“Awesome!” he said aloud. “Oh, man, David. You should be here.”
He wished he had a caving book with him to identify some of the structures. He should be taking notes, drawing maps or diagrams for the cavers who would come here next. Buck felt almost as eager to get out and tell people about it as he had been to explore in secret.
There were rocky formations that resembled familiar objects if seen from the right angle—a car…a boot…a head. In another gallery, he came across a few fallen rocks that resembled, from almost any angle, a huge chair. There was the back, the seat, two arms on either side, one a little lower than the other. He was almost tempted to climb up and sit in it.
On a rocky bridge, he stopped to reconnoiter, and looked about for the place he had entered this part of the cavern. For the first time he realized a basic of caving he should have learned long ago: an entrance doesn’t necessarily look the same going back as it did when you entered.
He had figured that the tall V in the rocky wall would be unmistakable from any angle. Now, even from here—five feet or more above the cavern floor—there appeared to be many different directions he could go.
Had he truly not marked the direction he was taking once he had freed his sneaker and moved on? Buck climbed down off the bridge the way he had come, foregoing an even larger gallery beyond. He looked for the pointed rock with the three dangling stalactites he had seen shortly after he made it through the V.
There—he saw them, not ten feet away. No…the rock wasn’t the same. As he moved forward, he saw another three to his left….No, not them…
He suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. Without food, he was easily exhausted. It was a mistake to try to find his way back when he was this weary, so once again, he found a smooth place where he could sit. This time he made a cushion of the rope for insulation, sat down on that, drew up his legs, and wrapped what was left of the fraying piece of survival blanket around him, tucking it in under his thighs. Almost immediately, his chin dropped down on his chest, and he slept.
•••
He awoke in total darkness and was completely disoriented. The only sound he heard was his own breathing, that and an intermittent growling of his stomach. He had never seen the world so black. Blacker than black. For a minute he wondered if he might have gone blind, and rubbed at his eyes, for there was no vision at all, even though he could feel his eyes wide open: no specks, no dots, no traces of light. He brought his hand up to within inches of his face but saw nothing, and finally realized that the headlamp had gone out.
Buck had nothing to rely on now but touch. There were two batteries left. If he lost even one, the headlamp wouldn’t work. His cell phone was dead—no light there.
It took a few moments before he had the courage to move again. Then, carefully, carefully, in slow motion, he lowered the hood of his jacket, lifted the headlamp band from around his helmet, and placed it in his lap. Feeling for the latch of the battery case, he opened it and removed the dead batteries. Unzipping his pocket with the cell phone in it, he dropped the batteries in and zipped it up again. Then, his pulse quickening, he unzipped his right pocket and took out the two new batteries—the last two—and transferred them to his left hand.
Carefully, he took back one battery, explored it with his fingers, and delicately, like a surgeon with a scalpel, he pressed it into the case until he heard the snap. Then the second battery, and with trembling fingers, he…
He dropped it.
No!
Don’t move, he told himself. With one hand, he felt to the right of the headlamp. Then the ground to his left, and could tell that it sloped, to where, he didn’t know. Felt around to his right again. Dust, clay…No battery. He gingerly lifted the headlamp in his lap, and felt between his thighs. Nothing. Oh, please! Please!
The left hand roaming again. Then the right. And finally, tucked under one thigh, he found the last battery. Holding it tightly between two fingers, he felt for the positive end and thrust it into the case. Then he closed the lid firmly, checked that it was locked, and flipped the switch.
Instantly the world of tan and gray and white and brown returned. Buck tipped his head back against the rock wall, taking big gulps of air, waiting until the pounding of his heart had subsided. Then he slipped the headband over his helmet, pulled up the hood of his jacket, and finally got to his feet.
He had no idea now what time it was, what day it was. His teeth chattered with cold. All he wanted was a marker showing the way back to the Pit—a little tower of rocks, an M&M wrapper, a sneaker print or arrow in the clay…How he would get back over the V he didn’t know. Make a platform of the rope, his shoes, his jacket, perhaps…
As he moved from one rocky gallery to the next, climbing, crawling, slithering, rolling, squirming, he found the air growing misty with fog, and wondered if he was going deeper and deeper, expending all this time and energy getting farther away from the one place he could be rescued. When the new batteries gave out, he absolutely would not be able to find his way back in the dark.
He had made one bad decision not to get out when he could, when Pukeman had offered; he couldn’t compound it now by making another. He had to get back to the Pit. He decided to allow himself one hundred steps or paces away from the bridge, and if he found nothing familiar or promising, he would start the slow journey back to the bridge and try another route. From now on the bridge would be his focal point, and he’d never get so far away he couldn’t find a path back.
Buck counted as he went, taking slow, measured steps, shoulders bent to avoid overhanging rocks, neck aching. He was overwhelmingly hungry, and his mind kept focusing on Holly Homestyle’s chicken pot pie. He thought of the buttery crust, the rough chunks of potato and onion, and could feel the saliva gathering in his mouth. That and a chocolate soda, the kind you could only get at the marble soda fountain in Talbert’s Drugs. Oh, man. He fantasized about holding those long spoons with the small scoop at the end so you could pry out the last of the chocolate syrup at the bottom of the tall soda glasses, the little dab of real whipped cream that he’d save till the very last….And finally, unable to stand it any longer, he reached in his pocket and ate the last of the M&Ms.
His strength was giving out, however, and he reached the count of eighty-six and knew he had to rest. He slid down to the cavern floor, his cheek against the wall, licking the tiny veins of water that trickled into his face. Then he surveyed his outstretched legs with half-closed eyes.
He was more than filthy. His jeans were worn through at the knees, and his kneecaps were bruised and a little bloodied. One pant leg was so covered with wet clay that he couldn’t even tell what color it was supposed to be. The laces of his sneakers were caked as well, and the canvas along the top had torn. The hands in his lap were as rough as sandpaper, and blistered too.
Perhaps he should just stay right here, he thought. He could not imagine that one of the boys had not told by now. But even the roof of his mouth felt dusty, and he was almost too tired to sleep. How many times had he heard his mom say that after a hard day at Holly’s—“I swear I’m almost too tired to sleep.”
He felt his head nod and he jerked it up again. He really shouldn’t let himself fall asleep without the Mylar blanket. It had torn again, and soon there would be little left. If he didn’t keep moving he could develop hypothermia. But his eyes closed in spite of himself. And once again, without the sound of his own grunts and footsteps, all he could hear was his own breathing and the faraway ticking of a clock….
A clock?
Buck opened his eyes suddenly and listened.
It wasn’t a clock. Too irregular for that. Plip, plip, plip…plippa plop. Plip, plip, plip…plippa plop…
He rose up on his knees, eyes enormous. Plip, plip…plippa plop. And with each drop, there was a slight echo.
He was on his feet again, following the sound. One in a million…The rhythm stopped, then quickly resumed again after a moment or two, but as he propelled himself forward, l
urching toward any handhold he could find, he could tell that the sound was getting louder.
Plip, plip, plip…plippa plop…
There could be a hundred places here in the cavern where water was dripping. He’d already reached his limit of one hundred paces from the bridge, and if he kept telling himself he’d go back and didn’t…
Approaching the sound, he scrambled over two huge rocks in his path. At the crest, the beam of the headlamp shone on a trickle of water sliding down a high rock wall—a long drop at the end—six or seven feet…
And as Buck lowered his eyes to the pool below, the light full on the water, he saw beautiful sparkles of color around one edge—the only bright colors he had seen in days. Green here, yellow there—a twinkling of red and orange, gleaming at him in the light of the headlamp, some of them reflected back in the water. Was he hallucinating? If you went too long without seeing color, is this what happened?
Unable to take his eyes off the strange-colored dots, he carefully descended the other side of a boulder and approached the pool. The colors were coming from tiny round disks scattered there on the rock. So thirsty he fell to his knees, his cupped hands bringing water to his mouth as fast as he could drink, again…and again…and again. And when he was satiated, he raised himself up and looked about. The colors were still there.
Suddenly, disbelieving, Buck leaned over and studied them closely. Skittles! His mouth fell open, and he looked up, training the headlamp on a small passageway that went up, up. He threw back his head and yelled with delight. It could only lead to the Hole. And home.
First things first.
Buck walked all around the pool, his sneakers making deep imprints in the wet clay, and gathered up the Skittles, one by one. The first disk on his tongue tasted of grape and made his stomach rumble in anticipation.
He had to get them all—the lemon, the green apple, the strawberry; the orange was so close to the water that he got the sleeve of his jacket wet in retrieving it, but he didn’t care. He knew the way home, and, meager as the Skittles were, they were his fuel for getting there.
But it wasn’t so simple.
The high ceiling above the pool dropped dramatically at one end, with just enough space for Buck to walk beneath it. It was here that the chimney began, but how far up did it go? He strained his memory, trying to remember if he had heard a splash or a ping when the Skittles fell out those many weeks ago. Had he heard anything at all? Or had he just felt them slipping from his overalls pocket?
Think! he instructed himself, but his brain was useless. He wanted another Skittle—lemon this time, then another.
He crammed the rest of them, sticky now, in his pocket and zipped it up, trying to devote his full concentration to getting out. It was like a trapdoor in a ceiling, with no way to crawl up the walls.
How could it be that he had come this far—all the way from the Pit—and had unknowingly discovered a cavern under the sliver of Blue Ridge Mountain that had diverted their country road eleven miles around it—only to find that he couldn’t get out?
If ever he needed Katie to tell their parents about the note, it was now. Please, he thought, please call David. Forget the Ambassador Hotel. Tell the rescuers to comb through Wilmer’s meadow till they find the outcropping of rock, and feel the cool air coming up out of the hole. If they crawl in, if they call my name, I might be able to hear them.
But how would she know all this? Why would she even call David, or believe anything other than what he had told her? And, worst luck of all, David was at Survival Camp, ironically, and his mom was on a trip.
One more Skittle—orange—and he would stop. He remembered now that when he’d looked down after the Skittles fell, there was a sort of shelf, perhaps ten feet below. Some Skittles must have missed the shelf and gone on to fall around the pool. Looking up again, he could see the shelf, and that there was room to get around it if he was climbing the chimney, but how could he get inside it at all?
He had a rope, and he knew how to make a knot or a loop in it and heave it up a hillside during a rock climb in hopes it would snag on something strong enough to hold his weight. But how do you throw rope up a hole only two and a half feet wide?
He squatted down, arms on his knees, forehead resting on the backs of his hands. He was too tired, too hungry, too cold, and now that his feet were wet, colder still. The gnawing in his stomach was painful, but even worse was the knowledge that he’d had a chance to get out when Pete called to him and he hadn’t answered soon enough. He might have ruined his only chance of rescue.
He had to face it: He’d wanted Pukeman to worry. Wanted Pete to suffer. Buck was too freakin’ stubborn to save his own neck. His mind just wasn’t functioning right, he knew. Lack of food, lack of sleep. He turned back to the pool and drank handfuls of water to keep hydrated. Think, he commanded again.
There had to be another way. Maybe he had overlooked the simplest solution—find something to stand on. At this point, if David were here, his friend would say, “Yeah. Anybody happen to have a stepstool?” And make them laugh. Or not.
Buck gave a low moan. Everything around him had been molded in place millions of years ago. There were jagged rock formations at the other end of the pool, but he could no more tip one over than he could have tipped over the Washington monument on his class trip. He stroked his closed eyelids, which felt heavy with the sleep he wouldn’t allow. Hadn’t he, when he’d last left the bridge, come upon a rock slide? Reddish-brown rocks at the foot of a boulder? If he could find one about two feet high, and roll it…
Maybe he had seen those rocks when he’d first entered this gallery. Or maybe they were a lot farther back than he could remember. He realized now how disoriented he had become, because when he headed in what he thought was the direction of the bridge, he came to the rock slide first.
Never mind. All he had to remember were the pool and the chimney.
There were, of course, no round rocks. There were huge square blocks, and diamond-shaped rocks, and rectangular chunks of limestone. The best Buck could find amid the tumble was an octagonal rock, perhaps two feet in diameter, that was sunk several inches into the clay floor.
He sat down on the square block and counted the Skittles in his hand. Four left. One now, one when he got the rock out of the clay, one when he got the rock beneath the chimney, and the last one when he’d climbed the chimney.
He chose a purple Skittle and waited until it was only a memory on his tongue. Then he lowered himself to the floor with his back against the square rock, feet against the octagonal rock, and, lifting his butt off the floor, pushed with his feet as hard as he could. He felt the rock move. Only a centimeter, but it moved. If he had to do this all the way to the pool, he would do it.
Five hard pushes and it was out of its hole. Buck turned around and stood up, leaning over to brace both hands against the rock, and pushed as hard as he could. It moved a couple of inches. Pushed again. An inch more. Again. Again. Finally, Buck stopped counting and just pushed.
•••
How long had it taken to push the rock to the pool? Hours? Half a day? Buck had never appreciated before just how much all that hoeing of bean rows and lifting of crates and biking uphill had done for him. For his biceps and hamstrings.
The octagonal rock was in place below the chimney at one edge of the pool, and Buck ate a strawberry Skittle and rested.
When he was ready for the next step, full of all the water he could drink, he found that even though the rock seemed to settle into the damp clay, it moved whenever Buck tried to stand on it. He gathered a few smaller rocks to place against it—but again, each time he tried to mount it, it moved, and he fell off.
Buck had one more trick to try. Taking the rope, he wound it around and around the base of the rock, as close as he could get it, pushing it in with his fingers to fill up every small space in the clay. And this time, when he stepped on the rock—first one foot, then…slowly…the other…the rock barely moved.
&nb
sp; He took a few breaths, then set his sights on the ridges above him. His head, his shoulders, his arms were inside the chimney, but everything depended on getting a foothold. Reaching as high as he could, he grabbed the stony projections on either side and tried to pull his feet up into the chimney, but he was too low. Not even Pukeman could climb up a chimney with his hands alone.
He rested a moment, and then he jumped. The next thing he knew, he was tumbling onto the rock below, scraping his ankle as he fell. One leg of his jeans got wet in the pool.
Buck rolled over on the clay bank, head buried in his arm, almost too tired to think. There was no other way out. He had to do this. Rest, he told himself. Just rest a minute.
The minute turned into several minutes, but when he opened his eyes again, conscious of the cold, he was also refreshed, and he knew he would try as long as it took.
First he made sure that the rock was secure in its rope and clay base. Then he gingerly climbed on again, balancing his feet just so, and with the beam of his headlamp, he scouted out the knobs and ridges to aim for. He bent his knees slightly, his body in a crouch, and he jumped.
His right hand grabbed a stony knob and held on; his left hand missed, but his arm came down on a ridge that supported his weight—at a crooked angle, to be sure, but he was higher now than before.
Carefully, carefully, he drew up one knee, searching out a landing place for his right foot. He couldn’t see anything below him, but he felt the toe of his sneaker strike the wall at some point. Buck braced his back and shoulders against the wall, his foot pushing hard on the wall across from him. The other foot came up to join it, and Buck was scrunched inside the chimney as tight as a boxer’s fist inside a glove.
For a minute or two, Buck let his arms rest, his back and legs doing all the work. Then, slowly, he began the difficult job of maneuvering his body up the shaft. A foot moved, then a shoulder, an arm, a hand….At times his thigh and calf muscles seemed to be going numb, and once or twice his body slipped, and he had to tense every muscle he owned to keep from going down. A foot, a shoulder, an arm, a hand…up and up, no more than an inch at a time, Buck “chimneyed” up the rock.