The World Beneath

by Aaron Gwyn

  He walks over to his desk and computer, clicks the browser. He brings up a search engine and types the word hole. He puts in quotation marks. He takes them out. He types underground, Oklahoma. Types tunnel. Then he hits the GO button and scans the results. Four thousand three hundred fifty-eight entries. He scrolls down the computer screen. He begins to sift through.

  He reads an article about drilling. He reads another about mines. He studies a website advertising tours through a cave in the northeastern part of the state. There are three of them a day.

  He finds a piece about bootleggers in 1930s Tulsa. He reads about tunnels used to smuggle whiskey. There are T-shirts. There are pictures you can click on to enlarge.

  Next he finds an entry about a child in a well, and next, one about the 1800s. He almost goes past it, when something catches his eye.

  It’s an article about Chinese immigrants employed by the railroads. How, in the 1890s, many were laid off and began to move east. Some went north to Chicago. Some down to Texas. A good number settled in Oklahoma City.

  And then Hickson clicks the next page and finds that this community was not aboveground but below. In the 1950s, police officers escorted a health inspector and a few concerned business owners through an abandoned building, into the basement, and from there down a chute and into a vast network of rooms. The men reported an entire other city, thriving with commerce in a foreign tongue. Jokes were traded about holes and China, but the people here were real, and their city no joke. There were temples and shrines and burial places; markets, shops, entries to more tunnels that went to buildings in different parts of the city. Tunnels that went beyond the city limits. Tunnels that went no one knew where. The people down there spoke little English. They referred to police as topsiders and they were pretty much ignored.

  Hickson reads and rereads the article. He does another search and finds websites corroborating the story. Pictures. Maps. He sits for a moment and leans back in his chair. One writer had speculated about other towns with underground cities, towns whose belowground inhabitants might outnumber those dwelling above.

  Hickson sits and imagines these people. Men and women fleeing railroads or enslavement in mining facilities and camps. They’d cross the plains, build an establishment. They would look, to white settlers, like people from another world. They’d have to make themselves another world, dig into it from ghettos and slums. Maybe all manner of folk, not just the Chinese. The cast-out. The passed-over. They’d leave the earth above them and delve deeper. Find other ways of being. Find another life.

  And there is admiration inside Hickson. For the resilience.

  There is something else inside him.

  Which is revulsion.

  The throwing off of order. The decision to tunnel down. Hickson can understand its appeal. Having no options, how someone could do this.

  But the sheer fact of chaos. The hollowing of territory. You walk on earth that is only a brittle shell. Miners have come from other lands to make it brittle. To make their way beneath you. Because of them, your life could collapse.

  Hickson glances at the webpage and closes it. He turns off his computer, makes his way down the hall.

  His mind is figuring the distance to Oklahoma City. As the crow flies, forty-seven miles.

  He must remind himself what he’s read is a story.

  He knows nothing, as of yet.

  Eleven o’clock Saturday morning, Hickson and Parks stand in front of Hickson’s garage. They are barefoot and shirtless and both are staring at Hickson’s truck.

  The tires, this time, are intact, but across the front grille, and over the door panels, across the windshield and the driver’s-side window and the rear window and blinkers, someone has scribbled, in black spray paint, alien designs. Curlicues. Asterisks. Letters in a back-slanted font. The number 13.

  “You have got,” says Parks, “to fucking be kidding.”

  Hickson studies it a moment. He says it’s J.T.

  “Who?”

  “Kid from my work.”

  “Mexican kid?”

  “Half Mexican,” says Hickson.

  “What’s the other half—Rottweiler?”

  “Chickasaw.”

  “That’d do it.”

  The two of them stand there, Hickson staring at the pavement.

  “Get in the truck,” says Parks.

  “What?”

  “Get in,” Parks says.

  “Where we going?”

  “Car wash.”

  “Won’t work.”

  “Will too work. We’re going to wash it off and wax it and we’re going to clean out the garage and put your truck inside. Then you’re going to show me where this hoodlum lives and we’re going to break a bat over his head.”

  Hickson straightens. He looks down the street.

  “C’mon,” says Parks.

  The man walks over, takes the keys from Hickson’s belt, lets himself in the driver’s-side door, and slides behind the wheel. He leans across the cab and opens the passenger door.

  They take the black off the body with Windex and a mixture of ammonia and 409. They scrape it off the windows with a razor blade. They clean it from the mags with Goof Off and they clean it from the blinkers with pet shampoo and half a bottle of acrylic paint remover. They work till late in the evening and when they are finished, Hickson cannot tell his truck has been spray-painted at all. They spend two and a half hours clearing boxes out of the garage, reorganizing Hickson’s workbench, and then pull the truck inside and close the door.

  “Now,” says Parks, “we turn off the lights and wait.”

  Hickson turns to ask what for, but Parks leaves him standing there and walks next door, and when he returns he has half a case of Budweiser, a sleeping bag, his service-issue .45, and a twelve-gauge sawed-off with a pistol grip. He moves the table from the front bay window, squats on the floor, and begins feeding shells into the belly of the gun. He looks up at Hickson. He reaches over and cracks the tab on a beer.

  “What?” he asks Hickson. “What?”

  A quiet night. A quiet Sunday. Hickson works Monday morning, making his rounds. Dresser is in Tucson, and no one has seen J.T. since the previous week. He calls Parks that afternoon and gives him an all-clear. The man is still sitting watch at Hickson’s home.

  “Been peaceful around here,” Parks tells him, noise from the background like gunshots or mortars. “I got the rest of the shed up around noon.”

  “Appreciate that,” says Hickson. He keeps hearing gunfire over the phone. He holds the cell away from his ear a moment and turns down the volume. The noise is still there when he brings it back. “What’s that I’m hearing?” he asks. “That the TV?”

  “No,” Parks tells him, “PlayStation. I brought it over. I’m stuck on this—Shit!”

  “What?”

  “I’m taking fire from behind.”

  “Oh.”

  “Can I give you a call later?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Hickson says.

  He pockets the phone and stands a moment at his bench. The summer after graduation, he and Parks entered the service. Their plan was to go Army Ranger. Special Forces. Parks even made jokes about Delta, but Hickson knew jokes were all. They’d won three state championships, two in football, one in track. Parks said it would be no problem. They made it to Fort Benning, and two weeks in, Parks twisted his ankle and was dropped on request. He shipped to an infantry battalion in Fort Riley, Kansas, and on Hickson went. He passed Mountain Phase, passed the Phase in Florida. He received a Ranger tab for his sleeve and a winged parachute over his left pocket. He was placed in cadre, and Saddam invaded, and his unit was deployed. They were in-country within the month. Parks went to Saudi, where he worked filing papers at Supply. His ankle had fractured in two places and he walked two years after with a limp. Hickson’s war was a different color. It was tracer-orange and white phosphorus and night-vision green.

  He thinks about this. Parks’s dog tags, Parks’s games.
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  Hickson has wished their positions reversed.

  He spends the rest of the day repairing the carburetor on one of the gas-powered carts. He takes a trip around the course before sundown to make sure Williams has collected the flags.

  He comes up the cart path by the fairway on Seven, the tree limbs stretched against the evening. Their leaves yellowed. Brown. In the east the sky has cleared, but clouds are piled on the horizon to the west, sunlight backing their edges. The air around him is a peculiar shade. It stands in a haze in the space between the trees and sits in a low fog in the hollows. Vapor. Pockets of mist. Hickson breathes it like some kind of smoke. He waves at it with his hand. He rounds a curve in the trail, looks back toward the creek, and just then J.T. steps from the tree line with a shovel and walks downfield.

  Hickson slows the cart.

  He stops.

  He sits quietly, watching the boy. If J.T. has seen him, he doesn’t show it in his stride. He moves at a deliberate pace, planting the blade of the shovel, using the implement like an oversized cane. There will be a path of sickle-shaped divots through the rough that Hickson will have to fix. He drags a thumb across his chin and eases his foot toward the accelerator. The boy continues walking. He steps across to a manhole just up from the creek and pries off the cover with the head of the spade. He tosses the shovel down inside, then squats, eases his legs into the hole, and then the rest of his body. In a few moments his head erupts and glances around. Then it vanishes.

  Hickson watches. He looks at the rusted nub of the manhole against the tree line, and then over to the hill across the creek. His housing addition not a hundred yards away. He looks back and forth between the two, and something like a laugh escapes his lips.

  “The son of a bitch,” Hickson says.

  NOVEMBER 2006

  That night, Martin lay with her, talking names. It was a game they’d played since the first trimester. They thought about buying one of those books, researching family history, but it was more fun just to talk. They’d go to sleep every night with a name in mind, wake the next day and start again.

  It was around midnight and there was no moon. No starlight. Martin glanced out the window several times and he couldn’t see the pond. It was just the sound of crickets and Deborah and the dark. Every now and then the thermostat would click and the heat would come on. It would run for a while, click off.

  “Christopher,” she suggested, her voice seeming to come from the mound of covers. “Christopher Jarrett.”

  “Jarrett?” said Martin

  “Sure,” she said. “I have a cousin named Jarrett.”

  “You have a cousin named Jarrett?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have a cousin named Aloysius.”

  She punched his shoulder. “You do not.”

  Martin shook his head.

  “What about Jason?” she said.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s nice.”

  “Christopher Jason?”

  “No. Just Jason. Jason Martin. Jason Lee Martin. You’d have the same initials.”

  Martin rolled onto his side. “What’s wrong with Christopher?” he said. “I thought Christopher was good.”

  She scooted closer to him. She placed the bottoms of her feet on his shin.

  “Hey!” he said.

  “Hey, what?”

  “Cold.”

  She rubbed her feet back and forth across his calf. Then she moved them.

  Martin snuck his arm beneath her head and pulled her onto his shoulder. “Bring them back.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Bring them back.”

  They lay there. He felt her feet on his shin again. Then she moved them up to his thigh.

  “You’re just going right for it,” he said.

  Deborah laughed.

  “So,” he said. “Jarrett Lee?”

  “Yeah. Jarrett Lee.”

  “You don’t like Christopher?”

  “I like Jarrett.”

  Martin thought about it. Then he thought about the boy.

  They lay there several minutes.

  The heat clicked off.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said Martin.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Martin said.

  She ran her hand back and forth across his chest. She told him everything would be all right. She told him nothing like that could happen again.

  “How do you know?” Martin asked.

  “I just do,” she said. “You’ve had your thing. This is something else.”

  “Something else?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can’t happen again?”

  “It’s like lightning.”

  Martin thought about that. The chance of the same thing twice. Of course, it would not be the same thing if their son was born dead, because the child she carried was not Peter and lightning could strike him just as easy.

  He closed his eyes. He reached over and cupped Deborah’s stomach with a palm. He thought a prayer, and that prayer was for his son not to be taken.

  He opened his eyes and lay there. He turned his head and looked over to see if she was asleep.

  She wasn’t asleep.

  She was watching.

  “Shhhhhhhhhhhh,” she said.

  The story hit the papers. It hit the local news. There were leads and sightings and all of them false. People called in or emailed. Turned out they’d seen the wrong boy. Or no boy at all. They sat with friends and reported it as a prank. Martin threatened to have them arrested, but there just wasn’t time. Every day they were searching abandoned buildings, dragging rivers, creeks, interviewing witnesses, friends, former teachers and schoolmates. A math instructor who called the boy a savant. A wrestling coach who said the boy could do anything he put his mind to. Said he was the finest athlete he’d trained. Said bar none. The man went on and on. Martin took notes on all of it. None of it seemed to help. Every day was one more that added toward an opinion that the boy had simply vanished. Or was dead.

  Rumors were he was a gang member. That he’d been involved in a crime syndicate. That on his way to work he’d been abducted by a killer, one of the monsters you heard about on CNN. A man in a semi with a torture chamber in tow.

  One story bled into another.

  People rehearsed them more and more.

  It was a week since the boy was reported missing. Then it was two weeks. Three. They were well into December and Perser was hit by an ice storm, and then it was hit by another. Schools were closed and power lines were down and the investigation halted, and then Christmas was upon them, and then the new year. Articles about the boy dwindled. Folks gave him up for a runaway, or an abductee, or a corpse. Martin kept looking. He kept in touch with the family and tribe, and each week he added material to the file. He added clippings and Post-its and he knew now he was the only one. He’d sit at his desk before driving home to Deborah, sit and stare at the picture the grandmother had given him. He’d sit slumped in his chair with the photograph cupped in his palms, and it was as if he were having a conversation. He imagined what the boy might think or say. He imagined his voice. He imagined him alive, smiling the same smile as the one that glinted from the photo.

  Martin would mumble to it.

  “Where are you?” he’d say.

  At home, Deborah would ask about the boy. She’d ask what was wrong. The woman had never seen him like this and Martin tried to hide it. She seemed to catch him every time. Staring into space or sitting with his brow knotted or she’d have said something to him and he simply hadn’t heard.

  “Hey,” she’d say, “just talk to me,” and Martin did his best. He told about his brother and he told about J.T., how the two merged for him, seemed in some way to blend. They’d gotten mixed down inside him. They’d gotten swapped. Martin’s attempts to separate them would always seem to fail. He could reason his way into dividing them, but his feelings couldn’t be sorted.
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br />   “It’s like it’s happening all over. Some part of it won’t quit.”

  They were sitting in the driveway one morning. He was going to take her to town. They’d been talking about the case and Martin was running through the facts. He’d pulled the car into reverse and his stomach made a hideous growl. Deborah looked at him.

  “Jerry Martin,” she said, “my sweet Lord.”

  The sheriff shook his head. He opened the door, leaned out a bit, and spat bile on the gravel, bile mixed with blood. Deborah unbuckled her seat belt and slid across the seat.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You don’t look okay.”

  “I’ll make it,” he said.

  Deborah put a hand to his shoulder.

  “This is making you sick,” she said.

  Martin sat there.

  “You’re going to get ulcers.”

  “I think,” he told her, “they’re already here.”

  Work went on. There were new duties and crimes. Martin attended court and served warrants and transferred prisoners from one cell to another while the county was repainting. He worked an arson case that January, the usual post-holiday domestics, gave speeding tickets, accompanied his deputies on a drug bust east of town. He helped a rancher corral this skinny calf which had gotten somehow through the barbed-wire fence and onto the shoulder of the highway. The sheriff stood there in the failing winter light, arms spread, herding the animal back toward the gravel drive.

  Then February came and the baby was due and one afternoon when Martin got in from lunch, a call came over the radio from Lem. The deputy was at the golf course where someone reported a smell around the tee box off Nine, and Lemming had ended up going down the manhole to check. He’d found a body, terribly decomposed.

  “Sheriff,” he said, “someone beat him just to mush.”

  Martin sat, listening. He thought of the grandmother. Of ascending those stairs. He asked Lem had anyone told the family.

  Lem asked him what he meant.

  “The family,” Martin repeated. “His grandmama and aunt. You ought not have to hear something like that over the—”