Scott Smith - The Ruins

Jeff shouted something to them, but Eric and Stacy just waved and kept walking. Pablo was waiting for them on the trail. He'd opened his pack, taken out the tequila. The cap was off; he offered the bottle to Eric, who-despite himself, knowing better-took a long, wincing swallow and then passed it on to Stacy. Stacy could be an impressive drinker when she put her mind to it, as she did now. She threw her head back, the bottle tilted at a perfect vertical, the tequila going blub-blub , blub-blub as it poured straight down her throat. She surfaced for air with a cough that became a laugh, her face flushed. Pablo applauded, slapped her on the shoulder, took back the bottle.

The two Mayan boys were still with them. They'd approached a little closer but hadn't yet left the jungle's shade. They'd climbed off their bike and were standing side by side, the larger of the two holding it by its handlebars. Pablo raised the bottle toward them, calling in Greek, but they didn't move; they just stood, staring. The dog was right beside them, also watching.

Jeff and Mathias and Amy had reached the far wall of the jungle, directly across the field from them. They were just beginning to move along it now, parallel to the trail, searching for the mysterious path. Pablo returned the bottle to his pack, and the three of them stood for a while, watching the others make their way along the muddy field. Eric didn't believe they were going to find the ruins. He didn't, in fact, believe that the ruins even existed. Someone was lying to them, or playing a prank, but whether it was Mathias or Mathias's brother or Mathias's brother's perhaps imaginary girlfriend, he couldn't decide. It didn't matter. He'd been having fun for a while, but now he wanted it to be over, wanted to be safely back on an air-conditioned bus to Cancún, drifting into sleep. He wasn't certain how he was going to accomplish this; all he knew was that he wanted to get there, and that the first thing he had to do was finish walking back to the road on the shortest route possible. This didn't involve tramping through a muddy field.

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.

It 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."