Jim got home after shopping and checking the mail (nothing but some legal firm hoping he’d slipped a banana peel).  Jim followed systematic patterns.  Park the Ford F150 twelve and one-half inches from the edge of the lawn.  Count to three and open the door.  Gather the groceries (tidily tucked into two tattered and faded blue eco-friendly bags with the local grocery store’s name branded on them). Twenty-seven steps to the front porch.  Be predictable.  The screen door banged shut behind him.  Wash your hands.  Listen to the breeze.  Listen for it.  Close your eyes, let your ears do the work. Expand, listen, not a thing.  Nothing to hear but the buzz of heat bugs and the gentle rustle of leaves in the nearby orchard.

It was already another hot day. He’d never been more thankful for a root cellar in his life.  The groceries, he washed and put away, each in their place.  Stripping off his jeans and faded grey chamois shirt, he jumped in the shower, scrubbing every inch of his body with military precision.  It was a miracle that he’d accidentally ordered a dozen cases of Hibiclens back in 2015.  Even more, a miracle was that he avoided getting sick in 2020.

Back outside to do some chores.  You had to be predictable.  The eyes of AI were on you.   Always the AI, the stupid AI that couldn’t find a cure.   The idiot AI couldn’t figure how to unravel the mystery of the smallest of things.  The super-genius AI that could see definitive, predictable patterns in the behavior in larger ones. The larger the organism, the larger the sample, the more predictable.  People were nothing if not predictable. Something hidden?  AI would know.  Anything that had batteries or plugged into a wall sent signals.  Every signal digested by la máquina. He thought of Bobbi and could only sigh, a deep, long, sigh. They’d worked all this out.  The plan had failed.  

If they’d found Chester with her, then they could find her with him. 

In finding him, they’d find the root cellar.  The wooden access door and metal hinges stood out against the pine board of the kitchen floor. He’d even painted it bright red.  There was nothing to hide.  Jim? He didn’t hide a thing.  “No worries”, he thought, “find the cellar.”

The damp of the small cellar comingled with a slight movement of fresh air as the hatch dropped down above him.  It was pitch black.  There was a bare electric bulb to illuminate the space (its switch was well placed on the kitchen wall above). But light? It wasn’t helpful.  The concealed passageway at the back of the cellar was impossible to find in the light.  You had to feel for the depression and latch.  Seeing it, and the trick of light that hid the doorway, confused everyone, even Jim.  The best illusions didn’t merely disappear, they confused and distracted the eye. “You could hide an orange elephant in the Oval Office if you surround him with enough cameras,” was something his Dad joked.  Invisibility was just about making the obvious more so.

The brick-lined tunnel behind the hidden door came from a century ago, during prohibition.  Rum running, distillation, spirits, hiding things in plain sight, this was his inheritance.  

There was a satisfying, quiet movement of the well-oiled mechanism, and he pushed the doorway open. Once in the tunnel, still black as pitch, he paused and pulled a one-piece zippered blue cotton mechanic suit from a hook.  He thought of it as his Elvis suit.  Not that Elvis would have worn it, but that it was like Vegas. 

With his Elvis suit, everything that was on this side stayed on this side. Nothing that existed on this side would return to see the other side of this door.  Nobody would ever know she was a blond. Not today.  Not ever.

He walked, deliberately, through the tunnel, which ran straight as an arrow under the neat rows of apple trees in the field overhead. He could name the trees as he walked under them: macouns, macs, delicious, pink ladies, honey crisp, empire, cortland, gala, sheep’s nose, and lastly quince.  That last one, not an apple at all but quince, was absolutely necessary for his great-grandmother’s recipe for apple preserves.

The pitch nightfall of the passage lightened and, if you thought about it, you could feel the doorway ahead and feel the change in the air.  This door opened to divulge a dimly lit room, a small warehouse space.  There were thick brick walls and the tiniest of slits, letting in the frailest smattering of light. Jim’s great-grandparents, great-uncles, great-great aunts (the legendary Smith sisters) had built the room and buried it. To look at it from the farm, it was a small hill, a slight rise behind the orchard’s end.  That rise, just beyond the quince and a crumbling stone wall, looked like it had always been there.  One hundred years of green growth blanketed the small hill, a magnificent oak, and towering white pines, several trinities of birches swayed in the afternoon breeze. 

Nature’s congregation fully cloaked the brick lair.  Nobody but Jim’s family had ever known of it.  There used to be stories, legends and whispers.  But, if by chance, someone suspected where all the distilled spirits actually came from?  Time and secrets had erased it from the town’s memory.

It was here that he’d chosen to hide her.  In the dim twilight, she walked over to him.  Here, under the hill, amidst the ancient copper pot still and various tanks, she was invisible.  Nobody could see or hear.  She smiled, the way they do, and whispered a greeting.  A less cautious man might assume no need for soundproofing.  Jim took no chances. He’d done the operation himself with his medical kit.  The larynx, after all, is a fragile thing. There’d be nothing but whispers from her.  Whispers and the language she spoke so abundantly from her large, dark brown eyes.  As she submissively sat on the floor and looked inquisitively up at him, he realized how very much he missed her voice.  Such is the price paid for secrecy.

Once, she’d loved to roam the woods.  That’s how she came to be on the farm; she seemed lost and hungry.  Jim never doubted his decision to ask her into the house. She’d obliged gladly, entering with innocence.  As he’d opened the floor, revealing the cellar, she’d been curious. It was when he closed the hatch behind that she freaked. He had to drag her, and she did fight, oh did she fight.  The toughest battle was through the tunnel.  By the time he’d gotten the second door open, he’d received bites and countless scratch marks.  Her nails were claws that scratched deep.  Once through, like an infant entering a brick-lined world, the fight left her.  He tried his best to be kind.  Especially with the chain.  It took months before she’d do anything but retreat to her corner bed when he entered.  Over time, he worked.  There was kindness when he collared her.  There was kindness when he trained her.  Kindness and food worked their magic, but she’d never risen to his ask for a kiss.  

No, she’d never get another chance to wander the woods again.  

Funny though, if he’d asked her, she’d have told him that she didn’t miss the world or the woods as much as she yearned for his presence.  She hated it when he went away for hours on end.  But he didn’t ask her, and she ate the plate of food he’d brought in silence.  She drank the freshwater in silence.

Jim? Well, he enjoyed watching her eat and drink, and he told her so.

Under the Hill