The Ruins (14 page)

 Jeff
thought of the clothes first, of emptying the backpacks the
archaeologists had left behind and knotting things
together—pants and shirts and jackets—into a
makeshift rope. It wasn't a good idea, he knew, but for the
first few minutes it was all he could come up with. He needed twenty
feet, probably more to be safe, maybe even thirty, and that would be a
lot of clothes, wouldn't it? He doubted if they'd
be strong enough to support a person's weight, or if the
knots would even hold.

 Thirty
feet.

 Jeff
and Mathias stood beside the windlass, both of them straining to think,
neither of them speaking, because there was nothing to say yet, no
solution to share. Amy and Stacy were on their knees beside the hole,
peering into it. Every now and then, Stacy would call Eric's
name, and sometimes he'd shout something back, but it was
impossible to understand him: Pablo was still screaming.

 "One
of the tents," Jeff said finally. "We can take it
down, cut the nylon into strips."

 Mathias
turned, examined the blue tent, considering the idea. "Will
it be strong enough?" he asked.

 "We
can braid the strips—three strips for each
section—then knot the sections together." Jeff felt
a flush of pleasure, saying this, a sense of success amid so much
failure. They were trapped here on this hill, with little water or
food, two of them out of reach down a mine shaft, at least one of them
injured, but for a moment, none of it seemed to matter. They had a
plan, and the plan made sense, and this gave Jeff a brief burst of
energy and optimism, setting them all into motion. Mathias and he
started emptying the blue tent, dragging the sleeping bags out into the
little clearing, then the backpacks, the notebooks and radio, the
camera and first-aid kit, the Frisbee and the empty canteen, tossing
everything into a pile. Then they began to take down the tent, yanking
up its stakes, dismantling its thin aluminum poles. Mathias did the
cutting. There was a brief debate about the desired width and they
settled on four inches, the knife slicing easily through the nylon,
Mathias working with strong, quick gestures, cutting ten-foot strips
for Jeff to braid. Jeff was halfway through the first section, taking
his time with it, keeping a tight weave, when Pablo finally stopped
screaming.

 "Eric?"
Stacy called.

 Eric's
voice came echoing back up to them. "I'm
here," he shouted.

 "Did
you fall?"

 "I
jumped."

 "Are
you okay?"

 "I
cut my knee."

 "Bad?"

 "My
shoe's full of blood."

 Jeff
laid down the nylon strips, stepped to the mouth of the shaft. "Put pressure on it," he yelled into the hole.

 "What?"

 "Take
off your shirt. Wad it up, press it against the cut. Hard."

 "It's
too cold."

 "Cold?"
Jeff asked. He thought he'd misheard. His entire body was
slick with sweat.

 "There's
another shaft," Eric called. "Off to the side.
There's cold air coming from it."

 "Wait,"
Jeff shouted. He went over to the pile from the blue tent, dug through
it, found the first-aid kit, opened it. There wasn't much of
use inside. Jeff couldn't say what he'd been hoping
to find, but whatever it might've been, it certainly
wasn't here. There was a box of Band-Aids, which were
probably too small for Eric's wound. There was a tube of
Neosporin that they could put on when they hauled him back up. There
were bottles of aspirin and Pepto-Bismol, and some salt tablets, a
thermometer, and a tiny pair of scissors.

 Jeff
carried the bottle of aspirin back to the shaft, stripped off his
shirt. "What happened to the lamp?" he shouted.

 "It
went out."

 "I'm
going to drop my shirt down. I'm knotting a bottle of aspirin
inside it. And the box of matches, too. All right?"

 "Okay."

 "Use
the shirt to put pressure on your cut. Give three of the aspirin to
Pablo and take three yourself."

 "Okay,"
Eric said again.

 Jeff
knotted the aspirin and the matches into the shirt, then leaned out
over the hole. "Ready?" he called.

 "Ready."

 He
dropped the shirt, watched it vanish into the darkness. It took a long
time to land. Then there was a soft, echoing thump.

 "Got
it," Eric called.

 Mathias
was done cutting strips, and he'd taken up the braiding Jeff
had abandoned. Jeff turned to Amy and Stacy, who were both still
peering into the shaft. "Help him," he said,
nodding toward Mathias, and they walked over to the dismantled tent,
crouched beside the German. Mathias showed them how to braid, and they
started on their own sections.

 Down
in the shaft, a faint glow appeared, gaining strength: Eric had managed
to light the lamp. Jeff could see him now, crouched over Pablo, the two
of them looking very tiny.

 "Is
he okay?" Jeff called.

 There
was a pause before Eric answered, and Jeff could see him examining the
Greek, holding out the oil lamp, bent low over his body. Then he lifted
his head, shouted up toward him. "I think he broke his
back."

 Jeff
turned from the shaft, glanced at the others. They'd stopped
working and were staring back at him. Stacy had her hand over her
mouth; she seemed as if she were about to start crying again. Amy got
to her feet and came toward him. They both peered down into the hole.

 "He's
moving his arms," Eric called to them, "but not his
legs."

 Jeff
and Amy looked at each other. "Check his feet," Amy
whispered.

 "I
think he might've, you know…" Eric
paused, seemed to search for the right words. Finally: "It
smells like he shit himself."

 "His
feet," Amy whispered again, nudging Jeff. For some reason,
she wouldn't shout it herself.

 "Eric?"
Jeff yelled.

 "What?"

 "Take
off one of his shoes."

 "His
shoes?"

 "Take
it off—his sock, too. Then scrape the bottom of his foot with
your thumbnail. Do it hard. See if there's a
reaction."

 Amy
and Jeff leaned over the shaft, watching Eric crouch beside
Pablo's feet, pull off his tennis shoe, his sock. Stacy came
over to watch, too. Mathias had resumed his braiding.

 Eric
lifted his head toward them. "Nothing," he called.

 "Oh
God," Amy whispered. "Oh Jesus."

 "We
need to make a backboard," Jeff said to her. "How
can we make a backboard?"

 Amy
shook her head. "No, Jeff. No way. We can't move
him."

 "We
have to—we can't just leave him down
there."

 "We'll
only make it worse. We'll jostle him and
he'll—"

 "We'll
use the tent poles," Jeff said. "We'll
strap him to them, and then—"

 "
Jeff
."

 He
stopped, stared at her. He was thinking about the tent poles, trying to
imagine them as a backboard. He didn't know if it would work,
but he couldn't think of anything else for them to use. Then
he remembered the backpacks, their metal frames.

 "We
have to get him to a hospital," Amy said.

 Jeff
didn't respond to this, just kept watching her, taking the
backpacks apart in his mind, using the tent poles for added support.
How did she imagine them getting him to a hospital?

 "This
is bad," Amy said. "This is so, so bad."
She'd started to cry but was struggling not to, wiping the
tears away with the heel of her hand, shaking her head. "If
we move him…" she began, but didn't
finish.

 "We
can't leave him down there, Amy," he said. "You know that, don't you? It's not
possible."

 She
considered this for a long moment, then nodded.

 Jeff
leaned over the hole, shouted, "Eric?"

 "What?"

 "We
have to make a backboard before we can bring him up."

 "Okay."

 "We'll
do it as fast as we can, but it might take a little while. Just keep
talking to him."

 "There's
not much oil left in the lamp. Only a little."

 "Then
blow it out."

 "Blow
it out?" Eric sounded frightened by this idea.

 "We'll
need it later. When we come down. We'll need it to get him on
the backboard."

 Eric
didn't respond.

 "All
right?" Jeff called.

 Perhaps
Eric nodded; it was hard to tell. They watched him bend over the lamp,
and then—abruptly—they couldn't see him
anymore. Once again, the bottom of the shaft was hidden in darkness.

S
tacy and Amy resumed the
braiding of the nylon strips while Jeff and Mathias struggled to make a
backboard. The boys were muttering together, arguing over the
possibilities. They had the tent poles, a backpack frame, and a roll of
duct tape Mathias had found among the archaeologists'
supplies, and they kept putting things together, then taking them apart
again. Stacy and Amy worked in silence. There ought to have been
something soothing in the task—so simple, so mindless, their
hands moving right to left to right to left—but the longer
Stacy kept at it, the worse she began to feel. Her stomach was sour
from the tequila she'd chugged; she was cotton-mouthed, her
skin prickly from the heat, her head aching. She wanted to ask for some
water but was afraid that Jeff would say no. And she was growing
hungry, too, light-headed with it. She wished she could have a snack,
drink something cool, find a shady place to lie down, and the fact that
none of this was possible gave her a tight, breathless feeling of near
panic. She tried to remember what she and Eric had in their pack: a
small bottle of water, a bag of pretzels, a can of mixed nuts, a pair
of too-ripe bananas. They'd have to share, of course;
everyone would. They'd put all their food together and then
ration it out as slowly as they could.

 Left
to right to left to right to left to right…

 "Shit,"
she heard Jeff say quite distinctly from across the clearing; then they
began to tear apart their latest attempt at a backboard, the aluminum
poles clinking dully as they knocked one against another. Stacy
couldn't even look at the two of them. Pablo had broken his
back, and she just couldn't face it. They needed help. They
needed a team of paramedics to come in a helicopter and fly him to a
hospital. Instead, they were going to pull him up on their own, bumping
and jostling him all the way to the surface. And when they got him
out—then what? He'd lie in the orange tent, she
supposed, moaning or screaming, and there wasn't a thing
they'd be able to do for him.

 Aspirin.
Pablo's back was broken, and Jeff had dropped him a bottle of
aspirin.

 Jeff
took a break, walked across the clearing, stared down the hill.
Everyone stopped to watch
him.
They're
gone,
Stacy thought with a brief jump of hope, but then Jeff
turned and came back toward them, not saying a thing. He crouched again
beside Mathias. She heard the clinking poles, a ripping sound as they
tore off another piece of tape. The Mayans were still there, of course;
Stacy knew this. She could picture them ringing the base of the hill,
staring up the slope with those frighteningly blank expressions.
They'd killed Mathias's brother. Shot him with
their arrows. And now Mathias was kneeling there, holding the aluminum
poles for Jeff to tape, absorbed in the difficulty of it, the solving
of the problem. She couldn't begin to understand how he was
managing this, couldn't understand how any of them were
managing what they were doing. Eric was down at the bottom of the
shaft, in the darkness, his shoe full of blood, and she was braiding
strips of nylon, one hand moving over the other, tightening the weave
as she went.

 Left
to right to left to right to left to right…

 The
sun was beginning its implacable slippage toward the west. How long had
this been happening? Stacy didn't know what time it was;
she'd left her watch back in her hotel room, forgotten it on
the table beside the bed. Realizing this, she felt a momentary tug of
anxiety, thinking that the maid might steal it, a graduation present
from her parents. She was always expecting hotel maids to steal her
things, and yet in all the traveling she'd done it
hadn't happened, not once. Perhaps it wasn't as
easy to get away with as it seemed, or maybe people were simply more
honest than she assumed. In her head, she could hear the watch ticking,
could picture it lying on the glass tabletop, patiently counting off
the seconds, the minutes, the hours, waiting for her return. The maids
turned down their beds for them in the early evening, placed tiny
chocolates on their pillows, leaving the radio playing so softly that
sometimes Stacy didn't notice it until after they'd
turned out the lights.

 "What
time is it?" she asked.

 Amy
paused in her work, checked her watch. "Five-thirty-five," she said.

 When
they finished with the braiding, they'd need to haul up the
rope and knot the sections of nylon onto its end. Then someone would
have to descend into the hole with the improvised backboard and help
Eric lift Pablo onto it, somehow securing him to the metal frame so
that they could pull him safely back to the surface. After that,
they'd drop the rope down yet again and ferry the other two,
one after the other, to the top.

 Stacy
tried to imagine how long all this might take, and she knew it was too
long, that they were running out of time. Because if it was 5:35 now,
creeping toward 5:40, then they had only another hour and a half before
dark.

I
n the end, they had to braid a
total of five strips. They knotted the first three onto the rope, then
dropped it back down the shaft to see if it was long enough, but Eric
shouted up to them, saying it was still out of reach. So they braided a
fourth section, only to realize when it came time to attach their
improvised backboard that they'd need two separate strips
hanging from the bottom of the rope, one to connect to the head of the
aluminum frame, the other to its foot.