chapter 50

HOT RAIN

It might be that I have slept for a few minutes. Can see the darkest part of night just ending. I think about light and dark. I sit up. I suck a breath.

I know where Calvin is!

I scramble off the bed. Jump into my pants. I stuff my feet into my open shoes. I hurry. Laces flying. I thunder down the stairs. Hands barely on the rail. I snag the flashlight off the hook and swing the door open. I leap over the ruined porch. Then I run. Full out.

I round to the back of the house. Head for the dip. I call Calvin’s name. My foot lands on something strange. Slippery. Hard and round. My legs go out from under. I go down on my side. The flashlight slams the hill. I can see in the beam. The plastic salad-bowl thing. The cap of the light shaft. It is sliding away. Down the wet hill. Like a saucer sled.

I scramble up. Hurry to the root cellar door. I reach into the thorns and haul it open. Inside, I stand below the Shaft of the Dead Man. All is dark. Too dark. I tip the flashlight up. Shine it into the shaft. What am I seeing? Is it anything?

I call, “Calvin! Calvin!”

Something comes down on me. Like hot rain. Stings my head. Drips down my shoulders and arms. There’s a smell. Not so good. I step up on a bucket. I reach my arm up. Up into the Shaft of the Dead Man. Something fits in my palm. I grab it. Tug it. Pull it down. And there I am holding one tan-sandy shoe.

“Mason?”

“Calvin? Calvin!”

“Mason?”

“Calvin! Oh! Holy cow!”

He says, “I’m sorry . . .”

“What? What did you say?” I talk up into the shaft. “You’re sorry?”

“Yeah . . . I just peed.”

I think this: hot rain.

“But Calvin! It’s you!”

He says, “Yeah. I’m hanging out . . . in the Shaft of the Dead Man.”

He is hard to hear. He is raspy. Like he wants breath and can’t get any. Like he wants to be funny. But this isn’t.

I say, “Aw, Calvin! How? We searched for hours! And then—just now—I woke up and I knew where to find you! Don’t know how. But I knew! But Calvin, I’m going to go get help. So you wait, okay? You wait.”

He says, “I will. I have to. I’m stuck. It’s so tight. And Mason, I’m not in great shape. You need to tell them. I can’t stay awake . . . and . . . and . . .”

“What? And what else?”

Calvin grunts. Then he says, “Tell them I can see my left leg. Because it’s right here by my face . . .”

“Yeah?” I think that does not sound good.

“Yeah. But I can’t feel it. At all. It’s dead asleep. In a bad way. And I’m thirsty, Mason. My head is aching. I’m scared.”

“You hold on, Calvin!” I cry it out loud. “Hold on!” Then I run.