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Chapter 7: A Stinky Place
Several hundreds of miles away in Gunnison, Walker and Diana Hanson sat among the group of crash passenger relatives and listened intently as Captain Monroe described the on-going search plans. A second storm was raging outside, but this one was blizzard conditions, with high winds and precipitation. Search efforts had again been canceled. Captain Monroe stated statistics and probabilities and he didn’t hold out to much hope for any survivors of the crash. He again suggested that the family members return to their hotels and wait for further word. He did promise to continue the search as soon as weather permitted. It was all the family members could expect. They couldn’t ask that the search team members to put their own lives in jeopardy to continue searching in unsafe conditions.
On the trip back to the hotel Walker made a detour and stopped at a small chapel. He and his wife went inside and kneeled at the alter, held hands, and in prayer put their children’s destiny into the hands of their faith.
* * * *
The boys destiny’s were at the time dictated by exhaustion. They slept long and hard, and comfortably warm. Ike pulled himself out of a deep sleep and found little Katie and Antonio sitting across from him, their legs crossed, watching him patiently.
"Stinky here," Katie said making a face and surprising Ike into laughter.
Taylor sat up stiffly. "What is it?"
"Katie says its stinky in here," Ike said.
"It is," Taylor agreed and then it stopped. "Katie says. She spoke real words?"
"Real words." Ike said. "Right, Katie? Stinky?"
"Stinky!" the little girl agreed with a nod of her head, her dark curls bouncing.
Taylor and Ike both laughed and got up to start their day. The cavern did smell, the strong odor of sulfur was very much like rotted eggs, but the warmth provided by the sulfur spring outweighed the bad smell. They fed the kids and unpacked the duffel bags and tried to make some sense of order out of the chaos. Zac woke up with a horrendous headache, so Ike gave him some aspirin and told him to go back to sleep. So while their little brother slept, they explored their new living space.
The cavern extended about forty feet wide by about thirty feet long and ceiling was at least twenty or more feet high in spots. There were other caverns extending from the main room, but they were dark and the boys no source of light to explore. They smelled worst than their cavern, probably because they were more under the mountain and had no opening to the outside to release the smell. The stream of water flowing through the cavern continued its path into another part of the underground network of caves, it was shallow, no more than two to four feet deep and clear in most places. Taylor saw a huge fish floating in the current and became determined to catch it. But they had no fishing gear so they had to use their wits to catch the fish. Taylor rolled up his pants and waded into the cold water, bent over with his hands poised in the water and waited with imminent patience until the fish swam close. Suddenly he brought his hands together and gripping the fish he tossed airborne and it landed on the rock floor.
"Yes!" Taylor and Ike both yelled.
"I caught it you clean it!" Taylor said teasing his brother as he scampered out of the water and up by the warm air vent to warm up his cold legs.
"That’s a deal, I can live with," Ike agreed.
Taylor laughed and pulled on his socks and boots.
"Could you guys keep it down. My head hurts!" Zac complained.
"Sorry," both brothers said simultaneously and then both did a thumbs up. They felt good about this place. It was warm, and protective from the elements and they did not have the haunting stigma of knowing that there were dead bodies only several feet away.
Taylor pulled on his coat and crawled out the cave to the entrance. He looked around and then went back to get his brother. "Ike come look at this." he suggested.
Ike pulled on his coat. "Antonio, vigilancia [watch] Katie."
"Si," the boy replied and nodded.
Ike crawled out the entrance to join his brother and they kneeled at the entrance and looked over the landscape. The icestorm that had begun the night before had blanketed the area with a heavy coat of glistening ice.
"Look," Ike said pointing out an indentation of huge proportions. "I think that’s a lake. It probably feeds the stream that runs through the cavern. Come on, we need to gather some wood for a fire. And, be careful, we don’t need a broken leg to make things worst."
"Speak for yourself, klutz," Taylor retorted smartly as Ike slipped and on fell to a knee.
"God, it’s slick," Ike complained as he tried his weight on the thick crust of ice over snow. The ice held him up.
"Duh, ice. What did you expect?" his brother ask.
"Just shut up and see if you can get to that scraggly tree." Ike suggested. So they worked their way over to the tree and proceeded to use their weight to snap branches off its thin trunk. When they had enough for a fire, they dragged them back to the entrance. Taylor climbed up the craggy rock and Ike handed him the branches. Then he climbed up and they dragged them inside. Now they had the means to cook the fish.
Feeling very successful, Taylor wadded back in the stream and managed to catch two more fish. It had been days since they had eaten well, and he wanted to eat this evening.
Zac complained every time someone made a noise, so to keep quiet, his two brothers dragged out their school books and worked steadily until they were several lessons ahead. Ike used the large hunting knife to clean and scale the fish and stuck them on branches which he and Taylor patiently rotated over the flames until they were fully cooked. They woke Zac up and although he was grouchy he quickly regained his humor when he found out there was food to be eaten. Taylor shared his fish with Katie picking off pieces with his fingers and feeding her as well as himself. Ike did the same with Antonio. They gave their little brother his own fish because he was feeling so bad and because he hadn’t eaten for several days while he had been unconscious so they figured he needed it more. It was a good meal, and they felt satisfied after it. For the first time in days, there wasn’t a nagging gnawing feeling their stomachs. It was a good way to end a day.
The next morning the sun was out bright and by mid-morning had reduced the thick cover of ice to a slushy mess. Ike and Taylor gathered wood and stacked it inside the cavern. Ike wanted enough stockpiled to get them through several days, in case of another storm. Zac and Antonio spent their day exploring the cavern although Ike quickly put them under a restriction not to leave the main cavern. Zac felt considerably better although he continued to take the aspirin Ike offered. Antonio began to follow Zac and mimic words spoken by his companion.
They all tried to catch fish, but Taylor was better at it. Zac and Antonio made to much noise and Ike didn’t have enough patience. So, by default Taylor became the fisherman. Ike became the keeper of the flame, keeping the coals in the fire smoldering when not in use and burning low at night to give them some sense of security in the dark. Zac became Antonio’s teacher and baby-sitter for Katie when his brothers left the cavern. Antonio’s job was to learn English and help in anyway possible. Katie’s only job just to sit in their laps and listen as they sang or told stories.
The boys fell into a set pattern over the several days. Each knew their jobs and they did them without question. Morning hours when the light was the best were spent working on their studies although Taylor would catch fish anytime he spotted a big one swimming along. In the afternoon’s Ike and Tay gathered wood and when they were finished they spent hours writing lyrics or music; arguing, laughing and fighting over words and notes and tunes. It was harder to write music without instruments but they were unique, so trained in their music skills that they could replicate music notes with their voices, and they would harmonize until they agreed on the notes.
The water spuring out of the rock acted as a shower, although Ike wouldn’t let them use to much soap because he was afraid it would contaminate the water. The air vents were their blow dryers and clothes dryers when they rinsed out their clothing.
On the third night of occupancy in the cavern, they were shaken out of their sleep by a sudden shaking of the ground and muffled roaring sound that only lasted about thirty seconds.
"What was that?" Taylor demanded.
"Earthquake?" Zac screeched his voice shaking.
"Settle down," Ike said. "More than likely it was an avalanche. Snow coming off the cliffs."
"Will we trapped in here?" Zac demanded.
Ike got up and lit a stick in the fire. He crawled out the entrance cave and then back into the cavern.
"The entrance is clear," he reported. "And, that’s all I can see for now. Go back to sleep, we’ll check it out in the morning."
So the boys hesitantly laid back down in their blankets, and gradually drifted back off to sleep.
Morning, found all three boys outside staring up at the mountainside. Once Zac was satisfied that the avalanche wasn’t near them, he returned back inside to the cavern.
Ike and Taylor exchanged looks. The entire cliffside above the plane had collapsed. The plane was buried, and large boulder sized chunks of snow and rock covered the plateau. Taylor gave his brother a thumbs up of approval.
On the fourth day of occupancy in the cavern, Taylor decided he was going to learn how to use the bow and arrow. So for hours, they would listen to a repeated thump, thump, thump as he practiced at one end of the cavern. Ike had to bandage the inside of his elbow, where the bow string had left a massive abrasion on his arm. He ask his brother to stop, but he refused and just promised to keep his arm bent out of the way.
As a week passed, Taylor’s arm healed and his aim got better. He became obsessed with his bull-eye rate. Ike figured that his brother planned on using his new skill to go hunting, an idea he wasn’t so keen about.
"Ike, I need you to throw targets." Taylor requested one morning. "I need to hit moving targets."
His brother nodded and promised to help him after he had finished his studies. Ike was used to hearing the repetitive thump of the arrows hitting his homemade targets. But when he came around the corner to watch, his brother wasn’t using the bow. The thump was from him throwing a knife. He was using the smaller hunting knife. The knife flew though the air and landed inside in a black circle drawn on a piece of wood. The deadly seven inch long knife sank deeply into the wood without a quiver.
"God, Tay, what are you planning on killing?" Ike ask in alarm.
Taylor looked up, walked over to the knife and pulled it out. "Anything we can eat," he stated matter-of-factly. "But not with the knife, I’m learning to throw this just for the heck of it."
"You’re scaring the heck out of me!" Ike exclaimed.
"Why?" Taylor ask. "Ike, we need meat. We need protein. I figure if I can get a rabbit now and then we’ll be a lot better off. Look, you don’t have the eye coordination to become a good shot. I can do this. Big brother, you have kept us safe and alive so far, but you need to let me help."