The Opium Equation

by Lisa Wysocky

  “Nooooo,” wailed Bubba. “No, don’t leave me. Anything but that. Please, please.” He broke into hysterical sobbing and latched on to me tighter than a horsefly on a colt.

  “Do you have any better ideas?” I asked after he had settled down.

  “If you go, I’m going with you.”

  I considered that. If I went alone, there was a sizable chance that I’d drown. Even if I were healthy the chances were very slim that I’d make it. If I drowned, then Bubba would surely die holed up in here, so why shouldn’t he drown right along with me? Then, of course, there was the very remote possibility that we’d both find our way out.

  “All right,” I agreed. “I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s not dangerous, so you have to make up your own mind. If you go, you can’t panic half way there and decide to turn back. It’s all or nothing. Do or die.”

  He looked at me for the first time adult to adult. “I’m in.”

  In a way, I wished I had kept my mouth shut and forbidden him to go. He was so young. Too young. But I could feel his determination as he straightened his shoulders and I realized he had just made a man’s decision. From here on out, I’d treat him as a man.

  We both waded to the center of the dark, cold pond, shining the fading light and feeling with our feet for an opening, however small. But after precious minutes of searching, we found nothing.

  “Let’s feel around the walls,” said Bubba. He went left, and I right. At the far corner I felt a small gap with my foot. I probed deeper and felt no resistance.

  “I found it!” I called. The opening was at the base of the floor where it met the wall. I could tell the opening was narrow, not more than three feet wide. But it sloped down gradually, and was just wide enough for Col. Sam’s boxes of supplies … and for us.

  “Let’s do it this way,” Bubba said. “Let me go first. Even though I’m kind of tubby I’m still smaller than you are. You grab my ankle with your good arm. Then you kick hard with your legs. They’re strong from riding and I’ll pull with my arms. They’re strong from batting things around, and you only got the one arm. We’ll go faster that way. But … I think … you need to … you know, get rid of some of them clothes you got on or you’ll drag us both down.”

  And someone had said Bubba wasn’t bright.

  Bubba helped me get rid of boots, socks, and sweats. The top part was complicated because of all the bandages, so we left it alone.

  Just in case, Bubba, wearing only his T-shirt, and I, clad only in panties, tank top, and bandages, joined hands and said a prayer. I don’t recall now exactly what it was that we prayed for, but it had something to do with ensuring our safety and, barring that, us being instantly teleported to heaven. That last part was Bubba’s. We agreed to keep our eyes open and to turn back if we hadn’t gotten out by the time we counted to fifty.

  It was tough. But after wishing each other good luck, we stood near the hole, took three long, slow, deep breaths. And then we dived.

  Cat’s Horse Tip #18

  “The horse’s hoof corresponds to the

  middle finger of a human.”

  31

  I COUNTED. ONE ONE THOUSAND, TWO one thousand… .

  The water was shockingly cold, and foul tasting, and as darkly black as ink. I pushed off as hard as I could with my feet and we were on our way.

  Fifteen one thousand, sixteen one thousand… .

  Bubba was heading toward a lighter patch of water a short distance ahead. I desperately hoped that patch meant the outside world was near. We swam into the light and Bubba started up.

  Twenty-nine one thousand, thirty one thousand… .

  My lungs were beginning to burn, my legs to ache. We were losing speed. Ahead, Bubba floundered and kicked his ankle free of my hand. I looked up in sheer terror as Bubba became tangled in a large clump of fresh water seaweed. My heart constricted as the tendrils clung tighter and tighter to him.

  Forty-three one thousand, forty-four one thousand… .

  Please, God, please, please, please.

  As my injured left arm was still wrapped close to my body, I started an upward sidestroke using my other arm. Bubba had stirred up all sorts of underwater sludge, and I couldn’t see. Somehow I bypassed the seaweed and hooked Bubba under the armpit as I passed. We went about a foot and jerked to a stop. I wanted to scream, to hyperventilate. I so wanted, needed, air.

  Bubba began thrashing more violently. The kid was terrified and so, I admit, was I. I grabbed his face and pulled it close to mine, shaking his face until he opened his eyes and looked at me. I mouthed the word “relax” to him several times. Relax. It was the last thing I could will my own body to do, but Bubba had to relax if he were to survive. Priceless seconds passed as Bubba slowly loosened his body.

  Fifty-two one thousand, fifty-three one thousand… .

  Frantically, I tore the offending weeds free of his body. Bubba helped me with the last, but as we once again began our ascent Bubba began to choke. Seconds. Fractions of seconds. I knew that’s all we had.

  I grabbed a fistful of his hair and forced my exhausted legs to kick for all they were worth. They did and before I knew it, our heads broke free of the water. I allowed myself two wonderful, exhilarating, gasping lungfuls of precious air before checking my surroundings. There was an idle thought in the back of my mind that Adam would be waiting for us on the bank of the river. I quickly scanned the gray shoreline. If he was there, he was well hidden.

  We were not far from the riverbank. Maybe fifteen feet or so. But Bubba had stopped choking before we surfaced and now, as far as I could tell, was not breathing at all. I kicked for all I was worth and with a final powerful surge, landed us both half in and half out of the river along a slew of muddy rocks.

  Bubba’s face was colorless, his lips blue. He was unconscious, his eyes partially rolled back. Water streamed from his nose and mouth. Come on Bubba, I thought. We’ve come this far. Don’t leave me now.

  I kicked myself out of the water and slapped his face. Hard. His eyelids fluttered faintly. Thank you God. I had no breath for myself, much less him, so CPR was out. I couldn’t recall if I knew how to do it anyway and the thought that it required two hands crossed my mind. I slapped the other side of his face. Harder. He took one ragged breath, then a century later, another.

  “Wake up, Bubba. Come on, wake up!” I cried. His hands still floated in the icy water, his wrists mottled a swollen red and blue from his vain attempts to free himself from the hobbles. Oh, Bubba.

  I slapped him again. His head rolled sideways, but his eyes opened. He took another ragged breath.

  “Come on, Bubba, breathe, dammit, breathe.”

  I pulled him further out of the water and heaved him onto his side. Then with all the strength I could muster, I punched him in the stomach.

  Immediately he heaved up a huge stream of mud-colored water. And he began to breathe. I lay beside him, exhausted, tears streaming down my face, watching the rise and fall of his chest. I had reached my limit. There was nothing more I could do without killing myself in the process. Bubba would live or die. It was up to him––and the man upstairs.

  I don’t know how long we lay there, although I think it must have been half an hour or more. When we first broke the surface, there was a gloomy light; it was barely dawn. But the day gradually got brighter, in spite of the heavy gray clouds that blanketed the sky. Morning. I’d been in the cave all night and it was morning.

  Eventually Bubba began to groan and he heaved up another massive load of water.

  I sat up and put my hand on his chest. “Bubba?”

  He moaned yet again and threw up a third time; he must have swallowed half the river. Finally Bubba raised his head and looked fuzzily at me.

  “That Adam is such an asshole,” he said.

  “Of course, I never should have opened the door last night,” I said to the deputy. “I should have checked to see who it was. But I really thought––no I knew––it was Jon. Shows you how much I
know.”

  Jon, Sally Blue, Agnes, and Deputy Giles had found us as we straggled up the muddy, rocky riverbank behind the Henley place. The deputy immediately called for assistance and also called Carole to accompany Bubba to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in the ambulance. Hill Henley, of course, was nowhere to be found.

  It turned out that Agnes had called Jon just after I did and it had taken him forever to get her off the phone. He could not convince her not to drive down to take care of me, and she was in her car and headed to the stables minutes after she hung up. She’d told Jon she knew I was in trouble because Ira, the shyest and most reticent of her deceased husbands, had told her so in a dream. Guess I owe Ira a thank you.

  Jon was upset that he hadn’t arrived in time to stop Adam, but in actuality, if he had, we never would have found the secret room––or Bubba. Funny the way life works out sometimes. When I think about it too much it scares me.

  When Jon finally arrived at my house, only to find Hank and me missing, he called the deputy, the Carsons, and Darcy. Then, when Hank showed up an hour later dragging the twine leash, he called everyone else he could think of.

  The police and my friends and neighbors had searched for me all night. I have to admit that it gives me a little thrill to think of that hunky Keith Carson out searching for little ol’ me at two in the morning. I know. It’s shameful how twisted I am when it comes to that man.

  Sally Blue was the one who eventually gave the searchers a clue. She burst out of her stall when Jon left to do the morning feed and jumped two fences to run to the field above the river where Bubba and I lay. Agnes insisted Sally was onto something and even Jon’s curiosity was aroused when Sally wouldn’t budge from her spot. Nor would she quit pawing or looking toward the river. Jon had just wrapped a lead rope around Sally’s neck when we came straggling up the bank.

  “Fairbanks was the first place we checked,” said the deputy. “We hunted from top to bottom and never found one sign of either of you.”

  We were now driving very fast up River Road toward Ashland City. One look at me, and the deputy had wrapped me in a blanket, started the sirens and headed toward the medical center. I didn’t argue with him because I’ll admit I have never felt worse. Adam had yet to be found.

  “We’re checking the airlines, the bus schedules, car rentals. My guess is he’s driving back to California. Back to his own stomping grounds. We’ve put out a bulletin for the car. If he’s driving it, someone will spot him.”

  I wasn’t paying attention for I had remembered a horrible thing.

  “Stop,” I said. “We’ve got to turn around.”

  The deputy looked at me as if I were nuts. We were flying up the curvy hill that eventually drops motorists back to the river and into the county seat. There was no place to turn around, even if he wanted to.

  “Please, Deputy, we’ve got to turn around.”

  He tightened his grip on the wheel in reply, but I reached over and pulled imploringly at his sleeve.

  “Martin, please. Stop the car. Turn around. Now.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “I just remembered that I talked to Opal before Adam… . Anyway, now I understand what she meant.”

  “I don’t care what she meant,” he said gruffly. “I’ll talk to her later. Right now you need to see a doctor and the closest one is at the medical center.”

  “Deputy, Opal Dupree will commit suicide, if she hasn’t already. I guarantee it. We just passed the nursing home. Please turn around.”

  During our last conversation, Opal had said she “chose not to handle any more of this trouble.” Not “can’t” but “chose” not to. Chose meant she had a choice. She also said she wasn’t strong anymore.

  At the time I took it to be a reflection on her arthritis. Now I knew she meant mentally. Opal meant she no longer had the mental fortitude to cover up the family demons. The only way out, for her, was suicide. That there’d be another scandal didn’t concern her. She wouldn’t be around to deal with it.

  I told the deputy what was whizzing through my mind. He considered it briefly, then stopped the car at the driveway to the Riverview Restaurant.

  As he headed the car in the opposite direction, he called ahead to the nursing home and alerted them to the potential problem. When he hung up, he gave me that half grin that I was coming to know so well, “Cat, you know I like you and all,” he said, the grin still on his face. “I even introduced you to my brother. You’re smart, and you’ve been a big help to me and I appreciate that.” He accelerated quickly up the big hill. “But I gotta say I’m getting awful tired of you being right every single dad-burned time.”

  Martin insisted I stay in the car while he went in, using my disheveled state and sheer exhaustion as excuses. And very good excuses they were, too. I waited until he entered the building, then followed him inside. We found Opal in bed staring thoughtfully at the portrait of Col. Sam, a surprisingly large stockpile of pills on her bedside tray, while a nurse measured her vital signs.

  “Mrs. Dupree has only been swallowing half her meds,” the nurse said as she made a notation in Opal’s chart. “We found that pile of pills rolled up in a sock in her drawer. Luckily, she hadn’t yet begun to take them.”

  “I wanted to see Adam one more time,” Opal said. “He’s a good boy at heart, but he changed. The drugs changed him. When I realized all he’d done, I knew I couldn’t go on. It’s all too, too much.”

  And with that, a single tear rolled down her cheek.

  While the medical professionals were seeing to Opal, I sat in the familiar gold plastic chair and quietly told the deputy that when we had talked the night before, Opal told me she felt she had spent her entire life covering up the doings of family members. Her grandfather, Col. Sam, had sexually abused his daughter––the same daughter who grew up to be Opal’s mother, Alice the younger. It started when Alice was a young girl and continued until Alice had the courage to break away and go to Nashville.

  By then the many years of laudanum use had turned the old man into a raving lunatic and Alice was close to thirty. Alice tried to start a new life in Nashville. She found a teaching job. She even fell in love. But the man was unsuitable––a gambler, a hustler. She was soon expecting a child, but before she could tell her lover, he was killed in a barroom brawl. The resulting child was Opal.

  Opal grew up in the 1930s with the stigma of being an illegitimate child. Due to the dual problems of Opal’s questionable parentage, and the family’s perception of Alice’s desertion of her father, Alice was shunned.

  When Opal was ten, poor Alice died of pneumonia. Opal was farmed out to distant cousins, an elderly couple from the Giles clan who often helped out at the big Henley place: Fairbanks. There, in innocent childhood wanderings, Opal first discovered the legendary “gopher hole.”

  Opal married young, bore her two daughters, was tragically widowed, and scrambled to make a better life for her young family. Opal felt they were blessed when Hollywood showed an initial interest in her daughters and it was a relief to leave Tennessee and all the problems behind. But this savvy woman soon realized that the plush roles, the starring vehicles that paid real money, were as politically assigned as were staff at the White House.

  Opal didn’t have much clout at the time, but she did have access to the gopher hole and she made liberal use of its contents. Even though the gopher hole eventually gave Opal and her daughters what they thought they desired, what lay ahead was less than a blessing. Drunken orgies. Forbidden affairs. Death. When Adam was born to Amie, starting once again the cycle of illegitimacy, Opal deftly covered up the name of the father. The family curse would continue.

  “I understand how Opal feels,” I said. “She’d reached her breaking point. I was at my own breaking point in the cave last night, and again on the riverbank this morning. Opal had gotten to where she couldn’t continue for one more second with all that had happened. All her life, by the very circumstances of her birth, Opal felt obligated to m
ake things right. But she couldn’t fix Glenda’s death or Bubba’s disappearance.”

  “Cat.”

  Opal beckoned to me from her bed. I gave a questioning look at the doctor and he nodded.

  “I’m glad you found that boy, the Henley boy.”

  “I’m glad, too, Miss Opal.”

  “You understand that both my girls are gone and that Adam is my only grandchild, my only living descendant,” she looked at me and I tried unsuccessfully to give her a smile. “I had to protect him, but then I talked to you. When I realized what you’d gone through for that boy––that Bubba––what you’d sacrificed, how hurt you’d been, I realized that boy, too, was someone’s grandson. He couldn’t be as worthless as he seemed, even though his father leaves a lot to be desired. So I had to help him in the only way that I could.”

  “But then I got so tired. I couldn’t keep any of it secret any longer. I was just too worn out. So I decided to go home, to go to the Lord. Only I guess,” she said with a glance at the doctor, “the Lord isn’t quite ready for me yet.

  “I know Adam was switching my pills. It took me a while before I figured it out, but I did. Adam almost killed me, but I’ve forgiven him. He’s a troubled boy and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive him, too.”

  I dug around in what was left of my heart. Nope, couldn’t seem to find any forgiveness anywhere in there yet. Maybe someday. Or not.

  Cat’s Horse Tip #19

  “Horses use their entire body to communicate with us. Our job is to understand the language.”

  32

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” SAID BUBBA TEN days later.

  I was finally out of the hospital, with strict instructions to stay in bed for another week. My upper arm had been reset, my ribs still burned when I took a deep breath, and the cuts on my fingers had been stitched.

  Bubba was riding slowly around the arena on Sally Blue. I sat in a corner in a high canvas chaise watching them, thoroughly enjoying the thought that my doctor wouldn’t approve if he knew what I was doing.