10
The next seven hours passed like a fever dream. With Frieda dead, Anna felt no compunction about rotating out. She climbed, crawled, and crept, a zombie clawing her way from the grave. Under protest but accepting the inevitable, Holden went out with her. Brent, too, took the opportunity to escape. Oscar, Peter, Curt, and Zeddie chose to remain with the new team and continue the body recovery.
The closer they got to the entrance of Lechuguilla the more desperate Anna became to get out. Emotions, long held in tight rein, began to break their bonds. Claustrophobia returned in force, and she chafed and sweated at each delay. Only the ominous threat of appearing a fool or a blackguard kept her from abandoning Holden and the others to bolt for the surface. By the time they reached the culvert that would release them into the confines of Old Misery Pit, waiting her turn to ascend she had to count in Spanish and recite poems to hold on to the ragged edge of patience. At last the iron trapdoor was closed behind her, and she could smell the world, cold and dry with a faint perfume of desert plants. Ascending the last sixty feet to the surface, she forgot the steady ache from her shoulder in unadulterated joy. Even the dirt smelled alive. Gone was the dank sepulchral odor of soil unblessed by life or light. When she saw her first stars, she croaked out her delight from tired lungs. Night, real honest-to-God night, with planets and dead suns, clouds and breezes. After so long a sojourn underground, even the moonless sky appeared bright and welcoming.
The glare and hubbub that awaited as she climbed into the narrow oak-filled gap protecting the cave's entrance was overwhelming. In anticipation of a heartwarming celebration of heroism and perseverance, a great crowd had gathered. News media from all over the country were there with harsh lights and makeup to herald the triumphant return. The news that Frieda died had surfaced only moments before Anna, and the party was in a confusion of changing gears, rewriting copy.
Nobody wanted to be left out of the limelight; all the NPS brass was in attendance: CACA's superintendent, the head of resource management, the chief ranger, a sprinkling of bigwigs from Guadalupe Mountains, an hour to the west. A tent had been set up for the rescuers, both those going and those returning. Beer and pizza had been hauled out onto the desert hillside.
Anna survived a grueling gauntlet of questions, condolences, and congratulations as she stumbled over the uneven ground toward the tent, where she hoped to hide. As a little fish, she gauged she should be able to slip through the net of cameras and well-wishers without too much difficulty. Not so Holden. Notoriety and a crippled ankle made him an easy target. The last Anna saw of him, he was pinned down by hot lights and microphones. Though sympathetic, she had to laugh. The man was worn out, his mind turned to putty, as was hers. Floodlights had brought down a host of moths, and as the news anchor asked deep and meaningful questions, Holden's eyes flitted here and there following the flying insects. He looked less like a hero than a complete lunatic. Anna hoped somebody with a VCR was taping the interview. When he'd recovered, she suspected he would enjoy the joke. Any laughter they could glean from this debacle was to be treasured.
The cavers' tent, probably borrowed from CACA's fire cache, was a twenty-by-twenty-foot canvas shelter with flaps that opened at either end. Free of media types and, no doubt because of that, free of brass, the welcome was low key. No amount of hype could seduce them from the single fact that they had gone in to save a fellow caver and they had failed. Anna was hugged by strangers, some smelling nearly as bad as she did; kind words were murmured and a cold beer was pressed into her hands. They seemed to understand that she could not talk and could not stay. No overbearing do-gooder tried to stop her when she slipped out of the rear of the tent.
The December air was cold on her arms and back. Clad only in tee-shirt and trousers-and those soaked with sweat-she emerged into a winter night, forty-five degrees at best, with a slight wind. Sweat turned to icy patches on her shirt, and the hair on her arms was raised by goosebumps. Anna revelled in it. Intellectually, she knew the honeymoon would be short-lived, but at the moment she felt she would never again resent the cold of the wind or the heat of the sun. So long as she could feel it, it would remind her that she was alive and above ground.
When she'd gone far enough she could still see yet was hidden by the night from prying eyes, she sat down with her back to a small boulder weathered into a thousand tiny crevices, potential homes for all manner of beasties that might be attracted by her warmth: snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes, lizards. In her exalted state, Anna welcomed them all. Like some deviant Disney heroine, she would spread her metaphorical skirts for all the stinging, biting, scaly creatures of the world. She smiled at the thought of waltzing with a horned lizard to the plaintive strains of 'Someday My Prince Will Come,' a bevy of mud wasps holding up the gossamer train of her soiled tee-shirt.
Numbness in her fingers reminded her she still clutched a beer. Years had passed since she'd given up the stuff. Not a drop had crossed her lips since the first summer she'd worked at Mesa Verde. Visions of blackouts and delirium tremens and inappropriate remarks had kept her sober.
Deliberately, she took a long drink. It wasn't as good as she remembered it, but then little was. She caught herself in that thought and was ashamed. Cynicism was okay, bitterness a pain in the neck. The hairline difference between the two was hope and humor. The cynic had both, the embittered, nothing. She took another drink and enjoyed the sensation of alcohol and rebellion. Eventually she would have to confess to Molly. The whole point of being a recovering alcoholic was making sure there was a healthy dose of guilt and the catharsis of confession as a chaser for each drink. But for tonight none of that could touch her. She felt as if she'd squirmed out of the ground into a world where she was only partially committed, as if she were a ghost or the invisible woman. Shock might have explained the sense of detachment, but, as it was not altogether unpleasant, she chose not to question it.
Despite Anna's rebirth on this higher plane, the cold was beginning to seep through the seat of her trousers, penetrate beneath the wet patches on her shirt. Soon she'd have to go back. Freezing to death ten yards from the tent would be humiliating to say the least.
Till I finish the beer, she told herself, and stayed where she was, watching the drama under the lights unfold. Mouthing lines she could not hear, people three inches tall, as measured between thumb and forefinger, marched about in a purposeful manner getting absolutely nowhere. George Laymon, CACA's resource management specialist, pushed his way into the camera's frame between Holden and Brent for his moment of fame, then was hustled offstage with the geologist. The superintendent, resplendent as was Laymon in a Class-A dress uniform, joined them momentarily. Brent was released, and the two National Park Service men gravitated back toward the limelight.
Brent bobbed this way and that, a man who had no place to go yet could not decide which direction would get him there the fastest. Suddenly his head jerked up, and the indecision left him. Anna watched as he walked, then ran, into the darkness beyond the floods. A minute later he reappeared, his fretful face transformed, almost handsome. In the crook of each arm he carried a little girl. The children were two or three years old. They were dressed identically in frilly pink dresses, white tights, tiny red cowboy boots, and little blue parkas with the pointiest hoods Anna'd seen this side of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Twins, she guessed, probably Roxbury's daughters by the way they clung and chattered and he laughed and nuzzled. A fourth member of the party dragged out of the shadows. Mrs. Roxbury, Anna presumed. She didn't seem to share the children's rejoicing in their father's safe return from the depths. Possibly she hung back only to give them their moment together.
The beer was gone; hypothermia was just around the corner. Time to go back. It was all Anna could do to rise from the ground, and that wasn't accomplished in one fluid motion but in a series of grunting stages from fanny to knees, knees to feet. With cold and inaction her muscles had shut down. She was so stiff it surprised her she didn't creak like a rusty gate at every move.
A bath. The concept gave her renewed strength. Now that she'd joined the ranks of the topsiders such luxuries were not unheard of. With this in mind she limped more or less cheerfully back toward the milling humanity.
Each and every wish of Anna's had come true. Zeddie's house had been given to her with Zeddie's permission granted over the newly functioning field phone. There was a bath, solitude, beer in the refrigerator. Even a cat, a sleek white female with a gray saddle and ears so pink they were translucent. Calcite, she'd been told, was the cat's name.
Anna had soaked till her skin shriveled, quaffed a second beer, and now sat on the sofa cocooned in Zeddie's sweatpants and hooded sweatshirt. The Austin Lounge Lizards poured forth musical nostalgia from an
