Revelation at Tikal | Literary Adventure Fiction Podcast

In Chapter 3 of Revelation at Tikal, the search for Floey takes Cutty up into the mountains north of Pasadena, where Rocinante grinds her way through hairpins with the BMW lashed to the stern rack like a pendulum trying to drag the whole rig into the canyon.

A glossy billboard for Villa Viejo, a paper retirement project that exists only in an architect's hallucination, gives way to a smaller, hand-painted sign tilted in the weeds: WELCOME TO THE TEMPLE OF THE RISING MOON. A yellow moon orbits a blue-and-green planet on the emblem, like a bumper sticker for cosmic sincerity. A dirt track climbs through ragged ivy past sagging houses and storm-damaged sheds. In the dirt lot at the top, Floey's wood-sided 1959 station wagon is parked outside a tired-looking house, and two bearded men built like mafia bouncers are loading duffel bags into it.

The man directing them is small, soft-bodied, and dressed in slacks and a tight black turtleneck. He has the angular bone structure of a low-budget movie Jesus and the calm, judgmental brown eyes of a man who has rehearsed his patience. He introduces himself as Ayer Dada, founder of the Temple of the Rising Moon. The car, he says serenely, has already been sold. Pink slip and all. Floey gave it up when she joined the Brotherhood and surrendered her material possessions, the way all members do.

Cutty doesn't believe a word of it. The wagon was their father's. Floey would not have let it go without a fight.

Ayer cannot be openly challenged on commune doctrine, so Cutty does the next best thing. He asks to look around, and Ayer, smiling, lets him. Then Ayer climbs into the woody and drives off with one of his bouncers, leaving the larger one planted in the lot, eyes locked on Cutty with the tense expectation of a guard dog.

Inside the main house, Cutty walks through a converted living room reeking of damp wool, dust, and incense. The fireplace has been turned into an altar to a silver-framed photograph of Ayer himself. The walls are crowded with tapestries, gurus, politicians, and Ayer always conveniently included in the shot. Between them run glossy posters of Palenque and Tikal with luminous flying saucers hovering above the pyramids and beams of light hauling stick-figured humans up to helmeted "gods." A red-underlined caption explains, helpfully, that the Maya were waiting all this time for Ayer to decode their space program.

A small procession of robed members shuffles past Cutty toward the temple bell, heads bowed, eyes on the floor. He drifts deeper into the building looking for any trace of Floey. In a back hallway, an open door reveals a small cot, a slump-shouldered young woman, and a Yale University Law sweatshirt that has clearly been through too many washings.

Her name is Paula. Soft pink-blond hair, a small arc of freckles, blue-gray eyes still sharp under the tiredness. She quit a third year of law school after deciding she believed in billable hours more than justice, got dragged up the mountain by her sister, and bought the routine for one bad week. Now her parents and aunt have sent her a five-hundred-dollar check meant for traveling, and Ayer is refusing to hand it over. He has put her on a vow of silence as punishment, claiming the devil scrambled her soul segments.

Cutty offers a deal. He'll get the check back from Larry the ex-accountant in the office behind the garage. She gets her choices back. A bus ticket, a plane, anything not stocked with true believers.

Paula stands up. The motion is deliberate enough to register, a small instinctive test of what the rescuer does with it, and she catches Cutty looking. "If we're caught, you're carrying me out bridal style," she says. "Deal," he answers, "though I'm more of a fireman-carry romantic." A few lines of crooked banter later, the two of them are walking toward the garage stairs in lockstep, like a lawyer and a client about to commit some tidy white-collar crime while the rest of the Brotherhood is locked into two hours of chanting up at the temple.

The bearded enforcer Ayer left behind is still tracking them. He follows them across the dirt lot, breathing close to Cutty's neck, and when Cutty starts up the office stairs, the big man lunges. Cutty goes off the side, rolls down the ivy bank, and comes up dirty and laughing about needing a stunt double.

What he does next is the kind of decision Cutty makes in a heartbeat and pays for later. He remembers a German shepherd that once charged him in Reno, and how he stopped it by yelling and charging back. He decides to test the same principle on a cult enforcer. He yells from the bottom of his lungs, runs straight at the bigger man, and snaps a karate kick at his solar plexus.

The kick lands lower than intended.

The enforcer folds like someone hit a kill switch and goes down in a tight, agonized knot. Paula stares, then lets out one short, disbelieving laugh. "You really do your own stunts. Remind me never to argue with you about anything important."

By the end of the chapter, Cutty has a bruised conscience, a dirt-streaked shirt, a temporarily disabled goon on the ground behind him, and a brand-new accomplice halfway up the office stairs already calling him "Sensei."

The Moon Job is on.

• Rocinante grinding up the switchbacks with the BMW lashed to her stern rack

• The Villa Viejo billboard and the hand-painted Temple of the Rising Moon sign

• Floey's 1959 woody station wagon being loaded for sale in the dirt lot

• Ayer Dada, the soft-bodied guru in the black turtleneck and his Brotherhood doctrine

• The altar to Ayer in the converted fireplace, and the wall of gurus, politicians, and Ayer-with-celebrities photos

• Posters of Palenque and Tikal with flying saucers — the ancient-astronaut seed planted early

• Cutty's first meeting with Paula, the Yale-Law dropout in the wrinkled sweatshirt

• The trapped five-hundred-dollar check from Florida and Ayer's "devil scrambled her soul segments" excuse

• Larry the ex-accountant and the office behind the garage

• The temple bell, the procession of robed members, and the two-hour window

• The bearded enforcer, the ivy bank, and the karate kick that lands lower than planned

• Paula's first laugh and the deal that turns her into Cutty's accomplice

Chapter 3 turns a missing-person story into a road story. Up to this point, Cutty has been retracing Floey's shadow through gallery openings, bunker jam sessions, and a long-distance call to Nevada. Here, for the first time, he finds physical evidence of where she has been — her father's woody wagon being sold off in a dirt lot — and the place that swallowed her: the Temple of the Rising Moon.

This is also the chapter where the trilogy's deeper machinery starts showing through. Ayer Dada is a small-time guru with big-time appetites, but the posters in his living room are no accident: Palenque, Tikal, ancient-astronaut iconography, helmeted "gods" hauling humans up to flying saucers. Floey's gravity has been pulling her toward Mexico and Guatemala for a reason, and the same iconography that will surface again in later chapters is hanging on the walls here, in red underline.

And then there is Paula. Cutty walks into her room looking for a clue about his sister and walks out with a partner. She is sharper than he expects, more wounded than she lets on, and the chemistry between them is built into their first three exchanges. The bridal-style joke, the bra-less straightening, the fireman-carry comeback, the bumped shoulder in the hallway — none of it is decorative. Paula is the second protagonist of this story, and the road south is not the same trip without her.

The chapter ends with Cutty fully committed: not just to finding Floey, but to dragging at least one other person out of the wreckage on the way.

• Follow Revelation at Tikal so you don't miss the next chapter.

• Leave a rating or short review — it helps other listeners find the story.

• Visit cuttybraughn.com for photos, background notes, and more behind-the-scenes material from the road to Tikal.

Chapter 2: Rocinante and Old Friends

Floey's no-show at her own gallery opening sends Cutty back to old haunts. He rides up to Jerry's Pasadena house, lets his hand trail along Rocinante — the thirty-foot diesel bus Floey gave him as a graduation gift — and drops down into the bomb-shelter bunker where Jerry, Mark, and Randy are still jamming as if no time has passed. The weed is gone, replaced by jars of fermenting cabbage juice. Floey, of course, is the one who sold them on it. A long-distance call to Carl in Nevada turns up something colder than dead air: fear in his voice, and a warning to keep Floey away from the children.

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## Full Episode Description

In Chapter 2 of Revelation at Tikal, Cutty's search for his missing sister carries him sideways into the past.

He rides up to Jerry's place in Pasadena, where Rocinante still sits on the cracked driveway like a beached whale next to Jerry's eternally "almost restored" Nash. The house is the same and not the same. The television has been gutted and replaced by a murky aquarium with a single swollen-headed goldfish drifting around like a tiny convict in an orange jumpsuit. Mark's surgical neatness still rules the surfaces, but the neglected fish tank suggests his order is already starting to rot.

Cutty hasn't come for the bus. He's circling old haunts, driven by the larger question of why Floey didn't show at her own gallery opening that morning.

The story of Rocinante carries the chapter's first weight. Floey bought Cutty the diesel-guzzling, thirty-foot recreational vehicle as a high school graduation gift, carved out of her share from selling the family ranch — the one she sold when she married Eugene "Carl" and shipped Cutty off to boarding school. She paid less than she should have, the way she always did. People did things for Floey the way iron filings line up for a magnet. Realtors, mechanics, and one stunned banker all seemed to wake up in the middle of helping her, wondering when they had agreed.

Following the music, Cutty drops down into the bomb shelter behind the house. The bunker is late-fifties vintage, built by a previous owner with a reputation for high-functioning paranoia, then stripped of its fallout fantasies and converted by Jerry into a musician's den: waterbeds, an over-tuned sound system, instruments wired for maximum volume and minimum sleep.

Jerry is half-naked on a waterbed with his guitar. Mark is on bass, ghosting his fingers over the strings as if he doesn't want to fully acknowledge Cutty's arrival. Randy stands in the middle with his flute, eyes half-lidded, swaying to the rhythm. They are jamming exactly the way Cutty left them a year ago, locked into an eternal practice session.

Only one thing is off. The familiar marijuana cloud is gone, replaced by something sour and vegetal. Mark opens a cabinet, pulls out a glass crusted with dried green sludge, and pours from a pitcher of cabbage juice. Floey, of course, turned them on to it. She convinced them it would replace drugs, sharpen the senses, and even land Randy a job at his father's insurance company. Floey's charisma working at full strength, even in absentia.

Mark steers the conversation toward Mahesh "the Animal" Davis, the only one of the old crew Cutty ever truly trusted. The story is about a sixteen-year-old neighbor, a tutoring arrangement gone sideways, and Mark's barely concealed pleasure at having walked in on it. The story matters less to Mark than the way he can use it to needle Cutty about his own private silences.

Cutty extracts himself, climbs back upstairs, and uses Jerry's phone — Jerry's father's bill — to dial long distance to the Magnin ranch in Nevada's Big Smoky Valley. His nephew Davy answers, repeating that he is not supposed to talk to Cutty anymore, that Daddy doesn't want him "corrupted," maybe by those Zen books. Then Carl gets on the line. He tells Cutty the place is locked against Floey. She hasn't been there. She won't be coming back. And then, beneath the anger, something Cutty has never heard in Carl's voice before: fear.

"You tell her to stay away from me and the children."

By the end of the chapter, the gallery's missing painter, the bunker's missing weed, and the ranch's missing welcome have all clicked into the same quiet pattern. Floey isn't just absent. Something is wrong.

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## In This Episode

- Rocinante on the cracked Pasadena driveway, and the story of how Floey bought it - Jerry's "almost restored" Nash and the gutted-television aquarium - Mark's territorial neatness, the policed ashtrays, and the borrowed Webster's incident - Down the steel stairs into the converted bomb shelter - Jerry, Mark, and Randy locked into the same year-old jam session - Cabbage juice, Floey's latest spell, and Randy's improbable new job - Mahesh "the Animal" Davis and the gossip Mark can't resist sharpening - Mark's needling about Cutty's private life, and the trauma Cutty cannot quite name - A long-distance call to the Magnin ranch in Nevada's Big Smoky Valley - Davy, the Zen books, and Carl's warning to keep Floey away from the children - The new note in Carl's voice: fear

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Chapter 2 widens the world without leaving Pasadena. The gallery opening in Chapter 1 told us Floey was missing. This chapter tells us why her absence matters to so many people, and how far her gravity reaches.

We see the Floey effect in action through other men: how she could walk into a bunker full of pot smokers and leave them drinking cabbage juice and applying for insurance jobs. We see her financial cleverness in the story of Rocinante. And we see, for the first time, what Floey looks like from the outside to someone who lived with her — Carl, scared, locking the ranch against her.

The chapter also begins to draw the shape of Cutty's own buried history: the father's suicide, the missing years before thirteen, the boarding-school exile, and the silences he carries into every room he walks into. Mark prods at those silences for sport. Cutty deflects. But the chapter quietly establishes that Cutty is searching for two things at once — his sister, and whatever he himself cannot quite remember.

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## If You're Enjoying the Story

- Follow **Revelation at Tikal** so you don't miss the next chapter. - Leave a rating or short review — it helps other listeners find the story. - Visit **cuttybraughn.com** for photos, background notes, and more behind-the-scenes material from the road to Tikal.

Chapter 1 — The Tombstone Painting

Los Angeles, December 20, 1977. Cutty Braughn flies in from Anchorage expecting a surprise reunion at his sister Floey's first gallery opening on La Cienega. What he walks into instead is a small framed painting of a tombstone — her name, her dates, her handwriting — and a room full of strangers placing bets on whether she's dead, missing, or staging a stunt to raise her prices.

Eight hundred miles south, on the old Maya causeway between Palenque and Tikal, the woman who used to be Florence Magnin-Braughn is walking barefoot toward an altar she doesn't yet understand. Neither of them knows about the other.

The opening chapter of Revelation at Tikal — a 1970s literary thriller about money, missing children, painted gods, and the year a brother went looking for his sister and found a stranger waiting at the end of the road.

Narrated by the author. New chapters every Wednesday.

In between the San Juan airport and the Rainforest Inn in Rio Grande, there's a Shell gas station that is home to one of Puerto Rico's best-kept secrets. The Pimentón pizzeria inside the gas station, and its accompanying coffee shop Cafe La Estación provide locals and tourists with the best pizza, coffee, wine and more. Listen for an interview and tour with owner Daniel Rivera.

This episode was produced by Sonia A. Rao.

Bill goes to San Juan to interview Omar Torres, the founder of Gustos Coffee Company. The company provides Puerto Rican-grown coffee at shops across the island. We also talk with Laura Colon, a key account executive for Gustos.

Listen for a tour of Gustos' shop and factory in Mario Julia Industrial Park, where Omar also shows us their barista training classroom. Gustos Coffee Co. gives back to Puerto Rico by training baristas and supporting local farms.

And for pictures, don't forget to visit our blog at https://www.rainforestinn.com/myblog.

This episode was produced by Sonia A. Rao.

Bill goes up to Old San Juan to interview Enoc Rivera, the owner of Filtrado, a specialty coffee shop. This is the first part of a series on local coffee growers, shops and producers from Puerto Rico TravelCast.

To view photos and learn more about Filtrado, visit our blog page at https://www.rainforestinn.com/myblog.

This episode was produced by Sonia A. Rao.

Renée and I leave the Rainforest Inn, our El Yunque retreat, and drive into Old San Juan to interview Eddie and Tisha at Casa Sol bed and breakfast. Casa Sol is a member of our Puerto Rico Bed and Breakfasts Association and he brings intimate knowledge of Puerto Rican politics to the table. He is especially knowledgable about Old San Juan. We discuss the resignation of Ricardo Rosselló and the expected orderly succession of the government. We discuss the impact on tourism and what's been happening with local businesses in Old San Juan.

Up in the rainforest Renée and I have seen no changes from the remarkably non-violent and orderly March on the capital.

The Rainforest Inn has a gofundme page created by Michelle Roover (one of our former guests) The link to it is here: gofundme link. This podcast is an interview with the mayor of Rio Grande and the police chief. We talk about the accomplishments that the mayor has made since hurricane Maria helping people and improving the infrastructure. We also discuss our plans to give the presents to the children of Rio Grande and we thank the many people who have helped. Our goal is to help make a Christmas / Three Kings for the children of Rio Grande.

Luquillo Farmer's Market http://www.luquillofarmersmarket.org http://www.lavenderinnovations.com flash only website but they have a Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Lavender-Innovations-172056617928/ Farm tour available Monday through Friday in Cayey from 7:30 to 3:30. (787) 466-5877 Marisa the bee lady http://apiariosdeborinquen.com/historiaenglish.html and the Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/apiarios.deborinquen Farm in Luquillo "Bee Love" Maribel of Messy Kitchen Goodies https://www.facebook.com/MessyKitchenGoodies/

Hola, I'm Melina, the journalism intern at the inn this summer. For my podcast cameo about Yunke Zipline Adventure in Luquillo, Bill took Renée's grandchildren and myself to zip through the forest canopy and to conduct interviews with the staff. Not only did we agree it was the best ziplining we have done here on the island, but we also learned the importance of ecotourism in the conservation of Puerto Rico's ecology. I present to you an audio tour of our zipline experience and go in depth with our tour guide Eric and the owner Roberto about their work in ecotourism.