Jonathan Rogers - The Way of the Wilderking

The pounding water had dug a broad bowl in the soft dirt of the crevice floor. Even when the last of the surface water had flowed through and out to the main channel, a little pond, a foot and a half deep, would remain in the chamber to grow stagnant and breed mosquitoes if the men didn’t do something about it.

The miners fell to the work with great enthusiasm-digging and grading, filling and scraping. They were proud of their work, proud of their expertise, proud when their comrades said they didn’t know what they would do without them, because they knew it was true. That feeling of being indispensable wasn’t one they got very often when they were toiling in the mines at Greasy Cave. In their workaday world, amid the dangers they faced daily in the mines, they felt very dispensable. The fact that they mostly looked alike-short, stocky, bearded-only added to the sense of interchangeability. Everybody in Greasy Cave could swing a pickax, and if a miner didn’t show up at the mines one day, the boss would surely find somebody else who would, and he would never miss a lick.

But here in Sinking Canyons, the Greasy Cave boys were heroes, just as they had been at Bonifay. Their tunnels had saved the lives of their comrades. Now they were in charge of the cleanup, organizing the others (civilians, as they had come to think of non-miners) into bucket brigades and telling them what to do and how to do it.

The others were happy to follow the miners’ leadership-most of them anyway. Marvin and his gang grumbled all afternoon and dropped their buckets on every other pass and sometimes wandered off from the work a half hour at a time.

After a cold and early supper, Gustus announced, “Boys, we still got a couple hours’ daylight left. What say we finish up this job so we don’t have to fool with it tomorrow?”

Everyone’s back was aching from the day’s work. But the men did like the idea of not having to return to the work a second day, so they stood, stretched, and prepared to go back to the bucket brigade.

They all stopped, however, at the booming voice of Marvin echoing on the canyon walls. “Some band of outlaws this is!” He threw his head back and laughed. “Toting buckets of sand! Getting bossed by a bunch of miners!” He pointed a finger at the miners gathered around Gustus. “I’ve took all the orders I aim to take from a bunch of stoop-backed gravel scratchers.”

Ernest gave it back to Marvin. “I didn’t hear no complaints about gravel scratchers when you was safe and dry last night in the tunnels we dug!”

Marvin waved at the air as if swatting away a bothersome fly. The rest of the miners now stepped up beside Ernest, across from Marvin’s gang, who fanned out to face them. The miners gripped their pickaxes and shovels. From the looks on their faces, it appeared they were ready to use them.

But Errol and his four sons stepped into the corridor between the two lines of men. The old man stood mere inches away from Marvin. The purple vein had appeared on his forehead. He spoke calmly but with unquestionable authority. “No one is keeping you here, Marvin. Leave anytime you wish. But if you mean to use our shelter and eat our food, you will join us in our work.”

Marvin snorted. “It’ll be dark in an hour. The water’s still high. We can’t leave now.”

Errol grabbed a bucket from one of the miners and shoved it into Marvin’s belly. “Then get to work,” he ordered, stalking off to join the bucket brigade himself.

Aidan lay awake most of that night, half-expecting trouble from Marvin and his boys. He finally fell asleep a couple of hours before dawn, and when he awoke, Marvin’s gang was gone. Cooky had seen the group leave while he was trying to light the breakfast fire in the predawn darkness.

Never had a day seemed fresher. Marvin’s departure was like a shadow lifting. The morning sun glistened off the stream, now only a little higher than normal. The birds that had spent the previous day drying out sang joyously in celebration of the new day.

After breakfast Aidan joined Jasper on a walk down the canyon. “The canyon changes after every rainstorm,” Jasper explained. “And the storm we just had was the biggest one we’ve had since we’ve been here. Look, this is what I’m talking about.” He pointed at a spot where the water flowed over flat sand.

“Looks like any other spot on the canyon floor,” Aidan said, not sure what point Jasper was making.

“But it didn’t two days ago,” Jasper said. “This was the wash hole. Remember those two willow trees right there? The ones where we always hang clothes to dry?”

“You’re right,” Aidan said, looking at the two big trees, then back down at the stream. “But that was a pretty big pool.”

“Took the miners most of a week to dig it,” Jasper agreed. “But it probably took only a few minutes for the flood to fill it back in.” He pointed up the canyon. “The sand and clay that washed down the stream and probably some from up there at the canyon rim got dumped into the pool here until it filled up.”

Jasper pointed at a smooth mound across the way. “Remember the tower that used to stand there? It must have crumbled away and washed downstream.”

“Amazing,” Aidan said. “So the storm tears down the high spots and fills in the low spots?”

“Sort of,” Jasper answered, “Sometimes it makes low spots lower, digging a little furrow into a big trench. Sometimes part of a wall crumbles away and leaves a new tower or chimney that wasn’t there before. The only thing you can be sure of is that dirt is going to move around. After a rain like this one, some spots get buried in sand and clay, and some spots get unburied. No rhyme or reason to it, as far as I can make out.”

Aidan pointed up at a pine tree on the very edge of the canyon. It was the one he had noticed when he first came here, with its roots reaching out into the air. “I remember that tree,” he said. “It used to have a neighbor. Do you remember? It hung upside down by the roots, just a few feet from that tree.”

“It’s gone now,” Jasper observed. “The storm must have been too much for it.”

“Wonder where it is now,” said Aidan. “Maybe floating down the Eechihoolee by now, on its way to the ocean.”

“Or it might be out here somewhere. Likely it’s buried in the sand,” said Jasper.

Aidan walked toward the canyon wall where the tree had hung, curious to see if it was on the canyon floor. He saw no sign of the tree, but he did see something else that caught his eye. “Hey, Jasper,” he called. “Come over here. What does this look like to you?”

Jasper knelt beside him in the wet sand and examined the flat, brittle piece of wood Aidan handed him. It was a little bigger than a man’s hand. A whole row of identical pieces peeked out of the sand like a row of teeth.

“It looks like a shingle to me,” Jasper said.

“That’s what I thought,” Aidan agreed. From his side pouch he pulled out a flat digging rock, a leftover from his Feechiefen days, and began digging around the shingles. They were attached to a wide plank, a piece of roof decking, no doubt. There was a second row of shingles nailed just below the first.

“Do you suppose a piece of roof from an old barn washed down here from a nearby farm?” Aidan asked.

Jasper gazed up at the canyon rim. “The nearest farm I know of is almost ten leagues away. That was a powerful storm, but I don’t see how surface water-or really anything less than a river-could carry something this big for ten leagues.” He thought on it a little more. “And besides, when was the last time you saw a shingled roof in this part of Corenwald? All the roofs around here are reed thatch or palmetto thatch.”