The Ruins (18 page)

 Stacy
leaned over the hole, cupped her hands around her mouth, shouted, "What happened?"

 Eric's
voice came echoing up the shaft: "It's out of
oil."

 Jeff
was trying to keep everything in his head, but it wasn't
working. He wished he had a sheet of paper, and the time to write
things down, make a list, bring a little order to the chaos into which
they'd stumbled. In the morning, he could use one of the
archaeologists' notebooks, but for now he had to keep going
over everything in his mind, feeling at each moment as if he were
forgetting some crucial detail. There was water and food and shelter to
think about. There were the Mayans at the base of the hill, and
Henrich's
corpse stuck
full of arrows. There was Pablo with his broken back. There were the
other Greeks, who might or might not be coming to their rescue. And
there was the lamp to add to it all—the lamp without any oil
to light it.

 He
and Mathias resumed their cranking of the windlass. "Let us
know when you see him," Jeff said to Stacy.

 Thinking
wasn't important right now, he told himself; thinking would
only confuse things, make him hesitate, slow him down. Thinking could
wait until the morning, until daylight. What he needed to do was pull
everyone out of the shaft, set them up in the orange tent, and then
try, somehow, to get some sleep.

 The
windlass creaked and creaked as the rope slowly coiled around the
barrel. Stacy remained silent; Pablo was still hidden in darkness. Jeff
could smell him, though, quite suddenly: an outhouse odor, his shit,
his urine. All the time they'd been cutting and braiding the
strips of nylon, taping the aluminum poles together, he'd
kept trying to tell himself that maybe Eric was wrong, maybe
Pablo's back wasn't broken after all.
They'd laugh about it later—tomorrow morning, when
the Greek was up and limping about—how they'd
jumped to their doomsday conclusion. But now, with that stench coming
toward him from the shaft, he knew better.

 
Stop,
he
told
himself.
Just
get everyone out. Into the tent
.
And then to sleep.

 "I
see him," Stacy whispered.

 "When
he clears the hole," Jeff said, "you'll
have to grab the backboard, guide it toward the ground."

 They
kept working at the crank.

 "Okay,"
Stacy said, and they paused, turning to look. The backboard was hanging
above the shaft, just beneath the sawhorse, Pablo a dark form upon it,
perfectly still, like a mummy. Stacy was gripping the sleeping bag, one
of the aluminum poles. "Lower it a little," she
told them.

 They
reversed the crank, and as the backboard began to descend again, Stacy
pulled at it, guiding it toward the edge of the hole.

 "Careful,"
she said. "Slow."

 They
eased him down onto the ground, then Mathias and Jeff stepped toward
him, everyone crouching beside the backboard. Maybe it was just the
darkness, or his own fatigue, but Pablo looked even worse than Jeff had
feared. His cheeks were sunken, his face gaunt and strikingly pale,
almost luminescent in the darkness. And his body seemed smaller, as if
his injury had somehow diminished him, atrophy already setting in. His
eyes were shut.

 "Pablo?"
Jeff said, touching his shoulder.

 The
Greek's eyelids fluttered open, and he stared up at Jeff,
then at Stacy and Mathias. He didn't say anything. After a
moment, he closed his eyes again.

 "It's
bad, isn't it?" Stacy asked.

 "I
don't know," Jeff said. "It's
hard to tell." And then, because this seemed like a lie: "I think so."

 Mathias
remained silent, staring down at Pablo, his face somber. A breeze had
come up, and with the sun gone, the night was starting to grow cooler.
Jeff's sweat was drying, goose bumps rising on his arms.

 "Now
what?" Stacy asked.

 "We'll
put him in the tent. You can sit with him while we pull the others
out." Jeff glanced at her, wondering if she was going to
protest, but she didn't. She was still staring down at Pablo.
Jeff leaned over the hole, shouted into it: "We're
carrying him to the tent. Then we'll come back.
Okay?"

 "Hurry,"
Amy yelled.

 They
had trouble untying the knots connecting the backboard to the nylon
braids, and finally Mathias just took the knife and cut it free. Then
he and Jeff carried Pablo across the hilltop toward the orange tent,
moving slowly, trying not to jostle him, while Stacy followed behind
them, whispering, "Careful…careful…careful."

 They
set him down outside the tent, and Jeff unzipped the flap. He pushed
his way inside to clear a space for the backboard, but
instantly—as soon as he breathed in the stale
air—he knew it was the wrong idea. He turned, stepped back
outside. "We can't put him there," he
said. "His bladder—he's
gonna
keep leaking
urine."

 Mathias
and Stacy stared down at Pablo. "But we can't just
leave him out here," Stacy said.

 "We'll
have to rig up some sort of shelter." Jeff waved back across
the hilltop. "We can use what's left of the blue
tent."

 The
other two considered this, silent. Pablo's eyes were shut;
his breathing had developed a burr, a
phlegmy
roughness.

 "We'll
pull Amy and Eric up, then figure it out. Okay?"

 Stacy
nodded. Then Jeff and Mathias ran back toward the shaft.

P
ablo started to shiver. One
moment, he was just lying there, eyes shut—not sleeping,
Stacy could tell, but quiet—and the next, he was trembling so
violently that she began to wonder if he was having some sort of
seizure. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to call out
for Jeff, but she could hear the windlass creaking. They were pulling
Amy or Eric up from the hole, and she knew she couldn't
interrupt them. The belts were still buckled tightly around
Pablo's body—at his thighs, his chest, his
forehead—and she wished she could loosen them, yet she
wasn't certain if this were allowed. She touched
Pablo's hand, and he opened his eyes, stared at her. He said
something in Greek, his voice sounding hoarse, weak. He was still
trembling; struggling against it, she could tell, but unable to stop.

 "Are
you cold?" Stacy asked. She hugged herself, tucked her head
into her shoulders, mimed a shiver.

 Pablo
shut his eyes.

 Stacy
stood up, darted into the tent. It was even darker inside than out,
but—groping on her hands and knees—she managed to
find one of the sleeping bags. She rose with it, intending to hurry
back outside and drape it across Pablo's body, then felt a
sudden hesitation, the temptation to lie down instead, curl into
herself here in this musty stillness, hide. It lasted only an instant,
this temptation. Stacy knew it was
pointless—there'd be no hiding here—and
she pushed past the moment. When she stepped back outside, the Greek
was still shivering. Stacy laid the sleeping bag across his body, then
sat down next to him, reaching to take his hand. She felt she ought to
speak, ought to find some words to soothe him, but she
couldn't think of a single thing to say. He was lying with a
broken back in his own shit and urine, surrounded by strangers who
didn't speak his language. How could she possibly hope to
make this better?

 There
was a slight breeze, and the tent billowed in it. The vines seemed to
be moving, too: shifting, whispering. It was too dark to see anything;
there was just her and Pablo and the tent, and—somewhere out
of sight across the hilltop—the creak, creak, creak of the
windlass. Soon Amy or Eric would appear out of the shadows, coming to
sit with her and Pablo, and then things would be easier. That was what
Stacy told
herself:
This
is the hardest moment, right here, all alone with him
.

 She
didn't like the rustling sounds. It seemed as if more were
happening out there than the wind could account for. Things were moving
about; things were creeping closer. Stacy thought of the Mayans, with
their bows and arrows, and had to repress the urge to flee, to drop
Pablo's hand and sprint across the hilltop, toward Jeff and
the others. But this was silly, of course, as silly as her fantasy of
hiding in the tent. There was nowhere for her to run. If the sounds
were what she feared, then attempting to flee would only prolong her
terror, draw out her suffering. Better to end it now, swiftly, with an
arrow from the darkness. She sat clenched, waiting for it, listening
for the soft twang of the bowstring, while that furtive rustling among
the vines continued, but the arrow didn't arrive. Finally,
Stacy couldn't bear it any longer—the suspense, the
anticipation. "Hello?" she called.

 Jeff's
voice came toward her from across the hilltop: "What?" The windlass had stopped its squeaking.

 "Nothing,"
she yelled. And then, as the windlass resumed its turning, she repeated
the word, in a whisper now: "Nothing, nothing,
nothing."

 Pablo
stirred, stared up at her. His hand felt cold to her, oddly damp, like
something found rotting in a cellar. He licked his lips. "
Nottin
?" he said with
a rasp.

 Stacy
nodded, smiled. "That's right," she said. "It's nothing." And then she sat there,
waiting for the others to join her, struggling to believe it was true,
that it was nothing—the wind, her imagination—that
she was pulling monsters out of the night. "It's
nothing," she kept whispering. "It's
nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing."

A
my had asked Eric if she could
hold his hand. She wasn't frightened, she'd
explained; it was just so dark down there in the hole, and she needed
some sort of contact, needed more than the sound of his voice to
reassure her of his presence beside her. He'd agreed, of
course, and though at first it had felt a little awkward, sitting on
the rocky floor of the shaft, holding hands with her best
friend's boyfriend, she'd soon grown comfortable
with it.

 This
was while they were waiting for Jeff and Mathias to return from the
orange tent and lower the rope back into the hole. She and Eric spent
the whole time talking—assiduously—as if they
sensed some danger in even the briefest silence. The danger of
thinking, Amy supposed, of stopping and assessing where they were, what
they were dealing with. She felt as if they were sitting on some
perilously high cliff, sensing the earth so far beneath them but trying
not to look down and see it. Talking felt safer than thinking, even if
they ended up talking about precisely what would've occupied
their thoughts, because with talking there was at least the chance for
reassurance, for them to bolster and encourage each other in a way that
was impossible to do on one's own. And there was the chance
to lie, too, if this were necessary. They talked about Eric's
knee (it hurt when he put any weight on it, but it had stopped bleeding
again, and Amy assured him it was going to be okay). They talked about
how thirsty they were and how long their water would last (very
thirsty, and only another day or so, though they both agreed that
they'd probably be able to catch enough rain to tide them
over). They talked about whether the other Greeks would come in the
morning (probably, Eric said, and Amy seconded this, though she knew
they were only hoping it was true). They talked about the possibility
of their signaling a passing plane, or of one of them sneaking past the
Mayans in the middle of the night, or of the Mayans simply losing
interest at some point, vanishing back into the jungle, leaving the
path open for their departure.

 The
one thing they didn't talk about was Pablo. Pablo and his
broken back.

 They
talked about what they were going to do when they finally managed to
return to their hotel, the very first thing, debating the merits of
their various choices, until it became too painful to think about any
longer—the meals they both dreamed of eating made them feel
too hungry; the icy beer made them feel too thirsty, the shower too
dirty.

 The
cold draft came and went, yet it did nothing to clear the shaft of the
smell of Pablo's shit. Amy had to breathe through her mouth,
but even so, the stench managed to reach her; she began to feel as if
it were some sort of paint into which she'd been dipped, as
if she'd never be free of it. Eric asked her if she could see
things in the darkness, floating lights, bobbing slowly toward them. "Over there," he said, and his hand fumbled for her
chin, turned her head to her left, held it still. "A bluish
sphere, like a balloon. Can't you see it?" But she
couldn't; there was nothing there.

 Jeff
yelled down that they were back. All they had to do was knot together a
sling, and then they'd pull them up.

 Amy
and Eric discussed who should go first, both of them offering this
opportunity to the other. Amy insisted that Eric should be the one. He
was wounded, after all, and he'd already spent so many hours
alone in the hole. She swore she wasn't frightened, said it
would only be a minute or two, that she didn't mind at all.
But Eric wouldn't hear of it; he refused outright, and,
finally, with secret relief—because
she
was
frightened, because
she
did
mind—Amy accepted his decision.

 The
windlass started to squeak. Jeff and Mathias were lowering the rope.

 It
was too dark to make out the sling's approach. They sat
staring upward, seeing nothing, and then the creaking stopped. "Got it?" Jeff yelled.

 Eric
and Amy stood up, still clasping hands, and held their free arms out,
swinging them slowly to and fro until Amy felt the cool nylon of the
sling; it seemed to materialize out of the darkness at her touch. "Here it is," she said, and she guided Eric to it.
They stood for a moment, both of them gripping the sling. Amy shouted
upward, "Got it!"