Morgan dropped his bag. The landscape on the drive had been humid and flora-laden, but here at the higher elevation the plateau was characterized by aeolian erosion, and large rocks were worn away at the base by dirt and wind. The only plants were hardy grasses and mat-like cushion plants. We’d intended to camp, but Julia asked us to push on — she had an uncle on his deathbed. Or, she said, we could stay by ourselves and she would return in a few days. We were tired. Already the sky leached colour, darkening to the east. Howie, we saw when we turned to consult with him, looked like he’d taken a punch in the face, with dark brown bruises under his eyes.
“He should stay,” Julia suggested. “Maybe even turn around.”
“We’re on Diamox, and we’re doing this.” Howie straightened his Galveston and whistled the spaniel to the foot trail.
“Or go on,” she said. “Whatever.” She wore her hair braided on one side of her face, and combed it back with her fingers in frustration — I was startled to see a raised, crimson birthmark that began behind her left ear, held her eye slightly closed, and came to an abrupt stop in the centre of her cheek. She saw me looking, said something to herself in a language close to Spanish, and then turned to Morgan and me. “I thought you were professional.”
“We are professional,” I said. “And he is on Diamox. Four a day and fluids. But we haven’t done altitude — I should have told you.”
“Do you have headlamps?” she asked, and began to sort our equipment and ready the alpacas’ panniers.
We hiked switchbacks in the dark. The gain in elevation didn’t affect Morgan or the dog, but had me lightheaded and focused on breathing. Although when we reached the hamlet and I turned to Howie, I lost concern for myself. He’d drooled a sticky bib of saliva over his shirt, and his nailbeds (when he raised his hand to wipe his mouth) were purple.
“How long were you in La Paz?” Julia swore under her breath. “Never mind. He needs oxygen.”
She went to get a tank. A couple kids unloaded the panniers from the alpacas in the dark, and Morgan and I assembled our wall tent. Both of us hurried the job, and with the spaniel underfoot it took twice as long as usual to get the fittings and rafters aligned and pitched. By the time we’d stashed the gear and set up our cots, Julia’d helped Howie strap an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. We stripped him of the wet shirt and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.
“You should sleep.” Julia balled Howie’s shirt and tossed it to Morgan. She was right. But the tent canvas pulled and sagged in the wind like a lung, and Howie, who’d stopped wheezing and drifted off, woke choking on himself.
“We’re not going to sleep.” Morgan found the pisco bottles.
“No? Fine. Of course not. Then you can help.” She zipped the tent screen behind us and we followed her to a fire pit, where the kids who’d unloaded our gear from the alpacas strummed a charango. Firelight flickered over pale-yellow and mint houses with aluminum or thatch roofs, and gardens. Only a single house had lights on, and Julia walked us toward the two open doors — a double-wide entryway and a kitchen where a number of women lifted five- and ten-gallon pots to the stove. Inside, a swept, packed dirt floor, a painting of Jesus on the wall, and colourful woven curtains. A wooden shelf held an open bottle and a line of shot glasses. Every bit of furniture — benches, two leather recliners, wooden stools, a couch — had been pushed against the exterior walls, and in the centre of the room a man in a faded green top and canvas shorts lay on a table under a bare lightbulb.
Behind the table another man (in a suit, his unbuttoned shirt loose around his huge gut) sat in the corner braiding palm fronds into a rope. A broad-chested senior chewed a cigar in one of the leather recliners, and on the couch a young man of about twenty leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. The door to the adjoining kitchen was open, and two or three women fanned the steaming copper pots. One of the women saw us and spoke to Julia, who in turn spoke to Morgan and me.
“This is a funeral,” she said.
The man on the table — I hadn’t realized. By “deathbed” she’d meant dead.
The youngest man rose from the couch behind the dead man and downed three shots from the glasses that lined the shelf. He raised his hands and spoke to the room in a dialect I again didn’t catch, not exactly Spanish — I kicked myself for only researching the geology, not the language.
“Julia—” I said. Our intrusion felt tasteless at best. Moths battered the bare lightbulb above the body, their dusty wings casting flickered shadows in the haze of cigar smoke. She waved me quiet. The young man moved to the table, cupped the dead man’s head, and slipped the braided palm fronds around the corpse’s neck. Then he twisted the rope around his hand, braced against the dead man’s throat, and began to strangle the body.
“His grandson,” Julia said. “The cord seals the airways. For gases.”
The grandson pulled tighter, so that the woven fronds dug into the dead man’s neck, and then tied the rope off and turned to us. I put my hand to my face; Morgan lifted the pisco bottle. The men in the chairs nodded in unison — Graçias. Morgan carried it to the shelf and filled the row of shot glasses. The grandson downed three more shots (“For any smell,” Julia explained) and he fell onto one of the chairs along the wall. The man with the prominent gut stood and cast a set of sheep knuckles to the dirt floor like dice. Morgan refilled their shots.
I stepped backwards into the night and closed my eyes. Maybe I could sleep — I should at the very least check on Howie. When I opened them there was no need. Howie stood at the edge of the fire, his oxygen tank hugging his bare chest and the spaniel close to his side. The green-and-blue blanket draped his shoulders and his straw Galveston sat on his head like it anointed him.
“Howie,” I said. He passed me, stepping cautiously around the firepit and into the house as Julia carried a copper pot full of boiling water from the kitchen.
“It’s a funeral,” I called after him. “You sure you want to go in?” He groped his oxygen mask with one hand and lowered the other to the spaniel and her pink tongue.
Julia set the pot on the ground beside a box of cuy, and an older woman with a waist-length braid joined her. The woman lifted a jumpy cuy from the box and yanked its feet and head and it died. She handed it to Julia and took another. She handed the second dead cuy to me, and Julia and I dipped the animals into the boiling pot and then cold water, and we ripped the fur out with our fingers.
“You found the fossil?” I asked.
“I did.” Julia rubbed a knife over the skin of the plucked cuy. She passed me the knife, picked up a razor, and ran the blade over any last fur. I used the knife, then took the razor from her and shaved the rodent.
“Is it close?” I asked.
“Very close.” She passed me a bone fragment from her pocket.
“Shin,” I said. Thin-walled and hollow. A bird, then. We were right.
She sliced the corners of her cuy’s mouth and cut the testicles off, then she pricked the belly skin and pulled it open with two fingers and shook the guts into a bowl. She rinsed the carcass in a bucket. After all the cuy were prepared, we stuffed them with a mix of apple, cumin, and marigold, and set them on the stove with rocks on their backs to flatten the ribcages while they fried.
We rinsed our hands. Julia stood and stretched her legs. The entryway to the house was wide and the interior lit. Inside, men blew smoke around the corpse. The grandson poured alcohol on the door frame and spoke aloud to the house and the dirt. I saw Howie with a shot glass, watching Julia from one of the leather recliners — in the angled light of the doorway her birthmark was slightly shaded, and not as unattractive as unusual. Morgan left and returned with more pisco.