Savior

by Caplan, Anthony

  When the show ended and they had everything packed, they gathered inside the plastic-covered shed where Muscowequan had his Arctic Cats, five of them in various stages of repair. He picked out two, pushed them to the front of the line, and got them both started with some help from Jacob and Briscoe and some sprays of carburetor cleaner. Ricky looked on with Willy, who intermittently rubbed his back when he held still. He was shivering, trying to stay warm by rubbing his hands in the gloves and hopping up and down.

  On the trip out, riding with Muscowequan, Ricky sort of dozed. He didn't notice much except the jarring in his bones and the cold seeping up his legs and numbing his extremities. They rode for almost an hour along the banks and ravines of the river's edge. The ice and snow banks merged with the black of the night and the noise of the engines pitching up and down. Then Muscowequan stopped. He got off and Ricky did the same. Jacob and Briscoe came up behind and parked. The river was making cracking noises as the cold froze it up, massive floes jamming up beside it. Muscowequan led the way with a headlamp. They tramped in the snow with drifts up to their hips in some places. A few times, Muscowequan stopped and got onto his side and dug in the snow along an ice floe. He finally found what he thought was the cave entrance where rocks jutted up at a bend in the river. He took off his pack and retrieved a pick from the side pocket. Then he chipped away at some ice and slipped away into the bank headfirst, into a crack nobody else could see. Jacob, Briscoe and Ricky waited, peering down into the bank of the river where Muscowequan had gone.

  Cold out tonight, said Jacob, lighting a cigarette. He offered Ricky one, but Ricky turned him down. Briscoe held something out in his bare hand.

  Here have this.

  What is it?

  Something my grandmother had from the St. Ignatius mission in the Kalispell country, in Washington. Her father was from down there. You being a Yank I thought you should have it.

  Jacob shined a light on it in Ricky's glove. It was an old medal with a worn mother and child. Ricky took his glove off and stuck it in the pocket of his jeans under the rain pants. Then he hopped up and down and shook his hands to get some feeling back.

  Thanks.

  No problem.

  Muscowequan emerged headfirst and stood.

  This is it, he said after catching his breath.

  He walked back to the snowmobile and pulled out the gear bag. He came back with a coil of rope and another headlamp.

  Here, Ricky. This is for you. Are you ready?

  Ricky put the headlamp around his head.

  Yeah. Let's go.

  Jacob and Briscoe watched as Ricky and Muscowequan slid back down the bank.

  Good luck, said Jacob.

  Ricky turned and waved acknowledgment. In the beam of Jacob’s light, Muscowequan looked grim and unsmiling. It was beginning to snow, and the snowflakes, backlit by Ricky’s own headlamp, were black specks flicking in front of them.

  Muscowequan wriggled underneath the escarpment of rock. Ricky followed, pulling himself along the ice. Once inside, they were in a little hollow where Muscowequan turned on his belly.

  Follow me. Stay down, said Muscowequan.

  The tunnel turned 180 degrees, and then they had to reverse their bodies to get down and around a large boulder. The sides of the boulder were wet. Then the passage went down a series of convoluted steps that they had to squeeze around. Finally, they were on a flat piece of ground. The headlamps' beams flashing around on the sides of the cave revealed patterns of yellow and white, streaked rock.

  This is limestone. The groundwater hollowed it out. It's getting warmer the deeper we go. Look at this. Muscowequan reached down and found a small ball of stuff, a nest made by some animal.

  River rats. Look at these. Cotton threads. Paper. This is all being brought up from the labs they got down there. Nobody knows what it is they're doing, but I do believe your father is a prisoner there. Okay, Ricky. This is where it's going to get hairy. See that? Muscowequan shone his headlamp on a gap further along the floor.

  Yeah?

  That's where you go down.

  You're not coming?

  No. I'll be waiting here. You have about ten hours of battery time in the headlamp. If you don't find your way in, get back to the rope and get back up to me. If you do find your way in, get out with your father and get back to me here. Either way, I'll be here waiting. A couple of days. After that, I'll assume you've found another way out. Okay?

  I guess.

  This is what you wanted, right?

  Yeah.

  Ricky, the old ones told us about you. They said it would be a boy with a scar from the Sun coming to save the world from the death of the Old Woman. This is her cave. She's sitting down there somewhere boiling a pot of berry soup and making a rawhide robe. If she ever finishes the robe, it's the end of the world. If she's ever stopped from working, it's the end of the world. You'll recognize her. She's got a face like a shriveled nut, the way old women used to look before white men came here. But don't be scared. She's on your side. You understand?

  I think so.

  While Muscowequan uncoiled the rope and let it down into the hole, Ricky found himself thinking he could smell the ocean. It was crazy.

  Why does it smell like the ocean, Muscowequan?

  I don't know. I never smelled the ocean. The closest I got was Lake Huron. There were some cargo boats bound for the St. Lawrence. Maybe they smelled like the ocean. Maybe it's fear you're smelling.

  Maybe it feels like I'm going down pretty deep.

  Oh, you’re going pretty deep, all right. For sure it's deep. But you can get back up. Just remember how to retrace your path. Every time you turn, look back and left and right and think of what you see as a picture. Turn it into a picture. That way you'll have a mental map of the territory as the pictures come back to your mind. You got that?

  Pictures in my mind.

  Every time the path takes a turn. Look at the picture around you.

  That's something my dad used to say.

  I hope you find him.

  Thanks, Muscowequan.

  I'll be here. Thank you, Ricky. Say hi to the Old Woman when you see her. Tell her we didn't mean to bother her.

  Keep working on the robe.

  That's right.

  Muscowequan wrapped the rope around his hips and braced himself against the side of the cave. Ricky took the rope into his gloved hands and backed into the hole. When he looked down he couldn't see the bottom for the blackness. He didn't know how to rappel, but he managed to let himself down little by little, letting the rope burn through his gloves with his feet pushing off the walls. Before he knew it he had come to the end of the rope, almost letting it slip right through his grip. He looked down and he still could not see the bottom. Losing strength quickly, he decided he would release his hold and try to climb down the rest of the way. The walls of the cave were dripping water, and he clung to the first handhold with every ounce of strength. He didn't even want to think of what would happen if he fell and hurt himself. He couldn't bear the thought of having to cry out for help to Muscowequan sitting there way up above him, believing in him. His foot slipped and he was hanging from the rocks above a crevasse of unknowable depth. Had Muscowequan miscalculated the length of rope? He had to trust him. Holding his breath, he let go and dropped.

  Nineteen—The Heart Pawned for Wisdom

  I was getting stronger. It felt like we were past the worst. We both thought that soon we would see the light of day. The air just had that feel to it.

  Lucas was in on the secret of my presence. He came in with food and stayed by the door.

  Sabine and I ate with our hands, ravenous for more, while he told us about the town, about the movies they saw. Apparently, many of the Santos Muertos men were getting into town and finding the pace of life unsettling. Chagnon would have prohibited their going, but he knew he would have a rebellion on his hands. The solution was quick rotation; both Guajiro and Ruben were gone. Lucas, however, was still aroun
d and in no hurry to get back to Bucaramanga despite the distance from family and friends. He was enjoying this exile of his and considered himself secretly, ironically, and somehow pleasurably, in the same boat as us. He liked talking to us. He brought us up to the baths one night and then waited for us while we wiped each other down. Lucas wanted to talk about the book, an anthology, The Best American Poetry of 1962. He'd discovered it on one of the seats during a college movie night. It was like it had been left there for him. One poem he liked in particular was by Rexroth with the lines:

  The heart pawned for wisdom

  The heart

  Bartered for knowledge and folly

  The will troubled

  The mind secretly aghast

  He wanted to know what aghast meant. And he wanted Sabine and me to help him understand what it was like to spend a lot of time in such a life, such a state of mind, as to be impressed by this kind of language. He was like a man who had lost his way and acknowledged that in some ways we were his liberators instead of his prisoners. He couldn't go to Chagnon with this because poetry was an endeavor tied to the cult of life. The Santa preferred a discreet silence, the desperation of knowing there was nothing to be gained from sharing words.

  He went back and forth. One day he was interested in movies and the next he would rail against what he could see of life on the outside. The absurdity and waste of so much of what he saw, so many goods, the energy devoted to vanity while others lived in squalor, was too much for him finally.

  You are like pigs, he liked to say on these days. Why do you think everyone hates you?

  But Lucas, everyone has weakness, everyone has folly. We need to awaken from the hatred of the past into a new life, Sabine would say. She had found a way to get Lucas to listen. She was winning the war for his soul.

  One day he came in, bothered by something. I expected it to be a movie or something he'd seen on a bus, but it was worse and different.

  Chagnon suspects there is more than one prisoner alive on the inside. He wants to go faster. Be more cruel, he says. No more food. Just water. In a week, if you are still alive, he will shoot you himself, personally. Also, I am to return to Bucaramanga and take up my study of computer science. The Santos need experts in logistics and that is what my future holds.

  Is that what you want, Lucas? asked Sabine. It sounds very conventional and not at all what you need.

  No.

  Then how can you do it?

  It is not a choice. He turned angrily towards us.

  This is the way it will be. From now, I will do what I can. But in a few days, there will be a new guard and no more food for you. Out of our friendship, I wanted to tell you. I, I am very sorry.

  There is no overstating the panic that set in after Lucas left. Sabine and I had had it so good for what seemed like a long time, though maybe it was only a month. We hadn't kept track of the days very well after all. But now it seemed pointless. Our concerns for keeping our minds sharp, for not losing sight of the greater aim, had led to this dead end. Our survival was now impossible. Without the lifeline provided by Lucas, we would starve. The only other option was to go down fighting, attempting to storm our way out the next time someone brought water. Sabine was in favor of trying. I didn't think I would manage to hold up my end of such a bargain. I didn't want her to harangue me about my failing. Bless her, she did not. It was a sign she was giving me that, in the end, together we mattered more to her than her own life alone. Besides, what else could she do? She hoped that I would find some courage.

  I found that, after all, I still held out hope for some other way out. I could smell the changing weather, the warmer days ahead, and I refused to give into a desperate attempt that would give us only a moment's relief from self-recriminations. False hope, in my book, was worse than a clear-eyed appraisal of the danger we were in.

  Sabine wandered off. I did not know where she was. I didn't want to go searching for her. The rats were scrabbling back there in the depths of the darkness. When Lucas came the next time he just had a thermos of water. He tried to go out the door again, but I grabbed his arm.

  No food, Lucas? I can't believe you could do this to us.

  It's not by me. I told you. Where is Sabine?

  I don't know.

  He turned pale. Under the blue lights by the cave door, I could clearly see his desperation. He was in agony.

  You have done something to her. You have hurt her.

  No. She's just gone off.

  I don't believe you. You have killed her and are eating the body. Her body to keep you alive. You are a pig, a hypocrite. With blood on your hands.

  Lucas. What are you saying?

  Don't stand and talk to me like this.

  He rushed me with open hands, trying to grab me by the throat and choke me. I threw a cross-body block. I couldn't help it. It was something I just remembered how to do. Then, before he could do anything, I was on top of him and pulling his gun out of its holster. I fired without a thought for what I was doing, like a man possessed, and I felt his body go limp.

  I wanted to tear my hair out. Lucas was someone's son, and I had taken his life. His love of poetry, his patience and earnest tenderness, all of these qualities I mourned. I prayed for a long time to be released from my body. I abstained from drinking the water in the thermos he had brought and began to hallucinate again. I prayed even harder that, after losing my mind, I would possibly be allowed to just slip away out of life. I didn't want to take my own life because I had argued Ricky out of it once and didn't want to backtrack on that. But who would it hurt now if I were gone? I asked God, I prayed to Jesus. Dispense with this trial. It's no good; I have failed.

  All was silent, except the water. I had a grip on death and didn't want to let go. Then I heard someone talking. It was Sabine. I listened as the voices approached, Sabine and Ricky talking.

  Here he is. See it's him.

  Sabine leaned down and shook me. Still I refused to open my eyes.

  Dad. It's me. It's Ricky.

  Ricky cradled my head. His eyes were more hooded than when I had seen him last. He looked older and he'd grown. I felt a shock, an electric current. I couldn't speak. Had part of my brain atrophied? All I could do was look at his face in amazement. Somehow he'd managed to reach me. And I, who had never doubted him, who had always preached to him of faithfulness as the highest virtue, had in the end doubted. I was ashamed and silenced by my hypocrisy more so than by my physical exhaustion and starvation. Eventually, I managed to sit up. Sabine took a little of the water and splashed it and rubbed my face.

  Ricky, if this is a dream, it's the best dream I've ever had.

  It's not a dream, he said with that characteristic earnestness.

  I hugged him to me, remembering the last time we'd spoken outside Evelio's mountaintop hut before the attack. Now, after all the months of captivity and just before I'd given up the ghost, there he was in answer to my prayers. I had to tell him about the prayers. I tried to tell him, but he wouldn't let me talk.

  You need to save your energy. We only have about two more hours of juice in my headlamp to find our way out. Are you strong enough to walk?

  With Sabine's help I stood up, unsteadily.

  We can make it, Ricky.

  Are you sure, Al? asked Sabine.

  Let's go now, while I'm up.

  Do you have anything to wear? The higher we climb, the colder it's going to get.

  Sabine and I looked at each other. We were almost naked, and like Adam and Eve, we hardly noticed any more. She turned toward the passage in answer, stepping over the body of Lucas, and Ricky and I followed.

  We left the burning flares of gas behind and followed the beam of light from Ricky's headlamp. We went up through a vent-like crevice, where I had to be helped. I tried to keep up the pace, but Ricky frequently had to fall back to help me along as we made our way, clambering from rock to rock. We rested on a narrow ledge when I couldn't climb any more. Ricky told me the roughest outline of h
is journeying, how he'd found his way, about the Canadian Mounties, about Tony being shot and killed in a parking lot in Fort McMurray and about the probable loss of the tablet.

  It doesn't matter anymore, whatever happens. You found me and we are going to get out of here. Nothing else matters, Ricky.

  Yeah, but the tablet. They might be able to finish whatever it is they wanted to build.

  Whatever gets built, Ricky, doesn't matter. You can beat it. Just remember that. Mind over matter.

  Do you think so? Can we will the world to be the way we want it?

  Sure we can, Ricky. You found me, didn't you?

  Maybe this is a dream.

  Come on, you told me this wasn't a dream. Don't go back on me now.

  Maybe it would be better if it was a dream.

  What are you saying?

  I don't know.

  Have faith, Ricky. God has a purpose. It will all be fine in the end.

  I try to believe that, but sometimes I can't help doubting. Did God help me find you?

  I think so.

  What was His point?

  I don't know. Look at us now. What was the point of this? I meant to include the cave, the darkness, and the light shining from Ricky's head.

  Look at this. Ricky showed me a medallion, an old Madonna and child almost entirely rubbed away. I handed it to Sabine. Ricky shone the light on her hand.

  Where'd you get it? I asked.

  Briscoe, one of the guys I told you about from Fort McMurray.

  Nice.

  It's very cool, Ricky, Sabine said, handing the medallion back to him.

  I want to believe, Ricky continued, but I just have a hard time thinking that it could be me who’s being singled out. I'd rather believe in luck or destiny or anything besides God.

  Whatever you want to call it is fine, Ricky, said Sabine.

  But it is you, Ricky, I said. Don't ever doubt that. When you hear your name being called, step up to the line.

  You don't need the medallion. You have it all inside your head, said Sabine.

  Thanks, said Ricky, looking at both of us in turn.