Gringos (18 page)

“Papa knows I can do this job. How many times have I driven him to Villahermosa?”

He was swaggering and dancing about so that I had to grab his shoulder to get his attention. He had the same quick moves as his father. With a swipe of his hand he could catch a fly in midair.

“I know you can do the job, but this time you're answering to me, not your Papa. This is my truck. Do you remember when those loggers in Ocosingo jumped Flaco Peralta and me and your Papa? Do you remember what Flaco did to that Tzeltzal who called himself the Captain? Well, that's just what I'll do to you if you wreck my truck.”

Manolo laughed and dropped to a crouch and began weaving about and making passes with an imaginary knife.

“No, I'm not joking now. Listen to me. I want you to show proper respect for your Uncle Valentín, but you're the one in charge. If he starts drinking, just leave him behind. Don't fool with him for one minute. Keep the tanks topped up so you won't get a lot of bad gas all at once. Don't pop the clutch and don't ride the brakes, use the gears. Keep it under sixty
millas.
Watch the heat needle. If it gets much past the halfway mark, pull over and let the engine cool down. But don't try to back up on the shoulder of the road or you'll jackknife the trailer. You'll need to add a liter of oil when you get to the Escárcega junction. Thirty-weight Ebano is good enough. Check it again in Mérida and once more on the way back. Keep your mind on your business, and remember, that trailer has no brakes and no lights. Now what did I say? Tell me what you're going to do.”

You couldn't trust a sixteen-year-old kid in the States these days to look after a goldfish, and not many kids here, but I had confidence in Manolo. I wasn't really worried, for all my lecturing. He had a better feel for machinery and the flow of the road than I did, a finer touch. Still, it's just as well to have things understood.

Sula wept. Her only baby was going off into the world. “But so many leagues to Mérida!” she wailed. Valentín, in a clean white shirt, was glad of the trip, happy to be going anywhere. He appeared to take no offense at the slight—having a boy put over him. Maybe I had misjudged him. He held the truck door open for Winkel, poor man, who would have to ride in the middle again. No matter, he was taking home enough irrigation pipe to build a new Zion in the thorny scrubland of Yucatán.

At the last minute Doc came up, cap in hand, and pressed some money on him. “For your mission work, sir. Remember me in your prayers. Richard Flandin. I have always tried to do right by my fellow man. And I have gone beyond personal ambition (
aspiración
). All that is behind me now (
atrás de mé
).”

Winkel didn't understand. He couldn't follow Doc's peculiar Spanish. He held the money away from him as though a subpoena had been slapped into his hand. The Mennonites were always the first ones on the scene after a hurricane or earthquake or other disaster. They were much admired for their practical works of charity but they carried on no mission work as such around here, that I knew of. “An offering for your church,” I explained to him. “Keep it.”

Doc, backing away, said, “That man is much closer to God than we are.”

Manolo popped the clutch and they were off with a lurch. Refugio, with Ramos at his side, was very much the
patrón
this morning. He stood apart from the rest of us, his head thrown back and his fists jammed down into the pockets of his long rubberized apron. He hadn't lifted a finger to help, as it wouldn't do to be seen performing menial labor before his people. He was proud of his son and pleased with the big sale. That PVC pipe had been a slow-moving line of goods. Saplings had sprung up around the pile. We had both known the despair of trying to sell things that nobody wanted.

ON TO Ektún in the potato chip van. The plan was that Refugio and I would drop Gail off there and then make our way down to Tumbalá along the rivers. We would catch a boat ride on the Usumacinta, as Rudy must have done. The van stood high off the ground and did well enough in the water. The hydraulic brake system was out, and Refugio had to work the hand brake and hold the wheel and shift gears, all three things, with his two hands.

Doc was glowing. “What shall we find today?” he said. He seemed to think we were off on a dig. I had tried to persuade him to stay behind at the salvage yard. He could do Refugio a real service there, sorting out his relics and appraising them, but no, he was determined to make one last venture into the forest. “My last
entrada,
” as he put it. He sat up front beside Refugio, holding Ramos between his knees and calling him Chino.

Dry season or not, a shower of rain was falling when we reached the ruins. The place was deserted. Refugio fired two shots in the air. We went from tent to tent and found no one. The motorcycle was gone. Ramos barked at a wooden box in the mess tent. Refugio kicked it over and a big diamond-back
palanca
came tumbling out, or what they called a
nauyaca
around here. In any case, a fer-de-lance, who righted himself in no time. He stood his ground, with his head rolling about and his jaws flung open about 160 degrees. Don't tread on me! Ramos, still yapping, shied back, as did we all, except for Refugio. With one hand he tossed a rag over the snake's head and with the other he grabbed the tail and popped him like a whip, cracking his neck. Snakes take a good deal of killing as a rule, it's a long business, but this one was stone dead, and all at once.

Doc and Gail waited inside out of the drizzle while I went down to search along the river bank. At least the mosquitoes were grounded. I took my shotgun, slung muzzle-down from my shoulder. Soaked or dirty, the old L. C. Smith had never failed me, with its exposed hammers and double triggers. It was simple and sure. The only firing mechanism I knew of with fewer moving parts was that of a mortar, with none. Refugio looked around in the woods behind the camp. I turned up nothing. He found two Lacondón Indians hunkered down in the old steam-bath chamber. They were drinking cans of beer and smoking long cigars they had rolled themselves.

He marched them back to the mess tent and questioned them sharply in their own lingo. Why had they not shown themselves? Did they not hear us calling out? The gunshots? The dog barking?

It was raining. They were waiting out the rain
.

Where was everybody? Where were all the
arqueos?

Gone away for a time. To Palenque or some other town. It was the rain. They couldn't work in the mud
.

Refugio was a little rough with them. I could see they were frightened of him, with that big pistol at his side. It was Cortez grilling the baffled
Indios
again. The thin one, the one called Bol, had some Spanish, and I got it out of him that they were here to keep an eye on things. The bearded Lund had hired them. They were to sleep here and watch things and take what food they pleased from the stores—though Bol wasn't sure about the beer. He thought we might be angry at them for drinking the beer.

“No, it's all right,” I said. “The beer is yours too. Don't worry about it.”

But they knew nothing about any missing gringo. Everybody had gone away to Palenque. That was about all I could get because Refugio kept breaking in with accusations and Doc was roaring around the tent, having a fit.

“Look at all this equipment! I can't believe it! Cases of canned milk and a professional drawing board and electricity to boot! Look at all the logistical support these people have! They even bring their own little secretary along! And for what! When it's all over they'll turn in some piffling report that nobody will read! That nobody
can
read! Well, these are your modern road-bound explorers! They hear the patter of rain on the leaves and what do our brave boys do? I'll tell you what they do! They down tools and head for the nearest motel!”

Bol and his friend thought this tirade was directed at them, and it took me a while to straighten things out. Doc apologized and gave them hearty handshakes. He gave them some money. He had always been a true friend of the Lacondones, he told them, even though he could not accept the claim that their cultural line went unbroken all the way back to the classic Maya. No, he was sorry, but he rather thought they were a hybrid, pariah people, descendants of runaways, drifters, outcasts and renegades, who had come together here in the forest in the not too distant past, to form a kind of tribe, and what was more, he believed he could prove it to their satisfaction. But he didn't think any the worse of them for being pariahs—he was one himself, a real outcast—and had he not always been their true friend, in thought, word and deed? Here was some more money, take it. The whole wad was theirs if they could direct him to the Lost Books. They must understand this was his last
entrada
. He would pay well for books of the
antiguos
or any fragments thereof . . .

There was a lot more of this, and they didn't take in a word of it. I explained to them that the old man was offering a reward to anyone who found the missing young man. He had yellow hair and wore army clothes. He was last seen walking down the river a few days back. Refugio went over it again in their own
idioma
, adding for good measure that the boy was rich and would buy them new motorbikes if they brought him out safely. Then, with some gifts, we sent Bol off to spread the word among his people. The other one stayed behind.

Gail didn't know which way to turn. Her boss was dead and her friend Denise had flown home and now her entire crew was gone. She had fallen in with a pair of pyramid looters, most vicious of all criminals in the anthropology book, and a loud old man who, if she could believe her ears, had just called her a little secretary. We could hardly leave her here and she couldn't drive the brakeless van out alone. Or could she? I knew so little about her. She didn't talk enough for me to get a good reading on her. Later I got a pretty good reading.

Refugio saw a good chance to jump ship. His heart had never been in this job, a lot of gringo nonsense, bound in the end to be abortive and unprofitable.

“So. I will drive the young lady back to my
ranchita,
or Palenque, wherever she likes. That is all we can do, no?”

Gail said, “You don't have to cart me around like some old lady.”

Doc said, “Palenque? What are we discussing here? Weren't we just in Palenque last night?”

Refugio couldn't get the Volkswagen going again. He ground away on the starter, but the little pancake engine wouldn't catch. Gail said that was all right. She would go on with us to Tumbalá. She would like to see the big river. Refugio told her it would be a hard and dirty trip. Doc said anybody who thought he could go to Palenque in a boat was crazy as hell. More delay and confusion. It was like those last frantic days in the coat factory. Scenes such as this had driven me to working alone. It was the old Rudy situation, where I had responsibility without authority. I couldn't tell these people what to do, but if they went wrong, got hurt, I would have to answer for it.

But then I no longer cared and I said I was going off on foot, now, down the Tabí to the Usumacinta. There I would hitch a boat ride to Tumbalá, pick up Rudy Kurle and continue on down the river by way of Yoro to the rail crossing at Tenosique. It was the easiest way out. They could come along or stay here, just as they wished.

Doc began giving orders, left and right. I had to tell him again that this was not a dig, that he was not in charge this time, and that we would go and stop as I directed. He threw up his hands. “Fine, fine. Don't mind me. I don't know anything. Just tell me what to do. I'm not anybody. I'm only the man who found the big eccentric flint at Cobá.”

Sula had packed some food for us, and we took some more out of the camp stores. Refugio found a square packet of delicatessen ham in an ice chest. He held up a piece and flopped it about and laughed at how thin it was sliced. Look, he said, here was this gray and sickly meat, cut to about the thinness of a cat's ear, that you can see light through, and this was what they called a piece of ham in the great land of America! No wonder the gringos couldn't win their wars anymore!

I was glad to have him along, willing or not, and I was glad to have Ramos, too, who quickly sensed the plan and led the way, jogging ahead of us down the river bank. He knew his job, which was to give notice of any trouble down the way, to scatter varmints from our path. We walked in single file and spoke little. The brush was so thick in places that we had to walk out into the water.

We came to the opening in an hour or so, a big sandbar, where the Tabí, running deep brown, flowed into the muddy and lighter stream of the Usumacinta. The water was
café con leche
. We stopped there to rest and eat.

The rain had let up. There was a light breeze. Doc stood at the point of the sandbar with his white pantaloons fluttering. “The mingling of the waters,” he said, looking across the way to the Guatemala side. Nothing was stirring over there. An unbroken line of trees, all even at the top, as though clipped with shears. “A rare day,” he went on. “This is truly the Garden of the kings.
La Huerta de los Reyes
.” He drew his machete and nicked an earlobe to get some blood, then flung it from his fingertips in what he called “the four world directions.” Some more of his cubo-mystico business, I thought. Gail said it was an ancient rite of the lowland Maya. An act of reverence then, in its way, which was fine with me. A blood offering, the only kind of any value, according to the Suarez. Big Dan was strong on blood, too. There had to be blood.

Doc called me out on the sandbar. “A word with you in private, Jimmy, if you don't mind.” I joined him, and he asked me in a confidential way if I had heard him say that this was his last
entrada
.