Dénouement

Sorry! I know it has been EONS since I have written, and you have all probably given up hope for poor Penny.

Or, heck, simply forgotten who she is.

I have some time right now to sit down and catch you up.

Our family rotates hosting Thanksgiving Dinner every year, and this year the dinner is at my mother in law’s. All I have to do is bring the wine, my famous Emeril’s Cranberry Orange Sassy Sauce (well, I don’t think that’s what it is really called, but whatever), and my Aunt Julia’s pumpkin bread that my daughter graciously volunteered to bake, as I loathe baking. We don’t have to be there until 4:00, so I have some free time between the Macy’s Day Parade and Turkey Gronk Fest.

In case you have forgotten where our fearless spelunkers were when I left off, I will take you back to the final scene of my last installment….

* * * *
All of a sudden my flashlight started to waver and then dim. I shook it and banged it on my free hand. It got brighter for a moment, and then it started wavering again.

And then, boom, just like that, it went out.

And Penny let out one of the most blood curling screams I have ever heard.

It scared the crap out of me and made me jump about a foot in the air. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Penny! Stop it!” I glared at her in the darkness.

“It’s dark! I can’t see anything!” Penny wailed. “We’re all gonna dieeeeeeeeee….”

“We are NOT going to die,” I said. “Ben, where are you?”

“Right here,” he said.

“Are you near Penny?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Well, can’t you find her and slap some sense into her?”

“You are SOOOOO mean!” Penny wailed.

“Well, you are SOOOO loud!” I retorted. “Jesus, your screaming is not going to solve anything. In fact, it will probably cause a cave in or something and then we will really be trapped.”

“Oh, NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

“Penny. Here. Stop yelling,” Ben said. “Just hold my hand. It will be all right.”

“Yeah, hold Ben’s hand. So, we don’t lose you in the dark and leave you here by mistake.”

“Oh, my God! Please don’t LEAVE me heeeeeerrrre!!!”

“Shhhh… she’s not serious. We would never leave you here. But you need to stop screaming.” Ben was annoyingly reassuring.

“Yeah, you might wake up the bats or something.”

“BATS?!?”

“Stop making her upset!” Ben sounded angry.

“Yeah, yeah. All right. All right. I’m just trying to get my bearings so we can feel our way out of here.”

“What do you mean ‘feel our way out of here’?”

“Well, if we just find the wall of the cave, we can follow it to the entrance. The only problem is….”

“What?”

“Well, when the flashlight died and Penny started screaming, I was startled and turned around a few times and now I’m not really sure which way is in and which way is out.”

“Ohhhh, nooooooo….” Penny started whimpering.

“Well, I haven’t turned around at all,” Ben said. “I was right behind Penny and she’s still in front of me. So, we just need to keep going in that direction.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Ben sounded sure. I wasn’t really sure if he was sure or if he was just sounding sure so Penny wouldn’t freak out again.

“I don’t think we are very far from the entrance. So, we should start to see light coming from there pretty soon.”

I didn’t add that if we went a while and we didn’t see daylight, then that would mean we were going the wrong way and would have to turn around and head the other way.

(The only thing I was really worried about was that it would be night time pretty soon and we wouldn’t see light no matter which way we went in the tunnel. But I didn’t want to get the others worried about that possibility.)

I found Ben and Penny in the darkness and then reached out my right arm to find the side of the tunnel. My hand brushed up against the cold, damp stone wall, and I took a deep breath.

“OK, guys. This is it. Let’s go!”

“See, Penny,” Ben said. “Stay with me and follow her, and we’ll be outta here in no time.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I really had no idea which direction we were going, to tell you the truth. But it seemed like a good idea to do something.

To keep moving.

We were moving very slowly, because it was inky darkness, and I was afraid of tripping over something or bumping into… something. I wasn’t sure what. And tried not to let my imagination go wild.

“Hey!” Penny said. “What’s that?”

“What?”

“Shhhh! That sound. In the distance. Don’t you hear it?”

All I could hear was my own breathing and the faint dripping of water from the ceiling.

“That!” said Penny. “Didn’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?” Ben asked.

“It sounds like… like… yelling from really far, far away.”

And then I heard it, too. Muffled yells. I couldn’t tell what the words were, but it sounded human at least.

“We’re in here!” Penny shouted at the top of her lungs.

“WE’RE IN HERE!!!” All three of us shouted at the tops of our lungs.

And then we saw a dim light bobbing in the distance.

We moved as quickly as we could towards the faint light.

And then I saw a huge, dark shadow looming behind the dim light.

Oh, God, it was a bear! I just knew it.

Never mind that there weren’t supposed to be bears in this area. Or that bears don’t generally use artificial lights.

“Nick!” Penny shouted with glee.

“Penny!” the dark form shouted back. “Where are you guys? It’s so dark in here.”

And then I could make out his frame and saw the white stripes on his shirt. He was carrying a penlight, the kind people keep on their key chains to help them find the door lock when it is dark outside.

I felt a tremendous surge of relief.

We were not going to die afterall!

“What are you guys doing in here in the dark?” Nick said.

“What are you doing here, period?” Ben asked. “I thought your parents said you weren’t allowed to go into any caves.”

“I’m not. But I got bored and came out here to look for you guys. And then I found your stuff out by the entrance to the cave. I just sat down on a log and was going to wait for you guys to come back out. But then I waited and I waited. And you weren’t coming.”

“Our flashlights all died!” Penny said.

“Yeah, we were in total darkness, man,” Ben said.

“But what made you come in?” I asked. “Even though you weren’t supposed to?”

“I heard a really high-pitched noise from inside the cave. And I realized it was somebody screaming. I shouted and shouted but nobody answered back. But I knew it was… was….”

“A call of distress?” I asked.

“Yes! I knew you guys still had to be inside, and it had to be one of you. I was afraid somebody got hurt or something.”

“So, you just came looking for us?”

“Yes.”

‘Well, thank God you did!” Penny hugged Nick. “You saved us!”

“Well….”

“You’re a hero, dude.” Ben agreed.

“Yes, I have to say that it was really lucky that you had that pocket flashlight on you,” I admitted.

“Yeah, well, I had our spare house keys, and it just happened to be on there. And actually still work. But it is pretty tiny.”

“Big enough to find us!” Penny said.

“You know, it's lucky I came all the way out here,” Nick said. “I mean, you know….”

“We would have found our way out. Eventually,” I said. “But thanks.”

“Yeah, I don’t think it was such a good idea that you guys went in there without better flashlights or extra batteries or a ball of string or something.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “But next time –“

“NEXT TIME?!? Are you NUTS???” Penny glared at me. “I’m not ever, ever, ever going in that stupid cave ever again!”

“Well, you won’t have to,” I said.

But I knew I would be.

And I knew, with even more conviction, that this tunnel was the one that would take us all the way under the river.

Don’t ask me why or how I knew, but I just did. I felt it in my bones.

The three of us were all muddy and wet from being in the cave. We looked kind of like drowned rats. Or contestants in a Tide commercial.

We gathered all our stuff together and started to head back home. I was already planning how we would sneak into our basement so I could wash all our muddy clothes without my mom knowing.

Penny walked up to Nick and yanked on his arm. “Here,” she said.

“What?” Nick turned around.

Penny slipped something into Nick’s hand.

“What is it?” Ben asked.

Nick opened up his hand to reveal a shiny, copper-colored coin.

“What’s this for?” he asked.

“Silly,” Penny blushed. “It’s your reward.”

“You don’t have to give me a reward.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“A penny’s not very much of a reward,” Ben said.

“Yeah, well, it’s my lucky penny. I carry it with me everywhere. And now it’s Nick’s.”

And so we come to the moral of our story:

A Penny saved is a penny earned.

Happy Thanksgiving!