The Ruins (9 page)

 They
all stood there, staring, shading their eyes against the sunlight. It
was a beautiful sight: a hill shaped like a giant breast, covered in
red flowers. Amy took out her camera, started snapping pictures.

 The
cleared ground was a different color than the fields they'd
crossed earlier. The fields had been a reddish brown, almost orange in
spots, while this was a deep black, flecked with white, like frost
rime. Beyond it, the path resumed, winding its way up the hillside. It
had grown strangely quiet, Stacy suddenly realized; the birds had
fallen silent. Even the locusts had stopped their steady thrumming. A
peaceful spot. She took a deep breath, feeling sleepy, and sat down.
Eric did, too, then Pablo, the three of them in a row. Mathias was
passing his water bottle around again. Amy kept taking
pictures—of the hill, the pretty flowers, then of each of
them, one after another. She told Mathias to smile, but he was peering
up the hillside.

 "Is
that a tent?" he asked.

 They
turned to look. There was an orange square of fabric just visible, at
the very top of the hill. It was billowing, sail-like, in the breeze.
From this distance, with the rise of the hill partly blocking their
view, it was hard to tell what it was. Stacy thought it looked like a
kite, trapped in the flowering vines, but of course a tent made more
sense. Before anyone could speak, while they were still peering up the
hill, squinting against the sun, there came an odd noise from the
jungle. They all heard it at the same time, while it was still
relatively faint, and they turned, almost in unison, heads cocked,
listening. It was a familiar sound, but for a few seconds none of them
could identify it.

 Jeff
was the one who finally put a name to it. "A
horse," he said.

 And
then Stacy could hear it, too:
hoofbeats
,
approaching at a gallop down the narrow trail at their back.

A
my still had her camera out.
Through her viewfinder, she watched the horse arrive; she took its
picture as it burst into the clearing: a big brown horse, rearing to a
stop before them. On its back was the Mayan man who'd
approached them beside the well in the little village. It was the same
man, but he seemed different now. In the village, he'd been
calm and distant, even aloof, with something that felt almost
condescending in his approach to them, a weary parent dealing with
un-mannered children. Now all this had vanished, replaced by an air of
urgency, even panic. His white shirt and pants were splashed with green
stains from riding so rapidly through the trees. He'd lost
his hat, and sweat was shining on his bald head.

 The
horse, too, was agitated: lathered, snorting, rolling its eyes. It
reared twice, frightening them, and they backed away, retreating
farther into the clearing. The man began to shout, waving his arm. The
horse had reins but no saddle; the man was riding bareback, his legs
clinging to the big animal's flanks like a pair of pincers.
The horse reared once more, and this time the man half-fell,
half-jumped to the ground. He was still holding the reins, but the
horse was backing away from him, jerking its head, trying to break
free.

 Amy
took a picture of the ensuing tug-of-war, the man struggling to calm
the horse as the animal pulled him, step by step, back toward the
trail. It was only when she stopped peering through the viewfinder that
she noticed the gun on the man's belt: a black pistol in a
brown holster. He hadn't been wearing it in the village; she
was certain of this. He'd put it on to come chase them. The
horse was too frantic; the man couldn't calm it, and finally
he just relinquished the reins. Instantly, the animal turned, galloped
off into the jungle. They listened to it crashing through the trees,
the sound of its
hoofbeats
gradually diminishing. Then the man was shouting at them again, waving
his arms over his head, pointing back down the trail. It was hard to
tell what he was trying to say. Amy wondered if it had something to do
with the horse, if he somehow blamed them for the animal's
frenzy.

 "What
does he want?" Stacy asked. Her voice sounded
frightened—like a little girl's—and Amy
turned to look at her. Stacy was holding Eric's arm, standing
a little behind him. Eric was smiling at the Mayan, as if he thought
the whole encounter must be some sort of joke and was waiting for the
man to confess to this.

 "He
wants us to go back," Jeff said.

 "Why?"
Stacy asked.

 "Maybe
he wants money. Like a toll or something. Or for us to hire him as a
guide." Jeff reached into his pants pocket, pulled out his
wallet.

 The
man kept shouting, pointing vehemently back down the path.

 Jeff
removed a ten-dollar bill, held it out to him. "
¿
Dinero
?
" he
said.

 The
man ignored this. He made a shooing motion with his hand, waving them
out of the clearing. They all stood there, uncertain, no one moving.
Jeff carefully folded the bill back into his wallet, returned the
wallet to his pocket. After a few more seconds, the man stopped
shouting; he was out of breath.

 Mathias
turned toward the flower-covered hill, cupped his hands around his
mouth. "
Henrich
!"
he yelled.

 There
was no answer, no movement on the hillside except the gentle billowing
of that orange fabric. In the distance, there was the sound of
hoofbeats
again, coming closer.
Either the man's horse was returning or another villager was
about to join them.

 "Why
don't you hike up the hill, see if you can find
him?" Jeff said to Mathias. "We'll wait
here, try to sort this out."

 Mathias
nodded. He turned, started across the clearing. The Mayan began to
shout again, and then, when Mathias didn't stop, the man
pulled his pistol from its holster, raised the gun over his head, fired
into the sky.

 Stacy
screamed, covering her mouth, backing away. Everyone else flinched,
instinctively, half-ducking. Mathias turned to look, saw the man aiming
the pistol at his chest now, and went perfectly still. The man waved at
him, yelling something, and Mathias came back, his hands in the air, to
join the others. Pablo, too, raised his hands, but then, when nobody
else did, he slowly lowered them again.

 The
hoofbeats
came closer
and closer, and suddenly two more horsemen burst into the clearing.
Their mounts were just as agitated as the first man's had
been: white-eyed and snorting, sweat shining on their flanks. One of
the horses was pale gray, the other black. Their riders dropped to the
ground, neither of them making any attempt to hold on to their reins,
and the horses immediately turned to gallop back into the jungle. These
new arrivals were much younger than the bald man; they were
dark-haired, leanly muscular. They had bows slung across their chests,
and quivers of thin, fragile-looking arrows. One of them had a
mustache. They began speaking with the first man, very rapidly, asking
him questions. He still had his pistol pointed in Mathias's
general direction, and as they talked, the other two men
unslung
their bows, each of them
nocking
an arrow.

 "What
the fuck?" Eric said. He sounded outraged.

 "Quiet,"
Jeff ordered.

 "They're—"

 "Wait,"
Jeff said. "Wait and see."

 Amy
pointed her camera at the men, took another picture. She could tell it
wasn't capturing the drama of the moment, that
she'd have to back up to do this, so she could get not only
the Mayan men with their weapons but also Jeff and the others, standing
there, facing them, everyone looking so frightened now. She retreated a
handful of steps, peering through her viewfinder. It felt safer like
this, more distant, as if she were no longer part of this strange
situation. Four more steps, and Jeff was in the frame, and Pablo, and
Mathias, too, with his hands still raised. All she had to do was go a
little farther and Stacy and Eric would appear; then she could take the
picture and it would be exactly what she wanted. She took another step
backward, then another, and suddenly the Mayans were shouting again,
all three of them, at her now, the first man pointing his pistol, the
other two drawing their bows. Jeff and the others were turning to stare
at her in surprise—yes, there was Stacy now, on the
right-hand side of the frame—and Amy took another step.

 "Amy,"
Jeff said, and she almost stopped. She hesitated; she started to lower
her camera. But she could tell she was nearly there, so she took one
last step, and it was perfect: Eric was in the frame now, too. Amy
pressed the button, heard it click. She was pleased with herself, still
feeling weirdly outside the encounter, and liking the sensation. It was
as she was lifting her eye from the viewfinder that she felt the odd
pressure around her ankle, as if a hand were gripping it. She glanced
down, and realized she'd backed completely across the
clearing. What she felt was the flowering vine. A long green tendril
was coiled around her ankle. She'd stepped right into a loop
of it, and now somehow had pulled it taut.

 There
was a strange pause; the Mayan men stopped shouting. The two bows
remained drawn, but the man with the pistol slowly lowered it. She
could feel the others watching her, following her gaze toward her right
foot, which had sunk ankle-deep into the vines, as if swallowed. She
crouched to free it, and was just rising back up when she heard the
Mayan men begin to shout again. They were yelling at her, and then they
weren't—they were yelling at one another. An
argument, it seemed, the two men with the bows turning against the bald
man.

 "Jeff,"
she called.

 He
raised his hand without looking at her, silencing her. "Don't move," he said.

 So
she didn't. The bald man was clutching his right ear with one
hand, tugging at it, frowning and shaking his head, his left hand still
gripping the pistol, pressing it against his thigh. He didn't
seem to want to hear what the other two had to say. He pointed to Amy,
then the others; he waved down the trail. But there was already
something halfhearted in his gestures, the prescience of defeat. Amy
could tell that he knew he wasn't going to get his way. She
could see him being worn down, see him giving in. He fell silent; the
men with the bows did, too. They stood staring at Jeff and Mathias, at
Eric and Stacy and the Greek. And at her, too. Then the bald man raised
his pistol, aimed it at Jeff, at his chest. He made a shooing motion
with his other hand, but now it was in the opposite direction, toward
Amy, toward the hill behind her.

 No
one moved.

 The
bald man began to shout, waving toward the hill. He lowered his pistol
slightly, fired a bullet into the dirt at Jeff's feet.
Everyone jumped, started to back away. Pablo had his hands in the air
again. The other men were shouting, too, swinging their bows back and
forth, aiming first at one of them, then another, herding them, step by
step, toward Amy. Jeff and the others were walking backward; they
weren't watching where they were going. When they reached the
edge of the clearing, they hesitated, each of them, feeling the vines
against their feet and legs. They glanced down, stopped. Eric was
beside Amy, on her left. Pablo was to her right. Then the others:
Stacy, Mathias, Jeff. And beyond Jeff, the path. This was where the
bald man was pointing now, gesturing for them to start up it, to climb
the hill. His expression looked oddly stricken, close to
tears—no, he'd actually begun to cry. He wiped at
his face with his sleeve as he waved them onward. It was all so
peculiar, so impossible to comprehend, and no one said a word. They
moved to the path, Jeff leading the way, the others following.

 And
then, still silent, all in a line, they began the slow climb up the
hill.

E
ric was in the rear. He kept
glancing over his shoulder as he walked. The Mayan men were watching
them climb, the bald one using his hand to shield his eyes against the
sun. There were no trees on the hill, just the vine growing over
everything, thick coils of it, with its dark green leaves, its bright
red flowers. The sun was pouring its heat upon them—there was
no shade anywhere—and behind them, down the slope, stood
three armed men. None of this made any sense. At first, the bald man
had tried to tell them to go back; then he'd ordered them
forward. The men with the bows had had something to do with this,
clearly; they'd argued with the other man, changed his mind.
But it still didn't make any sense. The six of them climbed
the trail, sweating with the exertion, walking in total silence,
because they were scared and there was nothing for any of them to say.

 At
some point, they'd have to come back down the hill and cross
the clearing, take the narrow path to the fields and then the wider
path to the road, but how they'd manage to do this, Eric
couldn't guess. It was possible, he supposed, that the
archaeologists might be able to explain what had happened. Maybe it was
even something simple, something easily solved, something
they'd all be laughing about a few minutes from now. A
misunderstanding. A miscommunication. A mistake. Eric tried to think of
other words that began
with
mis
,
tried to remember what the prefix meant. He was going to be teaching
English in a few weeks, and this was the sort of thing he ought to
know. Wrong, he guessed, or bad—something like
that—but he wasn't certain. And he'd need
to be certain, too, because there'd probably be students who
would know; there were always two or three like that, ready to catch
their teachers in an error, eager for the chance. There were books Eric
had meant to read this summer, books he'd assured the head of
his department he'd already read, but the summer was
essentially over now, and he hadn't even glanced at them, not
one.