Under the Cajun Moon (47 page)

“I know where there’s a ladder in one of the tunnels, but it won’t help,” Travis said, explaining that the mine cap was likely made of cement and couldn’t be removed from the inside without some heavy equipment doing the pushing.

Feeling antsy, I jumped up and used the light from my phone to explore our immediate surroundings. The chamber we were in was large, at least twenty feet across, with tunnels branching off in four directions. There were also the other tunnels on the two levels above ours. Surely somehow we could find a way out of here.

“What about our cell phones?” I asked, moving back toward Travis. “If I could get close enough to the surface, maybe I could text for help there.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“So where’s the ladder?”

He explained the route I would need to take through the tunnels to get to it. I could tell he wanted to go himself, but of course he was too injured for that.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, leaning forward and kissing him full on the mouth. “You stay here and pray. Mom, you come with me.”

With that I headed down the tunnel Travis had indicated, my mother following closely behind. Feeling a new surge of confidence, I moved more quickly than I should have and soon bumped my head on the solid salt wall.

“Oh, honey,” my mother cried, grabbing at my shirt from behind.

“I’m okay,” I said, gingerly feeling my forehead for blood even as I pressed onward.

We soon reached the juncture Travis had described and took the tunnel
on the right. About ten feet in, I slowed down, looking for the old wooden ladder that was supposed to be there but wasn’t.

“I see it!” my mother said, holding out her phone for light and moving carefully toward the far wall.

The ladder was lying on the ground, its wooden rungs crusted over with white salt.

“Good catch, Mom,” I said, moving to one end and lifting it. “With the salt, it was practically invisible.”

Beaming from my compliment, she grabbed the other end, but it was hard to carry the ladder with both hands and shine our cell phones at the same time. Finally, we put the ladder on our shoulders, supporting it there with one hand while holding out our cells with the other. Turning the corner was a bit tricky, but we managed it. As we went, I couldn’t help but think that this was one of the first times in my entire life that my mother and I had had to cooperate and work as a team in order to accomplish something. Despite the dismal situation we were in, at least that felt good.

When we finally reached the central tunnel again, it was to find Travis with his eyes closed and his lips murmuring in prayer.

“We got it,” I said proudly.

“Amen,” he said in response, opening his eyes.

Travis directed us from his place on the floor as my mother and I propped up the ladder against the wall directly below a tunnel opening. From what I could tell in the dim light, the ladder was tall enough to get me to the next level as long as the wooden rungs held up under my weight.

“Here goes nothing,” I said, kicking off my flip-flops and glancing back at my two companions with what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

“Be careful,” my mother urged.

“I love you,” Travis added.

He loved me? We barely knew each other but he loved me?

Funny, but in fact I knew I loved him too.

“It’s mutual, Cajun Boy,” I said, flashing him a grin. “Now get back to praying while I try to get us out of here.”

As I had feared, the ladder was partially worn through with rot. Still,
though two rungs split under my feet, it held together enough for me to make my way to the top. My mother steadied it against the wall as I stretched upward, desperate to reach the next level of the mine. Finally, with a fierce surge of effort, I grabbed the lip of the tunnel and pulled myself up and in.

Victorious, I turned around and looked down at the other two who were there below me. “Well?” my mother asked. “Are you getting a signal?”

I pulled my phone from my pocket, flipped it open, and tried to send the text message. After a long moment, it responded with a beep. Service unavailable.

“Not here,” I said, trying not to sound as devastated as I felt. There was no way to get any higher than this. “Let me go up the tunnel a bit and see if it’s any better.”

Summoning my nerve, I ventured into the darkness, checking the service bars on the screen of my phone as I went. Unfortunately, after a few minutes the phone beeped, and I looked to see that not only did I not have a signal, but the battery was low.

“Come on,” I hissed, shaking the phone as if that would give it more juice. I tried again to send the message, but it simply wouldn’t go through. As I continued onward, I thought about one of the Bible verses Travis had shared with me, the one that said He was one God who was over all and through all and in all. If that was true, then I knew that He was there with us now and we could turn our situation over to Him, for better or worse.

“I’m sorry I doubted before,” I prayed suddenly, out loud. “Please, if You can, teach me the difference between the uncaring and distant God I usually think You are and the loving and ever-present God that the Bible—and Travis—says You are.”

As I continued moving forward, I was filled with a sudden peace so overwhelming and pervasive that it could only have come through a divine blessing. My phone beeped again, and I thought of turning back, but something told me to keep going just a bit further. Pressing onward, I went around a corner and then, with a final beep, it died.

There in the darkness, I carefully turned around so I could exactly retrace my steps. I was scared, but I knew if I could just get back around
that corner, I could call out to the others and use the sound of their voices to find my way.

The funny thing was, after a few steps I decided that the black blackness of before wasn’t so black here. In fact, I realized, if I held my hand up in the air, I could actually make it out. Waiting for my eyes to adjust further, I decided that there was some light here, coming from somewhere, allowing me to see.

Please, God, let it be the sun!

Feeling my way along the walls, I slowly gravitated toward the light. I reached a point where the ground was littered with massive boulders, and I looked up to see that the ceiling of the tunnel had caved in there. Looking further upward, I realized that directly above where I stood was a crack high in the ceiling. With a gasp, I thought of what I had seen earlier, when I had been brought to the clearing by Wade Henkins.

When we had first arrived there, I had taken a good look at the ponds, and though three of them were filled with water, the fourth one had been empty with a small gash at its center. Thinking about that now, I had to wonder if somehow the bottom of that particular pond had actually broken through the ceiling of this tunnel. That would explain where the water had gone—it had simply drained down through the opening and into the mine below. That had to be it! Looking up, I decided that the crack in the ceiling was located right about where that pond probably was. Sunlight was pouring through the crack, illuminating the walls, which were not white, but pink. In fact, the boulders on the ground weren’t even boulders at all but instead were giant, pink chunks of salt that had fallen loose from the ceiling. Surely, my father had discovered this new vein on Monday morning, and that had been the source of his excitement the first time he called Kevin Peralta and told him to make the offer on Paradise. From what I could see, there was enough salt here to fill a million bottles of Chef Julian’s Secret Salt and then some. Given how proud he was of that salt, it was no wonder he wanted to own this place for himself.

I wanted to call down to Travis and my mother and tell them what I had found. First, though, I tried climbing up the salt boulders a short way, just to see if they would be stable enough to hold me. Torn between wanting to
go further and wanting to let them know that for the first time we had real hope, I was ecstatic when I heard the sound of my mother’s voice coming toward me and then I saw her approaching with her lighted phone.

“Chloe, you’re okay!” she cried, coming to a stop at the bottom of the pile of salt boulders. “You were gone so long I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“Look!” I cried triumphantly, pointing toward the ceiling. She looked up, and when she spotted the sunlight coming through the crack, her filthy, exhausted face burst into a beautiful smile.

“Mom, my phone died. Can you try sending the text with yours?”

As she did, I started to make my way back down the pile of rocks toward her, ignoring sharp edges digging into the skin of my feet. One of the rocks tilted when I put my weight on it. Scrambling to regain my balance, I knocked against one of the biggest chunks, dislodging it from near the top and causing it to roll down the back of the pile. It landed with a crash against the tunnel wall, busting through a surface I had thought was salt but sounded more like wood. As the dust settled, I peered into the cavern that the collision had exposed.

“It worked, Chole! It sent the text out!”

Standing atop the pile of rocks in my bare feet, I was torn between wanting to explore the newly opened cavern and wanting to see what text messages my mother might get in return. Looking from her to the opening, I was about to make a decision when I thought I heard Travis calling to us from far away.

Scrambling down the rock pile, I told my mother to stay there and wait for any return messages while I went to answer Travis. Of course, I had only gone a few feet when I realized I had no way to illuminate my path. I could have borrowed my mother’s phone, but we needed it to stay where it was in case texts came back to us.

Keeping one hand on the wall and inching one foot at a time out in front of me, I proceeded through the darkness. Except for a few scrapes and bumps, that worked well, though I was still afraid I might walk right past the end of the tunnel and fall to the main chamber one floor below.

Using the sound of Travis’ voice, I was able to call back and forth to him until I was fairly close—at least close enough to make out his words
without an echo. As I did and I understood what he was saying, my stomach lurched.

“Water, Chloe! Water is pouring in!”

Dropping to my knees, I crawled the rest of the way until I reached the overhang and could look down at him. There, by the light of his iPhone, I could see Travis struggling to make his way up the ladder despite his injured arm, ribs, and knee. Below him at least a foot of water swirled furiously around the chamber.

“How?” I cried. “Where’s it coming from?”

“It’s like Lake Piegneur all over again,” Travis replied, looking up at me. “I should’ve known they were going to do something like this. They’re trying to drown us.”

Horrified at this new turn of events, I tried to reach down and help Travis up the ladder, but the distance was just too far. With only one good arm, even if he made it to the top, he would never be able to heft himself up on the ledge and I had no way to pull him.

But that was one bridge we didn’t have to cross. When the rung he was perched on cracked under his weight, he fell back into the water, the cell phone in his pocket dimming and then going black.

Terror gripped at my heart at the return of complete darkness, but I had to remain calm for his sake.

“Travis! Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

“I’m here, but I’ve got terrible news.”

“What?”

“It looks like I probably violated the warranty on my iPhone.”

I couldn’t help but laugh despite the circumstances. Leave it to him to make a joke at a time like this.

“My mother got a text out. Someone will come and rescue us soon.”

“If we don’t drown first,” he replied, his voice echoing against the walls.

“Try climbing up again,” I urged, wishing desperately that I could see. “Can you find the ladder?”

“I think it fell. Let me see.”

I heard splashing sounds.

“Found it. No, wait. This is just part of it. Feels like it split clean in half.”

My heart sank. Without a ladder, he couldn’t come up—and I couldn’t go down.

“This is not our lucky day,” I said.

“With one arm, a bad knee, and some broken ribs, I think I was out of luck anyway.”

Lying down on my stomach on the salt floor, I reached out into the darkness, wishing I could lift him up beside me.

“Maybe the water will float you up,” I said. “By the time it reaches this level, you can swim right to me.”

“Guess that’s the only option we have left,
cher
.”

As the water continued to rise, I asked Travis where it was coming from and what he had meant about Lake Piegneur. He gave the short version, explaining that about forty years ago an entire lake in south Louisiana had been lost down a salt mine. An oil company had been drilling in the wrong place by mistake when their drill bit punctured through the ceiling of a mine. Like pulling the stopper from a bathroom drain, the lake began to pour through the resulting hole, filling the empty caverns of the mine and forming a whirlpool in the lake that sucked down the drilling platform, eleven barges, and something like sixty-five acres of surrounding terrain.

“Is that what you think the Henkins did here? Punctured the mine?”

“They must have. I don’t know how much time we have, but if help doesn’t get here soon, Chloe, we’re done for.”

“Hang on, Travis. I know you can do this.”

Unable to see anything, I had no way of knowing how quickly the water was coming in. I refused to think about drowning. Most of all, I just wanted Travis to be safe, to be next to me on this level, where we could make our way together through the darkness to my mother.

“How high is it now?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.

“It’s at my waist. You may be right. In the end I might just float up to you, if I can tread water that long.”

All I could do was lie there and keep talking to the man I loved as the water rose around him. He continued to update me on its progress, and
finally it was too deep for him to stand. Treading water with his injuries was harder than he had expected, and though I tried to keep him talking, I could tell by his voice that he wasn’t going to last long.