by Andrew Smith
I sighed. “Dad?”
Dad said, “What?”
“Will you let me talk? This is not about me and James Jenkins. It’s not about me and anybody. Well, it is about me and me, I guess.”
“Oh. Sorry, Son.”
I might say that Dad looked embarrassed, but he had worm guts on his face and was out in the rain with nothing on but a (excuse me) stupid kilt, and I don’t think anything could ever possibly embarrass him, anyway.
So I continued, “It’s okay. But the thing is . . . Well, here’s what it is. . . . The thing, I mean.”
It was hard for me to talk to my dad, but then again I was the one who’d put him and Mom through all the trouble after I got trapped in the well seven years ago, so I really didn’t want to let them down again. I bit the inside of my cheek. It tasted like worms.
I said, “The thing is, the other day when I talked to James, it was because I want to enter the Blue Creek Days thing.”
Dad patted my bare knee. His hand was muddy and wet and cold.
He said, “I know that, Son! We got the permission slip from Mr. Mannweiler for the Science Club display. Extraterrestrial life! That sounds creepy and spectacular!”
My Dad: Perpetual filler-in of all my blanks.
I said, “Dad. No. Here it is, Dad: I don’t want to go to MIT. I don’t want to have Advanced Placement Physics and go to Blue Creek Magnet School next year. I want to cook, Dad. I want to enter Colonel Jenkins’s, excuse me, stupid macaroni and cheese cook-off competition and meet celebrity chef Resa O’Hare, because I know I could win. And I want to get away from Blue Creek, where everybody prays for me and where I’ll never not be the, excuse me, dumb Little Boy in the Well. And I want to go to school somewhere that isn’t Texas, where there aren’t any abandoned wells and where nobody knows who I am—or was—because Resa O’Hare teaches in Oregon at one of the best private high schools in the world for kids who want to learn the culinary arts. Blue Creek Days. That’s what I wanted to tell you, Dad. Are you listening?”
And then I stopped suddenly for two reasons: First, I had let everything spill out so quickly, I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d just said to Dad; and second, my stomach was tightening up in convulsions because I was about to start crying.
Either that, or the worms had made a rough landing down there.
Being eleven years old and telling your dad he has everything wrong about you is rough.
The moons of Dad’s eyes got noticeably dimmer and smaller. He sat up straight, like he’d been stung by a bee or something. Looking at him made me feel worse, like I’d done something really terrible to my own father, but it was too late to suck all those words back in and let things go on the same as they’d gone for the past seven years.
I’d let my dad down again.
Dad said, “Oh. Hmm . . .”
And that was it.
I said, “Dad?” Then I touched my index finger to the top of my lip and said, “You . . . uh . . . got some . . . uh . . . worm.”
Dad wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “Oh! Heh-heh. Well. I guess we should try to get some shut-eye, Sam. It’s been a long day. A really long day.”
THE SECOND NIGHT IN THE HOLE
A MATTER OF MATHEMATICAL OPTIMISM
It starts underground in the dark, with a bit of math.
Bartleby’s third tunnel took me farther away from the well than I’d been on either of our previous trips.
“Too bad none of your tunnels point up,” I said. “We could have been out of here days ago.”
“Out? OUT? Who wants out?” Bartleby asked, his voice slightly muted by the closeness of the dirt walls.
“Well. I do,” I said. “You could dig . . . um . . . toward up, couldn’t you?”
Bartleby stopped dead in the middle of the tunnel. My face bumped into his (excuse me) butt.
Bartleby said, “I would prefer not to.”
Bartleby pressed forward, and I followed.
Then, as usual, Bartleby continued talking. “Besides, as well as being nocturnal, I am also subterranean.”
“Well, I’m neither one of those things,” I said.
“Ha ha! I’m neither one of those things!” Bartleby wrenched his voice into a sneering mock of my own. “Well, guess what, Sam. It’s the middle of the night, and you’re underground, so I guess you don’t even really know what you’re supposed to be, do you? Subterranean. Plus. Nocturnal.”
I stopped following Bartleby. It got very dark.
I realized that all this time I’d been underground with him, whenever Bartleby was around I could see perfectly fine, but once he was away from me, it was impossibly dark.
I said, “You’re really mean, Bartleby.”
Then I started to back up, feeling my way in reverse toward the well.
Ahead of me in the blackness of the tunnel, Bartleby said, “Hey! What are you doing? Don’t be like that. I was only messing around, Sam. Besides, you’ve GOT to see where I’m taking you.”
“I’m tired,” I said.
“Oh, kid. You haven’t begun to live yet. Look, number one—don’t go living your life only trying to avoid holes; number two—the only thing that matters is where you’re going, not where you’ve been; and number three—don’t ever let anyone tell you that deep down you really aren’t a subterranean, nocturnal animal, if that’s what you want to be. Because that’s what we are!”
Then came the most horrifying noise. It sounded something like a cat with its tail caught in a coffee grinder, if you can imagine what that would sound like. It scared me enough that I jumped, which, because I was on my hands and knees, made me crash my head and shoulders into the roof of Bartleby’s tunnel.
“What was that?” I said.
“That? That was my subterranean nocturnal armadillo roar!”
And, even though it was pitch-dark, I imagined Bartleby making air quotes and his eyes getting bigger and blacker when he said “subterranean nocturnal armadillo roar.”
And Bartleby added, “It’s what we subterranean nocturnal animals do.”
I did not respond to Bartleby.
“Hey, kid,” Bartleby said.
“What?”
“Did I ever show you how I can prove I’m a unicorn? Ha ha!!!”
I groaned and pushed away from Bartleby, continuing to back up.
“Look,” Bartleby called after me, “I am just messing around, kid. Lighten up. Besides, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I had been surprised enough. In fact, I was in a constant state of surprise—and I said so to Bartleby.
“This is different,” Bartleby countered. “I promise. But if I tell you what it is, it will ruin the surprise. Nobody wants that. So, come on, Sam—embrace your inner subterranean nocturnal animal self! After all, it’s your last night down here, so let’s have fun.”
I inched toward Bartleby. “Wait. Why are you saying it’s my last night? What’s that supposed to mean?”
I will admit that Bartleby’s prediction about this being my last night in the well—or wherever we were—made me feel light and happy, but at the same time I was filled with an ominous sort of dread. What if it was my actual last night anywhere?
What if this was it?
Bartleby turned around and scooted back in my direction. He said, “I did the math. They said they were halfway to you yesterday. They’ve got to be just a matter of hours away from making contact with their Little Boy in the Well. It’s a matter of calculation! Ha ha! You can call it mathematical optimism.”
And when Bartleby said “mathematical optimism,” he poked his little wet nose right into mine, widened his inky black eyes, and made air quotes with his sharp and muddy front claws.
I don’t know why I trusted Bartleby’s mathematical optimism. Maybe it had something to do with my only being four years old at the time. I think the default attitude for most four-year-olds must be optimism, with or without math. That all changes around the time you get into middle school, though,
but nobody tells you. But when Bartleby (who never stopped talking anyway) said, “Come on!” I sighed and followed him deeper into the tunnel, resigned to the fact that there was nothing I could do to ever stop Bartleby from manipulating my trust, based on all his math and optimism.
“We’re almost there, Sam!” Bartleby said.
“You’ve been lost before,” I pointed out.
“Lost? How can I possibly get lost? This is my world. I made it.”
“So I suppose that makes you something like the Armadillo of Thanksgiving Future?” I asked.
Bartleby paused. I bumped into him again.
He said, “Armadillo? What’s an armadillo?”
Bartleby was endlessly frustrating.
After a long moment of silence, Bartleby burst out in laughter.
I, on the other hand, did not.
LE CLUB SOUTERRAIN NOCTURNE
It starts at a going-away party.
I hadn’t realized how hot and stuffy it was inside Bartleby’s tunnel until a lick of cool fresh air washed over my damp face and arms. And when Bartleby stopped crawling forward, and we took in this new sensation, I could also hear the gentle sound of trickling water.
And then there was music. Not the kind of music that came down the well from all the people who’d gathered above me, playing guitars and singing folk songs. This music crackled faintly through a tinny radio speaker that was tuned to a gospel station from Fort Worth.
The song playing was unmistakable—it had been ingrained in my memory since before I could speak. The voice of the singer was my great-grandmother, Lily Abernathy’s, and the song playing was “I Will Walk with Him in the Garden of Blood.”
Bartleby whispered, “You hear that, Sam?”
I said, “That’s my great-grandmother.”
“Ha ha! I know that! Isn’t it great?” Bartleby asked.
“Um. But why? What’s it for?”
Bartleby turned around and grinned, which was the exact same expression an armadillo would have if it weren’t grinning. He said, “It’s a party. For you! It’s your Going-Away Party!”
And when Bartleby said “Going-Away Party,” his eyes seemed to grow to twice their size and he made jittery jazz hands with his front claws.
I still did not get how Bartleby could be so certain I was going away, not to mention that he seemed to know everything about me and my great-grandmother, but I was kind of touched that he’d arranged to have a party for me.
“Now, this might be a tight squeeze for you, but once you’re through we can finally get this party started! We’ve been waiting for so long,” Bartleby said. Then he grunted and pushed himself forward into a narrow slash that cut through a jagged rock wall.
Once Bartleby was inside, the sound of the music and the water became louder, and the cool air increased to a steady breeze on my face, as though Bartleby had been a cork that unstopped whatever was seeping into his tunnel from the other side of the narrow crawl space.
I pushed my head up into the fissure in the rock.
I said, “You’re not going to trap me down here, are you?”
“Ha ha!” Bartleby laughed. “You can’t trap a trapped rat!”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Bartleby, at the other end of the doorway (if you could call it that), said, “After all we’ve been through together, Sam, you still don’t trust me? Remember, unicorns never do bad things to little boys. Come on! It’s a party—for you!”
Well. Everyone likes parties. And I did miss the entire Thanksgiving thing that had supposedly happened at home up above. So I squeezed my shoulders into the opening and belly-crawled, scraping my way in after Bartleby.
The doorway hole was only about as long as I was tall, and once my head and arms had gotten through to the other side, I saw a sparkling cavern that looked like a scene in a fantasy fairy tale come to life before my eyes.
“A cave,” I said.
The cavern itself was massive. It was a view I had only seen before in pictures or on television programs about the world’s most spectacular caves. Once I’d squeezed through the doorway, the floor dropped down below me and the ceiling vaulted at least twenty feet over my head.
I could stand up again.
All across the ceiling extended thin, fingerlike stalactites that resembled bony icicles, twisting down at me. Some of them had to be nearly ten feet long. And up from the floor rose bulky stalagmites that looked like the rounded bottom teeth of whales or dinosaurs.
“We’ve been swallowed, Sam! We’re inside the mouth of Planet Earth! Ha ha! Welcome to Le Club Souterrain Nocturne!” Bartleby cheered.
And when Bartleby said “Le Club Souterrain Nocturne,” his eyes (as you have probably come to expect) grew nearly to the size of tangerines, he extended his front claw gracefully like he was some kind of showroom model, and he pointed at a buzzing neon sign that said this:
LE CLUB SOUTERRAIN NOCTURNE
(TRANSLATION FOR OUR NON-FRENCH-SPEAKING PATRONS: SUBTERRANEAN NOCTURNAL CLUB)
And in the expanse of the cavern ahead of me on the right lay a glimmering pool of perfectly clear water. On the floor of the pool were table-size flat rocks that stairstepped away into a deep-blue, seemingly bottomless lake below. The pool was fed by a waterfall that splashed down from some invisible dark place above us. Along the edge of the small lake, on the left, was a broad, smooth limestone floor.
This was where all the animals were dancing, if you could call it that.
What I mean is this: “I Will Walk with Him in the Garden of Blood” is not the most danceable tune you could ever hear (but it was the only tune that played—over and over and over—from the little red plastic radio sitting on top of one of the nubby stalagmites). The awkwardness of Great-Grandma’s song was magnified by the fact that the arms and legs of foxes, prairie dogs, snapping turtles, coyotes, and otters are not very well suited to the articulation of dance movements. But there were all these animals here, dancing and dancing, not one of them seemingly the least bit concerned about their lack of ability, or about a small four-year-old boy who was covered in mud and grime and just standing there in their presence, taking in all the strangeness of the spectacle.
But it was a real party, and for the first time since I’d fallen into the well (and how many days I’d been there I couldn’t tell anymore), I felt almost like I wanted to stay here.
And I was suddenly aware of how intensely thirsty I was.
I wanted that water.
I took a few steps toward the edge of the pool and looked down into it. Fish, frogs, and crayfish darted around before me, back and forth like shooting stars from rock to rock, almost as though they were also dancing underwater. I got down onto my knees and dipped my hands into the water.
“Can I drink this?” I asked.
Bartleby hopped from one hind foot to the other. He said, “Ha ha, Sam! There’s nothing a subterranean nocturnal animal can’t do if he wants to do it! Am I right?”
And then from all above us came a chorus of shrill, squeaky voices: “You’re a subterranean nocturnal animal!”
I hadn’t even noticed that up among the trunks of the stalactites was a gathering of thousands of bats—all of them, as always, saying exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.
They were also all quivering, dancing to the gospel music, hanging upside down from the ceiling with their tiny feet.
I got down onto my belly at the edge of the water and dipped my face into it. Nothing had ever tasted or felt so good in my short life; it was better than every Thanksgiving pie ever made.
I drank and drank, and all the animals danced and laughed while my great-grandmother sang her morbid song about guilt and horticulture.
When I was full, I sat up and took off my one remaining shoe and sock and I put my feet down into the water. Bartleby came up behind me and started grunting as he pressed his front claws into my shoulder and pushed.
“What are you trying to do?” I said.
“Ugh. Ugh! A joke. It’s just a joke. I’m trying to push you into the water, but you’re too heavy,” Bartleby said. “It’s a joke. It’s like a tradition at going-away parties. Right? Push the guest of honor into the pool. You don’t happen to have a pack of cigarettes or a cell phone in your pocket, do you? Ha ha! Because, you know, water. Ha ha!”
Bartleby kept pushing and grunting.
“Do you throw a lot of going-away parties?” I asked.
“Only this one,” Bartleby said. “But it’s been going on nonstop since 1888. We originally started the party for Ethan Pixler, the bank robber. Then nobody wanted to go home, so we all just kept it up, around the clock!”
And when Bartleby said “around the clock,” his eyes got big and his little claws drew circles in the air over my right shoulder.
Bartleby pushed again, harder. He said, “For all the rest of us here know, you are Ethan Pixler, and it’s about time you showed up! Ha ha!”
“Ethan Pixler! Ethan Pixler!” cried the bats.
Originally, Ethan Pixler never made it to Bartleby’s party, due to a scheduling conflict with the State of Texas.
“Ugh!” Bartleby gave another strong push, and then a pair of otters who’d been watching us came over to help him. I didn’t mind if it meant I would willingly participate in a traditional going-away party joke; I knew I could use a trip through a washing machine anyway.
The otters spoke Spanish, and very quickly—so fast that I could only make out a few words, which pretty much anyone in Texas can understand. But I could pick out the words for water and push, as well as a Spanish pronunciation of the name Ethan Pixler.
So I went into the pool with all my clothes on (except for one shoe and one sock that I’d lost, and the other shoe and sock that I’d removed), until the water was over my head, and I swam out into the middle of the glassy lake, which quickly clouded up with mud on account of how filthy I was.