"I know," Scott said.  "Can you get back up on your own?"

            "I don't know."  John called back.  "I…don't know if I should try."

            There was a pause as Scott digested this. 

            "How far down is he?" Virgil asked. 

            "How far down are you?" Scott called.

            "Pretty far," came the answer.  Scott guessed that John didn't have a lot of time to turn around and come back up before the rope broke or John let go of it, or whatever happened.

            "Why doesn't he just climb back up?" Virgil asked.  Scott turned his head and spoke quietly.

            "Because he had nothing to hold onto, and he's afraid of slipping.  That's my guess."

            Virgil wondered how Scott could be so calm.  His own heart was pounding so hard he could almost hear it echoing in the empty tunnel. 

            "What are you going to do?" he asked Scott.

            "Shut up and let me think."

            "If he falls…"

            "Virgil, I'm telling you to shut your mouth."  Scott spoke quietly enough, but Virgil subsided.

Scott  swiftly tied a loop in the end of the rope.

            "John, I'm going to throw you the rope," Scott said.

            "Okay," John's voice floated back up.  "Hurry up."

            His voice sounded strained.  Scott wondered if he was hurt.  He tossed the knotted end of the rope down the tunnel.  He shook the end so it would slide.

            "Do you have it?"  Scott called.

            "No."

            Scott shook the rope some more.  "Howabout now?"

            "No!"

            Scott turned to Virgil.  "Grab one of those water bottles.  I think we need something to weight the end."

            Virgil turned around and began crawling as fast as he could to the opening of the tunnel.  He blinked as he stuck his head outside – the sunlight shining on the field seemed painfully naïve.  Virgil grabbed Scott's knapsack and headed back into the darkness.

            "Scott," John's voice came bouncing up the tunnel.

            "Yeah?"

            "You need to hurry up."

            "Are you hurt?"

            "No.  You need to hurry up," John repeated.

            Virgil  reached Scott and pressed the water bottle into Scott's hands.  Scott knotted the rope around it and tossed it down the tunnel.  He could feel it sliding endlessly down into the darkness, the vibrations playing up into his hands, until it stopped.

            "John?  Do you have it?"

            "No," John said.

            "You're farther down than the rope," Scott called.

            "I know that!" John yelled.

            "You should have said something!" Scott bellowed back.

            "I didn't want to scare you guys!" John shouted.

            "We're already scared, John!" Virgil yelled, and they could hear John laughing.

            "Don't make me laugh," John called after a minute.  "I mean it."

            "John…can you tell us what happened?"  Scott called.

            "I'll tell you when I'm up there," John said.  "Just hurry up and get me out of here."

            Scott resisted the urge to yell "How?" down the shaft.   He understood why John was trying not to scare them – Scott was trying to do the same thing.  Scared people were unpredictable, and that could be dangerous.

            "Should I go get Dad?" Virgil asked.

            Yes, that was exactly what Scott wanted.  He wished more than anything that his father was here right now, able to take charge, able to fix everything.  Maybe it was childish, but Scott felt that nothing really bad could happen if their father was in charge.  But even if Virgil ran back to the house at full speed – which he couldn't do in this heat anyway – it would still take him around an hour.  Factor in another fifteen minutes for their father to mobilize and call whoever it was that dug idiots out of underground pipes, it could almost be two hours before John got out.  Scott was sure that John was in a more dire predicament than he was letting on – he could hear it in his voice, even distorted.  And there was no way in hell he was going to let anything happen to John.

            They didn't have a choice, as he saw it. 

            "That's plan B," he told Virgil.

            "I really think it should be plan A." Virgil said.

Scott took a breath.  "I know.  But I'm not sure we have the time."

 "Scott…if the three of us get trapped down there…"

            "It's not going to happen." Scott said firmly.  "Both of us aren't going to go down.  That would be stupid."

"This whole thing is stupid!" Virgil said.  He was on the edge of full-blown panic.  Scott had been briefly entertaining the idea of sending Virgil down – he'd rather have more weight at the top, but looking at him now, he thought maybe that wasn't the brightest idea. 

"It's going to be okay," Scott told him, a little automatically.  "You're all right."

            "I'm not worried about me," Virgil said angrily.

            "Well, you worry about you, and I'll worry about John," Scott said.

            Virgil gave him a skeptical look, and that made Scott feel better. 

            "Make sure that rope is tied tight," Scott told him.  He gave the end a tug, and Virgil examined the knot.  "It feels okay," he said.

            Scott tied the other end around his own waist.  "Okay, listen to me.  I want you to stay around the corner, and brace yourself against the wall with your feet.  Towards the end, John was really leaning on the rope, and I weigh more than him, and you, so it's really important that you not get pulled down on top of us, okay?"

            Virgil nodded.

            "If you feel yourself sliding, you yell and I'll stop, okay?"

            "Okay."

            "Listen to me.  If there is the slightest doubt that you can hold on, yell and I'll come back up.  You can't let me fall."

            Virgil nodded.  If Scott fell, or slid, he'd knock John further down the tunnel, maybe further than could be reached.  The thought was sickening, and he pushed it from his mind as he crawled backwards around the corner, and braced himself best he could.

            "All right," Scott said.  "Hey, John?"

            "Yeah?"

            "I'm coming down."

            There was a pause, and then John said, "Okay."  Even with the distortion from the echo, Scott thought John sounded reluctant.  Scott smiled to himself.  It sounded so classic John, prickly about his privacy.

            Scott nodded to Virgil, and then started down the tunnel.  His hiking boots were giving him good traction on the floor of the pipe, although the total darkness was unsettling.

            "John, can you shine your flashlight up?" he called.

            "No," John said shortly.  "I don't have it anymore."  Scott began to move as fast as he dared, but the darkness was oppressive and he kept having this image of kicking John away from him.  John sounded so far away.

            "Are you sliding down?" he asked.

            "No.  Stop asking stupid questions."

            It was growing colder and colder as Scott moved down the pipe.  The cold in a way was helping, keeping him focused, because the darkness was so total and John's voice was just a disembodied vibration fluttering around his head. 

            "Well, I need to know where you are," Scott said.  "So you need to keep talking."

            "There's not a whole lot of air down here," John said.

            Scott stopped for a moment.  That had never occurred to him.  The complete and total idiocy of this venture hit him over the head once more.  He was supposed to be the sensible one, the one who was supposed to keep his brothers out of trouble and in one piece.  Virgil had shown more sense this entire time, and Scott had called him chicken.  If anything happened to John because of him…Scott pushed himself forward. 

            "Okay, John," he heard himself say.  "You just hang on, and let me know when it sounds like I'm close to you."

            "Okay," John said.  "You keep talking."

            Scott braced himself his hands and slowed down more to stop himself from sliding.  The incline was increasing much faster than he expected.  Maybe John had just lost his grip and slid.  "What do you want to talk about?"

            John started laughing, and then shouted, "Don't make me laugh, Scott!  I'm not kidding!"

            "I'm really not trying to make you laugh," Scott said.  He could hear John laughing in response.

            "That wasn't even funny," Scott said.

            "Shut up!" John said.  He was still laughing. 

            Scott's boots were sliding a little on the floor, and he was bracing  himself as hard as he could, slowing his descent down to a minute crawl.  The tunnel was a long black tube of forever.  He cursed himself for ever coming up with this idea.

            "Virgil!" He yelled.  "You okay?"

            "Yeah!  Fine!"  Virgil's voice sounded high and strained.

            John laughed some more.

            "John, you're freaking me out a little," Scott said.  He had seen John do this a few times – last year, at school, a student had been killed in a drunk driving accident.  There was a solemn assembly to tell the students, and John, who knew the student fairly well, had to leave the auditorium because he couldn't make himself stop laughing.

            "Sorry," John said. 

            The tunnel was now so steep that Scott was inching down, and gripping the walls hard with the palms of his hands.  He was aware of the rope digging into his waist…and then he stopped.  He had reached the end of the line.