It was hard to tear myself from those dreams, from flying, but I rose just before dawn. Stripping off the long underwear revealed that the infections had advanced during the night. They were on fire.
I watched the rising sun paint the green horizon orange. Packed the gear and enjoyed one final view of the sacred eagle, then scrambled down the temple and back to camp.
By the time I arrived, Fernando had already broken camp and started to pack. He told me to raise my pant legs, and then looked at the infections; he squatted for a closer inspection. He said that he had planned, later that morning, to harvest some type of resin with antiseptic properties that might halt the spread of the infections, but that they'd already reached too dangerous a level; the resin would be too little, too late. I drained and irrigated them as well as I could, and then made breakfast while Fernando continued packing. His mind was somewhere else, and for the first time that I'd noticed, he was visibly worried.
After we'd eaten, Fernando left to retrieve the mule, in a tall patch of vegetation just outside camp. The mule wouldn't get up. Despite Fernando's tugging and prodding and harsh commands, the animal would not rise.
"¿Qué pasa?" I yelled over to Fernando.
"Venga, mira," he replied, and pointed to the mule's shoulder. It shimmered with a cascade of congealed blood, matted with mosquitoes, flies, and bees, crawling with garrapatas. He suffered similar wounds on his hips.
"Murciélagos vampiros," said Fernando, holding apart his hands, shoulder width, to indicate their size. "Chuparon mucha sangre. La mula está débil."
During the night, vampire bats had descended on the mule to feed, draining a good amount of blood. The mule sat there, head hung low, refusing or unable to stand. Fernando walked to the dying fire, and with a thin plastic sack, grabbed a handful of glowing embers and ash. He returned to the mule and pressed the embers into one of the wounds. The mule neighed, jerked violently to his feet, and backed away. "Hold him!" Fernando commanded. He returned to the fire for more coals, and then headed for the mule again. The mule retreated, bucking and dragging me with him by the lead rope. Fernando managed to cauterize a second wound. This we repeated two more times. I thought my arms would be pulled from their sockets.
We walked back to camp, made another round of coffee, and sat.
"The mule is weak," Fernando explained, and then his gears started turning in that way I'd become all too familiar with. He would find the solution. I knew it. He always did.
I finished loading everything into the mule sacks but the kitchen mess-pots, pans, assorted gear and some foodstuffs.
"You're going to have to put that in your pack," Fernando said, "and I'm going to carry as much of the water as possible."
A bolt of panic shot through my body. I think I shuddered. But I felt recharged from the magic night on the temple. I gained some composure, set my mind, and convinced myself that it wouldn't be a problem. After all, I had a map now.
I crammed the kitchen mess into my pack. Fernando filled two plastic liter bottles with water from the tambo, tied on some nylon twine. We secured the mule pack, Fernando slung the bottles over his shoulder, and we were off.
With the mule so weak, it was slow going at first, but eventually, after a few hours, Fernando's pops and shouts began to take effect, the mule built steam, and we once again traveled at our normal, furious pace. Around the same time, the extra weight of the kitchen mess came to full bore, and the pain well exceeded anything from the previous days, physically and mentally. By now we'd developed a surging momentum-we were trucking. I was on the verge of collapse.
I knew that if I fell more than a few feet behind the mule, I would be left behind completely, alone in the jungle. But I had learned that if I stayed within a few feet of the mule, it would somehow conserve my energy. At that range I was inside the mule's wake-I was pulled along by his energy, like a magnetic train hitch. Mule drafting. In any event, it was a fast train, the fastest yet. "¡Siga, siga, siga!" We were flying. Faster and faster, it seemed. The trance dug its hooks in deep.
And then it happened, the unthinkable. Fernando bit it. He tripped on a root and hit the dirt. The mule almost trampled him, delivered a few solid kicks. I did a double take, thought I was dreaming.
Fernando got to his feet, shaken, and brushed himself off. "We'll rest." He laughed. "Happens to everyone sooner or later."
No argument from me.
He was quick to roll the jungle herb. We smoked, watered ourselves, rested, and then continued, backing off the furious pace a bit. A while passed without further incident. Then we stopped.
"Tsss," Fernando cautioned. "Escuche."
I listened. From the distance, high in the canopy, came a low drone, a buzz. It grew closer and louder, and the pitch higher, until it enveloped us. It was overhead, just to our right. The deep vibration charged the follicles on the back of my neck. Then it was visible, a trailing column of bees that blackened the sky in its path. With one look, Fernando made it clear that silence was in order. For a strangely prolonged minute, the cloud rushed past, then faded into the distance.
We pressed on, and Fernando informed me that we would be taking a back route to draw from the only spring between ourselves and Carmelita that stood any chance of having water. We wouldn't reach it until the following day, so it was critical to be conservative with the little water that remained.
The trail gradually disappeared. I'd seen this before. Once again, we found ourselves hacking through dense raw jungle. This lasted a few hours, and we expended tremendous energy through our arms and shoulders. Fortunately the machetes had newly ground edges. It seemed that Fernando had foreseen this possibility, and that was why he had had me work the edges at El Mirador. Was there anything he didn't know about the jungle?
We eventually emerged from the thick, tangled undergrowth back onto the trail. How Fernando was able to hack through that much raw jungle and bring us out exactly on trail is beyond me. We stopped for a quick lunch, sipped at our remaining water, and continued, traveling again, at furious speed.
The trail passed through several small cities, their temples completely buried, long transformed into large hills, and lacking the usual scars of tomb raiders. Fernando said they all contained treasure.
Fernando stopped, sooner than he normally would have. It seemed he'd grown tired of the weight of water slung over his shoulder, or perhaps the twine digging into his flesh. He massaged his shoulder a bit and loaded the water bottles into the mule pack, along with the kitchen mess from my pack. I had developed a deep appreciation for the work of our loyal mule and thanked him for his hard work.
We smoked the jungle herb, sipped at the water that remained in my bottle, enough to hydrate our mouths, and continued. That would be the last rest until nightfall.
Hacking through the raw jungle had cost us precious daylight, and Fernando was determined to make up for it with speed. We pushed with all our might to build steam and hold the momentum. Fernando was demanding with the mule, shouting "¡Siga! ¡Siga!" all afternoon and popping him at the slightest reduction in speed.
I was gripped firmly in the clutches of the trance and felt like I was dying. The fibers of my muscles and the cells of my bones had suffered so much pressure over the past days that the crescendo of pain neared its apex. It felt as though my body was no longer fighting the pain, resisting the pressure, but eating itself for sustenance, dissolving at its cellular limits. My mind felt as though it too was beginning to crack, crushed by the vice grip of the trance and unable to further assimilate the barrage of synaptic impulses of fire and pain being transmitted, bombarded, from all reaches of the nervous system. The mosquitoes were horrible that afternoon. I'd lost the ability to absorb and diffuse the itch. I walked in a black shroud of biting hell and there was no escape.
I just needed to slow down, but I knew if I fell behind, the consequences would be even worse than the present situation. The inner map that had been charted days before was no use in this place; it was off the map. How much further could I possibly push? My feet had stress fractures, I was certain. I could barely bend my hips and knees. The discs in my spine were so compressed that I thought for sure they would rupture. The fire of the garrapata infections had transcended pain, and was now a web of tingling sensation along my lower legs, shooting white electric currents into my hips and, occasionally, when stepping wrong, into my spinal column. My skin was dry, unable to sweat; all reserve fluid was gone.
The jungle was silent, as if awaiting something. My mind, in contrast, was a raging storm, a deafening roar of voices, horrific shrieks and screams. Voices I never knew existed, thousands of them. All distinct, separate, screaming and clawing for survival, not mine, but theirs. Where the hell did they come from, and why were they in my mind? None of them gave a damn about me or one another, each concerned only with its own survival. They had somehow gained access to my mind, through which they viciously and relentlessly questioned everything about my existence, distant memories, secret fantasies, unlived dreams, relationships, family, friends, life decisions, the pain in my physical body, the functioning of my brain, the efficacy of my mind itself.
I was trapped in this hell for an eternity-there was no way out. No nightmare of my life, even combined and multiplied, compared with this mental agony. I was so trapped that it never occurred to me to ask Fernando to stop. I silently wailed, cried, screamed hysterically.
All memories, all dreams, faded into nothingness. Emotions went dry; the well was empty. All that remained was the mechanical firing of brain synapses, which began to dwindle and focus on the one question that remained . . . had the umbilical cord with reality been severed?
Yes, it had.
One final rush of panic, then . . . TOTAL CRACK of psyche. Something had come undone. Had I transcended? Surrendered? Was I lost? Could I ever go back? Would I ever be able to relate to my family and friends again? Lucid awareness of being alone . . . just me and a fictional old man who doesn't even speak English . . . a figment of my imagination, which I conjured to draw me into this dark place in the heart of this dark jungle. For that matter, my entire reality, everything I'd perceived during life as real, was not. It was an illusion, an elaborate synthesis of infinite perceptions, infinite thoughts injected into my mind by infinite voices, none of which was mine. What had I done? What had I, through passion and laziness, allowed my reality to become? Where had all my reckless questioning of the universe delivered me? Why had I taken it so far, so deep, so beyond the faculties of my limited deceptions of control?
I cursed everything, especially the spiritual path.
What use is any of it if my mind is forever shattered? Nothing matters. Why not return to the unconscious, unquestioning, robot state, and indulge forevermore in mindless earthly pleasures? What difference would it make? No, this newfound insanity is perfectly acceptable. It's just an insignificant part of a much vaster universe, and who am I to question that?
My family flashed through my mind. Would I ever see them again? And even if I saw them with my eyes, would I see them in my heart, as they were, as I had known them? Would they see me? Would there even be a me?
All I wanted in that moment was love-to love and to be loved. Not in an emotional sense, but in some larger sense that had never before occurred to me. I begged for it. I cared no longer about the survival of my mind or my physical body, only about this newfound love. A mixture of white light and this new feeling began pervading my mind. The process was beyond words-dynamic and static-throbbing in waves, pouring into me. The infinite voices lashing out in their anguish subsided, relaxed, calmed, until they went silent, until, eventually, there were no thoughts, no questions, no emotions. The energy released during this experience flowed from my mind into the whole of my body, and then into the whole of my being, until there was no body, no me, only an essential presence vibrating in a tingling bath of something long forgotten, something at the core.
I was still fully aware of the corporal pain, relentlessly present in all its splendid glory, and the psychic and emotional pain of twenty-six earth years and beyond. The thoughts generating that pain were very much present, and I was very much aware of them, but they were not my thoughts, they were not me. They existed, yes, around me and through me and in the distant reaches of consciousness, but they were not me. Detached, I watched them through new eyes, wondering where they came from and what they wanted from me.
This state of suspended observation existed outside time. It carried me through most of that afternoon. Once it faded, I slipped back into my mind-into the voices-and began to interact with them again. But it was different now. Infused with a sense of calm and serenity, I perceived the voices and the thoughts and the pain differently, as I have since. They are not me and they never will be.
I floated through the rest of the afternoon.
We reached camp after dusk. The first thing we did was build a fire and make coffee, plenty of sugar. As we sat there on generous logs, low to the ground, soft fire dancing between us, Fernando seemed different, he appeared different. And from his eyes and the broken rhythms of his speech, I sensed that I appeared different as well.
Fernando was noticeably fatigued-I hadn't seen him that way before. We unpacked the mule, hacked a clearing in the jungle, set camp, and strung our hammocks.
Fernando rolled the jungle herb and we partook of its grace. Later, he was wowed by dinner, a special recipe my father had taught me as a child, the only dish I cook well. Our bodies were numb with exhaustion. We sat there for hours, tapped, too spent for conversation. The flames licking the space between us dwindled into a pulsating mass of deep red wonder. I was sure that the rhythmic undulation of those embers held the secrets of the universe, but I was too exhausted to probe for them.
We sank into our hammocks earlier than usual. Fernando was snoring before I was even settled. I slipped in and out of sleep, adjusting cramps, trying to integrate the day's events. I felt the canopy winds, connected to my bones, rocking, gently rocking. Great white flashes illuminated the canopy, as my waking states dipped in and out of dreams.
Cool, I thought, aliens in the Mayan jungle! How lucky can I get?
Slowly my dreams dissipated, leaving me in a hot, muggy reality, in the middle of an immense dark jungle . . . with flashes of light igniting the skies. I watched from my hammock until I was fully awake.
"What is that?"
I leaned forward for a better look, but it was impossible to see anything through the canopy besides the flashing night sky.
"Oh, man, that's a thunderstorm."
I crawled out from under the mosquito net.
"¡Fernando, Fernando! ¡Mira! ¡La luz! ¡Va a llover!"
He moaned.
I fumbled around the dark campsite, looking for the tarp and some rope, all the while trying to wake Fernando, to warn him of our impending fate. He finally did wake up and helped me string the tarp over my hammock. He laughed at the absurdity of what we were doing.
"It's not going to rain," he said.
We set the tarp and slipped back into our hammocks. The flashing skies diminished, moved off into the distance. I felt like an idiot and felt horrible for waking Fernando when he was so tired.
Oh well, that's why he's the guía and I'm the gringo.
I drifted back to sleep.
CRASH!
The explosion jarred me awake.
"What the . . . ?"
Lightning and thunder exploded around us. Raindrops tickled the tarp and continued their charming game for some time.
Whew. It's just an electrical storm. Not much rain. Besides, the canopy is so thick that not much rain could get through, anyways.
Wrong. The heavens opened, dumped their seas upon us. In a matter of minutes a small river surged through camp, washing away our gear and provisions.
My pack!
I jumped out from beneath the tarp in my underwear. Fernando, also in his underwear, was already up, darting frantically around camp, rescuing gear that was being washed away and securing everything else. What a sight it must have been. When we had finally secured all the gear, I climbed back into my hammock beneath the tarp; Fernando lay down on the ground beneath me. We were soaked to the bone, and the chill crept in.
The downpour continued long into the night. The tarp, as it turned out, was more like Swiss cheese. Water poured through its many holes, onto my neck, my stomach, my legs. I contorted like a magician's assistant in the swords-through-the-box trick. It was pointless. There was not a dry place anywhere in that patch of jungle. Poor Fernando lay in a river of mud and leaves.
I was so exhausted, so delusional from all that had happened in the previous days, all that I'd not had time to integrate, that I just started laughing. Uncontrollably. Then Fernando started laughing. Uncontrollably. We finally laughed ourselves to sleep, despite the water and explosive thunder.