerged from the ark of Noah and resettled the world.”
“The ark!” Mrs. Sheldon practically screamed the word. “You cannot be serious! You have not taught our children that one man built a giant boat and animals climbed aboard and the whole world washed away!” She glared at Keith. “You claim to be a scientist! Of all the mythologies, that is the most ridiculous one! Tell these people it’s a fable!”
“Well, I can tell you a story,” Keith said. “I can’t be sure if it’ll change anybody’s mind about the Noah’s Ark and the Flood.”
“A story?” Mrs. Sheldon repeated, wrinkling her nose. “I was hoping you’d share some scientific facts.”
“Mr. Bradley never tells a story that ain’t full of science!” Tom exclaimed. “I mean, isn’t,” he added, flushing and looking at Talia.
“Tell it! Tell it! Tell it!” the students started to chant.
“Settle down.” Keith said. “You know I haven’t got the energy right now for The Eyeball or to let you know when ‘It’s One,’ and my voice isn’t what it used to be either. So you have to sit still and listen up.”
Silence immediately fell over the bus and all the students turned around or leaned into the aisles, intent upon Keith.
The story’s pretty short, but it has two parts,” Keith said. “The first part goes like this: quite a few years ago a famous scientist claimed that he could show us, step by step, the biological connections between a beetle and a deer.”
“What?” Adam said. “Does he mean a deer evolved from a beetle?”
“All big animals came from little animals?” Lisa said scornfully. “Is he kidding?”
“Tell us the other part of the story, Mr. Bradley,” someone in the back called out.
“”Here’s how the second part goes,” Keith said. “This is just a story, remember. Nobody knows exactly how things went, but this is one possibility. One day it started to rain. It rained really, really hard. All the bugs and little tiny animals and worms and things started to run as fast as they could, headed for higher ground. But you know what? The water just kept rising and those little guys couldn’t begin to run fast enough. They got buried in mud and silt and stuff in just a short while.
“Some of the animals that were a little bit bigger – they kept running, and they got up higher. But the rain kept coming, and water came up out of the ground, and they got covered up too. Before long bigger and bigger animals ran faster and faster. They got higher an
d higher but that was a big flood, and they couldn’t outrun it either. Down under the mud they went, maybe just a few days or weeks later.
“You should know, all along the way, it wasn’t just rain and floodwaters and mud. Volcanoes were erupting and ash and lava got spread around. Intense heat and volcanic flow hardened up over some of those slower, smaller creatures, and later over the bigger ones, when they just didn’t go fast enough, far enough, or high enough.
“Birds and other flying things thought they could rise above the rain and eruptions and stuff. But even things with wings have to rest. They have to land somewhere, sometime.
“So down they went, and there was so much silt and heat and volcanic activity it could maybe have been a kind of soup, laying down different kinds of bodies in layers – all in a few days or weeks. At the top were the ones who managed to last the longest.
“Among these were men. They could have made boats. Maybe they could even make flying ships. Whatever they did, they couldn’t last through all the catastrophes. They piled up on the top of the heap. But they still ended up dead, and still just another, more civilized, more ‘advanced’ layer. Primitive to advanced, simple to complex, – but really, it wasn’t those, so much as just slower to faster – bottom to top.
“Layer by layer … but in a short time, with huge amounts of heat and pressure. Fast, fast, fast! Not over a long time, because they would have all rotted away. They never would have turned into fossils so people can tell whoppers about them and pretend deer came from beetles.”
Chapter One Hundred and Three – Coming to a Head
The whole bus erupted into clapping after Keith finished. He leaned back and closed his eyes. Talia slid closer to him and held his hand, with no digging fingernails, just very gently. But he could tell she was worried about him, so he opened his eyes up again and kissed her on top of the head.
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