Even the brutal heat couldn’t still Clay’s nervous stomach as he stood there staring at the rim of the sinkhole. Others had ventured off the trail. Peter and John were trying to find the best view of the shaft by checking various spots around the rim. But Clay didn’t need to look over the edge. He knew too well the abyss that waited below in the darkness. It was the bottomless pit that churned up his fears and doubts. Feelings that demanded he hold his ground. It was the same overwhelming fear that he gave into yesterday when he peered over the edge at the Cave of the Swallows. Even after he saw the parachutes open and heard the others yell victoriously as they drifted down that hellish 360 meter drop into the belly of the earth, he had been unable to bring himself to take that solitary leap of faith.
He took a deep breath and tried to picture the hillside as it would have looked before the quake hit. Yesterday he would have been staring at a simple dirt trail that zigzagged its way up the plateau to where the two Huastecan Indians grazed their cattle. But that was before last night. He would never forget the strange sensation of the ground pitching under his cot and then under his feet as he jumped up and ran out to join the others around the smoldering campfire. Almost as strange as the sensation, was how everyone reacted to it. There was no unbridled panic – only a general sense of awe. Even before they found out that the epicenter was located nearly 500 kilometers away in the coastal mountains southwest of Mexico City, no one acted as if they felt their life were in danger.
He focused again on the forty-foot wide opening. After a moment of contemplation, he pulled the bandanna from his pocket and wiped the dust-laden sweat off his face. They were too far from the epicenter for the quake to actually open up the shaft, but not too far for it to fracture a relatively thin bed of limestone over the top of it. The trail would have buckled and then given way as several hundred tons of earth plunged into the void.
He looked over his right shoulder at the two locals. The team was heading back to Aquismon when the two Indians flagged down Stein’s jeep. Stein must have called Alejandro on the squawk box because a second later he ran past on his way up to the front of the convoy. Alejandro knew enough of the local Mayan vernacular to understand what the Indians were shouting and translate it into Spanish. Stein, whose Spanish and English were muddied by his own accent, then interpreted for the team. Stein could have slapped the Indians on the back and told them good luck with the find, but then it wasn’t in his nature to pass up such a rare opportunity.
Clay turned further until he could see the dirt trail descending under the lush growth of the lower canopy. Stein and Alejandro had been gone for a good twenty minutes. Normally Stein wouldn’t have gone off without leaving a local guide behind. But normal protocol went out the window after the quake. It turned out that the other local guide hired for the expedition had family in Mexico City. When Felipe heard how extensive the devastation was over the radio, he jumped into one of the jeeps and headed back while it was still dark. Stein understood and took the loss in stride. Like every bump in the road that the expedition had come upon, he kept the situation in perspective. He sat the team down and informed everyone that the Mexican government would impose law to keep the airports and highways unimpeded for the relief efforts that would be coming from around the world. Until such time that the law was lifted, they would retrieve the rest of their supplies in Aquismon and then hunker down at the airport in Tampico to wait it out.
That of course was before the group abandoned the jeeps along the gravel road and followed the Indians up the trail. As soon as Stein saw the sinkhole, he swung around and told everyone to hold their ground and to maintain a safe distance of at least twenty meters. Then with a level of excitement that gave clue to the true adventurer in him, he grabbed Alejandro and the two of them ran down the trail toward the road. There was no mystery to what Stein had in mind. In the same manner that no one was surprised that first day when the rugged Norwegian stood before the team at the airport in Munich and said, “You. . . you’re not children. You’re not boys and girls. There are no room for children here. You are young man and woman. You come to be challenged and prove yourself victorious over your fears.” After an introductory speech like that, it was easy to figure that Stein was heading back to the jeeps to check on gear and rigging. After all what is a high-adrenalin expedition all about if it’s not one to jump at the opportunity to explore something previously untouched by Man.
Clay started to turn back to the sinkhole, but paused when he spotted one of the two Indians staring at him. It was never easy to guess the age of a local Indian. Appearance was influenced way too much by the location of the village. If the village was close to an industrialized area where the locals worked in manufacturing, then it added ten years to the lines in their faces. But in the villages that were farther out, places where farming and herding were the primary way of life, the locals could easily lose ten years in appearance. Clay would have guessed this man to be in his mid-fifties, which probably meant he was around sixty-five. But it wasn’t his age or the vibrant colors of his Teenek clothing that made Clay stop and stare. It was the way the man was looking at him. Not that it was threatening. In fact it was just the opposite. The Indian was looking at him the way Clay hoped his father would look at him some day. It was incredibly relaxing.
Then he heard the commotion surrounding Stein’s return, but before he could look away the old man mouthed something to him. For a strange reason it felt deeply meaningful and as if it were intended just for him. So much so, that even though neither spoke the other’s language, Clay still found himself mouthing out the words ‘The last day is coming’.
“Komm!” Stein yelled out as he strode up the dirt path while motioning to those who had wandered off the trail.
The yell broke Clay’s trance, and after a few blinks to clear his mind, he turned to see Alejandro cradling a small canister of oxygen in one arm while doing his best to keep up with Stein’s long stride.
At the same time that Clay felt the soft touch of Aliston’s hand against his left arm, Stein exuberantly spit out in his best English, “We have enough for one! Who shall it be?”
Stein was asking for a volunteer to venture into the unknown. Peter and John ran back from the far side of the sinkhole, but then dropped to a more somber gait when they realized the gravity of the question Stein posed to the team. Clay sucked on the inside of his mouth until he had enough spit to swallow. Then as he started to lean forward, Aliston grabbed his arm. “You don’t have to do this.”
There was a little shoving and jostling as everyone jokingly tried to get the one next to them to go for it. But no one was leaping at the chance to be the first to explore the sinkhole opened by the quake. Not even Peter, who up until then had been the first to volunteer for every adrenalin rush on this adventure.
Clay ignored the others and turned toward Aliston. The freckle faced Australian was the only one in the group that didn’t make him feel like a coward when he refused to bungee at the Huairou’s Qinglong Gorge in Beijing or base-jump yesterday at the Sotano de las Golondrinas. Not that anyone actually said anything. And not that anyone actually looked at him any differently. But their actions couldn’t hide what they were really feeling deep down. Clay had too much practice sensing that same condemnation from his dad. Aliston though was different. He looked into her blue eyes as he slid his hand over hers. “I do,” drifted off his lips before he knew it. It could have been a number of different factors pushing him past his acrophobia. Part of it might have been to spite his father. Then again, it could have been that even though he didn’t buy into that “being a man” crap that his father kept shoveling on him, he still felt a need to prove that he could overcome his fears. But mostly it was because he never wanted anything to change the way those blue eyes looked at him. A second later, he turned and got Stein’s attention. They had their volunteer.
The team worked like cogs in a well-oiled machine as the sun slowly inched its way up to mid-sky. Alejandro, Peter, and Justin hooked on safety lines and then set about anchoring a cantilevered tripod near the edge of the rim. While they completed the work up close, others carried rigging and carted the motorized winch up the trail from the jeeps. About an hour into it, Stein took Clay to the side and walked him through what was about to take place. First he explained how to read the oxygen content by the movement in a lighter’s flame. Then he drew out a scheme of simple codes that Clay could click across the two-way mike to communicate topside while wearing the oxygen mask. Foremost, he made sure that Clay understood that there was only twenty minutes of oxygen in the first aid tank.
At about ten till one, Clay stood in the full heat of the Mexican sun fully prepped for the motorized descent. His sweat-drenched shirt and shorts clung to his chest and thighs under the polyester straps of a full safety harness. The oxygen canister was rigged with a belt and slung around his neck to where it rested against his stomach. Stein’s personal two-way headset was fitted under the lighted spelunking helmet that they borrowed from Peter. And of course there were the Bic lighters. One was still clutched in his right hand. The other was already packed in the breast pocket of his shirt. With all the preparation done, there was nothing left to do but turn around and face his fears.
After toiling in the heat for nearly two hours, the team was surprisingly full of energy as it gathered around the winch some twenty meters from the mouth of the sinkhole. Clay made his way between them and then waited while Stein tethered his harness to the end of the coiled 500-meter steel extraction line that had been threaded through the pulley on the tripod. Peter walked over and slapped him on the back. “Hals- und Beinbruch!” Clay looked at him, uncertain of the proper translation. Peter smiled and repeated in broken English, “Good luck!”
There was no problem understanding John’s sendoff in the Queen’s English, or the meaning behind the handshakes offered by the brother and sister from San Paulo.
But Clay was a little hurt when he glanced over at Aliston and saw no movement. Instead of sending him off like the others, she kept her distance a few meters off the trail. He was still staring at her when Stein grabbed him by the harness and shook him once to check the fitting. The jostle brought Clay’s attention back to the matter at hand. He glanced at the harness and then started re-checking the clips as Stein began to psyche him up by going on and on about how he was going to be the first and that this would forever be burned into his mind. It didn’t take long for the psychology behind Stein’s ranting to prove fruitful. Clay started nodding his head. Then he pumped his fists and took two quick steps back to separate himself from the rest of the expedition. “I can do it,” he huffed to himself with determination. He remembered the challenges he had already beaten on the expedition. He had walked over hot coals and broken glass in the deep Thar Desert of Rajasthan, India. He had ridden the whitewater of the Royal Gorge in Colorado. “I can do this!” he vowed again as he took two more steps backwards. Then he paused to look back one last time at the team standing around the winch. But instead of stopping when he saw Aliston, he kept searching until he found the old Indian standing a dozen meters behind the others. For some reason he felt that he would find courage in that fatherly face. But when he looked into the Indian’s eyes, the strength and warmth were gone. All that stood before him was an old Indian.
Clay quickly swung around, preferring to face his deepest fear before he could read any meaning into what he saw. But as he dropped his head and slowly began to trudge forward, he kept thinking about what the Indian mouthed to him earlier. He didn’t know what the Indian meant by it, but it was something important. He was sure of it.
The words were still rattling around in his head when he heard Stein’s command from twenty meters back. “Hold on! We pull in the slack.” He was at the rim.
The game plan was for him to continue staring at his feet while the winch reeled in the slack. But as he listened to the pant of his breath he slowly tilted his head up and looked forward. The first thing he saw was the dirt along the edge of the rim beginning to give way under the weight of his body. With a startled gasp, he quickly shifted his attention to the different shades of limestone layered on the far side of the sinkhole. The view offered a momentary diversion. But what he really needed - was to see that the shaft wasn’t that deep. The midday sun brought light to even the darkest of recesses. If it could reach the floor at Sotano de las Golondrinas, it would surely show him the bottom here. He grabbed the harness and peered over the edge. His hope was to see a little circle lit up on the floor of the shaft by the sun. That’s not what he found. The shaft continued down into darkness. He pulled back to where his head was over the centerline of his body. Then with his pulse racing, he unclenched his fists and grabbed the front of the harness. “I’m gonna do it!” he huffed.
Stein yelled, “Good! Now you must step off. The cantilever will swing you clear.”
There was no turning back. He bit down to steady his lower jaw and then closed his eyes. He would do it. After a hard swallow, he stuck his right foot out over the rim and let his weight fall forward. There was the pound of his heart, and then for a second there was nothing. Then the steel line snapped taunt, the harness dug into his crotch and armpits, and he felt his weight swing out over the shaft.
