The Rock Child

by Win Blevins

  We all doused our candles.

  “Oh yes oh surely oh deliciously, a cave-in. Why else would you come back? Why else would I hear the pitter-patter of little feet? Why else see the glow at the corner? You are rats hunting a way off the ship. I am the tomcat hunting you. And now I have you cornered.

  “Oh Your Holiness, I’m gonna put holes in you. I’m gonna cut off the top of your head and hold you up by your feet and drain the blood onto the ground, splot, splot, splot. Oh Your Holiness …”

  Sun Moon whispered calmly, “What we do?”

  Daniel answered firmly, and I couldn’t make out Rockwell’s taunts above the whispered words. “We have to take that last crosscut to the right,” he said. “It’s where the shaft bends left. Go the opposite way.” He knew the shafts like he knew the keys of a piano. Heckahoy, maybe there were eighty-eight shafts.

  “Hey, Brother Asie, Brother Daniel,” cried Rockwell sweetly, “come on out. You can go. I have no business with you. I want her. I want Sister Moon, you know, the sweet little Buddhist that broke my nose. Come out. I’ll let you go free. She, now, she has a debt to pay.”

  Daniel kept taking peeks up the tunnel. “I have no idea where he is,” he admitted. What with all the echoes, you couldn’t figure where a voice came from.

  “How far is crosscut?” asks Sun Moon.

  “Twenty or thirty strides,” says Daniel.

  “I go,” she says.

  “Wait!” squeaked Daniel. He considered. Then he fingered shells out of a side pocket and slipped them into the cylinder of the pistol till there was a full load. I saw it was a five-shooter.

  Rockwell roared again. “Miss Sun Moon, don’t worry, I don’t no more wanna stick my thing in you. I got some’p’n else a stick in you. It don’t go ’tween your legs, no. Somewheres to the rear. Then I light the fuse and run.” His horse laugh ack-acked off the walls from every direction.

  “I go now!” she whispered.

  Daniel held her back with a hand on her shoulder. “We all go,” he said. “First I fire two shots, then we all run, firing. Stay behind me.”

  He switched his eyes between the two of us, eyeball to eyeball. “It’s the only way.”

  He snuffed out his candle, raised the pistol, looked at us like we were horses at a starting gate, and lit out, spacing his shots.

  CLAP-CRASH-BOOM!

  CLAP-CRASH-BOOM!

  The roar of that gun in that little shaft felt like it would knock me off my feet. Then I saw I was behind the others and jumped like snapped by a bullwhip.

  CLAP-CRASH-BOOM-SKIDDED-CRACK-WHEE! roared all around us.

  In the lead, Daniel sent his smaller CLAP-CRASH-BOOM! again.

  Rockwell answered CLAP-CRASH-BOOM-SKIDDED-CRACK-WHEE! Those bullets felt like they weren’t bouncing around the stone sides of the shaft but around the inside of my skull bone.

  We whipped around the corner and huddled together like we were freezing.

  “Go!” ordered Daniel. “There’s a half cave-in beyond there. Find some cover and wait for me!”

  Daniel took a pose for keen listening.

  We skeedaddled as best you can skeedaddle in pitch-dark. I went feet and hands, tail up. Kept thinking what people say, about getting your ass shot off.

  I could hear Daniel wheedle mockingly at Rockwell behind us. “Come on, Brother Rockwell, is it Elder Rockwell, come let’s have it out. Be my good deacon. You are a man of God, Porter, and of the devil. But not equal, no, the devil has the mastery of you. The devil makes you want my gift, want the black of a muzzle pointed between your eyes. You’ve been looking for it your whole life, my dear Apostle …”

  THUNDERCLAP-CRASH-BOOM-SKIDDED-CRACK-WHEE!! rocketed through the tunnels, I can’t say how many times. It sounded like a twenty-one-gun salute.

  Rockwell’s voice was still, and the silence felt sinister.

  Daniel is dead. That thought flash-flooded into my mind. Daniel is dead. The words sounded louder than the noises of our hands and feet.

  Then came Daniel’s tense, teasing voice. “Good try! Good try! But you missed, my Apostle! You missed! I missed! Oh, Lordy, the Divinity must be tickled. How many …”

  But by then the shaft so rattled the words off the walls that I couldn’t make them out.

  We crawled over the rubble of the half cave-in and scooched down. I could imagine the two men listening, listening, their ears pricked for any sound, a clue that the other man was moving. You could creep up on your enemy. And he could spot you creeping, and put an end to your troubles.

  A shape came together in the darkness. The long, thin form of Daniel, wings folded. He picked his way silent over the rocks and perched next to us.

  “One cartridge left,” whispered Daniel, holding up the pistol.

  I looked through the darkness into Sun Moon’s face. It was steady.

  Daniel shrugged off his knapsack and began working at the straps.

  “How far we get out?” asked Sun Moon.

  Without looking up, Daniel answered, “Long, long way. Time for desperate measures.” He lit his candle. “I need light to work.”

  I could feel Sun Moon’s hesitation. “Why you risk self for us?”

  Daniel turned to her. “First,” he said, “you are my friends. Second, my stupidity got you into this. I led him here.” He shook her hands. “Third, you are my friends.”

  I could feel objection rise in her, like you feel something gush halfway up your gullet. For a moment I was sure she was going to insist on being a hero, and a martyr.

  My guts churned.

  Daniel took one of Sun Moon’s hands tenderly. “Do you love life?” he asked.

  “This human incarnation is precious, yes.”

  “Then let me help you. Help you where I could not help her.”

  She looked into his eyes a long moment. Then she put her hands on her belly, an odd gesture, and seemed to ponder. Finally, she said, “It is good. Thank you.”

  So Daniel drew his other hand out of the pack and held it up full of a dark shape.

  “I have blasting powder,” he said.

  I busted out, “You’ll kill us all.”

  “It’s dicey,” Daniel agreed. “When I didn’t take a risk, however, I lost the woman I loved, and life hasn’t tasted good since.” He turned to Sun Moon. “What about you?”

  “I willing do anything. I want live.”

  He smiled straight at her, and it was an odd smile. “Believe we’ll have to blow this place up,” he said.

  She nodded. Nodded again. “Yes,” she said.

  Just then came the sound. Rockwell was whistling, and the whistle bounced off every rock in the place. His tune was “Dixie.” As you’ll remember if you run the tune through your mind, it has some piercing high notes—“look a-WAY! look a-WAY!” and “way down SOUTH in Dixie.” Those high notes shrieked at us like banshees, and made my brain cells hurt.

  “I never did like that song,” said Daniel, not looking up from his work. He sang loud to the tune of the chorus,

  “I’m glad I’m not in Dixie,

  oh no! oh no!

  In Washo land I’ll take my stand—

  I damn near died in Dixie.”

  It drowned out Rockwell’s whistling. So then Rockwell starts to singing the verse at a roar.

  “Oh, I wish I was in the land of poontang,

  Old times there was nice when coons sang,

  Sing away, sing away,

  Sing away, Dixieland.”

  Daniel’s work went on apace. It looked tricky as the devil. He had two powder cartridges and a length of Bickford fuse. “No drill,” he muttered. “We’ll have to use cracks.”

  There were two likelihoods, he explained softly under Rockwell’s vulgar bellering. One was that we’d set them off and get nothing but a lot of noise. Rock walls don’t shatter easy. The other was that we’d bring the whole mountain down on ourselves. “And last,” he said, “there’s some possibility that we can break enough rock to block this tunnel and
not be under it when it comes down.”

  He worked fast, from time to time tossing out a chorus of “Dixie” to reassure Rockwell. He rammed the cartridges home and tied the fuses on, leaving a rattail hanging down the rock. We didn’t have any clay to stem the hole. When he lit them, we’d SKEE-E-E-daddle.

  I couldn’t help thinking how short these fuses were. But the next corner was close.

  Finally he says, “OK.”

  We looked at him, ready to see the spewing of those fuses, which would tell us how many inches we had left to live.

  “I want you to get around that corner quietly,” he whispers. “I’ll say something, cover your footsteps. And I will try a little ruse.”

  He steps back near the top of the cave-in and of a sudden calls, “Rockwell, I want to talk.”

  Silence in the tunnel, ours and Rockwell’s. Nobody could believe it.

  Dan shooed us down the shaft. He pointed and mouthed, “Corner.” We started creeping that way.

  “Talk,” Daniel called again. “Here’s how. I’ll set a candle up so you can see. Then I’ll throw my gun out. Last I’ll step out in the open. We’ll meet halfway and talk.”

  Rockwell’s voice was low and slinky, the way a cat moves. “What would we talk about, Sonny?”

  Daniel looked at us hard. We decided to trust him and stole along faster.

  “We don’t all have to die here.”

  “No,” said Rockwell. Now his voice was way too close. Sun Moon and I skittered a few steps, then turned around and listened. “Just you uns have to die.”

  Daniel lit a match and held it to a candle. When the candle lit, he set it atop the rubble.

  He kept the match going and put it to the fuses. Sparks spewed into the air, and he began calling loud to Rockwell to cover the hiss. “Here’s the candle,” he hollers to Rockwell. “I’m getting my gun out…

  Sun Moon and me ran. The last few steps we flew, and didn’t hear anything.

  Daniel screamed, and I saw his wings spread as he came.

  A ruckus like the end of the world blew up in my head.

  When I woke up, I was flat on my face, with my nose, lips, and left eye scrunched by rocks poking from different angles. I rolled over and found out my body was one big bruise. I had a dim memory of tumbling head over heels on the rock.

  Now I felt Sun Moon trying to untangle her legs from mine. Somewhere nearby Daniel was groaning.

  I sat up. The world shone with stars and lights, jiggered, came back straight, and went dark. In a second I realized the dark was because our candles were out. “Anybody dead?” says I.

  “Concussion, I guess,” says Daniel. “It must come around corners.”

  Something sure had slammed us into the mountain.

  Sun Moon pushed against me enough to get room to sit up.

  Daniel lit his candle.

  She said, “Is he? …”

  A low, soughing sound came, like the wind moaning. But tunnels are one place you don’t find wind. The mournful sound came again, and after a while it changed into, “O-o-o-oh! O-o-o-oh!”

  That went on for a bit. Our six eyes batted back and forth at each other, wondering.

  After another while it shaped itself into words. “God, God, God. O-o-o-oh! O-o-o-oh! O-o-o-oh! God … God.”

  Finally the voice attempted to communicate with us. “Hurt, I’m hurt, I’m dying, I’m dying. Help me, help me.”

  Then a while of silence while we looked at each other, trying to figure it out. “Don’t leave me like this. Please. Have mercy on me. Don’t leave me. Kill me, come kill me. God, God, God. O-o-o-oh! O-o-o-oh! O-o-o-oh! God, God.”

  “I’ll have a look,” says Daniel.

  “Me too,” says I. Because neither rock walls nor Rockwells shatter easy.

  “No!” hissed Sun Moon. “He lives! He shoot you!”

  Daniel put his candle out. “I’m gonna look,” says he.

  “He can’t see us in this dark,” I whispered to Sun Moon.

  We slipped out around the corner and crept up the shaft. Right quick we came to a wall of rocks. I heard Daniel start moving over it soft-like, and did the same myself. Got the cajoolies now—Rockwell might shoot at even a sound.

  I crept around that wall of rock for a long time. It was solid, top to bottom.

  Rockwell set in again. “Don’t leave me, have mercy, kill me. God, God. O-o-o-oh! God, God.” He kept it up all the while.

  Scri-I-itch!

  Behind a boulder Daniel had lit a match. Now he set the cap out where anyone could see it and lit the candle.

  No shot.

  In the half-light we could see the rubble that filled the tunnel. That hole was plugged tight. No one was going to shoot through that, much less crawl through it.

  A touch!

  I spun so fast I almost caught Sun Moon’s fingers in my teeth. She gave me a look that said, Sorry.

  We combed that place for holes, but there weren’t any. A mountain of rock jammed between us and Rockwell. The only thing that penetrated was his eerie voice. “Don’t leave me, have mercy, kill me. God, God. O-o-o-oh! God, God.”

  Daniel put his candle cap back on, and we all eased off stealthy-like into the shaft. We couldn’t hear our footpads over Rockwell’s voice. “O-o-o-oh! O-o-o-oh!” Sounded weaker now. When we rounded the corner, it got weaker yet, “O-o-o-oh! O-o-o-oh!,” and kept fading. I honestly didn’t know if Rockwell was telling true or faking.

  Doesn’t matter, I thought.

  Daniel whispered gleefully, “We dropped the whole mountain on him!”

  “Need a hundred men to muck that out,” I agreed.

  “Rockwell’s a dead man.”

  “Then why are we whispering?” asked Sun Moon. It was one of the few times I’d heard her sound annoyed.

  She touched my shoulder again. I stopped, and she lit a match for both our candles. Her eyes looked intently at me in the glow.

  “He not dead,” Sun Moon said. “Tunnel blocked, good. Rockwell alive.”

  “Why do you think so?” asked Daniel.

  “Rockwell not go away unless I make him.”

  I saw she meant it.

  “How can you do that?” I asked.

  “Have no knowledge,” she said.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We exit the mountain,” put in Daniel. “I’ve arranged a pleasant surprise.”

  He set off and we came along behind. I’d had all the surprises I wanted in the last twelve hours. Rockwell, a hidden mine, getting shot at, and blowing up a mountain. What could Daniel have to compare?

  Then I got my sense back.

  “Flabbergastonia,” I whispered to myself.

  It was snowing. We could see the flakes falling into the big hole, the shaft exit. The snow was lit up like a chandelier, every flake a candle.

  It gave me the shivers. After all, Daniel’s watch said it was the middle of a dark autumn night.

  We had slept the rest of the day away, I guessed, and now came to a shaft existing upward into the dark. Except it glowed to show us the way, and show us to the world.

  “Glorious,” said Daniel.

  “Beautiful,” murmured Sun Moon.

  “What is it?”

  “Firedamp. I’ve heard it happens here but never seen it,” he said.

  Now it shifted and fancified. Colored lights played in among the flakes, making rainbows, shimmery and glisteny, the way oil looks on water.

  “Like northern lights,” says Sun Moon.

  Gastonia, I thought.

  Now a smell came, rank, stomach-turning.

  “What in tarnation is firedamp?” I asked.

  “Carbureted hydrogen gas in mines.”

  Which meant purely nothing to me.

  Daniel walked forward into the light, and it got brighter, like a flame of pure white. He turned into a ghost, eerie white and unreal. He waved, kicked his legs into the air, danced. Snowflakes danced around him.

  “Wonderful,” said Sun Moon. Getting
changed into light meant something to her, something to do with Buddhism. Now the light burned brighter once more, furnace-bright, but utterly without heat. Every pebble in the shaft, every splinter, every piece of fungus glowed dazzling.

  Sun Moon and I stepped into the crazy light, too, swirling, playing. “I’m an angel,” I says. I started whistling a waltz, and Sun Moon came to my arms. We did a few triple steps. Her eyes gleamed like white silk cloth, and every bit of her face glowed with a white flame, even each hair in her eyebrows.

  I heard a clattering above, and something flashed into the light. A rope ladder.

  It hung up on some rocks off the bottom. I scrambled up to grab it, which was easy. I was ready to get out of this hole in the ground.

  Daniel wanted to go first. Sun Moon followed him, and I brought up the rear. As I rose, I pretended in my mind that we were celestial beings ascending. The awkwardness of a rope ladder kept saying it wasn’t so. Yet we burned like supreme candles, pure light without heat.

  When I got to the top, I stepped clumsily onto Earth again and looked around. Four Chinamen stood around, three holding horses, one bringing up the ladder. All was unnaturally bright in the burning gas, or whatever it was. Celestials, I said to myself, chuckling. We call ’em Celestials, and now they look it.

  Then I saw the fifth Celestial, standing out in the dark, Q Mark eyeballing the darkness. He figured we were not safe yet.

  I looked back at the great light. It rose fifty or sixty feet into the black sky. Snowflakes beamed, swirling down, and the colors of the northern lights seemed to rise into the sky.

  I spoke to the closest Celestial. “Where’s Sir Richard?” I asked.

  He just looked at me. Speaking English wasn’t any coin in this realm. “Where’s Sir Richard?” I repeated foolishly.

  A figure came out from behind the horses. “Tommy Kirk say Sir Richard no good. Sleep to tomorrow. Opium.”

  First I recognized the voice, then I recognized his sweet face. The head was tilted sideways onto folded hands to imitate sleep. An angelic smile lit the face. Paiute Joe.

  He came to me and stuck out his hand. “I am your guide,” he said.

  I shook it.