Caves

They say caves breathe. Staring into the darkness of the pit, I wasn’t sure if I believed it or not. There was a cool wind brushing my face, a wind that seemed to be emanating from the bottomless dark. Was the cave exhaling?
I wanted it to inhale. To beckon. To suck me in.
“Is it breathing?” I asked my guide, trying to sound light and curious.
He threw the butt of his cigarette off into the wind, beyond my line of sight. He was, I realized, the Marlboro man gone to seed, with his beer belly and his weathered face. He looked incredulous. “What?”
“The cave. Is it breathing?”
“It ain’t a living thing,” he said, by way of explanation. “You got your gear ready to go?”
I shouldn’t have persisted. After all, it had taken almost all I had to convince him to take me here. I didn’t want to press. But I was curious.
“I read that caves breathe. That they inhale and exhale.”
“If depends on the air pressure. Look, you wanna do this or not?”
I nodded. Best to give up. Because I wanted to do this.
North Georgia. Deliverance country. Filled with people the rest of the world didn’t understand or want to understand. Trailor trash. Crackers. Poor whites. Hillbillies. Rednecks. Inbreds. Moonshiners. All that and more.
Limestone country. Filled with pits and caves and hidden caverns that most of the rest of the world didn’t know about or think about. It was the perfect place to discover another world. Or destroy your own in the process, whatever one preferred. Caving – spelunking, if you’d rather - is a deadly sport, after all.
I stood at the brink of the cave. At the edge of a small bluff. Rough and wild grass at the mouth. That crumbly, red North Georgia soil staining my boots, the hot sun beating down upon me in stark contrast to the dark of the pit. Peering in I couldn’t even really see anything – I could just feel the wind brushing my face, and a distant dripping sound. What lay ahead I couldn’t see. I felt a twinge in my stomach.
“Okay,” Mack said. “Gotcher flashlights?”
I nodded.
“Just follow my lead. Like we talked about. And don’t do anything stupid.”

It had taken me a long time to find the right guide for my little jaunt. I needed a man or a woman without a family. One who wasn’t a professional cave guide. One who needed cash. I had long feared that it would be impossible to find one meeting my standards.
“I remember this one guy,” Brett had said over dinner. Brett was an amateur caver who had originally come from North Georgia. We were students at Emory. He was a geology major. I had asked him about cavers in his area of the state, since, after all, that was limestone country. “His name was Mack. Mack Loyd, I think. Something like that. Anyway, in his younger days, he was an amateur vertical caver, almost got himself killed a couple of times. He used to guide people, but he was a heavy drinker. Got fired after a little kid almost drowned when he was drunk on the watch. Mighta even spent some time in jail.”
Awhile was how long it had taken me to finally locate Mack. For one thing, his name was Mack Boyd, not Mack Loyd. And he didn’t seem to have a phone. So I began asking around the small town of Tallahoe.
The barhounds knew him. I ignored their leers and pressed for information. “Mack? Yeah. Likes his Bud. Try out on State Road 3.”
Mack lived in a dilapidated house, his driveway solid red clay. The house had once been white, but was now the dingy color of a well-used dishrag. The entire top story seemed to be caving in; he lived in the bottom three rooms with his bluetick coon hound, Sally. A rust El Camino with spots of tan paint sat under a sagging carport.
There was no doorbell. I knocked for five minutes, setting off a howling from the dog, and was about to give up when the door creaked open.
Mack, in worn jeans and a beer-stained muscle shirt. His glazed eyes took me in with a glassy disbelief while the hound charged out on the porch to examine me,
“What the hell,” Mack had belched. A statement more than a question. I could see behind his substantial figure into the dimness of the house. Threadbare carpet. A dank smell crept out. There was a TV on somewhere, with the unmistakable raised voice of Sally Jesse.
This was perfect.
“Mack Boyd?” I said.
“Yeh. Whatcha want?”
“You cave?”
His eyes widened. “Tell me what the hell you want, or so God I’ll get my sawed-off and show you the way off my property.”
“So you do cave.”
“Who the hell are you? Some kinda goddamned reporter?” He belched again.
I shook my head. “No. I have a proposal for you.”
“Wassat?”
“I want you to take me caving.”
He slapped his face. “Goddamn DT’s.”
“I’m not a hallucination, Mack. I’m real.” Not that I could blame him for thinking I was the result of years of alchohol abuse. I’m sure he had never expected to see a well-dressed, obviously upper middle class, attractive (if somewhat pale these days) college student on his doorstep.
He pointed a finger at me. “Whoever you are, you smart-ass, you should know I ain’t stepped foot in a cave since ’87, and I don’t plan to step foot in one again. Get someone else.”
“I’m Rebecca Cotter. And here’s what I have for you.” I reached into the large bag on my shoulder and pulled out a brown manila envelope, stuffed thick to bursting. Mack’s eyes followed my hands as I opened the flap and revealed to him the entire contents of my trust fund and bank account – twenty-eight thousand dollars, all in hundreds.
“That’s twenty-eight thousand dollars for you to take me caving. Once.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Mack had murmered. His eyes were fixed on the money. I gave him a minute to take it in. Then his face suddenly jerked back up to mine. “What’s the catch?”
“There isn’t one.” That had been a lie, but I was beyond lies at that point.
“You got a whole state full of professional cavers, and a goddamn suitcase of money, and you’re coming to find me to take you spelunkin?” The way he pronounced it, in his strong southern accent, was with a long first syllable – spee-lunking. “Why?”
“The catch is, you don’t ask why,” I replied.
He was a man utterly confused, but I was winning, and I could tell. He looked like his head hurt. He finally shook it. “I need a fucking Bud.”
“You can have all the fucking Buds you want, Mack, just not when you take me caving.”
“That works,” he grunted. “I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with you, but come on in and we’ll talk.”

We had talked. He had started to tell me his story, but I didn’t want to hear it. There were too many stories in the world, and I didn’t have time to hear them all. I wanted him to tell me about caving. And he did. He told me the equipment I needed to buy. He told me what needed to be done between now and the next week, which was when I needed to go.
“Why so soon?” he’d said.
“You don’t want to know.”
He had squinted at me through the gloom of the cigarette smoke, defiling the sunlight in the kitchen. “You on the run from the government or somethin’?”
I had burst out laughing. “No. No, I’m not running from anything.” I can’t run from this.
He had gone on. Told me about caving.
“You want to do vertical? You can’t do vertical without a license.”
“No. I don’t have to do vertical. I just want to get inside a cave far enough to see it. But not a cave that’s filled with tourists. I want something remote. Hard to get to.”
Mack had nodded with a grunt. “I can do ya. Got one in mind.”
“Good.”
Before I rose from the chipped and stained formica of his kitchen, I had asked one more question.
“The caves – inside them – what is it like, Mack?”
His gaze had drifted from me, and when he answered, he spoke slowly. I realized that for a wasted soul like Mack, it was the closest he could ever come to reverence.
“It ain’t like anything here. It ain’t – here. It’s places that most nobody ever goes to, and when you’re in one of them rooms in there, it’s like bein’ in heaven.”
I nodded. “Good.”

Now here we were. Standing at the mouth of this remote cave, and for the first time was I having some sliver of doubt? But if I turned back, what would I be turning back to? The cave was my future. I couldn’t see into it, but I couldn’t turn away.
Mack was disappearing into the hole, the miner’s lamp on his helmet leading the way. I knelt down behind him and crawled into the hole. I didn’t look back into the sunlight. I figured I had seen enough to last me the lifetime I was allotted.
The passage was small – I had to move at an awkward angle, and Mack was almost contorted. “Jeeesus,” I heard him mutter. “It’s been awhile.”
It almost immediately got colder. We moved deeper into the innards of the cave. I saw bats, hanging from the ceiling like in movies.
“Gonna hafta crawl for awhile up here,” Mack grunted. “Doin’ all right back there?”
“Peachey,” I replied. But I was short of breath. This was athletic, more than I had even expected, and I was weaker than most. As the passage thinned, I got down on my hands and knees and began to crawl. We rounded a bend, the last light from the passage disappeared, and there was darkness, complete but for my headlamp.
Water began dripping from the ceiling, and soon I was crawling through mud. My light, and Mack’s, illuminated stalactites and stalagmites, many of them in just enough time for me to avoid running into them.
“It smells so different in here…” I whispered. My voice, even at such a low volume, echoed off the small walls of the passage. Drip…drip…drip…the cave answered.
“That’s cause nothin’ dies in here,” Mack answered, through shortened breaths. He sounded as if he was having a time of it, too.
“Why doesn’t anything die in here?”
“Cause nothin’ lives in here,” he said. “Hold on for a sec. I gotta remember where we are.”
We stopped, and I was surprised to discover that I was almost immediately freezing. I had been sweating from the exertion, and now my dampened outfit was rapidly growing cold. I would be shivering before long.
While we waited, I studied the passage. The designs in the limestone on the wall almost looked like little streams frozen in stone. Flowstone, I think they’re called. It was beautiful. Nothing dies here.
Really?
“All right,” Mack finally grunted. “Left.” He began crawling again, then stopped once more. “There’s a hole up here we gotta crawl through, then on the other side we can sorta walk again. Gotta crawl through some water, another short passage, then we hit the first major cavern. The Angel Room, I think it’s called. You ready for this one?”
I nodded, the light from my lamp bobbing around the limestone.
It took Mac a long time to crawl through the hole in the limestone. I waited patiently, ignoring his grunts and wheezes and instead studying the tiny limestone formations. I had never felt more alive, even though I was dying. We were both dying, Mack and I, though sooner than most, and sooner than Mack probably thought.
He slid through so suddenly that I expected an audible pop. I crawled through the hole with ease – I was so thin nowadays that it didn’t even matter. Now we were in a larger passage. More water dripping. I righted myself. Mack had to walk at an angle, but I was so short that I barely even had to tilt my head. As I walked along the passage in the darkness deep as velvet, I felt as if I were in a dream world. Images passed along in my mind, and voices. I had expected them.
We cannot ask for life to be fair, Father Dolan had said. I could see the sad, forlorn look on his face. We can scream ourselves hoarse at the stars about how unfair it is, and we can do nothing. We must trust in God.
And go on God’s terms?
Yes, Rebecca. It is all God’s terms.
And then my mother. Aged so far in just a few weeks, holding her hands out, palms up, helpless. I can’t do anything. The first time in my life, I can’t do anything for my daughter.
Think of those air-filled sacs as little caves, Dr. Richardson had said.
Caves.
Suddenly the passage widened, opening up to a pool. “Let’s wade,” Mack said. As I stepped into the water – God it was cold – my light shined down. The vision inside the water stunned me and I let out a soft cry of surprise.
Mack stopped. “You lookin’ at the formations?” He turned around to face me, his light blinding me. I nodded.
They were like stone lilypads, flat, just underneath the surface. Incredible stone formations, all underwater. I had never seen anything like it before.
“Just don’t run into em.” But I had no intentions of running into them.
We waded through the pool, losing feeling in my legs, but it didn’t matter. When we reached the other side of the pool – really more like a miniature lake – we climbed a little ways up to another hole, though this one was bigger. It didn’t take Mack as long to navigate his way through this one. I followed, trying to ignore the wooziness that was creeping in. It wouldn’t get me today. I wouldn’t let it.
Hands and knees again. The pistol was poking me through the pack, but it was a minor discomfort. “Here we go,” Mack said. “The Angel Room.”
I sucked in my breath. Stalagmites, stalagtites, flowstone, sparkling, dripping, reflecting wherever I shone my lamp. Some like flowers, some like spools of cotton candy, some like delicate gemstone necklaces. The ceiling of the cavern spiraled upwards, beyond ranged of my light, and always more formations, gleaming and shining. Water ran down the walls, indistinguishable from the flowstone, so that you couldn’t tell the moving from the immutable. I breathed it in with lungs of numbered days. It was a fairyland, it was beyond what humanity could imagine.
It was a perfect place to die.
“Mack,” I said. I had a hand reaching back to my pack.
Grief takes many different forms, the counselor had said.
He turned. In the time it took his light to swing down and focus on me, I had the pistol pulled.
“What the fuck!?” he yelped.
My aim was steady. “Thanks, Mack. I’m sorry to do this to you, but life isn’t fair, you know.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I didn’t like the shriek of his voice. It ruined the effect of the room.
What its doing is filling up those caves. And we can’t operate to get it out.
This isn’t fair.
No. No, it isn’t.
“I hadn’t ever thought it would come to this,” I said softly. “But I never planned for my lungs to fill up with cancer, either.”
“Look, don’t fuckin’ shoot me, you crazy –“
“Mack, what kind of life did you have anyway?” I said tiredly. And then I did it. I pulled the trigger and ended the life.
Nothing dies here.
But I will.
I’m twenty-one, and I’m dying. I’m dying on my own terms. It’s the only thing I can do anymore.
I put the pistol back in the backpack. Then I removed my outer layer of clothing. I was wearing a cotton shirt, even though Mack had specifically told me to wear wool. The cotton would bring about hypothermia if it got wet, which my sweat had done by now. I stretched out on my back on the floor, and gazed up with my miner’s lamp at the Angel Room, the fairyland room. “It’s like heaven,” Mack had said, and maybe it was.
When Dr. Richardson told my mother and I about the cancer, my mother cried quietly. And I thought about dying.
And I swore that there would be no medications, no pain, no gradual wasting away. I swore to God, If I cannot live on my own terms, I’ll die on them.
I wanted to die in a place of surreal beauty, a place where no other people would be.
The cave was inhaling now. Breathing in my heat. I held up my hand, and in the light I could see five streams of steam rising from my hand. I am watching myself die, but then, would I have done that anyway?
There are tears running down my face, and I am shivering uncontrollably. The wonderful crystal formations are blurring in my eyesight now, and oh, God, I’m reaching the end.
Anger is common, the counselor had told me.
It’s so serene. Cold, but serene.
I’m Rebecca Cotter. I’m twenty-one. And this cave can breathe better than I can.