Don hopped out of the truck. “We lose Sabrina?”
“Yeah, she was digging and whoops, there she went.” No greeting, all business—Trevor would match the tone.
The whole street must know what the arrival of Harper and his equipment meant. Doors opened and neighbors converged, all worrying aloud about the reappearance of an old mine shaft on what looked like stable ground. Yeah, they could be next to find evidence of old greed, or perhaps they’d already had a visit from the Shaft Fairy.
“We need to pull the fence, Harper?” called one of the men.
Harper stopped examining the pit long enough to call over his shoulder. “Yes, do. And grab the sections of barrier out of the truck, or we’ll be pulling puggles out of the ground again.”
“What the hell is a puggle?” got mumbled around the growing group. Guess this sort of thing passed for community theater. Trevor hunched up and let Megan pull him back from the shaft.
“Yes, darlin’, we’ll get you out of there, just you wait and see. Won’t be long.” Don pulled a reel wound with a thick metal cord off his belt. “Let’s just see where you are.” From a cautious distance, he threaded the brightly lit end down into the hole. He peered into an eyepiece on the reel. “I see you, darlin’. Don’t be jumping around now.”
He looked up at Trevor. “She’s sitting on a couple of beams, about ten feet down. Looks like the shaft was double capped, and the lower level gave way before the top did. Which means it’s a long, long drop right next to her.”
Trevor’s chill had nothing to do with the wind. “What do we do?”
“I gotta open the shaft enough to get down there and fetch her, Trev. I can’t fit through a hole that size.” Don’s lips thinned out. “And I can’t promise she won’t get scared and jump around, maybe fall.”
Oh fuck, that would be the deepest grave ever dug for a beloved pet. Trevor couldn’t bear to think about Sabrina falling. He swallowed hard.
“What about you falling?”
Don reached to pat Trevor’s shoulder. “I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about her, getting scared of the bucket. I can get her off that ledge, but—she may not be there when I get inside.”
Poor girl, so scared. At least she couldn’t imagine—but Trevor could. “Can you—can we—dig by hand?” Trevor had a shovel; hadn’t he moved a couple of tons of snow last winter?
Don shook his head. “I have to bust old railroad ties. No way are we budging lumber seven inches by nine, buried under three feet of dirt. Sorry, Trev, I been doing this a long time and haven’t found a better way.” He offered open hands. “I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will.” Tears prickled Trevor’s eyes.
“Keep talking to her. I’m gonna get started. Think positive, okay?” Don turned to the neighborhood work gang, who were stacking sections of pickets against the house. A man lifted one of the removable posts, while a teenaged girl pulled the other. “Looking good, guys! Let’s get the man’s dog out of there!”
Don built this fence against the day when it would have to be torn down just like this. Remembering how he’d held the posts upright while Don shoveled cement, Trevor blessed this man’s foresight.
The backhoe started with a belch and a snarl—Don guided it off the back of the trailer, the treads rolling in their never ending track. He steered the great yellow beast bucket first through the gap the crowd opened in his handiwork.
A neighbor pulled Trevor back, away from the mechanical monster. “Don’t worry, he’s done this a hundred times,” confided the woman from two doors down. “The ground gets the winter heaves, and then old shafts open up in the spring. You’d think the blamed things would be marked on a map, but back in the eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, nobody thought to mark more than the claims.”
“You’d think!” added another neighbor. “Why, two years ago a shaft opened up right under my niece’s swing set. Harper set it to rights in no time. Took fourteen twenty-yard dumps of fill, and the lawn still isn’t the same...”
Fuck the lawn. Trevor watched Don maneuver the backhoe into position, crushing one of the junipers. He’d never liked that juniper anyway.
Finally where he wanted to be, Don dropped the outriggers, steadying the machine. Trevor watched his hands through the cab’s window, pulling levers and flicking switches. Please let him know exactly where to aim. Please, Sabrina, be still while Don digs for you.
No point in trying to talk to his dog over the roar of the machine—he could only observe with his heart in his throat. Someone slipped a hand around his elbow, and someone else—Trevor couldn’t stop watching to see who—took his hand. Please, use your gentlest touch.
The great toothy bucket swung on the end of its arm. Don set the teeth against the edge of the hole and pulled back, taking a bite out of the earth.
Even over the roar of the machine, he could hear Sabrina crying. If she was still crying, she could be rescued. Trevor set his teeth into his lip and tried to hear her yelps and wails as hope.
Don pushed levers, swinging around to drop his load, and back to let the bucket take deeper bites out of the ground. The machine strained against soil and thick lumber. Don slid a lever farther, his face wooden with tension. He battled the earth, at last coming up with a load of mud and shattered timbers.
Timbers that had been holding the land up. All that had been holding his back yard level.
A slide of mud dropped into the hole. Sabrina yelped and went silent.
Trevor’s silent comforters held him back when he tried to storm the hole. He’d dig her out, by force of will alone, damn it!
“Don’t!” Megan snarled, trying to break his hand. “Stay back, let Harper do this!”
But—Harper’d warned him she might not make it. If his best wasn’t good enough—! “I have to—” Trevor struggled to get free.
A high squeal split the air. Trevor quit fighting, slumping even while the onlookers cheered.
Harper climbed out of the backhoe with an assortment of straps and ropes. “I think I can get in there now.”
He stepped into a harness, buckling in with sure hands, threading ropes through the hardware dangling from him. He tied in to the backhoe. “Need some volunteers!”
His captors let Trevor go—they would have to be wild horses to keep him from it. He joined the clump of men at the backhoe. “Don’t step beyond here.” Don drew a line in the soil with the toe of his boot. “And be ready to haul.” He handed Trevor and two others a thick braided line. “On belay.”
Oh shit—if it wasn’t bad enough seeing Sabrina fall into the maw of the earth, now Trevor had to watch Don lower himself into the cavity. He let the ropes play through his hands, walking down the side of the too, too quiet shaft.
Trevor couldn’t breathe. Was Sabrina still there? Would they be able to hoist her from the pit? His hands shook, twitching the rope he gripped with all his strength. The men on either side of him had to feel the shaking, but they said nothing, watching the pit, waiting.
Two taut ropes and one loose one trailed into the ground. Long minutes passed, maybe a century. The pounding of his heart should mark the time. Every thud was an eternity.
“Got her!” Harper yelled from the depths. “Pull her up, men!”
Sabrina weighed nothing, or the huge whoosh of indrawn breath was lifting Trevor up to the sky. They pulled, hand over hand, scattering soil where the rope gouged ruts into the earth. At last! A muddy, whimpering puggle appeared at the mouth of the hole. A network of climbing rope crisscrossed her body. Once over the lip of the hole, she struggled to her feet. She staggered to Trevor, her tongue hanging sideways out of her mouth. She all but fell into his arms. The crowd whooped and clapped their approval.
Safe! Oh safe... He could cry from relief, but... “Don!” he yelled.
“Still here,” came out of the pit, along with the dance of a flashlight beam on the shaft’s mouth. “Since I’m down here, I might as well take a good look.”
Still, it was another eternity before a beloved, mud-streaked face appeared in the opening, and somehow it took a year before he stood on firm ground.
“Let’s get that barrier up, folks.” Don pointed and the neighbors scurried to assemble the temporary fence around the hole and the backhoe. “Don’t want to be doing that again any time soon.”
“God, no,” Trevor agreed more quietly. He let Sabrina flop on the ground, and rose to greet her rescuer. “Thank you.”
“I’d say, ‘My pleasure,’ but Trev, that is one deep shaft.” Don wiped his face with his bandana, smearing the mud across more of his cheek. “Don’t let her out except on the leash. It’s about two hundred and fifty feet to the bottom.”
“Dear Lord.” Trevor breathed what could have been a prayer or a thanks. “How many twenty-yard dump loads is that?”
“Depends on how it packs. Could be fifteen, could be twenty-two.” Don glanced at the hole, and wouldn’t return his gaze to Trevor’s face. “Either way, the county shaft abatement officer is going to be hanging around until it’s done.”
“Best thing I’ve heard all day.” Trevor wouldn’t reach up to thumb the dirt from Don’s face when the neighbors hadn’t all dispersed once the excitement was over. Especially since everyone wanted to come pat the scritch-whore victim of the piece. Sabrina soaked it up and made sure they had an audience, waving her curly tail and snuffling all over their hands. She strained at the end of her makeshift leash to reach her admirers. Resilient little bitch.
“Really?”
Mindful of the bystanders, Trevor kept it to, “Really. Want to come inside and wash up?”