“It counts well enough,” Nicodemus said.
“Well enough to what?” I asked.
“To make you the expert.”
“I don’t want to be the expert,” I said, even as I knew they were right. Even as I stood there thinking about it, small details were rising in the back of my mind, bobbing up like apples in a rain barrel.
“Tough luck,” Titus said, but he didn’t say it too unfriendly. “Let’s talk then, about what we know.”
“We’ve done enough talking for one day,” Carlson griped. “I’m sick of talking.”
And I griped back at him, “Nobody knows much, so don’t worry—it won’t take long.”
I had an idea. I reached up into a tree and half pulled, half picked a slender branch. I squeezed the small green bits off it and kicked at the dirt until I’d cleared a spot about as big as a pillow.
“Here’s what I know, and any man who can add anything should speak on up, and interrupt me if you want to. Right inside there’s a big room that splits up two ways.” I used the end of my stick to make a rough drawing of it. “I think one of those ways doesn’t branch very far. It dead ends pretty swift.”
“Which one?” Nicodemus asked.
“I don’t know. I only remember hearing about it when folks were looking for Winnter. One of the two main ways dies out, so there’s only one way back away from the opening.”
Uncle John peered down at my sketch and said, “It’s a pity we don’t have a map.”
“It’s a pity we don’t have a dead man with better sense than to send us all on a wild goose chase,” Jacob complained. “And while we’re making wishes, it’s a pity I don’t have a thousand dollars and a pretty wife.”
But John didn’t give up so easy. He ignored the mocking and said, “Hasn’t anyone ever charted it? Anyone at all?”
“Boone, maybe,” I said. “Nobody we know ever went inside too deep. Don’t you remember? Folks have been telling stories about this old hole since Heaster Senior first took the land.”
Nicodemus said, “The way I heard it, Heaster Senior swore there weren’t no cave out here on this land. And when one of his neighbors made a fuss about it, he admitted he knew it was here. But he said it was poisoned air inside, and that nobody should go there. He said we shouldn’t play out here, or put any animals inside or anything.”
We all looked at the ugly yellow swath of dead plant life that ringed the Pit’s entrance.
***
John swallowed hard. “I remember Heaster Senior, just barely. He died when I was a boy. But he was old then, real old.” And for a second there, I heard the valley in his voice. For a second, he sounded like one of us. Then it was gone, as fast as I’d heard it. “I remember hearing him talk about the poisoned cave, and how the air inside it would kill a man or a beast.”
His eyes flickered, and darted off to some spot behind me. His gaze settled again down on the fire.
Jacob scowled. “How are we supposed to go in if the air’s tainted up like that? I bet it’s some kind of trick. I bet that old bastard wanted to kill us all—to take us all with him.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” his son said.
“Nobody would,” I agreed. “But if someone went inside with the will, then someone survived long enough to leave it. And the air in there stinks, don’t it? We can all smell it from here. It’s nasty, but I don’t think it’s deadly.”
The other men lifted their noses, and one by one they nodded. The smoke couldn’t cover it, not completely. Wafting out from the mouth of the Pit came a sour smell—the smell of something rotting in an outhouse.
Uncle John threw in his two cents. He said, “I think Meshack is correct. The air would sicken us, even out here. It’s as foul as can be, but I don’t think it’ll kill us. Perhaps we should cover our faces with our handkerchiefs.”
I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see the other men staring at my uncle like he’d just jumped down out of a tree and started taking off his clothes.
Jacob finally spoke, and he didn’t even try to hide a laugh. “John Coy, maybe a fancy man like yourself keeps a handkerchief in every pocket. But I’m proud to say I don’t own a damn one of the things. We can handle the stink in the hole, can’t we, fellas?”
His son and my cousin Carlson laughed, and Titus even smiled.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said to Uncle John. “We’ll all handle it fine. If you want to use a handkerchief or whatever, then that’s up to you. Honest, though, I don’t know if it’ll make a difference. If it smells this bad out here, God knows how bad it’ll be inside.”
He shrugged, and the teasing rolled off his back like water off a goose. He didn’t like it when they made fun of him, but he was determined not to let it upset him—and he did a good job of it.
***
Maybe he did too good a job of it. Maybe it’s easy not to get your feelings hurt when you think you’re better than the people who are making fun of you. But if he felt that way, I’m sure it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t half as personal as the mean things the rest of the family said to him, anyway.
***
Titus looked at me, and his face was real serious. He said, “Does anyone know for sure if there’s anything in there at all?”
Nobody did, so nobody said anything. I fiddled with my stick and shrugged.
Uncle John was staring off into the distance again. He broke his own silence and said, “We could send someone in ahead of everyone else, with a torch. Just to make sure it’s all right.”
“A torch?” Nicodemus said. “What we need is a canary.”
“Well we ain’t got no canary,” Carlson spit on the ground. “And this ain’t no coal mine. But I know what he’s talking about, with a torch. If the air’s too nasty the torch’ll go out, won’t it? Then somebody goes in first, and if he stays alive and the torch stays lit, then we all go in after.”
Jacob waved his hands like he thought all this was completely stupid. “What damn fool among us is gonna go in first?”
Fast, right on the heels of that, Uncle John said calmly, “A man who’d like the advantage of getting the first look.” Then he added, just as quiet, “I’ll do it, if none of you want to. I’ve got a handkerchief, after all.”
Carlson seemed all right with the idea, but Jacob and Nicodemus went pissy about it. I didn’t say anything because I figured my uncle was bluffing. Me and Titus exchanged a look that said he was thinking the same thing, but he wasn’t going to point it out.
When the dust settled, it was Jacob who finally agreed out to get first go of it. He was oldest next to Uncle John, he had better eyesight than Carlson, and he wasn’t about to let his own boy go first.
And since we didn’t know how long this fragile agreement would hold up, we quit fighting over whether or not to go in then, or later.
John had been right anyway. Dark was dark, and it didn’t matter if you were inside or out if you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Besides, it was starting to look like rain. Maybe it’d sprinkle and maybe it’d pour. If we got inside the Pit, we’d be dry.
But first, Jacob was going to check the air and take a peek around.
***
You couldn’t have paid me enough to go first. Not in a thousand years, with my guardian angel standing beside me, if I had one.
I kept thinking about Winnter, no matter how hard I tried not to. I thought about my sister, long dead and maybe left lying inside this cave—or maybe…
…I tried to step on the thought, to crush it out like a cigarette…
Or maybe, what if she was still down there someplace?
That was crazy thinking, and I knew it. But that didn’t stop the thinking, no matter how much I figured it ought to. I thought about home, and my wife, and my babies—and the one about to be born. I thought about my fields and my house. I thought about my long, shining gun.
But into the nooks and crannies of these nice things, thoughts of my sister curled like smoke.
In my waking dreams, she was as brittle as a skeleton, with sunken eyes and teeth that had grown out long, like fingernails.
***
Jacob equipped himself with a lantern that we lit up good and gave plenty of oil. We handed him a torch we made from the campfire for his other hand, even though he wanted to hold a gun instead. It took some doing, but we convinced him there wasn’t anything in there that would need shooting at, and besides—what if he fired off a shot in there? Wouldn’t it bounce around? He might end up killing himself with his own itchy trigger finger.
He finally agreed to the torch and the lantern, mostly because he looked hard into the black room behind the slit in the hill, and he decided he wanted extra light more than he wanted to accidentally shoot himself in the face.
We congratulated him on his wisdom, and then we stood behind him—quite far behind him—while he worked himself up to walking inside.
I was wound tighter than an expensive watch.
I held my breath while he pushed himself forward and I could tell, watching him, that he was breathing just the opposite—fast and shallow. He was scared, and when he looked back over his shoulder I bet he was worried that he’d been tricked.
But he kept going. We were all watching him so he couldn’t back out, not without losing face.
He had to step sideways to pass through the entrance. He led with the lantern; he paused there on the threshold, half in and half out of that other world. His neck craned forward, following the lantern. It slung back and forth from its handle, spilling runny yellow light into the interior.
With one more step he was wholly inside.
It was as if he’d been swallowed.
***
His lantern and torch bobbed merrily and cast their flames around, throwing reflections and lights from wall to wall. We watched him as best we could. Mostly, there was nothing to watch but a shadow skulking back and forth.
***
Nicodemus called out, “Pa, you all right in there?” But he didn’t make a move to come any closer and see for himself.
Jacob called back, “Yeah.”
“How’s the air?” Uncle John asked.
“Smells like shit, but I ain’t dying.” Every word echoed, bounding around in the cavern, same as his lights. “Y’all get yourselves loaded up. Help me look around in here.”
“What do you see?” I stalled.
He didn’t answer at first. His lights wavered, and I thought maybe he was shining them around, trying to find something to tell me about.
Finally he said, “That Meshack asking?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s like you were saying—it splits up almost as soon as you get inside. And it looks like one way ends pretty quick, but the other one I can’t tell. Get yourselves inside here.” He stuck his head back out, and took a deep breath, and he shuddered. “Jesus. It stinks like hell, but there’s only one direction we can rightly go, and nothing’s done tried to eat me yet.”
He grinned then, all proud of himself and glad he’d taken the challenge to go first. And he said, “Come on. There’s no rigged-up traps or nothing, and I don’t think it’ll take long.”
“All right,” Carlson answered him, and everyone went around agreeing, but no one moved too fast.
***
“Uncle John,” I whispered.
He didn’t reply. He was staring hard at the cave entrance, and I didn’t like it. He was staring at the cave like he’d been staring at the hillside before he spotted Boone’s mark, like he saw something maybe no one else could see.
“Uncle John,” I said again.
He turned to me and blinked.
While the other men started packing up their stuff, and while Jacob started whistling in the cave like a brave man, I asked my uncle, “If you see my sister in there, living or dead, would you tell me so?”
He sucked in a breath. “I don’t believe I ever knew your sister, Meshack.”
“That shouldn’t make a difference. If there’s a woman here, and if she’s a ghost or if she’s turned into something worse…that’s surely her.”
“Something worse?” he repeated after me. “What on earth do you mean by that?” There was real worry written on his face, and again I got that awful suspicion that he knew something I didn’t.
“I don’t know.”
Everyone else was packed up and almost ready to head on forward, into the Pit. I tugged at Uncle John’s arm and helped him shoulder a loaded-up pack. It wasn’t too heavy, because we didn’t intend to be down there for a week or anything. All of us were carrying extra oil, a few caving supplies like pick-axes and little shovels, a canteen, and some candles just in case.
“You sure?” he asked me.
“I’m not sure of anything,” I admitted, and it was the truth. “Except for this bad feeling,” I added. “I’ve got a real bad hurt in my stomach about this whole thing, and I don’t like it—not any of it. Not at all.”
And that was all I could confess. It was all I was willing to share, and anyway, the other fellows were waiting for us to hurry up.
Uncle John gave me a look, and for a second I couldn’t figure out whether he wanted to give me a hug, or whether he wanted me to give him one. It made me uncomfortable, but I was almost grateful for it. I’d rather be embarrassed, than be scared so bad that I could hardly hold a pickaxe without it shaking.
“Let’s go,” I changed the subject. “They’re waiting on us.”
He nodded, and followed behind me. And one by one, in just about the same order we rode out, we filed into the Witch’s Pit.
XII
The Dead in the Pit
I don’t know what I expected from the cave. I’d never been inside one before, and until that day I’d never seen a spirit before, either; but the cave surprised me more than the ghosts, I think. I’d expected darkness, and I’d expected the echoes of our voices and footsteps to patter back and forth across the walls. I’d anticipated the dampness, too.
But nothing could have prepared me for the sheer stink of the place.
From the outside we could detect it faintly, and to look at the ground around the entrance you’d think that nothing healthful could be emanating from within. To see all the dead grass and the swath of plants that had expired rather than grow in such proximity to the terrible smell…well…it made me worry for our lungs. Even if the air was not the strictest poison, it certainly could do us no good to breathe it for any duration.
***
Years ago, back when I was still there in the valley, a large raccoon somehow trapped itself in the outhouse hole and drowned in the sewage one summer. After two or three days of stewing in its fecal broth, the decaying raccoon’s stench could have roughly compared to the rank air within the cave.
To put it in the mildest of all possible terms, it was revolting.
I didn’t care what my fellow cavers thought of me. I retrieved my handkerchief and held it up to my nose, for all the slim assistance it provided. For a mere moment, I whiffed a faint memory of the lavender I kept in my drawers at home. The scent was overwhelmed almost before I could identify it.
I stuffed the square of fabric back into my pocket, which would have been tantamount to surrender if my efforts had not been so soundly and fairly defeated.
***
In places, the ceiling was quite low—and all across its expanse, as far as the lanterns could project, it was dripping with formations. Some were sharp and long, and they dangled down as delicate-looking as candle wax spilling away from a wick; but some were knobby and round, stone bubbles that glimmered wetly in the firelight.
We all held our heads low, and held our lights as high as we could.
Once we were inside, a great grumbling of swears broke the claustrophobic silence. Partly, the swearers were appalled by the odor, and partly they felt a nervous need to make some noise.
It was crushing, knowing the weight of a whole hill was held up by this dank, uneven ceiling—and we wer
e walking beneath it. I could feel the heft of it, bearing down above me. And as silence fell between us once again, we held still and listened hard. I don’t know what we were listening for; there was nothing to hear except for ourselves, and the occasional flicker and pop of a small flame bucking against a wick.
We could hear ourselves quite clearly, when we listened. Our breaths were low and measured, as if we all believed that there wasn’t enough to breathe. Our hands tightened on our lights and our equipment, and the leather straps or metal holds creaked against our palms.
I cannot speak for the rest of them, but I could hear my own heart, too—pounding in my chest, bashing itself back and forth between my spine and my sternum. I could hear it madly pumping blood up through my temples.
And just when I thought it might make me crazy to stand there still, hearing my own body object to the surroundings, Titus said, “You think Boone ever came into this cave?”
He said it softly, but it was as loud as fireworks in the tiny black cathedral.
“I reckon he must’ve,” Jacob answered. “Otherwise, why would he leave his mark beside it?”
General murmurs of agreement went all along the line.
***
Since the oppressiveness and fear was working on us all, Meshack kept us all moving. He suggested, “Let’s spread out, just a little bit. I don’t mean we should split up, but this room’s pretty big, once you get looking at it. Let’s make sure there’s not some other passage out. Jacob, you said the room divides up.”
“Yes, it does. Right here.” He pointed at a wall that hung like a curtain made of melted rock. He indicated the left side of the curtain. “If you go that way, it dead-ends right quick. If you go the other way, it keeps on going. But now that all these lights are in here, I can see the place is bigger than I thought it was. There might be some other way—some other tunnel or something, leading someplace else.”
“It’s hard to tell, what with all the shadows,” his son said. Nicodemus took a step away from the line and moved his torch, trying to see farther.