Episode 5 - What Dwayne Built Without Knowing Why

Dwayne's B-day, Cyborg hand, Good times Gary

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:45

The Room at the Bottom of the Stair. Book Five of the Bay Village Chronicles, or What Duane built without knowing why. For Pierce, Henry, Emma, and Maddie. And for Duane, who built the thing before he knew what it was for. That happens more than people think. Chapter 1. The Hand. Duane had been 10 years old for exactly 47 minutes when he decided to show Pierce and Henry what he'd built. You have to come over, he said on the phone. Right now, my mom made pancakes, but that's not the thing. The thing is in the garage. It's seven fourteen in the morning, Pierce said. I know what time it is, Duane said. Get Henry. Pierce got Henry, who came downstairs still holding a beef stick he had apparently been sleeping with, and the two of them walked the four blocks to Duane's house in the early morning light while the lake made its low gray sound in the distance and the gulls hadn't even started yet. Duane's mom let them in. She was a tall woman with red hair and a permanent expression of mild surprise. Which made sense when you considered that she had spent the last ten years raising Duane. Standing behind her in the kitchen was Uncle Mike, who was so tall he had to angle himself slightly to clear the light fixture. He was thin in the way of people whose bodies are mostly legs, and he was holding a glass of water with the cautious optimism of a man whose stomach was already making its opinion known. Boys, Uncle Mike said. He shifted his weight. The kitchen agreed. Morning, Uncle Mike, Pierce said. Don't stand too close, Duane's mom said, not unkindly. Pancakes are on the counter, she said. The garage door's already open. I'm not going in there. They went through the kitchen and out the side door and into the garage. Duane was standing next to his workbench. On the workbench was the hand. It was enormous. It was made of pipe fittings and bicycle cable and what appeared to be the internal mechanics of three separate alarm clocks. The fingers were jointed in four places each. There was a pneumatic pump attached to the wrist casing. The whole thing was painted matte black, except for the fingertips, which Duane had painted silver. It's a cyborg hand, Duane said. I can see that, Pierce said. I built it for fun. Henry walked around it slowly, beef stick in hand, the way a museum curator might walk around a new acquisition. Does it work? he asked. Mostly, Duane said. He picked up a small rubber bulb attached to a length of clear tubing. He squeezed it. The hand closed, he released it, the hand opened. Three of the fingers moved in perfect synchronization. The pinky did something slightly different that no one could fully explain. What does it do? Pierce asked. It grips things, Duane said. Like what? Duane pointed to a tennis ball on the far end of the workbench. He squeezed the bulb. The hand reached, gripped, and held the tennis ball with an authority that made both Pierce and Henry take a small step backward. Happy birthday, Henry said quietly. Thanks, Duane said. I've been working on it since March. Chapter two. Margaret's Letter The Letter was waiting on Pierce's pillow when he got home from Duane's. He hadn't heard anyone come in. He hadn't heard anyone go up the stairs. The window was closed. He stood in the doorway of his room for a moment and looked at the envelope with his name on it in Margaret Ellery's careful looping handwriting, and he thought she has been doing this for a very long time, and she is very good at it. He sat on the edge of his bed and opened it. It read Pierce, there is one more gate. I have known about it for sixty one years, and I have never been able to open it alone. It is not a matter of strength, it is a matter of what you bring with you. The door is older than the other four. It is older than the underground. It may be older than the town, though I cannot prove that. What I can tell you is that it is there and it is waiting, and I believe the time is right. Bring Duane. It's his birthday. He'll want to be there. Also bring whatever he built. I don't know what it is, but I know he built something. He always builds something. Meet me at the mill at noon. M E P S Tell Henry to bring enough beef sticks for four. There will be guests. Pierce read the letter twice, then he read it a third time, specifically focusing on the line about guests. He went downstairs and called Duane. Can you bring the hand? he asked. A pause. To where? The mill. Another pause. I'm gonna need a cart, Duane said. Chapter three. Lois and Evelyn They arrived at the mill at eleven fifty eight. Uncle Mike had insisted on helping with the cart. This was kind of him and also complicated because he was so tall that pulling a cart required him to bend at an angle that seemed structurally inadvisable, and because every significant exertion produced a sound effect that made Henry walk slightly faster. By the time they reached the mill, Uncle Mike had apologized four times and explained his condition twice, and Duane had said, It's fine, Dad, in the patient way of a person who has been saying that particular thing his whole life. Margaret was already there, sitting on the low stone wall near the creek, with her walking stick across her knees and her thermos of tea, and her expression that always looked like she had just thought of something interesting and was deciding whether to share it. Standing next to her were two women Pierce had never seen before. The first one was short and wide shouldered and had white hair cut very close to her head, and wore a canvas vest with approximately eleven pockets, all of them full of something. She was looking at Duane's cart with the expression of a person who has seen many impressive things and is prepared to be impressed again. The second one was taller, with silver hair in a long braid and reading glasses pushed up on her forehead and mud on her boots that suggested she had not arrived from any ordinary direction. This is Lois, Margaret said, gesturing to the short one, and this is Evelyn. Hello, said Lois. She had a voice like a screen door. We've heard about you, said Evelyn. She was looking specifically at Henry. You're the one who saved the second gate. Henry straightened slightly. I prefer not to discuss the specifics, he said. He farted, Pierce said. The specifics don't matter, Henry said. Lois looked at Duane's cart. Is that a pneumatic cyborg hand? Yes, Duane said. Did you build it yourself? Yes. Lois looked at Evelyn. Evelyn looked at Lois. Something passed between them that Pierce couldn't quite read. Good, Lois said. We're going to need it. Chapter four What Lois and Evelyn were Uncle Mike set the cart down and straightened up to his full height and looked at the mill and the creek and the general situation. I'm gonna head back, he said. My stomach. He patted it once apologetically. You know? We know, Duane said. Uncle Mike put his hand on top of Duane's head briefly, the way tall people do when they're being affectionate and don't have another good option. Happy birthday, bud, he said. Then he turned and walked back up the path, moving in the careful, deliberate way of a man navigating a situation that required dignity. They walked down to the underground entrance by the creek, the one behind the lightning split sycamore, and Margaret lifted the door with her walking stick in the particular way she always lifted it, and they went down. In the first corridor, Evelyn lit three lanterns from her coat pocket and distributed them without being asked. How do you know Margaret? Pierce asked, walking beside Lois. We've been coming down here since nineteen eighty seven, Lois said. What do you do down here? Map it. She pulled a folded paper from one of her eleven pockets. It was a hand drawn map of the underground, more detailed than anything Pierce had ever seen, with corridors marked and distances noted and small symbols he didn't recognize at the junctions. Have you found everything? Pierce asked. Lois looked at him sideways. No one ever finds everything, she said. That's why you keep going. Evelyn fell into step beside Henry. Your brother tells me you already know what Margaret would say about most things, she said. That's what her letter said, Henry agreed. Do you know what she'd say right now? Henry thought about it for a moment, holding his lantern up, the light catching the stone walls and the old carved marks that ran along the lower corridor at knee height. She'd say we should pay attention, Henry said, because we're about to see something we can't unsee. Evelyn smiled. There it is, she said. Chapter five The Fifth Gate The door was at the bottom of a staircase that Pierce was almost certain hadn't been there before. It was stone set directly into the stone of the wall, with no frame and no hinges visible from the outside. The only reason you could tell it was a door at all was the seam, a hairline crack that ran in a perfect rectangle, and at the center a mechanism. The mechanism was a hand, not a real hand, a cast iron impression of a hand set into the stone, fingers slightly spread sized for an adult. In the center of the palm was a hole about the diameter of a garden hose. Pierce looked at it. He looked at Duane's cart. He looked at Duane. Duane was already looking at the mechanism with an expression Pierce recognized, the expression of a person who has accidentally built the solution to a problem he didn't know existed. The fingertip spacing, Duane said. What about it? Pierce asked. It matches? Duane crouched down and looked at the mechanism closely. The spread, the joint placement. I didn't measure anything when I built the hand, I just built it. He stood up slowly. It matches exactly. Nobody said anything for a moment. Happy birthday, Henry said again. He said it the same way he'd said it in the garage. Quiet, like it meant something bigger than the words. Duane wheeled the cart forward. He positioned the hand carefully in front of the iron impression, lining up the fingers. He connected the pneumatic tube. He looked at Pierce. Pierce looked at Margaret. Margaret nodded. Duane squeezed the bulb. The hand pressed into the stone, the fingers seated into their grooves, the palm sealed over the hole in the iron. For three seconds nothing happened. Then from somewhere deep in the wall, a sound like a clock being wound for the first time in a very long time. A series of clicks, each one deliberate, each one final. The hairline crack widened, stone dust sifted down. The door opened inward into darkness. Lois raised her lantern, Evelyn raised hers. Beyond the door was a room, and in the room were things that none of them, not even Margaret, had ever seen before. Chapter six What was Inside The room was round and it was full of maps. They covered every wall from floor to ceiling, drawn on vellum and pinned with copper tacks, dozens of them, some so old the edges had gone to lace. There were maps of the underground, more detailed even than Lois's, and maps of Bay Village and configurations that didn't match the town as it existed now, with streets that had been renamed and buildings that were long gone. There were maps of the lake. There were maps of other things Pierce couldn't identify. In the center of the room was a table with four chairs. On the table were four cups. Did someone set this? Pierce said. It was not quite a question. The room knows, Margaret said simply. The room doesn't know anything, Lois said, but she said it gently the way you'd correct someone you'd been arguing with for forty years. The room was built by someone who thought ahead. That's what knowing is, Margaret said. Evelyn was already at the walls, moving her lantern slowly across the maps. There's a whole section down here we've never charted, she said. Her voice was careful and even, but Pierce could hear what was underneath it. She had been looking for this room for a long time. Duane sat down in one of the chairs. It fit him perfectly. He put his hands on the table and looked at the ceiling, which had been painted a long time ago, with small silver stars and patterns Pierce didn't recognize. This is the best birthday I've ever had, Duane said. You say that every year, Henry said. I mean it every year, Duane said. This year I especially mean it. Henry sat down next to him. Pierce sat across from them. Margaret took the fourth chair at the head of the table or what felt like the head, and folded her hands and looked at each of them in turn. There's more underground than any of us have seen, she said. Lois and Evelyn have been mapping it for nearly forty years and they haven't finished. I've been down here for sixty and I haven't finished. You're the first people to open this room. Why us? Pearce asked. Margaret considered the question seriously, which was something Pierce had always appreciated about her. She never dismissed questions, she thought about them first. I think, she said finally, because you came down here the first time, not because you were told to or because you had a plan, but because you were curious, and you kept coming back, and you brought each other. She looked at Duane, and one of you spent six months building something without knowing what it was for, just because he wanted to see if he could. Duane looked at his cyborg hand, which was still seated in the iron impression in the doorway, holding the fifth gate open. I might need to leave it there, he said. For now, Margaret said. That's fine, Duane said. I can build another one. Chapter seven four cups The cups were full of hot chocolate. Pearce looked at his for a moment before picking it up. He thought about saying something about that, about how there was no stove in the room and no fire and no one had poured anything, and how the cups had been waiting on the table and the hot chocolate was somehow exactly the right temperature. He decided not to say anything about it. Some things in the underground didn't need explaining. They just needed noticing. Lois and Evelyn sat on the floor near the wall of maps, cross legged, with Evelyn's map notebook open and Lois reading one of the old Vellum charts by lantern light, and they talked to each other in the low, comfortable way of people who have been doing something together for a very long time and don't need to narrate it. Henry finished his hot chocolate in four large satisfied swallows and set the cup down. What happens now? he asked. Now we explore, Margaret said. The whole room? Eventually, and what's past it? She nodded toward the far wall, where, if you looked closely enough, there was another seam in the stone, a smaller one. A door that required nothing but a hand and the willingness to try. Pierce looked at it. He thought about the first time they'd found the entrance by the sycamore, about how the summer had felt like it was made of days that could hold anything. He thought about Henry with his beef sticks and his absolute uncomplicated confidence that the people next to him were worth following into dark places. He thought about Duane spending six months in a garage building a hand for no reason or what had looked like no reason, and how that was its own kind of faith. He thought about Lois and Evelyn, who had been doing this for forty years and hadn't finished, and who didn't seem to mind. Can we come back? Pierce asked Margaret. That's the whole point, she said. He picked up his hot chocolate. It was still warm. Outside, somewhere above them, Bay Village was going about its morning. The lake doing what lakes do, the gulls finally starting, Uncle Mike probably standing in the kitchen doorway with his glass of water, reconsidering the pancakes. Down here it was quiet and warm and full of maps. Duane reached into Henry's bag, pulled out a beef stick, and handed it to Lois. Happy to share, he said. Lois bit off the end of it thoughtfully. Good, she said. You'll need that instinct where we're going. Chapter eight. Going up They came back up at two in the afternoon, blinking in the may light. Duane had left the cyborg hand in the iron impression, exactly as he'd said. The fifth gate stood open behind them, airing out sixty years of closed stone, and Evelyn had propped her lantern inside the doorway so they could find it again. Lois had taken eleven pages of notes. Evelyn had drawn three preliminary maps, which she described as rough, though they were more detailed than anything Pierce could have produced with unlimited time and better tools. Margaret walked up the stairs last without help at her own pace, and when she came out into the light she took a long breath and looked at the creek and then at the four of them standing in the tall grass. Same time next Saturday, she said. We have soccer, Henry said. After soccer, she said. Done, Henry said. Duane's cart was significantly lighter going home since the hand was still underground. He didn't seem bothered by this. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his face tilted up slightly, which was the way he looked when he was thinking about a design problem. Counterweighted fingers, he said after about two blocks. What? Pierce asked. For the next one. If I counterweight the fingers, I don't need the pneumatic pump. It's simpler, fewer parts to fail. Pierce looked at him. You're already designing the next hand. I've been designing it since the first one worked, Duane said. That's how it goes. Henry had two beef sticks left in his bag. He gave one to Pierce. They walked home through Bay Village in the afternoon light, and the lake was there at the end of every west running street, grey green and enormous, doing what it always did, which was to make everything else seem both smaller and more worth paying attention to. It had been a very good birthday. It had been, if you were counting, the best one yet. End of book five. Coming in book six, what's past the small door? What Lois found in the oldest map? And the question Margaret has been waiting sixty-one years for someone to ask you.