The Quarantine Tale

 

It was a cold day in March when the world closed down. Karl and his wife, Kristy, and all the world were told to stay in their houses. A plague had fallen on the world, and it wasn’t safe to be around other people.

At first it wasn’t too bad. There was time to do things. The lockdown forced people to stop there rushing around. Who doesn’t like staying home? But after a few weeks, it began to wear on Karl. He got restless. Confused. Unsure. He needed something but he didn’t know what.

More than that, he had a strange, new thought that he couldn’t get out of his head. Something was telling him to dig. There was a large hill in his backyard, and he’d always imagined digging a tunnel or a cave under it.

So one day, with his wife looking strangely at him out the window, Karl began to dig. He walked behind his house, halfway up the hill, and drove his shovel into the green loam and pried it from the ground.

On the first day, he didn’t get too far. Shoveling dirt was hard. He had a hole only a few feet deep. But as the days went on, Karl dug further and further into the hill. Soon he had a small tunnel that was slightly taller than he was. At first, it was short, and he could walk shovelfuls of dirt out, but soon he got so far that he needed a wheelbarrow to help move the dirt.

By the second week, Karl was deep, deep into the hill. He didn’t know why he was digging. His wife would ask him to explain it, and Karl could only say “I don’t know. I just feel like I have to” and he would go back to digging. 

At one point, Karl looked up from his shovel, bleary eyed, as if in a dream, and he realized two odd things. One, he didn’t need a light. He was hundreds of feet under the ground, and it was bright enough to see--like the light just before dawn.

The second odd thing was that the tunnel was standing on its own. Karl wasn’t an engineer, but he’d seen enough prison escape movies to know that a tunnel needed support for its roof. His tunnel was hundreds of feet long, but the roof was firm and well formed and showing no signs of caving in. It was oddly regular looking. Almost like something had come behind Karl and smoothed down the rough arcs of his shovel blade--compacting them into sturdy clay.

But then, almost like he was going back to a dream, Karl dropped his head and started shoveling again. He dug and dug for day after day. Week after week. His wife gave up trying to talk to him about it and just shook her head as he trudged back into the house at night, dirty from the day’s labors.

On one particularly long day of digging, months into the quarantine and lockdown, Karl’s shovel broke through the dirt and into empty air beyond. At first he stopped, scared that he had imagined it or had lost his mind (Karl knew what he was doing was crazy, but he couldn’t stop). Then he dug more and as the dirt fell aside, he cleaned out a large hole in the wall in front of him. He stepped through and found himself in a large cavern. At the center of the cavern, was a pool of water. A small stream flowed out of the wall into the pool and then drained back out through a crack in the wall.

The ceiling of the cavern was so high that Karl could barely make it out in the dim light above him. In the center of the cavern floor, there was something impossible. Here, deep under the ground (Where was he? Karl wondered.) was a large elm tree, growing up from the cavern floor. Its trunk diverged into three perfect arms, and its leaves formed a curved canopy reaching almost to the top of the cave. It’s trunk with its brown, wrinkled bark called out to Karl. It’s roots formed a perfect seat, made for leaning against the wood and listening to the gurgle of the water. And as he sat there, Karl realized that the cave air--far from being cold and damp as one would expect--was warm and inviting. It was almost like the mysterious light suffused the air with its mystical warmth. And so, Karl, warm and comfortable and weary from his labors, sat down and slept.

When he awoke and looked around, he felt something was missing. He knew he had to show Kristy, his wife, this new wonder he had found. He rushed back into the tunnel towards their home.

When he got out of the tunnel, he went straight to Kristy’s office and waited impatiently until her last work call was done. Then he stood before her covered in dirt, and said simply, “I need to show you something.” 

Kristy was doubtful. At first she said, “I’m not going into that crazy tunnel. I don’t want both of us to die in a cave-in.” But she reluctantly agreed to come out and look at what Karl had created. Karl could see the doubt on Kristy’s face as they approached the tunnel, but he was patient and knew she would see it.

As they reached the edge of the tunnel opening, Kristy gasped and said, “How did you light it up like that?” 

“I didn’t,” Karl said.

“Then how . . . ?”

“I don’t know,” said Karl, “Look at the ceiling, too” because he knew Kristy would see it instantly.

“How did you do that?” 

“I didn’t,” said Karl, “But it’s why the tunnel hasn’t collapsed. You still haven’t even seen the best part.” And he led Kristy through the tunnel. As they walked, she commented on how far it seemed to extend and how long they were walking, and Karl admitted he couldn’t explain that either. Somehow, it seemed like time and distance stretched inside the tunnel, and they walked farther than seemed possible.

Finally, they entered the cavern, and the awe and astonishment Kristy’s face was mesmerizing to Karl. He knew she saw and felt what he felt. As she walked up to the elm tree and reverently, carefully laid her hand on its trunk, Karl knew this was the finishing touch of his strange journey. And as he and Kristy leaned back against the elm and looked out onto the pool of water and listened to the gurgling stream, their fingers intertwined, and they both felt an openness and peace unlike anything they’d ever experienced.