The Ruins (8 page)

 Eric
started forward along the path. They could wait for the others in the
shade on the far side of the clearing; perhaps he'd even be
able to nap a little. He and Stacy held hands as they walked.

 "So…"
Stacy said. "There was this girl who bought a
piano."

 "But
she didn't know how to play it," Eric responded.

 "So
she signed up for lessons."

 "But
couldn't afford them."

 "So
she got a job in a factory."

 "But
was fired for being late."

 "So
she became a prostitute."

 "But
fell in love with her first client."

 This
was an old game of theirs, the so-but stories. It was nonsense, the
purest form of idleness; they could keep at it for hours at a time,
ping-
ponging
back and
forth. It was their own invention; no one else understood it. Even Amy
found it annoying. But it was the sort of thing Eric and Stacy were
best at: silliness, play. In some deep, not entirely accessible part of
his mind, Eric realized that they were two children together, and that
someday Stacy was going to grow up, that it was already, in fact,
beginning to happen. He didn't think he himself would ever
accomplish this; he didn't understand how people did it. He
was going to teach children and remain a child forever, while Stacy
advanced implacably into adulthood, leaving him behind. He could dream
of them getting married someday, but it was just a story he told
himself, yet another example of his inherent immaturity. There was a
good-bye lurking in their future, a breakup note, a last painful
encounter. This was something he tried not to see, something he knew,
or suspected he knew, but before which he reflexively closed his eyes.

 "So
she asked him to marry her."

 "But
he was already married."

 "So
she begged him to get a divorce."

 "But
he was in love with his wife."

 "So
she decided to kill her."

 The
dog began to bark, startling Eric. He turned, peered back down the
trail. The two boys and the mutt had emerged from the jungle; all three
were standing there in the sunlight now. They weren't looking
in Eric's direction, though; they were staring off across the
open ground at Jeff and Mathias and Amy. Mathias was lifting a large
palm frond away from the tree line, tossing it out into the field. As
he bent to pick up another one, Jeff turned, shouted something
indecipherable, waved for them to approach.

 Eric
and Stacy and Pablo didn't move. None of them wanted to walk
out into the mud again. Mathias kept picking up palm fronds and tossing
them aside. Gradually, an opening was revealed in the tree line: a
path.

 Before
Eric could quite absorb this, he noted a flurry of movement back along
the trail. It drew his gaze. The larger of the two boys had climbed
onto his bike and was pedaling away now, very rapidly, disappearing
into the jungle, leaving the smaller boy alone on the trail, watching
Jeff and the others with an unmistakable air of anxiety, rocking side
to side, his hands clasped together, tucked under his chin. Eric noted
all this but couldn't make any sense of it. Jeff was waving
for them to come, shouting again. There seemed to be no choice.
Sighing, Eric stepped back into the muddy field. Stacy and Pablo did,
too, and together they began slogging their way toward the tree line.

 Behind
them, the dog continued his steady barking.

I
t had been Mathias who noticed
the palm fronds; Jeff had walked right past them. It was only when
he'd sensed Mathias hesitating behind him that he turned,
following the German's stare, and saw them. The fronds were
still green. They'd been artfully arranged, with the ends of
their stalks pushed into the dirt, so that they looked like a bush
growing there along the tree line, hiding the entrance to the path. One
of the fronds had tipped over, though, pulling itself free from the
soil. This was what Mathias had noticed. He stepped forward, yanked
another one free, and, in an instant, everything was revealed. That was
when Jeff turned and called to the others, waving for them to come.

 Once
they'd cleared away the fronds, they could see the path
easily enough. It was narrow and it wound off through the jungle,
moving gradually uphill. Mathias and Amy and he crouched at its
entrance, in the shade. Mathias took out his water bottle again, and
they all drank from it. Then they sat for a stretch, watching Eric and
Pablo and Stacy move slowly toward them across the field. Amy was the
first to mention what was surely on all their minds.

 "Why
was it covered?" she asked.

 Mathias
was sliding his water bottle back into his pack. You had to ask him a
question directly to get him to answer; whenever someone addressed the
group, he seemed to pretend not to hear. This was fair enough, Jeff
supposed. After all, he wasn't really one of them.

 Jeff
shrugged, feigning indifference. He tried to think of a way to distract
her from this topic, but he couldn't, so he kept silent. He
was afraid she'd refuse to venture down the path.

 He
could tell she wasn't going to let it go, though. And he was
right. "The boy rode off," she said. "Did
you see that?"

 Jeff
nodded. He wasn't looking at her—he was watching
Eric and the others plodding toward them—but he could feel
her gaze resting on him. He didn't want her to be thinking
about this: the boy riding off, the camouflaged path. It would only
frighten her, and she became obstinate and skittish when she was
frightened, which wasn't a particularly helpful combination.
Something strange was going on here, but Jeff was hoping that if they
could just ignore it, it might not amount to anything. He knew this
probably wasn't the wisest course, yet it was the best he
could come up with at the moment. So it would have to do.

 "Someone
tried to hide the path," Amy said.

 "Seems
that way."

 "They
cut palm fronds and stuck them in the dirt so that it looked like a
plant was growing there."

 Jeff
was silent, and wishing she was, too.

 "That's
a lot of work," Amy said.

 "I
guess so."

 "Doesn't
it seem strange to you?"

 "A
little."

 "Maybe
it's not the right path."

 "We'll
see."

 "Maybe
it's got something to do with drugs. Maybe it leads to a
marijuana field. The village is growing pot, and that boy went back to
get them, and they're
gonna
come with guns, and—"

 Jeff
finally gave in, turned to look at her. "Amy," he
said, and she stopped. "It's the right path,
okay?"

 It
wasn't going to be that easy, of course. She gave him an
incredulous look. "How can you say that?"

 Jeff
waved toward Mathias. "It's on the map."

 "It's
a hand-drawn map, Jeff."

 "Well,
it's…" He floundered, wordless, waved
his hand. "You know—"

 "Tell
me why the path was covered. Give me one possible scenario where
it's the right one, and there's a logical reason
for someone to have camouflaged its opening."

 Jeff
thought for a minute. Eric and the others were nearly upon them. Across
the field, the little Mayan boy still stood, staring at them. The dog
had finally stopped barking. "Okay," he said. "How's this? The archaeologists have started to
find things of value. The mine isn't played out.
They're finding silver. Or emeralds, maybe. Whatever they
were mining in the first place. And they're worried that
someone might come and try to rob them. So they've
camouflaged the path."

 Amy
spent a moment considering this scenario. "And the boy on the
bike?"

 "They've
recruited the Mayans to help them keep people away. They pay them to do
it." Jeff smiled at her, pleased with himself. He
didn't really believe any of it; he didn't know
what to believe, in fact. Yet he was pleased nonetheless.

 Amy
was thinking it through. He could tell she didn't believe it,
either, but it didn't matter. The others had finally reached
them. Everyone was sweating, Eric especially, who was looking a little
too pale, a little too drawn. The Greek needed to hug them, one by one,
of course, wrapping his damp arms around their shoulders. And, just
like that, the discussion was over. After all, what other option did
they have?

 A
few more minutes of rest, then they started down the path into the
jungle.

T
he path was narrow enough so
that they were forced to walk single file. Jeff led the way, followed
by Mathias, then Amy, then Pablo, then Eric. Stacy was the last in
line.

 "But
her lover told the police," Eric said.

 Stacy
stared at the rear of his head. He was wearing a Boston Red Sox hat; he
had it on backward. She tried to imagine that this was his face she was
staring at, covered in brown hair, his eyes and mouth and nose hiding
behind it. She smiled at this hairy face. It was their game, she knew,
and she thought the
words,
So
she fled to another city,
but she didn't say them.
Amy had made fun of her enough times, mimicking her and Eric saying "So" and "But," that Stacy
didn't like playing the game in her presence anymore. She
didn't say anything, and Eric kept walking. Sometimes this
was just how it worked: you threw out a "So" or a "But" and the other person didn't
respond, and that was okay. That was part of the game, too, part of
their understanding.

 She
shouldn't have gone at the tequila so aggressively. That had
been a stupid idea. She'd been trying to show off, she
supposed, trying to impress Pablo with her drinking. Now she felt
light-headed, a little sick to her stomach. There was all this green
around her—too much, she felt—and that
didn't help things: thick leaves on either side, the trees
growing so close to the trail that it was hard not to touch them as she
walked. An occasional breeze pushed past her down the path, shifting
the leaves, making them whisper. Stacy tried to hear what they were
saying, tried to attach words to the sound, but her mind
wasn't working that way; she couldn't concentrate.
She was a little drunk, and there was far, far too much green. She
could feel the beginning of a headache—flexing itself, eager
for a chance to grow. And the green was underfoot, too, moss growing on
the trail, making it slippery in places. When the path dipped into a
tiny hollow, she almost fell on the slickness. She gave a squawk as she
caught her balance, and was dismayed to see that no one glanced back to
make sure she was safe. What if she'd fallen, hit her head,
been knocked unconscious? How long would it have taken them to realize
she was no longer following in their footsteps? They'd have
doubled back eventually, she supposed; they'd have found her,
revived her. But what if something had slipped out of the jungle and
taken her in its jaws before this happened? Because certainly there
were creatures in the jungle; Stacy could sense them as she walked,
watchful presences, noting her passage along the trail.

 She
didn't really believe any of this, of course. She liked
scaring herself, but in the way a child does, knowing the whole time
that it was only pretend. She hadn't noticed the boy riding
off on his bike, nor the fact that the path had been camouflaged. No
one was talking about any of this. It was too hot to talk; all they
could do was put one foot in front of the other. So the only threats
Stacy had with which to entertain herself were the ones she could think
up on her own.

 Why
had she worn sandals? That was stupid. Her feet were a mess now; there
was mud between her toes. It had felt nice, walking across the
field—warm and squishy and oddly reassuring, but it
wasn't like that anymore. Now it was just dirt, with a
vaguely fecal smell to it, as if she'd dipped her feet in
shit.

 Green
was the color of envy, of nausea. Stacy had been a Girl Scout;
she'd had to hike through her share of green woods, clad in
her green uniform. She still knew some songs from that time. She tried
to think of one, but her headache wouldn't let her.

 They
crossed a stream, jumping from rock to rock. The stream was green, too,
thick with algae. The rocks were even slipperier than the trail, but
she didn't fall in. She hopped, hopped, hopped, and then she
was on the other side.

 The
mosquitoes and the little black flies were so persistent, so numerous,
that she'd long ago stopped bothering to swat them. But then,
abruptly, just after she crossed the stream, they weren't
there anymore. It seemed to happen in an instant: they were all around
her, humming and hovering, and then, magically, they were gone. Without
them, even the heat felt easier to bear, even the implacable greenness,
the smell of shit coming from her feet, and for a short stretch it was
almost pleasant, walking one after another through the whispering
trees. Her head cleared a bit, and she found words for the rustling
leaves.

 Take
me with you
, one of the trees seemed to say.

 And
then:
Do
you know who I am?

 The
trail rounded a curve, and suddenly there was another clearing ahead of
them, a circle of sunlight a hundred feet down the path, the heat
giving a throbbing, watery quality to the view.

 A
tree on her left seemed to call her
name.
Stacy
, it whispered, so clearly that she actually turned her head, a
goose-bump feeling running up and down her back. Behind her came
another rustling
voice:
Are
you lost?
And then she was stepping with the others into
sunlight.

 This
clearing wasn't a field. It looked like a road, but it
wasn't that, either. It was as if a gang of men had planned
to build a road, had chopped away the jungle and flattened the earth,
but then abruptly changed their minds. It was twenty yards wide and
stretched in either direction, left and right, for as far as Stacy
could see, finally curving out of sight. On the far side of it rose a
small hill. The hill was rocky, oddly treeless, and covered with some
sort of
vinelike
growth—a vivid green, with hand-shaped leaves and tiny
flowers. The plant spread across the entire hill, clinging so tightly
to the earth that it almost seemed to be squeezing it in its grasp. The
flowers looked like poppies, the same size and color: a brilliant
stained-glass red.