Every Day Above Ground

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “He hears you,” Addy said.

  “You want donuts? I’ll bring donuts.”

  She hesitated. “What’s the matter?”

  Jesus, Addy knew me a little too well. She’d been there during the hellish time when Dono was dying. I’d even crashed on her couch for a couple of weeks after the house had been destroyed and Luce Boylan and I had broken things off. I had been smart enough to find an apartment before Addy and I started snarling at each other. Both of us were used to having our own space, and two stubborn adults and one dog the size of a Harley-Davidson outstripped the sanity limits of her orderly little house.

  “Long night. Tell you about it later,” I said.

  I wouldn’t, and she probably understood that, and she would probably let it go. I knew her pretty well, too.

  Seven

  I beat the morning rush to snag half a dozen jelly-filled and apple fritters at Top Pot, and made it to the east side of Capitol Hill before the oily condensation had soaked through the bags. The last time I’d been on our block, I had met O’Hasson. Half a week and a lot of grief since then.

  Before drawing near, I circled the block to pass the street on both ends, looking for anything out of place. There were no strangers hovering around my little plot of land with its skeletal house frame. No unfamiliar cars parked nearby. I knew all of my neighbors’ vehicles, and their regular visitors. Long practice, from when Dono had been alert for any change on our hill that might signal trouble.

  The block looked safe. But O’Hasson knew my address. If the hunters had spotted me during the chaos of the fire, if they had forced O’Hasson to tell them who I was, then this would be where they would try to pick up my trail. I would have to prepare for that.

  I left the Dodge on the next block—O’Hasson knew my truck, too—and walked around the lower corner to Addy’s place. Addy opened her front door, and Stanley, her huge white pit-bull-maybe-mastiff-maybe-rhinoceros mixed breed came bounding out. His catcher’s-mitt paws slapped loudly on the paving stones as he ran to meet me. I tore off a piece of fritter and hook-shot it over the picket fence. Nothing but throat.

  “Thanks for this,” Addy said. “The washer, I mean. Not for teaching my dog bad habits.” She was already dressed for the day, in brown jeans and a silver-gray wool sweater that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a sailor from Melville’s time. The sweater matched Addy’s spiky hair and came down almost to her knees.

  “I want a favor in return,” I said.

  “Fine.”

  “Wait until you hear it.”

  Addy’s house always reminded me of a kid’s storybook, waiting for a cartoon mouse to move in and start baking. Yellow walls with blue stenciled flowers along the ceiling and floor brightened the living room where she spent most of her hours. Knickknacks from vacations Addy and her late husband, Magnus, had taken to his native Sweden were set high on built-in shelves, safe from Stanley’s swiping tail. The dog and I followed Addy to the back of the house, jostling for position around her overstuffed furniture.

  I unfastened the washer hoses and wrestled the machine into Addy’s project room. The twelve-by-twelve space was overflowing with what looked like old reference books. One stack fell over as I nudged it aside with my foot.

  “New hobby?” I said. Or grunted. The washer wasn’t light.

  “The books? Homework. I’ve got an event coming up, and I want to recognize the names, even if the faces have wrinkled and creased and generally collapsed.”

  I picked up one of the volumes. An annual industry directory for AM Radio in the Western United States, 1968. “You used to work in radio?” I couldn’t keep track of Addy’s latest pursuits, much less her tangled job history.

  “My first husband was a jazz musician, when he could be. I hung around nightclubs long enough that I picked up this and that and eventually talked a station into giving me a show, spinning records.”

  “Addy the D.J. Damn.”

  “Well, there wasn’t any sampling or scratching involved with it. Yes, I’m aware of the terms, don’t give me that look.”

  “I’m just impressed.”

  “Impress the washer back into the corner there. Then we’ll get to your favor. I assume coffee is in order.”

  “God, yeah.”

  While Addy was brewing the pot, I squeezed into the chair at her tiny secretary desk in the living room and used her computer to pull up the address of the office building—former office building—on a city map. The search also pulled up breaking news links from the local affiliates. The KIRO story conjectured that transients may have been squatting in the building and that the fire may have been accidental, caused by cooking or fireworks. No bodies were reported found, and no firefighters had been injured battling the blaze. I let out a breath I’d barely realized I’d been holding.

  The accident theory wouldn’t survive an arson investigation. They’d identify O’Hasson’s accelerants and find my charred tools by the safe, and then the SPD would quickly take the reins.

  Addy brought a cup of coffee to the desk and peered over my shoulder at the screen. “What happened there?”

  I pointed to the address. “I need your research mojo. Do you think you can run down the records for this property?”

  Addy had once been a librarian, and worked at a newspaper. While I’d been struggling with the aftermath of Dono’s death and his various properties, I had learned that the elderly woman had an almost preternatural ability to navigate bureaucracy and official documents. Her casual network extended to retired professors, reporters, and I swear I’d once caught her flirting on the phone with a former governor.

  She was still looking at the news story as a video loop of firefighters pumping water into the smoldering wreckage ran mutely at the top of the brief text.

  “I might help,” she said, slow as syrup. “Did you have anything to do with what I’m seeing here?”

  “I didn’t set the fire.”

  “Master of the half-answer.”

  “See if you can learn what company managed the commercial leases on this building when it was open. And who owns it now, if it’s not the same people.”

  “So you know it was sold,” Addy said. “Is the fire some sort of insurance scam?”

  “No.”

  “And if someone should ask why I’m calling the county Recorder’s Office about the history of a five-alarm calamity?”

  I tapped the screen. “Say you’re a freelancer. That retirement bored you and you’re interested in writing for these new things called blogs.”

  “That’s terribly ageist,” Addy said, although she didn’t sound offended.

  “The more you play the doddering senior, the better. Less attention that way.”

  “Good Lord, you really think I’m past it, don’t you?”

  “Think of it like a radio play, with Foley artists and everything. Yeah, I know the term.”

  Addy stopped my hand on its way to the coffee mug. “Are you in trouble here? Because it wasn’t so long ago you were having a lot of conversations with policemen.”

  “Polite conversations.”

  “Some while in custody.”

  “I won’t be asking you to post bail, Addy.”

  “That’s hardly my point. You didn’t much care for being on that side of the table. And history repeats itself, unless you pay attention.”

  I frowned. “Okay. I’ll pay attention.”

  “And I’ll mind my own business now. There’s another lemon left. Somehow the fritters have vanished.”

  I grabbed a donut and Stanley followed me to the backyard, where he managed to talk me out of a couple bites while I tossed a lacrosse ball for him to fetch. Addy’s house was on an eighth of an acre and the backyard wasn’t much more than a patch of torn-up grass half the size of a tennis court. I was careful not to throw the ball too close to the fence. Stanley might have run right through the thick wooden planks without noticing.

  Dono had been neighborly with Addy, but my grandfather
would never have shared details about his criminal life with her. The old woman and I had a different kind of friendship. She knew I had occasionally skirted the line between what was right and what was legal.

  This job with O’Hasson was one big parade march step over that line. I had made my choice, and it had all gone to shit. Addy would have said that was just deserts. She might even refuse to help me, if she knew the whole story. I didn’t like lying to her, even by omission, even if keeping her in the dark would keep her legally protected. But I needed her help. If Addy could find out who bought the building, that might give me a line on the hunters.

  The hunters had the little burglar now. But who had they really wanted? Who was worth so much to them that they would sit on four million dollars in gold and wait patiently for the alarm to sound? Was the gold just a fraction of a larger fortune they were after?

  Find the hunters, and maybe, if I was very lucky, I could find Mick O’Hasson.

  Because I couldn’t leave the man to his fate. Not until I knew for sure there was no way to save him. It wasn’t because he was sick, or because he had a kid.

  It was because O’Hasson had fought back, and maybe he’d accidentally saved my ass in the process. He might not know it—he may never know it—but I owed him.

  Age Twelve, December 17

  One minute to go. I willed the big hand on the clock to make the soft tap into ten past eleven. Jon Bower in front of me was watching, too, and being so obvious about it that I knew Mr. Brameley was going to tell us for the hundredth time that the bell doesn’t dismiss you, I dismiss you. It might not do much good. Not today. I could feel Susanna behind me leaning toward the door, the pom-pom on her elf hat dangling to the right. Last day before vacation, they let us wear holiday shit like that.

  In front of the class, Mr. B. was saying something about our reading assignments and how we should write that down so we don’t forget. But we all had our books and stuff shoved into our bags already, so nobody was writing anything, except for a couple of the real sticks, trying to suck up.

  Susanna poked me in the back with her sky blue colored pencil. I knew it was sky blue because it was always the same one. I would see the bright little marks on my shirts every day when I got home.

  “Van,” Mr. B. said.

  I nodded. Not sure what at.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  Half the class turned to look at me. What? The bell rang. Everybody jumped. And now they were waiting for me.

  Right. The pledge. Every Friday. It was my turn.

  “To praise people . . . To notice and speak up about hurts I’ve caused . . .”

  I rattled through the list, feeling everybody getting annoyed now that it was after the bell. It wasn’t my fault. I thought we’d be done with stupid stuff like this when we got to middle school.

  “. . . To right wrongs . . .”

  Susanna poked me, one last time, and I almost broke. That got Jon Bower and Samuel laughing, and I barely finished.

  “Okay, okay,” said Mr. B. “Have a good holiday break, everyone.”

  We were out of our seats before the second okay.

  On the way to the bike racks, Davey came running around the corner of the gym building at top speed. Behind the gym was where he and some of the other A.R.s would hang when they could slip away. A.R. for At Risk. The term had tagged along with Davey—and me, too, I guess—from elementary school.

  “Dude, did you skip?” I said.

  “Just the last period.”

  “It’s a half-day.”

  Davey could be an idiot. Pick a tough day, a day with tests, not a day where we would read half a chapter and spend an hour on art.

  He shrugged. “Marcus Bo stole some chew from his dad. Enough for us to try some.”

  I made like I was hurling up my lunch. Two eighth-graders passing us jumped aside, in case I wasn’t fooling.

  “Like you’ve done it,” Davey said.

  “Like I’d want to. When do you guys leave?” I used a key to take the chain lock off my bike. If I’d been alone, away from school, I might have tried to pick the cylinder lock on it—nearly had it beat just yesterday.

  “Christmas morning. But Mom says I have to help clean up the house today.”

  Davey and his mom and little brother Michael were spending half the holiday vacation with friends of their mom, way down in Kelso or Longview or some other place who knew where.

  “Can you come over?” he said. “You could chill while I pack.”

  “Last time your mom made me mop the kitchen.”

  “Come on,” he said. He grabbed the cloth-covered chain and snapped it like a whip.

  “I’ll ask Granddad,” I said.

  “So that’s a no. He hates my guts.”

  “Does not.”

  “He hates everybody, ’cept maybe you. Fuck it.” Davey was one of the few guys I knew who would use that word every day. Granddad would have tossed me into the garden shed with the spiders for a week.

  “I’ll come over later. For dinner.”

  “’Kay. Catch you.” He sprinted off to catch up to Jake Schroeder, who probably had cigarettes.

  I wound the chain around the seat post, jumped on my bike, and hauled ass, the pedals rocking good-bye good-bye to Louise Hovick Middle for two whole awesome weeks.

  Getting home, the last part was the toughest part. I could either coast down Madison and cut across to come in at the bottom of the block. Then I’d have to pump hard in low gear until I reached the top of our hill, red-faced and sweaty (embarrassing), walk the bike up (worse), or I could grind my brakes down two steep blocks and then dodge traffic on 23rd until I reached Roy Street. That could be scary. Today I picked scary.

  When I got to the house, Granddad’s pickup was at the curb. Our garage was way too small to hold a truck, so I always knew when he was home, or at least not out on a contracting job. I tossed my bike in the garage and ran up the stone steps. I’d ask him about Davey now. If I waited, he might start giving me chores to do, and then I was screwed.

  Coming through the front door, I heard a crunching sound from the back porch. Then a man’s voice. Not Granddad’s. I took one big step forward to the coat hooks on the wall, where I could lean around the hanging sweaters and other clothes and see through the picture window to the yard.

  My wrist whacked painfully against something in Granddad’s barn jacket. I felt in the pocket, and pulled my hand out like I’d touched a snake.

  It was a gun. Granddad was carrying a gun now. He never did that.

  I pushed the clothes aside—more carefully this time—and peered around the doorframe.

  Granddad stood on the porch with two men. The first man had bushy red hair and so many freckles that his skin was half pink, half brown. He was at least as tall as Granddad, a couple of inches over six feet. As he talked he made sweeping gestures with arms like the wingspan of the heron birds we read about in ecosystems class.

  The second man sat on the porch railing. He was a little older and grayer, and his wiry neck thrust forward over a white waffle shirt as he hunched. His face was pinched like he’d bitten into something rotten. If the redheaded guy was a heron, the other man was a vulture. A crushed can of Rainier sat on the railing next to him; that must have been the crunch I’d heard.

  Granddad leaned with his arms crossed against the round porch post. If you didn’t look closely you’d think he was totally relaxed, just listening to the redheaded man talk. I knew better. Something about the way he kept both men in view, and that he could move any direction he wanted with his feet like that.

  I slipped into the dining room and sat on the side of the window where I could hear.

  “—no chance they got their own guards,” the redheaded man was saying. He spoke as fast as his hands flapped. “Ain’t a gate on the driveway or any patrols driving around the property.”

  “What about inside?” Granddad said.

  “Well, we figure it’s wired.”

  “No sh
it. Besides that. How do you know they don’t have security people hanging around?”

  “You’re right. We aren’t sure.” That was the second man, the vulture. “So let’s get sure.”

  It must have been a question, because there was a pause. I almost bolted, believing they were coming back inside through the kitchen door and I’d be caught.

  “We’ll need to case the house,” Granddad said. “Somehow. Anybody out of place in that neighborhood is going to attract attention very damn fast. You know anybody who’s worked there before?”

  “We could find one,” the vulture offered.

  “Forget it. I’ll look for myself.”

  “So you’re in?” said the redhead.

  “I’ll look,” Granddad repeated.

  The conversation was coming to a close, no matter what the other guys might think. Time for me to leave. I crawled out to the foyer, retreated all the way down the steps, and made a lot of noise slamming the garage door. By the time I ran back up the porch, backpack slung over my shoulder, the men were making their way inside.

  “Hey,” said the redheaded guy. “Who’s this?”

  “Somebody who should be in school,” Granddad said, giving me that look.

  “Half-day,” I said. Breathing a little hard, like I’d just come off the bike. “It’s on the calendar.”

  “All right, early Christmas.” The tall redhead grinned.

  “We gotta go,” said the vulture. He looked less bitter, more uncomfortable as we all stood in the kitchen-slash-dining-room. Two big guys, one regular-sized, and me. There wasn’t a lot of standing space.

  “This your kid?” the redhead asked Granddad. That was typical. My mother had been sixteen when she had me, and I don’t think Granddad was much older than that when he’d had her. So everybody always guessed he was my dad.

  Granddad put a big hand on my shoulder and steered me as smoothly as if I were a vacuum cleaner toward the stairs.

  “Do your homework,” he said.

  There was no homework, not over vacation, but I shut up and ran to my room anyway. I threw my backpack under the bed—no need for that thing for two weeks—and turned on the radio. The sound of Veruca Salt blaring out of KNDD covered my careful steps into Granddad’s room to look out the window to the street.