Kachina

by Rada, J. R.

  “Looks like we’re just about there,” Gary said to Jared Chapman as the tall black man settled into the passenger seat beside Gary.

  Jared nodded and opened the can of Hawaiian Punch he had taken from the refrigerator in back of the Winnebago only a few moments before. “Not much in the way of scenic beauty around here. Be nice to see some green grass or a nice big oak or maple.”

  “We’re not concerned with what’s up here. Our job’s in the cavern. There’ll be plenty to see down there.”

  Gary had known Jared for nine years since they had both started teaching at the University of Tennessee at the same time. Together, they had explored over fifty caves throughout the world, including the Mammoth Caves in Kentucky and Carlsbad Caverns in Arizona. They had also authored two books on caving; one on mastering the basics and the other on mapping caves. Among spelunkers, they were considered two of the best, which is why the Utah Bureau of Recreation and Parks had hired them for this particular job.

  The sheriff’s sedan kicked up so much dust that Gary almost lost sight of it. He slowed the Winnebago to a crawl so that he wouldn’t rear end the sheriff’s car accidentally.

  “Do you really think it’s as big as they say?” Jared asked after a moment of silence. “It’s hard to imagine there being enough water running through this country to carve a cavern that’s the size they’ve described.”

  Gary grinned. “It’s that big. I can feel it. They explored it for five weeks and they still didn’t explore it fully. I bet it’s even bigger than they think.”

  He leaned forward in his seat hoping to see a little better. The dust in front of the Winnebago settled. He was thankful for that. It probably meant the sheriff had stopped. They were at the cave entrance.

  “The search-and-rescue team that pulled out David Purcell said they explored fifteen chambers, but they also said there were more, a lot more,” Gary added.

  Gary saw the police car in front of him. The sheriff had stopped. Pulling up beside the car, Gary turned off the engine. About half a dozen yards in front of the police car was a small area surrounded by metal poles driven into the ground and yellow tape running between them that read, “Police Line. Do Not Cross.”

  Gary stepped out of the RV as Lou Montgomery’s red Jeep Cherokee pulled up on the other side of the sheriff’s car. Gary waved to the two men in the Jeep and walked over to the sheriff’s car.

  Sheriff Harding rolled down his window. He was an overweight man in his mid-fifties. Gary could tell the man had no intention of getting out in the ninety-degree heat unless he had to.

  “Well, this is the place, Mr. Morse.” The sheriff pointed over to taped-off area. “Unless you need me for anything else, I’ve got to head down to Bluff for the day.”

  Gary held out his hand and shook the sheriff’s hand. “Thanks for the escort out here. Even with the yellow tape marking it, it’s an easy place to miss.”

  Sheriff Harding nodded. “I know. If my deputy hadn’t found Purcell’s sports coat, we might never have seen the hole ourselves. Without it, we probably wouldn’t have thought to explore off the highway. I can radio into town for one of my deputies to escort the other two members of your team out here when they get into town.”

  Christine and Alex still hadn’t arrived this morning. Their flight out of Louisville had been delayed, but Gary had been so anxious to get out to the cave site that he had decided to leave Blanding without them. They would catch up later. When all six cavers got together, the team would be complete and they could begin their work. While the rest of them waited for Alex and Christine, they could start preparing to go down.

  Gary shook his head. “That’s not necessary. They know what highway we’re on and approximately how far from Blanding we are. It’s a lot easier to see the Winnebago than the yellow tape. I don’t think they’ll have any trouble finding us.”

  Sheriff Harding shrugged. “Suit yourself. Good luck. And be careful down there. I don’t want to have to send another search-and-rescue team in after you.”

  The sheriff laughed as he rolled up his window. Gary laughed politely, but he didn’t think the comment was very funny. Not that he would need someone to come and find him. He hadn’t written a book on cave mapping because he got lost all the time.

  Gary smiled and stepped away from the car. Sheriff Harding backed the car up stirring up the dust again. Gary held one hand to his mouth to try and keep from swallowing the swirling cloud of dust and waved with the other hand. The car pulled out onto the highway and within a few moments was lost within the shimmering heat waves bouncing off the asphalt.

  Gary wiped his hands over himself trying to brush some of the dust from his University of Tennessee t-shirt and blue jeans. The problem was the dirt turned into mud when it mixed with the sweat on his arms and face.

  He walked over to the Jeep. Lou Montgomery and Billy Joe Nash were sitting inside. Both men were friends of his from Knoxville. Lou was another professor of geology and Billy Joe was a graduate student studying botany. They were also both experienced cavers, which was why Gary had asked them along on this job. They would get paid for exploring and mapping a new cave system, something both of them would have probably done for fun.

  The Cherokee’s engine was still running so they could keep the air conditioner on. Billy Joe, sitting on the passenger side, rolled down his window. He was twenty-seven-years old with long, blond hair that he tied back in a short ponytail. He had the lean, hard body of a gymnast, which came from the hours of working out on gymnastics equipment at the university. Women were attracted to him, but most of them did not share his notion that exploring a cave was an ideal weekend getaway.

  Billy Joe pointed to the marked-off area. “That’s not the natural entrance, is it?”

  “Sure doesn’t look like it. However, it’s our only entrance for the time being,” Gary replied. “Why don’t you and Lou come on over to the RV? Jared has the air conditioner on and he’s in there sipping a Hawaiian Punch.”

  Lou turned the engine off and jumped out of the truck. At forty-five, he was the oldest person in the group. In contrast to Billy Joe, Lou wore his black hair trimmed short. He was a two inches taller than Gary’s five feet, six inches, and he was just beginning to show the bulging belly that most men usually got before his age. Lou started toward the RV detouring to look down into the hole David Purcell had fallen into five weeks ago. Then he jogged over to the Winnebago and entered it with his two friends.

  Jared was sitting on the cushioned bench flipping through the television channels on the small, black and white television set. He turned to the three men as they came in.

  “Close that door. I just got it down to a comfortable temperature in here.” He slapped the television with his palm. “I can’t get a single station in on this thing. I guess I’ll have to set up the satellite antennae later.”

  Gary motioned to Lou and Billy Joe. “You guys grab yourself something to drink and then start setting up the tripod and the winch over the hole.” Gary opened a closet and took out a long ball of thick twine that had a weight tied on one end of it from the shelf. “Jared, let’s you and I see how deep this hole is.”

  “Not even going to let us catch our breaths, are you?” Jared joked.

  Gary shook his head. “I’m anxious to see what’s down there. This will be a totally new system.”

  Jared gulped down the rest of his fruit punch, tossed the can in the recycling bin, and headed out the door behind Gary.

  “Don’t you want to wait for Christine and Alex before you head down?”

  “Of course I’ll wait for them, Jared, but at least when they get here we’ll be ready to head down.”

  Lou and Billy Joe walked back to the Cherokee, each with a beer in his hand. Jared and Gary pulled up the metal poles that held the yellow-tape police line around the hole. When they had finished, they laid the poles off to the side and sat down near the edge of the hole.

  “You’re pretty anxious to get started, aren’t you?
” Jared asked.

  Gary smiled. “Is it that obvious?”

  Jared nodded. He turned on a powerful flashlight and shined it into the hole. He whistled when he saw that the light didn’t reach the bottom.

  “This chamber’s deep,” Jared commented. “And you say that David Purcell didn’t break any bones falling through here?”

  “That’s what I was told,” Gary answered.

  “Lucky man.”

  Gary tossed one end of the weighted string over the edge and began to gradually play out the rest of it. Each foot of the white string was marked with a black line to make it easier to count off the feet. Gary had originally thought the chamber might be fifteen-feet deep. However, the fifteen-foot mark disappeared over the edge and was lost in the darkness. The slack in the line appeared between the twenty-six-foot mark and the twenty-seven-foot mark.

  Gary lifted and lowered the string to find the point when the slack began. He grabbed the string between his fingers and held it out to Jared. Jared pulled out a small tape measure and measured the distance from the twenty-six-foot mark to Gary’s finger.

  “Four and a quarter inches. Twenty-six feet, four and a quarter inches,” Jared said.

  “Lucky man,” Gary said, repeating Jared’s earlier comment about David.

  Jared nodded. “The bottom of the cave must be made of sponge for him not to have broken any bones in the fall. Either that or his bones must be made of steel.”

  Gary leaned over the edge. “The roof looks to be about four-feet thick. That would make the actual chamber height about twenty-two feet plus a few inches.”

  Jared shook his head slowly. “A two-story tall chamber. I wonder how wide it is.”

  “We’d better not bring the truck and RV in any closer. We don’t want to find another weak spot in the roof like David Purcell.”

  Billy Joe and Lou walked over to the hole with the metal tripod. It was used to hold the winch line over the cavern so the cavers could easily be lowered and raised from the chamber without a danger of fraying the nylon cord. By using the tripod and winch, they wouldn’t have to struggle to climb up a shaky nylon ladder when they were exhausted from a day of exploring. Billy Joe anchored the six-foot high tripod over the hole and ran the winch line through the pulley that hung from the intersection of the three tripod legs.

  Gary told Lou and Billy Joe how high the chamber was. Billy Joe looked over the edge and whistled just as Jared had done.

  Then he looked at the others and said, “I can’t wait to get down there. This is going to be quite an adventure.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Watching the reporters file into his room reminded David of the clowns at the circus. A small car, which looked just big enough for one clown, would stop in the center of one of the circus rings. The door would open and a clown would climb out, then another and another and another. More clowns than could be physically inside the car. Every time David thought the line of reporters would end, another walked through the door.

  Dr. Haskell had said that Blanding Community Hospital didn’t have a conference room so David would have to talk to the reporters from his bed in his room. David preferred that anyway. His legs were sore and he didn’t want to walk if he didn’t have to. A nurse had come in right after breakfast to wash and cut his hair. David also shaved his face, which was a slow-going process, but at least he looked presentable for the reporters.

  David tried to smile as half a dozen photographers snapped his picture. Blue-dotted visions of flashbulbs blinded his view so that he could see little else besides bright splotches of light. He had wanted to see light, but not that bright. David ran his hand over his cheeks to make sure he hadn’t gouged his face with the razor. Although David was a man who had been lost for five weeks in a cave, he didn’t want to look it.

  He felt the heat from a bright light being used by a television reporter. The brightness hurt his eyes even more than the flashbulbs. The intensity of the light reminded him of the bright light he had seen in his dream, but unlike his dream, this light was not fading. It was also not all-encompassing like the light in his dream. Wouldn’t the light make him look pale? The thought of appearing pale white to the people who saw him disturbed him for some reason. He supposed it was because looking so pale under the light would make him look ill.

  The smell of different colognes and perfumes in the room combined to form one noxious odor that made David feel like heaving up his breakfast, which he hadn’t cared much for anyway. At least seven reporters, six photographers, and a cameraman were in the room with him, which was about six people too many for the small room. He wasn’t sure who was with what newspaper or television station, but that probably didn’t matter much. They were all going to share the same information.

  David waved his hands in front of himself to tell the reporters that he was ready to begin.

  “I’m not sure how press conferences are usually conducted. I don’t usually fall into deep holes to get the media’s attention,” David explained as he raised the end of his bed so he could easily sit up. “If you want to ask your questions one at a time, I’ll try to answer them as well as I can.”

  “How are you feeling, David? The country is anxious to hear,” an older woman asked. David almost laughed. What did the country care about him? All his family lived in Utah and Idaho. Probably very few people outside of those two states even knew his name.

  Was this the fifteen minutes of fame Andy Warhol had promised everyone in the country?

  David tried to answer the woman’s question seriously. “Fine. I’m feeling fine. Actually, according to Dr. Haskell, I’m better than expected considering I’ve spent the last five weeks of my life in a cave. The doctor says I show no signs of dehydration or starvation.”

  “What happened to you? How did you fall into the cave?” a male reporter asked with a heavy western accent. He wore thick glasses and a thin mustache. David guessed the man was definitely a newspaperman. He didn’t fit the television-reporter image.

  “I was hitchhiking to Blanding because my car blew a radiator hose. I was walking in the grass because it was easier on my feet and it wasn’t as hot as the road. The ground caved in under my feet, and I fell into the hole. Unfortunately, the hole led into the cave.”

  “What did you eat while you were in the cave?” a woman asked.

  David shrugged. “Who knows? I certainly don’t.”

  “Are you saying you don’t know because you couldn’t see it in the dark?” the reporter continued.

  David shook his head. “No, I’m saying I don’t know because I can’t remember.”

  “Do you have amnesia?” the male reporter with the western accent asked. He had a high-pitched voice, which David found annoying. Even a radio station couldn’t have used him as a reporter.

  “That’s what it looks like. I can’t remember anything after falling into the cave. Dr. Haskell says the amnesia could be a result of the fall. He said there are some unexplained bruises on my head. I’m lucky I’m not blind as well. It’s not unusual for someone exposed to total darkness for such a long time to become blind for a short time until their eyes get used to the light again, or worse yet, to become blind permanently. Dr. Haskell wants to take x-rays of me later to make sure I don’t have any hidden broken bones.” Actually the x-rays were being taken because Dr. Haskell hadn’t been able to confirm that his previous x-rays had gotten mixed up with someone else’s.

  “So why aren’t you blind? Was there light in the cave you could see by?” a young female reporter asked. She had a sultry sounding voice, and the face to match. Definitely a television reporter. She was even more attractive than the red-headed nurse David had seen when he first woke up in the hospital.

  “Like I said, I can’t remember much about my time down there. But I can remember that it was pitch dark. So I’m not sure of why I’m not blind. I guess I’m just lucky. Dr. Haskell thinks I must have seen some light down there to keep my eye muscles from atrophying.”

&nb
sp; “Do you remember moving around at all down there? I mean, the search-and-rescue team took five weeks to find you. They thought they were going to find a dead body, not a live person. You surprised them, but you obviously didn’t stay where you had fallen into the cave,” the older female reporter asked. She stood waiting with her mini-recorder aimed at him. To David, it seemed the reporters were waiting for him to make a confession.

  David shrugged. “I guess I must have moved, but I don’t know why. One of the things they taught me in Boy Scouts was if you are lost, you should stay at the point where you realized you were lost. If you were with a group, someone will find you,” David replied.

  David’s mouth felt so cottony he picked up the glass of water next to the bed and sipped it.

  “Mr. Purcell, you’ve said you showed no signs of dehydration or starvation. Looking at you, I would say that’s true. Since you were hitchhiking into Blanding after your car broke down, I doubt you were carrying a knapsack full of food. How could you not be at least a little underweight? Caves aren’t known for their abundance of food.”

  David was felt hot in the crowded room. He wished this press conference was over with already.

  “I really don’t know,” David said. “I don’t remember anything. To prevent dehydration, I might have found some water in the cave, but I truly don’t know what I ate while I was lost. I must have found something, though. I’m hoping I’ll remember when I recover from my amnesia.”

  “Will you recover?”

  David nodded his head vigorously. “Certainly. It’s just like in those old movies. I need to get a brick dropped on my head or get hit in the head with a hammer.” The reporters laughed. “Unfortunately, I’m not able to say how long it will take. I hope I remember everything that happened to me during the last five weeks by the time I leave the hospital.” David paused. “Listen, I hate to be rude, but I’m about done in for the day. I’m sure Dr. Haskell can answer any other questions you might have.”