Chapter 5 - A PLACE BESIDE THE PACIFIC
When Caleb returned from solitary, Elias almost did not recognize him.
He had lost weight.
His face looked older.
He walked into the yard carrying himself with the strange looseness of a man who had stopped protecting something.
Elias waited several minutes before approaching.
“You all right?”
“No.”
At least the answer was honest.
They sat against the wall.
Caleb looked toward the distant trees beyond Blackridge's outer fence.
“Have you ever seen the Pacific?”
Elias frowned.
“No.”
“Neither have I.”
“Good conversation.”
“There is a town in Mexico called San Blas.”
Elias looked sideways at him.
Caleb continued.
“Small place on the coast. Fishing boats. Warm water. Tourists sometimes.”
“You planning a vacation?”
“I'd open a little hotel.”
Elias studied him.
“You've been in solitary too long.”
“Probably.”
Caleb described the place anyway.
A building with weathered shutters.
Rooms looking toward the ocean.
A boat for guests who wanted to fish.
Nothing grand.
Something honest.
Elias became increasingly uncomfortable.
Men serving life sentences did not make detailed retirement plans.
“What are you doing, Caleb?”
“Thinking.”
“About what?”
“Getting busy living.”
Elias's stomach tightened.
The phrase sounded too much like a farewell.
Before they returned inside, Caleb asked him for a promise.
“If you ever get out, there's a field outside Hollis. Old stone wall running along the north edge. You'd find an oak tree taller than everything around it.”
Elias stared.
“Why?”
“Under the wall there's a stone that doesn't belong. Dark volcanic glass. You'd notice it.”
“And?”
“Lift it.”
Elias grabbed Caleb's arm.
“Stop.”
Caleb looked at him.
“You're talking like a man planning something.”
“I am.”
“What?”
Caleb smiled faintly.
“Remember San Blas.”
That evening Elias learned Caleb had asked another prisoner for a length of rope.
He barely slept.
At morning count the next day, Caleb's cell did not open.
Captain Rusk arrived irritated.
The guard unlocked it.
The cell was empty.
Rusk checked beneath the bunk as though a grown man might have hidden there.
Nothing.
Within minutes, Ketteridge arrived.
His fury filled the room.
He opened drawers.
Threw books.
Pulled bedding onto the floor.
“How?” he demanded.
Nobody answered.
Caleb's shoes were missing.
So were several items of clothing.
The door had been locked from outside throughout the night.
Ketteridge picked up one of Caleb's stone chess pieces.
“You think you're clever?”
He threw it.
The stone struck the Grace Kelly poster.
Except it did not rebound.
It vanished through the paper.
The room went silent.
Ketteridge crossed to the wall.
Pressed his hand against the actress's face.
The poster moved inward.
He tore it down.
Behind it was a tunnel.
Not large.
Not elegant.
Just wide enough for a man willing to crawl.
Rusk stared into the darkness.
“How long?”
Nobody knew.
Elias did.
Or thought he did.
Nineteen years earlier, he had handed Caleb a rock hammer and joked that a man would need centuries to tunnel through Blackridge with it.
May you like
He had been wrong.
Caleb had needed nineteen.
