Chapter Thirty One

1

Five minutes.  Five minutes to the bell.  He could already smell the wood chips in his hands and hear the yelling of his classmates.  He took a red pen, and added red bands to Captain America’s shield.

        The bell rang and he ran outside, oblivious to the content of last period’s lesson.  He was a beautiful boy, and he was free.  He was free to run and kick and hit and bite.  He was free to fight the world.  And perhaps as those girls took to their pursuit again, he might see himself the prey of forces yet too awesome to be comprehended.

        Two boys sitting in a circle as the skirts were pulled up.  They tried to keep their eyes upon the ground like good soldiers, but their curiosity always betrayed them.

2

Found on the Number 5, headed through Fremont.

But I can see a mustachioed man in a derby and fine uncomfortable clothing standing on a dirt track that cuts into a lush green that stands between vines that grow up from sulfurous soils that inhabit the wrong side of the world and perhaps also the wrong hemisphere with respect to this purposeful man’s point of origin.

        And though this man pretends to knowledge of other tribes and other peoples much of his knowledge has originated within the stiff coarse pages of textbooks and folios and travelogues which are all now regretfully out of print so that after trudging his way up dirt tracks in the midst of the jungle he feels himself at a loss to speak with the childlike fascinating natives that he comes across because his Spanish is both antiquated and too polished and he lacks the kind of common touch that common men are apt to understand.

        And beside him to the left stands his bedraggled sweaty wife of many years who has sacrificed the joys of more cultivated climes for the sake of accompanying or at least humoring his pretenses to scholarship with regard to many of the newfound peoples of Mesoamerica who are newly discovering his presence and she has worn all of the wrong clothes for their expedition and has instead travelled up the dirt track in a filthy travelling dress under which one might be so indiscreet as to discover a corset and various other undergarments which are all equally uncomfortable and she is carrying this ridiculous parasol and some kind of floral hat that might have been fashionable in the salons of Paris a year before.

        And they stand before a hut which is framed by banana trees and behind the trees are the emerald green mountains like colors of crayons that haven’t yet been discovered and the hut is made of palm fronds and in front of the hut there is a fire pit and next to the fire pit on a cane chair sits a small old brown man wearing coarse clothes who absolutely refuses to speak proper English.

“Dear, just ask him where the road goes, will you?  I cannot speak their language.  These people all sound like monkeys when they talk, and my mouth can’t make their monkey noises.”

And then she wipes her face with a handkerchief that this kind of woman always carries on her person and she squints up at the blue sky wishing that the sun would burn less ferociously and her husband winces and secretly wishes that he could have left her back in the hotel where the both of them would have been happier.

        And the old man in front of the hut adjusts his straw hat and speaks only half in Spanish and this half of Spanish is only halfway understood by the wincing Western man in the derby and the mustache and the uncomfortable brownish clothes that his society has forced upon him.

“In the beginning the Lord Itzamna came down from the sky, and he taught men how to write, and how to measure the passage of time.  There are some who say that it was also Itzamna who created men, but others dispute this, giving that honor to other gods.”

And as the wise native begins to tell this story the man in the derby dutifully begins to write down what little he can understand in the hope that later it will make him seem more famous or important or learned than he truly is but even if this turns out not to be the case he has still come all this way up the dirt track and it seems odd to come so far into the jungle and talk to a stranger without writing down his words in the hope that they amount to something.

        And his wife wilts further still in the tropical heat or it might only be subtropical heat because they aren’t really that close to the equator and she spins her parasol impatiently and thinks about how nice a cup of tea in a stateroom somewhere might be with those lovely small lemon cakes that her sister’s home always has in abundance and oh how wondrous to be back home away from this dreadful place that her husband has dragged her to even though she insisted that she come along.

“What is he saying now?  Does he know, or doesn’t he?  Look, we really have to get back to the hotel.  It’s afternoon, dear, and I do not wish to find myself here after dark.  I know you have an interest in these sorts of things, but can’t we come back tomorrow?  It’s really so hot up here, and I’m just dying for a bath.”

And the local native residential man who might have once been a chief or some sort of village elder has been talking all the while through her less than polite interruption because when he was younger a now vanished illness robbed him of his hearing and so he was from the beginning only guessing at what the white man wanted to know and he will continue on until the end because he knows of no other way to make the white man and his sweaty woman leave him in peace.

“And from this time, man has been given to observe the Tzolkin, which marks the passing of 260 suns.  The Tzolkin, marking 260 suns, sits alongside the Haab, whose number extends past 300.  The Tzolkin and the Haab make for the Great Season, with which we measure the passing of one Sun to another.  There are also the Trecena and the Veintena, whose suns are reckoned in 13s and 20s.”

And of all that the old man has said the man in the derby has only recorded every fifth word or so and as he writes the pencil snaps and he has to pull a knife from his pocket to sharpen it once again and all the while there is perspiration running down the back of his neck and even though his skull wants him to remove his hat he refuses to do so because he thinks that he is outside and it would be bad form to do so and not in any way something becoming of an educated man such as himself.

        And she is wondering aloud after his foolish hobbies and in her mind she asks herself why he doesn’t just settle down and grow stout like so many other members of his esteemed family for the simple reason that none of them really need to work or strive at anything and it would be enough if they just remained on their estates and created male children just as insufferable as they are and didn’t venture outward into strange lands where they are probably not welcome.

“Damn damn damn.  What is he blathering about?  Is he telling us where the road goes, or isn’t he?  It’s late, dear.  We should be on our way!”

And unknown to both of the travelers is the fact that the mountain behind the old man’s hut is not a mountain but rather a stepped pyramid dating back to the Maya and that in the base of this pyramid someone has buried a gold statue of such astonishing size that it would have been a wonder to all who beheld it but the old man will never speak of this thing because he knows that the statue is for Itzamna and should remain there along with the bones of all the youths they sacrificed to that fearsome god.

“But I have not yet spoken of the Long Count, which is used for other purposes.  The Long Count is the counting of many, many days, and can be used to measure from the time of our grandfathers to the time when all of this will be no more, when the hillsides stand quiet.  Within the Long Count there are also other numbers, provided for the honor of other gods, such as Our Lady of the Moon and Xolotl, who is very clever.  

“I often sit here like this, in front of my house, and try to remember all the numbers, and the counts, and the gods, who are to be honored, but it’s not easy, and before long I am lying in bed next to my wife, and I have forgotten.”

And she has had all she can take by that point primarily because neither she nor her husband thought to bring any water on their little expedition and it really was very humid that day and the trek to the old man’s hut had been much longer than they had originally thought and neither of them have properly acclimated to that part of the world yet and it was such a long boat ride from wherever it was they happened to have come from and she was so seasick and she hadn’t gotten a proper night’s sleep in weeks.

“That’s rather a large snake over there…”

And a smile cracks across the old man’s creased dark face and his eyes glitter as the sun goes down a little lower and he can see the first utterings of the stars in the far horizon and he knows that it will be night soon and if the white people are terrified of anything it is the night in the jungle when the jaguars begin to growl from the trees and eat the monkeys and he also knows that soon the telling will be at an end.

        And the man in the derby has stopped writing all of this down because he simply cannot follow the conversation and he has given up and returned the pencil to one of his pockets and instead he looks down at a pocket watch in his hand in place of the pencil and he sees that the hour is indeed very late and his wife is indeed at her wits’ end.

“This is why I cannot tell you what Age it now is, or why it is that you white men have come here, or how you might go back to the place you have come from.  The gods watch over such things, and I am only a poor farmer, who cares only for this place where I live.  I think that you would do well to return back down that road that has led you here, and take a right where the road divides, instead of a left.  I have heard that there is a town in that direction, though I have never seen it.”

And the man in the derby just wants to leave but he cannot think of a proper way to end the conversation or exit the situation without causing offense and he prides himself on being the kind of man who can talk to this sort of common man even though he isn’t and can’t and he begins to share his wife’s sense of apprehension and he is asking himself what to do next.

        And his wife is very wobbly from the state of her hydration and the extreme state of overdress in which she finds herself and she suddenly feels glad that she has slept with her husband’s brother even if it was something more akin to rape and to hell with him and all his academic delusions and this jungle is no place for a lady to find herself at night.

“Do you think we can be back soon?  We really have to be off.  If he doesn’t know, we should be off, dear.  Look, we’ll come back in the morning, alright?  He’ll still be here, and you can ask him more questions then.  I’d really rather not be here any longer…”

3

Five minutes.  Five minutes to the bell.  Recess is almost over, and the girls are chasing.  He runs one way and his friend runs another.  Some of the girls follow one boy, and some of the girls follow another.  Somewhere in his mind he is The Flash, in the midst of outrunning his foes.  Somewhere in the playground there is a bomb ticking, and he must use his superhuman speed to diffuse it.  One of the girls reaches for him and misses, and for an instant the sun blinds him.  Through the chain link fence that borders the playground he sees an old brown man on the outside sidewalk, and the old brown man is looking up at the sky, waiting for night to fall.