The tool with which she carved herself a way through the stinking, damp underground, lay wet and heavy in her hand.
Breathable air was nigh non-existing. The first fine caving had transpired, and Mary Graves past a hand over her forehead as she attempted to calm herself. Apprehension pressed against the confinement of her chest.
The back of her neck was wet and sodden, and the warm rainfall mixed with the sweat down the collar of her filthy white shirt. Water pooled round her ankles and was rising still. The feeble flame of the gaslight behind her was obscured by her own body and compared to the effort it had taken her to drag the hulk of a thing with her down the wooden ladders it was utterly inefficient. The mud shifted beneath her feet and Mary wedged her knee onto the half-hard debris that had gathered beneath.
She could hear Leigh's heavy stomping through the clatter of the storm as he came down.
"Ma'am!" The young man shouted, followed by something indiscernible.
"What?" Mary turned and almost lost her balance. Her boots were waterlogged and hefty; she pocketed her hand shovel and fisted a hand round the wooden rail overhead. Above her, Mary Graves could see Robert Leigh crouch on the ladder, his wet hair stuck to his forehead. His handsome face cramped in a mask of unease and badly hidden excitement. The seam of his pale shirt was splattered with mud. The boy shouted over the rain:
"They got caught in a slide at the bottom. They got the men, but we need the Minerva to pull the lift out!"
Mary Graves cursed and rose to her feet. She now asked: "Who went to the bottom?"
"Henderson and Bates, Ma'am. I told them you wouldn't be okay with it."
"Get the BeRliet. Not the Minerva; it won't hold. Keys are in the back of Jackson's van. Where's Jackson?" She drew near, squinting at Leigh, his outline stark against the clouded heavens.
"He didn't go with them, Ma'am. He's good. I told them you weren't okay with it."
She nodded absentmindedly. Leigh went back up. Mary waited till his weight had shifted to the next ladder before following him.
The dig site, at this point, was no deeper than eight yards. Its walls weren't steep, but gradual, resembling a slide, and the only reason they used the ladders was because of the rainfall. The cursed rainfall. It had hit them in the afternoon, clogging the wadis, and rendering the lift and the Hoover useless. The very least advisable thing to do was get to the bottom. Mary did not know whether to kill Henderson and Bates herself or leave them to their fate and the elements.
Bates stood shouting directions at Henderson; both had climbed down again with a few of the team to attach the cable to the slipping lift. Mary combed back her hair out of her face and straightened as she stood regarding the struggle of the men beneath.
"Slowly and carefully. Keep it coming." She turned and gestured to Leigh behind the wheel of the BeRliet, and then turned to the site and the people down below and raised her voice: "Bates! What do you think you're doing?"
Beneath, the man turned and shouted something back. Mary didn't hear whatever it was.
"Nearly there." Mary called towards Jackson. "And attach it —that's it!"
Hanging threateningly down the walls of the slope, the conveyer belt of the lift was now brought to a halt. The engine of the BeRliet roared, and the hefty bulk it carried began its gradual journey back up. Mary Graves regarded the scene with conflicting emotions; glad there had been no immediate damage, or victims, but nonetheless irked by Bates and Henderson's initial blunder, she went and let out a deliberate breath. The raised, threatening waterline of the river loomed in her peripheral vision. She licked her lips nervously. Then deliberately turned away and went towards the camp.
The draught allayed, doing nothing for the wet heat.
Mary had seated herself under the canvass that was strung over the back of one of the trucks that stood parked closest to the site. It was dry. Or at least dryer. And out of the wind, although the air was sweltering even during the storm. A fork of lightning split the sky and thunder cracked, echoing around the wadis. Mary looked up from her notes and she spied Henderson making his way over to her. He was still covered in mud and cut a stout figure against the setting of the mountains and the storm and the clouds above. The man now grimaced:
"Hey—hey," Henderson put up his hands, "I come in peace."
"Why didn't you tell me you planned on going down in this weather?"
"I didn't consider it a good idea but—"
"Oh, I think you've proven that."
"I was..."
"What? Pig-headed?"
"Yes."
"And stubborn."
"That's enough."
"How's the lift?"
"Leigh will be taking a look once we get it out."
"You've become fond of him, haven't you? He's a good kid."
"He's a smart kid. Still got eyes on his head." Henderson said. He threw a look back at the site: "It's gonna be bad news, I'm afraid," he said, letting a heavy breath escape him. "The pulleys of the conveyor, they'll be damaged. It's the strain. They weren't made to carry their own weight."
Mary regarded him, then followed his gaze, and saw Anne van 't Sand and Robert Leigh fussing with the steering wheel of the BeRliet. Van 't Sand was speaking intently in on Leigh. The cable tensed menacingly. "All of them?" Mary spoke.
"We've got spares at the warehouse in Mombasa, but it'll take a few days to get them to Loiyangalani and then here."
Mary shrugged. "We won't have much of a choice."
"We won't have anything at all if this weather doesn't lift."
"I know, I know. Get someone ready to head back for now," she stretched herself out. "Tea would be nice."
"And cake." Henderson grumbled. He raked a hand through his hair. "You remember that guy from the livestock place in '24? What was his name?"
"Nikusubila. They called him Papa Niku."
"Nikusubila," he said, a dreamy expression coming over his face. "Could that old man roast a piece of meat."
Henderson liked to talk about it. He always talked about the old days when there had been a lot of trouble as they hadn't yet acquired the proper company. Mary reached for her water flask and unscrewed the top.
"All right. What is there to eat?" She said with a nod towards the fraught crew. "We'll have to put something heavy into them after this, or we'll have a riot on our hands."
"McByrne brought a batch of sukuma and ugali from Lorugum yesterday and we bought snook and tigerfish from the fishermen. We can slice it up."
"Good. How will we have the fish?"
"Any way you want it," Henderson shrugged. "You ever had tigerfish? It's bonier and oilier than tilapia. They fillet or mince it and serve it in fish cakes. We may— Jesus Christ!"
Mary Graves put the flask down and then rose to a kneeling position in the back of the van as she watched, with vile apprehension, as the BeRliet slipped and went back another three feet. Then Leigh had him back under control. Mary saw Leigh nod as Anne van 't Sand asked him something and then van 't Sand leapt out of the truck and went to the edge.
Mary rose to her feet, jumped down and broke into a run; directly followed by a horrified Henderson. Down below, down in the mud, showing like a rag doll and clinging to the lift with one hand and to the ladder with the other, attempting, with heavy, lunging kicks, to get himself from under the lift, Joseph Bates lay covered and drowning, shouting loudly at the people on the edge.
"Oh Jesus," Henderson said, breathing heavily. "That cable's gonna hold but Leigh's never gonna get the BeRliet in time back out of that ditch. Oh— Jesus, Bates. Oh Jesus."
Mary Graves remembered, afterwards, that the main impression she had that moment was the great weight of the lift, hammering down on Bates. The way it sank and swung in the mud and gave cause to the cries of its victim. Mary's mind moved fast. The flowing series of possibilities ran smoothly before her judgment.
"Get something under those wheels!" Henderson yelled and Mary only heard him distantly. Bates still seemed to have a firm grip on the ladder. His shirt and vest hung teared at his sides, and he was looking steadily with wide eyes toward the cable and where it disappeared over the edge.
Mary took the ramp from Henderson. She kneeled and forced the galvanised steel under the wheel. The strain shot straight to her shoulders. The engine roared and the wheels threw a spurt of mud and she remembered they had been bent earlier. The BeRliet groaned. Mary Graves ducked away from another spurt of mud and rose from her knees and went to the front.
"Leigh!" She called over the roaring of the car and the storm and the rain as she threw open the door on the passenger side. The young man looked down at her with eyes wide and panicked, and fingers trembling on the steering wheel. "Quit spinning those wheels!" She climbed in and over the seats, "get out. Put him in forward, and get out."
"Ma'am—"
"It's alright, Leigh," she reached over his legs to open the door of the driver and nigh forced the kid out. "Help Henderson get some traction on those wheels."
Mary felt sick in her stomach, as though something had taken hold of her inside and was gripping her there, and on Henderson's clear signal, Mary pushed the BeRliet forward; as carefully and steadily as she could. A spurt of mud painted the windows. The open door moved with a shock. The BeRliet didn't move forward and kept sinking back with the same awful motion. The hind wheels of the BeRliet had been another six feet from the edge before she had taken over the wheel from Leigh and if Mary could trust the shouts that resounded from outside, then the lift was still sinking with that same awful slicing motion. The rain was nigh deafening as it clattered on the windshield, and she couldn't distinguish anything in front of the car. Mary prayed nobody would think to pass round the bonnet. She tried to relax but remain steady, tried not to hold her breath and not to think of anything but the car; to put him in forward and back in reverse, and rock it back and forth and keep just a touch ahead and keep the BeRliet straight as it began wobbling more than it ever had at the start. When she heard the tell-tale sign of the transmission burning out, Mary looked up, wiped her face, and saw Henderson gesturing wildly at her through the spotted rear-mirror. Mary turned the steering wheel left to right repeatedly and the back started firing mud once more and spouted all along the car. Then something clattered in front and in a short burst of dirt, water, and mud, the BeRliet jumped on a tighter patch and right out of the shallow ditch the wheels had buried themselves in.
Two more seconds.
Mary put the BeRliet on its brake and threw open the door and jumped down, throwing up another round of water as she landed on her feet. Jennifer Wilson passed by, carrying something she put behind the wheels. Mary ran to the edge.
"Get goddamned Bates out of there!" She heard Henderson shouting. "I can't stand this sort of thing."
Van 't Sand had let herself down while Leigh and another kid — Jackson — secured the lift and van 't Sand was now sliding fast toward Bates, and then Jackson was pulling Bates over the edge and then rising to help with the lift. Unsteady, feeling hollow and sick inside, Mary regarded them. A fever throbbed at her temples.
"Goddamn," Henderson said. "I'm getting too old for this."
Mary remained steadfast silent. She let herself breath, shuddering through a relief so profound she felt unmade by it, gutted open and her organs burnt to ash, only to be sewn back up and her pulse still somehow beating through it. Mary only gave a single nod, and once she had taken a deep breath and pushed down the leftover terror, she told Henderson: "get Bates inside. You take a look at him. When he's warmed up, we'll have someone drive him back to Loiyangalani tonight so Hadebe can have a look at him," she turned to do away with the filth that had clothed on her face and neck and breeches and check in on Wilson and Leigh. "And get some food inside him," she called back.