They followed the strip of red clay that traced the cave floor into another and larger room, hooted at their lapping echoes, their laughter rebounding in hollow and mocking derision. Water dripped ceaselessly, small ping and spatter on stone. The two dogs hung close to them, stepping nervously.
This’n here’s the biggest room, Warn said. Then I got me a secret room on back with a rock in front of it so you cain’t see it. Then they’s a tunnel goes back, but I ain’t never been to the end of it. Ain’t no tellin where-all it goes.
Boog came up dragging a load of dead limbs and presently they had a fire going in the center of the big room. This here is the way the cave-men used to do, Boog said.
They used to be cave-men hereabouts, said Warn. Pre-storic animals too. They’s a tush over on the other side of the mountain stickin out of some rock what’s long as your leg. Ain’t no way to get to it lessen you had ropes or somethin.
Johnny Romines took out a packet of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. Boog borrowed it and rolled one too and they sat smoking in long steady pulls. Which’d you rather be, Boog asked John Wesley, white or Indian?
I don’t know, the boy said. White I reckon. They always whipped the Indians.
Boog tipped the ash from his cigarette with his little finger. That’s so, he said. That’s a point I hadn’t studied.
I got Indian in me, Johnny Romines said.
Boog’s half nigger, said Warn.
I ain’t done it, Boog said.
You said niggers was good as whites.
I never. What I said was some niggers is good as some whites is what I said.
That what you said?
Yeah.
I had a uncle was a White-Cap, Johnny Romines said. You ought to hear him on niggers. He claims they’re kin to monkeys.
John Wesley didn’t say anything. He’d never met any niggers.
Tell John Wesley here about the time we dynamited the birds, Warn said. This is last Christmas, he explained. His daddy give him a electric train one time and they got it out for his little brother.
Johnny Romines told it, slowly, smiling from time to time. They had wired the transformer of the train to a dynamite cap stolen from the quarry shack and buried the cap in the snow.
We had us a long piece of lightwire, he said, and we set in the garage with the transformer all hooked up. Warn here claimed it wouldn’t work. Well, we’d sprinkled breadcrumbs all round over where the cap was buried out in the yard and directly you couldn’t see for the birds. I told Warn to thow the switch.
Goddamn but it come a awful blast, said Warn. I eased the switch on over and then BALOOM! They’s a big hoop of snow jumped up in the yard like when you thow a flat rock in the pond and birds goin ever which way mostly straight up. I remember we run out and you could see pieces of em strung all out in the yard and hangin off the trees. And feathers. God, I never seen the like of feathers. They was stit fallin next mornin.
Lord, whispered Boog, I’d of liked to of seen that.
John Wesley had begun to cough. Ain’t it gettin kindly smoky in here to you? he asked. Above their heads smoke roiled and lowered and they noticed they could no longer see the walls of the cave.
Believe it is some, Warn said. He stood up and was closed from sight by the smoke. Hell’s bells, he said, let’s get out of here.
This is the way the cave-men done it, Boog said.
Cave-men be damned, we’re fixin to get barbycued.
They crawled and stumbled to the mouth of the cave—a shifting patch of murky light weaving beyond the smoke combers, came red-eyed and weeping from their crypt, their jacket fronts encrusted with slick red mud. When they had dried their eyes and could see again they were in some volcanic and infernal under-region, the whole of the quarry woods wrapped in haze and smoke boiling up out of the rocky ground from every cleft and fissure.
Mr Eller stood at the counter and watched them come in, the clothes steaming on the backs of the men as they stomped off the slush from their shoes and stood about the stove making cigarettes with chilled fingers, the stove popping and whistling with the snow-wetted coal, the women excited with the cold, making their purchases with deliberation, some towing small children about in the folds of their skirts, leaving again, young boys with shotguns and rifles buying shells not by the box but by fours and sixes and lending to the bustle a purposeful and even militant air. He rang the money up in the cash register or marked it in his credit books.
Odor of smoke and cold, wet clothing and meat cooking. The snow was falling again and they watched it. Lord, Mr Eller said, reckon it’s ever goin to quit.
Boog and Johnny Romines came in with a rabbit and they each got a dope.
Whereabouts you get him, Johnny? Mr Eller asked.
Over on the creek.