“YOU SURE THIS IS where we turn?”
Art swiveled and gave me his most withering dead-eyed cop stare. “Didn’t Waylon tell you to follow the signs for the church?”
“I don’t see a sign,” I said.
Art pointed toward the trunk of a big tulip poplar, then swung his finger down toward the ground. There, nestled amid some weeds, lay a rusted, bullet-riddled sign: “CAVE SPRINGS PRIMITIVE BAPTIST CHURCH.”
“Oh, how could I have missed it? I guess if you need the sign to find it, they don’t want you there.”
Art grunted. “I’m guessing if you get there by following a sign, they invite you to reach into the box and hand out the rattlesnakes.”
“I don’t think Primitive Baptists are snake-handlers,” I said. “I think that’s Church of Holiness with Signs Following, or something like that.”
“What does that mean, ‘Signs Following’? Besides, aren’t we doing some signfollowing here?”
“It’s a reference to a Bible verse—signs of the true Christian, supposedly: healing the sick, sipping cyanide, handling vipers. Y’all don’t do that in the Episcopal church?”
Art shook his head. “Not so much. We keep in touch with the Lord by sipping wine and handling golf clubs.”
“So tell me again what this octogenarian caver told you about this place?”
“You listening this time?”
“I was listening last time. I just wasn’t remembering.”
“Lord, grant me patience,” he sighed. “Okay, he said it’s been a long time since he was up here—like, forty years’ worth of long time—but caves don’t change all that fast, you know? I told him one of the locals had called it Russell’s Cave, and I relayed the description just the way you gave it to me. He said he’s sure it’s the same one he mapped a long time ago. And he said your pal Waylon’s right: there is another entrance, right by the church, which is a lot easier to get to than the one the sheriff took you in. He said you went in the back door.”
“And where, exactly, is the front door?”
“I believe his last words were, ‘You can’t miss it.’”
“I’ve heard that phrase a lot of times before, and I’ve finally figured out what it means. It means, ‘You’re about to get hopelessly lost, sucker.’”
As we rounded a curve at a dip in the road, we came upon a small church nestled at the base of a bluff. Off to one side sat a small, weathered farmhouse, which I guessed might be where the pastor lived. We whipped into the gravel parking lot and skidded to a stop—the church had snuck up on us—and got out to have a look.
We had nearly clipped another sign. This one stood at the road’s edge, so close as to seem almost challenging, daring the heathen to vandalize it—or even just ignore it—at their eternal peril. It was laid up of smooth river rock, mortared into an approximation of a Greek pediment; cradled within the rock was a weathered wooden slab inscribed “CAVE SPRINGS PRIMITIVE BAPTIST
CHURCH.”
The church matched the sign: river rock in shades of tan and brown, nestled deep in a matrix of mottled gray mortar. The building appeared to have been created by geologic action rather than human hands. The double doors set into the front were stout wood, silver with age; their black hardware was forged iron, the hammer blows still visible on its surface. A pair of metal license plates was nailed to the doors: “JESUS IS COMING R-U READY?” asked one; the other read “HEAVEN OR HELL—WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?”
“Friendly crowd,” I observed. I tried the iron latch, but the door seemed to be bolted from the inside somehow.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” deadpanned Art, striking a Jesus pose. He rapped on the wood. “Ow! Looks like oak, feels like ironwood. Let’s see what we can see through a window.”
The windows were miserly—few, small, and high—minimizing the temptation, I supposed, to admire the trees instead of heeding the sermons. Luckily the stonework made it easy to climb the wall. Art and I hauled ourselves up a few feet and peered through a grimy pane. There wasn’t much to see: a dozen backless benches, a scattering of ragged hymnals, a battered upright piano, and a lopsided wooden lectern. “Now I see why they call it ‘primitive,’” I said. We clambered down and began circumnavigating the little building. A wide, well-worn path ran alongside the church, then led to the base of the bluff out back. The pathway ended at a natural rock basin, waist-deep or so, filled with clear water. The surface rippled slightly in the center, where water from a fissure welled up continuously. At the back of the pool, the water gurgled over a lip in the basin and disappeared into an opening in the cliff.