The Stirlings and the Missing Statue

Chapter Seven: Don't Drink the Water

It was one of the fundamental rules of traveling in Mexico and Mr. Stirling had broken it within moments of arriving at the house. His daughter had claimed that it wasn't fair to stereotype all of the water as unpotable and instead warned him to investigate the water's source before taking a sip. But that had been back home in California and months before when he'd protested the destination chosen. That had been well before he'd spent an embarrassing amount of time fighting with the car and the dimly lit garage that was not intended for reverse-parking. And it seemed centuries before he'd thirstily gulped down a full glass in the kitchen and then proceeded to consume an entire plate full of spiced beans and mole smothered enchiladas.
While his wife lazily relaxed on an outdoor lounge just off the master bedroom, Mr. Stirling was cursing the invention of Spring vacation and praying for the end while trapped on the commode in the luxurious master bathroom.
"Why me?" he called to his wife. Another sentence died in his throat as it was overtaken by a painful groan and an angry gurgle from his stomach.
Far across the room and in her own world of relaxation, Dr. Stirling paid her husband no mind, lost in a post-dinner level of bliss. She'd also had the enchiladas and lapped up every last drop of the mole with hot and delicious flour tortillas, but when her husband began squirming in the passenger seat on the drive back and begging her to drive faster, she'd felt none of the same discomfort. The children, full of tacos and tejate, had no complaints of intestinal distress and had gone to explore their own rooms and the fantastic—almost magical—backyard.
Thankful that there was an entire room between her husband's explosions on the toilet and where she was at the moment, she made a mental note to buy bottled water and lots—lots and lots—of wine at the market the following day.
"And toilet paper," she murmured, feeling herself drift away to sleep in the cool breeze of the closing day.

* * *

"All you had to do was not get sick," Ez complained to her pale-faced father. She sat in the breakfast nook and munched on slices of jicama that their host had left in the refrigerator for them.
"Don't blame your father, dear," her mother said, almost absently, from behind her laptop screen where she sat in the dining room. "It could have happened to any of us."
"Not me," Callum said. They were the first words spoken to the family as a whole, although he'd quietly thanked his mother for the leftover tacos she'd brought to his room the previous night. His hair was still clumped together on one side and the baby hairs at his temples were standing at attention. Sleep still crusted his eyes even at ten in the morning. He sat across from his mother at the dining table and picked at one of the cinnamon cookies he'd collected from the welcome basket.
"Whoah, are you gonna retch again?" Declan asked his father, rising up suddenly from the loveseat next to him.
Their father shook his head and pulled the blanket he'd dragged from the bedroom around him more tightly.
"Or is it..."
Mr. Stirling looked desperately afraid for a moment but then relaxed and shook his head.
"It says here that it should pass in a couple of days, honey," their mother looked up from under her blue-lens glasses and gave a sympathetic frown at her husband while she closed her laptop.
"Guess that means the trips you had planned aren't going to happen," Callum told his sister.
Ez was clearly fuming, but their mother calmed her. "We can still go on some. But you kids will have to figure something out for today."
"You go," Mr. Stirling added. "I'll..." He burped and the look of dread came over him again, but he grimaced and swallowed. "I'll be fine."
His wife looked across the room at him, to each of the children, save for Mitchell who was still in his make-shift bedroom, and then back to her husband. She sighed and rolled her eyes.
"I'll go to the little shop we saw last night, you kids get dressed, and when I'm back, we'll go from there."
"I'll go with you," Ez offered. As her mother started to shake her head, Ez held up her hand, pointing with a slice of jicama. "¿Cuanto dinero por el agua?" Her accent wasn't perfect and she really only knew American-taught Spanish (public school, of course, and no private tutors), but she was able to catch the rhythm of the language and remained a confident speaker.
"Uh. Oh. I know this one," her mother said, snapping her fingers at herself gently. "PAY-sos or...oh-o do-LAR-es?"
Ez sighed and saw that her twin was looking up at the ceiling with stern thought, as if they weren't in the same class and should have been at the same level of mastering a foreign language. "Yeah. I'm coming."
After some passive arguing between the two, they agreed and left for their respective rooms to throw on something other than sleeping clothes and flip-flops. The boys remained in various dazed attitudes as Ez and Dr. Stirling ventured back out to the garage through the now unlocked door off the south hallway and departed for the town center.
"Would one of you..." Mr. Stirling burped again. "...go wake up your brother and get him going...please?"
The longing for a normal day stuck in front of his computer was clearly written on the man's face and he tilted sideways onto the recently vacated place on the loveseat, resting his face on the warm leather.
Declan pushed on the lever door handle of the study and flung the doors open without knocking. Mitchell was curled up on the sofa inside against the wall with a big and colorful afghan blanket clutched in his hands. Having the unique talent of sleeping through everything, Mitchell hadn't shown any signs of movement yet.
"Wake. Up," Declan said after he'd crossed the room. He kicked the base of the sofa and when that didn't work, he lifted his foot higher and shoved his little brother forward.
"What?" Mitchell cried out at once and launched himself into a sitting position. "Oh thank you. THANK YOU." His tone did not indicate that he was thankful whatsoever.
"Dad said wake up. Get dressed."
"Is Dad alive?"
"Duh, dummy."
Mitchell looked around his brother and saw the tufts of their father's thinning blonde hair sticking up from behind the arm of the couch in the living room.
"Well you're not the one with the room next to their bathroom," he said, lowering his voice.
Declan laughed, more at his brother's expense than his father's, and retreated back to the living room. Mitchell pushed his doors closed again but the light within the room came on and it seemed to the others that he was up and moving.
Callum shuffled off to his room, taking the last piece of fruit that Ez had left behind on the counter, and Declan followed, stretching and yawning.
"Don't go back to sleep," Callum warned him.
Declan made a rude gesture and pushed open the door to his room carelessly. "Whatever, college boy. Or maybe you're the one who needs more sleep? Heard you crying through the wall, didn't I?"
Callum stepped from the threshold of his room over to his brother's and grabbed him by the shoulder. "What'd you say?"
Declan sloughed off Callum's grip and gave his brother a sharp push on his chest. "Crying. Pouting, whatever. You keep crying over some girl back home and you'll never get laid, bro. She'll dump your ass where it belongs, Cal. Cal the whiny little bitch."
Callum was clearly about to say something and took a step forward to put Declan in his place, but their father had heard. "Knock it off, you two. Get dressed. Not another word."
Their father's warning came out with the punchy sounds their father typically made when he was cross, but each word had a tiny halt to it, as if the word itself was holding back a flood of effluvium.
The boys each came out of their rooms again at different times, Callum having spent a few extra minutes checking to see if a certain girl back home was awake—the time difference and Daylight Savings Time changes were confusing, but a quick Google of the time back home in California indicated that she should have been awake by then. Declan had performed the same search, unknowingly, but to determine for himself if his teacher had posted their semester grades yet—his ability to enjoy the vacation in any way depended on his mother not seeing his test scores just yet.
Back in the living room and squeezed into the remaining chairs and seats of the other sofa, all three boys waited in silence for their sister and mother's return.
"Start thinking of something you want to do, boys," their father groaned. "The booklets in the welcome basket might be helpful."
"Mezcal tasting?" Mitchell's suggestion was hopeful and innocent.
"Too young," Mr. Stirling rejected. He was sure his youngest son, still a few years shy of even Mexico's drinking age, didn't know what mezcal was and certainly wouldn't like it.
"Food. That's what we're here for, right?" Declan suggested, though he offered it with a sneer.
"Don't even mention food right now," their father choked out selfishly.
"Then what?" Declan rolled his eyes and shifted in his chair in the corner. He made no move to find one of the pamphlets or tour guide booklets that the host had left, even if he would have found them to be printed in English.
"There is this one place..." Callum began. "But...no. You wouldn't like it."
Callum was looking directly at Declan and ignored Mitchell entirely.
"Why wouldn't I like it? Are there books? There are books aren't there? You just want to go somewhere to read. Dork."
"I want to go, what is it?" Mitchell chimed in, uncharacteristically. When his brothers were in disagreement, which was often, Mitchell knew to keep quiet.
"It's dangerous," Callum offered without thinking.
"Dangerous?" Mr. Stirling said, rising up. "Well then you're definitely not going. You're supposed to be the smar...the oldest one, Cal. Dangerous? Why would you even..."
"Not dangerous, per se," Callum said. "It's just a hike up this mountain and there's supposed to be a ghost or something when you reach the top."
"Hold up. Your idea of a fun time is to go HIKING up a MOUNTAIN in MEXICO?" Declan was largely confused more than upset, but his face was frozen in an angry scowl.
Callum left out the part about there being a curse and not so much of a ghost as there is some kind of treasure, allegedly, but he figured a phony ghost story was enough to get out of his accidentally calling the mountain dangerous.
"How big is this mountain? What kind of hiking?" their father asked, now back in a sitting position but still holding the blanket tightly around himself. "You guys are city kids. Your kind of hiking is over to the router in the office when the Wi-Fi is down."
Declan scoffed at his own problems with the potential hike being ignored and Mitchell only looked more interested than before.
"Is the ghost scary? Like oozing ectoplasm and screaming at you?"
Their father was still waiting for his answer but Callum answered Mitchell first.
"Ghosts aren't real, Mitch. It's just a story. And it's like a little trail up the side of the mountain, I looked it up. It's not even really a mountain. It's literally called the Fat Hill in Spanish. But you can totally get to the cave on foot and pretty easily."
"Cave?" Declan coughed. "First there's a mountain and now there's a cave? Where'd you come up with this?"
"I read about it. Last night. When you guys were out," Callum said quickly.
"What's it called?" Mr. Stirling made to rise from the loveseat but instantly regretted moving and sat back down. He groaned and said something along the lines of "Someone get mom's laptop" but the words never truly formed. He leaned over sideways again and laid his face on the leather.
"Do you need a bucket or something?" Declan asked. The question was tinged with disgust, so it was clear he was covering his own interest in not being coated with his father's vomit (or otherwise), rather than being helpful.
Mitchell had already bounded off the sofa and retrieved a cooking pot from the rack above the kitchen's island and brought it back over to his father's side. By the time Dr. Stirling and Ez had returned from their shopping venture, Mitchell and Callum had helped to empty the pot once each.
While the thought of hiking did not immediately appeal to Ez or their mother, the four siblings realized that they needed to band together if they were ever going to make it out of the house that day. Dr. Stirling was steadfastly determined to stay behind with her husband, or rather with the three bottles of wine, the books she'd brought, and the relaxing patio that beckoned her.
"How far is it? Five miles?" She asked her oldest directly.
"Five miles," he confirmed.
"Well, you can't take the car. I'll not have you driving when you're barely old enough as it is in the States," she said, throwing in a wasp-ish flair to her accent, making her normally flat dialect sound more world-traveled. "I just don't think we can get you there and back. Safely. And today."
"Why do you want to go there so badly again?" Ez asked Callum.
"It's for a girl," Declan answered.
"No it's not!"
The rest of the family looked at Callum, taken aback by his quick and animated response. It very clearly was about a girl.
"I'm just trying to do something I'm interested in, just like you," he told Ez. "You chose this place. Why can't we all get something from it?"
Their mother sighed again and stared longingly at the bags that contained the wine and the wheels of cheese that they'd left sitting on the dining table next to the empty plastic container that had held the jicama. "Come on, Ez, let's see if the two of us can figure out how to hire a car."