Lights were on inside Number 23; the people who lived here – their name was Saubers, according to computer research he’d done in the prison library – were home. He looked at the upstairs window on the right, the one overlooking the driveway, and wondered who was in his old room. A kid, most likely, and in degenerate times like these, one probably a lot more interested in playing games on his phone than reading books.
Morris moved on, turning the corner onto Elm Street, then walking up to Birch. When he got to the Birch Street Rec (closed for two years now due to budget cuts, a thing he also knew from his computer research), he glanced around, saw the sidewalks were deserted on both sides, and hurried up the Rec’s brick flank. Once behind it, he broke into a shambling jog, crossing the outside basketball courts – rundown but still used, by the look – and the weedy, overgrown baseball field.
The moon was out, almost full and bright enough to cast his shadow beside him. Ahead of him now was an untidy tangle of bushes and runty trees, their branches entwined and fighting for space. Where was the path? He thought he was in the right location, but he wasn’t seeing it. He began to course back and forth where the baseball field’s right field had been, like a dog trying to catch an elusive scent. His heart was up to full speed again, his mouth dry and coppery. Revisiting the old neighborhood was one thing, but being here, behind the abandoned Rec, was another. This was Doubtful Behavior for sure.
He was about to give up when he saw a potato chip bag fluttering from a bush. He swept the bush aside and bingo, there was the path, although it was just a ghost of its former self. Morris supposed that made sense. Some kids probably still used it, but the number would have dropped after the Rec closed. That was a good thing. Although, he reminded himself, for most of the years he’d been in Waynesville, the Rec would have been open. Plenty of foot traffic passing near his buried trunk.
He made his way up the path, moving slowly, stopping completely each time the moon dove behind a cloud and moving on again when it came back out. After five minutes, he heard the soft chuckle of the stream. So that was still there, too.
Morris stepped out on the bank. The stream was open to the sky, and with the moon now directly overhead, the water shone like black silk. He had no problem picking out the tree on the other bank, the one he had buried the trunk under. The tree had both grown and tilted toward the stream. He could see a couple of gnarled roots poking out below it and then diving back into the earth, but otherwise it all looked the same.
Morris crossed the stream in the old way, going from stone to stone and hardly getting his shoes wet. He looked around once – he knew he was alone, if there had been anyone else in the area he would have heard them, but the old Prison Peek was second nature – and then knelt beneath the tree. He could hear his breath rasping harshly in his throat as he tore at weeds with one hand and held onto a root for balance with the other.
He cleared a small circular patch and then began digging, tossing aside pebbles and small stones. He was in almost halfway to the elbow when his fingertips touched something hard and smooth. He rested his burning forehead against a gnarled elbow of protruding root and closed his eyes.
Still here.
His trunk was still here.
Thank you, God.
It was enough, at least for the time being. The best he could manage, and ah God, such a relief. He scooped the dirt back into the hole and scattered it with last fall’s dead leaves from the bank of the stream. Soon the weeds would be back – weeds grew fast, especially in warm weather – and that would complete the job.
Once upon a freer time, he would have continued up the path to Sycamore Street, because the bus stop was closer when you went that way, but not now, because the backyard where the path came out belonged to the Saubers family. If any of them saw him there and called 911, he’d likely be back in Waynesville tomorrow, probably with another five years tacked onto his original sentence, just for good luck.
He doubled back to Birch Street instead, confirmed the sidewalks were still empty, and walked to the bus stop on Garner Street. His legs were tired and the hand he’d been digging with was scraped and sore, but he felt a hundred pounds lighter. Still there! He had been sure it would be, but confirmation was so sweet.
Back at Bugshit Manor, he washed the dirt from his hands, undressed, and lay down. The place was noisier than ever, but not as noisy as D Wing at Waynesville, especially on nights like tonight, with the moon big in the sky. Morris drifted toward sleep almost at once.
Now that the trunk was confirmed, he had to be careful: that was his final thought.
More careful than ever.
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