Beverly Connor - Dust to Dust

“No. I’m not being funny. I’ve got good news. I’ve found the buried bodies we’re looking for.”

“What?” said Scott. “There’s a body down there with you?”

“Not exactly-well, I guess, yes, exactly. But it’s all bones,” Hector said.

Diane heard Hector rustling around at the bottom of the well.

“Hector,” said Diane, “don’t move around so much.”

Using her flashlight she examined the walls of the well and the area around the surface again. There were several trees nearby and one fairly close to the well, not a large tree, its trunk perhaps as big around as her leg. No large roots had worked their way through the cracks between the stones forming the wall, but smaller roots had, and the chances were good that tree root systems were pressing the wall in the direction of collapse. Where was the policeman with her rope?

Diane heard the rustling of someone walking through the leaves and brush and saw the play of a light. She looked up, expecting the policeman. It was Neva, and she had Mike Seger with her. Mike had Diane’s rope bag and backpack.

Mike, the museum’s geologist, was one of the best caving partners Diane had ever had. She was glad to see him there with Neva, another caving partner. Neva wasn’t as experienced as Mike, but she was a reliable and skilled caver. Mike put the bag and backpack down on the ground.

His short brown hair was longer than when she last saw him. His lean features had developed a weathered look since he’d taken on his job visiting the world’s most extreme environments. He usually had a serious look on his face. Here in the dim light his face looked to be carved out of stone.

“Hi, Doc. Good to see you.” Mike’s stern expression broke into a smile.

Diane grinned back. “Just the right people at the right time. We need to get Hector out of this well,” she said. “I take it you saw the policeman?” She gestured at her caving gear.

Neva nodded. “Two of them. They stayed to direct the paramedics,” said Neva.

She and Mike squatted down and looked into the well.

“What do we have here?” said Mike. “Hector, buddy, what the hell you doing down there?”

“Falling down a well seemed like a good idea at the time,” Hector said.

Mike felt the ground around the top of the well. “Pretty firm,” he commented. “But some collapse at the edge.”

Diane explained the situation and the dangers and what she wanted to do.

“Let’s get to it, then,” said Mike.

David and Scott moved one of the battery-powered lights closer so they could see what they were doing. Diane and Mike opened the rope bag, basically a large tarp with grommets. It held Diane’s caving rope. Diane took good care of her rope because it was literally a lifeline. She kept it clean and always took out any knots she had tied while caving. It was good rope and a lot of it.

“Do you think we can use that tree over there, the one closest to the well?” she asked Mike.

“Yeh, it looks good,” said Mike. “We only have a what, ten-foot drop? It’ll be over in a few seconds.”

Neva took off her suede and faux fur jacket and hung it over a bush. She began rolling up her designer jeans.

“You warm enough?” asked Diane, looking at the thin sleeves of Neva’s silk blouse.

“I’ll be fine. You know, I’m like you. I don’t know why I bother to dress up,” she said. “Our lives are always on call for some death-defying adventure or another.”

“At least you don’t have on sequins,” said Diane.

Diane began tying the handholds and a foothold in the rescue rope. Neva took the tarp and laid it over the edge of the well to reduce the crumbling of the edge when they pulled Hector out. Mike wrapped and tied off one end of a length of rope to the nearby tree at a height a couple of feet off the ground. The other end he tied into a half-hitch knot at a distance that allowed the rope to reach to the center of the well opening when the rope was fully extended from the tree. He took a rescue pulley from Diane’s backpack, laid the long rescue rope in the pulley, and attached the pulley to the end of the shorter rope by means of a metal alloy snaplink. This arrangement would suspend the pulley and rescue rope midair over the center of the well as they lifted Hector out.

Mike, David, and Scott were going to do the pulling. Mike gave them instructions as they took up their places six feet or so back from the well on the side opposite the tree. The three of them gripped the rope firmly. Diane dropped the other end of the rope down the well to Hector.

“Hector, I want you to listen to me,” she said.

“I’m listening.”

“Put your good foot in the loop nearest the end of the rope. Use the other loops as handholds. Don’t try to help us by putting your hands on the wall; it’s much too unstable. Just hold on to the rope. Your leg is probably going to hurt, but you have to ignore the pain,” said Diane.

“How do I do that?” asked Hector.

“You just do it,” she said. “Scream if you have to, but don’t thrash about, just hold on to the rope. Let us know when you are ready.”

“You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about the physics of hauling a weight up, and-”

“Hector, we have the math worked out. Just concentrate on hanging on to the rope,” Diane said. “Remember what I do in my leisure time.”

“Fishing?” he said.

Diane smiled. She watched him as he struggled to stand and she wondered whether she needed to go down into the well to help.

“You doing all right?” she asked.

“It’s not so bad. I can do it,” he said.

She winced as he held on to the side of the well to steady himself.

Hector got his foot in the loop and held on. He started to say something when a stone dislodged from near the top edge and fell with a crash as it hit the rotten wood.

“You all right?” she said. “Were you hurt?”

“No,” he said in a voice that could be called squeaky at this point. He definitely sounded scared. “But, I’m ready to get out of here-now. Just don’t drop me, okay?”

“You’re going to be fine. You’re in good hands. Here we go.”

Diane signaled for them to pull. They leaned into the rope as if they were in a life-and-death tug-of-war, and Hector rose toward the surface, screaming at the top of his lungs. When his shoulders cleared the top, Diane and Neva pulled him to the edge and dragged him over the tarp and onto solid ground.

Scott ran over to him. “Hector, are you all right? Are you in pain?”

Hector lay on the ground breathing hard.

“I’m fine. Not much pain, really. It’s just that, when Dr. Fallon suggested it, screaming seemed like such a good idea.”

Diane opened the blade of her pocketknife and ripped Hector’s jeans while David held the flashlight. His skin was bruised and swollen, but it wasn’t an open fracture. What was most noticeable, however, was the broken tibia he held next to his chest.

“You brought a bone up with you?” said Scott.

“Well, hell, yeah. I wasn’t going to have all that be a wasted trip. What is it, Dr. Fallon? Tell me it’s not a deer or a dog,” said Hector.

“It’s not. It’s human,” said Diane. “It’s relatively small, but judging from the epiphyseal union, I’d guess it was from a teenager.”

“Dang,” said Scott. “Wow.” And then the realization: “A small teenager. Dead. In the well.”

They heard the siren come up the driveway and stop in front of the house. David had cleared a path to the well by taking down some of his string and stakes. The two policemen led the paramedics around the back of the house to the abandoned well. The local firemen arrived with them. The paramedics set the stretcher down and began attending to Hector.