I glanced around. “For what?”
“To relieve yourself, dummy. Isn’t that what you were grimacing about?”
“Why, I never!”
“You do too; you always look constipated.”
“Why, so help me, Wanda, I’m going to huff, and then I’ll puff-”
“Stop it,” Agnes hissed. “Both of you. You’re getting louder by the second.” She paused just long enough to catch a breath. “Look! Over there to the left. Isn’t that smoke? And I hear something; something other than yinz excessive chatter. It sounds kind of like an engine. You don’t suppose she-or he-could have hidden the bulldozer underground, do you?”
“The smoke is coming out of a flat expanse of rock,” Wanda snapped. “You’re starting to sound as crazy as Magdalena.”
“Au contraire,” I cried. “Agnes, you’re on to something!”
32
Wanda was every bit as much afraid of gaping holes as was Agnes’s nude uncle, Uncle Remus. Although she’d lived her entire life within an easy drive of Thousand Caves Road, and the weird limestone formations, she’d never even been tempted to mosey on out and take a peek, not even during the height of the development scandal. Once, when Wanda was a junior in high school, her parents dragged her on a family vacation to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. A terrified Wanda took only a couple of steps outside the car, threw up, and then spent the rest of the day sobbing in the backseat.
A control freak with a phobia is not a pleasant creature. Although she refused, at first, to set foot off the road, neither would she consent to being left behind. Wanda mumbled and grumbled, and uttered some words that even a liberal Mennonite had no business knowing.
Meanwhile, Agnes moved like a hound to the scent. Of course the trail of a rumbling, smoke-belching steamroller is not exactly hard to follow, even if it has been dumped in a large sinkhole.
About ten yards from the cavernous opening, Wanda stopped abruptly. “I’m not going any farther.”
“Fine,” I said. “Just wait here.”
We were in an open area of flat, smooth limestone that crowned the rise of a low hill. The only trees were stunted pines that grew in places where, eons ago, eddies of water had carved out pockets, which were now filled with soil, but drought and infestation of foreign beetles had killed more than half of the pines, eventually turning them into bleached skeletons. With a sigh of relief Wanda sat shakily on one of these fallen trunks that had long since shed its bark.
Agnes, however, was as unstoppable as a bulldozer. Had I grabbed one of her pants legs (the poor misguided soul is a Methodist) and hung on tightly, I could have gotten a free ride. As it was, I had to trot to keep up, and I weigh a full one hundred pounds less than she does.
Still, the woman has to be admired. She didn’t stop until she was standing on the rim of the abyss, staring down into the blackness, from whence came the sound and the smell of a crashed bulldozer. But then, instead of recoiling due to a bout of dizziness (like any normal woman), Agnes got down on her knees and peered into Satan’s domain. Clearly, she was a woman possessed.
“Magdalena, come quick!”
“Don’t rush me; I’m coming as fast as I can.”
“But somebody’s down there.”
“What? Who?”
Agnes wouldn’t say another word until I dropped to all fours beside her. “Look, Magdalena; what do you see?”
“An upside-down bulldozer with smoke pouring out of the engine.”
“Not that, silly. There, to the left.”
“Oh that: that’s Frankie Schwartzentruber, our one female member of the Beechy Grove Mennonite Church Brotherhood.”
“You don’t seem surprised to see her!”
“I’m not; in fact, she’s why we came out here. I just didn’t expect to find her holed up in a-allow me to say it, please-a hole.”
“Wasn’t she the one who drove the bulldozer over that young, and extraordinarily handsome, Elias Whitmore?”
“Indeed.” I reared back just enough to cup my hands to my mouth. “Oh, Frankie! Frankie, dear.”
Although the roar of the bulldozer’s engine drowned any echo, I was nonetheless heard, and the murderess looked up for the first time. It was obvious from where we knelt that the sinkhole extended a couple of feet beneath the ground, at least on one side, but Frankie did not seem interested in hiding. Instead she waved her arms and jumped up and down.
“It looks like she’s glad to see us,” Agnes declared happily.
“Can you hear what she’s saying?”
Agnes cocked her head. “She’s saying ‘It will blow.’ ”
“Does a bulldozer have a whistle, Magdalena? I would have thought it had a horn.”
It took a few seconds for my thoughts to catch up with my cranium. “Oh, my stars,” I croaked. “She means the engine is going to explode; it must be leaking fuel.”
“In that case, Frankie should climb out of that hole.”
For a fraction of a millisecond I wanted to push Agnes into the hole for stating something so obvious. Instead, I took a deep breath and shouted down to Frankie.
“How can we help?”
“Don’t be a dolt, Magdalena; I need a rope.”
I gazed at the walls of the sinkhole. They were almost as smooth as the Babester’s chest that time he waxed it as a joke and got a terrible rash for the effort. There was one narrow ledge, a calcified swirl of limestone that began almost directly below us and followed the curve of the wall, widening as it descended, until it melded with the floor. An ancient whirlpool (not more than five thousand years old, of course) had carved this sinkhole and left an impression that looked for all the world like a giant scoop of soft-serve ice cream. Well, then again, we nursing mothers can never get too much to eat.
“Frankie,” I bellowed, “can you climb up on that shelf?”
“It’s too narrow! I keep falling off.”
“You need something to steady yourself with.”
“I need a ding-dang rope!”
“With language that blue, dear, you’ll not being having a white Christmas next year.”
“Magdalena, you’re the biggest boob to ever walk the earth. If you don’t shut up and get me out of here, we’re all going to blow.”
“Okay, but there’s no need to get nasty. Where can I find some rope? In your truck?”
“Like I said, you’re an idiot,” she screamed. “It’s going to blow any second. I need some rope now!”
“Let’s take off our clothes,” Agnes said calmly, “and tie them together in a knot chain. I saw that once in a movie.”
“Did it work?” I said.
“Yes, until one of the sleeves ripped, and the hero plunged to his death.”
“This is impossible, then. We’ll just have to wait until help comes.” I do have one foot in the twenty-first century; maybe one hand as well. I was wearing my cell phone in a flowered pouch dangling from my dress belt, and as I spoke I got it out and speed-dialed 911, even though I knew it was hopeless.
“I already tried that,” Agnes said. “You were right; there’s no service out here. This place is like the Twilight Zone.”
Meanwhile, Frankie’s cries for help were getting louder and more desperate. Something had to be done, even if it was drastic and full of risks.
“Oh, Lord,” I prayed aloud, “give me clarity of vision and the wisdom of Solomon.” I paused to tuck a wayward strand of hair back behind a clip. “If a clothes rope is the way to go-” The annoying strand slipped right out, forcing me to pause again.
“If you don’t quit fussing with your hair,” Agnes said, “any answer to your prayer will be a moot point.”
Hair! That was it! Does not the Lord work in mysterious ways?
“Agnes,” I cried, “how strong is human hair?”
“That depends on the human. There are many types, you know; straight, curly, fine, thick, black, blond-”