shotguns. As far as Eric knew, the only gun that Dad owned was a funny looking over/under 20 gauge that he used to hunt pheasant years ago. Eric had a hard time imagining Dad hunting anything. He reminded him of Barney Fife and Walter Mitty rolled together. Dad looked through his bifocals at Eric for a long time, and then rubbed his own forehead. “Today’s as good as any, I suppose,” he said. “Let’s pack.”
“Are you sure?” asked Mom.
“Take all the practical clothes,” Dad said. Eric hated it when his dad didn’t answer questions. It made him sound stupid, like he didn’t know, so Eric had made it a point of honor to never ask Dad anything. Eric filled his box, the only box Dad would let him take, with personal items. At the bottom he layered thirty comic books, all Conan the Barbarian adventures; then his slingshot and a marble bag filled with steel ball bearings; beside that, his cassette player and tapes (Run DMC, the Rolling Stones, Men Without Hats, The Cure, AC/DC, U2, and a Willie Nelson tape that none of his friends knew about); two paperbacks
GAY WHALES FOR JESUS bumper sticker. A small frisbee (the competition-weight disk was too large for the box); a thick bundle of wallet-sized photographs that his friends in the Eighth Grade had given him in the last two weeks (Mostly girls who signed the backs with “Have a nice summer,” or “It’s been a blast having you in class this year.” None mentioned the disease). He topped the bundle with an old MTV towel of Martha Quinn at the MTV beach party. He looked at the posters on his bedroom walls that the black light made glow like nuclear accidents, the rest of his books and tapes, and everything else he had to leave behind, forlornly. He went into the kitchen to help Mom. Eight hours later, near sunset, the van, filled not only with boxes and suitcases of clothes but also with all the food from the cupboards, pulled off U.S. 6 next to Clear Creek in a canyon west of Denver. Traffic passed them sporadically, heading west. Eric supposed that most people stuck to the newer, multi-lane I-70 rather than the two lane, winding, older highway.
“What are we doing here?” Eric asked Mom. “You’ll see,” she said. The canyon wall across the highway rose steeply to their right, and the thirty-foot-wide stream tumbled noisily over the rocks to their left. Other than the pullout their van almost filled, nothing seemed distinguishable about this stretch of road. “Do you feel like some climbing?” said Dad. Eric decided he definitely
“How is it in there?” she said.
Eric shrugged off his pack, held his flashlight in front of him, and crawled into the hole at the boulders’
base. The light penetrated deeply into a room that quickly grew wider and higher the farther in he went. Far from being empty, boxes lined the walls, each marked with thick felt-pen labels in Dad’s handwriting: soup, tuna, ham, beans, corn, chili, spaghetti, sterno, gas, kerosine, charcoal, and dozens of others he couldn’t see. Light reflected off something big wrapped in black plastic. Eric pulled a corner of the sheet off the shape revealing three mattresses stacked on each other.
Another light cast sharp shadows around him. He pointed his flashlight at the entrance, and his mother, just getting off her knees, shielded her eyes. “You all right?” she said. They used the plastic as a ground sheet and put the three mattresses side by side on a relatively flat spot on the floor.
Eric said, “What is this place?”
Mom pulled the lid off a box and looked inside. “A fault cave. Your dad learned about it when he was at the Colorado School of Mines.”
“Fault cave?”
“Caves normally form in limestone, but this is granite. Not many people know about it. Your dad has a map of all the passages and entrances. We can explore it later.”
She found sheets and blankets in one of the boxes and just finished making the last bed when Dad crawled into the room. “Why didn’t you light one of the Coleman lanterns?” he said. Later, with the lantern extinguished, Eric snuggled deeper under the blankets and sleeping bag Mom had spread over him. He strained his eyes, but saw nothing. He remembered once when the family had toured Cave of the Winds at Manitou Springs. The guide had turned out the light. After the group had stood in the velvet darkness for a minute, he said, “This is what a blind man sees every day of his life.” Dad breathed softly next to him. Eric guessed he was asleep. He couldn’t hear Mom. After a long while, when he almost felt the rocks of the mountain creaking beneath him, when he was sure that snakes or scorpions or demons were hovering in the air, he said, “Mom…” His voice sounded flat and small in the cave’s space. “… are you awake?”
Cloth rustled against cloth. “Yes.”
“Did Dad carry all this stuff up here by himself?”
She moved again. A blanket scraped across the plastic ground cloth. “When he heard how bad the disease might be, he started buying things and bringing them up on the weekends or after work.”
“No, really?”
“It tired him, Eric. He couldn’t tell anyone.”
“Did you help?”
“This is the first time I’ve been here.” She sighed. “He said he would be fine.”
“How did he get the mattresses? I mean, I could see a box of beans or something, but the mattresses? Arnold Shwarzenegger couldn’t get up that trail with a load like that!”
“He’s persistent when he’s got a goal,” she said.
Eric stood eight inches taller than Dad, which made Dad as small as the smallest kids in his class. “He’s not strong enough!” Eric caught his breath. Dad moved on his mattress, rolling on his back. Eric’s bed, which was pushed against Dad’s, shifted slightly.
Dad cleared his throat, then said, “A man needs a hobby. Now get some sleep.” But Eric couldn’t. Not with the total blackness settled over him, not with the rustle of leaves in the entrance crawlway or the skitter of rodent paws over rock. He smelled mice droppings. Eventually, Eric reached under the blankets for his cassette player and put the headphones over his ears. He listened to Run DMC at low volume, figuring the batteries might last longer that way, and he wondered if Dad had the foresight to bring some double A’s among the other supplies. He doubted it. In the morning they ate breakfast on a large flat rock behind a ridge above the cave entrance: Mom, sitting on a camp stool, Dad standing, back to them, surveying the canyon, and Eric leaning against a branchless juniper trunk that stuck out of the ground like a twisted pole. After they were done, they carefully policed the area of any scraps that might show they had been about. Dad was adamant about this. Then he led Eric to a rocky outcrop that overlooked the trail to the cave and the highway below. While Eric followed him, he silently critiqued Dad’s outfit. The flannel shirt seemed okay, although it was warm for it. Already the sun-washed rocks were too hot to lean against comfortably. But the blue corduroy pants were definitely wrong, and so were black socks with Hushpuppy shoes. The outfit was embarrassing, Eric thought. Dad gave him a canteen and told him to keep a watch for “tourists.” Even though he had sworn not to ask Dad any questions, the words blurted out. “What do you mean?” The canteen hung low on Eric’s hip and the weight pressed coolly against his thigh. Eric wished he had a cola.
Dad said, “You hear that?”
He’s not answering again, thought Eric, and he listened. Below the river mumble covered the passage of cars. Nothing else. Then he heard it, chirping somewhere in the rocks above him. A canyon finch, he thought, but he shook his head.
“It’s a canyon finch, son. You know that.”
Eric shrugged, as if he still didn’t hear it. For years Dad had been identifying bird calls, and lately the exercise wearied Eric to no end. He’d taken to not playing the game.
Dad pushed his glasses up his nose. He turned away from the bird and looked down the steep trail. His hair was matted and skewed to one side. Eric realized he’d never seen Dad before he’d showered and shaved. “We might get sick, Eric. There’s nothing we can do about that. But if we don’t, then there may be…” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “…dangerous men. We’ll be safe as long as no one thinks to come here.” His hand fluttered to his face, took off his glasses. He rubbed the lenses with his shirt tail. “Stay alert, and if you spy anybody
