Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (25 page)

 
          
Cynthia
stood on her left wingtip and looked down through the warm air to the top of
Kirby’s barren hill. Then Kirby slid her out of the roll, eased down the far
flank of the hill, and pushed the knotted face towel out the small side-flap
window as he approached South Abilene. Dancing children came scampering up out
of the huts, chasing the towel as it tumbled down through the sky. They would
bring it to Tommy, who would already know the message inside, but who would
carefully undo the knots anyway, open the towel, find the little plastic film
canister, pop the top off that, and read the scrawled note on the tom-off piece
of manila envelope: “Bring out the goods.”

 
          
Feeling
fine, Kirby flew around a little more, watching the clot of children find the
towel, fight over it briefly, then race it back en masse to town. Twice he
buzzed the huts, not too low, just for the hell of it, but when he saw the
Indians start to file out of the village and up the hill, each one carrying a
sack or bag or parcel, he angled away, flying high and higher into the pale
blue, then dive-bombing his damn property, pulling out of the dive low enough
to cause dust-devils on the hill’s eastern flank, then landing on the cracked
dry plain, creating great billows of tan dust in his wake. He turned Cynthia
and she trundled over as close as possible to the base of the hill, her wings
jiggling gently over the uneven ground.

 
          
The
dust had all settled and Kirby was hunkered in the shade of Cynthia’s left
wing, scratching a picture of a horse in the dry dirt (it looked like a dog, or
maybe a frog), when Tommy and the villagers arrived. “Well,” Tommy said,
“you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, huh?”

 
          
“Pretty
good,” Kirby admitted. “We’re back in business.”

 
          
“You
mean we get to put the temple back up?”

 
          
“Sure.
I’ll be around Belize City this week, maybe go out to San Pedro, find a live
one, or go up to the States for a while. We’re full time in business again.”

 
          
Luz
said, “You bring any gage?”

 
          
“Not
this time. You don’t want too much of that anyway, Luz, it’ll rob you of
ambition.”

 
          
Tommy
turned to look at Luz, squinting, trying to visualize him robbed of ambition.

 
          
Kirby
had opened the cargo door at the left rear and the passenger door behind the
copilot’s seat on the right, and the villagers methodically stowed all the
packages they were carrying, then each one stolidly headed back to South
Abilene. Mostly they didn’t look at Kirby at all, but if he did catch
somebody’s eye that person would give him a shy smile and a nod and that was
all. Tommy and Luz were the link between Kirby and the Indians, and nobody ever
tried to bridge the gulf.

 
          
Kirby
wasn’t even sure, in fact, why the Indians went along with this scam. They
liked the money, obviously—most of it went into colorful clothes and sweet
processed foods from town—but he had the impression they could get along just
as well without it. It seemed sometimes as though they did it for its own sake,
that they found it
fun
to recreate
their ancestors’ art and artifacts. The shyness linked up with that idea, the
modest appreciation of his appreciation of their skills.

 
          
Watching
as Cynthia was loaded, Kirby said, “I hope you gave me a lot of Zotzes.”

           
“Well,” Tommy said reluctantly,
“actually, no.”

 
          
“Not
a lot? How many?”

 
          
“Well,”
Tommy said, “actually, none.”

 
          
Kirby
gave him an exasperated look. “Come on, Tommy, you know how they love Zotz in
the States.”

 
          
“Maybe
so,” Tommy said, “but down here old Zotzilaha is bad news. People don’t like to
make him.”

 
          
Luz
said, “These are very primitive assholes here, you know. They do Zotz, they
figure Zotz maybe gonna get them.”

 
          
Kirby
understood the problem, but it was still a real annoyance. Zotzilaha Chimalman,
the bat-god of the ancient Maya, was the most fearsome of the Mayan demons, a
grinning evil creature who lived in a gruesome cave surrounded by bats. One of
his tasks was to divert the souls of the recently dead from the path leading to
Mayan paradise and send them instead to the eternal darkness of hell. In “Popol
Vuh,” the great Mayan creation myth, Zotzilaha appears as Camazotz, the enemy
of man. After less than 400 years of Christianity, the Indians still found
their ancient gods potent, and none more so than Zotzilaha Chimalman, the
powerful personification of evil, the bat-god who flies, who owns the night and
who destroys human beings out of sheer joy in his own viciousness.

 
          
It
was easy to understand why the villagers didn’t like creating images of
Zotzilaha, but the problem was that naturally the great demon-god was extremely
popular among Kirby’s customers. Give a sophisticate a devil to play with any
day; heros are boring. “Tommy,” Kirby said, “I really need some Zotzes.”

 
          
“I’ll
talk to my troops,” Tommy promised.

 
          
“Why
don’t you do some yourself?”

 
          
Tommy
looked vague, his eyes wandering away as he shrugged and said, “I’ve been
busy.”

 
          
“Jesus,
Tommy. You, too?”

 
          
“You’ll
get your Zotzes,” Tommy said defensively. “Okay?”

           
“Okay.”

 
          
Not
wanting a fight with Tommy, Kirby made a point of going over to the plane to
watch how the loading was coming along. Luz’s sister Rosita came over to Kirby
and said, “You ain’t been around.”

           
“Been busy, been busy.”

           
“How’s your wife?” There was some
sort of edge in Rosita’s voice, some sort of glint in her eye.

 
          
Kirby
pretended not to notice. “Worse,” he said. “She keeps seeing spiders on the
wall.”

 
          
“Maybe
there
is
spiders on the wall. Most
walls got spiders on them. ”

 
          
“Not
these walls,” Kirby assured her. “It’s a very clean hospital, completely
clean.”

 
          
Rosita
nodded, scuffing her filthy toe in the dirt. By daylight she was,
paradoxically, less attractive and more interesting. The wild girl tends not to
be too interested in personal grooming. “Sheena says—” she said.

 
          
“Who?”

 
          
“Sheena,
Queen of the Jungle.”

 
          
Oh;
a comic book. “Sorry,” Kirby said. “What does she say?”

 
          
“She
says she figures you don’t got a wife at all.”

 
          
Kirby
stared. “She what?”

 
          
“She
says she figures you’re some kinda con artist,” Rosita said. “Well, that’s what
you are, huh?”

 
          
“Not
with you, Rosita.”

 
          
“Huh.”
The glint in Rosita’s eye was on the increase. “What Sheena says, she says you
just don’t wanna get married, or maybe you just don’t wanna marry me, so you
make up this wife in the crazy hospital, you can’t get a divorce unless she
gets sane again.”

 
          
“That’s
what Sheena says, is it?” Kirby was beginning to get a little irritated.

 
          
“Yeah.
That’s what she says.”

 
          
“You
talk to Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and she talks back to you.”

 
          
“Sure.”

 
          
“Well,
you tell Sheena,” Kirby started.

 
          
“Tell
her yourself. She’s over in the village.”

 
          
What
Kirby might have said next he would never know, because Tommy and Luz came over
then and Tommy said, “Come on back to the fort, Kimosabe, let’s party.”

 
          
“Can’t
today,” Kirby said. “I’ve been letting things slide. I’ve got to get moving
again.” The truth was, he was too impatient right now for partying. A week and
a half sitting around was more than enough.

           
Luz said, “We got a surprise for
you.”

 
          
Rosita
said, “I already told him about it.”

 
          
They
all frowned at her, Kirby in bewilderment, the others in exasperation.
“Asshole,” her brother Luz commented, and Tommy said, “What did you do
that
for?”

 
          
“I
don’t owe him no favors,” Rosita said, and went away with a straight back and a
little whip-switch movement of the behind.

 
          
They
all watched her go. Tommy said, “Kirby, I got the feeling your wife just died.”

 
          
“Somebody
put some ideas in that child’s head,” Kirby said. Maybe somebody at the
mission, he was thinking. He was very bitter. “I really better not come back to
town this time.”

 
          
Tommy
and Luz agreed. Cynthia was loaded by now, so Kirby climbed aboard, waved, and
waited till the Indians were partway up the hill on their way home before he
started the engine, not wanting to strangle them in dust. Then he turned his
trusty steed aside, got up to a gallop, and became once again airborne.

 
          
He
wasn’t happy with the way he’d left things; turning down their party
invitation, getting static from Rosita and not dealing with it very well.
Circling around in the sky like a lazy wasp, he decided to go over and buzz
them once more, waggle his wings, let them know everything was still basically
okay.

 
          
The
line of Indians, single file, had crested the hill and started down the other
side. Kirby flew east, then came back low, right down on the deck as he crossed
the dry plain, leathery snakes ducking their heads, the hill looming up ahead.
He ran up the hill, Cynthia’s wheels just yards above the scrub, and burst with
a roar over the top, suddenly visible and extremely audible to the people on
the other side.

 
          
The
Indians loved it. They fell around laughing, holding their sides, pointing at
Cynthia as she circled, waggling her wings. Even the plane seemed to grin.

 
          
Kirby
rolled over them once more, then headed down and around for South Abilene to
give the shut-ins a treat. The cluster of huts came into view and a figure
ducked into one of them, out of sight, as Kirby flew over. He gave them some
throttle, stood Cynthia on her tail over the village, and heard some of the
cargo shift around. Deciding to quit endangering the merchandise, he leveled
out and turned north-northeast, toward the Cruzes and home.

           
Nice day. Nice lot of artifacts
aboard to sell to Bobbi and to Witcher and Feldspan. Nice to be in motion
again.

 
          
A
memory tugged at him as he flew along, the many dark greens below, the pale
blue high above. The memory of that figure who had run away into one of the
huts as he’d come over town. In his memory that figure was awfully
pale.
And had his eyes deceived him, or
had the figure been female?

 
          
Sheena?

 
          
Queen
of the Jungle?