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R.E. Whitmore
probably shot up all his ammunition, so hell. What am I saying? I didn't really intend to shoot him in the first place.
We had also stopped in Huntersville to try and buy Rick a hardhat. We had departed B-burg so expeditiously that Rick had left his hat and lamp hanging on his closet door. There were none to be found in Huntersville, so we pushed on to Cassand tried again, likewise with no luck. We discussed stealing a "Cass, Unincorporated" sign, but the vote was unanimous to wait until after we got out of the cave.
Fortunately for Rick, Ed carried a spare lamp he'd gotten off some guy who had quit caving. As Ed recalled, this guy gave up caving because he never could get his lamp to work.
There is an old adage, "Caves are forgiving to fools and drunks"; when we arrived at the Cassentrance we were both. But everything that we had no control over was working in our favor. The weather, for example, was ideal; warm for November - sunny, temperature in the sixties - and it hadn't rained for a month. We drove the VW right to the cave entrance.
The club had just bought a brand new 300-foot piece of half inch manila rope from Monkey Ward, and Ed had stashed this rope in a laundry bag for protection against snags in the entrance passage, a suggestion proffered by Sam Dunaway. Sam also told us about the 2000-foot side passage to the left on the way in, and showed us some gypsum formation samples he had collected there. They were beautiful and I wanted to photograph them in the cave, but we somehow blundered on by and never saw where the passage took off.
Except for a few stagnant puddles, the entrance passage was bone dry. Some kindly soul had left us a pile of timbers from which we constructed a rude ladder to an upper level known as the Belay Loft. The passage ahead remained unusually silent, so we correctly assumed that nothing was going over Suicide Falls. We pushed ahead on the upper level to a point where the floor ceased to be. Below us was 180 feet of void. Beautiful!
Blackness, blackness. Space. The Dark. I chimneyed out to the second stalagmite and examined the vast negative entity beckoning us. On the ledge Ed upended his laundry bag to liberate the glistening tire of shiny new manila rope. Wards had assured the integrity of the coil's shape with three stout pieces of bailing wire. Ed tugged at one of the wires then worked it back and forth. He vainly groped in his pocket for a tool, his eyes scanning the ledge for something to pry with. Nothing. The bindings wouldn't move. I inched back to the ledge to help Ed and Rick stare at the obstinate little devils. Finally Rick removed his swiss seat and began forcing one end of it between the rope and one of the wire. It wouldn't go. Ed pulled off his belt and used the pin part of the buckle to push one corner of the seat sling through. They kept working. Finally there was enough to grab hold of. Rick pulled. Then he had enough to wrap several turns around his hand. He grabbed both parts of the sling and placed his feet against the coil. Ed grabbed the coil and they pulled in opposite directions. At last the wire gave way and fell loose. One down and two to go. Twenty minutes of struggle later, the rope was free of its bindings.
While Rick secured one end of the manila python to the tie-in point on the ledge, I again inched out over the chasm with the rest of the coil. A bight was snaked around the second stalagmite, and when Rick indicated that the tie-in was complete, the rest of the rope was allowed to spill downward a few loops at a time, off the end of my arm and into the abyss.
What a sight! A rope stretching out into an empty void, its end unseen, like the yellow centerline of a vast highway at night, snaking, writhing, and coming taut the instant before it sails past the window. The hills flatten, the curves loose their shape as the tires constantly shove the pavement out behind you. And somewhere beyond the reach of the light beam is a more-or less destination. But not really. The objective isn't what counts, because you never ask if the cave was worth the trip. The trip is worth the trip.
This I know: wrecks are OK to look back on, but hell to look forward to. The yellow lines flashed by, the engine alternately revved and coasted. Ed slumped forward against the steering wheel.
"Ed!"
"Huh? What? Oh, damn! i've gotta stop and rest awhile."
"Then why don't you? Hell, I can't drive now; I'm too tired. Just pull off somewhere.
"OK, but you'll have to help me look for a good place. I don't want to run off into a ditch and get stuck or something.''
"There's a sign, Ed. Picnic tables ahead. How's that?
"Swell! We'll pull over there..."
Hey! You just drove by it."
'Damn. Didn't see the turnout soon enough."
"That's OK. We'll find something else pretty soon. How about the parking lot to that country store up ahead?"
"No. That's no good. The owner might live over the store, and he'll think we're getting ready to rob him, and he'll call the law on us. Maybe even shoot us.
You're right. They'll search the car and find all these beer cans. We'd better find something more secluded."
"Here's a wide place by a T-intersection."
I don't wanna stop there."
"Why not, Whitt? What's wrong with it?"
"Ain't level."
"Level? This isn't a house trailer, y'know.
Yeah, but we might start, rolling and go onto the highway or off a cliff or something."
continued
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