Reprisal (44 page)

"What does he care, if a man gets weary. ... What does he care if the land ain't free ...?"

They sang the song through, humming where they'd forgotten the words--and as they sang, Joanna felt again that faint shifting that promised happiness, with now no reason at all.

They rested in the dessert of completion of music, and Charis drifted the Volvo out to the passing lane ... then speeded up to overtake a station wagon with children seen in dim restless motion through its rear window.

As they pulled even, Joanna glanced over for some confirmation of normalcy.

She looked--was looked at, and struck still.

It was the same woman, sitting naked at the wheel. She was staring over at Joanna while two nude children, less distinct, less individual, were battling mildly in the backseat, like memories of two little boys. ...

The cars streamed along side by side through summer air, and as Charis pulled away, Joanna looked into the woman's eyes and saw that it was Rebecca--grown older in death, grown into the woman she would have become, the mother she would have been.

Joanna closed her eyes as they went by. She sat still as Charis steered back into the right lane, and felt she could sit that way for many years and never move ... sit still while the car rotted around her.--Rebecca had had no love in her eyes, no marveling at her own return. There'd been only determination, stern and requiring. What Joanna's father might have forgiven, what Frank might have forgiven, what Tom Lowell might forgive--Rebecca would never.

Charis had been her friend.

"Charis--stop passing cars."

"Stop passing ...?"

"Yes, stop passing other cars."

"I'm not going fast."

"I know, but please stop passing them."

Charis looked over at her, worried. "Want me to stop?--I can just pull over."

"No. No, it's all right. Just ... don't pass anyone for a while."

"All right, I won't. ..." A concerned daughter, her bereft mother still delicately balanced.

Not balanced, but broken, and past any notion of bearing the unbearable.--It had not been a ghost returning, who'd come to her. It was she who'd called that image to herself as punishment for singing, for the enjoyment of singing, the evasion it represented. ... For irresponsibility.

Dead Rebecca, with her time-touched face, her soft and sagging woman's breasts, her lost life and lost children, would be watching whenever Joanna passed by anyone--riding, walking ... any overtaking--since time was made of passing motion. She would be watching, until what must be done was done.

Now, as Charis drove more slowly, staying behind other slow drivers, there was only landscape. Joanna conjured no more Rebeccas, no phantom grandchildren.

There was only forest, and an occasional farm ... farm animals that didn't lift their heads to see her.--But there would come a time, and soon, when she would imagine even the beasts turning to watch as she went by.

Joanna leaned back in the car seat, took deep breaths ... and each one helped a little more, until in a while she was only a woman who'd decided something while riding in a car through a beautiful summer afternoon. She might have been anyone, her daughter anyone's--though brighter and more beautiful.

"Charis, what do you think? Would you rather stop off and do some caving before we go on to White River? ... We'd be going deep, and be down there for a while."

"You bet!"

"Sure? You might not like it at all."

"You like it. You love it."

"Yes, I do."

"--Then so will I."

They drove on for almost another hour, Joanna at ease, watching the sunlight on scattered summer flowers--weedy wildflowers, dull gold, pink, and pale powder-blue, growing in the ditch along the road. They drove, and the highway heaved slowly up into wooded hills, the sun slowly tilted to the west.

Nine miles from White River, two miles from Whitestone Ridge, Joanna asked Charis to pull over and change places, so she could drive. ... It was complicated. There would first be a right turn onto a county road, paved, going north through the hills for almost a mile. Then two intersecting farm roads, graveled ... the left one climbing to a barbed-wire fence gate and no-trespassing sign--marking Howard Newcomb's land, and the rising flank of the ridge.

From there, the gate closed behind them, it would be a maze of hunters' autumn tracks, rutted by high-sprung pickups, winding up and around through dense woods and berry brush.

Only one--overgrown, and hardly traveled in any season--climbed high as the cave's entrance. It would be late when they got there.

Joanna had steered off the end of the track into undergrowth beneath evergreens, small shrubs crackling under the Volvo's tires.

"We are trespassing, right? I mean, the sign down there ... and you're getting under cover here."

"The landowner has sealed the cave ... so yes, we are definitely trespassing."

"Okay!" And Charis was out of the car. "Have to pee."

"We'll pee first, then unload gear. ..."

Joanna was back out of the woods, and opening the car's trunk, when Charis came stomping through the brush. They undressed there side by side, under pine trees filtering failing light. Rain-clouds were bringing darkness early. ...

They folded their clothes as they took them off, and tucked them into the trunk. Joanna hauled out the duffels, and unpacked caving clothes--long johns, flannel shirts, coveralls, thick socks, and two pairs of her boots ... one pair fairly old.

... Joanna's shirt and coveralls were slightly big for the girl. Charis rolled her sleeves and pants cuffs up a turn, then propped a foot on the Volvo's bumper to try on boots. "... Boots don't fit."

"Try both pairs?"

"Tried the left foot of both. ..."

"Charis, are you saying I have big feet?"

"You have elegantly mature feet.--Won't my light hikers be okay?"

"Not best, but okay. You'll need to watch where you step; you won't have quite the support you should." Care, and concern.--It should be possible, now, not to care, not to be concerned. That should become possible. ...

Joanna pulled out the rest of the gear, closed the trunk, and locked the car.

Then, dressed and helmeted, burdened with equipment--the supply pack, gear pack, rope sack, and sleeping-bag duffel--and draped with a braid of dynamic rope, sets of webbing harness, and slings of jingling carabiners, they made the climb to the cave's narrow gate in one trip through brush and pine, Joanna leading. ... Thunder was grumbling over the hills.

The steel-bar gate unlocked and pulled to swing squealing open, Joanna stepped aside with it, and paused for a moment, fiddling with the padlock. It was a test for newbies she'd learned from Jim Feldt in Tennessee, with beginners facing for the first time a cave's black, breezing, and vacant mouth.

Charis went past her and in like a badger-ducked in without waiting, shouldering packs and rope braid to hustle away into darkness.

"Wait, wait!--don't go farther!" Joanna followed, slammed the gate closed behind them, and reached through the bars to set the padlock and snap it shut.

--A useful test. Charis would have to be reined in, not reassured.

"Stay right there, sweetheart, and switch on your helmet light. Bad place up ahead.-Where the hell did you think you were going?"

"Just ... in." Light bloomed from Charis's helmet lamp. Eyes bright, she stood hunched under gear and the passage's low, sweating ceiling.

""Just ... in"? Please, pause to think next time."

"There's a hole in the passage back here."

"Stay away from it. It's a slide. --Just stand where you are." Joanna crouched and went up the passage, hauling the supply pack and rope sack behind her.

"Here we are!" Charis made a little girl's face of excitement.

"Yes, here we are. Just ... just be a little thoughtful. There's a saying about pilots, and it's true for cavers, too. There are old cavers, and bold cavers--"

"But no old bold cavers. Right."

"Keep it in mind.--Okay, we'll rig you first. I really should have roped you from a tree, let you practice ascending and descending ... practice those changeovers."

"I've done that a lot."

"You've done it in daylight, rigging-in dry, climbing dry rock. This is not the same."

"Joanna, I'll be careful."

"All right. All right, let's see you rig for rappelling. ..."

Charis sorted through the gear--apparently at ease working by helmet lamp--and was swiftly sit-harnessed and chest-harnessed, buckles checked, and the little ascender bag attached on a three-foot web tape. "Okay?"

"Put three extra 'biners into your harness loops--you can lose a sling. And you may as well attach the tapes for the equipment sack, and sleeping-bag duffel, too. ^th'll be yours, rappelling; they'll hang free below you.--And clip on a safety shunt and runner."

Charis snapped the carabiners on, attached the gear and duffel tapes. She sorted through the pack, found the shunt, and clipped its runner into her harness link. ... Then she dug for a descender.

"What's that?"

"Your grigri."

"I know it's a grigri, Charis--what are you doing with it?"

"A descender."

"Charis, you use a grigri as a descender?"

"Yes. Lots of climbers do."

"Well, you're not going to do it down here; I don't give a damn what other people do. It's a belayer--to help control the belay rope if someone falls.

It's not a descender. This drop, you use my rack or the bobbin."

"I've used a bobbin."

"It's an autolock."

"I've used 'em. Case of trouble--let go of the handle."

"That's right, and your safety shunt exactly the same." Joanna felt tired already; contradiction, that malignancy, was exhausting her. She began rigging herself, testing her harness buckles, her gear attachments, maillon, and carabiners. "--ationow, you tie us into these ceiling-bolt rings. Let's see you do it."

Charis reached up and, her hands throwing swift shadows along the stone, snapped sets of doubled carabiners--positioned with their gates opposing-into both rings. Then she snaked the rope's running end through the lower pair ...

and into a figure eight on a bight, and backed it. She led the remaining line through into another backed figure eight off the higher bolt ... tested both knots, and crouched smiling in lamplight, waiting for approval.

"Always that thorough?"

"Nope."

"Well, you should be. Charis, you need to keep in mind that single rope means single rope. It's all we've got."

"Right."

... How many women had sighed the sigh of instruction only possibly heeded?

"Now, listen. I'll rig on the rope lower, descend below you.--We have a very slippery mud chute here, a tunnel slope down to the lip, and it's killed a man. I'll pause there to rig the rope up over the lip--a 'biner anchored high to keep the line out of the mud."

"All right."

"Charis, it's a long drop. Four hundred feet. An amazing drop for this part of the country." Joanna clipped her shunt and descender rack to the seat harness, then attached the web tapes of her ascender bag, supply pack, and rope sack.

"I'll be descending about thirty feet below you, and I'll go slow; you'll see my helmet light whenever you look down."

"No sweat. ... Joanna, I'll be okay."

"I'm sure you will. But it's a long drop, and it's very dark, easy to get disoriented. You call to me, stay in contact as we go down. If you have a problem, I'll rig ascenders and come back up to you, and we'll fix it."

"Okay."

"Your hair's up? Sleeves rolled up?" Joanna searched the passageway around them, made certain by her helmet's light that nothing had been left behind.

"My hair's up, sleeves rolled up. I won't jam the bobbin, Joanna."

"I'll be pausing at two hundred feet to tie on the second rope, so watch for that knot, be sure to clip in a cow's-tail for a safety while you transfer your descender-don't trust in the shunt." Joanna wove a length of rope into her rack, and rigged on.

"Okay."

Joanna tried to stop talking, warning--when worry was so stupid now, so beside the point. But how not? How not to feel what was felt?

"--Charis, going down so far in the dark, a free drop, you'll tend to obsess about the rope because that's all you have. That's all you have in darkness for a long way down--no rock, no holds. It isn't like climbing in daylight, where you have a bright world and see everything. ... But the rope will hold you, no matter what. You're as safe on it as you would be walking a paved road."

"Joanna, I know that." Impatient to be going.

"Knowing it is one thing--feeling it is another."

"I'll be fine; I'll be fine. I've been climbing for almost two years!"

"All right. But anytime you want to stop rappelling and rest, just lock off the bobbin and call down. Any problem, I'll come right up and be with you.

..." Joanna backed away toward the slide, feeding the Blue Water through her rack. "--And Charis, watch this mud down here. I've slid right over the lip.

..."

Not this time. Once down on the mud--standing braced in that narrow chute, so like a children's slide --Joanna kicked the pack and rope sack down to the end of their tethers. Then carefully stepped backward, leaning against the rope--paused at the stone lip to raise a loop and clip it into the roof's bolted carabiner.

Joanna waited there, at the edge of the drop, to see Charis back down into the chute after her ... watched the girl's balance and footing as she came.

... A natural, of course. So all that was necessary for her mother to do, was keep just to the side of reality--as trespassing boys might stand pressed against a railroad tunnel's damp and dirty brick, while the train, thunderous, bright-windowed, massive and full of life, went tearing by, only those few, absolute inches away. ...

Joanna stepped off the stone backward, and fell--rope humming through her rack to slow her ... slow her ... then hold her still thirty feet down in darkness and empty air. She swung there slightly, waiting for Charis, head up, helmet light barely touching the chute's opening.