The light spurred him into a dead run, and as he pounded toward it, he realized it was much farther away than it had looked. He finally had to stop running and walk because of the pain in his sides. When the pain had let up, he started running again and reached the little frame house with the wooden porch. He ran across the yard, walked up onto the porch, and rapped on the screen door.
The lights went out in the house and then he heard a slide latch on the inside of the front door. “Hey, please,” he shouted. He slapped the screen door against the jamb several more times. “You gotta help me. My wife’s in the bottom of the cave back down the road.” He paused. Hearing no sound within, he hit the screen door again. “Hey, please, help me. Just let me use your phone.” He waited again. Still no signs of response. “Call the police,” he shouted. “At least do that. Will you do that?”
He looked at the window that had gone dark after his first knock. He thought about kicking it out and going in and getting them to help him. But they might have a gun and decide to shoot him. That’s what he’d probably do if he was in the house and somebody came busting in.
He rattled the screen one more time. “Aren’t you going to help me? Please! My wife’s in the bottom of that cave up the road. Just call the cops for me.”
He paused again. They obviously weren’t going to do anything. He turned and sat down on the porch step. She was alone in that black cave. How was he going to get her out? He’d really done it this time.
He loved her. He really did. Loved her more than he thought possible. She was so great to him. She put up with so much. Sometimes he wondered why she did. He didn’t drink and he didn’t chase around after other girls. That was probably part of it. And he loved her and she knew it.
But he had to do things. That was the way he was. He heard about things and just had to do them. That was why they didn’t have anything. She often said they probably never would. But he couldn’t help it. Once he got a bug up his ass, he was off and running. The sky-diving lessons. The flying lessons. That stuff cost big money. And the automatic rifle with the scope. That had cost all of both their take-home pay from the mill for a week.
They didn’t need that rifle. But once he’d made up his mind, she went along with it. They’d taken it and hiked out to the old quarry a couple of times and floated bottles and beer cans on the water and sat up on the rim of the quarry and used up a couple of boxes of shells potting away at the stuff, taking turns. Then she’d heard the ricochet. Since that time, the rifle just hung on the wall in their apartment.
He thought about their apartment. She called it their rat’s nest and that was just about right. But he couldn’t help it. He’d rather do things than have things. They didn’t even have a car. Not even an old one. They walked to the mill and they hitched most everywhere else. They’d had a bike for a while, a Harley, a real beauty, but he’d wiped it out trying to learn to hill-climb. He’d had to let it go and he got off just in time, then sat there watching it head back down alone, end over end, just flying. They made payments for eight more months on something they couldn’t ride. Salvage parts covered one payment.
He heard about the cave and how the light coming up through the water was the most fantastic sight anybody ever saw and he had to see it. Clearest and greenest water anywhere, glowing green in the middle of a black cave. A giant emerald. A giant green light. He hadn’t listened too carefully to the part about getting out. He remembered that you had to get wet, but he figured you just got down on your belly and crawled through. He didn’t get the message that you had to swim straight down maybe fifteen feet. After he decided that he had to see it, he talked her into going with him, told her that it was something he wanted to do bad and it wouldn’t even cost anything. He’d said they’d just wear old clothes and she’d said that was all they had. And she’d finally agreed to go on a pretty Saturday afternoon when there really wasn’t much else to do.
And now it was a black Saturday night and she was in there alone. He wondered if there were any bears in that cave. Or snakes or waterdogs or rats. Or spiders. She was deathly afraid of spiders. Or bats that could see in the dark and fly down and get tangled in her beautiful long brown hair. What if there was another person in there? Maybe somebody hiding out? He had to get her out of there. He glanced back over his shoulder at the window. The lights were still out.
He got up and went back to the door and tapped lightly on the screen. Maybe he’d been too rough before. “Please listen,” he said in a pleading voice. “I’ve got to get help and get back to that cave back down the road and get my wife out of there. I’m not going to hurt anybody. I just want to get help. Can I just use your phone? Or could you just call the highway patrol? Please, won’t you help me?” He waited several minutes. “Please? Can’t you see I’m in trouble and need help?”
When he saw they weren’t going to answer, he became enraged. “Goddammit! Open the door! Help me! I need help.” He waited again. It was useless. He slammed the screen once more and then turned, left the porch, went across the yard and back onto the dark road. He could just make out objects near the road in the darkness. He thought about the level of blackness in the cave and wondered how much she’d used the flashlight. As he did, he tried to figure back how long he’d been gone from inside the cave.
Having rested on the porch, he started running again, his footsteps on the pavement producing the only sound anywhere in the vacuum of the black, windless night. He glanced back over his shoulder and the lights were on again in the window.
He kept moving, and in a few minutes the sounds of his heavy breathing fell around his footfalls as he concentrated on finding a pace he could maintain for a while. How far had he run? How far was he from the big cow-head rock? Two, three miles? That’s how far it seemed. Maybe four. The rock was around twenty-six miles from the edge of town. Would he have to get close to town to come to any more houses? He couldn’t remember.
Suddenly he saw some light. A car coming toward him. The first one he’d seen since he’d been on the road. It was coming pretty fast. He stepped out into the road in the path of the car and began to wave his arms up and down. The car approached, slowed down as it got near him, steered carefully around him as if he were an obstacle, and then accelerated back up to speed.
He turned and watched it disappear and then dropped to the surface of the road, flat on his back with his knees up, resting, waiting for his body to stop throbbing. He wanted to sleep and closed his eyes for a moment. He thought about his wife in the blackness of the cave and wondered if somehow she might have been able to sleep, or at least rest. Probably not. How would anybody be able to? He had to get help and get back there. Suddenly feeling very rested, he hustled to his feet and started off again, first walking and then in a slow run.
The road curved sharply and he saw another light in the distance. Remembering how he had been fooled before, he didn’t rush at the light but held his pace, watching it slowly approach him with each heavy jogging stride. The little house was very reminiscent of the first one — same distance from the road, same setting, same porch on the front with the light coming through the window. The house was on the right-hand side of the road instead of the left. Could it be the same house? Could he have started off in the wrong direction when he got up off the road? Maybe he had slept a minute or two and had gotten up all turned around. This possibility made him feel weak for a moment, but he figured he’d find out as soon as he knocked on the door. He slapped the screen three times and waited.