This one of my short stories which appeared in my “Stories for Shut-Ins” series, sent to over 300 readers during the Covid Pandemic.
Passage
My name is Tommy Taft and I go to Stanley L. Perkins Public School on the south side of Chicago, but nobody says the “L,” just “Stanleyperkins,” and it’s okay, but there’s lots of bullies there, lots of ‘em, and I guess the guys I go around with are bullies, too. Well, they used to be, until Chick Hansen graduated. Now, not so much, but still, being with ’em keeps me from bein’ jumped and made fun of for my left eye that “roves” sometimes and messes up my sight, so I wear this patch, and if it’s no better in about four years, when I turn 18, in 1959, I’ll get a glass eye.
This eye is why they call me Rover. “Hey, Rover, show us your eye.” Or “Here, Rover.” Like I’m a dog, but that mostly wore off by fifth grade. I’m in seventh now, even though I’m fourteen, ‘cause I lost so much time from school with eye operations that didn’t work and cost my parents lots more than they could afford, and my dad never says so, but that’s why we don’t laugh so much anymore. My mom was never much of a laugher anyway ‘cause she didn’t get a regular kid, is what I think.
So I don’t stay around the apartment much, and I don’t always hang out with those friends of mine, either, so I’m alone a lot and I don’t mind it. I like to walk around if it’s not too hot or cold or rainin’. Today I walked all the way to Mason Park which has the Mason Museum on it, since this guy Mason died and left it all to the city. It’s just a big house, but they call it a museum ‘cause all the old furniture came with it and all the weird globes and statues, but what I like are the big yards all around the house, especially when they’re green, like now, and there’s different kinds of trees and all these walkin’ paths and a couple of ponds and bridges.
When it’s sunny like this I just walk the whole place and then stand at my favorite spot and look around and think about everything in the world. It’s one of the places where the walkin’ path moves up and widens out into a bridge, all made of old polished wood with fancy carved shapes, some of ’em broken, but so what? Under the bridges are tunnels, small and dark and cool. Lots of times I walk through the tunnels, feelin’ the chill from a place that’s never sunny, never warm, and it feels kinda creepy, but it’s fun anyway.
The bridge I’m on now has a lot better view than the two others, but this one you can’t walk under ‘cause the tunnel is boarded up. There’s all kinds ’a junk and broken wood and busted mowers and stuff under there. You can see through the boards and this junk to the other side, but it would be hard to walk through, and there’s a sign that says KEEP OUT and UNSAFE FOR PASSAGE, and the sign’s been there for all the years I’ve been comin’ here, so why don’t they just fix it?
As I look down from the bridge, I see some people starin’ at this tunnel, just starin’, and two of them walk away, but another two people, who are wide apart from each other, just keep lookin’ at it. It’s a man and woman, but I don’t think they’re together, and now here comes another guy, just stoppin’ and looking at the boarded-up tunnel, which makes me wonder, and I’m not much of a talker with people I don’t know, but I can’t figure this out, and the newer guy is close enough to hear me from the bridge, and he looks…mild, you know? Not mean. He’s not smiling though. Looks sad, I guess. Just starin’ and starin’ at the tunnel.
“Mister?” I say it loud enough, but he doesn’t look up, so I say it a little louder, and this time he looks at me. “Why you lookin’ at the tunnel?” But he just keeps starin’ at me for a long time, like he’s studying me.
“You call it a ‘tunnel’,” he says.
“Well, yeah. What d’you call it?”
He stares a while before he answers. “Passage.” So I nod, and don’t know how to get him talking again, but then he says, “They’re boarding it up, completely. Tomorrow. It was in the paper. Closing it off, so … there isn’t much time.”
“But…it’s always been closed, right?”
“For years,” he says.
“So why board it up now?”
“People still try to go through. One got seriously hurt a couple of weeks ago. They hear about it somehow.”
I decide to come down from the bridge so I can see the tunnel, and so I don’t have to speak so loud. When I get to him, he’s still staring at it. Those other two people are still looking at it, too.
“Why do people wanna get through it – all these boards and the junk and the webs and…”
He looks at me then and takes his time. “I thought you knew.”
“You thought I knew what?”
He keeps starin’ and then says, “Because of your eye. I thought you knew. Is it just…temporary? A scratch?”
“No.” I wonder why he’s talkin’ about my eye. “It’s called a dancin’ eye, but the real name is ‘nystagmus.’ Maybe it’ll go away by the time I’m …” He takes his eyes off me, like I’m not even there anymore, and he walks closer to the boards of the tunnel, starin’ through to the junk to other side. While he’s doin’ that, the two other watchers, the man and the woman come closer to us, and the man’s a big, older guy, and he looks tough, and even mad when he looks at the man I talked to.
“What did you tell this kid? What are you trying to do?”
The first man turns to stare at the older guy and shakes his head. “Told him nothing.” And the older man looks at me.
“He tell you to go through there?”
“No, he …”
“Don’t you go through there.”
I notice the woman has come closer, and she speaks to the old man.
“It’s not up to you if he tries to go through there or not. You can’t tell him what to do.”
“Too many people know now, damn it," says the crabby guy.
“What’s it to you?” the lady shoots back, and she’s small and a lot younger, maybe 30, but she’s not scared of him at all.
“He’ll hurt himself,” the crab says.
“It’s up to him!”
The older man walks away, angry. The first man watches him go, looks at the woman and me a long time.
“What?” she says.
He takes a while, and then he says, “As a kid, I stuttered so bad I could hardly speak.” Then he looks at me, and in a minute, he walks away, too. It’s just the woman and me, and she walks right up to the tunnel and looks deep inside where you can see just a little light through the boards and clutter and webs to the other end. We both stare at it, and I don’t know what to say. My chest is so tight and my throat, too. I don’t understand this. I don’t get it.
She doesn’t look at me, but says the words straight out into the tunnel, like she’s staring at something or remembering something. “I had a birthmark that covered half my face. ‘Port wine’ they called the color. ‘Port wine.’”
I didn’t think I could talk at all, but in awhile I hear myself asking her, “What … what did you do? You went IN there? And what happened?!”
She still doesn’t look at me. “I waited till night. I didn’t want anybody to see me. I was scared, but – also ashamed to believe it, to want it so much. I said a prayer, and I walked through. It wasn’t easy. I cut myself in two places, hurt my knee, but … when I walked out of there and made it to a bench and looked in my pocket mirror with my hand shaking like crazy … the birthmark was fading, and then … it was gone. Imagine that. Gone.” She turns to me then, and I stare at her face, at her clear skin. She asks, “You believe me?”
I can hardly talk. I’m shakin’ inside. “I don’t know. I don’t KNOW! How … how did you know to come here? And do that? How?”
She gets that long look again, remembering. “For me it was a woman stopping me on the street. Looking at my birth mark. I don’t know how she knew about it, but she mentioned this place, and … what you have to do to … fix yourself, and she told me I must never tell anyone. “Keep the secret,” she kept saying. I thought she was just a crazy person. But … I couldn’t NOT try it. I just couldn’t.”
“But HOW could it happen? What makes it happen?!”
She’s lookin’ inside the tunnel when she answers me. “I think … it’s something in there, in the midst of all the … broken mess in there, some ‘thing,’ some power … maybe something that used to be in the old house. There’s broken stuff from the house in there. Nobody knows, and now … after tomorrow, nobody will ever know.”
She sighs real deep and looks at me. “Listen … it IS dangerous. People get hurt. Boards, nails, things falling … and there are rats. People get badly hurt, and … that’s all I’m going to say.” But after she takes a few steps, she turns and says one more thing. “Keep the secret.” And then she’s gone.
I just stand there, staring across the tunnel, the “Passage,” the man called it, and I think about what these people said. It’s crazy, but how could they all be making it up, and why would they? The more I stare, and the more I think about trying to move through there, the more afraid I am. I can hardly breathe and my stomach is so tight, my chest, too, where my heart is punching me, and my mind is sayin’ “You can’t. You’ll get hurt. You’ll get stuck in there. And the rats …” But while I’m thinkin’ all this, I start to duck down so I can fit through the first boards, and I put my leg inside the opening and then try to bring my other leg around, real slow, bein’ careful, but I look ahead into the dark and all the boards and junk and I think I hear a rat skitterin’ in there, and I pull my leg out fast, movin’ back, losing my balance and fallin’, and I know I can’t do it.
I look around to see if there’s any more people around, and there’s another man standin’ way back, lookin’ at the tunnel, and I walk over to him. He’s got on a suit and a tie and everything is clean, and he’s watchin’ me as I come up to him. I have to just breathe a minute before I can say anything. “You went through there?” He just looks at me, at my eye patch, then, finally, he nods, and I say, “Why? Why did you …?”
Then he looks at his hands, which are normal and also clean, and he says, “I was burned … in the war.”
I take a big breath and say, “Will you help me? Will you please take me through there? Now?”
It takes him a while before he says anything. “Sorry. YOU have to do it -- just the person who needs it. You have to need it.” He looks sad for me and says, “Be careful.” Then he turns away from me and just stares, stares at the place that changed him.
I look at the tunnel, too, and I know, I KNOW I can’t go in there alone, and the thought comes to me, what if two people needed it? What if somebody else needs it and we go in together, and I start thinkin’ hard ‘cause this place’ll be boarded up forever, and I’ll never get the chance, and I’ll never have a normal eye, and I’ll never get to watch my parents when they first see my eye is fixed, see the look on their faces, see ’em smile, so I keep thinkin’ who, who do I know?
I think of this neighbor in my apartment building ‘cause he’s blind, but nobody blind could get through there, and he’s so old, maybe he wouldn’t even try it. There’s a kid at school with a club foot, but I can’t even remember his name right now, and how could I find out where he lives? And then I think of the girl, the colored girl.
She’s a year ahead of me and she has a locked knee, can’t bend it, can’t walk right. She’s a thin girl, uses a cane, but she probably wouldn’t even talk to me because of what happened last year. I have to try, though, and the colored people who have been comin’ into the neighborhood in the last few years all are livin’ in those three blocks near 43rd and Ellis, and that’s only six blocks from this park, so I’m on my way and trying to think of what to say if I find her, but I can’t help goin’ over in my mind what happened that day last year.
This guy who was our leader – this Chick Hanson – he hated the coloreds and said they shouldn’t be comin’ into our neighborhoods, and a lotta kids agreed, but they only called ’em names when the teachers couldn’t hear. Chick wanted to do something. So, we’re walkin’ together after school and we see this colored girl, and we all know about her and the way she walks with a cane ‘cause her right knee won’t bend, and we catch up to her before she gets to her neighborhood, and we walk behind and in front and next to her, and we can see she’s scared, but she doesn’t look at us and just keeps walkin’, her face kinda tight. She’s got her books in a shoulder bag and one hand on that cane, and we’re all wonderin’ what Chick is gonna do, and he steps right in front of her so she has to stop.
She stares right at Chick, doesn’t look down or away, and even though she’s scared, she’s mad, too, and lookin’ right into his face, and he says, “We wanna see that knee that can’t bend. We wanna see your knee, Dora.” He stretches out her name, making fun.
She looks at ’im and says in a soft voice, “You leave me alone. I’m just goin’ home. That’s all. You leave me alone.”
He steps closer to her, smiling, but mean, his eyes real mean. “Show us,” he says, and she doesn’t move except for the trembling, which is worse now. So, real quick, he grabs the sides of her dress and pulls it up, not real far, not all the way, just … we could see her thighs, and she turns then, her face to the side, her eyes still mad, but she’s scared, and I see two tears moving down her brown face, and I’m sorry for her and I’m scared, too. Some of the guys are smilin’ but I’m just holdin’ my breath.
We all look at her knee and the two long scars, and then Chick lets go of the dress, and she’s covered again, still lookin’ away and shakin’, but still mad, too.
“Thanks, Doorrraaa,” Chick says, “and if you tell, we’ll get your little black brother. He’s in fifth grade, right?” and Chick walks away and we follow, but I remember turnin’ and lookin’ back at her, and feelin’ sorry, and the two of us looked right into each other’s faces, me sorry, and her all shakin’ up and mad, and here I am now, tryin’ to find her and ask her to come with me … I would do it alone, if I could. I’m not doin’ this for her, not really. I mean I would just be going through that tunnel now if I wasn’t so scared, but I can’t say that to her. I have to say it right, like I’m givin’ her a gift, so that she comes with me.
When I get to the neighborhood, I don’t see her on the street. Next to one of the buildings is a big cement yard, and kids are there, all ages – playin’ games or just … but I don’t see her, so that means I have to start askin,’ and that scares me, but … this is my only chance, so …
Now I see her. Some kids were blockin’ her from view, and there she is. I step into the yard, and the little kids are starin’ at me, and a few my age and older are walkin’ toward me now, but then they see that Dora is comin’, comin’ with her cane, comin’ right for me, and they stop, but keep watchin’. Some of them are asking her. I can’t make out the words yet, but when she’s closer, I hear her say, “He’s just from school,” and the kids drop back and she comes on, and she’s got this mean look aimed at me, stopping close in front of me now, her face asking what am I doin’ there.
“Hi, Dora. I’m Tommy Taft. You know me, right? I got somethin’ to tell ya, and you won’t believe me, but …” I stop then because I forgot how I was supposed to start, so I try again. “First, I’m really sorry for what happened last year, what Chick did …”
“You all did it,” she says.
“Well … we didn’t know what he was gonna do. We just …”
“So, what’ve you got to tell me?”
“You know my eye? Here, look.” I lift off the patch, so she can see my eyeball, see it move, and then I cover it again. “I got this … problem I wanna get rid of, and you got a problem too, with your knee, and I just found out, just today, I found out how we can fix our problems, and it really works, and I know it sounds stupid but it’s real and it’s about a tunnel over at Mason Park, that tunnel with boards and junk and signs on it, but you can still get through right now, but not tomorrow. They’re gonna board it up forever tomorrow, but now, just now we can still do it. We can walk through the tunnel, and when we get to the other side, we won’t have our problems anymore, and I know it sounds crazy, but if you come with me now, there’s somebody there who did it for himself, fixed his problems with this tunnel by movin’ through it, and he can tell you the way they all told me, so you’ll believe. They told me, Dora, a bunch of em’, and I was gonna do it. I was just about to do it, but then I thought of you. I thought, wait, I can make it up to Dora for what happened last year. This’ll make up for that, ‘cause I want YOU to be fixed, too. I DO, so I came over here to get you so we can share it – the goin’ through the tunnel, and the comin’ out okay.”
Her eyes are deep into me, and she’s still mad, and her voice is sorta choked when she talks. “You’re gonna get me into a tunnel, and your friends’ll be there, and your goin’ to shame me.”
“No, No! Just come with me. Please. You’ll see. There’s somebody there to explain, a grown-up, one of the ones who were fixed. It’s not a trick.”
“You want to hurt me again.”
“No, Dora, please, this is crazy but it’s REAL! I swear to god!”
“You swear on your mother’s life?”
“YES! I do. I’m doin’ this for her, too, for her and my dad, so they don’t have to spend any more money on this eye, so that her and my dad’ll be … happier, and listen, Dora. Please.” I can’t help that I’m chokin’ and almost cryin’ now. “Think of YOUR parents, and how they’ll feel. It’s for them, too ….”
Now a man is walking toward us, eyes on me, stopping in front of me, and Dora says to him, “It’s about school. It’s all right. He’s just leavin’.” I stare at her, at him. He keeps his eyes on me, hard, and she says, “He’s leavin’ now.” So I do. What else can I do? I just start walkin’ back to the park, thinkin’ maybe somebody else’ll be there, somebody who might …
It’s about two blocks later when I hear somebody yellin,’ and I don’t pay attention until I hear it again, louder, and it’s my name. It’s Dora callin’ my name, so I stop, and I wait for her, and she comes on pretty fast, cane and limp and all, and she walks right past me, not lookin’ at me, sayin’ “Okay. Okay, you better not be lyin.’ You better not, and I’ll come and look, just look, and I’ll see.”
I catch up with her and she’s got tears again, movin’ down her face, just like she did last year, and she’s still not lookin’ at me, and she doesn’t say any more, so neither do I. When we get to the tunnel, I’m so glad to see the man is still there, and he watches Dora walk right up to him, swallowin’ her tears, with her chest shakin,’ but she looks right at him and asks, “Is it true? Is it true about your hands?” And the man stares at her and nods his head, and I hear her choke a little in her throat. “And you were changed? You were fixed?”
He shows her his hands and nods again, and then he looks her all over and his eyes come back to her, and his words are soft. “But you can’t make it, honey. You can’t make it through … the way you are.”
My words come in a shout ‘cause I’m scared he’ll stop her from tryin’, and I need her in there. “I’ll help her!”
Neither one of ’em even look at me, still, watchin’ each other, and then he says to her, “Sorry, you won’t make it.”
After a few seconds, she says, “People been sayin’ that to me my whole life,” and she turns away and walks to the entrance of the tunnel.
I join her there and look into the dark space and I think I can do this now. I know I can do it cause somebody’s with me. I’m afraid to mention the rats, afraid she’ll back out. I put my leg through like last time and start to bring the other leg around some of the rotten, broken boards and I feel her touch me. I feel her hand on my leg, helpin’ me, and I’m in, and I’m already feelin’ cold, and I’m shiverin’ but maybe it’s fear, ‘cause the webs are on me and I swing my arm to break ’em and cut my hand on a board, and I see that the boards have rusty nails in ’em, but I’m already lookin’ for that next step I can take, when I hear her, her soft voice. “Tommy.”
I look through the gloom and see she’s waitin’ for me to help her inside, so I reach, and she pushes her cane toward me, and I take the end of it and start to pull while she moves her good leg over the first boards. Then she finds a place on the floor to plant her cane so she can swing the bad leg in, and I hold her shoulder while she does it, and now she’s inside, too.
We have to stand real close ‘cause there’s no room, and I point to where I think our next step should be, but it’s tricky with all the broken lawn tools and mowers and boards, and everything so thick with webs … I step on a pile that looks like it can hold me, but when I put my weight on it, it collapses and I fall on the floor that’s covered with more junk and some of it sharp, and I put my hands into the mess so I can push myself up, and that’s when a rat, a big one, runs over my hand and I yell and try to get my knees under me. Dora grabs me from behind, grabs my jacket and lifts, and I’m up and shakin’ so bad and I look at the pile of stuff ahead and it seems impossible to get through, but she’s pointin’ and sayin’ “There!” and I see just a bit of bare floor, cracked cement floor, and put my foot there, still shakin,’ and then see I might be able to climb over two broken mowers, and I point and look at her and she nods, and I make it to the mowers and feel something poke my back and turn, and it’s her cane. She’s moving her cane so I can grab it and pull her toward me, and I do, and she almost falls and she yells when some rusty metal scratches her leg so it bleeds, but we get up and over the mowers and we go on.
We never see bare floor again but only heaps of broken statues and lawn benches and wrecked signs and those rotten boards, and the rats are all around and we’re both shakin’ and yellin’, climbin’ and fallin’ and trying to keep it in sight -- that light from the other side, the side where we’ll come out, but it seems so far away, and it’s blocked by so much. She helps me and I help her, and once she crashes down, and I lift her, but her cane is trapped in some chains, and we can’t pull it out, and I say “Leave it! Leave it!” and she says, “I can’t!” and I say “You can! You can, Dora, ‘cause you won’t need it anymore once you’re out!” And she stares at me, all messy and cut and she realizes I’m right, and she keeps movin’ toward those bits of light from the other side, crawlin’ even. We’re both crawlin and screamin’ when the rats come close and come over us, and I reach some broken statues in our way, and I push ’em, and she pushes and they fall out of our way, but the crash starts more stuff fallin’, fallin’ on us and around us, and the dust chokes us, and we can hardly see, and I feel like my hand is broken, and she’s bleedin’ from her nose, and we try to rise up and make one more step, and one more, and I see the light from the other side, see it close, but more stuff is fallin’, and she goes down, and I yell, “Get up! It’s not far! It’s right here, Dora! Get up quick! And she tries, and I’m knocked down when a broken bench falls, but it falls so that I can see that the exit is only two steps away, only two, and I yell, “Come on!” and make for the light while the place is crashin’ around us, and I hear her scream “Wait! Tommy!” And I look back and she’s stuck, and I look back at the light, and it’s right there, and it’s drawin’ me, pullin’ me like a hand, while stuff crashes all around, and I stop, and I make up my mind and reach my way back to her and grab her and lift, and we’re both movin’ toward that opening, that light, but it’s gettin’ smaller ‘cause of all the things fallin’, and the light’s fadin’ away just when we’re almost there, and there’s so little room to get through, and I feel Dora fallin’, and I lift her and push her, without even thinkin’. I lift her and push her right at that light and I see her take one limpin’ step out into daylight and then everything’s falling on me and …
When I wake up, I’m laying on a stretcher and the stretcher’s on the grass, and I see the park around me and an ambulance close by, and the attendant is kneelin’ by me and puttin’ a bandage on my head, and when he finishes and moves, I lift my hand to my bad eye, and real slow, I move the patch, and it’s … just the same, my rovin’ eye, just the same, and so I cover it, and two attendants are there, liftin’ the stretcher, and I see Dora standin’ over me now and movin’ with me while they take me to the ambulance, and she’s cryin’ and sayin’ “Thank you, Tommy, thank you for pushing me through! They had to dig you out. I’m sorry, Tommy, sorry you couldn’t ...”
“WAIT!” I say. “DORA! You’re WALKIN’!” Dora is walkin’ along with the stretcher, walkin’ without a cane, without a locked knee, and I say to her “I’m so glad, Dora! Look at you!” And she nods, still cryin’, and I say “I wanted it to change me, too,” and now I’m cryin’ like she is. “I wanted it so bad, Dora, I even lied to you ‘cause I was scared to try it alone, but I’m glad you came, and at least it changed you! And I’m glad!”
And they’re putting me into the ambulance and she’s still there at the door and she says, “It changed you, too, Tommy! It changed you, too!” and I see her face and her tears, and she’s raisin’ a hand and I raise mine, too, so she sees it before they close the door.