Every Day Above Ground

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  We both drank some coffee and watched the water. Whenever the wind picked up an extra knot, the top of each gentle swell shimmered and rippled, like the wavelets were trying to break free.

  “Maybe this whole situation is a gift,” Hollis said, toasting me with his mug. “Whatever’s inside O’Hasson’s safe is just a penny lying on the sidewalk.”

  I made myself smile. “Finders keepers?”

  “It’s one perspective. I need a refresh. You?” I shook my head. He climbed down the ladder, agile as a gibbon, and disappeared into the cabin.

  I watched the boats and the water and thought about Cyndra O’Hasson. Twelve years old. County shelters and foster families for half of that. Her father in prison since she was in kindergarten. If she’d seen him at all since then, it had been in a visiting room.

  I knew exactly what that was like. No physical contact. Nothing passed between visitors and inmates. Even emotions were tamped down to the minimum.

  “Lucky penny,” I said to myself.

  Age Eleven

  Granddad turned the key and nudged our front door open with his boot, and I swear the air rushing out made a sound like when they open the mummy tombs in movies. The door hinges even creaked a little.

  “Home,” he said.

  It was. I was so stoked to see it, I didn’t care how creepy it suddenly felt.

  The four digits Granddad tapped into the alarm keypad were the same code I remembered. Which made sense. Neither of us had been around to change it, or the clock on the glowing display. It read half past eleven, and for sure we’d passed midnight while having burgers at Beth’s.

  Daylight savings time, I realized. Since Granddad had gone to jail, there had been two falls back and only one spring forward.

  He walked down the dark hall just as if all of the lights were on. I peered into the shadowy foyer and the front room. They looked the same as when I’d last seen them. Didn’t smell the same. The air was hot and it stank like peat moss.

  “Damn that woman,” Granddad said from the kitchen. I guessed he meant Paula. Paula had been Granddad’s girlfriend or whatever when he’d been busted. I dropped my bag and his leather jacket—mine now, by rights, since I’d kept it the whole time he was away—and went to join him. After turning on the hallway light.

  He was hunkered down, looking at a white trash bin I didn’t recognize. I was still getting used to how much jail had changed Granddad. His chest and arms strained at his shirt now, because of all the weight lifting in jail. Mostly it was his beard, ashy black and unkempt, like one of the pirate captains he was always reading about.

  I was still wrapping my head around everything tonight, really. Granddad had picked me up from the Rolfssons’ just a couple of hours ago. A complete surprise, I hadn’t even known he was out. The past couple hours felt a little like a dream I was going to wake up from and be bummed that it wasn’t real.

  A ragged hole had been gnawed through the corner of the trash can.

  “We’ve mice,” Granddad said. “Check your room for droppings.”

  Ugh. And also, cool. I could snag one as a pet. Never had a pet before, but maybe the rules had changed and I could keep a cage for it in my room.

  My room. Not just a place where I crashed every night, shared with other foster kids or even with babies put up by the same family. Mine.

  I ran upstairs.

  It was weird. The same, but weird. Maybe weird because it was the same. The square card table I used as a desk was covered in stuff, like little rocks, and a baseball I’d sawn in two to see if the inside really did have poisonous gunk in it, and a bunch of padlocks, two of which I had also taken apart—more carefully than the baseball—to check out how they worked. All of it looked just like I remembered. Except that I’d also forgotten about all of it while I was away. That was a strange feeling.

  We definitely had mice. The bottom edge of my Ken Griffey Jr. poster had been gnawed halfway into the words the kid, which meant the rodents had been running around on my dresser.

  I opened the drawers to look for mouse crap or other damage. My clothes looked okay. Well, unchewed. But embarrassing. I still had an Animaniacs t-shirt, which I wouldn’t wear to school now for a thousand dollars.

  Speaking of. I pulled my chair over to the closet and stood on it to loosen the bulb cover screws with my fingertips. The glass cover was dusty, but everything in the house was dusty, so who cared? I set the cover aside and reached up to find the wad of money in the hole in the ceiling. When I’d last been here, the woman from Social Services had been watching me like a dog on a pork chop, making sure I didn’t put any knives or guns or frickin’ TNT in my bag, whatever she was imagining. So the money had stayed. At least I had managed to pass off Granddad’s jacket as mine. I’d worn it almost every day, to keep it safe.

  Thirty-three bucks. Sweet.

  Downstairs, Granddad was probably checking his own hiding places. He had shown me how to open the one behind the shelves in the pantry—it was deliberately tricky—but there were others that I knew about, and I was pretty certain that Granddad didn’t know that I knew. Like behind the kitchen baseboard, where I once found a pump shotgun, and under the eaves outside, where he kept his burglary kit.

  “Strip the beds,” he called from downstairs. “Nobody’s touched the linens in a year.”

  “I thought Paula was looking after the house,” I hollered back.

  “She had been.”

  “Did she ever visit you?”

  “Get the sheets.” Which meant Don’t push it.

  I yanked my blue flannel bedclothes and the pillowcases off and dumped them by the stairs on my way to Granddad’s room.

  His room was the largest of four on the second floor, and the one in which I’d spent the least amount of time. I wasn’t allowed inside at all when I was a little kid. It still felt like I was committing a felony just stepping through the doorway, even though Granddad had just told me to.

  Not that his room was at all cool. In the spare rooms we had loads of tools and interesting junk that wouldn’t fit in the hobbit-hole garage carved out of the hillside below the house. Granddad’s room just had a wardrobe (kinda okay, but nothing in it but clothes) and a closet (more clothes and more junk) and a TV (channels preset to soccer—sorry, football—and news, same as he watched downstairs) and a stupid amount of books. Not like stories, but history and stuff. Some of the books were so old they were from when he was in school. I knew because he’d use them to show me how words were spelled in Irish, and then of course he’d quiz me.

  I guess part of the reason Granddad made me stay out was because of the pistol that was usually in his nightstand, but even as a kid I knew to stay far away from that, and he kept it unloaded anyways.

  Thumps of Granddad’s steps down in the front room, and musical scrapes of furniture being moved. Maybe he was settling into his favorite leather chair after so long away.

  It would be safe for me to have a quick look in the drawer. I inched it open.

  No gun. Good. Granddad had been busted—and jailed—for having a gun in our truck, which as a convicted felon he can’t do without catching some serious shit.

  The phone rang downstairs. It took me until the second ring to recognize the sound. We only had one phone, the green one hanging on the wall in the kitchen, and hardly anybody called us on a landline anymore.

  I slipped out to the top of the stairs to listen. The wooden planks had creaky spots, but I knew where to step. Crouched where I wouldn’t be visible from the ground floor. The springy phone cord was long enough that Granddad could walk as far as the foyer if he chose.

  “Yeah, I’m out,” I heard him say into the phone.

  I couldn’t tell whether the caller was a man or a woman.

  “No,” said Granddad. Then after another moment, “I don’t give a damn what he said.”

  Now I could hear that the caller was a guy. I faded back an inch, thinking Granddad was coming closer. But no, the guy was just getting loude
r. Insistent.

  “You’re a fool,” Granddad said. Cold as anything. His Belfast accent came on stronger when he was mad, or especially pleased. He wasn’t pleased.

  The voice lowered—Granddad had that effect on people—but kept talking. I heard him pacing the kitchen and into the dining room.

  “Shut up,” Granddad finally said. The voice seemed to obey. “You won’t go there again. And you sure as God’s own hell won’t take him there. If there’s anything to be done, I’ll decide. You follow?”

  A very short moment of quiet. Maybe the guy on the other end of the line was holding his breath, just like I was.

  “Lose this number,” Granddad said.

  His footsteps traced a line to bang the phone back onto its hook, and then out the back door. I stayed very still.

  I had forgotten that during the past year and a half, too. Just how scary Granddad could be.

  Better get the sheets done. I gathered up the pillowcases from his room and brought the armful of linens downstairs. Our washer and dryer were in a closet behind the kitchen, so I had to tiptoe past the big window that looked out onto the backyard. Granddad stood on the wooden steps leading down from the porch, his back to me, apparently staring at the lawn and the bushes. Which were so overgrown and weedy now it was hard to tell where one became the other.

  I stopped to watch. He didn’t seem to be looking for anything. He wasn’t smoking. He didn’t really smoke, not since I was real small, but when he had smoked Granddad would hang out in the same place on the porch, which made me think of it. Tonight he just stood there, a big dark shadow blocking other big dark shadows behind him.

  “I have to go out,” he said. Knowing all along I was there behind him. Jeez.

  Wait, what?

  “We just got here,” I said.

  He didn’t reply. I dropped the laundry on the floor and went out to join him on the porch. He’d left the back door wide open, so I did too.

  “Where are you going?” I said.

  “It won’t be long.”

  “But we need to clean.”

  “You know how to run the machines. I’ll be home before the sheets are dry.”

  “We just got here.”

  “A mhaicín,” he said, fixing me with a stare. Boy. He calls me that, and I know the next thing coming is trouble.

  “Fine.” I walked back into the house and grabbed the wad of laundry and went to stuff it all into the washing machine. Fuck the different colors. The powdered soap had crusted solid. I banged the box on the washer until a chunk of it came loose and tumbled to explode into granules against the center post. I let the lid fall with a clang—much louder than the slamming phone had been—and twisted the start knob so hard that it popped off and I had to force it back on.

  Granddad walked out through the front door. I heard his boots clomp down the stone steps to the street, before the washer kicked in.

  Was he working? This soon? He’d told me earlier tonight he was going to take it easy. Nothing big or risky, so we could stay together. Did he have to start now?

  Had he taken a gun?

  I ran to the pantry. Paula or somebody must have tossed all the food before it spoiled. I didn’t have to move any cans or flour sacks aside to twist the support and move the bracket and open up the little hidden door cut in the drywall.

  No gun. Some ID cards and a cheap cell phone still in its plastic blister pack, but no gun. Granddad must have taken it.

  He promised.

  Wait. There weren’t any boxes of ammunition, either. There would have to be some bullets left around if there had been a gun, right? Maybe Granddad had played it safe and had Paula remove every gun in the house, even the hidden ones, in case the cops came through with a metal detector or a gun-sniffing dog or something. I didn’t know what they could do.

  Okay. Granddad was angry, and it was for sure he wasn’t just going out to buy beer. But he wasn’t carrying. That was good.

  I had asked him, over the burgers at Beth’s—the first meal we’d shared since my tenth birthday—if we could work together. Told him that I’d been training myself with locks, which was true. I’d have to learn more.

  The green light on the alarm panel blinked. That was tempting. I could try bypassing it; I’d seen Granddad do that with other systems, and this one couldn’t be too different, right? No matter what improvements he’d made?

  Of course, if I did it wrong, the whole neighborhood would suddenly learn that we’d come home.

  I checked that the washer wasn’t overflowing and went upstairs. To my room. Sat at my table, with my things. Picked up one of the stripped padlocks. It was an older Yale, five pins, springs a little soft from use. Easy for me now. The Brinks discus lock would be tougher.

  The picks I had crafted last year out of hacksaw blades were still under my shirt, in their cloth eyeglasses case. I’d kept the case taped behind a drawer at the Rolfssons’. While packing my stuff earlier tonight, I’d stuck the little packet to my ribs. Just in case anybody checked my bag.

  I laid all the lockpicks out in one neat row on my table and started practicing.

  Four

  I spent Thursday night in my studio apartment off Broadway. The apartment wasn’t cheap, but it looked it. It had three bare walls and a sliver of a kitchen and a three-quarter bathroom. Twice as much space as I needed to hold a couple of stacks of clothes, a minimum of thrift-store furniture, and enough tools to build or break damn near anything. The tools filled the shelves I had built in the single closet.

  I’d cooked pork chops and rice for dinner, leaving half my plate untouched. Drank a bottle of Georgetown Porter without tasting it. I sat on the edge of my bed and gazed out the window, as the waning sunlight leached color from the brick wall of the third-floor yoga studio next door. From outside, I heard the occasional snaps and whistles of tiny explosions on the street. People eager for the holiday to come. The question of O’Hasson and his gold turned over in my mind so many times that it might have been bit of paper from one of those burst firecrackers, spinning in the wind.

  Taxes were due, if I wanted to keep the house. Or I could sell the scorched land and pay off the county and be free of the whole mess. Near thirty years old, starting from scratch. I could handle that. But if I helped O’Hasson find his pot of gold, I’d have the land and plenty of cash to rebuild.

  And his kid, Cyndra, might get a better shot in life. She’d been shuffled through four homes in six years. She’d probably see a few more, before they kicked her out of the system at eighteen. If she made it that far. Half the kids I’d known when I had been a ward of the state ran off, or wound up in Juvie, or both. I could improve her odds.

  Call a thing by its name, Dono’s voice said, or don’t expect it to answer.

  I wanted the money.

  That was enough.

  I picked up my phone and yanked Jimmy Corcoran away from his television to give him a shopping list. Then I called O’Hasson with the news. He whooped and started to ask questions. I told him the time and place to pick me up the following night, and ended the call before he could say another word.

  O’Hasson met me at the corner of 5th and Bell in a rattletrap blue Honda he had boosted from a long-term Park ’n Fly. His seat was as far forward as it would go, so he could reach the pedals.

  A sharp crackle echoing off the downtown buildings made him jump. “What was that?”

  “Fireworks,” I said. “Up at Lake Union.” As if in confirmation, a deep bang made the Honda’s loose windows tremble.

  “Shit, I forgot. At least everybody’s having as much fun as us, right?”

  We drove south on Highway 99 into lower King County, enjoying plenty of distance from the scattering of other late-night drivers. That was for the best. O’Hasson fidgeted so much, it was a small miracle that the Honda stayed between the white lines.

  I directed us to a Target that was open until midnight even on the holiday, where I handed him cash to buy a car battery. He stuffed the bills
into the pocket of his jean jacket and wedged a rigidly new Seahawks cap on his head to hide the surgical scar.

  “Twelve-volt,” I reminded him.

  He chuckled. “After tonight, you can buy the rest of the Maserati to go with it.”

  While he was inside, I opened the duffel bag O’Hasson had tossed into the backseat. He’d brought basic tools, along with a few of the same electronics I would want for a break-in, and a large bundle of what looked like cheap glow sticks, if we needed extra light.

  No gun. Good.

  Back on the road and off the highway, O’Hasson took a long circuitous route into a commercial neighborhood. The area grew progressively lower in rent the farther we drove, until it was clear that hardly anyone was renting at all. Vacant lots and shuttered businesses lined the streets. A jetliner coming off a SeaTac runway thundered overhead as it fought for altitude.

  “There. There,” he said, pointing with a gloved finger. A six-story tower loomed over the closed teriyaki joints and nail salons filling the rest of the block. Stuck on the outside of the building was a big wooden notice of proposed land use action sign. The few words on the sign not obscured by graffiti mentioned a mixed-retail commercial usage property, whatever the hell that was. At the bottom of the sign, the date of demolition was filled in with thick black marker, the last day of August.

  “See? The place is ready for the wrecking ball,” O’Hasson said.

  “It’ll still be here tomorrow. Stop for a second.”

  He squirmed impatiently. There were no lights on inside the building, on any floor. Through the scarred glass of the entrance doors I could make out the first few yards of lobby. The space was completely barren of furniture. Bare patches where reception desks had recently stood showed as clean white rectangles on the old tile. Shiny exposed bolts poked out like stubby fingers from the walls of the entryway, marking where security cameras had once been mounted.

  “Looks good, right?” said O’Hasson.

  It looked stripped to the bones. An unlikely home for a petty cash box, much less a safe full of gold.