Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 6. Whole No. 766, June 2005

“Where’d you get the truck?” one of them said.

“You gotta help me. My wife’s in the bottom of the cave and we gotta get her out. She’s alone out there.”

“Where’d you get the truck?”

“This is the fastest one yet,” the other trooper said. “We get the call fifteen minutes ago and here he comes, driving right up to us.”

“Please, you’ve got to help me get her out of that cave.”

“Taking trucks is serious business, friend. You’d better come inside.”

“Please listen to me. My wife’s in the bottom of that crazy cave about twenty-five miles out on Fifty-eight. You guys gotta help me. We gotta get her out.”

“You want to call a lawyer?”

“I don’t need a lawyer. I need help getting my wife out of that cave.”

They kept him in a cell for what seemed an endless period of time until they could get the sheriff up and in to see him. He lay on the cot and fidgeted, thinking about her out there in that black hole. He began to think about how much he really did care about her, how much he liked just touching her, seeing her at lunch at the mill, having her go with him when he was off doing something, watching her give in when there was some new wild-ass thing he just had to do.

“How’d you get out there?”

“We hitched.”

“What’d you go out there for?”

“I had to see it.”

“See what?”

“The green light.”

“What green light?”

“The light that comes in through the water under the rock. Some of the guys at the mill told me about it and I had to see it.”

“Didn’t they tell you about getting out of there after you got in?”

“I guess I didn’t figure the water was so deep.”

“Didn’t you read the sign on the lock, telling you to stay the hell out of there?”

“They went in and saw it and got out okay. I figured I could, too. And I did.”

“Why didn’t you leave your wife outside?”

“Anything I want to do that bad I like her to get to do, too. Can’t we go get her out?”

“In a little while. We need a little more light. We got to get a wrecker over to the hole. We’ve had to do this a time or two before. You’re lucky. We drop a chain down with a little harness on it and strap it around her and snake her back up out of there. We need a little more light to get the wrecker down the hill to the lock.”

They dropped off the pickup truck on the way back out to the cave. And he studied the little house with the porch as they passed it. Not much of a place.

He read the sign carefully for the first time as he watched them set up to drop the harness down through the lock. “Warning! Stay out! Do not enter. Once down inside, impossible to get back out.” He wanted to be the one who went in to help her out, using the harness. He wanted to be the first to see her. And he wanted just a little bit to see the green light once more. But he was relieved when the sheriff said no, that the man who’d designed the harness and handled the other rescues would go. He was relieved because he wasn’t sure what to expect.

She appeared at the mouth of the pit, both feet wedged into the little stirrup and a wide leather strap around her hips, binding her to the chain. She clung to the chain with one arm and held the other arm tightly over her eyes to protect them from the gray morning light and she was sobbing convulsively. They helped her off the chain and onto the ground and she sat, her face against her knees, closed in by her arms, her whole body shuddering. He wanted to go over to her but he was afraid and so he stood back and watched. He felt his own eyes fill up and start sending water down his face. He watched her and he watched as they dropped the chain back in and easily brought out the other man.

A trooper gave her a pair of sunglasses. She walked next to the sheriff back up the hill to the road and he lagged a little behind the two of them. When they reached the sheriff’s car, she began to get in front, doing so in such a way that it was clear he was to sit in back. As she was getting in, he finally said, very softly, “You all right, sweetheart?”

She glanced quickly at him. “I’m fine,” she said. And as she closed the door, he knew that she would never look directly at him or speak to him again.

She had been moved out for two weeks. He kept watching for her around the mill but she avoided him. He missed her, wanted her back, couldn’t get used to being without her. Everything seemed to be falling apart.

Since it was Saturday, he slept an hour or so later. When he woke up, he lay there, thinking about her and also about the fact that he’d have to make some changes. He couldn’t afford even their “rat’s nest” without her paycheck coming in, helping to carry it. He’d have to find something cheaper. Lots of things were going to be different.

He got up and looked outside. Pretty day. After some cereal and milk, he left the place, walked to where 58 came through town, and started hitching. The first lift took him all the way. When they reached the cow’s-head rock, he got out, hiked into the thicket to the lock, and lowered himself down to the floor of the cave. He made his way to the gravel beach and sat down, rubbing a freshly skinned elbow, to stare at the beautiful green glow and think about how it all had happened.

Copyright © 2005 by Stanley Cohen.

Peter Lovesey’s latest novel-length mystery to see print in the U. S. is Bloodhounds (Soho Press/12-’04), the fourth installment in the Peter Diamond series set in Bath. The tale centers around a group of detective and mystery fiction fans, and involves discussion of classic mystery plots and some of mystery’s illustrious authors, including John Dickson Carr, who reviewed Mr. Lovesey’s first two novels in this magazine.

I laughed when I was told. I took it for a party joke. There was nothing athletic about him. People put on weight when they get older and they shrink a bit, but not a lot. Willy Plumridge was five-two in his shoes and the shape of a barrel. His waistline matched his height. If Sally, my hostess, had told me Willy sang at Covent Garden or swam the Channel, I’d have taken her word for it. Jumped for England? I couldn’t see it.

“High jump?” I asked Sally with mock seriousness.

She shrugged and spread her hands. She didn’t follow me at all.

“They’re really big men,” I said. “You must have watched them. If you’re seven feet tall, there are two sports open to you — high-jumping and basketball.”

“Maybe it was the long jump.”

“Then you’re dealing in speed as well as size. They’re sprinters with long legs. Look at the length of his. And don’t mention triple-jumping or the pole vault.”

“Why don’t you ask him which it was?”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“He’d think I was taking the piss.”

“Well,” she said. “All the time I’ve known him — and that’s ten years at least — people have been telling me he once jumped for England.”

“In the Olympics?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Bungee jumping, I could believe.”

“Is that an international sport?”

“Oh, come on!”

Sally said, “Why don’t I introduce you? Then maybe he’ll tell you himself.”

So I met Willy Plumridge, shook the hand of the man who jumped for England. I can’t say his grip impressed me. It was like handling chipolatas. He was friendly, though, and willing to talk. I didn’t ask him straight out. I came at it obliquely.

“Have we met before? I seem to know your face.”

“Don’t know yours, sport,” he said, “and my memory is good.”