OH MAN! ANOTHER TUNNEL? A secret way into Pluto’s cave, Thomas thought. I never knew! Papa never knew. Or Mr. Pluto either?
He climbed up, going in just the way Pesty had, before he knew he would. I’m not going to like this, he was thinking. The way was narrow and black. He slithered in blindly and breathed the dank odor of a closed underground. There was no way to turn around to find out if he could see the light from the thatch opening.
Too narrow to turn, he thought. If you try it, you might get stuck. Oh don’t panic. “Pesty!”
“You got to move on down some,” he heard Pesty say. He was so relieved that she was there. “I’m right by you,” she said. “Just move on.”
“But how?”
“Move on! I got to git back there and grab that hole cover.”
He moved forward, sensing Pesty going by him. There must have been a niche in the tunnel side for her to fit into. Suddenly he remembered he had seen something attached to the cave lid. Rope and chain, twisted together. Must have been staked inside the cave wall somewhere, so the cover wouldn’t roll away. Someone in the tunnel would be able to pull it up by the rope chain and close up the hole as though it had never been. Pesty was about to do that.
Take it easy, he thought. Slaves must’ve been scared sometimes. Did they ever use this tunnel? It’s so dead dark.
He wasn’t going to move very far; he didn’t want to bump into anything unexpected. Then she was there behind him. “Move on out, Mr. Thomas,” she told him. “It ain’t far how.”
He never thought to correct her about saying “Mr. Thomas.” “Me, go first?” he said.
“I can’t get by you here. You got to go on first,” she said.
He knew he had to move. And he was moving, crawling and scooting along; crouching, never able to stand upright.
“Pesty! Where are we—” The tunnel turned abruptly. Thomas found himself up against the cave. “It ended,” he said. “We have to go back.”
“You just push at the wall with your hands,” Pesty said. “Press your hands, and slide them over on the right.”
Thomas put his hands against the coolness of the cave barrier in front of him. It was covered with moss. Damp rock and dirt. Gingerly he touched it, placing his palms against it. He pushed, pressing to the right as he did so.
It felt as if a boulder were rolling away, sliding out from under his palms. “I don’t believe this! Is this tunnel a real old one?” he asked.
He saw light, like shade. He saw huge horses right there in front of him.
“Just move real slow, Mr. Thomas. They ain’t going to bother you,” Pesty said.
As if in a trance, Thomas moved out of the opening and into the place of horses. It was a large horse stall. The horses whinnied softly and made room for him.
Pesty stepped out then. She went to the animals to pat their noses and stroke their necks. Their heads bobbed up and down as she slid her hands along their manes. They nuzzled her. “Good horses!” she told them. “Good ol’ Sam and Josie. You Mr. Pluto’s buggy ride. Haven’t been let out.
“They should be outside by now,” she told Thomas. “I’ll have to take them later.”
She left the horses. Thomas followed, closing the stall behind him.
“That back there is a secret tunnel,” he said to her.
“Might be secret to you, not to me,” she said.
“You never told us about it,” Thomas said.
“Nobody never did ask me. Wouldn’t want it to get known.”
He was dazed by what had happened, and he couldn’t think of anything to say. He followed her, realizing they were in familiar territory.
They walked inside Pluto’s cave. And there was Pluto, sitting by the fire, sipping from a glass carafe. He had a piece of wool wrapped around his throat.
Just like that, Thomas thought. A secret way in to see Mr. Pluto. He was amazed that ordinary life went on while he’d done something so strange.
There was the smell of camphor in the cave. Pluto looked surprised when he first saw them; then he smiled. “I see you come the back way. Well, I heard somebody at the door. Couldn’t yell. Hoarse. Figured whoever it was would come back later.” He raised the steaming carafe in greeting. “This here potion is for a slight cold in my throat.”
“Is it tea? Can I have some?” Pesty asked. “Does it taste good?”
“Tastes pretty bad, don’t think you’d like it, Little Miss Bee,” Mr. Pluto said. “But it sure has helped me some this morning fit for a fright.”
“You feelin’ sick?” Pesty asked him. She put her arm around his shoulder.
“It’s nothing much, some raspiness,” he said. “But, Miss Bee, I feel almost well when I see your face.” His mood changed, and his brows knitted together. “I won’t be scared. Whoever it was,” he muttered to himself, “he won’t be gettin’ nothing out of me.”
“Wha—what?” Thomas said, not sure he had heard right.
But Pesty was saying, “Mr. Pluto, you think you are well enough to meet Mr. Thomas’s great-grandmama?”
“Oh my!” Mr. Pluto exclaimed. “That’s right! I been feelin’ out of sorts some, I forgot she was coming. But you give me a day and I’ll be over there to welcome your great-grandmama, Thomas.”
“You can’t come back with us today?” Pesty said.
“Miss Bee, I get my feet wet again and I’ll have the pneumonia.”
“It’s okay,” Thomas was quick to tell him. “It can wait until tomorrow or the next day. Anyway, Great-grandmother Jeffers is going to stay with us forever.”
“That’s plenty time for me and her to get acquainted,” Pluto said, smiling at them.
Thomas was pensive before he said, “Did you say someone wasn’t getting anything out of you? Mr. Pluto … was there somebody here?”
“Dreams, is all, I expect,” Pluto said. He didn’t want to upset Thomas, or Pesty either. “But I feel a chill wind. Yes, it is,” he thought to add. “I do like to stay close to home such times.”
He turned his attention to Pesty. “Miss Bee, can you take care of the horses?”
“Sure can,” she said. “Mr. Thomas and me will do them.”
Thomas nodded to show that he was willing.
“Well, then I’m going to putter around here,” Pluto said. “Then I’ll lay down awhile again. That’s what old folks have to do when they get soreness. They have to lay down awhile again and again.” He chuckled.
“We could call a doctor for you,” Thomas said.
“No, son, you wait until I kick the bucket before you call the doctor.”
“Mama calls the doctor sometimes when I or my brothers are sick,” Thomas said.
But Mr. Pluto waved his hand, wouldn’t hear of it. “After the horses you-all can go on back home. I’m just going to lie about most the day. Keep warm.”
“You mean we won’t …” Pesty began.
Mr. Pluto stopped her before she finished. “… won’t go there this day.” He cocked his head slightly toward the hidden entrance to the great cavern. “Maybe walls have ears,” he added. “Real folks, maybe, living in dreams.”
Pesty looked solemnly at him.
“Miss Bee,” he said, “see how the snow lay. See to the way east and west.”
Pesty was going out, headed for the horses. Thomas followed, wondering what Pluto had meant. See to what way?
They went from the cave room down the short, dim tunnel back to the double stall where Pluto kept his horses. The horses neighed, glad to see Pesty again. Thomas saw that the cave wall at the back of their stall was closed. He hadn’t noticed when Pesty did that.
Nobody would ever know, he thought. But somebody knew. Pesty knew.
The horses, Sam and Josie, were bridle-and harness-wise. And it was easy to slip short ropes around their necks to lead them from the double stall.
Thomas and Pesty brought the horses back up the tunnel into the cave. Thomas unbarred the plank doors. Mr. Pluto was there, with a woolen throw about his shoulders, still sipping his tonic.
“Bye then!” Pesty called to him. “See you tomorrow!
“Bye!” Thomas said.
They headed the horses around to the fenced meadow. They cleared off the snow in the water trough and broke through the thin ice. There was still fresh water beneath. They added to it with snow that melted at once. Then they saw to the oats and hay.
“We still have most of the morning to fill up,” Thomas told her after they finished.
Pesty stared around them. She commenced walking the hillside from east to west. It was in the east that she bent low to study the snow-covered ground.
“What are you doing, girl?” Thomas said.
“Wait a minute, Mr. Thomas,” she said. She scraped away a top layer of snow. The ground did look slightly different here.
“Snow melted sometime in the night,” she told him. “Air turned warmer.”
“You see all that by just looking at the snow?” he asked. He hunkered down beside her.
“Well, now it’s colder,” she said. “The snow is packed and frozen and one layer stuck over the next, see?” she said.
If there had been tracks, they were certainly hidden now. But she knew something. She straightened up, gazing off to the west. She thought she saw impressions at intervals in the snow, going off into the woods.
She shivered slightly. Pesty could stand the cold most of the time. She had seen and walked snows and snows. There wasn’t much else to see in the wintertime. She knew tracks—melting, frozen, slippery, animal, human. “No kind I ain’t seen,” she murmured to herself, “but are these tracks?”
“That’s what you are searching for—tracks?” Thomas said softly, matching the level of her voice. He looked. Pretty soon he knew there had to be something there through the snow. The trail was nearly invisible. But someone had been where they were, maybe had come the way they had, through the hole, and had gone off the same way. It could have happened sometime in the night. “Yes, but whose tracks?” he said finally. “Was it—was it one of your brothers?”
When she was silent, he said, “Pesty, who was it came here? Did he come into the cave the way we did?”
“He?” she said. “I don’t know no he.”
“You know something. Now tell me!”
“What you talking about, Mr. Thomas? There was nothing. Those tracks is just animals going and coming, hunting shelter.”
She was protecting someone. Thomas was sure of it. “Was it Macky?” he said.
But she went on as if she hadn’t heard the question. “I come from here last night myself,” she said, “after evening, to see Mr. Pluto, and it was snowing.
“Is it time to meet your great-grandmama?” she said sweetly. She did not look him in the eye. “Can I meet her now?”
“Yeah!” Thomas said. “That’s a good idea. She’ll be up by now.”
“So …” Pesty said.
“Let’s go!” they said together.
They left then. Thomas let mysterious snow tracks drift out of his mind. Never seems to take as long going back home, he thought. Wonder why?