This letter is getting too long. My hand's cramped from writing. I need to get some homework done. Almost seven o'clock, and nearly dark out already. I'd better try to get Enid to eat something. Don't have any appetite myself. Duane, I wish Oh, never mind.
Your friend, Marjory
1
Three days after Marjory mailed her last letter to Duane, he found it, by accident, and read it.
He was baby-sitting, on a Friday night, for his four-year-old half sister Raybeth and another little girl from next door, Emmy McClure. Duane's stepmother, Nannie Dell, a civic-minded woman, had gone to a Williamson County Planning Board hearing that had to do with traffic on their street and the need for four-way stop signs. The two girls were at that age where they could be a real handful. Now that it was getting dark and also pretty cold by seven in the evening, Duane couldn't keep them outdoors on the swings and in the sandbox, and there was nothing on TV that interested them. So they chased around the house and he tried to keep track of them while reading a couple of chapters of
Moby Dick,
a novel he found nearly impenetrable but had to do a lengthy report on over the weekend.
After a prolonged silence that made him uneasy, Duane called from the living room, "Raybeth, where are you?"
"Inna kitchen."
"What're you doing in the kitchen?"
"Cookies."
Emmy giggled. Raybeth whispered something. Duane put the novel down on the living room couch and strolled to the kitchen. The girls had opened a box of cinnamon graham crackers and poured glasses of milk for themselves, but somebody's hand wasn't too steady; milk was dripping off the dinette table to the floor. They were trying to clean up the puddles with dish towels.
"Was a accident," Raybeth said. She had a way of looking at him with her lower lip stuck out that made him want to laugh, but Raybeth had in > sense of humor and if he laughed or even smiled at her when he had the guilts, she would kick him in the shins. Then he would hang her upside down by the ankles and threaten to shake her until her blue eyes dropped out of her head like marbles. When Duane did that, it always got back to Nannie Dell, who would then give him a well-reasoned, patient lecture on all the damage that might result from blood rushing to Raybeth's teeny brain. He didn't enjoy the lectures, but there was no arguing with Nannie Dell. There was no arguing with Patience and Virtue. Besides, she always defended him in conflicts with his father, when John Wesley Eggleston was in one of his prickly, hypercritical moods.
"I'll do that," Duane said. "Eat your cookies."
He wrung out both towels in the sink, rinsed them, and finished wiping the table. They'd emptied the half-gallon milk carton, so he carried it to the flip-top garbage can by the back door. The garbage can was lined with a brown paper sack from Kroger's, and it was full. Might as well carry the sack outside to the galvanized garbage cans by the garage. When he picked it up the bottom of the paper sack, which was soggy, opened, and three days' worth of garbage dumped on the floor.
The girls shrieked with laughter.
"Duane made a mess!"
The back of Duane's neck got red, but he didn't say anything. Eggshells, coffee grounds, sparerib bones, grease,
shit. A
fat white envelope, sealed with Scotch tape, that looked as if it hadn't been opened. Curious, he picked it up, pulled off a teabag that was sticking to the flap, and turned it over. The letter, dated the fifteenth, was from Marjory. Duane was jolted. What was
his
letter doing in the garbage? Had Nannie Dell thrown it out accidentally? No way, she paid the household bills and kept meticulous files. She never threw away any legitimate piece of correspondence. If the letter was in the garbage, it was there on purpose.
He put the letter on the sink counter and got out the dust pan, loaded a fresh paper bag with the garbage and carried it outside, frowning, pulses tingling in his wrist.
"Read us a
story!"
Raybeth demanded when he returned. Four was a very demanding age.
"When I get ready, badbreath," Duane said sulkily.
"Mommy said don't
ever
call me that!"
"Put a lid on it, Raybeth. Go up to your room and pick out a storybook and I'll be there in a minute."
When the girls were out of the kitchen Duane slit the envelope and read the letter standing up against the sink. He was incredulous at first, then angry. Then so frightened he couldn't breathe right.
"Duane! You said!"
"Raybeth, I'm coming. Just wait a minute! Play with your Play-doh or something."
There was a telephone in the kitchen. Duane looked in his wallet for Marjory's phone number. His hands were trembling, he had to dial twice.
It rang nineteen times before he gave up. Duane chewed his lip. His face was hot. He picked up the receiver again, glancing at the wall clock. It was a quarter to nine. He was supposed to have put the girls down for the night at eight-thirty. He dialed information for Sublimity, Tennessee, and eventually was connected to the sheriffs department.
"I need to get hold of one of your deputies, Ted Lufford."
"Deputy Lufford is off this week."
"Can I call him at home? What's the number?"
"Son, we don't give out that information."
"Well, could you call him for me, and ask him to get back to me? My name's Duane Eggleston, and I live in Franklin, Tennessee. Look, this is very,
very
important."
While he waited to hear from Ted, Duane went upstairs, still tingling from apprehension.
"We want to take a bath."
"All right, I'll run your bathwater."
The phone rang while the girls were splashing in the tub with thirty-nine plastic toys. Duane ran down the hall to his parents' room and took the call there.
"Mr. Eggleston? This is Deputy Purloe of the Caskey County Sheriffs Department. You asked me to relay a message that you wanted to get in touch with Deputy Lufford? I'm sorry, but we're told he's out of town and won't be back until Sunday night."
"Thank you," Duane said, swallowing hard. He hung up and thought,
Boyce.
"Duane, we're ready to get out of the tub now!"
"Yeah, hold on, I'm coming."
It was nine-thirty by the time he had them in bed in Raybeth's room. She held him to his promise to read a storybook.
"You're reading too
fast."
Duane took a breath and read more slowly, fussed with their blankets, left a nightlight on, and said as he closed the door, "No talking." He ran back down the hall to the telephone.
"'Lo?"
"Hey, Boyce, this's Duane!"
"This isn't Boyce, it's Lamar."
"Oh, yeah, hey, how're you doing, Lamar? Your voice change since I saw you last? Is he home, I really need to talk to—"
"Naw, the football team's in Lebanon, they won't none of 'em be back until after midnight."
"Oh, football game, must be where everybody is tonight, I couldn't get hold of—”
"I'd be there to, but I'm grounded."
"Yeah, well, good talking to you, Lamar, have Boyce call me.
I
don
't
care what time he gets in."
Duane hung up. The furnace was on but he felt chilly, a little nauseated. He tried Marjory's house again, with no results.
That didn't leave many options, Duane thought. Call the Caskey County Sheriffs Department one more time, have them go by the house.
What's it about, sir?
Well, I think—I mean it could be—it has to do with—just go look, goddammit, they could be dead! Or—worse.
Duane heard Nannie Dell on the front porch, saying good night to the neighbor who had given her a lift to the Planning Board meeting. His father was out of town on business. The family car, a Buick Riviera, was in the garage, but Nannie Dell couldn't drive. Duane's father wouldn't teach her. He liked having her as close to the house as possible at all times.
Their bedroom was strictly off-limits to Duane, although not to Raybeth. He was not allowed in there for any reason.
He heard Nannie Dell call cheerfully, "Duane!" as she came in the front door. He sat rigidly on the side of the high bed with the hand-pieced Appalachian star-pattern quilt and didn't answer.
Nannie Dell walked up the stairs and turned down the hall to Raybeth's room. All was peaceful there. She walked back to her own room, opened the door, and stopped short.
"Why, Duane."
He just stared at her. She was wearing a gray skirt and burnt-orange sweater, and, as usual, thickly braided pigtails that, came down over her shoulders and hung, perfectly straight and glossy, below her breasts. She had a clasp envelope in one hand. She was unaccustomed to Duane staring at her; open hostility on his part was unheard of. Nannie Dell moistened her full unpainted lips and decided to smile, a trifle sternly.
"I believe you know you're not supposed to be in here. What—is something wrong?"
"Yes."
"Well—whatever it is, you look terribly upset. Why don't you give me a few minutes, and then we'll have a talk about—"
Duane pulled Marjory's letter from inside his denim jacket and just held it, not taking his eyes off Nannie Dell. She batted her thick lashes a few times, and pursed her lips.
"This is a letter from Marjory Waller," Duane said in a low voice, gravelly from anger. "She's written me three letters in the past couple of months. She's called, too. What happened to those letters? Why didn't you tell me Marjory called?"
Nannie Dell took a deep, thoughtful breath, summoning Patience, alerting Virtue. She put her envelope aside and joined her hands, not quite prayerfully, in front of her.
"Well, Duane—" she began.
Duane sprang off the bed, thrusting the letter at Nannie Dell, who swayed back, mouth ajar.
"I want to know where you get the nerve to throw a letter addressed to me in the
fucking garbage!"
"Duh . . . waaaayne!"
He began to sob. "I put up with everything else . . . around here, all of
his
shit, but not you . . . I really liked you! Don't you know what you've
done,
Nannie Dell?"
"Duane, you'll wake the children."
"I don't care! You can't treat me this way! I can't get hold of Marjory! I know she's in terrible trouble, but what am I supposed to
do?"
"Duane, John Wesley and I. . . all those awful things happened, and it was on
television,
and they made it seem like—you were some sort of delinquent, and after what happened with that car—don't you see, for your own good he just didn't want you
involved
in anything else,
involved
with that girl we know nothing about! I'm sure when you think about it, you'll appreciate that he was only protecting—"
Duane turned away from Nannie Dell, face contorted, sobbing, humiliated and powerless. "That son of a bitch. Son of a bitch, I fucking
hate
him, you hear me?"
"Duane, you may not ever,
ever
speak about John Wesley again in that—”
"That's fine! I won't! I won't talk about him, or to him! I've
had
it!"
Tears flowed down Nannie Dell's flawless cheeks. "Duane, you don't mean it. I'm sorry . . . I knew it was wrong, but it's what John Wesley wanted me to do. I'm a Christian woman. I can't defy my husband. Duane, I'm sure if we approach this problem in a prayerful manner, everything will be—"
"No it won't." He stared at her, blinking away tears. "If you ever saw what I saw when I was in that cave, your tongue would stick to the roof of your mouth. You'd never pray again, Nannie Dell, because you'd know it wouldn't be any damn use."
Duane sagged. He sniffed a couple of times, and then a fresh spate of crying drove him out of her room and to his own room, where he had the presence of mind to lock the door behind him before he fell on his bed with his face deep in a pillow, so deep he couldn't hear Nannie Dell pleading with him outside in the hall, and she couldn't hear his sobs.
2
About ten-thirty they saw the lights of the pickup truck coming along the winding track in the Evernola National Forest, and the two cavers who had been hunkered down beside a campfire got up to stretch and throw away what cold coffee was left in their tin mugs. The driver of the pickup flashed his spotlight on the campsite and they signaled back with their hands in the glare.
There were three men crowded into the front seat of the pickup, which belonged to Wingo County Deputy Sheriff Wayne Buck Vedders. The other men were Ted Lufford and his first cousin, an explosives expert named Bill Whipkey, Jr. Ted introduced them to the cavers, two men in their thirties who preferred not to give their last names. The cavers were both undersized men, dirty, smelly, and bearded. They wore orange coveralls and pockmarked metal helmets with carbide lamps. They'd been underground for the better part of five days.
The caver who called himself Rex unrolled a hand-drawn map and said to them, "Maybe found what you're looking for. It's a big room, about three thousand feet from where we're standing right now. Honeycomb walls, some kind of hairy stuff all over the floor." Ted nodded. "Boogers, too. How many boogers you reckon, Alvy?"
"I must've counted two dozen boogers. Scariest sight I ever seen in my life."
"Naw, the scary part was when that radio cut loose. All them voices screaming." Rex laughed uneasily. "I thought sure the boogers was after us. I don't have much hair on my head, but I know all the hair around my peter done turned white. Hell, it shrunk up so bad I can't even
find
my peter no more."
Wayne Buck Vedders said, "You need to see one flitting around, that'll set you up for a coronary anytime."
Rex said, "What the hell they be?"
"All we're sure about," Ted explained, "is that they are something purely unnatural we don't want running around aboveground. And the first of next week the state proposes to start pulling the boogers out of that cave and giving them what they call a proper burial."
"Seen 'em yourself, Deputy?"
"No, but they were well described to me."
The caver named Al watched Whipkey unload his gear from the back of the pickup. "Shit. If he's got nitroglycerin, then you can count me out of this party."
"It's all plastic," Ted assured him. "Billy's just back from two years of blowing gook tunnels in Veet Nam."
"That's good. 'Cause it's three or four vertical drops and a couple of muddy squeezes afore we get to where you want to go."
"What's a squeeze?" Wayne Buck Vedders asked.
Al grinned. The front of his mouth was all but toothless. "A squeeze is a hole in the rock that's about twice as tight as your Aunt Minnie's asshole. Can't get through on your hands and knees; got to wriggle. The ceiling drips like a pisser most everywhere, and the humidity's a hundred percent. That's the bad news. The good news is we didn't see no transparent alligators. Them kind can be a bother."
Bill Whipkey came over to the group around the campfire carrying his backpack by the straps, and an unwrapped loaf of plastic explosive in the other hand.
"I ain't much for crawling on my belly. I travel first class when I go, and this stuffs my ticket."
Rex, looking at the plastic, shook his head woefully. "Ever make any mistakes?"
"Still waiting on my first."
"How's your peter hanging now?" Ted asked Rex.
"It's hangin' out the back," Rex said.