Chapter Fifteen
“Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor!”
“Who said that?” Angélica asked, laughing at Quint, who’d just finished spinning in a circle in front of her with his arms out wide.
“Groucho Marx,” he said, fanning his shirt.
Of course. One of his favorite comedians. Hers, too, since Groucho now reminded her of the guy who kept her heart in a twitterpated state day in and day out.
He held out his hand for her to take. “And so, milady, now that you have witnessed a grand display of the dance your father and I have named the Butterfly Hurly-Burly Twirly, would you like to give it a whirl?”
“Hey, I thought it was Burly-Girly,” her dad said. He stood next to her on the old Maya road. Judging from his watermelon-slice wide grin, he’d enjoyed Quint’s performance as much as she had. “Like a large, female gorilla.”
Quint snorted. “Did I look like a large, female gorilla?”
“Sort of,” Juan teased.
Angélica took the hand Quint offered and tugged him back by her side. “Maybe I’ll try that dance with you after we get back home and I have a couple of drinks under my belt.”
“I’m going to hold you to that, boss lady,” Quint said, breathing a little heavy after all of that gyrating.
He locked onto her hand, holding tightly as if he expected her to pull away. But she didn’t want to let go. After another day of turtle-paced progress, his laughter and energy eased her frustrations and reminded her that there was far more to life than digging in the dirt.
They strolled hand-in-hand in silence for several steps alongside her father on the sacbe, slowly making their way back to camp for the evening.
The rest of the crew had left before them with Pedro leading the way, complaining how much his stomach was growling and the lack of a cold cerveza waiting at camp for him.
Angélica glanced at her dad, who looked like he’d been wrung out and left to dry in a hot breeze. “What else did you guys find behind that door slab besides butterflies?”
Upon hearing about not only their detour to one of the large mounds on Dr. Fernel’s LIDAR map, but also her father’s decision to start the excavating without her, she’d been downright flabbergasted. And a bit pissed, to boot.
Why had he gone forth without her? That wasn’t his usual way of handling a discovery.
For one thing, it was unprofessional. For another, he’d obviously been swept up in Dr. Fernel’s excitement and allowed himself to be derailed from following normal dig site procedures.
Procedures he’d long ago established and she’d adopted upon taking the reins.
Damn it, she wished she’d been there to see the swarm of butterflies that her father kept talking about and Quint had demonstrated with his whirling dervish performance.
Thankfully, Quint had the forethought to take pictures before he’d moved the stone slab—and to not let her dad or Dr. Fernel get hurt in the process.
As for all of those butterflies holing up in what her dad thought could be a mine, a bunker, a cave, or some other kind of underground structure … What the hell? The mass exodus in a chaotic eddy up into the treetops seemed more along the lines of bat behavior, not butterfly.
“We didn’t find anything of significance besides the altar stone that I told you about already.” Her dad answered her question as he limped along, leaning harder onto his cane than usual and wincing periodically as he stepped.
According to Quint, on the way back to where Angélica had been working near Structure II, her father had stepped on a stone that rolled out from under him, twisting his ankle slightly.
Thankfully, it was not the same leg that had been broken, so there wasn’t likely any further damage to his previous injury.
To be safe, though, she’d have Teodoro check on him after they returned to camp.
“Was there any residue left on the altar stone worth examining?” she asked.
“Nothing visible,” Quint replied first. “But I’m sure if someone does a scraping of the surface and analyzes the residue under a microscope, there’s probably something of interest there.” He smiled her way. “Or whatever it is you call that process in forensic archaeology speak, boss lady.”
She smiled back, and then looked up to admire the rosy pink sky. If only she could fly as high as the vultures that had hung out overhead earlier in the day. The sunset was probably breathtaking from up there with the sea of green canopies spread out below as far as the eye could see.
“What about the structure you guys were really supposed to be checking out?” she asked them, returning to the happenings at ground level. “Did you find any stelae or other indications of the site’s history around it?”
“No, gatita. It was just another ruin similar in style and size to Structures I and II, only in worse shape thanks to several strangler figs growing on and into the stone walls and ceiling.” Her father yawned.
“It’s no wonder that ruin’s footprint was not as defined as the others on Dr. Fernel’s LIDAR map. ”
“Some of the area leading up to and around that structure had a lot of dead vegetation, though,” Quint added. “Several trees were all long gone, going by the cracked, peeling bark, and how easy it was to snap off branches.”
She frowned at the road ahead. “Was there a pattern to the dead area?”
“Not that I could tell,” her father said.
“Could you guys see any fungus or biological clue as to why there’d be a dead spot?”
“There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the layout of the dead,” Quint said. “Just a patch of gray death in the middle of the green forest.”
“We might want to consider bringing in a biologist at some point,” her dad added. “We need to make sure there isn’t some problematic spore or an underground pool of poison.”
“Why would there be a pool of poison?” Quint asked.
Angélica kicked a stone out of her dad’s path.
“Much of the Yucatán Peninsula is connected via underground water systems. That means a farmer thirty miles away might be trying to eradicate a certain kind of plant for whatever reason, legal or not. The farmer dumps the poison on the plant and the soil around it. Thanks to the rain, it trickles down into the underground waterways. It catches a ride downstream and pools in a natural cavity miles away, destroying a patch of jungle. Or worse, it ends up in someone’s well water. ”
“We should warn the others to steer clear of that area for now,” her dad said. He paused to slowly move his ankle in one direction and then the other, grimacing all the while. “We kept a safe distance from it, detouring around to reach the structure.”
“Which took an extra fifteen minutes of swinging the machete,” Quint added. “You want to feel my big muscles after today’s workout, sweetheart?”
“But of course, my Burly-Girly,” she joked back.
“And then we got to spend an extra ten minutes picking ticks off each other,” her dad grumbled.
Quint grunted. “I’d swear a cluster of the little sons-a-bitches set up a roadblock to keep humans away.”
She scratched her neck. Thinking about all those ticks made her itchy. “We can note those trouble spots on the map back at the camp.”
“What did you find today, gatita?”
Quint squeezed her hand. “Did you have any luck with the Jackson Pollock look-alike rubbings?”
“And were there any scorpions involved?” her dad asked.
“No scorpions, thankfully,” she told him.
“As planned, first Esteban and I completed a few more stone rubbings. Those will require additional study back at INAH to analyze and compare with other carvings at some surrounding sites. Then, Fernando and Pedro traded places with us and began clearing the tunnel entrance, stabilizing the opening per what we had discussed over breakfast.”
Her father had laid out a plan, involving logs strategically used as braces, which Fernando and Pedro had collected while she’d been busy rubbing charcoal on rice paper most of the morning.
Her dad pulled out his handkerchief. “How far back does the rubble go in the tunnel?”
“They made it about four feet in and then hit a wall.”
He dabbed at his neck. “You mean a problem or an actual wall?”
“An actual wall blocking the way.”
“Like the foundation layer of the big wall above the tunnel?” Quint asked.
“We’re not certain, but the layout of the stones in the tunnel look different.”
“Different how?” Juan asked.
“They weren’t as cleanly cut as the big wall’s stones, and the stacking array seems less architecturally stable. Pedro thinks it looks like someone built it in a hurry.”
Pedro also believed they were looking at the frontside of the rush-built wall based on the curve of the underground blockade. Same as how a dam was built on a curve to hold large amounts of water behind it, this underground wall seemed to be strategically set up to hold back significant weight.
Rather than tell her father about this additional theory, she told Pedro and Fernando to let her father take a look at it first and see if he came to the same conclusion.
“You’ll have to take a look at it tomorrow, Dad, if your ankle is up to the trip back to the site.”
“My ankle is fine, gatita.”
“It doesn’t look fine with the way you’re limping.”
“Stop being a mother hen. Leave that job to Teodoro.”
“Fine.” She aimed a raised brow her dad’s way. “But why did you go against our usual process when it comes to excavating that mound?”
He sighed, stuffing away his handkerchief. “I knew there was a reason you sent everyone else ahead. You didn’t want to walk with me, you wanted to chew on me.”
“I don’t want to chew on you, you’re too old and crusty. I just want to know your reasoning for not following our normal procedure.”
“I don’t know. I had this overwhelming urge to see what was on the other side of the slab,” her dad explained. “Dr. Fernel seemed as excited as I was at the prospect, so we went for it.” Her dad thumbed toward Quint. “You should know, gatita, that loverboy here resisted moving the slab at first.”