By Monkey

Chapter 8

Eyes of a Child

     Indiana Jones clutched tightly to the handle of his whip as he descended into the darkness.  Clinging to the familiar and trusted companion gave him at least some measure of solace as he plunged to his death.  But then with an abrupt suddenness that nearly caused him to lose that grip, the whip jerked tight, and instead of plummeting downward the archaeologist instead took on a more horizontal trajectory.

     He slammed into the side of a subterranean cliff below the altar of Payahuatac with a bone jarring impact.

     Just as the old saying goes that you always find things in the last place you look, so too do things always work the last time you try.

     The tendril of the whip had indeed finally taken hold of the hemp on Jones’ last try, wrapping over itself into a natural half-hitch that gripped tightly on to the rope.  Now he pulled himself up as quickly as his aching muscles could manage, not trusting the tenuous knot to hold too long.  Hand over hand he scaled up the length of the whip, feeling an immense sense of relief when his hands finally gripped the rough hemp of the hanging rope.

     So the luck of the Irish had come through again, he thought, as he pulled himself up on to Payahuatac’s altar and lay down on his back to catch his breath.  He peered back over and down into the void.  The altar had been built on the edge of a huge volcanic chasm.  Then he looked around him.  The floor on the other half of the burial chamber had not collapsed at all, only the half that he had been on; so much for luck.

     After catching his breath the archaeologist untied his whip from the rope.  He took a long look at it before coiling it up and hitching it back on to his belt.  Then, with the golden prize safely tucked into his leather satchel, Indiana Jones hoisted himself up the rope and out of the burial chamber of Payahuatac.  It had been a good day after all.

     A half hour later he emerged seemingly from out of the earth itself.  He pulled himself up and out through the Inca skylight and found himself standing on the side of a mountain, bathed in the blood red glow of a vibrant Andean sunset.  He took several deep breaths, tasting the crisp, clean air.  He exhilarated in the cool wind, and his own freedom.  The heavy weight of Payahuatac’s mask felt good at his side, and he started on his way down, in the direction of where the trail must lie.  He wanted to find it before dark.

     Indiana Jones whistled softly, and there was a spring in his step as he descended the mountainside.

     A set of wide eyes watched him.

     Concealed behind thick foliage at the edge of a stream bank, dark eyes peered through a small gap in the bushes and followed Jones’ every step.  The eyes belonged to a child.  They were wide; wide with wonder.  No one had ever come out from the mountain alive.  How could it be that this gringo, with the strange hat had survived?  With his own eyes Manilito had seen this white man enter the evil place, the place from which none ever returned.  But now he watched as the man, with his ‘latigo’ at his side, stepped lightly down the mountain, back towards the village.  Manilito wondered about the ‘latigo’.  Perhaps the man had slaves, he thought, and he beat them with the ‘latigo’ when he was angry.  Perhaps the ‘latigo’ had magic, stronger than the evil magic inside the mountain.

     Indeed the entire mountain was considered evil by the village elders, and all in his village were forbidden to set foot on it.  None ever did.  It had always been outsiders who went up the mountain, never to come down.  As it was when this gringo had passed through only days ago.  Manilito remembered how all the villagers had looked away, or ran away, when the man had asked for a guide. He remembered how he, Manilito wanted to speak up and offer to guide the man for money, but fear of what the elders might do had prevented him.

     Manilito needed money for his mother, and would do almost anything to get it.  He wanted so desperately to buy her some shoes.  They were poor, his whole family, and with his father gone, his mother had to work so hard just to put food, usually not much, on the table.  She dreamed of owning a new pair of shoes, to replace the rags she now tied around her feet to protect them as she toiled each day making bricks to sell in the town.  Yes, Manilito would overcome his fears of the mountain in order to buy his mother the shoes.  But before he had been able to speak alone with the gringo on that day, the gringo had left.

     But then the bad men had come to the village just a few hours later.  He knew they were bad, but they offered him money.  The bad men came from the town and offered Manilito money if he would go up the mountain to watch the gringo.  They said that the gringo would go into the mountain, and they wanted to know if he came out alive.  Manilito had told them that no one ever came out of the mountain alive, but the bad men seemed to think that this gringo with the hat could. Maybe they knew of this gringo’s magic.

     So they had given him money.  But only half of the money he needed to buy the shoes.  They said they would give him the rest after he came to them with news of the gringo’s return.  Manilito had complained, repeating to them that no one ever returned alive after going into the mountain.  They had just laughed, and told him that if the gringo did not return, then he would not get the shoes.  So Manilito had gone up the mountain to follow the gringo.  He’d watched him go in, and then had waited all the day long on the chilly slope, hoping against hope to see him emerge, and he had been rewarded for his wait. 

     Now, after Jones had well passed by his hiding place Manilito sprang to his feet.  It was hard for him to contain his elation.  He would now get the shoes for his mother.  How happy he knew it would make her.  All he had to do was go in to the town and tell the men that the gringo had come out, alive.

     The town was more than ten miles away, but Manilito didn’t care.  Like some kind of modern day chasqui, the winged courier of the Andes, Manilito took off down the opposite path from Indiana Jones, and ran like the wind.

     As he ran, Manilito’s joy was tempered by something else, something that bothered him.  He did not like to go into the town; in fact he feared the town, more even than the mountain.  The people of the town were cruel, and did not like his people.  They called them ‘Indios’, or worse names that he didn’t like to hear, or even to think about.  Even though at least some blood of the Inca flowed in the veins of most of the town people, they still thought themselves superior to the ‘Indios’, and treated them badly.

     Though still a child, Manilito knew in his heart that in many ways the poverty of his own people was caused by the cruelty and greed of the town people.  For this reason he was especially happy to take money from them, especially for something as easy as simply telling them that the gringo with the hat and the ‘latigo’ had come out of the mountain.

     Manilito smiled as he ran.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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