Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Christopher Gronlund presents Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Read by me, the author, Christopher Gronlund.
CHAPTER TEN
“Lost Down Deep in the Belly of the Earth”
Just when I thought I was figuring things out, something came along and ruined my theory. So it wasn’t Little Dick in the jar after all, but a little piece of Big Dick’s digestive system. I was sure I was still right about Lucky and the Inferno, though—at least I thought so. I wrestled with my thoughts until Lucky threw up.
He was sitting in Mom’s lap this time and just let loose, at least giving her the courtesy of hitting the floor. Had I been holding him, he’d have been sure to cover my legs and arms at the very least.
“Not the carpet again,” Dad said, reminding Mom he was still less than pleased about the hole she burned with her cigarette.
“The carpet’s probably the problem, James” Mom said. “There’s no telling what chemicals are in that cheap thing and I think it’s making him sick. Have some sympathy.” She held Lucky, wiping his face with a napkin he tried eating. When she was done cleaning Lucky, she handed him to me. I didn’t want to hold him, but before I could protest, she was using a handful of napkins to clean the floor.
I stared at Lucky waiting for his eyes to turn red. I gently shook him as he struggled to bite me—I was going to prove once and for all he was possessed, but he behaved.
From the front seat, I heard Dad say, “Mary, please, no!” but it was too late. She had sprayed cheap perfume all over the spot where Lucky got sick.
Mom was into covering smells she found offensive with smells the rest of us found offensive. She carried in her purse a cache of air fresheners, deodorants, and “fancy” perfumes (if it was more than ten dollars a bottle and sounded French, it was high-quality stuff in my mother’s eyes). I never understood the purpose of covering up a smell instead of properly cleaning it or letting it run its course and dissipate. Whenever any of us left the bathroom at home, Mom charged in with a can of room deodorizer; she feared the odor of our waste would spill from the bathroom and stick to the rest of the house, never letting go. “People would think they’re walking into an outhouse when they visit if it wasn’t for me!” she’d say. I always wondered—if she was so concerned about smells—why everything she owned, including the bottles and cans housing all her fragrances, smelled like cigarette smoke. All her bathroom cover-up did was make it smell like one of us had taken a crap in a flowerbed.
Mom may have thought she covered up the scent of dog vomit, but the resulting smell of cheap perfume and partially digested bits of bacon from Lucky’s stomach made the rest of us want to retch. The saving grace was, with the driver’s side front window broken from the night before, we couldn’t run the AC, so all our windows were down, taking a slight edge off the scent.
With the exception of Lucky emptying the contents of his stomach, we made it to Lexington, Kentucky in silence. After skirting town, it was back on the open road and I wasn’t about to drive another couple hours without anyone trying to make the trip worthwhile. I was convinced, if the moment was right, I could get my family to sing! I could hear the twins stirring behind me and tell Aunt Margie was restless. Lucky was getting hungry again and it looked like Mom wanted to chat with Dad. It was as good a time as any.
“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,” I sang. “Ninety-nine bottles of beer…take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.”
It worked! The twins joined in on the next round, as we went from ninety-eight bottles, to ninety-seven, but it quickly became apparent they weren’t interested in keeping the song going. When I sang, “Ninety-seven bottles of beer on the wall…ninety-seven bottles of beer…” the twins sang, “Michael’s IQ is twenty-seven…Twenty-seven is Michael’s IQ…He is stupid—he is dumb…and looking at his face makes us spew.” They high-fived each other and burst into hysterics.
I continued singing, pretending they didn’t bother me. Aunt Margie said, “I’d sing along with ya, but I ain’t no good at countin’ high.” Dad joined in and we sang a few more rounds before Lucky decided he’d join the choir.
While Dad and I sang about the eighty-eighth bottle of beer on the wall, Lucky howled along like he was in pain. Dad knew it meant something to me to have everyone sing that damn song. He said to Mom, “Dear, can you calm Lucky down, please?”
“He’s just having fun!” she said.
So Lucky sang along, growling and howling away. Then it happened. While Dad and I sang “Seventy-nine bottles of beer on the wall…” Lucky sang, “ROWRRROWR…DIE MICHAEL—BURN IN HELL…REEOWWRRRRRR…”
It was clear as day—Lucky told me to die and burn in hell! I stopped singing.
“Did you hear that?!”
“Hear what?” Mom said.
“Lucky. Did you hear what he said?”
“Yeah!” Elvis said, getting my hopes up. My little brother, of all people, was about to validate all my fears and tell my family he heard Lucky threaten me! I don’t know why I was surprised when he said, “Lucky says you’re a retard!” instead.
“Nevermind.”
Dad knew something was wrong. “What did you hear, bud?”
“Nothing. You’ll think I’m crazy if I told you.”
“No I won’t,” he said.
“I just thought I heard Lucky say something. It sounded like he was talking is all.”
“Back in the fifties when the Today Show first started, “ Dad said, “it was hosted by a guy named Dave Garraway. He used to get people on the show who insisted their dogs could talk. The owners would get them all worked up, howling and carrying on. Sometimes it sounded like the dogs said something a human would say, and the owners would get all excited. ‘See?! Did you hear that?!’ they’d shout—“
“It was probably just the wind, Michael” Mom interrupted. “If we had the air conditioner on, you wouldn’t have heard a thing, but I’m forced to sweat and suffer the rest of this trip. Trust me, if Lucky could talk, you wouldn’t be the first person he’d speak to.” She made smoochy-lips at the little beast and said, “Isn’t that right, Lucky-Wucky. If you could talk, you’d talk to Mama first, wouldn’t you?” Lucky licked her lips, smearing her lipstick. I used to wonder if the nicotine my Mom took in all day long was ingested by Lucky when he licked her, and if that could explain why the little dog was so hyper.
I looked at the rearview mirror and Dad winked at me. “We’ll talk later, Buddy,” he said. Indeed we would! I knew there was no way it was the wind, the hum of the tires on the interstate, or anything like that. It was Lucky, or whatever had taken hold of his squishy little brain, letting me know he was on to me, just as I was on to him and the Inferno.
* * *
We made it to Mammoth Cave National Park in record time. Dad, of course, wanted to spend days there, wandering the woods up top and squeezing our way through the caverns and tight passages that went on for hundreds of miles beneath the earth’s surface, but we didn’t have much time. Mom wanted to skip the cave entirely; she said, “Why the hell would I want to walk up and down in a dark, dirty hole?” Dad reminded her it was nice and cool in the cave, and we probably wouldn’t experience cooler temperatures again until hitting the desert, at night.
“Well, if someone hadn’t knocked out the window, we’d have air conditioning,” she said. I guess I was supposed to feel guilty.
We paid for our campground, and set up camp. While the rest of us put up tents, gathered wood, and cleared the area, Mom smoked cigarettes and kept an eye out for bears. I have to admit, camping in the Kentucky woods, even I was a little tense.
“Mary, we aren’t going to be killed by bears,” Dad said. “There aren’t any bears in this part of the state.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Jimmy,” Aunt Margie said. “There was a bear back home that kilt a lady hiking in the woods not far up the holler from us. Done tore her face clean off and ate her guts, it did!”
“Thanks for the help, Margie,” Dad said.
“You’re welcome.” Aunt Margie didn’t grasp the concept of sarcasm.
After camp was set up, it was off to the cave. We took the general tour, just to get everyone underground for a bit. Dad was right: the cave air was nice and cool—even Mom liked it. Everything was going fine until Mom saw the sign in the visitor’s center.
“NO SMOKING”
When she saw the sign, she told Dad, “I’m not going down in that hole if I can’t smoke! I’m going back to camp!” All Dad needed to say to get her to take the tour was, “Okay, Mary. When you get back to camp, remember—don’t leave food out or the bears will come.” She was right behind us as we walked down the stairs.
Mammoth Cave definitely deserved its name; knowing it went on for hundreds of miles beneath the earth’s surface was simply mind-boggling. We wandered along the trail looking at stalactites, stalagmites, and columns where the two met after so many years of formation. Being underground where it was cool, and realizing you were inside the earth was one of the greatest feelings in my thirteen years of living.
Of course Mom didn’t see it that way. When we had to climb stairs, she complained. “Don’t know why we have to climb stairs just to look at some rocks that look like drapes. If I wanted to look at drapes, I would have stayed home!” Even though the path was paved and dry, she kept telling Dad, “If I slip and break my neck, it’ll be all your fault, James David O’Brien.” Her only comfort was Lucky—she hid him in her blouse, riding between her breasts, so the tour guide couldn’t see him. She refused to leave Lucky at camp for fear a bear would eat him, and no kennel was good enough for her precious dog. Lucky stayed put, although the thought of him breaking free and running loose never left my mind. I could see him finding his way deep into the far reaches of the cave, finding some cave animal, and breeding. In a million years, blind cave Chihuahuas would be commonplace beneath Kentucky, wandering the cave floor with their beady little milky white eyes. Fortunately for the sake of evolution, Lucky stayed put.
The twins, however, didn’t. We walked into a huge cathedral chamber, where the guide told us all to stay put as they turned out the lights to show us how dark it was in the belly of the earth. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face—it was total darkness. Sometime in that total darkness, the twins slipped free. When the lights came back on and we wandered the trail more, Mom realized they were gone. “James, where are the twins?!” She was in a panic.
Dad was visibly shaken, but remained calm. “They have to be around here somewhere,” he said. He walked up to the tour guide and told him the twins were gone. The guide talked into a two-way radio and told a dispatcher there were two missing children in the cave. The dispatcher told the guide they’d send a search crew immediately. That wasn’t good enough for Mom—she was going nuts. She called out their names. “Olivia! Elvis! Where are you?!” Dad rushed to her side.
“Mary, we’ll find them. They’ll be okay. You need to stop worrying.”
Mom was good at worrying, though. If I was ten seconds late coming in from playing, she worried. One minute late and she figured she needed to call the police and hospitals to see if I had been hit by a bus. Ten minutes late, and she was convinced someone kidnapped me and had the police on full alert. On the rare occasions I was an hour late, I don’t even want to think what went through her mind: probably stuff involving child-molesting clowns with shovels. In her mind, there was more than cause for panic. In her mind, the twins weren’t safe; they had fallen deep into the cave, perhaps to the very center of the earth!
I was even a little nervous. The twins made my life hell, but they were still my younger siblings. I imagined Elvis and Olivia lost in the cave, wandering regions far off limits, places even the staff never saw. I imagined them in places that hadn’t been seen in generations, maybe longer. I imagined them overcome by bats, running from a swarm beating the twins back with leathery wings. I imagined them impaled by falling stalactites, left to die and not found for millennia.
“Ma’am, you need to calm down,” the guide said to Mom. “We have someone who will take you to the visitor’s center where you can wait. This happens sometimes, and we’ve never lost anyone. Your children will be safe.”
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down when my babies are lost in this God-forsaken place! I’m not leaving until I see them. If I have to crawl through those caverns myself to find them, I will!” I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who found the thought of Mom’s wide body squeezing through the caverns—only to become stuck—humorous. The search party came down and a female rescuer sat with us while the tour continued. The search party went off to look for Elvis and Olivia.
They didn’t turn anything up, though. Mom heard one of the rescuers tell the woman sitting with us, “We’re going to have to gear up for deeper exploration.”
Mom lost it! “What did you just say?! Deeper exploration?!”
“Please, Ma’am,” the rescuer said. “I realize this is scary, but we’ll find your children.”
Mom’s face went flush; she sat down. I remember that being one of the few times growing up where I truly felt sorry for her and believed she was justified in her worrying. She sat on the floor of the cavern, lost like a little kid. She was thinking of her two youngest children, lost somewhere in hundreds of miles of passageways. I wished I had never mentioned how big the cave was.
Then Aunt Margie sat down beside her and made everything better.
She sat beside Mom and hugged her. “They’ll be okay, Mary. Daryl once got lost up in the woods and I was a-scared to death, but we found him—“
Before Mom could finish saying, “How’d you find him?” Aunt Margie interrupted with a brilliant idea.
“Mary! When my Daryl done wandered into the woods and got lost for days, Ol’ Buttercup got his scent and found him. Maybe Lucky can track the twins.”
“Yeah, Mom!” I said. “You were holding Olivia’s hand. Maybe he can smell it, get the scent, and track them.”
The rescuers were shocked when Mom reached into the front of her blouse and pulled out a Chihuahua. That had to be one of the most surreal things they ever saw; a huge woman pulling a rat-dog out from between her breasts. She didn’t care, though. She put the hand that held Olivia’s in Lucky’s face and said, “Smell that, Lucky?! That’s Olivia! Go find her, boy! Go find her for Mama!!!” She set Lucky down and he charged back the way we came. We all followed, including the rescuers who were still trying to figure out where the Chihuahua came from. Mom lagged behind, but continued shouting encouragement.
“Thataboy, Lucky! You find them for Mama!” Lucky always liked the twins; proof-positive he was in cahoots with sinister forces. He backtracked our every step, and for a moment, I thought he was just following the scent they left behind from our trip to that point, but in no time he had us back at the surface and in the Visitor’s Center. Elvis and Olivia were eating hotdogs and marshmallows without a care in the world.
One of the rescuers said, “Are these your child—“ but Mom shoved him out of the way and smothered the twins in a huge hug.
“You scared the crap out of me, you two.” She was crying. “I thought I lost you..”
The twins said nothing; they seemed amazed Mom was making such a big deal of them retracing their steps and leaving the cave. Once it sank in that the twins were safe and not lost in the center of the earth, the Mom we knew came through. “Youse two are really lucky we’re not back home, cause it would be the sauce ladle for the both of yas!” We were a whole family once again.
Mom looked at Dad. “James, I think we’ve had enough of your cave!” she said, lighting a cigarette beside a NO SMOKING sign and inhaling deeply. Dad knew he had seen as much of Mammoth Cave as he’d be seeing that trip and quickly ushered us out of the visitor’s center before Mom’s smoke raised attention.
Back at camp, Dad started a fire. The twins were ecstatic—finally they would get a chance to roast marshmallows. There was only one problem, though: they had eaten their last bag in the visitor’s center when they wandered off from the rest of us.
“Can you take us to get more marshmallows?” they said.
“Guys, it’s getting kind of late,” Dad said. “We’ll be stopping at another campground tomorrow night. We can get some more and roast them then, okay?”
“Okay,” they said, slipping into depression. They went through withdrawal like heroin junkies when the school year rolled around and they weren’t allowed to eat in class. Time away from marshmallows was worse than time away from family. It was the one thing they truly looked forward to each and every day (aside from tormenting me). As long as they had each other and a bag of marshmallows, it didn’t matter what was going on around them—the world could crumble and they’d be content. That night had to be as hard a night for them as it would have been for Mom had she run out of cigarettes.
We sat around the campfire while Dad told recycled ghost stories about escapees from insane asylums with hooks for hands sticking in car doors; about Taily-Po and other creatures. The twins kept to themselves, sitting on a log and blowing bubbles high over the campfire (Mom still had them convinced bubbles were flammable). They watched the heat carry them high into the treetops where they reflected a sliver of moonlight on their surfaces. Dad told the same urban legends we heard every summer on trips—I was amazed how it seemed every state in America had a hitch-hiking ghost that wanted people to drop her off at the cemetery. Dad loved those stories and could spend hours telling them. They didn’t scare us, but I pretended they did, for Dad’s sake.
During a lull in the campfire stories, I thought about starting up a round of Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall, but knew only Dad and Lucky would sing along, and I wasn’t about to have a replay of Lucky telling me he was planning to kill me.
“I’ve got a story, Daddy,” Olivia said after Dad told us about a guy in a raincoat, some teenagers, and a bucket of pig’s blood—an old “Get out of the house now, before it’s too late!” legend.
“Is it scary?” Dad said.
“Yeah, really scary” she said.
“What?”
“Michael’s face!” Elvis spewed Coca-Cola from his nose; he thought it was the pinnacle of fine comedy.
Dad knew we had all grown tired of stories, so he resorted to another old campfire standby for our amusement: bodily functions. He belched loudly, striking a pose like a statue of a Greek God.
“That’s just absolutely disgusting!” Mom said, inhaling cigarette smoke at the same time she chewed a Twinkie with her mouth agape.
Olivia tried topping Dad, but only managed a little “urp!” Elvis, though, knew how to belch—he was built for it. He chugged the rest of his Coke and jumped up and down, shaking his guts. He swiveled his stomach around like a tiny, hula-dancing Buddha, then he rocked his head back, opened his mouth, and let out a belch that was probably heard for miles. He looked at me and smiled.
Not to be outdone by my little brother at a campfire belching contest, I started slamming my Coke, but there was something wrong with it—I threw the can to the ground! Elvis and Olivia were hysterical, and when Dad asked “What’s wrong?” and I pointed at my brother and sister and said, “They’re what’s wrong,” a bubble floated before my face. They had poured the contents of their Wonder Bubbles in my Coke while I wasn’t looking! I went for Elvis.
Before I could get on top of him and start throwing punches, Dad got a hold of me around the waist and held me back. Elvis, knowing Dad had me, stepped up and mocked me. I think he did it on purpose to teach Elvis a lesson, but Dad let go of me for an instant, just enough so I could step forward and get a good shot in on Elvis before Dad regained his hold. While this was all happening, Lucky was lapping up my spilled Coke and liquid bubbles solution.
When Dad finally separated Elvis and me, we all heard Mom shout, “Lucky!”
Lucky stood on a log, looking at us all. He exhaled, and a myriad bubbles popped out of his mouth. He looked like a weird little bubble machine; like something Dad would buy on the side of the road and put in his den.
“I think it’s about time for bed,” Dad said to all of us. Before Mom and Aunt Margie could start in about who got to keep Grandma’s ashes, I told them I’d take care of them the rest of the trip. They shuffled off to their tents, the twins closely following Aunt Margie.
I said goodnight to Dad after helping him put out the campfire. I didn’t want to be inside a tent with Elvis and Olivia, but even that was better than sleeping inside, or near the Inferno. The twins were already sleeping soundly by the time I slid into my sleeping bag. It wasn’t long before I joined them in the land of dreams.
I was awakened by Mom screaming. My first thought was, “Bear!” Maybe Mom was right, maybe bears did roam the area. Maybe one was ripping into Mom and Dad’s tent at that very moment. I sat still for a moment, listening for commotion. Aunt Margie and the twins woke up and looked to me for guidance. I heard Mom scream again and heard Dad shout, “Mary!” I unzipped the tent and charged out in search of a tree branch, or anything else I could use to fend off a bear and save my parents. When I got out, I saw Dad standing outside their tent with something cradled in his hands.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
He held out his hands, revealing a salamander. “This woke your mother up. It was on her face.”
I started laughing and Dad cracked a grin. From the tent, Mom said, “It’s not funny, youse two!”
Dad walked to the edge of camp and set the salamander down near a rock. The ground was wet and cool and the stars were bright and everywhere. I stopped and looked up at the sky.
“Don’t get that at home, huh?” Dad said. “Too much light, but out here, you can see everything. Wait until we get to the desert…most beautiful skies you’ll ever see.”
I wanted to tell Dad about Lucky threatening me, but standing there was one of those special moments you don’t want to spoil by talking about anything at all; one of those moments that feels so right, you remember it the rest of your life, even though nothing remarkable happened. Finally Dad said, “Night, Buddy,” and went back to his tent.
“Night, Dad.”
I don’t know how long I stood there in the wet grass, looking up at the sky, but I remember thinking about how small I was in the grand scheme of things. I remember looking at the sky and thinking that the only big thing humans truly possess are our imaginations. I remember thinking about so many things, until I realized how badly I was itching.
* * *
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Thank you so much for listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors–it really means a lot to me.
Theme music is provided by Belgium’s best surf band, Pirato Ketchup.
And if you want to know a little bit more about me and the other things I do, check out ChristopherGronlund.com.
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