lack of oxygen, he began passing out. The third year was the worst.
In an age of sophisticated torture there is no more effective tool than claustrophobia. It combines elements of suffocation, desertion, blindness, and isolation from reality. All these elements operate in a cave, except that they are reality. When Paine entered a bat cave, his heart was already racing, each beat a muffled alarm. As the light of the entrance evaporated, his lungs became twin vacuums and his limbs numbed. With every step he felt the cave closing behind him. The glow of his helmet lamp was a ghostly moon without reference to him, like a glowworm in a coffin. Past the threshold of panic, he forced himself deeper into the cave, seemingly more steady as his sanity folded in. Within goggles, his eyes bulged. Even as he tried to concentrate on the techniques of ropework or spreading a mist net of superfine thread, he tasted his hot and salty terror. Then someone would set off a flash and the cave would erupt into a whirlwind of panicked wings. When the sound of the wings and the lower-pitched cries of the bats made a dizzying roar, only then, occasionally, would Paine let go his scream of terror.
He wasn’t stupid enough to think he was a coward. Unfortunately, he was intelligent enough to know the reason he returned to the caves was to mimic his father, and that in imitating a better man, he was a farce.
No matter how many caves he went into and how competent he seemed, the secret panic blossomed. Until he took risks just to keep his eyes from straying to the enveloping dark. No one knew except his father, which was why Joe Paine had to go along when others hung back.
So, unfairly, in that Mexican cave, it was the better man who’d died. Not without a parting gift, though. Like dross from a fire, Paine’s panic fell away and was gone.
The desert sand had the quality of compacted ash. A desert, to Paine, was a land that was burned and constantly burning. For Paine, a relief compared to night.
After thirty miles of driving, he stopped in the shade of a canyon of stark, yellow walls and set up his laboratory. Like his belt, it was a construction of his own design. Aluminum poles screwed horizontally onto the top rear of the Rover and telescoped backwards fifteen feet to supporting poles rooted in the dirt. Over this structure he hung a fine wire mesh tent that zipped tight around the open doors of the Rover and at an entrance flap at the other end. He staked the mesh taut to the ground through eyeholes spaced every six inches; the whole effect was of a cocoon growing out of the truck. Inside this cocoon he set up tables and equipment. From the Rover’s refrigerator, bowls of blood culture gelatines. Test tubes. Rubber-stopped jars of killing solution. Microscopes and slides. A square black box two feet high with a front hooded by black crepe. Alongside the box, he placed the jar of specimens from the sheep.
He pulled the black hood aside and uncoiled an extension cord from inside the box to a dry cell battery he’d placed under the table. A frosted white light panel—the type used for X rays—glowed underneath an acetate map of the Navajo-Hopi reservation. Paine removed the map. With a clean scalpel he cut into the flesh of his little finger and milked three drops of blood onto the glowing panel. Over the blood-specked panel he set a clear plastic cover that had one circular, threaded opening. He picked up the specimen jar, shook it gently, counted the fleas at the bottom of the glass, and carefully unscrewed the lid, sliding a paper card between lid and jar. He turned jar and card over and slid the card away as he screwed the jar into the plastic cover. Then he set a microscope over the panel and pulled the crepe hood over the back of his head.
Magnified by 20X, the fleas lurched uncomfortably within the confines of the panel and cover. The heat of the glowing panel, though, spread the rich vapor of an abattoir. Antennae twitched and the
In an age of sophisticated torture there is no more effective tool than claustrophobia. It combines elements of suffocation, desertion, blindness, and isolation from reality. All these elements operate in a cave, except that they are reality. When Paine entered a bat cave, his heart was already racing, each beat a muffled alarm. As the light of the entrance evaporated, his lungs became twin vacuums and his limbs numbed. With every step he felt the cave closing behind him. The glow of his helmet lamp was a ghostly moon without reference to him, like a glowworm in a coffin. Past the threshold of panic, he forced himself deeper into the cave, seemingly more steady as his sanity folded in. Within goggles, his eyes bulged. Even as he tried to concentrate on the techniques of ropework or spreading a mist net of superfine thread, he tasted his hot and salty terror. Then someone would set off a flash and the cave would erupt into a whirlwind of panicked wings. When the sound of the wings and the lower-pitched cries of the bats made a dizzying roar, only then, occasionally, would Paine let go his scream of terror.
He wasn’t stupid enough to think he was a coward. Unfortunately, he was intelligent enough to know the reason he returned to the caves was to mimic his father, and that in imitating a better man, he was a farce.
No matter how many caves he went into and how competent he seemed, the secret panic blossomed. Until he took risks just to keep his eyes from straying to the enveloping dark. No one knew except his father, which was why Joe Paine had to go along when others hung back.
So, unfairly, in that Mexican cave, it was the better man who’d died. Not without a parting gift, though. Like dross from a fire, Paine’s panic fell away and was gone.
The desert sand had the quality of compacted ash. A desert, to Paine, was a land that was burned and constantly burning. For Paine, a relief compared to night.
After thirty miles of driving, he stopped in the shade of a canyon of stark, yellow walls and set up his laboratory. Like his belt, it was a construction of his own design. Aluminum poles screwed horizontally onto the top rear of the Rover and telescoped backwards fifteen feet to supporting poles rooted in the dirt. Over this structure he hung a fine wire mesh tent that zipped tight around the open doors of the Rover and at an entrance flap at the other end. He staked the mesh taut to the ground through eyeholes spaced every six inches; the whole effect was of a cocoon growing out of the truck. Inside this cocoon he set up tables and equipment. From the Rover’s refrigerator, bowls of blood culture gelatines. Test tubes. Rubber-stopped jars of killing solution. Microscopes and slides. A square black box two feet high with a front hooded by black crepe. Alongside the box, he placed the jar of specimens from the sheep.
He pulled the black hood aside and uncoiled an extension cord from inside the box to a dry cell battery he’d placed under the table. A frosted white light panel—the type used for X rays—glowed underneath an acetate map of the Navajo-Hopi reservation. Paine removed the map. With a clean scalpel he cut into the flesh of his little finger and milked three drops of blood onto the glowing panel. Over the blood-specked panel he set a clear plastic cover that had one circular, threaded opening. He picked up the specimen jar, shook it gently, counted the fleas at the bottom of the glass, and carefully unscrewed the lid, sliding a paper card between lid and jar. He turned jar and card over and slid the card away as he screwed the jar into the plastic cover. Then he set a microscope over the panel and pulled the crepe hood over the back of his head.
Magnified by 20X, the fleas lurched uncomfortably within the confines of the panel and cover. The heat of the glowing panel, though, spread the rich vapor of an abattoir. Antennae twitched and the
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