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Saint Maximón
by Erin Van Rheenen
Excerpts:
You don’t see many foreigners walking the road from Sololá to Panajachel. The way is crowded with Cakchiquel and Quiché women toting wares on their heads and children on their backs. Some of them ignored the tall solitary gringa; others smiled at the unlikely apparition. The slap of bare feet, the scent of pine and the roar of a waterfall accompanied me as I rounded a corner and saw Lake Atitlán spread out below. From this vantage little had changed since I’d lived here 20 years earlier, traipsing through the woods with my brothers, swimming in the lake and running from every scorpion we saw . . .
. . . . . .Where a familiar-looking path branched off the main road, an Indian woman had paused to adjust the baby strapped to her back. A little girl, dressed in a hand-woven cotton wrap skirt identical to her mother’s, stood beside her. I smiled; they smiled. “Maximón?” I ventured.The woman nodded and beckoned me to follow . . .
