Or so I hoped.
After four or five seconds I pursed my lips and blew hard, until my lungs felt completely empty. Then I sealed my lips, worked my cheeks and jaw like a bellows, and managed to draw a bit more air from my chest up into my mouth. I quickly forced that out my lips, then repeated the maneuver twice more. By now I felt on the verge of imploding. I thrust myself into the opening, willed myself to contract within myself, and wriggled as best I could while Art lunged forward, gripping my legs.
I felt myself slide forward an inch, two inches…and then I stopped, wedged tight. My rib cage was pinned in a vise, and the vise’s grip felt deadly. Desperately I struggled to knock my heels together, the signal for Art to pull me back, but something—maybe the rock, maybe Art—had my legs immobilized. Oh God, what a way to die, I thought as I began to suffocate. Then came a sensation like a locomotive slamming into my knees. I opened my mouth in an involuntary scream, but there was no air to carry it. My chest and spine ground forward, and I thought I heard something crack, and then I found myself lying in a heap on the floor, my shirt hanging open, its buttons smashed and torn off. I felt battered, maybe even partly broken, but I was on the other side. And I could breathe. I closed my eyes, took in a huge, agonizing, delicious breath of air, savored it greedily, and let it out with a loud groan. When I opened my eyes, I winced. A blinding light was shining directly into them from just inches away. From my side of the crevice, not Art’s. “Hello, Doc,” rumbled a familiar voice. “Looks like I got here just in the nick of time.”
I shielded my eyes and stared up at the big man looming over me. It couldn’t be coincidence that brought him here. I had been far too trusting of Waylon and his homespun routine, I realized; he’d just been stringing me along, biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. I didn’t know if he was acting on his own, or on Jim O’Conner’s orders, but I knew our luck had run out.
“Hello, Waylon,” I said flatly, too defeated even to plead. “Guess you’re here to take care of us, huh?”
“Well, you might could call it that. Just doing my job, really.”
“Right,” I said. “Nothing personal, just business, is that it?”
“Let’s quit jawin’ about it, Doc, and just get you and Art to a better place as quick as we can.”
“A better place? You talking about heaven? Give me a break, Waylon. If you’re fixing to kill us, at least spare us the Sunday School euphemisms.”
“The whats? Fixin’ to kill you? What the hell are you talkin’ about, Doc? You done hit your head in this cave?”
“You’re not here to kill us? Then what are you doing here? What about the explosions, the cave-ins?”
He set the light down on a shelf, pointing at himself. As usual, he was dressed head to toe in camouflage. He held his arms out, palms up, I guess to show he was unarmed, though I knew there were probably several weapons tucked into each of his many pockets. “Big Jim ast me to keep a eye out for you, make sure you didn’t get into any trouble you couldn’t handle. I heard y’all was up at Cave Springs Church, so I come up to check on you’uns. Time I got there, the entrance was all blocked up. I didn’t know if you know’d about this other entrance—hell, I didn’t know if y’all was even alive still—but all I knowed to do was get in here as far as this squeeze and start hollerin’, see if anybody hollered back. Figured if I could get you this close, I could get you out somehow.”
I felt ashamed. Far from being too trusting, I’d been way too suspicious. “Well, I’m out, but I don’t think Art can squeeze through the way I did. You got an idea how we can get him out?”
“I got me some blasting caps in the back of the truck, but that seems a little chancy right here—roof looks kindly unstable.”
Blasting caps? Maybe I hadn’t been too suspicious after all. “Waylon,” I said,
“we’ve had enough blasting to last us awhile.”
“Yeah, I reckon so. I b’lieve we’ll have to get him out the old-fashioned way.”
Art’s voice echoed hollowly from the other side of the crevice. “What, you gonna starve me out? That might take about six months.”