Michigan
July 1999
Mr. Marsh led me out into his backyard. I had been there once before, of course, but it had been dark then, and I hadn’t really been paying much attention to the landscaping. In the bright light of day, I could see that the grass had recently been planted, a thousand green shoots poking their way up through a thin layer of straw. There was about a half acre or so, ending in a line of trees that looked like part of an old apple orchard.
“You guys didn’t do my new grass any favors, either,” he said, pointing to a wide patch of new straw. “I should have waited and made you fix it.”
I looked down and saw four different sets of footprints.
“Anyway, if you really want to take this rap all by yourself, you’re going to be mighty lonely back here.”
Meaning what, exactly?
He walked out into the yard, stopping about twenty yards from the house. He picked up a shovel he had apparently left there. It was brand-new, with a yellow fiberglass handle and a shiny blade that had yet to touch dirt. A few yards away was a wheelbarrow with the price tag still taped to one of its handles.
“They asked me to have some sort of work for you to do for me,” he said. “Four hours a day, six days a week. For the rest of the summer. That’s a lot of time.”
He handed me the shovel.
“I marked it out,” he said. “Make sure you follow the lines exactly.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Until I noticed the length of twine at his feet. It was strung along a series of wooden pegs, one inch above the straw. I followed the line, maybe thirty feet or so until it took a right turn. Then three more right turns to complete a large rectangle.
“Don’t worry about depth yet. Just start and we’ll see how it looks, eh? When you fill up the wheelbarrow, just take it over to that spot by the trees and dump it.”
This was going to be a swimming pool. The man actually expected me to dig him a swimming pool in his backyard.
“There’s a plastic jug over there by the faucet,” he said. “That’s how you get your water. You need to take a piss, you use the woods. I’ll let you know when it’s four o’clock. Any questions?”
He waited for a few seconds, as if I’d actually say something.
“Let’s get one more thing straight here,” he said. “You’re dealing directly with me and nobody else. You don’t step foot in the house unless I tell you to. As far as my daughter goes, well, I’m just hoping that if she sees you working back here, maybe she’ll realize you’re not so terrifying. You hear what I’m saying? I want her to see that you’re just a cheap punk and not a monster so she can sleep at night. Beyond that you have nothing to do with her. If I see you so much as look at her sideways, I will kill you. You got that?”
I held the shovel. I looked at him. I felt the sun beating down on my back.
“My son, on the other hand… like I said, he’s already up in East Lansing, so you probably won’t get to meet him. You better pray you don’t, actually, because if he ever comes home and sees you… let’s just say I won’t have to worry about killing you anymore.”
He stopped, shook his head, and did a bad job fighting off a smile.
“I’ll be out later to check on you,” he said. “Remember, one word from me and you get sent to the juvie camp. So you sure as hell better get digging.”
I watched him walk away from me. He didn’t look back. When he opened the door and disappeared, I just stood there for a while, looking around me at the great rectangle marked in the grass and straw. There wasn’t a single cloud to pass above me. No trees to offer their shade. I swallowed hard and dug my shovel into the ground. I lifted a small mound of dirt and carried it over to the wheelbarrow. The dirt hit with a hollow thump.
One down. Seven million to go.
There are prison programs where you leave the grounds for a few hours every day to help out on some kind of project or other. Clearing out debris from a demolition, say, or maybe even helping to build something if you have the skills. It’s a chance to get out of the prison, ride a bus down a real street, see real women walking along on the sidewalk, then to actually do something constructive when you get there. Most inmates would gladly stick a knife in someone else’s back to get that kind of assignment.
It’s not like in the old days, like when they made the prisoners themselves build Sing Sing from the ground up. With regular whippings for anyone who didn’t pull their weight. No, they just don’t do that kind of thing anymore. No more backbreaking labor. No more rock piles and sledgehammers. No more whippings. They sure as hell don’t stick you in the middle of a field by yourself and tell you to start digging a swimming pool. That kind of cruel and unusual punishment would get a modern warden fired by the end of the first day.
But I wasn’t in a prison. I was here in the Marshes’ backyard and would be here everyday except Sundays. For the rest of the summer. I didn’t think I had much choice in the matter. I sure as hell didn’t want to find out if that juvie camp was an idle threat. So I put the shovel back in the ground, pushed down with my foot, lifted the dirt, and threw it into the wheelbarrow.
I kept going. I filled the wheelbarrow, rolled it over to the edge of the woods, and dumped it. I rolled it back and picked up the shovel again. While filling up the second load, I started to hit rocks. Some of them were big enough I had to shut everything down and spend the next few minutes working around it, until I finally got enough leverage to pry the damned thing free. My hands were starting to hurt already. My back, too. I was pretty sure I hadn’t even been digging for half an hour yet.
The sun was punishing me. I put down the shovel, took the plastic water jug over to the house, and turned on the faucet. The cold water felt good on my hands. I knelt down and splashed my face with it. Then I filled the jug and took a long drink. When I turned off the faucet, I could hear Mr. Marsh from inside the house. He was yelling at someone. I didn’t hear anybody respond, so I figured he must be yelling into the phone. I couldn’t make out the words. Only the anger.
Probably wouldn’t be a great idea to have him come out right now, I thought, see me sitting here by the house. I took the jug back with me and started digging again. I could see that I was barely making a dent in the ground. This would have to be something not to think about. At all. Just turn off your brain, I told myself, and keep digging.
Another half hour passed. Another few loads of dirt, moved from inside the stakes to the growing pile at the edge of the woods. The sweat was starting to sting my eyes. I didn’t see Mr. Marsh come out of the house. All of a sudden, he was just standing there behind me.
“You’re going to destroy your back,” he said to me. “You won’t last two days like that.”
I stopped and looked at him. He was holding a drink, some kind of summer cocktail with fruit and lots of ice.
“Use your legs,” he said. “Keep your back straight and use your goddamned legs. Then you might last three days.”
I pushed the shovel into the ground, bending with my knees. I hit another big rock.
“You can’t do this by yourself. You know that.”
I wiped off my face, then started working around the rock. This felt like the biggest one yet.
“You’re being a fool,” Mr. Marsh said. He took a long sip from his glass and squinted as he looked up at the sky. “This sun will kill you. Are you listening to me?”
I stopped and looked up at him.
“You give up the others, I’m telling you… I’ll let you sit out here under an umbrella.”
I went back to work on the rock.
“Fine, keep digging,” he said. “Let me know when you’re ready to reconsider.”
He walked back into the house, shaking his head. I spent the next twenty minutes hauling out a rock the size of a basketball. Things got a little hazy after that. I remember two birds high above me. I could hear one of the birds screaming at the other. When I looked up, I saw that the screaming bird was chasing a much bigger bird, drawing jagged shapes against the blue sky. The bigger bird could have flown away, or it could have turned on the smaller bird and knocked it out of the game entirely. It didn’t seem to want to do either, maybe as a point of pride. The smaller bird kept after it, screaming those same notes over and over again.
You cannot do that, a voice coming from somewhere inside my overheated head. Never mind the flying. You can’t even make a sound like that. The most elemental thing that any bird or lowly animal can do… it is beyond your abilities.
I started to hit roots, as thick as my arm. I hit them with the sharp edge of the shovel but could not cut them. I stopped and went to refill the water jug. I put my head under the faucet and shocked myself with the electric coldness of the water. I didn’t get up for a while. I sat there until I looked up and saw Mr. Marsh looking at me through the back window. His arms were folded and he had a look on his face that didn’t need any interpretation. I got up and went back to work.
Another hour passed. I didn’t slow down, but there was a strange yellowish tint to everything I was seeing, and the birds above me seemed to turn into vultures. Watching me. Waiting. I kept digging in that one little corner of the rectangle, getting down as deep as I could in that one spot so it would actually look like I was getting somewhere. I knew on some gut level that if I spread out my efforts too much, I’d just end up scraping the top two inches off of everything. And that would make me lose my mind.
The dizziness came next. Every time I bent my head down, I felt like I was going to pass out. I could feel the sun burning right through my shirt. I kept drinking, going back to work, drinking, going back. I didn’t hear her as she came up behind me. I didn’t notice her at all until I turned to reach for the water jug and saw her black sneakers. I looked up, at faded blue jeans with holes in the knees, at a blinding white shirt that gathered around her shoulders and made her look like she belonged on a pirate ship. At her face. Amelia’s face, for the first time in real life. Not a drawing, not a photograph.
Her eyes were dark brown, her hair was light brown. Kind of a mess, like mine, but maybe only half as curly. More like an unruly mop she’d have to push away from her eyes just to get a good look at you. A permanent set to her mouth like she’d just won an argument with you.
I’m making her sound pretty ordinary here. A normal seventeen-year-old, maybe a little un-put-together yet, going through one of those phases, never smiling, never brushing her hair. If you think you have the general picture, then I don’t think I’m doing her justice. Because there was something above and beyond about her, something I could see right away, even as she was standing there at the edge of the hole shading her eyes from the sun.
Of course, I know that seeing her drawings first was a big part of it. I mean, how could it not be? It was just a gut instinct at this point, this feeling that there was definitely something different about her. That maybe she’d seen some of the same things I’d seen.
Crazy, I know. Impossible to know so much about someone from just a few drawings, before you even meet them in person. Now here she was, about to say her first words to me.
“You are so full of shit. Do you know that?”
I kept standing there, looking at her. I can’t imagine what a sight I must have been. Hair even messier than hers, dirt and sweat all over my face. Like some medieval street urchin.
“I already heard about you,” she said. “I mean before you broke into our house. You’re the guy from Milford High School who doesn’t talk, right?”
I didn’t answer. I mean, not with a nod or a shake of the head. I looked at the way the sun made her skin glow.
“Because… why? What’s the deal with that? Because something happened to you when you were a little kid?”
I couldn’t move.
“I can see right through you. Your silent act there. Because believe me… you want to talk about things happening to you when you’re a kid? We could exchange a few stories someday.”
A sound from somewhere, a glass door sliding shut with a bang.
“Or no, maybe not. You’d have to drop the act then, right?”
Her father rushing across the grass now, slipping on the loose straw and nearly falling on his face.
“Nice job on the break-in, too,” she said. “That was real smooth.”
“Amelia!” Her father grabbing her by the arm. “Get away from him!”
“I’m just seeing what he looks like,” she said. “The big bad criminal.”
“Get in the house. Right now.”
“All right, all right! Relax!” She shook her arm free and went back toward the house. She turned and looked back at me for one second. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but I did know one thing. What Mr. Marsh had said about her, about how traumatized she was by just the thought of me breaking into her house? About how terrified she was?
Somehow, I wasn’t getting that from her.
“I warned you,” he said to me. “Did I not warn you?”
Well, yes, I thought. You did warn me.
“If I ever see you…”
Then he ran off the rails. What was he going to say? If I ever see you talking to her? Just standing there like you’re made of stone while she insults you?
“Look, this isn’t going to work,” he said. “Can we just cut through the bullshit right now? You don’t want to come here every day and do this, do you?”
I looked past him. Amelia was standing next to the sliding door. She was watching me. I picked up the shovel and pushed it into the dirt.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it. Looks like you’re making some progress on the shallow end here, eh? Just wait until you get to the deep end.”
He turned to walk away from me. Then he stopped.
“You’ve got one more hour out here,” he said. “I expect sixty minutes. Not fifty-nine. That’s all I’m gonna say.”
I carried the shovelful to the wheelbarrow and threw it in.
“Last chance,” he said. “I mean seriously, I know I keep saying it, but this is seriously your last chance. You come in right now, you write down the names, and we’re good. You hear me? That’s all it takes.”
What I did next… I don’t know where it came from. It’s not something I’d normally do, not in a million years. Maybe only after digging a hole for three straight hours on a hot summer day, while some middle-aged rich jackass wearing tight shorts gives me one last chance for the seventh time. I made an F sign with my left hand, a K with my right, brought them together, and then made like I was throwing the whole thing right at his face. Sure, there might be simpler ways to say it. Hell, you can do it with one finger on one hand. But if five years of sign language taught me anything, it was how to do things like this with a little more style.
Then I turned my back on him and rolled the wheelbarrow over to the woods.
“What was that?” he yelled after me. “What the hell was that supposed to be, you stupid little freak?”
He was gone when I came back. I didn’t see Amelia anywhere, either. I kept looking at the house for the next hour, but she didn’t appear.
I finished up at four o’clock. Then I left. I tried to keep her face in my mind as I drove home. I went right to my drawing paper and tried to capture it. I had such a talent for drawing from memory, after all. That was my “mutant gift,” as Mr. Martie called it, being able to re-create every detail, just starting with the basic shape and letting it all come back to me.
Today I couldn’t do it. For the first time ever, I couldn’t draw somebody’s face. I kept trying and failing and wadding up the paper and trying again. You’re too tired, I told myself. You can barely keep your eyes open. So I gave up and went to bed.
Waking up the next morning… biggest mistake of my life. My back was so tight, I literally had to roll myself out of bed. My legs were sore. My arms were sore. But nothing, and I mean nothing, has ever hurt as much as my hands hurt that morning.
I couldn’t open them, for one thing. I couldn’t completely close them, either. Then I took a shower and just about went through the ceiling when the hot water hit my blisters. When I was dressed, I rummaged around in the back room of the liquor store and found an old pair of work gloves. Better late than never, I figured. Uncle Lito took one look at me and just about fainted.
“What the hell did they do to you?” he said. “Your face is as red as a lobster. I’m going to call that stupid probation officer right now. Hell, I’m calling the judge.”
I grabbed him by the shoulders, which surprised the living hell out of him. I grabbed him and my shook my head. I didn’t want him to call anybody or do anything else that would stop me from going back to the Marshes’ house that day. I had to see her again, no matter what.
I ate something just so I’d have a little energy, got in the car, and drove over to the Marshes’ house, trying to loosen up my hands as I drove. It was a few minutes after noon when I got there. Mr. Marsh was waiting for me in the driveway.
“You’re late,” he said. “Come with me.”
Yeah, yeah, I thought, back to the pool. Just tell me that your daughter will be home again today.
“I want you to meet somebody.”
He led me around to the back of the house. There was a man there, kneeling by the door.
“This is Mr. Randolph,” Mr. Marsh said. “He’s a locksmith.”
The locksmith stood up and adjusted his baseball cap. “Mr. Marsh tells me you opened this lock,” he said. “I don’t see a scratch on it. So I’m calling bullshit.” He had a slight Eastern European accent, so bullshit came out as “bullsheet.”
“How about it?” Mr. Marsh said. “You want to show us how you did it?”
I put my hands up in surrender. No, I don’t.
“It was open,” the locksmith said. “Am I right? This door was open so you walked right in.”
I should have let it go. Instead I shook my head and made a gesture like I was picking an imaginary lock in the air.
“Come off it,” the locksmith said, sneaking a wink at Mr. Marsh. “There’s no way you could pick this lock. It would take me quite a bit of work to do it myself.”
“Let him prove it,” Mr. Marsh said. “Let him put his money where his mouth is.”
The locksmith started laughing. “I’ll bet you a hundred dollars cash. Real American money, right here on the spot.”
“You’re not taking my money today,” Mr. Marsh said. Then he turned to me. “But I’ll tell you what, Michael. You open that lock, and I’ll give you the day off. Okay? You up for that? Open it right now and you can go home.”
“Here, you can even use my tools,” the locksmith said. He pulled out what looked like a large wallet and handed it to me. “Best in the business.”
I unzipped the leather case and opened it. I stood there for a moment looking at the contents. I had never seen such a beautiful collection of tools.
“You know how to use them, don’t you? Come on, show us your stuff.”
There were at least a dozen lock picks to choose from. Three different diamond picks, two ball picks, one double ball pick, at least four or five hook picks. I didn’t know their names yet. I wouldn’t learn that until later.
“Okay, make that a thousand dollars,” the locksmith said. “I’ll give you ten to one odds.” He was about to take the case back from me, but I turned away from him and took out one of the hook picks. There were four different tension bars, so I knelt down next to the lock and tried to guess which size would work best. I had never had to make such a choice before. It had always been whatever hunk of scrap metal I had on hand.
I took out one of the tension bars. Not the smallest, not the biggest. I slid it into the bottom of the keyhole. I put one finger on the right side and pushed it ever so slightly. Then I took the hook pick and felt along the line of tumblers. I had already done this lock before, of course, so I knew exactly where to go. It was a very basic setup, six pins, one tight combination in the back but otherwise nothing too tricky. It had taken me all of three minutes with a screwdriver and a bent safety pin. With these perfect tools-hell, it wouldn’t take me more than thirty seconds.
“He seems to know what he’s doing,” Mr. Marsh said. “You don’t suppose…”
“No freaking way,” the locksmith said. He wasn’t smiling now. “I promise you.”
I popped the back pin, worked my way carefully past the fifth. With the good tension bar, it was so much easier to keep the last pin engaged. I felt that satisfying little click with each pin as I made my way to the front. I could feel that I had it halfway done. With the mushroom pins, I knew I had to go back and do them all one more time. There were just the tiniest slivers of metal standing in my way now. Six little notches on six little pins, and then the whole thing would turn free.
The two men were quiet now. I worked my way through the pins again, back to front. I was about to pop that last pin when something made me stop.
Think about this, I thought to myself. Do you really want to prove to these guys that you can break into this house whenever you feel like it? Into any house? Is that the kind of thing you want everybody to know?
“Is that it?” Mr. Marsh said. “Are you giving up already?”
“Playtime’s over,” the locksmith said. A sneer on his face. “Remember this the next time you feel like shooting off your mouth.”
Not the right thing to say to me, I thought. I looked the locksmith in the eye as I tapped up that last pin. I turned the knob, opened the door, and gave him back his tools.
Then I put my gloves on and went into the backyard to start digging.
I could hear Mr. Marsh and the locksmith having it out as I picked up the shovel and got to work. Within a few minutes, the locksmith was gone and it was just Mr. Marsh standing there watching me. He had a drink in his hand now. I filled my first wheelbarrow of the day, then rolled it to the woods to dump it. When I came back, he was gone.
It was a little hotter today. I went to fill up the water jug at the faucet. When the water stopped flowing, I could hear Mr. Marsh yelling into the phone again, just like he had done the day before. It may seem like an obvious point, but it was something I realized that day. Do not trust anyone, ever, if you hear them yelling into a telephone.
I spent the next two hours digging and rolling the wheelbarrow and wondering if I’d be able to make it through the day. I felt weaker than the day before. There was no way around that. I knew it was a simple matter of biology and physics. Eventually, I wouldn’t be able to do this anymore. It wasn’t even a question of pacing myself. I mean, you can only save so much energy when you’re digging a hole. Anything less than the basic minimum effort and you’re not even digging anymore.
Everything started to turn yellow again, my eyes too tired or too burned by the sun or God knows what. I kept the water jug full and kept drinking as much as I could.
You will collapse, I told myself. This will happen as surely as the sun rises in the east. You will collapse, and they will come and revive you. After a few days of recovery, you’ll go to that juvie farm Mr. Marsh was talking about. They won’t work you as hard there. Hell, they wouldn’t work you this hard anywhere. But it’ll be so much worse in so many ways. On top of everything else, you’ll never see Amelia again.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this.”
I turned around and saw her standing there. That same place on the edge of what would someday be her swimming pool. Today she was wearing cutoff denim shorts that went down to her knees. The same black tennis shoes. White shins and ankles in the bright sunlight. A black T-shirt with some sort of cartoon machine gun on it. It was way too hot to be wearing anything black today.
I stopped digging and wiped my face.
“You’ll never dig this whole thing. It would take you a year. Even if you did, so what? You think we’re ever going to use a pool back here?”
Extra motivation for me, I thought. Thank you so much. But God you are so beautiful.
“Adam’s away to college already. I’ll be gone after one more year. Who the hell’s going to use it?”
I stood there while she looked around and shook her head and then finally got to the point.
“So are you going to talk today, or what?”
I pushed the shovel into the dirt so that it could stand on its own.
“I’m calling your bluff. Okay? I know you can talk if you want to. So say something.”
I reached around to my back pocket and took out the pad of paper and pencil. I know you probably think this was a normal thing for me, having something to write on at all times. Seriously, though, I hardly ever did it then, and still don’t. I just don’t like writing impromptu notes to people in lieu of real conversation. I’m sorry, I cannot speak, so I’ll write down everything I need to say to you right here on this handy notepad that I carry with me for just such an occasion! & Thank you for your patience as I make you stand there with a slightly bemused look on your face while I carefully write down each word so you can then read it and pretend that we’re communicating like two normal human beings.
To hell with that.
But today was different. I had the pad in my pocket just in case I got into exactly this situation. I opened the pad and started writing.
I really cannot talk. I promise you. Really.
I handed her the piece of paper. She took two seconds to read it, then held her hand out for the pencil. Which didn’t make any sense, of course, because there was no reason for the writing to be anything other than a one-way process. I gave it to her anyway.
She held the paper down against her thigh and started writing on it.
“Amelia!”
A voice from the house, interrupting her writing as I watched the way her hair hung down as she bent over. Mr. Marsh, no doubt, on his way out to warn me off again.
But no. A younger voice. He was approaching from the house, someone our age, wearing an Oriental jacket, baggy pants. Ridiculously way too hot for this weather. Long hair tied together in the back, not just a ponytail, mind you, but with enough ties to make it look like a braid. Smug know-it-all face. A total good-for-nothing prick, I knew it from the first second I saw him. The next second bringing the sick realization, like a horse kicking me right in the stomach, that this was Amelia’s boyfriend.
“What are you doing back here?” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be staying away from the criminal?” No genuine worry in his voice. More a double-edged insult, that I was a criminal but a criminal not worth taking seriously. I was already fighting the urge to hit him in the face with the shovel.
“I was just asking him a question,” Amelia said. “I thought you were at the gallery.”
“It was just boring today. Is anybody home?”
“I don’t know. I think my dad went out.”
“Is that right?”
“Don’t get any ideas. He could be back any second.”
“His car’s loud enough. We’ll hear him.”
“I told you, Zeke…”
The conversation stalled for a moment. This intimate back and forth I was forced to listen to, and on top of that now the utter ridiculousness of his name. Zeke!
“Come on,” he said. “Leave the miscreant to his digging.”
“His name is Michael,” she said.
“Whatever.”
She crumpled up the piece of paper she had been writing on and threw it toward me. Then she walked off with him. She paused to look back over her shoulder at me, until Zeke put a hand on the small of her back. When they were gone, I picked up the paper. She had crossed out my words. Below them she had written her own.
When’s the last time you tried?
____________________
That was a hard day. It really was. I mean, aside from my hands hurting and my back hurting and feeling like I was two minutes away from heatstroke. I was digging a rich man’s pool, working like a slave behind the kind of house I’d never live in. And Amelia… who made me ache. If only there was some way to get through to her. To make her see that I wasn’t really a criminal. Or a freak.
There’s only one way, I thought. I have to draw something for her. No matter how hard I have to work at it, it’s my only chance.
Somehow, that thought gave me the energy to keep digging for that last hour. I rolled the last wheelbarrow over to the woods, rolled it back by the hole, which was actually starting to look like a real hole now after eight total hours on the job. I put the shovel in the wheelbarrow and went around to the front of the house. That’s when I got my first look at Zeke’s car sitting there in the driveway. It was a cherry red BMW convertible. The top was down, so I could see the black leather seats and the stick shift gleaming in the sun. Then, just a few feet away, the old two-toned Grand Marquis with the rust along the edges.
When I got home, I didn’t go into the liquor store. I didn’t want Uncle Lito to see me and start threatening to call the judge again. I went right into the house. I took a shower. I ate something. Then I sat down to draw.
I had failed so miserably the night before. Trying to capture Amelia on a piece of paper… it seemed impossible.
You were trying too hard, I thought. You were turning her into the Mona Lisa. Just draw her like you’d draw anyone else, like she wasn’t someone who made you sick whenever you looked at her.
I was still going at midnight. I was so tired, but I was so close now. Maybe that’s what I needed, to be so wiped out I could barely see straight. To have to do it all by gut instinct. Just move the pencil and let it come out.
In the drawing, she was standing on the edge of the hole. She was wearing her cutoff shorts and her black tennis shoes and her black T-shirt with the machine gun on it. Her hair all over the place. One arm across her body, holding her other arm near the elbow. Her body language a mixed signal. Her eyes slightly downward. Looking at me but not really looking.
Yes. This was better. I was getting her now. More importantly, I was getting how I felt about her. How I saw her in my mind’s eye. This was almost passable.
Now all I had to do was to figure out how to get it to her. Could I roll it up, keep it in my pants somehow? Or maybe if I put it in a big envelope, keep it flat. No matter what, I had to have it right there with me, ready to give to her if I saw my chance.
Yes, that’s it. If you’re patient, the chance will come. For now, take your wreck of a body to bed and get some sleep so you’ll be ready for another day.
When I got up the next morning, I felt just as bad as the day before but no worse. I ate something. Then I drove to the Marshes’ house. This whole idea with the drawing, it had seemed like the perfect plan at midnight. Now in the light of day I couldn’t help wondering if it was a big mistake. But what the hell, right? What did I have to lose?
I got there on time. The drawing was in a large brown envelope, under my shirt, flat against my back. I figured I could take it out and hide it in the woods on my first trip with the wheelbarrow. Leave it out there so it wouldn’t get ruined by my sweat. Then if Amelia stopped by at any point during the afternoon, I could go get it for her. I just hoped to God that she’d actually take it from me. That she’d open the envelope and look at it. I didn’t think that was too much to ask.
Mr. Marsh was waiting for me. He had the locksmith with him. Not again, I thought. This I do not need today.
“You remember Randolph,” Mr. Marsh said to me.
I nodded. The locksmith had a knowing little smile on his face today, like he had a little present for me and couldn’t wait for me to open it.
“Come around back again,” Mr. Marsh said. “If you don’t mind.”
I didn’t get the feeling that I had a choice in the matter. So I followed them. The locksmith’s toolbox was sitting by the back door. The old lock had been taken apart and lay in pieces on the ground. The shiny new lock was in place now, waiting for me.
“The tools, if you will,” Mr. Marsh said.
The locksmith took out the same leather case from the day before and slapped it in my open hand.
“How do you feel about serrated pins, kid?”
Serrated pins? That was a new one on me.
“You’re giving it away,” Mr. Marsh said. “I thought this was supposed to be your big demonstration.”
“I’m not worried,” the locksmith said, smiling at me. “If he’s never done ’em before, knowing what’s in there ain’t gonna help him.”
I opened the case and took out the hook pick and one of the tension bars. If I bend down to do this, I thought, is he going to see the envelope stuck to my back? Maybe I should just give up right now, concede defeat, and go grab the shovel.
“Go ahead,” Mr. Marsh said. “What are you waiting for?”
I had to make a show of it, at least. Take a minute to work the lock, making sure my shirt didn’t ride up in back. Then stand up and give the locksmith his tools. That was my on-the-spot plan. So I got down on one knee, set the tension bar, and got to work. It didn’t take long to feel out each of the six pins. Hell, I thought, this lock doesn’t feel any harder than the last one. In fact, the pins weren’t very tight at all. No high-low-high-low to make things tricky. I worked from the back, feeling each pin set. It was too easy. When I got to the front pin, I didn’t think the plug would turn yet. If these weren’t plain block pins, as surely they weren’t, there would be a false set on each and I’d have to go back and do each pin again. I kept the tension just right, went back and felt the back pin go up another fraction of a millimeter. Then the one in front of that, and so on until I was back at the front pin.
Okay, here’s where you might want to think about what you’re doing, I thought. Don’t even set the front pin. Just throw your hands up, shake your head, give the locksmith his tools. Let him think he beat you with this lock. Let Mr. Marsh think he’s finally got a door that I can’t open. Stop having to go through this every day, especially if you plan on smuggling in any more drawings under your shirt.
“I told you he wouldn’t be able to open it,” the locksmith said.
“It’s a shame,” Mr. Marsh said. “I was beginning to think this kid could actually do something impressive.”
I looked up at the two of them. At their self-satisfied smiles. Then I went back to what I was doing. I pushed up the front pin. I felt it set. Now the plug turns and I’m done.
Except it didn’t.
I took the tools out of the lock, feeling the pins fall back into place while the locksmith laughed over my shoulder. I held up one hand to silence him, put the tools back in the keyhole, and started again. Back to front. Set a pin, then the next. I knew these were false sets. I knew I had to go back and bump each pin one more time. This is how a good lock works. False sets, real sets, open.
I got to the front pin again, felt it go up just enough. It was right there now. Every pin should be in place. The plug should turn.
It didn’t. The fucking thing didn’t turn.
“Never send a boy to do a man’s job,” the locksmith said. “Did I or did I not say that to you?”
“You did,” Mr. Marsh said. “But come on, it’s not like you just beat a world-class jewel thief or something.”
“Maybe not, but upholding the integrity of my craft-that’s a big deal in my book, any day of the week.”
“Whatever you say. Just take your tools so the kid can go dig his hole.”
I tried to wave him off so I could give the lock one more go, but he grabbed the tools out of my hand. “Just give it up,” he said. “This isn’t a toy. You can’t open it. It’s guaranteed punk-proof.”
I stood there looking at the door, at the shiny new lock plate. I didn’t want to move.
“Go on, get to work,” Mr. Marsh said to me. “Playtime is over.”
I kept replaying it in my mind as I finally walked away. Each movement in that lock seemed so clear. There was no way I could have overset any of the pins.
My head was pounding. I couldn’t breathe.
For the first time, I had tried to open a lock, and I had failed.