Heywood Fetcher

by W.H. Harrod

  ~Spelunking

  Needless to say, Heywood got out of that little blackberry picking fiasco with the help of his fleet feet and within days all had been pretty much forgotten. Due to the group’s lack of interest or more likely their sheer laziness, Heywood was still looked upon as the group’s itinerary setter. In other words, he was still the chief mischief planner.

  Yet he was fairly sure that he was not the one who came up with the idea that they ought to go cave exploring. Heywood always had an aversion to being confined in dark, tight places like trunks of cars which his big brother and his addle pated friends apparently found so amusing. One never knew when it would happen. A younger student could simply be walking past a group of high school sophomores or juniors, and they would snatch the kid and stick him in the trunk while they went on lying to each other about how cool their bug-eyed, horned-rimmed, half-inch thick glasses wearing, mouth-full-of-braces girlfriends were. As Heywood recalled, those zit-faced Marilyn Monroe admiring, unfiltered Camel cigarette smoking thugs derived entirely too much pleasure out of making his life miserable.

  It was especially gruesome when two or three kids got put in a trunk together and one of them turned out to be Fart Face Decker. The kid let a big fart about every five minutes of his entire existence. It wasn’t his fault as he was from a poorer family that subsisted on beans for at least two meals every day. Heywood remembered the one time he made the mistake of going inside Fart Face’s family home one afternoon after school. About two steps inside the front door his eyes started to burn. Next his throat began to constrict as if he was being tear gassed. The whole room was a gigantic fart repository. He barely made it back outside where he fell upon his knees and promptly puked up the favorite leftover meatball sandwich lunch he’d enjoyed hours earlier.

  But, back to the subject under review - cave exploring. Heywood hated caves. He hated closets. He hated car trunks. So what made him agree to go along with the really stupid idea of getting down on one’s knees and following five or six gray-matter lacking adolescents into a newly discovered opening in the side of a hill, a cave heretofore completely unknown and unexplored by his or any other group?

  It was a harmless enough looking little cave from an exterior vantage point. It was located in a small holler just off a bigger holler they’d walked through many times before. One day one of the guys simply decided to see where a smaller creek led. They had walked along the main creek many times before without taking notice. Within minutes the whole gang was told to come and look at what had been found not more than a hundred yards away through the thick undergrowth.

  There, in front of the gang, after a short walk was an honest to goodness five foot high by four foot wide opening into the hillside. The entire opening was enclosed by a rock outcropping. A continuous stream of water trickled over the rocky base that led back to the main creek. The group stood silently staring at their newest discovery. What to do with this amazing discovery had to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Usually they just found dead skunks, crawdad holes, and partially destroyed Private Property – No Trespassing signs.

  This was something completely new - an undiscovered hole in the ground that was surely going to need a name. That part didn’t bother Heywood. It was what came next that caused a shiver to run up and down his spine. What came next was some idiot coming up with the idea of the group exploring this newly found eighth wonder of the world.

  Being well aware of the collective IQ deficiency that plagued this band of rural misfits, Heywood scoured his brain hoping to come up with any plausible reason to strongly suggest they table this matter for another day’s discussion. This way he would have time to come up with several alternatives to their getting down on hands and knees and crawling deep into the bowels of the earth. As far as Heywood was concerned getting whacked on the butt with old lady Basham’s broom while trying to steal some of her grapes from the arbor she foolishly located much too close to the road appeared to be a much more suitable idea for a bunch of kids who had been known to be frightened of anything related to doing anything in the dark. As far as Heywood knew, caves were about as dark and menacing as anything he could imagine.

  Thinking fast, a habit Heywood learned early in life, he suggested they head back to the big black walnut tree where they usually congregated to give due consideration to important matters. This was agreed upon with but some minor rumbling, and the group retired to their sacred meeting place to make plans for an all-out assault upon their newest discovery.

  All the way there, Heywood continued to think of plausible reasons for the group not to rush off willy-nilly to make an assault on what he, quite frankly, considered an ominous looking gateway to Hades. But alas, he was shot down unceremoniously by the entire group. This was something new. He usually managed to gather up some support for his opinions, but not this time. This time a solid front voted to go down into some newly discovered water-leaking hole in the side of a hill. There simply was no way that Heywood could not go along if he maintained any desire to compete for the position of Grand Poobah of the group. This leadership fetish he labored with was beginning to cause him to have second thoughts about the entire matter. No way did he have any interest in being an everyday foot soldier in any kind of group, especially with these lug heads. But was his ambition to be a leader so important that it would cause him to participate in what was becoming, by the minute, a really, really, really, double really, stupid idea?

  After more consideration, which included Heywood admitting, to himself, that his exalted position in this fairly pathetic group of underachievers was about the best he could hope for in the backwater community they blessed with their presence, he decided to go along with these idiots.

  “I say we go back and do it right now,” said Morgan, the one guy Heywood might have expected to back his play if he had been given a chance to offer it. That was it. The rest of the group to the last cerebrally deficient individual chimed in favor of the motion to run back to the new found hole in the ground and crawl inside as far as possible.

  In a tone of voice which obviated his complete displeasure at how quickly the decision had been made, Heywood offered up only a couple of suggestions.

  “What about lanterns? What about a rope to keep us all together? What about water if we get thirsty? What about leaving someone at the entrance in case we get lost? Any suggestions?” Heywood inquired of the group.

  “I got a rope,” said Morgan.

  “We’ll get the lanterns,” offered Lester and Fester in unison.

  “What about you, Cousin Henry, you got anything you want to bring along on this underground picnic?” asked Heywood, his lack of enthusiasm apparent.

  “Nope,” he replied, “but I think I ought to be the one who names it as it was my idea to follow the creek.”

  This idea did not thrill Heywood in the least. Cousin Henry was a good kid but he was totally deficient in the imagination area. Naming a cave would require the efforts of a more worldly individual, an individual like Heywood.

  “We’ll take that idea into consideration, Cousin Henry,” replied Heywood. “Now you boys hurry up and get the equipment as it’s already well past midday. We sure don’t want to be late gettin’ home for supper, now do we?”

  Heywood prided himself on looking at the bigger picture and getting home for supper was one of his daily priorities. He knew that nights were much longer if you were put to bed without any supper and getting home late meant going without supper at his house. With his bottomless pit brothers circling around the table like a bunch of sharks, there would be nothing left but pork chop or chicken bones. Not even a piece of corn bread would remain. Around Heywood’s supper table a kid could lose a body part if one of the youthful food snatchers got hold of a sibling’s finger in a mad grab for the last chicken leg. Grabbing the food item in question didn’t mean the fight was over. You had to get it into your mouth before it was safe to assume whatever it was you grabbed was going to end up in one’s stomach
.

  The gang’s excitement level must have been high because it took less than an hour for all the members to return to the cave along with ropes, flashlights, and a compass.

  Heywood inquired as to what use the compass might be to them in a cave where they did not have the liberty to determine which way they would go. In a cave you go in as far as you can and then you turn around and come back out. You don’t need a compass for that, he explained.

  The response he got was not reassuring. The kid named Fester replied that he didn’t care. He only wanted to see if it glowed in the dark.

  Heywood commented that if that’s all he wanted to do he should just get under a blanket with it.

  Fester then told Heywood he better shut up.

  That’s what Heywood did as the group prepared to enter, surely, the newest discovered natural wonder in the world. He also suggested that Fester should go first, seeing as he had the compass. This was quickly agreed to with the idea of his brother, Lester, going next, followed by Cousin Henry. Morgan, the mayor’s son went next, then Heywood, in that order. Heywood was adamant about going in last as he sure didn’t want this bunch of bumblers between him and the only way out if anything happened.

  Heywood crawled along behind the group as they made their way into the small cave opening. With each additional yard they progressed, Heywood’s apprehension grew. Up ahead, he heard a constant clamor of individuals griping about getting their knees wet as they crawled forward over the wet-rock-strewn cave floor. The farther they went, the smaller the cave became. Soon Heywood heard nothing but gripes as more of the brave spelunkers banged their heads and knees on all sorts of protruding rocks. The water was getting deeper and colder. After another several minutes of crawling, griping, and cussing, which Heywood estimated gained them another twenty-five yards, Cousin Henry began to get agitated as Lester and Fester began to reveal what they ate for lunch in the form of bean farts directly into his face. If the loudness, which Heywood could easily hear all the way in the rear, was any indication of the vile stench awaiting him only yards ahead, he was in no hurry to catch up with the pack.

  Just as Heywood expected, things began to turn for the worst. The guys in the rear were ready to rebel, swearing vengeance upon the two farting brothers up in front who were laughing at the plight of the intrepid explorers downwind.

  The way it was going, Heywood expected their adventure would not last much longer. Lester and Fester had gotten beyond the fun of laying down a near lethal layer of gas the guys behind had to crawl through and were beginning to gripe about the narrowing of the cave along with the fact they were also getting wetter and colder the farther they advanced.

  Everything that had happened so far was nothing compared to what the group would experience when the totally unexpected happened: their flashlights ran out of juice. Of a sudden the gas passing brothers were no longer having such a good time. They were the farthest into the cave and it looked as if, within minutes, they would be totally in the dark. They weren’t the only ones to take notice. In fact, every kid in front of Heywood was about to start screaming for their momma if past was prolog.

  Unlike the others, Heywood suspected that something amiss was surely going to transpire once this disorganized group of adolescent adventurers ventured so far out of their comfort zone. That’s why he insisted on bringing up the rear. He didn’t want these idiots climbing over the top of him as they fought to get out of the cold dark cave. That’s also why he had the good sense to count the number of yards as they crawled into the cave. He knew he couldn’t be exact but he could come up with at least an estimate. By his best guess they may have, after all the banging heads on rocks, crawling through water, getting cold and tired, and, finally, having to smell a continuous cloud of bean farts, gone no more than seventy five to eighty yards past the cave’s entrance. Heywood had no intention of telling the moaning and crying kids that choice piece of information. He intended to have some fun.

  “Oh no, what are we going to do now?” exclaimed Heywood in a voice replete with fear. “How are we going to get out of here without any light? We’re trapped in here forever. They’ll never find us.”

  That did it. Heywood’s pretense of a hopeless situation lit a fire under the rest of the frightened group.

  “I don’t want to die,” wailed one of the terrified youngsters.

  “I don’t want to die in this place either,” came the quick response from another frightened lad.

  “Get out of the way,” shouted either Lester or Fester. “I gotta get out of here. Let me out of here!”

  Heywood loved every minute of it. He knew that all they had to do was turn around and calmly feel their way back to the entrance. He had been keenly observant as they crawled into the cave, and he took particular notice of the lack of any additional passages leading off of the one they traversed to their present position.

  “Shut up!” yelled Cousin Henry. “It was you two’s idea to do this in the first place. So just shut up while we try to find our way out of here.”

  Heywood was proud of Cousin Henry standing up to the two brothers. He felt Cousin Henry was smarter than both of them together.

  “I’ll deal with you, you little traitor, when we get out of here,” yelled back one of the brothers.

  At the same time Heywood whispered to Morgan that everything was okay and that he should not be scared. He only wanted to have some fun with the two goofball brothers. Morgan must have approved of Heywood’s plan because he giggled from somewhere in the darkness ahead of Heywood.

  As Heywood began his slow crawl in the direction they had originally come from, he began to fashion a plan to have some fun with the two brothers still moaning and threatening the whole world with mayhem if they did not get out of this now not so intriguing dark and wet hole in the ground. He had remembered shining his, then, working flashlight to the side and discovering what, at first, looked to be another passage leading off from the main passage they were presently in. He gave it a cursory look and discovered it ended in a dead end in not more than ten or twelve feet away from the main passage. Still, he felt he could have some fun with it.

  “Hey guys, I just remembered that on the way in I saw another branch leading off the main cave. I think it was on the left side, so remember to keep feeling the walls and stay to the right. Okay?”

  “What?” yelled one of the twins. “I don’t remember any other passages.”

  “Then find your own way out,” replied Heywood.

  “We’ll find our way out, for sure,” came an angry voice from the rear, “and when we do we’ll sure come looking for you. You’re the reason we’re in here anyway.”

  Heywood wasn’t surprised at the two brothers having forgotten just how strongly they had resisted his attempts to talk them out of this increasingly irritating cave exploring adventure. All was quiet for a time, but Heywood didn’t expect it to stay that way for long. By his estimation, the two goofballs in the rear would be nearing the false passage coming up on the right side of the cave. Heywood made sure all the way along that he kept in contact with the left side, so he would not get led into the dead end.

  Soon, just as expected, the two brothers let loose with some howling that would have made a werewolf jealous.

  “Where are we? This is a dead end. How do we get out of here?” yelled the two brothers in unison.

  Heywood and the others had halted in their tracks at the first signs of distress from the two quarrelsome brothers.

  “Just stay to the left like I told you,” yelled Heywood as he sat together with the other two members of the expedition several yards away in the main cave passage.

  “You didn’t say left, you said right,” came the accusatory response. “You better get us out of here if you know what’s good for you.”

  “You’re crazy! I said left, didn’t I guys?” said Heywood in a loud voice to the two conspirators sitting close by in the main tunnel.

  “Yep,” replied Morgan.

  �
��That’s a fact,” added Cousin Henry.

  “You’re gonna get it, Henry, when we get out of here,” came the hasty reply from the wayward brothers lost somewhere behind them.

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Heywood. “Maybe I did say right. I don’t know which way to go now. We may all die in here, and no one will ever find our bodies. What are we going to do?” pleaded Heywood. “I think we’re trapped in here forever.”

  “All I know is that you are in for a good flailing as soon as I find you wherever you are,” voiced one of the lost brothers at the rear of the main party.

  Heywood decided it was time to have some more fun with the increasingly bellicose twosome in the rear.

  “You know what, fellas?” asked Heywood in his most fear- filled voice. No one bothered to answer him back so he kept on going with his idea. “It might be time for us to begin to make our peace with the Lord for I’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever see daylight again. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t want to end up even further down below, if you know what I mean.”

  The two kids with Heywood started to snicker but Heywood pinched both of them before they could be heard by the whimpering dolts lost behind in the cave. “I’ve heard it said by my uncle, the preacher, that if a guy fessed up and asked for forgiveness then he wouldn’t necessarily end up way down there in that place called Hades. He says there is a lot of fire there, so I guess it’s somewhere close to Hell.”

  Heywood and the twosome with him listened for any response from the guys in the rear. All they heard was the sound of whimpering from somewhere back in the cave.

  Heywood took this as a good sign so he decided to press on with the farce. “Okay, so I’ll go first being I’m sure the Lord will be more sparing on all those who are the most truthful in this time of our great peril. So -” said Heywood before he was cut off by two loud voices from deeper into the cave.

  Both Lester and Fester, sounding as if the fear of something sinister was about to come upon them, called out that they wanted to go first as they felt they were just two innocent victims of Heywood’s evil influence upon the whole group.

  “Well, I guess that’s okay,” replied Heywood. “It does look as if you two guys will never be found, even if someone ever does come looking around and finds this cave. Go ahead, but it better be good. Something no one else has ever heard about or it won’t count.”

  All was quiet as the two frightened former tough guys back in the deeper recesses of the cave discussed their plan to save their sinful souls.

  “Okay,” said a much less threatening voice identifying itself Lester. “We got one story that not a soul knows about except me and Fester.”

  “How come you get to tell it? I was there, too. I should get to tell some of it,” cut in another voice that could only have been Fester’s.

  “Would you just shut up and let me start it at least? You know you ain’t any good at recollectin’ things. You’re always gettin’ stories wrong. Like when you told everybody you was the one who ate that whole plate of chicken wings that time at the church picnic. Why you’re too dumb to even tell the difference between a chicken wing and a pork chop, much less eat a plate full of ‘em.”

  “I can, too,” came the indignant response.

  “Why -”

  “Hold on guys,” interrupted Heywood, “why don’t you start off Lester so we can get all this taken care of before we all succumb to the cold and hunger that is surely only minutes away.”

  “Did you hear that, Fester? I’m to get the story started and you can add what little you know later,” said an obviously put out Lester.

  “Huuuumph,” was the only response the distant listeners made out before Lester started in on the supposedly never told to another human being story.

  All this time, Heywood had to constantly restrain the two younger explorers sitting with him who were preparing to enjoy the forthcoming confessions about to be revealed to the world as soon as the two younger kids got back to civilization sometime later that day.

  “As I was about to say,” proclaimed Lester, “the story I feel I must divulge will not be easy for me. It has been a source of embarrassment for my entire family for some years.

  “Okay,” Heywood whispered to his co-conspirators from their forward position in the increasing inhospitable cave. “This should be fun.”

  “Go on,” said Heywood.

  “Well, first off it weren’t my idea; it was Fester’s even though I know he will deny it. All I can say to that is the Lord knows the truth and if I was Fester I would start being careful about who he calls a liar, especially since we are so close to making the big leap so to speak.

  “Why that’s a bunch-” started Fester.

  “Easy Fester, your time will come later,” injected Heywood before the two gray matter deficient goobers could start on one another again.

  “Once again, as I was about to say,” continued Lester, “my poor brother is a chicken torturing, egg stealing, tool of the devil if there ever was one. The Lord knows I’ve tried to set an example for the right behavior we are all expected to display if we ever want to dine at that big kitchen table in the sky. But sadly, Fester must have been lured into his evil ways by the Devil himself.”

  “You better shut up, Lester, or I’ll be putting a couple more knots upside your ugly head if you tell that story again,” said Fester.

  “But I got to brother, we’re getting down to the wire here. We got to tell the truth, or we’ll end up walking on hot coals for all maternity, just like the preacher said,” pleaded Lester.

  “It ain’t maternity, you nitwit. It’s fraternity. The preacher said we will live in a fraternity of evil men and have to eat bugs or something called locusts,” replied Fester.

  “Well, whatever. I just know I don’t want to be chewing on anything that can’t be fried with some fatback drippings for a little flavor,” responded Lester in a voice reeking of resignation.

  “Well, I guess you’re right there,” said Fester. “Go ahead and tell the story of my great misfortune if you think it will keep us from having to eat bugs and getting our feet burnt forever. I’ve heard that forever can go on for a pretty long time.”

  “Well, okay then,” replied Lester. “It all started last fall when Pa got laid off at his chicken head wringing job out at the poultry processing plant. We was having to endure some long nights of chewing on nothing more than canned pickles and flap jacks with but some homemade sorghum molasses to cover up the taste. So Fester and me decided that old lady Decker, over on Bratcher Holler road, had more laying hens than one person should ever need. So we decided to make a visit to her coup one night and borrow a couple of her fat hens to bide us over until Pa got back to work. Pa never knew anything about what we did, or he would have whooped our rear ends till the sun came up.”

  Not a sound came forth from any of the other spelunkers as Lester took a short breather before going on with his story.

  “As I said, we was pretty hungry, or we wouldn’t have resorted to such desperate tactics in the first place. You see, me and Fester was going to prayer meetings regularly there for-” continued Lester, before Heywood interrupted and brought him back to the main story he had been telling.

  “Well, as I said, we was real hungry-” continued Lester.

  “No,” interrupted Fester, “you said we was pretty hungry. That’s what you said, not real hungry. As I remember it, you was the one who was the real hungry one. As you recall, I said I kinda liked the sorghum molasses and pickles.”

  “You better shut up, Fester! I’m trying to save our mortal souls from eternal damnation,” interrupted Lester.

  “Oh, sorry,” answered Fester.

  “As I was saying,” continued Lester, “we crept up to old lady Decker’s chicken coop with nary a soul taking notice. We used Pa’s wire cutters to make a small hole in the fence so one of us - that being Fester, could get inside and fetch us a couple of hens and maybe some eggs. Everything went along real good u
ntil Fester, after handing me a couple of fat hens through the fence, decided to go back and fetch a few eggs for breakfast. The trouble started as old lady Decker’s old hound dog, the one that was so old it couldn’t catch a dead possum, started barking like all get out. That’s when Fester came flying out of the coup and got tangled up in the wire fence we’d cut the hole through.”

  Lester paused his storytelling for some reason at that point, and Heywood called out through the darkness asking him why he didn’t finish the story.

  Lester didn’t respond to Heywood but instead spoke to his brother.

  “Should I tell him what happened next?” asked Lester, speaking into the blackness. “It’s not like anyone else will ever find out as we are all going to die in this pit from hell anyway.”

  All was quiet until Fester’s feeble voice came floating through the darkness.

  “Might’s well,” he said, “nobody else is going to find out anyway.”

  “Well, alright then,” said Lester.

  Seconds passed until Heywood spoke up again asking the two story tellers located somewhere behind them in the darkness to finish the doggone story.

  “Well,” Lester said once again, “this is surely a sad, sad story and one that I had hoped to never have to tell to another human being. So here goes. My dimwit brother came busting through the wire and headed off in the darkness before I had time to gather up the two chickens I’d tied up and laid beside me, expecting Fester to hand some eggs through the fence before we skedaddled.”

  Soon, Lester halted his story causing Heywood to ask him to continue the story.

  “Well,” Lester said, “I barely caught sight of Fester heading off in the opposite direction from which we had snuck up to the chicken coup in the first place. I couldn’t holler at him and let old lady Decker know a couple of chicken thieves were on the property. So I hurriedly gathered up the two chickens and headed off in the same direction that Fester had gone.”

  “And?” asked Heywood after several seconds had lapsed.

  This time there was a quiver in Lester’s voice as he began his tale.

  “It was a horrible sight I encountered not more than thirty or forty paces towards the tree line running along the far side of the property. It was the smell that smashed me in the face even before I got to the place where my brother, Fester, stood up to his neck in the vilest pit of human dung this side of hell. Seems old lady Decker was having her outhouse moved to a new spot and whoever had started the project hadn’t finished covering the old hole yet.”

  “I stopped dead in my tracks,” added the obviously distraught story teller. “So frightening was the sight before me, that I dropped the two hens I was trying to pilfer and just stared at the unholy pit from hell. There my brother Fester, was, standing right dab in the middle of a filled to the brim with crap, outhouse hole. I’m telling you the smell caused me to gag; it was so bad. He was completely covered with turd droppin’s. If I hadn’t know who fell into the pit I wouldn’t have recognized him. I didn’t know what to do. I looked around to see if anyone from the house was after us, but I couldn’t see that anyone had even taken notice of that infernal dog’s yapping. That’s when Fester’s faint voice, passing through those now incrusted with outhouse droppin’s lips, asked me to help him out of that stinking to high heavens hole.

  “How am I supposed to do that? I asked him.”

  “If you don’t get me out of here quick, I’m going to start hollering to the high heavens, said the slimy creature I knew to be my poor brother.”

  “I wasn’t about to stick out my hand to him, what with him covered from head to foot with old lady Decker’s outhouse droppin’s. So I took a quick look around, but as I couldn’t find anything, I had to settle on a downed tree limb off to the side. The smaller limbs hadn’t been cut off, but still, it seemed strong enough to help a desperate chicken rustler out of a sure to goodness mess.”

  “I grabbed that stout limb and hurriedly extended the end with the smaller branches towards the sad, sad sight standing in the middle of a sure enough, God awful, open crapper hole. Fester eventually was able to grasp the wooden lifeline extended to him, and soon after, I, ever so slowly, pulled his mostly submerged body out of that pit from hell. That’s when the real horror began. As the weight of Fester’s body, along with his crap soaked clothes, caused the branch to give way, he reached out his free hand in my direction. My mind raced as I tried to decide on what I should do. Finally, my conscience won out and I knew I had to reach a hand out to my brother, no matter what. So that’s what I did, much to my regret.”

  Lester halted his story there causing Heywood and the two kids with him to wonder what was happening farther back in the cave. Heywood was about to make an inquiry, but didn’t get the chance as Lester restarted his tale.

  “Well,” said Lester, in a voice barely heard by the threesome several yards up ahead who were trying hard not to laugh out loud. “What happened next should never, ever happen to a human being again. As I said, I reached out a hand to Fester, and he grabbed hold of it and hung on for dear life. I realized real quick that I was going to have a hard time pulling my brother out of that stinking hole from hell. So I hurriedly got down on my knees to get a better grip. I grasped Fester’s hand as hard as I could. I pulled with all my might, and I could feel my brother’s body come towards the dry earth upon which I knelt down upon. I thought we were going to make it, but then I felt my knees begin to slip, resulting in my body starting to slide towards the foul hole that imprisoned my poor brother whose body was by that time only partly out of the hole.”

  Lester paused.

  “And?” asked Heywood.

  “What happened then should never happen to another human being. Because Fester, getting more desperate, lunged forward grabbing my arm with both his hands to try and pull himself out of that, stinking to the high heavens, open outhouse hole. He was desperate and started clawing at my body to get a good hold. I, at the same time, attempted to get to my feet to get more leverage.”

  “And, what happened?” asked Heywood eager to find out how things came out.

  “The horror of horrors, that’s what,” came the reply.

  “As Fester clawed desperately, trying to get out of the hole, I lost my balance and went head first into Satan’s honey pot. I’m sorry,” said an even more distressed Lester, “but I can’t talk anymore about it. That was the most embarrassin’ experience in both of our lives. And if it were not almost certain that we will never get out of this devil hole to see the light of day again, I would never have told this sad story to another human being.”

  All was quiet for the longest time. Only after waiting a respectable period of time in anticipation of getting some sort of sympathetic reaction from the listeners farther towards the front of the cave, did Lester seek out a response from the, hopefully, sympathetic, spelunkers up ahead.

  “Well, that’s about it for Fester and me,” said Lester. “We’ve gotten straight with the Lord following that terrible incident, so now which one of you fellers is going next?”

  Time passed and not a person spoke up. All remained deathly quiet in the increasingly uncomfortable darkness.

  “I said who’s going next! Me and Fester have fessed up, so now it’s one of you fellas' turn,” pleaded Lester.

  Still not a word came forth from the trio of silent snickering explorers up ahead.

  “Listen here,” said Lester in a much more aggressive tone of voice, “we’ve fessed up, so one of you guys better do some fessing up too!”

  Not a sound was heard.

  “I said, it’s time for one of you guys to come clean and fess up just like me and my brother here just did. Don’t make me come out there and find you,” said Lester with even more malice in his tone of voice.

  “I’m gitten mad,” said an irate Lester.

  Still there was no answer forthcoming. Lester was fuming by this time. “You better not make me-”

  “Make you what?” came a voice from
much farther away in the cave.

  “Where are you guys?” asked an agitated Lester.

  “We’re at the mouth of the cave,” answered Heywood. “All you two have to do is turn around, put your right hand on the wall, follow it back to the turn and then with your right hand still on the wall crawl another twenty yards until you see daylight. But we won’t be there waiting for you, as we know a few folks in town who will be interested in hearing about two guys deciding to go night swimming in old lady Decker’s backyard crapper hole and how they both came out of the pool with a nice gooey tan. See ya!”

  “I don’t remember us getting a tan,” piped up Fester. “I do remember it took Ma two good scrubbings with lye soap to get most of that mess off of us. Especially our hair! Boy I’m glad I didn’t go into the hole face first. Why I -”

  “Would you just shut up, you idiot!” yelled Lester.

  “Well, okay,” answered Fester, “but it ain’t like I was the one who pushed you in that hole or asked you to go cave exploring. Why, I was the one who pulled you out, so you ought to be thanking me.”

  “Lord, give me the strength,” said Lester.