The Opium Equation

by Lisa Wysocky

  There were other thoughts running through my mind. Thoughts that also made my blood boil. One of them was the idea of Bubba and me starving to death in the tunnel. Another was me going mad from the blackness once the flashlight went out. I wasn’t sure I could handle that, or any of this for that matter. How does one come to terms with being killed?

  For once, common sense took over and I knew I had to get help. I had to get out of here and call Deputy Giles. Now.

  I turned and started to slip past Adam, but the crevasse was too small for the both of us. He put his hand with the knife out and I backed off. I knew what those hands and that knife could do and I didn’t want any part of it. If he killed me, Bubba would die, too. There had to be another way.

  “I need my medicine,” Adam said with the pleading of a child, “and anyone who knows how badly I need it has to be dealt with. Oh, Cat, you must understand the joy I felt when I discovered this room. I found the latch on the dresser by accident.

  “When I saw the room, I realized the air down here in the cave is perfect for preservation of this kind. Do you understand? The consistent, cool temperature was perfect for keeping a little of the opium ready for my grandmother to make laudanum all those years later. And then I discovered Col. Sam’s notes and recipes, and the poppy field. Every time I visited Aunt Glenda I brought stores of saffron and wine and when the poppies could be harvested I mixed a batch for myself. Can’t you understand?”

  I understood that I wanted to shriek. I understood that I wanted to lie down and cry myself into a stupor, that I wanted to pound my fists into the wall and to bang my head against the cold, hard ground. But most of all I understood that I wanted to kill Adam Dupree. I wanted to wring his neck until his throat was crushed. I wanted to kick him in the balls, to pull a two-by-four from one of the shelves and bash him senseless. But the total unconditional rage and fury unleashed inside of me was what stopped me and I realized that I wasn’t going to kill Adam. Adam was going to kill me.

  “If you’d stayed out of it, Cat. If you’d just stayed away.”

  Boy, ain’t that the truth. Hindsight, as they always say. But then Bubba would surely have died and I’d have gone to my own grave knowing I could have done more, and that was not acceptable.

  “Okay. Let’s think about this, Adam,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. “You don’t have to do this, you know. There are other ways. We can work it out.”

  The blue in his eyes had returned and never been so deep, his smile never more sincere. It was the smile, the eyes, I realized, of an opium addict. It was the smile of a person whose own needs totally superseded the needs of everyone else around him, including their very lives. The powerful cravings had so engulfed his mind and body that all this seemed normal to him. This for him, was a reasonable situation.

  “No, Cat, I’m sorry. We can’t work it out,” he said, and amazingly, I believed he was truly regretful about this fact. “I do have to do this. You know you’d never let me get away with it. But I am sorry. I am. And by the time anyone finds you and the little brat it will be too late. I’ll be long gone with all my medicine and no one will ever catch up with me.”

  Did that mean he wasn’t going to kill me right here and now? It was a slim ray of hope, but one I caught just the same.

  “No, Cat, I’ve got to do this, and I’ve got to do it now. Go. Go find your little friend.”

  And with that he gave me another shove. I staggered backwards into a jut in the wall just as a heavy wooden door slid across the slim opening. Realizing that the door had cut me off completely from Adam and the outside world, I banged on the door and screamed Adam’s name over and over again until I was hoarse.

  I stopped only because during a break in my screaming, I heard Bubba crying, and knew I had to get to him before it was too late.

  Cat’s Horse Tip #17

  “Horses distinguish tones and vowel sounds rather than

  words. Consequently, saying no, go, slow, toe, so, oh,

  hello, or low in a firm tone will probably produce

  a halt in your equine friend’s forward motion.”

  30

  “BUBBA?”

  I groaned as I eased myself forward, step by step, fully conscious for the first time of the additional damage sustained to my ribs and left arm. I also was conscious of the fact that it probably didn’t matter any more. But for the time being, I was alive. I was ahead of the game.

  I was also conscious of the fact that whatever you are most afraid of, chances are you will have to deal with that exact fear at some point in your life. There couldn’t be any more fearful situation for me than to be in a blackened cave. Yet here I was. I’d rather walk barefoot through a roomful of snakes. Well, almost.

  “Bubba?” I called again. I hadn’t heard anything from him for quite a few minutes. I flashed the light backward. I didn’t think I’d missed any turnoffs. Nope. Hadn’t. I turned the light once more dead ahead.

  Carefully, cautiously, I walked down the descending slope of the tunnel. Here, while still dry, it was considerably damper than at the beginning of the passage. It was hard not to notice I was getting cold. Cave temperatures hover around fifty-five degrees. Add to that the fact I was soaking wet from the rain, badly scraped from my encounter with the bricks on the kitchen floor and now covered in mud. I longed for a hot shower and almost lost control of my battered emotions when it hit me that I might not get one. Ever.

  Ahead was a sharp turn to the left that opened on to a room similar to the one barred to me by the wooden door. I stopped at the wide entrance. The ceiling was lower here, barely six feet in most places. In the gloomy light, I could make out an old picnic table, much longer and taller than those seen today. There were several old washtubs, some scraps of musty material that had once been rags, and bits of broken glass. I guessed that this was where Col. Sam had mixed his special brand of laudanum. At the far end were two openings.

  “Bubba?”

  Silence.

  “Bubba can you hear me?”

  “Cat, I’m here!” Although still muffled, Bubba’s voice sounded closer. Quite close, in fact.

  “Where, Bubba?”

  “I don’t know!” He started crying again.

  “Bubba, think. Tell me what’s around you. What can you see?”

  “Can’t see nothing,” he hollered between crying spells. “It’s pitch black and there’s water. All around there’s water. It’s up past my knees.”

  Shit.

  “Okay, Bubba, hang tight. I’m coming.”

  First, I tried the passage on the right. It was a cramped, level path, but I turned back when it took a sharp upward swing and narrowed to an impenetrable slit. Besides, Bubba had said there was water. To me that meant I should be descending, not ascending.

  Going back, I noticed that the flashlight was dimmer than when I started out, but so far it was holding its own. Back in the room, I entered the second passage. My shoulder felt as if it was going to fall off. Actually, as much as it hurt, I thought it would be an improvement if it did. I had to breathe in short, tight breaths to avoid the Exacto knives that were twisting around my ribs.

  The second path also began fairly level. But before too long it began a sharp downward turn.

  “Bubba?”

  “Yeah! Cat?”

  I was getting close. I slipped as the damp ground turned to water and landed butt first with a thump and a splash. The jar of the fall hurt my arm and ribs so badly that my abdominal muscles began pushing up the remains of Verna Mae’s cooking. After, I realized I had instinctively kept my right arm raised––so the flashlight wouldn’t get wet. I take back what I said earlier. I’d crawl through a room full of snakes before choosing to be down here without a light.

  “Cat? I can see you. I can see your light!”

  I stood up in six inches of muddy water and waved the light around. The passage grew wider here and continued ahead for another twenty feet or so, where it stopped abruptly, the walls meeting not
a floor, but a large pool of water that covered most of the chamber, including where I now sat.

  I saw movement to my left and pointed the light in that direction. My heart stopped. A round, slime-covered shape that I assumed was Bubba was tied by his hands to a long chain that led to a large metal ring set about seven feet up. Around his wrists were tight, padded cuffs, similar to those used on training farms to hobble the front legs of horses. The water was indeed up past his knees.

  I splashed over to Bubba as quickly as I could and enveloped him with my good arm. We both cried with relief, the water swirling gently around us.

  “Cat,” he finally gulped, “I’m sorry I smell so bad.”

  I told him truthfully that I hadn’t noticed. “I couldn’t help it none. I had to go and my hands were all bound up, so I … well, I peed all over myself. And number two, too.”

  The confession brought on another round of tears. I felt a renewed spurt of anger against Adam. For Bubba to be humiliated so was unthinkable. I wished Adam could be tied down here for a week. See how he felt after peeing all over himself. On second thought, where Adam was concerned, a week wasn’t long enough.

  Bubba eventually rallied with a big sigh and a final round of snuffles. “What happened to your arm?”

  “I, ah, fell,” I said. I didn’t want to upset Bubba more by telling him the truth.

  “I bet that sorry bastard Adam had something to do with it, din’t he?” When he realized I wasn’t going to answer that one, he asked, “You think you can get us out?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “But I’m sure going to try. First, we’ve got to get you untied from here.”

  On closer inspection, I realized Bubba was bound by a set of horse hobbles, two sets actually, as his ankles were also bound. I wondered, briefly, if the hobbles were missing from my barn or Hill’s. Neither, I guessed. I only had one set, and no one could pull anything from Hill’s barn with his dogs around. Both of these sets had been modified by removing the six inches or so of chain between the two padded nylon cuffs, and replacing that with one heavy link.

  The result was that Bubba’s hands and legs were so closely bound as to render them totally useless. The heavy link between his hands was attached to a long chain of equal weight that led to the ring in the upper wall. At least the chain was long enough to let Bubba move around a little, sit down, and keep his arms moving,

  “I think the best way is to try to get the cuffs off. It doesn’t look like that chain is going to cooperate,” I said.

  “They’re awful tight,” he replied.

  I agreed. They were. There were small padlocks on each buckle, but nothing I did released the lock.

  “Bubba, listen. Back up the hill there is a room with a table and a washtub. Do you remember it?”

  He shook his head as huge tears dripped from his eyes. “All’s I remember is waking up here.”

  “Well, there’s some broken glass there. I’m going to go to that room, get the glass and come right back. Do you understand? I’m coming right back.”

  Bubba’s body was shaking with cold and fear, but he nodded that he understood. I sloshed through the cold water and up the incline, picked up as many of the larger glass pieces as I could, and sloshed my way back.

  Bubba was still shaking when I returned; I was afraid he was going into shock.

  “Deep breaths, Bubba, deep breaths.” It felt cold enough to hang meat in here. Bubba must be freezing, starving, exhausted and who knew what else. I prayed that after all he’d been through his body wouldn’t let him down now. He had to make it. I gritted my teeth. He would make it.

  I have no idea how long it took. It could have been ten minutes or it could have been an hour. My fingers were bloodied with cuts, but I was able to cut through the heavy fleece and nylon to free Bubba’s hands. Together we splashed and hopped to dry ground where I immediately went to work on the hobbles around his legs. Thank goodness that didn’t take nearly as long. Weakened by the continual exposure to water, the material cut more easily.

  As soon as he was free of all restraints, I started Bubba swinging his arms. First, one by one, then together. Back and forth, up and down, around and around. I was hoping the movement would bring some warmth into his body and feeling into his fingers.

  I didn’t know much about human first aid, but I was a regular pro when it came to equine medical emergencies. When horses were stiff and cold, you wanted to keep them moving. The principles couldn’t be all that different, I thought. Bubba was just a small horse in a human body.

  When the numbness was history and he protested that he could swing no more, we both collapsed on the floor. Eventually, I knew, we’d have to figure a way out. But for now this was enough. I positioned Bubba so he was lying with his head lower than his feet, and hoped the blood would rush to his brain. I also pulled every stitch of his wet lower clothing from him, shoes, socks, jeans, underwear, and it said a lot for Bubba’s physical state that he didn’t protest.

  Although Agnes’s new trench coat that I had so painfully draped over my shoulders was now mostly wet, there were still a few dry spots that I used to wipe the worst of the damp off Bubba before I covered him with it. Then, with a warning to Bubba, I turned the flashlight off and the darkness descended.

  I waited for the panic to arrive, for the hyperventilating to begin, for the sheer terror to come. But although I waited, nothing happened. I’d been through so much my body was too busy to be frightened. My body had its hands full just trying to stay alive.

  After an eon, I said, “Hey Bubba, you awake?”

  He groaned in answer.

  I was, meanwhile, asking myself the same question and getting a very painful answer that I knew meant yes. In addition to everything else, my fingers now throbbed from all the glass cuts. Lord, I thought, when can I give up? Sooner or later, I need to just lie down and die. But not yet. Not just yet. First, I had to get Bubba out.

  Somehow, my body continued to function. My heart pumped great amounts of blood to my head and injured arm. My fingers bled freely. My rib cage felt as if it had been kicked by a mule. I wanted nothing more than to stop, to stay right where I was and rest. Let the angels come and get me. But, I thought, getting out of here was simply a case of mind over matter. I could do this. Had to. Bubba was counting on me.

  Finally, Bubba groaned, rolled over, sat up and said in a clear, sensible voice, “Okay, how the hell do we get out of here?”

  It was a valid question and unfortunately it was one I wasn’t sure there was an answer to. The way I came in was out. Chances were slim to none that someone would hear us banging around way down here. I hadn’t seen any additional passages, other than the one dead end I’d tried. I’d been watching closely, so I was pretty sure I hadn’t missed anything. That left the pool of water, which was straight ahead.

  I thought hard. If I was right, the basement was directly under the den, which meant the room behind the dresser was under the back porch. I’d zig-zagged a few times to get where I was, but by my reckoning the zigs and zags had all evened out and the tunnel was headed directly behind the house. And if you went far enough, what was directly behind Fairbanks? The Cumberland River. Then it dawned on me. This must be the tunnel Col. Sam’s slaves used to bring in the smuggled goods. This was why Adam had shown me the river from above. Deep down, he wanted me to find a way out. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, except I really hoped he wasn’t waiting with a meat cleaver if I made it that far.

  “Bubba, when you first got here, was the water this deep?”

  “No way. There warn’t any water here.”

  “None?”

  “Dry as an old cob of corn.”

  “So when did you notice it was starting to get wet?”

  “I’m not sure. That prick Adam come down a couple times and give me a sandwich and a jug of water. I was real hungry but the stuff he gave me musta had drugs or something in it ’cause after I ate it I got real sleepy. That chain was long enough so’s I cou
ld move around some, and sit down. I ’member sitting against the wall and I musta’ fell asleep. When I done woke up there was water and there was fish nibbling at me.”

  “Fish?”

  “Well, I think it was fish. Couldn’t see ’em none. But I felt things swimming ’round my legs. They din’t bite me or nothing but I could tell they was there.”

  Fish. Now that was interesting.

  “Bubba, do you think the fish are still there?”

  He said he thought they probably were. I felt around for the flashlight and went to take a look. I couldn’t see anything by the edge of the water, so I waded deeper into the underground pond––and deeper and deeper until I was waist deep and almost to the far wall. I shone the light as far as I could down into the water. And then I saw them. Blessed little things they were. I don’t fish, so I don’t know a whole lot about them. I didn’t even know what kind of fish these were, except I knew they were the right kind. I knew they were the right kind because they had eyes.

  “Okay, I’ve got a plan,” I told Bubba after I’d splashed back over to him. I was so excited I could hardly breathe. Not that I could breathe all that well to begin with anyway, but now I was having some real trouble. “Those fish are from the Cumberland River. I know this because cave fish don’t have eyes. They don’t need them in the dark so they don’t have them.” I’d learned this interesting tidbit during my foray into Junk Yard Cave. “Can you believe it, Bubba, these fish have eyes!”

  My theory was that as it had rained almost constantly over the past few days, the water level in the Cumberland had risen enough to flood the outside entrance of the tunnel, the entrance that opened to the river bank. The fact that there were dams on the river to control flooding made me believe that we were very close to the entrance. If the water level in the river rose too much, someone would turn a crank somewhere and drop the level back down.

  “So we’ve got to be close to the outside,” I finished.

  “You mean we’re supposed to swim outta here through that pond?” asked Bubba.

  “Well, not exactly. I thought I’d leave you the flashlight, then I’d swim out and call Deputy Giles and we’d come back and get you.”