Through Caverns Measureless to Man

by D G Rose

  Then I felt something in my throat, a kind of tightness, like I couldn’t breathe, and then I was crying. I don’t know how it happened. I mean it wasn’t anything unusual. I was just one crying kid in a tent full of crying kids. But I was crying and I was scared. And for the first time, I was scared that something might have happened to Miranda. Not just that she would tell Mom and I would be in trouble, but, you know, actually scared for her. And I missed her. I missed her so much.

  And that’s how my mother found me, hours later, crying, and scared and missing Miranda. And she sat down on the bench next to me and she put her arms around me and we cried together.

  CHAPTER 4 - Old Testament, mostly.

  I don’t really know how to describe what happened next. A descent into madness. Hundreds of police and volunteers came out to search. I talked to the police for what seemed like hours. I finally told the true story. I could see the disappointment in my mother’s eyes, although she never, never said so. Dad, when we finally got a hold of him, said he would come home on the red-eye.

  The search went on for days, expanding into the small stretch of woods behind the fairgrounds and nearby neighborhoods. Mom and Dad and I put up hundreds, maybe thousands, of flyers. Dad went on the evening news to make a plea for anyone with any information to come forward. Nothing. No sign of Miranda.

  Then one morning the police came and arrested dad. Turned out he hadn’t been in Cleveland after all. Turned out he’d been right here in town. The whole trip to Cleveland was just a story so he could be with his girlfriend, some woman from his office. He’d decided to miss our birthday because her husband had been out of town that weekend, in Cleveland. They let him go after a few hours, the girlfriend backed him up and dad was able to produce witnesses who’d seen them at their favorite restaurant Saturday afternoon. They had a favorite restaurant.

  But it was all over the papers. “DAD OF MISSING GIRL IN TORRID AFFAIR!”

  After that, the search just, sort of, trailed off. Like his sin, somehow, made Miranda less worthy of searching for. Each day there were fewer and fewer volunteers and police until one day the police came out to tell Mom and Dad that they were calling off the search. They were quick to add that they were going to keep working the case, sifting through the hundreds of leads that they’d received.

  I kept waiting for someone to punish me. To blame me. We all knew it was my fault. They never did, but how can you forgive that?

  And that became the new normal in our house. Every evening, and every weekend, we went around in an ever growing circle, stapling flyers to telephone poles and hoping for a miracle.

  But there are no miracles.

  Dad started staying out all night. Looking for Miranda, he said. While Mom sat vigil in the house, her hand constantly by the phone, a bottle of booze in her lap. I started drinking too, not to keep Mom company or anything, just to keep myself from thinking too much. There was always so much booze in the house now that nobody missed the stuff I took.

  Mom and Dad split up about a year later. I think she could have forgiven him the affair, but not his being with another woman when Miranda went missing. Not the fact that even after he knew that Miranda was missing, he still waited hours, with his girlfriend, before he came home. He was afraid, not for Miranda, afraid of getting caught. I could never forgive him either.

  Dad moved away and I didn’t see much of him after that.

  Mom didn’t want to move, she kept expecting Miranda to come home at any moment.

  And then mom found religion. Church every morning and church every evening. Prayers at the table and prayers pretty much everywhere else, too. Every night she’d come into my room at bedtime, both of us reeking of drink, and she’d sit down, unsteadily, on the edge of my single bed and read me a story from the bible. Old Testament, mostly.

  One night she read me the story of the Binding of Isaac. How God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and how Abraham agreed. She read to me how Abraham told Isaac that they were going into the mountains to offer a sacrifice to God and how Isaac followed his father, unquestioningly. She read to me how Abraham bound Isaac to the altar and knife over his head prepared to kill his only son. He didn’t of course. There was a last minute decision in Isaac’s favor, but he was prepared to do it. Prepared to sacrifice his own son.

  After she’d read me the story, as I lay in my bed and she stood to leave I asked her. “Mom?” I asked. “If God told you to sacrifice me, would you?”

  I’d like to think that most mothers would jump at the chance to be reassuring, with a quick ‘Of course not, honey’, but not my mom. No, my mom, she paused for a moment, I mean really paused. Thinking it over. A complex question of theology. “Well,” she finally began, “I guess I’d have to, wouldn’t I?”

  I didn’t sleep much after that. Not ever.

  I was arrested for the first time when I was sixteen. Car theft. I did four months in juvie. I thought maybe Dad would come back for the trial, but he said he had business. It had always been his favorite excuse.

  I was twenty and in the adult lockup for the first time (six months for petty theft) when Dad was killed in some kind of boating accident. I couldn’t help feeling like a little justice had been done. His obituary listed his new wife and daughter, and nobody else. I got a life insurance settlement for five thousand dollars. I think he must have forgotten that he had it. It was in Miranda’s name too.

  I used the money to put myself through auto mechanic school. I was a pretty terrible student and I’m not much of a mechanic. If you need an oil change, I’m ok, but you don’t really want me fixing your car.

  Mom, finally drank herself to death when I was twenty-three. I found her, lying at the foot of the stairs, her neck broken from a fall, a photo of Dad clutched in her hand. I guess she never really stopped loving him. I know I never did. Weird huh?

  And that was that. I was finally, as I deserved to be, completely alone. Isn’t that, really, what I’d wanted all along?

  I tried my best to pull myself together. I scaled the drinking way back. I stopped doing stupid crimes. If I was going to be the last of the family, the only one still waiting for Miranda, I couldn’t very well be in jail when she came home. I kept the house, you know, just in case, and I kept the same phone number, even when the whole world stopped having landlines.

  A minute can last forever, an hour can drag, but any period of time longer than a day can only fly. Weeks, months, years and decades pass so quickly, and here I was, after all this time, sitting there with a package addressed to Miranda.

  CHAPTER 5 - The pleasure of being miserable.

  I took the mystery package into the house and left it leaning against the wall, almost exactly where I’d found it, but on the inside. There was something about the symmetry of the thing that I liked. I thought about opening it, but, well, pain of death. Plus, I wasn’t really the intended recipient.

  It itched at me all day. That well-traveled mystery package with my dead sister’s name and its bloody warning. I must have walked past it maybe twenty or thirty times during the day. Just walking out of my way to take a side-eyed glance at it. And at night in my bed, upstairs, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

  When I finally slept, I dreamt about it. I dreamt I opened it and an ocean of blood flowed out, filled the house and threatened to drown me. Just as the blood lapped over my head, I woke with a start. Well, that’s a fine beginning to the day.

  I went down the stairs. There it was, just like I’d left it. Nothing particularly bloody about it except, you know, the death threat. I grabbed a beer. I’d like to spend the day in bed again, but it ain’t my birthday anymore and I’ve got to go to work.

  After breakfast, I grab another beer. I look at myself in the mirror, face flecked with shaving cream, and I salute my reflection with the beer and repeat my morning mantra.

  "Every day above ground is a good day, one day you'll be dead and you won't even have the pleasure of being misera
ble, so enjoy being miserable while you can."

  Then I jump in the shower and get ready to enjoy the misery.

  I’d like to make it a three beer morning. It feels like it could be, ought to be, a three beer morning, but well, rules are rules. Two in the morning and one at night. That’s the limit. We have a deal.

  I hop on my bike. I don’t drive. Not anymore. I never even really learned properly. I’ve boosted more than my share of cars, but I usually just crashed them after a few minutes. Seems kind of odd to people, a mechanic who doesn’t drive, but heck, I wish that was the oddest thing about me. I wish that was even the third oddest thing about me.

  I wave at Jim Kincaid as I pass the funeral house. I like to stay on good terms with the people at funeral houses. I want to be well treated when it comes to it.

  As I’m riding I pass people on the streets, some alone, some in pairs or small groups. All the people, literally all of the people, in pairs or groups, are talking. Talking nonstop. All so desperate to explain themselves, to express their thoughts, to use the inanity of their daily lives to make some kind of connection. All such a waste. All so unlikely to lead to any real connections and if any accidental connections do occur, they can only lead to trouble. Better to stay quiet. Better to stay alone.

  I stopped for a cup of coffee and as I’m walking in, a woman is walking out. She had a small child in her arms and she wore a pair of denim overalls, her shoulder was tinted by a hypnotic swirling tattoo. As she walked past me, I glanced down and could see through the open side of her overalls the exposed bone of her hip. The child reached out and grabbed a hold of a wisp of my hair. The mother smiled at me as she unwound the child’s fingers releasing us from our accidental attachment. How cruel that there should be such things in the world, forever out of my reach.

  I lock my bike up at the garage and change into my coveralls. It felt good to be at work, in the pit, under the cars, with the smell of gasoline and old oil. While I’m working, at least I didn’t have to think about the package, about the past.

  “How ya doin’ down there, Nicky?”

  I couldn’t see anything except the boots, but the boots were enough. “Hey ya, Amy. Has it been three months already?” Amy was my neighbor and one of my steadiest clients. I gotta lot of respect for a woman who keeps regular with her oil changes.

  I could hear the shrug in her voice. “Two and a half, but I got a big delivery tonight and I can’t take any chances.”

  “Well, can’t have you breaking down and melting down.” I joked. It was funny because Amy was an ice sculpture artist. You know like they have at fancy parties and weddings and stuff.

  She laughed, just enough to let me know she got it, but not so much as to make me think she thought it was funny. I guess it wasn’t.

  She bent down, I could hear her knees crack and I looked up at her. “Say, uh, Nicky, any chance you’d be free tonight to give me a hand with this delivery?”

  “You and Ted on the outs?” I wasn’t surprised. I’d heard them fighting a few days back, a big knock-down-drag-out kind of thing.

  She rubbed the back of her neck with her hand and let out a huff of air. “Yeah. I guess the whole neighborhood knows. I wouldn’t ask, except it’s a big sculpture. A couple of big pieces and it’s more than I can handle on my own. I can pay you. Say fifty bucks? It won’t take long, maybe an hour and a half, not more.”

  I thought about it. I don’t like to break my routine, but, Amy’s always been nice to me. Just my kind of neighbor, we wave hello a couple of times a month and other than that she keeps to herself. “I guess I could. I get off here about six. I can come over after I clean up, say a quarter to seven? No need to pay me. Heck, you practically keep this place in business.”

  “A quarter to seven would be great. But I’m paying. I insist. Delivery’s included in my fee, anyway. Thanks a bunch, Nicky.”

  I was a little late getting out of w ork, so I had to hustle on my bike to get home and clean up. I like to be punctual. I always think that arriving late is like an insult, like me saying that my time is more important than your time. Punctually is a recognition of equality. Anyway, I don’t like to be late. So I’m breathing hard when I get home. Usually, I wash up at the shop, then when I get home, I like to take a shower and really get clean. I wear a hat while I’m working, but there’s always some grease or oil or something in my hair. But, no time for a shower today. I strip off my clothes and do a quick wipe down with a washcloth and double wash my hands using the nail brush. It’ll have to be good enough.

  I’m ringing her bell at 6:44. Amy asks me in and shows me into her kitchen.

  “You want something to eat? I had the Irish flag for dinner and there’s some left?” She asks.

  “What?” I say, not understanding a word.

  She laughs. “Sorry. It’s baked sweet potato, rice, and green peas. If you lay it out separately on a plate you get orange, white, and green, like the…”

  “Like the Irish flag. I get it.” I break in. “No thanks. I’m not very hungry.”

  “Well, how about a cup of coffee?” She asks.

  “No thanks.” I reply, suddenly anxious to finish the job and get back to my routine.

  “Well, just let me finish mine and we’ll get started.”

  She sat at the kitchen table and poured milk into her coffee cup from a small ceramic pitcher, the kind of thing my grandmother used to use and that I’d thought had gone out of style, then wrapping both hands around her mug, she stared down at the liquid, inclined her head slightly, took a deep breath and said, “OK. Let’s go.”

  “Aren’t you going to drink your coffee?” I asked.

  “No.” She replied with a shake of her head. “I can’t stand the stuff. But I love the smell and I love the feel of the warm mug in my hands and I love the way the milk billows out in waves. I’d hate to lose all that, just because I don’t like the taste.”

  Amy leads me around back to her workshop. Basically a walk-in freezer with a shed built around it. As she fiddled with the door to the freezer, my attention was grabbed by the washer and dryer, or more precisely by the giant pile of towels on the floor in front of the washer. With the freezer door finally open she caught me looking at the towels.

  “It’s a weird thing with me and the cleaning lady.” She explained.

  She has a cleaning lady? I thought of my house, which probably hadn’t been properly cleaned in, well, longer than I could remember.

  “Anyway,” She continued. “Every week, she gathers up all the towels, it doesn’t matter if they’re clean or dirty, and brings them here and, instead of washing them, she just throws them on the floor. Normally, I’d just wash them. I mean I never even told her to do anything with the towels, it was all her idea. But now, somehow, when she’s throwing them on the floor, I don’t want to wash them. It’s gotten to the point where I’m buying new towels every few weeks just to not wash the old ones.” She rubbed the back of her neck with her hand. “Yeah, it’s not a healthy relationship.”

  She hands me a pair of gloves, you know the kind with little rubber nubs all over to improve your grip, and she puts on a pair herself. The sculpture is something else. I guess I’d thought she did stuff like I’d seen in the movies. Swans and junk like that. But this was, well, for lack of a better word: art. A giant heart, not a Valentine ’s Day kind of heart, but a blood pumping kind of heart, and coiled around the heart, ready to squeeze it to death, a long thin serpent-like dragon. The whole thing cut in ice.

  “A dragon and a heart. What’s it mean?” I asked her.

  She gave an exaggerated shrug. “It’s art. It don’t mean shit.”

  And I laughed because, of course, she was right.

  She’d already prepared two wooden crates, lined with a thick padding of straw. “Look, there’s two parts. Let’s move the dragon first and then the heart. Ok?”

  “Yes, Domina!” I snap.

  “What’s that mean?” She as
ked

  “It’s Latin for jefa.” I explained, feeling oddly proud to know something that she didn’t, even though I had no idea what kinds of stuff she did know.

  “I thought jefa was Latin for jefa.”

  “Jefa is Latinate for Domina.” I tell her, and she laughs then, a higher laugh than you might expect from a woman like her and I like it that I made her laugh, then I think of why I’m there, not the fifty bucks, but the angry fight with her boyfriend, and I think; that’s not a relationship I need to get involved in.

  So, we picked up the dragon. It was easier than I’d expected because she’d carved him on a circular wooden platform with a hole in the middle for the heart’s separate platform, so we didn’t have to worry about supporting all the parts of the dragon at the same time. It was heavy, but Amy was surprisingly strong and we soon had the dragon nestled in his crate. Amy filled in the open gaps with more straw and we tacked down the top with little nails. When we had both parts boxed up, she pulled her truck around back to load.

  I climbed up into the passenger seat and she pulled out onto the road. She tapped the clock on her dash, it read 7:23. “Don’t worry, Cinderella, I should have you home in time for your beauty sleep.”

  “Not going far then?” I asked her. I mean, she was going to pay me fifty bucks, so I figured we’d be at it for at least a few hours.

  “Not far at all. Just about 5 minutes up the road.”

  “That is close. We going to Pitot?” I asked, thinking of the closest place where you could hold a wedding. You know a weird wedding, one with a dragon strangling a heart ice sculpture.

  She shook her head. “Nope. Just over to the fairgrounds.”

  CHAPTER 6 - Is your name Miranda?

  I probably don’t have to mention that I haven’t been to the State Fair in a while. It’s not like I’ve been avoiding it, more like I just got out of the habit. She pulled up to the exhibitor’s entrance and talked to the guard. He waved us through. And there I was again, the State Fair. I expected it to be tough, I expected that my heart would beat fast. I expected sweaty palms and weak knees. But no. Nothing.