"If we ever get out of this…" he said.
"Then what?"
"You're going to have a tough time keeping me away."
She smiled. "First things first. Back to the salt mines."
It was Jude's turn to work the cave-in face, and as he hacked away, the surface seemed more permeable. He was able to scoop out whole handfuls of dirt, and as he did so, he imagined he could feel the weight of the earth above shifting and straining. Reaching his arm into the recess, he tried not to think of what he was doing and of the protuberance above, the thin crust that could crumble at any moment, bringing down an avalanche. He pulled out a rock the size of a fist and dislodged a heap of sandy dirt that showered down to cover his knees. After that, he slowed down and worked more cautiously.
A half hour later, Jude thought he heard something like a distant groan. Tizzie was behind him, filling up the carton, and she reached over and put her hand on his back. At that split second the tunnel trembled and debris began crashing down, at first in thin streams and then in a flood. It poured down around all sides of the table and formed piles that hugged the walls and enlarged and spread toward the center. They instinctively ducked at the noise of the earth landing upon the metal inches above their heads. Jude grabbed the flashlight in one hand and clenched Tizzie's hand with the other. Everything about them shook, at first in small tremors and then a sustained, violent trembling. They froze and held their breath and waited helplessly.
Jude felt suspended. His mind was racing, but he wasn't thinking thoughts. He wasn't trying to think of something to do or planning an escape, because there wasn't any hope of that. He wasn't thinking about whether he was hurt or whether he was breathing. He was simply hunkered down, waiting in a half crouch, like an animal at the moment of supreme danger. Simply waiting vigilantly, poised to act, while the decision of life and death was being made elsewhere.
Clouds of dust filled their small subterranean hole. But at least the noise had stopped — the din of the earth coming at them from all sides, slamming down from above and inundating the walls so that it seemed to be pushing up from below. The noise had stopped and that meant, at least for now, that it was over. For the moment, they would remain alive.
Tizzie was the first to speak, and her tone — a frightened whisper, as if she were afraid that any sound could trigger yet another cave-in — said it all.
"Look," she said. "Behind us. We're trapped."
Jude shined his flashlight in back of her. There, instead of the tunnel extending under the second table, which had been their precious lifeline back to the chamber, was a solid wall of earth. It had crushed the table, a twisted edge of bright metal protruding at the bottom. The pile of dirt and rocks ran the full height of the passage and extended God knew how far beyond that. It was impassable. Their fate was sealed, as surely as was the space wherein they were now confined, not much bigger than a coffin.
The dust was settling; there wasn't enough air in the fetid enclosure to keep it aloft. Jude tried to form his thoughts, but was in too much shock to come up with any kind of a plan. And none was called for — their plight was elemental. They were trapped and they had to dig their way out or die. And they had to go forward rather than backward. That's all there was to it. From now on, survival was not a question of strategy but of endurance and luck — that and oxygen.
He picked up the ax handle and Tizzie picked up the knife, and together, squeezed side by side, they slashed and poked at the wall ahead. They no longer worried about causing more cave-ins. This was not a time for caution: they were in a race for their lives. They scooped the dirt out and thrust it behind them, working feverishly, each one trying to outdo the other, sweating, panting, piling the earth up behind.
Jude hit something with the ax handle, something hard. He cleared the dirt away with his hands, above and below. And then realized what it was.
"It's the beam," he cried. "Remember. You had to crawl under it to get here. Maybe we can do the same thing to get out."
"Unless the cave-in covered it, too."
"If it did, we've had it."
Now he dug under the beam, and the dirt was so loose he could reach through and pull it out by the armful. He thrust his hand in as far as he could and felt around — there was nothing but space, emptiness. He shined the flashlight; the beam did not hit anything. He put his face to the hole, and it seemed to him that it was easier to breathe. He widened the entrance to the passage and motioned to Tizzie.
"You first."
"No, after you."
He lay on his stomach and moved ahead, poking his head into the hole, wriggling his hips and digging in his feet for traction. Soon he had snaked his way deep inside the fissure. He felt the cold earth beneath him and the wood above him pressing down. It was much tighter than it had been on the way in. He found it impossible to fully expand his lungs. That damnable panic was taking hold of him again; he imagined the crevasse turning narrower and narrower until finally he got stuck. And just then he realized he could no longer move ahead — something was stopping him. He strained to pull ahead and felt a miniscule shower of dirt fall upon his face. He stopped. There was a snag: his belt was caught on a piece of timber above. He backed up several inches, exhaled, tightened his stomach muscles and slipped his right hand under his belly. Laboriously, he unbuckled it, and bit by bit pulled it out through the loops. Then he pressed his belly flat into the rock and tried slithering ahead. He moved an inch, then another. He made it — he was free! Another few minutes and he was out of the slender chasm and standing up in the passage on the other side of the cave-in.
He knelt to shine the light back inside, and the beam reflected off the top of Tizzie's head. She was already on her way, and he could hear her straining and grunting as she tried to fit her body into the narrow breach. The space looked so small, he couldn't believe he had just writhed his way through it; had it not been for the prospect of an agonizing death, he never would have attempted it.
Now he cheered her on, whispering encouragement.
"You're almost there, just keep coming."
Soon, her head was showing. She stretched out her arms and he pulled them, pulled them so hard that she popped right out. He hugged her and she squeezed him back, mightily. He held her at arm's length and looked into her eyes.
"I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get the hell out of here."
So saying, he led the way.
There was one final surprise, another cave-in that blocked their exit through the main tunnel. But Tizzie said she knew a detour, and she turned down a small passageway to the right. It sloped downward and seemed to be curving away from the direction in which they wanted to go. Jude was not certain that they should continue, and he said that to Tizzie.
"Trust me," she replied. "It's amazing — there are a lot of things I don't recall about my childhood, but these caves, I find I can remember almost every turn. They're imprinted on my brain."
The passage led to a small chamber. Its ceiling slanted downward at the far end, almost to the floor.
"Do you remember this place?" asked Tizzie.
"No. Should I?"
"Not really. But I do. We used to come here, too, I think."
"Right now, I'm more interested in getting out of here than anything else."
She led him to the rear, where the ceiling almost met the floor, and he saw that there was a space several feet high. They crawled through it and found themselves on the ledge of an adjoining chamber. They climbed down a rock face, jumped over a crevice and finally came to another tunnel, this time leading back toward the front of the mine.