Blind Descent Read online

  Peter McCarty was known to be skilled and experienced. By some he was considered a lightweight—a bit of a dilettante—but Rhonda had never heard much against him besides the occasional snipe because his wife was too young, his equipment too new, his hair too well cut.

  Schatz, Rhonda didn’t know. She’d met him a couple times, but he was mostly an eastern caver, and she hadn’t heard any stories about him either way.

  This pleasant, if fruitless, exchange was brought to a close by the intrusion of the telephone bell.

  “That tears it,” Rhonda said in exasperation.

  “Is that the phone?” Holden’s voice emanated from Andrew’s room.

  “See? Too good to last,” Rhonda muttered. “I got it.”

  Andrew slept on. Holden stumped out on crutches as Rhonda was hanging up.

  “That was George Laymon,” she said. “They’re bringing out the body.”

  12

  FIVE HOURS PASSED before Frieda was brought into the open air. This time the reception was subdued. There were no floodlights, only one media crew, and the brass had thinned out considerably. Not a single caver had left. Standing in rain rapidly turning to sleet, a dismal army dotted the stony hillside.

  Anna had no task to occupy her; when Frieda no longer needed her, she’d become superfluous. Knowing she’d failed her friend, Anna felt a crushing self-consciousness. The eyes of the surviving cavers seemed to follow her like the vacant sockets of so many masks. With a visible shake of her head, she told herself it was grief and guilt deluding her. The cavers’ eyes followed Holden, too. On crutches, lower leg in a cast, he’d hobbled the mile and a half over rain-slicked desert. Pain too deep to be accounted for by broken bones paralyzed his muscles as surely as if he’d suffered a stroke.

  Darkness hid the faces of the watchers, but Anna had little doubt that they looked on with respect and sympathy. Because she was with Holden, she was allowed down into the boulder-choked mouth of Lechuguilla. Desirous of staying out of the way, she found a niche in the rock behind the stunted oak that served as an anchor.

  Flanked by George Laymon and the superintendent, Mrs. Dierkz was below her, partially sheltered from the rain by scrawny branches. An attempt had been made to convince Dottie to wait in a warm dry car down in the parking area, but she’d been firm. She’d walked all over Europe and China, she told the superintendent. She would walk this last little ways. Her leather shoes were soaked and muddied, her hair flattened beneath a yellow so’wester-style rain bonnet, but she stood straight and, as near as Anna could tell in the rain, didn’t weep.

  One by one the recovery team crawled up from darkness, their progress robbed of grace by a need to navigate boulders and spiny plants while roped in at waist, knee, and ankle. Oscar Iverson was first, wide-eyed with fatigue. McCarty was next, his features closed down, as stony as Holden Tillman’s. Curt Schatz was third. His strength was wonderful to watch, the muscles fluid as they brought the Stokes to the surface. Frieda had been wrapped up in toto as befitted her new status as a corpse: a faceless, shapeless bundle lashed in the wire basket. Not a scrap of flesh or hair or clothing was left visible to remind them of the woman inside.

  As it should be, Anna thought. The woman was gone, the husk itself become an empty casket, deserving of respect but not reverence.

  Zeddie and Kelly Munk followed the Stokes. Zeddie had more life in her than the rest. Relief wasn’t evident, or sorrow. Anger was fueling her. In one so young it was impossible to mistake. She’d not yet learned to hide her feelings from the world’s freezing indifference.

  The source of her aggravation wasn’t hard to find. Kelly Munk, close on her heels, got a snarl in return for his offer to help her off with her gear. “Anna,” she snapped, seeing her hunched vulturelike in the rocks. “Make yourself useful.”

  Anna jumped down to help her derig, happy to be of service and happy to share in the snubbing of Munk. The man was unchastened. His face worked overtime. “Chewing up the scenery.” Anna dredged up a phrase from Zach’s theatrical lexicon. Kelly Munk labored under the delusion that all dramatic incidents were centered around Kelly Munk. As he hauled himself up the rocks at Anna’s shoulder, she could see him trying on expressions. He settled on a look of heroic exhaustion, affixing it firmly in place as he made a beeline for the media.

  Zeddie shot an evil look after his retreating form. “When I’m queen, different people are going to die,” she said.

  Anna scavenged a raincoat for Zeddie and gave back the sweater she’d worn all day. After so much time underground, none of the recovery team was prepared for the winter weather. Zeddie paid her respects to Frieda’s mother, then cleared out. Anna stayed till the litter, with fresh bearers and a frighteningly stoic Dottie Dierkz, started down the hill. A handful of cavers from among those keeping vigil amid the rocks came to take over the derigging. Anna fell in step beside Curt and went with him to the cavers’ tent. No pizza this time but beer and coffee and a plate of sandwiches that Dottie had insisted on providing. Blessing the woman’s graciousness, the team fell on them as if they’d not eaten in a week.

  Brent, Holden, Oscar, and Anna stood at the edges of the tent, wall-flowers at the dance. Feeling bereft, Anna took a cup of coffee to be companionable. The sensation wasn’t unfamiliar. Twice before in her career she’d pushed—once eighteen hours and once nearly twenty-four—bringing victims out of the backcountry only to have them die on her within sight of modern medical facilities. Too much time had passed; they hadn’t been strangers anymore. Too much hope had been invested, and ego and energy. A strange and cosmic coitus interruptus; perfect communion denied. From the way the team wolfed down their food, backs to one another, little left to say, Anna knew she wasn’t the only one feeling isolated.

  Kelly Munk was the exception. Beer in one hand, untouched sandwich in the other, he was holding court. Most of the older cavers ignored him, but he’d gathered a newsman and a coterie of the less-experienced cavers. With becoming modesty, he outlined how he’d taken over the medical care of Frieda, explained how his rigging could have saved her life, and, at risk of losing his audience, moved on to a tale of paranormal prowess implying he heard Frieda’s spirit crying in the darkness of the Pigtail. Zeddie looked as if she might be contemplating a queenly prerogative, and Brent Roxbury was so pale Anna was afraid he was going to faint. “I can’t take this,” she heard him murmuring. Even Schatz, who normally would allow Munk to make as much of a fool of himself as he wished, had taken on a look of if not malevolence then peevish irritation.

  The story was in the worst possible taste. Not because of the grandstanding, trading on tragedy for a moment in the spotlight, but because there were those, Anna among them, who would have dearly loved a last word with Frieda. That Munk could suggest her spirit would have frittered it away on an ass like himself was too much to bear on freeze-dried food and too little sleep.

  Hands were bunching into fists, faces screwing up for harsh words. Oscar stepped in. Anna thought Holden would do the honors, but he was too wrapped up in his own misery. With little fuss, Oscar herded Munk toward the tent’s exit. Kelly didn’t thank Iverson, but he should have. The men might have maintained a veneer of civility but Zeddie was ready to punch somebody’s lights out. Tempered by two years on rope and rock, her fists would carry quite a wallop. Anna was sorry to see the fracas averted. Abusing Kelly Munk would have proved a catharsis. But Oscar, older, wiser, not nearly so much fun, spirited Kelly Munk away before the newsman got anything interesting to train his camera on.

  Beer and sandwiches buoyed the team up sufficiently to make the hike back to the waiting vehicles, trudging along without speaking. With the exception of Oscar, Holden, and Brent, the core group gathered at Zeddie’s home. None of them had anywhere else to go, and, with the instinct of a flock of birds or a battalion that’s seen action, they needed to stay together.

  Zeddie pulled an answering machine from a drawer, hooked it up, unplugged the phone, and turned the volume on the machine
down so they could sleep in. McCarty didn’t call home to let his wife know he was out of the cave. He behaved as if he and Zeddie were an accepted couple. In this age of technology Anna doubted a thousand miles of real estate could have given him such a feeling of privacy. Gossip traveled faster than light, faster than e-mail. Sins in New Mexico could be news in Minnesota before they’d had time to be properly committed. It could be that he just didn’t care anymore. It could be that he knew for one reason or another that Sondra was beyond the grapevine, her threats no longer viable.

  Anna and Curt bunked on the couch, heads at opposite ends, limbs vying for space in the middle. Mrs. Dierkz slept on the single bed in the spare room. In keeping with Peter’s suddenly single status, he and Zeddie retired to the double bed in the master bedroom. Under the circumstances adultery seemed, if not natural, then inevitable, and no one commented. Frontline morality, Anna thought as she felt Calcite stomp up her belly to lie on her chest. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die. There was an attraction in that. The stuff of movies, the reason wars continued to delight in retrospect, if not in reality. To be so alive, so of the moment. No tedious consequences. No tawdry loose ends.

  In this atmosphere of opportunistic hedonism, Anna noticed the warmth of Schatz’s thigh pressed against hers. She could hear the hush of his breath and smell the soap he’d showered with. A lovely young man, she thought, and felt a pleasant tingle.

  “Get thee behind me, Satan,” she whispered.

  “Anna?” Schatz said, and she felt her already weak resolve vanish utterly.

  “What?” Her voice was husky, cliché; it embarrassed her.

  “Are you going to hog the cat?”

  She would have laughed but for the fact it might have disturbed Calcite. “She chose me. Get your own damn cat.” Disappointment was canceled by relief. This wasn’t war. Tomorrow they would all still be alive, and there would be pipers demanding to be paid. Best not to run up too much of a tab.

  MORNING CAME LIKE a hangover. Everybody seemed lost. The survey Frieda’s team had embarked on was scheduled to last four more days. No one had flights booked out till then. For a few days at least, Zeddie would have houseguests. Anna was glad. She could lose herself in the crowd.

  Curt seemed content to stay where he was, though Anna couldn’t tell whether it was due to her questionable charms, Calcite’s allure, or the fact that he had nothing waiting for him at home. Peter McCarty opted to stay as well, but his motives were more transparent. Mrs. Dierkz had the corpse of her daughter waiting on ice in Carlsbad.

  Peter reattached the phone line and made a duty call to his home in Minneapolis. The machine answered. He didn’t strike Anna as worried, angry, relieved—he didn’t strike her in any way at all. Did he know Sondra wouldn’t be answering the phone? Sondra had flown out with the first group, but nobody had checked to see what her destination was. She could have gone any direction. Maybe McCarty had reasons he wasn’t sharing for knowing she had bolted. Sondra could be running from the law or from her husband, or simply screening her calls.

  During the night Zeddie’s answering machine had taken one call. At 1:27 A.M., according to the impersonal voice of the recording, Brent Roxbury had called for Anna. He’d be at Big Manhole from noon till around three, checking reports of unauthorized digging. He needed to talk. From the late hour of the call, Anna inferred some urgency. While she had a car she would meet him and see if what he needed to tell had any relation to what she needed to hear.

  According to Zeddie’s map, Big Manhole was less than an hour’s walk from park housing. There was no trail, but the way was not difficult, much the same as the terrain to Lechuguilla. A walk would do Anna good. Exercise underground was a different discipline, and she longed for the hard stretch of movement, feeling the world go by, seeing the earth pay out beneath her boots. A bitterly cold wind and the necessity of delivering Dottie Dierkz to town dissuaded her. Paved roads out of Carlsbad would take her most of the way, dirt tracks the rest.

  Big Manhole was a cave on BLM land adjacent to the park, an unprepossessing hole more than fifty feet deep, the entrance a mere crack beside a low brow of stone. About ten feet down, the aperture widened abruptly into a bell-shaped cavern. On its own, Big Manhole had little to recommend it, but there were a number of people who believed it would prove to be a second entrance into Lechuguilla Cavern. Toward that end, various tunnels had been bored into the bottom of the cave. Some were dug with the knowledge and blessing of the Bureau of Land Management. Some were not. Holden had once remarked to Oscar that he always carried an extra padlock when he visited because, often as not, the last lock used to secure the gate closing the cave would have been pried off.

  North of the park the country was beautiful only to an eye acclimatized to the desert’s idiosyncratic allure. Broken hills, scabbed with rock and cactus, spread out to a horizon composed of faint blue mountain silhouettes. Dry washes, ancient stream- and riverbeds, slashed through, exposing the bones of the earth in stratifications of gray, white, and dun. Nothing eased the eye: no green trees, sparkle of water, or carpet of grasses. The sky failed to soften the blow. Cold and scoured by the icy winds, its blue was as unyielding as lapis luzuli.

  North northwest of the park boundary Anna ran out of pavement. Turning off Highway 137, she edged the sedan over a gravel road. For a dirt track it was in good condition, recently resurfaced and leveled. Potholes, massive and unannounced, suggested heavy use. That and dust forced her to slow to an irritating creep. Dust was ubiquitous. Anna had spent a lot of years in a lot of deserts, and she couldn’t remember seeing dust this bad. It was as if the land had been ground exceedingly fine, pulverized into white powder that settled over everything. Rocks, bushes, the few stalks of sparse grass were featureless under a suffocating blanket of grayish white. Clouds boiled from beneath the sedan’s tires.

  Suddenly a wind sucked the powdered earth up and wove it into veils, wings, plumes, fantastic blinding shapes. Anna stomped on the brake, and the car shuddered to a halt. The whirling devil wind that engulfed her in earthen fog pummeled the car, velvet fists pounding first one door, then another. The radio antenna whipped so hard she could hear its high faint singing over the wind. With a last, playful swat, a broken sage bush rolling tumbleweed fashion over the car’s hood, the tiny tornado moved on.

  Anna watched its progress, a jaunty white funnel skipping over the catsclaw. A dust devil in the steady winds that had raked the desert since morning was unusual but not the greatest of the natural phenomena spawned by the rugged landscape. The twister carried off only a drop in the ocean of dust that continued to pour across the roadway in a steady stream.

  A rough track forked to the south. No signs marked the way. Anna guided herself by counting. Unless she’d missed a road during the bizarre storm, this was the third; the road that would carry her to Big Manhole.

  Seconds after she left the gravel the dust was gone. Winds raged unabated. The road began to deteriorate. Zeddie had warned her she’d need a high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicle to navigate the backcountry. Anna would have preferred it. What she had was a 1993 Chevrolet and she would have to make do. Had it been her own car, she would have been more circumspect. Muttering a quick apology to the taxpayers, she forced the car over an imbedded spine of limestone that threatened to disembowel it.

  Twenty minutes later she knew she’d have to abandon the car and walk the last couple of miles or risk having to walk the entire sixty back to Carlsbad. Despite her leather jacket and another of Zeddie’s sweaters, wind found ways into her bones. Leaning into it, she shoved her hands in her pockets, lowered her head, and barged up the bleak hills. By the time she reached the last bump in a line of thick places along a low ridge, she felt a kinship with a baked Alaska. Exertion had raised her body temperature till, beneath her layers, she’d begun to sweat, but the bite of the wind had nearly frozen the flesh from her cheeks and ears.

  Over the years she’d nearly forgotten the unceasing winds of a Tra
ns-Pecos winter. Moaning, godless winds that ripped through, carrying away sanity. Jason’s harpies could have taken lessons from the Texas wind. Relentless, it tore at human nerves, snatching hats, doors, packages, whipping people with their own hair, scouring with sand and cold, never letting up, never letting go, sawing at the eaves in the night and the mind in the day.

  “The wind is my friend,” Anna remembered a conservationist in Guadalupe telling her. “It blows the tourists away.”

  Sensible tourists, she thought as she pushed over the nub of the last hill. The sight of a four-wheel-drive Blazer rewarded her. If, after all the effort, Brent had stood her up, she might have been less than perfectly gracious when next they met.

  Caves were well camouflaged in New Mexico. The entrances blended in with the scenery. One could easily pass within a foot of a major cavern and never notice it. Anna followed Zeddie’s directions to the letter. She walked to the middle of the barren knoll where Brent had left the Blazer, pulled out her compass, and turned till she was facing south southeast. If she’d done it right, park headquarters should be several miles away, hidden by a swelling of the ground. Crossing to where the knoll rounded down into one of the shallow ravines that carried away water from the short but fierce monsoons, she looked for the cave.

  Gray-brown hillsides rolled away in all directions, marked only by fragments of lichen-speckled stone and the unwelcoming beauty of desert plants. Anna turned her attention to the ground at her feet. At first nothing presented itself, but she was used to that. The desert was a mosaic; changes were subtle. After a moment a faint trail began to emerge as her eye picked out minute changes in color and texture. The experience was not unlike staring at a 3-D pattern. First there’s nothing; then, once the picture forms, it’s unmistakable. Enjoying the childlike delight this simple magic never failed to produce, she ran lightly down the trail, the wind at her back threatening to give her wings.