Deity (32 page)

“You
don’t know anything about my situation,” he tried to counter.

“No,
but Lori did.”

There
was no arguing that point. He hadn’t really considered before just how close
he’d grown to Lori. He never allowed himself. But now, the thought was
consuming. Over the years his student had come to know him just as well as, if
not better than, some of his closest colleagues. As much as Peet tried to close
himself up, Lori had a way of cracking the cover.

But
with Lori, it had become a two way street. Truth be known, he dared to admit
that he’d come to know her as well as anyone he knew.
Hours
in the lab, days in the field, years in the classroom.
None of it was
unique beyond the time he spent with any other student, but somehow Lori affected
him differently. With Lori, he took note of details, like the Kokopelli
pendant. He knew she always wore it. He knew she liked to start her day with a
shot of hazelnut in her coffee. He knew how well she filled Cathy’s summer
blouse.

He
knew of the scar in her side, just below the rib line.

It
was their involvement with the Effigy that had catapulted their relationship to
a whole new level. More time in the field. More time in the lab. More time in Mexico.
It was the realization of this closeness that had finally scared him away from
his student. That explanation sounded weak and inexcusable. Perhaps that was
why he just couldn’t give it to Lori. It seemed cowardly now. But now, it
really didn’t matter.

KC’s
buttocks slid off Matt’s pack as she slipped in close to him, pulling herself
between his knees. Her fingers slipped through his hair,
tingling
his scalp with her touch.

“It’s
okay to mourn, Anthony,” she said, soothingly.

Peet
closed his eyes, defeated. He was defenseless against women who could feed his
heart right back to him. He had nothing to combat their discerning stratagems. There,
hunched in the darkness of his soul, he felt like a little boy again, waiting
for his mother to make things right. She was there, stroking his hair and cooing
relief into his tattered nerves.

And
then her lips gingerly brushed his.

Peet
snapped back to KC. She was leaning into him, her lips searching his, her
watery breath filling his nostrils.

He
pulled away with a discouraging sigh but KC wasn’t so easily thwarted. The
flesh of her palm slipped from his hairline down to the coarse stubble on his
face, allowing her fingers access to his ears. She pulled his face toward her.

“Stop
fighting,” she whispered enticingly into his ear. “Don’t fight what you feel inside.”

Peet
buried his nose into her shoulder and gazed out at the human shadows gathered
around the bonfire.
KC’s cool, bare arms wrapped around his
neck, holding him into her.

He
closed his eyes again and allowed his arms to rest around her waist. The sinewy
muscles of her body softened and he pulled her tight against his chest. A
heaviness fell over him as he sat there, feeling the pain anchor deep into the
darkness of his chest, deep where Lori squeezed at his heart.

Part IV

Friday, December 21, 2012

Katun

“And here is the
shooting of Seven
Macaw
by the two boys. We shall
explain the defeat of each one of those who engaged in self-magnification.”

-Popol Vuh

One Hunahpu

John
slept fitfully. Actually, he hadn’t slept at all. The pain and swelling in his
ankle worried him that something was fractured and if that wasn’t uncomfortable
enough, his mat continuously lost air beneath his sleeping bag and his old
bones weren’t accustomed to lying on the hard floor of a tent anymore. To make
matters worse, a humid drizzle coated the early morning hours until just before
dawn when John pulled his stiff and aching body out of his dripping tent and
settled himself against a tree to watch the morning scurry of the villagers.

As
restless as John had been, the village had been just as agitated. He wondered
if anybody got any rest. People were moving around all night and scurrying
along well before dawn. The closer to sunrise the more hastily they moved, as
if preparing for something. And then John suddenly remembered.

This
is the day!

Movement
from Peet’s tent distracted him from the dark shadows floating back and forth
throughout the village. After a moment a shadow crawled out—a small shadow.
Too small to be Peet.

“KC?”

“Morning,”
she said and yawned. Apparently she hadn’t caught a wink of sleep either. “What
the hell’s going on?” she asked wearily.

“It’s
December twenty-first,” John announced, satisfied with the distraction from the
affairs of his son-in-law’s tent.

KC
appeared disinterested as she turned back toward the tent. “Wake me when it’s
Christmas,” she said.

“To
the ancient Maya, this is Christmas—a long awaited Christmas. This village must
be maintaining the ancient tradition.”

John
became excited. This was the dawn history had been waiting for. These villagers
weren’t going to miss it. Neither was he. With the help of an aluminum cane
given to him by a woman who’d lost her father several months ago, John pulled
himself up and reached for KC’s support.

“Come,
young lady,” he beckoned, pulling her away from the tent.
Don’t go back to that tent. Don’t go back to him.

With
a heavy sigh, KC ducked beneath John’s arm, holding his weight off his bad
foot. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the crowning of a king!”
John said excitedly as
they followed the stream of people out of the village.

“Is
that all,” KC groaned.

“You
don’t understand,” John insisted. “When the arrogant Olmec god, Seven Macaw,
fell from his perch on the North Star and was proven to be a false deity, the
people of Izapa discovered a new center of creation.”

“
Yeah,
and where’s that?” KC asked, struggling to wade
through the dark vegetation tugging at their feet.

Luckily,
they didn’t have to go far. Just beyond the trees skirting the meager village,
they came upon a reverent crowd of cotton and blue jean men gathered at an
abrupt ledge overlooking a deep ravine. The gap opened the jungle just enough
to allow view of the southeastern sky where the long span of the Milky Way
brightened the horizon. The men were silently watching, waiting, and after
pausing a moment, John saw it too—the pregnant bulge within the belt of stars,
a cross section of the galaxy.

“The
dark rift of the Milky Way,” he said.
“The great womb of creation.”

As
they watched the glowing prelude to sunrise began to outline the horizon,
slowly diminishing the Milky Way’s luster.

“Keep
your eye on the rift,” John instructed. “Don’t lose sight of it.”

“Easier
said than done,” KC grumbled.

John
admitted keeping an eye on that one point in the sky was getting difficult as the
sun’s glow began to drown the stars. Then, just when he thought the last trace
of the dark rift had been blotted out, the sun began to crown over the jungle
right where the womb of creation had set.

“One
Hunahpu is reborn!” He gasped.

“And
the Long Count Calendar is dead,” came a man’s voice. It was Matt. John turned
to find both he and Peet, already geared up to travel but content to stand at
the fringe of the gathered villagers to watch the mesmerizing display of
precession.

So Peet wasn’t in his
tent after all?

At
the moment it didn’t matter. He’d just witnessed the event all of Mesoamerica had been anticipating for thousands of years.
Civilizations had been centered
around
this singular
sunrise. Izapa had been the fulcrum between cosmologies, where old Olmec
beliefs collapsed and gave rise to new Mayan mythology. The Long Count wasn’t
dead. Not by a long shot.

“Don’t
you see?” John asked as he hobbled over to Matt. “Calendars are meant to be
cyclical. This isn’t the end of anything. This is the beginning of a new great
cycle, a renewal of the Long Count!”

“Like
New Year’s Day,” Peet said contemplatively, “on a new five thousand year
calendar.”

John
couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. “That’s right!”

“Pardon
me,” KC interrupted grimly. “But why are you the only one celebrating?”

John
hesitated only to realize the woman was right. There wasn’t the rejoicing John
had come to expect. In fact, as the sun drew higher upon the horizon the mood
of the village men had grown more somber. There was hardly a muttering amongst
them to acknowledge the return of their long lost god.

“I
don’t understand,” John said. “The Twin Boys’ decapitated father is alive once
again and has reclaimed his throne. This should be a day to celebrate.”

“That
doesn’t look like much of a celebration to me,” Peet said, pointing back toward
the village.

John
turned around. The village was eerily quiet and empty. Even the howler monkeys
seemed to revere the mystical morning by refraining from their usual morning
racket. Trapped beneath the canopy floated a haze of bonfire smoke around the
central prayer pole. There, the village women were huddled in their best red
and white huipils. Loops of tiny red and white beads dangled from their bowed
necks. The vibrant ribbons that had been braided through their hair now hid
beneath supplicant shawls as they crouched prayerfully, repentantly on their
knees at the base of the great tree.

“I’ve
never seen such a submissive display,” John admitted. “It’s almost as though…”

He
didn’t have the words to finish.

Matt
did.

“It’s
as if they fear what the day will bring.”

Vol De Feu

A
stiff nudge jolted Lori awake. Her eyes sprung open to a resurgence of hatred
welling up inside her. It didn’t help that her head was once again pounding and
Rafi stood over her, smiling.

“Time
to go,” he said, pulling her to her feet with one hand, gripping an assault
rifle with the other. Without further warning, he dragged her across Laffy’s
trailer, ramming her hip into a countertop. Books and equipment fell to the
floor in her wake as she was flung out the door into the dim glow of dawn.

She
landed hard and rolled across the ground. When she finally skidded to a stop
she became keenly aware of how quiet the morning was.
And how
empty.
The cluster of vehicles that had surrounded the trailer the night
before were all gone. Abe and his men were nowhere in sight.

“Back
on your feet, you clumsy bitch,” Rafi demanded as he dragged her, flailing and
stumbling to keep up, around to the back of the trailer where Laffy’s Vol De
Feu waited, idling with a choppy rotor. There awaited
Tarah,
now armed with a rifle of her own and sporting two pistols, one strapped to
each muscular thigh.

“Welcome
aboard, Lori,” she sneered.

Lori
couldn’t believe Tarah’s transition into yet another personality. She changed
character the way one would don a new outfit each day. Like a chameleon, her
colors had shifted from servitude to audacious poise to military arrogance in
the short time Lori had known her. Interestingly, this appeared to be the skin
Tarah was most comfortable in—a no holds barred rigidly commanding bitch.

Lori
spat at her feet. Tarah merely laughed as she tied a gag in place, tight enough
to nearly choke off Lori’s air. “You should be more appreciative,” she said. “If
it weren’t for me, Abe would have shot you last night.”

She
laughed again and, together with Rafi, threw Lori into the helicopter.

Lori
landed hard and in a heap into the cramped space behind the pilot and the back
seat. Laffy was already at the controls. He spun around to the sound of the
commotion behind him. Lori met his gaze and offered an apologetic grimace. Whether
Laffy understood the gesture or not, Lori couldn’t say, but he did seem to
offer his own silent response that reminded her that he was in no better
straights than she.

Rafi
and Tarah both leaped into the chopper and with a single command, Laffy lifted
them into the air. Within minutes they were thrumming over the jungle toward
Tacana, towering boldly against the skyline. While Rafi waited uncomfortably
close to Lori, Tarah and Laffy began searching the early morning shadows as
they drained off the volcano’s southern slope.