Dead Guilty

I’d like to learn.’’
‘‘Mike says he has a friend who just opened a gym with a good rock-climbing wall,’’ said Diane. ‘‘That’d be a good place to start working on your climbing muscles.’’
It was just daylight when they arrived at the cave. They piled out of the car, and Diane left her custom ary note and map detailing where they were going. She had also told Frank, Andie, David and Jonas. She never went caving without several people knowing where she was going and how to find her.
They hiked through the woods, through a gate and up a trail. The cave entrance in the side of a rock outcrop was shielded by thick brush and vines growing out of the cracks in the rock face.
At the entrance, Diane hung her compass around her neck and took a reading. They put on their hard hats, turned on their helmet lights and arranged their backpacks comfortably. MacGregor went in first.
‘‘Anybody has claustrophobia, now’s the time to say something,’’ he said, and laughed.
Diane followed him. Neva came right behind her, and Mike brought up the rear.
The entrance chamber was small and filled with de tritus blown and washed in from the outside. The walls were steep solid rock that curved upward and inward to make a dome-shaped ceiling. The entrance didn’t allow much sunlight to filter in, so the twilight zone— the dim area between the light of the outside world and the deep darkness of the cave—came quickly. Diane saw a black hole in the rear wall. She remem bered on the map it led to a short passage and to a larger chamber beyond—the Tail of the Lizard, MacGregor had labeled it.
‘‘Now entering the twilight zone,’’ said MacGregor, and he hummed the theme song from the TV pro gram. Diane glanced in Mike’s direction. He smiled and shrugged.
They had to duck low to enter the new passage. The limestone walls closed in with smooth, undulating shapes with bulges that curved gently like the begin nings of an arm carved eons ago. They were entering the realm of geologic time where the amassing of years was almost impossible for humans, who have been on earth the mere blink of an eye, to wrap their brains around.
Diane loved everything about caves—the an cientness, the wildness, the ornate shapes, the bejew eled and flowered mineral features, cave creatures and even the absolute velvet darkness. The lights from their headlamps made strange shadow puppets of the shapes and protrusions of the wall. Had any of them been overweight, the passage would have been a squeeze. She glanced briefly at Neva. She looked fine.
The tunnel was short. It led into a larger chamber strewn with boulders of various sizes, the largest being the size of a human. The rock face of one wall leaned toward the chamber, looking like it might fall over on top of them. They were in the dark zone now. Without their lights, they would be as blind as some of the creatures who lived there.
Diane turned and examined the tunnel they had just come through so she could recognize it from the oppo site direction. You have to learn how to see in a cave. You can see only in the direction your head faces because your light is on top of your head and points straight ahead. And in the darkness of a cave, the light beam is quickly swallowed up. You don’t get the panoramic view your peripheral vision gives you up in the world of sunlight.
She took another reading of the marked it in her notebook. They all books. Mike had a camera and snapped shots of the formations, making a quick burst of light with each picture. He wrote things in his notebook that looked like chemical notations, from the brief glimpse Diane got of them. Neva drew sketches in her notebook. MacGregor looked like he was writing a novel. Per haps he was, and a cave was where his muse talked to him. Diane could understand that.
The easy trail through the cave was a succession of tunnels and rooms like beads on a string, frequently crossed by other passageways. MacGregor’s chatty na ture was useful inside the cave, for he freely explained what was down each passage they crossed.
‘‘There’s lots of mazes in this cave—little twisting passages that all look alike.’’ He laughed, indicating that he’d just told a joke, or quoted something.
‘‘ Zork, an old computer game,’’ Mike whispered to her.
Sometimes they took one of the cross tunnels when it was marked as part of the easy route. They came compass and carried note to a passage that MacGregor called Fish Scale