LESLIE EPSTEIN
57
front of my brother. He grinned, his teeth a flash of white. Then, so that
I could hear the sound from where I stood in the door jamb, he hic–
cuped. And immediately hiccuped again.
"Come in, Arthur," said Barrie.
The black man dropped the stick and stumbled forward. He braced
himself in the frame of the doorway.
r
could smell his sweat, along with
the unmistakable fumes of alcohol. Hiccuping still, he stepped inside
and dropped onto the bed. Barton followed, closing the door. The cele–
bration continued on the far side of the road.
"Look at this fool I went and married," said Mary. "Went to a party.
Got hisself drunk."
.
IV
THE NEXT MORNING WE WERE among the first in line at the visitor cen–
ter. Arthur, chagrined, bought the tickets. I read the brochures while we
waited for the elevators. I told the others that not so long ago we 'd have
had to descend in a guano bucket.
"Guano,
that's bat doo-doo," I said.
Mary said, "I don't feature seeing no bats."
We went down to the Big Room and wandered among the illumi–
nated formations, the Lion's Tail, the Sword of Damocles, and the rest.
" Looks just like Miss Lotte's glass chandelier," Mary said, pointing
up at the collection of stalactites that hung, like our dining room fixture,
from the roof of the ca vern.
After a half hour or so we gathered in the Hall of Giants. I began to
feel light-headed, perhaps from the strain of staring upward, the blood
pooling at the back of my head; perhaps because I could not tell whether
the enormous columns were stalactites that had grown down or stalag–
mites that had pushed up or a combination of both; or else it was the
dinner we'd missed and the breakfast we'd gulped on the run. In any
case, the towering pillars seemed to be doing a dance in the light from
dozens of flashbulbs, and, at the same time, I thought I heard a voice
saying my name: "Jacobi? The Jacobi party, Jacobi?"
It
was a uniformed ranger. He walked up to Arthur. "I'm sorry, but
you'll have to come to the surface."
My first thought was that Negroes were not allowed in the monu–
ment. But my brother knew better. He said, "It's Norman. It's an emer–
gency about Norman. Barrie knows."
The ranger said, "I believe it is an emergency, yes."
When we arrived aboveground Arthur and Mary left us outdoors
while they went into the visitor center. I was amazed to see the man
from the Muscalero Motel leaning against the cab of a red pick-up.
