"We should put up a sign, I guess," Jeff said. "Just to be safe. In case the Greeks come when no one's there. A skull and crossbones or something."
Mathias laughed, very softly. "You sound like a German."
"What do you mean?"
"Always doing the practical thing, even when it's pointless."
"You think a sign is pointless?"
"Would a skull and crossbones have stopped you from climbing the hill yesterday?"
Jeff mulled over that, frowning. "But it's worth a try, isn't it?" he asked. "I mean, couldn't it stop someone else, even if it wouldn't have stopped us?"
Mathias laughed again. "Ja, Herr Jeff. By all means. Go make your sign." He waved him away." Gehen," he said. "Go."
Jeff stood up, headed off. The contents of the blue tent were still tumbled beside the shaft-the backpacks, the radio, the camera and first-aid kit, the Frisbee, the empty canteen, the spiral notebooks. Jeff dug through first one of the backpacks, then the other, until he found a black ballpoint pen. He took it and one of the notebooks, carried them back across the hilltop to the debris remaining from Mathias's hurried construction of the lean-to. From this, he retrieved the roll of duct tape, a three-foot aluminum pole. Mathias watched him-smiling, shaking his head-but he didn't say anything. It was growing subtly lighter; the sun was about to rise, Jeff could tell. As he set off along the trail, the Mayans' fires came into view, still burning on the far edge of the clearing, flickering palely in the fading darkness.
Halfway down the hill, he felt the urge to defecate: powerful, imperative. He set down everything he was carrying, then stepped into the vines and quickly lowered his pants. It wasn't diarrhea, but something one notch short of it. The shit slipped wetly out of him, snakelike, collapsing into a small pile between his feet. There was a strong smell rising off it, sickening him. He needed to wipe himself, but he couldn't think of anything to use. There was the vine growing all around him, with its flat, shiny leaves, but he knew what happened when these were crushed in any way, the acid sting of their sap. He shuffled back to the trail, only half-rising, his pants still bunched around his ankles, and ripped a sheet of paper from the notebook. He crumpled it, rubbed roughly. They should probably dig a latrine, he realized, somewhere downhill from the tent. Downwind, too. They could leave one of the other notebooks beside it, for toilet paper.
Dawn had begun to break, finally. It was an extraordinary sight-clear pink and rose above a line of green. Jeff crouched there, watching, the shit-stained sheet of paper still held in his hand. Then the sun, all in an instant, seemed to leap above the horizon: pale yellow, shimmering, too bright to look at.
It was as he was stepping back into the vines to kick some dirt over his shit-pulling his pants up, fumbling for his zipper-that he felt his fingers begin to burn. In the growing light, he could see that there was a pale green fuzz sprouting across his jeans. His shoes, too. It was the vine, he realized; tendrils of it had taken root on his clothes during the night, so tiny that they still looked more like the spread of a fungus than a plant-diaphanous, veil-like, nearly invisible. When Jeff brushed them away, they crumpled, leaking their stinging sap, singeing his hands. He stared at the green fuzz a long moment, not certain what to make of it. That the vine could grow so quickly seemed extraordinary, an important development, and yet what did it mean? He couldn't think, couldn't decide, had to give up finally. He forced himself to look away, to continue forward into the day. He tossed the wad of paper onto the little pile of shit. The dirt was too packed, too dry for him to kick any free; he had to crouch and chop at it with a rock, sweat rising on his skin from the effort. He loosened one handful of the pale yellow soil, then another, scattering them across the mess he'd made, partially obscuring it, burying the stench; it was good enough.
Then it was back to the trail, where he stooped to retrieve the tape and pen, the notebook and the aluminum pole. He was just turning to resume his downward journey, when he hesitated, thinking, There should be flies. Why aren't there flies? He crouched again, puzzling over this, staring back toward his half-covered pile of shit, as if waiting for the insects to appear, belatedly, buzzing and swirling. But they didn't, and his mind kept jumping-too rapidly, without pause, like a burglar rifling a desk, yanking open drawers, dumping their contents to the floor.
Not just here but on Pablo, too. Flies hovering over his smell, crawling across his skin.
And mosquitoes.
And gnats.
Where are they?
The sun continued to rise. The heat, too-so fast.
Maybe the birds, Jeff thought. Maybe they've eaten all the insects.
He stood up, stared across the hillside, searching for the birds, listening for their calls. They ought to be awake now, flitting about, greeting the dawn. But there was nothing. No movement, no sound. No flies, no mosquitoes, no gnats, no birds.
Droppings, he thought, and scanned the surrounding vines, searching among the bright red flowers, the flat, hand-shaped leaves, for the white or amber splatter of bird shit. But, once again, there was nothing.
Maybe they live in holes, burrows they gouge from the earth with their beaks . He remembered reading of birds who did this; he could almost picture the creatures, earth-colored, taloned, hook-beaked. But he could see no sign of tunneled dirt, no shadowed openings.
He noticed a pebble at his feet, perfectly round, no larger than a blueberry, and he crouched, picked it up, popped it into his mouth. This was something else he'd read: how people lost in the desert would sometimes suck on small stones to keep their thirst at bay. The pebble had an acrid taste, stronger than he'd expected; he almost spit it out, but he resisted the impulse, using his tongue to push the tiny stone behind his lower lip, like a pinch of tobacco.
You were supposed to breathe through your nose, not your mouth; you lost less moisture that way.
You were supposed to refrain from talking unless it was absolutely necessary.
You were supposed to limit your eating, and avoid alcohol.
You were supposed to sit in the shade, at least twelve inches off the ground, because the earth acted like a radiator, sucking your strength from you.
What else? There was too much to remember, too much to keep track of, and no one here to help him.
He'd heard the birds last night. Jeff was certain he'd heard them. He was tempted to stride off across the hillside, searching for their burrows, but knew that he ought to wait, that it wasn't important. The sign first. Then back up to the tent, so that they could ration out the day's water and food. Then the hole to distill their urine, and the latrine-they'd need to get the digging done before it got much hotter. Then, after all that, he could find the birds, search for their eggs, string up some snares. It was crucial not to lunge at things, not to become overwhelmed. One task and then another, that was how they'd make it through.
He started down the trail.
The Mayans were waiting for him at the bottom, four of them, three men and a woman. They were crouching beside the still-smoldering remains of their campfire. They watched him approach, the men rising as Jeff neared the foot of the hill, reaching for their weapons. One of them was the man who'd first tried to stop Jeff and the others, the bald man with the holstered pistol. He held the gun in his hand now, hanging casually at his side but ready to be raised. Ready to be aimed, fired. His two companions each had a bow, arrows loosely nocked. There were half a dozen more Mayans along the far tree line, Jeff saw, wrapped in blankets, straw hats hiding their faces, sleeping. One of them stirred, as if sensing Jeff's approach. He jostled the man lying beside him, and they both sat up to stare.