Funny how your mind puts things together sometimes. Watching him, I suddenly remember that his burlap sack was nowhere to be seen the whole time we sat around the fire. All at once I figure out that he’s hidden it back there among those roots. He must have done it as soon as he came into the cave, just before Pete and me.
But what’s he hiding? Has Caleb found pieces of that old fighter jet after all?
As I watch him flatten himself against the wall and pull his black hat low over his eyes, I know what it is I’m going to do.
The fire has died down to just a few embers by the time I move, crawling on my hands and knees right past him, to the back of the cave, where I feel coarse burlap under my hands.
I’d like to blame it on the fever. I know I can’t. I know full well that what I’m doing is stupid, that I’m taking an awful chance messing with someone crazy as Caleb Madliner. But I know more than that too. I know it’s wrong to be snooping on people—even people like him. I do it just the same.
The sack’s heavy and I find I need both hands to draw it forth from its hiding place. Quiet as I can, I work that drawstring loose, the threads rustling softly as they come free, and it’s a tiny little sound but one so loud in that stony dark that I suck in my breath and wait for Caleb to spring up.
He don’t move a muscle.
Caleb’s sack lies open before me on the cave floor, but there’s just one last problem: it’s too dark to see.
Getting down to my last good idea, I tiptoe back to the fire and, with a few hushed breaths, heat up those coals. I find a twig with a few dry leaves clinging to it, light them, and creep once again to the back of the cave. Sweat pours down my face now. My heart is slamming against the inside of my ribs.
A wild and terrible idea rises in my mind as I reach for that sack a second time, the thought that I could steal one of those pieces. My heart skips a beat. Oh, it’s a sin to steal, but if it saved Pete’s life, wouldn’t it be worth it? A way to save the whole expedition. A way to save my brother.
The whole weight of that mountain bears down on me as with trembling hands I lift that flap and—
Two round, black eyes stare into my soul.
All the breath leaves my body in a rush of fear.
Staring back at me is a great-granddaddy of a snapping turtle, the biggest I have ever seen, with folds of pale skin and an enormous triangle head and a beak mouth that’s opening wider and wider, showing a vast satiny-white cavern within.
The creature rises on knock-kneed dinosaur legs and hisses, and then a cold voice from behind me says:
“Does he look hungry to you, Jack?”
Dad told me stories of a man he knew as a boy, Dutch Billy, who used to hunt snappers in the slow-moving parts of Apple Creek. He only had seven fingers.
He’d catch the snappers alive and bring them back and turn them loose in his cellar. And whenever he wanted one, he’d just go down and grab it by the short, fat tail and take it out back, where he’d waggle a piece of rebar in front of it until the turtle chomped down. Since snappers never let go once they bite, Dutch Billy would just pull its head out from under the shell and hack it off with an ax. Even then he’d have to toss the rebar, with the bloody stump of a head clamped down on it. Never could get those jaws open once it was dead.
I remember all of that as I stare into reptile eyes that gleam right back at me in fiery light.
The hand that closes over my mouth buries my scream before it even begins. Caleb is there, his arm pinning me against him, and with his other hand he grabs my wrist and squeezes until I drop that burning brand.
“Should have left it alone, Jack,” he whispers.
In the wavering light, that ancient snapper takes one lumbering step forward, its head gliding out toward me. And slowly, ever so slowly, Caleb stretches my hand toward it, moving my fingers toward that pale, gaping mouth.
“Like I said, he’s hungry, and you’ve got fingers enough.”
It must be a nightmare. A feverish nightmare. I’m dreaming. I shut my eyes hard as I can but when I open them again, that snapper is there just like before and my fingers are sliding closer and closer to that awful mouth. I’m awake. Caleb Madliner is feeding my fingers to a snapping turtle while my brothers and my dog sleep not ten feet from us.
The snapper lifts its enormous head and hisses once more, and I know it’s preparing to bite when I get a last, desperate idea.
I bite first. Hard as I can on the hand over my mouth. Caleb gives a startled cry and his grip goes loose for just a moment, but it’s all I need. With every ounce of strength in my little body, I burst away from him. Then I scream.
A lot happens then.
Everybody comes awake.
Caleb seizes the sack and yanks the string shut, closing the loop over the hideous head.
Butch barks.
In my blind rush to get away from the snapper, I crash into someone—Will, who falls into Pete. All three of us Elliot boys go down in a heap on the cave floor.
Caleb springs for the cave entrance, but Frankie is just climbing to his feet and he’s blocking Caleb’s way out. Without hesitating for a moment, Caleb swings that burlap sack and its awful contents right at him. Frankie ducks just in time, the sack sailing over his head through empty air. But now the way to the cave’s mouth is open, and I look up just in time to see Caleb Madliner leaping through. Before anybody can do or say anything, he’s gone into the night.
I’m babbling like a fool, and it’s a good while before Pete and Will and Frankie are able to make any sense of what I’m saying. When I finally do tell them all that happened, they’re stunned. Then furious.
Will grinds a fist into his palm. “I’ll whip him for this. I always wanted to have at him too.”
Pete don’t say a word, but the way his jaw is set and the look in his eyes, it would be downright dangerous for Caleb Madliner ever to come near him again.
“It’s my fault, Jack,” Pete says. “I’m the one who decided to follow him up here. I should have known.”
Pete builds up the fire best as he can with what’s left of the kindling, then, giving us stern orders to stay put, he goes out to gather what firewood he can find from the branches blown down by the twister. When he comes back, he works the fire, finally getting it up to a good, hot flame that gives plenty of light.
Frankie stands at the entrance, looking into the dark. “What if he comes back?”
“Then he’d make my night,” Will says.
Pete shakes his head. “He won’t. He will try to cross the creek and get back to his house on the hill.” Pete snaps a branch over his knee and thrusts the broken ends into the fire.
“Will he make it?”
Will huffs. “Who cares? After this, it’d be just what he deserves for him to drown in Apple Creek.”
Nobody has anything to say to that. Truth is, we’re out of gas. All of us. Pete knows it. For the second time that night he tells us to try to get some sleep. Tells us he’ll stay awake and keep watch.
I am so worn out that I think I really will sleep this time. As I lie down again, though, I can’t help but think of that snapping turtle in the sack. Despite the fact that it almost bit my fingers off, I can’t help feeling sorry for it.
I feel sorry for anything that has to be that close to Caleb Madliner.
Chapter 17
THE RAFT
A fine mist blows over the mountain when we wake the next morning, cool and soft and chilly. I wander out into it to do my business.
For the first time, I see what the twister’s done to the world. Trees are splintered bony white, their arms flung far and wide across the forest floor. Standing at the edge of that rock shelf, I see something else lying down there too: Caleb’s black felt hat. Must have blown off when he was running out of the cave last night.
I unzip and pee thirty feet straight down onto it before going back inside.