The Sick Horror at The Lost and Found (9 page)

The two of them became fast friends.
And it occurred to Andrew that perhaps the best way to help our
business was by finding a way to help Don Cune.

Later, over a couple of
beers back at the Lost and Found, Andrew and I decided, screw it!
Screw the dam, screw the government.
Dale
pues
, we defied the law and opened.
Immediately we started to run tours to Cune’s farm, adding a farm
to table lunch, fresh sugar cane juice, coffee and wine with a
bite. Neighbors partnered with us to run horseback tours, jungle
treks, birding and hot springs tours. Defying all expectations, the
Ministry of Environment left as alone. The mayor of the district
noticed what we were doing and supported us, even if it was mainly
because he wanted to tax us. The Ministry of Tourism got on board.
Despite countless hours of headaches, the legal fees and even more
impact studies, we opened and take pride when we extend our middle
finger toward the dam, knowing we employ three times as many locals
as they do. Great rewards come from great challenges.

There is still unfinished work. The
community needs more English to participate more fully with
opportunities our tourists bring. But now I have a To Do list and I
have a place to be. I am part of the community.

A part of me wasn’t sure, after all
this work, that I was really ready to lease it out to Steve.
Meeting him didn’t help. Steve was crass and sexist who made jokes
at the expense of others. I had two days to make up my mind before
my flight back to Canada. Andrew was coming a week later, so I had
a two day window to veto the whole operation.

In a way it was María who helped me
make up my mind. Later in the evening, I was paired with her for
our nightly foosball tournament, and she warmed up to me despite my
dumb elevator joke. I thought we were getting on well, but I think
she just has that way with guys -- she makes you feel like she is
interested in your stories. When she hangs off the loft in the bar,
showing you her tattoos, you think that this is for you and you
alone.

But it wasn’t. I had a feeling she was
with Matt, and I saw him from the corner of my eye almost every
time I gave María a high-five after a goal and every time I gave
her a hug after a win. It wasn’t that he shot me dirty jealous
looks or that he was insecure. It was that I saw him in me,
following this girl.

Later that same night, Greg from the
Bambu hostel brought out his guitar and we sat around the campfire
as he played. I sat next to Matt. It turned out we had a lot in
common. He was an ESL teacher like I had been. He admitted that
Steve wanted him to quit his job in Panama City, but it was really
because of María that he was considering quitting and helping to
manage The Lost and Found.

I saw him at the same
crossroads where I found myself many years before at the airport in
Istanbul, wondering if following the girl was the right thing to
do. Wondering which path might lead to regret. I saw him wanting
community and wanting family. Matt and I walked back to the main
area to grab some beers for our friends by the fire. I took the
moment to tell him the truth. “Steve is a funny guy,” I said. “But
I don’t know if I want to leave my hostel with him. I need to know
if you are in too.” Matt paused and looked back toward the fire.
“Fuck it,” he said. “I’m in.”
Dale
pues
.

When we went down to the beer fridge,
I opened the dresser next to the window. “María looks cold,” I
said. I tossed it to him – the red jacket.

I shook everyone’s hands goodbye the
next day. I saw the reflection in Matt’s eyes, and I saw me. I saw
María, mesmerizingly beautiful; wearing the jacket that I knew
would never make it to Turkey. I never knew what happened to the
red rain jacket.

I am just a player on the sidelines.
The narrator of the story. Very little is actually written about me
in their blogs, diaries and letters home. But had I decided not to
lease out The Lost and Found, so many lives would not have forever
changed. I would still have the red jacket but I would not have
this book.

Rocky is Fine

By Steve Banks

Dear Patrick,

Thank you for giving me the
opportunity to manage The Lost and Found. I promise to keep it in
great shape.

Guess I missed your call the other
day. Try not to call during happy hour in the bar.

I decided to plant a garden so we
could have more organic, raw, fresh alternatives for the guests.
Also thinking of building a zip line if we can save up the
cash.

Luz came back from vacation and
introduced herself.

Did you ever notice that there are
more male backpackers than female? We are thinking of ways to even
out the ratio, like having ladies night in the bar or something.
But not Monday… that is reserved in your honor for trivia night, a
huge hit.

Gabriel is carrying rocks up the
hill.

Your buddy,

Steve

P.S. Rocky is fine.

Ladies’ Night

By Steve Banks

Hey Andrew,

Things are great here at The Lost and
Found. You really made a nice place. Maria and Estrella are
painting. They are working with a kind of Egyptian theme, symbol of
Isis, story of Osiris, that kind of thing. Maria wants to build a
labyrinth and is talking about adding more fun things to do like a
treasure hunt.

Bought a Panama Hat… looks
cool.

Told Patrick that Monday was trivia
night in his honor. Do you think he bought it? Actually every
Monday the girls drink free if they flash their tits.

P.S. Would you fuck Jessica Alba but
only if I fucked her first?

Response:

Hey Steve,

Good to hear about the improvements to
The Lost and Found. Keep up the good work. What is the treasure
hunt about? Is Matt helping out Maria? Are they hooking
up?

Andrew

Imagine

By Dr. Mike
Anderson

Imagine: You are alone in the jungle.
Suddenly you are surprised by a coiled pit viper. There are two
more behind you. What do you do?

To help Ooznahvi answer this question,
I decided to take her with me for an afternoon stroll. We set out
down Arco Iris, a scenic, looping road in the hills outside of
Boquete where I rent a luxurious house that literally looks like a
castle. It was a beautiful December day late in coffee season, but
we could still see the Indians in traditional dress hauling bags of
freshly picked coffee berries. The brugmansia, the white
trumpet-shaped flowers that hang their heads along the side of the
road, were still in bloom. We continued our walk, turning onto Bajo
Mono, another country road that traces the tumbling headwaters of
the Caldera River, passing cascading waterfalls and charming
bridges until it finally reaches the trailhead for the famous
Quetzal Trail. We were on our way to confront fear at the Skeleton
Temple.

Some of our fears are primordial --
they are part of our hard wiring, our collective unconscious. In
many ways they unite us and help us survive. But some of our fears
we learn as individuals, and they become obstacles to the
achievement of our personal goals. The single most important step
to overcoming these fears is to simply identify them and discover
where we learned them. The dark halls and vacant rooms of the
Skeleton Temple are like the caverns of our unconscious. They wait
for us to shine a light and see that there is nothing to be afraid
of. The temple was the perfect place for Ooznahvi’s first shamanic
journey to the underworld.

The Skeleton Temple, as I call it, is
an ominous, unfinished mansion guarded by barb wire and imposing
eucalyptus trees. It looks like an ashen palace, noble, yet
completely unloved. The local legend says that a wealthy Arab built
it for his fiancé, who later killed herself after he was gone on
work for an unusually long while. They say she plunged herself in
the rapids of the river that runs along the edge of the property.
After learning of her death, the wealthy owner didn’t have the
heart either to finish the construction or to sell it.

I threw my jacket onto the barbed wire
to help Ooznahvi over. She protested – this was illegal, she said,
there could be dangerous homeless people inside. This, of course,
was all possible, but this was merely her fear of the unknown
searching for a rationale in logic. As we approached the house, she
convinced herself that no one else was nearby and began laughing
nervously. I helped her through a ground floor window and we waited
inside for the sun to set behind the volcano.

When it was dark, Ooznahvi laid flat
on the floor, and I put my jacket over her to keep away the chill.
I arranged several candles around her. When I lit them, they cast
dancing, fleeting shadows against the wall. I lit a stick of
sandalwood incense and began tapping on a shamanic drum given to me
by a Haida Indian Chief in British Columbia.

To call this initiation ritual a form
of guided psychoanalysis would not be incorrect. But this
definition implies nothing more than projected imagination on
behalf of the initiate, when often there is quite a profound
discovery – a bridging of the conscious and unconscious that can be
quite traumatic.

We synchronized our breathing and I
brought Ooznahvi to a deep level of meditative relaxation. There we
journeyed through a forest to a cave, the metaphorical entrance to
the underworld – the unconscious. I suggested steps inside the cave
and she saw a massive spiral staircase – atypical for a girl her
age.

Inside the Skeleton Temple, water
dripped down from a hole in the roof, forming a puddle in the
adjacent room. Guided by the steady metronome of the dripping
water, we slowly made our way down the staircase, each step
groaning beneath our weight. I told her to stop when she found a
door. After fifteen steps down, she paused before her bedroom door
in the apartment she shared with her mother and younger brother.
When she opened the door, the candles in the Skeleton Temple
flickered and the shadows on the wall jumped.

Now to all of my readers with a
healthy sense of scientific skepticism: I didn’t lead her on or
suggest that each step represented a year of her life. Ooznahvi is
twenty three years old, and she climbed down fifteen steps. In our
journey we traveled to a time when she was eight years old, exactly
fifteen years ago. We know this because we went to the apartment
where she lived when she was eight, and there on the bed in her
room was a third grade mathematics textbook. This is the power of
the unconscious.

In addition to the school books on the
bed, there were scattered pieces of a puzzle. At first they
confused her. But then she realized this was Christmas Day, and the
puzzle was a gift she had bought for her younger brother. She
wandered out of her room. In the Skeleton Temple we lost our
synchronized breathing. Something was urgent. She was looking for
something.

While each step represents a year in a
life, the door represents that year when a fear was learned. It is
an opportunity to go back and identify the cause and change one
thing, anything, so that you can confront the event without
fear.

She found her mother sitting on a
chair, smiling. She had a small wrapped package, evidently a CD.
Ooznahvi was excited. She was expecting this. She asked for it. She
told her mom that she wanted the Backstreet Boys latest album and
she knew her mother had told her father in the States to get it for
her. She reached out to take the present and tear off the wrapping
paper. Her mother clapped her hands together in
anticipation.

In The Skeleton Temple, Ooznahvi held
her breath. A tear rolled down the corner of her eye. She knew what
came next. Not The Backstreet Boys, but a decades old David
Hasselhof CD obviously straight from the bargain bin at
Wal-Mart.

“
This is your moment to
change,” I told Ooznahvi. “Anything.” She could have changed the CD
or stopped herself from crying. But the change she chose was
entirely different than what I expected. She chose to cry in front
of her mother instead of burying her tears in the pillows of her
room. It was not the fear of abandonment that afflicted her. It was
the fear of not being able to be brave enough for herself and her
mother – the fear of not having the courage to be alone.

She cried, both in the temple and in
her Panama City apartment. When she calmed, we synchronized our
breathing once more, and together we climbed the creaking wooden
stairs to the waking world. When she was back in the Skeleton
Temple, she was surprised that the candles had not completely
burned down. We had been down in the cave for not more than ten
minutes.

Ooznahvi then told me that she
understood.

Imagine: You are alone in the jungle.
Suddenly you are surprised by a coiled pit viper. There are two
more behind you. What do you do?

You stop… and change what you are
imagining. After all, the snakes are only in your
imagination.

What’s the Vet
Number?

By Steve Banks

Hey Dude,

How is Andrew? Still on the geriatric
revival tour with the Backstreet Boys?