Lock Artist

by Steve Hamilton

  I started to hit roots, as thick as my arm. I hit them with the sharp edge of the shovel but could not cut them. I stopped and went to refill the water jug. I put my head under the faucet and shocked myself with the electric coldness of the water. I didn’t get up for a while. I sat there until I looked up and saw Mr. Marsh looking at me through the back window. His arms were folded and he had a look on his face that didn’t need any interpretation. I got up and went back to work.

  Another hour passed. I didn’t slow down, but there was a strange yellowish tint to everything I was seeing, and the birds above me seemed to turn into vultures. Watching me. Waiting. I kept digging in that one little corner of the rectangle, getting down as deep as I could in that one spot so it would actually look like I was getting somewhere. I knew on some gut level that if I spread out my efforts too much, I’d just end up scraping the top two inches off of everything. And that would make me lose my mind.

  The dizziness came next. Every time I bent my head down, I felt like I was going to pass out. I could feel the sun burning right through my shirt. I kept drinking, going back to work, drinking, going back. I didn’t hear her as she came up behind me. I didn’t notice her at all until I turned to reach for the water jug and saw her black sneakers. I looked up, at faded blue jeans with holes in the knees, at a blinding white shirt that gathered around her shoulders and made her look like she belonged on a pirate ship. At her face. Amelia’s face, for the first time in real life. Not a drawing, not a photograph.

  Her eyes were dark brown, her hair was light brown. Kind of a mess, like mine, but maybe only half as curly. More like an unruly mop she’d have to push away from her eyes just to get a good look at you. A permanent set to her mouth like she’d just won an argument with you.

  I’m making her sound pretty ordinary here. A normal seventeen-year-old, maybe a little un-put-together yet, going through one of those phases, never smiling, never brushing her hair. If you think you have the general picture, then I don’t think I’m doing her justice. Because there was something above and beyond about her, something I could see right away, even as she was standing there at the edge of the hole shading her eyes from the sun.

  Of course, I know that seeing her drawings first was a big part of it. I mean, how could it not be? It was just a gut instinct at this point, this feeling that there was definitely something different about her. That maybe she’d seen some of the same things I’d seen.

  Crazy, I know. Impossible to know so much about someone from just a few drawings, before you even meet them in person. Now here she was, about to say her first words to me.

  “You are so full of shit. Do you know that?”

  I kept standing there, looking at her. I can’t imagine what a sight I must have been. Hair even messier than hers, dirt and sweat all over my face. Like some medieval street urchin.

  “I already heard about you,” she said. “I mean before you broke into our house. You’re the guy from Milford High School who doesn’t talk, right?”

  I didn’t answer. I mean, not with a nod or a shake of the head. I looked at the way the sun made her skin glow.

  “Because … why? What’s the deal with that? Because something happened to you when you were a little kid?”

  I couldn’t move.

  “I can see right through you. Your silent act there. Because believe me … you want to talk about things happening to you when you’re a kid? We could exchange a few stories someday.”

  A sound from somewhere, a glass door sliding shut with a bang.

  “Or no, maybe not. You’d have to drop the act then, right?”

  Her father rushing across the grass now, slipping on the loose straw and nearly falling on his face.

  “Nice job on the breakin, too,” she said. “That was real smooth.”

  “Amelia!” Her father grabbing her by the arm. “Get away from him!”

  “I’m just seeing what he looks like,” she said. “The big bad criminal.”

  “Get in the house. Right now.”

  “All right, all right! Relax!” She shook her arm free and went back toward the house. She turned and looked back at me for one second. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but I did know one thing. What Mr. Marsh had said about her, about how traumatized she was by just the thought of me breaking into her house? About how terrified she was?

  Somehow, I wasn’t getting that from her.

  “I warned you,” he said to me. “Did I not warn you?”

  Well, yes, I thought. You did warn me.

  “If I ever see you …”

  Then he ran off the rails. What was he going to say? If I ever see you talking to her? Just standing there like you’re made of stone while she insults you?

  “Look, this isn’t going to work,” he said. “Can we just cut through the bullshit right now? You don’t want to come here every day and do this, do you?”

  I looked past him. Amelia was standing next to the sliding door. She was watching me. I picked up the shovel and pushed it into the dirt.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it. Looks like you’re making some progress on the shallow end here, eh? Just wait until you get to the deep end.”

  He turned to walk away from me. Then he stopped.

  “You’ve got one more hour out here,” he said. “I expect sixty minutes. Not fifty-nine. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

  I carried the shovelful to the wheelbarrow and threw it in.

  “Last chance,” he said. “I mean seriously, I know I keep saying it, but this is seriously your last chance. You come in right now, you write down the names, and we’re good. You hear me? That’s all it takes.”

  What I did next … I don’t know where it came from. It’s not something I’d normally do, not in a million years. Maybe only after digging a hole for three straight hours on a hot summer day, while some middle-aged rich jackass wearing tight shorts gives me one last chance for the seventh time. I made an F sign with my left hand, a K with my right, brought them together, and then made like I was throwing the whole thing right at his face. Sure, there might be simpler ways to say it. Hell, you can do it with one finger on one hand. But if five years of sign language taught me anything, it was how to do things like this with a little more style.

  Then I turned my back on him and rolled the wheelbarrow over to the woods.

  “What was that?” he yelled after me. “What the hell was that supposed to be, you stupid little freak?”

  He was gone when I came back. I didn’t see Amelia anywhere, either. I kept looking at the house for the next hour, but she didn’t appear.

  I finished up at four o’clock. Then I left. I tried to keep her face in my mind as I drove home. I went right to my drawing paper and tried to capture it. I had such a talent for drawing from memory, after all. That was my “mutant gift,” as Mr. Martie called it, being able to re-create every detail, just starting with the basic shape and letting it all come back to me.

  Today I couldn’t do it. For the first time ever, I couldn’t draw somebody’s face. I kept trying and failing and wadding up the paper and trying again. You’re too tired, I told myself. You can barely keep your eyes open. So I gave up and went to bed.

  Waking up the next morning … biggest mistake of my life. My back was so tight, I literally had to roll myself out of bed. My legs were sore. My arms were sore. But nothing, and I mean nothing, has ever hurt as much as my hands hurt that morning.

  I couldn’t open them, for one thing. I couldn’t completely close them, either. Then I took a shower and just about went through the ceiling when the hot water hit my blisters. When I was dressed, I rummaged around in the back room of the liquor store and found an old pair of work gloves. Better late than never, I figured. Uncle Lito took one look at me and just about fainted.

  “What the hell did they do to you?” he said. “Your face is as red as a lobster. I’m going to call that stupid probation officer right now. Hell, I’m calling the judge.”

>   I grabbed him by the shoulders, which surprised the living hell out of him. I grabbed him and my shook my head. I didn’t want him to call anybody or do anything else that would stop me from going back to the Marshes’ house that day. I had to see her again, no matter what.

  I ate something just so I’d have a little energy, got in the car, and drove over to the Marshes’ house, trying to loosen up my hands as I drove. It was a few minutes after noon when I got there. Mr. Marsh was waiting for me in the driveway.

  “You’re late,” he said. “Come with me.”

  Yeah, yeah, I thought, back to the pool. Just tell me that your daughter will be home again today.

  “I want you to meet somebody.”

  He led me around to the back of the house. There was a man there, kneeling by the door.

  “This is Mr. Randolph,” Mr. Marsh said. “He’s a locksmith.”

  The locksmith stood up and adjusted his baseball cap. “Mr. Marsh tells me you opened this lock,” he said. “I don’t see a scratch on it. So I’m calling bullshit.” He had a slight Eastern European accent, so bullshit came out as “bullsheet.”

  “How about it?” Mr. Marsh said. “You want to show us how you did it?”

  I put my hands up in surrender. No, I don’t.

  “It was open,” the locksmith said. “Am I right? This door was open so you walked right in.”

  I should have let it go. Instead I shook my head and made a gesture like I was picking an imaginary lock in the air.

  “Come off it,” the locksmith said, sneaking a wink at Mr. Marsh. “There’s no way you could pick this lock. It would take me quite a bit of work to do it myself.”

  “Let him prove it,” Mr. Marsh said. “Let him put his money where his mouth is.”

  The locksmith started laughing. “I’ll bet you a hundred dollars cash. Real American money, right here on the spot.”

  “You’re not taking my money today,” Mr. Marsh said. Then he turned to me. “But I’ll tell you what, Michael. You open that lock, and I’ll give you the day off. Okay? You up for that? Open it right now and you can go home.”

  “Here, you can even use my tools,” the locksmith said. He pulled out what looked like a large wallet and handed it to me. “Best in the business.”

  I unzipped the leather case and opened it. I stood there for a moment looking at the contents. I had never seen such a beautiful collection of tools.

  “You know how to use them, don’t you? Come on, show us your stuff.”

  There were at least a dozen lock picks to choose from. Three different diamond picks, two ball picks, one double ball pick, at least four or five hook picks. I didn’t know their names yet. I wouldn’t learn that until later.

  “Okay, make that a thousand dollars,” the locksmith said. “I’ll give you ten to one odds.” He was about to take the case back from me, but I turned away from him and took out one of the hook picks. There were four different tension bars, so I knelt down next to the lock and tried to guess which size would work best. I had never had to make such a choice before. It had always been whatever hunk of scrap metal I had on hand.

  I took out one of the tension bars. Not the smallest, not the biggest. I slid it into the bottom of the keyhole. I put one finger on the right side and pushed it ever so slightly. Then I took the hook pick and felt along the line of tumblers. I had already done this lock before, of course, so I knew exactly where to go. It was a very basic setup, six pins, one tight combination in the back but otherwise nothing too tricky. It had taken me all of three minutes with a screwdriver and a bent safety pin. With these perfect tools—hell, it wouldn’t take me more than thirty seconds.

  “He seems to know what he’s doing,” Mr. Marsh said. “You don’t suppose …”

  “No freaking way,” the locksmith said. He wasn’t smiling now. “I promise you.”

  I popped the back pin, worked my way carefully past the fifth. With the good tension bar, it was so much easier to keep the last pin engaged. I felt that satisfying little click with each pin as I made my way to the front. I could feel that I had it halfway done. With the mushroom pins, I knew I had to go back and do them all one more time. There were just the tiniest slivers of metal standing in my way now. Six little notches on six little pins, and then the whole thing would turn free.

  The two men were quiet now. I worked my way through the pins again, back to front. I was about to pop that last pin when something made me stop.

  Think about this, I thought to myself. Do you really want to prove to these guys that you can break into this house whenever you feel like it? Into any house? Is that the kind of thing you want everybody to know?

  “Is that it?” Mr. Marsh said. “Are you giving up already?”

  “Playtime’s over,” the locksmith said. A sneer on his face. “Remember this the next time you feel like shooting off your mouth.”

  Not the right thing to say to me, I thought. I looked the locksmith in the eye as I tapped up that last pin. I turned the knob, opened the door, and gave him back his tools.

  Then I put my gloves on and went into the backyard to start digging.

  I could hear Mr. Marsh and the locksmith having it out as I picked up the shovel and got to work. Within a few minutes, the locksmith was gone and it was just Mr. Marsh standing there watching me. He had a drink in his hand now. I filled my first wheelbarrow of the day, then rolled it to the woods to dump it. When I came back, he was gone.

  It was a little hotter today. I went to fill up the water jug at the faucet. When the water stopped flowing, I could hear Mr. Marsh yelling into the phone again, just like he had done the day before. It may seem like an obvious point, but it was something I realized that day. Do not trust anyone, ever, if you hear them yelling into a telephone.

  I spent the next two hours digging and rolling the wheelbarrow and wondering if I’d be able to make it through the day. I felt weaker than the day before. There was no way around that. I knew it was a simple matter of biology and physics. Eventually, I wouldn’t be able to do this anymore. It wasn’t even a question of pacing myself. I mean, you can only save so much energy when you’re digging a hole. Anything less than the basic minimum effort and you’re not even digging anymore.

  Everything started to turn yellow again, my eyes too tired or too burned by the sun or God knows what. I kept the water jug full and kept drinking as much as I could.

  You will collapse, I told myself. This will happen as surely as the sun rises in the east. You will collapse, and they will come and revive you. After a few days of recovery, you’ll go to that juvie farm Mr. Marsh was talking about. They won’t work you as hard there. Hell, they wouldn’t work you this hard anywhere. But it’ll be so much worse in so many ways. On top of everything else, you’ll never see Amelia again.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this.”

  I turned around and saw her standing there. That same place on the edge of what would someday be her swimming pool. Today she was wearing cutoff denim shorts that went down to her knees. The same black tennis shoes. White shins and ankles in the bright sunlight. A black T-shirt with some sort of cartoon machine gun on it. It was way too hot to be wearing anything black today.

  I stopped digging and wiped my face.

  “You’ll never dig this whole thing. It would take you a year. Even if you did, so what? You think we’re ever going to use a pool back here?”

  Extra motivation for me, I thought. Thank you so much. But God you are so beautiful.

  “Adam’s away to college already. I’ll be gone after one more year. Who the hell’s going to use it?”

  I stood there while she looked around and shook her head and then finally got to the point.

  “So are you going to talk today, or what?”

  I pushed the shovel into the dirt so that it could stand on its own.

  “I’m calling your bluff. Okay? I know you can talk if you want to. So say something.”

  I reached around to my back pocket and took o
ut the pad of paper and pencil. I know you probably think this was a normal thing for me, having something to write on at all times. Seriously, though, I hardly ever did it then, and still don’t. I just don’t like writing impromptu notes to people in lieu of real conversation. I’m sorry, I cannot speak, so I’ll write down everything I need to say to you right here on this handy notepad that I carry with me for just such an occasion! & Thank you for your patience as I make you stand there with a slightly bemused look on your face while I carefully write down each word so you can then read it and pretend that we’re communicating like two normal human beings.

  To hell with that.

  But today was different. I had the pad in my pocket just in case I got into exactly this situation. I opened the pad and started writing.

  I really cannot talk. I promise you. Really.

  I handed her the piece of paper. She took two seconds to read it, then held her hand out for the pencil. Which didn’t make any sense, of course, because there was no reason for the writing to be anything other than a one-way process. I gave it to her anyway.

  She held the paper down against her thigh and started writing on it.

  “Amelia!”

  A voice from the house, interrupting her writing as I watched the way her hair hung down as she bent over. Mr. Marsh, no doubt, on his way out to warn me off again.

  But no. A younger voice. He was approaching from the house, someone our age, wearing an Oriental jacket, baggy pants. Ridiculously way too hot for this weather. Long hair tied together in the back, not just a ponytail, mind you, but with enough ties to make it look like a braid. Smug know-it-all face. A total good-for-nothing prick, I knew it from the first second I saw him. The next second bringing the sick realization, like a horse kicking me right in the stomach, that this was Amelia’s boyfriend.

  “What are you doing back here?” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be staying away from the criminal?” No genuine worry in his voice. More a double-edged insult, that I was a criminal but a criminal not worth taking seriously. I was already fighting the urge to hit him in the face with the shovel.