Down the Throat of the Mountain

by Jennifer Erickson

  Chapter 30

  Margaret's concerned parents sent her older brother, Warren, to Long Shot to have a look around and size up Margaret's "friends". Warren paced around, hands in his pockets, serious and stiff, a wrinkle between his eyebrows. Ron could tell he was appalled.

  Ron pointed out the original oak and walnut woodwork, the dusty chandelier, the cracked marble counters in the kitchen. "Once we get it fixed up, it'll be magnificent."

  At the time, it was in transition. In other words, it was a worse mess than when they bought it. They had just cut into a wall upstairs to repair a pipe and discovered the wall was full of sewage. There was plaster and petrified shit everywhere: down the hall, the stairs, and all the way out to the road where they'd been dumping it in the ditch.

  Plus, they hadn't been bathing much. That would change once they got the plumbing up and running but they may have smelled like a bunch of dirty hippies.

  Out of ear shot of the others, Warren turned to Ron and said, "Do you really believe you're going to find The Family Treasure?"

  "Pardon me?"

  "That's what it's all about, isn't it? The treasure, the Chamber of Wonders. Great-grandpa Gundy's creative excuse for abandoning his family: kidnaped by the infamous Madam Charlotte! Seriously, that's the best he could come up with?"

  "I'm not sure--"

  "I mean, I grew up hearing the same stories as Margaret, and I never read into them anything like I should buy an abandoned hotel and search for a gold bear."

  Ron's mouth dropped open. He clamped it shut.

  "She was obsessed with it when she was a kid. I didn't realize she was still--And you seem like a reasonable kind of man. I don't understand how you got sucked in."

  Ron thought of the golden bear that he kept hidden, his own private secret. He'd thought of it as a sign, a key to his future. He had always admired Margaret-- Admire! What a tame word! He ached for her. And now he knew the way to her heart.

  He imagined taking her to dinner somewhere classy, maybe that Italian place where Joe used to work.

  "What's this all about?" she would ask, as the host pushed in her chair.

  Ron would draw the Golden Bear from his breast pocket, place it into her cupped hands. She would gasp with pleasure.

  "You knew all along," she would say.

  And Ron's reply would be clever and detached, yet romantic. Something like--

  "I didn't mean to offend you," said Warren, misreading Ron's silence.

  Ron snapped out of his fantasy. "No, not at all. I'm interested in hearing what you have to say."

  "It's just that it doesn't make any sense."

  "Yes, yes, I know," said Ron. Boy, did he know. Destiny was a mysterious thing. It didn't make sense in any rational way, but to his heart it made all the sense in the world.

  Warren sized him up. "I'm worried about her," he said. "My parents are going crazy. Did you realize she gave up a scholarship at CU to--" he swept his arm around the room. "play out this fantasy?"

  "I'll watch out for her. You have my word."

  Warren nodded doubtfully. "I hope so."

  That night, Ron upended his dirty clothes basket. Pawed through the torn Levi's, the crumpled flannel shirts, the tube socks, stiff with grime. Increasingly panicked, he ran his hand around the inside of the woven basket, threw clothes and books and bedcovers aside. Stood, fighting tears, in the middle of his room. The Golden Bear was gone! Too late, he'd realized its significance, and he couldn't even remember when he'd last seen it.

  Chapter 31

  Winter came and went, then spring. The crash of thunder signaled the arrival of summer. Every afternoon, there was a big production, pouring rain, lightening. And then the sun stepped out from behind a cloud as though it had been waiting in the wings.

  In September, at the end of their second summer in Long Shot, the aspen leaves put on a last, brave show, their yellow so bright it hurt Margaret's heart. They rattled in the wind, then fell to the sodden ground. The air was heavy with mold.

  Down in the caverns below the hotel, the temperature never changed. Hours and days melted away as the friends scrambled and cavorted, high on the wonder of it all, through hidden passages. Often, they got lost or circled around to the same spot without realizing it. "Haven't we been here before?" was their inside joke.

  Once, Ron stepped into what he thought was a puddle and sank up to his neck. The others mimicked his shocked expression, mocked him as he scrambled, quaking, to dry ground on the opposite side. The worst part was, the pool filled the passage wall-to-wall and he had to splash back in and thrash back across to his friends as Joe laughed and pretended to film "The Crossing", asking "interview questions" and thrusting an imaginary microphone toward Ron. After that, Ron never went anywhere first, except back to the safety of the dilapidated old hotel.

  The friends found the corkscrewing crevice that led from the ceiling of one chamber to the cavern's upper entrance. Once there, they peered down into the deep shaft that filled with water when it rained. They found human figures sculpted from clay. They found a human skull in the second chamber from the vault door, and from then on they referred to that chamber as the Crypt.

  They had names for the other places, too: Calamity Corner, the Corkscrew, the Drool, the Sculpture Garden.

  They found bones and broken tools and glimpses of heaven.

  They lost hours, days, inhibitions.

  Ron hovered near the cave entrance, never comfortable with the place, worrying over the others like a mother hen. Margaret laughed at him. What was wrong with being joyful, with staying up all night, Margaret asked? It wasn't right, he said.

  After some of those wildest nights, Ron brought her soup in bed, as though she were an invalid.

  Thanks to Margaret's brother, Ron knew that she was looking for the Golden Bear. He wondered sometimes whether he should tell her it was gone.

  As winter blew into the valley, something like a holiday spirit overcame the four young people. The future was a gift to be unwrapped there.

  On Christmas day, they were down in the cave again, and it felt extra special this time. Like Christmas morning when you're five years old, and you just know that Santa brought you the pony. That it will be tied up by the fireplace, munching on Santa's leftover cookies and pooping on the carpet.

  "Ah!" came Rich's muffled cry. He had squirmed into a side passage.

  Joe poked his head in. "What?"

  When Rich didn't reply, Joe leaned back out into the main tunnel, grabbed Margaret around the waist and nipped her earlobe. She sagged into his arms.

  "He found his dick," Joe whispered in her ear.

  She leaned into him, laughing, although she couldn't have explained exactly what was so funny.

  "Get a room," said Ron, from behind them. They ignored him. He was always saying things like that. He was just jealous.

  Margaret's kerosene lantern kept flaring. Margaret squatted to fiddle with it.

  Ron nudged her aside and shouted into the crevice, "What are you doing, Rich?"

  "He's probably stuck," said Margaret. "and too embarrassed to say so."

  "I don't even know how he got in there," said Joe.

  Joe and Margaret had explored that passage together. It was tight, even for Joe, and Joe was considerably smaller than the other men. Small enough to control, Margaret thought, secretly.

  "I'll go get him out," said Joe.

  Margaret laughed out loud. She could hear the pride in his voice. Boys loved to play hero.

  Margaret could tell Ron had reached his limit. He took deep breaths and let them out with a whoosh. Soon, he'd bolt back to the old hotel and when they returned, they'd find him pacing and fretting, chain smoking and nursing a fifth of Wild Turkey.

  She laughed at Ron's receding back in the light from her lamp. Boys were so funny! Margaret knew in her bones that there was nothing to fear.

  She breathed deeply of the sweet air that exuded from the crevice. Her head swirled deliciously. Her lamp flare
d once again, this time making a mini-explosion. Poof! She gazed at the broken wick, at the flame fighting its way out. Why would it do that? Then she realized that the lamp was trying to tell her something important.

  It told her that Joe and Rich had found her Chamber of Wonders and her Golden Bear, the treasure that had waited for her for a hundred years.

  Euphoric, she pursued Joe and Rich, leaving the lamp behind. Shuffling and squeezing around a bend, she stumbled into a wonderland of wedding cake and whipped cream, lace and chiffon.

  Joe jabbered at her in a language she could not understand, but she could feel his excitement. Rich spoke as well, in that same foreign language, and the beam of his flashlight made rainbows in her eyes.

  Margaret swam through time to search for her treasure. She could see nothing and everything. She was tiny as a mosquito, big as the whole world. Sparkling and spinning, it was glorious. It was beyond glorious. It was everything.

  Up in the ballroom of the old Long Shot Hotel, Ron sucked his last menthol down to the filter, glanced at the whiskey bottle, then reluctantly turned away.

  The sun had slipped away hours before. Now wind rattled the windows. Occasionally, one of the tattered red velvet curtains fluttered.

  Damn them. He hated when they did this. Once, again, he had to be the responsible one, to haul them, raving incoherently, out of the cavern, babysit the rest of the night. Usually, Joe and Rich came back on their own, eventually. Margaret was the worst, trying to jump out of windows, unzipping Ron's fly. Torturing him.

  As he stepped through the vault door into the cavern, he felt the difference right away. The energy of the cavern was stronger. He scrubbed at his scalp. A tremor ran through his body. Something stalked him in the shadows. Well, he knew that wasn't true, but it felt that way. He wanted to flee like never before. Ron stooped to pick up the rusted head of a rock pick, its handle lost a century before.

  In his hand it was cold and heavy, and it comforted him a little. He sighed and forced himself forward, focusing on his breath.

  At the side passage, more like a wide crack in the wall, where Ron had last seen his friends, Ron paused. Margaret's lantern sat on the ground, empty and cold. Ron preferred to use a head lamp, or sometimes a flashlight, but he spent more money on batteries than on food.

  Ron knew only what he'd been told of this crevice for two reasons: first, it scared him, for reasons he couldn't explain. Second, he was six foot two, two hundred pounds, and felt claustrophobic enough in the main tunnel.

  Ron leaned into the crack, held his breath and listened.

  What he heard was muffled, but he was almost certain that it was Margaret, sobbing.

  "Margaret? Are you okay?"

  The echo of his own voice in the tunnel behind him had him spinning around, the rusty pick raised to strike. Of course, nothing was there.

  He called again, but the sobbing noise continued.

  God, he didn't want to do this. He wedged himself into the crevice, called again. No answer. And now he was stuck. By his crotch, no less. He squirmed, fought and grunted until the crevice spat him back into the tunnel, then he leaned in with the pick and took out his rage on the protrusion. It fractured and clattered onto his foot.

  It wasn't the pain that propelled him forward or the desire to rescue his friends, but months of accumulated frustration. Who knew that frustration builds underground? Like plants smothered by mud, with time and pressure, turn to coal, which burns so hot.

  And he found himself hammering his way forward like a piston. Blood greased his motion. He hardly knew what he did.

  The sound, when he reached it, was not sobbing. It was laughter.

  In a room like a palace, Margaret stooped, hands on her knees, giggling hysterically. At her feet, Joe and Rich wrestled among pillars of white stone.

  Joe pinned Rich for a moment, gnawing at Rich's wrist with his teeth. Rich's clenched fist sprang open, and out rolled the Golden Bear. Margaret and Joe both dove for it. Rich grabbed Joe and dragged him back, sat on him to pin him, snatched up the Golden Bear and kneed Joe in the groin.

  Margaret darted forward with a dagger of stone and brought it down on Rich. A red gash blossomed on his head.

  As Ron watched, rage and confusion flooded his chest. How had Ron's Golden Bear gotten there? Had Rich--his best friend--stolen it: stolen Ron's future, Ron's destiny, the way to Margaret's heart?

  He elbowed past Margaret, flung himself at Rich and wrenched the Bear from him. He kicked and spit and bit and hit Rich with the rusty pick that he still gripped in his bloody hand.

  When Rich stopped struggling, Ron gave him one last vicious kick.

  He took Margaret by her beautiful hair and dragged her behind him out to the main passage. No matter how roughly he handled her, no matter how her head smacked the stone ceiling, no matter how the jagged rock tore at her flesh, she seemed not to even see him. She only wanted Joe. She wailed Joe's name and strained backward. Ron dumped her on the wooden boards outside the vault door and locked her out of the cave.

  Then, while his fire still burned hot, he returned for Joe, whose eyes were black, who seemed light as air, pliant as a reed. And he never did regain his substance.

  Rich was all wrong when Ron reached him. Misshapen, slick as a newborn. His head was a broken jug.

  Ron left him in the tunnel, next to the empty kerosene lamp. Left him, barely breathing, in the dirt. Left him for dead. Come morning, Ron would realize what he had done, but not yet.

  Ron's fire was spent. His hand throbbed. He wanted to curl up and sleep, the floor looked so comfortable. But he forced himself to stagger out of the cavern, heave the vault door shut, pocket the key, and crawl past Margaret and Joe up the stairs to his whiskey bottle. He stashed the Golden Bear under his pillow. Nothing would ever be the same.

  The following afternoon, Ron awoke when his mattress sagged to the side. Margaret sat next to him. Her face, normally so alive, was blank as the moon.

  "What happened to Rich?" she asked.

  He could not say the words. As he lay there, paralyzed, he studied a swollen cut on Margaret's cheek bone, noticed the way she refused to meet his eye.

  She knew. Then he realized she was asking another kind of question.

  "I, uh--"

  Ron twisted onto his side and vomited over the edge of the bed, splattering her bare feet. She watched impassively.

  When he was done, he wiped his mouth on the blanket.

  "--left his--him, in the tunnel."

  Her head sank so that he could see the knob at the back of her neck.

  "He didn't understand. He didn't know what he was doing."

  "Who? Rich?"

  She seemed to nod. "None of us did."

  Then Ron heard the shouting.

  They found Joe crying and pounding on the vault door. He must go back, he said.

  Margaret shooed Ron away. She soothed Joe with lullabies, Twinkies and sips of bourbon, then they barricaded him in a kitchen pantry, with its foot-thick wooden door.

  Together, Ron and Margaret dragged Rich's body from the cavern and laid him out in the ballroom. They never discussed why, they just knew that it must be done.

  As Ron drove his old Mercedes to the nearest phone, he kept glancing at his blood-caked knuckles on the steering wheel. Yes, they said. This is real. This has happened.

  The sheriff met Ron outside the Long Shot Hotel and followed Ron inside. He glanced at the body, scolded Ron and Margaret for removing it from the scene of the accident. He seemed anxious to leave. Maybe it was the muffled banging, Joe flinging himself around in the locked pantry downstairs.

  "Step on outside with me, kids" he said. "We've got to wait for the ambulance."

  Kids. If they had been kids yesterday, they weren't any more.

  He asked a few questions, dutifully recorded the answers. Their story was plausible enough: rock fall in an abandoned mine.

  The coroner arrived, glanced uneasily at the Long Shot Hotel. He didn't look li
ke a doctor to Ron. He wore stained coveralls and smelled like a barroom floor. The coroner and the sheriff conversed privately. An hour later, medics loaded up the body and took it away. It was all too easy, maybe because of the holidays. Maybe everybody just wanted to go home.

  And then, compounding the futility of it all, the Golden Bear vanished again almost immediately. The night before, Ron had pulled it quickly, guiltily from his pocket and thrust it under his pillow. When Ron returned after the paramedics took Rich's body away, his room was a shambles and the bear was gone.

  Who could have taken it but Margaret?

  He watched her watching him.

  He searched the room she had shared with Joe while she bathed at the kitchen sink. Nothing.

  After Rich's funeral, Joe's parents took Joe home with them, just for a rest. When Margaret visited, Joe looked straight through her and his eyes followed something only he could see. He shouted that he had to go back to the cave. He sobbed. His mother sent Margaret away. A week became a month.

  Ron and Margaret haunted the hotel, trapped in their routine, unable to decide about the future. She asked no questions. He gave no answers. They pretended it had been an accident.

  Lying awake on the futon that she and Joe had shared, Margaret tried to sort out what really happened from what could have happened.

  Had she seen the Golden Bear? Had she touched it? Many images came to mind, but they were things she had imagined, and not true memories, perhaps. One image she could not erase from her mind was of her, Margaret, raising a dagger of white rock over Rich's head. Was it true? And if so, why had she done it? To protect Joe? Or had it been more selfish than that?

  Even with this doubt (this guilt), her craving for the treasure (yes, craving) consumed her.

  Ron locked up the cavern and hid the key. He knew that Margaret had searched his bedroom for it. And when she fished in his pockets oh-so-flirtatiously, he knew, sadly, what she was really looking for.

  After a month, she asked him outright for the key. She said she wanted to return to the cavern, to see the place where it had happened. Then maybe it would be clear. Ron was drilling holes in the floor joists and pulling a wire through, or trying to. He gave the wire a last vicious yank, then straddled the top of his stepladder, glowering at Margaret.