Cavedweller (58 page)

Dede, Cissy found herself thinking. I should never have come down here with so much going on.

“I don’t understand,” Mim was saying. “We’ve been through this part before. I know it, and it’s on our list, but nothing looks the same. I don’t remember this much sand, and I sure don’t remember that rock.”

The rock was memorable, a hot dog in a bun or a phallus cradled gently between two breasts. “A dick,” Jean called it. “A dick with a lopsided head.”

A rock like that should have been in their notebooks or on one of the maps, but it was not. Somewhere in one of the initial passages they must have taken a wrong turn. The subterranean passage they thought they were following did not exist.

“Where do you think we are?” Mim whispered. Her words echoed hollowly along the naked rock above them.

“Somewhere new,” Jean said. “Somewhere we haven’t been before. We’ve got to go back, go back exactly the way we came, and look for where we went wrong.”

“Or for something we know,” Cissy said. “We need a landmark.”

“It’s not that big a cave,” Mim sounded determined to be reassuring. “And how many times have we been down here, huh? We go back a hundred feet and we’ll find something. You’ll see.”

Rock on rock, sand and shale, inclines of gray-black stone and sharp-edged slopes of knee-grinding pea gravel-there should have been something they recognized, they kept saying. On one trip they had found bright splashes of Day-Glo paint sprayed in arrows and circles in some of the first passages. Mim had complained about the kind of boys who would do that. “Got to leave their mark. Break something, deface something, mess something up that’s been clean and empty for a million years.”

At the time, Cissy agreed. The painted signs were ugly, and they burned behind her eyes when she turned away from them. Now, crawling hour after hour up a passage she could not chart, she started to imagine splashes of color and almost wept when none of them turned out to be real. I’m going to die down here, Cissy thought, then stubbornly shook her head.

An hour later Jean announced that she had to rest. “We could die down here,” she whispered. Cissy flinched. Mim giggled explosively.

“No, we can’t.” Mim kicked sand at the other two. “There is too much I have not done. I have not been to New York City. I have not seen the Pacific Ocean. And I have never had so many orgasms that I did not want to come again.”

Jean smiled, her teeth pearly in the indirect light of Cissy’s flashlight. “Neither have I,” she said. “Except for the last one. I have done that.”

They all grinned. Mim had a chocolate bar. Jean had saltine crackers with peanut butter. Cissy produced string cheese and salami slices. They ate intently and sipped sparingly. All of them knew there was not much water left.

“We’ll find something,” Mim said again. “We keep moving up this way, we’ve got to come out sooner or later.”

“My knees are killing me,” Jean said. “We keep moving up this way, they’re going to give out completely.”

“Better up than down,” Cissy said, though she was not sure of that.

Forty feet farther on, the passage cut back and reversed on itself. They began to crawl sideways, their boots slipping on broken shale and gravel.

“This is bad,” Jean said when she bumped into Cissy’s pack. She repeated it a half a dozen times in as many minutes.

Yes, Cissy thought. This was very, very bad. Behind her, Mim sobbed once and told Jean to shut the fuck up.

The next time they stopped to rest, Jean asked Mim to turn off her lamp. “We’re gonna need the light. We should use just one at a time.”

Jean’s voice sounded funny to Cissy, hoarse and shaky. Her face in the dim light seemed to have narrowed in the hours they had been crawling along the mud inclines. Cissy hoped she didn’t look that bad, but the trembling in her calves and the ache in her throat worried her. She wanted to lie down and pull dirt over herself, curl up tight and nap until God or some rescuer came for her.

“I’m cold,” Mim said.

Cissy closed her eyes. She did not have the strength to turn her head.

“You’ll be all right.” The sound of sand grating against soggy pants was loud in the hollow of the rock as Jean slid closer to Mim.

Cissy thought about how they would sit around the stove at Jean and Mim’s place afterward with the heat beating against their exhaustion while they sipped wine and repeated stories. Women made great cavers, Mim always insisted. It was the extra body fat and the endurance. Upper-body strength was important, but that could be developed. Women weight lifters would be great in caves, she said. They were muscled, flexible, and full of confidence. That was what it took, that and sheer determination.

Cissy laughed to herself. It was always easy to talk about determination and discipline while sipping wine and eating slices of chicken and cheese. There were spelunkers who deliberately starved themselves to be better able to fit through tiny crevices in the rock, who went down into the dark so thin they could crawl into passages where no one else could follow. Cissy wiggled, and a piece of limestone cracked under her boot. An echo ricocheted along the passage.

“It’s Floyd Collins,” Jean whispered. Mim giggled.

Cissy put her hands in her armpits and grinned in the near dark. She’d found two books on the Floyd Collins story, though both were less about the poor Collins boy than about the circus that took place above the cave where he died. All the time he was shivering and starving down in the dark, his rescuers were drinking, picnicking, and selling souvenirs above him. The first time the three of them went down as a team, Mim had teased them about “doing a Floyd Collins.”

“Don’t put your foot wrong. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

Another crack echoed, and Cissy hugged herself tighter. She could imagine that pitiful ghost wandering eternally in the rocky reaches from Kentucky and Tennessee down through Georgia. It was a good-old-boy legend, a tale to scare the tenderhearted. Did you hear about old Floyd, famous Floyd Collins? He’s a limping echo behind your left ear; it’s harder now for him to get around without that left foot, but if you listen you can hear him stomping and stumbling along. He wants to pull at your shoulder, tell you his story, whisper about the reporters who dropped down notes that promised a glorious tombstone, a fortune for his daddy, anything for how it felt, dying in a hole while the world made a carnival above your corpse.

“I’m famous,” he whispered, though no one spoke his name in daylight anymore. “I’m famous, and you could be too.”

Cissy watched color bloom on the underside of her eyelids, imagining how he might have altered, the haunt-body moving over sand and rock. He would be so lithe, so essential. No bend or slope could hold him now. He needed no dynamite, no ax, no rope. A solid wall was not solid to old Floyd Collins. Dark was not dark. He could breathe around rock, swim through dirt. He led with his head, his mouth, his canine phosphorescent teeth. Dead but not gone, Floyd Collins lived in the wind. He breathed from the deep rock, was there in the stink of bone and bat shit and slow-settling dust. A legend. A threat. A joke that was never funny. People had to speak his name to outlive his fate, people who knew better than to go creeping into holes they did not know how to escape.

Like Floyd, Cissy thought. If I get skinny enough, I’ll slide right through. How many calories does fear use? I’m scared enough to sweat off everything I ever was. And if I sweat enough, won’t I grease my passage? Could I slide right over these rocks and up into the light, become as lithe and essential as Floyd or memory or hope? Could I?

“Cissy? Cissy! Are you all right?”

“Fine, I’m fine.”

“You were mumbling something.”

Cissy shook her head. “Nothing, just thinking.”

She looked in Mim’s direction. She could barely see the two girls in the dim glow of the one lamp. Were they truly lovers? Lord, she was stupid. Jean was breathing hard and the sound bounced off the sloping rock. There were broken edges of slate close above Mim’s face. The curve of the rock turned between them so that there was more space above Cissy. Reaching up, she could almost extend her arm straight out. She turned her head and followed the slope as it widened out into the darkness, the ground dropping down to what looked like sand, and the rock roof rising until she could not see how high it went. There was more room there, they might be able to stand up.

Jean’s lamp dimmed again, so that the shadows seemed to be closing in. The only sound was their anguished breathing and the muted echo of water falling in the distance. Cissy held her breath for a moment, wishing that Jean would turn off the light and let them rest in the dark. If they were not moving, the dark felt perfectly safe to her, but she knew that Jean and Mim needed the light, that the dark was not comforting to them. It was only Cissy who was bothered by the light. It caught in the rough grade above her in such a way that the earth’s crust seemed to be moving.

“Hallucination.” Cissy said the word carefully, and felt Mim shift closer to her until their hips touched.

“Like an oasis in the desert.” It was as if Mim were reading Cissy’s mind.

The bumps in the rock above Cissy were whitish gray and darker gray, damp in the weak light, like bubbles in meringue. Some of them had dimpled centers with drip points that looked like nipples. To Cissy’s dazzled vision the bubbles were warm breasts sweating in the cool, damp air. She was tempted to slide back up the slope to a spot where the gap narrowed so steeply that she could lie back at an angle and put her mouth to one of those bulges. She stared at the glistening center of the largest teat. She could imagine grainy syrup filling her mouth. That tit would sweat sweet. It would be like rock sugar.

“Wouldn’t taste good,” Mim whispered into her left ear.

“No,” Cissy laughed. “Was I talking out loud again?”

“You been doing it for a while. And that’s limestone mud.” Mim pushed herself up a bit on the rock. “Limestone would be salty and sour. Don’t think about sugar. Think about getting out of here, about climbing up this passage and the one past it. Think about how close we are to the top. Think about staying warm.” ,

Cissy turned to put her mouth near Mim’s ear. “It’s beautiful, though.” Her words were startlingly loud. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Her voice sounded fuzzy. Every syllable had a little burr added, a slight vibrato that echoed against the crags. “Look at the way the light plays over the stones, the way the water drops shine.”

“Looks like ice being born.” Jean’s voice was rough with exhaustion, gravel under dust. “Ice babies looking for ice tits. No sugar. Frost.”

“You that cold, Jean?” Mim’s voice was sharp with fear.

“I’m freezing. I am just fucking freezing. My hands won’t stop shaking. Even my armpits are cold.” She cursed again, her voice lightening into something close to laughter. “If I could spit, I’d spit hailstones.”

“Oh, honey.” Mim crawled over to rub Jean’s shoulders.

“Oh, shit.” Jean started to giggle. “Don’t do that.”

Cissy heard wet material dragging over clammy skin. She crawled toward the sound. Mim’s hands rubbed Jean’s skin where she had pulled open the layers of clothing. Jean’s laughter slowed and faded to soft protests.

“Oh, honey,” she said in a teasing tone. “Don’t get me started.”

“You got to get that wet shirt off.” Mim’s voice was grim.

Cissy did not move. She didn’t want to have to be the one to do anything. It was enough just to be still and listen to them struggle, to hear the dull echoes of the walls all around them, to feel the thud of her own heartbeat.

“Christ damn,” Jean swore. “Here I am freezing and you want me to get naked.”

“Cissy! Come on,” Mim shouted. “Come help me.”

Cissy sighed. She wasn’t sure exactly what Mim had in mind, but she was clearly the most alert of the three of them, and her tone was insistent. Cissy made herself slide across the slate grade to Jean’s side. When her hand touched Jean’s shoulder, the girl turned to her, laughing. Mim was pulling frantically at Jean’s clotted layers of filthy wet clothing.

“Help me,” she said. “Come on. Help me.”

“It’s too cold!” Jean’s voice was slurred with exhaustion.

Hypothermia, Cissy realized. That’s what Mim is afraid of. Hypothermia could kill you in a cold, wet cave. She pushed Jean’s icy hands out of her way, carefully unbuttoning the flannel undershirt beneath the outer layer of denim.

“We got to get this off!” Mim’s voice was almost hysterical.

Jean’s light winked out. The dark was suddenly thick around them. Cissy did not hesitate. She clicked on her flashlight and wedged it in a crack in the rock so that it shone on the other two women. The angled light illuminated Mim and Jean perfectly, but it was the phosphorescent shine of Mim’s naked shoulder that shook Cissy out of her frozen passivity. Mim was half undressed, with her own undershirt wadded in one hand and scrubbing at Jean’s body. Jean’s shirt was pulled up to her neck and off one arm but still tangled around the other. Abruptly Jean started trying to help Mim drag her britches down, but her fingers were thick and fumbling. Cissy crawled close and wedged her legs around Jean’s torso. She finished undoing the last buttons on the jeans, pulling several off completely when they caught in the heavy wet fabric.

“I can do it. I can do it.” Jean was still reaching for the flannel shirt as it was being pulled over her head.

“Everything off. Everything off.” Mim’s voice sounded strained with her effort not to stutter with the chill.

“Right.” ,

Cissy worked the last layer off Jean’s upper body. The gray-blue shirt slid off Jean’s head in a soggy heap. Little pinpricks of goose bumps dimpled Jean’s blue-white skin in the awkward light. Icy prickles shot up Cissy’s midriff in sympathy at the sight. Immediately Mim was at Jean’s left side, pushing her back into Cissy’s braced thighs, scrubbing furiously at Jean’s exposed flesh. Jean blinked sleepily and struggled weakly.