BEHIND THE HOUSE, Mr. Small slipped through the trees on the hill, much the same way Thomas had the night before. Darkness had fallen; there was no moon, nor any starlight to speak of. Instead of going up and over the hill as Thomas would have, he went around it from left to right. He moved swiftly, making hardly a sound. Thomas followed him closely. He couldn’t see his father, but he could sense his movement through the stillness; he could feel the boughs settle back after his father passed.
We are Tuscaroras. He is my chief and I am his brave son.
Thomas had these thoughts and at once felt foolish for having them. Here they were about to fight off whoever it was had come to destroy his Mama’s kitchen, and all he could do was imagine he was an Indian brave.
“Thomas, are you with me?” Mr. Small called softly.
“I’m right behind,” Thomas answered. “Keep going.”
“Wait. Shhh!” Mr. Small had stopped. Thomas came up to him, not even panting, although it was tiring keeping up with his father and walking silently at the same time. But he stood still and straight; he was invisible there in the dark, as was his father. Relaxed in the manner of the sprinter, his muscles were attuned for action.
Thomas listened. Always he had found it strange that sound could become caught within the random growth of trees. He could hear a truck on the highway. If he were standing on the veranda of the house, he might not hear it. When the truck sound disappeared, he listened again. Trapped there in the trees was the sound of someone walking. It was a soft sound of feet going back and forth and around, back and forth and around.
Whoever it was walking was not in the trees with them. The bed of pine needles would have deadened the footsteps. The sound was ahead of them and not at all muffled.
Is there an opening in these trees? Thomas wondered. An open place where they can ambush us?
Mr. Small had started again.
Thomas knew where to follow. Moving blindly, he would suddenly have the sensation that his father had left behind part of his spirit like a handprint in the air. Thomas would stumble upon this unsettled space and would know his father had passed there.
He had no idea where they were headed; he’d never been around the hill the way they went. He assumed his father had some plan and he hadn’t thought to question what it might be.
They went down into what must have been a dried-up gully and then back up the other side. They went over a hillock that had a barren outcropping like a bridge. Covered with wet moss and fern, it was quite slippery. Once Thomas fell. There in the dark, he had the feeling he might slide forever.
Will they ambush us here?
When he scrambled to his feet again, they were back on the hill, with trees all around. A pale-yellow glow outlined pine boughs and tree trunks. It was enough light for Thomas to see the shape of his father a few paces in front of him. Mr. Small stopped again. This time he raised his arm motioning Thomas to stand where he was.
Thomas’ muscles jumped and jerked beneath his skin. He was wet with the slime of moss and with his own perspiration. It was almost impossible for him to stand still, so ready was he for whatever lay before them.
If they ambush us, I’ll swing up into the trees and jump down on them. I can do that a couple of times before they realize there are only two of us.
Then Mr. Small and Thomas were moving. They had walked a short distance when, without warning, the pale glow grew bright. The dense covering of trees gave way suddenly. They were indeed in open space.
They found themselves at the edge of a natural clearing and blinded momentarily by bright light. There lay before them a bed of flat rock, rectangular in shape, at the end of which was a cave. The cave mouth had heavy, plank doors. On either side of them were sconces, which held burning torches. The torches flared violently, sending smoke and a yellow glow up into the surrounding trees.
In the midst of it all, pacing back and forth like a falcon tired of his perch, was Mr. Pluto. He seemed in thought, and wasn’t aware of them watching. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand; the other hand was hooked in his belt.
Thomas couldn’t quite believe he was seeing Pluto, the cave and those eerie torches, he had so prepared himself for danger and ambush. And something else, Thomas thought. The whole scene was suited for another place and time. Mr. Pluto should have fitted right in, like a bearded pirate perhaps, left in the wilderness by his fellow scoundrels. He should have been a part of these surroundings, Thomas thought. Only he wasn’t.
Thomas couldn’t quite catch on to what was wrong, but there was something about Pluto that kept jarring Thomas’ mind.
Mr. Small started around the clearing toward Pluto.
“Mr. Pluto?” he called. “Pluto? I want a word with you!”
Pluto swung around, taking in the whole of the clearing. He must have seen Thomas and Mr. Small coming at him. His own face was in shadow caused by the torches above his head. But the rest of him was clearly visible. He looked massive, powerful, in the yellow light. Every inch of him recoiled in surprise. Still recoiling, he shrank toward the cave.
“Wait!” said Mr. Small. “You wait!”
But Pluto was gone. It wasn’t possible a man his age and size could move so quickly, and yet he had. Like fluid pouring itself away, he was gone, leaving only the gaping doorway.
Thomas remembered the night before, and the way Pluto had lifted him off the ground. Again he thought what he had thought then: No old man anywhere, lame or not, could catch him from behind, let alone swing him off the ground.
Then Thomas was on to something. He didn’t know what, but he knew what had been wrong with Pluto’s pacing back and forth a moment ago.
“Papa, he wasn’t sick at all. He was strong, did you see it? Papa, he was smoking … he had a cigarette!”
“I saw,” said Mr. Small. His voice had that hard edge, the way it had when he had seen the mess in the kitchen. “And he wore new hide gloves like the first time. You bet I saw!”
Mr. Small tore one of the torches from its sconce and thrust it in the opening to the cave. He went inside, and Thomas followed. They were in a tunnel similar to the one under the house of Dies Drear. It ended some thirty feet ahead, in what appeared to be a room. Mr. Small threw the torch out the door, since the room ahead of them was lit. They went cautiously forward. And once inside the room, they stood against the wall next to the tunnel, looking all around.
“This is where he lives,” Mr. Small said. “I’ve never been inside it, but there’s his forge. And over there must be where he sleeps. The other tunnel entrance to the right must lead to the place where he keeps his horses. I do remember, he mentioned to me that there was an inner tunnel leading from this main room.”
The cave was perhaps twenty-five feet wide and thirty feet long. The ceiling of rough and jagged stone was fifteen feet high. Thomas hadn’t ever seen anything like it. One portion of the room was carpeted, with a large, worn armchair and a table for eating. There were photographs on the wall nearest to the table, and many yellowed calendars. On the other side of the room was a simple, brass bed. There was a pair of slippers placed neatly beside the bed, and flung across it was a robe.
What light there was in the room came from Mr. Pluto’s forge. There was a fire burning, and his bellows rested on a tree stump next to the forge.
This was the first bellows Thomas had seen. He stared at it for a long time. He had known it would be large, but he had no idea it was such an awesome, strange instrument. A mighty bellows it was, old as an old man and tough and weathered as old Pluto himself had to be.
“Where the devil is he?” Mr. Small said. “He didn’t come out the way we came in … so that leaves just two ways he could have gone.”
Mr. Small crossed the room. There against the far wall was a ladder. Above the ladder in the ceiling, Thomas noticed for the first time, were two wood doors.
“Papa! Look!” Thomas said.
“Yes, I know,” said Mr. Small. “On the other side of those doors is the platform you stumbled upon last night. It’s a trap, you see. He built that platform just so he would know when folks were approaching. You always run into it before you expect to, even when you know where it is. That’s why I came around the hill, so as not to be found out before I was ready.”
Mr. Small climbed part way up the ladder. The doors were locked from the inside. “He didn’t leave from up here.”
“How about the tunnel leading to the horses?” Thomas said.
“You stay here,” said Mr. Small, coming down the ladder. “If I find him, I’ll bring him back with me.”
He left the main cave and was back again in a minute without Mr. Pluto. “Looks like he has vanished into thin air,” he said. “Maybe he is the devil, like you thought.”
Thomas’ father stood by the forge, with his hands deep in his pockets. Thomas knew he hadn’t been serious about old Pluto being the devil. But where was Pluto? And what did he mean by running away from them?
“So there’s another way,” Mr. Small said. “There has to be another way out.”
“A secret way?” Thomas wanted to know.
“At least one he never let on to me about,” Mr. Small said.
Thomas walked around the room. In back of the table in the corner was a woodburning cooking stove. The stovepipe went through a metal plate attached to the wall above the stove. There was more than likely a natural opening to the surface ground, Thomas decided, that would allow the smoke to escape. He put his hand gingerly on one round, iron cooking unit in the stove. It was cold. There was no fire at all.
“We’ll wait for him,” Mr. Small said. “He has to come back. This is his home.”
Thomas walked around and around. He let into his mind everything he saw in the room. He didn’t touch anything there, but he saw all there was to see, and closing his eyes, he remembered where most things were placed. Then, he stood still in the room.
That’s not it, he thought. You can hide something pretty well by putting an object in front of it. You have to know what you’re doing though. Most of the time, you’ll just attract attention. The best way is to leave it out in the open. Leave what?
He spun around the room, taking in the bare part of the floor, that space between the table and the bed. He scanned the walls where the calendars and photographs left off. On the wall opposite, there were many harnesses, many lengths of rope, and some chain. There were clothing hooks. And on the wall nearest to the entrance, there were cooking utensils by the stove; below that Thomas saw a pile of firewood.
On the far wall, above which were the trapdoors in the ceiling, there was nothing save that ladder. And one, single length of rope almost hidden by shadow in the corner.
“Papa …” Thomas started across the room.
Mr. Small had had no intention of waiting all night for Pluto. He remembered his wife alone, locked in the big house. His anger came back, flowing into him cool as night air. He’d been looking the room over all the time. He had come to focus on that blank wall, just as Thomas had.
They both started toward the rope at the same time. It hung from a hook of some kind. Indeed, it was looped somehow, loosely, around an old clothes hook. Mr. Small moved the ladder over to it and climbed up, so that his eye was on a level with the hook. Just above the hook was a smooth hole. Mr. Small saw that the rope came out of the hole. And looped around the hook, it hid the hole entirely. You wouldn’t see it unless you had a chance to stand, as Mr. Small was now, looking sideways at it.
“This is it, Thomas,” Mr. Small said. Carefully he climbed down the ladder and returned it to its position against the wall. He then took hold of the rope. Slowly it pulled down and down, like a bell rope. When he let go of it, it returned to its former position.
Between the ladder and the rope, the wall began to slide. Thomas heard a grating sound. It wasn’t loud, but it was unpleasant, the way the sound of rock rubbing against rock can be. When it stopped, after a moment, that wall had slid back completely. And what now lay before them was far beyond dream, or even nightmare.
Mr. Small took hold of Thomas’ arm. No matter how hard Thomas tried to pull away, his father held onto him and dragged him down.
“Lord!” Mr. Small whispered. “My Lord in heaven, look at that! Look at it! Look at it!”