Child of God(24)

shadow show across the upper hillside. Ballard slipped once and was caught up and helped on. They came to rest standing on an eight by eight above the sawdust pit. One of the men was boosted up to the overhead beams and handed up the slack end of the cable. They ain't got him doped up have they, Ernest? I'd hate for him not to know what was happenin to him. He looks alert enough to me. Ballard craned his head toward the man who'd spoke. I'll tell ye, he said. Tell us what? Where they're at. Them bodies. You said if I'd tell you'd turn me loose. Well you better get to telling. They're in caves. In caves. I put em in caves. Can you find em? Yeah. I know where they're at. BALLARD ENTERED THE hollow rock that used to be his home attended by eight or ten men with lanterns and lights. The rest of them built a fire at the mouth of the cave and sat about to wait. They gave him a flashlight and fell in behind him. Down narrow dripping corridors, across stone rooms where fragile spires stood everywhere from the floor and a stream in its stone bed ran on in the sightless dark. They went on hands and knees between shifted bedding planes and up a narrow gorge, Ballard pausing from time to time to adjust the cuffs of his overalls. His entourage somewhat in wonder: You ever see anything to beat this? We used to mess around in these old caves when I was a boy. We did too but I never knowed about thisn here. Abruptly Ballard stopped. Balancing with one arm, the flashlight in his teeth, he climbed a ledge and went along it with his face to the wall, went upward again, his bare toes gripping the rocks like an ape, and crawled through a narrow. fissure in the stone. They watched him go. Goddamn if that there ain't a awful small hole. What I'm thinkin is how we goin to get them bodies out of here if we do find em. Well somebody shinny up there and let's go. Here Ed. Hold the light. The first man followed the ledge and climbed up to the hole. He turned sideways. He stooped. Hand me that light up here. What's the trouble? Shit. What is it? Ballard! Ballard's name faded in a diminishing series of shunted echoes down the hole where he had gone. What is it, Tommy? That little son of a bitch. Where is he? He's by god gone. Well let's get after him. I cain't get through the hole. Well kiss my ass. Who's the smallest?

Ed is, I reckon. Come up here, Ed. They boosted the next man up and he tried to wedge his way into the hole but he would not fit. Can you see his light or anything? Shit no, not a goddamn thing. Somebody go get Jimmy. He can get through here. They looked about at one another assembled there in the pale and sparring beams of their torches. Well shit. You thinkin what I am? I sure as hell am. Does anybody remember how we came? Oh fuck. We better stick together. You reckon there's another entrance to this hole he's in? I don't know. You reckon we ought to leave somebody to watch here? We might never find em again. There's a lot of truth in that·. We could leave a light just around the corner here where it would look like somebody was a waitin. Well. Ballard! Little son of a bitch. Fuck that. Let's go. Who wants to lead the way? I think I can find it. Well go ahead. Goddamn if that little bastard ain't played us for a bunch of fools. I guess he played em the way he seen em. I cain't· wait to tell these boys outside what's happened. Maybe we better odd man out to see who gets the fun of tellin em. Watch your all's head. You know what we've done don't ye? Yeah. I know what we've done. We've rescued the little fucker from jail and turned him loose where he can murder folks again. That's what we've done. That's exactly right. We'll get him. He may of got us. You remember this here? I don't remember none of H. I'm just follerin the man in front of me. FOR THREE DAYS BALLARD explored the cave he'd entered in an attempt to find another exit. He thought it was a week and was amazed at how the batteries in the flashlight kept. He fell into the custom of napping and waking and going on again. He could find nothing but stone to sleep upon and his naps were brief. Toward the end he would tap the flashlight against his leg to warm the dull orange glow of it. He took the batteries out and put them in again the hind one fore. Once he heard voices somewhere behind him and once he thought he saw a light. He made his way toward it in darkness lest it be the lights of his enemies but he found nothing. He knelt and drank from a dripping pool. He rested, drank again. He watched in he bore of his flash eam tiny translucent fish whose bones in shadow through their frail mica sheathing traversed the shallow stone floored pool. When he rose the water swung in his wasted paunch. He scrabbled like a rat up a long slick mudslide and entered a long room filled with bones. Ballard circled this ancient ossuary kicking at the ruins. The brown and pitted armatures of bison, elk. A jaguar's skull whose one remaining eye-tooth he pried out