BOOK ONE
(Lucy)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN : The Final Chapter of Book One
Lost in misery, I did not notice the approach of a lone worker who stumbled upon me. He saw me in the dim light where I sat in a heap, my head in my arms, sobbing with shallow gulping breaths. It was Raúl, that happy bobbing, dipping guide who, (he later said) sensed I was not finding El Doctor Fee. I looked up. He was removing his hat.
“Why you are not wearing your shoes? You should be wearing them.”
“How did you find me?”
“It was not difficult. I followed the trail of broken things. And here you are,” he said. “They’re looking for you. Dr. Fee. The pilot. They are very nervous.”
“The pilot?”
“They found me on the Great Plaza by Structure 4, where you found me. I was with a group of Germans. They give me the Germans because I am good with the gutturals. They are easy for me.
“Dr. Fee asks if I have seen you. I said I watched you climb the steps of Temple 11. I tell them it is not easy to climb the steps of Temple 11 in single strides, but you climbed them in double strides. Then I tell them I saw you fall and wave your shoes.”
At that moment, James rounded the corner and came upon us. Raúl turned to him, dipping and smiling and shaking his head pointing at me, then departed. James halted, stunned, then came and kneeled and picked grass from my matted hair while I choked and heaved. “I was looking for you. I got lost.” I pressed my wet eyes to his shirt. He held me tentatively, not wanting to aggravate my wounds.
“Where don’t you hurt?”
“My face,” I said. “My face doesn’t hurt.” He kissed my face and the wetness from my cheeks. He pushed back my hair and smiled. “You look pretty in your dress.” He pulled his canteen from his shoulder and lifted it to my lips. He saw in degrees the dried blood on my legs and arms and dress, all of it mingled with dirt and sticks and grass and sweat. He curled my hand into his. “Larry is here. He came to take you home. He’s waiting outside.” I rose achingly and brushed off my dress. “Can you walk?”
James led me by the hand out of the tunnel, out of the darkness. If someone in that moment had asked which I would have preferred, twenty-four hours in a Honduran jail with cockroaches and a caffeine headache, or three hours in the belly of Temple 16 with oozing bodily fluids and apparitions of Yax K’uk Mo’, I would have said it was irrelevant. The result was the same: on both occasions, James Fee was on the other side of the darkness and led me into light.
We stepped out of the tunnels into open air and the brilliance of the sun caused me to recoil. When my sight returned, I saw plainly that Larry was not there and I knew why. James glanced around. “I told him to wait here.”
“Larry doesn’t take orders. He came into the tunnels. He saw us.” I looked at James. “What time is it?”
He checked his watch. “Five-thirty.”
“He’s going to try and fly back to the capital. He won’t be able to land. There are no lights at the airport. We have to stop him. I have to talk to him.”
James began darting about looking for the boy who always seemed to know where to be. “Paco! Paco, come here!” The boy appeared from behind the wall of the corte. He ran to James’s side without so much as a fleeting glance my way. “I need you to run after Mr. Larry. He is walking to his plane. Run and catch him. Tell him Miss Lucy wants to talk to him.”
Paco said, “You want me to tell Mr. Larry to wait for Miss Lucy to get into the plane?”
James kneeled and put his hands on his shoulders. “That’s not what I said. Listen to me, now. Run and tell Mr. Larry not to get in the plane. Tell him Miss Lucy is coming to talk to him. Now run! You don’t have a lot of time.”
* * *
He is a fleet-footed runner. Whenever there is running to be done, Mr. Fee always calls on Paco and he runs. He ran the length of the park that day. He caught up with Larry McCully who was standing at the plane, the pilot who had brought me to Copán only a few days before. Paco did not speak to me when I approached the plane, limping badly. He ran to the Visitor’s Center where James waited. Larry’s back was turned to me. He leaned against the Cessna, palms pressed against its side, his arms out straight. His head was bowed between his shoulders. He looked at me with wet eyes. “Please don’t fly until tomorrow,” I said.
I do not remember what else passed between us during those hard sad moments. I stood erect, my head tilted slightly, holding the one sandal left to me after my fall. I looked him in the eyes and didn’t turn away. Larry shifted his weight. He folded his arms, then unfolded them. He placed them on his hips, lowered his head, then raised it. He sometimes shook his head. He put his arms on my shoulders, then pulled them away. We had spoken for several minutes when Leonardo appeared. He looked at me and the three of us talked briefly. Leo kissed my cheek and sent me on my way. I left Larry with Leo at the plane. James and Paco waited at a distance. I came to them and told them I agreed to have dinner with Larry later that night. “He’s going to sleep in the plane tonight.”
Paco disappeared and James took me home. I showered and washed my cuts and tried to fix my hair. I had no dress to wear, only safari shorts, my Fighting Illini T-shirt, and Renegade hiking shoes. James dressed my wounds. He sat me on a chair so I could soak my cut foot. He dotted my scrapes with ointment. He was wrapping my knee in gauze, circling it with white tape, when I touched his hair. “K’inich Ahua, full of light and fire.” He looked up. “He marries the new moon, the mother of rain and rivers, keeper of the three stones.” He smiled. “This is my real life,” I said. He kissed my knee.
Later that evening, when I left for the hotel in town where I would be meeting Larry, I was halfway up that steep cobbled incline to the corner when I realized I had forgotten my backpack and returned to the house to fetch it. I approached and promptly recognized Paco’s voice arising from inside. I waited before opening the door. He was sitting at the kitchen table where James had served him tortillas and beans. Paco was saying, “You are not sad Miss Lucy is having dinner with Mr. Larry?” His little mouth curled painfully.
“What’s wrong?” James said, “You haven’t been yourself today.” He poured Paco some juice.
The boy didn’t answer. He lifted the beans with a fork and let them drop onto the plate. I watched from behind the screen door as James spread his elbows flat on the table, folding his big hands, and inclined himself to his son. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Why is Miss Lucy with Mr. Larry?”
“She needs to talk to Mr. Larry.”
“Is she going to go with Mr. Larry on the plane?”
“Yes. She has to go back with Mr. Larry on the plane.”
“Is she going to kiss Mr. Larry by the plane?” He pressed a fist to his wet eyes.
“Is that what’s bothering you?” I inclined myself nearer. “No,” James said. “Miss Lucy is not going to kiss Mr. Larry by the plane. Miss Lucy is not going to kiss Mr. Larry anymore. There will be no more kissing.”
“I told Miss Lucy I wished she never came on the plane.” A tear spilled down his cheek. “I don’t want Miss Lucy to go home on the plane.” More tears fell. James pushed his own plate away, then pulled away Paco’s. He put both his big hands around Paco’s little hands.
“Miss Lucy has to go home tomorrow on Mr. Larry’s plane. Then, in a few weeks, you and I are going to drive my truck to Miss Lucy’s house and bring her back here to live with us.” Paco coughed and breathed heavily, then lowered his head in his arms. “Don’t you want Miss Lucy to come back and stay with us?” He touched Paco’s head.
“She will go on the plane with Mr. Larry and she won’t come back. I told Miss Lucy I hated her and wished she never came on the plane.” He coughed and choked. “I love Miss Lucy. But she’ll never come back. I love Miss Lucy.” James stroked that little head. He put his other hand on Paco’s arm, so small an arm inside so big a hand. Paco did not speak.
James said, “You’re telling me the words of Tomás Fee are mightier than God?” Paco raised his head. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
James placed his arms around his son and lifted him. He carried him to the couch and sat, Paco curled in his lap. James saw me then as I looked through the window. I saw the lines on the edges of James’s eyes as he held his son and I knew he would never walk away again. I saw all the sadness and losses and ruined hearts as passing moments on a landscape filled with assertions of beauty and goodness more fierce and persistent than all sorrows. Paco lifted his face. I saw, standing there behind the screen door, strong bones carry fragile ones and that beauty lived and would not be held back by sorrows. Paco lifted his face to his father. “That is my name. My name is Tomás Fee.”
*
James was waiting asleep on the couch when I returned later that night. I lumbered in, stiff, swollen-eyed, covered with bandages. I sat near him and touched his face. He opened his eyes and played his fingers in my sleeve. “I brought in his bed,” he said. “I told him to shower.” He took my hand. “He asked when you were coming back.”
We slept where we were, on the couch, utterly exhausted, my head on James’s lap. Neither of us detected Paco slip out the door the next morning with the morning sun. The time had come for James to take me to the plane. He looked for his son, but Paco would not be found. James hoisted my bag into the bed of the truck and I called to Paco. James said he did not want to say goodbye.
Leonardo met us in the parking lot of the Visitor’s Center. He took my bag to the plane. I watched from afar as Larry heaved it into storage, where four days and a lifetime earlier he had pulled it out and carried it on his shoulder, duty-bound, as missionaries tend to be.
James carried my pack, since my arm hurt and my back was sore and my legs were stiff from the falls I took. Larry sat in the pilot’s seat adjusting headphones and pushing buttons, looking this way and that, ready to go. Leonardo smiled and shook James’s hand. “I will take care of her until you come.”
James and I did not touch before I looked at him and said goodbye. I turned to step into the plane.
“Miss Lucy!”
I stopped and looked up. “Miss Lucy!” I saw him running, that fleet-footed boy with the fire-blazed eyes and hair like a pixie. I caught him in my arms. “I love you. I love you, Miss Lucy.” He promised he would come for me in the truck. “In two weeks,” he said. He kissed my wet face. I looked at James, who winked at me, and I kissed my son’s face in return. “That is for you,” I said. I kissed the other cheek. “That is for Papi.”
James took Paco’s hand and pulled him from me. He handed me my pack. “Good-bye,” he said. They walked to the Center, James’s hand on the shoulder of his little boy. Leo sat with Larry up front. Larry didn’t turn to ask if I was ready, but I was. The plane roared. It lurched forward and coursed the dry airstrip and tears formed at the edges of my eyes, the way they always did when small planes went aloft. We turned in the sky, banked and settled. The wings of the Cessna carried me into the clouds, over the mountains.
The end of Book One.
You can purchase a hard copy of the book here.