It was a beautiful Sunday morning in April when Bartholomew found the cane. He was on his way to the donut shop when he saw it lying in the middle of the sidewalk, pointing directly at him. It was black. It had a Derby handle and a shiny silver collar around the neck. Sometimes people left stuff they no longer wanted out on the sidewalk, hoping someone would come along and save them a trip to the charity store. Mattresses. Ugly lamps. Adding machines. The cane did not strike Bartholomew as something from this category. He glanced around, half expecting to see an old man limping away in the distance, but no one else was around. He picked up the cane. It was lighter than he’d expected. The handle was smooth and cool to the touch. He looked for an engraved name, an address, but found neither. He went back home without getting his donuts.
Bartholomew’s bedroom was on the ground floor of the old Victorian he’d been living in with Ms. Crandall since his student days. A rosebush grew outside his window. Bartholomew’s aesthetic hadn’t matured beyond a certain freshman sensibility, entirely at odds with the grandeur of the cane. He still had, thumbtacked to the corkboard behind his desk, postcard portraits of Dostoïevski and Dalí and a gag photo of an obese naked woman walking her Welsh terrier in a park under the shade of a hand-held parasol. Bartholomew closed the door and stood in the middle of his room, both hands resting on the handle of the cane, one atop the other in the manner of an old man waiting for a bus. Rightly or wrongly, Bartholomew believed the cane was a symbol. He was not sure what it meant. He came up with a few ideas. It was significant that the cane had been pointing towards him, not away from him. You, it seemed to be saying. Stay, or Go, one or the other. If Go, wouldn’t it have been pointing away from Bartholomew? Or else, You, Bartholomew, Go. I beseech you. One or the other. A list of Pros and Cons, Pros on the left, Cons on the right, would have been tedious. Bartholomew did not make one.
On Monday Bartholomew went to work. He worked at the Munco Flour Mill, where he prevented compromised sacks from making it down the belt to the next sifter. He was good at his job. He’d read Das Kapital in college. Bartholomew didn’t mention his college degree to his fellow laborers. He rightly sensed the common man’s disdain for useless knowledge. Ms. Crandall didn’t understand why Bartholomew had taken a job at a flour mill. Why? she said. His mother was more understanding. She approved of everything he did. He knew that if ever he needed to he could move back in with her. He would need to if he left Ms. Crandall’s. That or find a career. He didn’t want to do either. His life was perfect as it was. He sometimes wondered if he deserved such good fortune.
Bartholomew was tired when he got home from work, covered in a fine coat of flour like a loaf of French bread. He bathed, he napped, he ate dinner. He was fond of TV dinners, not the microwaveable variety, but the old-fashioned ones in thin aluminum trays, their corners rounded and wrinkled like old men’s elbows. He ate two of them every night. The turkey dinner was his favorite. He would have gladly eaten the turkey dinner every night, but he had his health to consider. He believed the findings of studies that suggested that variety in the diet contributed to a longer life. To this end he made it a point not to eat two of the same dinner in a single night. The beef dinner and the chicken dinner were the other two dinners he liked, though not as much as the turkey dinner. After dinner his night was free to do with as he wished. He took long walks and petted all the cats he encountered on the way. They loved to sniff and lick the flavors of his dinner from his fingertips, the first few cats more so than the last.
That Monday night after his walk — he didn’t take the cane, fearing its rightful owner might recognize it and press charges — Bartholomew pretended to be debonair. This entailed thumping the cane against his bedroom floor like the master of a manor summoning his butler. It made a hollow sound, the cane thumping the floor. Odd he’d never heard it before. He thumped again. It made the same sound. A large imitation Persian rug, grayish reddish yellowish brown and depicting in a repeating pattern a royal fox hunt in a wood, covered most of the pine-plank floor. Until now Bartholomew had never had reason to look beneath it. He pulled a corner of it out from under his desk and rolled it part-way up. Lo and behold if there wasn’t a trapdoor there, built into the beams of the floor, with a little brass ring for a handle. Bartholomew grabbed the ring and pulled. The trapdoor opened. A set of concrete stairs led down into a gaping black hole, cool and musty. To know that it had been beneath him all these years gave Bartholomew a shiver. Most beguiling. He couldn’t see anything down there. He prodded the cane into the hole. It met with no resistance. He didn’t dare extend his arm below the floor. He would need a flashlight to see deeper. There was a flashlight in the kitchen but it didn’t work. Bartholomew didn’t want to go buy batteries. He didn’t want to leave his bedroom. He hadn’t felt such wonder since he was a boy. He went and bought batteries. Once again he is squatting before the open trapdoor. The stairs appear to have no end. They narrow to a vanishing point at what has to be a very great distance. Bartholomew sees no walls, no floor, only endless dark, and stairs.
After the first tentative steps the rest came easy. Down he went, cane in left hand, flashlight in right. He looked around for a light switch but could not find one. He pointed the flashlight up at the underbelly of the floor. It was raw earth of an olive-gray color. It seemed to go on forever in all directions, broken only by the open trapdoor. The square of light shining through, a rectangle from Bartholomew’s perspective, showed the mint-green ceiling of Bartholomew’s bedroom. Down he went. There was no railing. Nothing to hold onto at all. Bartholomew began to panic. He turned around and hurried back up. He closed the trapdoor and unrolled the imitation Persian rug. He was winded. He wondered if he shouldn’t notify someone. Public Works? The National Geographic Society? Did Ms. Crandall know about this? He thought about asking her, then decided against it. She might blame him.
It was good to see the mill the next morning. The flour so white. It all made perfect sense, there at the mill. People would always need flour. That was comforting. For bread. Pastries. Tortillas. Bartholomew ate lunch in the break room with his co-workers. It surprised him how easily he could pretend he hadn’t discovered a void beneath the floor of his bedroom. Sports were talked about. And the price of things. Then they all went back to work. The afternoon shift. The whistle. More a long hoot than a whistle. The belts wound down. Bartholomew was afraid to go home. He considered checking into a motel. Or a hotel. He missed the first train. What was he wearing that day? There is no avoiding it. He went home. Ms. Crandall was eating her dinner at the kitchen table. Pleasantries were exchanged. And you? He almost blurted it out: there’s a void, endless or not I cannot say, beneath my bedroom! Her dinner smelled good. He asked after her daughter. Read any good books lately? The void was calling him. Go deeper. He showered. He ate. He was hardly aware of doing so. Then he rolled up the rug and went down. Down and down he went. And down. Step by step. One foot, then the other. Cane in right hand, flashlight in left. His thoughts were few, and of a practical nature. Always in the back of his mind was the knowledge that each step down was a future step up. This made it easier to keep going down, rather than turn around and face the up. Every so often he stopped and looked back, to acknowledge the light through the trapdoor. It wasn’t difficult to turn around. Each stair was at least three feet wide, a foot deep, the same high. Unfinished concrete, free of graffiti.
Several hours down Bartholomew stopped and rested on a stair. He dared himself to turn off the flashlight. He sat for a while, staring at the stripe of light running down the middle of the stairs. He pulled the switch back. The void in all its nothingness closed around him. He stopped breathing. He blinked. Eyes closed it was slightly brighter. Probably the glow of his own kinetic energy, atoms moving to and fro inside his eyelids. Open, nothing. The weight of absolute black. He didn’t dare speak. What would he have said if he did? He breathed again. Slowly he turned and looked back. The light through the trapdoor was fainter than the weakest star in the night sky, illuminating nothing. And yet, that was the portal to his life. His bedroom lay beyond, and the world, which contained Ms. Crandall and the flour mill, among other things. He turned the flashlight on. Stairs. He began to feel sleepy. He turned around and headed back up. It was one in the morning when he stumbled back into his bedroom, legs and hips in agony from the climb. He closed the trapdoor and went to bed.
Every evening for the next week, Bartholomew went down into the void, setting out earlier and coming back later each night. He didn’t know what he was looking for, only that he needed more time to find it. That Saturday he bought a large, internal frame backpack at a camping supply store. It had eight zippers on it, and the brochure that came with it claimed that it could weather the harshest conditions. At this same store Bartholomew bought a heavy-duty flashlight, powered by a fat, cubic battery. He bought three extra batteries. Eveready: The Worlds Choice for Dependability. He bought an inflatable pillow. He was tempted to buy several other nifty gadgets, a mosquito net, a combination compass/sundial, but he could think of no use for them. He bought fourteen turkey and mashed potato TV dinners. He was certain that the preservatives in them would prevent them from going bad. He would eat two a day. One for lunch, one for dinner. He would be hungry, but he would not starve. He bought seven one-liter bottles of water. A liter a day. Less if possible. He also bought a pack of bubblegum, something he hadn’t done in fourteen years. It had ten strawberry flavored pieces in it. He did a trial pack. Into the backpack went the TV dinners, the water, the inflatable pillow, Huckleberry Finn, a small notebook, a pen, the spare batteries, a fork, the pack of bubblegum. He debated whether or not to take his toiletries. In the end, not. The only person to offend was himself. He could be forgiven if it came to that. In order to get the backpack onto his back Bartholomew first had to drag it up onto his bed, then squat down and work his arms through the straps, then, with his legs still bent, lean forward nearly horizontal to the ground before finally straightening up. Lest the weight should topple him backwards, Bartholomew maintained a sharp forward slant as he walked around the room, legs wide for balance. Not so bad, he said. He grabbed the flashlight with one hand and the cane with the other. He walked some more, turning the flashlight on and off for practice. Then he reversed the entire process.
On Sunday Bartholomew rested. Ms. Crandall asked him if he would like to go to church with her, as if she sensed his need for reassurance. The church was across the street. Assembly of God. They received God’s blessings and admonitions. Bartholomew was introduced to some elderly ladies and gentlemen. He was asked about and looked at with almost unbearable love. If only they knew there was a void beneath them of possibly infinite proportions. Bartholomew was glad when it was over that he’d gone. He called his mother. Her gall bladder was acting up. He should come soon, who knew what might happen to her? Bartholomew told Ms. Crandall he was going home to visit his mother for a week. The foreman at the mill, annoyed at being disturbed on a Sunday, wasn’t happy about such short notice. Bartholomew apologized, but his mother was sick, and he would only be gone a week. This was not a lie.
Early the next morning Bartholomew locked his door. Skip the preliminaries. Once again he is in the void, arguably where he belongs. It is different now that he’s on vacation. Despite the burden on his back he feels freer than before. Many good days lie before him. Before him and beneath him. He stops and rests for fifteen minutes every few hours. All he lacks is a companion. A Sancho Panza. A Tom Sawyer. For comic relief. He has the pack, but it is neither witty nor cheerful. Bartholomew looks back. The trapdoor is full of the dawn. Incidental, the light does not make its way down. He should have left his light on, for the night. At noon, or thereabouts (he never wore a watch), he stopped and pulled a TV dinner and his fork from the backpack. He thought about the bright break room at the mill. When he was done he tossed the empty tray into the void. He listened to the silence for a long time. He drank some water and went on. Two hours later he stopped and rested again. He turned off the flashlight. He pissed into the darkness. He went on. He ate dinner when he got hungry and rested for an hour. He went on until he began to get sleepy, then he stopped for the night. He was pleased with himself. His shoulders and back and knees and calves and the hand that held the flashlight were aching. He leaned back on his pack and relaxed. Tomorrow the pack would be lighter, lacking two TV dinners and a bottle of water. He read some Twain. He wasn’t companionless afterall. It was good to read in the void. It made it seem smaller and brighter in there. He propped the flashlight on the backpack, lamp forward, and leaned back and read. In hindsight he would see this as a mistake. Something shifted in the backpack. The page went dark. The flashlight hit a stair before plunging into the void. Bartholomew leaned over and watched it plummet. After spinning briefly it righted itself, lamp up. He watched it for a long time, a pinprick of light, then a mere smudge of lesser dark, unchanging, or changing too gradually to notice. Finally he tore his eyes away and sat staring glumly into the void. The issue was whether or not to turn around and go back and buy another flashlight. He was only one day down. But it would be the third day by the time he made it back to the spot where the flashlight fell. Then he could only go one more day down, or one and a half at most, before he would have to turn around and go back up. But if he did go on without the flashlight, and did arrive somewhere, he would not be able to see any of it, and what was the point of that? Without light his progress would be slow. He would need to confirm that the next stair existed before taking a step. A tap with the cane would suffice. Over time these thousands of taps, a second or two each, would accumulate into hours lost. On the bright side, he would not have to repeat this procedure going back up. But up and down both he would have to guard against drifting left or right and falling into the void, as the flashlight had. Nor would he be able to read or make notes, unless he learned to do so in the dark. These were important things to consider, and consider them he did before deciding to continue on his journey as planned.
Having no further need of them, Bartholomew tossed the spare batteries, the notebook, the pen, and Huckleberry Finn into the void. He was sleepy. It had to be close to midnight. He took out the inflatable pillow and blew it up. He took off his shoes and set them on the stair above him. He kept his socks on. His feet always got cold at night. He lay on his back in the middle of the stairs, five corners jutting at equal intervals into his body. He scooted up, then down, until he was as close to comfortable as he could get. He said a little prayer. Then he slept. He knew he slept because his dreams were full of light. Sunny fields, Nordic women, tundra. Then it was pitch black again, and he could feel his eyelids meet then part, meet then part, without a corresponding change of scene. He had the impression he had been asleep for a long time, but how could he be sure? It may have been fifteen minutes. He saw no light above. He had an urge to defecate, a good a sign as any that it was morning. He thought it best not to soil the stairs, given he would most likely be returning by them to his bedroom. True, there was no reason he shouldn’t be able to smell it before he reached it, but he couldn’t trust his nose to know when he had reached the actual stair where it lay. More than these practical considerations it was a deep sense of guilt, instilled in him by his strict Calvinist upbringing, that convinced Bartholomew to do the right thing and shit into the void. In the end it was a rewarding experience, one he would look forward to again and again in the days to come. It wasn’t only the uncanny absence of sound following the movement that so appealed to him, though there was much to be said for this. What he liked most was sensing the void from two directions simultaneously. In those moments he came as close as any man has ever come to grasping the unfathomable nature of the infinite. Peering over the edge afterwards he sometimes thought he could see, if not actually see, the ghostly pulse of the falling flashlight.
The first few days of any vacation are an adjustment period, when the ruts of routine still hold sway over the vacationer, who has not yet discovered the looser rhythms of the new space, the new time. Bartholomew’s vacation was no exception. It wasn’t until the third day, or what he believed to be the third day, that he truly began to unwind. He no longer had to think about each step before taking it. The sound and feel of the cane making contact with the next stair was ample proof that it was there. He ceased to think of himself as moving down, or forward, but simply moving. His backpack was lighter, his muscles stronger. He ate and drank and slept and shat in the dark with consummate ease, like a fish on the bottom of the sea, and because none of it could be seen it was as if it was not him performing these actions but some thoughtful force in league with his needs. He went on. One by one the TV dinners vanished into the void. The water, the bottles, the fork, the inflatable pillow, until nothing at all remained in the backpack. It fell and was gone. Somewhere along the way Bartholomew shed his clothes, his shoes. The cane he kept, for sentimental reasons. Memories of light pained him. The dark was so beautiful, full of shapes, thick and fluid. He saw black icebergs drifting on midnight seas. Blind horses in the bellies of coal mines. Ravens. Panthers. Smoker’s lungs. No form a form more than a moment. Taking shape only to leave it. Sometimes he thought he’d resolved the question, whether or not he should leave Ms. Crandall’s, but no sooner would he arrive at the answer than its opposite would seem the wiser choice.
So it was, until the day, if day it was, the stairs ended. Bartholomew went to step down but was prevented from doing so by a level surface. He stumbled and fell. It felt like wood. He felt around and discovered a little metal ring that swiveled up and down where it attached to the floor. He pulled on it. The smell of mothballs wafted up on a wave of blinding light. Bartholomew shut his eyes and moved away. When at last he grew accustomed to the light, Bartholomew looked down through the trapdoor. He saw a partially open door a few feet away, sunlight spilling through the narrow space between door and frame. He saw colorful garments on hangers. Women’s shoes. A straw hat with a silk flower on it. He hooked the handle of the cane over the edge of the opening and used it like a grappling hook to lower himself down. He nudged open the door and peered out into a bedroom. Brilliant sunshine was pouring through two lace-curtained windows to his right. Bartholomew shielded his sunken eyes with his hands. In this bedroom was a queen-size bed with a Second Empire headboard and a multi-colored, patchwork quilt, a blond art deco dresser cluttered with delicate perfume bottles, a Louis XIV armchair with faded lavender upholstery, and a large oval mirror in an ornate, gold-leaf frame. Bartholomew walked, if walk is the word for the strange double plunge his hips made when he stepped, over to the mirror. He was all bone and beard and forlorn phallus. Pale as a maggot. The bedroom door let out onto the landing of a set of dingy carpeted stairs which Bartholomew instantly recognized.
He walked down the stairs, each stair making a familiar creak. He hoped she wasn’t home. He didn’t want her to see him naked. She would surely evict him if she did. At the foot of the stairs he looked down the hall but didn’t see or hear Ms. Crandall. He tried his door. It was locked. He wished he had some clothes on. He went into the bathroom and guzzled water from the sink. He wrapped his red bath towel around his waist and went down the hall to the kitchen. It was while he was standing at the refrigerator, gnawing on a hunk of leftover lasagna, that he heard the parlor door open behind him. He turned to see Ms. Crandall, standing rigid, gaping at him in terror. He gaped back at her.
What do you want? she hissed. Bartholomew put the lasagna back in the pan. What he meant to say was, It’s me, Ms. Crandall. Bartholomew. I can explain. But what emerged from his mouth was a slush of gibberish.
Get out! she yelled. Bartholomew tried to explain that he’d entered a void through a trapdoor in his bedroom and after many days of downward travel had somehow emerged in her closet, but nothing came out right. He’d forgotten how to speak.
Out! she yelled. Before I call the police. She pulled the brass fireplace poker from around the edge of the parlor doorway and shook it at him.
Batholomew shuffled off down the hall. Ms. Crandall didn’t let him out of her sight. As he passed his bedroom door Bartholomew felt such a powerful longing to be back in there, with his bed, his desk, his books, his postcard of an obese woman in a city park walking her Welsh terrier under the shade of her parasol, that he couldn’t help but try the knob again.
Out! screamed Ms. Crandall. Out! Out! Out! She was coming down the hall with the poker. Bartholomew rushed to the front door but was deterred from opening it by the unappealing prospect of running out into the world in nothing but a red towel. Inches before the dull point of the poker reached him, Bartholomew turned and ran back up the stairs, into Ms. Crandall’s bedroom. He heard her calling the police. He locked the door and ran into the closet. He didn’t have the strength to pull himself up by the dangling cane. He dragged the armchair into the closet, threw the cane up through the opening, climbed in after it and shut the trapdoor. There he lay, for the longest time, panting in the blessed dark. He felt bad about frightening Ms. Crandall. He should have been there to protect her. But what was done was done. He couldn’t change that now.
Bartholomew rested a while longer, in a rare state of peace, then he picked up the cane and started back up the stairs. He didn’t make it far, a hundred stairs at most, before he was overcome with fatigue. He sat. He closed his eyes. Or maybe he opened them. He thought he could see the tiniest speck of light, miles and miles above, but he couldn’t be sure. He rested his chin on the handle of the cane and thought about his quandary. He could stay, or he could go. Those were the choices. There was no going back. Bartholomew gave the issue considerable thought but arrived at no satisfying course of action. The only thing to do now was to wait with an open mind.
© 2010 James Terry
