"You have been chosen and touched by the gods. They see what we do not." Jose put his hand on the young man's shoulder. "It is very dangerous to question them. They anger easily."
"Kaminaljuyu is Guatemala City. That is where you must go. But first we must prepare you." The shaman looked past him. "Sleep tonight. Tomorrow you will go."
When he returned to the shaman's home in the morning, most of the village was there to share in the magical thing that had happened. When he left them, Jose walked with him into the rain forest, carrying a package. Out of sight of the village, the shaman wrapped Hunapu's elbows and knees with the cotton padding he had brought with him. The old man told him that this was how he had been dressed in Jose's dream the night before. It too was a sign that Hunapu's vision was true. Jose warned him to tell those he met of his quest only if they could be trusted and were Lacandones like himself. The Ladinos would try to stop him if they knew.
Xepon was small. Perhaps thirty multicolored houses clustered around the church on the square. Their pink, blue, and yellow paint was faded, and they looked as though they crouched with their backs to the rain that had begun earlier. As Xbalanque bounced down the mountain road into the village, he was happy to see the cantina. He had decided to take the most isolated roads he could find on the worn road map under the driver's seat to get into the city.
He started to park in front of the cantina, but instead decided to park around the side, away from curious eyes. He thought it was strange that he had seen no one since entering town, but the weather was fit for no one, especially him and his hangover. His Reeboks, another gift from the norteamericanos, flopped against the wet wood walkway that ran in front of the cantina before he entered the open doorway. It was a disconcerting sound amid a silence broken only by dripping water and the rain on the tin roofs. Even the dimness outside had not prepared him for the darkness within, or the years of tobacco smoke still trapped between the narrow walls. A few tattered and faded Feliz Navidad banners hung down from the gray ceiling.
"What do you want?" He was assaulted in Spanish from behind the long bar that lined the wall to his left. The force and hostility behind the question hurt his head. A stooped old Indian woman glared at him from behind the bar.
"Cerveza. "
Unconcerned for his preferences; she removed a bottle from the cooler behind the bar and flipped off the cap as he walked toward her. She set it on the stained and pitted wood of the bar. When Xbalanque reached for it, she put a small gnarled hand around the bottle and nodded her chin at him. He pulled some crumpled quetzals from his pocket and laid them on the bar. There was a crash of nearby thunder and they both tensed. He realized for the first time that the reason she was so hostile might not have anything to do with an early customer. She snatched the money off the bar as if to deny her fear and put it into the sash around her stained huipil.
"What do you have to eat?" Whatever was going on certainly had nothing to do with him. The beer tasted good, but it was not what he really needed.
"Black bean soup." The woman's answer was a statement, definitely not an invitation. It was accompanied by more thunder rolling up the valley.
"What else?" Looking around, Xbalanque belatedly realized that something was extremely wrong. Every cantina he had ever been in, no matter where or how large, had some old drunks sitting around waiting to try to pick up a free drink. And women, even old women such as this one, rarely worked in bars in these small villages.
"Nothing." Her face was closed to him as he looked for a clue to what was happening.
Another peal of thunder turned into the low growling of truck engines. Both their heads swung toward the door. Xbalanque stepped back from the bar and looked for a back way out. There was none. When he turned again to the old woman, she had her back to him. He ran for the door.
Green-clad soldiers piled off the backs of the two army transports parked in the middle of the square. The paths of the trucks were marked by the broken benches and shrubs they had run over on their way across the tiny park. As the soldiers hit the ground, they pulled their machine guns into firing position. Two-man teams immediately left the central area to search the houses lining the square. Other armed men moved out of the square through the rest of the village.
Palms spread against the plaster, Xbalanque slid along the outside wall of the cantina for the safety of the side street.
If he could get to the jeep, he had a chance to escape. He had made it to the corner of the building when one of the soldiers spotted him. At the soldier's order to halt, he jumped for the street, sliding in the mud, and dashed for the jeep.
Shots into the ground in front of him splashed him with mud. Xbalanque threw his hand up to protect his eyes and fell to his knees. Before he could get back up, a sullen-faced soldier grabbed his arm and hauled Xbalanque back to the square, his feet slipping in the thick mud as he scrambled to stand up and walk.
One of the young Ladino soldiers stood with his Uzi pointed at Xbalanque's head while he was shoved facedown in the mud and searched. Xbalanque had hidden the artifacts in the jeep, but the soldiers found the stash of quetzals in his Reeboks. One of them held the wad of money up to the army lieutenant in charge. The lieutenant looked disgusted at the condition of the bills, but he put them in his own pocket anyway. Xbalanque did not protest. Through the excruciating pain in his head that had begun when he fled the soldiers, he was trying to decide what he could say to get out of this. If they knew the jeep was stolen, he was dead.
The sound of more gunfire made him wince into the mud. He raised his head slightly, knocking it into the barrel of the gun above him. The soldier holding it pulled back enough for him to see another man being dragged from inside the dilapidated yellow school on the west side of the square. He heard children crying inside the small building. The second prisoner was also an Indian, tall with eyeglasses knocked askew on his narrow face. The two soldiers escorting him allowed him to regain his feet before presenting him to the lieutenant.
The schoolteacher straightened his glasses before staring directly into the lieutenant's mirrored sunglasses. Xbalanque knew he was in trouble; the schoolteacher was deliberately trying to anger the army officer. It could only result in worse consequences than they already faced.
The lieutenant brought up his swagger stick and knocked the teacher's glasses off his face. When the teacher bent down to pick them up, the officer struck him across the side of the head. With blood dripping down his face onto his white European shirt, the teacher replaced his glasses. The right lens was shattered. Xbalanque began looking for an escape route. He hoped that his guard might be sufficiently distracted. Looking sideways up at the young man with the Uzi, he saw that the boy had not taken his eyes off him.
"You are a communist." The lieutenant made it a statement, not a question, directed to the teacher. Before the teacher could reply, the officer glanced toward the school house with annoyance. The children inside were still crying. He swung his swagger stick toward the school and nodded at a soldier to his left. Without aiming, the soldier panned his machine gun across the building, breaking windows and pocking the plaster. A few screams erupted from inside, then silence.
"You are a traitor and an enemy to Guatemala." He brought the stick up across the other side of the teacher's head. There was more blood, and Xbalanque began to feel sick and somehow wrong.
"Where are the other traitors?"
"There are no other traitors." The teacher shrugged and smiled.
"Fernandez, the church." The lieutenant spoke to a soldier smoking a cigarette leaning against one of the trucks. Fernandez tossed away the cigarette and picked up the thick tube propped beside him against the truck. While he aimed, another of the men around the trucks shoved a rocket into the launcher.