Summer Lightning

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  Chapter 23

  “Today’s mostly for the exhibitors to set up,” Jeff said, helping her down when they arrived at Richey’s Meadow. Two big marquees had been erected at either end of the field, while booths and smaller tents created an avenue between them. Narrow banners snapped in the breeze, and concertina music started and stopped as someone tried to catch hold of a tune.

  A creek wandered through the wildflowers, bubbling a song. Above the fairground at the far end of the meadow, a gentle hill rose against the sky. Its side was marred by a white scar, from where, once upon a time, the slabs of stone piled at the foot of the hill had fallen. Jeff saw Edith looking that way.

  “Just below that mark is the Cave of Mysteries,” he said. “It goes deep, right under all of this, even where we’re standing. We’ll be running tours of it tomorrow. Mostly to keep the kids out of it the rest of the time.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and some of the other men, Paul for one. I guess he and I know it about as well as anybody, but nobody’s ever explored it all. You run into deep water, for one thing.”

  Edith looked up at the white mark of the cave and shivered despite the sunshine. She could imagine the dripping depths of a lightless hell, worse than a dungeon. “How awful,” she said.

  “Wait ‘til it’s ninety degrees at noon. You’ll be glad to get into the cave then. As a matter of fact, it’s so cool up there we keep the ice cream in it.”

  Sam said, “Quit talking about it. You’re giving me the willies.”

  “You won’t be giving tours, I imagine,” Edith said gently.

  “You couldn’t pay me to go in there. I don’t even like getting the ice cream down, to tell you the truth.” He glared at his son. “Are you going to stand there gabbing all day, or are you going to help me with this crate?”

  Jeff winked at Edith and went around to the back of the wagon to lift the crate out under the faultfinding supervision of his father.

  His prediction for the heat came true very shortly. No one seemed to mind, however. The children raced around and played with shrieks of abandon no matter how high the mercury climbed. Outside the livestock tent and looking down the fairway, Edith saw a bright array of parasols, in every shade from white to black with red predominating. She wished she had one, but that was the single item the kind ladies in St. Louis had forgotten.

  “Miss Parker?”

  Edith turned to see Mrs. Armstrong and Dulcie standing a few feet away. They came over at once. “Isn’t it hot, though? I declare there isn’t a breeze stirring,” Mrs. Armstrong said, patting her forehead with a handkerchief.

  “It was a little close in the tent.” The ordure of the cattle combined with the heat had turned her faint. Jeff didn’t seem to be affected by the smell or the temperature. Grouchy, by his heels, seemed delighted by the different smells. Jeff had nodded when she whispered to him about going out, and he went on discussing the merits of Black Angus versus the Shorthorn with a group of men,

  “We’re going to get some lemonade at the Methodist tent. Come along,” Dulcie invited. She had a calm, relaxed air about her today, completely different from the wound-up wildness of the day before.

  “Thank you,” Edith said, falling into step beside them. “Where’s Gary?”

  A blush augmented the heat-induced pink in Dulcie’s cheeks. “He’s entered a whittling display. He’s there now, hovering.”

  “You were there yourself,” Mrs. Armstrong said. “You won’t believe it, Miss Parker, but I had to practically drag her away. It seems like only yesterday that carving was too dumb for anyone but hayseeds to trouble with.”

  “Mo-other . . .”

  As Jeff came to the tent exit, he caught sight of Edith moving off with the Armstrongs. He grinned happily as she stopped to talk to Louise, who had raced by her like a wild creature. More and more, he was growing confident that he’d made the right choice. Edith fit in here. Soon she’d give up her foolish notion about mysterious powers beyond mortal ken and settle down to life with him.

  “Hey, Jeff!” Arnie Sloan came trotting up to him, flapping a piece of paper. “I’m awful sorry about this. Seems like a mailbag done fell open while Minnie Grable and me were moving it to the post office. We thought we picked ‘em all up but here was this one under the bench when I swept up the depot this morning.”

  “It’s all right, Arnie. These things happen.” Jeff looked at the superscription in the corner.

  “Hope it isn’t anything important—I mean, you know, like somebody dying or something.” Arnie lifted up on his toes to look at the envelope through his rimless cheaters.

  “Mighty pretty handwriting. I’ve been studying up on handwriting, you might say. Got a book on it. This feller says you can tell everythin’ ‘bout a person by the way they write. Now that big O there, that means a generous nature. And the way she crosses her T—it is a woman, ain’t it? S. Carstairs. You can always tell when it’s a woman.”

  Jeff stuck the letter in his coat pocket. “Thanks again, Arnie. See you later.”

  “Sure thing. Don’t know how I come to overlook...”

  This must be the letter Sabrina had said she’d sent him. Obviously, Arnie didn’t believe in sweeping the station too often. Jeff thought about ripping it up unread, but his curiosity got the better of him. Stopping off the main fairway, he opened the letter.

  What he read there sent him hotfoot after Edith. She’d been right about Sabrina and the waiter. They were deeply in love, hoping to marry and move West. Then Sabrina inserted a sly request for money, hinting that she’d never trouble her old “friends” again. Jeff vowed to send her a hundred dollars just for proving that Edith really could tell lovers at a glance.

  But when he reached the Methodist tent, he found only Mrs. Armstrong and Dulcie at one of the little tables by the entrance.

  “Edith? She went to take some lemonade and cookies to Maribel. Louise went too.” Mrs. Armstrong studied Jeff’s face. “Are you feeling all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Where did they think they’d find Maribel?”

  “Over at the little tent next to the livestock. Where the kids are keeping their pets until the judging tomorrow.”

  As Jeff raced off with his long-legged stride, Grouchy lolloping alongside, Dulcie turned to her mother and said, “What a strange family!”

  There seemed to be a lot more people on the fairway now than even a few minutes ago. Jeff careened off heavyset women, tripped over children who appeared out of nowhere to run between his legs, and brushed past men he’d known for years without a greeting. But when he bumped into his father and put him aside without apology, he found his arm gripped.

  “Hold on, son. Gol-durn it! Isn’t it bad enough Sullivan got in a few licks without you adding to ‘em?”

  “Sorry, Dad. I’m looking for Edith.”

  “I saw her a few minutes ago, but I don’t think she heard me call. She was heading . . .” He jerked his thumb toward the hill. “Figure somebody shanghaied her into handing out the ice cream. Better her than me.”

  Jeff ignored the sharp tug on his coat skirt and Louise saying, “Daddy . . .”

  “How long ago did you see her, Dad?”

  “I don’t know. Five, maybe ten minutes. I’m looking for Vera Albans. Have you . . . ?”

  “Just a minute, Louise.”

  “But Daddy . . . Miss Edith said . . .”

  “I have to say, son, you look like you’ve got a real burr under your saddle. What’s up?”

  “Nothing, but I have to find Edith. I was wrong . . . about something important . . . and I think I owe it to her to say so.”

  “Daddy, please!”

  “What is it, Louise? You want some doughnuts or something?”

  “No, Daddy. Miss Edith said I should find you and tell you Mr. Sullivan’s taking Maribel to the cave.”

  Out of breath and overheated from the climb, Edith hesitated an instant at the gaping mouth of the cave. She felt the
cold air it exhaled like the slithering touch of a snake over her skin. A lantern, unlit, sat on one of the dripping boxes of ice cream just inside the entrance. Edith picked it up, the oil swishing inside the bell.

  A bobbing light ahead in the sloping darkness showed her how far ahead Sullivan had gotten. Like an echo, Maribel’s light voice floated back to her. Though the words were indistinct, the tone was happy. She had no fear of the man who held her by the hand, though his replies were monosyllabic at best.

  Edith hurried over the threshold between the sanded entrance and the hard stone of the cave, her breath still short and rasping dryly in her throat. She mustn’t let the others’ light get too far ahead. Already the dark was closing in. A few feet beyond the entrance, all the daylight was swallowed up.

  Like in a nightmare, Edith hurried on, but always the light bobbed too far ahead to catch. She began to feel that something was behind her, breathing down her neck. Glancing behind her at the entrance, the lighted space seemed infinitely tiny and remote. The sight brought her no comfort. Suddenly she understood Sam’s fear of underground places.

  When she turned to go on, the lantern’s glow had vanished. She stopped as though she’d run into a wall, the dark like a muffling curtain all around her.

  “Wait! Mr. Sullivan!” she called out. “Please wait.”

  She went on, blindly, her hands before her, her whole body shrinking from an inevitable crash against solid stone. Then the light returned, blessed light, showing Maribel’s figure beside the battered Mr. Sullivan. “Who is it?” he snarled, raising the lantern into the air.

  “It’s me. Miss Parker.”

  Maribel tugged her hand free of Mr. Sullivan’s, though he made a futile grab to recapture it. “Cousin Edith,” Maribel said, running up to her. “I get to look at the cave by myself! Louise will be so mad!”

  In her relief and joy, Edith knelt down on the gritty floor. She embraced the little girl, who wiggled free at once, impatiently. “You want to come too?”

  Edith raised her head to look at Mr. Sullivan. From his pocket, he withdrew a knife, the yellow light dancing along the edge. “Yes,” he said with a smile. “Miss Parker would like to come on a private tour too, wouldn’t you. Miss Parker?”

  “I would. But Maribel . . . did you ask permission from your father before you left the tent?”

  Though the light was behind Maribel, Edith felt the girl’s shoulders slump. “No,” she admitted.

  “Don’t you think you’d better?”

  “Now wait a minute. . . .” Mr. Sullivan approached.

  “Let her go ask her father,” Edith said, crouching at his feet, but not looking up. “I’ll go with you, instead.”

  “I don’t want you . . .”

  “I’m going to m-a-r-r-y Jeff Dane.” Maybe if she spelled key words, Maribel wouldn’t become alarmed. “And it won’t help you to show her that k-n-i-f-e. You’ll only f-r-i-g-h-t-e-n her.”

  Maribel said on a note of grievance, “You don’t have to spell stuff. I know what you’re saying. Daddy’s going to be mad at me, isn’t he?” She sniffed. “I just wanted to see the cave before everybody else.”

  “No, your daddy won’t be mad, honey,” Edith said, rising to her feet, Maribel’s hand in hers. She looked Sullivan in the eyes. “Let her go ask him. You’ll be able to show me some of the chambers while we wait.”

  His gaze shifted between Edith and the child. “All right. But no tricks or . . .” He patted the pocket where he’d concealed the knife.

  Edith touched the child’s cheek with her free hand to tilt her face up. “Now listen to me, Maribel. You’ve got to walk very slowly and head straight for the exit up there. You’ll be able to see your way out without any problem. Then you sit and wait for your ... for someone to come. There’ll be somebody along soon to get the ice cream. Don’t go back to the fair. Just sit and wait. All right?”

  “All right.” Maribel’s white face turned from Edith to Sullivan, a look of doubt narrowing her eyes.

  “Can you see the way out?”

  “Sure.” Still the child hesitated. Edith prayed that Maribel wouldn’t say anything about the tension between the two grown-ups. It was like the silence before a mighty thunderstorm, when even the earth seemed to cower down.

  “Go on then,” Edith said.

  “Okay.” Maribel turned and began walking up the slope toward the exit, her little legs carrying her along with surprising speed. About ten yards away, she suddenly turned and yelled, “But it’s not fair!”

  Edith studied Mr. Sullivan as the echoes of Maribel’s running footsteps surrounded them. One of his eyes was swollen nearly shut and his mouth was bruised and sore looking. He took care to speak out of the other side.

  “You think you’re smart, huh?”

  “Not really. But whatever you’re going to do, better I should suffer it than a child, don’t you think?”

  He stepped suddenly closer and grabbed her upper arm in fingers that bit her to the bone. He twisted. Edith cried out, trying to turn out of his grasp. “That’s right,” he said in her ear, his voice pleased. “Be scared of me. Be real scared.”

  He let her go, almost throwing her aside. Edith rubbed her arm, her skin burning from the friction.

  “Let me ... let me get the other lantern,” she said, trying to keep her voice from wavering. “We might need it.”

  “Okay. But I won’t light it. Better for me that way.”

  After they’d been walking for some time, Edith was glad she’d worn her own shoes. The ones Mrs. Waters had bought for her were always a little too big or too small. Mr. Sullivan set a rapid pace and the footing was very uneven. She kept close behind him. Though she tried to take notice of landmarks, she was soon confused.

  Sullivan noticed her looking around. “You might as well enjoy yourself. You wouldn’t have gotten this much of a look if you’d gone with your boyfriend.”

  “You seem very familiar with this cave, Mr. Sullivan. Are you from Richey, somehow?”

  “Hell no. I was born in Pennsylvania.”

  “But you don’t seem to have any difficulty down here. I’m . . .” She rubbed her arms, the eternal sunless chill penetrating to her bones. “I already don’t know which way we came or where we’re going.”

  He laughed pridefully. “No cave can mess me up. I was sent to the mines when I was nine years old. Spent five years of my life underground, slaving away at the bottom of a coal shaft. There’s nothing I don’t know about caves and such.”

  He held the light to illuminate the ceiling. “See those? We called them Devils’ Teeth.”

  Projecting down from the roof were huge, pointed icicles of sweating stone. Edith saw a single drop of water hanging at the end of the one closest to her. She held out her hand to touch it. The coldness stung even through her cotton glove.

  “That drop could have been forming for a year. Shows you how long it takes for something like that to grow. And I’ve seen ‘em big around as a man. Seen ‘em fall too, right through the chest of some guy too slow to get out of the way.” He grinned. “Pinned him like a bug on a card. Never saw so much blood.”

  “Horrible!”

  They passed through great vaulted chambers that seemed decorated with delicate plasterwork. Edith stopped for breath in a stone garden, with curious pieces of rock petaled like roses. Tiny castles sprouted on mounds of stone at the bottom of stalactites, like models of European strongholds. Though she saw great wonders, all the colors were the same, a ghostly yellow-white in the lantern’s glow. And overlaying everything was the smell of a vast cellar and the ceaseless rushing of water somewhere in the depths.

  Edith asked, “Where is all that water I can hear?”

  Sullivan’s mood seemed to have changed since he told her about the Devils’ Teeth. “Shut up, can’t you? That’s all women are good for. Jabber, jabber, jabber.”

  Edith’s mouth was dry. She felt as though a hundred years had passed since she’d sipped lemonade at the Methodists’ t
ent. Though they slopped over a rise that water raced down, slurried with mud, Edith saw nothing to drink. The sound of the water became taunting, for it surrounded her, yet the only moisture she saw was the faint sheen on the walls in the lantern’s glow.

  How long they’d been traveling, with their only light the yellow circle of the lantern, she couldn’t say. Time had little meaning here, where such things were measured by a slowly swelling drop of water and the passage of centuries. She remembered squeezing through a passage sideways, afraid every instant of becoming stuck. She walked along a narrow ledge, clinging to the slick stone as best she could.

  Sullivan abruptly stopped and swore when Edith bumped into him.

  “Give me that other lantern.” He snatched it. Her fingers were so cold she’d forgotten she was holding it until the weight was taken away.

  “Sit down,” he ordered. “Over there.” He flashed his lantern at a large stone slab, tilted out over a mess of small chips like a drawbridge over a gravel pit. The small stones spurted out from beneath Edith’s feet so that she had to spread her arms wide to keep her balance. She reached the big slab and hoisted herself up on it, thanking mercy that she had a small bustle to use as padding.

  Sullivan put the second lantern down at his feet. “Now you listen, girlie. I haven’t brought you all this way for your health. Not at all. I’ m going to go back up there. If your boyfriend does what I say, I’ll tell him how to find you. If not . . . I’ll think of you down here, when I’m someplace sunny.”

  “I feel confident you will one day find yourself where it is always very warm.”

  He gave her a half-grin, as though pleased by her good wishes. Then, figuring it out, he snarled, “Be nice. That’s the sort of thing that might make me make a mistake in telling your boyfriend where to find you. Maybe you didn’t notice but there’s a whole lot of passages running through these caves. A lot of ‘em are dead ends. This will be one for you if you’re not careful.”

  His quip seemed to restore his good humor. “I’m a kind-hearted fella, so I’ll leave you this lantern. I guess it’s got about three hours’ worth of oil in it. If Dane sees reason, he’ll find you long before the light goes out. If he tries any rough stuff or calls in the law . . . Are you afraid of the dark?”