BOOK ONE
(Lucy)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Goody said it’s the in-between times when a soul is won or lost. I reckon that the trip back from Yamileta’s was one of those times. James and I did not speak. James drove in silence, jaw tight and eyes narrow, until he pulled up to his little house on the corner near the Quebrada. He turned off the engine, then sat.
“James.”
He looked at me.
“We have to find Paco.”
He stepped out of the truck without a word and unlocked the front gate. Then he walked to the house and unlocked the door. He returned to the truck, where I waited, and took his place behind the steering wheel, shutting the door behind him.
“What are you going to do?” I said.
“Dig.”
“Don’t you want to talk to Paco?”
He looked at me. “Don’t tell me what to do, Lucy. He’s my son.”
I sat momentarily, then pulled my backpack to my shoulder and opened the passenger door to leave. I thought to peek my head in the window to say something, but before I could speak, James threw his baseball cap onto the passenger seat, turned the ignition, and pulled away. The truck disappeared up the cobbled street and around a corner as I watched alone in silence.
I roused myself and entered the gate. That is when I found Paco waiting outside James’s house.
“Where is Mr. Fee?” He looked at me with sullen eyes.
“Do you want some food? Juice?” I prodded him in and closed the gate behind me.
“Where is Mr. Fee?”
“He said he went to dig.”
Paco shook his head. “He is not digging.”
I walked inside. He followed. “He told me he was going to dig. That is what he said. Do you want something to drink?” I pulled open the refrigerator.
“Are you going to leave, Miss Lucy?” He tugged at my elbow. “Are you going to leave, Miss Lucy?”
I stopped. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
He shook his head as if the words were stuck to his tongue. “Go find Mr. Fee. He is not digging. Go find him, Miss Lucy.”
I sat at the kitchen table. “Paco,” I said, “whenever I find myself looking for Mr. Fee I end up losing myself.”
Paco stood close so that we were eye to eye. He shook his head. “Tell him you are sorry, Miss Lucy. He’ll forgive you.”
“Sorry?” I laughed.
His eyes narrowed. “You shamed him.”
I looked at him.
“You shamed him. He told you he’s my papi and you shamed him.”
I gaped. “He hasn’t treated you the way a papi should treat a son.”
“Say you’re sorry.” He stiffened. “Say you’re sorry, Miss Lucy.”
I reached to him. He batted me away, tears falling down his cheeks. He turned from me. “I wish you never came on the plane. I wish you were still in the jail.” He looked at me coldly. “I hate you.” Then he ran away. The door slammed behind him.
I stood and looked out the window. Then I sat. Then I stood. What do I do? What am I doing here? What is happening to me? I grabbed my backpack. I dug out the water bottle we had shared during the interview. I pulled out the tape recorder I hadn’t used. I pulled out the camera, my notebooks. Before I reckoned with what I was doing, I picked up the phone and dialed Larry. I heard it ring on the other end and a chill came over me. I hung up. I dropped to a chair at the kitchen table, my head in my arms. Then I lifted my eyes and dialed my brother Gabe, who picked up on the third ring.
“Why did you ruin everything and get married?”
“What’s going on, Bu. You still at Fee’s?”
“You and I were supposed to live out our days together. Now you’re married and I’m alone.”
“Pack your things and leave. Go home. Take a bus.”
I didn’t respond.
“Can you do that, Bu? Can you do it right now?”
I didn’t respond.
He paused. “There’s your answer.”
“You ruined everything.”
“Bu, why does it take heaven and earth to move either one of you two? Can you answer me that?”
* * *
Leonardo says I don’t always understand what I want. He says that sometimes I need someone to tell me what I want, but that I am stubborn and won’t listen to anybody. I do not deny it. The one exception is Gabe. Only he could have shown me that I could not pack my bag and walk away from James Fee. I sat at his kitchen table and stared into the silence of his home. I saw him everywhere, his imprint on the couch where he had dropped next to me and smirked when I labeled my notes as our last interview. I saw him in the empty space where he kept his baseball cap on the table by the door. I saw him snatching it and adjusting it to his head on his way out. I saw him in the dish rack that held the frying pan he had used to scramble the eggs he served me without salt. Where was Paco? I thought surely he would have reappeared by now. I looked out the kitchen window. I went outside and peered beyond the gate. “Paco?” He did not answer.
I returned to the bedroom to wash my arms and legs. I powdered myself and tied a bow at the waist of my summer dress and loosened my hair. I colored my lips and pulled up my hair. I wanted to surprise James, he so rarely saw me in a dress. Perhaps he would think of me as the spinner.
I went to the courtyard to pick a handful of flowers and was placing them in a vase atop the kitchen table when the doorbell rang. Paco at last had returned. And just in time. I knew he would be able to tell me where I could find Mr. Fee. I opened the gate and stood stunned to see staring back at me, not Paco, but the brooding eyes of Mario Lopez. He seemed equally surprised.
“Lucy.”
He wore white chino pants and a blue denim shirt minus the leather utility belt. His face was tanned and the sunlight glinted off the shocks of gray hair. His eyes warmed to me. “Mario.”
“I’m looking for James.”
I peeled back hair the breeze brushed over my face. “He’s not here.”
“When will he be back?”
“I don’t know. He said he was going to dig.” I hesitated, then thought of the two hundred lines I needed for magazine copy. “Have you got a minute?”
It may have been the dress. It may have been the breeze in my hair. It may have been the lipstick. Anyway, whatever the reason, Mario Lopez was not thinking in that moment that all journalists were wolves. He said he would be glad to talk to me.
We went to the kitchen and I pulled out a chair. “Do you want something to drink? Juice? Coffee?” In my self-appointed role as hostess in James’s house, I pulled a glass from the cupboard and poured him a drink from James’s refrigerator.
Mario was the picture of helpfulness. He waited patiently, sipping and smiling awkwardly as I set up the recorder and tested the tape. I grabbed a pen and opened my notebook. I wrote at the top of a fresh page: Saturday, March 6; The royal tomb/Yax K’uk Mo’/ Mario Lopez.
“Are you ready to begin the interview?”
He smiled. “A su orden.”
“Where did you grow up?”
He looked surprised. “You’re not going to ask me about the tomb?”
I leaned on an elbow. “We’ll get to that.”
“Outside Tegucigalpa. A town called Yuscarán.”
“Do you have brothers? Sisters?”
“An older sister.” He sipped his juice.
“Did you play games?”
He looked at me. “No.” He shook his head, turning his glass.
“What did your father do?”
“He was in the rum business. Yuscarán is known for rum.”
“Your mother?”
“Ama de casa. She took care of her children. I was close to my mother. She suffered a lot.” He stared at his glass. “My father was gone days at a time. My father had another wife and child in Tegucigalpa. Another family. I didn’t know it growing up.” He looked at me and sipped. “He paid for their dwelling and stayed with her when he traveled to the capital on business.” He lifted his eyes. “What about your family? Who are your parents? Do you have brothers and sisters?”
I recounted for him moments from my childhood, how Gabe and I swam in the lake by our house and paddled from the piranhas. “They went after scabs and moles,” I said. He gaped. I told him of drinking coconut milk and eating fried yuca at the tribe. He seemed genuinely affected when I told him of the chigger-bites after sitting in the grass at the top of the ridge.
“Your childhood was mysterious and happy,” he said, smiling faintly.
“It was a good childhood.”
“You and your brother shared many happy moments. That’s nice. It sounds like you are close with your father.” He paused. “That is why you are bold and ask so many questions. You do not have to fight battles inside yourself.” He paused and sipped. “You are a good journalist. I cannot deny it. And your magazine upset me. I cannot deny that either.” I leaned toward him and put a hand on his arm.
“They gave me two hundred lines this time, Mario.”
He sat up straight. “Then we had best fill the space.” He pulled in his chair, folding his hands and resting his elbows flat on the table. “Copán.” He paused. “I came to the ruins the first time when I was thirteen. It left an impact on me. I saw the Maya as part of my heritage. I am Honduran.” He paused again. “These are my people. I wanted to understand what happened to them. It was a question I was always thinking about. Whowere they? Why did they disappear?
“I was a grad student in the late seventies with my friend, James Fee. We came here together. Of course, we were going to solve all the mysteries of the Maya.” He laughed. “We did not. We created more mysteries.” I put down my pen. “James and I focused our work in the Acropolis. He had his part. I had mine. I focused on Temple 16. That is where we found the tomb of K’inich Yax K’uk Mo’ ” He lifted the recorder. “Is the tape running?”
“It’s going.”
“Structure 16 is a typical royal structure. Therein lies the challenge.” He shifted his angle, crossing his legs and folding his hands around a knee. “For the Maya certain spaces were sacred. They would collapse the upper levels of an existing structure and encase what was left with fill. Then they built the new structure around it. In our work we live inside a labyrinth of tunnels. So many levels require us to work in three dimensions, up, down, sideways, and in between, all at once. It is easy to get lost. Sometimes you can’t see what you’re looking at.” He shook his head. “By the time we got to the third level inside Structure 16 we discovered it was very different than the first two levels. We found a beautiful temple, perfectly preserved. We removed the loose dirt. Exposed on the face of the temple we found a set of giant masks tinged with traces of the original paint, red paint. It was all over the place. It is the best preserved Maya temple we’ve ever found. We called it Rosalila because of the red.
“Two giant birds frame the central doorway. They are facing the setting sun. Above them, undulating serpents extend their bodies to the sky. Rosalila once crowned the highest point in Copán. From miles around you could look in the direction of Copán and see the shocking red temple mounted over the city. We found a hieroglyphic step on the stairs of Rosalila that tells us it was built by Moon Jaguar, Copán’s tenth king, in C.E. 571. It is dedicated to K’inich Yax K’uk Mo’.”
He emptied his glass and lifted it. “Is there more?”
I paused the recorder to refill the glass.
“Usually the kings smashed to bits other kings’ structures so they could build something bigger and better over it. But one of the kings decided to bury Rosalila intact. It is completely, entirely preserved, like it had been embalmed. This got us wondering — why was this building so revered that it was essentially mummified? What is inside of it? It was obviously sacredly related to Yax K’uk Mo’.”
“How did you know that?”
“The temple, which measures about eighteen meters by twelve, represents an allegory in Maya cosmology. It contains no tombs, which suggests it was used only for ceremonial purposes. Rosalila mentions Yax K’uk Mo’ in the imagery in many different ways. The birds on the bottom on either side of the doorway are placards of the name of Yax K’uk Mo’. Then, over the doorway is the face of the sun god, his long wings emerging from both sides of his face. It is an avian form of the sun. He is Yax K’uk Mo’ but he has become apotheosized, or deified, as the sun. One of his titles is ‘K’inich,’ which means ‘great sun’ or ‘sun face.’ So he is the sun over the doorway of Rosalila. All of the temple is focused on Yax K’uk Mo’.” He leaned with his elbows flat against the table.
“James and I found a small cache of flint eccentrics hidden inside Rosalila. You would not believe how sharp the edges of those things were. These were powerful works of art. A bundle of blades chipped from the sacred fire stone—flint.” He paused, his eyes shining. “They were emblems of power, probably used on ceremonial occasions. Some were meant to be hafted onto shafts of spears. Others were hafted to powerful sacred objects used in rituals. There were nine of them. Some people interpret this as representing the nine lords of the night, in accordance with the nine levels of the Maya Underworld. Others think at least one of them was a portrait of Yax K’uk Mo’. They’re amazing.”
I interrupted. “How does the Rosalila fit into the significance of the discovery of Yax K’uk Mo’s tomb?”
He crossed his legs, leaning back. “One of the holiest sites in Copán’s sacred geography is the place where Yax K’uk Mo’ is buried, in the heart of the Acropolis, Structure 16. We found Rosalila also buried within Structure 16, and in it, incense burners, stingray spines, and jade flowers. Incense burners and stingray spines were the implements used in the ritual of auto-sacrifice, or blood-letting, when the king would pierce himself to communicate with his ancestors. He would use a stingray spine on his tongue or genitals and drip the blood onto bark paper, which was then burned in an incense burner. The king’s blood was sacred. His vision of the ancestors would come in the smoke. Finding the implements of auto-sacrifice inside Rosalila meant the kings used the sacred temple as the doorway to the ancestors. Finding the tomb of Yax K’uk Mo’ also in Structure 16 meant the kings used Rosalila to communicate with him. This strengthened their authority. All the kings of Copán legitimized their power by linking themselves to Yax K’uk Mo’.
“Finding his tomb put all the pieces of the puzzle into focus. I already said Structure 16 is at the heart of Copán’s sacred geography. Rosalila is buried inside Structure 16. Rosalila was used by kings for auto-sacrifice to communicate with the ancestors. The bones of Yax K’uk Mo’s are buried at the lowest level of Structure 16. He is at the center, he is the cornerstone that holds the other pieces in place.” He paused. “Now that we know he was a real man, we are able to understand the significance of Rosalila, Altar Q, the Hieroglyphic Stairway, Structure 11—everything. His bones brought the whole picture into clarity.” He touched my arm. “I will never forget the day James and I found those flint eccentrics. The two of us were alone in the tunnel, squeezed between the narrow walls. We had only a single light bulb and it cast many strange shadows. The walls looked blue because of the angle of the light. James’s face looked bronze, like the face of a god. We were dripping in sweat, he more than I because of that beard. I pulled them out and placed the first one in the box he held. I carefully laid it in. I said, ‘You cannot believe how sharp those edges are.’
“One by one I pulled them out. We examined each closely with the flashlight. We found all nine.” He shook his head and smiled faintly. “Sometimes you forget that human beings made these things, and that it was very important to them when they did.” He stared at his glass. “It is amazing to think that yours are the first eyes to see something this powerful, that no other eyes have seen for over a thousand years.” He looked at me. “It is a special feeling. It doesn’t happen everyday. It touches me.” Mario shook his head. “Sometimes we forget why we are doing this.”
I inlined myself to him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“In our grad school days, we felt we were going to solve all the mysteries of the Maya. We would crown the efforts of our beloved forebears. When we found those flint eccentrics buried inside Rosalila, just he and I, we understood that we weren’t there to solve mysteries or crown the work of our forebears. We were there for our love of the tunnels. Ours were the first eyes to see the flints in 1,300 years, the first hands to touch them since the hands that so carefully put them there. No one knows how long it would take to make an implement like that today because no one today has the skill to do it.” He lifted his chin. “We make our measurements. We take our photos. We hold our press conferences. Sometimes we forget to think about the human hands that made these specimens. It is a special trust we have been given. It doesn’t happen to everyone. It is a privilege.” He paused. “Those are the moments that explain why we do this. Those are our moments, James’s and mine. The Maya are giving up their secrets. How do you explain that at a press conference? How do you tell a reporter that the world shakes beneath your feet when you find things like those flints? How do you explain that you hear the ancestors whisper? ” He looked at me. “They don’t want to hear it. They want to know what treasures we found and how it will enhance our international reputation and if it will help tourism. We give them stories. Then they reduce our discoveries to ten lines.” He smiled and drained the remainder of his juice. Then he stood.
“You are too dressed up to be on assignment at Copán. You are going to find my friend, I presume.” He smiled. “I understand.” Rising, his hands on his belt, he said, “I will be going. Thank you for the juice.” I followed him to the gate. Before leaving he turned to me. “By the way, I came to tell James the coroner determined Berto was not murdered.” I looked at him. “He was already dead by the time he was painted and placed in the tomb.”
“How do they know?”
“They could tell by the absorption of the paint in the skin. Or, I should say, by the lack of absorption. Anyway, it was not paint. It was dandruff shampoo. So, we do not have a murder on our hands, thank God. A sick act, yes. But murder, no.”
“Do they know how he died?”
“They found high levels of alcohol in his blood and a crack in his skull and swelling in his brain. They concluded he fell down drunk and hit his head. That caused the swelling. They believe they have a suspect. But I will leave it to James to give you an explanation.” He looked at his watch. “Half past two. Can I give you a ride to the park?”
“I’m going to straighten up here a little. I’ll catch a cab.”
He hesitated. “I apologize for what happened about the jail. I regret it.”
“That day doesn’t exist in my memory, Mario.” We shook hands.
“Tell James I will catch up with him later. Good-bye, Lucy.” He waved.