avoiding my eyes. "Tell me ..." she began, then stopped and started again. "Tell me what it was like when you started to go crazy."
The hut was very quiet, a crystalline silence that seemed ready to shatter. A pool of darkness had gathered at her feet. "Robert called me crazy," I said softly. "I never agreed."
"You don't think you were?"
"I think that a great many people we call insane are just in the wrong place at the wrong time." I shrugged. "I opposed the societal norms, so I was crazy by Robert's definition. Out here, no one calls me crazy." I studied her in the dim light. Her head was bowed and her hair hid her face. "Why do you ask?" I wanted to go to her, to touch her on the shoulder and stroke her hair, but I could not make myself move.
"I think ... I thought before I left that I might be going crazy. I thought coming here was crazy." Her voice was low. "After Dad died and I quit my job, I didn't know what to do. I kept walking and walking—pacing from one room of the house to another, moving a knicknack from a shelf to a side table and back. Just walking and walking, with no purpose." One of her hands rubbed the other, scratching a mosquito bite and raising a red welt. "I thought about killing myself, just so I could rest."
I took a long drag on the cigarette. "When Robert had me committed, the doctors at the nuthouse had to tend to my feet. I had infected blisters, all over the bottoms and sides of both feet. The doctors asked me why I hadn't stopped walking when my feet hurt." I shrugged. "I wanted to leave and I couldn't. Walking seemed like a reasonable reaction."
She was looking at me now. "Was coming here a reasonable reaction for me?"
"I suppose it was," I said.
Her smile was tentative. "Last night was the first time I slept a night through in weeks. I had dreams, but I slept the night through."
I glanced at the clock on the shelf. The luminous dial showed midnight. "I'll walk you to your hut," I said.
"Survey comes early tomorrow."
She nodded slowly but did not move. "You and Tony took Carlos off survey."
"Yes," I said. "We thought that Barbara had a large enough crew and John needed a little help."
Her expression did not change. "I wanted to tell you: I've been taking care of myself for a long time now.
I'm not stupid."
"I know that. I—"
"It's not that I don't appreciate your concern. But you made me feel like a fool." She was watching my face.
"I didn't intend that."
I could not read the expression in her eyes. "All right."
"I'll walk you to your hut," I said.
"Never mind," she said. "I'll be fine." She ducked through the door and left me alone with the shadows.
Tony and I walked out to the plaza by Structure 701 on Tuesday morning. We walked slowly, and the shadows of Mayan women passed us on the path. They carried gifts to the temple: baskets filled with maize, pots of freshly brewed balche, woven cloth, cured deer skins. Preparations for a festival, no doubt. I tried to eavesdrop on two old women who were chatting about the misbehavior of their neighbors—
particularly about the bad housekeeping of one woman. But the women spoke quickly, and Tony kept interrupting with comments about the weather and the dig, and I could not follow their conversation.
The shadows faded before we reached the plaza. The sun was hot. The three workmen who had levered the stone from its place stood in the shade, smoking and sharing water from a gourd, while Tony and I squatted by the upturned slab, brushing away the loose dry dirt that clung to the stone surface. On its underside, the slab was carved with a series of glyphs.
The stones on all four sides of the area that the slab had covered looked like they could have been walls.
The center was a tumble of boulders and fill. I sat back on my heels. "A corridor, I'd guess. Intentionally filled." I looked at Tony. "Leading to a burial filled with pottery, jade, and obsidian artifacts."
"I suppose that you want to take some men from the house mounds to continue the excavation," he said.
"I suppose so."
He frowned.
"Jade masks," I said. "Discs of beaten gold. Pottery in a known context."
"An empty chamber and a lot of wasted time," he said gloomily.