The Hermit's Story

by Rick Bass

  A trickle of urine escaped. She stopped again, clamped down, hoped that he would not distinguish it from the spring water. Despite the coolness, she was sweating, muddy and gritty now.

  There came a grunting sound from below her, piglike in nature, and her heart leapt in terror, certain that the transformation had begun.

  “Oh, man,” Russell said, “I wish I hadn’t eaten so much.”

  “Are you stuck?”

  “No, I’ve just got to go.”

  “Can you wait?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much farther do you think?”

  “Any minute. Any time now,” he said.

  The penny of light above had disappeared completely.

  A little later, a little deeper into the hole, she heard Russell cry out in what sounded initially like fear.

  “What is it?”

  He was right below her, thrashing and bumping, so that at first she thought he was falling.

  “What is it?” she asked again. She felt him climbing up below her, his hands and head up around her ankles, and she scooted up quickly, bumping her knees against the wall.

  “Oh Christ,” he said. “It was a shitload of bones down there. A wad of bones. Something must have fallen down the hole and gotten stuck there where it narrows. God,” he said, “I was all tangled up in them.”

  Sissy was quiet for a long while. “What do you think they are?” she said. “Do you think they’re human?”

  “I guess I should find out,” Russell said. He descended from her ankles back into silence. A few seconds later, she heard the sticklike clattering of bones as he kicked his way through the nest of them: the brittle snapping of ribs and femurs. God, she thought, I will go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life, I will become a nun, I will...

  Russell groped around for the different pieces he could reach. “I heard them land,” he said. “We’re almost to the bottom.”

  Thank you, Jesus, Sissy thought, not caring now if they were the pope’s bones.

  “Careful,” Russell said, “they’ll scratch you some, coming down through them.”

  “What are they?”

  “I don’t know,” Russell said, and then a moment later, “Okay, I’m on the bottom.”

  After the constriction of the adit, the space around her was divine: open air all around her, and a set of railroad tracks beneath her feet, tunneling laterally through the coal.

  She hunkered down and peed. There was too much space in the total blackness; she felt that if they ventured left or right of the adit, with its lightless surface high above, they would never find it again, but Russell said that they would be able to feel the ladder rungs hammered into the wall and would know also where they were by the tangles of bones beneath it.

  “What kind are they?” she asked. She had moved nearer to Russell and reached out to touch his shoulder, and kept her hand there, as would a tired swimmer far out in the ocean who found, strangely, one rock fixed and protruding above the waves. Even that close, she could see nothing of him, though she could feel the heat from the mass of his body.

  He crouched and began sifting through the bones, sorting them by feel, nearly all of them long and slender, until he found the skull, which he groped in the darkness: felt the ridges above the eyes, the molars, the eye sockets themselves.

  “Deer,” he said, and handed her the skull. He could not see where she was, and accidentally pressed the skull into her belly.

  She took the skull from him and examined it. The relief that it was not a human seemed to her to give them a freedom, a second chance at something.

  “All right,” she said, “I guess we can walk a little ways.” She reached for, and found, his hand.

  “Wait here a second,” he said. “I’ve really got to go.”

  He left her standing there and walked down the tracks. He was gone a long time. Sissy sat down and wrapped her arms around her knees and waited. She kept her back to the wall. She kept listening for Russell but could hear nothing. She wondered if he had come to some junction in the tracks and had taken a turn and gotten lost.

  She had the adit directly above her, or very near her. She could feel the slight upwelling of breeze, still rising as if to a chimney, though she supposed that at nighttime as the air cooled it would begin to sink back down the adit, falling with an accelerated force that might be exhilarating, deafening.

  She called out his name but got no answer. He was too shy. It was possible he would walk a mile, maybe farther, before depositing his spoor, to keep from offending her.

  If he got lost, all she had to do was stand up, take hold of the rungs in the darkness, and begin climbing back up.

  She called his name again. Not only was there no answer, but there was an emptiness that made it seem certain no ears had heard her call. She stood up and began walking in the direction she was certain he had gone.

  She walked for a long time. She kept her right hand on the wall at all times, and stretched her left hand out into space, hoping to feel what might lie out there, though there was always nothing.

  She came to another adit, and paused; she peered up it, saw no light, and could not be sure whether she felt a breeze or not. She touched the steel spikes, the rungs hammered into the stone, to see if she could discern any human warmth he might have left climbing up them.

  She thought that she might be running out of air, and then felt almost certain that she was. A jag of panic shot through her like a spike of lightning—her heart clenched—and she gripped the rungs and started up.

  The farther she climbed—five, then ten minutes—the more she began to understand why perhaps she should not have.

  There was no water-trickle coming down this shaft; there was no breeze, no dimness of light above.

  Her eyes felt as large as eggs. The shaft was tight all around her, too tight, and she longed for the space below. She stopped, dropped her head in momentary defeat, and then descended. The bare stone and grit beneath her bare feet felt good, once she got back down to the bottom. The tunnel was beginning to feel familiar to her. She started walking again, traveling on in the same direction she had been traveling. She came to what she thought was a dead end—a fallen jumble of timbers and stone—but in her groping found a cave-sized opening, a passage—the only one through which he could have passed, if he had indeed come this way—and she squeezed through it.

  It was possible that as she climbed, he had passed back by beneath her, searching for her.

  She walked deeper, farther into the darkness, wondering what mountain she was passing beneath: wondering what the shape and size of it was, and what birds lived on it; whether there were the houses and homes of humans perched atop it, or if bears lived on it; wondering if cougars hunted deer on its slopes. Wondering if packs of coyotes ran wild through its woods. Wondering if mossy creeks ran down its folds and crevices, and if there were fish in those creeks, and frogs and salamanders.

  She walked right into Russell, coming from the other direction; they collided, bumped chests and heads and knees, and caught each other in a tangle of arms and stinging elbows, grabbed each other from reflex, then yelled at each other and leapt away.

  “Russell?” she said.

  For a moment he considered not answering her, or saying that he was someone else. But the other language—her hands gripping his arm, her knee against his—was already speaking, and they moved into each other, and together, as easily as if the fit were one they had been searching for all along, as if it were not a chance or random stumbling. They sat down, still coupled, and then lay down to love, sprawled yet clinging to each other on the bed of old crushed rubble and ore, blind to the world, blind to everything except the language of touch—so heightened now by the deprivation of other senses that it seemed possible that when they emerged, if they emerged, they might somehow be able to transfer a similar intensity to all of the other senses, and that in so doing, they might stride the earth as strongly and freely as giants. That there was not a
ny one limited reservoir of feeling, but infinite access to the senses, and that after having thus loved, and emerging transformed, metamorphosed, they would see and hear and taste and scent odors with an almost intolerable fullness.

  Afterward—still feeling so huge, so alive, as if they could barely fit in the tunnel—they held hands and walked farther, following the tracks.

  “Sometimes there are different layers,” Russell said. “Adits below adits. We have to be careful not to step into one and fall a hundred feet down to some lower level. In the old days you could be working on one level and feel the mountain shaking when a train of ore passed above or below you.”

  “How far down do you think this goes?” Sissy asked. “How many layers?”

  “It’s honeycombed,” Russell said, and laughed. “Hell, maybe it goes all the way.”

  The tunnel veered slightly, or so it seemed—as if it were tracing some contour that might be reflected on the slope of the mountain, out in the green bright outside world. They kept coming to various junctions, taking a left or a right based not on any regular or mappable system of order or logic—two lefts and a right, two lefts and a right—but rather based only on how their hearts felt at each juncture.

  A dull scent at one intersection, a bright scent at another. A breath, a bare whisper of a breath, of freshness or dampness. A variance—or so it seemed—in the gravity beneath their naked feet. Anything could make up their mind for them, and they had no earthly idea of their reasoning; they were simply being pulled along by the earth. If they got lost or tired of walking they would stop and make love again.

  After some time, they came to one of the abandoned pump-jack boxcars—one of the old manually driven ore carts that used to race up and down the tracks, which a single miner could operate by pumping up and down on a central fulcrum, which rose and fell like a seesaw, with hidden intricate gearings below by which great volumes of mass could be moved—slowly at first, but then with increasing power and speed and efficiency.

  They stopped and examined with their hands the shape and coolness of the rust-locked vehicle.

  They climbed up on top of it. With his hands, Russell showed Sissy where to sit to stay out of the way of the handle, and by pulling as hard as he could, he was able to slowly make the first downward stroke on the mechanism, breaking it free of years of rust and sleep. The tracks were rusted, as were the steel wheels and axles of the little flatcar itself; but once he got that first downward stroke, the second stroke came easier. The flatcar seemed to lift slightly, and tighten and tense—as did Russell, on the third stroke, down, and the fourth, up.

  The boxcar began to inch along, moving no faster than an old man walking crookedly. Slivers and flakes of orange rust, unseen by them, but scented, began to fall from the flatcar.

  A slight breeze stirred her hair and cooled her sweat-damp skin. A lone spark tumbled from the front wheels. Sissy could feel the radiant heat from Russell’s work—she sat on the other end of the flatcar across from him, so that it was as if she were on the bow of a ship—and slowly, the breeze increased. It swirled her hair in front of her face, and passed cool beneath her arms. She listened to the groaning resistance of the rusty tracks beneath them—a sound like a cat yowling—and wished that she could see him.

  More sparks began to spill from the steel wheels, trickling but then pouring from the wheels, so that the lower half of the tunnel, as well as the lower half of each of their bodies, was periodically illuminated as if by orange firelight.

  Their passage became easier, faster, and the shower of sparks increased proportionately, her hair swirling all around her and the rooster tail of sparks rising higher around them, revealing in flickering orange light the cave walls; up past their waists, and then past their chests, and then the orange pulses of spark-light rose higher still.

  The spray of light rose above their shoulders and finally their faces, so that now all of them was illuminated, as if they had been painted or even created by that light, and by the thunderous noise. As the cave walls raced past, they caught occasional glimpses of old artifacts from the other world: busted out carbon lamps, and pickaxes leaning fifty years against the walls as if the miners had stepped away for only a moment.

  They were traveling thirty, forty miles an hour. Sissy leaned forward, peered intently into the onrushing darkness, unable to see beyond the sparks. It was if they were surrounded by a cage of sparks, fire bouncing all around them and leaving glowing ingots in their wake.

  Sissy looked back at him—in his feverish, nearly demonic pumping, he seemed to be orange-afire, and as he looked down at her watching him, she seemed calmly likewise—and now the flatcar, the mechanics of its gearings and the momentum of its mass, entered some kind of glide.

  The tunnel reverberated and the mountain sang, glowing with traces and movements of life once more—such a roar that it was as if they were gnawing or carving or even blasting their way out of the mountain; and as they hurtled onward, fearless of unseen brick walls or plunge-caverns below, swept by reckless frenzy and daring, Sissy had the slightly troubling feeling (despite her grin, as she leaned out into that black wind) that she was leaving something behind.

  Russell was finally beginning to tire. He was slowing down, pumping only three or four times a minute, letting the cart glide and then slowing it to a coast.

  A button of light appeared before them. They were confused, not knowing whether the light was above them, or directly ahead of them, or even below: they could no longer be sure now, save for the faint tugging of gravity, which way was up and which down.

  As Russell slowed the cart further, the fountain of sparks fell lower, the wall of light fading from their waists and their thighs, until finally the flatcar was drifting so slowly that only their feet were illuminated by occasional bouncing crumbs of orange light.

  Russell’s body was lathered with sweat; the cart coasted to a complete stop. His heart pounding as wildly as if he had a badger trapped in his chest, he lay down, trembly-legged, on top of Sissy, nestled in to the fit of her, laying his big head on her stomach, and rested. He was so hot that it seemed he might burn her.

  They lay there for a long time. Sissy had the thought that he might harden in his cooled position as he slept, like something molten cast from a forge. She licked the dried salt from the hollow of his neck, then licked his chest, to awaken him, fearful that the button of light would disappear, and that they would not be able to find it again.

  He sat up, stiff, and spit out a little blood, which he could taste but not see. He coughed again—splashed another spray of it across the walls, unseen—the silicosis, the lung-lattice of scars, clenching within him as his body realized where he was once again, as if in an allergic reaction.

  They rested a while longer and then climbed down from the flatcar and began walking toward the light, once more holding hands. It was all she could do to keep from dropping his hand and racing toward that light.

  The wind coming from behind them grew stronger closer to the cave’s exit. Sissy leaned forward—the dull light bright enough now for them to see vaguely the pale dull outlines of each other’s bodies—the ball of light was the size of a melon, and so close; again, she wanted to drop his hand and run—but Russell wanted to make love again, there at the edge of light, and so with a strange reluctance she let him pull her down to where he was sitting on the tracks, on the bed of ore. She was too sore to take him so he worked between her legs, and around the shape of her; as he kissed her, she could taste the blood, could scent the odor of it coming from his lungs, and when he had finished, his concluding tremors lured his lungs into another paroxysm of blood-spray, so that he was barely able to pull away in time, and heaved the mist of blood-spray across her back rather than into her mouth.

  They lay in silence a short while—he apologized; she said nothing, only squeezed his hand.

  They got up and walked on toward the light, the blood sticky across both of them. Sissy could taste the clean air. It seemed that
a rain shower had passed during the time they had been beneath the mountain—there was that smell in the air, as well as the scent of flowers and wild strawberries—and the sunlight looked washed, scrubbed.

  The opening was now its full size, its full self. The light was fully upon them. Sissy was afraid Russell would want to pull her down yet again, but instead he followed her out into the sunlight where the tracks ended. They turned around and looked up at the forested mountain above them, having no idea where they were. Sissy felt like weeping, so strange and beautiful was the sight of the real world.

  They studied each other for the first time in the full light of late afternoon: blood and semen splattered, red grit and coal-dust caked, wild haired, but beautiful to each other.

  They bathed by wading through the brush, which was still wet from the afternoon’s shower. They scrubbed themselves with leafy green branches, then began walking carefully on bare feet through the woods, contouring around the mountain, hoping to somehow stumble across the piles of their clothes.

  The sunlight seemed different—as if they had been gone for months, so that now they had emerged into a different season; or that perhaps they had been gone for centuries, even millennia, so that the tilt and angle of things was slightly different—the sunlight casting itself against the earth in some ancient or perhaps newer pattern.

  They moved through the bronze light carefully, searching for where they had been. They could hear no roads below. They passed beneath sun-dappled canopy, through beams and columns of gold-green light where the sun poured down through sweetgum, beech, oak, and hickory. They could taste the green light on their bodies. It was a denser, more humid light—almost as if they were moving around underwater. Sissy saw that Russell was becoming aroused yet again—that he was like some kind of monster, in this regard—and she hurried into a trot, only half-playing, to stay ahead of him.