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shouting through a walkie-talkie and saw the herky-jerky movement of a flashlight in the hands of someone at a dead run. Tom took a quick right and I followed him, into a room that was litwith green and red lights, a room whose theme I remembered from a past school trip as having something to do with a pile of rocks shaped like a Christmas tree. Through that room and into the next: we ran directly toward the dusty coffin of Squire Boone, propped up on what looked like sawhorses, when Tom took another sharp turn. We splashed across a shallow, slow stream—I wondered what the sad blind fish might think of the commotion—and into the safety of an unlit, untraveled passageway, where deep, loose gravel made running tough. I knew the tour guides would hesitate before following us this far off the path. I also knew from Tom’s speed that he must have had some notion of where he was going. I trusted him completely; his sense of direction in the caves was uncanny.
    We ran like scalded dogs up the path, until I saw narrow lines of light ahead of us, the unmistakable, welcoming brightness of natural sunlight. The two lines of light intersected at a perfect right angle, a beacon of something that had to be man-made. We got closer and I saw that the light outlined a metal door set into the rock by some enterprising cave owner, an attempt at keeping nonpaying customers like us out. It was not, however, designed to keep anyone in. Tom and I hit the door with our shoulders at the same time and it flew open, hurling us into the blinding sunlight, the heat, and the blanketing humidity.
    We slammed the door behind us and quickly assessed the situation. We were alone, for the moment. Tom and I ran to the top of a low ridge to get a better look at the landscape and to figure out exactly where we were. We saw the tall knobs in the distance, heard traffic on Highway 60, and saw the slightest discoloration of sunset on the westernsky. We knew that the Ohio River, and beyond that Kentucky, must be just over the next ridgeline. A small aluminum fishing boat with a Kentucky license sticker on its bow was turned over by the cave door, another indication that the big river was nearby. As we ran by the boat, we stopped long enough to lift it up, to confirm that there were good oars stored beneath it, and that it looked generally river-worthy. Despite our mad rush, taking inventory of a discovery that valuable in the woods came automatically.
    Having fixed our position in the woods, we ran all the way back to my house, staying off the roads and hidden in the trees because of Tom’s pants-less condition. At my house, both cars were in the driveway, meaning both Mom and Dad were home, which I still wasn’t used to at this early hour. Tom and I snuck in the back door when I heard Mom vacuuming in front. We didn’t have to sneak by any siblings—to my perpetual dismay, I was an only child, a rarity in a land of sprawling German-Catholic clans. In my room, Tom put on a pair of my pants and old sneakers over his orange-stained socks. Tom’s pants and shoes, I knew, would be forever preserved in the cave, or at least until disturbed by another reckless boy or some wondering archaeologist centuries in the future.
    I walked with Tom to the intersection of Cabin Hill Road and our driveway, the relief from having gotten away unscathed starting to settle in. I saw a turkey hop deeper into the woods as we approached, effectively disappearing into the green. Had it been winter, after the leaves fell and the scrub died off, we could have watched that turkey run for a thousand yards, and followed its tracks in the snow for miles. We could have seen right through the trees down toHighway 60, perhaps even to the black smudge on the road where the Chrysler had burned. It was August, though, and the woods were choked with vegetation; the turkey could feel secure. I couldn’t even see the deep gorge that marked our property line, barely a half mile away.
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