Stephanie stood quietly at John's shoulder, and when he finished the reproach in Spanish, she took up a systematic breakdown of what was awry with our data. In the ensuing twenty minutes, everyone shrunk a bit in their chairs as they recognized their forms being quoted. The now-cold tea brought little comfort.
At the site, we were individually upbraided by a reluctant Stephanie. For my part: I am, apparently, no longer allowed to use the word "impregnated" to describe something permeating a layer; also, as I have been told since the third grade, I willplease write my name at the top right-hand corner of my papers. Well-chastized, then, we all sat around Stephanie and took notes on proper note-taking. Rather ironic, I think.
When we got back to our individual sand-boxes, things became decidedly less depressing. The smooth, globular stone I saw at the end of yesterday turned out to be much larger than expected. As we worked around it, our trowel points rasping runes in its grey flanks, it grew into an ovoid that could have been a dinosaur egg. By the time we eased it from the earth, Dr. Rick had appeared out of the ether at our elbows. "Mmm" he said, like he was savoring dessert, "a mola. Grinding stone," he said, by way of explanation, and hefted the stone so its longest crescent edge faced the dark soil. He rocked it back and forth on an invisible table, and you could see that the small pits, mostly smoothed on the bottom, were the result of years and years home-grown milling.
The hits kept coming: before lunch our silvery blades turned over iron paint bits, a bright ochre-red in the shade; painted pottery, faded but visible in Javier's hand; charcoal, smelling of barbecues and burgers; and the scattered remains of a two-thousand year old deer, folded around fallen rock. That rock, by the way, was of unknown origin, so it was our solemn duty to whisk around it, practically Hoover-ing the soil from the cracks between. Most irritating.
As he flits about, John amuses himself by making Yoda-like statements, responding to his "knights of the old trowel"'s questions with a glib "use the force." Ignacio, his middle-age Peruvian grad student, fiddling with the theodolite, dissolved into heavily-accented chuckles.
On the way back to lunch, we began to see small children, in definite uniform, running away from us, down the street. As we got closer, they began to run in groups, and clotted together to block the street. A tall, tan man with a combover and a three-piece suit stalked up the street toward us, tapping a silver-handled cane as he came. As he passed loose lines of schoolgirls and boys, he tapped the foot of the cane in time to some far-off drumbeat. The children eyed him, though they looked straight ahead, and hopped and shuffled until their legs popped high with every whump and tap. By the time the hostal was in view, we could not walk in the street; it was filled shoulder-to-shoulder with children, mostly around ten or so, marching in place. Creepy as all hell.
We could not get into the hostel. The gated entryway was blocked by a dull-faced man with a purple backpack. He stood on the small ledge, gazing into the plaza over the heads of a crowd, and refused to move, even when asked politely. We had no choice but to join the sidewalk throng and watch the spectacle, dumbfounded.
The streets on all sides of the plaza were thick with people, who were watching the children of Chavín goose-step in high style. On a platform in the plaza proper, the mayor had invited perhaps a dozen white people (tourists?) to review the troops. The gringos, delighted, were gesturing from under sun visors and let off flash after digital flash.
Under the watch of the silver tapping-cane man, a block of children would screw their faces to frowns, and depart from the alley in a squad twenty-deep. In strict time, their legs would swing high with the drumbeats, jackbooted feet making leathery thumps on the cobbled streets. Colorful pennants waved from above the honor guard lining the street as girls, then boys, then girls paraded army-style for the better part of an hour. And on every Peruvian face, the approving, blissful faces of parents at a birthday party.
The north americans among us were a bit mortified. When did all these third-graders learn to goose-step? Why were they marching in the town square? And why did none of the Peruvian students not understand when we whispered Hitler, Red Army, or Korea to each other? They said that this was how it is -- in school you learn to march. It was a vestige of when these children used to actually be drafted to fight guerilla wars against northern neighbors. "This is what happens," Marcela said, "after a military government."
The last group of children to march couldn't have been older than twelve. They wore army-fatigue pants, and rambo-style holsters across their bare, ribbed chests. Each was daubed with warpaint across the face, shoulders, and back, so that they smiled shyly from under skulls, crosses, and multi-colored bruises. Extra cheering rang out as they crossed in front of the mayor's platform, and some chose to break their grim scowls and wave their fake machine guns in happy hello to their families.
The strangest thing about the whole thing, as we shouldered past the purple-backpacked man, is how seductive it was. Yes, it sounds silly -- it was only a march of minors, after all, and mostly a festive thing... but still. The rhythmic thump of boots, the double-time of the drum, the mayor waving from on-high... there was something proud about it. There was something sinister about it. Ghosting behind the smiles of the gun-toting youth, there was something deeply unsettling, but also familiar. We talked about how easy it would be; how fun it would be -- to watch our military march as darker ones do, waving their machine guns in happy hello.
The afternoon excavations were the same as always. I will not dwell on them for long. More bones showed their yellowed heads through the loam, the plaza gringos paraded past on tour, a Chihuahua in tow, and I hit my head more times than I can count on the atrium roof. John visited again and exclaimed that we could have found an ancient house. So it goes.
After work, we unwound a little with a friendly game of soccer. The local school, which looked like nothing so much as a blocky exhibition of the possibilities of concrete, had a convenient court for us to play on. Above and behind its parade ground, the small asphalt surface was just longer than a tennis court, and had no goals, other than crude gates marked by piled, broken bricks. We picked school-yard style: rock-paper-scissors for first pick, the girls twirling their ankles until the last. Our team, as if you knew them: Rónald, Caro, Juliet, Becca, myself, and a small Chavíno kid dressed like Green Day.
I was reminded how easy it is to rest on your laurels. I used to play, that's true, but whatever I had in the way of footwork and stamina (not much for starters) has faded into blurry memories and photographs. I lurched about in the twilight air, heaving and snapping my foot now and again at the ratty ball. Everyone gasped after a play was run -- the altitude robbing us of breath -- but couldn't have been happier. We called to each other in English or Spanish, whichever bubbled up first, and shuttled back and forth, shooting again and again at our narrow gates. Though we were wrung-out by the end, and I twisted my ankle in a poorly done fake, we had a blast. When the time came to count the ground-shot goals, our team came out ahead by a healthy margin. We strutted down off the platform, water bottles in hand, exhilarated in the falling dark.
Evening was quiet. They often are. We ate, got pastries, returned to loll about in the lab. A little lithic work was done, though arguably we gave more attention to the playing iPod. I looked forward to a night of typing (this takes time, you know) but there was a claim made on my computer. The Peruvians wanted to screen Wall-E, but had no computer to play it on. Marcus asked for it during lithics, and I gave it over with the greatest reluctance.
Silly? Maybe. I am usually over-protective of my things... but the Mac is new (like, brand new), and there would be no recourse if they spilled beer or cigarette ash on it. Still, I did not want to appear Scrooge-ish, so I let them borrow it, and fretted for the better part of the night, to the amusement of Robert. I did not disguise my relief well when it was returned it its red case, never the worse for wear. So it goes.
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