Building Blocks (7 page)

“I've got to,” Brann answered. Now I know how, he thought to himself. Besides, he'd go crazy living in this house. He wondered hwy Kevin hadn't gone crazy already. “I really have to,” he said. “It's fate.”

That was what you said when you couldn't possibly explain.

The two boys had finished the castle close. That was Kevin's name for it. Brann would have named it a fortress. It was a castle enclosed by a tall wall, like a fence around a farmyard. The boys made little buildings inside the wall, sheds and storage barns, for animals and for supplies; an overseer's house, a blacksmiths' forge, a silversmith's hut, a mill and a granary, a gardener's hut (because the castle itself had extensive vegetable gardens). Kevin explained that the serfs would have had their homes outside the close, near the fields. The gateway, built up as high as Brann's knees, was broad enough to let to wagons through. It would have had a heavy spiked gate that was lowered every evening and raised in the morning. If the lord was away from his castle, the gate would always be kept down and only raised to admit people who were recognized by the lady or the steward. But if the lord was home then the castle gate was kept raised during the day, because he could fight to defend it.

“What if he was too old to fight?” Brann asked. “What if he was a bad fighter, or a coward?”

“He wouldn't have the castle if he couldn't fight to hold it. He'd have lost it to some other lord and he might go be a monk and illustrate manuscripts, or be in service to some stronger lord. If he was old—like my grandfather, you mean? He'd have his sons, and the eldest son would run things and the lord would move into a tower or someplace out of the way.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I read a book,” Kevin said. “My grandparents didn't have any sons, only daughters.”

“It's hot up here,” Brann said. With the door closed, the one window didn't draw any air in. Brann's whole body felt sticky with sweat. He went to stand by the window, looking down at the yard and the roof of the garage and the big house behind this one.

“Because it's a river valley—the Ohio River Valley—and the air goes along the river. It's always hot and muggy here in summer.”

“And the caves go right under the river? Like a tunnel?” Brann asked.

“That's what they say. But not like a tunnel. Because they're caves formed when rocks shift, or slide,
the strata, you know? Not by erosion like caverns.”

“I wouldn't mind seeing those caves. Have you ever been in them?”

Kevin shook his head. Of course not, Brann thought, looking at him; he'd be too scared.

“What's that farm like?” Brann asked, just to be doing
something
, even just talking. Kevin told him about the hills and the river there, the same river, the Ohio, only dirtier because of the big mill towns along it, between Sewickley and the arm. Kevin talked about harvesting hay, about milking cows so early in the morning that stars still shone in the sky, and about mucking out the stalls and the mingled smells of manure and dry hay and warm animals. He talked about spending all morning on a tractor, to weed out the long rows of corn, and the way the sun beat down until the skin on your hands cracked, and you had to hold the wheel so hard—because if you didn't the sweat would make it slip out of control and you'd rip out the young corn plants—that you could barely unclench your hands at the end of the day. His Uncle Andrew talked all the time, stories and advice about life, jokes.

“You really like your uncle, don't you?” Brann
asked. He wondered why his father had never talked about Uncle Andrew.

“Yeah. I guess I do. And he likes me,” Kevin answered. “He really does.”

“Are you going to be a farmer when you grow up?” Brann expected the answer to be yes.

“I don't know what I'm going to be. I'd like to draw—magazines have a lot of drawings in them and someone must do them. Or greeting cards and calendars. My mother says that's all well and good, but I should be practical. She says I should look for something that uses drawing, because otherwise I won't be able to earn a living.”

“Does she like your drawings?”

“She likes them OK,” Kevin said. “She says, I'm no genius but I have some talent, and you have to work on talent to train it.”

Brann nodded. That was good advice, even if it didn't sound exactly enthusiastic.

“She wouldn't say that if she didn't mean it,” Kevin announced, with confidence.

“I guess not,” Brann said. “Why didn't you tell her it was Suzanne's fault this morning?”

Kevin shrugged. “Anyway, it was my responsibility.”

“When can we go out again?” Brann asked. He was getting really restless, with this feeling . . . exploding inside him, waiting to find out what the special thing would be.

“When my mother calls.”

“Show me some drawings, will you?”

When the phone rang three times, then stopped, the two boys were sitting on the bed, looking at some drawings Kevin had made of faces. (He didn't know how to make noses. He drew a nose in one line and then put two nostril dots beside it. Brann's father had taught him how to make noses by shading.) Kevin took the three little children down the street to stay with a neighbor. “They go there two afternoons a week, when my mom does the books,” he explained to Brann. “The Grynowskis have six kids of their own, and she feeds them supper. Other days their kids come to our house.”

“I'm glad I came on a day when yours are going there,” Brann said. Suzanne stuck her tongue out at him. Brann decided to wait for Kevin on the back steps.

“You won't go away, will you?” Kevin asked. “I'll only be five minutes, maybe ten. Then we can do something.”

Brann couldn't possibly fall asleep in five or ten minutes. He wasn't even tired. All of his nerves were jangling. “I'll be here,” he said. He felt trapped, even though he knew the way to get out, even though he was waiting for his adventure to begin. Every hour in this place—time—was like a year, a heavy and hopeless year. And thinking about Kevin—about his father—who lived there—it made Brann feel even more jangled. He really wanted to go back home—except he was curious to know why this was happening for him.

Kevin was running when he came back. He stopped in front of where Brann sat on the porch steps. “What do you want to do?” he asked.

“I want to see the caves.”

“Why?”

“I've never seen caves.”

“I'm sorry,” Kevin said. “We can't. We're not allowed.”

“But who would know? Is it far?”

“No, but—”

“Have you got a flashlight?”

“Yes, but—”

“Let's get it.”

Brann had made up his mind and he just swept Kevin along, because the kid was easy to sweep along. The way to do it was just not to give him time to answer. The flashlight was in a kitchen drawer, a heavy metal one, and Kevin ran upstairs to tell his grandparents he was going out now.

“We aren't allowed,” Kevin reminded Brann.

“You aren't allowed,” Brann told him. “Nobody's said anything to me.” That was a weak argument, he knew, but he also knew how to win arguments with Kevin, like his mother did. “Look, I know you're scared but you don't have to go in or anything. I just want to see them. You won't be breaking any rules or anything. You aren't scared just to take me there, are you?”

Kevin shook his head, no, his face ashamed.

“Then let's go,” Brann urged him.

They crossed a couple of streets, then went up a road that wound with steep curves up a wooded hillside. They trudged up the hillside, with Brann urging Kevin to go faster, to keep going. “I'm sorry,” Kevin said. Brann didn't answer, just grunted his impatience.

Along the top of the hill was a cemetery, with dirt roads twisting through it. The entrance to the cemetery was marked by a statue of an angel with a sword,
a monument to the men who died in the Civil War. Brann turned to look down the steep wooded hillside. At the foot of the hill the houses of the town began. Beyond, he saw the Ohio River, lying in the sun. It didn't look bad from that distance, especially with the wooded hills rising on its far side.

“It's nice, isn't it?” Kevin asked.

It was cooler up on the hill. All around thick green grass spread between the tombstones, and lush trees spread their branches. But nice?

“There's nothing nice about being dead,” Brann said. “Let's go.”

This steep, blufflike hill undulated back into grassy fields, with woods edging them. The entrance to the caves was right at the edge of a field, where a few trees grew. A sudden short hillside among the sparse trees lay covered with dried leaves from past falls and a few dead branches. The opposite hillside rose up as sharply, making a miniature ravine. Kevin led Brann halfway down the slope, the leaves rustling under their bare feet, making it sound like fall underfoot even though the air around them was thick with summer. “They're here,” Kevin said.

Brann looked around. “Here?” He looked for
some undergrowth that would mask the entrance to a cave.

The entrance wasn't masked, it was just hard to see. It didn't look like the entrance to anything. It looked like the narrow end of the ravine, with the big tree roots above. But once you knew where to look, you could see through the natural camouflage to a narrow slipping away, where a gap was created by the floor of the ravine falling down below the rise of the hill. Brann went right up to the entrance. It was so low, he had to bend over to shine the flashlight in. Kevin stood ten feet behind him, and even with his back to the younger boy Brann could feel the fear pouring out of him. He didn't pay any attention.

The beam of light showed the floor falling away. It looked like a slide, you could slide right down it.

“I've never been in a cave,” Brann said, without moving his head.

“Anyway,” Kevin answered.

“I'm going in,” Brann decided.

“Don't. Please?”

“Look, other kids must have, if they talk about it. That's true, isn't it?”

“Yes, but—”

“I won't go far. You don't have to come.” In fact, Brann didn't want Kevin with him. This was his adventure, for him. “Wait here, I won't be long.”

“But Brann—”

Brann lay on his back, his legs extending into the sloped entrance. He held the flashlight against his abdomen, to protect it with his body in case the tunnel narrowed unexpectedly. He elbowed himself forward and down.

“Brann?” he heard behind him, before he slid out of hearing.

The leaves hadn't entered far into the tunnel, and he could move under his own control, he could even sit up, resting his torso on his elbows. He could have walked down hunched over, he realized, it wasn't so steep after all, and the roof was higher than he'd thought. Daylight filtered in behind him and the beam of the flashlight probed ahead.

The slope lasted no more than twenty feet. At its end the floor leveled and Brann sat for a minute, moving the flashlight around. It was about the size of a walk-in closet, this area. A couple of spider webs, but everything else rocks: uneven rock walls, an uneven rock floor, the ceiling smoother rock.
There was still a little daylight behind him.

Brann stood up and examined the walls. If it was part of the underground railway, there had to be a way forward, unless that was just a story. But Kevin didn't tell stories like that, to boast. He moved around to the right, along the wall, and sure enough he saw a narrow opening, behind an outcrop of rock. It was half his height, and he crouched down to send the flashlight beam in. A kind of tunnel; he'd have to crawl. But at the end, deeper darkness, like another room, and not a long tunnel. Brann made himself look around at the closet room he was in, memorizing the appearance of the outcropping rock. He wasn't going to be careless about this, and he knew he had a good memory. Then he crawled into the tunnel.

No daylight here, nothing but heavy black darkness. The flashlight, held in his right hand, clunked on the ground. Stupid, he said to himself, and moved it to his mouth, thinking that that must be why miners had lights on their hats. He wouldn't like to lose that flashlight or have it break on him.

The stones rubbed at his shoulders and cut sharp at the fabric of his jeans. Like a dog following a scent, he followed the beam of light, slowly, his head down
to keep from banging it against the ceiling.

The light splayed out in front of him at the same time he felt the ceiling lift. He felt down, over the edge of the tunnel, with his right hand. Nothing.

Brann felt a second of panic, as pleasurable as a good horror movie. All he had to do was back out the slow ten feet, no problem. No reason to give up. He took the flashlight out of his mouth and shone it ahead. He couldn't see anything across, so it had to be a big room, a real cave. Flat on his belly now, he scraped forward, until his head and shoulders were out in the empty blackness. He directed the light down. And it was going to be easy, he just hadn't reached down far enough to find the floor of this room. It wasn't even a two foot drop, he just had to be careful with the flashlight.

Careful also to memorize what he could. He looked at the shape of the opening, hunching backwards to do so. He hunched forward again and twisted his neck around to check the walls he could see. Then he slowly, cautiously, careful never to come even close to being off balance, edged his body onto the floor of the room. And stood up.

A sharp pain in his heel, a reflex jerk away, but his
grip tightened on the flashlight. He'd stepped on something sharp. The light showed uneven stones, some of them sharp edged, jutting up. He should have shoes on. He grinned.

So far so good. Now the misty edge of light showed the shadowy opposite of the room, showed a ceiling five feet over his head. If he stuck to the wall he could check the way the cave went form here. But first he buried the front of the flashlight against his backside, to get the feeling of what it was like in here. He didn't want to turn it off, just in case, but he did want to get the real feeling.