Mango Digger Read online

  With my hands occupied trying to keep from going deaf, I wasn't able to clear the fog off the windshield and almost missed seeing a faint flicker of light in the woods. It was off to our left and I wasn't really sure if I'd seen the light or not. It could have been lightning in the distance or a strange reflection off the Jeep's headlights.

  I leaned into the windshield and wiped a circle with my sleeve. Looking out, I saw the light again. A faint beam moving through the woods.

  I pointed to it and said, “Abby, you see that? There's someone out there.”

  Not waiting for an answer, I opened the door and went back out in the rain and mud, heading toward the light. Someone was coming down Crystal Mountain, flashlight in hand and I wanted to see who it was.

  I turned back to Abby, who was still inside the Jeep and yelled, “Honk the horn.”

  I only had to say it once. She laid on the horn and, with me standing just in front of it, I learned firsthand how loud it actually was. Way more than would be legal in most civilized countries.

  Instinctively, I covered my ears, blocking out some of the noise. I turned back to face Abby and shook my head, hoping she understood I wanted her to get off the horn.

  Thankfully, she got the message.

  I turned back to where I had seen the light and, just as I did, I saw someone stumble out of the woods onto the road.

  I couldn't tell if it was Kat or not. The height was right, but without getting closer I wouldn't know for sure; I went over to check.

  As I got close, I could see it was a woman. Wet from head to toe. Shivering. Unable to speak. But it wasn't Kat.

  I ran up to her and said, “We're here to help. The Jeep over there, it's dry and warm inside. Follow me.”

  The woman hesitated, seeing a stranger on the cold wet mountain wasn't what she expected. But she was cold and tired, and the warmth of the Jeep sounded better than standing in the rain.

  I ran to it, and she followed. When we got there, she again hesitated. She wasn't sure she wanted to get into the Jeep with a strange man. I opened the driver's side passenger door and pointed to the seat. The woman shook her head and looked at her own car. She was trying to decide which would be safest.

  Abby saw her indecision and called out to her. “Get in and get dry.”

  The woman, hearing Abby's voice, took a seat and I closed the door behind her. I ran to the other side of the Jeep, intending to get in the back seat next to her. But Abby stepped out and stopped me. She said, “Might be better if I did it.”

  She was probably right. Our guest might feel more comfortable with a woman sitting beside her than a man, so Abby got in the back and I took her place up front. I watched as she wrapped the woman in a blanket and held her hand while telling her everything was going to be all right.

  The woman, who had been crying when I found her, tried to speak but was unable to. She could only grunt. Looking around, she saw the bottles of water and pointed at one and then at her mouth. It was easy to figure out what she wanted.

  Abby grabbed a bottle and handed it to her. The woman took it without hesitation, twisted off the top and took a long drink. She closed her eyes, leaned her head back and shook some of the rain water from her hair.

  She took another sip and after a moment spoke the first words she said since we'd found her. She said, “Ccccoooldd.”

  Abby turned to me and said, “Put the heater on high. Let's warm it up in here.”

  The Jeep's motor had been running since we stopped, and it didn't take long for it to start blowing warm air. As soon as the woman in the back felt the heat flowing from the front vents, she smiled and nodded.

  A few minutes later, she spread her arms, loosening the blanket that had been wrapped around her. She took another sip of water and asked, “Whaaaaat time is it?”

  Abby, who wasn't wearing a watch, answered. “After nine.”

  The woman shook her head and said, “I need to call my husband. He'll be worried.”

  I pulled out my phone and looked at the display. Abby had been right. It was after nine. But we weren’t going to be making any calls. The phone showed zero bars.

  I showed it to her and she nodded. She asked the woman, “Are you out here alone? Anyone else with you?”

  “No. Just me. No one else.”

  She looked over and saw the Burger King bag. Abby noticed and said, “We have apple pie. Would you like it?”

  The woman nodded.

  Abby handed her the pie along with the plastic fork it came with. But the woman didn't use the fork; she pulled the pie out of the little box and gobbled it down. When she was done, she wiped the crumbs and apple juice from around her mouth and said, “Thank you—for the food, the water and for finding me. I was lost up there, I couldn’t find my way back to the road.”

  She reached for the door. She wanted to get out but couldn't figure out how to open it.

  Abby stopped her. “You don't want to go out there. Stay in here, where it's warm.”

  The woman shook her head. “I can't stay. I've got to go back. My husband will be worried.”

  “Your husband? Is he up on the mountain? Is that why you need to go back?”

  She shook her head. “No, he's not up there. He's at our condo in the Village. He'll be worried I haven't called or returned.”

  Abby nodded. “I understand. But your car is stuck in the mud, and it's not going anywhere. We'll take you back to your husband if you want us to.”

  The woman looked out the window at her car and asked, “Will it be okay to leave it here?”

  Abby nodded. “Yeah, it'll be okay. But if there is anything in it you're worried about, we can it take it with us.”

  The woman smiled and in a weak voice said, “I know this sounds silly, but I worked too hard finding those crystals to leave them here. I need to take them with me.”

  She reached for the door, but again Abby stopped her. “You don't need to go out in the rain. He'll get the crystals for you.”

  She tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Go.”

  I was already wet and muddy and getting back out in the rain to get the crystals wasn't going to change anything. I took a deep breath, pushed the door open and trudged through ankle deep mud to get to the passenger side of the woman's car. Just as I reached it, the car's headlights flashed and the doors unlocked. Looking back toward the Jeep, I could see the woman holding up the car's remote. She'd unlocked the doors for me.

  I opened the front and grabbed the basket of crystals, the ones that had been carefully wrapped in newspaper. I figured these were the ones she wanted. I carried the basket back to the Jeep, opened the front passenger door, and put it on the seat.

  I went back to the car, grabbed the basket from the rear seat, brought it back to the Jeep and put it in on the front passenger side floorboard. Then I went to the driver's side of the Jeep, shook off as much wet as I could and took a seat behind the wheel. Abby wouldn't be happy with the thick globs of wet mud I'd tracked in; but she could worry about that later.

  As soon as I got in, she tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Walker, I want you to meet Haley.”

  I turned and smiled, and said, “Good to meet you. Looks like you had some luck digging crystals.”

  Her eyes lit up. “It’s amazing up there. Everywhere you look, there's crystals. Nice ones. I started finding phantoms and double terminated points, and I couldn't stop.”

  Abby tapped me on the shoulder. “Think you can get us back to the highway without wrecking?”

  I was pretty sure I could. The hardest part would be finding a place to turn around on the narrow dirt road. But the Jeep was fairly small and it wouldn't need much space.

  Since I was already sitting in the driver's seat, I put the Jeep in first and pulled around Haley's car. There was a wide spot in front of it where others had parked and I used it to get the Jeep turned around.

  As we passed back by Haley's car, she said, “I don't feel right leaving it here. It's a rental. If anythin
g happens to it, I’ll have to pay extra.”

  Abby said, “Don't worry about it. Your car will be fine. You can come back and get it in the morning. Right now, we need to get you off the mountain so you can call your husband.”

  Haley understood. Her car could wait.

  I drove slowly, trying to follow the tracks we'd made when we came in. Rain had filled most of them, but the mud hadn't gotten much deeper. It looked like the dirt road had been built on a solid rock base. Our tires plowed through the mud and gained traction on the hard surface below.

  As I drove, I could hear Haley in the back seat explaining how she and her husband had won a timeshare vacation at Hot Springs Village. They had come up from Mississippi to check the place out. After sitting through the mandatory sales pitch, she decided she wanted to go to the nearby mine to dig crystals. Her husband volunteered to go with her, but she knew he'd rather stay in the condo and watch TV, so she went alone.

  She took their rental car to the mine where she met a man who told her about Crystal Mountain and the Crystal Cave. He showed her some crystals and said she could find ones like his up there. The man's crystals were so nice and his story so intriguing, she paid him twenty dollars for a map showing how to get to Crystal Mountain.

  She had followed the directions, had parked where he said to park and had found crystals where he said they'd be. But she hadn't found the Crystal Cave.

  When she paused, Abby asked her, “Did you see anyone else up there?”

  Haley thought for a moment then said, “I did. Another woman. She was there when I got there. She showed me some of the crystals she had and told me where she had found them. She was real nice but didn't stay long. I heard a car leave about twenty minutes after I saw her. I think it was hers.”

  Abby nodded. “Did she say where she was staying or where she was going next?”

  Haley shook her head. “We talked about crystals, not much else. She did say something about another mine. I think she called it the Surrender Mine. I don't know if she'd already been there or was going there next. I was so excited about the crystals I was finding that I really didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying.”

  Abby nodded. “What did she look like?”

  Haley squinted, “She was big. Probably six foot tall. Frizzy, red hair. Wearing overalls. You'd remember her if you saw her. She a friend of yours?”

  Abby shook her head. “No. The one we’re looking for is not that tall. Just barely over five foot. Dark hair, cut short. You didn't see her up on the mountain?”

  Haley shook her head. “No, I didn't see her. Just the tall redhead.”

  Abby said nothing for a moment then asked, “What about the guy?”

  Haley cocked her head. “What guy?”

  “Wasn't there a guy up there? After the woman left?”

  She thought for a moment then said, “You're right! There was a guy. But he wasn't digging crystals. He was looking for a cat. It was the strangest thing.

  “I was coming down the mountain to load some crystals into my car, and there was this guy. He was standing by my car window, looking in.”

  “I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was looking for a cat. I didn't know why he thought there'd be a cat in my car, but there wasn't one, and I told him so.

  “He didn't look dangerous or anything, but you never know these days. I told him my husband was right behind me and wouldn't like the idea of a stranger messing with our car.

  “He apologized and left. But it was strange; he kept calling out for his cat. He kept yelling, “Cat,” over and over, like he expected his cat to hear him and come running.”

  Abby nodded. “This guy, what was he driving?”

  Haley shook her head. “He wasn't driving anything as far as I could tell. He was walking. I figured he was part of the Rainbow crowd. Their camp is on the other side of the mountain.

  “He looked like he could have been one of them. Long hair, unshaven, dirty clothes. Up here on the mountain on foot. I almost felt sorry for him. And his cat.

  “I probably should have loaded up my car right then and left. That would have been the smart thing to do. I'd already found a lot of nice crystals and I was getting tired. It looked like rain so I should have left right then.

  “But I didn't. Instead of leaving, I went back up the mountain. I couldn't help myself. The crystals up there are so nice. I was still finding them when the rain came. When it got heavy, I came down to my car and tried to leave. But it got stuck. The tires just spun in the mud.

  “Instead of doing the smart thing and staying in the car, I went back up the mountain to get more crystals.”

  She put her hands on her rain flattened hair and sighed. “I should have left before the rain started.”

  She was right. She should have got off the mountain before the rain started. But if she had, we wouldn't have found her, or learned about the redheaded woman or the guy looking for his cat.

  By the time we reached the highway, the rain had let up and we had a cell signal. Haley called her husband and let him know she was okay and he was relieved to hear her voice. He said he'd be waiting for us at the Hot Springs Village gate.

  True to his word, he was there when we arrived. In a golf cart he had borrowed from a timeshare neighbor. The cart was his only other form of transportation because their rental car was back on Crystal Mountain stuck in the mud.

  But he didn't seem to care about the car. He knew it could be replaced, but not his wife, who he seemed to truly love. He stood by her side and held her hand as she told him how we had found her. He thanked us profusely and offered us money for our trouble. Of course, we didn't take any.

  We were happy to have helped his wife and to have learned what had happened up on the mountain that day. The husband gave us his business card and said to call him if we ever needed anything. They piled into the golf cart and started to ride off, but then did a U-turn and headed back toward us. Haley hopped out and said, “Almost forgot my crystals! I can't leave them.”

  She walked over to the Jeep and pointed at the baskets in the front seat. “Those are my babies.”

  Abby opened the door and I grabbed one of the baskets and Haley grabbed the other. I took mine to the golf cart, but Haley took hers to the hood of the Jeep and motioned Abby to come over and see what she'd found.

  She picked up one of the crystals wrapped in newspaper and carefully peeled the paper away revealing a perfectly clear double terminated quartz crystal about eight inches long It had natural symmetrical facets with sharp points on both ends. It looked too perfect to be real, but it was real. Haley had found it on the mountain.

  She handed it to Abby. “This is for you for coming to my rescue.”

  Abby reached out and touched the crystal, but she didn't take it from Haley. Instead, she shook her head and said, “No, you keep it. It's already brought you good luck. It'll bring you more.”

  Haley smiled and closed her hand around the gem. She took a deep breath, opened her hand and said, “Please. Take it. It's telling me it belongs with you.”

  Abby nodded as if she understood what Haley was saying. She smiled, reached out and ever so gently took the crystal from her. She held it tightly with both hands, which brought a smile to Haley's face. Without words, the two women had used the crystal to pass a message between them.

  Whatever message the crystal had sent, had made both of them happy.

  Haley picked up her basket and walked over to her husband who had been watching the two women from his seat in the golf cart. He didn't question what had just transpired. He seemed to understand.

  She sat down beside him, holding her basket of crystals in her lap. They waved at us and drove off.

  Abby looked at me and said, “That will be us some day, sitting side by side in a golf cart, driving away in the sunset.”

  I could have broken the mood by saying the sun had set six hours earlier and that there was little chance that Abby and I would ever be in a golf cart together
. But I was tired, my feet were wet, my pants covered in mud. All I wanted to do was get back to the motorhome, dry off and get some sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Bob was waiting for us when we got back to the RV. Abby went in first and he was all over her. He rubbed up against her ankles and cried like a baby. When she bent down to pet him, I tried to step around her, but she stopped me.

  She put her finger on my chest and said, “Before you come in here, you need to pull off your wet clothes. Everything down to your undies. I don't want you tracking mud in here.”

  I was too tired to argue, so I sat down on the entry steps and pulled off my muddy socks and shoes. I stood and stripped off my shirt and dropped my pants. Abby nodded her approval and said, “Okay cowboy, you can come in now. But you need to take a quick shower and clean up. No way you're getting into bed with me like that.”

  I was halfway back to the bathroom before I realized what she had said, something about getting in bed with her. That was the last thing on my mind, getting in bed with Abby. All I wanted to do was get warm, get clean, and get some sleep.

  It had been a long day that had started out in the casino parking lot in Vicksburg, followed by a two-hundred-fifty mile drive to the crystal mine, then two hours talking to Digger, followed by a rough ride up Crystal Mountain road. I had gotten out into the wet rain, waded in ankle deep mud, and rescued a woman who was lost and not Kat.

  After all that, I was bone tired and bothered by the fact that we hadn't found who we were looking for.

  I took a quick shower, pulled on a T-shirt and clean shorts and came out to find Abby sitting on the couch, a half empty glass of wine in hand.

  She looked up and smiled. “Feel better?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I do. Now I need to get some sleep. It's been a long day.”

  I headed to the back bedroom, to the bed Abby had slept in the night before. My plan was to get there before she did, get in the bed and lock the door behind me. She could sleep on the couch like I had done on the previous night.