Moonscape

by Julie Weston

  After she pulled the black cloth over her head and looked at the image, she stood up. “Could you all put the lantern there,” she said and pointed to an especially icy area, “and then point your lights to the same area, but a little higher and a little lower.” She decided to move the camera just a small step or two. But her foot slipped, and she felt herself losing her grip on the icy floor. She began to slide down an incline into the dark. “Grab the camera!” Moonshine barked, and he, too, began to slide after her.

  Nell didn’t know how far she slid before she hit what felt like a wall, a rock wall. Her head banged on the side, and she saw stars. It took her a moment to realize she had stopped completely. Then a soft bag hit her: Moonie. She had no light, but she could feel his fur. He made his strange arp-ing sound, so she knew he was alive. “Are you all right?” She wasn’t certain she was all right, but she moved her arms and legs, and nothing seemed broken. She felt an ache all over, beginning with her head.

  Moonie tried to stand up but kept slipping into her. She felt around, touching rocks, icy spires above and one or two near where she had landed. She seemed to be in a narrow end of a tunnel that had collapsed, all that had saved her from sliding further into the earth. She held herself still to see if she could hear anything above her. Nothing. She tried to stand on the rocks at the bottom, but there was nothing to grab to pull herself up. Instead, she felt around with her feet to see how wide her dead-end was. One foot hit something soft. “Moonie, is that you?” Moonie whimpered next to her ear, not at her feet. She pulled her boot back as if scalded. “Ack! What is it?” She curled herself up into a ball. What if it was a bear?

  Nell gathered up as much courage as she thought she would ever possess and turned herself around so she could touch whatever was soft with her hand. It was not furry. Not a bear. She felt material, cloth. As she groped with her hand in wider circles, she touched flesh. “Oh, no!” Cold, cold flesh. This was not something that was alive.

  “Sheriff! Rosy! Where are you?” Her calls were loud to her ears, but the black tunnel swallowed them whole. She was going to have to figure out how to scramble back up the tunnel. She placed her feet on the rocks at the bottom and pushed her body up as far as she could. Then she swept her hands to her left and right, looking for something other than ice—and found it. Along one side wall was a narrow strip of rock or lava and a crack that felt as if it were filled with dirt.

  “Come on, Moonshine. I’ll boost you up. You see if you can climb out.” She hugged her dog and shoved him over to the side wall. She took one paw and moved it along the dirt. He knew immediately what to do. She felt him grab hold in the non-icy patch and begin to move out of her reach. She followed with a touch on his leg as long as she could, and then he was gone.

  Nell’s head hurt and began to throb. She lay still, trying not to imagine what was there with her in the bottom of the tunnel. After a long while, she thought she saw the darkness grow a little less intense. Was it her imagination? She closed her eyes and then opened them again. No, it wasn’t. “Sheriff? Rosy?”

  “We’re comin’, Nellie. You hold on.” Rosy’s voice, rough as always, felt as if it could pull her out on its own.

  “We will send a flashlight down to you, so you can see if there is a way to get out, a bigger trail than Moonshine was able to negotiate.” The sheriff’s voice comforted her. “It has to come slow because we can’t see where it is going or if there are rocks in the way.”

  “All right. There is something down here with me.” She tried to keep the tremble out of her voice but failed. Then a lit flashlight inched its way toward her at the end of a rope. “I have it!” She loosed the rope and flashed the light around her. The something soft looked like a bundle of clothes, something far too familiar from their other finds in other caves. Nothing she could do. She swept the light from side to side back up the slide. The strip where Moonshine had climbed out was narrow but widened as it went up. Maybe she could get a purchase on it.

  “Can you bring it up?” The sheriff’s voice.

  “How can she do that an’ climb, too?” Rosy’s voice.

  A low, rumbled conversation followed, but Nellie couldn’t hear any of it.

  “Hey! I could wrap the rope around the . . . the thing, and you could keep pressure on it until I climb. Then I’d have something to hang on to.” Nell didn’t like that idea at all, but that was all she could come up with.

  “All right.”

  “Nope. Let me come down and boost you up.”

  “No, Rosy! Don’t come! We might never get you up. At least I’m light.” She heard Moonie bark in the background. “Don’t let Moonie back down either.” Her voice was wearing out from shouting. “Hang on to the rope!” She pulled on it to get some slack, and then she squatted over the bundle and felt along it. Definitely a person. Almost frozen. She held her breath, pulled some more, and wrapped the rope around what felt like legs and then once again around the trunk. It wasn’t easy, but the fact that it didn’t move helped.

  “I’m going to climb up where Moonie did. Keep the rope taut.” She pulled on the rope and boosted herself to the narrow strip.

  “You ain’t that light, Nellie. Let us know when you’re gonna pull!”

  “I’m pulling from now on!” She couldn’t do this with a flashlight in hand, so she stuck it down her sweater. Then she moved one hand at a time up the rope, taking little steps in the rocky strip. It wasn’t rocky enough, and she slid several times. Her hands began to burn. Her gloves were in her camera pack— dumb to leave them there. “I have to rest!”

  “All right. Let us know when you begin again.” This time the sheriff’s voice sounded much closer. Maybe she was making progress.

  “Okay!” Nell began up again, and then her feet slid, but she managed to hold herself in place. Her arm muscles were trembling, and her hands ached. “Can you drop a glove towards me? I can’t hang on without something for much longer.”

  “Can you wrap the rope around your waist?”

  “It’s fastened at both ends. How’m I going to do that?” She dug the flashlight out and looked around. Only parts of the slide were ice. There was another, wider dirt path if she could get over to it. The going might be easier than where she was.

  “A glove’s a’comin’.”

  A dark object slid toward her and then stopped out of reach. “Oh damn.” She gripped as hard as she could and climbed up two steps and grabbed the cloth, steadied herself with one hand, and pulled it on. It was huge, but warm, and that helped.

  “I’m going to try and swing some to the left—my left—and get on another patch of dirt. It looks wider and maybe not too steep. Hang on!” One, two, three, Nell counted to herself. She took a huge step to her left, and her foot at first skidded on ice, almost causing her to lose her grip. Then her boot stopped, and that foot was on dirt. Her gloved hand didn’t slip at all. Her other foot caught up and helped her stabilize. Sweat trickled down her face and then her chin. Hard to think she was so hot in all the ice and cold. Once again, she stepped up. She could reach farther with the gloved hand, and she forced herself to ignore the burn on her other hand.

  “All set?”

  “Ye-es.”

  “Here comes another glove.” This glove bounced and nearly slid past her, but she caught it, almost losing her balance in the process. Her other gloved hand saved her.

  “Got it!” With two gloves on, Nellie made better progress and then could see Charlie’s and Rosy’s lights. “I’m almost there!”

  “Hang on to me, Rosy. I’m going to reach down . . .” Charlie’s hand appeared close to Nellie’s head. She took another step and stretched as far as she could. He grabbed her wrist, and she grabbed his, and then he lifted her bodily into the air and out of the hole.

  Nellie dropped to her knees, gasping for air. Rosy wrapped her up in his coat. “No, no. I’m too hot!”

  “You won’t be in two shakes.” He kept the coat around her and helped her to stand up. “I’m gonna set you
down over there, close to the lantern, while we drag up the . . . the thing you wrapped the rope around. Here’s my canteen. Drink some.”

  In a moment, Nellie was thankful for the coat. The water in the canteen, smelling as usual of metal, tasted like ambrosia to her. She watched the two men pull on the bundle, hand over hand. “Do you want your gloves back, Rosy?” She could see his bare hands in the jumping light. She began to get up.

  “You stay there, Cora Nell.” This from the sheriff. “We almost have it. Do not get in the way.”

  Happy to stay seated on the flat rock Rosy had found for her, Nellie did as instructed. “Where’s my camera? And Moonshine? And Tom?” She took the flashlight from her sweater and swept it around. Her camera leaned against the side of the cave. Tom and Moonshine weren’t anywhere.

  “Rosy, take Nell out of here, please. Round up Tom. Nell and Moonshine can wait in the light. The three of us can carry this . . . out where I can see.”

  “No, I want to help!”

  “C’mon, Nellie. I’ll carry your camera.”

  “No, I’ll carry my own camera.”

  Rosy helped Nellie over the rough spots of ice and rock, and soon they returned to where light came through the hole in the dome. The area was empty, so Rosy and Nellie pushed on. She didn’t care about another photograph at the moment. When they reached the stage, there was Mayor Tom, sitting with Moonshine, holding him with the leash.

  “Need your help, Tom.” Rosy turned to Nellie. “You wait here. Keep Moonshine here, too.” He patted her shoulder. “Dog saved you, y’know.”

  “Yes, I know.” Nellie hugged Moonie and kissed him all over his face and ears. Moonshine cuddled up to her and folded his front legs in her lap. Arp, arp. “Let’s go outside, Moonshine. Enough of this dark.” Nellie stumbled from exhaustion but made it into the sunshine. Even the black lava fields were a welcome sight, but the blue skies and clouds were even more so. Clouds.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mrs. Bock held each boy by a hand and walked to the train station. “Here is where you arrived,” she said. Neither boy said anything. “Now we’ll walk to the school house.” Ketchum was so small after the mines mostly closed there weren’t many places to show the boys. The old mill down by Warm Springs was closed. The train still went to the mill, but she did not know if Guyer Hot Springs was still open in the fall. People from Boise and Idaho Falls and even farther away came through in the summer, either going to the hot springs or up and over Galena Pass to do campouts with the cowboys in the Stanley Basin. Nellie had described being at Fourth of July Lake and the camps there.

  The school house sat large and empty on a Saturday. The huge gray stones added up to two stories, and a flag drooped from the flagpole in front. Stairs led to double wood doors. “This is where you will go to school, until your father can make arrangements for living and a job. You might move to Hailey. You came through Hailey on the train.”

  “I saw two boys playing outside the train. Are there any boys here?” Matt’s yearning was apparent in the dark eyes he turned on her.

  “I don’t know, Matt. I don’t know any, but there must be boys at school, and you will meet them on Monday.” She hoped. Not many people left in town.

  A man driving a paneled truck stopped near the three of them. He opened the door and stepped out. “Are you Goldie Bock?”

  “That’s who I am. Who’re you?” The man’s dirty clothes contrasted with her sense of seemliness.

  “Name’s Max Adkins. I just come back from the lava fields. Trapper, here, was with me.” He motioned to the other man in the truck. “We delivered a—uh . . . we made a delivery to the—to Hailey for the sheriff and Rosy. Rosy said to come tell you that he and the sheriff and that lady photographer are camping out tonight. They’ll be back tomorrow but might be late. They’s heading on to another section of the fields to see if they can find someone who’s lost.”

  “What did you deliver?” She peered around him into the truck. The other man was just as dirty.

  The man looked at the boys. “I’d rather not say, ma’am. They found what they was looking for, if you know what I mean.”

  “Was it lost?” Mrs. Bock released Matt’s hand. He pulled away and stomped through a pile of leaves. “I thought they knew what they were getting.”

  “It was gone. But then they found it in another cave.” Max moved to return to the truck, then stopped to talk a minute more. “Almost lost the camera lady is what I heard them say when they came back with . . . it.”

  Mrs. Bock shook her head. How Nellie got into so much trouble, she didn’t know. “Thanks for telling me.”

  The trio walked back to the boarding house, and Mrs. Bock cranked up the telephone to call Guyer Hot Springs. She learned they were open on Saturday, and the group could come out to swim. The old shuttle train that used to carry ore to the smelter ran on weekends in the fall to the mill, and a carriage would pick them up. They could ride out, stay a while, and ride back later. Goldie asked Esther if she wanted to come with them, hoping Rosy’s sister would say no.

  “Yes, I would. I don’t have a swimming dress along with me though.”

  “Well, neither do I, but we can figger out something to wear in the water. Do the boys have some short pants?”

  Someone knocked at the front door. “Who d’you suppose that is? No one knocks.” Mrs. Bock strode to the door and opened it. “This ain’t a house . . .”

  “Are you the owner here?” The tall stranger interrupted her and removed a huge Stetson to reveal thick pepper and salt hair when she opened the door. “I heard tell that Miss Burns lives here, the photographer, and she takes pictures of crimes. I want to report a crime and ask her to come and photograph it.”

  Mrs. Bock managed not to laugh. “I think the person you want is Sheriff Azgo. He’s the crime solver around here. His reg’lar office is in Hailey, but he ain’t there right now.” It occurred to her then that she shouldn’t say he was out of town. Maybe this man intended on committing a crime. “He’s probably over in his Ketchum office right now. City Hall is around the corner and down the street.” She pointed.

  “I’ll tell him soon enough. Meanwhile I need a picture.”

  “Can’t help ya.” Mrs. Bock rolled her eyes. “What sort of crime are you talkin’ about?”

  “Somebody abandoned a baby—right at the door of the church. I was visiting and found it with a note on it. Someone’s gotta take care of it, and I want to be sure the basket and baby get looked at and seen just like it was when I found it.” He fingered his Stetson by the rim so it moved up and down. “I don’t want anyone accusing me of abandonment. The minister’s gone, and no one’s there except an old lady who talks all the time, and she’ll throw it all away or my name isn’t Peter Banks.”

  “Hello, Peter Banks. C’mon in.” Goldie sighed. Weren’t two boys enough? “You can telephone the sheriff’s office from here. Then I’ll come back with you and see just what it is you’re talkin’ about. That’ll have to do. Miss Burns is not here.”

  When Peter Banks and Mrs. Bock arrived at the church, Mrs. Henny Penny (as Goldie called her because she always swore the sky was falling in) sat on the church steps. “ ’Bout time you got here. Where’s that picture lady? I told this man we needed proof that this child was left and abandoned right here on the steps. I thought at first this man left it here, but upon reconsideration, I changed my mind. Where would a man get a baby, now I ask you.” Her mouth closed for three seconds, and Goldie hastened to get her own two cents in.

  “Now, Penelope, Nellie Burns ain’t here. I’ll take notes and give ’em to the sheriff. Just tell me what you found and how you found it.”

  “This man here—”

  “I can tell my own tale,” he interrupted. “I went into the church to say a prayer for my sister who has the cancer. When I came out, here was this pile of blankets right by the door. I could easily have stepped on it. I stepped over it and was going on my way, because I thought it was a bum of some sort.
Then I heard a squall, so I leaned down and lifted up one corner of the filthy thing. And there was this baby.”

  Mrs. Henny Penny moved aside. Hidden by her skirt was a dirty sheet wrapped around and around a baby, whose head barely peeked out. “Newborn it is,” Penelope said. “I can tell ’cause I seen lots of newborns around these towns, between all the Catholics and the Mormons. They’re always havin’ babies. We could fill up every town . . .”

  Goldie swept up the sheet and baby. The cloth was so dirty, she didn’t want it to get into the baby’s mouth. “Where’s the note? I’ll take this little thing over to my boarding house and find someone who can take care of it.” The bundle mewled like a tiny kitten. “Have you even fed it?”

  “He told me not to touch anything or do anything! Or he’d have my hide!” Mrs. Henny Penny stood up and was about to hit the stranger, Peter Banks, with her purse. He fended her off.

  “I told you. I didn’t want anyone to accuse me of leaving this baby here.” Peter Banks’s voice rose.

  And now why would they do that, Mrs. Bock wondered. How many men went around with babies in their company. “I have it now. I’ll see it gets fed and cleaned up and find a nurse or someone to take care of it until we find out where it come from.” She turned to the man. “You better come with me. You need to write down what you found and when. And where you live and how the sheriff can find you. And we need the note.”

  The baby was a girl. Goldie washed her in the sink and swaddled her with a wool blanket. She heated up some milk and fed her with the end of her finger. There was a scab, moist and scaly, where the umbilical cord had been cut away but not cleaned. She thought the little mite was lucky to be alive. It couldn’t be more than several days old. Her mewl was so weak, she might not live yet. Then Goldie telephoned the hospital, if it could be called that, in Hailey and asked to speak to the head nurse—probably the only nurse. Mrs. Bock explained the circumstances and asked if there was anyone in town who just had a baby. This child needed breast milk and more care than Goldie could give. Meanwhile, Esther paced around, watching and complaining about the baby and whoever had left it. Civilized folk didn’t do things like that. And who would take a strange baby under her care. She wouldn’t.