Donald Westlake - High Adventure

Feeling fine, Kirby flew around a little more, watching the clot of children find the towel, fight over it briefly, then race it back en masse to town. Twice he buzzed the huts, not too low, just for the hell of it, but when he saw the Indians start to file out of the village and up the hill, each one carrying a sack or bag or parcel, he angled away, flying high and higher into the pale blue, then dive-bombing his damn property, pulling out of the dive low enough to cause dust-devils on the hill’s eastern flank, then landing on the cracked dry plain, creating great billows of tan dust in his wake. He turned Cynthia and she trundled over as close as possible to the base of the hill, her wings jiggling gently over the uneven ground.

The dust had all settled and Kirby was hunkered in the shade of Cynthia’s left wing, scratching a picture of a horse in the dry dirt (it looked like a dog, or maybe a frog), when Tommy and the villagers arrived. “Well,” Tommy said, “you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, huh?”

“Pretty good,” Kirby admitted. “We’re back in business.”

“You mean we get to put the temple back up?”

“Sure. I’ll be around Belize City this week, maybe go out to San Pedro, find a live one, or go up to the States for a while. We’re full time in business again.”

Luz said, “You bring any gage?”

“Not this time. You don’t want too much of that anyway, Luz, it’ll rob you of ambition.”

Tommy turned to look at Luz, squinting, trying to visualize him robbed of ambition.

Kirby had opened the cargo door at the left rear and the passenger door behind the copilot’s seat on the right, and the villagers methodically stowed all the packages they were carrying, then each one stolidly headed back to South Abilene. Mostly they didn’t look at Kirby at all, but if he did catch somebody’s eye that person would give him a shy smile and a nod and that was all. Tommy and Luz were the link between Kirby and the Indians, and nobody ever tried to bridge the gulf.

Kirby wasn’t even sure, in fact, why the Indians went along with this scam. They liked the money, obviously — most of it went into colorful clothes and sweet processed foods from town — but he had the impression they could get along just as well without it. It seemed sometimes as though they did it for its own sake, that they found it fun to recreate their ancestors’ art and artifacts. The shyness linked up with that idea, the modest appreciation of his appreciation of their skills.

Watching as Cynthia was loaded, Kirby said, “I hope you gave me a lot of Zotzes.”

“Well,” Tommy said reluctantly, “actually, no.”

“Not a lot? How many?”

“Well,” Tommy said, “actually, none.”

Kirby gave him an exasperated look. “Come on, Tommy, you know how they love Zotz in the States.”

“Maybe so,” Tommy said, “but down here old Zotzilaha is bad news. People don’t like to make him.”

Luz said, “These are very primitive assholes here, you know. They do Zotz, they figure Zotz maybe gonna get them.”

Kirby understood the problem, but it was still a real annoyance. Zotzilaha Chimalman, the bat-god of the ancient Maya, was the most fearsome of the Mayan demons, a grinning evil creature who lived in a gruesome cave surrounded by bats. One of his tasks was to divert the souls of the recently dead from the path leading to Mayan paradise and send them instead to the eternal darkness of hell. In “Popol Vuh,” the great Mayan creation myth, Zotzilaha appears as Camazotz, the enemy of man. After less than 400 years of Christianity, the Indians still found their ancient gods potent, and none more so than Zotzilaha Chimalman, the powerful personification of evil, the bat-god who flies, who owns the night and who destroys human beings out of sheer joy in his own viciousness.

It was easy to understand why the villagers didn’t like creating images of Zotzilaha, but the problem was that naturally the great demon-god was extremely popular among Kirby’s customers. Give a sophisticate a devil to play with any day; heros are boring.

“Tommy,” Kirby said, “I really need some Zotzes.”

“I’ll talk to my troops,” Tommy promised.

“Why don’t you do some yourself?”

Tommy looked vague, his eyes wandering away as he shrugged and said, “I’ve been busy.”

“Jesus, Tommy. You, too?”

“You’ll get your Zotzes,” Tommy said defensively. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

Not wanting a fight with Tommy, Kirby made a point of going over to the plane to watch how the loading was coming along. Luz’s sister Rosita came over to Kirby and said, “You ain’t been around.”

“Been busy, been busy.”

“How’s your wife?” There was some sort of edge in Rosita’s voice, some sort of glint in her eye.

Kirby pretended not to notice. “Worse,” he said. “She keeps seeing spiders on the wall.”

“Maybe there is spiders on the wall. Most walls got spiders on them.”

“Not these walls,” Kirby assured her. “It’s a very clean hospital, completely clean.”

Rosita nodded, scuffing her filthy toe in the dirt. By daylight she was, paradoxically, less attractive and more interesting. The wild girl tends not to be too interested in personal grooming. “Sheena says—” she said.

“Who?”

“Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.”

Oh; a comic book. “Sorry,” Kirby said. “What does she say?”

“She says she figures you don’t got a wife at all.”

Kirby stared. “She what?”

“She says she figures you’re some kinda con artist,” Rosita said. “Well, that’s what you are, huh?”

“Not with you, Rosita.”

“Huh.” The glint in Rosita’s eye was on the increase. “What Sheena says, she says you just don’t wanna get married, or maybe you just don’t wanna marry me, so you make up this wife in the crazy hospital, you can’t get a divorce unless she gets sane again.”

“That’s what Sheena says, is it?” Kirby was beginning to get a little irritated.

“Yeah. That’s what she says.”

“You talk to Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and she talks back to you.”

“Sure.”

“Well, you tell Sheena,” Kirby started.

“Tell her yourself. She’s over in the village.”

What Kirby might have said next he would never know, because Tommy and Luz came over then and Tommy said, “Come on back to the fort, Kimosabe, let’s party.”

“Can’t today,” Kirby said. “I’ve been letting things slide. I’ve got to get moving again.” The truth was, he was too impatient right now for partying. A week and a half sitting around was more than enough.

Luz said, “We got a surprise for you.”

Rosita said, “I already told him about it.”

They all frowned at her, Kirby in bewilderment, the others in exasperation. “Asshole,” her brother Luz commented, and Tommy said, “What did you do that for?”

“I don’t owe him no favors,” Rosita said, and went away with a straight back and a little whip-switch movement of the behind.

They all watched her go. Tommy said, “Kirby, I got the feeling your wife just died.”

“Somebody put some ideas in that child’s head,” Kirby said. Maybe somebody at the mission, he was thinking. He was very bitter. “I really better not come back to town this time.”

Tommy and Luz agreed. Cynthia was loaded by now, so Kirby climbed aboard, waved, and waited till the Indians were partway up the hill on their way home before he started the engine, not wanting to strangle them in dust. Then he turned his trusty steed aside, got up to a gallop, and became once again airborne.

He wasn’t happy with the way he’d left things; turning down their party invitation, getting static from Rosita and not dealing with it very well. Circling around in the sky like a lazy wasp, he decided to go over and buzz them once more, waggle his wings, let them know everything was still basically okay.