by Scott Smith
The bicycle was still at the airport, locked to the chain-link fence where Gary had left it that final day. Eric's father dropped him off there early one morning, on his way to work, and Eric claimed the bike, hunching over it with the slip of paper Mrs. Holmes had given him, squinting to decipher her handwriting, the three numbers for the combination lock. He had to try it a half dozen times before it worked, and then he rode off, straight to school, a fifteen-mile trip, arriving a few minutes late, the first bell having already rung, the halls silent and empty. The bicycle's seat had been too high for him, making it difficult to pedal; the chain needed oil; the rims were rusting from having sat out in the weather for the past month. It wasn't a thing to feel proud of, and he already had his own bike anyway-perhaps it was this, or else simply that he was late, but he didn't lock the bicycle when he arrived at school; he tossed it down against the rack and hurried inside. He left it there that night, too, still unlocked, taking the bus home instead. And in the morning, it was gone.
There was that pressure against Eric's back once more, a hand touching him. He felt his heart jump in his chest even as he struggled to reassure himself. It was just the vine. He must've slouched back into it again. He shifted toward Pablo, only to realize that he was already as close to the Greek as he could get. The vine had moved somehow, crept toward him, drawn by his warmth, perhaps. It made him uneasy, a little scared, to think of the vine like this-something volitional, almost sentient-it made him want to flee the hole altogether. He thought about shouting upward, calling to the others, but he stopped himself at the last instant, worried that he'd wake Pablo from his sleep.
Gary 's mother had gone from house to house, passing on her son's possessions to boys who didn't know what to do with them. Boys who lost her son's sweaters and jackets, his baseball mitt and swim goggles, who gave them away or discarded them outright, who buried them in closets and trunks and basements. This was the way death always worked, Eric supposed; the living did everything possible to sweep all evidence of it from sight. Even Gary's closest friends continued forward with their lives, unmarred in any significant way by his absence, climbing from grade to grade, then leaping off into college, forgetting him as they went, remembering instead that photograph of the crumpled plane, the abrupt silence on the soccer fields before its crash.
Eric had to pee. But he was afraid to stand up and step toward the wall of the shaft to do this, irrationally frightened that the Greek or the lamp or the matches would no longer be there when he returned. He unbuckled his belt to ease the pressure on his bladder, tried to distract himself with word games, making up a vocabulary test for his future students, beginning with the A 's, ten words, a little quiz to start the week, five points for the definitions, five for the spelling.
Albatross, he thought. Avarice . Annunciation. Alacrity. Armament. Adjacent. Arduous. Accentuate. Accommodate. Allegation.
He was just turning to theB 's-Boisterous. Bravado. Bandoleer. Botanist-when that electronic chirping began again, waking Pablo, startling them both. Eric let go of the Greek's wrist, stood up, the wound on his knee making him stagger-step, like a clubfoot. The chirping seemed to be coming from his right, yet when he limped toward it, he realized he was wrong. It was coming from behind him now. He started to turn, but then wasn't so certain. It seemed to be circling him, drifting along the walls of the shaft.
"Eric?" Jeff yelled down. "Can you find it?"
Eric craned his head back. He could see them leaning into the rectangle of blue sky. He called up, told them how it was moving on him, first in one direction, then another.
"Is there a light?" Jeff shouted. "Look for a light."
The sound seemed to be coming from the opening beyond Pablo's body now, just inside the mouth of the shaft. Eric limped past Pablo, the air growing noticeably cooler. The chirping retreated, as if to draw him down the shaft. He hesitated, frightened suddenly. "I don't see it," he called. And then the chirping fell silent. "It's stopped," he yelled. He counted to ten inside his head, waiting for it to start again, but it didn't. When he peered up at the mouth of the hole, the heads had vanished and the sky had taken on a reddish tint. The sun was beginning to set.
He hobbled back to Pablo's body. He could sense him moving in the darkness, shifting his head, but he remained silent. He didn't resume his moaning or muttering, and this frightened Eric.
"Pablo?" Eric said. "You okay?" He wanted the Greek to start speaking again, but he just lay there, motionless now. Eric reached for the lamp, found it, reached for the matches, and…they weren't there. He patted at the rocky floor of the shaft, in a slowly widening circle, with a sense of growing panic. He couldn't find the box.
There was a creaking sound above him, and he looked up. The sky was rapidly growing dark, but he could see something silhouetted against it, an oblong shape, almost filling the hole. They'd finished their backboard, were setting it into place. He kept patting at the ground, reaching farther and farther away from himself, then returning to the lamp, starting outward again. But the matches weren't there.
The creaking grew louder, steadier, and he glanced up again. They were lowering the backboard into the shaft. "Eric?" he heard Amy call.
"What?" he yelled.
"Light the lamp!" She was on the backboard, he realized, dropping slowly toward him.
He stood up, limped a step, thinking that he might've been holding the matches when the chirping began, might've carried them with him as he started off to discover the source of the sound, only, absentmindedly, to set them down again. It didn't make sense, and he didn't really believe in it, but then he took another step and his foot hit something, kicking it, and he knew by the noise it made, by the way it felt against his foot, that it was the box of matches. He lowered himself carefully to his hands and knees, began to pat the ground, searching.
The creaking continued. The sky had grown dark now; he couldn't see the backboard any longer, but he could sense its approach. "Light the lamp, Eric," Amy called again. She was closer now, and there was an urgency to her voice. She sounded scared.
He kept patting at the ground. He was in a corner of the shaft that the vine had colonized fairly aggressively; his hands kept getting tangled in its tendrils, giving him the eerie sensation that the plant was purposefully impeding him. When he finally found the box of matches, it was buried underneath the vine, almost completely covered by it. Eric had to tug it free, tearing at the plant, its sap sticking damply to the fingers of his left hand, cool at first, then suddenly burning.
"Eric?" Amy shouted again. She was almost upon him.
"Just a sec," he called. He hobbled back to the lamp, crouched over it, lifted its glass globe. He didn't realize how badly his hand was trembling until he struck the first match: he was shaking so much that it immediately fluttered out. He had to take a moment, two deep breaths, working to calm himself, then try again. This time, he was successful-he lighted the lamp-and there Amy was, barely fifteen feet up, peering anxiously down at them, dropping, dropping, dropping.
He had to turn away from the lamp's brightness after so many hours sitting in the dark, but, even so, the flame was somehow fainter than he'd remembered-or than he'd hoped, perhaps. Much of the shaft remained shadowed, impenetrably so. His hand was burning from the vine's sap. He wiped it on his pants, but it didn't help.
When the backboard came within reach, he took hold of it, guiding it slightly to the right so that it would come to rest at Pablo's side, but then, with three feet still to go, it jerked to a halt, almost toppling Amy off her perch.
"Amy?" Jeff called from above.
"What?" she shouted.
"Have you reached them?"
"Almost. A few more feet."
There was a brief silence while this information was absorbed. Then: "How many?"
Amy leaned, peered down off the backboard at Pablo's broken body. "I don't know. Three?"
"It's the end of the rope," Jeff called. There was a pause. Then: "Can you still do it?"
Amy and Eric looked at each other. The whole point of the backboard was to keep Pablo's spine straight while he was lifted: without it, there'd be twisting or bending, which would, of course, cause further damage to his injured body. But if they decided to wait, it meant winching the backboard back up, taking it off the rope, braiding another length of nylon, reattaching the backboard, dropping the whole thing down the shaft once more, all of this attempted in complete darkness.
"What do you think?" Amy asked Eric. She was still crouched on the backboard, though she could've easily slid to the ground. It seemed as if she didn't want to attempt this, as if she felt it might commit her to a task she was still hoping she could evade.
Eric struggled for something that might approximate thought; it wasn't easy. He noticed a shovel leaning against the far wall of the shaft-a camp shovel, the type that could be folded up and carried in a backpack-and he spent a long moment staring at it, trying to imagine a way in which it might be useful to them. He couldn't come up with anything, though, and when the words grave digger popped into his head, he almost flinched, as if he'd picked up something hot.
"We can undo the backboard," he said. "Put him on it, then lift it up and tie it back on."
"By ourselves?" Amy asked. It was clear she didn't think this was possible.
Eric shook his head. "They'll have to lower someone else to help. Stacy, I guess. Two of us to lift him, one to tie the knots."
They thought about this for a moment, imagining all the steps, the time it would take.
"We'll need to blow out the lamp," Eric said. "Wait for her in the dark."
Amy shifted her weight, and the backboard began to swing. Eric extended his hand, stopped it. He thought she was going to climb off it, but she didn't.
"Or we can just lift him ourselves," he said.
Amy was silent, staring down at Pablo. Eric wished she'd say something. He couldn't do this by himself.
"It's only a few feet."
"If he twists-"
"I could take his shoulders. You take his feet. One, two, three-easy as that."
Amy frowned, uncertain.
Eric lifted the lamp, tilted it, examining its reservoir, the diminishing pool of oil. "We have to decide," he said. "The light's not going to last."
"Amy?" Jeff called.
They both craned their heads to look, but it had grown too dark up there to see him.
"We're gonna try it," she yelled.
Eric held the backboard steady while she climbed off, then he set the oil lamp on the ground. Amy gathered the belts from the sleeping bag, dropped them next to the lamp. Pablo was watching them, his eyes moving back and forth from one to the other.
"We're going to pick you up," Amy said to him. She made a lifting motion with her hands, palms open, then pointed to the backboard. "We're going to put you onto here, and then hoist you up and out."
Pablo stared at her.
Eric moved to the Greek's head; Amy stood at his feet.
"His hips," Eric said.
Amy hesitated. "You sure?"
"If you lift from his feet, he'll bend at the waist."
"But if I lift at his hips, won't he end up arching his back?"
They both stared down at Pablo, picturing these two different scenarios. It was a bad idea, Eric knew. They should send the backboard back up, have them lengthen the rope. Or at least have Stacy come join them. He glanced toward the lamp. It was nearly out of oil.
"At his knees," Eric said.
Amy considered this, but not long enough. A handful of seconds, and then she crouched over Pablo's knees. Eric bent, sliding his hands under the Greek's shoulders. He could feel the cut on his leg stretching, tearing, beginning to bleed again. Pablo groaned, and Amy started to pull away, but Eric shook his head.
"Quickly," he said. "On three."
They counted together: "One…two…three."
And then they lifted.
It was a disaster-far worse than Eric had feared. It seemed to take forever, and yet it happened so fast. They'd barely gotten him off the ground before Pablo began to scream-even more loudly than before, if possible, a pure shriek of pain. Amy almost gave up, almost set him back down on the ground, but Eric shouted at her-"No!"-and she kept going. Pablo's body sagged at the waist; he began to thrash his arms. His scream went on and on. His body was too heavy for Amy; she couldn't keep up with Eric. The Greek's shoulders were level with the backboard now, but his knees were still a good foot beneath it, and it looked as if Amy might not be able to lift them any higher. The bend at Pablo's waist increased. His right arm, flailing, hit the backboard, and it began to swing wildly back and forth.
"Lift!" Eric shouted at Amy, and she tried to hoist Pablo's legs higher, lunging, the Greek's torso twisting, his screams going higher.
Afterward, Eric wasn't even certain how they managed it. It was as if he'd had some sort of blackout in those final moments. He had the impression that they'd been reduced, finally, to making a lurching sort of toss toward the swaying backboard, throwing the Greek's body onto it. All he knew was that he felt terrible, as if he'd absentmindedly stepped on an infant. Amy had begun to cry, was standing there, looking stricken.
"It's okay," Eric said. "He'll be okay." He didn't think she could hear him, though, because Pablo was still screaming. Eric had the urge to vomit, his tongue going thick, bile rising in his throat. He forced himself to breathe. His leg was bleeding again, draining wetly into his shoe, and, once more, he was abruptly conscious of his bladder. "I have to pee," he said.
Amy didn't even look at him. She stood with her hand over her mouth, watching Pablo shriek, the lower half of his body perfectly still while his arms flailed about, the backboard continuing to swing to and fro. Eric limped to the wall, unzipped, began to urinate. By the time he was through, Pablo had started to quiet. His eyes were tightly clenched; there were beads of sweat standing on his forehead.
"We have to tie him down," Amy said. She'd stopped crying, was wiping at her face with her sleeve.
There were four belts on the ground beside the oil lamp; Eric stripped off his, added it to the pile. Amy picked up two of them, buckled them together so that they formed one long strap. She draped this over Pablo's chest, sternum-high, pulled it tight, knotted it in place. The Greek's eyes remained shut. Eric put two more belts together, handed them to Amy, and she repeated the procedure, securing Pablo at his thighs.
"We need another one," Eric said, holding up the last remaining belt.
Amy leaned over Pablo, carefully undid his buckle, started to pull his belt free of its loops. The Greek still didn't open his eyes. Eric handed her the belt he was holding, and she used these last two to tie Pablo across his forehead. Then they stepped back to examine their work.
"It's okay," Eric said again. "He'll be okay." Inside, he felt wretched, though. He wanted Pablo to open his eyes, wanted him to start muttering again, but Pablo just lay there, swaying slightly on the backboard, the beads of sweat continuing to form on his forehead, growing larger and larger, and then suddenly collapsing, rolling sideways down his skull. Eric could feel the blood filling his shoe. His elbow was hurting, his hand burning. There was a bruise on his chin, and his back was itching-he was covered with bug bites from their long walk through the jungle. He was thirsty, hungry; he wanted to go home-not simply back to the relative safety of their hotel, but home. And it wasn't possible, he knew. Nothing was going to be okay. Pablo was terribly hurt, and they were part of this, part of his pain. Eric felt like weeping.
Amy lifted her head toward the darkness above them. "Ready!" she yelled. And then: "Go slow!"
They were just starting to raise him, the windlass beginning to creak, the backboard climbing past Eric's face, moving upward-above him, beyond his reach now-when the lamp dimmed, flickered, and went out.
Jeff," Stacy said, her voice quiet, almost a whisper, but tense, too-he could hear an urgency in it.
He and Mathias were working the windlass's crank, struggling to kee
p it slow and steady, and he answered without looking at her. "What?"
"The lamp went out."
Now he turned, Mathias and he both, pausing to stare at the mouth of the shaft. It had gone dark, like everything else around them. The sky was clear; there was starlight but the moon hadn't risen yet. Jeff tried to recall if he'd seen it in the preceding nights-what stage it was at, what time it ought to appear-but all that came to him was the image of a cantaloupe slice hanging just above the horizon on one of their first evenings at the beach. Whether it had been rising or sinking, waxing or waning, he couldn't guess. "Call to them," he told her.
Stacy leaned over the hole, cupped her hands around her mouth, shouted, "What happened?"
Eric's voice came echoing up the shaft: "It's out of oil."
Jeff was trying to keep everything in his head, but it wasn't working. He wished he had a sheet of paper, and the time to write things down, make a list, bring a little order to the chaos into which they'd stumbled. In the morning, he could use one of the archaeologists' notebooks, but for now he had to keep going over everything in his mind, feeling at each moment as if he were forgetting some crucial detail. There was water and food and shelter to think about. There were the Mayans at the base of the hill, and Henrich's corpse stuck full of arrows. There was Pablo with his broken back. There were the other Greeks, who might or might not be coming to their rescue. And there was the lamp to add to it all-the lamp without any oil to light it.
He and Mathias resumed their cranking of the windlass. "Let us know when you see him," Jeff said to Stacy.
Thinking wasn't important right now, he told himself; thinking would only confuse things, make him hesitate, slow him down. Thinking could wait until the morning, until daylight. What he needed to do was pull everyone out of the shaft, set them up in the orange tent, and then try, somehow, to get some sleep.
The windlass creaked and creaked as the rope slowly coiled around the barrel. Stacy remained silent; Pablo was still hidden in darkness. Jeff could smell him, though, quite suddenly: an outhouse odor, his shit, his urine. All the time they'd been cutting and braiding the strips of nylon, taping the aluminum poles together, he'd kept trying to tell himself that maybe Eric was wrong, maybe Pablo's back wasn't broken after all. They'd laugh about it later-tomorrow morning, when the Greek was up and limping about-how they'd jumped to their doomsday conclusion. But now, with that stench coming toward him from the shaft, he knew better.