by Cindy Myers
“We should call the sheriff and let him know,” Lucille said.
“Maggie and Jameso headed up to Jake’s mine, didn’t they?”
“Yes, we’d better go, too. In case they find . . .” She swallowed hard, choking off thoughts of a boy’s broken body lying at the bottom of a mine shaft. “In case they find him. We can both read him the riot act for running off this way.” She started down the stairs, leaving Olivia to turn out the lights in Lucas’s room and follow.
Olivia caught up with her mother near the front door and slipped her hand in the crook of Lucille’s arm. “What you said up there, about being proud of me,” she said. “I’m proud of you, too.”
“Whatever for?”
“I know it wasn’t easy looking after me by yourself. I didn’t appreciate that when I was a kid, but now . . .” She shrugged. “Sometimes when I think that I’m the only one in the world Lucas has to depend on, it scares me sick.”
“I know. But you don’t have to be scared that way anymore. You and Lucas both have me. And right now he has a whole town looking for him.”
“I hope they find him . . . and that he’s okay.”
“He will be,” Lucille said. He had to be. She refused to think anything else.
Jameso moved down the mine tunnel, Maggie close behind. Before too long, he had to hunch over to keep from hitting his head on the low ceiling. Neither of them said anything until they came to the niche in the wall, with its collection of rocks and the shiny medal. Jameso examined the medal in the light. “Saint Barbara,” he said. “Patron saint of miners.”
“Why is it here?” Maggie asked. “Jake didn’t strike me as particularly religious.”
“He wasn’t . . . and he was.” Jameso put the medal back on the shelf. “More spiritual than religious, maybe. He’d talk about God sometimes, when he’d had a few drinks. But it was the way some men talk about women they want but can never have.” He turned and started walking farther into the mine. “He told me once that he’d done too many bad things to ever make it right with God.”
“Did you know he was at My Lai? The massacre in Vietnam?”
“My Lai?”
“It’s a village in Vietnam, where a bunch of American soldiers killed Vietnamese women and children. More than three hundred died there—maybe as many as five hundred. Jake was there. Or, his unit was. He had to have been there, too.”
“He never mentioned it.”
“I think it’s the kind of experience no one talks about.” She put her hand out to touch the wall as the passage narrowed. Jameso’s back loomed ahead of her, solid as stone. “I read about it on the Internet. There’d been a lot of casualties in the weeks leading up to that day, and the soldiers just . . . snapped. They killed everything that moved. Pictures showed bodies and blood everywhere.” She shuddered. “How could anyone do such a thing?”
“When you’re in a war zone, constantly under attack, it does things to your mind. I’m not saying it excuses anything he may or may not have done, only that none of us can know how we’d act in similar circumstances. It’s not like the real world over there. All the rules go out the window.”
She remembered that Jameso had fought in Iraq, that he’d said it was hell. That he’d been afraid all the time he was there. “You’re right,” she said. “I shouldn’t judge. He was nineteen, thousands of miles away from home . . .”
Jameso stopped, then angled his body to reach back and take her hand. He squeezed it, hard. “Don’t think about it,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do for him now.”
She took a deep breath, sucking in the cold, dusty air of the mine shaft. “I can’t not think about it. It explains so much. How could anyone go through something like that and not be different? Damaged.”
“We’re all damaged in one way or another,” Jameso said. “Some more than others. Jake had his faults, but he did his best. Try to remember that.”
How are you damaged? she wondered. What had happened to him in Iraq—or before that—that made him think he wasn’t the man for her? But she couldn’t think of a way to ask such a question. And now didn’t seem the time to be baring their souls. So she merely squeezed his hand, then released it. “Come on. We’ve got to find Lucas.”
They reached the passage where Maggie and Barb had turned off. “Lucas!” she leaned into the passage and shouted.
“Let’s try straight and if we don’t find him, we’ll come back,” Jameso said.
Not anxious to navigate that narrow tunnel in the dark, Maggie agreed. This main shaft was still tall enough here for her to walk upright, though Jameso had to hunch over. Little avalanches of dirt and debris spilled into the passage at intervals, forcing them to scramble over them. Maggie’s hands and arms were scraped and bruised. “At least it’s not too cold down here,” she said, thinking again of the boy.
“Not exactly warm either. Do you know if Lucas had a jacket with him?”
“I don’t know.”
He stopped. “Lucas!”
They waited, holding their breath. Maggie heard only the pounding of her pulse in her ears. Jameso cursed under his breath and they moved on.
“How far back into the mountain does this go?” she asked as they scrambled over yet another mound of debris.
“I don’t know. Could be miles.”
“Miles?” The idea exhausted her. They’d already passed two other side passages; Lucas could be in any one of them. “Maybe we should go back to town and get some help.”
“We’ll search a little longer. Lucas!”
A sound—little more than a squeak—drifted down the corridor. “What was that?” Maggie gripped Jameso’s back.
“Lucas!” he shouted again.
The squeak came again, stronger this time. Jameso ran toward it, hunched over, his feet pounding hard on the packed dirt of the passage. Maggie stumbled after him, slamming into him when he stopped suddenly.
He put out an arm to steady her. “There’s a drop-off here,” he said. “I think it’s a vertical shaft.”
She peered over his shoulder as he shone the light down into the hole. A pair of wide, scared eyes stared up at them from about ten feet below. “Lucas!” she cried.
When Lucille and Olivia arrived at Jake’s—now Maggie’s—cabin, they found a crowd of people, but no Maggie or Jameso. And no Lucas. Olivia had called the sheriff, and he said he was sending a search and rescue team up to go into the mine. Meanwhile, those gathered outside the mine were arguing over whether they should wait for the sheriff or go in on their own.
“The last thing we need is a bunch of amateurs going in there and getting hurt and adding to the rescue squad’s work,” Rick said.
“Who are you callin’ an amateur?” Bob countered.
Lucille wondered if she was going to have to tear the two apart, when a third man stepped between them. She was startled to recognize the dark-haired young man who’d bought the single ticket at the Founders’ Pageant. “Does anybody have a map of the mine tunnels?” he asked.
“Who are you?” Bob demanded.
“I’m—”
“D. J.!” Olivia’s voice rang clear above the murmur of the crowd. Everyone turned to look at her. She stood five feet away, mouth open, face pale as she stared at D. J.
“Hello, Olivia,” he said, his voice low, his expression solemn. But his gaze searched her, wanting yet wary.
“What are you doing here?” Olivia asked.
“I heard Lucas was missing. I came to see if I could help.”
“No. What are you doing in Eureka?”
“I came to talk to you.”
She looked away. “If this is about your SUV, I didn’t steal it. I was only borrowing it.”
“I never said you stole it. I don’t give a damn about the car.” He took a step toward her, but she held up her hand to stop him.
“We don’t have anything to talk about,” she said.
“I think we do.”
“I don’t have time for this now.
My son is missing.”
“I want to do what I can to help find him.”
“The best thing you can do is to leave us alone.”
D. J.’s expression clouded. “Are you saying you don’t think Lucas wants to see me?”
Lucille was certain Olivia wanted to lie, but she couldn’t. Not about Lucas. Or maybe not to this man. “Lucas would love to see you.”
“Then I’ll stay.”
“Suit yourself.” She turned away, though she must have felt the heat of his gaze on her back. The look was searing.
Lucille stepped forward. “I’m Lucille Theriot,” she said. “Olivia’s mother.”
He glanced at her. “I wondered when I saw you at the theater. There’s a resemblance.”
Lucille flushed. “Do you really think so?” Olivia was so slender and delicate and beautiful. All things Lucille had never been.
He nodded. “Something about the eyes is the same.”
He was talking to her, but his eyes followed Olivia as she paced back and forth in front of the mine entrance, arms folded over her stomach. “She was pretty upset with me last time we spoke,” he said.
Lucille said nothing.
He sighed. “I guess now’s not the best time for a reunion.” “Probably not. Are you back in the U.S. for good or merely on leave?”
“I’m back for a while.” His gaze remained fixed on Olivia. “It depends.”
Depends on what? she could have asked. But she had an idea she knew.
“When’s that damn sheriff going to get here?” he asked in a sudden burst of emotion.
“He should be here soon,” Lucille said.
“Not soon enough. What was the boy thinking, going off by himself to explore a mine?”
“We don’t even know for sure he’s in there.”
“I bet he is,” D. J. said. “His last letter to me was full of stuff about mines and minerals and Indians. . . .” He shook his head. “He wrote the most incredible letters, long and full of details, almost stream of consciousness, just pouring out of him. He’s an incredible kid.”
“Yes, he is.” Emotion tightened the bands around Lucille’s heart as she thought of Lucas, lost and alone in a cold, dark mine tunnel, maybe injured . . .
“I fell for Olivia practically the first moment I met her.”
Lucille was grateful for D. J.’s voice, giving her something to focus on besides what-ifs, and he seemed to need to talk. “Olivia has that effect on men,” she said.
“It wasn’t just physical attraction,” he said. “She was so smart and funny and fierce—how could I not love her? But Lucas . . . I never expected to fall for him, too.”
“Then why did you leave?” Wasn’t that the question women always asked?
His eyes met hers briefly, dark and glittering with anguish. “I wanted to be able to give them something. A future. That wasn’t going to happen if I stayed a bouncer at a bar. I left for them. I tried to explain that to her, but she wouldn’t listen.”
Olivia had never been very good at listening, but what woman wanted to hear that her man would rather be away from her—working? Lucille wasn’t naive enough to think money didn’t matter, but sometimes it didn’t matter enough to make up for being left behind.
“That sheriff better get here soon,” D. J. said. “I lost them once, but I’ll be damned if I lose them again.”
“I’m stuck!” Lucas wailed. “My ankle . . .”
Jameso directed the beam of light down, and they saw the boy’s foot was wedged between two rocks. “I’ve tried and tried to pull it out,” Lucas said. “It won’t budge.”
The light showed a long scratch on the boy’s face and the tracks of tears. “Other than the ankle, are you all right?” Maggie asked.
“I’m thirsty,” he said. “And cold.”
Jameso stripped off his jacket and dropped it down to the boy. “Put that on,” he ordered.
Lucas did so. “What are we going to do now?” he asked.
“I’m going to find something to move those rocks.” He pushed past Maggie and retreated down the corridor.
“Wait,” she called, but he was soon out of sight. She swallowed, the darkness closing in around her. “I’m still here,” she said to the boy. How many hours had he been waiting in this darkness alone? She’d have been terrified.
“I missed the play,” he said.
“Sylvia Rayburn said your lines, but she didn’t do nearly as good a job,” Maggie said. “Everything else went pretty well, until the end. Bob wanted to set off fireworks, but instead he almost set the theater on fire.”
“I’ll bet Ms. Wynock was pissed.”
“I imagine she was. The rest of us were worried about you.”
“Is my mom really mad at me?”
“More worried than mad right now. And your grandmother. Why did you come all the way up here by yourself?”
“I wanted to see a mine, and I figured with everybody involved in the festival, now would be a good time to see it without anyone trying to stop me. I guess it wasn’t such a smart thing to do.”
“No, but it will be all right now.” Though she still had no idea how they would free him.
The beam of Jameso’s light glowed bright down the corridor and she turned to greet him. He carried what looked like a rusted iron fence post. “Hold the light.” He handed Maggie the flashlight. “Shine it down into the hole once I’m down there.”
Before she could protest, he lowered himself into the hole, landing heavily at the bottom. Maggie crouched beside the opening and focused the beam of light on him. Jameso was trying to move the rocks by hand, grunting and straining. “Owww!” Lucas wailed. “You’re just making it worse.”
“Sorry.” Jameso glanced up at Maggie, his face anxious. “I’m going to try to pry the rocks off. It might hurt.”
“Lucas, look at me,” Maggie said. “Try not to think about the pain. Tell me what you want to eat when you get out of here.”
“Eat?” Lucas winced as Jameso moved toward the rocks that trapped his foot.
“Look at me,” Maggie commanded. “Do you like burgers? I had the best buffalo burger this afternoon.”
“Cheeseburger,” Lucas said. “With fries and a chocolate shake. My grandmother never lets me eat stuff like that. ’Course, I’m so hungry right now I’d even eat vegetables. Broccoli with cheese sauce is goo—ahh!”
“It’s moving!” Jameso shouted.
Lucas screamed. Maggie wanted to cover her ears, but she had to keep hold of the light. “Got it!” Jameso cried. He tossed aside the fence post and gathered the boy in his arms.
Maggie looked away, then peeked into the hole again. Lucas’s face was pale, and she caught the glint of fresh tears, but he was conscious and breathing. “Everything okay?” she asked.
“His ankle’s pretty scraped up and swollen, but he’ll be okay.” Jameso addressed the boy. “I’m going to boost you up. Think you can crawl out on your own?”
Lucas nodded. Jameso grasped him around the waist and lifted. Maggie dropped the flashlight, grabbed the boy’s shoulders, and helped him scramble out of the hole. Then she turned to help Jameso, who was already heaving himself over the side. He brushed himself off, then turned his back to the boy.
“Climb on,” Jameso said. “You can’t walk on that ankle, so I’ll give you a ride out.”
Maggie led the way back down the tunnel, the flashlight weakly illuminating the passage ahead. They walked quickly, up the slight grade, past the side tunnels and the niche with the saint’s medal. Soon she saw the glow of light from the entrance. She frowned. Where was the light coming from?
She discovered that the combined headlamps and flashlights of half a dozen people made for quite a bright glow. As they emerged from the tunnel, a cheer went up, and Olivia and Lucille rushed forward to embrace both Lucas and Jameso.
“I’m fine, really. I just . . . I think I sprained my ankle.” Lucas leaned on his mother, balanced on one foot, and rubbed at his dirty cheek, pe
rhaps to brush away fresh tears.
Rick hovered around, snapping pictures for the paper. “Put that damn camera away before you blind someone!” Lucille ordered.
“What were you thinking, going down in that mine by yourself?” Olivia scolded.
“I know I shouldn’t have done it. I promise it won’t happen again.”
“Hey, big guy, you okay?”
A young man Maggie didn’t recognize stepped forward.
“D. J.!” Face alight, Lucas threw up his arms and hobbled toward the man. D. J. swung him into his arms and held him tightly.
“You okay?” he asked again.
“I think my ankle’s busted, but I’ll be okay. When did you get here?”
“This afternoon. I wanted to surprise you, see you in your play.”
“I’m bummed about missing it.”
“This is better,” Rick said. He snapped another photo. “You’ll be on the front page.”
“We need to get your ankle looked at,” Olivia said. She’d been standing to one side, arms crossed, frowning at the man Lucas had called D. J.
“Will you come with me?” Lucas asked D. J.
“If your mom says it’s okay.” He glanced at Olivia.
She hesitated, then nodded. But as he and Lucas moved past her, she touched his arm. “We’re not going to pick up where we left off,” she said.
“I didn’t think we would,” he said.
“I almost forgot!” Lucas whirled around. “Mama, look what I found.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of blue stones. Maggie moved closer.
“What are those?” Olivia asked.
“They’re from the mine,” Maggie said. “Barb and I found some like them when we went down in there.”
“I’m pretty sure they’re turquoise,” Lucas said. “There’s a lot more down there, where I was stuck. I bet they’re worth a lot of money.”
“Money that doesn’t belong to you,” Lucille said. “You were trespassing, remember? And the mine doesn’t belong to you.”
