Michael pulled up to the front door in a cloud of dust, got out of the truck, and walked up the front steps. He paused for a deep breath, then opened the screen door and came in. “Sally Ann?”
“In the kitchen, Michael.”
He came in and sat down at the kitchen table. He was visibly trying to keep himself under control. “Where’s Mary, Sally Ann?”
She turned to look at him and he took in the black teeth, the scaly, thin skin, the ragged hair, and the arms so thin they were like little sticks. All his anger disappeared.
“I came back to tell you that you have three grandchildren.” His mouth fell open and he stared at her. “Three beautiful children, Michael. They play in the water and laugh and love. And they don’t believe in you.”
A new type of anger held him to his seat. The thought of three children in caves. What kind of a monster was this woman? Then he thought of Mary. Sweet Mary. Like a flower. She survived down there? But . . . who was the father? He laughed. “You’re insane, Sally. There’s no children. There’s just you and your twisted ways. I knew Mary. She was too fragile. She could never have survived down there.”
“You’re wrong, Michael, I survived. And your son survived.” Shock froze his face.
“My son?”
“Yes. Our son. And now he and Mary have three children. I’m sorry I don’t have pictures of them for you.”
He jumped up and grabbed her skull and started to squeeze. He could feel her thin, brittle bones, and he just wanted to pop her head like a melon. “You monster! I’ll kill you for this!” His rage was born of fear, and didn’t last. His hands slipped from her head to rest on her shoulders, and he started to cry. She put a comforting hand on his face.
“It’s not so bad, Michael. They’re really very happy. It’s a whole different type of existence down there, but it’s not a bad life.”
“We looked for you,” he sobbed. “We searched for weeks. There are so damned many tunnels down there. We all got sick. We couldn’t believe that anybody could live down there. Oh, Sally Ann.” He sank to the floor and hugged her legs. “My soul ached to think you have been down there all those years. All those years I had given you up for dead. I locked you down there that day and didn’t know it. And I’ve lived with that guilt ever since.”
She stroked his hair. “It’s okay, Michael. I thought it wasn’t, but it is now. Everything is all right. Our son is a good man, and he’s a good father to the boys and a good husband to Mary.”
“When Mary was missing and Maggie told me it was you staying here with Mom, I didn’t believe her. I hit her. She makes me so angry sometimes. But I had to believe her when your Mom said the same thing, and the lock was broken off the door to the stairs. Our life hasn’t been the same since.” Sally Ann smiled slowly above his head. “How could you . . . ? How did you raise a child down there?”
“One has to do what one has to do, Michael. His name is Clinton.”
“My God. Will you take me to see them?”
“Of course, Michael. You won’t be able to really see them, it’s too dark. But I’ll take you to them, if you like.”
Cora paled when Sally told her what had happened. “You can’t take Michael down there!”
“I can and I will. Besides, he wants to go. He wants to see his son.”
Cora looked at her in horror, then turned to her closet. She put on a jacket and scarf. “Where are you going, Momma?”
“To church.”
2
Sally Ann laughed when she saw what Michael brought with him. A whole backpack, with sleeping bag, food, fresh clothes, and flashlights. “No flashlights,” she said.
“I can’t go down there without a flashlight.”
“If you take a light, you go alone.” He saw the resolve in her grotesque face. Reluctantly, he left them behind.
They descended. She breathed the familiar air of the main tunnel. Refreshing. She urged Michael to walk faster, but he was unaccustomed to walking in the dark so their progress was stumbling and slow. “At this rate, it will take us a month to get to them.” He didn’t think that was very funny, but Sally laughed. He was amazed at her ability to navigate.
When they reached Monster Lake, Sally told him of the beast that lived in the waters to the left of the path. They rested near the entrance, and when Sally made a meal of the slugs they found on the floor, Michael found this practice so revolting that he quite lost his appetite. She laughed at this, too. “You’ll be eating them soon enough.” He didn’t believe that a monster lived in the lake and told her so. “Take a swim in there, then, if you don’t believe.” The thought of swimming in total darkness made his flesh crawl.
He found his backpack cumbersome, and Sally was quickly losing patience with his slow pace. In fact, she was not as thrilled to be with him as she had imagined she would be. He was foreign here. This was not his element. He didn’t belong. Well, she would take him to see his children and grandchildren, and then he could go back.
They tiptoed through Monster Cavern, then resumed their normal slow pace. Sally found the temptation to leave him when he was sleeping deliciously irresistible. He would wake up and find himself alone. The panic in his voice as he shouted for her was comforting. Then she would return to him and he was so glad to have her back. At last she was needed. Clint had needed her, but that was different. This was Michael, the man she had needed for a long, long time. And now he needed her. Not for companionship, but for basic survival. She loved it.
They stopped frequently and slept. She convinced him that there were tunnels too small to take the pack into, so he agreed to leave it, taking with him only his essentials—sandwiches. Along the way she told him stories of Clint and his growing up and what a delight he was. He shared with her stories of his children. Justin, he said, was in the air force, thinking about making a career of it. The twins had been modeling and making television ads for some time. He spoke of his marriage to Maggie, how it had come about, how her father had died, the relationship between Cora and Maggie. She encouraged him to talk; it made her realize how little she missed that world. In fact, she was glad she was back where she was comfortable.
As they passed the tunnel with the dank smell, she told him of her grueling trip up the well shaft, adding bits here and there about how much she had missed him. He was horrified. She was glad.
They reached the first Home Cavern and she showed him where she had given birth, where for twenty years they had had their home. He was beginning to have an appreciation for her strength, her courage. She could feel it, and he made little comments alluding to the fact that he had no idea . . . Of course he had no idea. What a fool he was. She impressed upon him the number of smaller tunnels, some dead ends, some leading to huge caverns with hundred-foot drop-offs, the dangers of wandering without knowing where you were going. He insisted he would stick close to her.
She felt a growing surge of power in this relationship. The tables had indeed turned and she was enjoying every minute of it. She toyed with the idea of just leaving him and letting him find for himself the overpowering fear. Let him discover his own inner strength, she told herself with contempt. It takes no balls to ride a tractor. Was this the man she had pined for during more than thirty years in the underworld? This was her God, this weak man who carried peanut-butter sandwiches with him and whined when she wasn’t by his side when he awoke? She must have been insane.
They continued through tunnels barely large enough for Michael’s muscular body, up and down shafts, eating when hungry, resting when tired. They finally reached the lake, and the underwater doorway to Home Cavern.
At the large lake, they camped. Michael didn’t know that his children and grandchildren were so close, just on the other side of the wall. No sounds escaped the underwater entrance. Suddenly she didn’t want Michael to see them. She wanted to keep him under her control. She realized that he might want to take her babies back with him, and that was out of the question. She prayed Clint or Mary or one of the boys wouldn’t come out this way while they were there.