The Ruins (4 page)

P
ablo had a bottle of tequila
in his pack. No: Eric could hear a clinking sound, so there
must've been two bottles, or more. Eric only saw one, though.
Pablo pulled it out to show him, smiling, raising his eyebrows.
Apparently, he wanted them to share it on their ride to
Cobá
. There was
something with a coin, too—some sort of Greek coin. Pablo
took it out, mimed flipping it, then drinking. Another game. As far as
Eric could understand, it seemed like a pretty simple one.
They'd flip the coin. If it came up heads, Eric had to drink;
if it came up tails, the Greek did. Eric, displaying a wisdom unnatural
to him, waved the idea aside. He tilted his seat back, shut his eyes,
and fell asleep with the speed of a man on an anesthesia
drip.
One
hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven
…and he was gone.

 He
woke briefly, blearily, sometime later, to find that they were parked
in front of a long line of souvenir stalls. It wasn't their
stop, but some of the other passengers were gathering their things and
climbing off, while still others lined up outside the door, waiting to
get on. Pablo was asleep beside him, openmouthed, snoring softly. Amy
and Stacy were hunched low in their seats, whispering together. Jeff
was reading their communal guidebook, bent close over it, intent, as if
memorizing it. Mathias's eyes were shut, but he
wasn't sleeping. Eric couldn't say how he knew
this; he just did, and as he stared at him, wondering why this was so,
Mathias rolled his head toward him, opened his eyes. It was an odd
moment: they sat there, with only the aisle separating them, holding
each other's gaze. Finally, one of the new passengers came
shuffling toward the rear of the bus, momentarily blocking their view
of each other. When she'd passed, Mathias had turned his head
forward again and shut his eyes.

 Beyond
the window, the freshly disembarked passengers stood uncertainly beside
the bus, staring about, as if questioning their wisdom in choosing this
as their destination. The vendors in their stalls called to them,
gesturing for them to approach. The passengers smiled, nodded, waved,
or struggled to pretend that they couldn't hear the shouts of
greeting. They stood, not moving. The stalls sold soft drinks, food,
clothing, straw hats, jewelry, Mayan statues, leather belts and
sandals. Most of the stalls had signs in both Spanish and English.
There was a goat tied to a stake beside one of them, and some dogs
loitered about, warily eyeing the bus and its former passengers. Beyond
the stalls, the town began. Eric could glimpse the gray stone tower of
a church, the whitewashed walls of houses. He imagined fountains hidden
in courtyards, gently swaying hammocks, caged birds, and for an instant
he thought of rousing himself, urging the others off the bus,
shepherding them into this place that felt so much more "real" than
Cancún
.
They could be travelers, for once, rather than tourists; they could
explore and discover and…But he was
hungover
,
and so tired, and it was hot out there; Eric could sense it even
through the smoked glass of the window, see it in the way the dogs held
themselves, heads low, their tongues hanging from their mouths. And
then there was Mathias's brother, too—the reason
they'd ventured forth on this expedition. Eric turned his
head, half-expecting to find the German staring at him again, but
Mathias was facing straight ahead, his eyes still shut.

 Eric
did the same: he turned back toward the front of the bus, closed his
eyes. He was still conscious when they rolled into motion. They jolted
and bumped in a wide circle, pulled out onto the road. Pablo shifted in
his sleep, fell against him, and Eric had to push him away. The Greek
muttered something in his own language but didn't wake. The
words had an edge to them, though, as if they were an accusation, or a
curse, and Eric thought of the smiles the Greeks sometimes exchanged,
the sense of shared secrets they gave
off.
Who
are they?
he wondered. He was half-asleep already, his mind
moving on its own; he wasn't even certain whom he meant. The
Mexicans, maybe, the Mayans calling from their stalls. Or Pablo and the
other Greeks with their constant chattering, their nods and hugs and
winks. Or Mathias with his mysteriously missing brother, that ominous
tattoo, that blank stare. Or—well, why not?—Jeff
and Amy and
Stacy.
Who
are they?

 He
slept and didn't dream, and when he opened his eyes again,
they were pulling into
Cobá
.
Everyone was standing up and stretching, and the question was no longer
in his head, nor the memory of it. It was just before noon, and as he
woke more fully to himself, Eric realized that he felt as good as he
had all day. He was thirsty and hungry and he needed to urinate, but
his head was clearer and his body stronger, and he felt he was ready
now, finally, for whatever the day might bring.

J
eff found them a taxi. It was
a bright yellow pickup truck. Jeff showed Mathias's map to
the driver, a short, heavyset man with thick glasses, who studied it
with great deliberation. The driver spoke a mix of English and Spanish.
He was wearing a T-shirt that clung tightly to his padded frame. There
were immense salt stains under his arms, and his face was shiny with
perspiration. He kept wiping it with a bandanna as he examined the map;
he seemed displeased by what he found there. He frowned at the six of
them, one by one, then at his truck, then at the sun hanging in the sky
above them.

 "Twenty
dollars," he said.

 Jeff
shook his head, waving this aside. He had no idea what a fair price
would be, but he sensed that it was important to bargain. "Six," he said, picking a sum at random.

 The
driver looked appalled, as if Jeff had just leaned forward and spit
onto his sandaled feet. He handed the map back to him, started to walk
away.

 "Eight!"
Jeff called after him.

 The
driver turned to face him but didn't come back. "Fifteen."

 "Twelve."

 "Fifteen,"
the driver insisted.

 The
bus was leaving now, and the other passengers were drifting off into
the town. The yellow pickup was the only cab in sight big enough to
accommodate them all.

 "Fifteen,"
Jeff agreed. He sensed that he was overpaying, and felt foolish for it.
He could see that the driver was having difficulty hiding his pleasure,
but no one else seemed to notice this. They were already moving toward
the truck. It didn't matter; none of it mattered. This was
only a stage in their journey, quickly finished. And Mathias was beside
him suddenly, opening his wallet, paying the man. Jeff didn't
object, didn't offer to contribute. Mathias was the reason
they were here, after all. They'd be half-asleep on the beach
right now if it weren't for him.

 There
was a small dog in the rear of the pickup, chained to a cinder block.
When they approached the truck, the dog began to throw his body against
the length of chain, growling and barking and drooling great strings of
saliva. He was the size of a large cat—black, with white paws
and a shaggy, greasy-looking coat—but he had the voice of a
much larger dog. His anger, his desire to do them harm, seemed almost
human. They stopped walking, stood staring.

 The
driver waved them on, laughing. "No problem," he
said in his heavily accented English. "No problem."
He lowered the tailgate, waved toward the dog, showed them how its
chain only reached halfway down the truck bed. Two of them could sit up
front. The other four could arrange themselves in such a way as to
remain out of reach of the fierce little dog. Most of this was
communicated in hand signals, punctuated with a steady recitation of
those two words: "No problem, no problem, no
problem…"

 Stacy
and Amy volunteered to sit in front. They hurried forward, yanked open
the passenger-side door, and climbed inside before anyone could
protest. The others warily pulled themselves up into the back. The
dog's barking rose in volume. He threw himself with such
force against his chain that it seemed possible he might break his
neck. The driver tried to soothe the dog, murmuring to him in Mayan,
but this had no apparent effect. Finally, the man just smiled,
shrugging at them, and swung the tailgate closed.

 The
truck needed three attempts before it managed to start; then they were
in motion. They swung out onto a paved road, heading away from town.
After a mile or so, they turned left onto a gravel road. There were
fields of some sort—Jeff couldn't tell what was
growing in them, but one had a broken-down tractor in it, another a
pair of horses. Then, abruptly, they were in the jungle: thick,
damp-looking foliage growing right up against the road. The sun was in
the center of the sky, directly above them, so it was hard to tell
which direction they were heading, but he assumed it was west. The
driver had kept the map. They just had to trust that he knew how to
follow it.

 The
four of them sat with their backs flat against the tailgate, their feet
drawn into their bodies, watching the dog, who continued to lunge
toward them, growling and barking and slobbering without pause. It was
hot, with the thick, slightly fetid humidity of a greenhouse. There was
the false breeze of the truck's motion, but it
wasn't enough, and soon they were sweating through their
shirts. Now and then, Pablo would shout something in Greek at the dog,
and they'd all laugh nervously, though they had no idea, of
course, what he was saying. Even Mathias, who otherwise rarely seemed
to laugh, joined them in this.

 After
awhile, the gravel road turned to dirt and became heavily rutted. The
truck slowed, bouncing across the ruts, jostling them against one
another. The larger bumps lifted the cinder block briefly into the air
before slamming it back down against the truck bed. Each time this
happened, the dog managed to drag it an inch or two closer to them. It
seemed like they'd gone farther than the eleven miles the map
had demanded. They drove more and more slowly as the road became worse
and worse, the trees crowding in upon them, hanging over them, brushing
against the side of the truck. A cloud of bugs gathered overhead,
following their slow passage, biting their arms and necks, making them
slap at themselves. Eric dug a can of mosquito repellent out of his
backpack but then fumbled it, dropping it to the truck bed. It rolled
toward the dog, clanged against the cinder block, coming to rest there.
The dog sniffed at it briefly, then resumed his barking. Pablo was no
longer shouting, and they'd stopped laughing. Time was
stretching itself out—they'd gone too
far—and Jeff was beginning to suspect that they'd
made an immense mistake, that the man was taking them into the jungle
to rob and kill them. He'd rape the girls; he'd
shoot them or stab them or smash their skulls with a shovel.
He'd feed them to his little dog; he'd bury their
bones in the damp earth, and no one would ever hear of them again.

 Then
a turnaround appeared on the right-hand side of the road, and the truck
pulled into it, stopped, idled. A path led off into the trees.
They'd arrived. The four of them scrambled quickly over the
tailgate, laughing again, abandoning the can of repellent, the dog
still lunging at his length of chain, growling and barking his
farewell.

S
tacy was sitting by the
window, which was shut tight against the day's growing heat.
The truck's air conditioner was on high; she'd
begun to shiver as the ride progressed, her sweat drying, goose bumps
rising on her forearms. It hadn't seemed like an
exceptionally long drive to her. She'd hardly noticed it, in
fact, her mind floating elsewhere, fifteen years back and two thousand
miles away. The color of the pickup truck: that was what triggered it.
A legal-pad yellow. Her uncle had died in a car this color. Uncle
Roger, her father's elder brother, caught in a Massachusetts
spring downpour, trying to ease his way through a flooded patch of
road. A creek had
overflown
its banks; it snatched the car, spun it downstream, flipped it over,
then cast it aside on the edge of an apple orchard. That was where
they'd found Uncle Roger, still with his seat belt on,
hanging upside down,
batlike
,
in his yellow car. Drowned.

 Stacy
and her parents and her two brothers were in Florida when they received
the news. It was spring break, and her father had flown them to Disney
World. They were staying in one room, all five of them together, her
parents in one bed, the two boys in another, Stacy on a foldout cot
between them. She was seven years old; her brothers were four and nine.
She could remember her father on the phone, hushing them with his free
hand, while he said, "What…What…What…"
It was a bad connection, and he'd had to shout, repeating, in
a questioning tone, everything that was said to him. "Roger…A
rainstorm…Drowned…" Afterward,
he'd started to cry, bent into himself, eyes clenched shut,
fumbling to replace the receiver on its hook, thumping it against the
night table, missing again and again, until finally Stacy's
mother took it from him and hung it up herself. Stacy and her brothers
were sitting on the other bed, staring in astonishment.
They'd never seen their father weep, never would again. Their
mother gathered them up, took them for an ice cream in the hotel
restaurant, and by the time they returned, it was over. Their father
was himself again, busily packing their bags. He'd already
booked them seats on a plane home later that evening.

 Uncle
Roger had been a portly man, graying early, who'd always
seemed uncomfortable around his brother's children, resorting
to shadow animals and knock-knock jokes as a means of diverting their
attention. He'd come to stay with them the Christmas before
his death. The guest room was across from Stacy's bedroom,
and she'd awakened one night to a tremendous thump. Curious,
a little frightened, she'd crept to her door, peeked outside
into the hall. Uncle Roger was lying there, very drunk, struggling to
pull himself back to his feet. After a few attempts, he gave up. He
rolled, shifted with a groan, and managed to arrange his body in
something resembling a sitting position, his back against the guest
room's door.