Eleven
We reach the end of Main Street, where the road dives beneath the barbed wire fence and into the woods. The Caving Grounds.
It’s a Saturday afternoon in mid-October, the day wet and cloudy and cool.
The forest ahead of us riots in peak fall colors, crisp yellows and deep reds and earthy browns, muted by a soupy layer of mist hanging between the trees.
The world is changing: I can feel the frozen stillness of winter hiding behind the curtain of this day.
But for now, there’s us. Garrett in a maroon sweatshirt and backward Falcons hat, his camera slung by a strap over his shoulder. Me, hands in the pockets of my jeans, hoping he won’t think this is lame.
I lead him along the fence line to where it dips into the woods. A rusted NO TRESPASSING sign hangs limply from a post. We walk until downtown is hidden from view.
“This is where you kill me, isn’t it?” he deadpans.
I find the spot. An old oak toppled over years ago, crushing a section of fence beneath its trunk.
I pull myself onto it, take a few steps, carefully avoiding the sprays of barbed wire poking up from under the rotting wood.
I jump off on the other side of the fence.
Garrett follows. We tromp through a thicket of underbrush and emerge on an abandoned street.
Sidewalks run along both sides of the pavement, grasses straining upward through every weakness, every crack in the asphalt.
Tree limbs stretch overhead, covered in leaves of deepest fall color, turning the street into a fiery tunnel.
We walk until we reach an intersection where a dilapidated sign stands, labeling the roads as Snow Street and Jackson Avenue.
We turn onto Snow, into the remains of a neighborhood.
Chest-high retaining walls butt up against the sidewalk, marking the edge of what used to be front lawns.
Spaced out at regular intervals, cut into the stone, sets of stairs lead up and away from the road into the gloom of the forest. There are no houses here, not anymore, not even the skeletons of them.
The trees have taken over everything, the asphalt and stone holding the only memory of what this place used to be.
It’s eerie, this empty, overgrown remnant of a neighborhood.
We walk down the middle of the street, stopping next to a wide stairway flanked with decorative stone pillars.
“What the hell is this place?” Garrett asks in a reverent whisper.
“The Caving Grounds,” I say. “This used to be the other half of Irontown. But when the mine tunneled underneath it, people’s houses started caving into the ground.
So the Range Iron Ore Company paid to have all the houses and businesses in this part of town put onto trucks and moved to the other side. ”
He looks at me as if he’s waiting for the punch line. “You’re making this up.”
By way of answering, I lead him to the top of a set of stairs.
The ground levels off, and spread out before us is the foundation of a house, stones cutting into the earth and forming a large square depression.
Grass covers the floor of what would have been the basement.
Scattered saplings are interspersed with rusted pots, a rotting chest, a few broken glass bottles.
Garrett’s jaw hangs slack. He glances at me, and I can tell he no longer thinks this is an elaborate joke.
He jumps down into the used-to-be-basement, unstraps his camera, and begins taking photos of the debris of someone’s forgotten life.
I watch as he crouches in a corner, using the viewfinder to line up a shot of the detritus.
He’s like a musician who knows how to find the music waiting in his instrument—focused, confident that there is art hidden in the ruin.
He moves around, capturing the space from every possible angle while I stand on the edge of the wall.
I feel a shift in myself as I watch him, one I’m afraid to put into words. He is painfully beautiful, but there’s something more underneath, something about him that makes me feel as if part of me is breaking.
He returns to the wall and I reach down to help him, our palms locking together, our fingers curled around the back of each other’s hand.
I pull him up, then let go. For a second, though, he doesn’t move.
We’re close enough that I can hear his breath, and it flips my stomach on its axis.
This lasts only a second, and it’s all in my head because now he’s leading the way down the stone steps.
He turns and snaps a photo of the stairway to nowhere, stone leading into the burning autumn trees.
He faces me. “This is incredible. How did you figure out how to get in here?”
“You said it yourself: There’s not a lot to do in Irontown.
So one summer, some friends and I decided we wanted to find a way in.
It didn’t take long.” I think about the summer after seventh grade, how a group of us spent entire days wandering these streets, making up stories about the people who once lived here.
Garrett and I start walking. He takes shots of the street and staircases from different angles. “It’s probably a little late to ask this, but should we be concerned about these being caving grounds?”
“I’m pretty sure the streets are safe,” I say. “But there are some tunnels under the woods over there. I was walking along once and almost fell into a hole in the ground. In the winter, the snow covers them, and it’s impossible to tell where they are. Like a minefield.”
He looks impressed, so I lead him up a grizzled road that turns into a narrow ravine.
Red ore-filled walls of rock press in on either side, tree branches meeting in a tangle overhead.
The mist swirls heavier here, and we walk uphill for several minutes until the road burrows into the rock face.
It’s a primitive tunnel, cut directly into the stone.
A rusting wire barrier stretches across the opening, but part of it disintegrated years ago, leaving a space large enough for us to crawl through.
“I think they used this tunnel to cart ore,” I say, “so the ground underneath should be stable.”
Garrett peers into the tunnel. “What about the roof?”
“Less sure about that.”
“Awesome.”
We bend our bodies through the wire fencing and step into the tunnel. It’s not long, and by the time the light behind us fades, we can already see the light on the other side. The air hangs damp and cold here, like we’re in a stony throat.
When we exit the tunnel, the path ends at a stark drop-off, plummeting to a water-filled basin below.
We’re standing midway up an old mine shaft, rough walls stretching around and above and below.
It’s wide enough, with trees circling the opening overhead, that this entire pit seems almost natural, like an enclosed chasm simply dug itself into the earth.
In the murky water below, twisted barbed wire and rusting steel beams and unidentifiable machines hover under the surface.
“How deep?” Garrett breathes.
“I don’t know. These old mine shafts went down hundreds of feet, but this one could have been sealed.”
“It’s like you could lose yourself in here,” Garrett says, his voice filled with the awe of someone standing in the nave of a European cathedral.
In the fading afternoon light, we seat ourselves on the ledge, our feet dangling over the side.
“A girl drowned here,” I say. “Years ago. This pit had been abandoned even before the Caving Grounds were closed off, and anyone could just walk up the road and come here. One day, people heard a girl screaming, heard her voice echoing all over town, and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.
Turns out sound travels weirdly when you’re in this pit; it amplifies in strange ways.
By the time they found her, it was too late. ”
He narrows his eyes at me. “How long has this area been fenced off?”
“Since the 1950s.”
“So that story has been passed down for decades?”
I nod.
“I don’t believe you about the girl.” He cups his hands and makes a hooting sound, which echoes eerily off the walls. “But I’d buy the thing about the sound. Maybe you should bring your clarinet here to practice sometime.”
“Oboe,” I correct. “I play the—” Then I break off, noticing the twitch at the corner of his mouth. “You’ve been messing with me for a month.”
His grin has turned into a full smile. “Longer. I knew it was an oboe when I saw it in your room on my first day here.” He points at himself. “This guy paid enough attention in elementary music class to know the difference between an oboe and a clarinet.”
“I’ve been messing with you, too,” I say. “I totally understand the difference between a tight end and a wide receiver.”
He bumps me with his shoulder. “Of course you do. From all that Madden you play.” A beat passes, and then his face turns serious.
“Is that what you really want to go to college for? Music?” He asks the question with complete sincerity, like there isn’t a doubt in his mind that this could be my future.
Like someone from a family that can afford to bet on uncertainties.
“I don’t want to end up working in a coffee shop for the rest of my life,” I say, trying to turn it into a joke instead of an admission of defeat.
“But you’re good.”
“Good isn’t enough in the music world. You have to be fantastic to make any money, let alone enough to live on. And I definitely don’t want to teach.”
“What about all the composing you do?”
“That’s just a hobby.”
His brow furrows. “Don’t you do it for hours every day? And take classes? And half of the stuff your quintet performs is composed by you?”
“Arranged,” I correct. “My own stuff isn’t that good.”
He shrugs, letting the matter drop. He’s quiet for a while, his jaw shifting side to side, as if he wants to say something. Then he turns to me, his eyes bluer than usual against the rusty backdrop of ore-filled rock.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“When did you come out?”