“Going back where?” the man asked.
“Going back to get him.”
He was sitting on an overturned paint bucket and he stood up.
“You won’t.”
“I will.”
“It won’t do no good.”
“I don’t care.”
“How you figure you’re gonna get back?”
“I’m gonna get the sheriff to fix this car. He said he would.”
“He’s full of it.”
“Then I’m gonna tell him what we done and he’ll take me back.”
“Shit. He’ll make one phone call to figure out if you’re lying or not and then he’ll throw you under the jail.”
“I don’t care no more. I been thinking about it. I’m going back to get him and that’s the only way I know to do it.”
“It ain’t just you. You know that. If it goes bad it’ll be the both of us.”
“I said I don’t care.”
He walked over and stood next to her. The midday sun fought through the spaces between the vines and trees, leopard spots of light dotting the ground around them. All around the car were piles of trash they kept to start fires. Milk crates filled with the junk the boy found in town and brought back to the hovel. Empty beer cans and cigarette butts and dirty blankets. The woman unfolded her arms and waved her hand at their place here below and she said we’re fucking worse than animals and I’m sick of it.
“You think about that for a second,” he said.
“What?”
“The words you said. We’re fucking worse than animals. Think they just gonna hand that little boy back to somebody like you. You done run off on him once and you ain’t got nowhere to go with him. What you think is gonna happen?”
She folded her arms again. Bit at the side of her mouth.
“Don’t you get the sheriff,” he said.
She sniffed.
“I said don’t you get the sheriff.”
“I ain’t deaf.”
“You done the right thing. We done the right thing. Should’ve done it with the other one a long time ago.”
“Shut your mouth,” she said. “Shut your goddamn mouth.”
He backed away from her. Walked around the Cadillac. Tugged at the coat hanger that kept the bumper above ground. He then stared at the back of her head and knew he would come back to the hovel and find her gone. Maybe not today or tomorrow but one day.
“I don’t mean it,” he said. “But you need to settle down.”
She didn’t answer. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and thought of the dreams that woke her in the night, dreams of a great pit that lived and breathed and sucked at her feet, taking hold of first her ankles and then her knees and drawing her closer into its depths as she dug her fingers into the ground and clawed to remain above. She wondered if the little boy they had abandoned would one day share these same dreams.
“I can’t figure out what to do,” she said. “It won’t leave me.”
“It will. If you let it.”
“That’s what I mean to tell you. I don’t want to let it. I want to go get him.”
She moved from the car. Slid her feet across the dusty ground and nudged an empty can with her foot.
“You need to think on something else,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere.”
“I ain’t walking to town. I’m tired of that too.”
“I got something better.”
“What is it?”
“Something better, that’s all. I’ll show you.”
“I ain’t going in there,” the woman said. She and the man stood together, looking down into the cave opening.
“It’s a tunnel.”
“I know. You done told me about it.”
“I figure it might be treasure somewhere in it.”
“I don’t care. I ain’t going in there.”
“Don’t be chicken.”
“I ain’t chicken. I just ain’t stupid.”
“What’s stupid?”
“You mean to ask me what’s stupid about going down in a hole you don’t know nothing about and walking around in the dark you don’t know nothing about?”
“I know about it. I been in there about fifty times.”
“You can do fifty-one like you done them others.”
“How’s that?”
“By yourself.”
“Come on.”
“I ain’t.”
He kept asking and she kept refusing and her feet remained still. Hands propped on her hips. Her head leaned over and her eyes down into the opening.
“That’s why I brought this light,” he said. He held up the kerosene lamp. The boy had brought it back from town in the shopping cart. The glass was cracked and the wick burned down to a black stump. Half an inch of oil swishing around in the basin.
“Come on,” he said again.
She looked up at him. He was licking at the empty space where his front teeth used to be and he stood halfsquatted as if getting ready to jump.
“Don’t mess with me,” she said.
“I ain’t.”
“You got to help me down.”
“I’m fixing to.”
“If there was a treasure you would’ve done found it.”
“Maybe.”
“You best not mess with me.”
“I said I ain’t.”
“You say a lot of shit.”
“You might like it. I bet you ain’t been in nothing like this before.”
“You act like you ain’t been beside me damn near every day of my life.”
“Not every minute of every day.”
She looked over down into the opening again.
“You go down first and you light that thing,” she said. “I ain’t going in there all dark and shit.”
“Here,” he said and he handed her the lantern. “Hold it while I get down.”
He grabbed hold of the vines and eased down into the opening. He then reached up and she passed him the lantern.
“Do like I done,” he said.
She took hold of the vines. Crouched and then sat on the edge of the opening with her legs hanging. He wrapped his arms around her legs and she let her weight slide from the edge and he eased her down inside.
“How we supposed to get out?” she asked.
“Same way,” he said.
He pulled a matchbox from his pocket. Removed the cracked glass and struck a match and held it to the wick. The wick smoldered and then turned blue and burned into yellow. He replaced the glass and said we might better hurry. It ain’t gonna burn long.
“I ain’t going far anyhow.”
“You might change your mind.”
“I ain’t.”
“Well. Come on.”
They began down the tunnel. The lantern gave a golden glow and their shadows loomed large against the tunnel walls. The man in front and the woman behind, her fingers hooked around the belt loop of his pants.
“See,” he said. “Ain’t nothing but dark.”
“It don’t feel like it. Feels like something else in here.”
“Like what?”
“Like I don’t know what. Something mean.”
“You mean animal.”
“No. Worse.”
“What’s worse than what eats you?”
“Stop it. You said no messing.”
“You the one who said it.”
“Just stop it,” she said and she tugged on the belt loop.
“You just dreaming stuff up cause it’s dark.”
“I don’t wanna go no further.”
But he did not stop. He kept walking and she kept following, his arm reached forward and the lantern held in front. Pointing out when to duck an extended root or when there was a tricky step. They moved steadily and she would not let go of the belt loop and she kept asking him to stop, looking over her shoulder back toward the opening that had now disappeared. Stop, she said. But he moved on and she wasn’t brave enough to turn around and be alone. The light of the lantern weakened as the flame burned the wick down toward its end and she yanked on his belt loop and slapped the back of his head and said you take me out of here right now. He turned and said damn you. Don’t be slapping nobody.
“Listen,” she said. A quick command and she pulled her shoulders together as if getting ready to duck and hide.
“What?”
“Listen.”
There was the moan. Low and steady.
“I ain’t doing this no more,” she said. She slapped him again across the shoulder.
But he did not answer her or acknowledge the slap. He held the lantern to the side and his eyes were ahead and into the black.
“Come on,” he said.
“I ain’t going,” she said and her voice trembled now. Part anger and part panic. She pulled on his belt loop and said please.
He stared ahead.
“We can get out this way.”
“Stop playing.”
“Little bit further on.”
“Stop it,” she said. Crying now.
He began again and she moved with him. No other choice. The light nothing more than a spot of yellow now. Their shadows gone and the moan like some monotone song of hell. They were almost there.
The pit was right before them now. She slid her fingers from his belt loop and thought to turn and run but she was seized by the sadness that her life would never change. He knelt and set the lantern on the ground as the last of the wick burned away, a final flash of flame that gave them a brief glimpse of each other. His eyes alive and ravenous and her eyes watery and knowing. She wanted to cry out but there was only the black. The end of the world. Her nightmares alive now and she reached out to push him before he could grab hold of her but he had stepped to the side, and when she shoved and met nothing her momentum carried her forward and she stumbled and fell headfirst into the pit. Her final scream a piercing echo in the dark.
He stood there alone and listened and if she ever hit bottom it didn’t make a sound. There was no thud or crying or calling. Only the silent thank you from the dark that now held him. He felt around and his hand found the lantern and he picked it up. Turned away from the pit and halfexpected a feeling of dread or regret or the necessity to repent but he only felt the fervent satisfaction of having done what he set out to do and before she was maybe even dead his thoughts were already turning to how he could feel this way again.