Anna Pigeon - Blind Descent Part 4

Anna fantasized about bringing great mercury-vapor lamps in and cranking up the wattage. The movie Interview with the Vampire had given her a similar feeling, though to a much lesser degree. She needed to see the sun rise.

Rolling onto her side, she realized that while she slept someone had spread a s.p.a.ce blanket over her to keep off the chill. Fear had lain down with her, and at this sign of interference, she instinctively reached for a weapon. The reflex was a mere flick of her hand, aborted before her hand had moved even a finger's width. Here she was not a law enforcement ranger. Her a.s.signment had been quite specific. Ladies in-waiting didn't customarily go heavily armed. Anna was without so much as a hat pin.

Remembering her nocturnal exchange with Frieda, she wondered how much danger there was. What was delirium and what was the truth? That, too, was wrapped in shadow. She looked over at her friend. Frieda's eyes were closed. If she slept, Anna didn't want to disturb her. She lay a bit longer, taking advantage of the extended night to see what fellows she had fallen in amongst.

Holden, Oscar, and Peter McCarty were huddled around a single lamp, heads low and close, fannies in the air. Anna guessed they were going over surveys of the cave, discussing the care of Frieda as she was subjected to the rigors of her rescue.

A big man, his face lost in darkness, stood a few feet behind them, listening but contributing nothing. Light from the floor caught the bottom of the cup he held, the edges of two large, soft-looking hands, and the underside of a jaw bearded in short red-brown whiskers as thick and s.h.i.+ny as a cat's fur. His bulk took Anna by surprise. He was more than six feet tall and easily weighed two hundred pounds. She'd thought all cavers would be lean and lithe, eel-like. She wasn't sure whether the man's size suited her or not. Should she follow this large subterranean specimen, she would be a.s.sured of never getting wedged in a tight spot. Anywhere he could get through would be a breeze for a person Anna's size. Then again, should he become stuck fast when she was behind him, a considerable wall of human flesh would stand between her and freedom. It would take weeks to eat the man; he had that much meat on him.

Behind him, closer to the cavern wall, was a woman cast in a more cla.s.sic cave formation. Working by the light of two helmet lamps, facing into her camp like lanterned turtles, a lanky woman, so thin that anorexia came to mind, banged gear into packs. Her movements were abrupt, each cached item cracking in protest as she smashed it against the rest. Long straight hair, not caught back in a braid or bandana, swung around her bony shoulders with the angry switch of a mare's tail. Every few seconds she flung it irritably back from her face. As the curtain of hair was raised and the lamps painted her face, Anna noted sharp, clear features. Each was exaggerated just enough that the woman would never be considered truly pretty. Her nose was well shaped and large, her jaw thin, jutting slightly and ending in a squared-off chin with a hint of a dimple. The widely s.p.a.ced eyes were long, exotic, and slightly unnatural looking. Her mouth was her best feature. The upper lip was well cut with a cupid's-bow fullness, the lower pouted but so girlishly it charmed rather than irked. Anna guessed she was in her late twenties.

"How is Frieda doing?"

Anna rolled over to see a woman hunkered down on her heels not three feet behind her. Anna had neither heard her coming nor sensed her presence. For protection, Frieda would have been better off with a Lhasa apso, she thought sourly.

"She's going to be fine," she said firmly, hoping Frieda could hear and take comfort.

The uninvited guest nodded slowly. She had a round bland face and dark hair pulled back under a bandana that had once been green. The kerchief was tied across her forehead in the fas.h.i.+on of pirates, artists, and outdoorswomen. "Frieda is one tough lady," she said after giving the matter some thought.

Bovine, Anna thought, but it wasn't an insult. The woman brought to mind not the cow-like traits of stupidity or of being easily led, but of solidity and being slow to anger. The image was helped along by dark brown eyes, black and liquid in the dimness, and her size. She was nearly a match for the bearded man. Unfolded, she was probably close to five-ten with broad hips and heavy thighs. She wore shorts and a white tee-s.h.i.+rt, the sleeves rolled above her shoulders. A soft layer of fat hid the muscle, but Anna was willing to bet she was terrifically strong.

"Zeddie Dillard," she said, and stuck out her hand. Damp hair curled from her armpits, and Anna was impressed. Zeddie wasn't more than twenty-four, yet she was as comfortable as an old hippie.

"Anna Pigeon."

Clanking cut into their exchange of pleasantries, and both looked to where the skinny woman knocked a cookstove into its component parts.

"Tantrums on the River Styx?" Anna asked.

"That's the doctor's wife," Zeddie replied with a careful lack of inflection. "And that's what's got her so p.i.s.sed off."

"That she's Peter McCarty's wife?"

"That she's the doctor's wife."

"Ah."

"Zeddie Dillard, amateur psychiatrist and oracle to the stars," the woman said, and laughed. "Coffee?"

Anna was warming right up to Ms. Dillard. "Cream?" she asked hopefully.

"Better. Magic white powder that turns into cream if you stir it with a little plastic stick. It might not work down here," she added as she rose to her feet. "All there is to stir with is the community spoon."

"I'll be with you as soon as I've visited the ladies' room," Anna said.

Zeddie took a flashlight and used it to point out a black gateway between two sizable blocks of stones. "Unis.e.x Johns. Easier on the cave," she said. "Put that pointy rock in the path. Privacy guaranteed."

Destination confirmed, Anna worked her way up from the ground. Everything hurt. The aggressively three-dimensional nature of caves ensured that she had been battered equally from all directions. She felt as if she'd been beaten up by experts. Muscles unused for decades cried their lament as she hobbled toward the powder room. Bruises made themselves felt in places that never came into contact with anything more abusive than a down comforter or silk underpants.

Nothing was easy.

Anna was accustomed to the practice of cat-holing, digging tidy holes for waste and covering them. She'd burned enough toilet paper in the wilderness to raise the stock of Scott Tissue a point or two. And she knew why it wouldn't suffice. None of the normal elements of the terrestrial world were at work here, no self-cleaning features built in. Pack it in; pack it out. With stoicism if not good cheer, she completed her toilette as she'd been told: a neat rectangle of aluminum foil, Lisa's "burrito bag." Anna laughed in spite of herself.

Zeddie was waiting with fresh-brewed water. Anna added brown powder and white powder and told herself it was coffee with cream. The group had gathered around an upended flashlight that took the place of a campfire. The people she'd observed earlier were there, as well as another man who had not been in camp before. In his forties, he looked in good physical condition. His hair was blond and cut short, reminiscent of the n.a.z.is in World War II movies, but his face wasn't hard. If anything, he looked slightly timid, slightly aggrieved. He was clad in a muscle s.h.i.+rt and cutoffs so short Anna made a mental note not to get behind him on a steep climb unless she wanted to get to know him a whole lot better.

Zeddie saw where she was looking and muttered, "Brent Roxbury. Fortunately for Brent, there are no fas.h.i.+on police in a cave."

"Is Frieda any better?" Roxbury asked, interrupting their less-than kind gossip. The question sounded genuinely concerned, and Anna felt mildly guilty. To make it up to him, she forgave him the short-shorts.

"The same," she replied, sorry she didn't have better news. As Anna looked at the ring of concerned faces, Frieda's words of the night before seemed absurd. It was possible she had been thinking clearly and yet had been mistaken. If a blow to the head could erase the trauma, surely it could scramble the facts. Frieda might have been recalling an event from the delirium, a dream so real that in a confused state it would be remembered as gospel. Memories could and were implanted, often so deeply that even faced with proof that an event never actually occurred, a person couldn't shake the feeling from muscle and bone that it had happened.

If the words were true, just as Frieda had said, no psychological voodoo involved, then one of these individuals radiating sympathy and love had pushed a rock on her. Unfortunately, in a place as rigidly controlled and inaccessible as the bowels of Lechuguilla, the last minute solution of the wandering hobo with homicidal tendencies was unworkable.

"We haven't met," Anna said to half the group, wanting to hear their voices, feel the clasp of their hands, in hopes a sense of their trustworthiness would be communicated.

"Sondra McCarty," Zeddie said, adopting the hostess role. McCarty's wife was braiding her hair with both hands, a thick cloth covered band held ready in her teeth. Anna got neither a voice nor a handshake but merely a grunt and a nod.

Zeddie went around the circle. "Dr. Curtis Schatz." The big man with the furry chin looked up from where he sat. His eyes were obscured by gla.s.ses framed in mock tortoisesh.e.l.l. The lenses caught the light and reflected back blank s.p.a.ce.

"h.e.l.lo," he said in a flat voice that gave absolutely nothing away and left Anna feeling snubbed.

"Two doctors," she said just to say something. "That's lucky."

"Not really," Schatz drawled, but without Holden's Texas warmth. A "Tennis, anyone?" effeteness lent his words a sn.o.bbish air. "I'm a doctor of leisure and recreation."

Anna laughed, realized it was not a joke, and laughed again. "Sorry," she said.

"No problem." Schatz returned to his coffee. Again no handshake. Near the center of the earth, life tended toward the informal.

"Curt's a professor of leisure and recreational studies-park planning stuff-with a state university in New York." Zeddie came to Anna's rescue with the biographical details. "He's sketching this trip."

Anna remembered Oscar discussing survey team responsibilities. Always, when mapping, besides measuring distances and surveying angles, someone sketched the rooms, the landmarks, the pa.s.sageways, formations, fossils, and anything else of interest they could squeeze in. Depending on the sketch artist, the drawings varied from stick-like cartoon pictures that doc.u.mented where an object was and its rough shape, to things of beauty in and of themselves.

"This is Brent Roxbury." Zeddie introduced the last of the strangers as if they'd not already raked him over the coals for his sartorial inelegance.

Brent did shake hands. His grip was firm and dry, as apparently sincere as his asking after Frieda's health.

"Brent's a geologist," Frieda said. "He teaches and does a lot of work for the Park Service and the BLM."

Sondra had finished her hair. She pushed forward and stuck out her hand. "I'm a freelance writer," she said. The gesture, belated, and the announcement were out of place. Anna wasn't put off by it. Though she couldn't remember exactly when or why, she knew there'd been a time when she was younger that she'd felt as she imagined Sondra was feeling: ignored, undervalued, outcla.s.sed. Her husband was a doctor. He was probably fifteen years her senior. It had to be a hard act to follow. Anna took the proffered hand. The woman's grip was hard, compet.i.tive. Anna resisted an impulse to shriek and sink to her knees in exaggerated pain.

"I write travel and adventure articles for the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch and travel magazines in America and Great Britain." Her credentials and resume complete, she dropped Anna's hand.

At a loss for an appropriate response, Anna mumbled, "How do you do?" and left it at that.

Holden was pinching his wrist, pressing the minuscule b.u.t.ton on the side of his watch. In the ubiquitous gloom even the green glow of a Timex night-light shone vividly. It was 6:23-A.M., Anna a.s.sumed. There was no way of knowing, but her body suggested she'd gotten four hours' sleep, not sixteen. In an hour or less, the team that followed, bringing gear and rigging, should arrive. This would be one of the last times this group would be alone together. As soon as the others came, the machinery of the rescue effort would fall in place and they would be swept up in the momentum.

It was on the tip of Anna's tongue to ask what had happened, how Frieda had come to be hurt, when Holden said, "Okay, before the world starts happening to us, let's go over what we're going to need. Just us chickens. Everybody else is extra."

Anna was just as glad her question had been preempted. It was too late to catch the perpetrator-if there was a perpetrator-off guard. Everyone had ample time to perfect a story. But, had she asked, an official version would have been created by the simple expedient of publicly relating it. Hearing five unofficial versions might prove more enlightening.

Holden spoke just loud enough that one could hear if silence and attention were maintained. When Anna'd been in high school it had been one of Sister Mary Corrine's favorite techniques. Thirty years later and seven hundred feet underground, it still worked. They hung on Holden's every word. Three things were paramount: speed, care of the patient, and care of the cave. The rescuers would keep to the trails even when it made things more difficult. On Tillman's watch not a single aragonite crystal was to be sacrificed. Looking at each in turn, he told them their duties.

Anna and Sondra were ladies-in-waiting. Their task was to see to Frieda, make sure she was comfortable and secure, calm her if she became agitated, let Holden know if she needed to rest. Peter was to focus on Frieda's health, commission any help he needed with drugs, dressings, and services, monitor her vital signs, and keep Holden apprised.

Curt was given the task of carrying heavy objects. "Born to sherp," he said with a resignation that made Anna laugh. Zeddie was to carry packs and water. There would be others to help her, Holden promised, but it was her job to see that the core group-the eight of them-had what they needed during the carry-out and at the next camp. Holden estimated they could evacuate Frieda in approximately forty-eight hours; two twenty-hour days broken by an eight-hour sleep. Cavers from outside-and by this he meant anyone not in what he had chosen to call the core group-would bring in food, rigging, water, and medical supplies. There were people to lay phone line, prerig major obstacles at the Rift, the Boulder, and the entrance, and do liaison work and requisitioning. Cavers would be a.s.signed to carry the Stokes when needed, and would cart out garbage and derig the hauls behind the evacuation party.

At rests and in camp they would segregate themselves. Those outsiders who could or wished to would rotate to the surface to be replaced by fresher, rested people. Holden wanted Frieda to be surrounded by people she knew. He wanted to keep her trauma and stimulation to a minimum.

For Frieda's peace of mind, Anna would be rigged with her on all the hauls, traveling up with the Stokes. When hands-on carrying of the litter was not required, only Anna, Dr. McCarty, and Sondra would be allowed near her. Holden didn't want Frieda swamped with good intentions.

Anna listened with a growing sense of confidence. She could feel it spreading through the group. When she could get a moment alone with Holden or Oscar, she would tell them of Frieda's a.s.sertion that her injury was not accidental. Till then, the arrangement that kept her near Frieda and most others away was tailor-made for her needs.

Lights flashed from the far end of Tinker's h.e.l.l. The cavalry had arrived, and the meeting broke up. Sondra McCarty waylaid Anna as she walked back to where Frieda lay.

"Ladies-in-waiting," she said, her voice dripping with conspiratorial scorn. "That man's a dinosaur from the pregnant-and-barefoot school. Doesn't he think we're fit for men's work?"

Anna was dumbstruck. For ten years she'd made a living doing what was traditionally considered men's work. Being a lady-in-waiting required more courage and stamina than she'd ever bargained for. "Hey," she said when her silence had grown too long to be considered polite. "It's a job."

"Yeah. Well. For you, maybe," Sondra said, and Anna knew she'd been written off as hopelessly bourgeois.

A team of twelve cavers rattled into camp, bringing a raucous confusion of light and sound. Packs were dumped and fallen upon, their innards jerked forth for inspection. Peter McCarty was handed a bundle earmarked for patient care. He tucked it under his arm and made a beeline for his patient. Until Anna knew for sure what had harmed Frieda, she didn't intend to let anyone mess with her un.o.bserved, not even her private physician.

"And good morning to you," McCarty said as Anna joined him. With his good looks and instant attentiveness, she could guess part of his wife's problem. The man was a natural flirt. Or a habitual one. She doubted he meant anything by it; the response had just become ingrained into his patterns. Squatting on Frieda's other side, she trained her headlamp not on the doctor's face but on his hands.

"Frieda," he said, "Anna and I are going to fit you up with a catheter so you don't have to go traipsing off to the loo. It will be a wee bit uncomfortable for just a minute." His voice was rea.s.suringly conversational. Anna would have liked to have absolute faith in the man, but it was a luxury Frieda couldn't afford.

Together they cut away the injured woman's trousers. They were lined with soiled toilet tissue, a homemade diaper the doctor had taken care to provide till his equipment arrived. At each step in the procedure, Peter explained what he was doing, dividing his remarks between Anna and the unconscious Frieda. His hands were ungraceful-looking, the nails chewed down to the quick, but his movements were sure and gentle.

When the catheter was in place, McCarty pulled an oversized handkerchief from his hip pocket and shook out the square of cotton. A baseball was printed in the middle, the words "I do believe in the Twins, I do!" stenciled in a semicircle around it. "Not exactly sterile," he said, "but clean and unbesnotted." Draping it carefully over Frieda's lap, he secured it with safety pins to preserve her dignity.

Their patient was settled, as comfortable as they could make her. McCarty began gathering up his supplies, and Anna asked him how the accident had happened. Her light was on his face now to see if muscles might betray something voice had been schooled not to. Watching for lies was a professional habit and, though Anna was a fairly decent pract.i.tioner of the art, she had learned not to count on it overmuch. Some liars were just too good, some honest people just naturally twitchy. Still, it was a place to begin.

McCarty glanced over his shoulder. The move was not precisely furtive; maybe he was only judging the time left till they moved Frieda out. Anna had noted that quick, unfocused glance before. It was the one crack in his armor of charm. Though seemingly attentive, one sensed he checked to see if anyone more interesting was in the room before committing his time.

Either Anna won, or she'd imagined the game; McCarty turned back to her.

"n.o.body knows for sure," he said. "Possibly not even Frieda. The brain has a way of protecting us from memories that are too painful to be relived."

"Did anyone see it happen?"

"Nope. We'd split up to explore possible leads out of Tinker's. Most of us were fairly close to camp. Brent thought he had a going lead in the upper quadrant. There." McCarty picked up his hard hat, switched on the lamp and used it to point out a crack seventy or eighty feet up the back wall. "He and Curt climbed to that ledge. Brent went inside. Curt waited on the ledge, sketching. Sondra was photographing a broken formation. Zeddie and I had been pus.h.i.+ng a lead behind that mountain of breakdown." Again he used the light to point. The vastness of the chamber swallowed the beam before it reached its objective.

"So you were with Zeddie. Who found Frieda?"

"No. It got kind of squirrelly. Our lead petered out. Zeddie was headed back to camp and I was going to collect Sondra when I heard a yell-high, like a bird or a stepped-on cat. There was no way to tell where it came from, but it sounded enough like a cry for help that I think everybody pretty much started trying to get to wherever they thought it was. We ran around like the proverbial headless chickens. Then we all started shouting at each other, so if Frieda called a second time there was no way to sort it out from the general hubbub.

"Zeddie was the one who found her. She'd known where Frieda was going. Neither of them thought the lead had much promise, it wasn't blowing to speak of, but if you don't check them all out, you know the one you skipped leads to the bottom of the world and the next guy is going to find it.

"Frieda was in a crawl s.p.a.ce, vertical, mostly breakdown-unstable stuff. Zeddie had gone down twenty feet and could just see Frieda's head. A rock the size of a basketball but pointy on one end had lodged between Frieda and the side of the pa.s.sage. The weight rested on her shoulder, wedging her in.

"Zeddie got down as far as she could, squatted over Frieda, and lifted the rock straight up. Talk about clean and jerk! Zeddie's no slouch in the weight-lifting department. She pushed it up over her head. Curt and I got hold of it and brought it the rest of the way. It was a good forty pounds. Frieda's lucky it didn't crush her skull or break her collarbone."

"Curt was there when you got there?"

"No. Wait. Yes. He was trying to get Zeddie to let him go after the rock."

"So Zeddie pulled Frieda out?"

"No. That was a group effort. I doubt even the amazing Zeddie could lift a hundred and forty pounds of dead weight straight up. She got out, and I went down and got a cervical collar on Frieda. We tried to be careful, but you know how it is. For all the protection we could give her spinal column we might as well have hooked a tow chain under her armpits and yanked her out with a backhoe.

"It was lucky she was unconscious. We didn't know her leg was broken till we had her out where I could get a look. The pain would have been horrific."

"Frieda never said what happened? Wasn't she conscious at first?"

"Her level of consciousness wasn't stable. She knew who we were but not where she was or what had happened. As near as we could guess, she was climbing down and loosened some rocks as she went by. When she was below them, they broke loose. The first one hit her right leg at the knee and sheared off the top of the tibia. That must have been when she called for help. Then the second rock hit her in the head.

"Guesswork, but informed guesswork," he said with a laugh. "That's a doctor's bread and b.u.t.ter."

Having finished with the story and clearing up the medical paraphernalia, he stood, unfolding with the ease of a dancer. "When we get you tucked up snug in the Stokes," he said to Frieda, "I'll get you on an IV to keep your fluids up."

Anna didn't know whether Frieda had gotten Peter's message, but she had to keep talking. There was no way of telling what got through to Frieda, but all possible lines must be used to tether her to this world when temptation urged her to wander into the next.

Since Anna hadn't bothered unpacking so much as a change of socks the night before, she had nothing to do for the moment. Sitting near Frieda's head, she took her friend's hand between her own. "I know, I know, I'd never dare take such a liberty if you were awake," she said as she pressed her friend's fingers. "But, hey, there's not much you can do about it, is there? And I don't know if it comforts you, but it sure soothes the h.e.l.l out of me. This cave stuff is for the birds. Bats." For a moment she sat quietly, playing Frieda's inert fingers against her palm. "Think about this," she said after a time, talking as much to herself as to her friend. "According to the good doctor, everybody was by themselves, near you, all shrouded in darkness when the rocks fell. Except maybe Brent and Curt. They were together, but I'm not clear exactly how together. This of course narrows things down not one whit. Cogitate upon it and then wake up and tell me all."

Frieda moved and made a noise in her throat. Anna held her breath and waited, but Frieda never opened her eyes.

5.

Things happened fast and so smoothly that Anna's estimate of Holden Tillman-already high-went up a notch or two. His quiet authority overlaid strict self-discipline. In another man it might have been abrasive, but Tillman created the illusion that he had time for everyone, an ear for every concern. In addition to a gentle, self-effacing humor, his manner provided the lubricant that allowed a disparate collection of people to operate with singleness of purpose.

Anna and Peter packaged Frieda Dierkz. She was strapped snugly in the Stokes, her hands crossed on her chest and lashed in place with soft bandages. A helmet with a Plexiglas face s.h.i.+eld was fitted over her head and a stirrup beneath her left foot so, should she become able at some point, she could keep the weight off her injured leg when the litter was tilted. The oxygen bottle was secured between her knees.

Because of the radical ups and downs of the rubble-strewn path to Tinker's exit, the standard method of carrying a litter would have subjected Frieda to a b.u.mpy ride. So Holden strung the sixteen people out along the path, and the stretcher was pa.s.sed between two lines of cavers, eight on a side, moving Frieda from hand to hand in the fas.h.i.+on of a bucket brigade. As the stretcher left a caver's hands, he or she scrambled ahead, keeping the line always unbroken, always moving forward. In an effort to make her journey as uneventful as possible, the stretcher bearers would stand between stones and pa.s.s the Stokes overhead rather than lower Frieda and pull her up again, squat on their haunches on the high ground and keep the Stokes moving levelly a foot or so above the rock.

The men were as motley a group as one could hope to a.s.semble behind any one cause. One had a gray-shot beard and hair that tangled like Charley Manson's in his heyday. Another resembled an undergraduate from a conservative midwestern seminary. Various points masculine in between were represented. Most worked s.h.i.+rtless. In the cave's humidity, exertion brought body heat up. Sweat glistened on bare backs between streaks of dirt. Bound by convention even this far below Emily Post's bas.e.m.e.nt, the women sweated beside them in tee-s.h.i.+rts and running bras. Lisa was there, her Rapunzel braids looped up under her hard hat, along with two other women Anna had not seen before.

Like a column of ants pa.s.sing a gra.s.shopper up the line, they moved the injured woman across the ruptured floor of the cavern. Running, climbing, waiting, lifting, and running again, Anna worked all the kinks and aches of the previous day out of her muscles. Later there would be h.e.l.l to pay, but for the present it was good to be moving.

She'd thought more bodies in the limited s.p.a.ce would exacerbate her claustrophobia. In the tighter crawls she believed it still would, but in the vast dark of Tinker's h.e.l.l, the crowd made things feel less alien, less likely to close down in an inky tidal wave and blot out the fact that humans had ever dared venture there.

A sense of purpose brought with it a rush of high spirits that those who had been stranded with Frieda sorely needed. Though the injured woman was seldom far from the minds of her rescuers, there wasn't an aura of grim determination but laughter and hard work and sharing. As Anna took a long pull on a water bottle offered by a stubby caver from Kentucky, she thought how good it was for people to be heroes, how much joy and confidence had been lost when the American public turned the care of themselves and their neighbors over to the impersonal rescuers of government agencies: police, fire fighters, paramedics, park rangers.