The singing water of the Rio Grande whistles through the desert, babbling across the polished stones worn smooth by centuries of washing. Five trembling Mexicans hide from view among the scrubby green bushes. It is dusk. The sun plummets from the sky in ribbons of hot color, like the glowing of campfire logs: blood-red, orange, yellow, licking blue tongues, the confused color of both heat and ice.
Maria yanks her pink woolen hat, smudged with desert dust, over her cold, sensitive ears. She pulls her tattered gray sweater tightly around her chest. Absentmindedly, she loops a pearly white button through a sweater hole, and wraps a shawl around her little sister Carmen. The oldest of seven children, this night Maria and her fifteen-year-old brother, José, plan to smuggle one of their siblings into the United States. If they succeed, their parents will follow with the others.
Two small, stocky Mexican men, smelling faintly of alcohol, huddle in their group, waiting for a signal from the Coyote, the guide on the other side who will offer them safe passage.
Maria thinks of her mother, cooking hotcakes and shooing chickens from their dirt-floor hut. In her family's wood and straw abode along the dusty route to Chichen-Itza, chickens run in the front door and out the back. An antenna punctuates the roof, reaches into the sky, grabs invisible signals and throws them like fairy dust into the square metal box. Images flicker across the screen. A gift from a wealthier uncle, an employee at an American hotel in Cancun.
Maria's mother continues to shuck corn, grind meal, and form rounded corn cakes in her small plump fists until the chickens run underfoot. Then she swipes a nearby broom into her doughy hands, runs and chases four screeching chickens from the hut with fury. Feathers fly like snow onto the hot dirt floor.
Four-year-old Gaby runs around in circles, chasing her mother. "No, no, Mama! No, no hit chickens, Mama!"
Within minutes, Mama returns to the hut and to her molding of the corn cakes.
"Maria, you do not want this life. Feathers floating through a straw birdcage. This is no life for a pretty young girl like you!"
Maria laughs. "You're funny, Mama, you know that? You have chicken feathers in your hair."
Later that night, Maria watches a lone tour bus barreling down the road from Chichen-Itza, churning up dirt clouds with its rumbling wheels. Who are the tourists? Where do they come from? She imagines fancy clothes, fine manners, wealth. The people from the television world. Finer than she; happier than her mother.
"Hey, you! I said get over here!"
Maria jerks from her reverie. One of the two grubby men, emitting scent of alcohol through his pores, strokes his rough facial hair, as though lost in thought, leers at her.
José puts his arm in front of his sister to keep her from leaving. "Over there? Why?"
Standing up from a crouching position, the man displays a gun tucked into a holster under his brown suede jacket. The setting sun glints from the weapon, a bouncing ray of fiery light.
"Was I talking to you? I don't think so. Senorita, get over here!"
Maria pushes her brother's arm away as she answers, "Why should I do that? You should answer my brother."
"Oh, I should, should I? Do you think I should do that? You are a stubborn fool. Listen. What do you hear?"
Maria stands still and silent. A soft breeze rustles across the desert, flipping tumbleweeds here and there; a lone coyote barks into the wind; the song of the Rio Grande continues pouring out its song across the babbling rocks.
"I hear mostly quiet, some wind, a coyote."
"You idiot child! You hear the human Coyote waiting on the other side of the border to help you reach freedom. Are you coming? I send one person at a time. The older girl goes first."
José whispers violently, speaking under his breath so that only Maria can hear him, the way he had whispered when Gaby was struck by the scorpion under the deep black velvet cloak of night, "You must listen to me now!"
Maria looks into José's brown eyes, wild with fear and the splintering reflection of dusk. She pushes him out of her way and returns a harsh, angry whisper, "I won't listen! This is our only chance. I go first!" She squeezes her brother's hand briefly, pressing appreciation for his protection--like a folded paper thank you note--into his sweaty palm; but she pushes past him, knowing that in the long run he can't protect any of them.
The two men leer and swagger. Close up, they stink more pervasively of alcohol, though it masks the underlying stench of unwashed bodies. Maria looks them defiantly in the eye, her strong chin held high, as she approaches. The man who had been doling out orders grabs her by the upper arm when she gets within reach and squeezes hard enough to bruise. He leans close to her face and kisses her on the mouth. Maria pulls away; then gives no further reaction.
"I own you, Senorita. Until the Coyote on the other side takes you, I own you. You cross the Rio Grande under my protection. Don't you forget that! You betray us, and we leave your brother and little sister in Mexico. You understand?"
"Yes, I understand. So when do we cross?"
"Soon. As soon as the sun sets a little more, so that the border guards can't see us."
As darkness swallows the woods and fields of upstate New York, the streetlamps suffuse with soft orange light. The ivy-covered stone mansion--tucked away behind wrought iron gates and ancient winding trees--bleeds golden light and music onto the front lawn. Inside, Professor Brandon Moore entertains his guests.
Musicians play a series of Mozart's Chamber Sonatas in a large corner of the living room decorated with snow-white carpet and dark, heavily upholstered furniture. Guests mill about in tuxedos and long, flowing evening gowns. In addition to the music, there are sounds of hushed voices, clinking glasses, and the swishing of finely tailored clothing.
Isabella, a local artist, swirls sparkling red wine in a circular pattern at the bottom of her long-stemmed glass. As the musicians end their piece and depart the room for break, she leans closer to Dr. Moore. "So, where was your last assignment?"
Dr. Moore studies Isabella's long lashes, her impenetrable blue eyes, her pouty lips painted violent in a saturated shade of red, and the diamond necklace encircling her pale, thin neck. He admires her slender figure in the tightly fitted black dress.
Dr. Moore reflects back the woman's mannerisms, slowly swirling cognac in the bottom of a pear-shaped glass. He sips the fiery elixir; then answers, "My last assignment was two months ago in Mexico ... in Chichen-Itza. I did research into a game that was played there many, many years ago."
"A game?"
"Yes. An unusual type of basketball, to put it in more modern terms." The anthropologist pauses, locks his gaze more securely onto the artist's curious blue eyes, swirls his cognac in one brief loop around the bottom and up the sides of his glass, takes a brief swig of the burning liquor, then continues, "The game was played in several ancient Mayan cities. There are several ball courts at Chichen-Itza itself; but my last trip was devoted entirely to the study of the Great Ball Court at Chichen-Itza, the largest in the Mayan world. The playing field is 40 feet long, situated in between two walls, each 25 feet high. Stone hoops are situated 20 feet high, stuck sideways into the walls. Two teams of players competed to hit a ball through the hoops. The game sometimes went on for days; but, when the game finally ended, the real fun began."
Dr. Moore smiles at Isabella with a slight upturn of the left side of his upper lip, a cross between a smirk and something more jovial to match the sparkle in his emerald green eyes.
"The real fun?"
"Well, perhaps fun for the ancient Mayans. In the lower walls of the Great Ball Court, there are some rather interesting carvings." Dr. Moore's eyes soak in the dim light of the room and twinkle more brightly. "One carving shows a man with his head cut off spurting blood from his neck, while another man proudly holds up the head. Anthropologists think that either the winners or losers were sacrificed. Perhaps it was a great honor to win the game and be sacrificed to the gods."
Isabella stares at the lecturer. "That's disgusting, no matter who was sacrificed. I really didn't need to know all that." Isabella looks into the empty well of her wine glass. "It looks like I need more wine. I think I'll go get a refill."
Dr. Moore watches the sultry movement of the artist's naked back in her tight-fitting, low-cut dress, as she turns away from him and weaves her way through the crowded room to the bar.
A dirty red eighteen-wheel big-rig rumbles along the roads from Seattle to New York. The wooden planks jostle and complain on the flatbed; the driver guzzles strong coffee; gravel whips up around the wheels and flies out periodically from behind.
Several nights after beginning its trip, the vehicle pulls up in front of the Moore estate. Dr. Moore waits in the shadows; then steps out and opens the wrought iron gate. He waves the trucker up his long circular driveway, built like a noose around a flowering garden and large, ancient trees. Wind dances through the leaves and branches, scattering shadows, light, and spirited whispers across the verdant lawn.
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