I'm Ted Schiffhorst, by the way. An old girlfriend said I looked a little like Nick Nolte, but I don't see it.
I live in New Jersey but I was driving through West Virginia. That's the downside to being a caver in New Jersey. The biggest cave in New Jersey's 700 feet long. To do any caving over an hour, you need to drive. A lot. It's like being a skier in New Mexico.
The average four day weekend, if there is such a thing, is Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Monday's usually some federal holiday so you only take one day off work. This wasn't the case, since it was April and there're no holidays in April. I had to take Friday and Monday off at the Ford plant where I work. Officially they were sick days since I just got the job a few months ago, but I had a decent boss who let me slide on using them as personal days.
I was behind the wheel of a beat to death Ford pickup, built when I was still in high school. I had only been driving two hours or so, since I switched with Jed Halpern when he started nodding off. Jed was asleep on the passenger side, using a Gortex jacket as a pillow and another one as a blanket. His old girlfriend said he looked like Jeff Gordon. That's just a flat out lie.
The drives from New Jersey to West Virginia are always killer. I made the trip down in eight hours once, but that was starting right by the Delaware River, and ending an hour north of where I was now. Most trips are a few hours longer. Add in that we didn't take off from Edison until 11:30 P.M., and we were driving in daylight.
We were going into Devil's Hollow. It's really not as menacing as it sounds. Half the caves I know of are called Devil's Den or Hellhole or Satan's Urinal or something. It's about 5 miles total, most of it a through trip over a big Appalachian hill.
I was hoping to get some sleep in the sleeping bag instead of going straight from car to cave, but the drive got hampered thanks to a huge traffic delay in Pennsylvania. There's always some delay in Pennsylvania.
It had been two years since anyone, Garden State Grotto or otherwise, had gone to Devil's Hollow. That was thanks to Jed. And me, I guess.
Jed and I used to go in caves without the owner's permission. We would always ask, but if we got a no, sometimes we'd go in anyway. Jed's logic for this was so long as no one caught us, there was no problem. Jed was right: no one gave us problems, until we did get caught.
We had asked Mrs. Coten for permission because she owned the land, and this one time she said no. No reason, she just said she didn't want people in her cave any more. Jed and I had geared ourselves up for this trip, and so we went and did it anyway. We had a decent six hour trip. Jed thought he knew of a lead to some virgin passage in the cave, but it ended up just going ten feet and dead ending. But ten new feet of virgin passage, though. As we came out, we saw an angry note on Jed's truck, saying this cave was now closed to all cavers, especially us.
We tried talking to Mrs. Coten afterward, but she just screamed that we were now official trespassers and get the hell off her property.
Then we began hearing from other grottoes. She had shut the cave off completely to visitors, no matter where they were from, and very vocal how the Garden State Grotto had ruined it for everyone.
That got us on some crap lists. That got the grotto to hate Jed, and to a lesser extent me. That got Jed and I to resign, and that's what kept us out of the grotto for a year and a half.
Jed and I rejoined the grotto a few months ago, after a little business with a psycho who was burning homeless people in caves. Since then, we had been on a few day trips, but this was the first real weekend with the grotto.
At a meeting a few months back, Jed had volunteered to mend some fences with some of the cave owners he'd pissed off. Technically, Henry the grotto president volunteered the job to Jed, but Jed didn't refuse it. He'd call Mrs. Coten up and apologize on behalf of the grotto, then ask if he could go back in.
Somehow, it worked. I don't know what he said to her. She was so pissed no one had really tried before.
Furthermore, she was letting us stay with her for the weekend. Not just pitching tents on her property, but sleeping inside the house. It was going to seem weird to go in a West Virginia cave and then sleep indoors. I heard she was even going to make us eggs for breakfast.
"Jed, you are one hell of a talker," I said.
"Wha? Huh?" Jed was still half asleep.
"Getting us to stay at the Coten's house. Hell, I can't remember the last time I didn't have to pack a tent. So what exactly did you say to her?" I meant to bring it up earlier, but there's not much talking on long trips with people you know. The first time with someone new, you go through the drill of finding out where they work and their family and that, but once you've done two or three trips with the same people, you don't talk much, just listen to whatever tapes you brought. This trip it was old Billy Joel.
Jed sat up a little. "I said 'I'm with the Garden State Grotto, I know some members have treated you with disrespect, I apologize on behalf of them, and would like to reopen communications.' Standard blather."
"And that worked?"
"Like a charm. She was the one who suggested we stay with her for the weekend. I was the one who volunteered to pay her, of course." It was only twenty bucks per person for the long weekend. It's tough to find a campground that'll charge that little.
"And she's OK with the people who disobeyed her in the first place being the ones who first go back in?" I asked.
"Uh..."
"You told her it was US, right?"
"Well ..."
"Oh Christ. She doesn't know it's us?"
"It was only a ten minute phone call! I didn't have time for a life story."
"How's it going to look when she opens the door and its the same two jackasses that screwed her over the last time!"
"Hey, if she didn't recognize my voice over the phone, maybe she won't recognize us. I'm not wearing glasses any more, and you put on at least twenty pounds."
"Bite me. She could recognize your truck."
"It's a beat up pick up. It's standard issue for West Virginia."
"We don't even have tents! If she doesn't let us in, we're going to have to get a motel or something! For three nights!"
"It'll work."
"What, do we make fake names for ourselves?"
"She never knew our real names, except for some scribbles on a logbook two years ago. If she still was pissed off at us, we never would have been invited."
"But she doesn't know WE'VE been invited."
He was silent for a second. "It'll work out. It always does."
I hit a rather big bump in the road, and Jed practically got thrown from his seat. He took the coats off him. "What time is it?"
I checked my watch. "8:45. We're about ten minutes away."
We hit another bump, and the gear tied down in the back of the pickup made a small clattering. Usually it's packed so tight we need to have a camp stove or sleeping bag up front to save space, but since the camping gear could be left at home, we had plenty of room in the back.
We were meeting Marv and Gunther at the house; they got directions from Jed. I had no idea what their timetable was, so they could have still been on the road, or already inside Devil's Hollow.
There was a fifth in our party: Harry. Harry was coming down the next day, by himself. He wasn't taking either Friday or Monday off; he taught college, and didn't want to get a substitute. He was driving down Friday night, and heading back Sunday at noon. He'd be in the car more than he'd be in West Virginia.
"There we go," I said, as the steep gravel driveway that led to the Coten house came into view. By it, I saw a familiar car waiting outside. A giant silver Lexus SUV, with New Jersey plates and a bat sticker.
It was Marv's new car. He got it back in January, and had shown it off to everyone perpetually for three months now. Thanks to a busy schedule and a not so busy grotto calendar of events, this was his first test of unpaved roads.
Marv and Gunther were outside, staring at the windshield with cigars in their hands. I pulled the truck to a stop, got out, and rubbed my legs a bit.
Marv passed his cigar to the left hand and shook mine with the right. Gunther stayed where he was. "Hey Teddy. Can you see a mark on the windshield?" Marv asked.
I walked over and stared at a fleck on the driver's side. "What am I looking for?"
"A piece of gravel winged us back in Maryland. I was pretty sure it made a ding in the windshield, but as soon as I stop driving I can't find it."
I took a good look. "I don't see anything."
"I hope it's just nothing. It'd be nice to find, though."
Gunther took the cigar out of his mouth. "Hey, so it's been two years without this cave in the roster."
"Well, it's back on the roster, thanks to Jed."
"It was off thanks to Jed, too." Gunther had his problems with Jed.
"It's in the past now."
"You mean back when that shirt fit you?" The shirt was snug around the waist, and had a tendency to pull up around the stomach. I pulled it down over my strip of white belly. If Jed wasn't around, I was Gunther's favorite target.
"How long have you been waiting here?" I asked Marv.
"Just half an hour or so." He let a big cloud of smoke go from the cigar. "We were going to go up to the house, but we figured Jed talked to her, so he might as well do the honors."
It was a cold April, so the cigars must have been really good to make the two of them stand out in the cold when there was a warm car interior waiting. Cigars were little early in the morning for my tastes, but maybe they were thinking of it as a 48 hour night. I tried exhaling so my breath would puff up, but it was just warm enough for breath to not condense like that.
Jed stumbled out of the passenger side of the truck, stretching. "Oh, that feels good."
"Come on, we're burning daylight," Gunther said. "Get up there and talk to the old lady."
"You guys didn't do it yet?"
"Nope," Gunther said, growing a small smile, "we left that for you."
We walked up a rocky path for 200 feet or so. A huge cluster of pine trees was on the right hand side, the standout green in the mostly brown countryside. The steep walk after all the sitting felt good on my legs. An old pickup truck at the end of the road told me this was their driveway. It really did match Jed's.
The porch around the front door had three washing machines on it, all of them rusting out. The screen door had a strip of duct tape covering a rip. Jed opened it, letting off a screeching creak that made the broken doorbell a moot point.
"I'm comin'" came from inside. Soon, Mrs. Coten opened the interior door. She was about sixty, wearing a faded floral print dress and a well used baseball cap. Here was the moment of truth.
"Hey," she said.
"Hi ma'am. I'm Jed Halpern, with the cavers in New Jersey. I called you on the phone earlier." He stuck out his hand.
She gave it a weak shake. "I didn't know when you'd come." We could hear a TV cheering someone on in the other room. "I can't see the road from here. Pines in the way." She wasn't recognizing us. Phew.
"It's very nice of you to let us stay here."
"It's very nice of you to pay me!" She laughed, and so did Jed. "Well, do you want to bring your stuff on in?"
"A little later. We've got two others down by the road, and they're itching to get in the cave a little first."
"Didn't you all drive down here from New Jersey?"
"Yes ma'am."
"So you spent all night driving, and you go right in without sitting down or anything?"
"We've been sitting all night. We each got some sleep during the trip, enough so that we're awake for the trip."
"That must be rough."
"We just spent 11 hours driving. I could spend the next four days asleep, but I could do that at home."
"Well, you go do your caving. No one's been in there for two years, so watch out for loose rocks. Or whatever happens to caves when no one's in them."
"We'll keep an eye out."
"All right. I'll see you when you're done." She closed the door, and I could hear her walking back to the TV.
Jed grinned at me. "Ta da!"
"She didn't recognize us. Guess the contacts worked."
We walked back down the steep driveway to the Lexus, which was now idling. I knocked at the driver's window. "We're good. Let's go."
Jed got in the truck's driver seat; he had normally driven the road up to the cave's mouth. He took off down the road slowly. It wasn't a road so much as strip of dirt that enough cars had driven over to kill plants. But in the past two years, a lot of weed had grown over, so it felt like driving through a field.
Jed's truck took all the bumps terribly. The car hadn't died through all the abuse Jed had given it, and I was sure it'd be fine this weekend.
Marv's Lexus behind us was going twice as slow. Each bump was a careful peak to roll over as slowly as possible. If for no reason other than saving the new paint job, Marv was being very very careful.
After fifteen minutes and maybe 500 feet, there was a closed gate. This was new. Jed stopped the truck.
I hopped out and walked over to it. A padlock held it shut. A laminated sign in bright yellow was attached by a small length of wire. It read "KEEP OUT CAVERS!"
"Well, now's a good time to see this sign, huh?" I shouted, holding the sign up to Jed.