Ruby falls, p.11
Ruby Falls, page 11
“I’ll toss it up,” he says, even louder, as if maybe her hearing is the problem.
“Shy” is what she’s always heard, like silence is a sign of insecurity. Silence is power. Silence is holding your cards tight while everyone keeps tossing more money into what will surely be your pot.
“Editha, be sensible,” Howard calls. She hates the word “sensible.” “Don’t kill yourself out of sheer stubbornness.”
“Slow down,” Tom says. “Take your time.”
He’s got his arms in front of him as if he’s ready to catch her. She finds it hard to believe he’d bother, unless he thought she’d land on Miah, in which case he’d all too gladly absorb the blow.
“Mrs. Hagathorn, you’re more important than a few swallows of water,” says Morris, and he is less annoying than the others. He reminds her a little of Mr. Wilson with his banana taffies.
“I won’t have any trouble descending,” she says, in hopes that they will all shut up.
The headlamps are blinding her: The men are staring straight up, and she might as well be onstage. Miah, at least, has pulled off his helmet, although he’d hate that his bald spot shines in the glare of her own lamp from this angle.
She leans over, snagging the strap of the canteen. She doesn’t know who was more foolish, Miah for playing around with the water or the guide for hurling the canteen up here. In fairness to Talmadge, it was extremely unlikely it would get stuck up on the wall. He doesn’t seem like the sort of man who throws things. He was solid and steady until three minutes ago, and she’s not sure what flipped the switch.
Well, Miah flipped the switch. That much is clear, although he would never have taken a sip of that water. He had a bad bout of typhoid during the war, and it left his stomach sensitive. He doesn’t touch hot peppers or raw vegetables, and he certainly wouldn’t touch water with metal in it. Is he intentionally yanking their guide’s chain? Does he want the man’s emotions closer to the surface, thinking it will be easier to read him?
He’s straight-backed and unfidgeting down there, Miah, helmet in hand, half a foot taller than the others. In character, as always.
Why hasn’t he found the pin yet?
He smiles, and she knows he can feel her eyes on him. He likes eyes on him, especially hers. Everyone assumes that because of the kind of man he is, she must either worship him or hate him, although maybe people assume the same thing of all wives and husbands. She’s not sure, but she neither worships Miah nor hates him. She knows him, inside and out, as he knows her. He’s the only one down there not worried about her in the slightest.
“Did you get it?” he asks, not raising his voice.
She holds it up, although she wishes he hadn’t asked. She wouldn’t mind staying above everything longer.
The caves remind her of Lake Michigan, deep and vast. She’s never liked noise and movement: She hates crowds, which people—the few who know about her skills—think is strange for a performer. But the stage is also a lake, with the spotlight blotting out the entire world, erasing every person on the planet so that nothing exists other than her body and the rope and the quiet.
“What’s that Bible verse?” Miah says to the others. “‘A virtuous woman is worth more than rubies’? Piss on virtue. What you want is a woman who can beat you in arm wrestling.”
“For God’s sake, be careful,” calls Talmadge. “There’s no ambulance to cart you away. It’s a desert island down here.”
“Editha, you’re going to kill yourself,” yells Howard, and he’s got to stop calling her that. It’s too familiar, and, anyway, a fall from here would hardly kill her. She’d likely only break her legs.
“You have no idea what she can do,” Miah says.
Even from this height, Editha sees Howard draw himself up, and for a moment she thinks he might raise a hand to her husband. He doesn’t, though, and she’s reminded—how did she forget?—that he was always a gentle sort. Which doesn’t mean anything. She has no idea what sort he might be now.
The men are spread out below her like pieces on a chessboard. Morris has turned back to the waterfall, so one less beam is blinding her. He seems very taken with it, considering it’s no more impressive than rain running down a sandblasted roadside. He’s uncomfortable down here, but he’s trying to bluff his way through, which she respects. Howard’s still standing too close to Miah, pushing his luck. Talmadge is pacing, all energy even when he’s at a standstill.
She can’t stay up here forever. She knows it. It’s time to dive back into the posturing and panic and ego, and she will play the part that she needs to play, just as she always does.
“Do you need to toss it?” Miah asks.
“No,” she says, slinging the canteen across her chest.
He’s getting anxious himself, wanting her to come down because he knows she’d rather not. He does not like distance, especially when she’s the one craving it, so she, mostly, keeps those cravings to herself. She can read exactly what he wants, every moment of the day, and without that trick, it would be harder to play her roles. As it is, she can perform them while another part of her—the true part—drifts in other directions, doing as she likes.
Miah says something to Howard, who gives him a nod, curt.
Her husband thinks he sees everything, but he can be remarkably blind. She could tell him that Morris is rapidly losing whatever faith he might have had and Talmadge is actively starting to hate him. Howard, who Miah most needs to win over, does not seem to enjoy dramatics as much as he used to.
She presses her belly against the rock again, flexing her sore hands one at a time. She adjusts her grip and lengthens her body to begin the climb down, stretching for the first foothold, but she can’t resist taking one more look at the dark expanse around her. The caves seem bigger from up here. She can get a better feel for the scope of them, nothing but rock and darkness stretching in every direction—
She opens and closes her hand, considering. She studies how the ceiling arcs and how a jutting wall partially bisects the chamber. She studies the two lights bobbing on the far side of that wall.
For all Talmadge’s talk of islands, they aren’t alone down here.
5:20 p.m.
Ada’s in the middle of a passage, enjoying the brief high ceilings, when she spots the bottle lying on its side. It’s hidden in the shadows: whiskey, maybe, or whatever it is moonshiners pass around these days. She’s the one who kneels first, but Quinton picks it up, taking a whiff from the open top. When he tips it upside down, a single drop hits the ground. She can see the flame of her headlamp reflected in the glass like a small moon. It’s a clean bottle, like new.
She can’t hear voices ahead of them anymore, but the group passed through this tunnel not five minutes ago.
“Whose is it, do you think?” she asks.
Quinton shakes his head, light wigwagging. “Maybe they shared it.”
“Better than somebody polishing off the whole thing.” As soon as she says it, she’s not sure that’s true. “You really think they might be making a party of it?”
Over the last few hours, she has heard nothing that sounds close to a good time. That scene at the waterfall, though—it did not feel rational.
“No,” he says softly.
“Who would even consider drinking?”
One thing about conversations here: Silence is truly silent. She can read all manner of thoughts into Quinton’s quiet.
“Do you drink down here?” she asks.
“Down here?” He’s staring at the bottle, so she can’t see his face. “No. I’m not an idiot.”
She takes the bottle from him and lays it against the wall. She can’t stop reading meaning into what he’s not saying.
“I wasn’t trying to say you couldn’t or shouldn’t,” she says. “Drink at all. I’m no devotee of temperance.” This feels too mealy-mouthed and mollifying. He thinks she’s looking to castigate sinners? Maybe he does not know her at all. “But I don’t have much tolerance for stupid drunkenness.”
“I don’t get the feeling you tolerate stupid soberness,” he says.
Her annoyance floats away like a mote. He does know her.
“When I was a boy,” he says, looking just over her shoulder, “I’d walk maybe a mile into the caves, and when I got to a room I knew like my own bedroom, I’d blow out my light. I’d picture where I’d come from, put my arms out in front of me, and retrace my steps in the dark. And you know what?”
She tilts her head.
“I never got it right,” he says. “I never once made it to the right spot. There’s no room for playing down here. Anybody who plans to make it back to the surface has to know that.”
5:45 p.m.
Talmadge
He swipes at his neck with his still-wet bandana, the only good thing to come out of that disaster back at the falls. He has a notion that his frustration is seeping out of his skin like poison from a toad: A few handfuls of cold water to the face cut through it, but not for long.
If he were alone, he’d be covering ground five times this fast—ten times—and now he’s a dog on a leash, ready to gnaw something. He’d like it to be the mind reader.
“Should we have stayed longer?” Mr. Efrom asks quietly from behind him.
If anyone were to overhear, they’d assume he’s worried about whether the group needed a longer rest. He’s smart, Morris Efrom, smarter than this quack calling himself a professor. It took forever to get to the hatpin, with Hagathorn choosing the wrong direction more often than not, and there wasn’t anything Talmadge could do about it. He could only take whatever path the man chose. When they finally arrived at the falls, Talmadge made sure to walk right up to the pin. He stood at the edge of the water, his boots aimed like signposts. He could see the hatpin flash from where he had wedged it into the wall.
He could not have made it more obvious without pointing. He gave Hagathorn time to sense energy or vibrations or ghostly messages. But instead of seeing any kind of vision, the dolt started messing around with his canteen, making as if he’d unscrew the top and fill it up at the falls, as if he hadn’t heard a word Talmadge said about water contamination. Even then, Talmadge thought he could manage him. He threw the canteen toward the hatpin. If Hagathorn had just looked in the right direction—no, if Talmadge’s temper hadn’t made him overthrow—
It is tiny, a hatpin. They were within a dozen feet of it for at least twenty minutes until Hagathorn insisted they head on. He has no more idea of where to find the hatpin than a cave spider.
Talmadge cannot say any of this to Mr. Efrom, not with the others so close behind.
“The professor was anxious to get moving,” he says instead. “But if you wanted to get another look at the falls, we’ll have to pass back through the same chamber when we head home.”
“Good to hear,” Mr. Efrom says, just as his foot catches, sole scuffing across the rock.
He’s been solid this trip, no trace of panic, and it seems he knew himself after all. He’s stumbling occasionally, but Talmadge hasn’t had to worry about him.
He’s worried about pretty much everyone else.
The ceiling rises, and Talmadge straightens. The path splits ahead, and they’ll need to get on hands and knees for the next part, whichever way the mind reader chooses.
“Junction,” he says for surely the fiftieth time today.
Hagathorn closes his eyes for surely the fiftieth time today. He places both hands on Talmadge’s shoulders, swaying slightly. He lets out a breath through pursed lips.
“Steady,” he says, as if they are carrying a piano instead of remembering a hatpin, and Talmadge does not know how many more times he can hear the word “steady” before he wraps his hands around the man’s neck.
“We’re plenty steady,” Mr. Efrom says. “We’ve been steady for hours.”
“Left,” the mind reader announces, his hands too heavy.
The right path would be easier, and it would lead to the same place, but Talmadge goes left, relieved to slip loose.
“Keep your minds strong, friends,” Hagathorn calls. “I can feel everything sharpening.”
“Hands and knees again,” Talmadge says. “Remember to keep a couple of feet between you.”
He will never again lead people he cannot actually lead. Normally he explains about sediment and calcite, and he points out slick patches and low ceilings, and there is a beginning and end. This little show may never end. It takes a hundred years for an inch of stalactite to grow, and that’s approximately the pace these people are keeping.
And the hell of it is, none of it matters anymore. They have passed the hatpin and they are headed away from it, deeper into the caverns. Every step is pointless, and all Talmadge can do is follow the madman.
He slaps his palms against the rock, one after the other, and hears a grunt behind him. He doesn’t slow down. Hagathorn can hardly take a step without banging some part of himself into a wall.
Hand, knee, hand, knee. One in front of the other.
step after step after step
if you do it long enough you become all body and no brain and
it is such a relief—
Talmadge pushes into an open space and waits for the others. Here’s Hagathorn now, shining his headlamp on every square inch of rock, Mr. Efrom breathing loudly behind him. The others crowd closer as Talmadge settles on the balls of his feet.
“We’re headed down,” he says. For the past eight hours, the words in his head haven’t come close to matching the ones coming out of his mouth. “The drop is about seven feet. If you fall, it won’t be the end of the world, but I’d rather you not. I’ll go in first, and then you each come down, belly to the wall. You’ll feel a foothold for your left foot first—I’ll help, if need be—and then your right foot, and after that you’ll be able to step to the floor. Left foot, right foot, floor.”
He watches them nod before he lies down on the ground, threading his legs through the opening into the next room. He finds the footholds and jumps to the ground—less clay and more gravel in this chamber—and for a few blissful seconds he’s alone.
He breathes in the cool stillness. He really is good at his job. He knows this landscape as well as anyone, and so far as he knows, not one person on his tours has ever had anything but compliments for him. Like some people have perfect pitch, he has a feel for directions. Even before he was school age, his sister Maddie would take him outside to hunt for cattails or dewberries in the woods, and she’d get turned around, but he never did.
If you were a wolf, you’d gnaw your own paw off, she used to say to him. She understood how he needed to bolt sometimes, how he needed to get away
get away
get away
get away
and he feels that need pulsing now, but Morris Efrom is coming down the wall. His foot kicks until Talmadge guides it to an outcropping. The others follow, unavoidable, and it’s another wait. Ten minutes, at least, while Hagathorn scans the room, head bobbing.
He always stands too close.
“Hold up,” the mind reader says when Talmadge starts across the room.
Talmadge obeys. There’s still a part of him that believes the man might lift his palms in the air and shout with a hallelujah that the pin is back at the waterfall. But Hagathorn’s lamplight only glints off a cluster of bats, and one of them detaches from the ceiling, gliding low. Behind Talmadge, the rest of the group dodges and yelps.
He dodges, too. It’s impossible not to flinch when a bat blurs toward your face. When they’ve all caught their breath, he meets the professor’s eyes.
“Forward or back?” he asks, and it’s the first time he’s offered going backward as an option.
“Onward,” Hagathorn says. He is no better at noticing hints than hatpins. “Always onward.”
Talmadge starts toward the opening at the other side of the chamber, pulling out his pocket watch. However much he might want this man to fall into a hole and never climb out, he wants Mr. Lambert to succeed. He needs him to succeed, if these caves are going to stay open. If he failed to announce a few junctions and looped the group back around to the waterfall sooner rather than later, they might not notice. These men are more sluggish by the minute.
The wife does not seem sluggish. She seems invigorated by her climb. In different circumstances, Talmadge would be impressed, but since he has enough problems without adding someone prone to squirreling up walls without so much as a word, he is not feeling much admiration.
Over his head, inch-long stalactites are tipped with pearls of water, shining. He picks up his pace, and Hagathorn says something to him about slowing down, but Talmadge is thinking of Maddie again.
Pale eyelashes, big-toothed smile. She was seventeen when the fever took her, and they laid her out on her bed with the coffin waiting for her in the front room. The house was jammed full of aunts and cousins, but it was his father who found Talmadge inside the coffin. He’d liked the feel of it, lined with the quilt Maddie had kept on her bed, the one their mother had made that had been washed so many times the bluebirds were peeling off. He liked the rough of the pine and the soft of the blanket, and he liked how dark the box was and how safe he felt, and at first he’d been worried about how Maddie might feel stuck underground but instead he wound up jealous. After they buried her, he visited her every day, laying on the heaped-up dirt and imagining her down there in her box. He’d talk to her, but Aunt Arlene told his father he was fixated on death and they made him stop.
It wasn’t death that took him there. It was love. It’s love, too, that sets him apart down here. He doesn’t worry that a lamp will go out. He doesn’t worry about being blind. He’s never blind. Every time he lays his hand against a rock, it’s like that bluebird quilt against his fingers, clear as day. The candle-smoothness of flowstone or the minnowed-outline of fossil or the gust of a passageway, like a giant blowing a dandelion—they’re as familiar to him as the tip of a cotton wing worn thin and the curved stitching of the round flower with insides like egg yolks. He doesn’t need his eyes to see them.
