CAVE ANGEL
By J. L. Kerry

     The call came at breakfast. I put my grandfather Thornton's eggs and toast in a pan and tried to keep them warm. From what I could pick out of the one-sided conversation, I knew there was serious trouble.
     He stood by the kitchen table in his spacious cabin in the hills of southern Missouri and spoke into the wall-mounted phone, shaking his head. "Just one? How long ago?"
     Silence. My grandfather nodded. One what? I wondered.
     "Won't starve. Exposure's the danger, then water, unless he made it to the end where there is some." He turned momentarily and looked at me as he bit his lip and listened to the distant voice say something back.
     "Yes. Falling is a real possibility if he panics." Thornton looked through the kitchen window as if he were checking the weather, then turned back to the phone. "No! We're closer and it'd be wrong to delay if there's a chance he's injured -- if he's there at all."
      We? I wondered.
     "Right. We'll call you as soon as we make a thorough sweep," he added, nodding at the phone, then hung up and turned toward me.
     "Alene..."
     I looked at him and waited. He didn't seem to know what to say, but I had a feeling that breakfast had been wasted. His expression was thoughtful, and the lines in his forehead suggested he was carefully searching for the words he wanted. Then he found them.
     "Alene, that was officer Noonan in Potosi. We go back aways... Anyway, there's a kid with a set of worried parents. Didn't come home from school yesterday at all. After a bunch of phone calls, his parents think he mighta gone into Scott by himself."
     I looked blankly at my grandfather. "Scott?"
     "That's the cave I've been wantin' to show you."
     "Oh. You're going... or rather it sounds like we're going to look for him?" I tried to smile as I said it. I had earlier feigned willingness, if not delight, about a cave exploration; but I was an English major, not a geologist -- and certainly not a spelunker. I tried to keep my faint smile from wilting; it was the last full day of my visit, but I was not going to escape. I made up my mind to be a good sport about it.
     He spread his hands apologetically. "Don't know what else to do. If he's in there, he's outta light by now. Unless he's at the end, he won't have water to drink. If he panics and tries to make it out in total darkness, falls, breaks something..." He looked appraisingly at my expression and added, "I assumed you'd want to go along, but I guess there's really no need..."
     "I'd rather go with you than wait here and worry," I said, cutting him off. "Besides, I'm trained in CPR." I was determined not to disappoint him. But darkness was for sleeping and I did not enjoy it at other times. I imagined flashlights growing dim or going out completely. I pushed the thought aside.
     A proud grin formed on his tanned and weathered face, the worry lines changing into what I was more used to seeing. "I'll round up the essentials." He looked at his watch, then met my eyes. "We better get goin' as soon as we can."
     I nodded encouragingly. What else could I do?

* * *

     We both wore jeans and boots. Thornton parked as far to the side of the road as possible, and we put on long-sleeve flannel shirts to complete our cave-crawling wardrobe.
     The air was already warm and humid, making my long black hair curl into tangles. Clouds were low and puffy, their bottoms beginning to darken as if contemplating battle. Squirrels stopped their chatter and went into threat-assessment mode as we picked our way through the surrounding pine, dogwood, oak and scrub that penetrated the rocky hillside and kept it from eroding away.
     We made no attempt to be subtle as we trudged downward from the gravel road where we had left my grandfather's worn and dust-coated Blazer. It was a deliberate strategy and probably a good one: Missouri was home to poisonous snakes, notably the copperhead, and it seemed unlikely that we would see one in time to avoid it; better they should hear and avoid us, and I dearly hoped they would. I glanced back and estimated we had traveled a hundred yards down the ragged slope. I tried to make even more noise as I walked.
     We were eight miles west of Shirley, a tiny town west of Potosi in the lead-mining region of Missouri, sixty-five bird miles southeast of downtown St. Louis, and -- despite our mission -- I found myself enjoying the fresh air and wooded beauty of Mark Twain National Forest. I pushed away thoughts of books and papers and classroom schedules that would soon close around me after this end-of-summer visit when I began my senior year at Drury College in Springfield. I hoped to teach.
     Since my grandfather had lost his wife a year ago, I had tried to visit more frequently, but the demands of education had made that difficult. Thornton had made much progress, it seemed, but I sensed he was still struggling with acceptance, and he sometimes forgot and called me by her name: Eileen. Eileen, Alene. Our names were close enough that the mistake could easily be passed off as a slip of the tongue instead of a momentary outpouring of his innermost thoughts.
     We moved on and I was fully into the spirit of the mission now, apprehensive, but no longer regretful. If there were someone lost in darkness, my heart went out to him, and I would not wish such a fate on anyone. And it was good to see Grandfather with a sense of purpose again, a task for which he was well suited. Just what he needed, I thought, and felt guilty about thinking it.
     A few more yards and we were there. Thornton's sense of direction had always been good, and the twin cave openings were suddenly in front of us: two openings, spaced about twenty feet apart, each a yawning blackness, a study in contrast with the mottled colors of nature. Scott Cave. I wondered if the discoverer, whom I presumed to be someone named Scott, still lived.
     The openings, which sloped steeply, were lined with what appeared to be a mixture of limestone and granite, and were laced with moss. I could see dirt and gravel farther down the hole I was inspecting, but the blackness stole what I guessed might be the bottom -- I hoped there was one. I searched futilely for snakes and spiders as I peered into the darkness to see if any teeth were flashing or any movement could be detected. But only silence and cool, humid air poured from the entrance. I walked over to the other opening and saw little difference.
     Thornton, his silver hair shaggy from a hundred yards of brush snagging at it, stood between the twin openings, his arms searching in a canvas tote-bag, checking for flashlights, I assumed. I tried not to think of how my hair must now look, and refrained from asking if he had a comb in that bag; I did what I could with my fingers. I looked again into the intimidating mouth of the cave and could feel my sense of mission evaporating.
     I remembered visiting Meramec and Carlsbad caverns, following and listening to the tour guides who must have mumbled their presentations in their sleep more times than their spouses would likely admit, and found myself wondering why I had accepted my grandfather's offer to guide me through a cavern that did not have lights, restrooms, a concession stand, and tourists surrounding us, chattering and hushing their children. But it was too late to back out; if I did at this point, it would be a devastating vote of no confidence in Thornton's ability to take me safely in and out of this cave, an abandonment of my part in this rescue effort; desertion. And Thornton might actually need my help, although I doubted it; he was extremely capable.
     "This one," he said as he pointed back to the first opening I had inspected. "Both will get us there, but the one you're looking at now would be a rough descent."
     I did not want a "rough" descent. I nodded in acceptance of his choice, noting with pleasure the authoritative timbre in his voice. Six months ago it was soft, dull, and full of a pain he could not express.
     Progress.
     Thornton entered first, then turned and used his hands to assure me of footholds as I scraped my thin body through the opening, wondering how he had done it so easily. I found the floor and looked around to see absolutely nothing. Then, as my eyes adapted, silent shapes formed around me, emerging from both ceiling and floor. The ground was indeed hollow and we duck-walked through a large room to avoid its low ceiling, which mercifully became higher as we walked in the general direction of the road, I guessed. Or was the floor getting lower? I could not tell.
     "You seem pretty agile," Thornton remarked as we moved toward darkness.
     "I was a Girl Scout," I said as if that explained it. "I still have my uniform."
     "Bet you can still get in it, too."
     I sighed. It had been my misfortune to be the runt of a litter of one. "Better Miss Twiggy than Miss Piggy," I finally said.
     He laughed at that, and it was good to hear the vigor of earlier days in his laughter. It was a welcome contrast to the seriousness of our mission.
     We did not yet need the flashlights. I stopped and looked back, comforted by the two diffuse shafts of light, which now provided ample illumination as my eyes continued to adjust. That would soon change.
     My grandfather in the lead, we angled to the left, and a path of sorts became evident; we could walk without fear of banging our heads on the rocky ceiling. I could see boulders in the vague distance, and in the semi-darkness, they seemed to become walls as the ceiling continued to expand above us. Nothing moved or snarled and my fear began to dissipate. I began to feel a spirit of adventure I had not experienced for a long time.
     Thornton stopped and turned toward me. "Alene, hold your flashlight on this for me so I can get this going," he said. "Please," he added.
     "What is it?"
     "My carbide lamp." He held a brass lantern that was a two-part cylinder that could not have been more than four inches tall and two inches in diameter. I thought he had carried flashlights and perhaps a camera in the bag, and maybe a small thermos -- perhaps a cookie or two.
     "Carbide?" I questioned as I examined the lantern. On one side of the strange lamp, mounted at the center of a shallow and well-polished metal reflector, was a ceramic spout no larger than a pencil eraser, with a tiny hole drilled through it. A handgrip was mounted on the opposite side of the cylinder. Near the perimeter of the reflector was a flint-wheel. A lever was mounted at the very top of the device, its position indicated by ridges in the yellow metal.
     "Yep. It's better than a flashlight for cave illumination. Flashlights' too... focused, doesn't throw enough light to the sides."
     "How's it work?" I asked.
     He met my eyes squarely. "Really wanna know?"
     "Of course I do." I'm a student, aren't I?
     "All right." He held the lamp as if giving a classroom demonstration. "The top chamber contains water - H2O. This lever controls how fast the water drips into the bottom chamber, which contains calcium carbide -- CaC2. The two react to produce acetylene gas -- C2H2 -- and calcium hydroxide -- CaOH. Makes a bright yellow flame."
     "Oh." I was sorry I had asked.
     He turned the lever and the lantern hissed as the chemical reaction began. He cupped his hand over the reflector for a few seconds, trapping the gas, then slid it off to the side, dragging his hand against the flint wheel in the process and making a spark.
     BANG!
     I jumped.
     Thornton chuckled and waved the beam from the lamp around the room. I was surprised by the amount of light thrown off by the narrow tongue of yellow flame jutting out two inches or so from the center of the reflector.

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