Thomas, A Secret Life

by A. J. B. Johnston

  The amber glow splays mostly forward and up, so only the leader really sees where they’re going and even for him it’s not as much as he’d like. The apprentice can make out only that their way ahead is surrounded on three sides by looming rock and stone, and that it’s packed earth down where they trod. Like Thomas, but much less often, the other boys reach out to touch the stones jutting at them left, right and overhead. The touches are to calm the inner doubts. By touching and lightly pushing off, hands and fingers tell the rocks that the boys are expecting to come back out the same way they’re now going in.

  Here and there a few rocks shine in the dim lantern’s glow. That’s when the lantern light catches wetness running over a surface. The farther the boys go, the less the subterrane appears to be a man-cut tunnel. Only the entrance was chiselled and burrowed. That was obvious by the pits and grooves and drill holes in some rocks. Soon enough, however, it is clear that only the entrance shows evidence of the work of man. Farther in there are only long flat beds of upturned rocks, random in shape and size and each with its own band of colour.

  The passage where the boys are treading narrows and widens at its whim. It is some natural fissure. So close do the dimly lit stones sometimes project and descend that the boys are required more frequently to duck and bend as they move along. Thomas mulls if he’s the only one wondering if it’s wise to keep going into this, a stinking, wet and buried world.

  “Oh,” comes a moan an instant after there’s a thud.

  “What?” Jean-Chrys’s voice wavers. The other boys hear the worry.

  The candle lantern halts up front and the boys following behind trudge to a stop. Thomas makes out that the lout with the mole, the tallest of the five, is rubbing his head with his hand. He must have hit the roof. Thomas gives him credit for not crying out in fear or in pain.

  “You cut, Pierre?” Vinaigre leans in to study his friend’s forehead.

  Pierre examines the tips of his fingers. “No, guess not.”

  “Bend lower next time, bean pole,” says Vinaigre. Then after a pause, speaking now to the apprentice holding the lantern: “Want me to take the lead? Just for a while?”

  Thomas does not hear the reply, but the lantern does not change hands. It begins to move again with the apprentice still in front. The only sound Thomas can discern above the trudge is a trickle of water. It’s not like there’s a river or a stream. No, there are a hundred tiny drips all around. There must be seams or cracks with water coming in from all over, Thomas decides. He doesn’t want to hear such noises. The wet pulse of whatever it is that resides beneath the earth is a troubling sound. Within his chest it feels like there’s a hand starting to squeeze hard. The trickle of water gets louder.

  “Far enough,” comes a breathless voice.

  Thomas recognizes that it’s Jean-Chrys. His voice is far from his normal one. It’s thin and wobbly, as if Jean-Chrys were trembling. Thomas reaches out to touch his friend. Yes, Jean-Chrys is aquiver.

  “Time to go back.” Jean-Chrys is speaking louder. The voice almost shrill.

  The line of boys shuffles to a halt. The three up front crane over their shoulders. In the amber glow Thomas makes out three pinched faces.

  “And who said that?” taunts Vinaigre. “You, I bet.” His eyes fix on Thomas. “Little professor want to go home?”

  Thomas feels a surge of heat well up inside. His mouth opens all by itself. “What so?” he says, his left leg vibrating like a guitar string. He puts a hand down to steady that uncontrolled part of his body. He hears a vibrato in his voice. “Maybe it’s far enough.”

  Vinaigre smirks at the two boys closest to him. The apothecary’s apprentice opens his mouth to give his leader’s opinion but Jean-Chrysostome gets there first.

  “No, it was me.” Jean-Chrys’s words come in a hurry, like he’s running out of time. “Lantern. Candle. If it, if it goes out … way down here … we’re … not getting out. Not get … we … we … let’s start back.” His voice trails off.

  All eyes go to Vinaigre, whose face is more orange than before. The apprentice is holding the lantern right beside his cheek. Vinaigre is shaking his head. The lips, the eyes, they show disgust. In front of Vinaigre, though, Pierre, the lout with the mole, is mulling over a retreat from this chill and frightening subterrane. And the apprentice too, Thomas notices, he is peering through the glass of the lantern to measure just how much candle might be left.

  “So, what say you,” Thomas directs at the apprentice. “Our time is nearly up?”

  “Go on,” snarls Vinaigre. He uses his left hand to make a dismissive sweep. “No one’s stopping you. Get. Get. But the lantern stays here. That’s what we say. You two cunnies go back on your own. In the dark.”

  “Whoa,” says Thomas, both hands upraised. He ignores the thumping of his heart. “Jean-Chrys is right. The apprentice and your friend, they think so too. If the candle burns down much more, we’re … we’re not …” Thomas shrugs to make his point. “It’s going to be black down here.”

  Vinaigre glances to his left and his right. He receives in return weak shrugs from the apprentice and from Pierre. He takes that as an endorsement of his leadership. Thomas is dead wrong. The other boys don’t want to turn tail. “What say you, boys,” says Vinaigre, seizing the moment. “What say we leave these two girls right here. Who cares about them anyway?”

  Vinaigre takes a step ahead, making contact with the apprentice. The leader is now holding the lantern as high as he can, out of Vinaigre’s reach should he have ideas to try and take it away. Pierre snorts agreement with Vinaigre and sidles closer to his friend. They each place an arm around the other’s waist.

  The apprentice speaks, “I say le- le- let’s ke- keep going on.”

  “That’s right.” Vinaigre leans in to Thomas and aims to place a finger on the cleft of Thomas’s chin. Thomas bats the hand away before it gets too close. “Babies,” says Vinaigre. He turns back toward the apprentice holding the lantern and nods to him that it’s time to get moving, moving into the darkness of the subterrane still unexplored.

  Thomas puts a hand on Jean-Chrys’s shoulder, the sea of impenetrable blackness closing in as the lantern edges forward. Jean-Chrys blinks his sad eyes. The trudge and shuffle of the other three boys is moving away from them. The bouncing amber light is getting thinner and thinner. Another minute and....

  “Wait,” shouts Thomas, arms outstretched. He has to catch up to the only light there is; there is no other choice. He can’t, they can’t go back up the stony, dripping darkness without any kind of light. “Wait up.”

  “Wait,” adds Jean-Chrys. His feet quick-scuff the dirt floor to catch up to Thomas, who feels the clutch of two desperate hands grabbing at the clothes on his back.

  —

  Time slows to the pace of an endless trudge. The five boys continue what has become something to endure. The heat in the clearing above ground was no guide to the cool air found below. Worse than the damp air is that other chill, the one that comes from going on in a closed-in darkness into God knows what.

  In the rasp of breath and trudge of shoes in steadily wetter ground Thomas thinks he hears something else as he goes along. First it’s a rhythm then it’s a chant.

  Bravura, brave boy.

  Fear of black and blue.

  Fortissimo, little friend.

  Find out, find out what to do.

  All at once, the ground beneath their feet changes. It’s no longer firm with occasional spots soft and wet. Suddenly, it feels like ooze. A suck of muck comes with each horrible step.

  “Wh- wh- what’s that?” is the cry up ahead. It’s the apprentice. His lantern is out chest high, way out in front of his body as far as he can extend. His free hand is over his nose. He’s making a gagging sound. Vinaigre and Pierre halt alongside the leader, all three blocking the passage, their dark sha
pes swallowing the light. They crouch as one. Their heads swivel. Back and forth at each other and at whatever it is that lies just beyond their feet.

  Thomas and Jean-Chrys stretch tall, but neither can see what it is that has stopped the others in their tracks. The amber lantern light up ahead is spinning back and forth across the passage’s stone roof.

  “Give me that.” Vinaigre comes full height and grabs for the lantern, trying to wrest it from the apprentice’s hand.

  For an instant the glass and wood box is airborne. The lantern in freefall and the candle sputtering. The apprentice reaches out to catch it but is thrust back by Vinaigre. Just before the lantern hits the ground Vinaigre catches it by its metal ring. He rights the lantern and brings it to his chest. The candle regains its flicker, painting the rock sides and roof with dim amber waves. Vinaigre wraps the fingers of his right hand tight round the wire handle to make sure that such a drop or change of possession cannot happen again.

  “Better,” says Vinaigre, to no one in particular. He sucks a breath as he moves forward to examine more closely what it is on the ground that so horrifies the apprentice. Pierre, with the importance of his friendship with Vinaigre never stronger, pulls on the new leader’s shoulder. Pierre’s breath is as rapid as a dog’s.

  There on the ground just ahead of Vinaigre’s feet, the flickering lantern lights up a tangled mass of something hairy and oozing. It’s a carcass of ribs. It’s hair and skin. It’s something like meat only with bits of fat, hair and fur and all torn in a heap. A single dead glassy eye stares back at the lantern’s light. Vinaigre and Pierre suck in their breaths, just as the apprentice had done. They follow a trail of yellowish mucus that is seeping out of the thing in a trickle across the ground. The sickening flow pools at their feet.

  “God in heaven,” mutters Vinaigre, swinging the lantern left then right.

  Thomas and Jean-Chrys follow the quivering lantern light. When they see the bloody carcass they too gasp. Then everyone sees the solid rock wall face. This is where the exploration, where the subterrane ends. Whatever it was that brought the carcass here is eventually going to come back. They have come into some ferocious animal’s lair.

  Vinaigre spins round, the lantern held as high as he can. His flickery face is waxen, eyes filled with what to Thomas looks like panic. “Out,” Vinaigre shouts, flailing the free arm at the bodies in his way. “Out of my way.”

  The apprentice and Pierre flatten against the sides of the subterrane, Vinaigre’s lantern swinging past their startled faces. Thomas and Jean-Chrys are not so quick. The collision with Vinaigre is jarring. Elbows on chests and faces, knees on knees and thighs. There are oofs and grunts and curses before Vinaigre topples over an unseen leg. The sounds of the three boys tumbling – shouts and then the crush and snap of the lantern – come fast. The extinction of the candle’s light comes next. It drains like water down a pipe. A total blackness, an impenetrable cloak, is thrown over every little thing. It’s a deeper dark than Thomas has ever known before.

  For a sliver of suspended time no one says or does a thing. There is only the trickle of water dripping. It’s the same wet tick-tock that’s been there from the start. But then the animal nature within each boy responds. It’s one grabbing, pushing, shouting, reaching, blaming the other and whoever is in the way. Arms swim the air as if in water and the darkness is a stream. A desperate fight and crawl begins. On all fours it’s everyone up, over and through all the others. Push and pull, scratch and punch and muttered threats. The sidewalls of jutting stones hit back when blind heads and shoulders and hands make contact. It takes only a few panic-stricken moments for a new regime, the reign of darkness, to establish itself. Vinaigre in front, Jean-Chrys next, followed by Pierre, then the apprentice with Thomas in the rear. Thomas tells himself that he picked where he is at, though if there were any light at all, the marks on his face and chest would reveal that he was put where he is. The hands, elbows and feet of four others have all left their marks.

  —

  “Still day,” Vinaigre cries out. The other boys, each in his turn, express more or less the same surprise when they finally spot the narrow rock opening up ahead.

  Everyone squeezes through in a hurry and heads for the sun-drenched clearing. In the deepness of late afternoon golden light the five boys stand with their faces upturned. It’s as if they have reached a promised land. There are handshakes, back pats and conquerors’ words all round. Even Thomas and Jean-Chrys join in the camaraderie, though Vinaigre makes a scowl at their approach and the weak grips of their hands. Thomas pulls his hand back after the slightest of contact, before he gets hurt. He steps away, and looks up to the sheltering chestnut tree. Two large grey birds are flitting from branch to branch, pecking at something to eat. Thomas pretends to study the birds. What he is really doing is wondering if this is how it will always be for him. A little apart. Of course, there have to be leaders and followers, yet will it always be him that brings up the rear? Is it possible to change the order of things in a life or is it set when you’re young and there’s no hope of a rise? What is it he overheard his father say to his mother: that he needed a backbone to survive? Can Thomas be different than he is?

  He brings his focus back down to where he is standing, away from the chestnut and its food-pecking birds. Yes, he thinks, I’ll be up near the front the next time. If not the leader then at least by his side. Unless, Thomas continues with a wince, glancing past Vinaigre, unless that leader is you.

  “That’s right,” Thomas says aloud, but to no one at all. He walks away from the other four boys, and runs his hands over his ribs. They’re hurting, but he’s pretty sure that’s all that’s wrong. If something were broken, surely it would hurt more than this. No, he’ll be all right. He’s relieved just to be out. He looks back at the brushy area that hides the opening to the cave.

  One of the birds he had been watching up in the chestnut tree swoops down, across Thomas’s sight line then away up out of sight over the trees. It flashes into Thomas’s mind that with a bit of luck he too, like the bird, will eventually be out of this place, out of little Vire. All he has to do is wait things out. Some kind of chance for a departure will emerge. His parents hint that they are making arrangements for him to go away to follow his studies. No doubt they still want him to become a priest. But he’ll make them see the nonsense of that. Instead, he’ll go study medicine, maybe even in Paris. Physicians have standing in the world. Maybe not as much as a priest in a mother’s eyes, but they’re better than merchants at least. He makes a face at his father’s occupation. Cloth merchant, he nearly says aloud. Thomas shakes away his reflection and tugs at the crotch of his pants.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Thomas spins round. He finds Jean-Chrys.

  “Nothing. Just … just waiting for you, I guess.” Thomas gestures in Jean-Chrys’s direction. “How are you anyway? I mean, down … down underground. You all right?”

  “Just glad we’re out.” Jean-Chrys summons a deep breath.

  The two friends look over to the other three lads, who haven’t yet moved from their chosen spot in the sun. Vinaigre is spinning some kind of story that has his two listeners paying rapt attention.

  “Quite the guy, isn’t he?” says Jean-Chrys. “He just takes charge.”

  “You, you admire Vinaigre?”

  “No, no,” says Jean-Chrys, taken aback by the instant anger on his friend’s face. “Just saying, that’s all. He takes charge.” Jean-Chrys shrugs at the self-evidence of what he’s saying.

  “Let’s get out of here,” says Thomas.

  “All right.” Jean-Chrys reaches out to tap Thomas on the elbow, but Thomas elbows the seeking hand away. They turn their backs to the other three boys and start up the long hill.

  “Hey!” It’s Vinaigre. The cut of his voice puts a dozen small birds to flight from the top of one of the nearby chestnut tree
s. “Where you goin’, girls?”

  Thomas and Jean-Chrys look round over their shoulders, unwilling to turn any more than that. Jean-Chrys opens his mouth to say something to Vinaigre in return, but Thomas warns him not to with tiny shake of his head and a quick roll of the eyes.

  “Home to Maman?” Vinaigre shouts. His chin is up, his head tilted back. The apprentice and Pierre laugh like they’ve turned into crows. “That’s right, you’d better,” Vinaigre adds for good measure. “Girls.”

  Thomas and Jean-Chrysostome look at each other, then at Vinaigre, their heads swivelling like owls. They keep their faces blank, intent on saying nothing. Neither wants to send an invitation for Vinaigre to come after them and maybe strike them down. They are comrades coming out of the underground no more.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Thomas mutters through tightly closed lips. His clothes look like he tried to swim through muck.

  Jean-Chrys nods agreement and the two are off. They run as fast as they can. At the top of the incline, where the beaten earth turns to finely crushed stone, they pause to look back, to make sure that neither Vinaigre or his allies are coming after them. No one is. Thomas raises an arm and makes what he thinks is a Roman salute, feet together, arm upraised. Vinaigre swats the air in return, but he stays where he is.

  “Could’ve been worse,” says Thomas to Jean-Chrys as they come to within a dozen paces of the town gate. He flexes his eyebrows, inviting his friend to comment.

  “Yeah, it sure could’ve. We could’ve been trapped. I’m not going back down in there, I’m not.”

  “No,” Thomas laughs, “why would you?”

  “Yeah.” Jean-Chrys hunches his shoulders. “Why would I? Well, I’m not, that’s what. I’m not. I’m just saying I’m not going back.”