by Hank Early
I touched my chest, found it wet with blood. Maybe there wasn’t a way through.
No, I refused to believe that.
I tried again, this time standing on my toes, stretching my body as much as possible. Now the piece of rock pressed into my belly, just below my rib cage. I sucked in my gut and tried to force my way through. The rock cut into me. I sucked in harder and leaned against the opening. The rock ripped my shirt again and ground itself against my bare stomach.
Just a little bit farther …
I gasped as I fell through into a much wider passage.
It felt even darker here. The light from the opening seemed far behind me, as did the backpack and the journal. Why hadn’t I brought them with me? I immediately regretted not doing so. They would have been perfect for Chip and his article. It would have been concrete. I turned back, momentarily considering going through, but the thought of those stone jaws gripping my midsection again was too much.
Instead, I gritted my teeth and continued on down the ever-widening corridor.
47
Time fell away, lost in the darkness of the winding cave. I walked for a while and then grew tired and lay down on the cave floor and slept for some interminable amount of time. It might have been minutes or hours, or even days. The quiet inside the bluff got to me, made me paranoid, made me fear the slightest sound—the scuffing of my own boots against the rock floor once made me scream out in a sudden panic—and soon I began to move like a cat, slinking across the endless cave.
This is how it starts, I thought. This is how you lose your mind.
As much as the silence comforted me and the smallest sound disturbed me, I also began to feel irrevocably alone, as if I’d been condemned to live out the rest of my days in this stone prison, isolated from everything.
And everyone.
I lost track of what was and what was not. The invisible became the visible and I soon saw more in the darkness than I’d ever seen in the light.
Maybe I was asleep or maybe I was walking, but eventually I returned to the warm, silent place I’d visited on the suspension bridge over Backslide Gap. The dead place, where it felt too comfortable, where there was nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive against. I began to feel detached from my body, as if the whole of the darkness was me and my essence had been scattered across the vast universe of the cave. Size and shape were banished. Time slipped.
I was losing it. Losing it quickly.
I forced myself to keep going.
Why?
I searched my mind and realized I wasn’t completely sure. Mary was gone. Rufus was gone. Ronnie? There was Ronnie, I supposed, but as long as I was in here, he was gone too.
What was left?
Me.
Nothing.
I felt as if I were floating. I reached for a wall, but they’d all somehow vanished. This was a dark world, a vast and unending universe. There was no way out.
I tried to quit, but something deep inside me, some spark of light, or of the divine, stopped me. My hand went to my mouth, and I pinched my lower lip, digging my thumbnail into the flesh. I kept doing it until I drew blood, until I could taste it. To escape the darkness, I had to endure the darkness. It was the only way.
It had always been the only way. There was no shortcut, no ledge. You fall, climb, or die. It was that simple.
As if I were a vampire, the taste of blood seemed to rally me. I was okay. I was fine. The darkness could not last forever.
Could it?
I walked again. I would walk until I found the edge of the world. I would touch the end and know the end and map the end, or if there was no end, I’d create a world within my mind, one I could carry with me forever and always, one that would keep me safe from the darkness to come.
A voice came to me from the darkness, from inside my head. Rufus. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but his voice was a comfort. He droned, the deep gravel of his voice scraping the bottom of my soul. One word came clear.
Blind.
I saw his face, sans the sunglasses, his eyes scarred by what appeared to be chemical burns. What had blinded him? And more importantly, what had he believed in to help him move forward? Not God. Rufus was what I called a conscientious objector to the divine. He wouldn’t serve on principal.
What was I then? I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of having nothing else to fear, nothing else to keep me moving, and nothing else to defeat me.
So I kept on moving, digging deeper into the spiraling heart of the mystery that would as soon devour me as reveal its secrets.
* * *
When I saw the light at last, I was moving blindly, one foot in front of the next, mentally checked out. I’d already resigned myself to spending the rest of my days in this maze of darkness, sure it was some punishment—some kind of hell—I was owed for my sins.
The light was dim at first, but at the first small hint of it, I picked up my pace, nearly running toward what I hoped would be an exit.
I wasn’t disappointed.
The light grew stronger, blazing into my eyes, my skin, making me stumble under its glare. I picked myself up, dusted off my blue jeans and what was left of my shredded shirt, and kept on going, eyes shut, toward the glorious light.
Once I felt the sun on me, I opened my eyes in a squint and saw I was in a forest somewhere. Trees surrounded me on all sides, their branches parting directly above me to allow the bright light in. Birds sang, charging me with newfound energy. The warmth of the midday sun felt good on my skin, at least at first. It took no longer than a few minutes before I started to sweat and longed for the coolness of the caves again.
My best guess was I’d been inside the cave for about twenty-four hours, maybe a little less.
But where was I now? I walked a bit, noticing the land sloping downward gradually. The trees grew dense as I moved downhill. After walking awhile and finding nothing even resembling a trail, I turned and looked behind me. Through a gap in the trees, I could see the towering, rocky bluff. I’d been underneath this bluff, inside it. Like some dwarf in Middle-earth, I’d burrowed straight through the mountain instead of climbing over it.
I had to guess that was exactly what Harriet had done some twenty-eight years ago. And once she was here, she would have been free to go anywhere in the world. It seemed abundantly likely to me she’d done just that. Why stay in a place like Coulee County? As a gay woman—hell, as a woman period—I couldn’t imagine her sticking around this godforsaken place one minute longer than necessary.
Then again, I hadn’t been able to imagine myself as a seventeen-year-old straight male sticking around either, and I’d come back. Sometimes I wondered exactly why I’d done that. What had I been trying to prove?
The answer, of course, was that I’d been trying to prove myself worthy, first of this place, and later of Mary. But there was more.
I wanted to change my home, to make it all the things it could be. There was so much here to recommend it, so much beauty, so much ruggedness, so many hidden places that revealed themselves like slow-blooming flowers. And the people—the ones who hadn’t been blinded by their own ignorance—were a people you could not find anywhere else. I wouldn’t trade a thousand people from anywhere else for one Rufus, and as flawed as Ronnie was, I couldn’t imagine a more loyal friend.
So, I was here for the long haul, with or without Mary, I realized. Great. That was one less thing to worry about, but the more pressing matter still remained: finding Harriet.
Finding her could be the key to Chip’s article and the missing piece that might complete the picture of the school’s—and, by extension, Jeb Walsh’s—corruption.
Ahead, I noticed the first sign of what I took to be a trail. There was a stream curving along a tree line, and on the other side of it was another crevice, just a small niche in a wall of trees.
I followed it and didn’t stop until I saw the ground had turned to gravel. I squinted at the sun’s shimmering reflection off the aluminum
siding of single-wide trailers.
48
An old man stood beside the banks of a muddy river, fishing with a push-button Zebco. He was black, and his skin shone in the bright sun. He had deep creases in his face, seams in old leather, and he wore a pair of athletic shorts, oversized fishing boots, and nothing else. A scar ran across his chest, all the way down to his waistband, where it vanished underneath his mesh blue shorts.
He saw me coming and nodded, his face contorting into something like surprise. It was a likable expression, and I decided this was the kind of man with whom you could spend an hour with and wonder where the time had gone. His surprise opened up into a gap-toothed grin, and he turned the crank on his Zebco, reeling in nothing, just a dangling hook. He caught the hook expertly, pinching it between his fingers before sticking the pole between his legs and bending to pick up a live worm out of his bucket. He stabbed it, pressed the button on the rod, and threw a beautiful cast out onto the slow-moving river.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said, “I thought you was a wolf.”
“A wolf?”
He nodded but didn’t explain.
“I’m just a man,” I said. “Didn’t know there were wolves around these mountains.”
He shrugged. “They come and go.”
I grunted, not sure how to respond to that.
“Why you coming from that direction without no gun?”
I shook my head, really confused now.
“You ain’t been hunting?”
“No sir. I’ve been in the cave back there.”
“The cave, oh boy, that cave is a killer.”
He was reeling his line in again. This time, I thought he might have a fish. He popped the line and turned the crank faster.
“Goddamn it,” he said as the hook came out empty again.
“What do you mean, the cave is a killer?”
He leaned his rod against a nearby tree and turned to look at me. “It ain’t safe for no man. It’s where them Wolf Brothers go.”
“Wolf Brothers?”
He nodded. “You might have seen ’em. They run all over these mountains like they got a fire stuck up their asses. Used to be you’d see ’em once or twice a year, coming to try to pluck some virgin out of one of them trailers, but lately them boys have been on a mission.”
I thought of the Hill Brothers. Was it possible he was talking about them?
“Why do you call them that?”
He shrugged. “Gotta call them something. They weren’t born with no mama, no daddy. Folks say they raised themselves up in some barn. Had to kill mice and birds and ate ’em raw. Nowadays, they just come out of the mountains like spirits, or maybe demons. Yeah, they come out of the dark hollows like demons, that’s what. People say they’re the sons of Old Nathaniel. You know Old Nathaniel?”
“Yeah, I know Old Nathaniel.”
“Then you know the kind of evil I’m talking about. Say, you still ain’t told me what you were doing in them caves.”
“I’m looking for somebody.”
“Somebody in the caves?”
“That’s right.”
He whistled, seemed to think it over. “What did you say your name was?”
“Earl Marcus.” I held out my hand, realized it was still beaten up pretty badly, and wiped it on my torn shirt.
He took it anyway, not squeezing too hard, which I appreciated. “I’m Zachariah Eason,” he said. “Who you looking for?”
“Her name is Harriet Duncan. It’s sort of a long shot. She would have been last seen in this area twenty-eight—”
“Don’t know her.”
“Oh.” Why had he cut me off? “Well, it’s been a while. Maybe there’s someone else living around here that might—”
“I don’t think so.”
I studied him closely and felt pretty sure he was lying to me.
“I gotta get going,” he said.
“Did I say something wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Just can’t help you. Never heard of Harriet Duncan.”
Except he had heard of her. I was sure of it. Zachariah was a bad liar.
“Has somebody else been around asking for her?”
“Nope.” He picked up his fishing rod and nodded at me. “Nice to meet you, Earl. I’d stay away from them caves.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said. He hurried off, heading toward the wooden bridge that crossed the river and led to the trailers. I watched him go. When he made it halfway across the bridge, he looked back. I waved, but he didn’t return the gesture.
49
I followed Zachariah to his trailer, keeping my distance in case he turned around, but he didn’t. He kept right on going like somebody had told him there was a fire that needed putting out. He lived near the front of the trailer park, close to a highway I didn’t know. As I lingered a few trailers down, standing in the shade of a large pickup truck, I realized how hungry I was and how long it had been since I’d last had anything to eat. When he went inside his trailer, I looked around for what I hoped might be a kind face.
I didn’t see one. Hell, I didn’t see anybody. It was too hot to be outside. There was a single dog lying under a makeshift wooden porch that had been attached to a single-wide. He eyed me with disdain and growled. I waved at him and decided a dog was as good a sign as any in this kind of place. I walked across the dirt path and stepped onto the wooden porch. The dog bristled again but didn’t show himself. Too hot, I figured.
Just before I knocked on the door, I heard a door close to my right. A young girl stepped from the trailer and out into the muddy road. She shaded her eyes from the sun and looked around.
When she saw me, her face changed. She smiled.
I smiled too. Here was a friendly face after all.
“Virginia Thrash,” I said.
“Mr. Earl!”
She ran over to me, and I stepped off the porch to meet her. She gave me a huge hug, and I hugged her back. It hadn’t even been a year since I’d seen her last, but it felt much longer than that. When we broke the embrace, I stepped back to get a look at her. In just a few months, she’d changed a lot. She looked less like a child and more like a teenager. She also seemed more confident, less sad than she had before, and that made me feel good. I wanted to believe what I’d done for her had played some part in her improvement, but I was wise enough to realize she was a special kid, resilient and strong in ways I’d never be able to truly comprehend.
“Do you live here?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Yeah. For about the last few weeks.”
“What about Roscoe?”
Roscoe was her little brother. They were Ronnie’s niece and nephew, and they’d had a hard time because their mother had been addicted to drugs. I’d helped get them into foster care, but something told me—based on the condition of this trailer park—that they might be back with their mom, which was probably not a positive development.
“Roscoe is with me. He’s inside taking a nap. It’s too hot to do anything else.”
“And your mother?”
Virginia looked sad. It was her old face, the one she’d worn last fall when she’d told me how she’d witnessed lights in the cornfield, which had turned out to be Old Nathaniel and Jeb Walsh’s camera crew trying to capture his violent acts for a snuff film. Yeah, she’d had a tough go of it for sure, but there was something noble about her, something transcendent, almost. Whatever it was made me believe she was going to make it. That she wasn’t just going to make it, she was going to excel.
“She’s inside. She’s doing better.”
“Better?”
“Yeah.”
“Define better.”
“She has good days and bad days.”
“What happened to the foster family?”
Virginia shook her head. “It didn’t work out.”
“What happened?” I felt terrible. Had I somehow managed to make her situation worse?
“It’s not like that,” she s
aid. “I wanted to come back. Mama needed me.”
“But you don’t need her,” I said.
She smiled brightly. “I’ll be fine.”
“What about Roscoe?”
“He’s doing well. I’m taking care of him and Mama.”
I shook my head, dismayed and impressed at the same time. Just when you start to lose faith in human beings, someone like Virginia comes along and reminds you of the possibilities of love and sacrifice, of commitment and personal determination. I was in awe.
And now I needed her to help me, too.
“Could I ask a favor?” I said.
* * *
Roscoe wandered out of the back while I was dialing Ronnie’s number. He saw me and started giggling and pointing. Virginia went over to him and picked him up, his curly black hair flopping as she lifted him into the air. She brought him over, and I offered my fist for a fist bump. He grabbed it with both hands and hung on. My heart swelled and I put the phone down on the table.
“Come here, big boy.”
Virginia handed him to me, and he said, “Earl!” Damned if that didn’t make me feel like there was something to live for. Damned if it somehow also didn’t make me think of Mary. I squeezed him tightly and tried hard not to cry, but the tears came anyway.
Roscoe giggled at first, like he thought I might be pretending, playing a game, but when the deep sobs came in and racked me, he fell silent. Virginia came over and placed a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said, trying to suck the sobs back, but Virginia made a hushing sound and patted my shoulder again.
“Earl sad,” Roscoe said.
I laughed. And cried. I did them both at the same time. It was the most alive I’d felt in a long time.
* * *
Ronnie picked up on the second ring. “What’s up, Virginia?”
“It’s Earl.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“What?”
“Where are you?”
“What?”
I sighed. “I made it across the gorge, found a cave and went through the mountain. I found this trailer park and ran into your niece. You knew she was out of foster care?”