The one bathroom in the house was tucked under the stairs. It was a tiny thing with a claw tub along the right side. Over the toilet, the ceiling was only about five feet high, since that was where the stairs cut in. I banged my head real good standing up from that.
All the Cotens filed upstairs to their bedrooms, popping back down to use the bathroom. It took fifteen minutes for Sheila to get R.J. to brush his teeth. It sounded like this was a regular occurrence.
It was freezing that night, weird considering we were inside. I was sandwiched between Marv and Gunther, and could hear them shifting in their crummy borrowed blankets all night. Jed and I should trade the sleeping bags with them on Saturday, spread the misery around.
Harry woke us all up on Saturday morning. "Uh, hello?" he said, loudly knocking on the front door. "Anybody home in there?"
I heard Gunther muttering as he opened the door. The cold must have got him up early. I cracked an eyelid, saw Gunth was fully dressed, and closed the eyelid. I was happy staying in the sleeping bag all day. I checked the clock on the VCR by my head. It was 6:17 A.M.
"I was wondering if I had the right house," Harry said from the doorway. "I saw a truck with a bat sticker, but not Marv�s big Lexus. I thought he was taking that one down."
"Yeah, he did," Gunther said, "it got stolen."
"Stolen?" Harry whisper-shouted. "Are you sure?"
"Pretty damn sure. All my gear was inside. Marv�s too."
"Christ. I was all set to bitch about my drive here, but I�ve still got a car."
Footsteps came down the creaky stairs. Mrs. Coten�s voice said "So you�re the last one, huh? Well, come on in, mind where you�re steppin�. Bodies all over the place today." Her footsteps went into the kitchen. "And lock the door of your car. We�ve had trouble lately."
Gunther whispered to Harry a slanted recap of yesterday, hammering home that Taylor was the obvious thief. Gortex rustling told me Jed was getting out of his sleeping bag, and soon I heard Jed whispering that Mitch was the real thief.
Fast little pattering ran down the stairs, and then the TV went on, by my head. R.J. was watching another cartoon tape. I was hoping he hadn't relayed anything from last night to his mom, or any of the other Cotens.
The smell of coffee began filling the house, and that became my motivation for crawling out of the bag. I pulled my jeans inside the sleeping bag and wriggled into them in the bag. Better that than moon a little kid who happened to have a very nice looking mom. Also, it was still astoundingly cold in the house.
Breakfast was coffee and a whole box of Bisquick pancakes, eaten as soon as they came out of the frying pan. Harry took my place at the kitchen table, so I stood with my plate of pancakes, eating them like finger food. Taylor wasn't down yet. He must have still been asleep.
"The plan�s till Deep Rock today, right?" Harry asked. I cold see a dab of maple syrup hanging off his huge mustache. For someone so proud of his mustache, you�d think he�s be able to keep food out of it.
"I guess so," Jed concurred. "Marv and Gunth don�t have vertical gear, so we�ll have to yo-yo in and out of the pit, then take ours off and lend it to them."
"You didn�t bring it with you?" Harry asked.
"Of course we did," Gunther said, a little too cheerful. "We just wisely left it in the Lexus."
"Oh." Harry said. "Sorry."
"Yeah, so am I. Five hundred bucks of gear, right in the hands of thieves," Gunther said with a mouthful of pancake. He glanced at Marv�s stoic face, then added, "Per person."
"Give or take sixty grand," Marv said quietly.
"It shouldn�t add too much time to the trip," Jed said. "The gear can be switched when someone else is on rope."
"And we do the same thing for Cougar Pit tomorrow?" Harry asked.
"I guess so," Jed said again.
"Hey, well at least the weekend�s not a total bust," Harry said, trying to bring up the dismal mood. Glares from Marv and Gunther told him it didn�t work.
Jed began describing the superstitions of his gear to Marv and Gunth, something I�d already heard five or six times by now. "Now, before you descend, you have to spit on every bar of the rack that you�re going to use. Just the ones you use: I�ve had a perfect service record by following this�"
I skipped the fifteen minute �You�re an idiot, Jed� debate this automatically brought about, and went into the living room. Sheila was sitting on the couch, watching R.J. watch cartoons.
"So what�s this one about?" I said at I sat down next to her. "Another giant commercial for toys?" I heard people say that about cartoons, mostly parents, and hopefully it would score some points.
"I�m just hoping it teaches him how to use silverware," she joked. R.J. was eating a pancake like it was a hamburger.
"I happen to know many intelligent individuals who eat pancakes the same way," I said. I put the plate down on my lap and got a two-hand grip on my own pancake. She didn�t fall over with laughter like I was hoping for, so I put the pancake back down. "So, uh, what are your plans for the weekend?"
"Normally I�d go food shopping, but Mom got that done yesterday, so I�m free up. Maybe I�ll go to the library, rent a video."
Great: she�s free, but I�m stuck caving the whole time. A light bulb went off in my head. "Would you want to go caving?"
Her eyes lit up. "Really? Go with you guys?"
"Yeah, it�s always nice to get new people in caves. Especially locals. This stuff�s your home turf."
Her brow wrinkled. "It�s not going to be dangerous?"
"We can do an easy part. Just flat areas, maybe a little crawling, but nothing insane. Nothing vertical."
"Is that the climbing up ropes?"
"After you go down them, yep. But that�ll be the other guys. We can stick to an easy part." She smiled. "OK then. Let's go caving." She had a great smile. I was guessing R.J. hadn't told her anything from last night. Phew. "Guess I won�t even need my gear today. Ooh!" I jumped up and went to the kitchen. "Marv, do want to borrow my vertical gear? For the whole day?"
Marv was morosely staring at a smear of syrup on his plate. "Aren�t you going to be using it?"
"Nope, I�m going to take Sheila caving, do some horizontal stuff today."
"Yeah, I�ll bet you�re going to do some horizontal stuff today," Gunther said, just soft enough so Mrs. Coten couldn�t hear it.
"We�re going to the horizontal section of Deep Rock. We can carpool over together."
"Thanks, Ted," Marv said. He sounded very honest when he said it.
"Wouldn�t want this trip to be a complete disaster for you," I said.
"And Sheila�s got nothing to do with it," Gunther sneered.
"Just a happy coincidence."
Jed corralled everyone into movement as soon as breakfast was over. "The day�s going to suck no matter what, so let�s make it suck and at least get some caving out of it," he said. Gunther got two big garbage bags from Mrs. Coten to hold their coveralls, since Marv�s tub and Gunther�s bag were both in the Lexus. Harry�s stuff was already set to go. Everything was packed in Harry and Jed�s trucks within an hour, very good for caving time.
Jed knew the way to Deep Rock, so he was in the lead car. I was with him, and everyone else was in Harry�s car, a black Jeep Liberty. I wanted Sheila to ride in our car, but asking a relative stranger to sit on the hump as opposed to a full seat in another car was pushing my luck.
It was a pretty silent trip. I was expecting Jed to rattle on about Mitch being the thief, or at least my ditching the group for some Sheila caving, but neither one came up.
Deep Rock was an hour and a half from the Cotens. We pulled off onto the closest side road to it, a half-mile hike to the cave.
I lent Sheila my extra helmet and light, and Jed lent her a spare set of coveralls and polypropalene long underwear. I figured Marv and Gunther would need them, but they were wearing their coveralls and polypros when the car got stolen, so those were the only bits of property they still had in this state.
"Where do we go to change?" Sheila asked. Thirty feet away, Gunther chose that moment to drop his pants, and stroll along the asphalt in his underwear. "Oh. Out here?"
"You can go inside the truck. Don�t worry, no one�s going to peek." Cavers never did when you changed in a car. Outside you were fair staring game, but car changing was a personal space rule that otherwise lawless cavers abided by. Besides, you could never see anything good from a car.
While she changed, I handed my vertical gear to Marv. "It works just like regular gear. No spitting, no voodoo."
Gunther came up close to me. "How come you offered your gear to just Marv? I�m sitting here with nothing too, you know."
"I know," I said, "but lost gear and lost car beats lost gear. Easy math."
Sheila emerged a few minutes later in Jed�s shapeless blue coveralls. A blue bandanna covered her waist length hair, which was tied up somewhere in the bandanna. "Will the helmet fit over this?" she asked.
I gently placed the helmet on her head, and it dropped over her eyes. I took it off and tightening the sizing. Now it fit her.
We set off within half an hour of parking. The general mopey tone of the group cut delaying conversations short. Jed took his keys with him, walking a good five minutes before stopping by a particularly gnarled tree and hiding the keys underneath a rock at its root. Harry walked six minutes and slipped his under a rock. Normally we just stick them under the back tire. We were all feeling the paranoia.
It was about 60 degrees, which felt like 90 as we walked half a mile bundled up. Sheila kept her coveralls zipped up, but the rest of us had them tied around our waists by the time we hit the cave entrance. Jed was carrying the bag with the 100-foot rope, and had completely taken his coveralls off. He walked in his polypro pants and no shirt, and only suited up once he reached the entrance.
The Deep Rock entrance is pretty nondescript: just a small depression in the earth, and a slight slanting pit that threaded through some breakdown. You wouldn�t have guessed you could store a 10-story building inside.
Sheila went in second to last, and I went last. She was very good about the initial descent. Deep Rock had an immediate tight belly crawl, not the best choice for a beginner trip, but Sheila handled herself fine.
We followed some crawling and bear walking passage until a room we could all stand in. Every cave seems to have this room, the Entrance Meeting Room. Jed dropped the rope bag, and brought out two maps in Ziploc bags from his coveralls.
"Ted, you go thataway with Sheila," Jed said, pointing up. "The rest of us, the pit awaits."
I led the way up. Our passage was mostly walking, with some stooping and a bit of crawling. I figured we could check out the pit first, then follow the horizontal passage around.
The high point would be looking down at the 90 foot Deep Rock pit from the 90 foot mark. There was nowhere to tie a rope around on that ledge, so Jed and the others would take a separate passage to fifteen feet below our ledge. That would cut their descent to just 75 feet, but with 90 not feasible, they were happy to get the 75.
Sheila didn�t have any of the initial cave jitters some first timers have. She held her own nicely. I tried to start a couple conversations, but the activity of movement seemed to take up most of her thinking. She seemed in good sprits, though.
I reached the ledge first, Sheila close behind. We had a quicker trip, and weren�t lugging vertical gear and rope, so we beat Jed and the guys to the target.
A bear-sized rock at the edge blocking the view down, but it was visible if you crawled on a ledge jutting out to the right. I scampered on the ledge, far enough along so Sheila could also fit. "Come on, the ledge is right here. This is a great view."
"I don�t want to fall."
"Me neither. The ledge is plenty big when you get on it. Just move as slow as you feel safe."
"Maybe I just won�t do it. That�s a dead end, right?"
"Right. But it�d be a shame to get this far and not take a peek down." I hadn�t bothered to look down yet, so I demonstrated. My carbide light only lit the first few feet of pit. I snapped on a Maglite I had taped to the side. It punched through fifteen or so feet, still just a drop in the bucket. Sheila�s headlamp would reach down thirty feet or so, which made for a much better viewing.
"I really don�t want to go out there. I�d like R.J. to still have a parent at the end of the day."
"If you don�t want to, you don�t have to. But if you press your body flat to the ground and stick to the wall, there�s really zero chance of anything happening."
A five-second pause. From my angle, I couldn�t see her. That rock was blocking my view of her. I heard a sigh, and "OK, I�m coming out there." I crawled a few feet further out, giving her even more room.
I heard a heavy shifting of rock, like something sliding off the ledge. Sheila screamed.
Her light flashed at me, then disappeared. I saw it midway down the pit, rotating as it fell. A heavy crash echoed up at the bottom of the pit.