The Ruins - Страница 20

Again, they could sense Eric moving about. "I don't see it," he called. And then, a second later, just as they were realizing this for themselves: "It's stopped."

They all waited to see if the sound would start again, but it didn't. The sun touched the western horizon and everything took on a reddish hue. In a few minutes, it would be dark. Mathias was done with his braiding. They watched him join this final section to the others, then attach their makeshift backboard to the two dangling strands. He finished just as the day began its sudden descent into night. Then Jeff held the crank while Mathias and Stacy lifted the backboard out over the shaft's mouth. They spent a moment staring at it as it dangled there: Mathias had covered the aluminum frame with one of the archaeologists' sleeping bags, cushioning it. They piled all four of their belts on top of the sleeping bag. Amy knew that though she hadn't yet agreed to Jeff's proposition, the question had somehow been decided. Everything was ready, and they thought she was, too. Mathias joined Jeff beside the windlass, taking hold of its crank. Stacy stood there, hugging herself, watching.

"Just climb on it," Jeff said.

So that was what Amy did. Girding herself, thinking brave thoughts, she stepped out into the shaft's opening, crouching on the aluminum frame, clutching at the braided strands of nylon. The backboard creaked beneath her weight, rocking back and forth, but it held. And then-before Amy even had a chance to collect herself, or begin to second-guess her decision-the windlass started to turn, dropping her from the day's gathering darkness into the deeper darkness of the hole.

It had taken them a long time, but now, finally, they were coming. Eric didn't know how long, exactly, it had been, perhaps not quite as long as it had seemed, but a long time nonetheless. Even under the best of circumstances, he wasn't very good at reckoning the passage of time-he lacked an internal clock-but here in the hole, in the darkness, under the stress of everything that had happened thus far today, it was far more difficult than usual. All he knew was that it was becoming night up there, that the blue rectangle of sky had taken on a brief blush of red before fading into a blue-gray, a slate gray, a gray-black. They'd made a backboard and Amy was crouched on it now, dropping toward him.

Hours, Eric supposed. It must've been hours. Pablo had been screaming and then he'd stopped, and Stacy had shouted down to him, and they'd talked back and forth, and Jeff had told him to blow out the lamp. Then they'd all vanished to make the backboard and lengthen the rope-it had taken them a long time, too long-and he'd first crouched, then sat beside Pablo, gripping his wrist all the while. Talking, too, off and on, to keep the Greek company, to raise his spirits and try to trick him-trick both of them, maybe-into believing that everything was going to be all right.

But everything wasn't going to be all right, of course, and no matter how hard Eric worked to throw a tone of optimism into his voice-and he did work; he consciously struggled for it, an echo of the Greeks' playful bantering among themselves-he couldn't elude this difficult fact. There was the smell, for one thing. The smell of shit-of urine, too. Pablo had broken his back, lost control of his bowels, his bladder. He'd need to have a catheter put in, a bag hanging from the side of his bed, nurses to empty it and keep him clean. He'd need surgery, and quickly-right now, earlier than now-he'd need doctors and physical therapists hovering about him, charting his progress. And Eric couldn't see how any of this was going to happen. They'd worked all afternoon to build a backboard and with it they were finally going to get him out of this hole, but what would that accomplish? Out of the hole, up there among the tents and the flowering vines, his back would still be broken, his bladder and bowels leaking urine and shit into his already-sodden pants. And there was nothing they could do about it.

Eric's knee had stopped bleeding finally. There was a steady, throbbing ache, which jumped in volume whenever he shifted his weight. Jeff's T-shirt was stiff with dried blood; Eric set it on the ground beside him. His shoe still felt damp.

Eric told Pablo how people healed-implacably-how the worst part was the accident itself, then the body went to work, mobilizing, rebuilding. Even now, even as they were talking, it was beginning to happen. He told Pablo about the bones he'd broken as a child. He described falling on a wet sidewalk and cracking his forearm-he couldn't remember which bone, the radius, maybe, or the ulna; it didn't matter. He'd had a cast for six weeks, the end of the summer; he could remember the stink of it when they cut it off, sweat and mildew, his arm looking pale and too thin, his terror of the whirling saw. He'd broken his collarbone playing Superman, flying headfirst down a playground slide. He'd broken his nose falling off a pogo stick. And he described all of these accidents for Pablo now, in detail, the pain of each one, the course of his eventual recovery: his implacable, inevitable recovery.

Pablo couldn't understand a single word of this, of course. He moaned and muttered. Occasionally, he'd lift the arm Eric wasn't holding and seem to reach for something at his side, though Eric couldn't guess what, since there was nothing there but darkness. Eric ignored this movement-the moaning and muttering, too-he just kept talking, working at it, his voice high and falsely cheerful. He couldn't think of anything else to do.

He told Pablo of other accidents he'd witnessed: a boy who'd skate-boarded into traffic (a concussion and a handful of broken ribs), a neighbor who'd tumbled off his roof while cleaning out the gutters (a dislocated shoulder, a pair of broken fingers), a girl who'd mistimed her jump from a rope swing, landing not in the river, as intended, but upon its rocky bank (a shattered ankle, three lost teeth). He talked about the town where he'd been raised, how small it was, how ugly and provincial, yet somehow picturesque in its ugliness, somehow worldly in its provincialism. When a siren sounded, people went to their front doors, stepped out onto their porches, shaded their eyes to see. Children jumped on bicycles, raced after the ambulance or fire truck or police car. There was gawking involved, of course, but also empathy. When Eric had broken his arm, neighbors had come calling, bearing gifts: comic books for him to read, videos to watch.

He kept hold of Pablo's wrist with his right hand while he talked, squeezing sometimes to emphasize certain points, never letting go. His left hand moved back and forth between the oil lamp and the box of matches, touching one and then the other in a continuous, restless circuit, moving lightly across them, as if they were beads on a rosary. And there was something prayerful about the gesture, too; it was accompanied by a pair of words in his head. Yet, even as he told his tales to Pablo in his confident, assertively optimistic voice, he was silently repeating the two words, chanting them internally while his hand shifted from lamp to matches to lamp to matches: Still there, still there, still there, still there…

He described for Pablo what it had felt like to ride his bicycle in pursuit of the sirens, the flashing lights. The excitement-that giddy feeling of drama and disaster. He told him of happy endings. Of seven-year-old Mary Kelly, who knew how to climb a tree but not how to get down, her fear making her scramble higher and higher, crying as she went, pulling her tiny body upward, forty feet, into the very crown of an ancient oak, a crowd gathering beneath her, calling to her, urging her back down, while a wind came up, gradually increasing, making the branches sway, the entire tree seeming to dip and rise. He imitated for Pablo the collective gasp when she almost slipped, dangling for an excruciatingly long string of seconds before she managed to regain her foothold, crying all the while, the sirens approaching, the boys on their bicycles. Then the fire truck with its ladder slowly angling skyward, the cheers when the paramedic leaned deep into the foliage, grasped the little girl by her arm, yanked her toward him, throwing her over his shoulder.

Eric had the sudden sense, in the darkness, of a hand touching the small of his back. He jumped, almost yelped, but caught himself. It was just the vine. Somehow, it had managed to take root down here, too, at the bottom of the shaft. He must've leaned into it as he talked, creating the impression of its having reached out and touched him, cradling him at the base of his spine, almost caressing him. It was impossible to keep his bearings here; he was as good as blind. All he had to orient himself was Pablo's wrist and-still there, still there, still there-the oil lamp and the box of matches. He slid forward to escape the vine's touch-it was creepy, and it made him shiver; he didn't like it-shifting until he was right up against Pablo's broken body. When he moved, there was a sharp, tearing pain from the cut in his knee, and it started to bleed again. He patted at the ground, searching for Jeff's T-shirt, then pressed it once more to the wound.

He circled back to the girl on the rope swing; Marci Brand, thirteen years old. She'd had braces and a long brown ponytail. He told Pablo how they'd all laughed at first, seeing her fall, he and the other children. There'd been something comical about it, cartoonlike. They'd watched her drop, heard that awful slapping sound as she hit the rocks; everyone must've known she was hurt. But they'd laughed, all of them, as if to deny this, to undo it, stopping only when they saw her try to stand, then crumple awkwardly, falling onto her side and sliding down the rocky bank into the water. Her mouth was cut-she'd hit her face against the stones-and a murky cloud of blood slowly formed around her in the water as she floated there, thrashing her arms. Her eyes were clenched shut, Eric remembered, her expression contorted. She was grimacing, but not crying; she didn't make a sound, not even when they pulled her out, dragging her back up onto the bank while one of them rode off on his bicycle to get help. Later, they all felt guilty about having laughed, especially when it looked as if she might not be able to walk again. But she did, eventually-implacably, inexorably-with a slight limp, perhaps, although this was barely noticeable, not noticeable at all, really, unless you knew the story, unless you were watching for it.