Apologize, Apologize! (11 page)

“Next to Bingo, the Marquis de Sade would seem uptight,” I said. “I just like a little decorum, you know. A bit of restraint might be nice. I know it’s a foreign concept in our house, but it’s something to consider.”

The front door opened, and Erica, in shorts and sweatshirt, said good-bye to her mother, who smiled and waved at us from the porch as Erica ran down the steps and toward the car.

You’ve got to be skinny to go caving. You never know when you’re going to run into a tight squeeze. We had a couple of flashlights among the lot of us, no headgear, and we decided not to worry about the rain. Rosie and I had been through the caves in the past. I was familiar with one route in particular and was confident we could make it a pretty straightforward excursion. We talked about bringing ropes, but in the end we thought forget it, we don’t need them, we’re going on a lark, we aren’t Stanley and fucking Livingstone, for Christ’s sake. Parents took their little kids on excursions through those caves.

We got to the cave entrance—a narrow opening in the limestone—and right away we had problems. Bingo was slim enough, he could pass through the eye of a needle no sweat. I wasn’t as slender, but I was pretty lean, so it was no problem for me or Erica, but Rosie had put on a little beer weight, and he couldn’t make the cut.

Even with Bing pushing down on his shoulders at the surface and me pulling his legs from below, we couldn’t budge his fat ass.

“You guys are gonna kill me,” he said, his face getting redder with each passing moment.

I was so disgusted, I was all for leaving him wedged in there for the rest of his life.

“Well, this was a total waste of time,” I said, hoisting myself back up to the surface, unkindly poking Rosie in his soft gut with a long stick I picked up off the ground.

“Let’s look around for another entrance,” he said.

“No,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. We didn’t bring any stuff with us. And I only know my way from here.”

“Come on, Coll, where’s your sense of adventure?” Bing said mischievously, eyeing Erica. It was plain to see his reasons for wanting to go belowground. She smiled back at him.

“Adventure’s got nothing to do with it,” I said. “You don’t know what’s down there. If we get into a jam, we’ve got no way of getting out. I don’t want to be one of those weekend spelunker dorks they have to rescue after they’ve spent three days wandering around in circles in the dark.”

Bingo started squawking like a chicken.

“That’s mature,” I said.

“I’ve come all this way. I’m looking for another entrance. Are you coming?” he asked the others.

“I’m in,” Erica agreed, pointedly looking at me. I shifted involuntarily.

Jesus, I thought, outclassed by a girl.

“What the hell? Come on, Coll, we’ve come this far . . . ,” Rosie said, hauling himself up and dusting off his jeans, stained a rich brown from the earth.

“Jeez, we’ve driven for a couple of hours. You guys make it sound like we trekked for days through the Himalayas,” I said, bringing up the rear as the others scrambled out across the limestone, searching for another way in. But no one was listening to me. The momentum, clearly, was for going in.

Everything was telling me it was wrong. I felt my uneasiness spreading as if it were poison ivy. My skin itched with reluctance, and still I went ahead. What is that? Every part of me covered in hives, my whole body screaming out an alarm, and I ignored it? Even after years of thinking about it, the only explanation I have is that those whom God would destroy He first makes itchy as hell.

“Over here!”

I looked up. It was Bingo. I heard him whoop delightedly. I saw the top of his head, and then he disappeared. The others were laughing.

“Jesus, Bing, you asshole!” I said as I stood looking down at him in disbelief.

He shone his flashlight in our direction from where he stood in the darkness about eight feet below. He’d found an opening in the limestone and he’d jumped, without thinking, without discussing it with anyone, he’d just leapt in. I couldn’t believe it.

“It’s awesome down here,” he said.

I was bent over the hole and staring down at him.

“Come on. Jump,” he said.

“Are you crazy? How do we get back out?” I yelled down. “How the hell are you going to get out?”

“Oh, Collie, there are a million ways out of here. What are you so worried about? I can see light way down at the end of this big cavern. At the worst we can always just follow the water to the river opening. Come on, Erica, I’ll catch you. You can do it. Jump.”

Erica hesitated for a second, giggled nervously, closed her eyes, and let fly.

“One, two, three . . .” Rosie followed, landing with a loud thud.

“Hey, I felt the earth really move for the first time,” Bingo joked. “Come on, Collie. It’s fine. There’s light streaming in. I can see it down round the bend.”

“Bingo’s right,” Rosie said, his flashlight illuminating his face. “You know how porous these caves are. There are openings all over the place.”

I hesitated. I was thinking about something, and for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. I’ve gone over every moment of that day a thousand times in my head, so thoroughly that I can account for every second, but no matter how I try, regardless of what tricks I play on myself, I can’t remember what I was thinking at the precise moment before I jumped.

Mostly I remember following the trail laid down by Bing’s laughter.

“Are you finished?” I asked as Bing emerged from the darkness, his knees covered with mud, yellow dust in his hair, his eyes shining like an oil lamp, Erica trailing him, this ever-loving girl, this obliging mattress he’d found somewhere on the way and insisted on dragging along.

“I think I’m in love,” he said, full of high spirits. Clapping both hands around my head and dragging me into him, he kissed me as Rosie and Erica hooted in shock and delight.

“Come on, Collie, let’s fuck!” he shouted, and even amid the ensuing hilarity, no one was more amused than he was.

“Yeah, yeah, hey, Shecky, let’s get going.” I gave him an impatient push. “We’ve got to find a way out of here in the next couple of hours,” I said, turning away and starting the meandering trek around the bend and toward the light glimmering somewhere off in the distance.

It was then I noticed Bing limping.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

“It hurts,” he said. He had twisted his ankle in the jump.

“What a fucking asshole you are,” I said. “What are you going to do if we have to climb? Damn it, Bing.”

“You’ll help me,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’ll be fine.” He said it as though he meant it, as if he knew it was true, as if he could count on me.

We were navigating a long, narrow pitch down to the level of the streamway. There was a squeeze in the middle that gave us a bit of trouble. Bingo slipped and fell a couple of times as we carried on our journey downstream. Three hours into our trek and his ankle was swollen and bruised and his toes felt cold.

“Ouch,” he said, jumping, grabbing my forearm as I gently felt my way around his foot in the semidarkness.

“Jeez, Bing, I think it might be broken.”

“Nah. It’s just a sprain,” he said, looking over at Erica, pretending to be brave, trying to impress her.

“Oh, and you’d know, of course,” I said. “I’m telling you it’s broken.”

“Poor baby,” Erica said, kissing his forehead.

I reached out and, taking his hand, helped him to his feet. “Put your arm around my neck,” I said.

We hobbled along for a while, Bing making the odd joke, but for the most part he was uncharacteristically quiet, not singing or whooping it up or cracking wise. It was a bit disconcerting, him being so silent.

“How you doing?” I asked him.

“Just leave me here to die,” he said. “I can’t take another step. You guys go ahead and save yourselves. If I get hungry, I’ll gnaw on a limb.”

“Shut up, you idiot! Here . . .” I bent over and gestured for him to climb aboard. “Get on my back.”

“Thanks, Coll.”

“I wish you were my big brother.” Erica looked over and smiled at me.

“No, you don’t,” I said.

Just ahead, we heard the muffled roar of water. We came around the bend and saw a deep pool fed by twin waterfalls—tall, explosive cascades of surging water feeding the plunge pool, the water, unusually high from the rain, sweeping in a strong, circular motion, a series of complex currents competing. At one end, the pool narrowed and opened up into rapids phasing into a fast-moving current that by the look of things—I could see light sparkling on the water’s surface off in the distance—eventually led outside the cave and onto the wider river.

There was a huge boulder near the base of the waterfall. I felt uneasy.

“Rosie, do you remember anything Mr. Morrison said about aerated water?” Mr. Morrison was our geography teacher at Andover and had led us on a few caving expeditions.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Rosie said. “What’s aerated water?”

“You can’t swim in it,” I said, struggling to recall the details of Mr. Morrison’s warning. “You need to be careful in a pool like this where there’s a waterfall. Especially when there’s something like a rock or a log—see the big boulder down there? Something about the currents making a hole in the water and you just sink to the bottom. Remember he told us the story about the guy in Australia who tried to swim out of a cave, but he drowned because it was aerated water?”

“No,” Rosie said. “I remember something about staying away from dams. Who ever heard of water you can’t swim in? Where the fuck do you come up with this stuff?”

“Tell me about it,” Bingo said, sliding off me and back onto the ground. “Collie, you’re like the Grim Reaper or something. Don’t be such a downer all the time.”

“Pointing out legitimate danger isn’t a character defect,” I said. “You guys are acting like Curly and Larry.”

“I guess that makes you Moe,” Bingo said as Rosie laughed a little too appreciatively.

I ignored them and looked around, trying to decide whether we should go forward or head back and wait until someone else came along who could help us.

It didn’t look good. The only way to avoid the pool and waterfalls was to go up to the source of the light shining on the water. Above us was a narrow limestone ledge, covered in moss and slick with water and wear. It wrapped around the tops of the waterfalls, gradually ascending to what seemed to be a series of openings beyond the rapids in the cave’s ceiling that I hoped were wide enough to take us aboveground.

But there was no way in hell Bingo could make it across with his injured ankle.

He read my mind. “To hell with it, I’m gonna swim out of here.”

“Are you crazy? You can’t take the chance. It might be that weird water,” I said. “There’s no buoyancy. You’d sink like a stone.”

“I can swim in anything,” he said, appraising the boiling currents.

“No, you can’t,” I said, a tone of desperation creeping into my voice. “There’s no discussion, Bing. We’re climbing. I’ll help you. Just forget about swimming.”

I held on to him as we made our ascent, the color draining from my hands, my fingers aching. I was afraid he’d jump in, so the truth was I was holding on to him for all I was worth. I think he knew, too, because he held on a little tighter to me.

“It’s okay, Collie,” he said. “I won’t do anything stupid. I could do it, though, you know, I can hold my breath forever if I have to.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Rosie and I were okay swimmers. And Bingo? He was the best swimmer I ever knew. He
could
hold his breath forever, started practicing breath-hold diving when he was a little kid after pretty much outgrowing the asthma that almost killed him.

Even I had to admit there was something magical about seeing him in the shallows along the beach at home, sliding beneath the water’s surface, barely creating a ripple, smooth and silent as the schools of silverfish. I’d watch for the fleeting rhythmic flick of long flippers—his only concession to equipment—as he made his descent, heartbeat and respiration deliberately slowed, air packed and waiting for him. My own heartbeat and respiration accelerated, panic rising, as I waited for him to emerge, four minutes, five minutes, six minutes later.

Quite a trick; a real hit at parties, where Bingo inevitably spent half the night with his head in a bucket of water and the other half touring the hidden depths of just about every girl in the joint, each one lining up for the privilege. His magic expressed itself in many ways. I wouldn’t have minded a little of what he had. There was no magic in me.

All of us were getting soaked by the silver spray assailing the rock. The water and the air were cold. Bing’s teeth were chattering from the cold and the wet and the pain of his ankle.

“Are you okay?” I asked him as we inched along the narrow passage.

“No,” he said.

We didn’t have far to go. I nearly slipped a couple of times. I was afraid I would lose my balance. We decided it was safer for him to walk than ride.

“Once we get beyond the waterfalls, I’ll piggyback you to the top to where the opening is,” I said, promising him.

So it was me leading the way, followed closely by Bing, who was limping, then Erica, and Rosie reluctantly bringing up the rear.

“Whose fucking idea was this, anyway? Shit, Bingo, I could kill you for getting us into this jam. I’m fucking freezing up here. Where the hell is the way out?” Rosie had lost his enthusiasm for the whole project around the same time he got stuck.

“Lay off,” I said. “You’re not helping. Anyway, you were all in favor of this little adventure until you found out you might actually have to move your fat ass—speaking of which, that’s what got us into this mess in the first place.”

Bing looked over at me, eyebrows raised, clearly pleased that I would take his side over Rosie’s.

I had hardly finished sputtering before Erica gave this tiny gasp, kind of an eek—a soft little yelp tacked on the end of a sharp inhalation of air. Her foot shot out from under her, and Bing instinctively reached over to grab her to stop her from falling. The unexpected twist and force caused him to lose his own footing. I saw what was happening. I lunged for him—too late.