Last Summer Boys(50)

Pete’s heart pounds like a jackhammer through his chest, and I am afraid it’s going to burst it’s beating so fast. I struggle to climb down, to let him rest, but he just holds me tighter, his muscles locking me against his body, and all of a sudden we’re flying, dashing through electric air as he jumps from one rain-splattered rock to another, and then another and another, up the mountain.

A ball of blue lightning explodes over us, and suddenly the Indian is there in the rain-slashed night. In the place where his mouth should be is a black hole: the entrance to the cave.

Caleb disappears into the Indian’s mouth and is gone.

Pete don’t even slow down. Ducking his head, he dives into that dark and the warrior swallows us too. Pete’s arms go loose and I slide onto the wet rock floor. I hear him collapse beside me, his breaths echoing off the walls.

I reach for him in the darkness of the cave and my hand touches his heaving chest, and I feel his heart, still pounding away underneath. I want to tell him how sorry I am, but my body shakes so fierce I can’t make any words.

Pete lays a hand on top of mine and gives me a weak squeeze.

Barking outside. Frankie and Will crash out of the night, soaking, coughing, cussing, Butch right behind. My dog finds me in the dark, his coat dripping wet, and starts licking my face and whining, as outside thunder crashes again.

Will shrugs off the two packs he’s carried the whole way, then turns over and throws up.

Beyond the mouth of the cave, the storm roars like a wild animal. But there’s something else in the air now, a terrible, high-pitched shrieking that sounds almost human. Sticks and leaves blow in from the night. Butch whines again.

“What’s that?” Frankie asks in a trembling whisper.

From the inky black, Caleb answers him.

“It’s a twister.”

Outside, the shrieking grows louder.

“Get to the back of the cave!” Pete shouts.

We scramble blindly in the dark over the rough rock, but the cave ain’t deep. At its far end, we huddle against cold rock and a mesh of old roots and wait. I wrap my arms about Butch and hold his soaking body close.

“Hang on!” Will shouts as suddenly the cave is filled with a screaming wind.





It’s Frankie who remembers the rope. As that howling cyclone reaches its fingers into our cave and whips our clothes about our bodies and snatches at the hair on our scalps, our city-boy cousin crawls to the entrance and finds it in Will’s pack. Ignoring our shouting, or maybe because he don’t hear us, he stays at the edge, tearing through the pack. Lightning flashes and we see him, a blackened cutout of a boy, kneeling before a torrent of water and wind and light. When the lightning comes again, the cave’s mouth is empty and I’m certain he’s been sucked out, but in another flash of electric light he appears out of the dark right before me.

He’s got the rope with him.

“Wrap it around you!” he shouts. I do and an instant later the rope tightens and I realize: he’s lashed us to those roots.

There comes a sound like the world is ending, a terrible crash that shakes the rock walls. The ground trembles under us and I think: This is it. This cave is our tomb.

It’s a second later that Will’s pack picks up and sails right out of the cave. The others go right after it, one after the other, and now that awful, shrieking wind is tugging at me, tugging at Butch, trying to drag us out too.

But that rope around my chest holds; the twister can’t have us.

“Hold on!” someone shouts.

That shrieking gets even louder, and I shut my eyes and start to pray, pray that my family won’t die, that they and even Caleb Madliner will live through this, even if I don’t.

A wave of peace, a touch of sadness come over me. And just when I decide that I’m ready to go, that horrible shrieking begins to fade. The wind begins to lessen until, with a last furious breath, that twister blows itself out.

We press against cold rock, barely believing we’re still alive. Even when Frankie lets that rope go slack, nobody moves until, slowly, he crawls to the mouth of the cave and peers out into the night.

Rain hammers the mountain and lightning splits the sky once more, but the twister is gone.





Rain pitter-patters against the Indian’s rock face. Away south, thunder rumbles. The storm has passed. From far below comes a sound like a soft wind rustling in the grass. But it ain’t wind. It’s water. A whole lot of dark, fast water.

Apple Creek is flooding.

Cold and wet, we sit in the dark: five boys and a dog with no food, no blankets, and no fire. It’s the fire I need most. My fever’s back and my wet clothes and that cold air have me shaking like a leaf on a tree.

“Anybody got a match?” Pete asks. His voice sounds weak, haggard.

“In my pack,” Will answers, sounding every bit as tired. “Miles away now.”

There’s a scratching sound and suddenly a single yellow flame cuts a hole in the dark.

Caleb Madliner holds a lit match in his fingers. Where he got it, I don’t know. At first we see only his floating head, and it’s horrifying. Then, in flickering light, the walls of the cave, the tangle of roots, and some scattered, curled leaves.

Frankie grabs two fistfuls for kindling, but Caleb turns the matchstick around in his long, bony fingers, watching the tiny strip of cardboard wither and curl inside the flame. He lets it burn down to his fingertips before dropping it on the leaves.