Travelers Rest (28 page)

“We tried to be nice to you when you came here,” Ruby said.

“You sure did,” Robbie said. “You guys were solid. You were aces. I enjoyed that night we went up and down the stairs.” Ruby and Rusty and Ray and Miles looked at one another. “I've actually got a question for you,” Robbie said. “There's something I'm concerned about with Stephanie. Hang on just a second. I've gotta take a leak.”

He turned as quickly as he could without seeming hurried and walked past Ruby. He counted in his head—thousand one, thousand two, thousand three. There was the men's room door to his right. To his left was another familiar door. Next to it lay the cat he'd seen when he was stuck in the stairwell.

This was exactly what he'd been afraid of, what the rock in his gut and the annoying voice had been telling him lay in his future. Calmly, he opened the door on the left, stepped through, and shut the door behind him. Then he ran like hell down the rickety stairs, back into the nightmare labyrinth, hoping to find his way across the street.

I
t was stupid, of course, to try to go down a mine shaft without a light. You would think an anthropology professor had enough sense to procure a flashlight, no matter how difficult that might have proved to be under the circumstances, before attempting to crawl down a black hole. But no. Here he was.

The gray light from the clouds extended just a few feet into the shaft, and after that it was all black. But he continued. This was where he believed he was being led. As long as the slope was gradual, he could take it slowly, step by step, feeling his way amid the rocks and clutter. In a sense, there was no point to it. What was he, a grown man, doing groping his way down an abandoned mine shaft, an empty hole, in the middle of nowhere? He was looking for his son. He was also, he knew, looking for himself. And in that respect, he had already achieved something—he felt more lucid than he had in days, maybe in weeks, perhaps ever.

Nothing existed in the world but him and this darkness. It was as if he were sprouting, as if he had been planted in this very spot where his feet searched for purchase on the hard, damp ground. For most of his life he had maintained a rigid certainty regarding objective reality that even now he steadfastly clung to…but maybe he was starting to grant reality some wiggle room. Or maybe it was just that objective reality encompassed more than he had bargained for. Here in the total blackness where, if he stood completely still, he could imagine that he existed only as a form of consciousness, he could see how life stretched out in space and time to encompass everything. The individual was the universal and the universal was the individual, no difference between the two, each wrapping itself inside out with the other—a black hole could be right here in this small town in Idaho, it could form inside a human heart, and the farthest galaxies in space existed only because people had discovered them.

The problem with this wealth of lucidity was that it didn't accomplish much. It wasn't getting him his life back. It wasn't helping to find Dewey or Julia. He was just standing here, in a hole in the ground, in the dark. Or was it dark? His eyes were confused, no two ways about it. In the absence of any light, the synapses were apt to play tricks on you, but he could see a red glow far off in his vision. He shut his eyes and the red scar cut through the space behind his sight, growing sharper the tighter his eyes were closed. When he opened his eyes again, the light was brighter, closer, as if he had coaxed it into coming near. He held out his hand and could begin to see his fingers. The light widened like an iris, and soon he clearly saw a figure, a bearded man wearing a miner's cap, bent somewhat at the waist, clambering up the incline with an oil lamp in his hand. In what seemed to be mere seconds, the man was positioned in front of him, breathing heavily, wiping his forehead with his free hand.

“You're Diamond,” Tonio said.

The man chuckled, then wiped his face, then chuckled again. “Yes, Mr. Addison, I'm Diamond. I'm still Diamond.”

The man stood there looking at him in the lamplight. Tonio wasn't sure whether it was an effect of the lamp, or the sharpness of the light in contrast with the utter blackness of the mine shaft, but Diamond's blue eyes appeared almost glacial in their depths, as if the lenses were layered inward.

“Come, Mr. Addison,” Diamond said. “It's the middle of the night. This is no place to be. Come with me.” And he started shuffling back toward the entrance.

“But I came here for a reason,” Tonio told him. “And it's warm. I haven't been warm…” And he shook his head trying to remember for how long.

“I know,” Diamond said. “Believe me, I know it's easy to get confused.” He was still moving back toward the mine entrance. Tonio reached out and grabbed his shirtsleeve, which was oily and cold to the touch. Diamond turned on him reproachfully, his icy eyes forming hard crystals in the orange lamplight.

“I understand who you are,” Tonio said, even though he wasn't sure how. “But I came here because I believe something has been leading me to this place. I came here because I believe I'll see my son.”

Diamond's eyes softened. The pupils narrowed and the irises flattened out, adjusting to the light like those of a nocturnal animal. “Mr. Addison,” he said, “I appreciate the sentiment. You're a fine man. I'd sooner work for you than any pit boss I ever had. But I'm telling you that you're mistaken here.”

“I'm not mistaken,” Tonio said. “I'm more certain right now than I've ever been in my life.”

Diamond blinked his strange eyes, pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket, and wiped the back of his neck. It was warmer here than it had any reason to be.

“Of what?” Diamond asked him.

“That I'm supposed to be here.”

Diamond lowered the lamp to his side and his face was lit weirdly from below, one eye glistening in the light, the other dull and dark. “It's my job to keep people from passing through.”

“Your
job?
” Tonio said. “You
work
here?”

“I've worked here a long time,” Diamond said. “You know that. It's dangerous here. It's my job to protect people, to keep them from passing through. This place is too close to things.”

“
This
place,” Tonio said. His sense of well-being had evaporated. He felt suddenly as if he'd been confronting obstacles like Diamond all his life. “What about that crazy hotel?” he said. “What about
that
place?”

“The hotel is Mr. Tiffany's affair. It belongs to him.”

“Well, who does this place belong to? It's an abandoned mine shaft. Who says I can't come in here?”

The suggestion of a smile took shape in a corner of Diamond's mouth, but his eyes, or at least the one Tonio could see, looked tired. He pulled off his cap and ran his fingers back through his hair. “‘All our dreams are true'?” He put his cap back on and held up the lamp and peered into Tonio's face.

“Right,” Tonio said. “I saw the sign.”

Diamond shook his head and lowered the oil lamp again. “I'd say the sign is about equal parts promise and warning. If you…” His cheeks, which had been drawn up tightly, suddenly loosened and fell, and his mouth opened. His eyes were trained over Tonio's shoulder. “It's too late now,” he said. “You won't be able to leave, Mr. Addison.”

Tonio turned to find another light meandering down from the entrance, this one obviously a flashlight beam, steady and strong and white against the walls. The shaft was now lit from two directions, Tonio situated in the middle, so that he was almost blinded no matter which way he turned. He held up a hand against the flashlight beam, and he discerned the shadowy form of the intruder, a smallish person who appeared to be carrying a rifle in his left hand. He was being tricked in some way, cornered, trapped—but Diamond's expression indicated that he was just as confused as Tonio.

Together they watched the figure assume a certain size, take on a certain shape, and Tonio's breath left him so fast that he could barely stay on his feet. He managed to set himself in motion, his legs like an old man's, uncooperative and shaky, but still he stumbled ahead. For just a moment he saw clearly the curly head of hair and the familiar gait before the flashlight struck the ground and threw a wobbly light on the rocky wall. And then he was grasping him tight, his own son, Dewey.

These strange few days dissolved and faded, and he knew that in this moment he had reached his objective, that he had found both Dewey and himself, because the only self he knew anymore lived inside this boy, was sparked to life by their connection. When you wanted something, when you waited for it and wouldn't let it go, when you fought so hard in your own mind that the absence of the desired object became impossible, then the desired object returned to you, or you forced your way to it, because it contained a true part of yourself. The best part of him was in this boy. With this boy he had shot baskets in the driveway, with this boy he had collected shells. This boy he had pulled in the wagon, and when the wagon tipped, and the boy scraped his chin, and he could see in those eyes the look of pain and betrayal, it was he, Tonio, who had soothed the wound and made it better.

He had thought just minutes earlier that he was making discoveries about the world, but, it turned out, there were only a few things he really knew in it, and one of them was the feel of this child in his arms. He lowered himself to his knees, and Dewey's hand patted his hair.

“Is Mom with you?” Dewey said.

He could feel his son's heartbeat, how it fluttered with hope. “No,” he said. “We'll find her. I thought maybe she was with you.”

They stayed like that for a while in the warm cave with the flashlight shining against the wall. He breathed in and out against Dewey's wool sweater and he could feel Dewey breathing back. It was some time before he realized that Diamond was gone.

It didn't matter. There was no reason that Diamond should be there. But the shaft seemed darker than before, and peering over Dewey's shoulder in the dim light he saw that the iron gate was closed. He stood and grasped Dewey's shoulder for a moment and walked resolutely to the cave entrance, stumbling a little over the rocks, and then Dewey was behind him with the light. The gate was shut all the way and there was no handle and no lock on the inside of the door.

He pushed and shoved and prodded for all he was worth. He banged until his fists were sore and he shouted until he was hoarse, until his lungs ached with the pressure of shouting, until the mine shaft seemed to burst with the accumulated noise. He shouted until Dewey grew alarmed at all the shouting, and then he shouted some more, but no one came.

Finally he sat down, exhausted, and Dewey sat down with him. Now that, for the first time since they'd arrived here, he couldn't get at the snow, he was very thirsty.

He thought to turn off the flashlight. It was dark and quiet and beyond the iron door no doubt the snow still fell outside. Someone was chopping wood somewhere, a steady
thock, thock, thock.
People still existed in the outside world, even if they paid no attention.

“It's a big mine,” Dewey said. “There's another entrance somewhere.”

“We'll find it,” he said. “I hope this flashlight has good batteries.”

“It does,” Dewey said. “It belonged to Hector Jones's dad. He made sure it had good batteries.”

“Who?”

“I'll tell you later,” Dewey said, and with that he took the flashlight from his father's hand and turned on the beam and stood up and wiped off his pants. “Let's go, Dad,” he said.

Tonio stood up and brushed himself off. “All right,” he said. “Let's go find Mom. Let's get out of here.”

They made their way down the shaft. Dewey stopped to pick up the gun where he'd dropped it. He handed Tonio the flashlight.

“It's just a pellet gun,” Dewey said.

The shaft followed a gentle curve downward and to the right, and the ground was drier and the footing better the farther along they went. Tonio asked Dewey questions: Yes, he had been staying in the hotel. Yes, by himself. There wasn't any food or running water, so he had been eating and using the restroom at the diner. Hugh and Lorraine were very nice and looked after him. They made sure he washed up in the kitchen sink and brushed his teeth. Yes, he'd seen his father watching him from a window. He'd seen his mother, too. He'd seen his father in the street. He'd seen a lot of strange things. No, one of the strange things was not Uncle Robbie, whom he hadn't seen at all. He was fine, really, he was fine. He just wanted to find his mother and go home.

While Tonio listened, he thought about how this was exactly the thing that he'd wanted, to find his son, and how he had almost everything he wanted now, except that he, too, wanted to find his wife and go home, and he also wished he could hold his son's hand, the way he used to do when they crossed the busy streets in downtown Charleston. But Dewey had recently warned him against that, saying he was too old for it now. So they walked along with Dewey holding the pellet gun and Tonio holding the flashlight. He could see Dewey in the flashlight beam. His face was dirty and his hair was a mess and the sweater drooped from him comically and he had to constantly push up the sleeves, but his face and eyes looked sharper, with a new kind of calm and determination. Julia would be proud. Tonio had always been interested in Dewey thinking like a grown man, but it was Julia who had wanted him to conduct himself like one.

Soon they reached a place where the shaft forked, the path to the left angling off in a level track while the one to the right descended sharply.

“It's this way,” Tonio said.

“How do you know?” Dewey said.

“I just do.”

“Like you just know it,” Dewey said. “Like for no reason.”

“Right,” he said, and shrugged.

“I feel that way sometimes, too,” Dewey said. “Like I know things here. This is a weird place.”

Tonio nodded. “It is a very weird place.”

They had come upon a cave-in or an excavation, a pile of rocks knee-high and halfway across the path. They stopped and sat for a moment. Tonio set the flashlight carefully on the rocks. They had never had a language for their emotions. People remarked on the way they talked with each other, how each understood what the other meant, how each knew what the other would say. He had taught his son all he knew to teach, but he regretted now that one of the things he'd taught him might have been his own reticence. He wanted to talk now not about what he knew but what he felt.

“I'm sorry, Dewey,” he said. “I didn't know what was going to happen when I left the hotel.”

“I know,” Dewey said.

With a trembling hand, Tonio balanced the flashlight so it angled up toward Dewey's face.

Dewey drew back and held his hand in front of his eyes. “Stop, Dad,” he said. “What are you doing?”