One Grave Less

. . . or police. But she didn’t feel relief when the boat pulled away.
    The distance to the airport where she was headed was only eleven miles. But the boat was going slow. It was, after all, a tour boat. There was music and dancing on board. Maria sat with Rosetta on her lap, barely hearing the music.
    She noticed several others who had not joined in the merriment. It alarmed her, thinking these might be the thugs she was waiting for, disguised as ordinary people. Until she realized they were probably workers going to some night shift somewhere in the city. It wasn’t only a tour boat, but a ferry, a waterway bus line.
    It took a little over an hour to arrive at Tabatinga. The vessel overshot the airport by about a quarter of a mile because that’s where the dock was. They sounded a horn as they docked. Maria stood up and waited for the crew to make the gangplank ready.
    She wasn’t the only one getting off here. She didn’t know whether that was a good thing. She would rather they be alone than among people she didn’t know. On the other hand, sometimes a crowd was safer.
    Most of the people getting off went down a road toward what a sign said was a power plant. The rest were going to the airport. She walked along with the crowd. Some had motorbikes stashed away and rode off in a cloud of dust. In a straight line the airport wasn’t that far, but going the way of the road it was about a mile. Rosetta walked part of the way and Maria carried her part of the way.
    She felt relief when they got to the terminal. It was a small, cream-colored building with rust red roof and trim. The building was landscaped with well cared for hedges and beds of flowers. It looked normal.
    She and Rosetta had stayed to themselves on the walk, but several of her fellow travelers were there to catch a plane. Most had backpacks rather than suitcases. She and Rosetta fit in with their new clean T-shirts, jeans, ball caps, and backpack.
    The inside was just as clean and neat as the outside. They went to the ladies’ room first and freshened up. Then Maria found them a couple of seats that were out of the way and not so front and center as most of them.
    Rosetta still looked scared. Maria understood. The closer she got to the prize, the more afraid she was of losing it. Maria felt the same way. Rosetta hadn’t asked to call her mother. Maria wondered if it was because she was afraid the bad man would trace the call, or if she was afraid her mother might ask her not to come. Maria knew instinctively that wouldn’t happen, but Rosetta was a kid who had been told lies. And as much as she tried to believe, the lies crept into her fears and made them grow.
    “You doing okay?” asked Maria.
    Rosetta nodded. She looked tired and Maria realized, as she saw some of the others around them settle into chairs to sleep, they were supposed to be in bed.
    Maria found an out-of-the-way corner where they could sit on the floor and Rosetta could lay her head in Maria’s lap and sleep. Maria wasn’t able to sleep. She was tired enough but she was too wary. She dug into the backpack and pulled out some paper and a pen she had bought in the marketplace. She hadn’t had a chance to draw the Inca site they had discovered. Now would be a good time. It took a few tries, but she found a way to hold the notebook so she could draw and not bother the sleeping Rosetta.
    She began drawing the site from memory—the rocks, the mounds, the linear scars in the ground—changing the oblique view she had in her mind to an overhead view. She had enough experience with sites that she was good at guessing distances. She penciled estimates on the drawing. She shaded in the stones and added the jungle. Maria worked on the drawing until it was a reasonable facsimile of the site. She added her own observations, on-the-fly field notes about the settlement pattern.
    Maria dug out the ceramics and drew them, front and back views. Made notes about the style, the tempering, the color. She rewrapped them and put them in an envelope she had purchased at the time with the notebook and writing materials.
    All that took several hours. Periodically she would stop and survey her surroundings, looking for Michaels or anyone who seemed to take an interest in them.
    Morning came and Rosetta awakened with a start.
    “It’s all right,” said Maria. Her legs felt asleep from the pressure of Rosetta’s head. And her butt definitely felt the pressure from the hard floor. Maria stood