Deity (31 page)

“This
should have been converted out of them long ago,” Father Ruiz muttered beneath
his breath.

The
day had not gone at all to Father Ruiz’s liking. From the moment they were shot
down by the Zapatistas, he observed that Dr. Peet seemed to have lost sight of
the purpose of their mission. The missing reliquary cross seemed far removed
from the professor’s mind, due primarily by the distractions presented by the
very man they were looking for – Matt Webb.

Ever
since Matt came into the picture, the focus had turned to some lost calendar—apparently
the very first Mayan calendar ever recorded. Father Ruiz could care less, but
he couldn’t expect that from an archaeologist. Now, with three archaeologists
anticipating this bogus treasure and an agnostic woman opposed to anything
related to the church, Father Ruiz was outnumbered. He was on his own.

But
that didn’t mean he’d given up.

They’d
found their museum thief. In fact, Matt readily admitted to stealing the pillar
ball. That meant he took the Effigy of Quetzalcoatl on his way out – a detail
strangely overlooked by Peet. Father Ruiz hadn’t forgotten it. If Matt took the
Effigy, he must have been the one to have exchanged it for the reliquary cross.
He’d yet to see any sign of the Talking Cross in Matt’s possession, so Father
Ruiz chose to wait and see where this trail might lead.

He
had no idea how quickly his patience would be rewarded.

“Quiché
Maya,” Matt said as they drew close enough to feel the bonfire’s heat.

Father Ruiz wasn’t a linguist like Matt, but given the
traditional colors and patterns of the women’s clothing, he suspected the
remote clan had been displaced from Guatemala, forced to live a
squatter’s existence in the deepest jungle. Whatever the case may be, he
silently admonished their tree worship.

He
followed Matt right to the center of the ceremony where the villagers finally
took note of their presence. Silently, one by one, the Maya recognized them for
the strangers they were and their ceremony was shortly abandoned. For a moment,
they only stared.

Matt
slung his pack to the ground and reached into the main compartment. “Just so
they don’t get the wrong idea, we better show them that we come peacefully.” An
ironic statement considering the rifle still slung over his shoulder. Nonetheless,
Matt dug into his pack and withdrew a peculiar wooden cross.

Father
Ruiz held his breath.

The
Talking Cross!

It
was all Father Ruiz could do to keep himself from abandoning John for the
opportunity to snatch the cross away. Every nerve inside him pulsed with
electricity. Matt Webb did in fact steal the cross! And now he was about to
hand it back to the Maya!

The
villagers brightened upon seeing the cross. Father Ruiz was ready to pounce. He
couldn’t let the Talking Cross fall into Maya hands. The Zapatistas would
surely catch wind of this and they’d come for it. They might even kill for it. They
were tiptoeing around the edge of another revolution.

The
people closed in around them, led by two men who approached with friendly,
inquisitive smiles.

“Great,” KC groaned, apparently unaware of the
danger.
“I suppose they’re going to beg for money now.”

“They’re
not interested in your money,” John rebuked as he lowered himself to rest on the
ground. “Do you see a Walmart around here where they could spend it? We come
from the outside. It’s our experience they’re after.”

Fortunately,
there wasn’t a fanatical rush like Father Ruiz expected. The villagers’ eyes
shined with familiarity, certainly, but there wasn’t the hunger for
militaristic power as they beheld the cross. There was a reverence to their
countenance that at least set Father Ruiz’s mind at ease. These were farmers
and family men who weren’t out to start a revolution. Perhaps they knew nothing
of the cross’ history any more that Matt did as he stood there ignorantly
holding it out for all to see.

Could
it be that even Matt didn’t realize just what exactly it was that he was
holding? Had he simply mistaken the Talking Cross for nothing more than a
Catholic crucifix, a symbol universally accepted throughout the country?

Father
Ruiz was no anthropologist, but even he knew the natives placed great
importance upon cross symbols long before the first Spanish explorers stepped
foot into the New World. The natives’ cross
didn’t arise from a savior’s death. Instead, the Mayans recognized a heavenly
cross created whenever the sun’s path intersected the Milky Way – the Great
Cross, also known to them as the Tree of Life; two familiar concepts that the
church once manipulated in order to conquer and convert.

It
was the symbol of this Tree of Life that Father Ruiz realized the Quiché
village thought Matt was holding in his hands.

“Perhaps
they’d like to hear the Gospel, Father Ruiz?” Matt said, invitingly.

Father
Ruiz shook his head with a relieved grin. This Mormon boy truly had no
comprehension of a cross’s significance here. However, he certainly recognized
an opportunity to spread the word of the saints. But just to be on the safe
side, Father Ruiz took hold of the ribbed shaft of the Talking Cross. Matt
readily released it and Father Ruiz clutched it tightly to his chest.

Safe
at last! Cardinal Balbás would be pleased.

“Father?”
Matt said, waiting expectantly.

Father
Ruiz cleared his throat.
“Of course.”
After all, he
still had to get the Talking Cross back to the cathedral. He turned toward the
crowd looking eager to hear what he had to say. How this small group managed to
escape the true religion was beyond him, but surely they weren’t too rural to
have learned Spanish as their secondary language. After all, their clothes were
all modern textiles.

Still
clutching the Talking Cross tightly to his chest, Father Ruiz started for the
bonfire. “Let us begin with the Virgin,” he said.

Center
Of Darkness

KC
wasn’t made for primitive life. She was a high-flier, a woman born of steel and
mechanization, of screaming jet engines opened full throttle. Yet, behind all
the metal and mechanics that made her tick there was still a woman inside that
could be touched by a rare, armor-penetrating moment.

Such
a moment was threatening to come on.

The
Maya eagerly hosted them beneath the great tree which had been de-limbed clear
up to the dark, choking canopy hungrily consuming any open view of the night. In
fact, the tree appeared to be nothing more than a large pole, a praying pole
with offerings of ribbons and trinkets that littered the hanging bark.

There,
between the pole and the glow of the communal bonfire, she and the others were
showered with food and ritual that only an anthropologist would find
fascinating. John was one such person who’d settled right in with all the attention
he was receiving, particularly from a cluster of women who attended to his
injured ankle while children vied for position to listen to Father Ruiz preach,
aided
tremendously by Matt Webb and two Spanish
speakers among the crowd.

Tuning
out the priest’s sermon wasn’t difficult, even if KC did understand Spanish or
Quiché. Uncivilized cultures may be what made anthropologists and missionaries
tick, but she wasn’t an anthropologist, and she sure as hell wasn’t on a
mission for God. Unfortunately, that left KC sitting politely amongst a mob of
strangers who had much more interest in her than she did of them.

But
she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t paying attention.

Across
the communal fire, not three feet away from the silently enthusiastic John sat
Peet, surprisingly glum and unresponsive to the curious villagers. In fact he
didn’t even seem to notice that his position was getting swallowed up by an encroaching
crowd of children. Peet was detached, his guard down and his eyes an open
window to his thoughts as they stared distantly into the flames. Even a nudge
from the jittery children couldn’t rattle him from his inner distraction. KC
felt his display of vulnerability strumming her feminine fiber.

Finally,
as two young boys elbowed their way to the front of the crowd, they managed to
shake Peet from his consumption. He shifted his outstretched legs to give them
room, and then, he simply slipped away from the crowd, his departure noticed by
nobody.

Nobody but KC.

After
a moment, she too stole away from the fire and quietly stalked Peet to a
muddled woodpile around which the villagers had allowed them to pitch their
one-man tents. Peet crouched into his tent and KC patiently waited. Neither a
light came on, nor did Peet come back out, and she debated whether or not she
should join him.

Her
mind struggled over her last conversation with Father Ruiz. His instruction had
been to simply sit with a mourner while her own reasoning told her to leave
Peet alone. And yet, something deep inside yearned to be alone with him,
secluded within the confines of his tent.

But
what would Peet do? Would he toss her out, or would his own exposed yearning receptively
comply
to
a similar languish boarded up inside her?

He
would understand, she decided. Peet needed somebody. He needed her.

She’d
convinced herself to make her move when suddenly the tent flap opened and Peet
slipped back out. KC pouted, having missed her opportunity, but to her
surprise, Peet didn’t leave. Instead, he pulled a chunk of wood from the
woodpile and seated himself on it just outside his tent. There, he seemed
content to resume the thoughts that had been plaguing his mind as he rested his
elbows upon his knees and toyed with a cord strung between his hands. Something
dangled from the string and softly glinted in the distant firelight.

Now
was the time.

KC
tenderly approached. Before he even realized she was there she could tell he
wanted to be alone but she couldn’t bring herself to leave. Her own armor was
pierced and she was too far drawn to him.

* * * *

Peet was caught like a man spotted with his pants down and
he felt suddenly awkward as he clumsily regained himself. His hands fumbled the
necklace they’d been holding, failing to coil the chain away and instead
dropping it to the ground between his feet. He reached down, hoping to retrieve
it before KC saw it, but she moved fast and snatched the silver Kokopelli pendant
from his groping fingers.

“Men
don’t wear chains this light,” she observed.

Peet
hated the way she said that. He hated the awkward way she stood over him. To
her credit, she must have sensed his discomfort and chose Matt’s unpacked bag
for a seat which she pulled up right in front of Peet. Too close for his
liking.

There
was something different about KC, something softer. Her movements had lost
their edge and when her eyes shifted back from the necklace, they revealed
something he didn’t expect—a deeply genuine concern.

“This
is Lori’s, isn’t it.”

It
wasn’t a question so Peet didn’t feel compelled to answer.

“You
loved her, didn’t
you.
”

Peet
shifted uneasily to KC’s silky voice. A part of him wished she’d return to the
calloused, rough-and-tumble pilot he’d hired two days ago. He didn’t need a
confidant to wring out the overflow of his personal life.

“I
don’t want to talk about it.”

“Nevertheless,
it’s still there,” she pressed, her slender fingers still toying with the
pendant. “Look at all that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours. You’ve
nearly drowned in a collapsing cenote, you almost cooked in a plane crash, and
you were that close to taking a Zapatista’s bullet for that Bible thumper, and
yet none of that has shaken the hurt from your eyes.”

Peet
finally snatched the necklace back from KC and stuffed it into his pocket. “Maybe
I don’t handle death very well,” he reasoned.

“And
yet, in your line of work you dig it up all the time. But this is very
different.”

“I’m
not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes,
you do. You’re not the same man that boarded my plane in Salt Lake City, Dr. Peet. I saw the way you
lit up when Lori found us. Suddenly, looking for John and Matt wasn’t so much a
chore as an adventure. But ever since you returned from that cenote you’ve been
living out a personal hell. I see it in your eyes.”

Peet groaned inwardly. He hated being evaluated, much
less finding himself under the lens of someone he’d met only days ago. Then
again, maybe it wasn’t the evaluation but KC’s intuition that left him wishing
for a hole to crawl into. Women were like that. They had a way of reading him
like a book. His late wife had been a proficient mind reader. Lori had been
pretty good herself. Now it was KC, and her intuition seemed to be hitting its
mark, whether Peet cared to admit to it or not.