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“Great!” Adam’s thoughts immediately turned to the pleasant prospect of dinner.
Roasted javelina would go very nicely with tortillas. It would probably taste a bit like justice.
“Let’s get you settled in,” the priest concluded neatly.
?
Two hours later, Adam leaned back from the low table. He was pleasantly and completely stuffed with chili-spiked beans, smoky meat, and a seemingly endless pile of hot corn tortillas. One of the women of the household came to clear his plate. She looked to be aged about thirty. Adam had heard Kuyoc address her as Cruzita, which meant she must have been the one whom the chicken was named after.
“¿Habla usted español?” he asked as she approached.
She shook her head.
Adam nodded to the priest, who sat across the table from him.
“Could you tell her to please extend my thanks to the other ladies for the food?” he asked.
Kuyoc flashed him a thoughtful look, then spoke a little Mopan to Cruzita. There was a distinctly wry tone to it.
Cruzita snorted, but gave Adam a pleasant nod and a half smile before leaving.
“Why’d she laugh?” Adam asked.
“I told her I knew you really liked it because you ate the better half of a pig,” Kuyoc returned blithely.
“I walked a lot today,” Adam grumbled in reply. “And it was good.”
The other men at the table—a collection of Feliciana’s sons and sons-in-law, as best Adam could tell—rose from their stools, chatting together comfortably as they made their way out into the night.
Kuyoc popped up behind them like an unfairly energetic cork.
“We should clear the way for the women to eat. Want to share a little k’uutz?” he asked.
Adam definitely recognized the Mopan word for tobacco.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he replied happily.
Outside, evening had settled in over the village. Kuyoc settled them on a pair of wooden stools in front of the house. The seats were perfectly positioned to take in the expansive view, which was still just gradual enough to be nice instead of nausea-inducing.
Adam extended his legs out comfortably as he leaned against the whitewashed wall and enjoyed his cigar.
The sun drifted toward the line of the mountains that lay to the west. The sky above it was falling into shades of breathtaking orange and purple. Even the mosquitoes weren’t as bad up here—though the cigar smoke also helped with that.
Adam took another puff. The spicy, rich taste of the tobacco pleasantly filled his mouth.
“Hell of a nice place you’ve got here,” he commented.
“Thank you,” the priest replied evenly.
“Have your people been here long?”
“The first settlers came about forty years ago,” Kuyoc said.
“From the Peten or Izabal?” Adam casually asked.
There was a pause the length of a breath before Kuyoc replied.
“You know your history,” the priest noted carefully.
