Joe Stevens Mocks a Llama Read online

  “What are you doing, Joe?” Freddy asked when I didn’t vocalize a mutual enthusiasm for being trapped in a pitch black inquisition torture cell.

  “He’s gone! He left us,” I explained, shaking the cell. Then I thought that perhaps the gate had a locking mechanism I could release, and began tracing my fingers where I thought a latch might be.

  “He’ll come back.”

  “I don’t want him to come back.”

  “But he still has to take us to the catacombs.”

  “We’re not going to get to the catacombs if we don’t get out of this cell!”

  “Just open the door.”

  “What do you think I’m trying to do, play chopsticks on the bars?”

  “Just chill, Joe. He’ll come back.”

  “With snake occultists.”

  “With what?”

  “Just help me open these things. Here,” I said, leaning against the wall of the cramped cell and preparing to kick the bars, “If we both kick it we might break it loose.”

  “This is a historical jail cell, Joe, I’m not going to break it.”

  “It’s historically holding us captive and unless you want to be a part of the exhibit I suggest you help me kick it to rusty bits!”

  “Hold on, Joe.”

  “One…”

  “Joe…”

  “Two…”

  “Joe don’t…”

  “Hey!” I heard shouted from the stairs as the light bulb switched on. I nearly fell off the wall with relief and leapt at the bars to look at the staircase.

  “See,” Freddy said, “I told you he’d be back.”

  My initial reaction was to feel my face redden to the point I wished the lights were once more off. The color of my cheeks lightened, however, when I saw that it was not the skinny guide who’d turned on the lights, but the guard we’d passed when we first entered the museum.

  The guard looked upon us with confusion and annoyance, saying something in angry Spanish as he visibly tried to figure out what we were up to.

  “Can you help us out, please?” I asked, hoping he knew English, “Por favor.”

  “Door locked?” the guard asked, thankfully understanding English.

  “Yes. I can’t get it open.”

  “Hmm.” The guard, aware of whatever mechanism secured the iron bars, was able to find the release switch and opened the gate.

  The sigh of relief I let out as I exited the cell must have made the guard concerned. Freddy’s chuckling probably made him equally concerned and I would not have been surprised if he accused us of being drunk out of our minds.

  “Thank you,” I said, “Thank you.”

  “That was fun,” Freddy said.

  “What were you doing in here?” the guard asked.

  “Oh, our guide locked us in,” I explained, “Skinny fellow. Probably trying to scare us. He walked out of here just before you came.”

  “There has not been anyone beside you enter this building.”

  It was with this information that the cognac-sipping Joe Stevens leapt out of his leather chair, turned it on its side, and called it a day.

  Of course Freddy did not want to call it a day, no sir. He just had to see the catacombs. Because going to a church with a bunch of dead people in it was exactly what I wanted at that moment. But, I supposed dead people couldn’t lock me inside an inquisition cell so it was a little less stressful.

  “We can’t not see the catacombs,” Freddy said as we walked from the museum and back to the cathedral we’d passed earlier, “They make the walls out of bones.”

  “Walls out of bones?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Pretty cool huh?”

  It was kind of intriguing.

  “But what about the guide?” I asked, looking around as we passed through the archway of the old cathedral to get in line with the other tourists waiting to see the catacombs, “Weren’t we supposed to pay him?”

  “Maybe he forgot.”

  “People like that don’t forget to get paid.”

  “Don’t make assumptions about people, Joe.”

  “Making assumptions about people is exactly the kind of thing that prevents you from getting locked in an inquisition cell.”

  “It was worth it. We got to experience something of historical significance.”

  “Historically, they all died. So we only got half the experience.”

  Freddy didn’t have a good response for that. Besides, by then we were well within the confines of the cathedral and catacombs grounds. The complex had apparently been a monastery at some point. There were only a few monks remaining, we learned through the walking tour, as most of the monks had left to work elsewhere in Peru. But the heritage of this building dated back to the earliest stages of Peru´s history. It was full of beautiful paintings and walkways and had a musk to it that reeked of age and importance.

  I soon forgot about our skinny guide as the musk of the catacombs overwhelmed my senses. Descending well-cut stairs into a smooth-edged basement carved out of the bedrock, Freddy and I gaped at the darkened pathways that were covered with the bones of the long-dead.

  Utter silence greeted us inside this graveyard for thousands. Skulls littered the ground at the edges of the leg bone-walled walkway. Boxes made up a majority of the floor space, wooden containers that stored sorted rib bones and arm bones. There was one wall that was made of skulls and bones in a sort of picture frame for a dozen more skulls that seemed to deserve special attention, though no visible marker indicated they were of any notable importance.

  Despite the fact that we were literally staring at bones and skulls, there was nothing gothic or gory about that musty basement of a mass grave. It all seemed silent, still, a pure picture of the underworld that demanded any mortal who entered be absolutely silent.

  The spattering of other tourists, along with Freddy and I, walked the pathways of catacomb tunnels slow and quiet as if we were in a funeral parade.

  Freddy and I were in the back of the line of tourists, and Freddy looked like a kid in a candy store. “It makes you wonder how they died. What happened to them,” he said quietly.

  “Yeah,” I whispered back, wondering what the skull staring back at me from the wall might have looked like when it was alive. I wondered the same thing about a large box of skulls further down the path.

  “How long did they live? What was their place in life? Did they believe in the church where they were buried?”

  “I wonder if they wanted to be put in a box. Personally, I wouldn’t mind being made into one of those wall designs.”

  “I don’t think they have a say in it, Joe.”

  “No. But it is a little weird if you think about it. Dude’s legs are in a box over there and his skulls on a wall over here and his ribs are probably beneath the floor.”

  “In life we are tools, and in death we are turned into building materials.”

  “That’s quite poetic, Freddy,” I said, suddenly realizing that Freddy and I had been musing long enough that the rest of the tour group had gone and left us behind.

  “Thanks.”

  “Freddy,” I said, pointing out that we were alone, “Did you see the others leave?”

  “Oh, yeah. We must have been staring at the walls too long.”

  “We should probably head back.”

  “Yeah.”

  Freddy turned around, heading back the way we had come. I followed and took a few moments to ponder what I would look like, or feel, with my head being mounted on a wall. The only thing I thought that would be sad about it would be that my head would be on the wall but I couldn’t be making a funny face.

  “Of course all skulls are making a funny face,” I said aloud.

  “What was that?” Freddy asked, turning toward me just in time to miss the skinny guide stepping from around a corner.

  “Did you like the tour?” the skinny guide asked as Freddy whipped his head around, saw the guide, and screamed.

  Freddy shrieked loud enough I thoug
ht the skulls would shake off the walls. He leapt backwards, slamming into me and diving to the ground for cover. In what looked to be terror-fueled instinct, Freddy reached for something to strike the guide with and found his hand reaching inside a box full of human femurs.

  Swinging a leg bone like a club, Freddy charged the skinny guide and kept on screaming in what was now a fear-induced rage. Freddy bashed his shoulder against the wall in an attempt to strike the quickly-dodging guide. He swung once, twice, three times before the guide held up his hands for restraint and said, “Whoa, whoa-whoa! What are you doing?”

  The words, and the guide’s submissive confusion, made Freddy hesitate.

  Freddy panted as he stood over the guide, then looked at what was in his hands. With a shriek, Freddy threw the femur back into its box and bolted as fast as he could up the stairs, screaming all the while.

  “See!” I shouted after Freddy, “I told you he was frickin’ scary!”

  “Excuse me?” the skinny guide asked.

  “Sorry. Let me pay you. Oh, and I’m definitely giving you a tip.”

  We had dinner at an outdoor grill. They had pork meats and chicken, but Freddy and I opted for the vegetarian tamales.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning at breakfast, we sat down and ate our toast, Freddy consulting the map and looking for other museums and places of interest with which to examine. We’d gotten up what we thought was early, but the kitchen tables were already occupied by a small group. Even more surprising, Louis had pants on.

  “Ah, Joe and Freddy, how did you enjoy Central Lima, hehe? Fun?” Louis asked, scratching his backside as he lumbered to a table with a plate full of jelly-laden bread.

  “It was fine,” I said, yawning as I fetched my coffee, “Good morning everyone.”

  “Good morning,” one of the four other people, guests at the hostel, said. This particular individual spoke with a Scottish accent and had a smile that was completely out of place for this early in the morning. The girl sitting close enough next to him that I took her for his girlfriend, reciprocated the smile, though she did not apparently possess her boyfriend’s early morning energy.

  “Are you going on the raft trip too?” the Scottish hostel guest asked.

  “Raft trip?” I asked.

  “We’re going whitewater rafting,” the girlfriend said, her accent also Scottish.

  “The four of us and Louis.” The Scot pointed at the group of them in a circle, including two Indian guys sitting across from them at the breakfast table. The Indians greeted Freddy and I in a quiet wave. “You should come.”

  And just like that, ten minutes later we were loading into Louis’s SUV, getting ready for him to drive us to the spot where we could go whitewater rafting.

  “It’s a new car,” Louis said, grinning with pride, “I bought it used just yesterday. I’m very excited about it. Come, sit here, hehe.”

  The SUV was newish-looking, and had a factory designation of seating for seven. This meant that it could fit seven uncomfortably, so Freddy got the front seat while I volunteered to shove in beside the Scots in the middle row, the Indians taking the tiny seats in the very back.

  Driving through Lima is a frightening experience for no less than the most experienced or native Peruvian driver. Peruvians in Lima drive with an offensive hostility to other cars, using the horn not as a warning device but as a weapon to weave through traffic, disregarding laws and only barely avoiding a collision at every intersection and encounter with another vehicle. I couldn’t count the number of times Freddy wailed as the Scots and I tried to pretend it was no big deal whenever our hostel owner nearly ran over a dog/person/car/fruit stand.

  Chatting with the Scots, of course, helped ease our worry for Louis’s suicidal driving. I learned that Grant and Amy, their names, were seasoned world travelers of the highest order. I shared with them the time I’d spent studying in London, and all the travels I’d enjoyed. When two travelers meet, listing off places you’ve been to is sort of like when athletes compare their personal records, with the more exotic and hard to reach places earning the most points in the unspoken contest of travel worthiness. Grant, of course, won soundly.

  “We’ve been on holiday for about a year now,” Amy said.

  “A year? That’s impressive. Freddy and I are only here ten days and that was hard enough to schedule,” I said.

  “It’s much easier for us to do it, I suppose.”

  “You don’t hear a lot of Americans traveling, actually,” Grant said, “You’re the first American I’ve met who’s actually been to Latvia.”

  “Only place in Europe you can go bobsledding. I think,” I said, recalling the experience and how it’s not a good idea to go bobsledding alone. But that’s a story for another time. “So how long are you in Peru?”

  “We’ve been here a week already. We’ll be heading to America about the same time as you, so two weeks here in full.”

  “What’s there to do here? Freddy and I actually tried to go to Egypt at first. But they had this little revolution thing going on.”

  “Joe dragged me here,” Freddy added from the front seat. When Louis looked at him funny, Freddy added, “Not that I’m complaining. We just don’t know much about Peru.”

  “Have you heard of Machu Picchu?” Grant asked.

  “Ancient Mayan city or something, right?” I asked.

  “Inca,” Freddy corrected.

  “I can make up words too, Freddy, I thought we’d been over this.”

  “No, Inca is the name of the people who built Machu Picchu.”

  “Not the Maya?”

  “They’re from Central America.”

  “I don’t know about Mayas or Incas,” Grant said, “But Machu Picchu is very cool. Amy and I went there a few days ago.”

  “Just don’t take the bus,” Amy added.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “We took the bus because it was cheap. It’s…hard to get to,” Grant laughed, “Louis wrote us a bunch of instructions and called ahead to some friends. Use him. We did, and it was hard enough but fun.”

  Grant then told us about the fun and adventure Amy had traveling to and visiting that ancient city in central Peru. He advised we take a plane, and Freddy and I agreed that was the best idea.

  “Did you guys go to Machu Picchu?” I asked the Indians in the back seat. They said that yes they had, but were otherwise content to not participate in the conversation.

  Shortly after driving through the traffic gantlet and out of the city limits of Lima, we saw the hovels and shanty towns occupying the hills around the city. Squalid neighborhoods of absolute poverty, people lived in shacks made from brick shells or even wooden shells piled one on top of the other in a sadly colorful mass. We stared with melancholic intrigue at these countless homes as children played and people sold goods and food along the side of the road.

  Many political signs and billboards lined the road and many more impoverished homes had been painted with the names of political candidates. I hoped someone could help these people, or that the situation improved so that they could pull themselves out of poverty. It made me a little embarrassed to be passing by on my way to raft but Louis didn´t seem bothered by the sight. I guessed it was normal for him.

  It took three hours to get to the rafting site, and by then we were all pretty eager to exit the cramped vehicle.

  The weather was absolutely perfect. A bright sun shone through a cloudless sky. The river snaked through a small town made up of brick and concrete homes layered with white plaster. All around us were the tall, brown mountains of the desert that was central Peru. The high hills were plain and jagged, reminding me more of pictures from mountainous sections of Mars than what I thought of as South America. At base level were the crystalline waters of the rushing river, flowing past green growths and flowery patches of grass that went right up to the white-washed buildings and homes. The contrast between blue sky, death-like mountains, and fertile waterway struck me as whol
ly interesting and I was only halfway paying attention when Louis instructed us to go into the large barn where the white water raft rental service was located.

  “So, who’s been white water rafting before?” asked the darkly-tanned Peruvian man who was to be our guide. He stood on top of the inflated raft with his arms crossed, showing no concern that he might fall from his precarious post on the raft’s tall nose. He wore sunglasses and a bandana around his neck, with the kind of build that made me wonder if he was whatever the equivalent of a Peruvian Navy SEAL might be.

  When neither the Scots, the Indians, nor Freddy and I raised our hands in response to the guide’s question, we all looked at each other and shared a nervous chuckle. The guide laughed at us and issued life jackets and helmets, telling us how to put them on.

  Since we were new to rafting, the guide recommended we go on a “dry run.” This meant imitating rafting-like conditions with the raft still on land. We all boarded the inflatable boat and took up positions at random, holding the oars and leaning forward and backward in air-strokes to the commands of the guide.

  “Are you sure we should be doing this?” Amy asked.

  “We’ll be fine; don’t worry,” Grant assured her.

  “No, I mean, how strong are the waters again?”

  “Pretty strong,” the guide said with a shrug.

  “Well since we’ve never been – ah!”

  The guide, in order to illustrate wave-like conditions, started kicking the raft and shaking it. No one thought it a good omen when Amy fell out and landed with a thump on the dusty ground. The guide, however, found it hilarious and immediately recommended we pick up the raft and head for the river.

  “You would think something that’s inflated with air would be lighter,” I said as we carried the big blue raft to the steep edge of dust-laden grass we had to descend to get to the water.

  “Air has weight, Joe,” Freddy pointed out.

  “Then we should fill the raft with helium.”

  “I don’t think that would be cost effective.”

  “I didn’t say it would be cost effective I said it would be lighter. Or maybe you could fill it with hydrogen! Then it would be lighter and more dangerous.”