Those Who Went Remain There Still (11 page)

“What do you mean?”

“You spotting that carving over there. Look at them, all getting along.”

“It won’t last,” he said. “You know it won’t. They’ll forget about it soon enough.”

“No, they won’t forget,” I argued. “They’ll go home and tell everyone they see about it. But they’ll get tired of getting along, and then they’ll snap right back to the old feuding ways.”

***

I was right. Eventually, the friendly happiness we shared from finding the Boone mark was used up; and eventually we made a fire—halfway between the spots everyone was arguing about.

I would’ve rather set it farther from the cave, but it was either put it where we did or break out the guns for another round. I loved my long rifle, and it was probably the most valuable thing I owned apart from my house in Iowa; but I wasn’t in a rush to show it off again.

It was only mid-afternoon and we didn’t really need the fire yet. We only made it to mark our spot, and declare our camp. It’s just something men do when they stop on the road.

We stood around it, warming ourselves even though we weren’t that cold.

“We should go in tonight,” Jacob said, hands on his hips, standing like he meant business.

Carlson said, “It’s getting late. And we don’t know how big the cave is, anyhow. We should just camp tonight, and bother with it in the morning.”

But Uncle John pointed out, “What does it matter if the sun goes down? It’s darker inside the cave than outside at night, regardless. Don’t let the hours determine how you approach the place.”

The silence around the fire confessed without words that he’d said something reasonable.

“Maybe,” Titus said slowly. “One or two of us ought to poke our heads in and take a look around—just to get an idea. Anybody here know how deep the Pit goes?”

We all shook our heads.

He continued. “Now, how many of us have gone inside, just a little bit? Most of us have peeked inside, I reckon—even if it was on a dare from our brothers. Meshack,” he looked real pointedly at me. “What about your sister? When she took off, did you come in here to look for her?”I started to say “no” like a reflex, but I caught myself. “We weren’t real sure this is where she went,” I mumbled. “Just ‘cause that’s what she told Momma, that don’t make it true. But I might’ve poked my head in, just a little bit.”

Uncle John frowned at me, not like he was angry but like he was worried. “I thought you’d never been inside.”

I shifted on my feet and folded my arms. “I’ve never spent any real time in there, no. But when my sister was gone, yeah—I might’ve looked around. I didn’t go so far that I couldn’t see the entrance, though, and that don’t hardly count.”

“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?”