Newshawk’s Crawl
by Ollie Swasey
part 1
Marlin Fletcher was not the sort of man to balk at the last minute. For ten years he had built a career on the follow-through — the deciding and then the doing — where most men would rather stand and watch. He wasn’t afraid to get dirty, to get banged up, to get down on his hands and knees and crawl on his belly to get what he wanted. Waiting for it to end and reporting on the aftermath was last-century stuff. What the people of today wanted, what Marlin needed, was the story as it happened, the unimaginable recorded in real time and printed coast-to-coast with his name at the top. Credit, as always, where it’s due.
“Hold on, Marlin,” said Glen, Marlin’s editor. “I gotta take a breather.”
“Sure thing, pal.”
They stopped halfway up the hill, and Glen sat down heavily on a chunk of granite flecked with lichen. Both of them were sweating in the tricky weather of early autumn, golden late-afternoon sun beaming at them slantwise through the yellowing trees.
While Glen caught his breath, Marlin bent down and inspected the cuffs of his trousers. Barely a mile trek out from the road, and they were already dirty with mud from last night’s rain. What a pain in the ass, he thought, kicking himself for not packing the ones with the patch on the seat. At least those trousers he wouldn’t miss. “Doin’ alright over there, Glen?”
“Catching up,” he replied. Glen had finally stopped wheezing. Sweat wetted down the sparse hair around his ears, darkened the underarms and middle-back of his checked shirt. Marlin took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and handed it to Glen, who mopped his brow with it gratefully.
“Are you still sure,” Glen said, “that you want to go through with this?”
“You keep asking that like you’re expecting me to change my mind.”
“They said it’s a tough squeeze.” Glen raised his eyebrows, pleating the moist skin of his forehead. “Maybe tougher than you’ve done before.”
“Oh, I heard ’em,” Marlin said with a little smirk. “Why do you think I skipped supper last night?”
Glen met his attempt at levity with silence. A gust of wind rustled a clump of dying leaves somewhere overhead. Marlin sighed.
“Look,” he said, “I know you think this is too much for me, but you have to remember where I’ve been before. Down the mineshaft in Beckley, under the beams at the Knickerbocker, up in a tree with a goddamn pussycat. Nothing shakes me, Glen.”
Glen put up his hands. “I know, I know. All I’m saying is, the situation is unstable. Even the rescue crew’s getting weak at the knees. Said they need to put in some struts if they’re gonna make a good effort to pull him out.”
“If they wait to put in struts, he’ll die in there. I want the story before he croaks, not after.”
“You’ll get it either way.”
“Yeah, but, Glen, I want it from him. Come on,” said Marlin. “I wanna get there before the sun goes down.”
Glen sighed. Then he got up, and they carried on.
They saw the crowd before they saw the hole. More than a hundred heads by Marlin’s guess, milling around eating sandwiches like they had nowhere else to be. This late in the day, he’d have thought it would be more solemn, vigil-like, but the atmosphere was closer to a holiday picnic. Little family groups laughed and joked in their Sunday best while a handful of kids chased each other around, shrieking with delight, kicking up clouds of orange leaves. And all the while, under their feet, the man they came to see lay alone in the stony darkness.
As Glen and Marlin crested the hill, a thick-chested man with a push-broom mustache caught sight of them and lumbered over. His starched navy jacket was buttoned tightly over his middle, and a police badge glinted a spark of sun directly into Marlin’s eye.
“Gentlemen,” said the constable in a phlegmy baritone, “unless you’re here to assist in the rescue effort, I think we have enough bystanders for the time being.”
“I can see that, sir, but not to worry,” said Marlin cordially, “we aren’t spectators.” He stuck out his hand. “Marlin Fletcher, lead reporter for the Manassas News & Messenger. This is my editor, Glen Weeks.”
The officer took his hand. The officer’s palm was soft and damp, but the grip was firm. “Mr. Fletcher. I believe I read your story on the Pickwick disaster last year. Well done, very well done.”
“Thank you, sir. All part of the job. I’m here to report on the situation for the Sunday edition. I’d like to climb down there and speak with him personally, if that would be amenable to you. Oh, and could I please have your name? For the paper, of course.” He withdrew a pen and pad, offered it to the cop so he could write it down. The surest way to get the fuzz to bend some rules was the promise of a personal mention in print.
While the officer preened and penned his name, Glen shot Marlin a look.
* * *
Over drinks in the dining car earlier that day, Glen had asked him, “What do you get out of this, huh? Don’t you ever worry about impeding the rescue? Why not just write the story from solid ground?”
Marlin could only shrug. “Look, interviewing folks who aren’t in any danger doesn’t sell papers. Old missus so-and-so from up the road isn’t gonna have anything interesting to say, she’s just here ’cause her church group moved the potluck. I know what the people want, Glen, and I only write stories people want to read.” He took a slug of his scotch. “And you know what’s great about doing stories like these?”
“What?”
A smile. “They can’t get away from me.”
* * *
“There you are, Mr. Fletcher,” said the officer, handing back the notepad. “One of our rescue workers is coming up now, assessing the situation. Once he’s out, he’ll have more information for you, and then things will be clear for you to go down. I’ll have someone find you a lamp so you can see where you’re going.”
“Thank you very much, sir. May we see the cave entrance now?”
“Right this way, gentlemen.”
When the cave came into view, Marlin saw right away that Glen had heard correctly; it would be a tough squeeze, all right. The mouth of the cave was small, maybe two feet across and half as tall, tucked away on the western face of the hillside in a jumble of moss-crusted boulders. Easy to miss, unless you were looking for it.
Cold air issued from the entrance in a steady stream like a long, exhaled breath. The darkness beyond was thick and complete. A little noise came from the opening, the sounds of equipment and oilcloth scraping against stone: the rescuer on his way back out.
“Wait right here, if you please,” said the officer. “I’ll be back in just a moment.” He trundled back towards the crowd of picnickers.
Once he was gone, Glen turned to Marlin. “I’m gonna be straight with you, Marlin,” he said. “I don’t think you should do this. It’s not too late to back out.”
Marlin scoffed. “And what, let Jimmy Prescott run some nonsense above the fold? I’m a reporter, Glen. I report the news. If the news is down that hole, then I’ve got to go down there and get it. Anyway, it’d be a sore waste of a train ticket to leave here empty-handed, don’t you think?”
“I’d rather leave empty-handed and eat the damn tickets than let you go down there in the dark,” Glen said. His doughy face darkened. “What did I say at Beckley, after the secondary cave-in?”
Marlin sighed and looked away. “You said, ‘I told you so.’”
“That’s right,” he said, “I did tell you. I said, ‘Marlin, you idiot, cave-ins are never just one collapse.’ I said it before you went in, and I said it after you came out. You got lucky, is what you did.” Glen thrust a finger at him. “You wanna keep spinning the wheel? You feel that lucky?”
“But this isn’t a cave-in, Glen! This is one guy goes in, backs into the wrong passage, can’t get out ’cause he gets stuck. We’re not talking about a mining accident this time; we’re talking solid rock.”
“Oh, is that so? Then why are all the rescuers shaking in their boots, calling timber companies from here to Richmond looking for lumber to keep this place from collapsing?” Glen stopped suddenly, fumbling for Marlin’s handkerchie, which he scrubbed over his perspiring face. They were silent for a moment, eyes not meeting, instead gazing off at the rolling forest as the dusklight faded from orange to purple, and the sun disappeared beyond the farthest hill. Finally, Glen said, “I know I can’t stop you. But as your friend, I’m asking you to reconsider. I have a bad feeling about this.”
Marlin stuffed his hands in his pockets and picked at the seam inside, pretending to think about it, but there was no changing his mind. Glen could beg all he wanted, but come Sunday when the ink was dry, Marlin knew what he’d say: “Gee, Marlin, I’m so glad you didn’t let me talk you out of getting the big scoop. This piece sure is something. Say, when’s your dinner with the President again?”
In lieu of a response, Marlin knelt down — the trousers were a lost cause, anyhow — and peered into the entrance of the cave. The sounds of the worker on his way out were closer now. Then, a flicker of light struck the stones, and a pair of thick gloves gripped the edge of the passage. The reporter shuffled back from the opening, watching strangely rapt as someone emerged, grunting and huffing as he dragged himself back onto the surface.
“Damn, that’s tight,” the man muttered as he made ground. “Goddamn.” He took off the miner’s cap he was wearing and put the light out with a gloved thumb before setting it in the grass. His hand left a streak of grime across his forehead when he pushed a sweat-soaked lock of hair away from his face. Finally, he got to his feet and, for the first time, looked at Marlin and Glen, as if only just noticing their presence. “Somethin’ I can help you boys with?”
“Hello, sir,” said Marlin, instantly forgetting the argument, “I’m reporting on this situation for the News & Messenger. Can you describe the predicament our man is in down there?” Marlin reached into his jacket, found a pad and pen and held them at the ready.
There was a hesitation as the rescue worker squinted at Marlin, as if he were trying to guess his intentions. “Well,” he said after a moment, “he’s been down’ere about two days now. I guess he went in lookin’ to chart these tunnels, but he pushed himself into this sort of” — he made shapes with his hands, holding the palms parallel to each other — “this low, skinny squeeze, see, and then he got ’round a bend he can’t quite turn back from. Got wedged in some place goin’ forwards, but can’t go back, else he’ll break his legs backwards.”
“And why not pull him out with ropes?”
“Like I said, he’ll break his legs, make him harder to move. Liable to kill him that way,” the man said matter-of-factly. “Assessin’ the situation now, and it’s lookin’ like we’ll need to start diggin’ another shaft to break through into where he is.”
“I see, I see.” Marlin’s pen streaked across one page, flip, then another. “How far is he from the entrance, would you say? Has he been able to eat or drink?”
“Best we’ve been able to do so far is sort of push a wet rag up to him with a stick for him to drink, but he’s in a bad way. Through that first stretch there’s a pretty big room and, near the bottom of that, is the passage he’s in. About sixty feet down the squeeze, you see his boots. That’s the closest we’ve got to him yet.”
“That’s just horrible. I’ll go down there straight away and see what aid I can offer to him in the moment.”
“Go down there?” The man stood at last, brushing dust from his clothes. “No, no. No one else is goin’ down there till we get some struts in place.”
“Really?” Marlin said innocently. “We just spoke with the officer managing the scene, and I was given the go-ahead.”
A dark cloud passed over the caver’s face. “He don’t know what he’s talking about. ’Scuse me, gentlemen. I need to have a few words with him.” He stalked off in the direction they’d come from.
Marlin stripped his jacket off, dropped to his knees and grabbed the miner’s hat from the grass.
“What are you doing?!” Glen hissed.
Copyright © 2025 by Ollie Swasey
