I lifted it out. My hands were shaking. I do not know why. It was something about the care of it, the deliberate hiding, the sense that someone had put this here for a reason and then died before he could explain what the reason was.
I unwrapped the oilcloth. Inside were 14 ledger books, each about the size of a hymnal, each numbered on the spine in lampblack, 1 through 14. Some of them had swelled with damp. Others were still tight and dry. Underneath the books were 2 thermometers in wooden cases, a brass compass with a cracked face, and a tin of carpenter’s pencils sharpened to points.
I picked up the first ledger. The spine said 1 in faded black ink. I opened it to the first page.
It said: October 12, 1867. Arrived at Mercy Gap. Purchased the tract at auction for $9. The auctioneer laughed when I paid. He said I had bought exactly $9 worth of nothing. I do not think he is wrong, but there is a cave here, and I have questions about caves.
I sat on the floor of the cabin with the book in my hands and read until the light failed. Silas Boon Ren had been my grandfather, my mother’s father. I had never met him because he lived in a hollow 3 miles from nowhere and my mother had married a timberman and moved to Gap Mills and then died before she could ever bring me back. I learned this from the journals. I learned everything from the journals.
He had been a schoolteacher once in the valley before the war. He had fought in the war and come back with something broken in him that made him want silence more than company. He had bought the Mercy Gap tract because it was cheap and far away from other people and because he had read something about caves that had made him curious.
