by Various
“Let’s fill the water bags,” Kaleb said.
They filled the bags and the older man drank from his and refilled it.
“Let’s rest,” he said.
The young man sat, and the old man lay on his back, his head propped on a stone.
“Is this the place you were talking about?”
“Yes.”
“Heavenly. If there were sunlight I could stay here a long time.”
“I saw the light, Father, a few hundred feet from here.”
“That’s all?”
“It’s tough going.”
“How tough?”
“Some climbing, and some narrow passages—but we have been through far worse.”
“I am not as nimble as I used to be.”
“Together we can do it. Are you ready to go on?”
“We’ve just arrived. Let’s enjoy this place.”
Kaleb held his tongue and leaned on an elbow. The old man stood and stepped over to the fountain. He pulled a dirty linen handkerchief from his pocket and with his back to Kaleb sopped it in the water. He rinsed it and wrung it half-dry then reached inside his shirt and wadded it over the sensitive area.
He sat near Kaleb.
“Is there anything to eat?”
“Check your pack,” Kaleb said.
He loosened the leather straps of his knapsack, pulled up the canvas flaps, and stuck his hand inside. The coarse texture of canvas. Then: something small and round. He pulled it out.
“What’s this?” He handed the sphere to his son.
“A radish,” Kaleb said.
“I’ll be damned. I thought we had jerky.”
“We did, Father. Eons ago.”
“Eons!”
Aaron laughed and coughed and laughed again, painfully, while Kaleb laughed and howled and the echoes ricocheted and collided and bounced back on themselves.
From his mud-encrusted trouser pocket, the old man pulled out a pocket knife and handed it to his son who divided the radish into two equal parts. Unhurriedly, they crunched their portions between their teeth and reveled in the tang and watery goodness.
• • •
“We were here before,” the old man said.
“Here?” asked Kaleb.
“Eons ago.”
“This place?”
“You were a little boy. It may have been that day. We had climbed down a cliff, and.…” His voice trailed off. “How deeply I regret it. It was an adventure, and to see you, you were so happy, so heroic.”
“The way I remember it,“ Kaleb said, “you were the hero.”
“You were so full of life—”
“You caught me on the cliff,” said Kaleb. “I was falling and you caught me by the arm.”
“And then we were happy finding this—”Aaron gestured to indicate the grotto surrounding them “—this place….” His words melted into the music of the nearby water show. “There was a game we use to play—”
“We should be moving on soon, ” Kaleb said quietly.
“With the Hawthorne clan,” Aaron said. “I wonder how they’re doing. I don’t suppose you remember them.”
“Neighbors?”
“Village folk. Their daughter schooled with you in that little house at the end of the road. Black hair.”
“Anna.”
“Yes.”
“What was the game?” Kaleb asked.
“Don’t you remember? We’re still playing it. We’ve always been playing it. And the stakes, oh, the stakes! When we were here last we had beef jerky. I wonder if I deposited it in a spot for safekeeping. Under this stone, perhaps.”
Kaleb stood and reached high with the torch. “The sunlight awaits, Father. Let’s make haste!”
The older man looked away and absentmindedly stroked his beard. “Thirty more minutes,” he mouthed quietly.
“Father—”
“Aren’t you tired?”
“It’s a question you’ve told me not to ask.”
“I was wrong then and I’ve been wrong since. But don’t you need to rest? You’ve been exploring on your own. Now you’re dragging me around. You’re young and vibrant, but we must be alert for the final stretch.”
He needs rest, Kaleb thought, fighting a sadness that had crept up on him suddenly. He’s more worn than I’ve seen him. “Go ahead, Father, rest. I will wake you in a quarter hour.” I mustn’t base the schedule on emotions, though. And since there are no timepieces, and no way to be certain, I will err on the shorter side of the hourglass. “Go ahead, Father.”
“Amen. Wake me in an hour.” Aaron laid his head down and was asleep instantly, breathing quickly, as Kaleb watched and listened to his breaths and the water gurgling, Bubbling and babbling little twists and lies. Oh!—does the lord blame me for understating the difficulty of the path ahead? Father remembered the cliff, the same one I scouted. Without enough rope—they had just twenty feet in one knapsack—maneuvering would be difficult. And after the cliff, the crawl space, half-deep with water. Surely there’d been no water in it when they first entered.
The hypnotic melody of the nearby stream reminded him of birds singing, those flying beasts a cat might chase through trees, and Kaleb remembered trees and valleys with snow in the winter and dry golden grass in the summer, and he closed his eyes and remembered a farmer’s field with wheat, and tall animals people rode; he pictured these though he didn’t remember the names and sometimes with names there was no use, a thing was a thing if you used it, his father once said, maybe yesterday, but once you stop using it and being around it you forget it. You only remember if it means something. He remembered Anna, one of the few names he could remember. He no longer remembered his mother’s name, just her sweet smile and joy when she was around. And now he did something else the old man had taught him to do: imagine he was somewhere else, and he went to that place and did what he had to do, he knew what it was, he did it every day, and he kept doing it, in his mind anyway, until he forgot.
A rumbling shook him from an evolving dream and he fought to keep from slipping back into it. Rousing himself, he stood. His joints cracked and he felt the nagging discomfort of an empty stomach. He shuddered with a sickening feeling of guilt. Never should have slept. The sun may have dropped out of sight—and we need her, the sun, to guide us down the last stretch of the tomb’s interior.
He yanked the torch from the rocks where he had wedged it earlier and turned to face the snoring body—white-bearded, scabbed face. The limbs filled the clothing like twigs.
Kaleb patted his shoulder.
“Father,” he said.
The elder’s eyelids cracked like an animal wakening from hibernation, eyeballs sliding in sockets, skin riddled with boils. With effort, he sat. Wiped his lips on the back of his jacket.
“Let’s go, Father,” Kaleb said gently.
The old man smiled, both corneas glazed over, almost white. “Do you have the goods?”
“What do you mean?” said Kaleb.
“Did we get what we came for? What are you taking out of here?”
“You,” Kaleb shouted.
“No, you’re not,” the old man said, standing up. “Where’s the swill?” He turned and zigzagged into darkness. Soon Kaleb heard slurping and groaning, and felt himself struggling for control. He was in charge and it frightened him. But this place had always frightened him; the cure was to stay focused. Think. To reach the cliff, they had to negotiate a path next to a crevice. When he scouted the route earlier he had dropped a broken stalagmite into the crevice and listened for ten seconds and heard a splash as faint as a teardrop. For much of its length the crevice divided the passage down the middle; they’d have to straddle it, with barely enough room on each side for a man’s foot. Then the crevice widened and there was just a narrow ledge to walk on near one wall.
The old man returned.
“Ready, Father?”
Aaron nodded.
When they reached the mouth of the crevice, Kaleb described the up
coming terrain as his father stood and listened. A heavy bellow, which began as a slow ripple from far out, ran under their feet for part of a minute, and they stood, four eyes with expressions of forced meditation.
“Understand what I said?”
“Lead the way,” the old man muttered. “I’m right behind you.”
“You’ll lead,” Kaleb said, removing a coil of rope from his knapsack. “If you slip—I’ll be there to pull you up.”
He wound the rope under the old man’s armpits. Tied the other end around himself. Bound together they muddled along, skirting the crevice by inches.
At first, the old man whistled, but then his breath came in gasps. They stopped. He hacked and spat into the abyss.
“I can’t see.”
“Keep hugging the wall, Father. You’re doing fine.”
They ambled onward. Now the cave was too quiet and Kaleb felt tortured by the silence. He remembered when he was a child, standing with his father next to a creek. Two fishes, pale as moonlight, were swimming against the current, trying to find a way upstream for reasons he could only begin to wonder at.
• • •
They arrived at the foot of the cliff, a chamber with ground enough for several men to lie flat on. His father bent over and coughed, then slumped to his knees.
The cliff wall would have to be scaled. They had come down it long ago. Now they would have to climb back up. When Kaleb was here earlier, sunlight had been shining through a breach in the ceiling. Now there was just darkness and dripping water.
“Father, I’ll untie the rope,” Kaleb said gruffly.
Standing behind his father, he blinked tears as he untied the knots that bound them.
“Who are you to untether me?” his father asked.
“Who do you think I am?”
“You’re me, when I was your age.”
Kaleb held the torch and glanced at the cliff as his father braced himself near a sloping column of limestone.
“Doesn‘t look good,” Kaleb said.
“You don’t have to tell me. I can see for myself.” He reached into his pack and pulled out his water bag. “Or I cannot see it! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“The sun is gone.”
“Gone with the sun.”
“It’s not… good.”
“Time to greet the devil.”
“That’s always been a poor joke.”
“I’ll admit that.…” His words trailed off. “I tried to be the village joker; I didn’t succeed. I need to nap now.”
He draped a thin cloth over a rock and lay down and rested his head against it, his eyes barely open.
“Father? Should I… get help?”
“Do what you have to. You’re the torchbearer.”
“The cliff is tricky. If we had more light and more rope, and maybe another strong back, or two, or three we could carry you out of here… I can make it out myself. The village is not far.”
“The village,” the old man muttered, contemptuously.
“That’s been our goal.”
“Ha!” croaked the old man, coughing into the dark. “I’m in no rush. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, its patience.”
Kaleb stroked his father’s wrinkled brow. “I’ll be back, soon.”
“Go with God.” The old man closed his eyes. The ground shook, and from above a cloud of dust drifted down. They both coughed. A powdery residue coated their faces, and crusty phlegm dirtied the old man’s beard.
“I’ll leave you my water, Father—”
He mumbled something Kaleb could not hear, and the old man crooked a finger at him. Kaleb leaned in and the old man whispered:
“If you see the devil—”
“I know—”
“Give him my best.”
It took Kaleb ten minutes to reach the top of the cliff, and when he peered back over the edge the sweat on his back and under his arms chilled him. He saw darkness and heard… snoring.
The last passage was a crawlspace and he snaked his way through water—holding his breath several times before resting in water up to his elbows. The torch was dead and the cold water paralyzing; he shivered and his teeth chattered.
He pictured his father and forced himself to go on, groping blindly, discovering dead ends and turning back, until finally, after one last underwater swim, he emerged. Moonlight sifted through an opening in the very near distance, atop a scree of boulders. On hands and knees he crawled, one rock at a time, sensing vibrations beneath—water flowing somewhere below. Reaching the top, he brushed aside hanging roots and vines and straddled the lip of a creek. He was out—outside!
Free!
Sensations. He was happy and sad, weak and giddy, all at once. He nearly laughed and nearly wept.
The air smelled of pine and fir, and felt fresh against his face. A light snowfall shimmered in the moonlight and he squinted, allowing his eyes to adjust. Feeling unsteady, like he might float away above the earth, he followed the hillside. Down. Down. Down. Hopping over fallen trees and propelling himself off rocks, he let gravity guide him. The snow was shallow, only an inch or two deep, and the air was pure and invigorating. He heard a hoot and then a bird swooped and flew into the distance. An owl, he thought. Then he saw a large rodent. Badger? Skunk?
He wondered how it would be to sit and wait for the sunrise, but checked himself. He stared back in the direction he had come from. He could roughly make out the path, and the ledge where the cave was hidden, where his father was waiting. Committing this to memory, he pranced downhill, turning back every few moments to further solidify in his mind the cave’s location.
Soon he was on a field without rocks or trees. A million stars, the universe endless. Wheel ruts. Snow covered them lightly along with scattered hoofprints. Going east, he soon found himself between tall trees and a wooden fence. He smelled a wondrous smell, the aroma of smoke from a wood-burning stove.
A small cottage stood before him, with a wooden porch in front and a smoky wisp curling from a chimney. He felt joyous but also cautious. He was unsure how the inhabitants might welcome his nighttime calling.
He strolled up to the front door and knocked, feeling lightheaded. He waited a moment. He knocked louder; heard voices. A bilious wave rippled up from his gut and the world started spinning. Someone on the other side of the door asked, “Who goes there?” His legs buckled and the landscape tilted. Out of his peripheral vision, the porch approached. He felt a clapping crunch and swirled into blackness.
• • •
The room was dark. He was in a bed. Pillows, sheets, blankets. A young woman was asleep next to him. He closed his eyes and drifted….
Later, he awoke, alone. The room drenched in sunshine. On a wooden box was a pitcher of water, and a glass half-full. Through a window: evergreens, shrubs. Scattered patches of snow, glistening blue at the edges.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. His stomach ached and his head throbbed. He put on his pants, shirt, and socks. Where were his boots?
Opening the bedroom door, he shouted, “Hello?”
He heard rustling elsewhere in the house, and a beautiful woman with black hair appeared. Dark eyes, his age.
“My name is Kaleb.”
Tilting her head, she looked at him oddly. “That’s what you told us… last night.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You didn’t say much,” she said, leading him down the hall. “We were worried.”
They entered a larger room, with chairs and a fireplace, and a sink and table and cupboards. He smelled food. An older woman with white hair looked up from a rocking chair.
“He’s awake,” the young one said.
“Kaleb,” the older woman said. “You must tell us your story. After you eat.”
Kaleb ran his hand through his hair. “Are there any strong men in the village? My father must be rescued.”
The women exchanged glances.
“I beg of you,” Kaleb said, “we must get help at once.”
“The food’s getting cold,” the young one said, draping her arm around his waist. He felt good and a little lost; it was a strange and cozy feeling, being touched this way, and he wanted to sink into her for support and hold her tightly, but he was hungry. Starving. He needed sustenance.
He sat. The old woman smiled and picked up some knitting needles.
He was given oatmeal with butter, and he spooned it in gulps. There were sausages. He picked them up one at a time and ate many, sucking his fingers after each one.
• • •
And later he would remember the view through the window: a shapeless cloud blotting out the horizon.
• • •
It snowed that afternoon as he and four men from the village finally set out down the road. Two women came, too, the wife of one of the others, and Anna, the beautiful dark-haired one he had stayed with last night. He was glad for all the help. For a time he felt part of something larger than himself, a tribe united in a purpose; but then the wind died and the snow turned to rain, a drizzle at first and then a steady downpour, and almost imperceptibly the mood changed. Night came. The women prayed, and then, after saying farewell, headed back to their cottages.
Under curtains of rain, the men left the road and trudged up the mountain while clouds obscured the moon and mud sucked at their boots.
When at last they found the cave, a raging creek was feeding it, and there was a debate as to who would enter.
The oldest man stayed back with the one horse while the others, in single file, squatted and descended the scree on hands and rumps as water gushed underneath the boulders they were clutching.
At the bottom of the rocks, they huddled together in water up to their thighs; the tunnel going forward, which had been partially filled with water yesterday, was now completely submerged.
He remembered standing with them, as they each held torches, illuminating their wet hair and dampened spirits, as they discussed the options. They made tentative plans to return the next day, and then the next, but it rained for a fortnight, and the cave was not mentioned again. Kaleb left the village.