Waylon laughed. “Naw, ain’t got time for that. Got to get you’uns back on the job quicker’n ’at.” He fished around in the rear quadrant of his capacious pants and hauled out a hand sledge and a stout chisel. The man was like a human Swiss Army knife. “Few good whacks with this ought to do the trick. Y’all might want to step back aways, in case I underestimate my own strength.” Art and I both gave him plenty of room.
Slipping an elastic strap around his scalp, Waylon switched on a heavy-duty headlamp and leaned in toward one side of the crevice. I heard a low, humming sound, and then, astonishingly, Waylon began to sing. He had a rich bass baritone that filled the cave with a haunting song: “In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky/That’s the place where I trace my bloodline./And it’s there I read on a hillside gravestone/‘You’ll never leave Harlan alive.’”
Sparks flew as the hammer blows rang out in time to the mournful ballad. Every half-dozen or so blows, a chunk of rock would crack off and clatter to the floor.
“Where the sun comes up”—CLANG—“About ten in the morning”—CLANG—
“The sun goes down”—CLANG—“About three in the day”—CLANG—“You fill your cup”—CLANG—“With whatever bitter brew you’re drinking”—CLANG—
“And spend your life diggin’ coal”—CLANG—“from the bottom of your grave.”
Waylon paused, shifting his stance to attack the other wall. His hair and beard dripped with sweat. “Lucky thing this is such a small piece we got to widen,” he huffed. “Much bigger, and I might pull a John Henry, die with my hammer in my hand.”
I seriously doubted that.
After ten minutes and two ballads, Waylon stepped back and sized up his handiwork. “Art, come on up and see if maybe you can shinny through that. I knocked off them knobby parts in the skinniest places. If that ain’t enough, it’s gonna take a lot more work to widen. Careful, though—they’s some sharp edges now.”
Art sidled up to the crack, and after a few adjustments and contortions—only slightly more severe than Sheriff Kitchings had required to shoehorn his belly into the crystal grotto—he popped through. Waylon grinned. “You fellers always have this much excitement on a case? This forensic shit keeps a man hoppin’, don’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes it’s a real blast.”
Waylon chuckled, Art groaned, and I said a silent prayer of thanks to be back in the land of bad puns.
Waylon led us a hundred yards up a gently sloping tunnel; for the latter half of the trek, an irregular oval of light grew larger and brighter. “Uh-oh,” said Art from behind me.
“What? We’re almost out.”
“We’re ascending toward a bright, white light. Last time that happened to me, they had to hook jumper cables to my heart. Maybe we weren’t as lucky in that second cave-in as we thought.”
“If we were dead, we’d be climbing a big marble staircase.”
“Marble? We’re inside a mountain in Cooke County; I’m guessing the afterlife’s a little more rustic here, too.”
Before I could think up a retort we emerged, squinting and blinking, into the glare of the late September afternoon. Overhead, the sky shone electric blue; around us, the dogwood and tulip poplar leaves blazed red and yellow. Scrambling up out of a small sinkhole, we angled along a hillside for perhaps a quarter-mile, then scrambled down one end of the bluff behind Cave Springs Primitive Baptist Church. The church looked just as we’d left it, just as it probably had for the past fifty years or more. Beside it, though, my truck bore a fresh coating of limestone dust.
Waylon’s truck was parked beside mine. It looked freshly washed. Unless he’d somehow scrubbed it after the explosions, Waylon was telling the truth: by the time he’d arrived, the cave’s entrance had been blasted long enough for the dust to settle.
“Let’s get the hell out of Dodge,” said Art.
“Wait a second—I’ve got an idea. You still got your forensics kit?”
“Are you kidding? After that big production you made of hauling it up by your bootstraps, I knew I’d never hear the end of it if I left it behind. Why?”
“Come with me.”
I led him back to the cave’s entrance. Just as I’d expected, there in the mud beside the spring was a fresh set of boot prints. They led into the mouth of the cave, vanishing beneath the fresh rockfall.
“Eureka,” said Art as he knelt down and set about taking a cast from the clearest of the several prints. “Look familiar?” They didn’t, but it could have been a familiar pair of feet inside an unfamiliar pair of boots. I studied the surrounding area. As far as I could tell, the tracks led into the cave—but didn’t lead back out again. “You think he’s still in there? Got caught in his own cave-in?”
Art shrugged. “Maybe. Kinda hope so. But maybe he slipped out the back before setting off that second blast. Or maybe he’s coming out the same way we just did.”