by John Darnton
Suddenly, Jude flinched. A sound reached him, far away but loud, a pounding noise that seemed to shake the room. It got louder and louder. At first he thought it was a landslide that was going to bury him alive, but then he recognized the throb of engines. He rushed to the front bedroom and looked down just as the noise turned deafening: a group of motorcycles thundered down the main street, leather jackets flying in the wind, and clouds of dust spewing up behind. There were five or six of them, bulky men spreading their abdomens on the gas tanks, beards and studs and helmets and thick forearms gripping the handlebars. They were gone almost as quickly as they had come, riding off on the road farther up the mountain.
Jude looked up the road after them, leading up the mountain. And he suddenly knew that was the road he had to take. He could not have explained how he knew; the conviction just took hold of him. He walked downstairs, stepped outside and looked around. And he realized that he had been bothered by something since he had arrived, by the absence of something—that veiled sense of familiarity that he had first felt driving up Route 260. If he had grown up here, had spent his childhood here, then why did nothing that he'd seen here speak to him? Nothing did—until that moment when he knew that the road up the mountain was where he needed to go.
He walked to the car. Another one was parked farther down the road, a blue Camaro: was that the vehicle that he had spotted in the rearview mirror? He stared at it: Arizona plates, nothing distinctive. And no sign of the owner anywhere.
He got in his car, drove up the road, and after five minutes came to a turnoff on the right, a narrow dirt road rutted with holes and mounds. A beaten sign pointed the way to the Gold King Mine. Jude knew, even before he saw the dust still settling on the leaves from the motorcycles, that this was the turn to take; it was familiar and everything around it was familiar—the trees, the slope of the land, the look of the blue sky, as if he had suddenly stepped through a hidden door to his past. The sensation was frightening but energizing.
The road was short. It mounted a slope and then came to the crest of a hill, and he looked down, as if he were looking into the crater of a volcano, into an open pit mine and a cluster of wooden buildings. There were old warehouses and wooden dormitories, storage bins and a dozen outbuildings, piles of rock and railroad tracks. And in the center of it all, a large gray smelter with a giant red-brick smokestack. He knew the smokestack instantly; he had seen it before from all angles. He knew the entire scene, all of it—except that it now looked smaller, dollhouse size, compared to the tableau that had existed dormant and buried in his memory.
He drove slowly along the approach road around the rim of the pit. On the far ridge, higher up on the other side of the slope, was a narrow cabin where the motorcycles rested on their kick stands. A man in a black T-shirt sat side-saddle on one of them, smoking and watching him. Jude stopped the car before the road descended into the pit and parked on a narrow isthmus that separated the pit from the escarpment that fell off sharply into the Verde Valley below. He took a flashlight from the glove compartment.
Down the road he walked, at times so steep he had to turn sideways and dig his heels into the dirt. At the bottom, he knew to continue straight ahead, and entered a large building that had once been the mine office. The wooden steps were worn into concave bows by generations of boots. Had he not been there a thousand times? He turned to survey the layout from the doorstep—how strange to stand there, a giant returned to the homeland, looking at the buildings and at the tubular smokestack in the air, the only piece of the landscape that did not seem mysteriously diminished.
Abruptly, with the same certainty that had brought him there, he knew where to go next. He stepped outside and followed his feet, which took him through the encampment and up a rough road toward the hillside. He kept walking as the road curved, and finally came to an end before a gaping black hole in the side of the mountain, the entrance to the underground mine. He stepped inside and touched the rough rock walls with the palm of his right hand, then turned and took in the vista before him—the tops of the buildings, the smelter, the smokestack—it all fit so neatly into the mold of his memory. Unaccountably, he felt anxious.
He turned and walked twenty paces into the shaft until he was engulfed by darkness. He flicked on the flashlight and shined it around, up and down; the beam illuminated the roof of the tunnel, crisscrossing a mass of packed earth and rocks. From somewhere inside him came memories of warning of cave-ins and landslides, the childish terror of being smothered alive. Still, he walked on, and he managed to calm the fears as he made progress deep into the passageway. He came to a crossroads; to the left was a large tunnel in which he could see the rails for the iron cars, and in the hardened mud the sharp imprints of mule hooves. But he knew to take the smaller fork to the right.
Some ninety feet down, the tunnel sloped and passed under supporting timbers, which sagged. Then it narrowed until he could touch it on both sides, and as he did so, the fears returned with a vengeance. A wave of claustrophobia swept over him, so strong he decided to sit for a while. He waited a full ten minutes, then rose and walked on and came to another fork. This time he went left, and he realized he had followed a large white arrow that had been painted onto the rock face. He knew it from somewhere. After another hundred feet, he was stopped by an old cave-in. A support beam had split—half of it lay cracked in the middle of the tunnel—and above it the debris had tumbled down like sand, forming an impassable blockage. He felt a complicated rush of mixed emotions: he would be denied his destination, which attracted him with a force difficult to explain, but he was also almost secretly gratified that he would be forced to turn back and return to the surface.
But then he saw that the open darkness continued under the half beam. He shined the flashlight there. It was not just a beam but an entire wooden ceiling that had fallen, forming a kind of platform. Underneath was a stunted passageway about two feet in height. If he crawled, perhaps he could squeeze through. He inspected it thoroughly with the flashlight; it narrowed at the far end, which meant he could get stuck—or even worse, he might dislodge the precarious boards above, setting off another cave-in. He peered through it again, fighting down the panic that was pushing up from his chest. He got down on his hands and knees, then on his belly. He ducked his head and crawled forward, holding the flashlight ahead of him and pushing against the rocky floor with his feet. He closed his eyes as he moved slowly, feeling the dampness of the rock around him, the massiveness of the enclosing cocoon, breathing the stale air. Halfway through, he stopped to collect himself. He opened his eyes, which was a mistake: the wood above and the rock below seemed to converge into a thin envelope ahead; the wall on either side was less than a foot from his nose. He closed them again and squirmed forward—another six inches, another foot. Across the ridge of his back he felt a board; it scraped and he heard a sound, a slight shifting noise, and saw a trickle of dirt spilling down and forming a tiny anthill off to one side.
Then suddenly he was through. He pulled his legs out and stood up, breathing deeply. But he did not stay there for long, for he could tell, from a flick of the flashlight, that he had almost reached the place he was looking for. He walked another ten yards, and abruptly the tunnel opened up on all sides and he was standing at the opening of a large cavern. The floor was smooth rock, and the sides rose up like walls; there were electrical cables leading up to open light sockets on the ceiling, pipes to bring in water and, most surprising of all, furnishings. He knew the room from childhood.
He moved the beam of light slowly in all directions, and as he did so, it took in what little was left of the equipment that once had been there: long white enamel tables, double sinks, shelves for storage of flasks and test tubes and microscopes, even hooks for robes and masks. It was the ideal environment for a laboratory—sealed off underground from the outside world, no contaminants, constant temperature, almost hermetic conditions. It was also, he reflected, perfect for secrecy.
Jude examined the r
oom. It looked as if no one had been there for a long time. He opened the drawers, checked the shelves, looked in the trash bins. It had been stripped of almost everything but the rudimentary furnishings. In one corner was a pile of rubbish that included empty cardboard boxes, a small sterilizing drum missing an electrical cord, used batteries and several pairs of latex gloves. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it fully furnished and operating, tried to bring it all back, but the images remained just out of reach.
Then he heard a noise.
It came from the tunnel he had used, a small scraping sound—on second thought, it could be distant footsteps. He doused the flashlight, and when the cavern was plunged into total darkness, he saw a pinprick of light down the tunnel. It seemed to glow, stronger and then weaker, as if the wick of a lantern was being manipulated, but then he realized that it was the beam of a flashlight moving around the tunnel. He felt a tingling in his scalp, a twist in his gut. He moved to one side of the room and felt his way with his hands: there was the smooth surface of a table, then emptiness, then the rocky wall, until he came to a large cabinet. He snuck behind it and waited, still watching that little dot of light.
The sounds got louder. He realized that his pursuer, whoever he was, was negotiating the same narrow passage he had gone through. He had a split-second thought: shouldn't he run up the tunnel and catch him just as he was about to emerge? At a moment of vulnerability? But he stayed frozen where he was, in his hiding place, and he could hear grunts of exertion so close that he knew it was probably too late for that.
The light was brighter now and moving around, and Jude knew that the person was on his feet again. He flattened himself against the wall, and stood without moving, scarcely breathing, as the seconds ticked off. Then suddenly the light burst into the room like an explosion, almost blinding him before it flashed about wildly. It pointed away toward the other side, and Jude could see the round metallic edge of the flashlight and the sharp beam opening out in a V, and the dim outline of a hand clasping it.
And at that moment the person moved over to the wall on Jude's side and began slowly circling the room, holding the light before him almost like a protective shield. Jude held his breath as he came closer, until he was standing right next to him. Then Jude lunged. He grabbed him with both arms, knocking the flashlight to the ground, where it scuttled across the rock, the beam dancing wildly on the ceiling. A short sharp cry of surprise, a struggle. Jude felt an arm strike him under the chin, but he held on and dragged his pursuer down. He landed on top of him and grabbed an arm and twisted it behind with all his might until he thought it might break. The person froze. Then spoke.
"Jude, is that you?"
The voice sounded tiny, scared.
Jude reached with his other hand and found his flashlight. He turned it on, held it at arm's length and shined it down.
"Tizzie!" He almost screamed her name. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Chapter 21
Jude let Tizzie up. She checked for bruises, bending over to roll up her left pant leg, revealing a cut on her knee. Two trails of blood trickled down toward her ankle, which she wiped with her hand, rolling the pant leg down again.
She still hadn't answered his question. He asked another one, simpler.
"You all right?"
She nodded yes, then added: "Frightened more than anything else. You scared me to death."
"Sorry. I didn't know it was you."
"I hope not."
Typical, he thought, that he should end up being the one to apologize.
"You followed me?" he asked, now with a touch of hardness to his voice. He didn't know how she was going to play it out.
"Yes. At least to Jerome."
"That was your car back there—the one you rented? The blue Camaro?"
"Yes."
"And then you followed me in here?"
She hesitated. "Not exactly," she said. "I knew you were coming here."
"And you knew the way—right?"
"Right"
"Why come after me?"
"I thought you might... get hurt. I thought they might be here. Or come after you."
"I see."
He looked around the bare room, almost absentmindedly, then realized he was looking for something to sit on. It was going to be for a long while.
"The time has come for a good long talk," he said.
"Do you want to go to our special place?"
The question rocked him. He had not heard or thought about that for a quarter of a century, but when she said the words, it came back in a flash—a cave that they used to frequent, hardly bigger than a closet. They'd liked going there because the entrance was small, not made for adults.
"You remember how to get there?"
She slid her hand in his—her fingers felt small and cold, and he realized she was frightened—and led him to a back passageway he hadn't seen earlier. The tunnel was narrow, so he dropped her hand and followed behind, shining his flashlight at her feet while she aimed hers farther ahead. She squeezed past a support beam and moved on, surprisingly quickly, so that he felt the need to hurry. He brushed the beam with his shoulder. It shifted a little, sending down a small shower of rocks and dirt.
She shined the flashlight back, and he could see her face in his beam, a worried look.
"I'll be careful," he said quietly.
"Almost there," she replied.
And they were. She ducked under an overhanging rock and he did the same, and they entered the small chamber that was instantly recognizable. There were shelves in the rock, and they sat on them, low down like adults in a kindergarten class. One wall was streaked with multicolored rivulets, and he remembered the candles burning there and dripping tears of wax while the two of them sat in these very seats.
Tizzie looked Jude in the eye—the first time in a long time, he thought, that she didn't seem to turn away.
"It's tough to know where to begin," she said.
"Try the beginning," he said tartly.
"I've only started to remember a lot of things lately—and there's still a lot I can't recall. But now I expect I remember more than you do. Some of my first memories are right here, in this room, with you. We used to come here a lot and play and talk. I remember the coziness of it and how we felt safe—or at least I did—safe and secure in the knowledge that not far away in the chamber just outside, adults were working, doing things, whatever it was they did—experiments in the lab..."
"Did you remember all that when we met? Did you know who I was then?"
"No. Not at all. Please, Jude. I know how you must feel—how suspicious all this seems. I swear I'm on your side. But let me tell you the whole story. If you keep interrupting, we'll never get anywhere."
"Okay. Go ahead."
"We lived right outside, in that building that used to house the mine offices. Don't you remember? I remembered it as soon as I saw it. Things are flooding back to me. When we lived here, the mine had been closed down for years. I guess somehow the group got the title to it. When we were little, we weren't told anything. I have a vague memory that we knew somehow that our parents were scientists, that they were doing great things, and that it was all very secret because the rest of the world wouldn't understand. They would try to stop it—whatever it was.
"My parents were involved. So were yours. And there were others—I don't know how many and I can't remember them. I can't really remember any of the important details, though God knows I've been trying this past week—ever since I went home. I always thought I'd just been too young to remember the years before White Fish Bay, but that wasn't it. I'd simply blocked them out. Until this week.
"I think I almost remember your father. Not your mother. As you said, she died some years before. But now if I close my eyes, I can remember the day your father took you away—I can almost see the car going down the road. I had a sense then that something horrible had happened, something shameful. When you described it, back when we first met, it seemed familia
r, as if I had dreamt it. But after talking with my parents, I suddenly remembered it clearly. It was that sense of something bad happening—remembering that brought it back.
"My parents said we were all told never to speak of your father again. So your name just disappeared. There had been this huge argument, a fight among the parents, and that was why your father took you away. I don't know all the details because even now my parents don't like to speak about it. But I gather the split came because your father objected to something—something involving the research. I think I now know what it was—but we'll get to that later.
"The group was called the Lab. And they were working on research that they were convinced would change the world—life extension. And the center of it was this scientist, Rincon. When I heard Skyler say that name, I didn't connect with it at all. I don't recall him. But I do have a recollection of someone very important. You know how children have this almost innate sense of hierarchy among adults—who is above who. I knew there was this person that everyone worshiped. He was like the sun. I think he lived in that mansion in that town we passed, the Palmer mansion. I remember the grown-ups would traipse up there to meet with him.
"He had tremendous power over them in some way, I don't know what exactly. Anyway, we kids never saw him. To this day, I couldn't tell you what he looked like. But we knew he was there. And he was supposed to be good, benevolent, and extremely smart—brilliant—because he was the head of the whole thing."
Jude was burning with questions. So far, he realized, he had not learned all that much that was entirely new, though the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit together a little more snugly.
He took out a cigarette and lighted up. He saw a half candle lying on the floor, put it on the small, wax-covered ledge, and lighted it, too, dousing the flashlight. The glow made the cave come alive with shadows and seem even smaller.
"Go on," he said.
"There were a bunch of other leaders, Elder Physicians was what Skyler called them, and when my parents used the same word last weekend, I felt like screaming. Baptiste—I don't know who he is. There are others who are important, like my Uncle Henry. I don't know where he fits in, but he plays an emissary role for the Lab. I think he's like the group's contact point with outsiders. Now that I look back, I imagine that he and the others like my parents and your parents—they were probably the original founders of the group or something like that."
