Billy’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “I’m going downward on a slant of about twenty or thirty degrees. The hole itself is about six inches in diameter ahead of me, a little wider than it is tall. Ahead is a twist where the animals have headed in another direction and made it wider. I am digging it out carefully, taking off only the material I need so that I can squeeze through.”
“Any sign of muskrats?” asked Mudman.
“I see a lot of tracks on the tunnel floor, for sure,” chuckled Billy. “I keep the light shining in front of me. Every once in a while and maybe far ahead I might see a glint of some eyes, but it’s hard to tell. I’m sure they aren’t happy to see me coming into their living room.”
“Any sign of what went wrong with the microphone?” asked Charlie.
“No. It’s running alongside of me and I can’t see any damage to the wire.”
Mudman interrupted, “You’ve gone in about five feet. We can barely see your boots. Don’t get careless. It’s time to set up one of those roof supports like I showed you, Billy.”
“I’d rather wait a bit until I get a few more inches into the mound.”
“Don’t take any chances.”
A blast of rain tore at the radio tent. Hank asked, “What’s the latest on the weather?”
“Storm is right on time,” said Charlie, adjusting his earphones. “We’ve got less than an hour before the surge makes the water too high. About midnight I’d guess.”
In front of Hank, out in the swamp, the glare from the large spotlights at the mound bounced over the whitecaps of the swells. He hit his fist into his palm in frustration.
“Everything takes time,” said Pete, seeing how upset Hank was.
“A lot of good going for that tractor did us,” said Hank.
Sammy said, “We wouldn’t have known if we hadn’t tried. Besides, the tractor did find the airplane; helped us get an idea where it was. You can’t say that wasn’t good, Hank.”
“Don’t you worry none,” said Mudman. “This is going to work, you’ll see.”
“OK,” came Billy’s voice. “I got a little earth falling from the roof. I’m going to put up one of your braces, Mudman.”
“Take the long pieces, one on bottom and one on the top. Put the two short timbers to hold them out,” said Mudman.
Billy answered, his voice squealing in the speaker, “I’m trying to get the wood in place. I can see the wire going ahead of me into the hole.”
Mudman checked the block and tackle. The rope was taut against the supporting timbers and extended to a stake at Mudman’s feet where the end was secured.
Hank tapped the microphone. “Too much time. Billy should have reported by now.”
Mudman looked at Hank. “We can get him out pretty quick.”
Charlie spoke into the microphone. “Billy, come on back.”
They heard only the background static.
Pete looked over in concern. “Something’s happened.”
Sammy put another sandbag on the wall. “We better get him up.”
Mudman and Hank were already pulling on the exit rope.
“I can see his boots, but there’s no movement,” Sammy called out. Sammy punched numbers into his cell phone, calling for a boat from shore with paramedics aboard. “We should have had those guys out here standing by,” he muttered.
Mudman swept the rainwater off his face. “The mud got him. We didn’t count on all this rain coming down. The rain has entered the hole and caused walls to collapse around him,” he said.
Billy came up, suspended in the air by his waist, his head down.
“He’s breathing,” said Sammy, cleaning Billy’s unconscious face, as the others took off Billy’s digging apparatus.
Sammy’s face clouded. “That’s it. I’m not sending down any more of my people.”
Mudman said, “Wind keeps on picking up and next time the hole will be filled even quicker. It’s getting very dangerous. The next person might not get out.”
Chapter Nineteen
Melissa came up then, Cincy beside her, and said to Mudman, “I’m going down next. I want to get my son.”
Pete tried to tell her how dangerous it was but she refused to listen. Hank himself stood back, realizing that this was the General’s granddaughter, matured into a woman used to having her way, seeing her as a Mrs. Pond in the making. Like the others at the mound, he was able only to watch her, astonished as the rest of them, as she pulled herself into the suit left behind as Billy was taken down to the boats. She pulled the bag of support timbers up over her shoulder. Then, before they knew it, she had hooked the rope to her harness.
Mudman, with Hank’s reluctant assistance, lifted her upside down until she was poised over the hole. Then she moved into the opening head first, pulling herself down with her hands grabbing into the space that Billy had constructed. The two men, standing in the walkway behind the tripod, eased the rope as she descended, letting out slack as she required on her radio contacts.
“We’ll put a tarp over the hole after you get down,” radioed Mudman.
“That might keep the rain out for a while,” she answered, her voice clear and determined.
Pete handed up a square of canvas cloth to Cathy and Richard so they could spread it to protect the opening. The cloth was snugged as close as possible to the descent rope.
“I repeat, send one of the paramedics out here,” said Sammy, talking into his hand held. Then he clicked off the phone and swore.
Melissa called up, “The tunnel Billy made is still here down to about nine feet. My face is against some fallen earth but it’s easy to move out of the way. I’m making up the roof support here before I go ahead.”
“You’ve got another ten feet at least before you get close to the airplane,” replied Mudman.
“Might be she’ll miss it altogether. All this shifting of the fuselage,” observed Sammy.
“I’m starting to fill my bag,” she said.
In his mind, he saw flash portraits of Melissa as she used to be, in her cut off shorts, sandals, and simple red halter, long hair and sunglasses, holding her can of Doctor Pepper. His mind moved to remembering the touch of her tanned bare body as they lay together on the green grass behind the General’s mansion.
He remembered the old warrior, too. The General’s local exploits were more important to the citizens anyway. When the General arrived in River Sunday during the Depression, he immediately employed a dozen men rebuilding the oldest of the then deserted tobacco mansions along the Nanticoke River near River Sunday. The house had been lived in by the only remaining descendent of the building family, a woman who had been deported to Richmond during the Civil War. She returned and lived alone there for many years. She was insane according to legend. Stories had it that she walked at night on the overgrown lawn, her white hair down to her waist, dressed in a tattered red and white dress. She would toss candles a few yards and let them sputter out in the darkness.
Hank, as he stood in the rain, was getting worried. He had not heard Melissa’s voice on the radio for a while.
His reverie continued. During the fifty years after she died what was left of the mansion became overgrown with vines and its walls, filled with animals, were about to fall down. The General bought the place and all its barns for unpaid taxes which was another windfall for the town. He fixed it up and proceeded to have the best parties, perhaps the only parties, the area had seen since before the Depression. The new settlers in River Sunday, that is, the ones who had money, and the still living albeit mostly broke of the older colonials like the Allinghams went to call, drink his whiskey, and praise the General but mostly perhaps for the quality of his whiskey. The General, who was never a fool, enjoyed the respect that his money brought and probably gave Melissa the idea that she could only get this same kind of adulation by spending money. The problem was that the General lived in such a depressed time that very little money could buy a great deal of respect. He did it in such an offhand way that he n
ever took himself into a stratified level of local society. Everyone felt welcome at his house even if most people were not actually invited.
Melissa, unfortunately, came along in a more prosperous time. She never understood the reason for her grandfather’s social success and acceptance - that his seemingly endless bounty was welcome in a time of misfortune. It made him a savior, one of their own, and a stability on which the people could depend. The General was the welfare state country squire of River Sunday and it boded him well during his lifetime.
Melissa tried to follow in his footsteps, to codify his success, and failed miserably. Her invitation lists were noticeably shallow, bereft of the true citizens of the town and notable for their inclusion of only the very wealthy. Her former childhood friends felt out of place and finally unwelcome.
Hank was one of those.
Hank moved closer to the hole and watched the rope trembling with Melissa’s descent. She had not been lucky with parents. Not like he had been.
Melissa’s mother, one of the father’s sailboat girlfriends, lived in Baltimore on a healthy allowance and scarcely came to River Sunday except, as Hank understood from Melissa, when she had to pick up her check. After the father died Hank never saw her again and she never expressed any desire to see him. Melissa asked her to come to their wedding but the woman claimed a bout of arthritis and that she was not well enough to make the trip across the Chesapeake Bay.
-John lost at sea today-stop-Fell off yacht-stop-Unable to rescue in seas-stop-Condolences to family-stop-Yacht being shipped back to New York next freighter deck space available-stop-Thank you-stop-
Hank asked the General why the words “thank you” were in the telegram. The old man, sitting back in his leather den chair, a stuffed Canada goose on the wall over him, his fresh whiskey in hand, stared at Hank without a tear in his eyes. He finally said gruffly that maybe it was sent by the crew of the boat his son was racing against.
He thought back to the warnings he had about marrying Melissa.
The General knew it right then about his daughter. He told Hank, “You know, boy, you and Melissa get married that’s all fine but you got to keep up with her, boy, because this little lady is going to step out on you someday. She doesn’t even recognize yet what she can do and one day she’s going to go after whatever she wants on her own and you got to be ready to go along, or you are going to get left behind.”
The wedding was before all that. The General arranged to have a yacht, a hundred footer, cruise up the Nanticoke River as far as the inlet creek around the north end of the Wilderness. The big cruiser had a captain and a two women crew. When Hank and Melissa went aboard they were waited on completely. The boat cruised the Chesapeake down to Norfolk and back up to the Delaware canal, stopping at the small towns and sometimes just anchored in little rivers and creeks.
He came back to the present and yelled at Charlie. “Call her!”
Melissa replied immediately. “I’m working on getting more earth into the bag. It’s cramped here. Everything takes time. The wall is about three inches in front of my face. The flashlight illuminates a small part of it. The rest I find by my fingers.”
In a few minutes she called again. “I want to roll over and lie on my back to rest but I am afraid that the roof will fall in if I do.”
“Melissa,” said Mudman. “You’re very brave. Take it easy though.”
Melissa radioed that she noticed a root sticking through in the corner of the tunnel ahead. She cleared dirt and moved closer to the spot. With her right hand she grasped a part of the wet wood and tried to move it. It gave a little and a chunk of earth fell down ahead of her into the rat tunnel.
“I think I can work around this root,” she said, her voice showing exhaustion. “It’s holding me back.”
“We could get a line around it and pull from up here,” suggested Mudman.
“If you do that it might bring the whole tunnel down on me. I’ll have to do it from here. I’m going to reinforce this section though before I proceed. I’m putting up the two by fours.”
Then another report came. “Hey, we got a surprise here. It just fell away, the root when I was tapping in the boards. There’s a larger hole opened up ahead of me. I’m trying to see with the flashlight.”
In a few moments she reported again. “Ha. I know where that squealing was coming from. We got ourselves a whole nest of the little rascals down here.”
“Tell us about it,” said Mudman. Hank remembered what Duke had said about the muskrats coming out of the mound.
“I can just make out their heads,” she said.
“Bobby said animals were around him.”
“I can’t see down too far into the hole. Right below the hole turns again and the flashlight won’t light around the corner. I can head on further down.”
“Can you get by the animals?”
“It’s like they are on a ledge just below me, maybe two or three feet.”
“All right, we’re going to pay out some more line,” said Mudman.
“I’m moving down,” said Melissa.
Suddenly, screams came through the loudspeakers and rippled across the swamp.
Hank heart lurched.
Mudman called frantically on the radio.
Melissa gasped her reply amid her screams, “Good God, pull me out. Pull me out.”
“Tell us what happened. We’re pulling,” yelled Mudman.
“Rats are tearing at my face. I’m hitting at them with the flashlight. Damnit. The light went out.” Melissa’s screams interrupted her words. Then she said, “I can’t see them. Pull me out. Oh God, Hank. Mudman, pull me out.”
Hank was on the plywood as she came out of the hole. Her face was covered with small cuts that were bleeding down on her coverall. He took her by the waist and laid her carefully on the wood. She was whimpering.
From the walkway several yards away, Cincy, standing in her oversize windbreaker, was calling. “Hank, is she all right?”
“I don’t know, Cincy.”
Hank carried her to the boat where he set her out in a stretcher laid out in the bottom. Cincy bent over her, trying to wipe away some of the blood from the animal bite wounds on Melissa’s face. Melissa was moaning, trying to move her hand to her face.
“You’re going to be all right,” whispered Hank.
Melissa grasped at his hand.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the mound, Will was working by himself as if he were in a daze and unaware of the catastrophic storm. The last time they checked on him, his tractor was up to its axles in marsh water. He was still digging at a small tunnel he had made where the trench had been. Around him were fallen sandbags and water. In the rain, the remaining walls of the old trench were slippery and very weak. With the rising water, they would soon tumble inward. Will, however, worked steadily and intently, not concerned about the danger he was in, resisting stubbornly and forcefully any attempt by anyone to get him to move to safety.
Will stood up in the rain, moving dirt off his face with his left hand. He used the shovel he had in his right hand as a walking stick and steadied himself, his eyes on the ground ahead of him.
Then he suddenly called out, “Pete, are you still there?”
Hank heard Pete answer, “Hey there, Will, you about ready to give up on your digging?”
“I can’t give up. I’m too close to finding that rudder. I could use some help. I need just a man or two to help me dig.”
“Will, there’s only a few volunteers still here. We don’t have enough to handle what we are doing.”
“You still think Bobby is alive, Pete?” he called over the wind shrieks.
Melissa heard Will from where she lay in mud next to the mound. She whispered to Hank, “Why can’t he understand? Why can’t he help Bobby?”
Will snapped, “Pete, you got to get me some men.”
Pete shook his head. “Can’t do that, Will.”
“You and Sammy. You can do it.”
“Will, I
can’t free up any of the rescue team,” said Sammy.
“Remember you wanted me to talk to some of the board of trustees at the Allingham School. They are rich folks. They can give money for your fire volunteers. I can talk to them. You want some money for a new station. I’ll talk to them.”
Sammy shouted at Will. “Nobody wants your money.”
“I’ll give you some of the money I make from the land. I’ll give it to you directly. Forget the Fire Department. Use it for a vacation.”
Pete turned to Hank. “He’s alone. That’s the worst a man can be. He’s alone when he’s in trouble and needs others.”
Hank thought back to the bullying child Will had been. All his true personality was coming out. Nothing was left out in that mud of the quiet schoolteacher, the gentleman of River Sunday who had walked the main streets, full of strength, his head high.
An old story came to mind. One Shot Will. That name started around town when one Sunday afternoon a farmer found Will and Melissa in the act. Hank would have just put on his clothes.
Not Will. He tried to get the farmer to forget what he saw. He was standing there naked as a jaybird, arguing with a middle-aged farmer. The farmer tried to keep from snickering at what the preachers call a backslider and a ridiculous one at that. Melissa was behind the corn, drunk and not able to remember in which corn row she had left her blue jeans. Melissa yelled for him to get dressed.
Instead Will kept on talking to that poor man. He followed the farmer right back over to his barn, still naked. He did not want the farmer to tell what he had seen. At the barn was the man’s wife and little boy sitting in the shade. That’s when the farmer picked up a board and threatened Will off his land.
Hank knew about the whole episode within a few hours. From that day on, people referred to Will Allingham as “One Shot Will.” Even the girls and boys at his school would taunt him by scrawling the nickname on bathroom walls.
Easter Sunday (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 7) Page 15