by Pete Hautman
“Gaia!” I yelled, then listened. All I heard were explosions. I took a deep breath, held it, and ran back into the smoke-filled chamber. I grabbed two lit candles and made my way back to the passageway where Adrian said she had gone, one flickering candle in each hand. Behind me the firecrackers were slowing down. Ahead was only darkness.
Bottle Rockets
The candles were barely enough to light the ground three feet in front of me. I couldn’t see the ceiling, or even the walls unless I got close to them. It was like walking through an infinite black space, with garbage underfoot.
I had to walk slowly to keep the candles burning. By the time I reached the steel gate, the candles were burned halfway down. Gaia wasn’t there. I looked up at the gap between the limestone and the gate frame. Could she have climbed out? Would she do that? Would she leave me there?
I didn’t think so. She had to be in the caves. I hoped she still had her flashlight. I headed back in. It took only a few minutes to reach the chamber. The firecrackers were done. A chest-high layer of smoke hung in the air. I waded into the stinky cloud and shouted, “Gaia!”
I listened and heard something that might have been laughter, then nothing.
My candles were almost burned out, so I lit a couple of fresh ones from the ones on the giant steps and stuck a couple more into my pockets.
Now which way? I wondered. There were four choices: the way I’d come in, two unknowns, and the one where I’d run into Grant and his friends. After a moment of indecision, I went for the tunnel where I’d met Grant. I hated to admit it, but I needed his help. Grant knew his way around the caves, and those guys would have flashlights.
It didn’t take long to find them. Almost as soon as I was in the tunnel, I heard a sharp explosion, then guys laughing. I followed the sound into a side passageway, and saw a light ahead.
Grant and Adrian and the other two guys were sitting against the four walls of a chamber about twenty feet across. In the middle of the room, four flashlights were balanced on their bases, shining straight up. As I entered, there was a fizzing sound and a blinding streak of light followed by a loud bang. All four of them shrieked with laughter. It took me a second to get what had happened, and I couldn’t believe it. Grant had fired a bottle rocket at Adrian, who was sitting against the opposite wall.
“Damn, that was close,” Adrian said. “My turn!”
He fumbled with a lighter and lit the fuse of his own bottle rocket. The rocket leaped from his fingers and corkscrewed across the chamber. Grant dove to the side, and the rocket exploded against the wall where his head had been. More laughter, from all four of them.
“Hey,” I said.
They all looked at me.
“New player!” Adrian shrieked.
“No, thanks,” I said. “Have you guys seen Gaia?”
“You couldn’t find her?” Grant asked.
“Obviously not.”
“Maybe she ditched you,” said Vern.
“Or maybe you guys scared her so bad that she panicked and got herself lost and she’ll never find her way out of here.”
They thought that was pretty funny. I forced myself to remain calm. If I lost it, they would just find it even more amusing.
“Look, can I borrow one of your flashlights? I really have to find her.”
Ben Gingrass lit another bottle rocket. It shot across the chamber straight at me. I threw up my hands, dropping my candles. The rocket glanced off my elbow and exploded a nanosecond later.
“Shit!” I yelled, it being the only word I could think of.
They thought that was hilarious.
I ran over to their collection of flashlights and, before I could think too much about it, scooped them all up and took off back down the tunnel, followed by a clamor of shouted curses.
I hit the big chamber at a dead run, clutching three flashlights in one arm and holding one in my hand. I picked a passageway at random and ran into it. As soon as I got far enough away, I stopped and turned off all but one of the flashlights. I stuck the extras in my belt, then looked around at the passageway I had entered.
It was much like the other tunnels, with a flat floor and an arched ceiling. I wanted to yell for Gaia, but I was afraid Grant and company would hear me. They might not have flashlights, but they had candles, and they knew these caves a lot better than I did. I continued down the passageway. There were lots of footprints. If Gaia’s were among them, I had no way of knowing. I kept walking, silently reaching out with my mind: Gaia! Gaia! Gaia!
I thought I’d found her at one point, crumpled, naked, and thrown up against the wall like a broken mannequin. My heart stopped and I was hit by a wave of horrified vertigo—then I saw that it wasn’t Gaia. It was exactly what it looked like: a busted-up store mannequin.
I had to take a minute to calm down after that. She’s okay, I told myself. I’ll find her.
I edged around the mannequin. It had no hands. That creeped me out worse than anything.
I kept going. After a while the passageways all looked the same—maybe I was going in circles. The first flashlight dimmed and finally quit working altogether. I threw it away and pulled out the next one. Because I didn’t know what else to do, I just kept walking, and walking, and thinking about Gaia.
I’d been thinking about Gaia a lot the past few weeks. I’d been thinking about her constantly. She didn’t know that. Every time our relationship came up in conversation, she either changed the subject or made it about how I was doing something wrong.
“I like spending time with you,” she said once when we were drinking bubble tea at the Squeeze. “When you’re not being a dick.”
“When am I being a dick?” I asked.
“You told Maeve she was an elitist agri-poser.”
Maeve Samms was Gaia’s friend. She had a boyfriend who went to school at Macalester, and that bugged me. I mean, I wasn’t interested in Maeve, but a college guy going out with a girl in high school felt like poaching.
The week before, we had run into Maeve at a concert at Lake Harriet—some aging punk band from the eighties having a reunion, and it was free. Maeve was going on and on about how her supercool uncle had this supercool organic farm in Wisconsin. That bugged me too—her talking about the farm like it was the Garden of Eden. I thought “elitist agri-poser” was pretty clever, but Maeve had taken it the wrong way. I’d thought she was going to start crying.
“I wasn’t trying to be mean,” I said to Gaia. “I was just joking around.”
“Yeah, well, joking around and acting like an asshole aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. You know Michael has disappeared.”
“Who’s Michael?”
“Her boyfriend? Hannah McCourt’s brother? Do you even listen?”
“Oh. The college guy.”
Gaia rolled her eyes. “Yes, the college guy.”
“I didn’t know he was Hannah’s brother.”
“Well, he is. He just took off a few weeks ago. Left school. Nobody knows where he is. Maeve’s really upset, and Hannah’s freaking.”
“Why are we all of a sudden talking about Hannah?”
“God, you are impossible!”
• • •
Why was I thinking about that? I came to another intersection. Had I been there before? I looked around, trying to find some familiar piece of trash. Just some beer cans, and there were beer cans everywhere.
I shouted Gaia’s name and listened.
I thought I heard something. My name?
“Gaia!” I yelled, so loud it hurt my throat. I listened again.
Nothing, just the faint hiss of air creeping over sandstone, and the almost inaudible murmur of blood coursing through my veins.
I stacked some beer cans in the middle of the passage, so I’d know if I ended up there again, then took the right-hand passage.
Sometimes I wondered if Gaia even liked me. She always seemed to be up for going out and doing something, but it was always me who called her. We’d been to a coup
le of movies, we’d gone to a beach on the Saint Croix, we’d been to that concert at Powderhorn. In public I tried to match her sullen whatever-ness. I thought if I acted like her, it would be more like we were together. As far as I knew, she wasn’t seeing anyone else. Did that make her my girlfriend?
Garf thought she was my girlfriend. That’s what he called her.
“How’s your girlfriend?” he would ask. I think he might’ve been a little jealous, since I hadn’t been hanging out with him as much.
“She’s not exactly my girlfriend,” I told him.
“I don’t think she likes me,” Garf said.
“I don’t think she likes anybody.”
Except I hoped she liked me.
• • •
I came to another intersection, one I was sure I’d never been to before because one of the passageways was choked with rubble. The tunnel had collapsed. There was only one way to go, so I went that way.
I’d heard Grant and his posse only twice since I’d run off with their flashlights. Just echoey voices in the distance. For the past half hour or so I’d heard only my own footsteps, my own breathing. Still, every time I turned a corner, I expected to run into them. Part of me wished I would—they’d probably kick my ass, but at least I wouldn’t be so alone.
I kept going and soon noticed the smell of fireworks. I figured I must be getting close to the candlelit chamber. I stopped and turned off the flashlight. There was a faint glow ahead, and the sound of voices.
A single male voice: “Come on, don’t be like that.”
Then a louder, girl’s voice: “Stop it!”
Gaia.
“Amazing”
Johnette Napolitano
4:08
Maybe I’m a little high from the secondhand smoke, or maybe I’m just tired after hours of driving, but after I drop Bob the Knob off at a farm five miles north of Hannibal, my mind is spinning in circles, thinking about what he said, about nexuses, and John Donne, and “Dem Bones.” I know I’ve heard that song, but I can’t imagine where. It’s not on Dad’s iPod.
I’m still thinking about it when I pull into downtown Hannibal, and guess what?
Hannibal sucks.
Just like I knew it would. Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn everything, right down to the fence that Tom Sawyer supposedly was in charge of painting, even though Tom Sawyer is fictional and so was Mark Twain in a way, because Mark Twain’s real name was Samuel Clemens.
I suppose you can’t blame Hannibal for turning into a tourist trap. A lot of the small towns along the river are half-abandoned, with nothing left but a dilapidated trailer park, a bar, and a gas station if they’re lucky. Hannibal still has a lot of people and businesses, all thanks to their connection with a guy who’s been dead a hundred years and who wrote a few books set in a fictionalized version of their town.
I spend an hour walking around gawking at all the phony junk with the rest of the tourists. I stop at a kiosk and take a brochure advertising the Mark Twain Cave tour and sit on a nearby bench and read it. Apparently the cave Samuel Clemens wrote about in Tom Sawyer was real. Back in the 1850s some crazy doctor used it for storing dead bodies, and Jesse James once used it as a hideout.
It’s twenty bucks for the tour. No caving for me, thanks—not at any price.
Thinking about caves makes me think about Gaia, and thinking about Gaia is not what I want to do right now. The whole reason for this stupid trip is so I can think about other things—or better yet, not think at all.
Keyed
I clicked the flashlight back on and ran toward the light, toward the voices. I heard Gaia yell, “Let me go!” Laughter. I burst into the candlelit chamber. The guy’s back was to me; I could see Gaia’s face past his shoulder. He was gripping her wrists. I ran straight at them and drove my shoulder into the small of his back. It should have knocked him down, but it didn’t. He was too big. He’d played too much football. He just grunted and whirled around and punched me in the chest so hard, I thought my heart stopped.
It was Ben Gingrass. He was still holding on to Gaia with his other hand.
I was gasping for breath, still on my feet but just barely. Gaia twisted and kicked at his legs and tried to pull free. He looked at her and said, “You’re ugly anyway.”
He let go. Gaia fell onto her butt. He turned back toward me, his fists bunched, his little eyes glittering in the candlelight.
“The flashlight thief,” he said through a teeth-gritting smile. “This should be fun.”
I did not think whatever was about to happen would be fun. He brought his right fist back and stepped toward me. I lifted my hands to try to block him, but before he could deliver a punch that would probably break my jaw, Gaia screamed and leaped onto his back.
Ben reached over his shoulder with his left hand, grabbed her by the hair, and threw her off—a casual motion, like taking off a T-shirt. His little eyes never left my face. I was sure I was going to die.
“Hey!” A new voice. It was Grant, holding a candle, standing at the mouth of one of the tunnels.
Ben lowered his fist. Vern and Adrian followed Grant into the chamber.
“What’s going on?” Grant asked.
“I caught the flashlight stealer,” Ben said.
I thought, Uh-oh. I was going to get the crap beat out of me by all four of them.
Grant looked at Gaia, who was on the ground holding her head.
“Are you okay?” Grant asked.
Gaia shook her head.
Grant frowned and said, “We beating up girls now?”
“She jumped me from behind,” Ben said.
“He tried to rape me,” Gaia said.
Ben laughed. It sounded fake. “You’re not pretty enough to rape.”
“So you only rape pretty girls?” Gaia said.
“Ha-ha-ha,” Ben said. He looked at Grant. “Nothing happened. Look, she’s still got her pants on.”
“Lucky for you,” Grant said. He turned to me. “How about you, Twig?”
“I’m all right.” I was starting to think I might not get killed after all.
“He try to rape you too?” Grant asked.
“Ha-ha-ha,” Ben said. “Very funny.”
Vern and Adrian were looking on, waiting for a clue as to what to do next. I had the feeling that they could go either way.
Grant pointed with his candle at the two flashlights still stuck in my belt. “Mind giving us our flashlights back?”
I gave him the two flashlights. He handed one to Vern. The one I’d been using a minute before was over by the wall, glowing weakly. Adrian picked it up.
“Where’s the other one?” Grant asked.
I shrugged.
“Whatever,” he said. “I’m tired. Let’s go.” He started toward the passage leading to the exit. Vern and Adrian followed. Ben hesitated, then trailed after them, leaving Gaia and me alone. I went over to her and helped her stand up.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, then hugged me.
“What about you?” she said in my ear. “He hit you really hard.”
“I don’t think anything broke. I was looking for you.”
“I got lost. My flashlight died. I thought I’d never find you.”
“I was calling.”
“I thought I heard you once. Did you hear me?”
“I think so.” I held her at arm’s length, looked into her candle-sparked eyes.
“We should go,” she said.
“Let’s wait a minute, give them time to get out. I don’t want to run into them again.” Mostly I didn’t want to let go. I wanted to kiss her so bad, it hurt. But after what had just happened, I was afraid of how she would react. I felt lucky to be touching her at all.
“He said you stole their flashlights.”
“Yeah, I did.” I was kind of proud of that.
“Like it was my fault what you did. He said I owed him.”
“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t so proud anymore.
“I think Grant saved us both.”
“He’s just as bad. You watch. He’ll keep being Ben’s friend. So will Adrian and the other guy. They’ll laugh about it. That’s what guys do.”
“Not me.”
“Not you.”
• • •
We each took a candle and made our way down the passage to the entrance. A little piece of me was sorry to be going—I felt like something good had happened with me and Gaia—but mostly I was hungry for open sky.
I climbed the steel gate. It was still light out. I was surprised, like when you come out of a movie matinee and expect it to be dark but the sun is shining. I felt as if we’d wandered those dark passageways for ten hours. I reached down and helped Gaia up, and moments later we were standing outside.
The Mustang was the only car there.
“At least they didn’t slash my tires,” I said, then noticed the long, deep scratch across the passenger side. One of them had keyed the door.
I stared at the damage, thinking at least it was on the passenger side. When I parked the car in the garage, Mom wouldn’t see the scratch.
• • •
We didn’t talk much on the way home. I was surprised when Gaia grabbed my hand and held it. I drove all the way with just my left hand on the wheel. She kept looking at me and not saying anything. That side of my face felt warm, as if her eyes were heat lamps.
When I signaled to turn onto Ash Avenue, Gaia squeezed my fingers and said, “Can we go to your house?”
“Okay.” I stayed on the boulevard and a few minutes later pulled into my driveway. I hopped out and rolled up the garage door. Gaia watched me from the passenger seat.
“You’d better climb out here,” I said. “It’s kind of tight inside.”
She got out. I pulled into the garage. The side with the scratch was inches from the stacks of cases from Sam’s Club. Mom would never see it. Probably.
Gaia followed me into the garage. We squeezed between the car and the cases and went through the connecting door into the kitchen.
