by Greg Hunt
In a flat open area amid a jumble of boulders, the body of a woman lay motionless on a woolen army blanket spread on the dirt. Her clothes had been torn away, and much of her body lay exposed to the damp night air. She was bruised and filthy, and the blood from a wound on the side of her head had crusted in her tangled brown hair. Her eyes were closed and she lay still as death, though her bare breasts still rose and fell with awful slowness.
Although he barely recognized her, Mel knew it was Rochelle.
A man lay on the blanket beside her, his trousers still down as if, after he had finished his violation of the young woman, he simply rolled off of her and fell asleep. Mel knelt beside the man, staring down at him, burning with silent rage. His hair was long and tangled, and the wiry thatch of his beard covered the bottom half of his face like a rodent sanctuary. A poorly healed scar stretched down one side of his face, as thick and dark as a night crawler. An odor of filth and decay flowed from his open mouth with every noisy breath.
Tangling his fingers in the man’s hair, Mel raised his head up about a foot and slammed it down hard on the stone floor of the cave. The man never made a sound, but his breathing stopped immediately. Mel slammed the head down again and again, using all the power in his arms, just for the savage satisfaction of it. Then he shoved the body away, not content to leave it lying on the blanket beside Rochelle.
He tenderly pulled the torn pieces of Rochelle’s dress together to cover her nakedness, then leaned down so his lips were close to her ear. “Rochelle, wake up,” he whispered. “It’s Mel Carroll.”
She didn’t move or make a sound. Mel stroked her cheek with his fingers, ready to cover her mouth if she cried out. Her skin was cool to the touch, but not dead cold.
“It’s Mel Carroll, Rochelle. I come to take you out of here. You and your sister. Where is she?” There was no response, no movement.
He heard the whimpering again, close now, coming from a shadowy niche in the stone a few feet away. “Oh, please let her be!” a tiny, scared voice begged from that direction. Mel raised the lantern for a better look, and saw what seemed to be a bundle of blankets stuffed back between the rocks. But there was a small white face in the middle of it, with eyes that glowed like a cornered animal’s in the lamplight.
“Becky?” Mel asked.
“She can’t take no more!” The tiny voice pleaded. “Do it to me if you gotta. But leave her be!”
Mel moved closer to her and she withdrew instinctively deeper into her tight little den.
“Oh, please, mister,” the girl whined. “She’s had all she can take of this business. I’m a little better off than her, so if you got to . . .”
She was thirteen, Mel thought, or maybe fourteen by now. He tried to close his mind to the thought of all she must have been through since they brought her here.
“Be very quiet and listen to me, Becky. I’m Mel Carroll, your neighbor, and I’m here to take you and Rochelle out of this cave.”
“Naw, you ain’t real. You’re a ghost, or a haint. Or a dream I’m having. Your face is all yellow and red, and kind of shimmery like. You ain’t a real flesh-and-bone person.”
“Touch my face, Becky,” Mel told her. “I’m real enough.”
A trembling hand slid out of the folds of filthy blanket, and small fingers brushed his whiskered cheek with the softness of feathers.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Becky whispered. “It is you, isn’t it, Mel Carroll? But how could you find us?”
“Your mama told me where they took you, and I know these caves.”
“Mama? Daddy? Are they still alive?”
“Both alive, and both waiting back at your place.” He didn’t say any more. They’d see the sad truth of it soon enough when they got back home. But right now this girl needed hope, and the strength it would give her.
“Can you walk?” Mel asked.
“I ain’t been out of this hole for a long time,” she said. “But I can walk. I will walk.”
“All right, you take the lantern and go where I tell you. I’ll bring your sister.” Mel folded the blanket over Rochelle and picked her up in his arms. She felt like dead weight to him, although he could tell she was still breathing. It felt wonderful just knowing that he had actually found her, and that they were on their way to safety. He made a silent vow that nothing else bad would happen to her, or her sister, as long as he stayed alive to stop it.
But what now? The best exit was right out the front cave entrance. It had been hard enough making it in the back way by himself, and he could hardly imagine what it would be like with an unconscious woman and a scared young girl. But if he tried the front way and woke even one of these men, it would be impossible to fight and run and carry Rochelle all at the same time. It would be over for all of them. With a feeling of dread, he realized what his choice must be.
Becky led the way, moving slowly on stiff, tired legs, and Mel whispered directions to guide her toward the split in the rock at the back of the cave that he came out of minutes before. Once they squeezed through that crack and were clear on the other side, they would be safe. To the band of deserters in the cave, it would seem as if their prisoners had simply vanished.
Weaving through the tangled boulders, Mel wasn’t sure where the man came from, but it was clear that they startled him as much as he them.
“Here now, girlie!” a male voice growled out loud. “Where you makin’ off to with that lamp?” He grabbed Becky’s arm and she seem to go limp in his grasp. For an instant Mel was afraid she would drop the lantern, dashing their hope of escape, but she held onto it.
It was a challenge for Mel to pull his revolver out of its holster without dropping Rochelle, but he managed. His first shot went wild. So did the second and third. He knew he was pulling his shots to the side and high for fear of shooting Becky.
By then the man had fumbled a handgun somewhere out of his own clothing, but as he raised it and fired, a small fist landed hard in his crotch. Doubling over in roaring, cursing pain, he didn’t have a chance to shoot again. Mel stepped forward, more deliberate this time, and delivered the kill shot close up.
The rumbling echo of the gunfire got everyone in the cave stirred up in a hurry. Dying fires were kicked back to life, and down toward the cave entrance, Mel could see men rising from their blankets, fumbling for their weapons and staring up toward them.
“What’s that shooting?” someone called out. “Who’s up there?”
“Head for that crack in the rock, right straight ahead,” Mel urgently ordered Becky. “We’ll be all right. We’ll make it.”
He knew he wouldn’t be able to carry Rochelle crosswise in his arms through so narrow a passageway. He lowered her to the ground, then he lifted her back up with her arms over his shoulders and her body hanging limp across his back.
Down below men were lighting up lanterns and raising flaming faggots out of the fire. They must have seen the lantern, Mel thought, and it wouldn’t take them long to come after him and the girls.
Ahead the light faded as Becky stepped into the cleft in the rock wall. “Don’t get too far ahead,” Mel warned. “I need to see where I’m going, and I don’t want to bang your sister on the rocks.”
By the time they made it to the other side and emerged into the next open chamber, Mel could tell that the men were close behind, close enough to make out what they were saying, and to hear the anger and frustration in their voices.
“But we don’t know where that crack goes, if it goes anywhere . . .”
“Must go someplace. They went in it . . .”
“Then go in and find out, why dontcha . . .”
“I ain’t that curious, an’ them two gals was about used up anyway . . .”
“Hell, I’ll find out . . .”
Mel stashed Rochelle and Becky off to the side, then knelt by the split in the stone wall. The men on the other side fired a volley into the passageway, but it was a waste of lead and powder. He waited. It took the volunteer several moments of ea
sing carefully forward before Mel spotted the flicker of his lantern and the shuffle of his footsteps.
When the time came, Mel use the same knife thrust he’d used on the loudmouthed scout back in his barn, in just under the point of the breastbone and shoving up. His daddy had highly recommended it, and claimed it had once saved him from a panther mauling. He even had scars across his shoulders to liven up the story.
The lantern the man was carrying fell, splashing coal oil on the stone floor. For a moment the cave was bathed in bright, eerie light, almost blinding to eyes that had grown accustomed to the near darkness. That was a big loss, Mel thought. They sure could have used that lantern to finish their escape from this awful place.
“This one’s dead already,” Mel called out as the body slumped clumsily to the ground amid the flames. “So you can send me another one. Maybe I’ll drag him out into the dark and turn him over to the bats and haints and cave rats.” He heard Becky giggle nearby, a sweet, surprising sound.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was nothing short of pure hell finding the way back out of the cave. Rochelle was dead weight all the way. The crawl between the flat layers of rock had been the worst, but at least he had the blanket to drag her along on. Otherwise the harsh layers of stone would have scraped her skin off to the bone. He had thought Becky might balk at snaking through that terrifying narrow space, but it seemed to jangle her nerves less than it did his own.
Eventually the lantern flickered out, which was one of the things Mel had worried about most. But at least it had happened near the end. Becky plunged into complete panic when that last glow of the wick died away and absolute darkness swallowed them. Mel had to grab her and hold her tight in his arms, which seemed like trying to control a writhing, scratching, biting, screaming bobcat. It took a long time before she began to calm down and find her senses again. He promised her over and over that they were all right and would still make it out, and he sure hoped his promises were true.
Finally, as a new day dawned, Mel began to make out a faint glow of light ahead and above. He woke Becky and let her go ahead as fast as she could scramble up the long jumble of stones that led up to the surface of the earth and salvation. It was slower going with the still-unconscious Rochelle, but eventually he reached the top. Then he went back in the cave and fumbled around in the dark until he had retrieved his pack, tossing aside everything except the guns, powder, and shot to lighten the load.
Once outside, the remainder of the trip back to the Adderly farm continued to be an ordeal. Although the distance wasn’t that great after they escaped the cave, less than a three-hour walk at a regular pace, it took far longer with Rochelle and Becky.
He fashioned a travois of sorts with the blanket and a pair of long saplings. It seemed like days since he’d last slept, and he knew his body wouldn’t hold up to carrying her all the way back. After a couple of hours of slow, bumpy, downhill progress, pulling Rochelle down a narrow game trail and nearly tumbling her off the travois a dozen times, Mel called a halt under the protective boughs of a weeping willow beside a narrow, brisk creek.
Mel fed Becky watercress, wild onions, turnips, and a few little minnows that he managed to seine out of a creek with his shirt. Becky told him she didn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. She gulped it all down without complaint, even the flopping little fish, which she swallowed alive and whole. They tickled inside, she told Mel, but not for long.
Rochelle never came around to try the simple food, and Mel’s heart sank every time he looked at her. She was bruised and battered from head to foot. Some of the injuries were from the abuse by the men in the cave, but others, he knew, were from the ordeal he had put her through making their escape. Her face was so bruised and swollen that she was hardly recognizable.
Becky poured tiny sips of water into her sister’s mouth from time to time, and some seemed to trickle down her throat. Sitting on the damp moss beside the softly breathing form of the young woman he had faced so many hardships to save, Mel fought hard to reject the heartsick notion that, despite all his efforts, the Lord was about to take her anyway. The loss of his cabin and barn, his crops and stock, literally all he owned except a scarred scorched hilltop, seemed like nothing compared to this. He wondered if he’d grieve inside, like Daddy had, for months or years, or right on to the end of his days.
“When they dragged us into that cave, she fought for me long as she was able,” Becky said quietly. She had eased up beside Mel, and gently began to bathe her sister’s face with the dampened hem of her skirt. “The one you bashed in there, the one beside her, did this to her. He went upside her head with a gun barrel, and she blinked out like a lamp.”
“I wish I’d known that,” Mel said bitterly. “I’d have made dying a lot worse for him.”
The washing reopened a wound above Rochelle’s right ear, the one her sister had referred to, and it began to bleed. Becky tore some cloth free from Rochelle’s skirt, rinsed it in the creek, and bandaged the long, ugly cut. She seemed to know what she was doing, and didn’t squirm at the blood.
Mel recalled a story Mother used to tell about a cousin back home in Virginia who fell off the porch roof, landed on his head, and never woke up again. He’d been up there gathering apple slices that his mother was drying in the sun, when he got careless and fell off backwards. They managed to force enough fresh milk, grits and broth down his throat to keep him alive for weeks, but he never opened his eyes again, or moved, or spoke, or seemed to recognize anybody. That blow was on the back of his head, and Rochelle’s was on the side, so Mel prayed it wasn’t the same.
“It wasn’t all of them,” Becky explained. “When they raided the farm, mostly they was looking for food. Twelve or fifteen of them, I guess, ragged and wild-eyed and hungry-looking like wild dogs. Only the one you bashed and a few others wanted to take Ro and me. The rest, I guess, was too scared to argue. When we got in that cave, that mean one acted like he owned us. He made some of them give him stuff before he let them take care of their business.”
“Don’t tell me any more right now, girl,” Mel said, holding up his hand. “I’m afraid it might make me crazy.”
“Maybe Mama will know how to help her when we get back,” Becky said. “Some herb teas and poultices, or something like that. Or maybe all she needs is time to rest and heal.”
“Maybe,” Mel said. He thought of the batty old woman squatting in the dirt plucking a chicken and mumbling nonsense to herself. It didn’t seem like she’d have sense enough to help anybody.
“She doctored us all our lives,” Becky added hopefully.
Eventually, staggering and falling from fatigue, Becky had to join her sister on the travois during the long trudge back. Mel began to wonder if his own strength would fail him, and he found himself dropping the poles time and again. He had never felt so tired, so weak, and so helpless in all his life. But they did make it back to the farm late in the afternoon.
There was no one in sight as they approached the collapsed barn, but Mel could hear Henrietta talking inside. He called out, and shortly she came crawling out from under the downed building.
At the sight of her mother, Becky tumbled off the travois and stumbled to her. “Mama we’re back, we’re alive! Mel Carroll took us from them men, and kilt the worst of them in the doing,” Becky said, throwing her arms around the old woman so suddenly that they both nearly fell. “Ro was thumped on the head, but I know she’ll be okay now that we’re back home again.”
Mel glanced around the wreckage of the Adderly place and thought this wasn’t much of a home to return to, but at least they were together again and safe for now.
“I knew you girls oughtn’t to be up there in them caves,” Henrietta said. “I told your daddy that bad things would come of it. There’s bats and snakes and cave rats big as cats . . .”
Surprised by the scolding, Becky drew back and took a fresh look at her mother. Mel watched as the young girl’s face clouded with confusion and concern. “Mama,
what’s the matter with you?” she said with alarm. “Don’t you remember those men took us? We didn’t want to go.”
“I told your daddy . . . ,” the old woman continued doggedly.
“Where is Daddy?” Becky asked. “Did his leg get better? We need to take him up to Cable Springs and find a doctor to look at it.”
“No need. He’s gone on,” Henrietta Adderly said simply.
“Gone on to Cable Springs? By himself?”
“He’s gone on to meet Jesus, child,” the old woman said. “It was his time.”
Becky’s face went pale and blank with disbelief, and her eyes welled up until a steady stream of tears flowed down her cheeks. She looked at Mel in disbelief, as if he might somehow bear some of the responsibility for Ezekiel Adderly’s death.
“By the time I made it here,” he said quietly, “it was already too late to do anything. The whole leg was putrified, and it was spreading fast. It’s pure mercy that he died quick as he did.” Then he added, almost defensively, “And besides, I had to head up to the caves and bring you girls home.”
Becky wrapped her arms around her mother and buried her face against her shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably. Motherly instinct took over, and the old woman stroked her daughter’s hair and muttered soft consoling words to her. Mel sat down on the dirt beside Rochelle’s travois and waited, feeling like an awkward intruder in the grief of this family. He had seen a lot of suffering and dying in these last several days, and was responsible for a share of it himself, but this put a human face on it that he hadn’t had much time to think about until now.
When the sharp unexpected pain of loss began to subside, Becky eased away from her mother and managed to turn her thoughts to the situation at hand. She looked down at her sister and said, “One of those men hit Ro in the head, Mama, and she ain’t woke up ever since. It’s been two days, and Mel and me don’t know what to do for her.”