Well in Time

by SUZAN STILL

  Father Keat sat behind his judge’s desk with his head bowed, staring at his folded hands.

  ”It’s hard,” he said at last, “when you realize you’ve become horrible through your own diligence at homicide. People think criminals are crude and have low intelligence, but we Ghosts see it as a spiritual problem of intelligence gone awry.”

  Calypso found herself on her feet, gazing at the collected men, who stared back through sad eyes. She had no idea what to say, but knew she needed to say something, to lay some kind of balm on their collective psyche.

  They looked at her expectantly, and Calypso realized it was time for her to give her own defense. What could she say to move the hearts of a roomful of assassins? It seemed that her case could only come out right if it included sending light into the darkness of these men’s hearts. Maybe she even had been guided here for that very purpose.

  “A wise person once told me,” she began, thinking of Father Roberto in Chiapas, “that all things are sacred to those who are led by spirit—who are subordinated to mercy, ennobled by love, dominated by truth, and restrained by justice.”

  She let her eyes glide from one grim, watchful face to the next.

  “I have come among you quite by accident. When I learned who and what you are, I thought I would never find mercy, love, truth or justice here.”

  She stepped forward, her long skirt swaying, her dark, silvered hair drawn over one shoulder and her green eyes somber.

  “Yet, what I expected and what I found were quite different. I discovered men who had committed terrible crimes, yes. But more importantly, I found men who have experienced genuine remorse. Who have known deep anguish of spirit. Who have repented of their dark deeds.

  “I am not a simple woman. I have lived in the world and I know how wicked and violent and greedy and cruel it can be. I know that, this very moment, there are men and women in places of power whose crimes rival yours and probably exceed them. And I know that remorse and repentance are the furthest thing from their minds. Which makes your transcendence of your actions all the more amazing and admirable.

  “I can’t absolve you. I don’t have that power. But I can tell you what I know about human behavior. We all make mistakes. And we keep making them until we realize they’re mistakes. And then, we don’t do that anymore.

  “You’ve all made a huge leap in consciousness, from killing to not killing. You killed when you didn’t know any better than to kill. Now, you don’t kill because you know better.”

  She knew she was babbling. She looked at the faces of the men, turned up to her with a kind of expectation, possibly with hope. She wondered how long it had been since any of them had even seen a woman, as she lifted her hands and opened her arms to them in a gesture of inclusion and forgiveness.

  “All I ask of you,” she concluded, “is that you allow me and my friend Hill to go free. Your secret is safe with us. We are honorable people—just as I now believe you to be.”

  A shuffle of feet, a murmur of assent and nodding of heads erupted from the audience. Calypso felt a surge of hope until a harsh voice called out. It was El Lobo, frowning at her from his post by the door.

  “You’re a liar! You swore, even under the Devil’s Breath, that you came through the cave from the Urique Canyon but that’s impossible. So why should we believe anything you say? Maybe you’re here to spy on us.”

  Another voice shouted from within the audience, “Yeah! I think you’re lying, too!” Several more voices joined in the chorus of suspicion, until Father Keat’s gavel came down in a single, sharp rap.

  Shaken, Calypso gathered herself and answered, “It is true that I came through the cave from the Urique to the Batopilas canyon. I can show you how it’s done, if you like.”

  “I’ve spent years exploring that cave, and I know that it’s impossible.” El Lobo’s tone was surly.

  “Then it’s imperative that I show you. And I would like to request that others come, too, so that I have fair witnesses.”

  She addressed this last to Father Keat, who nodded impassively.

  “And I also request that my friend Hill be present.”

  “Why?” Father Keat asked.

  “Because I need to know he’s alive and unharmed.”

  “Or what?” El Lobo sneered. “Are you threatening us?”

  “Not at all. Hill is my friend and I’m worried about him.”

  She turned with an expansive gesture to the men seated before her.

  “You may be a company of Ghosts, but I can see that you’re also a company of friends. Wouldn’t you be concerned for your friend if he were captured and held against his will?”

  “One thing at a time,” Father Keat demanded. “In the meantime, I’ll go with you to the cave myself. Who else will to go?”

  A few hands were raised and Father Keat picked eight men, Lone-R among them.

  “It takes at least twenty-four hours for the entire passage,” Calypso said, needing them to understand the magnitude of the undertaking. “It won’t be just an afternoon jaunt.”

  “We’ve got nothing but time here,” Father Keat said, with a strange, twisted smile. “And you need to understand something: if you can’t prove this to us, there will be consequences.”

  He paused to let the threat sink in.

  “We’ll go after lunch,” and he motioned for Lone-R and El Lobo to take Calypso back to her room.

  §

  The afternoon was cold but the rain had ceased as Calypso and eight Ghosts set off for the cave. The men had changed from cassocks to camouflage and were carrying weapons.

  Calypso, wearing the same dirty clothing from the last cave crossing, relished the fresh air and cool sunshine, surprised at how just two days of confinement had dampened her natural optimism. A small wind played along the edge of the canyon, and the cliffs rose coppery against a very blue sky swept clean of clouds. She concentrated on these things so that she didn’t have to think about what lay ahead.

  As far as she could imagine, the only way to prove that there was a passage to the Urique Canyon was to take one of the men through. That meant going back into the tube not once but twice. If she allowed herself to think about that, it would sicken her and she would bolt. So she kept her eyes roaming, taking in the way nooks in the stone held small caches of rainwater, tinted turquoise by reflected sky.

  The men moved at a vigorous pace, making her aware that, although not young, these men were extremely fit. El Lobo led the way, bounding up onto stones and leaping down again with his namesake, Lobo, close behind. Father Keat brought up the rear. No one spoke a word.

  When they reached the grotto, she was surprised when everyone stopped, turned to the Virgin of Guadalupe on the back wall, and said silent prayers. Calypso joined them, praying fervently that she would have the courage to carry out the terrible passage through the tube. Then, without a word, the men fell into formation again, with Calypso in the middle, and they dog-trotted down the steep, narrow game trail, then worked their way uphill through the boulder field to the mouth of the cave.

  They shed their daypacks and pulled out headlamps. Then, with solemn eyes, they turned to look at Calypso. She fitted her headlamp over her forehead, wrapped her long hair in a chignon at the base of her neck, and took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, “let’s go.”

  §

  They clambered into the cave, El Lobo and Lobo leading, Calypso going second. It was clear that not everyone had been into the cave before. There were brief exclamations of discovery and surprise.

  El Lobo stepped back and with mocking gallantry, waved Calypso forward. “After you, milady.”

  Calypso got her bearings and found the tunnel leading toward the tube. Without a word, she ducked into it, knowing that the men would follow—all except one left at the entrance as guard. She felt the rush of adrenaline that always accompanied the first minutes of a dive into the depths of stone. Her body screamed to be released back into sunlight and fresh air, but she subdued her impu
lses and willed herself forward.

  An hour later, scraping and swearing, the men arrived one by one out of the tunnel into the chamber holding the entrance to the tube. When they were all assembled she said, “This is it. Who’s going to go in with me?”

  “Go in where?” It was El Lobo and his tone was scornful.

  Calypso turned and pointed to the base of the far wall with its narrow aperture. “There,” she said.

  A moment’s silence elapsed as all eyes followed her pointing finger, and their collective headlamp beams converged. Then a murmur arose.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding,” someone said.

  “No way,” came another voice.

  “That’s impossible,” El Lobo said.

  “No,” she said adamantly. “It’s not impossible. And I’m going to prove it to you. Who’s going to come with me?”

  For the first time, El Lobo looked uncertain.

  “This is some kind of trick,” he said. “She’s gonna get one of us in there and pull some kind of fast one.”

  He laid his hand on the head of the wolf. The animal stood stock still, staring at Calypso.

  Calypso was growing impatient. She knew her resolve would fade if she didn’t go into the tube soon. The very thought of it was making her heart race and her breathing accelerate.

  “Fine. So we’ve come this far but now no one will go with me to prove that this can be done?”

  “I’ll go.” It was Lone-R.

  Calypso hesitated, her face stricken.

  “What’s the matter? You afraid to go in there with him?” El Lobo jeered.

  Calypso shook her head slowly.

  “No. It’s just that the passage is very tight. My husband is a big man and so is Hill, and they could barely squeeze through. I’m afraid for Lone-R that he might not be able to get past the smallest part.”

  She scanned Lone-R appraisingly. He had shoulders like a pro football player, his head was large, his arms and legs massive.

  “Truthfully,” she said finally, “I don’t think you’d fit. And it’s a terrible thing to get wedged in there. The first time I went through, I got stuck and I thought I was going to die. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”

  Father Keat looked from one man to the next, and no one would meet his eye, except Lone-R.

  “El Lobo,” he said at last, “you’re the one who thinks this can’t be done. You’re the one calling Miss Searcy a liar. I nominate you to go and I call for a vote of those assembled.”

  He raised his own hand and looked expectantly at the others. One by one, some quickly, others reluctantly, their hands went up. Only El Lobo’s did not. “Looks like this is your gig, El Lobo,” Father Keat said grimly. “Better get a move on. We’ll expect you back in two days, give or take a few hours.”

  To hide her apprehension, Calypso bent to check her pack. She fastened the drag line, checked her extra batteries, and the small store of rations from the monastery larder.

  Finally, she straightened and said, “Okay. Let’s go then,” and dragging the weight of Hill’s fate behind her along with her pack, she lowered herself to the floor and squirmed into the mouth of the tube.

  §

  No matter how many times she had passed through it, the living entombment of the tube taxed Calypso’s courage almost beyond bearing. Now, there was the added stress of El Lobo’s presence behind her, driving her on. Of one thing she was certain: he could do her no harm during the passage. His arms and hands would be pinioned.

  With that small comfort she wriggled forward, already feeling the lowering of the ceiling, the squeezing in of the walls. Behind her, she could hear the exertions of El Lobo, his muttering and his exclamations of fury, as he barked his elbows or cracked his head.

  It took some time before her ears picked up another sound. It was muffled and faint, but distinct from El Lobo’s exertions. The realization came as a shock: the wolf had followed his master into the tube! It, too, was worming itself along behind him, emitting small groans and yips of protest. Calypso’s heart was moved by this show of loyalty and it occupied her mind as she slithered deeper and deeper into the tube.

  As she approached the lowest spot, she fought back the feeling that the stone was slowly, ineluctably pressing down—that it would not stop until it had flattened her. To distract herself, she began calling instructions back to El Lobo. “We’re coming to the lowest part. I know it seems impossible, but the tunnel will narrow even more. Keep your arms at your sides and wiggle yourself forward using your hips and feet. In the smallest place, you’ll have to turn your head to the side to fit your skull under the rock. After that, flatten your shoulders and push with your toes. Once your shoulders are through, the worst is over.”

  She listened for a response, but all she could hear was a kind of low keening coming down the tube, like the sound of distant wind. She assumed that the terror of the stone had struck and knowing that nothing could save El Lobo now but his own courage, she wriggled onward.

  She arrived at the lowest place. Turning her head to the side, she felt the cool stone beneath her cheek as she slipped her head through. It was like being birthed, she always thought, each time she came through that terrible constriction.

  Was a baby conscious and terrified by its passage down the birth canal? Had she been, at her birth? And what would ever invoke lifetimes of reincarnation, knowing that this terror awaited, every single time? Surely, the pleasure and privilege of life must be great to overcome such memories!

  She pushed with the toes of her boots and inched her head and shoulders through, then her hips, and finally the pack. It caught crosswise for a few moments, during which her breath came in the gulps anticipating panic, but she managed to hook her toe under the line and give it a sharp upward jerk and the pack slid through.

  She was several feet beyond the narrowest part when she realized that she was no longer hearing any sounds behind her.

  “El Lobo?” she called, but there was no response.

  “El Lobo!” she yelled. Still nothing. “Christ!”

  The thought of the man behind her, paralyzed with terror, unable to proceed or retreat, moved her to pity. Even the most macho of men met unknown parts of themselves in the narrows of the tube. She would never forget Javier’s response the first time they traversed it.

  He was leading and when he came to the narrows, he froze for several minutes. He said later he was trying to find a way to fit his head under the stone, but that he was afraid they had come to a dead end and would have to backtrack. The thought of that, he had said, was more terrible than going forward and the panic of it drove him through the aperture like a hammer driving a nail.

  And while all that was happening, Calypso had been lying face down, her arms pressed to her sides, with the weight of the living stone descending like a huge mechanical press that she once had seen crushing wrecked cars. When finally they both had squirmed out of the tube into the cavern, they had lain in a heap, entwined in one another, and wept.

  As she strained to hear him, El Lobo was transmogrified from a menace to a suffering being, face to face in the terrifying embrace of his own mortality. She wished that she knew his real name, the one given him by his mother and father, the name that called him to supper and tucked him into bed each night. If she knew that small secret, she might be able to coax him forward.

  “What is your real name, El Lobo?” she asked.

  Silence.

  “Your name is the magic word.”

  Nothing rational she could say would make the smallest difference now. Intuition was guiding her.

  “Say your name, turn your head to the side, and push with your toes.”

  She strained to hear a response and heard instead his labored breathing. Then it came to her.

  “Turn your head, mijo, and push with your toes.”

  The Spanish endearment passed her lips softly: mijo, my son.

  The narrows confronted each person with his or her deepest horror and released them t
hrough their sweetest hope. For her, it had been her mother’s voice, singing at the piano, as distinctly as when she was a child curled in a chair in the music room. For Javier, it was a blinding jolt from the fingertips of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who appeared and disappeared like lightning. And for Hill, it had been the sudden opening of a crack in the stone, revealing an ethereal guide and filling his lungs with pure, cool air. Perhaps for El Lobo, it would be his mother’s voice, crooning.

  A muffled sob reached her, stifled by stone, but poignantly alive.

  “Push, mijo,” she called. “Push with your toes. Wiggle your hips. You’re almost through, mijo, trust me.”

  She listened with all her being and heard faint scraping sounds.

  “That’s right. Keep moving. Keep pushing, mijo.”

  The sobs were more distinct now. She moved forward, so that the pack would not impede his progress. And thus, slithering and calling encouraging endearments, Calypso forgot her own terror, and saved the sanity of her bitterest foe.

  §

  When she reached the cavern, Calypso, still moved by compassion, reached to pull El Lobo out of the tube and help him stand. Behind him, shivering and whining, came the wolf. She kept a steadying hand on El Lobo’s arm as she reached down to comfort the frightened animal. El Lobo tottered forward and leaned against a boulder, his headlamp sending arcs of yellowed light across the chaos of the cavern floor, in time to his wrenching sobs.

  Calypso knelt and put her arms around the wolf, pulling its thin, shivering shoulders into her breast and soothing over and over, “It’s okay. It’s okay now. What a fine creature you are. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  The animal leaned into her, almost toppling her, because her own legs were rubbery from exertion.

  She rose and went to El Lobo, saying gently, “You did well. You were very brave.”

  “My mother,” he said brokenly. “She came. Why would she come?”

  “Because she loves you.”

  He shook his head and doubled over in a renewed fit of weeping. Hands braced on knees, he sobbed in bitter, wrenching groans, his face glazed in tears and runnels of mucus. He tried to speak, but his words were twisted and tormented by explosive sobs and hiccups.