The Trough
By Ron Burch
We descend into the trough. The air is cold, currently three degrees, and smells sulfurous. The only light source comes from our headlamps, round circles of light that reflect off the rocks and crystals. Breathing becomes difficult, and we find ourselves gasping for breath. The rock’s cold to the skin, so jagged and sharp that a chance encounter will easily slice open the flesh. I find myself down here more than I like – the claustrophobia of the rocks, the small, narrow openings, which we force ourselves through.
Marie, the other researcher, takes a couple of readings and says that the gas is present at this depth. I worry about the lack of quality air down here, what does exist has an effect on our bodies, our intake of the gas that permeates these rocks, like the diver’s bends, and enters our bloodstreams. We grow angry and short-tempered as if we’re being possessed by some underworld being. Despair, anger and sadness, a confluence of emotions, staggers us. I don’t know if it hits Marie as hard as it does me, but we grow surly in this tight space, our words short and mean, even our silence is an offense.
We’ve taken the thick white pills that the doctor prescribed. We’ve followed the instructions in the manuals and the strict guidelines mandated by the professionals. But it doesn’t help. We both change individually while we’re down here, taking our readings, doing our measurements, chipping away at things that go hidden in our test tubes. There may be riches down here that we may never find, but we continue to look, to search, to unearth. As soon as I’m down here, as soon as I recognize these wet, glimmering walls, I want to get the hell out, but I can’t. We’re trapped here until the appointed time when we are pulled up by the operator of the rope, the lifeline from these depths to the surface, where we can again breathe easier as our senses return, our heads clear, and we are no longer infected with hopelessness.
A couple trips back, we each tried to have an oxygen tank with mask, like scuba divers on dry land, to avoid the trough’s danger, but the tanks were too large to fit within these narrow crevices, and we had to abandon them as soon as we touched down. They sit here still on the lower ledge, rusting and decrepit, the oxygen long ago leaked out, now just empty shells. Sometimes down here, I feel the urge to scream because I’m suddenly so unhappy, but it freaks out Marie, not that she’s never yelled while down here. Once she blamed it on a large spider, but I believe it’s just the trough having its way with us.
For me, the hardest part is the despair that settles in, that feeling that I’m never going to escape, that I’ll be trapped down here forever, my bones eventually oxidizing like the discarded oxygen tanks dead on their sides. Sometimes, I must admit, the only thought I have going through my head is how do I get out, how do I get out, how do I get out?! I keep it to myself because I’m a professional, and it’s not good to show weakness to a colleague. Marie asks if I’ve taken all my samples. I angrily lash out at her. I don’t mean to. I don’t want to. But there’s something new in my body, in my blood stream, in my head, that turns me to anger and she responds in kind. She throws her rock pick, missing me by a foot or so. It clangs off the wall, falling below us where this cavern extends down where we do not yet know. There doesn’t seem to be an end to this decline. I wonder if we have enough rope to see us to the end, but we’re not there yet. I chastise Marie and she tells me to fuck off.
I take a sip of water from my canteen. She tugs on the rope and says she’s returning to the top. I tell her that we haven’t finished our work, but she pushes me away. She grabs onto the taut rope, the sound of it scraping against metal. It slowly carries her up the shaft, away from me and the trough. The last thing I see are the worn soles of her shoes as they begin to disappear into the darkness. I leap for her boot and she kicks me off. I fall hard onto the rocky ledge, the air pushed out of my body, and I lie there catching my breath. For whatever reason, it gets worse when you’re alone. The gas plays tricks on you. I scream at her to come back, but there’s silence.
I grow afraid, more afraid than I’ve been down here. I yell up at her. I beg and plead. Don’t leave me here, I say. I don’t know how much time passes. My watch isn’t working, the minute hand still, broken from the fall. I try to breathe calmly as the rope is lowered down again, its slim end like a snake. Marie’s on the bottom of the rope, holding out her hand, and, despite this madness in my brain, this gaseous cloud that’s taken me over, I wonder if she’s really here to save me, no, I’m in the trough where I’m supposed to be, but she says to me, Take my hand and despite my fear, my doubt, my despair, I reach out my hand, stretching up as far as I can, until I start to rise, hoping this will be my last trip down into the trough.
THE END