Most of the time, he was on his knees, leaning his upper body inside the crawl space, keeping Elbows company. But right now, he was sitting outside the narrow tunnel, resting his cramped legs and working the splinter out of his hand. Man, he thought when at last the sliver was free, that feels better. Somehow, Elbows had decided Tern was his long-lost brother or something, the only one who could placate him. Tern thought the man was losing touch with reality. Maybe he was thirsting to death. No matter how many lids full of water Tern scooted in, he was still asking for more. His plaintive begging was driving Tern nuts. Mr. James, and sometimes Billy, came and went, checking on them, but the real work was on the other side of Elbows’s crook-legged, rock-jagged prison. Bob figured the whole thing to be less than half a mile long—wide as a doorway on one end and tight as a coffin on the other. The big problem was the rock slide smack in the middle of the burrow. Tern thought the problem was Elbows and why he would try to maneuver through a squeeze that tight in the first place.
