Eventually he found the trick to free himself, by pushing his foot into the cleft and twisting it. After that, it was just a matter of squeezing through the narrow opening and lowering himself on his hands, carefully avoiding the loose hatch cover. He crouched on the concrete floor, taking up no more space than he had inside the paneling, listening intently. Silence lay on the house like a fall of snow. The only sound was the whine of the freezer in the corner and a car engine revving up outside in the street. Jamie recognized the deep, throaty roar of Mr. Valdez’s Pontiac.
The thought that normal life was going on close at hand gave him the courage to stand up and look around. Everything looked the same as it had when he came down to hide. Jamie stepped cautiously, on tiptoe, to the door of Kevin’s room. He turned the handle and opened the door a crack. His brother lay stretched out on the bed as though asleep. Jamie opened the door wider, and sniffed. There was a funny smell, kind of nice, like fireworks or something. Then he saw Ronnie Ho lying face down on the floor. Jamie’s fear abruptly left him.
“C’mon guys!” he said in the edgy tone he knew Kevin hated. “Pay-up time.”
Neither of them moved. Jamie began to feel irritated. They were playing one of their stupid games, ignoring what he said, acting like he wasn’t there.
“You owe me a dollar, Kevin!” he said, taking a step into the room.
Still there was no response. The stress and strain of the past twenty minutes had left Jamie’s nerves ragged. Being treated like a dumb younger brother was the last straw. He picked up a social studies textbook lying on the chest of drawers and spun it across the room like a frisbee. It was a heavy book, and the corner struck Kevin just below the ear. Realizing that he’d gone too far, Jamie sprinted quickly across the basement and upstairs before Kevin could catch up and give him hell.
In the hall at the top of the stairs, he paused. There was no sound of pursuit. In fact there was no sound at all. Even the Accident had stopped whining for attention. Jamie was still standing there uncertainly when the phone began to ring, doubled by the electronic warble of the portable. He waited for his mom to answer, but the phone kept right on ringing. Jamie walked through to the living room. The portable was still lying on the sofa where his mom had thrown it. He picked it up and pushed the button.
“Hello?”
“Hi! Is this Jamie? This is Kelly Shelden. Your mom left a message on my voice mail. Can I speak to her?”
“Hold on.”
He lowered the phone.
“Mom!”
There was no reply. Jamie wandered down the room toward the dining area.
“Mom!”
He stumbled on something and grabbed the back of the sofa to stop himself falling. The portable went flying. Jamie looked at the thing he had tripped over. It was wrapped in shiny blue fabric, with pieces of crinkly white appearing here and there.
Mrs. Shelden was hollering something in a squeaky voice. Stepping carefully over the obstacle on the floor, Jamie reached down and picked up the portable.
“Hello?” he said.
“Jamie? Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“What’s going on?”
“I dropped the phone.”
“Oh, OK. Did you find your mom?”
“Yeah.”
“OK.”
Jamie turned and looked down again.
“Hello?” said Kelly Shelden.
“I’m here,” said Jamie.
“Well, are you going to put your mom on or what?”
“I can’t.”
“How come? Is she in the bathroom or something?”
He did not answer.
“Jamie? What the heck are you playing at?”
“Could you get over here, Mrs. Shelden? Like now?”
“Oh boy, you must be kidding! I’ve got a zillion things to do. Listen, I’ll call back in ten minutes. Will she be able to talk then?”
“I think she’s dead.”
“Well, have her call me when she’s free. I’ll be home till four, then I have to bring Ryan to baseball practice, but I should be back by-”
“You’ve gotta come!” Jamie shouted. “I’m only a kid!”
Kelly Shelden’s voice softened into concern.
“Why, Jamie! What’s the matter, honey?”
Jamie broke into sobs.
“I’m feeling weirded out. Like totally.”
2
The time I remember best is the night we ended up down at the Commercial, and all that happened afterward. It would be nice and neat to be able to say that that’s where the whole thing started, but there must have been a lot more behind it, a slow shifting of psychological fault lines under the pressure of life events about which I know nothing, about which maybe no one ever knew anything, and never will now.
Minneapolis is not exactly notorious for its seedy lowlife, but there is-or was, back in the seventies-a part of downtown, a couple of blocks either side of the railroad tracks, which got reasonably lively after dark. The Commercial Hotel was right in the middle of it. They knocked it down later and built a mall with fountains and escalators and shops selling things which no reasonable person could need, but I don’t recall anyone circulating a petition to save the place. The Commercial was one of those oppressively huge hotels which went up all over the country around the turn of the century near major railroad depots.Its fortunes exactly mirrored those of the transportation system it was built to serve, and during its last decade the rooms were used only by prostitutes, winos and other down-and-outs. What kept the place in business was its liquor license. The bar was the biggest and rowdiest in town and they had pretty tight bands on the weekends, but for us the main attraction was the atmosphere of sleaze and failure. It appealed to our sense of living on the edge.
Maybe that was what held the group together. It’s hard, in retrospect, to see what else we had in common. Even calling it a group is misleading. We were just a bunch of guys who liked to hang out together. The membership was never clearly defined. The basic core-Greg, Sam, Larry, Vince and me-was more or less stable, but it also included a temporary assortment of girlfriends, buddies, hangers-on and anyone who happened to be crashing at our pad at the time.
We were all young, of course, but so was everyone else back then. Greg, Sam and I were all connected in one way or another with the university, but the links were so tenuous and diverse that this too is a false trail. Greg had been an athlete, a college football star, but had been dropped from the team in his second year following a much-publicized drug bust. Sam had studied English for two years-we’d taken some classes together, which is where we met-before dropping out to complete his studies at the University of Life, while I was in my third year of Comparative Literature.
As for Larry and Vince, they came from other worlds altogether. Larry worked for a painting contractor, and got home every night covered in specks and streaks of various hues, stoned out of his mind on paint thinner. Vince’s means of support remained a mystery. We suspected that he was subsidized by his parents, but that was not something you could either admit or inquire about in those days. He spent most of the day fiddling with a bank of stereo equipment he had put together from kits and spare parts, which provided a mind-numbing volume of sound that was the envy of our friends and the despair of our neighbors.
What brought us together originally was the house. It was a pleasantly decrepit wood-framed place with an overgrown yard and a huge maple out front, in a run-down blue-collar neighborhood south of the river. Many lots had been demolished and rebuilt as condos or walk-ups, and the surviving older houses had a provisional, doomed look accentuated by lack of care and upkeep. Respectable renters steered clear of such properties, but the combination of low rent and no hassle was just what we were looking for. The landlord, an old Swede, was waiting for some redevelopment company to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse, and he didn’t much care what we did with, to, or in the house just as long as the rent was there on time every month.