Elisha's Bones - Don Hoesel [34]
“I’m pretty sure I can keep up.” She disengages her elbow and starts for the steps, using the trail of weathered two-by-eights that straddle pits and small ravines. I’m right behind her, my boots thudding on the old wood.
We’re halfway up before she starts to lose steam. The steps are tall but have a short tread length, which makes ascending them difficult. And while I doubt she’s noticed, the cut of the stones changes slightly in either direction. Later on I’ll tell her how the builders intentionally designed the nonuniform steps to produce echoes in musical notes.
When finally we reach the top—out of breath, with sweat beading on my forehead—I turn around so that I’m looking back over the clearing, at the five men cutting paths between the trucks and the two sites I chose, and at the jungle that closes into a solid wall of green along a defined line of demarcation. It’s easy to understand how a Mayan priest would have felt, standing here above everything. It makes me wonder, again, why this temple is a freestanding structure. Why are there no plazas around it? Where are the evidences of dwellings, of industry? What exactly would a priest have looked down upon?
“It’s dark in here.”
I turn and see Esperanza peering into the single chamber that tops the pyramid.
“A lot of the later structures are open to the sky.” I pull a miniature flashlight from the front pocket of my jeans.
I click on the light and step into the doorway, playing the beam over the interior. It’s empty, save for the stone ceremonial table in the center. It’s where the priests would have performed the ritual sacrifices integral to their religion.
“It’s so small,” Esperanza says, following me as I step deeper inside.
“We’re at the top of a pyramid. What did you expect?”
I know where she’s coming from. All of the labor involved in building something this large just to support a single fifteen-by-fifteen-foot room?
Turning back to the door, I direct the light over the lintel and the carvings in the stucco that decorate it. It’s the only ornate part of the chamber—further evidence to support the time period in which I have placed its construction.
“Up until about 1950, experts believed these pyramids to be solid,” I say. “That the whole structure supported a single room. A Mexican archaeologist discovered a hidden entrance into the substructure in the temple pyramid of Pacal at Palenque.”
I see a spark of interest in Esperanza’s eyes, displacing her disappointment. I think she’d been expecting something more elaborate, more ornate. Most people do.
Circling the ceremonial table, my feet echoing on stone, I search for the entrance to the larger chamber below us.
“Crap.”
“What?”
A portion of the ceiling has given way, creating a barrier to the access panel. I aim the light up until I see the gaps in the ceiling, and the lines that suggest another round of falling rock is inevitable.
“I hate limestone,” I say.
It is almost noon and we’ve been at it for the better part of six hours. There’s a lot more debris than I’d first estimated. In fact, I find it difficult to believe that the sections of felled ceiling could account for all the rock blocking the entrance. It almost looks as if someone has brought in additional material just to make this more difficult. It’s like something Duckey would do just to irritate me.
From my vantage point on the steps, the second tier, I sip from a water bottle and watch a swarm of bugs that seem to hang in the air in front of me like a small cloud. I’m covered with insect repellent but have still suffered a few nibbles from the more adventurous of the little monsters.
It’s taking a while to clear the entrance because I’ve been adamant about using the proper methods. Even though I’ve already been inside, I can’t bring myself to ignore the rules. It’s unlikely, but I may have missed something the first time through—something that might be contaminated or destroyed by hasty work. Too, I suppose I’m milking my first time