Beneath

by Roland Smith

  One night a dog bit him on the nose.

  Coop still kept digging.

  A flashlight was fine for finding his way down the dark tunnel, but for digging he used a lantern. The fuel lasted a hundred times longer than batteries and was cheaper.

  Coop found a second dump site about a quarter mile downstream from the shed and was once again making good progress on the tunnel. He had also discovered some artifacts: a handful of musket balls and a rusty bayonet he claimed were from the Civil War.

  Spring break was a few weeks away, and a couple of months after that, school would be out.

  “We’ll have the whole summer to dig,” he said. “Who knows what else we’ll find!”

  On the last night of the project we found a gas line.

  It was a Saturday morning a little after three.

  The night before, Coop had bumped into the Mesas’ Olympic-size swimming pool and was digging along the side of it, hoping he had chosen the shortest way around. He was grunting so loudly in the confined space while he swung the pick he didn’t hear the hissing noise.

  I was lying right behind him waiting for the next bucket of dirt.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  “What?” Coop said, taking another swing with the pick.

  “Do you smell that?”

  “I don’t smell anything except my own sweat. The pool is heated, and the wall is warm.” He moved the lantern to a better position. “I can hardly wait until we get around this thing. I can’t believe I bumped into it. Of all the luck. At least we won’t have to shore up this side of the —”

  Coop swore, then yelled, “Run!”

  The tunnel was not tall enough to run in. I crawled on my hands and knees as fast as I could, with Coop’s head bumping into my rear. We were twenty yards from the second entrance when we heard the wumpf!

  I didn’t see the fireball because Coop had straddled my back and covered my head with his body. The last thing I remember was feeling as if I was flying down a muddy rifle barrel like a musket ball with Coop hanging on to me.

  I woke up in the hospital three days later. Mom was sitting next to my bed reading an article in the Journal of Astrophysics called “The Formation of Polar Disk Galaxies.”

  “How’s Coop?” I asked.

  “He is insane,” Mom answered.

  Except for some burns and singed hair, Coop was fine.

  The same could not be said for our neighborhood.

  McLean is across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. Aside from former astronauts and Nobel laureates we have senators, CIA agents, Georgetown University professors, lobbyists, and other people, like the vice president’s daughter and her family, whose house is kitty-corner to ours.

  Two hundred local, state, and federal law enforcement agents arrived within minutes of the explosion. They thought it was a terrorist attack.

  It didn’t take them long to figure out that it was only Coop. Every inch of his tunnel had collapsed, which led them directly to the shed in our backyard.

  I missed everything after the fireball, but I heard about it after I came out of my coma.

  The blast blew us right past the second entrance. Coop and I caught on fire, or at least our pants did, but we were put out by the water from the Mesas’ swimming pool. Mostly.

  Through all of it Coop hung on to me.

  He dug us out of the collapsed tunnel with his bare, blistered hands, stopping every few seconds to blow air into my lungs.

  He carried me across our back lawn to my waiting parents and several federal agents, looking like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Our pants were still smoking.

  Dad took me.

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation took Coop. They hustled him into the back of a black sedan and drove him away before anyone in the neighborhood saw him.

  The whole thing was hushed up. The headline the next morning read: “Gas Line Explosion Scares McLean.” I think our family was the only one who knew what really happened.

  By the time I got out of the hospital, a couple of days after I regained consciousness, you wouldn’t have known anything bad had happened in the neighborhood. The lawns had been repaired, the flowers replanted, and the five trees that were knocked down were cut up and hauled away. The only thing still being worked on was the Mesas’ pool. (They ended up having to replace it.)

  Two FBI agents came by the house. An Agent Ryan did all the talking. She told us that in the interest of national security they were going to stick with the gas-line-explosion story. She said that people were already jumpy enough with all the terrorist threats. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to know that a fourteen-year-old dug a mile-long tunnel and blew up a swath of one of the most secure neighborhoods in America.

  (I’m probably violating some state secrets act by writing about it here.)

  They let Coop go a few days after I got home.

  His hands were wrapped in bandages.

  He said they kept him in a nice room with a comfortable bed and brought him a tuna sandwich whenever he asked for one. Several times a day different people came into the room asking the same questions over and over again. But mostly he talked with Agent Ryan, whom he got along with well.

  There wasn’t much my parents could do to punish him.

  They couldn’t ground someone who doesn’t care if he can’t leave the house.

  They couldn’t take away the phone, computer, or TV from someone who doesn’t use any of them.

  They could have taken away his tap shoes, but they knew he would just tap in regular shoes or his bare feet — muted tapping.

  “No more tunnel digging,” Dad said.

  Coop agreed.

  Later, up in his bedroom, I asked him about his hands.

  “No big deal. I got some blisters when I put out your pants. They got infected when I dug us out.” He hesitated and tears came to his eyes. “The worst part of it was thinking that I killed you, Meatloaf.”

  Coop would have gotten out of the tunnel a lot faster without having to drag me through the suffocating muck.

  Coop hung on to me with blistered hands.

  Coop filled my lungs with air from his lungs.

  Coop could have died trying to save me.

  More than the tunnel had collapsed that terrible night.

  After that, things weren’t the same between Coop and me.

  We were brothers.

  We were friends.

  But he no longer confided in me. It was as if we were in separate passageways.

  When Coop talked to me, there was an echo now.

  I couldn’t tell where he was.

  When I complained about it he said, “I’ve got to travel my path, and you have to travel yours.”

  I searched his room to see what he had taken with him.

  Tap shoes. (Which were the only Christmas gift he had ever accepted from anyone. I got them for him last Christmas because the pair he was using looked and smelled like road-killed opossums.)

  Half a dozen flashlights.

  Some clothes.

  A two-man tent.

  A sleeping bag.

  A beat-up backpack.

  He left behind his purple stationery and envelopes.

  Coop’s life did not revolve around things.

  Sorry it took me so long to send this recording, but I didn’t want to sound like an idiot, so I had to practice for a while. I would have rather written you a letter, but you said you wanted to hear my voice. So here it is …

  Mom and Dad have separated.

  Mom has a boyfriend. Dad has a girlfriend.

  If it works out, you will have three half sisters, a stepfather, a stepmother, and a half parrot.

  Mom is with a widower named Wayne, a real estate lawyer in Boca Raton, who has three daughters under the age of five. She moved to Florida. Dad is with a girl not that much older than you. Just kidding. But she is a lot younger than Dad. Her name is Denise. She’s an ornithologist. She and Dad go birding almost every weekend, leav
ing me home alone with the parrot. I guess this is good, because Dad’s looking up now instead of down … at least on the weekends.

  I was ballistic when you took off without telling me, and mad for months when you didn’t contact me.

  I’m over it now. I guess.

  What are you doing? Where are you working? What’s it like there? Where do you live? How long are you going to stay wherever you are? Are you tapping? Are you ever coming back here?

  Holy cow, Pat. A half parrot? I always wanted a parrot. I guess half a parrot is better than none. But I’m sorry to hear Mom and Dad split up. They may not have been pleased with the two meatloafs they baked, but they seemed happy with each other … at least most of the time. I hope they get back together …

  Me?

  I’ve been exploring. I know that New York City is only a few hours by train from McLean, but I took the long way around, hitching to California, up the West Coast through Oregon and Washington, then back east across Canada, dropping down from Quebec.

  When I finally got here I knew I was in the right place. What I’m looking for is here. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can feel it … It’s close.

  I know you’re wondering: What is Coop looking for? You’re not alone. So am I. All I know is that something has been pulling me my whole life like some kind of cosmic magnet, and I think the magnet is buried someplace here. I need to find it and ask it what it wants.

  I’m not working. I’m not looking for work. I live wherever I am at the end of the night. I’ll stay here until I find whatever it is I’m looking for. In the meantime there’s a lot to see. I have a lot to learn. And of course I’m still tapping. The shoes you gave me are magical.

  I’m running a little low on batteries. I think there’s still some up in my room. Throw them in with the next recording. I’ll cut this short because I need to find a stamp and an envelope and catch the postman. Wonderful to hear your voice, Meatloaf. I mean that. I miss you. Everything is good here …

  Coop, I found the batteries in your room along with your purple stationery. I’ve included some of it with some stamps. Not much to talk about here. School. Homework. Neighborhood. On weekends it’s just me and the parrot most of the time. His name is Vincent and he doesn’t like anyone except Denise, who’s had him since she was a little girl. He’s chewed up some things around the house and screams a lot, but Dad doesn’t seem to care. He’s changed since he and Denise got together. Smiles more. He’s exercising. He bought an expensive pair of binoculars. A couple of days ago I came home from school and he was wearing jeans, an untucked polo shirt, and Birkenstocks. He’s growing his hair out. He doesn’t shave on weekends. At night he and Denise spend a lot of time looking at topographical maps and bird guides. They listen to recorded bird calls and test each other. Denise wins every time.

  Hey, Lil Bro … I’m at the library today getting out of the rain, doing some research. I met this old guy who knows everything about New York City … especially underground. He turned me on to a bunch of books about it.

  Here are some interesting New York City factoids …

  For the first two hundred years pigs were used to clean the streets. Twenty thousand of them!

  The city is built on rock, but there are hundreds of streams, springs, and sucking sand-whirls beneath New York. In fact, the New York Public Library, where I’m sitting right now, is on top of the Murray Hill Reservoir, where the city used to get its water.

  There are one hundred and seventy varieties of precious and semiprecious stones in the rocks beneath the city. Amethysts, opals, beryl, tourmalines, garnets … Whoa! Hang on …

  I just hopped a subway uptown …

  I’m at the American Museum of Natural History now looking at one of the biggest garnet crystals ever found in the US. It came out of a ditch on West Thirty-Fifth Street. Before they put it on display here someone was using it as a doorstop.

  In this one I thought I’d just take you through one of my nights here in the city. Kind of like carrying you in my pocket. It’s going to sound a little weird because I’ll be turning the recorder off and on …

  “Yo, Curious Coop, my man. Where you been, CC? Got your shoes? Listen to this …”

  Tap, tap, tap, tap … tap, tap …

  “Not bad, Taps. You should have been on Broadway.”

  “I was on Broadway. Now let’s see what you got.”

  Tap, tap, tap … tap, tap, tap, tap …

  “Whew. You got the juice, CC.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Some girl. Look’s like a junkie, wearing shades at night like that.”

  “She’s not a junkie. There’s something about her.”

  “I got bad vibes. Leave her be.”

  “I’m going to talk to —”

  “Too late. She’s disappeared into the night.”

  “I think I’ve seen her before.”

  “Forget her … By the way, the mayor was asking after you last night. You got her ear. Likes you. I thinks she’s gonna take you down.”

  “That’s good news.”

  (After the tap dance I hear Coop walking for about ten minutes, without a word, as if he’s forgotten the tape recorder is in his pocket, then … )

  “Hi, Meg.”

  “Evening, Coop.”

  “You didn’t happen to see a girl pass by recently? Street girl — small, wearing shades.”

  “Didn’t see her, but I wasn’t looking.”

  “No big deal. How’s Tootsie?”

  “See for yourself.”

  “Has she been eating?”

  “Nope. She’s not interested. Gettin’ old like me I guess.”

  “Maybe she’ll be interested in this. I’ll just break off little bits.”

  “You’re a good boy, Coop. Nobody cares about Tootsie and me but you. I found some books in the trash yesterday. Saved them for you.”

  “You should read them first.”

  “You know I don’t read no more. My eyes.”

  “How about if I read them out loud to you. I used to read to my brother all the time.”

  “I ain’t no baby that needs story time. Got my own stories runnin’ in my head at high speed in high def. Just take the books, you rascal. I gotta be going. It’s gonna rain tonight. You gotta place where it’s dry?”

  “Soon, I might have a place where it never rains …”

  And that’s how it went. Back and forth for several months. I’d send a recording. A few days later Coop would send one back. His were much longer than mine and a lot more interesting until …

  but I’m sticking in the city. A lot of people head south for the winter if they can scrape together enough cash. And no, I’m not asking for money. I don’t need it. I already have my entrance fee, and it’s taken me months to earn it. Keep sending those recordings, and I’ll record you back when I can. I have to go now. My guide awaits.

  When I first listened to this I didn’t think much about it. The only thing that struck me as a little odd was that he called me Patrick. I’m Meatloaf, Lil Bro, Pat, but never Patrick. That would be like me calling him Cooper, which he hated. This all started with my parents, who did not believe in the shortening of given names. My father’s name was Bertrand O’Toole, never Bert. My mother’s name was Ariel O’Toole, never Ari. To annoy them, Coop took the er out of Cooper. And when I was born he took the rick out of Patrick.

  I replied with another one of my boring recordings.

  Then another, and another, and another, then some letters …

  I’ve been checking the PO box on the way to school and on the way home.

  Empty.

  No word from Coop.

  Here’s what Dad said …

  “So you’ve been sending recordings back and forth and Cooper is in New York?”

  “Yeah. But it’s been a month since he sent one back. I think something’s happened.”

  “Maybe he moved on. Maybe his recorder is broken. Maybe he didn’t pay the PO box rental fee. Maybe h
e’s just preoccupied … you know how he can get.”

  “Or maybe he’s in the hospital.”

  “A hospital would contact us. He would have to fill out forms. Next of kin, et cetera, someone would call us. He didn’t contact you for a year after he left here. What makes you think he wouldn’t do that again? And he didn’t contact me or your mother at all.”

  “I think something’s happened.”

  “I think he’s fine, but, if you want, I’ll file a missing person’s report. Now, I need to talk to you about Christmas break.”

  “What about it?”

  “Denise and I are going to Belize to try and find one of the rarest birds in Central America, the keel-billed motmot. I emailed your mom and she said you can spend the holidays in Florida with her.”

  (Mom and Dad had stopped talking on the phone, because when they did they argued. You can’t argue in an email … at least not loudly.)

  “I don’t want —”

  “I know, but you can’t go with us. We’re going to be gone for sixteen days, and you have only two weeks off of school. And we are going to fly. No other way to get to Belize quickly. You can take the train to Florida. I’ve already bought you a ticket.”

  “Does Mom really want me in Florida?”

  “Absolutely! She misses you, and she wants you to spend some time with your … uh … potentially anyway … stepsisters. If your mom … Well, if she marries this guy, those three girls are going to be in your life for the rest of your life.”

  “You’ll check on Coop?”

  “First thing tomorrow morning. I’m sure he’s fine. Don’t worry about him.”

  and the longer it goes without a word from him the more worried I become.

  I’ve lost track of how many recordings I’ve sent. Two weeks ago I included a self-addressed stamped postcard with a note telling him to send it back to me so I would know if he was okay. All he had to do was drop it in the slot at the post office. It didn’t come back. I sent a registered letter he had to sign for. He didn’t sign for it. The letter came back. I called the post office in New York and asked a postal worker what they did with regular mail that wasn’t picked up. He told me if the letters have return addresses they are sent back to the sender as undeliverable. (All of my unregistered letters and packages had return addresses. None of them have come back.) I asked him if he knew Coop. He said he couldn’t tell me, and even if he could, it would be unlikely he would know him anyway. “Kid,” he said, “I’ve been at this post office for over twenty years and I don’t even know everyone who works here.”