by River Jordan
But look now, it continues. Billy and Blister are clearing the central cavern.
Monday, 8:59 P.M.
“Which way from here?” Billy has conceded to Blister the choice of the way to go. He will admit, without the map, without the water, without Nehemiah and Trice, he’s become as blind as a bat. And missing the radar. This much he knows. What he doesn’t know is this: Blister doesn’t know, either. And he is thinking of the skeleton that he once encountered in this cave. Many years ago. Dried old bones. Time fried right there and stuck in between those rocks where some man had fallen, slipped in the dark. Never to get out again. And it was just one tiny footstep. Just an inch, maybe two, to the left when it should have been right, and there he went. Over and down. Hell’s Jungle Blister had named it. He had found his way in from another door. A lower level. Had found his way in, found the strange contorted formations that cast grotesque shadows in every direction. Had felt the chill run up his spine as he searched for a way to climb up out of the cavern’s bottom. And that’s where, between the twisted, grotesque structures, he had found the bones. Still intact. The legs twisted and horribly broken. The face frozen in a grimace of pain. The arms splayed out. And then Blister had screamed. Long, hard, and loud. The strange echo from the cave walls had sounded like the screams of his long-dead companion. The screams of a dead man screaming while he’s still alive. And from one who knows it. But for this man there was no rescue. Only a dying wish. One he is still waiting on to come to pass. Wishes never die.
“Don’t step on him,” John Robert says.
Billy stops walking. Freezes his feet in mid-step. “Don’t step on who?” He has one foot frozen on the ball of his toes.
“Who?” John Robert shakes his head. He is trying to filter out the past but it won’t work now. Time has melted, run together now in this spot. Two thousand years, one thousand years, one year, all running together.
“You said, ‘Don’t step on him.’” Billy shines the light around his feet, settles his heel to the ground.
“I did?” Blister shines the flashlight all around him. “This ain’t Hell’s Jungle.” He looks up at Billy, shines the light under his own face so that Billy can see one eye and what’s left of the other. “And he ain’t here.” He pauses for a moment, then adds, “unless he got up and walked off.”
Billy has never been afraid of John Robert, but he wishes he’d shine that light somewhere else. In the cave, with the light shining up underneath his scarred, stretched skin, Blister looks like a dead man. But Billy doesn’t say this. Billy turns around, talks while he keeps walking. “You need to help me think, Blister. We got to find them because they don’t know where they are.” And he’s partially right. They don’t know where they are.
Monday, 9:00 P.M.
I am watching Trice follow Nehemiah through tunnels. I am watching Nehemiah turn to follow Trice down old stairs carved out by time, down. The four of them are approaching the center from opposite directions. Trice and Nehemiah had entered from the short way, but now the short way is more treacherous. It is more tricky. Without the map, the short way has become the long way.
“Trice…” Nehemiah wants to say, Slow down. He wants to say, Be careful. And as he knows this contradicts their purpose, the ground swells beneath the rock, lets out a groan. A deep, long, lasting hungry groan.
“It’s eating us alive,” Trice says.
“What, Trice? What’s eating us alive?”
“Don’t you know by now, Nehemiah?” She turns to face Nehemiah, or almost face him, her light helmet turned slightly to the side so that her face is to the cavern wall, her eyes toward him. “Actually, I believe we both know what this is.” And she stands with her eyes not on him but in him. In what’s left of him that she can see. “It’s that thing, the one we heard as kids. The one we convinced ourselves wasn’t real.”
“The thing we thought we saw.” Nehemiah looks down into the distance.
“No, the thing we saw, Nehemiah. And it saw us. And it remembered.”
“None of this was happening.” He waves up and out toward Shibboleth. “All the fading and disappearing. There was water then. Water still for years.”
“As long as we were watching…”
And Nehemiah finishes for her, “All it could do was growl. And try to take away—everything.”
Trice reaches out to touch his face, but she is below him, cannot reach him from where she stands, and lets her hand drop. “Let’s go on, Nehemiah. Let’s go find what we came for.” And she turns so quickly and retreats that he loses sight of her for a second. Can only see the beam of light ahead of her as she moves forward. The light appearing to grow dimmer with every step. And then the dimness fades to black. For the second time since Nehemiah came home, Trice disappears.
“Trice?” He falters on the steps, catches and rights himself, and calls out again. “Trice, where are you?” Then the whispered voice rises. “Trice! Answer me! Trice!” And the voice becomes a yell. And the yell is heard from a long, long way off.
“I can hear them.” Billy says. “Listen.” He puts his hand back toward Blister, who stands still and listens also. The sound of a voice carries. At first only the noise. The human voice sound. Then the recognition that it is Nehemiah and that he is calling. And then the unfortunate understanding that the call means he has lost something. Something precious. Something priceless. And from the pressure in the plaintive sound, that it’s nowhere to be found.
“Sound don’t carry like that down here.”
“Must be a tunnel somewhere.” Billy calls to his brother. Calls long and hard and moves toward the sound like a lighthouse in the dark. “A tunnel we didn’t know about. “And even with all the calls, with the twists and turns and crawl spaces, it will be almost an hour before Billy is standing breathless and sweating (even in the air that is cooler than it should be) before Nehemiah, who simply says, “She’s gone.”
Monday, 9:05 P.M.
Butch pulls the Lincoln up behind Billy’s truck. As he opens the door and Kate and Magnus step out, the ground buckles beneath their feet, swells and then recedes, pulling at them. Butch has left his cell phone at the diner. And just in case anyone is left, in case anyone finds it, he has written a note. He has known men who went into jungles, into deserts, who knew they might never come out again. Today he has joined their company. He is on a one-way mission. He took a while to recognize it, but now he knows that for him, for all of them, there may be no tomorrow. He is thinking that at least if they die, he will be there to keep them from being afraid. He is marveling in the fact that, in the end, his final mission is one of mercy.
He reaches out to steady Kate with one arm, Magnus with the other. They are carrying covered dishes, bags with paper plates and spoons and forks. A thermos with coffee and some cups. What were they thinking? He thinks of crazy things. His old schoolyard in PA. The boys down the block. His mother and father and three sisters. The nephews and nieces he hasn’t seen since last Christmas. Or was it two Christmases ago? I sure am a long way from home, he thinks, and for a moment, but only the briefest moment, he thinks about turning and getting in the car, driving to Philly without stopping. Find someone he knows. For just a moment he wants to be with someone at the end who was there at the beginning.
Kate and Magnus try to walk across the rolling earth, stepping on pine needles as they make their way to the hole in the earth. The turkey buzzard is watching them. Has made its way across the dry ground. Has perched outside the cave’s open passage and watches with great interest as they approach his tree. He is eyeing Kate specifically. Is so caught up in the flesh of her folds that he doesn’t realize until much too late that Butch can reach the lowest limb. Or how unexpectedly fast Butch can be. He snatches the buzzard by the foot as they pass by. Snatches him just as the buzzard is slowly turning around, taking his aim. Butch grabs the huge bird by the foot, pulls him from the tree and swings him full force, slapping him hard against the tree trunk. Without a word he drops him to
the ground and keeps walking. The stunned bird lays silent, temporarily breathless.
“Not his day, I reckon,” Magnus says, never turning around. She keeps her boots determinedly moving forward.
I don’t bother stifling a laugh, which no one but you and God can hear. Sometimes, in the midst of the darkest of situations, something funny is still funny.
Monday, 9:33 P.M.
Cassie Getty has found an old log and stopped to catch her breath. And to try to get her bearings. “It used to be right here,” she says. “Or maybe,” she looks off to her right, “back over there.” She has been walking for hours now. She is hot and thirsty. And a little hungry. For a little while, she thinks about collard greens and cornbread. And about Kate’s biscuits. Then she thinks about Kate some more, and that’s what gets her back to her feet. Her bloody shins start off in a new direction. I’m thinking, as the ground lifts up beneath Cassie’s feet and sucks them down again, that this may be her last chance to get this part right. I am thinking that it is intrinsically amazing how one life leads to another.
Monday, 9:35 P.M.
Blister leads the way to the steps that he’s been both avoiding and searching for. I am watching the truth of this thought as he leans into the cavern wall to avoid falling and begins walking his way down the corridor, straight into Hell’s Jungle. The only place in the cave where he’d ever been lost. The only place he’d thought that he’d never escape. A place he swore he’d never venture into again. But he’s more than just along for the ride. Blister figures he has a debt to pay. And that his marker for payback has arrived. He shines his flashlight down the corridor into the cavern’s bottom. There are the columns, and as he shines the light across them, he swears he sees something move between the twisted shapes. Something man-sized. Something strangely familiar. He stops in his tracks. Just my eyes, he thinks. Just a shadow.
“What is it?” Nehemiah asks before John Robert has time to move forward again.
“Nothing.” He walks on, a little slower. “Probably nothing,” he adds, emphasizing the probably.
Nehemiah is hoping in all of his flesh and bones that Blister knows exactly what he’s doing. And that his doing is going to lead him directly to Trice. How’d she fade into nothing like that? he thinks. Then he says it aloud to Billy from behind him. “Billy, how’d Trice just disappear to nothing right in front of me? How could that happen?”
“Are you sure she disappeared?” Billy keeps walking. They are going down, getting lower. The air is getting colder. And colder. There is, oddly, a freezing breeze. Coming up from somewhere below them.
“What do you mean, am I sure? Of course I’m sure. I was looking right at her.” Nehemiah stops, stands still, listens for any sounds of Trice, but all he hears is Blister and Billy’s steps below him. His heart beating hard against his chest. His blood rushing through his veins faster and faster at the thought of Trice lost and alone. And then he resumes walking but slower. I was looking right at her. Wasn’t I?
Monday, 9:36 P.M.
Kate and Magnus reach the cave’s entrance with their one plastic flashlight. They are breathless, not accustomed to walking up steep hills in the dark. “We can’t go on in there like this,” Kate says, between short gulps of air. “We don’t have enough light.” She bends over and puts her hands on her knees.
“I don’t reckon going in was ever our business.” Magnus sits down on a rock just inside the cave’s entrance. “I guess this is as close as we need to get.”
“Well, need to or not, it’s as close as we’re going to get today.” Kate carefully sets the plates down on the rock floor. “Whatever day it is anymore.” She pulls up on the corners of her apron and fans herself with it. Then she stops and looks, perplexed, at Magnus. “What are we here for?”
“We’re keeping a watch.” Magnus says and spits without apology in the corner of the cave’s floor.
“Are we sitting up with the dead?” Kate has lost her bearings, just like that. As if they were snatched out from under her.
“Not yet, Kate.” Magnus says. “Not yet.” And I’m thinking that in the end of days, the Mighty Magnus, as Blister calls her, has been mighty indeed. In the end, she has become fearless.
Monday, 9:38 P.M.
Nehemiah stops walking on the stone steps. Something isn’t right, he thinks. There is a shifting beneath their feet. So hard the cave floor shakes. Almost tossing them off the edge. Now they have only fifteen feet to go, but it’s a long and ragged fifteen feet. She’s not down here. Trice isn’t here. That’s what Nehemiah is thinking as he throws his arms against the cave wall, trying to steady his legs. He is feeling Trice’s absence like a vacuum. Feeling her blood grow colder with every step he takes. And without another word, he turns and starts back up the stairway.
Billy is no brother’s fool. He immediately knows his brother is no longer close behind him. He’s felt that absence for more than a decade. And now he feels it again. “Nehemiah?” When there is no answer forthcoming, he calls, “Brother?” but there is a hopeless, lost, and plaintive tone to his call. One that if you listen you can even hear from there. His headlamp searches the steps above him, but incredibly there is no sign of Nehemiah. “Momma, send some angels to watch over Brother, will you? He’s all I got left.”
“Who you talking to?” Blister turns back toward Billy. He is jumpy. Mighty jumpy. His skin is crawling all over him. Like it will jerk off his body and run off of its own accord. And if it could, it would.
“Talking to my momma.”
“Oh” is all John Robert says. But he doesn’t keep walking. He is too afraid. He’s afraid of what’s down there. And afraid of what isn’t.
“Blister, go on.” There is a pause because John Robert doesn’t move. “We can’t just stand here.” And Billy’s words come pouring out like prophecy because the next rumbling of the ground is solid tremor. It cracks the cave steps they were walking on. Shakes the foundation from beneath their feet. Causes what was solid only a moment before to come down. And still six feet from the bottom, Billy and Blister come tumbling down to the ground.
Nehemiah hears the caving in of the steps. The rocking throws him to the floor of the cave, but only for a moment before he is back on his hands and knees. He is on his feet again before the rumbling stops. Running before the ground is steady.
Cassie Getty is thrown to the ground. Her purse slips off her arm. It will take just a little while before she gets up. She stands and looks to the left and right until she spies her pocketbook. She picks it up and dusts it off with her dirty hands, hooks the vinyl strap back over the crook of her arm, and heads off in the same determined direction she was traveling before. She knows exactly what she has to do.
Butch has grabbed Magnus and Kate and pulled them together, pushing their heads down against his chest, their faces toward him. He has done this so quickly that they have had no room to protest. And they won’t tell you so, but they are happy not to see what might be coming next. They both squeeze their eyes shut, tight as mothballs, and stay that way until the shifting and rumbling has completely stopped. Until Butch has gently released them, then resumed his pacing at the opening, as if nothing had happened. They look at his back, wordlessly. Then sit side by side on the cave floor, their backs against the wall. Silently praying for Nehemiah and Billy and Trice. But mostly for Trice. After all, she’s their baby girl.
But another silent prayer is rising from the entrance of the cave. From a man on a mission who recognizes a mission when he sees one. Recognizes what weapon is required for that mission to be accomplished. And what he knows right now is that Nehemiah is on the most important mission of his life. And as it turns out, he hasn’t been sent to check up on him. Or to bring him back. He’s been sent to serve him. And the best he can do now is to guard the door. And pray like he’s never prayed. To stretch his faith. To use a weapon he can’t touch to aim at a target he cannot see. Because it’s come down to this. Only prayer can help Nehemiah succeed on a mission Butch d
oesn’t understand. Only prayer can bring him out alive. And a marine doesn’t leave a man behind. Butch drops to his knees in the center of the cave’s opening, and with his eyes wide open, looking beyond the space, he prays like a poet. Call it inspired. Call it desperation. Regardless of the source, these are the words that filter up from the cave’s entrance and take flight. I write them down. “In darkness, be his eyes. In weakness, be his strength. In fear, be his faith.”
Butch remains kneeling on those words with Nehemiah’s face before him. And he determines that if he has to, he will remain this way until Nehemiah comes walking out. Or until there is nothing to walk out of, or into.
Magnus begins singing a song, first humming it under her breath, then the words come halting out. Magnus doesn’t sing well. But she sings loud enough to make up for it. “Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey? Won’t you come home?” she sings. “I’ve cried the whole night long. I’ll do the cooking, honey. I’ll pay the rent. I know I done you wrong.” Her words dissipate into humming.
“That’s not a very nice song,” Kate says. “You orta sing something better than that.”
“Just popped up in my mind,” Magnus says. “Ain’t that a funny thing? I had forgot all about that song.”