“The conference table,” Rudy said. “Steve called it his conference table.”
“No doubt,” Murph said. “It appeared that a piece of the framing fell across the box and formed a bit of protection, a pocket of air space, that you had managed to crawl into. When we finally reached you, you seemed to be unconscious, but then you began to cry.”
Murph stopped and ran a hand over his eyes and up over his kinky gray hair. “God, I never thought I’d be so glad to hear a kid cry. You cried, screamed really, for a long time. Hung on to me for dear life and buried your face in my jacket and screamed and sobbed and trembled. But by the time I got you back to my house you’d cried yourself to sleep. I put you down on my couch and went over to get Art. He was home by then and I told him what had happened—and what I thought of him for going off and leaving you alone.”
Murph stopped and stared over Rudy’s head for a while, nodding and then smiling ruefully, until Rudy shook his arm and said, “And then what happened?”
“Well, at first Art, who’d apparently had a beer or two, threatened to punch me in the face, but then we both calmed down, and I will say that when he came over to look at you—you were still fast asleep—he seemed to suddenly realize what a close thing it had been and he seemed quite shocked and anxious. He begged me not to tell your mother. Said he’d do it himself and that he’d take you to the doctor as soon as you woke up to be sure you were all right. And perhaps he meant to. But then he carried you home—still sleeping—and that was the last I heard about it. Except that the next day he came over and begged me again not to say anything to your mother. He told me that Natasha was in a very emotional state anyway, what with him losing his job, and with the new baby due in just a few weeks—and that there was no point in upsetting her further. And he made a big point of the fact that you’d seemed perfectly normal when you woke up.
“‘He’s forgotten all about it,’ he kept saying. It seems that when you woke up he told you you’d had a bad dream and then he took you downtown and bought you an ice-cream cone. He kept telling me that when Natasha came home that’s all you could talk about—that great big ice-cream cone he bought you. Which didn’t surprise me much—considering it was probably the first and only time your stepfather ever bought you anything.”
“So, he never told Natasha,” Rudy managed to say.
“Apparently not. I suppose when he found out that you’d forgotten the whole event—blocked it out—the temptation not to tell was just too great.”
“And you never told her?” Rudy asked.
“No, I never did. She really wasn’t feeling well with the baby coming and with all the trouble she and Art had been having, and I just didn’t want to give her anything more to worry about. And I’m sure the Bowles boys weren’t at all anxious for anyone to know, so apparently they didn’t tell anyone either.”
“And you never asked me if I remembered? Until today, that is?”
“I did start to once, several years ago. But when I discovered that you really had blocked it out I didn’t dare push it. I’d read that the response to reliving a repressed experience can be very dangerous. And I probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to tell you today if I’d realized how violent your reaction would be.”
“Yeah, violent. Tell me about it,” Rudy said, and then grinned. He really was beginning to feel more like himself. Murph poured them some more coffee and Rudy stirred his for quite a while before he said, “I guess the good news is that there’s a good reason that I keep freaking out in certain situations. I mean, maybe I’m not just your basic nut-case. Or even your basic all-purpose chicken. That’s what I used to think it was—general all-purpose chickenhood. Maybe I’m pretty normal after all.”
“Better than that,” Murph said. “Much better than normal. I mean smarter, and funnier, and more talented, and braver too.”
“Aw, shucks,” Rudy said, doing an only slightly shaky version of his bashful hillbilly bit. “Knock it off, will ya.” But then, as he got up to leave, he added, “And thanks for telling me—about the cave-in and everything.” He took a step or two toward the door and stopped and said, “And thanks for the pancakes too.” And just as he was opening the door he turned around one last time and said, “Oh, yeah. And for saving my life. Thanks for that too.”
Chapter 16
RUDY CAME HOME and collapsed in the hammock on the veranda. Every time he let himself remember the cave-in it came back more and more clearly. All of it. Not just the dreamlike flashes but a clear memory of all of it, right from the beginning. How he’d wandered down Lone Pine and then on out the old road to where the Bowles boys were digging their cave clubhouse. And as he remembered, the shaking came back too. Violently at first but gradually easing as he went over and over and over the worst parts, prying into every faint memory without really wanting to, the way you can’t help picking a nasty scab on your knee.
By the time the girls and Ophelia pounded up the steps he was still a little bit shaky, but pretty much back to normal. Maybe not entirely normal, though, because when he told the girls that he wanted them to do their dance practice first and play later, they stared at him for a moment as if they saw something in his face that worried them. And then they did what he said without arguing, which certainly wasn’t normal behavior for them.
Collapsed again, this time in the overstuffed chair in the dance studio, he watched his sisters practicing—Moira limbering up at the barre, slim and sleek in her green leotard, and Margot in the famous pink tutu doing chunky pirouettes around the room. And as he watched, his mind went right on rerunning the cave-in. Rerunning it and then, he suddenly realized, putting it into words. Words that needed to be said to somebody. He wanted, he suddenly knew he needed to tell somebody all about it. He could feel the words almost like solid things rising up in his throat and for a moment he imagined calling his sisters over and… But he stopped himself in time.
It would be way too risky. He had no idea how they would react to such a frightening story, and, to tell the truth, he had no idea how he would react. He didn’t want to risk coming completely unglued again—certainly not with Moira and Margot watching. But the need to talk didn’t go away.
He managed to get through the afternoon without saying anything, but just barely. And when Natasha finally got home he listened to her stories about what had happened at the store in what he thought was a pretty normal manner. But the need to tell was there in his mind the whole time. And it must have shown, at least a little, because as soon as the girls had gone to bed Natasha as good as brought it up herself. She was on her way into the living room with a cup of coffee when she stopped and turned around.
“Rudy,” she said. “What’s the matter? Why are you following me around? Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Yeah,” he said, feeling the shiver beginning somewhere in the middle of his chest. “I guess there is.”
Natasha curled up at one end of the couch and he sat at the other. She stared at him for a moment, puckering her forehead, then she sighed and said, “Okay, shoot. What did they do this time?”
Rudy shook his head. “It’s not the girls. They were fine today. Well, okay, at least. It’s about me. About something that happened to me when I was five years old.”
“When you were five?” Natasha’s tired smile said she couldn’t believe it. “Don’t we have enough to worry about without dredging up something that happened almost nine years ago?”
Rudy felt his voice begin to shake as he said, “I got buried alive, Mom. I got buried and Murph saved my life.”
She was listening then, her face tense and pale, as the words that had been rising up all afternoon began to pour out. The words that told about what had happened, and why, and what Art had done and what Murph had done. And how, when it was over, he’d blocked it out of his memory, except for the nightmares and the times when he’d had the attacks of claustrophobia. And how he hadn’t really remembered until today when he told Murph about his claustroph
obia and Murph decided to tell him the whole story.
Rudy was shaking hard again as he talked and his voice was trembling, but this time right along with the terror there was a kind of easing somewhere down deep, as if something dark and heavy was breaking up and oozing away. Somewhere in the midst of the story, Natasha moved over beside him and put her arms around him, but it wasn’t until he’d finished that he realized she was crying.
“Hey, don’t do that,” Rudy said.
“It’s my fault,” Natasha sobbed. “It’s all my fault.”
“No, it isn’t. How could it be your fault? You didn’t even know about it.”
She cried harder then, so hard that for a while she couldn’t talk. But when she finally began again it was in short phrases between gasps and sobs. “That’s just it—I should have known… and I should never have left you with Art—not ever—and I should never, never have married him—but I was so young, and it was so hard being a single mother—and he pretended to like you so much until—until it was too late.”
“I know. I know all that,” Rudy said. “Murph explained it to me years ago. And I think I understood it even before that. I always knew it wasn’t your fault.”
She cried some more after that, but then she got up and went into the kitchen and washed her face. She was scrubbing it hard with a towel when he came in and she smiled at him in a wobbly, uncertain way.
“Rudy,” she said. “I want to talk to Murph, alone. At least for now. Maybe later we’ll all talk—the three of us.”
“Sure,” Rudy said. “I’ll be in my room. But call me if you want me. I definitely won’t be asleep.”
Natasha said okay and hugged him again and went out the back door, and Rudy went to bed. And even though he felt certain he wouldn’t even be able to close his eyes, he must have fallen asleep almost immediately.
He woke up the next morning gingerly, aware that something had happened but not remembering exactly what. Then it all came flooding back and to his relief he found that, on the whole, he felt pretty good about it.
What he was feeling was that he’d survived. Survived the cave-in—and learning about it—and talking about it to Natasha, and he’d probably survive talking about it again to Murph and Natasha if that was going to happen sometime soon.
And—though this bit of good news wasn’t related to the cave-in thing, it was perhaps even more important—he’d survived the threat of having to choose between becoming a gold miner and losing Barney’s friendship for good. Because it certainly seemed possible, judging by the way things were going before Barney left for Montana, that he might be losing interest in Tyler and his hair-ball schemes.
Everything was back to normal at breakfast. Natasha was running late and hurrying, but she hugged him extra hard before she ran out the door and whispered that they’d talk some more that evening. Rudy got the girls off to the sitter’s and just a little later the phone rang. It was Barney.
“Hey, Barn. You’re home,” Rudy said. “How was it? Did you have a great time?”
“Yeah, great,” Barney said. “The rodeos were great—and the weather, and—everything.”
Rudy waited, but he didn’t say any more. “Well, tell me about it. Was being in the junior events a blast?”
“Yeah. Sure. A blast. I got to compete in a couple of things in Butte. I got a first in the calf-riding event and a third in roping.”
“Wow. Did you get blue ribbons and billions in prize money and like that?”
“Well, ribbons, anyhow. Oh, yeah, and a belt buckle for the first prize. It was—a blast.”
“And… And…”
“And what?”
“What else did you do? Did you go to all the rodeos and watch your mom and dad take a lot of prizes?”
“Oh, sure, you know the world-famous Crookshanks.” There was something different about Barney’s tone of voice. It sounded almost sarcastic. Except that it wasn’t like Barney to be sarcastic about anything. “The famous Crookshanks always pick up some prize money in an event or two—and even when they don’t, they always steal the show.”
“Barney?” Rudy said. “What’s the matter?”
There was a long silence before Barney answered. “Oh, nothing. Just remind me not to go on the circuit with my folks again. Not until I’m eighteen, at least.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, it’s just that I hardly ever saw them except from the stands. The rest of the time they were with their friends and mostly in places where you have to be eighteen to get in. So I sat around in motel rooms a lot. Alone. Want to know what’s on late-night TV in Montana? I can give you a complete rundown.”
For once Rudy was speechless. He wanted to say how sorry he was that Barney had such a bad time and he also wanted to say how disgusted it made him that Jeb and Angela had deserted him, again and as usual. But what he actually did was what he always did when he didn’t know how to deal with something. He made a joke of it. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. What’s on NBC in Butte, Montana, at eleven thirty? Nothing good, I’ll bet.”
“Yeah,” Barney said. “You got it.”
There was another awkward pause, and then Rudy said, “Look, Barney. I do want to talk to you. Could you come in to town?”
“To your place?” Barney sounded uncertain. “I don’t know if I have time. I’ve got something I have to do at twelve.”
Rudy looked at the clock. It was ten o’clock and Margot and Moira would be coming home at one. “Well, I could get out to the ranch and back by one, but it wouldn’t leave much time for—”
But Barney interrupted. “I didn’t mean for you to come here. How about”—his voice lowered—“how about at the mine? It doesn’t take as long to get there.”
Rudy’s throat squeezed up so fast he had to try twice before any sound came out. “The mine?” he said at last.
“Yeah. Pritchard’s Hole. I was just talking to Styler a few minutes ago and I’m supposed to meet him there around twelve. He’s been working on the entrance—you know, prying off some of the boarding—while I was away. He thinks we could actually get inside today.”
“Inside the mine?” Rudy managed to say, fighting to keep his voice at a normal pitch and to control what felt like a series of small explosions that seemed to be happening somewhere inside his skull. It didn’t seem possible. Tyler hadn’t mentioned the mine even once while Barney was gone. But then he wouldn’t, of course, to Rudy. Not if he felt Rudy might rat on him if he didn’t have to rat on Barney at the same time—which was probably exactly how he felt.
“Yeah.” Barney’s voice suddenly sounded odd, higher pitched and with a sharp, excited ring to it. “We’re planning to start today. Can you come? You can still be in on it, if you want to be. How about it?”
Rudy took a deep shaky breath, and with a huge effort shut off the explosions and began to think. “Well, I don’t know. I can’t stay very long because of the baby-sitting. But I do want to…” He paused for a minute, his mind racing. “When did you say Tyler’s going to be there?”
“He said around twelve.”
“Could you get there sooner? Like in about half an hour?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Okay,” Rudy said. “I’ll meet you there. At the mine at ten thirty.”
Five minutes later Rudy was on his bicycle heading up Lone Pine toward the edge of town where the old Cemetery Road led toward the northeast and Pritchard’s Hole. He rode at top speed past all the weatherbeaten old houses that straggled out along Cemetery Road, some of them windowless and empty, and then on into the open countryside. While he raced along his mind was going even faster, going over and over the things he’d been planning to say to Barney. Over what he would need to say in order to make Barney realize that going down into an abandoned mine, not to mention jumping off water towers and swinging across deep canyons, were not things that he really needed, or even wanted to do. It wasn’t going to be easy.
It was an extrahot dry day and even before
he’d turned off Lone Pine onto Cemetery he was sweating like crazy and there was a fierce catch in his side. He didn’t slow down, however, until he’d passed the huge rotting headframe of the old Olympia Mine and reached the really steep part of the road. At last, breathless and gasping, he passed the crest and began to coast down to where another road angled off to the left. More of a trail really, rutted and overgrown by weeds—it was the old wagon track to Pritchard’s Hole.
Pushing his bicycle, Rudy made his way through a small grove of trees and out onto a flat open field that ended where the steep rocky foothills began, rising up sharply toward the mountains beyond. The field was scattered with broken bits of debris, the wheel-less remains of an old ore cart, piles of rotting wooden planks, and odds and ends of rusting pipe and rail. And beyond that, set into the cliff face, thick wooden pillars framed the entrance to Pritchard’s Hole.
Rudy had been there before—once just exploring the area with Barney and Sty, and another time on a kind of neighborhood picnic. He remembered how the heavy weathered planks completely covered the entrance, held in place by huge rusty spikes. But now two of the splintery old planks were missing and in their place was a narrow strip of deep, empty darkness.
Rudy turned his back on the mine and looked around at the scarred and littered field. He walked over to the ore cart and checked it out and then poked around in a pile of broken pipes and tools. There was still no sign of Barney. But as he started toward a thick log that offered a fairly comfortable sitting place, he became aware of the sound of an approaching bicycle. A moment later Barney burst out of the grove and skidded to a stop only a few feet away.
They went through the usual “Hey, Barn” and “Rudy-dudey” more or less in unison and then Rudy gestured toward the other end of the log and added, “Be my guest.” Barney propped his bike against the ore cart, took off a bulging backpack and dropped it on the ground, and sat down straddling the log.
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