Beneath

by Roland Smith

  Posty looked at me a second. “I don’t have an apartment. Why would I want an apartment where I would have to pay rent, utility bills, phone bills, and have neighbors I don’t even know?”

  “What do you do with the money you make at the bank?”

  “Not much. Fitness club dues. I buy a suit once in a while, shirts, socks, shoes … all used. Most months I make enough money from the stuff I find on the street for everything I need. I put the money I make from the bank in the bank. Not the bank I’m working at — I don’t want them to know how much I have. I don’t need the job or the money. I work at the bank because I like the people there and I’m good at what I do. Mr. Trueman has made some very sound investments, and someday he’s going to use his money to help people out. He just hasn’t decided exactly how to do this yet.”

  We climbed out of the Dumpster.

  “So you’re a homeless banker.”

  “I’m a banker, but I’m not homeless. I’m houseless, and there’s a difference between the two. There was a time when I was homeless, but that was years ago.”

  to carry as we walked down the frosty street.

  “Christmas Eve. We’ll be hauling a lot of stuff tonight — last chance for a couple of days. Everything will be closed down tomorrow. But next week things will really pick up. You wouldn’t believe what the department stores throw away after Christmas. Then there’s the New Year. Everyone dumps the junk they got in the previous year to make room for the junk they’re going to get in the New Year. I’ve actually picked things out of Dumpsters and sold them to the same people who dumped them the day before. And they say people like me are crazy.”

  We got to an alley near an Italian restaurant. I started to turn down it.

  “Not that one,” Posty said.

  “There’s a Dumpster,” I said.

  “A bad-luck Dumpster. Keep walking. I found something horrible in that Dumpster one night. In fact, it was Christmas Eve almost twenty years ago. I haven’t been down that alley since.”

  “What was it?”

  “I’m not telling you. It’s bad enough that I have it seared in my mind. I don’t even like walking by this alley. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about it. Let’s go.”

  We arrived at the next Dumpster and climbed inside.

  “So Coop did this with you?”

  “Sometimes. But mostly he worked on his own. Night owl. Stayed out on the streets long after I was in bed. He was a natural scrounger. The kid could find anything. That’s how he got his ticket beneath. That and the fact that he was likable and wasn’t an addict or a thief. He was pretty quiet. Didn’t say much. Just sat back and took everything in. May liked him right away.”

  That was Coop, but I didn’t like the fact that he was talking about Coop in the past tense.

  “Who’s May?”

  “I guess I better explain the names. May’s in charge of the Community. She’s our mayor.”

  “And you’re Posty because you pick up the mail?”

  “Right. Sparks is our electrician. TV is our cable and TV guy. Plum is our plumber. Chef is our cook. Handy is our builder. IT is our computer guy. Vet is our doctor.”

  “He’s a veteran?”

  “No. He used to be a veterinarian, but he’s also a pretty good human doc. The point is most of us have nicknames related to our jobs.”

  “So you have to have a skill to be in the Community.”

  “Not necessarily, but you have to bring something to the plate. In addition to delivering and picking up the mail, which is only a part-time job, I’m also a scrounger, with food as a specialty. Coop was on his way to becoming a scrounger too.”

  “What do you mean ‘was’?”

  “This Dumpster’s a bust. Let’s go to the next one.”

  before he told me what he meant by “was.”

  Sort of.

  “Right now there are twenty-three permanent members of the Community and a handful of what we call visitors. Coop was a visitor, which isn’t what it sounds like. To become a visitor you have to be invited to the Community by one of the permanent members, and we can only invite one visitor a year. And most of us don’t invite any visitors at all because there’s a risk involved.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Banishment. If we bring someone below who disrupts the Community, we might get voted out of the Community. It’s happened before. So we’re careful about who we invite.”

  “So someone can’t just drop in?”

  Posty laughed. “Impossible. No one can find us.”

  “What about the visitors?”

  “Blindfolded in and out every day, every night, every time. They are met above and escorted beneath.”

  “I’m going to be blindfolded?”

  “If you want to go beneath, absolutely.”

  My chest started to tighten just at the thought of being blindfolded and escorted beneath.

  “You okay?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “I’m fine.”

  But I wasn’t.

  I was scared.

  “You said that Coop was on his way to becoming a scrounger. What happened?”

  “Here’s how it works. After a month the permanent members of the Community vote on whether the visitor can join the Community. It has to be unanimous. We don’t discuss the pros and cons. We don’t try to persuade or influence each other. It’s a simple yes or no written on a scrap of paper tossed into a bucket. One no and the visitor is escorted above and is never allowed to visit the Community again.”

  “So Coop got a no.”

  “Nope. He got twenty-two yeses. In fact, another guy and I were going to put him up for membership, but May beat us to it. I liked him too. Coop’s a permanent member of the Community. Number twenty-three. But after he was accepted, he had a little different path in mind, which I can’t tell you about because I wasn’t his sponsor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “May invited him down. She’s the one you need to talk to.”

  “All I want to know is if Coop is okay.”

  “You’ll have to talk to May.”

  This was not the answer I wanted, but it was clear that this was the only answer Posty was going to give.

  was a bonanza.

  It was like someone had gotten everything ready for the holidays, then at the very last minute, decided to throw Christmas away. Even if Posty had more to tell me about Coop he wouldn’t have been able to. He was too excited about the unopened boxes of Christmas lights, candy, ornaments, tinsel, fruitcake, and …

  “Look at this! It’s a complete Santa suit with black boots, belt, hat … everything!”

  “How are we going to haul all of this stuff?”

  We already had more than we could carry.

  “Three blocks down is a Thai restaurant. In back of it is an apartment building.” He fished a key ring with two keys out of his pocket. “The brass key opens the basement door. The silver key opens a storage locker. Number eight. Right inside the locker door are two grocery carts.”

  The storage locker was filled with boxes and shelves of junk. I wheeled the carts out of the basement and jogged back to the Dumpster. Posty had everything pulled out and stacked in piles. We filled the carts and wheeled them back to the locker.

  “We’ll take what we need and leave the rest here. This is just one of our storage areas. If we don’t have time to sell what we find, or we can’t get the right price, we stash it here or in other lockers we have around the city.” He paused and stared at the boxes for a moment, then shook his head. “IT is setting up a system to sell the stuff on eBay.” He frowned. “My banking days are numbered. I’ll have to become a full-time postman.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then why don’t you just move above? Lead a regular life.”

  “And leave the Community? I’d never do that.”

  “How long have you lived beneath?”

  “Twenty-five y
ears, give or take a few months. What are you staring at? There are people who have lived beneath forty years. There are people who have never been on top.”

  “They had to be born on top.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Hard.

  We trudged down the street like two houseless Santas with huge black garbage bags slung over our shoulders.

  Posty told me how the Community was formed.

  “May, Taps, Sparks, and a couple of us had been talking about getting organized for years. But you know how it goes … it was just talk. We didn’t do anything about it. Our houses were flimsy but livable — nailed together with whatever we could find. There were the druggies and alcoholics and thieves and hooligans coming and going, getting out of the cold or hiding from the cops. It got a little rough sometimes, but we managed. Then 9/11 happened. That changed everything. The transit authority, city cops, and the feds came down and booted us out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because most of the infrastructure of New York City lies underground. If some wacko terrorist planted a couple of bombs beneath, it could kill thousands of people.

  “They offered us free apartments and job-training programs, but some of us didn’t want to go. May argued that we knew the underground better than the authorities could ever know it. If they left us in place, we would be able to tell them if something was going on. Homeless Security, she called it. Homeland Security didn’t get the joke. They sealed the entries and put up security cameras to make sure they weren’t reopened.

  “Of course they had no idea where all the entries were, and none of us volunteered the information. We tore our houses down, moved into apartments miles from each other, and fourteen of us were back under the streets within a week. We went deeper. We found a place to rebuild that no one could find. We set up some ground rules … or I should say underground rules. We finally got organized.”

  Posty stopped and started looking through his little red day pack.

  “Let me tell you the difference between a house and a home. A house, or a condo, or an apartment are structures. A home is family and has absolutely nothing to do with what it’s made of or where it is. Which do you want? The hood or the blindfold?”

  “What?”

  He held up a black hood in one hand and a black bandanna in the other.

  but I didn’t want either.

  “Sorry to make you nervous, but we have rules. We wouldn’t last a week if we took visitors down without the blindfold. Someone would tell someone and they would tell someone else and pretty soon a SWAT team would be knocking on our door with sledgehammers.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  But what Posty didn’t understand was that I wasn’t nervous about the blindfold he had just tied around my head. I was nervous about going beneath.

  “It’s a lot warmer below.”

  He said this because my knees were shaking.

  My knees weren’t shaking because it was cold.

  “Just put your left hand on my shoulder, and I’ll lead you to the entrance.”

  We walked for a long time with our plastic Christmas bags bumping against our backs. I didn’t know if we were walking down different streets or around the same block over and over again.

  I didn’t care.

  The walk gave me a chance to prepare myself. If I had a panic attack, Posty would disappear down the hole like a rabbit, alone, and not pop back up until after New Year’s.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re here. Take your backpack off. I’ll follow you down with the bags. Careful. It’s a tight squeeze.”

  Down.

  Tight.

  Squeeze.

  These are not the words a claustrophobic wants to hear.

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just a little cold.”

  I was sweating in the snow.

  “Best to go down headfirst. I’ll crawl in behind you.”

  Crawl.

  “No cheating. Keep the blindfold on.”

  He pushed down on my shoulders.

  I got on my knees.

  He placed my hands on the edge of the entrance.

  “Feel it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just stick your head inside and wiggle through.”

  Inside.

  Wiggle.

  “It slopes downward. Go slow. When you feel an edge in front of you, stop. There’s about a three-foot drop. You’ll have to ease yourself to the bottom by bracing yourself on the wall opposite the hole.”

  I could barely hear him above the sound of my jackhammering heart.

  I stuck my head inside and gagged.

  “It’s not a sewer. Stagnant water. You’ll get used to it. It’s only a short …”

  I didn’t hear the rest.

  Coop hung on to me with blistered hands.

  He didn’t let go.

  He blew his breath into my lungs.

  Coop saved my life.

  I slithered into the hole like an earthworm being stalked by a robin.

  I moved so quickly I missed the edge.

  And fell.

  Landed on my back in icy water.

  Gasping.

  Sucking in corrupted air.

  landed on my chest.

  A giant rat?

  A bat?

  A second monster landed on top of me.

  I fought them off.

  I heard a splash.

  “You’re wrecking our stuff!” Posty grabbed my coat and pulled me to my feet. “What’s the matter with you? You’re all wet. Do you want to get hypothermia and die?”

  “I slipped.”

  “Be more careful. It’s dangerous down here.”

  He helped me into my backpack.

  He handed me one of the plastic bags I had mistaken for a nightmare.

  I hoped it was dark and he couldn’t see how embarrassed I was. Not that I could see anything myself.

  “There isn’t enough room here for us to walk side by side. You’ll have to hold on to my bag and follow. And watch your footing. We’ll take it slow. It’s slippery through here, and there are a lot of things to trip over.”

  The blindfold actually helped.

  Not being able to see allowed me to imagine that I was in an open area much bigger than it probably was. Except for my initial panic and my fistfight with the bags, it was going better than I’d expected. I can’t say I was relaxed, but I wasn’t hyperventilating. And Posty was right about the smell: The worst of it was quickly behind us.

  I’m not sure how far or how long we walked, but it seemed like hours. The straps on my pack dug into my shoulders. Every few steps I had to switch the bag to my other hand.

  There were a lot of right and left turns.

  Posty must have had a flashlight or headlamp, but I could not see the beam.

  Subway trains roared past — sometimes close, sometimes far away.

  Cars passed overhead.

  Water dripped.

  Steam hissed.

  Every once in a while Posty stopped and took things out of my bag or his and put them into what sounded like trash cans.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making deposits. We’ll be there in about twenty minutes. You’re lucky. That was one of the closer entrances. Some of the outlying entrances can add an hour or more to the trip.”

  “Do other people in the Community have jobs on the outside like you?”

  “A few of them. I’m really going to miss the bank when IT gets that eBay thing going.”

  “Maybe you can trade your postal job with one of the other members.”

  “Maybe.”

  Or maybe you could move up top, I thought, and lead a normal life. “Has anyone ever left the Community?”

  “Sure. It’s not a prison. Half our people are away for the holidays right now. They’ll be back after New Year’s.”

  “Where do they go?”

  “Visit relatives, kids, parents. Where else would yo
u go for the holidays?”

  “Skiing, Disneyland, cruise to someplace warm …”

  “None of that stuff. They leave to check on the people they know up top. We have a Community kitty that everyone contributes to. If someone has to travel, they can take what they need to get there, but most of us stick around.”

  “That sounds a lot like rent,” I said.

  “Well it’s not. Up top, rent is mandatory. Beneath, the kitty is voluntary. No one keeps track of who puts money in or how much they put in.”

  We walked for a while longer, then Posty came to a stop.

  “That’s interesting.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a dog tied up outside the compound. No one in the Community has a dog.”

  A door opened and we walked through.

  It was warmer inside.

  The door closed.

  He took off my blindfold.

  “We’re here.”

  was a small square room, like a mudroom. Coats and hats hung on the wall. Old shoes and boots were lined up in a neat row on the floor beneath them.

  A single bulb dangled from the ceiling. It wasn’t bright, but I still had to blink several times to adjust to the light after the blindfold.

  Water dripped from some of the coats.

  Some of the shoes were wet.

  “We don’t allow shoes or coats inside because they track in dirt and germs.”

  Posty opened a second door.

  “Come on in and meet the gang.”

  The room was huge and circular, covered with mismatched carpet, sofas, chairs, and two long dining tables side by side with place settings, including cloth napkins.

  There were more than a dozen doors — different sizes, different types, cut into the walls.

  Along one curve was a kitchen. Double oven, commercial grill, stainless-steel sink, refrigerator, prep table, and a man dicing onions without looking down at his blurring blade.

  Chef?

  Twelve sets of eyes stared at me.

  One set wore big sunglasses.

  A girl.

  Short black hair.

  Pale skin.

  Small.

  Older than me, but far younger than the other eleven.