by Ike Hamill
“Boys? Where are you?”
Gus couldn’t tell where her voice was coming from. It didn’t matter if Sam’s mom didn’t like cellars. Uncle Auggie was down there somewhere and he wasn’t afraid of anything. He would find them in an instant if he came looking.
“We have to go,” Gus said.
Sam seemed to figure it out at the same time. “Cousin Auggie,” was all that Sam had to say. He nodded. “Go down and I’ll hand you the box.”
“Leave it. There’s nowhere to hide it down there.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “We can always come back in the morning.”
Gus felt a lot better when the box was safely back in the bureau. He closed the desk drawers while Sam put the dresser back the way it had been. Sam was already climbing down when Gus realized that it was going to be up to him to turn off the overhead lights before he left.
Gus didn’t want to do it. Sam was right—they could come back in the morning. Then, they could turn the lights off after that. But what if they couldn’t get away? What if Uncle Tommy came back and found the lights on and tracked them down based on their fingerprints or DNA? They had touched everything. Gus had even touched the poster on the wall. Uncle Tommy would be furious and they would get into mountains of trouble.
Before he could think too hard about it, Gus rushed over and flicked off the light.
Darkness flooded around him, surrounding Gus, and drowning him in black. He couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t fully dark. At first, Gus thought that Sam’s flashlight from the shaft was responsible for the strange shapes above. As he looked up, he knew that he was wrong. The ceiling was painted with some sort of blue, glow-in-the-dark paint. At first, Gus thought it was a wolf. The face was too narrow and the ears were too small. He was looking at a fox, rendered in fuzzy blue paint, looking down at him. The eyes followed as Gus fled for the shaft. In his haste, he stepped right over the edge. Gus barked his shin against the edge of the floor as he fell. It was pure luck that he caught himself before he fell completely through the hole. He would have taken out Sam on the way and the two of them would have broken their necks on the way down.
“Don’t forget the door,” Sam whispered.
“Boys! Where are you?” Sam’s mother called through the wall. It almost sounded like she was in the passage too.
Before he descended, Gus forced himself to feel around and find the handle. The door slammed way too hard. Gus barely got his fingers out of the way and he felt the wind from the heavy door dropping into place above him. Gus practically flew down the rungs to get away from that place. When Sam grabbed his leg, he kicked and nearly screamed.
“I’m just putting your foot on the step, stupid,” Sam whispered.
“Sam? Are you down there?”
As Gus dropped to the cellar floor, he saw the ankles of Sam’s mom. She was standing on the top stair. If she bent down, she would see the stepladder and figure it all out.
“Yeah, mom, we’re coming,” Sam said. He sounded perfectly bored. Gus was amazed. Quickly, Gus folded the ladder and pushed it over so he could lower it back to the place where he had found it. As he put it away, Sam moved to the bottom of the stairs.
“Right here,” Sam said.
“What are you even doing down there? It’s dirty and there’s nothing that should interest you.”
“We were looking for snake skins. You remember how Dad said that they like rocks to shed against? We figured that there might be one or two down here.”
“Just get up here,” she said.
Sam moved slowly, giving Gus a chance to finish stowing the ladder and then rush to join him. Sam’s mom eyed them as they came up the stairs. Sam did a decent job of looking innocent but Gus knew that his own guilt showed. When Sam’s mom stared at him, he could only look away.
“Brush off all that dirt and dust before you come in this kitchen.”
They did.
“Gus, your mom wants to talk to you.”
Gus glanced at her and then looked back to the floor. He knew that somehow his mother had figured it all out. He could go wherever he wanted outside and she never guessed at where he went. Inside the house was a different story. Whenever he tried to explore, he could be pretty sure that she was going to figure it out. It was almost like the house was all connected to her and she could feel him moving around in it. That’s why he had waited for his cousins before he had attempted his midnight exploration. And that hadn’t worked either.
“And don’t leave your sister behind, mister,” Sam’s mom said. “Without Millie and Isla, she doesn’t have anyone else to play with. It’s not fair to her.”
“Okay,” Sam said.
# # # #
Sam ran to his sister and then the two of them sprinted upstairs without consulting anyone for permission. Gus came in with his head tilted down.
“Out on the porch,” June said as she stood. Gus didn’t even look at her. He marched slowly towards the door and she followed him. The two snagged their coats automatically as they moved through the door and pulled it shut behind themselves.
Deidra sat back down on the futon and Henry handed her a drink.
“Where were they?” Auggie asked.
“Basement,” Deidra said.
Auggie threw up his hands and let them fall. “One day, you can’t beg them to go down. Then, they’re playing down there. Kate had to escort Gus to get him to go the other day.”
“Wait,” Henry said, “go back to your story about the slippers. What happened?”
“That was it,” Auggie said. “We returned Trudy’s slippers to that room where she liked to watch TV. It was the end to the promise we made before she died.”
“And how come you didn’t know Trudy?” Henry asked Deidra.
“I knew her, I just didn’t really know her, you know? There were a lot of people here then, and I didn’t spend any real time with her. When I moved in, I wasn’t even really sure that she lived here full time. She seemed to disappear for long stretches of time. I have a pretty good memory of her face. She looked a lot like Aunt Allison, didn’t she?”
“Yeah,” Auggie said, seesawing his hand in the air. “Ish. She looked almost exactly like those photos of Great Aunt Vivian. You know the ones that are in the hall outside of Travis’s room?”
Deidra nodded and sipped her drink.
“And what changed that made you move in?” Henry asked her.
Deidra laughed into her glass. She pulled it away from her face, directing her wide smile at Cousin Auggie.
“You never told him?” Auggie asked.
Deidra could only laugh. Doubling over, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.
“How on earth have you never told him?”
“It’s too embarrassing,” Deidra managed to cough out between gasps. She shook her head.
“How many years have you two been married?” Auggie asked. He waved his hand when Henry started to answer. “Forget I asked. I suppose the kids will learn to love their new mother after Deidra dies of shame when you hear this.”
“It’s that bad? Are you going to tell me?” Henry asked Auggie.
“Oh, I have to tell you. This story is like a samurai sword—once it is unsheathed, it has to draw blood.”
Deidra doubled over again with more choked laughter.
# # # #
“There’s something that you may or may not know about your dear wife,” Auggie said.
“He doesn’t,” Deidra slipped in.
“She has, or had, kind of a thing for books.”
“A thing?” Henry asked.
“It’s not like that,” Deidra said, quickly taking another sip of her drink.
“It’s not like anything that I know of,” Auggie said. “This—let’s call it an extreme fondness for books—was always present, but it really blossomed as Deidra was in middle school.”
“As those things will,” Henry said.
“It wasn’t like that,” Deidra said, turning her eyes over to the far wall so
she wouldn’t have to see how her husband raised his eyebrows.
“She was quickly banned from the public library because of her penchant for sneaking books through the reading garden and trying to strap them to the back of her bicycle in order to get them home without checking them out.”
“There was a limit on the number of books a kid could check out each week,” Deidra said.
“Are you telling this, or am I?” Auggie asked. “Because if you want to tell this…”
Deidra waved her hand, bidding him to continue.
“So,” Auggie said, “apparently there was a limit on the number of books that a kid could check out each week, so lovely young Deidra tried to borrow them on her own terms, was discovered, and she was barred from even setting foot in the public library. I can attest from my own experience that the librarian over in Kingston was a real W-I-T-C-H. We had a game over there with the Kingston Black Bears one time. We used to call them the Kingston Black Balls, but that’s another story. To kill time between our bus arriving and the game, we all had to go to an impromptu study hall in that library, and that woman wouldn’t let us even get up to go to the bathroom. I assumed that she was just an avid Black Balls fan, but I later learned that the other team was…”
Henry put up his hand to stop the digression. When he pointed to Deidra, Auggie got the point.
“Right. So, anyway, after being banned from the public library, your lovely bride found out that the library at the high school was nearly as good. It was summer, but she was able to mingle in with the summer school degenerates and sneak into the library for some hot, girl-on-tome action.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Deidra said.
“It didn’t take all that long for the high school librarian to catch on. Deidra knew she couldn’t get away with sneaking the books out, so she would take the books into the bathroom for some quiet time.”
Deidra covered her face with one hand.
“Sure enough, her behavior aroused suspicion. That librarian was way more progressive than her public library counterpart, so she was inclined to look the other way. Still, all those trips to the bathroom couldn’t continue. The vice principal, entrusted to keep order during the summer months, instituted a bathroom pass policy and it had a limit on frequency. I don’t have any idea why he never discovered that Deidra wasn’t actually enrolled in summer school, and was not, in fact, even old enough to attend the high school.”
Henry looked to Deidra.
“He knew. I was officially supposed to be studying for extra credit so I could jump a grade to Literature. Freshman weren’t normally allowed.”
“At any rate, he managed to cut Deidra off from her quiet time with the books.”
Deidra began to giggle.
“That’s when the real ingenuity arose. As the school remodeled the science lab, Deidra saw the top of the book shelves through a temporary hole they made in the wall. I’ve heard that the shelves were giant oak monoliths, donated by a cabinetmaker. Two days earlier, janitors had set up ladders and cleaned atop the shelves in order to clean up all the construction dust. One day, Deidra found a good looking volume in the reference section and she took her new friend up the ladder. There, on top of the shelves, she could find enough privacy to enjoy her book.”
Henry nudged Deidra with his elbow.
“It wasn’t like that,” she said, covering her face again to hide her blushing.
“Why couldn’t you get your own books at home?” Henry asked.
“Good question,” Auggie said.
“I had to have a new one every day. And not new—I mean, each day I wanted to flip through a new book that I had never seen before. I liked to run my hands down the pages and smell that old book smell. It’s intoxicating. Those books were lovely.”
After a pause, Auggie continued.
“Lovely they were, and Deidra took her lovely volume up the ladder and climbed on top of the sturdy bookcase so she could enjoy her latest conquest in private. She must have been completely engrossed because she didn’t even notice when the janitor came along and folded up his ladder to take it back to the storage closet. She was stuck up there, a good ten feet in the air, on top of the stately, sturdy bookcase with her book about the trees of Europe.”
“You were excited by a book about hard wood?” Henry asked.
Deidra pushed at his shoulder. “It wasn’t like that.”
Both men just stared at her as she looked between them. Deidra burst out laughing. She glanced at the stairs to make sure no kids were lurking and listening, and then she said, “It wasn’t like that! It was just some light, over the pants self-pleasure, that’s all!”
They all burst out laughing.
Just then, the door opened.
# # # #
June hustled her son out to the porch and watched as he bundled up in his coat and zipped it all the way up to his neck.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she said.
“What?” Gus asked. He was looking down at the porch.
“Exclude your cousin like that. You barely get to see her and it’s not fair when you run off and don’t let her come with you.”
“We didn’t stop her,” Gus said. “She didn’t want to come.”
“Where?”
Gus sighed before he answered. “The cellar.”
“And who told you that it was okay to go play down there in that dirty cellar.”
He chewed his reply. “Nobody.”
“Exactly. If you hadn’t gone down there, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation, right?”
“Right,” Gus said, taking a peek up at her. “Can I go play now?”
“Not so fast. What did you see down there?”
“In the cellar?”
“Yeah.”
Gus shrugged. “I don’t know, dirt and stuff?”
She motioned with her hand for him to elaborate.
“It looks like a regular cellar, I guess. The walls are made of big rocks on the bottom and then stacked rocks up higher. The floor is dirt and gravel. There are all kinds of pipes and wires attached to the ceiling and lots and lots of cobwebs.”
“Any furniture or big appliances?”
“Like what?”
“What did you see?”
“Ummm, there was a furnace, right? A water heater and, like, one of those things for the water pressure? Aunt Kate said something about how the water pressure goes up and down, you know?”
“Yes. I know that it needs to be fixed. What else?”
“I don’t know, jeez. What do you think is down there? You want me to go look for something?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. June paused for a moment. It seemed like she was getting ready to share a secret with Gus. He knew how his mother worked. If he asked, she would never tell. Sometimes, if he stayed perfectly quiet, she would accidentally say the thing that she was trying to keep in.
It worked.
“Did you see anything that looked like it might be a big safe? You know, like where someone might keep important papers?”
Gus cut his eyes to the side. He immediately pictured the thing that had been next to Uncle Tommy’s bed. It had looked like a refrigerator, but it could have been a safe. Maybe those buttons on the face were how a person could enter the combination. He wanted to tell his mother about the thing, but there was no way that he would admit to having snuck into his Uncle Tommy’s room.
Gus shook his head and said, “Not that I saw.”
She examined him closely, almost sniffing out the lie.
“Are you sure?”
“If you want, I can go back down and take tons of pictures on your phone. Then you can look yourself.”
“No, don’t worry about it,” she said, waving her hand between them to dismiss the idea.
Gus waited while his mother thought about it. He began to bounce on his feet to fight the cold. His jacket was zipped up tight, but his thin pants were no match for the wind that whipped across their porch. Gus wanted
to go back inside, where the warmth and soft glow of the lights was so comforting. His extended family was all moving around the house and it was his favorite time of the year. When people spread out, and there was a different activity in every corner of the house, it made Gus feel like he was sincerely at home. The rest of the year, they were merely caretakers of this place. It never really felt alive except at New Year’s. And, for whatever reason, this year was even more exciting than usual. Gus didn’t know why. He hated to think, but it might be the looming idea that this might be his last New Year’s in Mumma’s house.
“You need to make more streamers and hats,” his mother said.
“Huh? Why?”
“Your cousins, Millie and Isla, are probably coming back.”
“Seriously!”
His hand shot out and grabbed his mother’s wrist. She twisted her arm to break his grip as she laughed at him.
“Yes, seriously. Just plan on a few more kids maybe, okay?”
“A few more? Like, how many?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Get Penny to help you. She would love that.”
With that order, he understood that he was free to go. Gus ran to the door, threw it open and shoved his way inside. June chuckled as he disappeared, dropping his jacket and running up the stairs.
When she hung up her own coat and turned back to the others, they were all looking at her. They looked like their conversation had stopped in mid-sentence.
“What?” June asked.
“I was telling the book story,” Auggie said.
“Oh!” June said. She started laughing again. Auggie shifted forward and waited for her to take her seat before he started again.
# # # #
“So there she is, lying on top of the giant bookshelf, peering over the edge. If anyone had looked up, tilting their head way back, they might have seen her little eyes just peeking over the edge of the crown molding on top of the shelf with her little hands curled over the lip. She waited until she didn’t see anyone or hear anyone and then she started to inch her leg over the lip of the molding.”