Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem (18 page)

His hand rested on a heavy metal signpost sunk into the sand. The oblong sign at the top of its eight-foot height had been viciously twisted to one side as if struck by an immense force. A row of jagged punctures ran up the sign’s center.

“Those bullets holes?” the Sheriff asked.

“That. Or teeth marks.”

“Son of a bitch! You’re not tryin’ to tell me that mother-fuckin’ shark has grown wings?”

“You might could say that.”

In between the holes and sheered off paint the Sheriff could still make out the words on the sign. It read:
NETS NOT SHARK PROOF.

Mexican Standoff

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

Neiderbaum is the bane of my existence.

I pull aside the tent flap. Rain whips down in acid sheets, making the night as black as the inside of my stomach. The area around my tent is a quagmire of mud not unlike the winter trenches of the Great War.

Ten yards away, secure on a stone platform, Neiderbaum’s tent glows like an alien spaceship. It’s made of some new hi-tech translucent cloth. Backlit by a gas lantern, two silhouettes, one on top of the other, hump wildly, the old
el
dick-a-roo slamming away at
la pussy
with utter disregard for anything but its own pleasure.

I’ll kill the bitch!
is what comes to mind as I watch this shadow play. At the same time I’ve got a hard-on.

Correction. I’m going to kill Theodore Neiderbaum.

It all began six weeks ago in Cal Western State’s Archaeology Department, the last day of the spring semester. I’m the junior lecturer. Neiderbaum is Vice-Chairman. I’m standing in the departmental office making small talk with the new typist Brenda, a buxom little thing with a cherry blossom complexion and myopic eyes. A chest-high counter divides the room in half. On one side sits Brenda and the departmental files. I’m on the other side leaning over the counter.

“You’re sure you won’t come for a drink?”

“Gee, Alex…I mean, Professor Silverman, my boyfriend would be pissed,” says Brenda. “I don’t want to get a black eye.”

“If he threatens you, you can always sleep at my place. On the couch.”

“He killed a man once in a bar fight.”

“Frankly, I don’t understand why you would take up with someone who’s clearly a psychopath.”

“Who can explain my trailer trash urges?” she says blithely.

At that moment Neiderbaum in garish tweeds walks by. His thick hairy fingers pluck the printout of my trip reservation from my hand resting on the countertop. His eyes scan the page. His tanned brow wrinkles like a plowed field.

“Where is it you’re digging this summer?” he asks.

“Zetehux, down in the Puuc Hills. A four-hour drive south of Merida. The last two on dirt roads.

“A third tier site, isn’t it?”

“We’re the first team to dig there. We’re hoping to find a bunch of shit the grave robbers missed.”

Neiderbaum refolds the itinerary and slaps it back and forth across my nose. Brenda giggles. My face goes Tabasco red.

“Maybe I’ll see you down there,” he says.

Like Hell! I think.

The itinerary leaves his hand. I grab for it. But it swooshes away through the air, grazes the countertop, slips over the edge and nosedives into the crack between Brenda’s desk and the half-wall supporting the counter.

“I’ll print you another one,” Brenda says, still laughing.

Neiderbaum is now walking away.

“See you later, Teddy,” Brenda calls after him.

My team for the dig at Zetehux consists of three graduate students, Mary Beth, Chip, and Fawn, and four locals.

Mary Beth is pudgy and enthusiastic. Chip is thinking about dropping out of the program and applying to business school. Fawn is trouble.

Five-six-ish, jet black hair swept back from the an unsullied brow and tied with a rubber band, neon blue eyes set a tad too close together on opposite sides of a petite upturned nose, lush lips cast in a pout, small but assertive chin, and a raging pair of knockers designed by God himself. She favors tight T-shirts and baggy cargo pants. A space exists between her front ivories through which she periodically spits globs of tobacco juice with daunting accuracy.

The locals are the usual swarthy malnourished lot. Extras from
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

We’ve been in Zetehux a month, and Mary Beth’s legs and arms are covered in throbbing infected mosquito bites. She’s running a fever.

I stand looking down at her flushed distorted face, wondering whether I should send her to the hospital back in Merida.

Fawn and Chip are over at the dig: a mound of stones that were once a towering Mayan edifice, lying broken and hidden for centuries under a camouflage of ravenous trees and vines.

Mary Beth looks like dog crap. Pale with a tinge of yellow. Dark lemur-like circles around her eyes. Lips parched and cracked. Slow shallow breathing.

I take a stained and greasy washrag from her forehead. Finding it bone dry, I soak it with water from a jug, fold it like a blindfold and lay it across her eyebrows. Her cheek twitches. Not quite dead yet.

I think:
You really need to send her up to the hospital in Merida. Chip can drive her.
Except Chip does a lot of the heavy digging, as well as managing the Mexican spade crew. He’s fluent in Spanish. On the other hand, with him gone, Fawn will have no choice but to capitulate.

Because of Mary Beth’s illness, Fawn and Chip share a tent. As far as I can tell they aren’t fucking yet. But Fawn uses him as an excuse every time I suggest a walk in the jungle or some other nonsense. My tawny eyes follow her like albino bats. She is a goddess. At Cal Western State we have a by-law that prohibits faculty-student rutting. But this is Mexico.

My random thoughts are interrupted when one of the Mexican crew bursts into the tent. His pupils are dilated. He’s nervous, jittery. Is he stoned on some hallucinogen?

“What is it, Miguel?” I ask.

“Come see,” he says, “
Muchos dioses antiguos!
”

Miguel stinks. I hand him a cigarette and fire it up with my Marine Corp issue Zippo, before lighting my own. The Corp’s emblem rises from the chrome plain of the lighter’s surface like an anthill on the Serengeti. I bought the lighter in a pawnshop in Fresno. The acrid smoke of cheap Mexican
cigarillos
drowns Miguel’s stench.

Ancient gods? What is he talking about? Is it possible they’ve made the astonishing career-making find I dream about? A chill scuttles up and down my spine like the little pink feet of a white mouse.

I glance down at Mary Beth one more time.
What the fuck am I supposed to do?
Then I motion to Miguel.

“
Vayamo.
”

We exit the tent, cross the slash-and-burn clearing and start up the path that slices through the jungle. On the left is the latrine. It and Miguel smell about the same.

As a matter of personal hygiene, I can’t go for more than two days without a shower. We rigged one up outdoors just to the right of our three tents. Fawn, sipping a
mescal
in the early twilight, often watches me soap down my tanned and seasoned physique, then rinse off. But when I come back from dressing in my tent, she’s sitting on Chip’s lap.

Around the next bend in the trail, a sudden tree-covered hill blocks out the sky. The Mayan temple we’re excavating. At a propitious spot we’ve sunk a trench into the side of the ruin. So far the only results are a few worthless shards of pottery.

At the moment Chip and two more of the Mex crew, Juan A and Juan B, squat in a half circle at the mouth of the trench. As Miguel and I come up to them, I realize they’re passing a jay. Chip hands me the reefer without looking up. I take a long pull, closing my eyes and letting the smoke slither deep into my lungs.

But pot doesn’t really do it for me. Just a slight veering off track, a dazzle of light in the corner of my eye.

“What’s going on? You’re taking a lunch break already?”

“Go take a look,” Chip says, nodding in the direction of the trench.

“Where’s Fawn?”

“In there.”

The overcast day steeps the trench in heavy shadow. Fifteen feet into the hillside it becomes a tunnel penetrating into the depths of the pyramid, a wormhole into a long-hidden undead past.

I grab the flashlight lying at Chip’s feet and head in. I have to duck my head to enter the cave-like portion of the excavation. To prevent cave-ins, a veneer of rough boards covers the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. Ahead I detect a faint glow. Scrambling over a landslide of dirt and stone, suddenly I’m standing at the threshold of an oblong room two thousand years old!

Gripped by sudden vertigo, as though standing at the brink of a bell tower, I reach out and steady myself against the wall. The only light in the room comes from a white gas lantern set in the middle of the floor. Fawn stands next to it, furiously scribbling into her notebook. I am overcome by lust.

She turns and sees me.

“Alex! We fuckin’ found it, Alex.” She waves her hands in the air and twirls like a dervish into my arms. “Look at this place.”

We’re hugging. I nuzzle her neck. She throws her head back, laughing. I go for a breast. Nibbling the nipple through her T-shirt.

Suddenly, she breaks away; strides back to the center of the room.

“Not here!” she says. “It’d be like doing it in church.”

“I’d like to do it in a church.”

She ignores me, gazing around the ancient room. “So, Alex, what do you think the twisted fucks were like who painted this place?”

But I’m already staring at the mural-covered walls. Kings and queens and high priests, warriors and their prisoners, sacred animal totems, gods and goddesses. Many of the images are familiar from other sites. Except they’re all engaged in wild fornication of one form or another. Each panel is a Mesoamerican version of a Paul Avril etching. The tongue of a squat toad creature laps a princess’ nether regions. Choc, lord of storms, rains semen down upon a dozen maidens.
The aged fertility god, Itzamnaj, toothless and gnarled as the bark of a cottonwood, spryly partakes of plump poontang. We’ve discovered the fucking Mayan Kama Sutra! The Pompeii of the Yucatan!

I’ll be rich
is the first thought out of the gate. Followed by
and famous
.
The Fawns of this world will be lining up outside my door.

Three hours later my mind has had enough of Mayan porn. Too many whips & chains and beheadings. Snuff porn.

“We need to go back to camp and think about all this,” I say. “Besides I could use a drink.”

“Me too!”

“Whatever,” says Chip, who gave the Mexican crew the afternoon off. “I think we should lock this place up.”

“There isn’t a door, dingbat,” Fawn says.

“We should make one,” Chip says. “I’m concerned about how the peasants in the nearby villages may react if they see this stuff. It’s creepy.”

“Relax, Chip,” I say, “this discovery is going to make us millionaires.”

“Take me to your
mescal
,” Fawn says, pushing me toward the tunnel. I hope she’ll grab my
cojones
from behind, but she doesn’t.

Back at the camp, I take a quick check on Mary Beth. She’s awake and smiles weakly up at me. Petrified that I’ll catch whatever it is that’s devouring her alive, I place my hand on her forehead. It’s burning up.

“How do you feel?”

“Like dog shit.”

“Interesting…”

“Oh, my God!”

Mary Beth leaps out of the cot, dives through the door, and makes a beeline for the latrine.

I turn and walk to our makeshift clubhouse, a rough-hewn table, and four aluminum and canvas camp chairs under a canvas fly. Chip hands me my first
mescal
of the day.

“Bad news,” I say, tossing my thumb in the direction of
el latrino
, or whatever they call it down here. I drink the
mescal
in one gulp, wince at the burn, then continue: “Chip, you’ll have to drive Mary Beth up to Merida. To the hospital. I’ll give you a list of things to bring back.”

Chip purses his lips and nods sagely.

“Lot’s of bad news comin’ down. I stopped by the kitchen to get a fresh bottle of hooch. Looks like the spade crew have given us the finger. Disappeared without a trace, as they say.”

“You’re kidding. Why would they do that?”

Chip shrugs.

“Fuck if I know.” He taps the mescal bottle on the lip of my empty glass; then pours in a double, while I hold it steady. “Drink up,” he says.

By five o’clock Chip and Mary Beth are in the Mitsubishi, ready to go. Mary Beth, in the passenger seat, has the shakes now. She’s wrapped in an old hand-stitched quilt, her eyes shimmering pools of fever, her teeth chattering.

“I envy the fresh sheets you’ll be sleeping in tonight,” I say to Chip.

“I’m not sure who’s getting the better deal out of this,” Chip says, gazing at Fawn where she sits in the clubhouse.

“We’ll see you in a couple of days,” I say.

“You hope.”

Even when Chip screeches his wheels, Fawn doesn’t look up from the novel she’s reading. Her hand automatically reaches out to her fourth
mescal
cocktail resting on the tabletop and draws it to her lips. As I long to be drawn.

A cloud of dust erupts as the Mitsubishi jolts and farts up the laterite streambed that pretends to be a road in these parts.

I sit down opposite Fawn. As I pour another drink, my eyes rake from her nose to her toes and back again. She squirms in her seat. But she knows she can’t postpone the inevitable.

I flash into consciousness like a bat diving from its perch. The squeals and hee-haws of a four-wheel-drive vehicle thumping and sliding its way down the rough roadbed disrupt the undertow of the jungle. It can’t be Chip, I think, unless I’ve been asleep for two days.

As I scoot from bed and slide into jeans and a T-shirt, I realize Fawn isn’t next to me in my doublewide canvas cot. On the wood crate next to the bed sit two half-f glasses of Mexican rotgut, a torn foil condom wrapper, and the Chester Himes thriller I’m reading.