Lock Artist

by Steve Hamilton

  He’s been coming around a lot lately. I don’t mind too much because for the most part he treats me okay. He brings me lots of comic books, for one thing. The very comic book I am reading on this day had come from him. From the little suitcase that he brings with him sometimes. He buys the comic books and he gives them to me and then sometimes he goes into the bedroom with my mother while I am reading them.

  I am eight years old, but I am not a dummy. I know the comic books are a way to keep me occupied. I play along because, hey, what can I do to stop them? They’re going to do what they’re going to do, and at least this way I’m getting comic books!

  I remember I used to see my father on weekends sometimes. Back when I was five or six years old. We’d go to Tiger games and movies, and I believe one time we went on a big steamboat on the Detroit River even though it rained all day. Then he disappeared for what seemed like forever to me. Even when he was away, my mother would still get phone calls from him. She’d send me out of the room while she talked to him. Then she’d go outside and sit on the steps and smoke a cigarette.

  She works at one of the plants down the river. Mr. X is actually her boss, I believe. The first time he came over, they went out and I got stuck with a babysitter all night, but then after that he started coming to the house and staying longer and longer. That’s when he started bringing the comic books.

  So Father’s Day. Here we are, all sitting there in the room, when we all hear a noise at the front door. My mother gets up and looks out the little window, but she doesn’t see anybody. Before she comes back to the couch, she hooks that little chain on the door. That little chain with the knob that fits into that little slidey hole thing. No matter how old I am, I realize that a little chain like that is not going to stop somebody if that somebody really wants to get into the house. Not that anyone would want to. But if.

  There is a back door in the kitchen, leading out into the tiny yard with the wooden fence around it. So there are two doors plus seven windows, which I know because I have counted them, plus the one tiny door on the side of the house from a long time ago when the milkman used to come. That was before I was born, but we did use that door the one time we got locked out of the house. I was just small enough back then to fit through it.

  But that back door. That’s the door my father came in. Who I haven’t seen in two years. All of a sudden, it isn’t just my mother and Mr. X on the couch watching television while I sit on the floor reading my comic book. It’s my mother and Mr. X on the couch watching television while I sit on the floor reading my comic book and my father standing there in the doorway like it’s the most perfectly natural thing in the world, leaning against one wall with his feet crossed and saying, “So what are we all watching, huh?”

  Mr. X gets up first and my father hits him across the face with something. It’s a rolling pin, which he’s picked up from the kitchen. Mr. X bends over with his hands on his head, and my father kicks him right in the face with his boot. My mother is screaming now and trying to get off the couch and getting tangled up with the legs of the coffee table while I keep sitting there the whole time watching everything happen. My father hits Mr. X in the head again, and then he goes after my mother, who is trying to get the front door open now except she can’t because of that stupid little chain.

  Then he spins her around a few times like they’re dancing, and my father asks her if she missed him. She’s trying to hit him and she’s screaming and finally she claws him right in the face. He pushes her down right next to me. Mr. X is trying to get up now, so my father picks up the rolling pin and hits him in the head again. And again and again and again and again. The sound of that wooden rolling pin hitting his head makes me think of one thing, which is the sound of a bat hitting a baseball.

  My mother is screaming at him to stop, so he throws the rolling pin at the television. It hits the screen and knocks out one half of it while the other half goes black. Then while my mother is trying to crawl away, my father gets down on his knees and he comes over to me finally.

  My mother is begging him to leave me alone, but all my father does is he takes my comic book from me and he looks at it.

  “I’m not going to hurt our son,” he says. “How could you even think that?”

  Then he hits her across the face with the back of his hand.

  “Go in the bedroom,” he says to me, his voice dropping into a gentle tone. “Go ahead. It’ll be all right. I promise.”

  I don’t want to move for one simple reason, and that is because I have pissed all over myself and I don’t want him to see the puddle on the floor.

  “Go ahead,” he says. “Go. Right now.”

  So I finally get up, puddle or no puddle. I go to the bedroom, and when I look back my father is taking his shirt off and my mother is crying and trying to get away. I go into my room and I try to open up my window, one of the seven windows in the house, but it has this lock on the top that is jammed tight and I can’t move it one little bit. My pants are all wet and I want to change but I can’t remember which drawer my pants are in and it doesn’t even occur to me that I could just start opening them until I find the right one. I can’t think straight at all. Not with those sounds coming from the living room.

  There is a pile of comic books in my room and a desk with a pad on it where I had been trying to draw pictures of superheroes and a single bookshelf with my books on it, plus a trophy on top of that from T-ball, which I pick up now, thinking this might be something I could use because it would really hurt if it hit you on the head.

  I open up the door to my bedroom, cracking it open the way I do at night when I’m supposed to be in bed but I want to see what’s on television. But of course now the television is half gone and all I can see is what my father is doing to my mother in the living room. I could draw an exact picture but it still wouldn’t make any sense, the way she’s bent over the coffee table with her hair hanging to the floor and the way my father is behind her with his pants off, moving his hips against the back of her again and again.

  He doesn’t see me coming out of the room with my T-ball trophy in my right hand, getting closer and closer until I can see what he has done to Mr. X’s body. How he’s taken Mr. X’s pants off just like he’s taken his own pants off except there’s blood all over Mr. X’s legs because he has cut off or pulled off or whatever else he has done to Mr. X’s private areas, as my mother calls it when I’m in the bathtub.

  I run back down the hallway except this time I go into the spare bedroom where we keep my old bed I’ve grown out of, plus the old gun safe that used to be my father’s but was too heavy to get out of the house.

  I am not allowed to open that safe or even touch it under any circumstances, my mother has said more than once. There’s something about the bolts in the door that are extra dangerous. Because they have springs in them that automatically lock when you close the door. But today seems like good circumstances to me all of a sudden after what I’ve just seen, and I don’t want my father to do to me what he’s done to Mr. X, so I pull the safe door open and I get inside. It’s empty now, of course, because my father doesn’t live here and he doesn’t have any guns or anything else to put in it, so I have just enough room if I sit cross-legged. Then I pull the door closed.

  That’s when I realize that there is no handle on the inside. I can’t get back out even if I want to. Not without somebody on the outside spinning the right combination. I start to wonder if I really will suffocate or how I’ll even know if I am. I remember all those times when I’d be under my blanket and the air would get heavy until I stuck my nose out and the air would be so cool and delicious. It starts to feel like that, the heavy part I mean, but then I notice that there’s a thin line of light on the side of the door where the hinges are and if I put my nose up to it I can almost smell the fresh air.

  So I stay in there with my legs crossed and my nose up against the side of the door. I can’t hear what’s going on outside the safe very well, but I know one th
ing for sure. As much as I’ve ever known anything in my whole life. I have to be quiet.

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  Until I finally hear the footsteps. Into the room. Then out. Then into the room again. My father’s voice.

  “Michael?”

  Then farther away. Then closer.

  Then right next to the safe.

  “Michael? Are you in there?”

  I must be quiet.

  “Michael? Seriously, did you go inside there? You know you shouldn’t be in there.”

  Quiet, quiet. Not a sound.

  I feel the safe being tipped over a few inches.

  “Michael! Come on! You didn’t really go in there, did you? You’re gonna die in there! There’s no air!”

  I feel the warmth spreading in my pants again.

  “Michael, open the door, okay? You’ve got to open it.”

  I can hear the dial being spun now.

  “I don’t remember the combination! You have to open it!”

  More spinning. Such a simple idea. If those three numbers come into his head, he will spin those numbers and the door will open.

  “What was it? Fuck! It was two years ago! How am I supposed to remember?”

  A hand slamming down on the top of the safe. I stop myself from crying out. Nothing. Not a sound.

  “Listen to me. You have to open this thing right now. Just reach up and turn that handle. You have to do this, right now!”

  Be quiet. Be quiet.

  “Come on, Michael. Turn that handle.”

  There is no handle.

  “I promise you, it won’t hurt. Okay, buddy? I swear to God. It won’t hurt. Just come out and we’ll do this together, okay? You and me.”

  Be quiet.

  “Come on, Mike. I can’t do this by myself. You have to come with me, okay?”

  There is no handle. Be quiet. There is no handle.

  “It’ll be so quick. You won’t even feel it. I swear to you. I cross my heart and hope to die. I want us both to be together when we do this. Okay?”

  I keep my nose against the edge of the door, but I’m getting dizzy.

  I hear my father crying. Then I hear him go away. At last. At last he’s gone.

  The relief and the panic all at once. He’s gone but now I’m going to be in here forever.

  Then the footsteps again. A crinkling noise, all around me. The light getting dim.

  “We’ll go out together,” he says. “I’m right here with you. I wish I could see you one more time. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. We’ll go out together.”

  The air getting thinner and thinner. My mind starting to shut down. A pinhole of light, at the bottom of the safe. Whatever he has wrapped around it, he isn’t covering the whole thing. He’s trying to cut off my air but …

  Everything’s black for a while. I think. I’m out and then I come back. I can hear his breathing.

  “Are you still there, Michael? Are you still with me?”

  That’s when I feel the whole world tilting. I hear the steady squeak of the wheels underneath me. The rumbling across that wooden floor. Down the steps. Whump whump whump. A fresh blast of air through that crack along the safe’s door. Waking me up. We are outside now. We are on the sidewalk. Hitting every crack. Bump bump bump. Onto the smooth road. A car passing by us, honking its horn. Then the motion of the safe almost stopping. I can hear my father laboring outside now, fighting for every inch. We must be on rough ground. The dirt and weeds and gravel beside the road. Where are we going? We can’t be going toward the river. We can’t be.

  A few more feet. Then we stop.

  “You and me, Michael. You hear me in there? You and me. Forever.”

  Then the fall. The impact, slamming me against one side of the safe. The sudden darkness.

  Then the water, seeping in through the crack. It’s cold. It fills up the safe, one inch at a time. It’s squeezing out the rest of my air.

  The seconds ticking away. I feel the water covering my face.

  I can’t breathe. I am cold and I am dying.

  I can’t breathe.

  I close my eyes and wait.

  I finished the last panel. Amelia was right behind me, darkening the lines and making everything stand out as if we had burned it into the wall. For the second time that night, the tears were running down her face.

  We stood back and looked over what we had done. The panels started in the room where the safe had been. They wrapped around three walls and out into the hallway. They continued into the living room and finished on the wall opposite the front door, right where the couch had been. The last panel was the biggest of all. A complete underwater panorama, with the trash collected there on the bottom of the river. An old tire. A cinder block. A bottle. A piece of lumber with the nails still in it. The stringy weeds pushing up through the debris and swaying with the current.

  In the middle of everything, tilted slightly with one corner submerged in the sand, the great iron box. Sunken. Abandoned. Never to be brought back to the surface again.

  That was it. That was the very last panel.

  “Why does it stop here?” she said. “They got you out. They saved you.”

  I understood what she meant. In the reality she was thinking about … yes, they got me out. It was a cheap safe, after all. That’s why the door didn’t quite seal shut, and why I was able to keep breathing, at least until I was in the water. That’s why the men who pulled the safe from the river were able to open it. With a big crowbar? With the Jaws of Life? I didn’t know. I wasn’t awake to see that part. It didn’t really matter. In my own mind, the safe was and always would be at the bottom of the river. With me locked inside forever. That was the only real part for me. As real as anything had ever been real.

  “You’re not in that box anymore,” she said, wiping her cheeks. “You’re free now. You can leave the box here.”

  I looked at her.

  “Now that you’ve done this. Can’t you leave it all right here in this house?”

  If only it were that easy.

  She kissed me, in that room where the worst parts of that day had begun. She kissed me and she held me tight. We both sat down on the floor and stayed there for a long time. Just the two of us in that house.

  When I opened my eyes again … it was so late. Past the middle of the night. We had been here in this house so long. We collected our things. We went outside and got on my bike. Then I took her back to Ann Arbor.

  As we left, I knew that if anyone else ever dared to come inside this house, they would see this story. They would know exactly what had happened here.

  ______

  When we were stopped in front of her dormitory, she got off the bike and stood there next to me for a long time, not saying anything. She reached into her shirt and pulled out a necklace. It was strung through the ring I had given her, a year ago.

  “I still have this,” she said. “I wear this every day.”

  I wanted to say something so badly. I wanted to open my mouth and talk to her.

  “When you left … I tried not to care about you anymore. I really did.”

  She kissed me.

  “I know we can’t be together right now. So just …”

  She stopped. She looked up at the stars.

  “I can’t do it. I can’t just let you ride away again.”

  I reached back into my bag for a pad of paper. I took out a pen and wrote two sentences for her. The two most important sentences I’d ever written for anyone.

  I will find a way to come back. I promise.

  She took the paper from me. She read it. Then she folded it up and put it in her pocket. Whether she believed it or not … well, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she didn’t. But I did. I knew I’d find a way back. Or die trying.

  “You know where to find me now.”

  She turned to go inside. As I rode away, I hoped to God that it would always be true.

  It was another long trip, all th
e way back to Los Angeles.

  I started out slow, but halfway there, the decision came to me. As crazy as it sounded … as desperate and hopeless … I knew it might be my last chance to be free.

  I’m going to do this, I told myself. No matter what, I’m going to try.

  For the last thousand miles, I was flying.

  Twenty-five

  Michigan

  August, September 1999

  *

  I passed the fresh scrape in the bridge embankment, edged with cherry red paint, as I rode out to her house that morning. She was there when I arrived. A duffel bag over her shoulder. Moving back into her own house after her little “vacation” with relatives up north. When she saw me, she dropped the duffel bag, came over to me as I was getting off my bike, and held me tight for a few long minutes straight. She kissed me and told me how much she had missed me and otherwise made me feel absolutely numb with such sudden happiness.

  It was my first lesson in how everything in your life can change if you just do one small, specific thing perfectly well.

  I helped her bring her stuff inside. Another small measure of pure joy for me when I saw all of Zeke’s love notes in her garbage pail, along with the dried-out roses. She wanted me to take her out on the bike, right then and there, but it was getting close to noon. My first taste of the conflict I’d have to live with every day for the rest of August. Mr. Marsh covered for me today, at least, telling Amelia that I had to go to work at his health club, and that he was sure I’d be able to see her again later. When she was distracted by something, he gave me a little wink and a thumbs-up.

  In the end, that’s how it had to work. I still had my court-ordered obligations to Mr. Marsh, after all. Beyond that, I still knew that working with the Ghost was the one thing that was keeping everybody safe and happy. Even though Amelia didn’t know it yet, I was busy keeping the wolves from her door.

  I wasn’t naive about what I was doing. I really wasn’t. I mean, when I let myself think about it, I knew I wasn’t learning all this stuff so I could open up my own little locksmith shop on Main Street. I knew these men would want me to actually open a safe for real at some point. I mean, open a safe that belonged to someone else. I figured I could live with that. Open one safe, let them do what they had to do. Then walk away.