The lights went out and a strong voice said, “Git going!”
“You gotta help me. I gotta get help. My wife’s in the bottom of a cave back down the road and I gotta get help getting her out.”
“Git going. Git off the porch and off this land. Git going.”
“Please help me. I mean no harm. Let me just use your phone. I’m telling the truth. My wife’s in that crazy cave down the road. I gotta get help.”
“If I open the door I’m gonna be shootin’ to kill. Now, git!”
“Please! You gotta help me. Just let me use your phone. Call the cops. Anything. Please help me.”
“Got no phone. Now git moving.”
He hesitated a moment. “How far to the next house?”
After a prolonged silence, “A mile toward town.”
“Tell me something else,” he said to the closed door. “Was I here banging on your door a little while ago?”
A foot kicked the other side of the door and the voice shouted, “Git! Git moving!”
The kick startled him and he ran off the porch into the yard. He stopped, turned, and stared at the house. There was a white earthenware pot with something growing in it on the porch step which looked familiar. He had gotten turned around. He had to get moving toward town. One mile to the next house. He could get there in ten minutes. He was going to get lucky at the next one. He felt assured and took off running down the road.
Another car approached him from behind and this time he was determined to stop it. He turned and stayed in the middle of the road, flagging wildly with his arms. When it became apparent that the car would hit him if he didn’t move, he leaped out of the way and watched the red taillights fade.
He started running renewed. Help was a few minutes away. This time he was sure. He was going to get help and get on back and get her out of that black hole. The next house was the one.
He came up over a little rise and the lights appeared, right on schedule. He pounded harder, down the hill, feeling much stronger. Second wind. As he came upon the house, he could see it was much larger than the other one, set farther back from the road, painted white, lots of lights, a nice house, one like she often said she wished someday she could have.
He slowed down as he reached the corner of the yard and then noticed an old pickup truck, a small one with an open bed, parked heading out. He studied the house. They couldn’t see him. They were inside in the light. He was outside in the dark and already had eyes like an owl’s, used to the dark.
He moved across the yard to the truck, stepped up on the running board, and reached through the open window. The key was in the ignition with a heavy piece of cotton string hanging from it. After surveying the house again, he silently eased the truck door open and slid into it. He clutched, twisted the key, and the old clunker exploded into life. He was on his way to get help.
As he approached the town, things finally started looking familiar. Once in the town he began to realize that a lot of time had passed. Everything seemed quiet, deserted, asleep, even for Saturday night. He went straight for the highway patrol station and as he pulled up to it to park, two troopers got out of a car where they had been sitting and walked over to him.
“Where’d you get the truck?” one of them said.
“You gotta help me. My wife’s in the bottom of the cave and we gotta get her out. She’s alone out there.”
“Where’d you get the truck?”
“This is the fastest one yet,” the other trooper said. “We get the call fifteen minutes ago and here he comes, driving right up to us.”
“Please, you’ve got to help me get her out of that cave.”
“Taking trucks is serious business, friend. You’d better come inside.”
“Please listen to me. My wife’s in the bottom of that crazy cave about twenty-five miles out on Fifty-eight. You guys gotta help me. We gotta get her out.”
“You want to call a lawyer?”
“I don’t need a lawyer. I need help getting my wife out of that cave.”
They kept him in a cell for what seemed an endless period of time until they could get the sheriff up and in to see him. He lay on the cot and fidgeted, thinking about her out there in that black hole. He began to think about how much he really did care about her, how much he liked just touching her, seeing her at lunch at the mill, having her go with him when he was off doing something, watching her give in when there was some new wild-ass thing he just had to do.
“How’d you get out there?”
“We hitched.”
“What’d you go out there for?”
“I had to see it.”
“See what?”
“The green light.”
“What green light?”
“The light that comes in through the water under the rock. Some of the guys at the mill told me about it and I had to see it.”
“Didn’t they tell you about getting out of there after you got in?”
“I guess I didn’t figure the water was so deep.”
“Didn’t you read the sign on the lock, telling you to stay the hell out of there?”
“They went in and saw it and got out okay. I figured I could, too. And I did.”
“Why didn’t you leave your wife outside?”
“Anything I want to do that bad I like her to get to do, too. Can’t we go get her out?”
“In a little while. We need a little more light. We got to get a wrecker over to the hole. We’ve had to do this a time or two before. You’re lucky. We drop a chain down with a little harness on it and strap it around her and snake her back up out of there. We need a little more light to get the wrecker down the hill to the lock.”
They dropped off the pickup truck on the way back out to the cave. And he studied the little house with the porch as they passed it. Not much of a place.
He read the sign carefully for the first time as he watched them set up to drop the harness down through the lock. “Warning! Stay out! Do not enter. Once down inside, impossible to get back out.” He wanted to be the one who went in to help her out, using the harness. He wanted to be the first to see her. And he wanted just a little bit to see the green light once more. But he was relieved when the sheriff said no, that the man who’d designed the harness and handled the other rescues would go. He was relieved because he wasn’t sure what to expect.
She appeared at the mouth of the pit, both feet wedged into the little stirrup and a wide leather strap around her hips, binding her to the chain. She clung to the chain with one arm and held the other arm tightly over her eyes to protect them from the gray morning light and she was sobbing convulsively. They helped her off the chain and onto the ground and she sat, her face against her knees, closed in by her arms, her whole body shuddering. He wanted to go over to her but he was afraid and so he stood back and watched. He felt his own eyes fill up and start sending water down his face. He watched her and he watched as they dropped the chain back in and easily brought out the other man.
A trooper gave her a pair of sunglasses. She walked next to the sheriff back up the hill to the road and he lagged a little behind the two of them. When they reached the sheriff’s car, she began to get in front, doing so in such a way that it was clear he was to sit in back. As she was getting in, he finally said, very softly, “You all right, sweetheart?”
She glanced quickly at him. “I’m fine,” she said. And as she closed the door, he knew that she would never look directly at him or speak to him again.
She had been moved out for two weeks. He kept watching for her around the mill but she avoided him. He missed her, wanted her back, couldn’t get used to being without her. Everything seemed to be falling apart.
Since it was Saturday, he slept an hour or so later. When he woke up, he lay there, thinking about her and also about the fact that he’d have to make some changes. He couldn’t afford even their “rat’s nest” without her paycheck coming in, helping to carry it. He’d have to find something cheaper. Lots of things were going to be different.