“Buck!” Now two voices were calling.
He turned his head and listened.
“Buck, we’ve got more rope. Come on.” Pukeman.
“Yeah, come out, come out, wherever you are.” That was Isaac.
The sound was obviously some distance away, yet he could hear the words clearly.
“Hey, Buck!” Pete yelled. “We put some knots in the rope, so you can climb it. Let’s go!”
They must both be leaning over the Pit, Buck decided, because he could hear much of their conversation.
“…think he got out?”
“How?…Bike’s still here….”
“Shine that lantern all around down there….any way he could have…?”
“Buck?” Pete was calling again. “Nobody knows I’ve got the truck and I won’t be able to get it tomorrow. C’mon, man. We were just messing with you.”
Yeah? Buck thought. Tell me about it.
Their conversation again.
Pete: “There’s our flashlight.”
Isaac: “Where?”
Pete: “There! Look! You’d think…”
Isaac: “What’s that dark over there? Looks like water. Over to the right…Man, it is water….You don’t figure…tried to…swim out?” More silence. “What if he didn’t make it, Pete?”
“Shut up! Just shut up!” Pete’s voice. “Why don’t you climb down there and check it out?”
“Why don’t you? This whole thing was your idea….”
“I weigh more than you….”
“So what? Neither of us can hold the other….”
“Buck!” Pete was bellowing now. “Enough already. Just climb the frickin’ rope if you’re down there. Your folks are going a little nuts….Calling everyone….”
Buck leaned back against the rock wall and buried his face in his arms. He hadn’t wanted his folks to worry, but of course they were. What did he expect? He remembered Katie standing there with that bag of M&Ms, holding it out for him, probably blaming herself over and over now for not asking him more questions when he said he was going to Bealls’.
He knew that Mr. Beall would be questioned, and he would tell them he’d sold Buck four batteries. Then Joel would tell them about the headlamp, and—thinking that Buck was fooling around in the woods at night—Mel, when he got home, would be searching every path along the river. How could he let them go on worrying like this when all he would have to do was go climb up the stupid rope and let Pukeman drive him home?
He looked back the way he had come…then the other direction, with more and more openings to explore….When would he ever get down here again? When would he ever get another chance? Still, how could he let the family worry like this? Katie would probably have told them about that note to David and the police would be searching for him in the old Ambassador hotel. Made perfect sense. He’d wanted the headlamp to explore that old hotel at night.
“Okay,” he called finally, and turned himself around. He’d go home.
He slithered a few yards back into the narrow passage and then, getting no answer, called to Pete again.
“Okay,” he yelled, louder, but the last syllable was drowned out by the distant sound of an engine starting up, the noise growing fainter and fainter, and then Buck was alone for real.
Now he’d done it. Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn. All the breath seemed to go out of him, and Buck lay motionless on the cave floor, trying to think.
Maybe they’d gone to get help? Not bloody likely—not yet, anyway. Maybe they figured that someone else had come along, heard Buck yelling, and had gone for a ladder and got him out. A tall roof ladder might have done it. No, probably not. If that had happened and he’d been rescued, wouldn’t his bike be gone too? No, Pukeman had to know that he was still down here.
What chance did he have now to get out? Who would likely come all the way out here? There wasn’t even a road leading back to the Pit, just a trail in the weeds where people had come to gawk before the county boarded it up. Buck didn’t even know how to get here himself, except what he’d heard Pete saying to the other guys, something about Brandon Junction and Mountain Road….
He crawled backward until he could sit up, then reached for his cell phone again to see what time it was. Did he only imagine it or was the time display getting dim? It was five after eleven, but…He snapped it open and punched in “phone information.” The battery was low. Very low. Only one bar left and it was flickering off and on. At some point, even the time and the light from his cell phone would be gone. It was his only backup if something happened to the headlamp. He closed it quickly. Now he really had to be careful.
Okay, stay calm, he told himself. What was so different from a couple of minutes ago, when he was debating whether to answer Pete? Nothing, except it would be a while longer before someone called the rescue squad. Meanwhile….
He ate another M&M to give him energy, got on his knees again, and began a crawl. It was murder on his kneecaps, but at least he was making better time than when he was flat on his stomach, trying to get through. And he was cold. He had to keep moving.
Each time he came to a wider passage, he stopped and sat back to rest. Sometimes it was only a place he could stretch out one leg, not both. And sometimes he could stand up if he bent double at the waist. Or the only way he could sit was in the knee-chest position, looking up through a narrow chimney of rock, ending in darkness, whether rock or night sky, he couldn’t tell.
There were two distinct places he made a choice which way to go. At each of those points, Buck built a small tower of rocks and then, in the clay nearby, scratched an arrow to show the way he was going.
He was tired, though. And cold. And hungry. Excitement could keep you going for a long time, but it couldn’t fill your stomach. How long would his batteries last? he wondered. Seventy-two hours, the instructions had read, on low beam. But he needed to keep it on high occasionally to check for danger ahead. He had one more set of batteries; that was it. He tried not to punish himself for having bought the four-pack instead of the six.
In some places the passage, if he could even call it that, had walls that were wrinkled like corrugated tin. Like crawling through someone’s intestines, David would say, and Buck smiled at the thought. David could turn almost anything into something gross. Buck remembered the time they’d been looking at a photo of a once-submerged cave, with knobby calcite growths on the walls and floor, and David had called it cat barf.
He was grateful when he made another turn and found that not only was the ceiling high enough for him to stand, but there was a thin stream of water trickling down the side of the rock. He cupped his hands to catch it but got so little that he finally took off his helmet, pressed his cheek against the rock, and lapped at the water with his tongue, leaving the sharp taste of cold chalky rock in his mouth until he had just enough to swallow. It was delicious. He closed his eyes and swallowed again, and again, and again, one hand on the front of his jacket to keep it dry.
He took a new direction and started forward, then gave a sudden yelp. Two black eyes were coming directly at him, almost colliding with his face. Then, with a swoop, they flew upward, grazing his forehead. Bats.
Others clung like beans on a vine to the low ceiling ahead, only occasionally twitching, turning. Buck knew that if he didn’t disturb them, he could get by without incident.
Every so often the passageway opened into a larger space, almost room size, and that, in turn, was connected with another passageway farther on, like galleries in a museum. He crawled into one where the flowstone was more like ruffles—brains, David would describe them—ridge after ridge to crawl over, and Buck couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just going around in circles, stumbling and lurching toward any smooth surface where he might be able to stand up. He didn’t dare make any turn he couldn’t remember. How did he know it was already too late to find his way back? A quick stab of fear made him suck in his breath. An insect dropped on him, down the neck of his shirt. Buck had no free hand
to dislodge it. Several minutes passed before he found a level spot where he could stop and shake it out.
He tried to see everything, memorize it so he could describe it to David. Buck had never thought of himself as lucky—not until he’d discovered the Hole—but now, coming to a huge rock that looked as though it had been split in half, he was amazed to see what he guessed was the faint imprint of a leaf—part of a fern, he thought, about as big as his hand.
He maneuvered himself a little closer until both feet were solid, then stood transfixed, wanting to run a finger over it. He blew on it instead. A thin cloud of clay dust rose in the air. And then, to his wonder, he saw that it wasn’t a fern at all, but the fossilized skeleton of a trilobite—three fourths of one, anyway—one of the earliest creatures to inhabit the earth. Its three segmented lobes were unmistakable. He had seen photographs of them in almost every caving book he had studied. He knew he was standing for sure where a sea had once been.
“David,” he said aloud. “I’m naming you David.”
He took out his cell phone to take a photo. There was a click, but no flash. Now, when he tried to check the time, there was no time at all.
•••
He had no way of knowing whether it was the middle of the night or the middle of morning. Whether it was still Saturday or Sunday now. All Buck knew was that he was more tired than he could ever remember being, his thigh and calf muscles aching with the strain of keeping his balance, crawling sideways or up and down.
He found a spot smooth enough to sit on, and folded his arms across his chest, but he was too cold, especially his legs. He took the rope and wound it around and around his calves, pressing his jeans more tightly to his legs. Taking off his old jacket, he examined it for zippers, and discovered a long one under the collar. When he unzipped it, there was a hood, tightly rolled up, that he unfurled. He looked for more pockets, more zippers, and found two more on the inside, left and right.
There was nothing in the right pocket. But in the left, he pulled out the half piece of cheap survival blanket that David had given him once, which had torn on the center crease and, he saw, was threatening to tear on the other folds as well. He put his jacket back on, drew the hood over his head, pulled his knees up, and, as gently as possible, covered himself with the piece of Mylar blanket. His head dropped. Ten minutes, he promised, and then he’d keep going.
When he woke, however, he could tell through the fog of sleep that it had been longer than that. Perhaps much longer. He’d dreamed too, a weird dream about trying to find something. Yet when he found it, whatever it was, it belonged to someone else.
Carefully he straightened up, rubbing the crick in his neck, and refolded the survival blanket. He unwrapped the rope from around his legs, and when he finally got to his feet, he relieved himself against the boulder where he had been sitting and moved on, to see as much as he could before rescuers came.
Another thought, and this time it was like a punch in the gut. Maybe no one was coming. Maybe none of the guys had told. If Pete and Isaac started to think that Buck had fallen in that stream and been sucked under, or tried to swim his way out and didn’t make it, maybe they wouldn’t tell anyone. Wouldn’t want it known that they were responsible. And by the time one of them cracked, it could be days from now. A week. Much too late…
“Stay calm,” he said, aloud this time. Or, as Gramps would say, Settle yourself. Wasn’t that the first rule of caving? Almost anything you could do when you were super scared would be a huge mistake.
Better to keep himself busy, keep moving, backward or forward, what did it matter as long as it could disguise the thumping in his chest and keep him warm. He knew this much—there were no footprints here but his own. There was no graffiti on the walls, no beer cans or gum wrappers or cigarette butts on the floor. Nothing that gave any evidence that anyone had been here—ever.
Occasionally Buck came to a small stream or a pool, enough for a long drink. When the path divided again, he left another little tower of rocks and, this time, the wrapper of one of the three precious M&M packets to show the way he had come.
He was hungry, no disguising that. His stomach grumbled and ached, and he finally gave in and opened the second pack of candies. He remembered the way Katie had held them out to him, wishing his hand had clamped down on more of them. The next time he made a turn, he was both thrilled and dismayed to see that his path was almost completely blocked except for a tall lopsided V-shaped slit in the rock, about four feet off the cavern floor. Poking his head into the opening near the bottom, he could see a high-ceilinged gallery ahead, and the headlamp shone on crystal soda-straw formations hanging from the ceiling like clustered subterranean chandeliers.
He gasped, gaping in wonderment. The Hole was nothing compared to this. He had to go through. Had to see it. This was the most wonderful thing he’d seen yet, and he had discovered it! It was incredible! Wait till he told David! But how to get over there? It was too high to step over. Too narrow and jagged at the bottom to slither through on his stomach. Gravity alone would pull his body downward, not only shredding his clothes, but possibly entrapping him. With his feet off the floor, he would not even have his knees available to propel him over to the other side.
In a cave, you had to plan every single footstep before you took it; you had to know exactly where each foot would go. If he crawled up the wall on this side and tried stepping into the V with his foot, leaving his other foot free to swing himself over, his sneaker might turn sideways, down into the point of the V. If that happened, he could be stuck there with no easy way, if any, to pull himself out.
Directing the light from his headlamp straight ahead, he could see that this cavern seemed to go on and on. There was no way of telling how far he had come already. It was the chance of a lifetime. His skin tingled with excitement. He decided he had to try.
Correction: He wanted to try. Nobody had a gun to his head. Still…
He could tell by the pounding in his ears that he was scared, with good reason. He didn’t even try to convince himself he shouldn’t have left the Pit. Should have stayed right there till someone found him. And then…to lose his chance to go back with Pete and Ethan…
If only he had put on hiking boots that morning instead of his sneakers. If only he had knee pads and arm pads, he might be able to slither his body across the sharpest point of the V. But he didn’t, and if-onlys didn’t help. He was here, and this was his chance.
He took the rope and stuffed it between some of the sharp spikes at the bottom of the V, packing it down to make a small platform. Then he scrambled his way up the rocky wall till he reached the bottom of the V and could see the floor on the other side.
Still, he clung to the wall and reconsidered. Even if his right shoe balanced perfectly level on the platform he had made, the other leg had to come forward and pass it in that narrow space. His entire weight would be on the foot in the V. And it was that foot that had to push off and propel him over. What if his legs became entangled and he tripped? What if the right foot tipped sideways anyway and got wedged between the rocky spikes?
There was no other way to get through, and it was either try this or go all the way back to the Pit and wait for rescue, without exploring the most important part of his discovery.
He made the decision to go ahead. If he could brace his hands or forearms against the rock wall of the V to take some pressure off his foot, it might work. It would require all the arm strength he had.
Buck gingerly extended his right foot. He placed the sole of his sneaker lightly down on the rope platform between the spikes. Wait, he told himself, bracing his arms on the rock wall before putting more weight on his foot.
Carefully…carefully…pushing harder and harder against the rocky walls with his arms…he brought the left leg forward….
But there wasn’t enough space for his legs to pass without raising his left foot higher…higher still….His right foot began to sink.
And suddenly the rope plat
form shifted. His right foot tipped. He felt the jolt as his sneaker settled sideways, the left foot suspended in midair with no place to go.
For a moment he couldn’t breathe. His sneaker was growing tighter around his arch. Every second he perched there, the weight of his body on a single foot, gravity was at work.
Far more experienced cavers than he had been trapped in a similar manner. Using his arms, he pushed against the walls of the V with all his strength. Buck attempted to lift his foot even a centimeter, and tried to rock it gently toe to heel—back and forth, back and forth…
His shoulders throbbed, his biceps ached. His arms began to tremble with the effort he was expending to take the weight off his foot.
“C’mon, c’mon!” he said aloud. He felt his foot begin to move as the shoelaces loosened. Suddenly his foot was out of the sneaker. Using the trapped shoe for a launch pad, he gave it one swift downward push and propelled himself over to the other side.
For a minute or so, he just lay on the limestone floor, too freaked out and shaken to sit up. But gradually, as he felt his heartbeat begin to slow, he raised himself up on one hand and looked around.
Ahead of him, he could see the largest gallery yet—not as big as the Pit, perhaps, but the most fantastic. It was even awesome where he sat, with knobby formations protruding from the ground like pale carrots. He rose up and crawled back to the V to free his sneaker and the rope. Then, carefully, he made his way through the stalagmites toward the delicate crystal straws hanging from the ceiling in the room beyond.
How far did this go? Once again, the headlamp captured a long crooked passageway of sorts, like a mirror seen in a second mirror, where one reflected tunnel displayed another reflected tunnel, and they would go on into infinity. He was careful not to touch the seemingly translucent straws, and was mindful of where he put his feet.