To hear Belinda tell it you would think the seven of them had always
meant to stay below the surface of the earth, that in tunneling out of
prison together they had done no different than they would have above
ground and outside the barbed-wire fence if they had been there instead.
Her determination inspired Eliot, who had tumbled in on the loamy ex-cons
one morning while attempting to uproot a tree in his backyard and chose to
travel with them, but it did not entirely convince him. "We got too close
that day," Belinda often said to him; "I consider you a warning. A reminder
to stay low." Ostensibly, they were headed to Taos.
    Life underground agreed with Eliot. They had nothing to occupy time
with but conversation and the constant physical work of pushing the tunnel
wall forward, and yet the food wasn't bad when they found any, and the
times when music boomed through the earth from above could cheer everyone
up for days. Rock music actually survived the downward journey best; techno
was unfulfilling.

    A raspy clank, metal against stone, announced that they had come to
some obstruction. Belinda's reckoning put them neat Denver; Eliot, once a
surveyor, would have said Boulder, but no one asked. Speculation among the
four who were off-shift about what the blockage could be began as the four
with shovels tried to widen the tunnel to see.
    Mary, the mildest among them, had guessed right: it was the base of a
crypt, and they were in a cemetery. All at once the diggers began jabbing
at the ceiling while their three compatriots looked on in awe. Only Eliot
stood back, confused.
    Two hours later they ascended to a cloudless, windless night. Even with
the moon only half-full, they all squinted and shielded their eyes against
the light. "What's going on?" asked Eliot. Only Mary seemed to heat; she
put an arm around his shoulders for a moment and said, "We're
superstitious. Let it be."
    The women, still clad in prison orange, leapt from one spot to another,
laughing at some tombstones and sighing at others. A sign that Eliot nearly
tripped over, his eyes still adjusting, explained it to him: "Greater
Mountain Region Joint Penal System Burial Center. Trespassers prohibited.
Remains may not be transported to or from this property without
certificate." Then the laughs turned to gasps, accompanied by deep moans of
lamentation.
    "We found her," Belinda shouted, waving Eliot near. "We found her. This
is Bunny from Reno. She was one of us." Eliot didn't recognize the given
name carved in the stone, but the monument was fresh. "She lost it after
we'd been digging for a month, right around Easter. Tore off her pants and
just started rolling in the dirt. We couldn't move her, so we left her."
    "How'd she get here?" Eliot asked.
    Belinda looked grim. "It means they knew. They knew about us and they
never did a thing to stop us." After a moment this sank in. "They knew!
It's done! We're free!" Wide-eyed, they instantly began making plans for
the future. Pammy spoke darkly and jubilantly of trashing the "suck-ass"
golf course the city had built by her old home while she'd been inside.
Belinda herself swore to go straight, reeling off a dream of finding her
old flame and taking him out to dinner on hard-earned wages. "No more
swindling," she said, "and no goddamn Dutch treat! I'm going to make it."
    "The plan!" Eliot exclaimed; "Taos. Stay low. What happened?"
    Mary looked up at him. She had taken two fistfuls of aromatic fall
leaves and pressed them to her face, pulling the smell deep into her lungs
with each breath. "Go home," she said, "or just get out of here. But go."

written for Tess in my room 8/16/03

This felt like a flop from the start, though I held on as long as I could. The degree of irreality is left vague, which causes practical problems, like the question of how far and how fast they're digging. The introduction of a notional penal-system employee that might have been following the escapees and dragged their fallen comrade away to bury her complicates an already-confusing setup.

I do remember that on rereading it I thought there was one thing I'd done well, but I can't remember what.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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