Finders Keepers

  Over the Pennsylvania state line, in Gowanda, he found a coin-op car wash. The brushes brushed, the jets rinsed, and the car came out spanking clean--underside as well as topside.

  Morris drove west, headed for the filthy little city residents called the Gem of the Great Lakes. He had to sit tight for awhile, and he had to see an old friend. Also, home was the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in--the gospel according to Robert Frost--and that was especially true when there was no one to bitch about the return of the prodigal son. With dear old Dad in the wind for years now and dear old Mom spending the fall semester at Princeton guest-lecturing on the robber barons, the house on Sycamore Street would be empty. Not much of a house for a fancy-schmancy teacher--not to mention a writer once nominated for the Pulitzer--but blame dear old Dad for that. Besides, Morris had never minded living there; that had been Mother's resentment, not his.

  Morris listened to the news, but there was nothing about the murder of the novelist who, according to that Time cover story, had been "a voice shouting at the children of the silent fifties to wake up and raise their own voices." This radio silence was good news, but not unexpected; according to Morris's source in the reformatory, Rothstein's housekeeper only came in once a week. There was also a handyman, but he only came when called. Morris and his late partners had picked their time accordingly, which meant he could reasonably hope the body might not be discovered for another six days.

  That afternoon, in rural Ohio, he passed an antiques barn and made a U-turn. After a bit of browsing, he bought a used trunk for twenty dollars. It was old, but looked sturdy. Morris considered it a steal.

  2010

  Pete Saubers's parents had lots of arguments now. Tina called them the arkie-barkies. Pete thought she had something there, because that was what they sounded like when they got going: ark-ark-ark, bark-bark-bark. Sometimes Pete wanted to go to the head of the stairs and scream down at them to quit it, just quit it. You're scaring the kids, he wanted to yell. There are kids in this house, kids, did you two stupes forget that?

  Pete was home because Honor Roll students with nothing but afternoon study hall and activity period after lunch were allowed to cut out early. His door was open and he heard his father go thumping rapidly across the kitchen on his crutches as soon as his mother's car pulled into the driveway. Pete was pretty sure today's festivities would start with his dad saying Gosh, she was home early. Mom would say he could never seem to remember that Wednesdays were now her early days. Dad would reply that he still wasn't used to living in this part of the city, saying it like they'd been forced to relocate into deepest darkest Lowtown instead of just the Tree Streets section of Northfield. Once the preliminaries were taken care of, they could get down to the real arking and barking.

  Pete wasn't crazy about the North Side himself, but it wasn't terrible, and even at thirteen he seemed to understand the economic realities of their situation better than his father. Maybe because he wasn't swallowing OxyContin pills four times a day like his father.

  They were here because Grace Johnson Middle School, where her mother used to teach, had been closed as part of the city council's cost-cutting initiative. Many of the GJ teachers were now unemployed. Linda, at least, had been hired as a combination librarian and study hall monitor at Northfield Elementary. She got out early on Wednesdays because the library closed at noon that day. All the school libraries did. It was another cost-cutting initiative. Pete's dad railed at this, pointing out that the council members hadn't cut their salaries, and calling them a bunch of goddam Tea Party hypocrites.

  Pete didn't know about that. What he knew was that these days Tom Saubers railed at everything.

  ***

  The Ford Focus, their only car now, pulled up in the driveway and Mom slid out, dragging her old scuffed briefcase. She skirted the patch of ice that always formed in the shady spot under the front porch downspout. It had been Tina's turn to salt that down, but she had forgotten, as usual. Mom climbed the steps slowly, her shoulders low. Pete hated to see her walk that way, as if she had a sack of bricks on her back. Dad's crutches, meanwhile, thumped a double-time rhythm into the living room.

  The front door opened. Pete waited. Hoped for something nice like Hiya, honey, how was your morning?

  As if.

  He didn't exactly want to eavesdrop on the arkie-barkies, but the house was small and it was practically impossible not to overhear . . . unless he left, that is, a strategic retreat he made more and more frequently this winter. And he sometimes felt that, as the older kid, he had a responsibility to listen. Mr. Jacoby liked to say in history class that knowledge was power, and Pete supposed that was why he felt compelled to monitor his parents' escalating war of words. Because each arkie-barkie stretched the fabric of the marriage thinner, and one of these days it would tear wide open. Best to be prepared.

  Only prepared for what? Divorce? That seemed the most likely outcome. In some ways things might be better if they did split up--Pete felt this more and more strongly, although he had not yet articulated it as a conscious thought--but what exactly would a divorce mean in (another of Mr. Jacoby's faves) real world terms? Who would stay and who would go? If his dad went, how would he get along without a car when he could hardly walk? For that matter, how could either of them afford to go? They were broke already.

  At least Tina wasn't here for today's spirited exchange of parental views; she was still in school, and probably wouldn't be home directly after. Maybe not until dinner. She had finally made a friend, a bucktoothed girl named Ellen Briggs, who lived on the corner of Sycamore and Elm. Pete thought Ellen had the brains of a hamster, but at least Tina wasn't always moping around the house, missing her friends in the old neighborhood, and sometimes crying. Pete hated it when Tina cried.

  Meanwhile, silence your cell phones and turn off your pagers, folks. The lights are going down and this afternoon's installment of We're in Deep Shit is about to begin.

  TOM: "Hey, you're home early."

  LINDA (wearily): "Tom, it's--"

  TOM: "Wednesday, right. Early day at the library."

  LINDA: "You've been smoking in the house again. I can smell it."

  TOM (getting his sulk on): "Just one. In the kitchen. With the window open. There's ice on the back steps, and I didn't want to risk a tumble. Pete forgot to salt them again."

  PETE (aside to the audience): "As he should know, since he made the schedule of chores, it's actually Tina's week to salt. Those OxyContins he takes aren't just pain pills, they're stupid pills."

  LINDA: "I can still smell it, and you know the lease specifically prohibits--"

  TOM: "All right, okay, I get it. Next time I'll go outside and risk falling off my crutches."

  LINDA: "It's not just the lease, Tommy. The secondary smoke is bad for the kids. We've discussed that."

  TOM: "And discussed it, and discussed it . . ."

  LINDA (now wading into even deeper water): "Also, how much does a pack of cigarettes cost these days? Four-fifty? Five dollars?"

  TOM: "I smoke a pack a week, for Christ's sake!"

  LINDA (overrunning his defenses with an arithmetic Panzer assault): "At five a pack, that's over twenty dollars a month. And it all comes out of my salary, because it's the only one--"

  TOM: "Oh, here we go--"

  LINDA: "--we've got now."

  TOM: "You never get tired of rubbing that in, do you? Probably think I got run over on purpose. So I could laze around the house."

  LINDA (after a long pause): "Is there any wine left? Because I could use half a glass."

  PETE (aside): "Say there is, Dad. Say there is."

  TOM: "It's gone. Maybe you'd like me to crutch my way down to the Zoney's and get another bottle. Of course you'd have to give me an advance on my allowance."

  LINDA (not crying, but sounding on the verge): "You act as though what happened to you is my fault."

  TOM (shouting): "It's nobody's fault, and that's what drives me crazy! Don't you ge
t that? They never even caught the guy who did it!"

  At this point Pete decided he'd had enough. It was a stupid play. Maybe they didn't see that, but he did. He closed his lit book. He would read the assigned story--something by a guy named John Rothstein--that night. Right now he had to get out and breathe some uncontentious air.

  LINDA (quiet): "At least you didn't die."

  TOM (going totally soap opera now): "Sometimes I think it would be better if I had. Look at me--hooked through the bag on Oxy, and still in pain because it doesn't work for shit anymore unless I take enough to half-kill me. Living on my wife's salary--which is a thousand less than it used to be, thanks to the fucking Tea-Partiers--"

  LINDA: "Watch your lang--"

  TOM: "House? Gone. Motorized wheelchair? Gone. Savings? Almost used up. And now I can't even have a fucking cigarette!"

  LINDA: "If you think whining will solve anything, be my guest, but--"

  TOM (roaring): "Is whining what you call it? I call it reality. You want me to drop my pants so you can get a good look at what's left of my legs?"

  Pete floated downstairs in his stocking feet. The living room was right there at the bottom, but they didn't see him; they were face-to-face and busy acting in a dipshit play no one would ever pay to see. His father hulking on his crutches, his eyes red and his cheeks scruffy with beard, his mother holding her purse in front of her breasts like a shield and biting her lips. It was awful, and the worst part? He loved them.

  His father had neglected to mention the Emergency Fund, started a month after the City Center Massacre by the town's one remaining newspaper, in cooperation with the three local TV stations. Brian Williams had even done a story about it on NBC Nightly News--how this tough little city took care of its own when disaster struck, all those caring hearts, all those helping hands, all that blah-blah-blah, and now a word from our sponsor. The Emergency Fund made everybody feel good for like six days. What the media didn't talk about was how little the fund had actually raised, even with the charity walks, and the charity bike rides, and a concert by an American Idol runner-up. The Emergency Fund was thin because times were hard for everyone. And, of course, what was raised had to be divided among so many. The Saubers family got a check for twelve hundred dollars, then one for five hundred, then one for two. Last month's check, marked FINAL INSTALLMENT, came to fifty dollars.

  Big whoop.

  ***

  Pete slipped into the kitchen, grabbed his boots and jacket, and went out. The first thing he noticed was that there wasn't any ice on the back stoop; his father had been totally lying about that. The day was too warm for ice, at least in the sun. Spring was still six weeks away, but the current thaw had gone on for almost a week, and the only snow left in the backyard was a few crusty patches under the trees. Pete crossed to the fence and let himself out through the gate.

  One advantage to living in the Tree Streets of the North Side was the undeveloped land behind Sycamore. It was easily as big as a city block, five tangled acres of undergrowth and scrubby trees running downhill to a frozen stream. Pete's dad said the land had been that way for a long time and was apt to stay that way even longer, due to some endless legal wrangle over who owned it and what could be built on it. "In the end, no one wins these things but the lawyers," he told Pete. "Remember that."

  In Pete's opinion, kids who wanted a little mental health vacation from their parents also won.

  A path ran through the winter-barren trees on a meandering diagonal, eventually coming out at the Birch Street Rec, a longtime Northfield youth center whose days were now numbered. Big kids hung out on and around the path in warm weather--smoking cigarettes, smoking dope, drinking beer, probably laying their girlfriends--but not at this time of year. No big kids equaled no hassle.

  Sometimes Pete took his sister along the path if his mother and father were seriously into it, as was more and more often the case. When they arrived at the Rec, they'd shoot baskets or watch videos or play checkers. He didn't know where he could take her once the Rec closed. There was no place else except for Zoney's, the convenience store. On his own, he mostly just went as far as the creek, splooshing stones into it if it was flowing, bouncing them off the ice when it was frozen. Seeing if he could make a hole and enjoying the quiet.

  The arkie-barkies were bad enough, but his worst fear was that his dad--now always a little high on the Oxy pills--might someday actually take a swing at his mother. That would almost certainly tear the thin-stretched cloth of the marriage. And if it didn't? If she put up with being hit? That would be even worse.

  Never happen, Pete told himself. Dad never would.

  But if he did?

  ***

  Ice still covered the stream this afternoon, but it looked rotten, and there were big yellow patches in it, as if some giant had stopped to take a leak. Pete wouldn't dare walk on it. He wouldn't drown or anything if the ice gave way, the water was only ankle deep, but he had no wish to get home and have to explain why his pants and socks were wet. He sat on a fallen log, tossed a few stones (the small ones bounced and rolled, the big ones went through the yellow patches), then just looked at the sky for awhile. Big fluffy clouds floated along up there, the kind that looked more like spring than winter, moving from west to east. There was one that looked like an old woman with a hump on her back (or maybe it was a packsack); there was a rabbit; there was a dragon; there was one that looked like a--

  A soft, crumbling thump on his left distracted him. He turned and saw an overhanging piece of the embankment, loosened by a week's worth of melting snow, had given way, exposing the roots of a tree that was already leaning precariously. The space created by the fall looked like a cave, and unless he was mistaken--he supposed it might be just a shadow--there was something in there.

  Pete walked to the tree, grabbed one of its leafless branches, and bent for a better look. There was something there, all right, and it looked pretty big. The end of a box, maybe?

  He worked his way down the bank, creating makeshift steps by digging the heels of his boots into the muddy earth. Once he was below the site of the little landspill, he squatted. He saw cracked black leather and metal strips with rivets in them. There was a handle the size of a saddle-stirrup on the end. It was a trunk. Someone had buried a trunk here.

  Excited now as well as curious, Pete grabbed the handle and yanked. The trunk didn't budge. It was socked in good and tight. Pete gave another tug, but just for form's sake. He wasn't going to get it out. Not without tools.

  He hunkered with his hands dangling between his thighs, as his father often used to do before his hunkering days came to an end. Just staring at the trunk jutting out of the black, root-snarled earth. It was probably crazy to be thinking of Treasure Island (also "The Gold Bug," a story they'd read in English the year before), but he was thinking of it. And was it crazy? Was it really? As well as telling them that knowledge was power, Mr. Jacoby stressed the importance of logical thinking. Wasn't it logical to think that someone wouldn't bury a trunk in the woods unless there was something valuable inside?

  It had been there for awhile, too. You could tell just looking at it. The leather was cracked, and gray in places instead of black. Pete had an idea that if he pulled on the handle with all his might and kept pulling, it might break. The metal binding-strips were dull and lacy with rust.

  He came to a decision and pelted back up the path to the house. He let himself in through the gate, went to the kitchen door, listened. There were no voices and the TV was off. His father had probably gone into the bedroom (the one on the first floor, Mom and Dad had to sleep there even though it was small, because Dad couldn't climb stairs very well now) to take a nap. Mom might have gone in with him, they sometimes made up that way, but more likely she was in the laundry room that doubled as her study, working on her resume and applying for jobs online. His dad might have given up (and Pete had to admit he had his reasons), but his mom hadn't. She wanted to go back to teaching full-time, and not just for the money. br />
  There was a little detached garage, but his mom never put the Focus in it unless there was going to be a snowstorm. It was full of stuff from the old house that they had no room for in this smaller rented place. His dad's toolbox was in there (Tom had listed the tools on craigslist or something, but hadn't been able to get what he considered a fair price for them), and some of Tina's and his old toys, and the tub of salt with its scoop, and a few lawn-and-garden implements leaning against the back wall. Pete selected a spade and ran back down the path, holding it in front of him like a soldier with his rifle at high port.

  He eased his way almost all the way down to the stream, using the steps he'd made, and went to work on the little landslide that had revealed the trunk. He shoveled as much of the fallen earth as he could back into the hole under the tree. He wasn't able to fill it all the way to the gnarled roots, but he was able to cover the end of the trunk, which was all he wanted.

  For now.

  ***

  There was some arking and barking at dinner, not too much, and Tina didn't seem to mind, but she came into Pete's room just as he was finishing his homework. She was wearing her footy pajamas and dragging Mrs. Beasley, her last and most important comfort-doll. It was as if she had returned to the age of five.

  "Can I get in your bed for awhile, Petie? I had a bad dream."

  He considered making her go back, then decided (thoughts of the buried trunk flickering in his mind) that to do so might be bad luck. It would also be mean, considering the dark hollows under her pretty eyes.

  "Yeah, okay, for awhile. But we're not going to make a practice of it." One of their mom's favorite phrases.

  Tina scooted across the bed until she was against the wall--her sleeping position of choice, as if she planned to spend the night. Pete closed his Earth Science book, sat down beside her, and winced.

  "Doll warning, Teens. Mrs. Beasley's head is halfway up my butt."