They were sitting at the kitchen table. Cissy had taken down the bottle of wine that Nadine told her was in the top cupboard. They had each had a glass and started on a second.

Tacey took another sip and leaned her head to one side. “He said black people were crazy too, but we weren’t simple.”

“Yeah,” Cissy agreed. “God knows my whole family is crazy. Probably going to get Dede certified out of this, and Amanda is nuts for sure.”

Amanda came in from the hall that led back to Nolan’s room. “Oh, am I?” And poured a good slug of wine into a water glass.

“How is he?” Tacey was prepared to be diplomatic. “He asleep?”

“He’s drugged.” Amanda rolled her head, and the muscles in her neck made popping sounds. “But he’s fine. Thank the Lord, Dede didn’t have a really big gun. For being shot like that, Nolan’s doing just fine. I think the swelling in his leg is starting to go down. We’ll have a terrible time keeping him in bed tomorrow.”

Amanda frowned down at her wine. “Is this stuff all right? Is it supposed to taste like this?”

Cissy shrugged. “Nadine say how old it was?” she asked Tacey.

“Never mentioned it to me before. Probably thought I’d drink it up and replace it with soda or something.” Tacey sipped. “It might have turned. Seems a little bitter, but what do I know? I don’t drink.” She looked at Amanda. “Didn’t think you did either.”

“I’m taking it up,” Amanda said. “Had a drink yesterday with Cissy. Going to do it regular from now on. I’m studying on sin. I’m studying on how it works.”

“Amanda, you scare me,” Tacey said.

“I know. I scare myself sometimes, but I’m trusting in the Lord. Figure I’m human and flawed and need His help. I’m just figuring

things out as I go.“ She took a gulp of wine. “Those girls called you here,” she said to Cissy. “Called twice, wanting to know what was going on. Said you were supposed to meet them this evening.”

“Oh Lord! I forgot to call them. We were going to map Little Mouth. We were going to stay out overnight.”

Amanda shook her head. “I will never understand you, Cissy. What on earth are you doing, climbing down into what might as well be the outer gates of hell? And Mary Martha Wynchester said you quit your job at the real estate office.”

Cissy nodded. “I did. I hate realtors. I hated that job.”

Amanda sat down at the table. “Well, what are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to think about it.” Cissy looked at Tacey and then at Amanda. “Before all this happened, Nolan told me Dede wasn’t happy, that she wanted to be doing something different. It sounded like he was thinking the same thing. He was talking about taking a job in Atlanta.”

“Yeah,” said Tacey. “He told me that too, and I told him to look me up at Spelman.”

“Well, it shook me.” Cissy toyed with the empty glass. “Funny how you go along and you get settled and you never think about things changing. Then this happened, and I realized things were changing anyway.” She raised the glass to Amanda. “I’m thinking. Studying on things, like you. Time for me to make some plans of my own.”

“Long as you stop running around with those girls.” Amanda’s face assumed a familiar pinched expression. “There’s something not right about them.”

“Oh, they’re just like everybody else,” Cissy said. “They an’t any more crazy than you or me.”

“Is that so? Well, I saw them sitting in that truck the last time you went out with them, you know. I saw them sitting close together. That tall one put her arm around the other one, leaned over, and kissed that girl right on the mouth. Looked to me like they’re considerably more crazy than you.”

Cissy watched Amanda refill her glass. Kissing? Mim and Jean had been kissing?

“I think they’re lesbians,” Amanda said with authority.

“Lesbians?” Tacey snorted. “For God’s sake, don’t tell Nadine. She’ll invite them over and ask them to talk about it. Bad enough she still thinks I sleep with the garbage men. She’ll be sure I sleep with the lesbians too.”

“You don’t know anything about them, Amanda.” Cissy felt sick. She had the strongest desire to lean over and slap her sister.

“I know what I saw, and I bet you know too. You been spending all that time with them. You tell us. Don’t they live together? Don’t they kiss and hug all the time? Didn’t they ask you to start this club with them so they wouldn’t have to join the one that has all the boys in it? You going to tell me I’m wrong?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.” Cissy stood up and shoved her chair back. “You should be home with your own boys, not here telling me all this crap.”

“Michael’s got the boys. They’re fine. Don’t tell me about my boys.”

“Don’t you tell me about my life.”

“I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about those girls.”

“Well, don’t. Talk about me.” Cissy felt as if Nadine’s wine had turned to poison in her belly. “Maybe I’m a lesbian too.”

“Maybe you are,” Amanda said flatly. “I always knew there was something wrong with you. Figured sooner or later you’d get around to telling us, probably at the worst possible moment—when your sister is in jail and we’re all just about worn down to nothing.”

Amanda rested her elbows on the table, the glass of wine in both hands. I really should hit her, Cissy thought, but she could not move.

“I think we should get some rest.” Tacey put both hands flat on the table and pushed herself up. “I think tomorrow is going to be difficult enough without all of us going crazy on each other.”

“I don’t know what I am,” Cissy said through clenched teeth. “I an’t got God on my shoulder telling me to take a drink of wine and push my sister around. I an’t got a gun in my pocket. I an’t got nothing-not one notion what I am going to do with my life-but if you ever come at me again, Amanda Graham, I’ll push you so hard you’ll need God to pick you up. I’ll push you so you’ll know you been pushed!”

“I rented a car.” The voice was soft and startling. All of them turned to the door. Rosemary stood there with an overnight case in one hand and the other against the doorjamb. “You going to invite me in or yell at each other some more?”

“Jesus Lord!”

“You must be Tacey.” Rosemary stepped in and dropped her case on the floor. “I’m Rosemary. Delia tell you I was coming?”

Tacey shut her mouth and nodded. This was Rosemary! This woman was Delia’s friend from Los Angeles.

Rosemary sighed heavily and pulled up a chair. “I think you should sit down,” she said to Cissy. “And maybe one of you could tell me where Delia is. I went over to the house, but she wasn’t there. Figured you would all be here.”

Amanda stuttered when she spoke. “Delia’s at Judge Walmore’s, talking to him about getting Dede out of jail.”

“So she should be back soon. It’s pretty late.” Rosemary opened her purse and took out her lighter and cigarette case. “Is it all right if I smoke in here?” she asked Tacey.

“Yes,” said Tacey, who couldn’t stand cigarette smoke.

“Thanks.” Rosemary lit up and looked at Amanda and Cissy. “You’re still fighting,” she said. “Well, at least some things can be trusted to remain the same, huh?” She blew out smoke. “You want to come over to your mama’s place with me, Cissy? Maybe we should be there to meet her.”

Cissy lifted her head. Tacey was staring at Rosemary in happy fascination. The woman did not look a day older than she had when Clint died. Her hair was beautifully styled and her skin glowing, her nails perfectly done. Around her neck was the same gold necklace, wide and gleaming in the light from the overhead fixture.

“Yeah,” Cissy said. “We should go.”

Both of them were silent on the short walk down Terrill Road from Nolan’s house to Delia’s. When they got there, Cissy ran ahead to turn on the porch light and promptly tripped on the bottom step.

“Shit!” she cursed.

“Hold on.” Rosemary had a little flashlight in her purse. As she clicked it on, a car turned into the driveway and caught the two of them in its beam.

“What happened?” Delia called.

“Cissy took a fall.”

“Rosemary!” Delia left her lights on and rushed over to help.

“Hey, honey.” Rosemary gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and the two of them pulled Cissy up.

“She’s not really hurt,” Rosemary said. “She’s just been drinking bad wine.”

“Bad wine?”

“With Amanda and that sweet little girl over at Nolan’s. I came in and they were all half drunk and talking trash at each other.” Rosemary put an arm around Delia. “Honey, what’s been going on since I left?”

Emmet had told her Nolan would come see her as soon as the doctor would let him. Dede ground her teeth. She did not want to have to look into Nolan’s face again. She wanted him to give her something to hate him for. It would be so much easier if she hated him. It was loving him that felt dangerous, all that talk about family and moving in together, moving to Atlanta, making it possible for her to do what she wanted to do. Were there really people who got to choose what they wanted, instead of just taking what they could get and making the best of it? Nolan had talked to her as if anything were possible. That was what he said—“With you, anything is possible!” —and Dede knew from the look in his eyes that he believed it. That was the way he loved her. She loved him too, but like that? Like the whole world could fall on her and still she’d be all right because he was with her? People like Nolan were sports of nature, loving so completely that their love satisfied everything in them.

He’s better than me, Dede thought. Nolan could make a real career with his clarinet in Atlanta, but he told her that he would move or stay in Cayro, whatever she wanted. If someone offered Dede a two-hundred-thousand-dollar rig and a route from Georgia to Arizona and back again, she’d jump at it. It wouldn’t matter if Nolan couldn’t go. Hell, it wouldn’t matter if he were lying in the street and she had to drive over him. She’d shift gears and crush his spine.

It might never have happened if she hadn’t already had that gun, and that was Billy Tucker’s fault. But then, if not for Billy Tucker, would she have ever taken up with Nolan at all? Maybe all of it had been predictable. That silly waitress from Goober’s didn’t matter. She was nothing. Nolan didn’t care about her and Dede knew it. When he looked at Dede with the gun in her hand, his face said, All right, shoot me if you have to, kill me if that’s what you need. What kind of man stood still for a woman to shoot him?

“He’s crazy,” Dede had told Emmet.

“Yeah,” Emmet agreed. “He loves you.”

Two parts the moon, one part loneliness-and the rest? Dirty-blond hair or the smile of the beloved, Nolan’s smile when he lay on top of her, his chin between her breasts.

In the jail late at night, Dede heard women crying. Emmet had put her in a cell by herself, but that didn’t stop her from hearing a woman down the corridor sobbing for her baby-her child? Some man?—and another woman cursing at her. Whatever they’d done, they couldn’t be as crazy as she was. They were like Delia, Dede thought, the kind of woman who could screw up her whole life for love of a man, but then Delia sat at that table and spoke about Clint as if he were not what Dede had always thought he was, contemptible and evil.

“Don’t you live your life the way I have,” Delia had said. “Don’t shut yourself off to love. Don’t bury your heart in a hole.”

Dede lay awake and listened to the women. My heart is a hole, she thought. I have never let myself use it for love the way Nolan does, never risked everything and known what I was doing. She curled up and pushed her face into her pillow. With that woman she had never seen, she cried for the one she loved.

“Didn’t you sleep?” Cissy asked.

“I slept a lot, on the plane and here.” Rosemary nodded toward the house. “I’m doing fine. Just look at what your mother has accomplished back here.” She took out a cigarette. “Doesn’t appear to me like she sleeps at all.”

“She don’t, not much anyway.” Cissy sat on the steps and sipped her coffee. “She’s always out here when she’s not at the shop. She putters and gardens and refinishes furniture. Never idle, that’s Delia.”

“A happy woman.” Rosemary looked up at the pecan trees.

“You think?” Cissy watched Rosemary walking carefully on the wet grass. “She keeps busy. She’s always doing something.”

“How about you?” Rosemary came to the steps and sat down beside Cissy. “You keep busy?”

“Busy enough. I guess you heard what Amanda said last night.”

“I didn’t hear much, just you and your sister going at each other as usual. Seems to me you’re both getting too old for that, but it’s not my business.” She raised an eyebrow. “Delia told me you were going to the community college, working a little and crawling around under the ground whenever you got the chance. All that true?”

“True enough.” Cissy rocked on her heels. “But I quit the job, and school is stupid. I took two classes, but not with anything in mind. I don’t know why I bother.”

“You could do something else.”

“Like what?” Cissy said, but she looked at Rosemary hopefully.

“You could come back to Los Angeles with me. Go to UCLA, if you could get in.” Rosemary gave her a meaningful look. “No sense even talking about it, though, unless you really want to. You’d have to think about what you’re willing to be serious about, what you care about.” Cissy set the cup down on the step and dropped her head. “I don’t know what I care about. If I knew that, I could figure everything else out. ”

Rosemary poked Cissy’s shoulder. “Delia says you’ve been doing this caving a long time. Says you’ve been going out to those caves for years, long before you started doing it with these girls Amanda was talking about. Seems like you might care about that, about caves and all. What’s that? Spelunking? Archaeology maybe, or geology, minerals and such. You could check it out, see what interests you.”

Cissy stared openmouthed into Rosemary’s impassive face. “Are you serious?”

“I am completely serious.”

“How would we pay for it?” Cissy tried not to let her excitement show.

“We could manage something. You are Randall Pritchard’s daughter, after all.” Rosemary rubbed her temple. “Seems to me we have to make sure that Dede is all right, and then there’s a lot of paperwork and preparation involved. You don’t just walk out of one life and into another. It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“This Delia’s idea?” Cissy sat back on the step. “She ask you to talk to me about this?”

“Your mother and I discussed you, yes.” Rosemary’s tone did not alter. “She loves you. Maybe you don’t know that. I remember when she hauled you back here, what you looked like after your daddy died. Like a half-drowned kitten, and Delia the mama cat that was going to drag you around by your neck till you dried out.”

Rosemary stood and went up the steps. “You think about things. Delia said it might take two or three days to get Dede out of jail. She wants her to talk to Nolan, and the doctor won’t let Nolan get out of bed yet. You go on your trip with your friends, but while you’re down there, you think about things. When you decide, Delia and I will talk to you about how to get what you want.”

“You’ll play fairy godmother?” Cissy said to Rosemary’s back as she went through the door.

“You be good to your mama,” Rosemary called back. “You pay attention for a change.”

“Better than me,” Tacey told her. “Better than me. I’m going to the store. You stay with him for a while. And don’t wake Nadine up if you can avoid it. She was up and down all night after you girls got out of here.”

Cissy hesitated at Nolan’s door, but she could see his feet moving under the covers. “You awake?” she asked, and he said yes right away.

She stepped in nervously, not sure what to expect. He had been asleep last night, and he looked terrible every time she peeked in. His face was pale, and a shadow of beard was already darkening his jaw. The way his eyes moved reminded her of something, but she could not think just what. The feeling was unpleasant enough to make her want to back right out of the room.

“Don’t go,” Nolan begged. “For God’s sake, Cissy, help me get some clothes on. If you help me, I can get downtown before any of them come back.”

“Downtown?”

“To see Dede.” Nolan was trying to swing his leg over the side of the bed, but the bulky bandage above his knee made him clumsy. “If I get downtown, I can talk to Emmet, maybe see the people at the courthouse, find out how to get her out. She shouldn’t be in jail. It was all a mistake.” He got his leg off the bed.

Cissy saw that he was wearing only his underwear, that there was an ugly scrape on his left side, and that he was about to fall on his face. “Goddamn it, Nolan.” She jumped forward to catch him and shoved him back hard.

Nolan gasped. “Don’t,” he pleaded. “Don’t do this. You got to help me.”

“I am helping you. Are you crazy?” Cissy pushed him back onto the pillows and pulled the sheet up. “Think for a minute. Is anybody going to listen to you if you go down there like a madman? You want to get Dede free, you got to act like a sane, thoughtful individual. You got to convince people that neither one of you is crazy.”

Nolan gaped at her. “You think?”

“Yes, I do.” His face was too pale, Cissy thought. He looked so pitiful. “You got to start thinking like a lawyer if you want to help Dede.”

Nolan put a hand up to his mouth. His eyes swept the room. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.” Then he sobbed, a hoarse, ugly sound. “God, maybe.”

Cissy put her hand on his arm and patted him awkwardly. “You know I’m right. You don’t want to get her in any more trouble. You’ve both used just about all the luck you have.”

“I messed it up,” Nolan said. “I pushed her. I made her do it. You know she didn’t mean to hurt me.”

“I know. I talked to her.”

“Is she all right?”

“She’s fine, Nolan. She’s angry and confused and scared, and she isn’t sure what to say to you. I think she’s afraid to see you.”

“She shouldn’t be afraid of me.”

“No, she shouldn’t.” Cissy sat on the edge of the bed. Nolan wiped his eyes with the sheet.

“I asked her to marry me.”

“I know. She told me.”

“Did she tell you that’s why she shot me?”

“I figured it had a lot to do with it.”

Nolan swallowed painfully and took Cissy’s hand in his. “Well, when you figure it all out, you tell me about it. I’ll take it on trust, but I got to tell you I don’t understand it yet.”

Cissy held his eyes. “She’s afraid. Do you understand that? She thinks that marriage is the end of love, that it will steal her soul and make her hate you. She thinks that if she loves you that much, she’ll disappear into you and become someone she despises. She thinks that you’ll turn into her daddy and start to beat her, or she’ll turn into him and beat on you. She thinks she’s damned, and she’s always tried to defy that. Kind of a Paradise Lost devil-resisting-God kind of thing.”

Nolan shook his head. “All that?”

“And more,” Cissy said.

“Well, then, it’s no wonder she shot me.” He closed his eyes.

Cissy smoothed the sheet over Nolan’s hips. For an instant she wanted to kiss his forehead the way Delia used to kiss hers when she was sick. She repressed the impulse and stood up quickly. “Give yourself a little time, Nolan. Let other people handle things for a couple of days. You’d be amazed what they can accomplish if you give them the chance.”

Cissy closed the door and called Jean from Nolan’s house. “You girls want to go this afternoon?”

“Go? Can you get away?”

“I need to get away,” Cissy said. “I need to go somewhere cool, quiet, and dark. What about you?”

“Hell, yes.” Jean laughed into the phone. “I’ll talk to Mim and get back to you. If she doesn’t have to go to her mom’s place, we could do it for sure. How long can we be down before you need to get back?”

“Nothing’s going to happen for a while, they tell me, so we could go for an overnight.”

“Yes ma’am!” Jean’s voice was loud. “You get your stuff, and I’ll call you at your mom’s as soon as I check with Mim.”

Cissy nodded to herself. A lesbian, she thought. She’s a lesbian, one of two. I know two lesbians, and what does that say about me? She looked back at Nolan’s room.

“I don’t care,” Cissy said out loud. “I don’t care what they are. I don’t care who I am. I can go to Los Angeles in the fall. I can be anybody.”

Dede, Cissy found herself thinking. I should never have come down here with so much going on.

“I don’t understand,” Mim was saying. “We’ve been through this part before. I know it, and it’s on our list, but nothing looks the same. I don’t remember this much sand, and I sure don’t remember that rock.”

The rock was memorable, a hot dog in a bun or a phallus cradled gently between two breasts. “A dick,” Jean called it. “A dick with a lopsided head.”

A rock like that should have been in their notebooks or on one of the maps, but it was not. Somewhere in one of the initial passages they must have taken a wrong turn. The subterranean passage they thought they were following did not exist.

“Where do you think we are?” Mim whispered. Her words echoed hollowly along the naked rock above them.

“Somewhere new,” Jean said. “Somewhere we haven’t been before. We’ve got to go back, go back exactly the way we came, and look for where we went wrong.”

“Or for something we know,” Cissy said. “We need a landmark.”

“It’s not that big a cave,” Mim sounded determined to be reassuring. “And how many times have we been down here, huh? We go back a hundred feet and we’ll find something. You’ll see.”

Rock on rock, sand and shale, inclines of gray-black stone and sharp-edged slopes of knee-grinding pea gravel-there should have been something they recognized, they kept saying. On one trip they had found bright splashes of Day-Glo paint sprayed in arrows and circles in some of the first passages. Mim had complained about the kind of boys who would do that. “Got to leave their mark. Break something, deface something, mess something up that’s been clean and empty for a million years.”

At the time, Cissy agreed. The painted signs were ugly, and they burned behind her eyes when she turned away from them. Now, crawling hour after hour up a passage she could not chart, she started to imagine splashes of color and almost wept when none of them turned out to be real. I’m going to die down here, Cissy thought, then stubbornly shook her head.

An hour later Jean announced that she had to rest. “We could die down here,” she whispered. Cissy flinched. Mim giggled explosively.

“No, we can’t.” Mim kicked sand at the other two. “There is too much I have not done. I have not been to New York City. I have not seen the Pacific Ocean. And I have never had so many orgasms that I did not want to come again.”

Jean smiled, her teeth pearly in the indirect light of Cissy’s flashlight. “Neither have I,” she said. “Except for the last one. I have done that.”

They all grinned. Mim had a chocolate bar. Jean had saltine crackers with peanut butter. Cissy produced string cheese and salami slices. They ate intently and sipped sparingly. All of them knew there was not much water left.

“We’ll find something,” Mim said again. “We keep moving up this way, we’ve got to come out sooner or later.”

“My knees are killing me,” Jean said. “We keep moving up this way, they’re going to give out completely.”

“Better up than down,” Cissy said, though she was not sure of that.

Forty feet farther on, the passage cut back and reversed on itself. They began to crawl sideways, their boots slipping on broken shale and gravel.

“This is bad,” Jean said when she bumped into Cissy’s pack. She repeated it a half a dozen times in as many minutes.

Yes, Cissy thought. This was very, very bad. Behind her, Mim sobbed once and told Jean to shut the fuck up.

The next time they stopped to rest, Jean asked Mim to turn off her lamp. “We’re gonna need the light. We should use just one at a time.”

Jean’s voice sounded funny to Cissy, hoarse and shaky. Her face in the dim light seemed to have narrowed in the hours they had been crawling along the mud inclines. Cissy hoped she didn’t look that bad, but the trembling in her calves and the ache in her throat worried her. She wanted to lie down and pull dirt over herself, curl up tight and nap until God or some rescuer came for her.

“I’m cold,” Mim said.

Cissy closed her eyes. She did not have the strength to turn her head.

“You’ll be all right.” The sound of sand grating against soggy pants was loud in the hollow of the rock as Jean slid closer to Mim.

Cissy thought about how they would sit around the stove at Jean and Mim’s place afterward with the heat beating against their exhaustion while they sipped wine and repeated stories. Women made great cavers, Mim always insisted. It was the extra body fat and the endurance. Upper-body strength was important, but that could be developed. Women weight lifters would be great in caves, she said. They were muscled, flexible, and full of confidence. That was what it took, that and sheer determination.

Cissy laughed to herself. It was always easy to talk about determination and discipline while sipping wine and eating slices of chicken and cheese. There were spelunkers who deliberately starved themselves to be better able to fit through tiny crevices in the rock, who went down into the dark so thin they could crawl into passages where no one else could follow. Cissy wiggled, and a piece of limestone cracked under her boot. An echo ricocheted along the passage.

“It’s Floyd Collins,” Jean whispered. Mim giggled.

Cissy put her hands in her armpits and grinned in the near dark. She’d found two books on the Floyd Collins story, though both were less about the poor Collins boy than about the circus that took place above the cave where he died. All the time he was shivering and starving down in the dark, his rescuers were drinking, picnicking, and selling souvenirs above him. The first time the three of them went down as a team, Mim had teased them about “doing a Floyd Collins.”

“Don’t put your foot wrong. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

Another crack echoed, and Cissy hugged herself tighter. She could imagine that pitiful ghost wandering eternally in the rocky reaches from Kentucky and Tennessee down through Georgia. It was a good-old-boy legend, a tale to scare the tenderhearted. Did you hear about old Floyd, famous Floyd Collins? He’s a limping echo behind your left ear; it’s harder now for him to get around without that left foot, but if you listen you can hear him stomping and stumbling along. He wants to pull at your shoulder, tell you his story, whisper about the reporters who dropped down notes that promised a glorious tombstone, a fortune for his daddy, anything for how it felt, dying in a hole while the world made a carnival above your corpse.

“I’m famous,” he whispered, though no one spoke his name in daylight anymore. “I’m famous, and you could be too.”

Cissy watched color bloom on the underside of her eyelids, imagining how he might have altered, the haunt-body moving over sand and rock. He would be so lithe, so essential. No bend or slope could hold him now. He needed no dynamite, no ax, no rope. A solid wall was not solid to old Floyd Collins. Dark was not dark. He could breathe around rock, swim through dirt. He led with his head, his mouth, his canine phosphorescent teeth. Dead but not gone, Floyd Collins lived in the wind. He breathed from the deep rock, was there in the stink of bone and bat shit and slow-settling dust. A legend. A threat. A joke that was never funny. People had to speak his name to outlive his fate, people who knew better than to go creeping into holes they did not know how to escape.

Like Floyd, Cissy thought. If I get skinny enough, I’ll slide right through. How many calories does fear use? I’m scared enough to sweat off everything I ever was. And if I sweat enough, won’t I grease my passage? Could I slide right over these rocks and up into the light, become as lithe and essential as Floyd or memory or hope? Could I?

“Cissy? Cissy! Are you all right?”

“Fine, I’m fine.”

“You were mumbling something.”

Cissy shook her head. “Nothing, just thinking.”

She looked in Mim’s direction. She could barely see the two girls in the dim glow of the one lamp. Were they truly lovers? Lord, she was stupid. Jean was breathing hard and the sound bounced off the sloping rock. There were broken edges of slate close above Mim’s face. The curve of the rock turned between them so that there was more space above Cissy. Reaching up, she could almost extend her arm straight out. She turned her head and followed the slope as it widened out into the darkness, the ground dropping down to what looked like sand, and the rock roof rising until she could not see how high it went. There was more room there, they might be able to stand up.

Jean’s lamp dimmed again, so that the shadows seemed to be closing in. The only sound was their anguished breathing and the muted echo of water falling in the distance. Cissy held her breath for a moment, wishing that Jean would turn off the light and let them rest in the dark. If they were not moving, the dark felt perfectly safe to her, but she knew that Jean and Mim needed the light, that the dark was not comforting to them. It was only Cissy who was bothered by the light. It caught in the rough grade above her in such a way that the earth’s crust seemed to be moving.

“Hallucination.” Cissy said the word carefully, and felt Mim shift closer to her until their hips touched.

“Like an oasis in the desert.” It was as if Mim were reading Cissy’s mind.

The bumps in the rock above Cissy were whitish gray and darker gray, damp in the weak light, like bubbles in meringue. Some of them had dimpled centers with drip points that looked like nipples. To Cissy’s dazzled vision the bubbles were warm breasts sweating in the cool, damp air. She was tempted to slide back up the slope to a spot where the gap narrowed so steeply that she could lie back at an angle and put her mouth to one of those bulges. She stared at the glistening center of the largest teat. She could imagine grainy syrup filling her mouth. That tit would sweat sweet. It would be like rock sugar.

“Wouldn’t taste good,” Mim whispered into her left ear.

“No,” Cissy laughed. “Was I talking out loud again?”

“You been doing it for a while. And that’s limestone mud.” Mim pushed herself up a bit on the rock. “Limestone would be salty and sour. Don’t think about sugar. Think about getting out of here, about climbing up this passage and the one past it. Think about how close we are to the top. Think about staying warm.” ,

Cissy turned to put her mouth near Mim’s ear. “It’s beautiful, though.” Her words were startlingly loud. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Her voice sounded fuzzy. Every syllable had a little burr added, a slight vibrato that echoed against the crags. “Look at the way the light plays over the stones, the way the water drops shine.”

“Looks like ice being born.” Jean’s voice was rough with exhaustion, gravel under dust. “Ice babies looking for ice tits. No sugar. Frost.”

“You that cold, Jean?” Mim’s voice was sharp with fear.

“I’m freezing. I am just fucking freezing. My hands won’t stop shaking. Even my armpits are cold.” She cursed again, her voice lightening into something close to laughter. “If I could spit, I’d spit hailstones.”

“Oh, honey.” Mim crawled over to rub Jean’s shoulders.

“Oh, shit.” Jean started to giggle. “Don’t do that.”

Cissy heard wet material dragging over clammy skin. She crawled toward the sound. Mim’s hands rubbed Jean’s skin where she had pulled open the layers of clothing. Jean’s laughter slowed and faded to soft protests.

“Oh, honey,” she said in a teasing tone. “Don’t get me started.”

“You got to get that wet shirt off.” Mim’s voice was grim.

Cissy did not move. She didn’t want to have to be the one to do anything. It was enough just to be still and listen to them struggle, to hear the dull echoes of the walls all around them, to feel the thud of her own heartbeat.

“Christ damn,” Jean swore. “Here I am freezing and you want me to get naked.”

“Cissy! Come on,” Mim shouted. “Come help me.”

Cissy sighed. She wasn’t sure exactly what Mim had in mind, but she was clearly the most alert of the three of them, and her tone was insistent. Cissy made herself slide across the slate grade to Jean’s side. When her hand touched Jean’s shoulder, the girl turned to her, laughing. Mim was pulling frantically at Jean’s clotted layers of filthy wet clothing.

“Help me,” she said. “Come on. Help me.”

“It’s too cold!” Jean’s voice was slurred with exhaustion.

Hypothermia, Cissy realized. That’s what Mim is afraid of. Hypothermia could kill you in a cold, wet cave. She pushed Jean’s icy hands out of her way, carefully unbuttoning the flannel undershirt beneath the outer layer of denim.

“We got to get this off!” Mim’s voice was almost hysterical.

Jean’s light winked out. The dark was suddenly thick around them. Cissy did not hesitate. She clicked on her flashlight and wedged it in a crack in the rock so that it shone on the other two women. The angled light illuminated Mim and Jean perfectly, but it was the phosphorescent shine of Mim’s naked shoulder that shook Cissy out of her frozen passivity. Mim was half undressed, with her own undershirt wadded in one hand and scrubbing at Jean’s body. Jean’s shirt was pulled up to her neck and off one arm but still tangled around the other. Abruptly Jean started trying to help Mim drag her britches down, but her fingers were thick and fumbling. Cissy crawled close and wedged her legs around Jean’s torso. She finished undoing the last buttons on the jeans, pulling several off completely when they caught in the heavy wet fabric.

“I can do it. I can do it.” Jean was still reaching for the flannel shirt as it was being pulled over her head.

“Everything off. Everything off.” Mim’s voice sounded strained with her effort not to stutter with the chill.

“Right.” ,

Cissy worked the last layer off Jean’s upper body. The gray-blue shirt slid off Jean’s head in a soggy heap. Little pinpricks of goose bumps dimpled Jean’s blue-white skin in the awkward light. Icy prickles shot up Cissy’s midriff in sympathy at the sight. Immediately Mim was at Jean’s left side, pushing her back into Cissy’s braced thighs, scrubbing furiously at Jean’s exposed flesh. Jean blinked sleepily and struggled weakly.

“Don’t fight,” Mim insisted. “Lie back.”

“Tell me what to do.” Jean’s demand was spoken in the voice of a petulant, exhausted child.

“Help me.” Mim was growing more desperate as Jean’s shivering increased. Cissy tried to scrub at Jean’s back and look around at the same time. The slight grade they were resting on sloped down to meet another layer of rock. Just ahead there was that shine of some white reflective surface. Sand, she had seen it before. It looked like sand. Abruptly Cissy pulled free of Jean’s shivering body and grabbed the flashlight to shine the beam in the direction of the white glow.

“That’s sand!” She started pulling Jean with her before Mim realized what she was doing.

“Tell me what to do,” Jean said again. “Just tell me what to do. I can’t think. Just tell me.”

“Here, here.”

Cissy pulled Jean along the rock, dragging the wads of damp clothes with them. Mim was falling and weeping but climbing down with them, still holding on to Jean’s shoulder with one hand as if she could not bear to lose contact with her. Cissy pushed Jean ahead of her onto the sand surface, ignoring the girl’s squeals as the rough silt abraded her tender belly and thighs. Roughly Cissy shoved Mim to the other side so that they sandwiched Jean between them. Then she began again the coarse scrubbing motions with the filthy clothes. When Mim joined in and began to scrub Jean’s other side, the girl’s squeals became sobs.

“It’s okay, baby,” Mim crooned. “This is going to help. We’re going to warm you up. Oh, baby, we got to warm you up.”

Cissy scrubbed hard, rocking her whole body against Jean’s passive one. Gradually the exercise began to warm her as well, but it was fool’s heat, adding another layer of sweat to her skin. The damp would invite more chill. Deliberately she scooped sand over herself, adding another layer of insulation. Her body felt both tremendously heavy and gossamer-thin at the same time, as if her substance were evaporating with her efforts.

“Scrub,” she shouted, no longer sure she was talking to anyone but herself. “Rub harder. Come on.”

Mim scrubbed harder, briskly massaging Jean while Cissy left them to crawl over and drag back the packs. They had one remaining layer of dry clothing. The maps were wrapped in plastic covers. That was what they needed, paper to make another insulating layer. She used the map case and then some small plastic bags. She split those, spreading them out. That gave Jean one dry layer beneath the outer layer of wet clothing. It was a pity to pull apart the maps, but there was no way around it. They needed every bit of heat they could manage, every layer they could add.

With Jean in the shape she was, they did not have as many hours as they had hoped. They had to crawl and climb without stopping. If they stopped, they would die, all of them down here in the cold and dark. For a moment Cissy considered. Would she leave them if she had to do it to get out? Could she? If it came down to it, would she leave Jean in Mim’s embrace and crawl out on her own? I might, Cissy thought. If I have to, I might. I want to live. I want to get out of here alive.

“It’s going to be all right,” Mim whispered into Jean’s tousled hair. “You’re going to be fine. Just fine, baby.”

Cissy prodded Mim. “We got to get going.”

“She needs rest.” Mim sounded as if she wanted to cry.

“Listen to me.” Cissy put her lips up close to Mim’s cheek. She dug her fingers into Mim’s arm. “This is like being in a blizzard. It’s like taking a nap in a snowdrift. She can’t nap. We can’t lie down. We have to move and keep moving.”

“Please, Mim,” Jean whimpered. “Just let me warm up.”

“You won’t warm up.” Cissy felt as if her shoulders were tightening into iron posts. An iron core went up her spine from her tailbone to her brain. She was all ice and metal and cold determination. “You will die,” she said, and heard Delia’s accent in her own. Delia had talked like that when she had dragged them all the way across the country. She had pushed and prodded and forced Cissy to do what had seemed like sheer craziness. It had not mattered that Cissy hated her for it. It had not mattered that there had been no reason to believe they were going somewhere safe.

“She’s right,” Mim said, pulling at Jean’s body. “Oh, honey, she’s right.”

Mim pushed up onto her own knees and pulled Jean with her. Cissy reached over and grabbed Jean’s belt. “Get up. Come on and get up,” she shouted.

Weeping, Jean crawled up until she was kneeling beside Mim. “I hate you,” she said. She could have been speaking to either of them. It made Cissy feel light-headed to hear her say it. She smiled and her lips cracked as her mouth pulled wide.

“I hate you too,” Cissy said. “I hate this rock and this sand and God and Georgia and the ghost of goddamned Floyd Collins, but I am not going to die down here. And as long as I can make you crawl, neither are you.”

Cissy turned her body so that she could reach Jean more easily. She looped a loose piece of the rope she still had wrapped around her middle through the woman’s belt. Then she rolled around again and started crawling forward. She heard Mim moan and Jean cry out as the rope jerked and pulled her forward. It was harder still, crawling forward that way, dragging the reluctant and weeping woman behind her. Mim followed behind, sometimes cursing when she bumped her head against Jean.

Cissy paid no attention to the girls behind her except to kick at them when they stopped. She had a clear picture in her mind now. She knew exactly what she had to do, how far she had to crawl, how many times she would have to roll over and slide along on her back. This passage was lit up in her memory. It was the way out.

“Come on,” she called back over her shoulder to Jean and Mim. “This is it. It’s the way out, I know it.”

“You don’t know nothing.”

“Oh yes I do.” Cissy scraped a line of dirt off her neck where her collar was rubbing a raw spot. “I know this part. I know where we have to go. If you don’t come after me, I’ll leave you to rot down here.”

One of them sobbed and the other cursed. Cissy did not bother to see who did what or to speak. The rope tied to her belt loop pulled taut and then slackened. They were following. That was all that was important. If they kept moving, none of them had to die down here.

“I hate you,” one of them said in a hoarse, unrecognizable voice, and Cissy, still crawling forward, laughed out loud.

“Sure you do,” she said, “sure you do.” Light-headed and exhilarated, Cissy kept giggling to herself as she crawled stubbornly upward. The color of the sandy loam beneath her was buttermilk. The shale above was as dusty as a raven’s wing. Her pulse was pounding a steady cardinal, her breath was sky blue. Randall was singing somewhere behind her right shoulder, “born on the corner of Calvary and Nazareth, but I an’t gonna lay me down and die.” No Daddy, Cissy promised. If Delia could drag me so far, I can damn sure pull these bitches up out of a hole in the ground.

When they finally found the Day-Glo paint splashes three hours later, Cissy was shaking with exhaustion, but her head was clear and her thoughts as smooth as ball bearings on a greased surface. Venice Beach, she thought, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, UCLA California, and all those places I don’t even remember anymore. I can go there if I want.

“Daddy,” Cissy whispered when the morning sunlight fell on her face. “Daddy, I’m going to go back. I’m not going to die here. I’m going to find out what I can do.”

“Oh God,” Mim sobbed behind her. Her face was bruised and streaked with mud. She climbed up into the light on her hands and knees. “That’s the last time, the last time I ever do that in this life.”

“Oh, you don’t know what you’ll do,” Cissy told her. She was stumbling with exhaustion but full of happy exhilaration. “We don’t none of us know what we might do.”

Cissy looked back down past Jean’s sodden, mud-encrusted body. The gaping mouth of Paula’s Lost was half obscured by a sweeping hang of kudzu vines. “I don’t think I can map the passage,” she said. “We found it, but I don’t think I could show anybody the way. An’t that a hoot!”