Finders Keepers

by Stephen King

  "Sorry," Morris says.

  "Sorry what?"

  "Sorry, Mr. McFarland."

  "Thank you, Morris, that's better. Now let's step into the men's room, where you will pee in the little cup and prove to me that your paranoia isn't drug-induced."

  The last stragglers of the office staff are leaving. Several glance at Morris and the big black man in the loud sportcoat, then quickly glance away. Morris feels an urge to shout That's right, he's my parole officer, get a good look!

  He follows McFarland into the men's, which is empty, thank God. McFarland leans against the wall, arms crossed on his chest, watching as Morris unlimbers his elderly thingamajig and produces a urine sample. When it doesn't turn blue after thirty seconds, McFarland hands the little plastic cup back to Morris. "Congratulations. Dump that, homie."

  Morris does. McFarland is washing his hands methodically, lathering all the way to his wrists.

  "I don't have AIDS, you know. If that's what you're worried about. I had to take the test before they let me out."

  McFarland carefully dries his big hands. He studies himself in the mirror for a moment (maybe wishing he had some hair to comb), then turns to Morris. "You may be substance-free, but I really don't like the way you look, Morrie."

  Morris keeps silent.

  "Let me tell you something eighteen years in this job has taught me. There are two types of parolees, and two only: wolves and lambs. You're too old to be a wolf, but I'm not entirely sure you're hip to that. You may not have internalized it, as the shrinks say. I don't know what wolfish shit you might have on your mind, maybe it's nothing more than stealing paper clips from the supply room, but whatever it is, you need to forget about it. You're too old to howl and much too old to run."

  Having imparted this bit of wisdom, he leaves. Morris heads for the door himself, but his legs turn to rubber before he can get there. He wheels around, grasps a washbasin to keep from falling, and blunders into one of the stalls. There he sits down and lowers his head until it almost touches his knees. He closes his eyes and takes long deep breaths. When the roaring in his head subsides, he gets up and leaves.

  He'll still be here, Morris thinks. Staring at that damned picture with his hands clasped behind his back.

  But this time the lobby is empty save for the security guard, who gives Morris a suspicious look as he passes.

  25

  The Hogs-Dragons game doesn't start until seven, but the buses with BASEBALL GAME 2NITE in their destination windows start running at five. Morris takes one to the park, then walks back to Statewide Motorcycle, aware of each car that passes and cursing himself for losing his shit in the men's room after McFarland departed. If he'd gotten out sooner, maybe he could have seen what the sonofabitch was driving. But he didn't, and now any one of these cars might be McFarland's. The PO would be easy enough to spot, given the size of him, but Morris doesn't dare look at any of the passing cars too closely. There are two reasons for this. First, he'd look guilty, wouldn't he? Yes indeed, like a man who's got wolfish shit on his mind and has to keep checking his perimeter. Second, he might see McFarland even if McFarland isn't there, because he's edging ever closer to a nervous breakdown. It isn't surprising, either. A man could only stand so much stress.

  What are you, twenty-two? Rothstein had asked him. Twenty-three?

  That was a good guess by an observant man. Morris had been twenty-three. Now he's on the cusp of sixty, and the years between have disappeared like smoke in a breeze. He has heard people say sixty is the new forty, but that's bullshit. When you've spent most of your life in prison, sixty is the new seventy-five. Or eighty. Too old to be a wolf, according to McFarland.

  Well, we'll see about that, won't we?

  He turns into the yard of Statewide Motorcycle--the shades pulled, the bikes that were out front this morning locked away--and expects to hear a car door slam behind him the moment he transgresses private property. Expects to hear McFarland saying Yo, homie, what you doing in there?

  But the only sound is the traffic passing on the way to the stadium, and when he gets around to the back lot, the invisible band that's been constricting his chest eases a little. There's a high wall of corrugated metal cutting off this patch of yard from the rest of the world, and walls comfort Morris. He doesn't like that, knows it isn't natural, but there it is. A man is the sum of his experiences.

  He goes to the panel truck--small, dusty, blessedly nondescript--and feels beneath the right front tire. The keys are there. He gets in, and is gratified when the engine starts on the first crank. The radio comes on in a blare of rock. Morris snaps it off.

  "I can do this," he says, first adjusting the seat and then gripping the wheel. "I can do this."

  And, it turns out, he can. It's like riding a bike. The only hard part is turning against the stream of traffic headed for the stadium, and even that isn't too bad; after a minute's wait, one of the BASEBALL GAME 2NITE buses stops, and the driver waves for Morris to go. The northbound lanes are nearly empty, and he's able to avoid downtown by using the new city bypass. He almost enjoys driving again. Would enjoy it, if not for the nagging suspicion that McFarland is tailing him. Not busting him yet, though; he won't do that until he sees what his old pal--his homie--is up to.

  Morris stops at the Bellows Avenue Mall and goes into Home Depot. He strolls around beneath the glaring fluorescents, taking his time; he can't do his business until after dark, and in June the evening light lasts until eight thirty or nine. In the gardening section he buys a spade and also a hatchet, in case he has to chop some roots--that tree overhanging the bank looks like it might have his trunk in a pretty tight grip. In the aisle marked CLEARANCE, he grabs a pair of Tuff Tote duffels, on sale for twenty bucks each. He stows his purchases in the back of the truck and heads around to the driver's door.

  "Hey!" From behind him.

  Morris freezes, listening to the approaching footsteps and waiting for McFarland to grab his shoulder.

  "Do you know if there's a supermarket in this mall?"

  The voice is young. And white. Morris discovers he can breathe again. "Safeway," he says, without turning. He has no idea if there's a supermarket in the mall or not.

  "Oh. Okay. Thanks."

  Morris gets into the truck and starts the engine. I can do this, he thinks.

  I can and I will.

  26

  Morris cruises slowly through the Northfield tree streets that were his old stomping grounds--not that he ever did much stomping; usually he had his nose in a book. It's still too early, so he parks on Elm for awhile. There's a dusty old map in the glove compartment, and he pretends to read it. After twenty minutes or so, he drives over to Maple and does the same thing. Then down to the local Zoney's Go-Mart, where he bought snacks as a kid. Also cigarettes for his father. That was back in the day when a pack cost forty cents and kids buying smokes for their parents was taken for granted. He gets a Slushie and makes it last. Then he moves onto Palm Street and goes back to pretend map reading. The shadows are lengthening, but oh so slowly.

  Should have brought a book, he thinks, then thinks No--a man with a map looks okay, somehow, but a man reading a book in an old truck would probably look like a potential child molester.

  Is that paranoid or smart? He can no longer tell. All he knows for sure is that the notebooks are close now. They're pinging like a sonar blip.

  Little by little, the long light of this June evening mellows to dusk. The kids who've been playing on sidewalks and front lawns go inside to watch TV or play video games or spend an educational evening texting various misspelled messages and dumbass emoticons to their friends.

  Confident that McFarland is nowhere near (although not completely confident), Morris keys the panel truck's engine and drives slowly to his final destination: the Birch Street Rec, where he used to go when the Garner Street branch of the library was closed. Skinny, bookish, with a regrettable tendency to run his mouth, he rarely got picked for the outdoor games, and almost always
got yelled at on the few occasions when he did: hey butterfingers, hey dumbo, hey fumblebutt. Because of his red lips, he earned the nickname Revlon. When he went to the Rec, he mostly stayed indoors, reading or maybe putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Now the city has shut the old brick building down and put it up for sale in the wake of municipal budget cuts.

  A few boys toss up a few final baskets on the weedy courts out back, but there are no longer outside lights and they beat feet when it's too dark to see, yelling and dribbling and shooting passes back and forth. When they're gone, Morris starts the truck and pulls into the driveway running alongside the building. He does it without turning on his headlights, and the little black truck is exactly the right color for this kind of work. He snuggles it up to the rear of the building, where a faded sign still reads RESERVED FOR REC DEPT. VEHICLES. He kills the engine, gets out, and smells the June air, redolent of grass and clover. He can hear crickets, and the drone of traffic on the city bypass, but otherwise the newly fallen night is his.

  Fuck you, Mr. McFarland, he thinks. Fuck you very much.

  He gets his tools and Tuff Totes from the back of the truck and starts toward the tangle of unimproved ground beyond the baseball field where he dropped so many easy pop flies. Then an idea strikes him and he turns back. He braces a palm on the old brick, still warm from the heat of the day, slides down to a crouch, and pulls some weeds so he can peer through one of the basement windows. These haven't been boarded up. The moon has just risen, orange and full. It lends enough light for him to see folding chairs, card tables, and heaps of boxes.

  Morris has planned on bringing the notebooks back to his room in Bugshit Manor, but that's risky; Mr. McFarland can search his room anytime he pleases, it's part of the deal. The Rec is a lot closer to where the notebooks are buried, and the basement, where all sorts of useless bric-a-brac has already been stored, would be the perfect hiding place. It might be possible to rathole most of them here, only taking a few at a time back to his room, where he could read them. Morris is skinny enough to fit through this window, although he might have to wriggle a bit, and how hard could it be to bust the thumb-lock he sees on the inside of the window and pry it up? A screwdriver would probably do the trick. He doesn't have one, but there are plenty at Home Depot. He even saw a small display of tools when he was in Zoney's.

  He leans closer to the dirty window, studying it. He knows to look for alarm tapes (the state penitentiary is a very educational place when it comes to breaking and entering), but he doesn't see any. Only suppose the alarm uses contact points, instead? He wouldn't see those, and he might not hear the alarm, either. Some of them are silent.

  Morris looks a little longer, then reluctantly gets to his feet. It doesn't seem likely to him that an old building like this one is alarmed--the valuable stuff has no doubt been moved elsewhere long ago--but he doesn't dare take the chance.

  Better to stick with the original plan.

  He grabs his tools and his duffel bags and once more starts for the overgrown waste ground, careful to skirt the ballfield. He's not going there, uh-uh, no way. The moon will help him once he's in the undergrowth, but out in the open, the world looks like a brightly lighted stage.

  The potato chip bag that helped him last time is gone, and it takes awhile to find the path again. Morris beats back and forth through the undergrowth beyond right field (the site of several childhood humiliations), finally rediscovers it, and sets off. When he hears the faint chuckle of the stream, he has to restrain himself from breaking into a run.

  Times have been hard, he thinks. There could be people sleeping in here, homeless people. If one of them sees me--

  If one of them sees him, he'll use the hatchet. No hesitation. Mr. McFarland may think he's too old to be a wolf, but what his parole officer doesn't know is that Morris has already killed three people, and driving a car isn't the only thing that's like riding a bike.

  27

  The trees are runty, choking each other in their struggle for space and sun, but they are tall enough to filter the moonlight. Two or three times Morris loses the path and blunders around, trying to find it again. This actually pleases him. He has the sound of the stream to guide him if he really does lose his way, and the path's faintness confirms that fewer kids use it now than back in his day. Morris just hopes he's not walking through poison ivy.

  The sound of the stream is very close when he finds the path for the last time, and less than five minutes later, he's standing on the bank opposite the landmark tree. He stops there for a bit in the moon-dappled shade, looking for any sign of human habitation: blankets, a sleeping bag, a shopping cart, a piece of plastic draped over branches to create a makeshift tent. There's nothing. Just the water purling along in its stony bed, and the tree tilting over the far side of the stream. The tree that has faithfully guarded his treasure all these years.

  "Good old tree," Morris whispers, and steps his way across the stream.

  He kneels and puts aside the tools and the duffel bags for a moment of meditation. "Here I am," he whispers, and places his palms on the ground, as if feeling for a heartbeat.

  And it seems that he does feel one. It's the heartbeat of John Rothstein's genius. The old man turned Jimmy Gold into a sellout joke, but who can say Rothstein didn't redeem Jimmy during his years of solitary composition? If he did that . . . if . . . then everything Morris has gone through has been worthwhile.

  "Here I am, Jimmy. Here I finally am."

  He grabs the spade and begins digging. It doesn't take long to get to the trunk again, but the roots have embraced it, all right, and it's almost an hour before Morris can chop through enough of them to pull it out. It's been years since he did hard manual labor, and he's exhausted. He thinks of all the cons he knew--Charlie Roberson, for example--who worked out constantly, and how he sneered at them for what he considered obsessive-compulsive behavior (in his mind, at least; never on his face). He's not sneering now. His thighs ache, his back aches, and worst of all, his head is throbbing like an infected tooth. A little breeze has sprung up, which cools the sweat sliming his skin, but it also causes the branches to sway, creating moving shadows that make him afraid. They make him think of McFarland again. McFarland making his way up the path, moving with the eerie quiet some big men, soldiers and ex-athletes, mostly, are able to manage.

  When he's got his breath and his heartbeat has slowed a little, Morris reaches for the handle at the end of the trunk and finds it's no longer there. He leans forward on his splayed palms, peering into the hole, wishing he'd remembered to bring a flashlight.

  The handle is still there, only it's hanging in two pieces.

  That's not right, Morris thinks. Is it?

  He casts his mind back across all those years, trying to remember if either trunk handle was broken. He doesn't think so. In fact, he's almost sure. But then he remembers tipping the trunk endwise in the garage, and exhales a sigh of relief strong enough to puff out his cheeks. It must have broken when he put the trunk on the dolly. Or maybe while he was bumping and thumping his way along the path to this very location. He had dug the hole in a hurry and muscled the trunk in as fast as he could. Wanting to get out of there and much too busy to notice a little thing like a broken handle. That was it. Had to be. After all, the trunk hadn't been new when he bought it.

  He grasps the sides, and the trunk slides out of its hole so easily that Morris overbalances and flops on his back. He lies there, staring up at the bright bowl of the moon, and tries to tell himself nothing is wrong. Only he knows better. He might be able to talk himself out of the broken handle, but not out of this new thing.

  The trunk is too light.

  Morris scrambles back to a sitting position with smears of dirt now sticking to his damp skin. He brushes his hair off his forehead with a shaking hand, leaving a fresh streak.

  The trunk is too light.

  He reaches for it, then draws back.

  I can't, he thinks. I can't. If I open it and the notebooks aren't the
re, I'll just . . . snap.

  But why would anyone take a bunch of notebooks? The money, yes, but the notebooks? There wasn't even any space left to write in most of them; in most, Rothstein had used it all.

  What if someone took the money and then burned the notebooks? Not understanding their incalculable value, just wanting to get rid of something a thief might see as evidence?

  "No," Morris whispers. "No one would do that. They're still in there. They have to be."

  But the trunk is too light.

  He stares at it, a small exhumed coffin tilted on the bank in the moonlight. Behind it is the hole, gaping like a mouth that has just vomited something up. Morris reaches for the trunk again, hesitates, then lunges forward and snaps the latches up, praying to a God he knows cares nothing for the likes of him.

  He looks in.

  The trunk is not quite empty. The plastic he lined it with is still there. He pulls it out in a crackling cloud, hoping that a few of the notebooks are left underneath--two or three, or oh please God even just one--but there are just a few small trickles of dirt caught in the corners.

  Morris puts his filthy hands to his face--once young, now deeply lined--and begins to cry in the moonlight.

  28

  He promised to return the truck by ten, but it's after midnight when he parks it behind Statewide Motorcycle and puts the keys back under the right front tire. He doesn't bother with the tools or the empty Tuff Totes that were supposed to be full; let Charlie Roberson have them if he wants them.

  The lights of the minor league field four blocks over have been turned off an hour ago. The stadium buses have stopped running, but the bars--in this neighborhood there are a lot of them--are roaring away with live bands and jukebox music, their doors open, men and women in Groundhogs tee-shirts and caps standing out on the sidewalks, smoking cigarettes and drinking from plastic cups. Morris plods past them without looking, ignoring a couple of friendly yells from inebriated baseball fans, high on beer and a home team win, asking him if he wants a drink. Soon the bars are behind him.