THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART TWENTY-SIX:

Marshall shivered as he was hustled by Bart toward Eden's car. Bart had a hold of the back  side of the collar of the solid burgundy flannel shirt Marshall was wearing, pushing him rapidly along the snow-covered walkway. He heard the double-tone sound as Bart used the remote on Eden's key chain to unlock the doors, then found himself being shoved into the back seat. As Bart went around to the driver's side, Calvin got in beside Marshall.

"Here, mister," Calvin said, pushing Marshall's rust-colored leather jacket into his lap.

Bart paused, half in the car, frowning at Calvin. "What'd you do that for?" he growled.

"I went down for grand theft. I ain't no murderer," Calvin said, glaring back.

Marshall got awkwardly into his jacket, a belted one that went just below his hips. He found his long muffler stuffed in the right arm, where he liked to keep it so he wouldn't accidentally end up with the wrong one, and tucked it around his neck. Bart started the engine and as they went down the long driveway, Marshall slid on his leather gloves and whispered a soft, "Thanks,"
to the man on his right.

At the end of the drive, Bart turned left. Marshall carefully noted that. "Do you...?" he began, but Bart hissed, "Shut up!" cutting him off. He leaned back into his seat. There was nothing to do for the moment but wait and see what the two men had in mind. He was trying to estimate how far they'd travel, keep track of turns. Except for the sound of the engine and the vibration of the car, the only other noise was from the tires on the wet snow of the road and the breathing of the men. His own coughing kept interrupting his listening concentration.

After one more protracted coughing session, Calvin leaned forward toward Bart. "Shit, man, this guy's sick."

"Just a cold, that's all," Marshall said, trying to clear his throat.

"We shoulda taken the damn woman like I told you!" Bart snapped.

"Too late now," Calvin replied, sitting back in his seat.

Thank God! Marshall sighed silently. The mere concept of Eden with these two was unthinkable.

"You know the cops'll be looking for this car before long?" Calvin said.

"I'm not stupid. We're going to have to ditch it pretty soon. Find us another one before.....fuck!"

Woods were on both sides of the two-lane road and a doe had darted suddenly out from the right. Bart braked but the small car swerved on the snow, lost traction, and slid backwards into a culvert. Unbuckled, Marshall flew forward, his chin impacting the front headrest. Stunned for a second, he couldn't seem to move until the taste of blood in his mouth snapped him out of it. Exploring then with his tongue, he found his lower teeth had opened a gash inside his lip.

The next thing he knew was that he was being dragged out of the tilted car, a string of profanities filling the air. "I'd say you ditched the car pretty damn good," Calvin remarked, resulting only in a fresh spew of profane words from Bart.

"Ain't gonna be too hard for the cops to find it here," Calvin continued, surveying the firmly trapped vehicle. They hadn't gotten more than four miles from the inn. "Now what?"

"You know this area better'n me. Where can we get another car?" Bart asked.

"Well, ain't very many places in these parts." He turned his head, looking around. "Best bet might be the used car lot over on the highway. I could hotwire us one of them."

"Where's that?"

Calvin pointed toward the woods on their right. "Straight through there'd probably be quickest. 'Bout five mile I'd guess."

"Shit, man!"

"You want to just walk down this road, then, wait for the cops to come along and offer us a lift?" Calvin pointed out.

Bart looked at the woods. They were part of one of the large state forests that covered so much of the land in this area of the state. But the snow on the ground would make it too easy to tell which way they'd gone. About fifty feet further along, a creek crossed under the road. The water was flowing fast enough in it that ice had only formed in the small pools made by the many rocks and along the banks. His eyes shifted to Calvin's feet. "You got them rubber boots from that old man's shed on. I got me an idea. Just a sec."

He popped open the trunk of Eden's car, rummaging around, coming up with a short length of thin rope. With a grim smile he approached Marshall and began tying his hands together in front of him. "I can't walk like that," Marshall said quietly.

"You can't walk with your hands tied?"

"Right. I need to be able to use at least one hand to feel where I'm going."

Bart stepped back, staring at Marshall's unseeing eyes for a moment, then retied it so that Marshall had about a foot of rope between his wrists. "That'll have to do you, mister."  With that, he grabbed the center section of rope and tugged Marshall along down the road toward

the small bridge.

"What you thinking?" Calvin asked.

"Too easy to track," Bart replied, not stopping until they were at the edge of the bridge. "You got them boots. You make a bit of a fuss with them in the snow that way." He pointed left. "Make it big enough so they'll think we all went that way. Then kinda deliberate-like, just step
into the stream and head back this way. Maybe the cops'll think we all just got in the stream down there to cover our tracks. That's the more likely way we'd go anyway. Town's back that way, ain't it? We'd probably go that way to get another car."

"So what're you doing, then?"

"Mr. Blind Man and I'll just step into the stream on this side. You cover our tracks to the edge then head off the other way. He and I'll just go upstream a bit and wait for you 'bout a half mile into the woods."

Calvin nodded. "Makes sense," he agreed.

"You got a watch, Blind Man?" Bart groped for Marshall's left wrist. "Ah!" he was pleased.

It had a black leather band with a buckle. No need to untie the guy's hands to get it off him.

He passed the watch to Calvin. "Just before you step in the stream, drop this on the bank. They'll think he did it as a signal we took him that way."

Calvin looked at the watch. "What the heck kinda watch is this, anyway?"

"Braille," Marshall said, sighing.

"Yeah, stupid, You think Blind Man here needs a regular person watch?"

Calvin put the watch in his pocket and Bart yanked on the rope so Marshall had to step into

the stream. He gasped with the shock of it as the icy waters swirled around his ankles. It wasn't deep, but it completely covered his feet. He heard Calvin stomping around back on the bank, covering their footprints, going back and forth like they'd been trying to decide which way to

go then he headed off under the bridge away from Bart and Marshall.

Bart forged relentlessly ahead, just slightly turned so that his right arm could reach back and hold onto the rope. Time after time that hold kept Marshall from falling but it wasn't because

he cared if Marshall fell or not, only that he didn't want the delay or the bother of it.

The streambed was strewn with smooth rocks of all sizes, the ones below water wet and slippery, the ones above it glazed with ice and even more slippery. Marshall had never had such a hard time keeping to his feet. He tried to feel ahead with a foot before putting it down, but Bart didn't
allow him much chance to do that successfully.  He was so concentrated on it, though, that he had no sense of the passage of either distance or time. All there was was trying to get past the next rock, and then the next.  And he coughed so much that finally Bart whirled on him and
spat, "God damn it! Can't you shut that up!"

He couldn't. He tried to keep his mouth shut, but couldn't seem to get enough air through his nose alone. "Miserable, goddammed, worthless...," Bart mumbled as he walked. 

The thought passed briefly through Marshall's brain that his captor was obviously of the Spartan school of thought concerning the blind population. He slipped and Bart wasn't fast enough, so Marshall went down hard on one knee, bruising it deeply and getting the lower half
of his right pant's leg wet. "Idiot!" Bart yanked him to his feet.

So laborious was each passing second that it seemed to Marshall like hours had passed when Bart finally dragged him out of the stream in a place where there were rocky ledges. "Sit!"

Bart ordered. They'd wait here for Calvin.

Marshall let his legs fold under him and sat, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. His

knees were bent and he leaned forward, cradling his head in his hands, his whole body shivering. He was still like that when, about 20 minutes later, Calvin showed up, having been able to
make faster time because he was alone.

"You drop the damn watch?" Bart greeted him.

"Yeah, right on a big, flat rock. They'll be sure to see it if it don't get covered with snow."  He tipped his head up. The snow had stopped right before the car had slid into the ditch. "Maybe

it won't snow no more for a while."

"Maybe. Maybe not," Bart grumped. "But we got to get going. You take him along with you

for a while. Arm's tired of hauling the worthless load of shit." He searched around and found a large, broken pine branch. "Go on. Start walking. I'm going to brush these tracks off them
ledges."

Calvin squatted beside Marshall. "Can you stand up, mister?"

Marshall lifted his head. "Sure."  But he was so stiff with cold that Calvin had to help him to

his feet. After they'd gone several yards, Calvin looked back at the man stumbling along behind him. No way was this guy going to make it 4 1/2 miles through these woods. No way.

Bart came along a bit further back, brushing away their tracks until he felt they'd gotten far enough away from the stream. He dropped the pine branch and came up beside Calvin. "Ain't no fun hauling him along, is it?"

"Ain't much fun for him being hauled, I 'spect," Calvin replied.

After two more miles, Marshall was putting one foot in front of the other in what had become a complete mental fog for him. He tripped over a branch buried in the snow and fell flat, taking Calvin down backwards.

"Damn it to hell!" Bart shouted as Calvin sat up. He surveyed Marshall, still lying in the snow. "This guy ain't any good at all in the hostage department."

"Well, we got him," Calvin pointed out. "Guess we're stuck with him."

"Maybe not," Bart replied, his eyes scanning around them, fastening on a thick piece of wood about two feet long. He picked it up and walked back toward Marshall.

"Wait a minute!" Calvin cried. "What the hell you going to do with that?"

"What you think, stupid? I'm going to eliminate the hostage situation."

Marshall had sat groggily up, shaking his head a bit, and Bart was behind him, the wood poised like a baseball bat.

Calvin got quickly to his feet. "Don't do that!"

"Why not?"  Bart spat into the snow.

"For Pete's sake, man. He's shit blind. He ain't going nowhere, ain't finding his way out of this forest. Just leave him be. It'll be just as good as whacking him in the head."

Bart looked at Marshall, who was shivering and coughing. "Well," he said, reluctantly dropping the wood, "I ain't going to leave him just sitting there free and easy like that." He walked about 10 feet to an old dead evergreen, reaching up to judge the height of several of its jagged branches. "This'll do," he muttered to himself then walked back to Marshall, grabbing the rope and yanking him to his feet.

Marshall swayed, almost falling again, but Bart had a firm grip on the rope and dragged him to the pine. "Come here!" he ordered Calvin. "You hold him up a minute." 

With Calvin's arms around his middle so he wouldn't topple over, Marshall's arms were jerked
roughly up and Bart slid the rope over the branch. Both men stepped back, Bart with a pleased smile on his face. Marshall's hands were straight up in the air, the rope connecting his wrists now pulled tightly over the branch, keeping him in a standing position.

"Come on," Bart said, heading out.

Calvin looked back over his shoulder. "It's murder," he breathed softly.

"Ain't neither," Bart laughed. "If he dies, he dies. Ain't my doing."

Marshall was so foggy he hadn't even realized what was going on. All he knew was that he was being hauled to his feet again but, then, instead of more endless slogging through the forest, he felt his arms pulled upwards and somehow being held there. It took him a good 10 minutes before his head was clear enough for him to even think about what had happened.  He stood perfectly still, then, straining to listen. There was no sound from either of the two men. He was puzzled. Had they simply...gone? No, they wouldn't do that, would they? Didn't they need him

as hostage? He listened more. Still no sound other than the wind clacking frozen branches together over his head. 

His left shoulder was aching. The position was straining muscles and tendons too freshly healed. The rope must be over something, something that was holding him up.  He tried to reach a bit higher with his fingertips, but the branch was just beyond his grasp. He moved forward a bit, hoping the rope would slide, but it wouldn't. He couldn't see it, but several short, sharp smaller branches off the main one had the rope firmly lodged between them. He could go neither forward nor backward.  He tried bending his knees, hanging his weight on the branch. Nothing but a sift of snow onto his face from the vibrations he'd caused. "Eden," he whispered, then coughed so hard and so long he thought his rib cage would crack.

There must be a way! There had to be some way!  He was not going to die today, hung up from

a tree like some carcass of a deer! Perhaps if he...?  He jumped slightly then bent his knees and was rewarded with a small sound like old wood was beginning to splinter. He jumped again, higher this time, letting the branch take the force of his downward plunge. This time it broke about two feet behind him, falling with him as he came down on his knees. It was right above

him and as he landed, the branch struck him a glancing blow on his left temple. He stayed on

his knees one second, then two, then quiet as the snow, crumpled sideways, the rope still curved over the broken branch.

ON TO PART 27

BACK TO LIBRISCROWE

BACK TO PART 25

BACK TO INDEX