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Field of Dreams; Fields of Reality
here), and a daughter, who was then given as a gift to the older wife,
who was no longer fertile.
We crowd around, watch Koh make a toucan, stare at Chan K’in’s
hammock, where a century’s dreaming tried to discern the Lacan-
dón fortunes. The Koh-daughter shows me a tiny ceramic mouse that
she’s made. I offer to buy it, suspecting that mouse is one of my na-
guals, guardian spirits: we can’t all be jaguars. She refuses money,
tells me it’s a gift. Pleased, I give her two barrettes to hold back her
long black hair.
Then the sun is out, breaking through the low-lying cloud blanket
in an instant, and we follow the Kohs up and down a long, narrow
mud chute out to their distant milpa. We would learn later that the
younger Koh was not well, so our simple gift of nine pairs of bleed-
ing and bruised gringa hands really was a help. We learned to distin-
guish food plants and medicinal plants from those with no real pur-
pose in the Lacandón schema. We pulled these, and the dead, dry stalks
of last year’s maize, finally clearing about two hectares. The sun was
warm, healing, melting away unsettling images left over from the day
before. We were a group of compañeras, sharing in that moment an
ageless weave of work and silent companionship. Side by side, hand
over hand, we worked with the two Kohs, whose proud, slow giggles
commented on our haphazard labors.
We returned to camp, walking in a daze, wearing shit-eating smiles
of pleased exhaustion, and looked up to see a Humvee and six sol-
diers waiting for us. We pass them, round the bend toward the cem-
etery of empty flowerpots, and there are three more. The closest ex-
tends his hand in effervescent greeting.
“Good af-ter-noon.” In English. Switch to Spanish. “This is how
you say it, no?”
Kate and I nod in unison. She turns to Victor, who is with us.
“Tourists,” he whispers in English.
In unison, Kate and I begin the litany once again. We shift uneasily,
all of us. I’m sore, my hands are blistered and bleeding, the students
have to piss. We look at each other, maintaining the pleasantries.
At last, the soldier stretches out his hand in farewell and I bleed into
his firm grip. They have tracked us down here, and though in 1999
