The Rock Child (36 page)

A rock clattered. Just a little rock. Up toward the entrance. Then everything was quiet.

Sun Moon and I froze. Looked down the shaft, ready to run. Looked at each other and Daniel, still frozen.

Daniel reached to his underarm and drew out a small pistol. His long, musical fingers folded around it most peculiarly. He glided four or five steps up the shaft, still and subtle as a shadow. He stuck his head around a corner. He looked back at us, his face stricken.

“It’s my fault,” he whispered. “In my ignorance I led him here.” He
hesitated, like swallowing something that tasted terrible. “Run!” He made a shooting motion. “Run!”

The shaft filled with the roar of gunfire. In that small space it felt like the explosions was in my head, busting my ears.

Sun Moon lit out. I tried to do the same, but a bullet buzzing past my ear persuaded me to dive for dirt.

Daniel came scrambling my way, loosing shots to make Rockwell keep his head down. “Run!” he hollered. I scrambled to my feet and slipped and fell.

Daniel crab-hopped over to his knapsack and swung it onto his back. “Run!” he yelled.

I found my feet.

A shell whacked Daniel, and he sprawled in front of me.

I pounced on him, thinking to drag him to safety.

“It just got this!” he bellered in my ear, pointing to the knapsack. “RU-U-U-UN!”

I did it.

Then came Rockwell’s yell, the sound of the killer, oozing lust for blood. “Ah-OOOOH-oooh! Rasp-rasp-rasp. A-a-a-anee, anee, anee. Ah-OOOOH-ooooh!”

Before it sounded awful and awesome, man as beast, raw, primitive, more murderous than any animal. Now it echoed and echoed. I could feel my back hairs slowly curling and uncurling. “Ah-OOOOH-oooh! Rasp-rasp-rasp. A-a-a-anee, anee, anee. Oh-OOOOH-ooooh!”

The only reason we didn’t get killed right off was Daniel. He hopped from rock to rock and corner to corner and slowed Rockwell down with bullets. Even Rockwell’s flesh was mortal, even his head could get blown off, so he had to play it cagey.

Right off Sun Moon’s face came back around the first corner, looking for us in the half-light. I realized her candlelight might help us, but it also helped Rockwell—it made her head a wonderful target. For a sorry moment I felt glad mine wasn’t lit.

“Go!” I hollered, and she did. I followed, hell-bent. From time to time she came to a drift to the left, or a crosscut to the right, and she just scampered whatever way, just like she knew what she was doing.

What we were doing, in truth, was running toward deeper and darker places.

A while after we took one left where we mighta gone right, we came
to a cave-in.
Cornered
. My heart dropped into the well and shattered like slate.

Sun Moon just scampered up top of the pile of rocks, though, found something, and called to me. When I caught up, she pointed, wanting to make sure I spotted the little crevice we were going to slip through. I stuck my head in and saw the blackest black ever there was,
black
black.

I thought there was good and bad in it. Bad was, Daniel might not find the hole and get trapped by Rockwell. Good was, Rockwell might not find it and we’d get away. Bad again was, who knew what in stars and cornicles was on the other side? A thousand-foot drop. A pit of snakes. Without Daniel, we’d just wander through these shafts until we died.

Needful was, take the plunge. Or die right here.

“Me first,” I said.

I squeezed through the hole feet-first. My toes found rocks aplenty. The slide felt no steeper on this side than the other. I drew my trunk through the hole and stood near upright, propped on my hands.

Big rumble coming at me,
that’s how it started. Strange, it didn’t get louder, it got whispier, and it whirled at my face in the dark. A thousand flutters circled my head. Desperate, I flung up my arms and waved them wildly. Odd anythings brushed at my fingers.

I nearly strangled myself on my own scream, but I held it back.

Sun Moon came through the crevice with her candle, and I saw them flying away. I realized, and whispered to Sun Moon, “Bats.”

She stumbled and crashed into me. We went down in a tangle. Points of rock jumped out and stuck me.

“Are you OK?” says I. I fumbled and finally got to my feet by pushing on rocks, not her body.

“Yes.” When I looked for her face, I realized. Her candle was out. “I’ve lost my cap,” she said.

We found it in a jiffy, but we couldn’t get the light back. We’d run off without any matches.

I can’t say I got the cajoolies or the willywoollies then, because that wouldn’t cover the case. Fear felt like a million tadpoles swimming up and down my back, flicking my spine with their tails.

I took my heart in my hands. Sun Moon needed me now. So I began to work my way down, hands and feet, backing through darkness toward wherever the bottom might be. I could sense more than hear her coming down above me.

Sometimes the rock felt wet, and I didn’t like that. I would write
songs to open spaces, dry air, and sunlight, not to any damp grottos nor dark catacombs nor such like. Besides, wet makes you slip.

When I got to what felt like the bottom—the rock pile was getting level—I began to feel the water. First I thought I sensed the water, then I felt it for sure, then I was up to my ankles in it. It was cold.

Fine, ankle-deep here, but what about there?

The darkness swallowed me up. What folks call dark isn’t dark. I can see well enough to walk cross-country most any night. Even new-moon night isn’t all the way dark. Nor is under the covers. Caves and mine shafts a hundred feet down and eleventy-nine crooks into the earth,
those
are dark.

For a second I had the crazy notion that there wasn’t any me, nor Sun Moon, but just a blackness bigger than anybody ever imagined. Maybe I could swim off into it, and it would be like fog, and I would be fog, and … I felt of my body to find something solid, chest, hips, face, but still wasn’t absolutely sure.

“We must
go!
” whispered Sun Moon fiercely.

So I started feeling my way across with my toes. Didn’t have no notion of how deep this cold water might be, nor how far across nor wide.

I eased one foot out, felt for solid earth underneath the water, and then shifted forward. Did it again. Did it, stumbled—FELL!

Both knees into the water hard, getting cut. One elbow smashed into the rocky bottom and hollered out its hurt. One hand forward … onto a rocky slant.

I felt with both hands. Sweet gizzards, dry ground to step up onto. After only a dozen steps in the cold, black water! Relief, relief. My hands and arms went from tense to fluttery.

I reached out into the dark, got some handholds, pulled myself out of the water, cocked a leg onto the rocks, stood up, and put my hands onto the top of the rock pile.

I leaned on my hands, shifted one to take weight, and put it onto … PURE SQUISH!

I leapt back and tottered toward the water crying, “A-a-a-gh,” trying to throttle my bellow of horror.

I hit the water full on my back, then the rocks just under the surface. Felt like a hundred hammers giving me a sharp WHACK! at once.

I jumped up, looked at my squishy-feeling hand, saw nothing, rubbed it on my pants, which did no good, and finally dunked it in the water and washed it.

Sun Moon touched my shoulder gently, wanting to know what happened. “I put my hand into something awful, awful squishy,” I says. “It scared me.” Now I felt like a fool.

“Maybe a … What you call them? Snail without shell?”

“Slug,” I agreed. Maybe so.

Suddenly light appeared.

It beamed from the vicinity of the crevice we came through. A candle, I saw, surely on a miner’s cap. Though it didn’t shed a world of light, it shone on Daniel’s face beneath the flame beautifully.

He picked up Sun Moon’s cap, climbed down to us in silence, waded through the water, and said softly, “Let there be light.” He fished in his knapsack and gave us each matches. We lit each other’s caps. I wondered how many more miracles were in that knapsack. “Rest awhile. From that hole I can hold him off forever.”

Daniel mounted the rock pile again, took off the miner’s hat, and set it, candle still burning, in the hole. Bait for Rockwell.

Daniel found another crevice, just big enough for his arm and a line of sight, sat next to it, and stuck the hand with the pistol through.

Sun Moon slipped half-behind some rocks and started changing clothes. I realized this was a devil of an idea and did the same. I got rid of the party clothes for everyday stuff and put on all my hidden treasures—coins in waistband, belt, and scabbard, and the knife itself, which right now had more use than gold. Though neither had any at all.

Sun Moon came out without that fancy gown, back in her Chinese jacket and pants.

I smiled at her, she smiled at me. We held hands for a second or two, feeling close. The candles made the place seem right homey, considering it was a big, wet, dark hole in the ground.

Then I stretched out in a half-comfortable sort of way on the rock pile. I’d been scared till my skin turned inside out, and that is exhausting.

I rested. I think I may even have dozed off.

CLAP-CRASH-BOOM!

The noise blasted me straight into the air. First thing I saw was that candle skittering down the rock pile. Rockwell had shot Dan’s cap, and it flew into the water.

Dan fired into the blackness, shooting at Rockwell’s muzzle flashes.

Rockwell fired back with a heavier caliber, CLAP-CRASH-BOOM-SKIDDED-CRACK-WHEE!
That din was the closest thing to hell I ever hope to know.

Sun Moon took off down the shaft. She seemed to have a certain poise and calm in her running. Myself, I felt shambly as hell, dogging along behind. At least the thunder didn’t seem quite as close, and my legs didn’t want to crow-hop sideways on every boom. By my candle I could half see where I was going, and could see Sun Moon bobbing along ahead.

She took a left, took a right, ran wherever instinct told her. Right quick, though, we ran straight into another cave-in, and you could see this one wasn’t a go, it was wall-to-wall rockjam.

Suddenly I noticed that the booming had stopped. The armed ones had stopped shooting at each other. Which meant Daniel was on his way here, and Rockwell would be following.

Now we had to walk back up the shaft, straight toward Porter Rockwell.

Sun Moon did a whirl-around. She doused her candle, and I did the same. Then she headed right back up the tunnel.
Stars and cornicles,
I says to myself,
she has no fear
. I looked at her shadowy back and behind, strutting right back toward Rockwell, and decided I’d rather die with her than cower behind a rock and wait.

At the first corner we came on Daniel, wearing his light. He jerked his arm hard back up tunnel, like, Hurry up, dammit.

We ran to the next corner and crouched behind him. He opened his mouth to speak but it was Rockwell’s voice boomed out. “Miss Sun Moon, Sister Sun Moon, Your Holiness Sun Moon. You have come to a caved-in shaft.”

We all doused our candles.

“Oh yes oh surely oh deliciously, a cave-in. Why else would you come back? Why else would I hear the pitter-patter of little feet? Why else see the glow at the corner? You are rats hunting a way off the ship. I am the tomcat hunting you. And now I have you cornered.

“Oh Your Holiness, I’m gonna put holes in you. I’m gonna cut off the top of your head and hold you up by your feet and drain the blood onto the ground, splot, splot, splot. Oh Your Holiness …”

Sun Moon whispered calmly, “What we do?”

Daniel answered firmly, and I couldn’t make out Rockwell’s taunts above the whispered words. “We have to take that last crosscut to the right,” he said. “It’s where the shaft bends left. Go the opposite way.” He
knew the shafts like he knew the keys of a piano. Heckahoy, maybe there were eighty-eight shafts.

“Hey, Brother Asie, Brother Daniel,” cried Rockwell sweetly, “come on out. You can go. I have no business with you. I want her. I want Sister Moon, you know, the sweet little Buddhist that broke my nose. Come out. I’ll let you go free. She, now, she has a debt to pay.”

Daniel kept taking peeks up the tunnel. “I have no idea where he is,” he admitted. What with all the echoes, you couldn’t figure where a voice came from.

“How far is crosscut?” asks Sun Moon.

“Twenty or thirty strides,” says Daniel.

“I go,” she says.

“Wait!” squeaked Daniel. He considered. Then he fingered shells out of a side pocket and slipped them into the cylinder of the pistol till there was a full load. I saw it was a five-shooter.

Rockwell roared again. “Miss Sun Moon, don’t worry, I don’t no more wanna stick my thing in you. I got some’p’n else a stick in you. It don’t go ’tween your legs, no. Somewheres to the rear. Then I light the fuse and run.” His horse laugh ack-acked off the walls from every direction.

“I go
now!
” she whispered.

Daniel held her back with a hand on her shoulder. “We all go,” he said. “First I fire two shots, then we all run, firing. Stay behind me.”

He switched his eyes between the two of us, eyeball to eyeball. “It’s the only way.”

He snuffed out his candle, raised the pistol, looked at us like we were horses at a starting gate, and lit out, spacing his shots.

CLAP-CRASH-BOOM!

CLAP-CRASH-BOOM!

The roar of that gun in that little shaft felt like it would knock me off my feet. Then I saw I was behind the others and jumped like snapped by a bullwhip.

CLAP-CRASH-BOOM-SKIDDED-CRACK-WHEE! roared all around us.

In the lead, Daniel sent his smaller CLAP-CRASH-BOOM! again.

Rockwell answered CLAP-CRASH-BOOM-SKIDDED-CRACK-WHEE! Those bullets felt like they weren’t bouncing around the stone sides of the shaft but around the inside of my skull bone.

We whipped around the corner and huddled together like we were freezing.

“Go!” ordered Daniel. “There’s a half cave-in beyond there. Find some cover and wait for me!”

Daniel took a pose for keen listening.

We skeedaddled as best you can skeedaddle in pitch-dark. I went feet and hands, tail up. Kept thinking what people say, about getting your ass shot off.