Once we actually had the boy, that groaning in the ground seemed louder than ever. I fancied I could even hear the timbers creaking. I’m not usually an imaginative sort, but it sounded to me like they were trying to talk. Telling us to get out while we still could.
I couldn’t resist shining my light into that crack once before we went, though. When I bent down I could feel air rushing out, so it wasn’t just a crack in the slide; there was some sort of rift on the other side of it. Maybe a cave. The air coming out was as hot as air coming out of a furnace grate, and it stank something fierce. One whiff and I held my breath so I wouldn’t vomit. It was the old-campfire smell, but a thousand times heavier. I’ve racked my brains trying to think of how something that deep underground could smell so bad, and keep coming up empty. Fresh air is the only thing that makes things stink like that, and that means some sort of vent, but Deep Earth has been burrowing in these parts ever since 1957, and if there had been a vent big enough to manufacture a stench like that, surely it would’ve been found and either plugged or followed to see where it went.
The crack looked like a zigzag S or a lightning-bolt, and there didn’t seem like there was anything much in it to see, just a thickness of rock-at least two feet, maybe three. But I did get the sense of space opening out on the other side, and there was that hot air whooshing out, too. I thought I maybe saw a bunch of red specks like embers dancing in there, but that must have been my imagination, because when I blinked, they were gone.
I turned back to Garin and told him to move.
“In a second, just give me a second,” he says. He’d taken the boy’s little black cowboy boot out of his shirt and was sliding it on his foot. It was the tenderest thing. All you’d ever need to know about a father’s love was in the way he did that. “Okay,” he says when he had it right. “Let’s go.”
“Right,” I says. “Just try to keep your footing.”
We went as quick as we could, but it still seemed to take forever. In the dreams I mentioned, I always see the little circle of my Penlite sliding over skulls. There weren’t that many that I saw when we were actually in there, and some of those had fallen apart, but in my dreams it seems like there are thousands, wall to wall skulls sticking up round like eggs in a carton, and they are all grinning just like the little one was grinning when his Dad picked him up, and in their eyesockets I see little red flecks dancing around, like embers rising from a wildfire.
It was a pretty awful walk, all in all. I kept looking ahead for daylight, and for the longest time I didn’t see it. Then, when I finally did (just a little tiny square I could have covered with the ball of my thumb at first), it seemed like the sound of the hornfels was louder than ever, and I made up my mind that the shaft was going to wait until we were almost out, then fall on us like a hand swatting flies. As if a hole in the ground could think! But when you’re actually in a spot like that, your imagination is apt to go haywire. Sound carries funny; ideas do, too.
And I might as well say that I still have a few funny ideas about Rattlesnake Number One. I’m not going to say it was haunted, not even in a “backstage report” no one may ever read, but I’m not going to say it wasn’t, either. After all, what place would be more likely to have ghosts than a mine full of dead men? But as to the other side of that slide of rock, if I actually did see something there-those dancing red lights-it wasn’t ghosts.
The last hundred feet were the hardest. It took everything I had in me not to just shove past Mr Garin and sprint for it, and I could see on his face that he felt the same way. But we didn’t, probably because we both knew we’d scare the rest of the family even worse if we came busting out in a panic. We walked out like men instead, Garin with his boy in his arms, fast asleep.
That was our “little scare”.
Mrs Garin and both the two older kids were crying, and they all made of Seth, petting him and kissing him like they could hardly believe he was there. He woke up and smiled at them, but he didn’t make any more words, just kind of “gobbled”. Mr Garin staggered off to the powder magazine, which is a little metal shed where we keep our blasting stuff, and sat down with his back against the side. He laced his hands together between his knees and then dropped his forehead into them. I knew just how he felt. His wife asked him if he was all right, and he said yes, he only needed to rest and catch his breath. I said I did, too. I asked Mrs Garin if she’d take her kids back over to the ATV. I said maybe Jack would like to show his brother our Miss Mo. She kind of laughed like you do when nothing is funny and said, “I think we’ve had enough adventures for one day, Mr Symes. I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but all I want to do is get out of here.”
I said I understood, and I think she understood that I needed to have a little talk with her man before we picked up our marbles and called it a game. Not that I didn’t need to collect myself some, too! My legs felt like rubber. I went over to the powder magazine and sat down beside Mr Garin.
“If we report this, there’s going to be a lot of trouble,” I said. “For the company and also for me. I probably wouldn’t end up fired, but I could.”
“I’m not going to say a word,” he said, raising his head out of his hands and looking me in the eye. And I don’t think anyone will hold it against him if I add that he was crying. Any father would have cried, I think, after a scare like that. I was near tears myself, and I hadn’t ever set eyes on the lot of them until that day. Every time I thought of the tender way Garin looked, slipping that tiny boot on his boy’s foot, it raised a lump in my throat.
“I would appreciate that no end,” I said.
“Nonsense,” he said. “I don’t know how to thank you. I don’t even know how to start.”
I was starting to feel a little embarrassed by then. “Come on, now,” I said. “We did it together, and all’s well that ends well.”
I helped him to his feet, and we walked back toward the others. We were most of the way there when he put his hand on my arm and stopped me.
“You shouldn’t let anybody go in there,” he said. “Not even if the engineers say they can shore it up. There’s something wrong in there.”
“I know there is,” I said. “I felt it.” I thought of the grin on the boy’s face-even now, all these months later, it makes me shiver to think of it-and almost told him that his boy had felt it, too. Then I decided not to. What good would it have done?
“If it were up to me,” he said, “I’d toss a charge from your powder magazine in there and bring the whole thing down. It’s a grave. Let the dead rest in it.”
“Not a bad idea,” I said, and God must have thought so, too, because He did it on His own not two weeks later. There was an explosion in there. And, so far as I know, no cause ever assigned.
Garin kind of laughed and shook his head and said, “Two hours on the road and I won’t even be able to believe this happened.”
I told him maybe that was just as well.
“But one thing I won’t forget,” he said, “is that Seth talked today. Not just words or phrases only his family could understand, either. He actually talked. You don’t know how amazing that is, but we do.” He waved at his family, who had got back into the ATV by then. “And if he can do it once, he can do it again.” And maybe he has, I hope so. I’d like to know, too. I’m curious about that boy, and in more ways than one. When I gave him his little action figure woman, he smiled at me and kissed my cheek. A sweet kiss, too, though I seemed to catch a little whiff on the mine of his skin… like ashes and meat and cold coffee.