Third Interlude Gwen, Under the Shadow #7
Erin Oakes told Wendy to hang on, that they wouldn’t be able to talk for a while. Conversation would be impossible once the
stone cutter started going. Erin had been in the declivity all night, talking to Wendy, praying with her sometimes, joking
more often. Listening, mostly. When Wendy was nineteen she had killed a man, driving drunk. At the time of the accident, Wendy’s
ten-week-old was in the back of the car. He had survived unharmed, aside from some scratches from flying glass. In the aftermath,
even before she was sentenced to nine years, child services had swept in to transfer custody of the infant to his father,
an estranged ex-boyfriend. Wendy told Erin losing her baby boy was the best thing that ever happened to her—because now she
wouldn’t be able to ruin him.
Erin told her it was a lie. Erin said she was going to hold her boy again.
Erin said her son was going to find out how strong his mother was someday .
. . strong enough to try and do some good in the world after making a terrible, stupid mistake.
Erin told Wendy she had been imprisoned in jail herself once, right here, in Black Cricket.
Erin said she killed a man too. Erin said for a while she had also believed she was unworthy of her son’s love but had found out no one was unworthy.
Either that, or maybe everyone was unworthy and we had to love and be loved anyway.
Gwen came to get her, and Erin climbed out of the pit, dusty and swaying a little with tiredness. But her eyes were bright
and she gave Gwen’s hand a quick squeeze.
“She’s a trouper,” Erin said. “Forget getting a hug from her son. He’s going to have to wait in line behind me.”
A big, three-hundred-pound Pole with a face like a ham lit up his stone cutter and bent to the concrete. Sparks flew.
“Hey! Hey!” Gwen cried, pushing Erin aside. “The hell you doing, hoss? Shut it down! Shut! It! Down!”
He couldn’t hear her over the grinding roar of the spinning blade, and she had to catch his attention by waving her arms.
Mark Ruffner spied her agitation and closed in, joining her at the edge of the pit. The Pole lifted his saw—it was so big
it had to be held with two hands—and switched it off. He looked befuddled behind his goggles.
“What’s up, Gwen?” Mark said.
“That saw isn’t water cooled,” Gwen said. “That kid down there is up to her chest in who knows what and that saw is throwing
sparks.”
“That kid down there is almost out of time and that’s the best saw we’ve got on hand. The water-cooled saw got mangled yesterday,
over in Zone One.”
“Get another one.”
“We’re working on it. Maybe by tomorrow night. Do you want to wait that long?” He waited for her to reply, and when she didn’t,
he waved a hand for the Pole to continue.
The saw whined, hit the stone, began to flay the air with sparks. Mark leaned to Gwen to shout in her ear.
“She’s got a mashed leg and she’s in rotten water. She’s in and out. And, Gwen, the water is still rising.”
“How? How the hell is it rising? Ain’t we got it shut off?”
“Everywhere. But the kid we’re trying to save, she’s down in the basement now. Below the ruptured boiler tanks.” He clapped a hand on Gwen’s shoulder. “She’s been lucky this far. Have a little faith.”
Gwen did have faith—but not in anyone’s luck. Her faith was in King Sorrow . . . and the grief that trailed behind him, miles
longer than his tail.
13.
About an hour later, the Pole took a break and Erin and Gwen got back down into the pit. Erin stretched out on the concrete—it
was hot now in the direct sunlight, and the rivulet of water had dried to a greasy chemical slick—and called down to Wendy.
“What do you want to eat when we get you out?”
“Ugh. I got no appetite.” Her voice was closer now. It was like listening to someone shout from the next room. “The smell down here, it makes my head swim. What I’d really like is ice water.”
Gwen thought, People in hell want ice water, and felt ill at heart.
“How about an ice water with a slice of lemon in it?” Erin called.
“How about an ice water with a lemon and a shot of gin, hold the water,” Wendy said, and laughed. “Kidding. I got a hundred and twenty-four days sober. You’d be surprised how easy it is to get drunk even in jail.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I had a cellmate who kept mashed grapes and Wonder Bread in a plastic shower cap for a couple weeks to make
some kinda hooch. That stuff was like the punch they served in Jonestown.”
“How are you doing up there?”
Gwen shouted, “We’re almost to you, girl. We’ll have you out by dark.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything. It’s always dark down here.” She laughed again, a weak, confused laugh. “You hear creaking up there, Gwen? Like, metal creaking?”
“No. What are you hearing?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes things creak. I guess this mess is still settling. I get crazy ideas like it’s getting smaller in
here. It’s not getting smaller, is it?”
Erin said, “No, Wendy. I’m sure it isn’t.”
Maybe Erin was sure, but Gwen wasn’t. She said, “Wendy? Where’s the water now?”
For a few moments, Wendy didn’t reply—Gwen wondered if she had heard her. But before Gwen could shout again, Wendy squeaked:
“Oh, shit.”
“Wendy, we’re almost to you. We’re going to get you out soon.”
“Oh, shit. Gwen? It’s almost over my boobs. It was only up to my navel before. It is getting smaller in here, isn’t it? Like when you squeeze a paper cup full of water and it runs over the sides.”
If Gwen had doubts about running a hot stone cutter before, she dismissed them now. They would save her with what they had
or they wouldn’t save her at all.
“You listen to me, kiddo. We aren’t going to let you drown. You copy that?”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” Gwen said, carefully avoiding Erin’s eyes.
“I knew I might not get out. You ever think luck is like money? What I’m thinking, I used up most of my luck the night I had
my car accident and my baby didn’t get killed. I used up the rest not getting smooshed when the building fell. There’s nothing left now.
I’m busted, Gwen!”
“You don’t need luck. You got me.”
“Wendy?” Erin called. “He’s going to begin cutting again in a minute.”
“Ugh. Okay. You wouldn’t believe the noise it makes down here—the roar of it. I was fading out last time, when he started
cutting, and the sound scared me awake. For a minute I thought that thing was back.”
Gwen felt a cold prickle across her back, between her shoulder blades, down her spine.
“What thing?” Erin asked.
“The thing that fell on the penitentiary. It hit us with a scream. I thought it was a bomb, like artillery, only it screamed again and again, after the first hit. It was in the building. You guys must know about it. I could hear people shooting at it. And some crazy Spanish bitch—’scuse my language, Reverend—was howling, ‘el diablo esta aqui!’ You know what that means? ”
Gwen had picked up a little Spanish in her years riding in the ambulance jump seat . . . but that one required almost no familiarity
with the language at all. The devil is here.
“What a nightmare you’ve been through,” Erin said, giving Gwen a mystified look.
“Does anyone know what happened to us?”
“A gas main ruptured,” Erin said. “If you heard gunfire, it might’ve been ammunition exploding in the heat.” But she didn’t
sound like she believed it.
“No. No way. They were fighting that thing for almost fifteen minutes. You could hear them yelling for backup. You could hear
the guards screaming for their lives. Is that what they’re telling you, it was a gas main?
They’re lying, Erin. Someone is lying. I don’t know what hit this place, but I think that Spanish lady was closer to it than you are.
‘El infierno no tiene gobernante ahora porque el diablo está aquí.’” Wendy laughed and said, “You wouldn’t believe it, a bozo like me, but I got As in Spanish.
I was great at languages. My teacher used to say, Arthur,
you’ve got a gift. If you work hard, you could have a real future. Well. He wasn’t wrong. Everyone has a future. Mine was
to die here. In a hole.”
“You’re not dying here,” Gwen said, but she had no spit. She didn’t like hearing Wendy call herself Arthur. She didn’t like
knowing Wendy Arthur was good at languages, like her oldest chum.
“Wendy?” Erin said. “Would you like to pray with me again? We’ve only got another minute.”
“Yes, please. Can we pray for my son? I want to pray he’ll know love . . . that the people who look after him will be better
at it than I was.”
“We can pray for your son. We can pray for the day you hold him again,” Erin said.
The two of them began, and Gwen got up and walked away—reeled away, really.
Her legs felt shaky. The sun had been beating down on her hard hat and she was lightheaded and woozy, half-stunned by the heat.
She found Mark Ruffner talking with one of the structural engineers, a narrow-faced, sharp-nosed man in a pair of square-rimmed glasses.
“Mark,” she said.
He held up a hand, palm out—hang on a minute—and said to the engineer, “We keep cutting.”
The engineer pointed at the torn-open dollhouse looming above. “You’re destabilizing what’s left of the east wing. You need
to back off. We can find another way. Let’s dig in Zone Three. Get forty feet down and then burrow—”
“What’s your time frame on that? Two weeks? Wendy Arthur doesn’t have two more days. We cut.”
The engineer put his hands on his hips. “And maybe lose six people instead of one?”
“I won’t ask anyone to work in the pit without understanding the risks,” Ruffner said. “If it comes to it, I’ll cut myself.
We’re getting that girl out tonight. Right, Gwen?”
Gwen nodded. “You said it, boss.”
But they weren’t.
14.
When it happened, it happened fast.
They had cut a triangle out of the concrete slab, three feet wide along each side, and winched it free. Beneath was a bent
girder, with more rubble beneath. But the girl was close now, her voice only feet away. The Pole bent to the girder and the