The Ruins (29 page)

 Eric
could hear the faint murmur of Jeff's and Mathias's
voices, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. They
were out of sight, somewhere farther down the hill, digging the
latrine.

 He
squeezed Stacy's hand; she still hadn't looked at
him. "So…" he began, tentatively, not
certain if it was the right path, "there was this guy, and he
had a vine growing inside him."

 
Silence.
She's
not going to answer,
he thought. And then she did. "We got it out," she said, her voice quiet. Eric
had to lean to hear her.

 "You're
supposed to say ‘but.'"

 Stacy
shook her head. "I'm not playing. I'm
telling you he cut it out. It's not inside you
anymore."

 "But
I can still feel it."

 She
finally looked at him. "Just because you can feel it
doesn't mean it's there."

 "But
what if it is?"

 "We
can't do anything about it."

 "So
you admit it might be."

 "I'm
not saying that."

 "But
I
can
feel
it, Stacy."

 "I'm
saying no matter what might be true, we just have to wait it
out."

 "So
I'm going to end up like Pablo."

 "Stop
it, Eric."

 "But
it's inside me—it's in my blood. I can
feel it in my chest."

 "Please
stop."

 "So
I'm going to die here."

 "
Eric.
"

 He
fell silent, startled by the jump in her voice. She was crying. When
had she begun to cry?

 "Please
stop, sweetie," she said. "Can you do that? Can you
calm down?" She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. "I really need you to calm down."

 Eric
was
silent.
In
my chest
—where had that come from? He
hadn't realized it till he said it, but it was true. He could
feel the vine inside his chest, a subtle yet definite pressure against
his lower rib cage, pressing outward.

 Stacy
pulled her hand free from his grip, pushed herself to her feet, stepped
across the clearing. She bent over Pablo's pack, rummaged
through it, dragged out one of the glass bottles, then started back
toward him, opening it as she came. "Here," she
said, standing over him, offering him the tequila.

 Eric
didn't take it. "Jeff said we shouldn't
drink."

 "Well,
Jeff isn't here, is he?"

 Still
not moving, Eric eyed the bottle, the amber liquid within it. He could
smell the tequila, could feel its pull, which was
mixed—illogically but inextricably—with his larger
sense of thirst. He lifted his hand, took the bottle from her. It was
the one they'd drunk from the previous afternoon, after their
aborted crossing of the muddy field—a different world
altogether, peopled by other versions of themselves, untouched and
unknowing. He remembered Pablo standing before them, so full of
laughter, offering the bottle, and with this image in his
mind—more dream, it seemed, than memory—Eric tilted
back his head and took a long swallow of the liquor. It was too much;
he gasped, coughed, tears briefly blurring his vision. But it was good,
too; it was the right thing. Without waiting to recover—just
his breath, that was all he needed—he lifted the bottle to
his lips again.

 The
only thing he'd eaten since yesterday morning was that tiny
square of tuna fish and bread—he was dehydrated,
exhausted—and he could feel the tequila within seconds,
pleasantly enervating, letting him breathe, finally. It happened so
quickly, like the plunge of a needle into a vein, a numbness, a slurred
quality to his thoughts. He wiped his mouth on his forearm and
surprised himself by laughing.

 Stacy
was still standing over him, the absurd-looking umbrella resting on her
shoulder, enclosing him within its circle of shade. "Not too
much," she said, and when he raised the bottle for another
swallow, she bent quickly and pulled it from his grasp.

 She
capped it, put it back in Pablo's bag. Then she sat beside
him, letting him take her hand again. The tequila burned in his chest,
made his ears
ring.
Maybe
they're right,
he
thought.
Maybe
I'm overreacting.
He could still feel something
moving, wormlike, in his leg, and that odd pressure continued in his
lower chest, but he could see now, as the liquor quieted the tumble of
his thoughts, that none of this necessarily had anything to do with the
vine. It was possible that he was simply frightened, that he was paying
too much attention to his body. There was always something odd to feel
if only you stopped and searched for it.

 "The
miserable misery of the miser," he said, the words coming to
him suddenly, for no apparent reason.

 "What?"
Stacy asked.

 Eric
shook his head, waving it aside. There were three bottles of tequila,
and he struggled to tilt his thoughts forward into the coming hours,
rationing out the liquor sip by sip, like a bag dripping solace into a
vein. The Greeks would be here soon, and everyone was going to be okay.
What he needed to do now was sit, holding Stacy's hand, and
in a little while he'd be able to ask her for the bottle
again. In that way, one small sip at a time, he believed he could make
it through the coming day.

T
hey didn't have a
shovel.

 Jeff
had found a sharp rock, shaped like a giant spearhead, big enough that
he had to get down on his knees and use both hands to chop at the dry,
hard-packed soil. Mathias used one of the metal stakes from the blue
tent, stabbing the earth with it, grunting each time he swung his arm.
When a sufficient amount of dirt was loosened in this manner, they
stood up to kick it free, then paused for a few
moments—catching their breath, wiping the sweat from their
faces—before starting the whole process all over again.

 It
was hard work, and not going nearly as well as Jeff had hoped. He had
an image in his mind: a hole four feet deep, just wide enough for
someone to squat over it, one foot on either side, its walls dropping
into the earth, perfectly perpendicular. It was possible Jeff had read
a book that described such a thing, or seen a drawing of it somewhere,
but this wasn't what he and Mathias were creating here. At
even a slight depth, the walls of their latrine began to collapse and
crumble, so that it widened as quickly as it deepened. For it to be
narrow enough to allow someone to squat above it, the hole would have
to stop while it was still only two feet deep, which defeated the whole
purpose, of course. A latrine that shallow wasn't really a
latrine at all; they might as well just continue to fumble through what
Jeff had done earlier that morning, shuffling off into the vines and
shitting, covering the mess with a parting kick of dirt.

 Thinking
this, Jeff realized the truth, what he should've known from
the very start: it was a stupid idea. They didn't need a
latrine, even a well-made one. Sanitation wasn't high on
their list of problems just now, and no matter what might happen to
them here, they'd be gone long before it became an issue of
any urgency. Rescued, perhaps. Or dead. Jeff and Mathias were digging
now not because it made any sense to be doing so, but because Jeff was
floundering about, looking for something solid to cling to, some action
to take, anything to keep from simply having to sit, helpless, and
wait. Realizing this, accepting it, Jeff stopped digging, dropped back
on his haunches. Mathias did, too.

 "What
are we doing?" Jeff asked.

 Mathias
shrugged, gesturing toward the sloppy, shallow ditch they'd
managed to gouge out of the earth. "Digging a
latrine."

 "And
is there any point in that?"

 Mathias
shook his head. "Not really."

 Jeff
tossed his stone into the dirt, wiped his hands on his pants. His palms
burned—that green fuzz was growing on his jeans again. They
all had it—on their clothes, their
shoes—he'd seen each of them, at one moment or
another, reaching to brush it away as they'd crouched
together in the clearing.

 "We
could use it for the urine," Mathias said. "To
distill it." He made a motion with his hands, spreading an
imaginary tarp across the hole.

 "And
is there any point in that?" Jeff asked.

 Mathias
bridled at this, lifting his head. "You were the one
who—"

 Jeff
nodded, cutting him off. "I know—my idea. But how
much water will we get out of it?"

 "Not
much."

 "Enough
to make up for whatever we're sweating right now, digging
like this?"

 "I
doubt it."

 Jeff
sighed. He felt foolish. And—what else? Tired, maybe, but
more than this: defeated. Perhaps this was despair, which he knew was
the worst thing of all, the opposite of survival. Whatever it was, the
feeling was on him now, and he didn't know how to shake it. "If it rains," he said, "we'll
have plenty of water. If it doesn't, we'll die of
thirst."

 Mathias
didn't say anything. He was watching him closely, squinting
slightly.

 "I
was trying to make work," Jeff said. "Give us
things to do. Keep up our morale." He smiled, mocking
himself. "I was even planning to drop back down into the
shaft."

 "Why?"

 "The
beeping. The cell phone sound."

 "There's
no oil for the lamp."

 "We
could make a torch."

 Mathias
laughed, incredulous. "A torch?"

 "With
rags—we could soak them in tequila."

 "You
see?" Mathias asked. "How German you
are?"

 "You're
saying there's no point?"

 "None
worth the risk."

 "What
risk?"

 Mathias
shrugged, as if it were self-evident. And perhaps it was. "Look at Pablo," he said.

 
Pablo.
The
worst thing.
Jeff hadn't mentioned his
idea yet, his plan to save the Greek, and he hesitated even now,
wondering at his motives, how pure they were, how mixed. The
possibility that he was simply, yet again, making work for them hovered
at the edge of his mind, then was quickly dismissed. They could save
him if they tried; he was certain of it. "You think
he's going to make it?" he asked.

 Mathias
frowned. When he spoke, his voice went low, almost inaudibly so. "Not likely."

 "But
if help came today—"

 "Do
you believe help is coming today?"

 Jeff
shook his head, and they were silent for a stretch. Mathias picked at
the dirt with his stake. Jeff was working up his courage. Finally, he
cleared his throat, said the words. "Maybe we could save
him."

 Mathias
kept probing at the dirt, not even bothering to glance up. "How?"

 "We
could amputate his legs."

 Mathias
went still, watching Jeff now, smiling at him, but uncertainly. "You're joking."

 Jeff
shook his head.

 "You
want to cut off his legs."

 "He'll
die if we don't."

 "Without
anesthesia."

 "There
wouldn't be any pain. He has no feeling beneath his
waist."

 "He'd
lose too much blood."

 "The
tourniquets are already in place. We'd cut below
them."

 "With
what? You don't have any surgical instruments,
any—"

 "The
knife."

 "You'd
need a bone saw—a knife wouldn't do a
thing."

 "We
could break the bones, then cut."

 Mathias
shook his head, looking appalled. It was the most emotion Jeff had ever
seen on his face. "No, Jeff. No way."

 "Then
he's dead."

 Mathias
ignored this. "What about infection? Cutting into him with a
dirty knife?"

 "We
could sterilize it."

 "We
don't have any wood. Or water to boil. Or a pot, for that
matter."

 "There
are things to burn—those notebooks, the backpacks full of
clothes. We could heat the knife directly in the flames.
It'll cauterize as it cuts."

 "You'll
kill him."

 "Or
save him—one or the other. But at least there's a
chance. Would you rather sit back and watch him die over the coming
days? It's not going to be quick—don't
trick yourself into thinking that."

 "If
help comes—"

 "Today,
Mathias. It would have to come today. With his legs exposed like that,
septicemia's going to set in—maybe it already has.
Once it gets going, there'll be nothing anyone can
do."

 Mathias
started picking at the dirt again, hunched into himself. "I'm sorry I brought us here," he said.

 Jeff
waved this aside; it seemed beside the point. "We chose to
come."

 Mathias
sighed, dropped the tent stake. "I don't think I
can do it," he said.

 "I'll
do it."

 "I
mean agree to it—I can't agree to it."

 Jeff
was silent, absorbing this; he hadn't expected it, had
thought that Mathias would be the easiest to convince, the one to help
him sway the others. "Then we should put him out of his
misery," Jeff said. "Get him drunk—pour
the tequila down his throat, wait for him to pass out. And, you
know…" He made a sharp gesture with his arm,
waving it through the air, a blow. It was harder than he
would've thought to put the thing into words.

 Mathias
stared at him; Jeff could tell he didn't understand. Or
didn't want to, maybe, was going to force him to say it
outright. "What?" he asked.

 "End
it. Cut his throat. Smother him."

 "You
can't be serious."

 "If
he were a dog, wouldn't you—"

 "But
he's not a dog."

 Jeff
threw up his hands in frustration. Why had this become so difficult? He
was just trying to be practical. Humane. "You know what I
mean," he said.

 He
wasn't going to continue with this. He'd offered
his idea; what more could he do? He felt that weight again, that leaden
quality. The sun was climbing higher. They ought to be in the tent, in
the shade; it was foolish for them to be out in the open like this,
sweating. But he made no attempt to move. He was pouting, he realized,
punishing Mathias for not embracing his plan. He disliked himself for
this, and disliked Mathias for witnessing it; he wished he could stop.
But he couldn't.