Sanibel Flats

Sanibel Flats

Randy • Wayne • White

ST. MARTIN S PRESS • NEW YORK

For three friends: Dan Rogan, Lee Wayne, and Allan W. Eckert

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The details of Pedro de Alvarado's conquest of the Maya are historically accurate, as are accounts of the modern-day butchery by Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path. The Kache and Tlaxclen are fictional peoples and should not be confused with the Quiches and Tzutuhils of fact. In all other respects this novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The exception is Florida, which still exists.

Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

SANIBEL FLATS

PROLOGUE

CIUDAD DE MASAGUA, CENTRAL AMERICA

JULY

Ford crawled to the mouth of the tunnel that connected the convent to the park outside the Presidential Palace. It was after midnight and he was wearing no pants, but he'd had time to grab his shoes—Nike Air Soles— and now he put them on. Water dripped from the ceiling, down his nose, and the cramped walls scraped at his shoulders. The convent had been built in the late 1500s; the passageway in the 1600s, during the time of the Inquisition, when the nuns of Cloister La Conception sometimes broke their vows of solitude to save heretics condemned by the courts to die by fire.

Heretics, Ford decided, were smaller in those days.

A stone disc covered the entrance, and he pushed the stone away, looking through the bushes into the shadows of the park. Beyond the traffic of Avenida Las Americas, the windows of the Presidential Palace formed a citreous checkerboard above lighted statues and fountains. Police were everywhere, running down sidewalks, surrounding the convent. Many wore the white holster tassels of the elite guard. How in hell was he going to get past them?

He lifted himself out of the hole, replaced the stone cover, and stepped out of the bushes to find an old man staring at him. The man was dressed in the traditional clothing of a Maya shiman, embroidered shirt and baggy, mauve-striped pants—not unusual for the Indios who came down from the mountains to trade, for they practiced their own religion. The man had lighted rows of candles in front of a large stone artifact. There was a censer in his hand made from a bean can, and from it came the incense smell of burning copal leaves. Frightened at seeing Ford crawl out of the ground, the old man jumped back, chanting in some guttural language, Tlaxclen Mayan, probably . . . pleading, judging from his vocal inflections, or asking some question. When Ford did not respond, the old man said in Spanish: 'Can this be? You do not understand . . . you really do not understand the old tongue?' He looked bewildered and a little disappointed, too.

The elite guard was moving in on the convent; Ford could see the silhouettes of policemen moving through the trees of the park. Standing naked, but speaking formally in Spanish, he said to the old man, 'Senor, you have perhaps confused me with another. I am only an American, a turista. To prove it, allow me to buy your pants. As a souvenir.'

The old man was staring at the stone artifact, a gray Mayan stela, staring at the candles flickering in the late wind, not listening, saying 'How can it be that Quetzalcoatl does not understand the language of his people? I have been kneeling here, praying that he would come to save us—instead, he wants to negotiate for my clothing. Do the gods never tire of their shitty tricks?' He turned to Ford, considering him intently now, adding 'Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps you are not Quetzalcoatl. Yes, that is it! I can see that you have been cut ...'

Ford looked where the old man was looking, hoping he wouldn't see blood.

'. . . cut in the way of the Hebrews. And you are wearing glasses. And you did not come from the sky as the sun god surely would. No, you cannot be Quetzalcoatl. But your hair is blond and you came at the moment of my prayer. And on this night, near the end of the Calendar Round and the beginning of the Year of Seven Moons —'

Ford interrupted. 'I really do like those pants. They would make a very fine present. A nice souvenir. I will give you twenty—no, thirty. Thirty quetzals for your pants!'

The old man stood, wobbling, troubled. He was very drunk, Ford realized. 'You came from the earth—' He looked at the bushes in sudden realization. 'No . . . that is the place of the old tunnel; the tunnel that connects the palace to the convent and the convent to the park. My people still speak of it, though the knowledge has been lost to others. You did not come from the earth, you came from the convent. Yes, I understand this thing now. A naked man in the convent! A bad omen!'

The police were beginning to search the outside fringe of the park, the beams of their flashlights probing among the trees. Ford ducked as a funnel of light swept past him. 'Senor, I will give you fifty quetzals for your pants. Have I mentioned that I am in a hurry?'

Fifty quetzals were worth about thirty-five dollars, and, though it caught the old man's attention, he was skeptical. 'And where do you carry this great fortune? Behind your ears?'

Ford's hands went involuntarily to where his pockets should have been. 'I can come back tonight and bring you the money.' The old man still looked skeptical.

'Or meet you in the morning. That would be better. Mercado Central, at the place where the women weave the mats and sack coffee beans. Fifty-five quetzals, I swear on my honor. ' 'I should take the word of a man who defiles nuns?' The man was already taking off his pants, resigned.

'I was not with a nun. What do you take me for?'

'Oh, do not tell me; do not lie. I am an old man who knows the way of people. I myself once lay with a missionary woman, an evangelica. Such a strange woman, but very lively in bed. Her eyelashes, she kept in a box on the table, and she made odd noises in her passion. This woman told me I had been born a second time, yet that year a certain insect came and ate my corn. Yes, most of the problems in my life have been caused by this creature which lives between my legs, so you need not lie to one such as me.'

Ford accepted the pants, saying 'Now your knife. I must use your knife. Hurry, please.'

The old man handed over his bone-handled knife, but reluctantly. 'Do not misunderstand. I wish to keep this creature. We have had many adventures and he refuses to grow old. Where is there a man who secretly does not covet such problems?'

'You take me for a murderer, too?'

'You do not have the look, it is true. You have the strange face of one who can be trusted, which makes me all the more suspicious. Who can tell in such a year!'

As Ford cut the legs off the pants, the old man rambled on, explaining, saying this was the end of the Calendar Round, the fifty-two-year cycle, a time of great change in the Mayan calendar. It would bring many omens, many changes—some tragic, perhaps. Long ago in such a year, on a single night, the old man said, madness swept through Guatemala and Masagua. People ran into the streets screaming without reason; old women died of fright.