Chapter Twenty-Two
Screaming, Ronnie fought for balance on the bicycle and plunged down hard on the button. The light mounted on the front of the bike lit the walls of the tunnel, flooding them with luminescent intensity. They were pink and glistening. He again remembered his trip to the caverns around St. Louis. This cave had the same type of granulated rock structure with fissures and crevices but the whole time it had been clear that he had been looking at hard rock that formed over hundreds of year’s time. This was different: the walls seemed to pulsate outward, throbbing gently as he zoomed past them.
His moped at home could never perform the same way as this ethereal vehicle! For the first few yards it seemed as if he had been riding in a narrow cavern passage. He thanked the Almighty that it was flat and straight as far ahead as he could see. It was also wide, nearly wide enough to permit a car such as a Volkswagen bug or a Cooper Mini.
The walls still seemed similar to cavern walls, especially with the vivid pink and clay colors intertwined with tans and beiges. Faint violet lines also snaked through at intervals like intermittent thunderbolts. Light from the headlamp caused the colors to glisten and for a moment he wondered if they were wet from a recent flood.
While he was contemplating the shape, size, and texture of the tunnel, he was glad he kept the major part of his attention on the pathway ahead. The tunnel veered to the right. A surge of panic shot through him as he realized there were no brakes! He quickly checked the handlebars for grips (there were none) and he pushed down with his foot for a coaster pedal. Rather than forking off abruptly, the tunnel veered with a soft curve. It gave Ronnie time to think. His thumb would cause the motorbike to rocket ahead at full throttle.
What if he let up on the button slightly? It couldn’t be like a light bulb that flickered on and off at the touch of a switch. There was not much time to waste as soon the tunnel would bend again. The first clue that he could decelerate in this way happened when the headlight suddenly dimmed. It startled him, and he plunged down harder on the button reflexively, the motorbike spurting and sputtering ahead. Soon he found a smooth rhythm, cruising along at a dimmer, slower speed, gliding through the curves.
When he had visited the cavern in St. Louis, he remembered expecting there would be an echo. Instead, the air was still, sounds muffled. A tour guide had led the way for them. When he spoke, Ronnie got the sense he was pushing the volume in his voice to keep his words from falling flat in the stillness. As he rode in the strange cave presently, the only sound he heard was the sluicing of water and mud from the tires, like riding his bicycle on a damp spring day. To test his voice he shouted out, “Hello! Hello! Hello!” but his words fell blankly against the walls and floor.
Would there ever be an end to this labyrinth? So far he seemed stuck in the cavern in what must have looked like a maze if a giant were looking at a cross section view from above. The Empress had said “I will always be with you,” and suddenly Ronnie wondered what she meant. Was she actually his guardian angel? It made as much sense as anything else he could think of. There was not much time to think deeply about the subject. He knew if he slipped on the floor of the tunnel, missed a turn and rammed into one of the walls, dropping the bike, there was no one to help him. If he hurt himself, he would probably just lie there in pain and agony, possibly die, for real. Yet, could he actually get hurt? He wondered. If his actual body was languishing on a bed back home in Tulsa, what was this body? It was like a dream but he could feel pain when he pinched or slapped himself. But could he actually injure himself?
The floor seemed to drop out from underneath him and the vista broadened. He seemed to be riding on a rigid, gauzelike substance, able to see beneath the floor into a huge room lit by the headlamp to reveal a snakelike network of tubes and coils, all glistening in reds, violets, ambers, and yellows. In the larger, open space the sound of the tires splashing carried further and echoed. “Hey Empress lady!” he shouted out, his voice booming and echoing in the wide expanse. “What’s going on? Where am I?”
Still only the sound of the tires sluicing water and mud as a response. Right then the path up ahead dropped down like the first hill on a roller coaster. That was when he heard the Empress voice call out, her melodious alto booming in the cavern, jarring him but also soothing at the same time. “Ronald! Be brave! Hang on!”
Ronnie gripped the handlebars more tightly and leaned forward, the same as he would do at home when coasting down a high hill. The winged two-wheeled vehicle plummeted down a hill and he felt like one of those men on a bobsled during the Winter Olympics. He still kept the button pressed all the way down, a reflex action from gripping the handlebars so tightly. The engine and the downhill force synergized to rocket him through the twists and turns of the gauze, translucent tunnel.
He could still hear the Empress’ voice but the roar of his heart pounding in his ears drowned it out. She would shout out commands and suggestions like “Turn left!” and “Let up on the button!” and he thought he heard her say “You’re almost out!” but there were other voices as well. Snarling, angry voices like those of unkind, frustrated teachers lashing out at him or his father bellowing names at him during one of his temper tantrums. He could also hear his own screams and sobs as the bike tore through the tunnel pathways.
Ronnie realized that the cave had brightened, as if the wattage on his headlamp had increased one hundred fold. “Where am I going?” he shouted out, thinking that he had rocketed so far past the Empress she wouldn’t be able to hear him.
But she responded. “You’re almost there!” she said. Her voice was so clear and sharp he felt as if she had perched herself on the back of the bike and was whispering the words of encouragement directly into his ear. The light ahead brightened by the second and was soon so intense it washed out all the details of the cave, the violet and red tubes below him and the gauze floor. Yet the light did not hurt his eyes, strangely. He could keep them opened wide while gazing ahead.
Next he realized that he was no longer riding on the tunnel floor. He seemed to have been catapulted out into space and was now flying for real. “Angel!” he shouted out into the void, “Where am I?” He had kept poised ahead, holding tightly to the handlebars, but the bicycle had dissolved beneath him. He floated onward toward the bright light. “Angel! Anybody?” he kept shouting out over and over, the words thundering in his ears.
Someone responded.
The voice sounded much different from the Empress. More ordinary and very faint. “Ronnie? Are you there? Can you hear me?” It sounded like someone had turned on the radio with the volume dial at its lowest point, barely audible, but Ronnie was ecstatic that someone had heard him.
“Yes! I’m here! Can’t you see me? Where are you?”
“Ronnie? Are you there? Can you hear me?”
“Yes! I can hear you!”
The woman’s voice was louder now, but still barely above a whisper. Ronnie wondered if there was a way he could kick and use his arms and legs to swim toward this person speaking to him.
“Ronnie, are you there?”
He wondered if this was some sort of a cruel joke. He had told her over and over that he could hear her and she couldn’t seem to hear his reply. Suddenly his body became leaden, heavy, and with a whoosh he was pulled toward something which felt like a whirlpool. Like the drain on the bathtub swirling down but a thousand times stronger, the force of the escaping water able to pull him along with it. The force pulled him feet first and he still felt a sensation of rocketing forward yet he was lying down, as if on a sled.
Gradually his arms, legs and body felt heavier and the rocketing sensation slowed but all the while the woman’s voice called out to him in an ever-increasing volume: “Ronnie, are you there?”
The bright light dimmed, and he was aware that he could see shadows and shapes. His shoulder ached and his hip felt as if someone had slugged him with a baseball bat there. And his head burned with a feverish ache that throbbed against his skull. “Ro
nnie, are you there?” the voice repeated, yet again but this time the echo had vanished. He realized that now he was in front of this woman who had been calling out to him. The shapes and shadows he’d been seeing slowly materialized into her hair, the corners and tip of a cap she was wearing, her eyes, her nose, and her moving lips, forming the words, calling out to him.
She was a nurse. Dark haired and pretty. When he could see all the details of her face clearly, he could see a light of joy in her wide-open eyes and a smile of triumph. “Ronnie, just nod if you can hear me. Squeeze my hand!” He allowed his chin to drop. His head seemed to have been restrained in a box-like object. The nurse was clasping his hand tightly and, as she asked, he squeezed back for her. “Oh my God, Ronnie, you’re back! “It’s a miracle!”
Meanwhile in the World where Kennedy Survived Page 22