She did not even want to think about Azzy.
“Hey, could everybody come over?” Mr. O’Connell asked, his voice soft and consoling. “Could you hold on and let’s take a second?”
Mary stopped picking at the stones. She heard Bob Worm toss the last of the rocks into the pile to the left of the door. It was terribly dark now. She walked carefully toward Mr. O’Connell’s voice. He wore the headlamp, she saw. It flashed wherever he looked.
“Okay,” he said quietly, “everyone here? Look around you…. Check on the person next to you. Everyone okay?”
Because he had asked no individual, no one answered.
“We’re okay, I think,” Mary said for the group. “Just shaken up.”
“No pun intended,” Bob Worm interjected.
Mr. O’Connell apparently realized the headlamp had been painful to their eyes, so he slipped it off and put it in the center, beam facing up. The world’s smallest campfire, Mary thought. Still, it was comforting to have some light.
“I won’t kid you at all,” Mr. O’Connell said when they had all settled. “You know we’re in a bit of a pickle. No one could have predicted an earthquake. They just don’t have much impact up here in Maine as a rule. As a rule.”
He faded off, seemingly thinking of something. Then he cleared his throat and went on.
“This is what we know. We’ve had an earthquake. The tremors have gotten increasingly lighter, so I don’t think we’re in danger of more significant shocks. But as you know, some of the damage a quake does depends on where you are when it arrives. We happened to be in a powder magazine, and an old one at that. Not a great place to be, it turns out.”
Mary heard Sandy snort. Apparently Sandy needed to underline any statements about their predicament with disgust.
“The good news is, other than Sam here, we all made it through unharmed. I know some of you are concerned about Azzy, and so am I. But we can’t do anything about her for the moment. I’m sorry. It’s possible she made it out and is trying to get help.”
Mary cocked her head at that one. That was a fib Mr. O’Connell was telling them to make them feel better. She didn’t appreciate being lied to, even for a good cause. If Azzy had made it out, it was likely they would have heard her calling. Or she would have gone around to the slot, where she could look inside. Something. Mary didn’t buy Mr. O’Connell’s explanation, but she didn’t say anything.
“So, we need to get out of this magazine. I think Mary’s idea to move the rocks is a good one. Let’s keep doing that. It’s hard to judge how thick the pile of fallen rocks might be. Mary, can you give us any insight?”
“Not yet, really,” Mary said. “It’s hard to see and it’s a huge pile.”
“But it’s loose stone at least,” Ms. Carpenter said. “We have that going for us.”
“Hooray,” Bob Worm said mockingly, but no one laughed.
“I wish we had some dynamite,” Harry Cameron said. “I really do.”
“Fantasies aside,” Mr. O’Connell said patiently, his voice surfing the last of Harry’s ridiculous notion, “our job has become digging out of here. Plain and simple. On Tuesday, Bertie will be back for us. We should be out long before that, but that’s something we have on our side, too. And parents will begin to ask questions if we’re not back … so it’s not as if we can’t expect the cavalry to come over the hill at some point. We can. We have to keep perspective, in other words. This could be an uncomfortable couple of days, but we should be okay in the end, right?”
Not right, Mary thought. Not right at all. In science class Mary had done a report on the effects of dehydration and she remembered some of the data. They could not make it. They could not go three and a half days without food or water. At least not without water. Not in these temperatures, not if they were going to be working to move the stones. Not even close. In a desert environment, she knew, you could die within hours from a lack of water. But even in cold temperatures a lack of water became a serious concern amazingly fast. You shivered in the cold and burned off liquid. No, they could probably make it without food, but not without water. She was certain of that.
Add to that the fact that they had no blankets, no way to get warmer, and you had a dangerous situation. The air would grow foul, and she didn’t even want to think of the bathroom situation. Mr. O’Connell was putting an optimistic spin on things, and while she saw the need to stay positive, she also thought a little more reality might be needed.
“We need to get out of here,” she said. “We need to dig. Everyone.”
“Except Sam,” Ms. Carpenter said.
“Except Sam,” Mary agreed. “Everyone except Sam.”
“Any questions?” Mr. O’Connell asked softly.
No one spoke. A last tiny tremor rocked them gently and then disappeared into the sea.
Harry’s fingers hurt. They hurt a lot. It was long past the point where he wished for gloves, or for a stick of dynamite to blow the rocks out of the doorway. All he knew was that one rock came after another. He took one in his right hand, switched it to his left hand, then passed that to another hand. He’d lost count of how many stones they had moved, but it had to be thousands. And it was all done in the dark. True dark. Like working in the basement of a basement.
“Switch,” someone said nearby.
That meant the person at the rear of the line got to have a break. The person who had been resting came to the top of the line and began handing back rocks. Round and round they went. Harry hated it.
“I am sooooo thirsty,” Sandy Bellow said.
No one answered her. No one cared.
Then she said, “Are we going to do this, like, forever?”
“Shut up, Sandy,” Bob Worm said. “Just keep working.”
“But, I mean …”
Then Sam Harding moaned. He had done that with increasing frequency, Harry noticed. He was in a lot of pain. His ear had been half-shredded, and his biceps looked like a bear had scraped its claws down his upper arm. One stem on his eyeglasses had broken, too, so they sat on his face like a goofy parody of what people with glasses should look like.
When Sam moaned, everything slowed. Everyone listened. It reminded Harry of the ghost story Azzy had told them before they hopped on the boat. Supposedly Whistling Willy lived on the island. He was a ghost with a cannonball in his guts and an eye that dangled from a thread. Whenever Sam moaned, Harry couldn’t help thinking about Whistling Willy.
“What time is it?” Ms. Carpenter asked as the rocks started passing down the line again. “Does anyone know?”
“If I had my cell phone I’d know,” Harry said.
No one had a cell phone. That was against the rules of Mr. O’Connell’s Outing Club. No electronics.
“Anyone besides Harry know what time it is?” Ms. Carpenter repeated.
“It’s only a little after seven,” Bob Worm said, catching a glimpse of his watch in the dimming light.
All just voices. All darkness.
Sam lay on the floor, his mind dislocated from his body. At least it felt that way. He listened to the stones dropping on the discard pile, listened to the occasional voices talking about what they were doing. He had trouble staying awake. His arm felt melted into the floor. Or glued there by blood. His head felt foggy and imprecise. As soon as he formed one thought, another chased it away. Mostly he simply stared into the darkness, wondering how this would end.
All stories had to end, he knew. He had watched too many movies not to know that.
But movies weren’t life. In real life, you had to take whatever ending came.
A little later they stopped moving stones. It felt late. Bob Worm had a watch, but he couldn’t read it now unless he went over to the headlamp. Everyone used cell phones now to tell time, but without cell phones you were left with guesses. Still, it felt like the core of the night, something dark and silent and tight. The air inside the magazine had taken on particles of dust, so that every breath tasted of earth and minerals.
Someone began snoring nearby. Then another person mumbled something in their sleep. He couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl who mumbled. Then Mr. O’Connell — he was pretty sure it was Mr. O’Connell from the deeper sound of the voice — said, “It’s early; go back to sleep if you can.”
Easier said than done, Sam knew. So he did what he always did to put himself to sleep: He remembered movies. He went through sections of films in slow-motion detail. Scene by scene. Before he made it to the end, sleep came on him again and he felt his body floating up into the darkness, in the cave that they all inhabited, and once, right near sleep, his body jumped at something. At the quakes, maybe. At the tremors. But his arm lifted a tiny bit and sent a shock wave of pain to his head, and then he fell deep inside himself and did not wake again until he heard them moving rocks, the ping of stones oddly comforting as they splattered into the discard pile.
Sandy Bellow stood in front of the tiny slot that still existed in the seaward wall and wondered if they really expected her to slide out through it. The only reason they had picked her, she knew, was that she was the tiniest. No one else stood a chance of fitting through the slot, and she wasn’t sure she did, either, but it was worth a try. She understood that. But all she could think about was Azzy and how she had tried to make it outside and how that hadn’t ended so tremendously.
“What do you think?” Mr. O’Connell asked her. “You think you can do it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you game to try it?”
“I don’t think so.”
She heard someone making a tsk sound in disgust. She wanted to turn and say, Sorry, you try it, but she controlled herself. Still, she had wanted to tell Bob Worm, Bob Worm especially, the big oaf, that he should try to squeeze through the minuscule little slot if he thought it was so easy.
“Sandy,” Ms. Carpenter said, “we could really use some help. It’s incredibly important for someone to get out and get water. It’s key. Do you think you could do it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You need water, too,” Mr. O’Connell said, his voice droning on the same thing. “You’re going to need it soon, too.”
“I know that.”
“If we have to dig our way out, it could take another day. Maybe more,” Mr. O’Connell said.
Sandy shrugged.
Not that she wanted to be down here any longer. She hated it. She hated everything about it. She had already vowed one thousand times that she would never, ever let anyone talk her into a camping trip again. No way, no how. She couldn’t wait to confront Lenny and ask him if she now had “a little Spackle on her tail.” How about now? she wanted to ask. What kind of merit badge do I get for this?
“If your head can go through, you can make it,” Ms. Carpenter said. “Maybe you could just give it a small try and see.”
“What if things are still falling outside? What if it collapses?”
“It would have collapsed by now if it was going to collapse,” Mr. O’Connell said. “It would have given way.”
“How do you know that? It could collapse any second. It could collapse and cut me right in half. How do you know that?”
“Why don’t you just think about it for a little while?” Ms. Carpenter asked. “Just get your head around the idea. Nobody’s going to pressure you.”
Bob Worm made a tsk sound again.
“Bob …” Mr. O’Connell said.
“She’s being a jerk,” Bob Worm said. “She’s always a jerk.”
“Bob, that’s not helping,” Ms. Carpenter said.
“I don’t care.”
“Bob, stop it,” Mr. O’Connell said.
“She could get out and get us water if she just weren’t so selfish,” Bob said.
“I’m not selfish!” Sandy yelled back at him. “You try it if you think it’s so easy.”
Then no one said anything. Sam moaned. And then they heard Mary begin moving rocks again. A little more light came in through the slot, and they heard seagulls calling, making baby sounds, Sandy thought, making sounds like people crying.
Harry played the harmonica softly. To his amazement, it sounded good. Or okay, at least. It probably sounded okay because of the echo, but also because it gave everything a little cover. You didn’t hear people coughing or sneezing or grumbling because the harmonica covered it all. It felt, honestly, like one of those old cowboy campfires where the young guy pulls out his mouth harp and gives them all a tune.
“That sounds nice,” Mary said. She sat close. They all sat close. “It sounds real pretty down here.”
Harry nodded. He kept his lips moving on the harmonica.
He didn’t play any particular tune. He couldn’t play any particular tune. But he could play a few notes, and he linked them together fairly well, so that people went along with it. It made his heart hurt a little to play. He thought of them all being trapped down underground, and a harmonica made an awful lot of sense in circumstances like that.
He also thought of Sam. He thought of Sam playing the circle-finger-punch-in-the-arm game on the boat. It made Harry get a little cloudy to look over at Sam and see him still stretched out on the jackets, not moving. Sam was probably the only friend he had. Probably his best friend.
“What songs do you know?” Mr. O’Connell asked. “Can you play any we could sing to? Maybe it would do us good to sing a quiet song.”
Harry shrugged. He didn’t know any actual songs.
“I think it’s just nice to hear the music,” Ms. Carpenter said. “Just the sounds.”
Harry played and did pretty well, he thought. When he got tired he tapped out the spit from the harmonica and slid it back into his pocket.
“Thank you,” Mary said.
Ms. Carpenter said thanks, too. It was surprising how much you missed the music once it was gone, Harry reflected.
“This is bad,” Eamon O’Connell whispered to Ursula Carpenter. “This is incredibly bad.”
“I know.”
“These kids could die down here.”
“I know. So could we, Eamon.”
“We have to get Sandy to try it.”
“Sandy has a mind of her own,” Ursula whispered. “She just does.”
“She has to see the benefit.”
“She’s scared, Eamon. We can try to be reasonable with her, but I’m not sure that will work.”
He didn’t say anything. He backed away slowly and sat on a large boulder that had come loose during the tremors. Ursula wasn’t sure what he wanted. Did he want her to follow him, to yell at Sandy, what? It was difficult to know. Truth was, they didn’t have any good options. They had been moving rocks for the better part of a day and they still hadn’t broken through yet.
“She may not even fit through,” Eamon said, continuing the conversation, which meant, Ursula figured, that she should follow him to where he sat. “We don’t know that she will. It’s awfully narrow.”
“Still.”
“It’s going to be dark again soon.”
“The darkness is pretty terrible.”
“How do you think Sam is doing?”
She shook her head. Then she realized he couldn’t see the motion.
“He’s cold and he’s in shock. We’re going to have to warm him with our bodies tonight.”
“I guess so.”
“If we can get through, Eamon, we’ll be okay. You have the satellite phone out by the tents, right? So one thing at a time. If we get out, everything else will take care of itself.”
He put his head in his hands. She sat down beside him. She felt tired and hungry and thirsty. Really thirsty. The cold, too, snuck into your clothing and bones. It wasn’t good. The entire situation was pretty horrible.
“It all feels so stupid now,” he said, his voice slightly muffled from his hands. “This whole trip.”
“You can’t do that. You can’t look back and say this or that should have happened. You couldn’t anticipate an earthquake.”
<
br /> “We just got here,” he said. “We hadn’t even spent an hour on the island.”
“I know.”
“Stupid puffins.”
She couldn’t tell if he meant it as a joke. She smiled and then started to giggle. It was the strange, way-too-tired kind of giggle. She tried to control it, but couldn’t. It rattled around her stomach like a squirrel caught in an attic. Her face turned red and bright.
“What’s so funny?” Harry Cameron called over from the work line. “Share with all of us.”
“Mr. O’Connell,” she said, working the words around her silliness, “said puffins are stupid.”
No one laughed. It was a case of having to be there, she knew. Or feeling tired in the same way she did. Their lack of comprehension only made her laugh harder.
She was still laughing when Sandy Bellow stepped in front of them.
“I’ll try it,” Sandy said, her voice straightforward and calm. “I’ll try the slot if you still want me to.”
“What changed your mind?” Ursula asked.
She hated herself for asking and risking that Sandy might change her mind again, but she couldn’t help it.
“I don’t want to move more rocks,” Sandy said. “If I go out, you have to let me off the work detail.”
“That’s not negotiable,” Eamon said.
Sandy started to walk away, but Ursula called her back.
“Let’s try it,” Ursula said.
Sandy paused for a moment, then nodded.
Like trying to fit your head in a lion’s mouth, thought Bob Worm.
Only he wished it were a lion’s mouth and Sandy’s big head was leaning right into it.
“Ooowwwwww,” she said.
She had already said “ooowwwwww” a thousand times.
“Easy does it,” Mr. O’Connell said.
He had Sandy’s right foot. Bob had her left foot.
Of course he had her foot. If there was lifting to do, call Bob Worm.
“Lean a little more…. A little more … You’re almost clear,” Ms. Carpenter said.
“I might get trapped. It’s tight. Owwwwwwww.”
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