Amy looked frightened by this prospect. “Talk to him?” she asked.
Jeff motioned her toward the hole. “Just stick your head over the side. Let him see you. Let him know we haven’t abandoned him.”
“What should I say?” Amy asked, still looking scared.
“Anything—soothing things. He can’t understand you anyway. It’s just the sound of your voice.”
Amy moved to the hole. She dropped to her hands and knees, leaned forward over the shaft. “Pablo?” she called. “We’re coming to get you. We’re fixing the rope, and then Eric’s coming to get you.”
She kept going on like this, describing how it would happen, step by step, how they’d help him into the sling and pull him back up to the surface, and after awhile Pablo stopped screaming. Jeff and Mathias were almost done; they’d reached the last section of rope. Jeff tied the final knot, then pulled on one end while Mathias held on to the other, the two of them using all their weight, a momentary tug-of-war, tightening the knot, testing its strength. There were five splices on the rope now. The knots didn’t look very strong, but Eric tried not to notice this. It felt good to be the one going, the one doing, and if he thought too long about the knots, about their apparent tenuousness, he knew he might end up changing his mind.
Mathias was winding the rope back onto the windlass, double-checking it for burned spots as he went. He threaded the end of it back over the sawhorse’s little metal wheel. Then Jeff fashioned a sling for Eric, helped him slide it over his head, tucking it snugly under his armpits.
“It’s going to be all right, Pablo,” Amy was yelling. “He’s coming. He’s almost there.”
Stacy crouched to light the second oil lamp, then handed it to Eric, its flame flickering weakly in the tiny glass globe.
Eric was standing beside the hole now, staring into the darkness. Mathias and Jeff positioned themselves behind the crank, leaning against its handle. The rope went taut; they were ready. The hardest part was the step into open air, wondering if the rope would hold, and for an instant Eric wasn’t certain he had the courage for it. But then he realized it wasn’t possible not to: the moment he’d pulled the sling over his head, he’d set something into motion, and now there was no way he could stop it. He stepped off the edge of the shaft, dangling beneath the sawhorse, the rope biting into his armpits, and then—the windlass creaking and trembling with every turn—they began to lower him.
Before he was ten feet down, the temperature started to drop, chilling the sweat on his skin—chilling his spirits, too. He didn’t want to go any farther, and yet was dropping foot by foot even as he admitted this to himself, that he was scared, that he wished he’d let Jeff be the one to go. There were wooden supports hammered into the walls of the shaft, haphazardly, at odd angles, buttressing the dirt. They looked like old railroad ties, soaked in creosote, and Eric could detect no apparent plan in their positioning. Twenty feet from the surface, he was astonished to glimpse a passage opening up into the wall before him, a shaft running perpendicular to the one he was descending. He lifted the oil lamp to get a better view. There were two iron rails running down its center, dull with rust. A dented bucket lay against one of the rails, at the far limit of his lamp’s illumination. The shaft curved leftward, out of sight, into the earth. A steady stream of cold air spilled out of it, thick-feeling, moist, and it made the flame in the lamp rise suddenly, then flicker, almost going out.
“There’s another shaft,” he called up to the others, but there was no response, just the steady creak of the windlass unwinding him into the darkness. There were skull-size stones embedded in the walls of the shaft: smooth, dull gray, almost glassy in appearance. The vine had even gained a foothold here, clinging to some of the wooden supports, its leaves and flowers much paler than on the hillside above, almost translucent. When he looked up, he could see Stacy and Amy peering down at him, framed by the rectangle of sky, everything growing a little smaller with each shuddering foot he descended. The rope had begun to swing slightly, pendulumlike, and the lamp swayed, too, its shifting light making the walls of the shaft seem to rock vertiginously. Eric felt a lurch of nausea, had to stare down at his feet to calm it. He could hear Pablo moaning somewhere beneath him, but for a long time the Greek remained lost in darkness. Eric was having difficulty guessing how far he’d dropped—fifty feet, he guessed—and then, just as the bottom came into view, still shadowed, a deeper darkness, upon which Pablo’s crumpled form—his white tennis shoes, his pale blue T-shirt—was coming into focus, the rope jerked to a halt.
Eric hung there, swaying back and forth. He lifted his eyes, peered up toward that small rectangle of sky above him. He could see Stacy’s and Amy’s faces, and then Jeff’s, too.
“Eric?” Jeff called.
“What?”
“It’s the end of the rope.”
“I’m not at the bottom.”
“Can you see him?”
“Pretty much.”
“Is he okay?”
“I can’t tell.”
“How far are you above him?”
Eric looked down, tried to estimate the distance between himself and the bottom. He wasn’t very good at this sort of thing; all he could do was pull a number out of the air. It was pointless, like guessing how many pennies someone had in his pocket. If he were right, it would simply be a matter of chance. “Twenty feet?” he said.
“Is he moving?”
Eric stared down again toward the Greek’s dim figure. The longer he looked, the more he could make out, not just the shoes and T-shirt but Pablo’s arms, too, his face and neck, looking oddly pale in the darkness. Eric’s lamp picked up bits of broken glass around the Greek’s body, pieces of its shattered cousin. “No,” Eric called. “He’s just lying there.”
There was no response. Eric looked up, and the faces had disappeared from the hole. He could hear them talking, not the words, just the murmur of their voices, which had a back-and-forth feel to them, discursive, strangely unhurried. They sounded even farther away than they actually were, and Eric felt a brief wobble of panic. Maybe they were walking off; maybe they were going to leave him here….
He glanced down just in time to see Pablo lift his hand, hold it out toward him, a slow, underwater gesture, as if even this slight movement were difficult to accomplish.
“He lifted his hand,” he called.
“What?” It was Jeff’s voice; his head reappeared over the hole. Stacy’s did, too, and Amy’s, and Mathias’s. No one was holding the windlass. No one had to, Eric realized.I’m at the end of my rope, he thought. He couldn’t help it: The words were just there inside his head. A joke, but mirthless.
“He lifted his hand,” he shouted again.
“We’re pulling you up,” Jeff called. And all four heads vanished from the hole.
“Wait!” Eric shouted.
Jeff’s face reappeared, then Stacy’s, then Amy’s. They were so tiny, silhouetted against the sky. He couldn’t make out their features, but somehow he knew who was who. “We have to figure out a way to make the rope longer,” Jeff called.
Eric shook his head. “I want to stay with him. I’m gonna jump.”
There was that murmur of voices once more, a consultation far above him. Then Jeff’s voice echoed down the shaft. “No—we’ll pull you up.”
“Why?”
“We might not be able to make it longer. You’d be trapped down there.”
Eric couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Pablo was already down there. If they couldn’t make the rope longer…well, that meant…He glimpsed what followed, shied away from it.
“Eric?” Jeff called.
“What?”
“We’re pulling you up.”
The heads disappeared once more, and then, a second later, the rope gave a jerk as they began to turn the windlass. Eric looked down. His lamp was swaying again, so it was hard to tell, but it seemed as if Pablo was staring up at him. His hand was no longer raised. Eric started to yank at the
sling, kicking his legs. He wasn’t thinking; he was being stupid, and he knew it. But he couldn’t leave Pablo there. Not alone, not hurt, not in that darkness. He lifted his left arm toward the sky, the sling scraping his skin as it slid upward, over his head. He was still hooked under his other arm, rising slowly, the bottom of the shaft slipping into darkness, and he had to switch the oil lamp from one hand to the other. Then he let go of the rope and dropped into the open air, the flame fluttering out as he fell.
It was farther to the bottom than he’d imagined, yet the bottom seemed to come too soon, materializing out of the darkness, slamming up into him before he had a chance to prepare himself, his legs collapsing, jarring the air from his lungs. He landed to Pablo’s left—he’d had the presence of mind to aim for this spot before the lamp blew out—but he wasn’t able to hold his balance once he’d hit the bottom. He fell, bounced back off the wall of the shaft, landed on the Greek’s chest. Pablo bucked beneath him, began to scream again. Eric struggled to push himself up and away, but it was difficult in the darkness to find his bearings. Nothing was where it seemed it ought to be; he kept reaching out with his hands, expecting to find the ground or one of the walls but hitting open air instead. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry.” Pablo was screaming beneath him, flailing with one arm, while the lower half of his body remained perfectly still. It frightened Eric, this stillness; he could guess what it meant.
He managed to rise to his knees, then pull back into a crouch. There was a wall behind him, and one to his left and another to his right, but across from him, on the far side of Pablo, he could sense open space: another shaft, cutting its way into the earth beneath the hill. Once again, there was a current of cold air pouring forth from it, but something more, too, some sense of pressure, of a presence: watching. Eric spent a moment straining to peer into the darkness, to make out whatever shape or form might be lurking within it, but there was nothing there, of course, just his terror fashioning phantoms, and finally he managed to convince himself of this.
Eric heard Jeff yell something, and he tilted his head back, looking up toward the mouth of the hole. It was far above him now, a tiny window of sky. The rope was swinging gently back and forth in the intervening space, and Jeff was shouting again, but Eric couldn’t hear his words, not over Pablo’s screaming, which echoed off the shaft’s dirt walls, doubling and tripling, until it began to seem as if there were more than one of him lying there, as if Eric were trapped in a cave full of shrieking men.
“I’m okay!” he yelled upward, doubting if they could hear him.
And was he okay? He spent a moment assessing this, tallying up the various pains his body was beginning to announce. He must’ve banged his chin, because it felt as if he’d been punched there, and his lower back had definitely registered the fall. But it was his right leg that called out most aggressively for attention, a tight, tearing sensation just beneath his kneecap, accompanied by an odd feeling of dampness. Eric groped with his hand, found a large piece of glass embedded there. It was about the size of a playing card—petal-shaped, gently concave—and had sliced neatly through his jeans, burying itself half an inch into his flesh. Eric assumed it was from Pablo’s shattered lamp; he must’ve landed on it when he fell. He girded himself now, clenching his teeth, then pulled the glass free. He could feel blood seeping down his shin, strangely cool—a lot of blood, too—his sock growing spongy with it.
“I cut my leg,” he shouted, then waited, listening, but he couldn’t tell if there was a response.
It doesn’t matter,he thought.I’ll be all right . It was the sort of empty reassurance only a child would find comforting, and Eric knew this, yet he kept repeating it to himself nonetheless. It was so dark, and there was that cold air pouring across him from the shaft, that watchful presence, and his right shoe was slowly filling with blood, and Pablo’s screaming wouldn’t stop.I’m at the end of my rope, Eric thought. And then, again:It doesn’t matter. I’ll be all right. Just words, his head was full of words.
He was still holding the lamp in his left hand; somehow, he’d managed to keep it from breaking. He set it on the ground beside him, reached out, found the Greek’s wrist, grasped it. Then he crouched there in the darkness, saying, “Shh, now, shh. I’m here, I’m right here” as he waited for Pablo to stop screaming.
They could hear Eric shouting, but they couldn’t make out his words over Pablo’s screaming. Jeff knew that the Greek would stop eventually, though—that he’d tire and fall silent—and then they’d be able to find out what had happened down there, whether Eric had jumped or fallen, and if he, too, was hurt now. For the time being, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was the rope. Until they figured out how to lengthen it, there was nothing they could do for either of them.
Jeff thought of the clothes first, of emptying the backpacks the archaeologists had left behind and knotting things together—pants and shirts and jackets—into a makeshift rope. It wasn’t a good idea, he knew, but for the first few minutes it was all he could come up with. He needed twenty feet, probably more to be safe, maybe even thirty, and that would be a lot of clothes, wouldn’t it? He doubted if they’d be strong enough to support a person’s weight, or if the knots would even hold.
Thirty feet.
Jeff and Mathias stood beside the windlass, both of them straining to think, neither of them speaking, because there was nothing to say yet, no solution to share. Amy and Stacy were on their knees beside the hole, peering into it. Every now and then, Stacy would call Eric’s name, and sometimes he’d shout something back, but it was impossible to understand him: Pablo was still screaming.
“One of the tents,” Jeff said finally. “We can take it down, cut the nylon into strips.”
Mathias turned, examined the blue tent, considering the idea. “Will it be strong enough?” he asked.
“We can braid the strips—three strips for each section—then knot the sections together.” Jeff felt a flush of pleasure, saying this, a sense of success amid so much failure. They were trapped here on this hill, with little water or food, two of them out of reach down a mine shaft, at least one of them injured, but for a moment, none of it seemed to matter. They had a plan, and the plan made sense, and this gave Jeff a brief burst of energy and optimism, setting them all into motion. Mathias and he started emptying the blue tent, dragging the sleeping bags out into the little clearing, then the backpacks, the notebooks and radio, the camera and first-aid kit, the Frisbee and the empty canteen, tossing everything into a pile. Then they began to take down the tent, yanking up its stakes, dismantling its thin aluminum poles. Mathias did the cutting. There was a brief debate about the desired width and they settled on four inches, the knife slicing easily through the nylon, Mathias working with strong, quick gestures, cutting ten-foot strips for Jeff to braid. Jeff was halfway through the first section, taking his time with it, keeping a tight weave, when Pablo finally stopped screaming.
“Eric?” Stacy called.
Eric’s voice came echoing back up to them. “I’m here,” he shouted.
“Did you fall?”
“I jumped.”
“Are you okay?”
“I cut my knee.”
“Bad?”
“My shoe’s full of blood.”
Jeff laid down the nylon strips, stepped to the mouth of the shaft. “Put pressure on it,” he yelled into the hole.
“What?”
“Take off your shirt. Wad it up, press it against the cut. Hard.”
“It’s too cold.”
“Cold?” Jeff asked. He thought he’d misheard. His entire body was slick with sweat.
“There’s another shaft,” Eric called. “Off to the side. There’s cold air coming from it.”
“Wait,” Jeff shouted. He went over to the pile from the blue tent, dug through it, found the first-aid kit, opened it. There wasn’t much of use inside. Jeff couldn’t say what he’d been hoping to find, but whatever it might’ve been, it ce
rtainly wasn’t here. There was a box of Band-Aids, which were probably too small for Eric’s wound. There was a tube of Neosporin that they could put on when they hauled him back up. There were bottles of aspirin and Pepto-Bismol, and some salt tablets, a thermometer, and a tiny pair of scissors.
Jeff carried the bottle of aspirin back to the shaft, stripped off his shirt. “What happened to the lamp?” he shouted.
“It went out.”
“I’m going to drop my shirt down. I’m knotting a bottle of aspirin inside it. And the box of matches, too. All right?”
“Okay.”
“Use the shirt to put pressure on your cut. Give three of the aspirin to Pablo and take three yourself.”
“Okay,” Eric said again.
Jeff knotted the aspirin and the matches into the shirt, then leaned out over the hole. “Ready?” he called.
“Ready.”
He dropped the shirt, watched it vanish into the darkness. It took a long time to land. Then there was a soft, echoing thump.
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