The Stirlings and the Missing Statue

Chapter Ten: Wait, When Did We Get to Mexico?

"Would you stop?" Declan pushed his younger brother's arm off of his and elbowed his other brother's leg that was sticking into his back.
"Stop what?" Callum pushed back, nearly toppling Declan over and out of the truck.
After a slew of curses that would have made a sailor blush, Declan righted himself and pushed his full weight against Callum as he scrambled for a better hold. "This was your idea!"
"I just wanted to go to the cave thing," Callum began.
"What, because your girlfriend dared you to?"
"She's not—"
"Both of you, shut up, please," Ez interjected. Her eyes were closed and she clutched the side rail with both hands. Her knuckles were white.
Declan laughed despite his own ongoing peril, sitting on the open tailgate of one of the villa's attached agave farm's trucks. "Look at her, scaredy-cat." He pointed to Ez for his two brothers to see but the truck lurched over a pothole and he, too, adopted a white-knuckle grip on the edge of the tailgate.
"We're almost there, right?" Ez asked, not opening her eyes.
"How would I know? I can't see over the sides," Callum responded, sure that the question had been for him.
The calls Ez and her mother had made in order to hire a car, a taxi, anything, for the siblings had been disastrous. Some of the conversations were lost to the language barrier and others ended abruptly after some choice words in the native tongue for the American tourists. Resorting, finally, to the contact number for their host, they found an agreeable laborer who was headed to a partnering farm that makes various products from the discarded agave leaves. He would be driving right through Cerro Gordo and the kids could ride in the truck.
The Stirling siblings met the truck on the road and it was clear on all of their faces (including Ez who had helped to setup the ride) that they were not expecting to ride in the back with the agave leaves. Warned of the irritation to their skin, should they ride too closely to the stacks of plants, the Stirlings clamored in the back and attempted to stay away from each other as much as possible while steering clear of the cargo.
"I think he's slowing down," Mitchell offered quietly.
"What? Speak up, Squeaky," Declan chided. He was the only one to call Mitchell by anything other than the boy's name. Everyone else knew he hated nicknames and wouldn't respond to them. This gave Declan even more ammunition for a new name every day. Squeaky was a recent addition to the repertoire, given Mitchell's soft voice that pitched suddenly at times.
"He said the driver's slowing down. And he's right," Ez announced as she opened her eyes.
"How can you tell? We could have walked faster," Declan retorted.
The truck came to a stop on the side of the two-lane road on which they'd been slowly progressing. The siblings each carefully rose to a standing position once the squealing of the truck's brakes had stopped and the driver clunked the gears into park. They could see an old sign welcoming them to Cerro Gordo, a village within the same municipality where they were staying, standing on the left side and above it and to the left stood the mountain—hill.
"¡Adios!" the driver offered somewhat insistently when the siblings did not exit the back of the truck.
A bit startled into action, Declan jumped down with his arms spread wide, as if he were jumping from a high cliff. The others followed in similar fashions and the driver barely waited for the last of them to touch the ground before moving on. Mitchell's backpack, filled with bottled water, some quick cheese and ham sandwiches their mother had made, the last of the cinnamon cookies and tamarind candies, and just one of the four cellphones they'd been allowed to bring, thudded heavily as Mitchell skipped across the road to the welcome sign.
"What are we doing here again?" Declan asked the group.
"Exploring. Doing something other than listen to Dad on the toilet for the rest of the day," Callum said.
"We should be on a tour of the mezcal farm," Ez insisted.
Their parents hadn't even entertained the idea of allowing the children to go, unattended, on the tour planned for that afternoon. Even less so did they (although their father had to run to the bathroom during this part of the conversation) think well of the idea of the children taking the bus into the city for the sites and destinations Ez had planned them to visit later on in the trip.
"Absolutely not," their mother had said between the moans and groans of her children and the far-off but not unheard moans of her husband.
"She said that there's a cave here that's supposed to be really cool. Buried treasure, maybe," Callum said.
"Mom?" Declan asked.
"No, not Mom. Never mind. We just have to find it."
"Sorry, I didn't bring my treasure map. Or the little key thing that only lines up when the sun is just right and shows where the entrance to the cave is," Declan trolled. "Who are we, The Goonies?"
Mitchell perked up and looked back at Callum and Declan expectantly. The Goonies was a favorite and he and their Dad would reference it more than anything else.
Another truck, a red cab instead of the white that the truck they'd ridden in had, rounded the hill down the road from the opposite direction they'd come and began slowly creeping toward them. Callum, Declan, and Ez crossed the road and joined their younger brother in front of the sign. The driver of the red truck peered at them from under a worn and dirty baseball cap as he passed but did not stop or even slow down any further. The sight of four very clearly American teenagers must have been strange, but then again, it was Spring Break. It was also very likely that the farmer had not a single thought to spare for them and didn't care at all.
The teens stepped down into the shallow ditch beside the road and onto a two-track road with old tread marks that were practically fossilized from when they were made. The track curved around the base of the hill and appeared to travel up the side but they could not see where it ended. The crest of the hill wasn't high and the smooth rise of the surface to the top was only broken by a few rock formations.
"So where is it, adventure boy?"
Callum thought to ignore Declan entirely, as was the family's custom, but he also sought to put his slightly younger brother in his place. It was Callum's anecdote for his college admissions entry, after all (he couldn't just let his little brother find the entrance). "It's...up here," he said, pointing to the footpath that curved around the base of the hill and climbed out of sight. His feet found hard-packed earth that was covered in small chunks of rough stones and overgrown with weeds and small wildflowers. Declan and the other two siblings followed him onto the path and at least once in the first few minutes, Declan attempted to overtake him.
"What's your problem?" Callum asked as he leaned to his right to prevent Declan from passing.
"I was going to ask you the same thing."
"Would you two knock it off?" Ez was already sweating and her pale face was red despite the temperature being only a couple of degrees warmer than back home and that they'd only just begun walking.
"Mitchell, you're keeping track of time, right?" Callum asked, ignoring both Ez's outburst and distress. "Remember, we have to meet the return truck by five."
"It's eleven fifty," Mitchell said dismissively.
Declan stopped in his tracks, making Ez and Mitchell bump into one another, each lost in their own levels of stress. "We're going to be here all day?"
"Yeah?" Callum turned and watched his brother begin to overreact. "What? Did you think we were just gonna drop by real quick and then...walk around town? Catch a wild burro for a ride back? Weren't you paying attention before we left?"
"No," Declan said without any further explanation. The family was used to his inattention to everything and it dawned on each of the three siblings that they hadn't taken the time to explain the plan in the simplest of terms to Declan.
Callum looked back at Ez and she simply shook her head. Mitchell and Callum continued forward, around Declan who had refused to continue on, leaving Ez to explain to her twin exactly what was going on.
"Deck," she began, "We're in Cerro Gordo. That hill is also called Cerro Gordo. Do you remember where we're staying?"
She spoke slowly and in a higher pitch than normal, as if she were talking to a toddler.
"San Luis Obispo," Declan said quickly and confidently.
"That's in California, Deck. Where we live."
"We live in LA," he corrected.
"I know we live in LA, you complete MORON, I'm saying that we live in CALIFORNIA, where San Luis Obispo is located. WE ARE CURRENTLY IN MEXICO, where SAN LUIS AMATLÁN is located. THAT'S WHERE WE ARE STAYING."
"Ez, calm down," Callum called over his shoulder, smiling. It was forever Ez's torture to have shared practically every moment of her life with her half-wit of a brother.
Declan looked from Ez to Callum and then back. "So WHAT? San Luis whatever. What does that have to do with Corro Doggo or whatever?"
"Cerro...you know what? Just think for one freaking second Declan. We rode five miles to get here and there's NOTHING around here. We are spending the day hiking, exploring, whatever here, then catching the truck back to San Luis Amatlán and hopefully when we get back, Dad is feeling better and mom isn't hungover so we can go out to dinner and MAYBE drive into the city. GOT IT?"
"FINE. Whatever. It would have just been nice to KNOW before we left!"
"Cal, I'm going to push him off the side of this mountain, I swear."
"Hill," Mitchell corrected.