Ten Days at Federal Hill: Chapter Six

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 Chapter Six: The Tunnel

After Carla left the clerk’s office, Julia sat among the tea cups wondering about her cousin’s questions. Julia fingered the fragile cups and saucers she had brought here. She rolled up both small rugs, tucking the chipped china inside. She knew Carla suspected something, but exactly what … Julia didn’t know. She couldn’t risk more questions about the dishes and rugs. She had found them, brought them home from a place far away, a place only she knew of.

Julia tucked the bundle under her arm. When she was sure that Carla was safely into the woods in her search for Cecil, Julia slipped quietly to the front door of the big house, went to her room and into her alcove, shoved the windowsill objects onto the bed, lifted the trap door, and disappeared into the dark passage. The opening was square and the walls descended straight down, like a wooden box. Wooden slats were attached to one wall as a sort of ladder. Julia awkwardly climbed down with the rugs and dishes, pausing to close the windowsill down over her head like a hatch. On a ledge she found her flashlight, clicked it on, and continued descending down the ladder until she reached the cool, earthy bottom. She stood at the bottom of the old well that served Federal Hill many years before. It was quite dry, and at the bottom a well-formed tunnel ran nearly straight east beneath the boxwood garden. The tunnel was arched overhead and lined with bricks except for the floor, which was hard-packed earth. Julia turned and walked confidently as one who had been there many times before.

The passage went directly under the statue of the lady in the garden. Julia stopped, brushing aside cobwebs that dragged across her face. At this spot the brick arch overhead was broken by a wooden hatch door that could allow someone hiding beneath the statue to drop secretly into the tunnel. Here Julia paused, laid her bundle of rugs down, and began fingering the wall, searching. She looked for any indication of an opening, a break in the brickwork, and she found it. Some bricks had been removed and replaced, stacked in an opening to give the appearance of a continuous wall. She easily removed them and discovered another smaller tunnel, a crawling tunnel large enough for a child but too small for a grown man. She shone her flashlight into it, stacked the bricks on the floor, retrieved her bundle, and continued down the main tunnel to her destination.

She walked for forty-five minutes, over a mile, until the tunnel ended abruptly with a chute going upward exactly like the one in her bedroom. She tucked the rugs safely under her arm, climbed the ladder, and emerged from an old well opening into a thick, tangled growth of azalea bushes and Virginia creeper. The child was totally obscured from view by the shrubs, which were much taller than she was, and by the vines, which reached into the trees overhead. She stood perfectly still, studying a house that was not twenty feet from the well. She waited until she was certain there was no movement in the house. She whistled a quick, high tone, just once, and waited for a reply, but there was none. She slipped carefully from her hiding spot up to the house and peered into a window on the end of the house nearer her.

The room was large with tall ceilings that had collapsed. Beams leaned against the fireplace and plaster littered the wooden floor. Vines crept from the windows and crossed the floor, and a slender tree grew from one gash in the floor, stretching upward to the light. In a far corner, behind some loosely stacked lumber, were a blanket and pillow and a rusted pot. Leaving the window, Julia moved quietly around to the front of the house and walked up the steps. One front door leaned drunkenly on a single hinge, and the other was missing altogether. Avoiding jagged holes in the porch floor, she walked through the double doorway into a house that was still and hot from the baking summer sun. The front hallway, just like the one in her own home, was deep and broad and had been graced by a turned staircase. Now only a few steps remained at the top, and a few at the bottom. In between was an ugly, gaping space where the stairwell had collapsed in a ruined heap in the middle of the hall. Julia went to the left, into the room she’d just studied outside the window. Flies and bees buzzed against the window glass and in the corners. Suddenly a sparrow flew overhead and crashed into a wall before finding its way out through the ceiling. Julia jumped in fright but did not scream. She walked to the corner. Beside the pillow and blanket she placed the rugs and dishes. She squatted there, pulled pencil and paper from her pocket, and scrawled a quick note: “Sorry. Here they are back. I hope you are okay. I’ll come back soon.” She dropped the note on the pillow and stood. Almost immediately someone came through the door.

“I’m here.”

Julia jumped. A boy stood across the room.

“Oh! I just wrote you a note. I brought back the rugs and dishes.”

“Why did you take them?”

Julia was silent, and then said, “I don’t know. I liked them.”

“It’s okay,” he replied. The boy was thin and filthy, his hair well below his neck and his clothing too small. He was barefoot.

“Do you live here now?” she asked.

“Not yet. I’m not sure yet. I don’t know if it’s safe.”

“I could bring you some food, if you need ….”

“Not yet. I don’t want them to know that you, that you ….”

“Exist. Yeah, I know.”

“I need somewhere really safe first,” the boy said.

Julia squirmed. “Do you have food?” she asked. “How do you eat?”

The boy seemed embarrassed. “Not much. A little. I’ m good at finding food in the woods.”

“That must be hard!” Julia said. “I could bring some food and leave it here. I could hide it.”

The boy shook his head. “I appreciate it. But if they found it, if they knew anybody was here ….”

The boy’s fear seeped into Julia’s mind. “Yeah,” she said. “I have to get back. I have family visiting, and they’ll wonder where I am.”

“Oh, okay.” The boy looked confused. “Family? What’s that?”

“People, cousins, my parents’ brothers and sisters and their kids – you know, other people you’re related to.”

The boy was silent. Julia could tell from his face that these words had no meaning for him. “Your parents are the ones,” she began, and paused. “The ones … you came from. Your mother gave birth to you?” Her voice drifted off like a question, waiting for recognition to register in his eyes. “Brothers and sisters come from them too.” Finally she added, “They’re the ones who love you the most.”

Then he asked, “Is it really far away, where you live?”

“Yeah, it takes a long time to get here.” Julia looked down at her shoes. “Maybe … maybe some other time, when it’s safer, maybe I’ll take you there, if you want.” She began walking toward the door. “But not this time. There’s too many people right now.”

“Yeah, yeah, I understand.” He opened his mouth to say something more, and Julia waited. “I … I didn’t come from anybody.”

Julia didn't know what to say. Finally she mumbled, "I have to go." She passed him and went into the hall. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

She turned back to him. “Oh. I forgot to ask you before. What’s your name?”

“My name?”

“Yeah. What do people call you?”

“Oh, that.” The boy looked down at his dirty feet, his calloused hands. “They call me Ten.”

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[Ten Days at Federal Hill is copyrighted in its entirety by the author, M.K. Christiansen.]