Lying flat on his stomach on top of the leaves, Tristan inspects the silent hole. From time to time, he gently calls, “Dumestre?” No answer comes back up from the pit. He waits. He thinks.
Go down. Join Dumestre. Revive him. Carry him on your back. Go back up the slope with Dumestre’s body that weighs one and a half times your own. Be a hero. Find the strength.
“Dumestre?”
The sun rises and Tristan starts to make out the contours inside the tunnel. Colors appear, melted together at first but growing more and more distinct as his vision adapts. He squints. It’s like when you don’t know how to read, and the letters, those indecipherable freight cars of the sentence train, file past and escape you.
Blood rushes into his tilted head. Dizziness overtakes his brain. Nausea in his stomach. In one bound, Tristan gets up, rubs his temples, breathes deeply. There’s nothing to do. Just wait. The others must have reached the car.
Dumestre’s car.
The key to Dumestre’s car.
In the pocket of Dumestre’s jacket.
At the bottom of the hole Dumestre fell into.
At what moment could they have realized? He’s only just thought of it. He pictures them in front of the good old Citroën, the impenetrable, locked Citroën.
He imagines their feet kicking the tires, hears the swearing. You couldn’t have thought of this, you dickhead? Dreads the fight. The loaded guns. The restless bullets. The relief of the blast. Sees them running, toward the road, making hand signals. The local highway is less than two miles away. They just need to run. In half an hour, they’ll be there, attracting drivers, calling for help on the cell phone.
Be patient. Two hours instead of one. What’s the difference?