Beneath

by Roland Smith

  His garbage-picking was not random.

  He was following a definite route.

  He’d done this countless times before.

  After two hours he was holding two stuffed bags in each hand and a third tied to the red pack slung over his shoulder. He had enough food to feed himself for a week.

  But why?

  I wanted to confront him again and ask him about Coop and the PO box, and to make sure it was the same guy, but I was afraid he might run off again. So I just followed him zigzagging through the cold city from garbage can to garbage can, Dumpster to Dumpster. He would have to stop foraging eventually. And he did …

  At about ten o’clock he went down yet another alley.

  I waited across the street, hands in my pockets, jumping up and down, trying to keep warm, waiting for him to come back out.

  He didn’t.

  Maybe he went out the other side … although he hadn’t when he’d gone into any of the other alleys. Maybe he lived in the alley and was stuffing his face before he went to sleep.

  Maybe I was afraid to walk into the dark alley and check.

  This was more like it.

  And it had nothing to do with claustrophobia. Dark alleys are not on my claustrophobic list. But they are on my chicken list. Especially when there’s a garbage picker lurking in the shadows. I tried to convince myself that the man was more afraid of me than I was of him. When he was in his suit he had run away from me. But now he wasn’t in a suit.

  What would Coop do?

  That made me laugh.

  Coop would stroll into that alley like it was his own bedroom, with that idiotic grin on his face ready for anything that waited for him in the dark.

  I wasn’t Coop, and I sure wasn’t grinning, but I walked into that dark alley.

  I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them squeaking and skittering as I called out ridiculously …

  “Hello? Hello? It’s Coop’s brother, Pat. I’m not here to cause a problem. I just want to talk.”

  The alley was about a hundred feet long and ended in a solid brick wall. There was only one door. It had bars over it and was locked from the outside with a bulletproof padlock. The closest windows were twenty feet up.

  No fire escape.

  No Dumpster.

  No guy.

  Poof!

  He had vanished.

  and out on the street after the late night transcribing the recordings into my journal.

  First stop: the alley.

  If this is where he vanished, this is where he would have to reappear.

  Right?

  Wrong.

  The big padlock on the barred door was rusty and hadn’t been opened in years. I couldn’t even tell how the rats got out of the alley — I didn’t see a big enough chink in the bricks for them to squeeze through.

  He may have vanished into thin air, but I doubted he was going to suddenly materialize out of thin air. And I didn’t think he was going to show up at the post office after what had happened there yesterday.

  That left me with the fitness club and the restaurant across the street.

  brought me my breakfast.

  A cheese-and-mushroom omelet, three sausage links, toast, orange juice (from concentrate). Twenty-two dollars and fifty-three cents without the tip. If I sat there through dinner waiting for the guy to show up at the club, a third of my cash would be gone. Maybe this explained why the guy was Dumpster diving the night before. You need a lot of money to survive in New York City.

  I rehearsed my next move as I ate. It was a big fitness club, but they had to know this guy well. How many people come into the club in a suit, work out, then leave as a homeless person?

  Being young has some advantages.

  And the time of year wouldn’t hurt either.

  As soon as I finished my last three-dollar sausage link (burnt) I was going to walk over to the club and tell them the mystery man was my long-lost father and that my mother and I wanted him home for Christmas.

  I didn’t think they’d give me his address or phone number. But I was hoping they’d at least tell me how often he came to the club and at what time. They might even give me his name. After all, it was almost Christmas.

  I dropped twenty-five dollars on the table and was about to leave the restaurant when I saw the man with the red day pack cross the street and walk into the club.

  I sat down, ordered another four-dollar OJ, and waited.

  He was back out within a half hour dressed just like he was at the post office the day before — except he was wearing a red tie instead of a blue tie.

  Two blocks later he walked into a bank.

  I tried to follow him in, but I was stopped by a security guard.

  “Bank’s not open yet.”

  “Oh … uh … I saw Mr. uh …”

  “Mr. Trueman?”

  “Right. I saw Mr. Trueman walk in and thought …”

  “Come back when the bank opens.”

  “Great. I’ll come back then.”

  I crossed the street and went into a Walgreens and came out with a disposable cell phone. I should have bought one the night before. Now at least I could call 911 if I needed to, but more important, I could call the bank. I called information and dialed the number.

  “May I speak to Mr. Trueman?”

  “I’m afraid new accounts isn’t open yet. You’ll have to call back at nine.”

  I walked into the bank at nine with my recorder on.

  “Hi, I need to open a new account. I’m supposed to talk to a Mr. Trueman.”

  “Terry’s right over there at his desk.”

  “Thanks … Hi, Terry.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Like I told you yesterday at the post office, I’m looking for my brother, Coop.”

  “And like I told you, I don’t know your brother. I’m going to call security.”

  “Do that. And I’ll tell everyone here about your other life.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The fitness club, the old clothes, Dumpster diving, the alley.”

  “You followed me to the alley last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sit down. Act like you’re filling out this form … I don’t know what your game is, but we can’t talk here … There’s a coffee shop on the corner. I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  I waited outside the bank where Terry couldn’t see me and watched the entrance.

  I didn’t trust him.

  When I’d said hi he’d nearly come out of his suit.

  I was sure there was a back door to the bank, but I couldn’t be in two places at once.

  But he walked out the front door, obviously nervous, and hurried down the street to the coffee shop. I followed him inside and switched the recorder on as I sat down across from him …

  “What’s it going to take?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How much to keep your mouth shut?”

  “I don’t want any money. I’m just looking for my brother.”

  “So you weren’t going to blow the whistle on me back at the bank?”

  “No. I just said that so you’d talk to me.”

  “You’re saying I can end this conversation right now, go back to the bank, and you won’t come in and tell everyone about … What did you call it? My other life …”

  “What would be the point?”

  “So this is legit. You’re not shaking me down. Coop’s really your brother.”

  “Yeah. Have you seen him? Do you know where he is?”

  “He never said he had a brother.”

  “He never says much of anything about himself.”

  “Let’s see some ID.”

  “See? Same last name.”

  “Tell me what he looks like. Describe him.”

  “I haven’t seen him in a year, but he’s a little under six feet, brown curly hair, green eyes, always smiling. He looks a little like me, but I’m
shorter, and my hair’s black. My eyes are blue.”

  “I see the family resemblance.”

  “Where is Coop?”

  “Let’s talk about the alley first.”

  “What about it? Which alley?”

  “The last one. The one you didn’t come out of. I went back there this morning. You didn’t use the entrance?”

  “No, I —”

  “Thank God! We’re not supposed to use the same entrance twice in a row. There are rules. You’re lucky you didn’t go down.”

  “What rules? Down where?”

  “You don’t know anything, do you?”

  “I guess not. Tell me about Coop.”

  “You’re not from here. Did you run away?”

  “Not exactly. I mean … uh … my parents are gone for the holiday. They don’t know I’m here. I came to New York to see if I could find Coop. We haven’t heard from him in a while. You picked up a couple of my letters to him yesterday.”

  “I’m the postman. I just drop off the letters and packages and pick up the mail. I can’t tell you if Coop got them or not. It would be best if you went back home. This isn’t any place for a kid like you.”

  “I’m not going back until I find Coop.”

  “You’ll have to talk to May.”

  “Who’s May?”

  “Do you have a sleeping bag?”

  “No, I’m staying in a hotel.”

  “Get one, get a sleeping bag. I’ll meet you outside the fitness club at six. Don’t be late. We have a lot to do. If you’re not there, I’m gone.”

  and I’m back at the restaurant waiting for a banker to trot up the stairs to the fitness center and morph into a homeless person.

  Mr. Terry Trueman.

  Homeless for the holidays.

  This might be the strangest Christmas Eve I’ve ever spent, and that’s saying something, because all my Christmas Eves and Christmas Days have been a little odd.

  Coop started the tradition.

  Even when he was a little kid he didn’t want things. Mom said that we still had wrapped Christmas/birthday presents (they celebrated his birthday and Christmas on the same day) up in the attic from when Coop was two years old. He refused to open them, which kind of ruined the gift-exchange thing. The only exception was the tap shoes I’d given him.

  Mom and Dad, being scientists, were happy to buy into the let’s-not-make-a-big-deal-out-of-Christmas thing. They weren’t complete grinches, but they didn’t do the decorated tree, stockings over the fireplace, Christmas lights, or any of the other trappings. Most years we’d leave town and stay in a nice hotel somewhere. New York twice. Or we’d go to someplace warm. I should say that we cruised to someplace warm. (After I was nine there were no more airplanes for me.)

  Even though Coop didn’t come right out and say it on the recordings, I knew he was flirting with the underground again, which has me a little worried as I sit here writing in this journal.

  Or maybe it wasn’t again.

  Maybe he had never stopped.

  Maybe all those nights he left our house with his shoes hanging around his neck he wasn’t tapping.

  I put the earphones in and fast-forwarded to Coop’s references to what lies below:

  There are over 700 miles of subway tunnels beneath New York. In 1912 the workers digging the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit subway accidentally rediscovered the city’s very first subway line, forty-two years after it closed …

  Buried under Front Street is an 18th-century merchant ship, 25 feet wide and 92 feet long. The bow of the ship was cut off and is now on display in Newport News, Virginia. The stern is still under the street …

  Beneath Chrystie Street is a six-lane highway built in the late 1960s, then sealed and forgotten …

  Below the theater district are dozens of public toilets that haven’t been tinkled in for years …

  Several stories under the Waldorf Astoria hotel is a private entrance that allowed President Franklin D. Roosevelt secret passage to the private train carrying him to and from his home in Hyde Park …

  The people who live beneath the streets are called Mole People, but they don’t like that name. Some say there are over two thousand of them …

  The rats under the city are called track rabbits, because they are sometimes eaten during lean times …

  A place where it never rains …

  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.

  He’s walking into the fitness club.

  This is insane.

  I don’t even know this guy.

  But Coop must have trusted him.

  I bought a sleeping bag and some other stuff at an outdoor store.

  When this guy comes out he’s taking me beneath.

  Just twenty-four hours ago I had a panic attack on a subway.

  How am I going to react now?

  If there was an entrance in that alley I sure didn’t see it.

  Mr. Trueman’s coming back out of the club wearing his black hooded sweatshirt, tattered overcoat, jeans, boots, and gloves.

  I’m closing my journal.

  Time to go.

  to catch up with him.

  “I didn’t think you’d show,” he said, walking down the street in the opposite direction he had gone the night before. “I wish you hadn’t. Did you get a sleeping bag?”

  I could see his breath in the cold.

  “Yeah.”

  We walked for three blocks, then turned down an alley.

  “Good pickings here. Even better on Christmas Eve. The restaurant isn’t open tonight, and it’ll be closed all weekend. They toss the good stuff.”

  He flipped open the lid to a metal Dumpster with a bang. Four rats scurried out from under the Dumpster.

  “Track rabbits,” I said.

  “You mean rats,” Mr. Trueman said.

  “Coop called them track rabbits.”

  “Are you nuts? We don’t eat rats. And you better stay clear of them. Guy I knew got swarmed a few years ago. Not much left when the meal was over, and the guy wasn’t the one doing the eating.” He pulled a handful of plastic grocery bags out of his pack and handed half of them to me. “Here are the rules. Only take things that haven’t been gnawed on by humans or rats. Give it the sniff test. If it smells funky, don’t put it in your bag.”

  “Funky?”

  “That’s right. Tainted. Rotten. Odd. Foul. Corrupt. Diseased. Spoiled. If it’s not something you’d eat raw if you didn’t have a fire to cook it, throw it away.”

  He climbed into the Dumpster.

  I stood where I was.

  “What are you waiting for? You can’t pick unless you’re in the pile. And don’t think Coop didn’t pick. He showed me this Dumpster. In fact, I’m takin’ you on his route. He had a knack. You can’t believe some of the things he found.”

  I climbed in.

  “This is the most wasteful city on earth. The food thrown away here every day is enough to feed entire countries for a month. But you gotta know where to look. That restaurant you came out of across from the club is not one of the places to look. You paid for food that I wouldn’t take for free.”

  I touched something deep in the pile.

  It was cold and soft.

  Something dead.

  I closed my eyes as I pulled it out.

  “Beautiful!” Mr. Trueman took it from me. “Eighteen pounds give or take.” He sniffed it. “Fresh. You know how many families right here in the city can’t afford a turkey dinner for Christmas? Tens of thousands that’s how many. And you just plucked one for absolutely nothing from one of the best restaurants in the city.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Me either, but that’s just the way it is.”

  “I’m not talking about the turkey, Mr. Trueman.”

  “Drop the Mr. Trueman. That’s not my r
eal name anyway. You can call me Terry or Posty. Those aren’t my real names either. Now what don’t you get?”

  “Why are you doing this? You have a job. You make money.”

  Posty picked through more trash, finding a bag filled with croutons. “Stuffing. You mean Dumpster diving?”

  “Right. Why are you doing this if you have a job?”

  “It started with a two-thousand-dollar suit.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not kidding. We find all sorts of things going through the trash. We eat the food, but if we find something like a two-thousand-dollar suit we take it to a secondhand store, or we try to sell it on the street. Anyway, almost twenty years ago now I found a beautiful suit zipped up in a suit bag in a Dumpster. The tailor’s name was right on the bag, so I thought I might get the best price by taking it back to him. I’m walking down the street with the bag slung over my shoulder and I start thinking about what I’m carrying. I go into a public restroom and try it on. It was a perfect fit. And I mean perfect. I looked like a millionaire except for my shirt and shoes. So instead of taking it back to the tailor I go to a secondhand shop and buy a pair of shoes, a white shirt, and a red power tie. I think that suit made me go temporarily insane, because I walked into a stylist shop for a haircut, shave, and manicure that cost me more money than I’d usually spent in a year back then.

  “When I come out I buy a New York Post with the last of my change. I read the newspaper most days, but I had never in my life bought one. So now I’m completely broke, but I look like I own the city. I go through the employment listings and see they’re looking for a bank trainee. I know the bank. It’s right next door to a restaurant with a great Dumpster in back.

  “I walk into the bank, and everyone there is fawning all over me. I mean they thought I owned the bank. I tell them that I’m interested in the trainee job. I fill out an application with absolute lies. The bank president interviews me and hires me on the spot. I didn’t think I’d show up for the job … It was just one of those I-wanted-to-see-if-I-could-do-it things. But I walk in on Monday in my suit, and twenty years later I’m still there.”

  “So you have an apartment. You don’t live … uh … beneath.”