the upper world the same way again. I reached that point a long time ago.
John Junior is disappointed when I tell everyone we need to move on but time doesn’t stand still down here, no matter how much it seems otherwise. The tour is only supposed to last until five and it’ll take a good hour to squeeze Leah and her unhappy tits back through the narrow passages.
By the time we get back to the surface the bad boyfriend has changed his attitude. He’s probably realizing that he’s on his way to sleeping alone tonight and that Leah likely has a few better options. He’s now helpful and attentive, circling an arm around her possessively as she grins and blushes. But I don’t miss the way she looks back at me with a kind of puppyish longing just before he firmly leads her away.
John and John Junior shake my hand and say what a damn good time they had, and that this was the best caving expedition they’ve ever been on. I tell them there’s plenty more caves around if you don’t mind investing a whole day to hike deeper into the hills. I hand out my business card and tell them to give me a call if they’re interested. I really do mean it. I wouldn’t even charge them for the trip.
Once I’m alone I just stand there for a few minutes and breathe in the honeyed feel of mid summer. By early October the green on the hills will disappear, replaced by a wild explosion of autumn color. I expect I’ll be around to see it. I’ve been lingering here far longer than I’m used to hanging around a single place but I’m enjoying the break. With my apartment in the nearby small town of Jacoby and my job as a guide, it’s been peaceful, a little dose of serenity in a restless life.
The harsh calls of some nearby wild turkeys interrupt the quiet moment. I shoulder my pack and take a quick tour around the cave entrance to ensure that not so much as a gum wrapper was left behind to stain the landscape. Then I cover the half-mile walk back to my truck in five minutes before deciding to swing by the office, figuring Brock will be around.
Brock Gardner is a former nature photographer who suffered a broken spine when he fell from a steep cliff in New Mexico while trying to get some money shots of eagles in flight. We were already friends and I’d been scheduled to guide for that weekend trip, but a painful stress fracture in my right foot kept me off the trail and put Brock at the mercy of some novice who didn’t understand his own equipment. Brock’s harness hadn’t been fastened properly and when he leaned back to switch the camera lens one of the critical lines snapped. He only tumbled for about fifteen feet but the jagged rock he landed on cut right through the eighth spinal vertebrae and that was that.
If you ask Brock about his wheelchair and useless legs he’ll tell you the whole story with a matter of fact quality, like he’s talking about horse racing or lacrosse, one of those things people find interesting but don’t get all busted up about. That’s just Brock. He’s a no bullshit kind of guy who couldn’t swallow pity if you tried to choke him with it.
Brock had grown up in these mountains. When he made me an offer I was glad to follow him out here and take a job at his fledgling adventure tour company. He’s a good guy, and one of the few people on earth who knows a thing or two about me.
“Cheeseburgers,” Brock announces. He tosses me a greasy paper bag the second I open the screechy aluminum door of the single-wide trailer that serves as company headquarters.
I catch the bag and sniff at the contents, my belly rumbling expectantly in response. “You hauled your wheels to town just to buy me lunch?”
Brock grins and shakes his head, closing the silver lid of his Mac. “Nope. Ashley stopped by with the goods. That’s one cute slice of tender blondeness, Oz. Poor girl looked so crestfallen by the news you weren’t around I thought about inviting her to sit in my lap as consolation.”
“Maybe you should have,” I grumble and slide into a rickety folding chair as I open a paper-wrapped burger. I’ll have it swallowed in two bites.
“Well then maybe I will,” he