“How come you speak English?”
“Because you can`t speak Spanish man”, Isaak chuckled into the rearview and
ashed in the can (this was a nonsmoking rental van). He was their navigator through
the early morning traffic, fielding questions about bodysnatchings and cracks in the building code.
The Lost Cities crowded close as they left d.f., then a toll road took them straight
to the Teotihuacan gate.
Entry was free for Isaak; the other guys nodded and lied they were citizens,
the guard nodded and listened:
“Sing the National anthem then if you`re Mexicans”
The guys in the back were gringos, the driver Norwegian; he
got money out of his camera bag and passed back tickets to each of them.
“They practiced human sacrifice here” he parked, excited, it was something he`d read,
already imagining the falling, severed heads.
They entered the ruins across a field, stone walled them in like stadium seating, and
the pyramids appeared ahead.
“This is some 2012-type shit” one of the guys´, dressed in black
Had a handful of gravel from the parking lot, which
he chucked up at nothing as they walked.
They walked , and Isaak told
about the El Chepe rail line, built way-back-when
by a few engineers and some cave-dwelling Indians.
Isaak`s dad had told him how they`d done it, “ The triumph
of civilization” he laughed at the memory, of the Tarahumaras Indians
introduction to money.
“My dad has crazy stories, but now we talk on the phone and
he just worries about building solar panels in space for when the oil is all gone. Really
he just chills on his ranch outside Chihuahua- he lives up there in the north
with my mom.”
The sun was high, the guys moved into the shade of
a stone awning that had protected a mural from centuries of sun and rain. It was a depiction
of the feathered-serpent god Quetzalcoatl,
who would return to earth when the 4th world was over (something to that effect:
a plaque on the wall explained that translating ancient Mayan was a bit of a stretch).
“Why did they build this place?”
Isaak considered this thought, put forth as a question, shared by them all.
“They built this place according to the stars, particular angles for the avenue- there`s even a science to the shadow cast by the pyramid of the moon.”
They followed his gaze up the pyramid, making up reasons for its shape and guessing
its laws of relation, understanding something pleasantly familiar in this strange situation.
