Dustin Thomason - 12.21

“So he wants us to bring one to him?”

Chel reached into her bag, pulled out a tattered copy of the holy book, and set it on the nightstand. “Like a Christian might want a Bible.”

No indígena would use only the word wuj —what the Maya called their ancient books—for the proper name of the Popol Vuh . But no one would question her here.

“See if he can tell us anything about when he got sick,” Thane said. “Ask him if he remembers when he first had trouble sleeping.”

As Chel translated the doctor’s questions into Qu’iche, Volcy opened his eyes a little. “In the jungle,” he said.

Chel blinked, confused. “You were sick in the jungle?”

He nodded.

“You were sick when you came here, Volcy?”

“For three suns before I came here, I had not slept.”

“He was sick in Guatemala?” Thane asked. “You’re sure that’s what he said?”

Chel nodded. “Why? What does that mean?”

“It means I need to make some calls.”

CHEL PUT A HAND on the crease between Volcy’s neck and shoulder. It was a technique her mother had used when Chel was a little girl, to calm her after a nightmare or a bad scrape; her grandmother had done the same for her mother. As Chel rubbed her hand back and forth, she felt the tension in Volcy’s body loosening. She didn’t know how long the doctor would be gone. This was her chance.

“Tell me, brother,” she whispered. “Why did you come from El Petén?”

Volcy spoke. “Che’qriqa’ ali Janotha.”

Help me find Janotha .

“Please,” he continued. “I have to get back to my wife and my daughter.”

She leaned in. “You have a daughter?”

“A newborn,” he said. “Sama. Now Janotha must care for her alone.”

Chel knew that, but for a twist of fate, she could easily have been Janotha, waiting with a newborn in a palm-thatched house for a man to come home, watching his empty hammock hanging from the roof. Somewhere in Guatemala, Janotha was pressing corn into tortillas over a hearth and promising her infant daughter that her father would return to them soon.

Volcy seemed to fade in and out, but Chel decided to press her advantage. “Do you know the ancient book , brother?”

His eyes suddenly focused on her in a way they hadn’t before.

“I have seen the wuj , brother,” Chel continued. “Can you tell me about it?”

Volcy stared at her. “I did what any man does to help his family.”

“What did you do to help your family?” she asked. “Sell the book?”

“It was broken into pieces,” he whispered. “On the floor of the temple… dried up by a hundred thousand days.”

So Chel had been right: The man lying here in front of her was the looter. Tensions in Guatemala had left indígenas like Volcy—manual laborers—with little option. Yet somehow, against all odds, he’d found a temple with a book that he understood would command a fortune in America. The amazing thing was that he had managed to bring it here himself.

“Brother, you brought the book to America to sell?”

“ Je’ ,” Volcy said. Yes.

Chel glanced back over her shoulder to make sure she was still alone before asking, “Did you sell it to someone? Did you sell it to Hector Gutierrez?”

Volcy said nothing.

“Tell me this,” Chel said, trying a different tack. She put a finger to her cheek. “Did you sell it to a man with red ink on his cheek? Just above his beard?”

He nodded.

“Did you meet him here or in the Petén?”

He pointed down at the floor, at this foreign land he would no doubt die in. Volcy found the tomb, looted the book, made his way here, and somehow hooked up with Gutierrez. Within a week, the book was sitting in Chel’s lab at the Getty.

“Brother, where is this temple?” she asked. “There is so much good that could come to our people if you will tell me where the temple is.”

Instead of answering, Volcy whipped his body toward his side table, his arms flailing at the pitcher of water. The phone and alarm clock crashed to the ground. He grabbed the top off the pitcher and poured the rest of the water into his mouth. Chel stumbled back and her chair fell to the floor.

When Volcy finished drinking, Chel reached for the end of his blanket and dried his face. She knew she had little time to get the answers she needed. He was calm again, so she pressed on. “Can you tell me where Janotha lives?” she asked. “What village are you and Janotha from? We can send word to your family and let them know you are here.” The temple couldn’t be far from his own home.

Volcy looked confused. “Who will you send there?”

“We have many from all over Guatemala in Fraternidad Maya. Someone will know the way to your village, I promise.”

“Fraternidad?”

“This is our church ,” Chel said. “Where Maya here in Los Angeles worship.”

Volcy’s eyes filled with distrust. “That is Spanish. You worship with ladinos ?”

“No,” Chel said. “ Fraternidad is a safe place of worship for the indígenas .”

“I will tell ladinos nothing!”

Chel had made a mistake. Fraternidad meant brotherhood in Spanish. Living here in Los Angeles, commingling of Spanish, Mayan, and English was common. But where Volcy had come from, it was reasonable to doubt a Maya church with such a word in its name.

“ Fraternidad cannot know,” Volcy continued. “I will never lead the ladinos to Janotha and Sama…. You are ajwaral! ”

There was no single English word for it. It meant literally, You are a native of here . But Volcy intended it as an indigenous slur. Even though Chel had been born in a village like his, even though she devoted her life to studying the ancients—to men like him, she would always be an outsider.

“Dr. Manu?” said a voice from behind her.

She turned and found a white-coated figure standing in the doorway.

“I’m Gabriel Stanton.”

CHEL TRAILED THE new doctor past the masked security guard and out into the hallway. His voice was full of purpose, and his height gave him a commanding presence. How long had he been watching? Had he sensed the uncomfortable direction her conversation with Volcy had taken?

Stanton turned. “So Mr. Volcy says he was sick before he got to the States?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“We have to know for sure,” Stanton told her. “We’ve been looking for a source here in L.A. If what he says is true, we need to be looking in Guatemala instead. Did he say where in the country he was from?”

“Based on his accent, I have to assume he’s from the Petén,” she told him. “It’s the largest department—the equivalent of states. But I haven’t gotten anything more about the village he’s from. And he won’t say how he got into America.”

“Either way,” Stanton said, “we could be talking about Guatemalan meat as our vector. And if he’s from some small indigenous village, then it has to be something he would have had access to. Far as I understand, thousands of acres of tropical forest have been cut to make way for cattle farms down there. That right?”

Chel nodded. His knowledge was impressive, and he was clearly a smart guy, if intimidating.

“Volcy could’ve been exposed to tainted meat from any of those cattle farms,” Stanton said. “We need to know all the meat he ate before his symptoms began. Far back as he can remember. Beef especially, but also chicken, pork—anything.”

“Villagers can eat meat from half a dozen different animals at a single meal.”