Big Maria (33 page)

“God’s watching over all of us, sure. But believing that God has a reason for doing stuff don’t mean that everything is going to turn out the way I want. Means that I believe it’s going to turn out the way he wants. No optimism there.”

“He’s got you this far, hasn’t he? And if you die, you’re going to heaven, right? It’s a win-win. Gold or heaven.”

“I can’t talk about this with you. You have no faith. You talk to me like I talk to Rosie about Santa Claus, and that ain’t what it is.”

I
t took Ricky a couple of dangerous near-misses to get the hang of climbing down the rope with only one good arm. But
once he figured how to dig the toes of his boots into the rope, he caterpillared down: feet then arm then feet and so on.

Four feet from the bottom, he let himself drop. The ground felt good. It made him feel like the first of many possible dangers had passed. Like the first level in a video game. He removed his backpack and turned on one of the flashlights, letting his eyes adjust.

“Everything okay?” Harry’s voice echoed down from above. “Careful you don’t trip on the dead donkey.”

Ricky tripped on the dead donkey.

“Thanks,” Ricky said, slapping the dust off his pants. The cloud of fine dust diffused the flashlight beam that pointed down the mine shaft.

“Good luck,” he heard Harry say as Ricky waded into the blackness.

D
arkness had never frightened Ricky. Even as a child, he had been at ease in dark, confined spaces. When you’re a foster kid, you get used to hiding. Hiding from “parents” or “siblings” or “uncles” or any number of other forced family that claimed they were there to help. It occurred to Ricky that God may have given him a childhood under houses and in closets for the necessary strength to walk down a one-hundred-year-old mine shaft without superstition or fear.

The wooden braces that supported the rocky ceiling looked weathered but strong. The shaft he walked down felt unchanged, untouched, from the time it had been mined. After thirty yards, he found himself below another vertical shaft. A wooden ladder rose up the narrow opening. He pointed the flashlight into the darkness, but the light only rose ten feet before it hit rock. The opening had been sealed for a time, possibly by the same explosion that created the crater.

How many openings led into the mine? How large was the mine? From the description that Harry had gleaned from Constance’s journal, it hadn’t sounded like a big operation. Harry claimed that the gold had been mined, bagged, and left for them. The way Harry described it, the gold should be waiting for them near the opening. But which opening?

Ricky’s plan was simple and stupid. Walk around until you trip over a big bag of gold. He couldn’t think of a better option.

H
arry hated waiting. He paced and fidgeted until his leg burned. In an attempt to get his stress under control, he did
push-ups for the first time since guard training. He had despised them then, too. After four pretty good ones, his back dipped and his arms shook. Maybe he would use the gold for a gym membership.

The sound of helicopter blades began as a low hum but built quickly to a thump. Harry scrambled to his feet and moved to the nearest wall of the crater. There was no real cover, so the best he could do was press himself against the limited shadows. He held his breath and waited for the helicopter to pass.

It didn’t. He couldn’t see the chopper, but the sound of the blades indicated that it was hovering. What was it waiting for? Had they seen him? He hadn’t actually seen the helicopter, so it couldn’t have seen him. But this was an Army base. Who knew what kind of technological wonders they had? Had stealth technology gotten so good that the Army could make their vehicles invisible? It sounded like the helicopter was right overheard.

He wanted to take a peek. See if he could catch a glimpse of chopper blade to reassure himself that it was a regular helicopter. But he didn’t dare move. He pushed his back as hard as he could against the rocky wall, sweat dripping down his face and cooling his arms. He felt sick and had to piss really bad.

Harry closed his eyes and took a stab at praying. It seemed to work for Ricky, so what the hell.

“Here’s the deal. Even though I don’t really believe in you, and feel kind of ridiculous for talking to myself, I need a solid down here. Not so much for me, but for the kid. As much as I want that gold, I’m feeling good about getting this far. Gold is better, but, you know. Thanks, if you had anything to do with that. But, man, you blow it for the kid, you’re going to lose him. Kid lost his faith once, don’t dick him over again. That bus accident was bullshit, by the way. That’s all. Amen, Mother Mary, all that other jazz.”

And as if on cue, the helicopter blades receded, and it was silent again. The sound only a bad memory. Though the rhythm of the blades continued to beat in Harry’s pounding head.

To be on the safe side, Harry waited five minutes before he dared move. Blocking the sun with his hand, he combed the sky and saw nothing, only puffy, gray clouds on the horizon. He took a long piss and a longer exhale.

R
icky wondered how long he was going to trek through the mine before it was time to call it a day. Obviously, finding the gold would be good, but there had to be a stopping point if he didn’t. He wasn’t worried about getting lost. Straight ahead had been his only choice so far. In movies, mines were complex mazes, but apparently in reality it made more sense to dig in one direction. The only crossroads he had encountered was the spot where Harry had initially fallen in. That appeared to be the primary entrance.

One long tunnel with nothing in it. Not even a remnant of the old mining operation. No picks. No shovels. No helmets with those lights on them. No lanterns. No nothing. And especially no nothing that looked like gold.

It occurred to Ricky that someone could have found it before them. A lot of time had passed. A worker that had escaped Constance’s murderous spree? Maybe Frank’s grandfather lied and came back for the gold. What were the odds that they were the first to set foot in the mine in all that time? The military could have found it and swept the area on a routine patrol. There must have been surveyors—whatever they did—out here at some time. Ricky was starting to believe that this wild-goose chase was more of a snipe hunt.

He had to focus. He wasn’t coming back down here ever again, so he might as well suck it up and make his search a thorough one. Complaining never did no one no good. He got on his knees and swept the ground with his hand. The dirt was cold and as fine as sifted flour. If this place was untouched, of course a whole bunch of dust would have settled and accumulated on the mine floor. Maybe covering stuff from seeing it easy. He should
have brought a broom. He brushed away the dirt anywhere the ground appeared uneven. For thirty minutes, he crawled up and down the mine shaft and searched near the walls but found nothing but rocks.

On his hundredth rock—he had kept count to maintain his sanity—Ricky decided that due diligence had been achieved. He was calling it empty. There was nothing to find. Nothing in the mine. He had searched every direction until the mine had ended or become impassable. He had kicked every rock and examined every small bump in the path. There was nowhere else to look.

He returned to the dead donkey and the rope, unsatisfied with this as the end of the adventure. Frank dead and no gold. Was life that anticlimactic? Ricky decided that it was. Life wasn’t stories. It was a gift without a ribbon.

Ricky tried to find the bright side, but it’s a weak consolation when the high point of your day is that you weren’t buried alive.

Ricky double-checked the saddlebag of the donkey to make sure that Harry had gotten everything. Of course, he hadn’t. He had half-assed it and only got the supplies from the easy-to-reach top bag. He could see the full and bulging saddlebag pinned under the donkey’s flank.

Knowing that some important tools for survival were possibly inside, Ricky stepped back and tried to figure out how best to get to the bag. The donkey was too heavy to lift, but maybe he could move it. He unhitched the saddle and then wedged himself between the donkey and the wall. He put his back to the donkey and pushed with his legs against the wall, the donkey sliding away from him very slowly. The sound of scraping skin made the inside of Ricky’s cheek itch. He held on to the bag, doing his best to keep it stationary while the dead donkey inched away. He kept at it until his aching legs were straight and the donkey was as far as he could push.

Standing, Ricky held the ache in his lower back, his legs wobbly underneath him. He shook it off. Picking up the saddlebag, he
was surprised to find a couple small leather bags underneath it. He didn’t remember ever seeing them. They were old and brown, weathered and chipped. Like they had been there for a hundred years.

“No. That easy?”

Ricky dropped to a knee. Picking up one of the bags, he immediately felt its weight.

“Lord God in heaven.”

The rawhide drawstring was knotted tight. He dug in his pocket for his knife. After some struggling and sawing and even frantic biting, he got the bag open. He shoved the knife in the opening, lifted it out, and held the flashlight to the blade. At the end of the knife was a small mound of dull yellow granules. Not exactly yellow. Gold.

The donkey had fallen on top of the gold. It had been at the entrance to the mine the entire time. Just like Harry had thought.

“Wish you could see this, Frank.”

Ricky’s eyes welled up. He clutched one of the bags to his chest like you would a newborn and wept openly. He thought of Flavia and Rosie and everything that led to that moment. The pain he had endured and the pain he had been responsible for. There was still work to do. The gold didn’t fix everything. He knew that. But finding the gold was good. It was. Finding the gold was better than not finding the gold. He knew that for sure.

There were four small bags. Ricky guessed that each one weighed around twenty pounds. He tried to do the math in his head, but all he could do was the simple times tables. Four times twenty. Eighty pounds of gold. He didn’t know how many ounces that was or how much gold cost per ounce or any of the other numbers. Not important. The only thing he needed to know was that eighty pounds of gold was eighty pounds of gold.

R
icky tied the first bag of gold to the rope. He gave it a hard tug to test the old drawstring’s ability to hold the bag’s weight. “Pull her up. Your brain’s going to explode when you get it in your hands, Harry.”

For a moment, the bag didn’t move, hanging in space. Ricky squinted up the mine shaft at the darkening sky. Then slowly the bag rose and ascended up and out of the hole.

Harry’s hearty “Holy hell. It’s heavy!” echoed into the shaft.

“Send the rope back down,” Ricky yelled up. “There’s more. Gold, Harry. We found it. You, me, and Frank found the gold.”

The rope dropped down, brushing the shaft and enveloping Ricky in dust. He tied another bag to the rope, careful with the old drawstring. Harry pulled it up, and then dropped the rope back down. Ricky tied on the third bag. He noticed that he was whistling a tune. Ricky didn’t know he knew how to whistle.

The drawstring and canvas of the fourth bag were too badly damaged from Ricky’s knife and teeth to tie it safely to the rope. Ricky found a jacket among the supplies. He put it on, stuffed the damaged bag into the interior pocket, and zipped it to his neck.

“I’m coming up,” Ricky yelled.

He gave the rope a hard tug to remove any give.

“Brace it. You don’t got to pull. I’ll climb.”

Harry didn’t respond.

Ricky used his feet and legs to brace himself around the rope and his good arm to pull up. He moved at a snaillike pace. For ten minutes he inched up the rope. Then a strange thing happened: he felt himself being lifted. He gripped the rope tightly and enjoyed the ride.

He had no idea where Harry found the strength to pull him up. Maybe in his excitement over the gold, he had gained the adrenaline and strength to lift him. Ricky held on, proud of Harry. He was really moving, the hole above him getting increasingly closer.

Ricky’s excitement was immediately shattered by utter disappointment.

When he surfaced, he saw the truth of Harry’s remarkable strength. Harry wasn’t even touching the rope. The unlucky bastard sat on the ground with a gun to his head. Six guys in fatigues pulled Ricky out of the hole. The gold sat on the ground in front of Harry, who stared sad and longingly at the old, weathered bags. He lifted his head and met Ricky’s eyes.

“Sorry, kid.”

The moment couldn’t be experienced silently. Ricky needed to say something that fully expressed his reaction to the tableau in front of him. He found the perfect word.

“Motherfucker.”

R
icky marched behind Harry as they descended the hill. The hike felt considerably shorter without the donkeys, the bombing, or the anticipation. The expectation of gold was now dread, and apparently dread sped the clock. Also, the soldiers holding guns on them knew where the hell they were going.

The hike would have been pleasant if they hadn’t been at gunpoint. Three men took point in front of them, while the other four soldiers were somewhere behind, rifles pointed to the ground, but no less frightening. None of the men had directly threatened Ricky or Harry. They hadn’t treated them poorly in any way. In fact, they had said almost nothing. Everyone involved seemed to be acutely aware of the whos, whys, and whats of the situation. Words would be redundant.

Ricky and Harry weren’t restrained. Whether out of compassion or practicality, it wasn’t immediately obvious. Probably the latter. At the roughest points in the trail, the men needed their hands to navigate the craggy rocks. With no reason to assume that Harry and Ricky were armed, the soldiers hadn’t even bothered to frisk either man. Ricky took some pleasure in knowing that he still held one of the bags of gold inside his jacket.

The thought of running never occurred to either man. Where would they go? Fighting, running, or protesting would be nothing but wasted effort. They were caught, and they accepted it.