"Will they ever open it up? Maybe charge admission like they do at Colossal Cave?"
"Don't be stupid, Tommy. You heard what Davy said. It's sacred or something."
It wasn't the first time Quentin and Tommy had squared off against the rest of the world. The two of them had been keeping secrets-some worse than others-all their lives. They were used to it, and they kept this one, too.
Three weeks after finding the cave, they ventured far enough inside the first chamber to locate the narrow passage that led to the second. The first room had been so rough and wet that it was almost impossible to walk in it. Starting in the passage, the second one seemed dryer, and it had a dirt floor, as though someone had gone to the trouble of covering the rough surface so it would be easier to walk on it.
Inside the second chamber they had discovered the rock slide barring most of what had once been a second entrance to the cavern. And over against the far wall, much to both their horror and fascination, they had found the scattered pieces of a human skeleton.
"Hey, look at this?" Tommy said, picking up a bone and flinging it across the cave. "Maybe they left this guy here to guard these pots and to cast a spell over anybody who tries to take them."
Tommy Walker's imagination and his fascination with magic had always outstripped his older brother's. "Shut up, Tommy," Quentin said. "And leave those bones alone. What if they still carry some kind of disease or something?"
Shrugging, Tommy leaned down and picked up the first pot that came to hand. In the orange glow from the flashlight it looked gray or maybe beige. A black crosshatch pattern had been incised into the surface.
"I'll bet something like this would be worth a lot of money," he said thoughtfully. "How about if we take it to the museum over at the university and try to unload it? Whaddya think of that idea?"
"It might work," Quentin had agreed. "With all the gas we're buying these days, our budget could use a little help."
Together they had discussed which pot might best serve their immediate monetary purposes, settling eventually on the one Tommy had picked up in the first place. Carrying the pot in one hand and his flashlight in the other, Tommy had started back toward the main cavern. Quentin was several feet behind him, so he never saw exactly what happened. All he knew was he heard a noise, like something falling. He also heard the pot breaking into what sounded like a million pieces. When he came around the corner, Tommy was nowhere in sight.
"Tommy," he yelled. "What happened? Where'd you go?"
For an answer, he heard only dead silence, broken occasionally by the drip of water.
"Tommy, come on now. Don't play games," Quentin said, fighting back a sudden surge of fear. "This is no time for jokes. We have to get out of here and head home. It's getting late."
But still there was no answer. None at all.
Slowly, carefully, Quentin had begun to search the area. After ten minutes or so, he found the hole, almost killing himself in the process. Just off the path they had used to get to the passage, there was something that looked like a shadow. But when Quentin shone his light that way he found instead a shaft, some twenty feet deep, with Tommy lying still as death at the bottom with his feet in a murky pool of water.
"Tommy!" Quentin shouted again. "Are you all right? Can you hear me?" But Tommy Walker didn't answer and didn't move.
Terrified, Quentin raced out of the cave. In honor of their spelunking adventures, the two boys had managed to amass a fair collection of discarded rope. Gathering an armload of rope, Quentin dashed back up the mountain. Inside the cave, working feverishly, he managed to rappel himself down the side of the shaft. Once there, he was relieved to find that Tommy was still alive, still breathing.
"Tommy, wake up. You've gotta wake up so we can get out of here." But there was no response. Finally, desperate and not knowing what else to do, Quentin tied the rope around his unconscious brother's chest-fastening it under both his arms so it wouldn't slip off. Then he climbed back up to haul Tommy out.
It had worked, too. With almost superhuman effort and after a half-hour struggle, Quentin finally dragged Tommy's dead weight up out of the shaft. He heaved him out of the hole and rolled him onto the jagged floor of the cave like a landed fish, but by then Tommy Walker wasn't breathing anymore. He was dead.
"Goddamn it!" Quentin had screamed, gazing down at his brother's still and rapidly cooling form. "How dare you go and die on me! How dare you!"
He had started to go for help even then, but halfway to the car the second time, he changed his mind. What if, in the process of pulling Tommy up and out, Quentin had done something to him-what if he had broken something else, caused some other damage that hadn't happened in the fall? What if it was Quentin's fault that his brother was dead? And maybe it was anyway. After all, Quentin was the one who had driven them there in the first place. It was Quentin's car, Quentin's driver's license, and Quentin's gas.
And finally, because he didn't know what else to do; because he didn't know how to go about beginning to face the enormous consequences of what he had done, he climbed into the car and drove away. He went home. Later that night, when Janie asked where Tommy was, Quentin said he didn't know. He claimed he had no idea.
And a day later, Quentin Walker had reluctantly agreed, right along with everyone else, that for some unknown reason his brother Tommy must have run away.
From that day on, no amount of drinking ever held the awful memories quite at bay. In his sleep, Quentin Walker often dreamed about his brother lying limp and lifeless on the floor of the cave. And now, after all the intervening years, for the first time, Quentin Walker was headed back there.
He didn't know for sure if Tommy's body was still in the cave. It probably was, but by the time Mitch Johnson arrived on the scene, it wouldn't be there anymore. Quentin couldn't afford for Tommy to be found now. Back at the beginning, when it first happened, people might have believed it was an accident. If they found out about it now, who would believe that story, especially if it was coming from Quentin Walker, from somebody who was an ex-con?
Tommy Walker had been missing all these years, and his brother Quentin was determined that he stay that way-missing forever.
8
As the two men led the woman back toward the village, many of the Little People went away, but there was always a swarm of bees or wasps to guard the woman. On the fourth day of the journey, the woman pointed to the sky and began to dig holes in the ground. And the bees were very excited. They sang, "Rain, rain, rain!"
In two more steps ofTash — the Sun-in what theMil-gahn would call hours, the clouds appeared, and the rains came. The two men filled their water baskets and were glad. But the happiest of all wasJeweth — the Earth.
When the rain was over, the two men wanted to continue on, but the woman would not go. So the two men left the woman some pinole and went back to their own people. After a time the Indians returned to their own country. When they came to the place where the two men had left the strange woman, they found many houses. Thiskihhim — this village-had been built by people from the south. They said they had come to be near the great Medicine Woman of theTohono O'othham. Gohhim O'othham — Old Limping Man-was curious and asked where this Medicine Woman lived. The people of the village took him to a house made of sticks of ocotillo and covered with mud. There were two rooms in this house. The inside room was dark with an odd noise in it-a strange kind of buzzing.
WhenKulani O'oks — Medicine Woman-came out, Old Limping Man saw it was the same woman whom the Little People had saved. And so this great Medicine Woman, whose name wasMualig Siakam — Forever Spinning-told Old Limping Man how she had been among strangers in the south. When she had returned alone to join her own people, theTohono O'othham, she found her home village deserted. All the Desert People were gone. There was no water. The animals had gone too, and so had all the birds.