Gringos (7 page)

The younger one had some Spanish, and I asked if he knew a hunter named Acuatli who used to roam these parts with a 20-gauge shotgun slung across his back. He wore short rubber boots. Some years back this Acuatli had guided me and two Dutch photographers to Lake Perdido, over in Guatemala, where the Dutchmen took pictures of ducks and white egrets. We had no papers for Guatemala and no mule to carry our goods. We went up the San Pedro River and then followed an old
chiclero
trail overland. I made some money out of it but I wouldn't want to take that hike again. I learned, too, that slipping up on birds requires the patience of a saint.

The Lacondón said that Acuatli sounded like a Mexican name to him. By that he meant Nahuatl. He said in all his life he had never known a person named Acuatli. A few minutes later he told me that Acuatli was dead. It came to much the same thing. Sula had once told me that on the day the last Lacondón died, there would come a great earthquake, and a great wind that would blow all the monkeys out of the trees.

I bought a small bag of cacao beans from these two. Lund came by and wanted to know about Rudy. “Who is that guy? Can you vouch for him?” Lund was a surveyor who was plotting the site with his alidade and rod. He seemed to come third in command, after Skinner. A white towel was draped around his head and fashioned into a burnoose.

“Rudy's all right as long as you don't cross him,” I said.

That night there was shrimp again, with onions and peppers and potatoes in a makeshift paella. It was good and there was plenty of it. The mess tent was a blue nylon canopy with mosquito netting hanging down on all sides. We sat on folding chairs and ate off card tables, or rather Carta Blanca beer tables made of sheet metal. There were two hanging lights, powered by a generator. A little cedar bush had been decorated as a Christmas tree. An electric bug killer hung on a pole outside. Bugs flew to the blue light and were sizzled on a grid.

A bath in the river and a good meal had perked up the diggers. Even Skinner was in a good mood. He held up a floppy tortilla and said that corn didn't have enough gluten in it to make a dough that would rise. Still, heavy or not, the flat bread it made was good, and yet nobody seemed to know it outside Latin America and the southern United States. Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, yams, chocolate, vanilla—all these wonderful things the Indians had given us. Whereas we Europeans had been over here for 500 years and had yet to domesticate a single food plant from wild stock.

The two females left in camp were Gail and Denise, both a little plump, with their brown hair cut short, so that you could see the backs of their necks, all the way up to where the mowed stubble began. Gail was the quiet one. I took her for a mouse and I was wrong about that. She prepared a tray of food to take to Dr. Ritchie.

“No, no,” said Skinner. “He's coming. He's up on his feet now. I just went over the work log with him. He'll be along.”

Rudy asked if they used a caesium magnetometer in their work. I was uneasy. This had an extraterrestrial ring to me. But no, there was such a device, something like a mine detector, I gathered, for sensing underground anomalies, buried stelae and the like, and they did have one here, though it was down. High tech or low, almost everything here was down. I was proud of Rudy for knowing about the thing.

Dr. Ritchie came stumbling in, and Gail got up to help him along.

Skinner said, “Here's our warlike Harry now. Look, there's a leaf on his shoe.”

“Greetings, greetings. Anything left?”

Gail seated him across from me and took off his hat and served him. He was trying hard to be chipper. “Sure smells good. We're in your debt, Jimmy, for this fresh seafood.”

“We can pull out tonight if you want to, sir. I can have you in the hospital by midnight. No use putting it off.”

“Well, maybe tomorrow. I'm certainly no good to anybody like this. What do you think, Gene?”

Skinner shrugged. “Whatever you say. What's your fee on a deal like that, Burns? Double rate on a hospital run?”

“For you it would be double.”

Dr. Ritchie jiggled his soup spoon. “Boys, boys.”

Lund picked up on the theme of Indian superiority. He talked about their natural ways, how they were attuned to the natural rhythms of life, their natural acceptance of things, natural religion, natural food, natural childbirth, natural sense of place in the world, natural this, and natural that. All true enough, perhaps, but there was something a little bogus and second-hand about his enthusiasm. It was like some poet or intellectual going on and on about the beauties of baseball.

I lit a cigar and tuned out. We had the Indians to thank for tobacco too. They had given us these long green
puros
for solace. I watched the flashes of bugs being electrocuted. You couldn't hear the crackling sounds, or even the chugging of the generator, for the rushing noise of the river.

Skinner was soon at it again. “. . . an old and honored tradition, I know, this robbing of travelers in out of the way places of the world, but I broke your pal Bautista from sucking eggs and I'm going to break you too.”

“You've already broken me, Skinner. I'm cured. I won't be back.”

“No, you don't get off that easy. You can't just turn this away. You'll be back. Guys like you are always hanging around where there's a quick buck to be made. You'll be back, but on my terms. No more grand larceny. Next time there'll be a clear understanding.”

“We'll see.”

I noticed that Dr. Ritchie's jaw had dropped. Flies were walking around on his lips and teeth. The flies know right away. The man was dead. He had just quietly stopped living. As a child I thought you had to go through something called a death agony, certain pangs and throes. They were not incidental but a positive visitation. Death came as a force in itself. We laid him on the ground, and Gail gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation. Burt pounded on his chest. I turned him over and pitched in with my method, long out of date, of pumping up and down on his back. Lund said, “All right. That's enough.”

We carried the body to his tent and zipped it up in his sleeping bag. Skinner was shaken. “I thought he just had the flu.” He said we would sit up with the body through the night, turn and turn about. He took the first watch. I slept in my truck, after moving it beyond the glow of the electric bug killer. My suspicion was that those things attracted more bugs than they killed. The trick was to lie low. Later it rained a little and that shut up the monkeys. No one called me for my watch. Skinner sat up alone with the body all night.

At breakfast he announced that he and Lund—the Mexicans might want a second witness—would take it out in the Toyota. I was to follow behind in my big truck to see that they made it across the ford. The river was up a bit. They would take the body to Villahermosa, the nearest town of any size, there to make the necessary calls home and to see to the legal formalities and the shipping arrangements. They would return in a day or two. The rest of the crew would carry on here under Burt's direction. He had his trail bike, if any emergency came up. Dr. Ritchie's achievements were well known, his brilliant work on the Tajín horizon, his reconstruction of the Olmec merchant routes. The Bonar expedition could best serve his memory by finishing the job here.

Gail said, “Denise and I are going out, too.”

“No need for that.”

“I mean we're leaving the dig. We're going home.”

“Why?”

“We have our reasons. One reason is that we agreed to work for Dr. Ritchie and no one else.”

Skinner looked at them and brushed crumbs around on the tin table. It was a bad moment for Denise. She was almost in tears. Gail turned to me. “Can we ride back to Mérida with you?”

“Sure.”

“Can you fly out of there to the States?”

“Yes, of course. Daily flights to New Orleans and Houston.”

Skinner said, “Well, I see it was a mistake to bring you along. You've wasted a lot of my time. I thought you were serious students. You realize how this is going to look in my report?”

Gail was calm. “We may have some things to report ourselves.”

He thought that over and then came quickly to his feet. “All right, suit yourself. Anyone else. No? Then let's get on about our business.”

At this rate Rudy would soon be in charge. The girls went to pack their things. We lashed the body down in the bed of the Toyota so it wouldn't roll about. Skinner said, “I really thought he just had the flu.” I drained my two tanks and left the gasoline for Burt, or almost drained them. I kept just enough to make the run back to Palenque.

Rudy gave me a manila envelope to take back to Louise. It was all sealed up with tape. Today he was dressed in camouflage fatigues and black beret with a brass badge on it. I couldn't believe the National Guard had ever issued that cap. From his web belt there hung canteens and other objects in canvas pouches.

“Rudy, I wouldn't wear that military stuff around here. Just down the way there, through all that greenery, is the Usumacinta River, and on the other side of the river is Guatemala.”

“So?”

“You might get shot. They're shooting at each other over there, guerillas and government troops. Sometimes there are skirmishes on this side of the river. A lone straggler in that outfit—you're just asking for it.”

“With my blond hair they can see I'm a gringo.”

“And maybe shoot you all the quicker for that.”

“I can take care of myself. I've been out in the field before. You never give me credit for knowing how to do anything.”

He was right. I liked Rudy but something about him aroused the bully and the scold in me.

“Look, Burns, don't worry, okay? I always have this stuff right here in my shirt pocket where I can get at it. I have my tourist visa and my car papers and my letter of introduction from Professor Camacho Puut. I know how to get along with people. Nobody's going to bother me when they find out who I am. I have my press card taped to my chest.”

“Who you are?”

“That I'm a writer. Down here they respect artists.”

“Well, I wouldn't go wandering far in that rig. The Mexicans don't like it either.”

“There's a ninety-minute cassette in that envelope. Keep it out of the heat. I've sealed it up in such a way that Louise will know if it's been tampered with.”

“Okay.”

“And don't tell anybody where I am. Just say I'm at—Chichén Itzá.”

“Right. The sacred well.”

We stopped at the fording place on the Tabí and loosened the fan belt on the little truck, to keep the fan from turning and throwing water back on the distributor. A family of rusty brown iguanas watched us from an overhanging limb, then plopped into the water on their lizard bellies, a family dive. Skinner dithered and stalled around. Finally he took the plunge in his truck and made it across without mishap.

I was busy dodging roots and hanging onto the gear-stick. The girls talked between themselves, about some certificate they probably wouldn't get now. Denise asked me if there were any drugstores in Mérida.

“There's one on every street corner.”

Once out on the wider road I dropped back and let Skinner and Lund pull ahead, out of sight. There was no dust, but I disliked being part of a convoy. Denise said she and Gail had not been sick a single day and had washed more potsherds than any four of the others. She wanted me to know that their departure had nothing to do with female hysteria but was rather a carefully considered and justifiable move.

I agreed. “You stayed longer than I would have.”

We picked up a hitchhiker, an old man, who piled into the cab with us and sat by the door, silent, with his stick between his knees. He rolled up the window, as I knew he would, to keep the
aires
—evil winds—from swirling about his head, seeking entry. These dark spirits penetrate the body by way of the ears and nose and mouth, and cause internal mischief. He would suffocate on a bus before he would crack a window.

At Refugio's place we had some coffee with hot milk. He was sitting under a shade tree, bolt upright on a wooden chair, with his hands placed stiffly on his knees. He was a pharaoh. Sula was trimming his hair. Manolo was polishing the new red truck.

“No!” said Refugio. “But this is terrible news! Dr. Ritchie! Such an amiable man! There was a light in his eyes! So quiet! Always dedicated to bennee! He leaves small children?”

“I don't know. I wouldn't think so.”

He said he had seen the
pagano
Skinner go by in his truck and had wondered. Now Skinner was a pagan monkey. Was his stupid
cloche
then fixed? Yes, I said, but they were going to the wrong town, to Villahermosa. The death had occurred in Chiapas, and the proper place to deliver the body and make the report was Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital. They didn't know that Villahermosa was across the state line in Tabasco, or didn't think it important. There would be bureaucratic delays, various Mexican hitches. Skinner's temper would flare. He would insult the officials and his problems would be compounded tenfold. He and Lund would be gone for days. The fellow with the motorcycle, Burt, was now the boss at Ektún. He was an agreeable young man. Refugio could now resume his deliveries to the site and perhaps even sell the boy some odd lengths of plastic pipe.

“Yes, this is good thinking, Jaime. But my little green man? You won't forget him?”

It took me a moment to make the connection. His Olmec jade piece, my photograph of same. “No, I won't forget.”

The fuel gauge needle had long been resting on E when we reached Palenque. The old man got out at the town plaza. He took off his straw hat and said, “You have my thanks, sir, until you are better paid.”