Stacy gestured to move towards the house. That was a signal Mike felt confident he could remember, pointing, otherwise he was terrified he would forget everything they had practiced. At the edge of the woods the forest turned into thick newly cut grass. They could have walked across it in ten seconds but there was the light to the back porch was on, so he had each of them go separately, crawling on their bellies, keeping to the shadows as best they could, pausing regularly and moving forward just as they had discussed.
Being this methodical, took a kind of patience and concentration Mike wasn’t used to. As the minutes went by the effort to stay quiet made him quiet inside, something he had only experienced a couple of times before while on long fishing trips. He ended up so relaxed he fell asleep: for a moment and the light of the porch became the light from his dad old Model T and it was coming up the driveway on his way home from work. He was in trouble and he was going to be punished, bad. He suddenly realized his father might kill him. Stacey touched him on his shoulder and that brought him back. He looked up at him and realized that Stacey didn’t know that he had fallen asleep, he was disoriented though and it took him a moment to remember where he was. Stacey was signaling for him to go, and that’s when the fear really kicked in and his bowels sunk.
He was grateful to have those three minutes as he crossed the yard to collect himself. The grass was wet and he was soaked but the time he made it to the basement steps. The other guys were waiting, They gave him a minimal nod and each returned to staring at nothing. Slim was keeping an eye out on the street. The house was in the middle of a wide curve in the road, from where they were they could see about a quarter of a mile out, which meant the opposite was true too. The street lights were bright which was unusual as the town and it's roads, bridges, street lights had been going to shit for the last thirteen years. They Nazi's kept the lights by the mayor's house in good repair though. Sometimes collaborator’s were treated like kings, given wild rewards and extreme protection, other times they were ignored. They didn’t know what exactly they would find on the other side of the basement door. It was possible they had guards staying with them.
Stacey arrived and moved quietly down the steps squeezing past him to the door. It was reinforced with heavy bolts on the hinges. Stacey turned him around by the shoulder and started to pull the tools out of the backpack he was carrying. It was all pretty simple, a heavy rubber mallet, three different sized chisels, a crowbar, old rags, a bag of cotton, strips of inner tube. Everyone gathered around Stacy and the top hinge. Stacey shoved some cotton between the thinnest chisel and the hinge. Slim, Rick and Mike held the old clothes and rags around the base of the chisel. They all know that this was the most dangerous moment.
Stacey started with some soft taps to test it out. As long as they kept everything wrapped tightly in cotton they were good and he was able to start hitting hard. “That guys so fucking smart” Mike thought to himself, “I would have just started pounding away.” Stacey was really going at it and it made about as much sound as someone at a diner carelessly tapping his tapping his knuckles on the counter top, but every once in awhile the chisel would hit the cement backing in a way that took the sound up. Then they would pause for a long while. It wasn’t loud but the night was so quiet. It’s easy to forget how quiet the night is, and then they had to shove the crowbar under the hinges and tear them free from the bolts, half inchers set four inches deep into a eight inch slab of cement, they had to tear the hinge from that.
Now he had to stop guarding so that he could support Stacey as he to put his foot against the wall and pulled back on the crowbar with all his weight and strength. Slim had one had hand holding the muffling to the hinge and the other stabilizing Stacey’s foot against the wall while wrapping fabric around it to cut down on the noise. He could feel the effort of Stacey rhythmic heavy pull. Stacy was the strongest guy he knew by far. His hands were big like dictionaries and rough like burlap when you shook them. He fell back suddenly as the hinge gave way.
“Just do your fucking job” he thought to himself. He did everything he could to stop Stacey from falling over and to keep himself from making noise. He was able to pull it off but the moment after he congratulated himself in his mind he heard the clang of the hinge hitting the ground. They all looked back and forth at each other with the question, the fear, all over them. Stacey motioned firmly with his hand palm down and went into a crouch. They all followed him down and waited.
Chapter 8
The Arendt Files Page 7