Willett Cave • Buena Vista Cave • Sand Cave • Skylight Cave

we’re joined by fresh cavers from Knoxville and
Chattanooga. After eighteen hours in the cave, during
which they had refused all offers of relief, a few of the
members of the rigging team and the haul team have
agreed to come to the surface. They stagger out of the
hole, muddy and haggard, perhaps take a bite of soup,
accept a blanket, and then fall asleep wherever they
happen to be.
After daylight word comes that the body is nearing
the surface. Not long after that, the remainder of the
riggers and haulers begin to emerge from the cave,
some obviously spent, others seemingly still strong.
Mark enters the cave again to help haul the body
through the final canyon. A bit later he emerges with
word that the body has reached the bottom of the
entrance chimney.
The body has been brought this far in a stretcher
known as a SKED, a sort of thin, flexible plastic
toboggan that wraps around the body, making it
possible to scoot it over the floor and maneuver it
through tight spots. Now the SKED is rigged to the
haul rope, which in turn has been run through a pulley
hanging from a tree limb above the entrance, and those
of us on the surface are deployed to pull. Which we
do, repeatedly, to no effect. Rocks near the top block
the SKED’s progress. Easy enough for a living body
to wriggle around, they present an insurmountable
obstacle for an inert mass, lacking volition and
flexibility. The SKED is lowered to the bottom of the
drop, carried down canyon a bit, in fact, and a caver
named Greg climbs into the entrance with a piton
hammer. Surprisingly quickly, he reduces the obstacles
to shards. Greg comes out, the SKED is carried back to
the bottom of the drop, we haul again, and the burden
reaches the surface at last.
I’m glad that I can’t really see the dead man. Inside
the SKED, he’s wrapped in a dark tarpaulin, a faceless,
mummy-like shape. I’m glad that I didn’t know him,
that I can easily enough reduce him in my mind to an
object. For many of the cavers here, many of those who
stayed with him for nearly twenty hours underground,
he was a man, a friend, someone with whom they
shared food and drink and stories and laughs. Several of
5
those who have stayed with him so long had been on
the trip on which he had died. I don’t want to imagine
how they must feel, how weary they must be, how sad.
The body, still wrapped tightly in the SKED, is
loaded onto the Ferno, the Ferno is fitted with a single
fat wheel, and several of us begin the long climb up the
hill to provide counterweight for the haul system. A
team accompanies the litter, actually pushing, pulling
and lifting the Ferno up the mountain. Others of us
attach ourselves to the opposite ends of the haul ropes
and hustle down the mountain, thus helping to pull the
Ferno upwards. Near the place where the mule waits,
a call goes up for one more person on the litter team. I
fall in behind Anne and try to help in the task of rolling
the unwieldy litter along.
Then we come to the mule and load the Ferno
crossways in the bed. While the load is strapped securely
to the mule, most of us begin to trudge toward the top.
Mike and I fall into conversation with another caver
we know. Moments later the mule catches up to us and
we step aside to let it pass. I feel a momentary impulse,
which I do not act upon, thank God, to salute, John-
John Kennedy-like, as the makeshift hearse passes.
Up top, the body is swiftly loaded into a waiting
ambulance. We sign out at the forest service tarp. Ropes
are packed away. People shake hands, say goodbye. We
change clothes, exchange wan smiles, get in our cars
and trucks and drive away. At the nearest town, Mark
and Anne bid us goodbye to head for Knoxville. Cheryl
has left her car at Cumberland Gap, so she’ll ride back
there with Thor and me. Before hitting the road we
have lunch at a Chinese restaurant, make a few phone
calls to let people know we’re all right. Thor, who has
stayed in the staging area due to a badly sprained ankle,
has had more sleep than either Cheryl or I, so he drives
while I doze, fitfully. I don’t know if Cheryl sleeps or
not.
We reach the research center, sort out our gear.
Each will head home alone from here. I make it home
by about six in the evening. Tina is not home from
work yet. I walk upstairs, sit down on the living room
sofa, and begin to cry.