Building Blocks Read online

  Along the top of the hill was a cemetery, with dirt roads twisting through it. The entrance to the cemetery was marked by a statue of an angel with a sword, a monument to the men who died in the Civil War. Brann turned to look down the steep wooded hillside. At the foot of the hill the houses of the town began. Beyond, he saw the Ohio River, lying in the sun. It didn’t look bad from that distance, especially with the wooded hills rising on its far side.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” Kevin asked.

  It was cooler up on the hill. All around thick green grass spread between the tombstones, and lush trees spread their branches. But nice?

  “There’s nothing nice about being dead,” Brann said. “Let’s go.”

  This steep, blufflike hill undulated back into grassy fields, with woods edging them. The entrance to the caves was right at the edge of a field, where a few trees grew. A sudden short hillside among the sparse trees lay covered with dried leaves from past falls and a few dead branches. The opposite hillside rose up as sharply, making a miniature ravine. Kevin led Brann halfway down the slope, the leaves rustling under their bare feet, making it sound like fall underfoot even though the air around them was thick with summer. “They’re here,” Kevin said.

  Brann looked around. “Here?” He looked for some undergrowth that would mask the entrance to a cave.

  The entrance wasn’t masked, it was just hard to see. It didn’t look like the entrance to anything. It looked like the narrow end of the ravine, with the big tree roots above. But once you knew where to look, you could see through the natural camouflage to a narrow slipping away, where a gap was created by the floor of the ravine falling down below the rise of the hill. Brann went right up to the entrance. It was so low, he had to bend over to shine the flashlight in. Kevin stood ten feet behind him, and even with his back to the younger boy Brann could feel the fear pouring out of him. He didn’t pay any attention.

  The beam of light showed the floor falling away. It looked like a slide, you could slide right down it.

  “I’ve never been in a cave,” Brann said, without moving his head.

  “Anyway,” Kevin answered.

  “I’m going in,” Brann decided.

  “Don’t. Please?”

  “Look, other kids must have, if they talk about it. That’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I won’t go far. You don’t have to come.” In fact, Brann didn’t want Kevin with him. This was his adventure, for him. “Wait here, I won’t be long.”

  “But Brann—”

  Brann lay on his back, his legs extending into the sloped entrance. He held the flashlight against his abdomen, to protect it with his body in case the tunnel narrowed unexpectedly. He elbowed himself forward and down.

  “Brann?” he heard behind him, before he slid out of hearing.

  The leaves hadn’t entered far into the tunnel, and he could move under his own control, he could even sit up, resting his torso on his elbows. He could have walked down hunched over, he realized, it wasn’t so steep after all, and the roof was higher than he’d thought. Daylight filtered in behind him and the beam of the flashlight probed ahead.

  The slope lasted no more than twenty feet. At its end the floor leveled and Brann sat for a minute, moving the flashlight around. It was about the size of a walk-in closet, this area. A couple of spider webs, but everything else rocks: uneven rock walls, an uneven rock floor, the ceiling smoother rock. There was still a little daylight behind him.

  Brann stood up and examined the walls. If it was part of the underground railway, there had to be a way forward, unless that was just a story. But Kevin didn’t tell stories like that, to boast. He moved around to the right, along the wall, and sure enough he saw a narrow opening, behind an outcrop of rock. It was half his height, and he crouched down to send the flashlight beam in. A kind of tunnel; he’d have to crawl. But at the end, deeper darkness, like another room, and not a long tunnel. Brann made himself look around at the closet room he was in, memorizing the appearance of the outcropping rock. He wasn’t going to be careless about this, and he knew he had a good memory. Then he crawled into the tunnel.

  No daylight here, nothing but heavy black darkness. The flashlight, held in his right hand, clunked on the ground. Stupid, he said to himself, and moved it to his mouth, thinking that that must be why miners had lights on their hats. He wouldn’t like to lose that flashlight or have it break on him.

  The stones rubbed at his shoulders and cut sharp at the fabric of his jeans. Like a dog following a scent, he followed the beam of light, slowly, his head down to keep from banging it against the ceiling.

  The light splayed out in front of him at the same time he felt the ceiling lift. He felt down, over the edge of the tunnel, with his right hand. Nothing.

  Brann felt a second of panic, as pleasurable as a good horror movie. All he had to do was back out the slow ten feet, no problem. No reason to give up. He took the flashlight out of his mouth and shone it ahead. He couldn’t see anything across, so it had to be a big room, a real cave. Flat on his belly now, he scraped forward, until his head and shoulders were out in the empty blackness. He directed the light down. And it was going to be easy, he just hadn’t reached down far enough to find the floor of this room. It wasn’t even a two foot drop, he just had to be careful with the flashlight.

  Careful also to memorize what he could. He looked at the shape of the opening, hunching backwards to do so. He hunched forward again and twisted his neck around to check the walls he could see. Then he slowly, cautiously, careful never to come even close to being off balance, edged his body onto the floor of the room. And stood up.

  A sharp pain in his heel, a reflex jerk away, but his grip tightened on the flashlight. He’d stepped on something sharp. The light showed uneven stones, some of them sharp edged, jutting up. He should have shoes on. He grinned.

  So far so good. Now the misty edge of light showed the shadowy opposite of the room, showed a ceiling five feet over his head. If he stuck to the wall he could check the way the cave went form here. But first he buried the front of the flashlight against his backside, to get the feeling of what it was like in here. He didn’t want to turn it off, just in case, but he did want to get the real feeling.

  Without light the room moved out around him again, but the dark got heavier, as if the earth above was pressing down on it. It was cool here, and dry. Brann gulped in air, suddenly worried that the air would run out, then reminded himself that he’d have to be a lot deeper, and sealed in somehow, before that could even begin to happen. But it felt like it could happen, with the light gone. It felt like it was happening.

  His eyes tried to make out any shape, any shadow, but they couldn’t see anything. He felt the dark air closing around his body. He could feel the hard, uneven rock against the soles of his feet. He could hear—nothing, nothing but deep, muffled darkness. He knew you couldn’t actually hear nothing, but the hollow soundlessness was so different from anything he had ever used his ears to hear, it really felt like hearing something. Then he thought he could hear his heart beating fast in his ears. It really was scary. Brann resisted the impulse to the free the light for another minute, to let the scariness soak in a little more. If you were lost in a cave, he thought to himself, saying the words out slowly, this is what it would feel like, the earth pressing in all around you, only a narrow belt of air holding it off. And what if there was an earthquake, right now? It wouldn’t have to be an earthquake. Because of the way strata of rocks were connected underground, once one little thing shifted, rocks for hundreds of miles around would shift too, readjusting. Then the dark walls here would shift, grinding probably, closing of—

  He freed the light and shone it around, grinning to himself. He started on his circuit around the room, moving always to the right, knowing that it closed off in basically a circular shape, so as long as he didn’t move out of the circle he wouldn’t get lost. By looking carefully, he could see occasional entrances off
the room, but you had to really use the light to find them, looking beyond and behind the rocks, up and down the walls of the room. He counted three, then up to seven, and then another three.

  A lot of entrances for a space that wasn’t in fact that big. The caves must spread out like a honeycomb network, like—what did they call the burial places in Rome—the catacombs? You’d really have to know your way around to move out of this room. A couple of the entrances were overhead, unreachable. A couple were like the one he’d used, ledges, and they were the hardest to pick out.

  If you were a slave, escaping, you might use one of the entrances that came high up. You would fall down, into darkness. What an idea. And what would it have been like under the river, really deep down, probably with the rock slippery underfoot and the walls slimy, cold all year round, wet, and wondering if the river would make its way through and smash you against the rocks even though you were only an arm’s length away from the walls—Brann shivered.

  OK, that was enough, it was about time to get back to where Kevin waited. He moved to the right, along the wall, looking for the ledge. He came to it. He didn’t realize until he’d found it that he had, in fact, been afraid he wouldn’t find it. He put his arm into it and shone the light down it. The beam, narrowed by the low ceiling, reflected off stone and shone back on itself, down an endless tunnel.

  Brann’s chest tightened, like an iron band had been drawn around it. He put his face into the opening. It wasn’t an endless tunnel, he saw; it was a false tunnel, the roof gradually sliding down to meet the floor.

  Don’t panic, he muttered aloud. Slowly, move on, keep checking. He forced his memory to recreate the shape of the opening he was looking for and forced his muscles to keep slow.

  And he couldn’t find it.

  He tried to remember just how many openings into the room there had been, but then he remembered that probably like a man lost in the woods he had been going in circles and circles, getting nowhere, without any sense of direction—

  “Stop it!” he told himself. His voice echoed strangely. He had always moved to the right, there was nothing to do with direction in here. It was just recognition. But his memory was crowded with undistinguishable shapes, all of them black and rocky—he couldn’t recognize anything.

  And the light was getting yellower, and that meant it was giving out, and he’d better find his opening, fast.

  Brann’s heart beat and his legs shook, partly with the effort required not to break into a run. His hands shook with fear. He gulped for air.

  He made himself sit down, crouching with his knees up against his chest, his back against the rough wall. He counted to ten, then twenty. He said the alphabet backwards. He shone the light on his feet, to keep from seeing the stone underground room around him, just a few short feet, really, from the earth’s surface—if only he could find it.

  He had a couple of cuts on the heel of his right foot. He licked his fingers and wiped the blood off, then licked the blood off his own fingers.

  His mind raced around the room banging up against the walls, trying to remember something, anything that would help. His body wanted to move the same way. What was he going to do? He had to do something; you couldn’t just sit there and wait.

  Because he was trapped—trapped in this circular cave and he’d be really stupid to try any tunnel he wasn’t sure of, because he could crawl deeper away until he died. Of hunger. Of exhaustion. And he’d thought there was some terrific special reason for him to have traveled back in time. Well, maybe this was it, and maybe later a later Brann would come and find his bones. . . . Except that couldn’t be, because he was the later Brann. So he was trapped in a time circle, and he’d never even be able to warn that later Brann because he’d never get out, and the later Brann would never know until now, when he was trapped in the cave. That was fate with a vengeance.

  Brann sat shaking, his teeth chattering, his unseeing eyes fixed on his ten toes coming out from his feet in two tidy rows. He felt like his brain was cracking in half. He had never thought about how you could go crazy from being afraid. He’d heard of it, of course, but those were just ghost stories. But he had to stop thinking or he would go crazy, he had to stop being afraid, or being this much afraid. But he couldn’t.

  All right, he said to himself, his chest so tight he had to push it out every time he wanted to take a breath, so what. It’s fate. And you had to grab fate if you were worth anything. That’s the hard truth, he said to himself, you hear? If you have to grab fate then you grab it, like Arthur grabbed Excalibur to take the sword out of the stone. Because he must have grabbed Excalibur the same way, at the end, to throw it back into the water, the hilt hard and heavy in his hand, and both of them were fate.

  The band around Brann’s chest tightened and he started to cry—sniveling like a baby, whimpering, he thought in a back corner of his brain. And he couldn’t stop, because after all he couldn’t grab onto his fate. He pulled up his T-shirt to wipe his nose on, furious at himself.

  “Oh God, what am I going to do?” he wondered, and heard his own terrified voice.

  Another voice called his name: “Brann? Brann?”

  Stupid chicken, Brann said to himself, sucking in air to clear his nose, rubbing the back of his left hand across his eyes to hide the marks of tears. If he’d only thought, Kevin was outside and he wasn’t very far in—he’d panicked. He felt like a jerk, a real jerk. He hoped nothing showed.

  “In here,” he said. “Can you see the light?”

  “Brann?”

  “Here,” Brann said. He moved out to the center of the room so the light would shine as widely as possible. He turned toward the direction of the sound of a body scraping down a tunnel.

  “Brann?”

  “See the light?”

  “Yes, OK.”

  Brann shone the light toward the voice. But the echoes had deceived him and Kevin hurried toward him from the darkness behind him. Tripped, stumbled against him, and almost knocked the flashlight out of his hand. Brann wheeled around to shine it in the boy’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” Kevin said.

  “No harm done,” Brann said, just glad to not be alone in there, glad to see another face. He put his hand on Kevin’s shoulders, and relief made his knees weak. The narrow bones under his hand surprised him, they were so round and small. “Let’s get going,” he said. “I’ll tell you—” but he didn’t finish the sentence.

  Kevin stood aside, waiting for Brann to move. Brann waited for Kevin to move. They looked at one another, in their pale circle of light.

  “You didn’t mark where you came in?” Brann asked.

  “I was worried about you—it was a long time. I’m sorry. Don’t you know how to get out?”

  “If I did I’d have been out long ago,” Brann snapped.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What are we going to do?” Brann asked, after along time. “I couldn’t’ find it. I looked and looked and I could only find the wrong ones.”

  Kevin didn’t say anything.

  “You should have marked where you came in. You should always do that, it’s just common sense,” Brann told the boy.

  “I’m sorry,” Kevin said.

  Brann let out an angry breath of air—and heard himself do that, just like his mother did, and his grandmother too. He heard the way he had just been talking to the kid, hammering. His brain had split, he thought to himself, and new things were getting into it.

  “No, I should have marked it too and I didn’t,” he said. “Let’s sit down.” Why had Kevin followed him in? As long as Kevin was outside to go for help, Brann was OK, he’d finally figured that out. For all the good that did now. Back to the beginning, that’s where they’d got to. Trapped still, only Kevin didn’t have to worry because it was for sure that Kevin would get out. Maybe that was what Brann’s fate was supposed to be, they’d sit and starve and he’d die first and Kevin would chew on his bones and that would save Kevin’s life until he was rescued. Then Kevi
n would grow up and get married and have three children until one disappeared one day.

  “Will we die?” Kevin asked him.

  “It’s no good asking that question,” Brann told him.

  They sat shoulder to shoulder, and Brann played the flashlight around on the indecipherable walls of stone, not expecting see anything.

  “I guess we could, even so close to the surface. We could, couldn’t we. I’d rather the with someone I like, wouldn’t you?”

  Brann didn’t answer. He was staring at Kevin. “Aren’t you scared?”

  “Sure,” Kevin said. “But if you think about it—I mean if it has to happen, if it’s fate—I’d much rather with you than anyone else.”

  Brann couldn’t think of what to say. Either the kid was really stupid or he was incredibly brave.

  “I mean, I don’t know about you, about your family, but if you’ve run away—and my family, well, they wouldn’t care much. Do you think?”

  “No,” Brann admitted. He was astounded by this kid. “Your mother would.”

  “She might if she wasn’t so busy, but she’s too tired and busy. It’s not her fault, she just has to be. So it would be OK. I mean”—Kevin smiled his odd, sad smile—“It’s not OK at all, but I wouldn’t mind that much. What about you, though?”

  Where did the kid get that kind of courage? Brann was wondering. “I’m glad you’re here, anyway,” he said. “I was getting hysterical.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kevin told him.

  “Oh yeah? Crying like a baby. Cross my heart.” Brann crossed his heart.

  “I’m sorry,” Kevin said.

  “Oh Kevin,” Brann said. “Look, it’s not your fault at all, it’s my fault. You warned me.” He felt the boy’s slight body beside him. “I feel terrible about this.” Boy was that inadequate. “I wish my father was here,” Brann said without thinking. Without even thinking why he would wish that even under ordinary circumstances.

  “My mom says wishes aren’t good for anything. She says if wishes were horses beggars would ride.”

  “Yeah,” Brann agreed. Then it struck him—his father was here, and that struck him as pretty funny. He began to laugh. “Well, maybe your mother doesn’t know everything,” he sputtered out, before he began to laugh again.