by Michael Loyd GRAY

They pay me, the two sides, and the mon­ey isn’t bad. 

It’s a toll, to be sure. A user fee, a levy — what­ev­er — for my time and trou­ble go­ing un­seen be­tween East Fizz­witch and West Fizz­witch, two burgs as dif­fer­ent as night and day, and of­ten I can set my price. 

What I charge fluc­tu­ates. Main­ly by how I feel, I ad­mit. Sure, it’s capri­cious — I don’t de­ny it. I have a cor­ner on the mar­ket, as the cap­i­tal­ists like to say. You know, what the mar­ket will bear. That prin­ci­ple is un­der­stood well enough in East Fizz­witch, but in West Fizz­witch, it’s more of a pay what one can af­ford to pay approach. 

It all got start­ed in an un­like­ly way. It was a warm day, and I went down in the cel­lar where I keep a fridge stocked with my own home­brew. It’s cool down there. Com­fort­ing. Qui­et. No sounds from East Fizz­witch or West Fizz­witch can pen­e­trate my lit­tle bunker, al­though even the sounds from the two burgs can some­times be as dif­fer­ent as night and day. Oil pumps wheeze and whine in East Fizz­witch. The cool swish of wind tur­bines hum gen­tly in West Fizzwitch.

The two burgs are sep­a­rat­ed by a wall that stretch­es in­to the sky.

That was when I built the tun­nel, not long af­ter the wall went up. At first, I had no idea why I de­cid­ed to dig a tun­nel. I thought maybe it was just some­thing to do, that I’d dig a few feet and give up. I’d nev­er tried a tun­nel be­fore. But that’s not how it went. I kept at it every day, like you see in those movies about pris­on­ers of war dig­ging tun­nels out of POW camps.

It was good ex­er­cise, the dig­ging. I put my back in­to it. Soon, I had to fig­ure out what to do with all that dirt. I had the same dilem­ma as those guys in war movies, ex­cept my so­lu­tion was eas­i­er and I didn’t have to hide it, of course. No­body was watch­ing me, like in the movies. My wife, Lor­raine, died five years ago, and we didn’t have kids. It’s just me and a lazy or­ange cat named Ral­phie who doesn’t like to go down in the cellar.

There’s good soil down there in the tun­nel, rich and earthy, and I start­ed spread­ing it around the prop­er­ty. I knew Lor­raine would prob­a­bly ap­pre­ci­ate how that good earth could grow flow­ers, and when I could, I plant­ed some seeds. She was par­tial to tulips and daf­fodils, and I plant­ed a bunch of them all over the place. Some of those tiger lilies, too. If on­ly she could be here when they come up. They were her favorites. 

But I have to make do by re­mem­ber­ing her good ad­vice about how to do things: al­ways be sure some­thing has a strong foun­da­tion, she used to say. That made me re­al­ize that my lit­tle tun­nel need­ed to be care­ful­ly shored up and so I be­gan tear­ing down an old shed no longer in use and I used the plank­ing to se­cure the tun­nel walls and cre­ate a nice lit­tle walk­way, too.

I’m not sure how many feet it ac­tu­al­ly is by tun­nel from East Fizz­witch, where I live, to West Fizz­witch. I could get out my mea­sur­ing tape, or walk it off and guessti­mate, but I don’t re­al­ly need to know the ex­act dis­tance. I don’t know how that in­for­ma­tion would be rel­e­vant. I’ve even avoid­ed gaug­ing the walk­ing time through the tun­nel, which re­quires me to hunch over slight­ly. It doesn’t take long. But time is dif­fer­ent for every­body. I don’t fret that much about time any­more. Time takes care of itself. 

But now, in East Fizz­witch, it of­ten seems like time is speed­ed up, every­one in a hur­ry, kind of fran­tic like. In West Fizz­witch, time seems to slow down. That’s just my im­pres­sion and I don’t mon­i­tor a watch. I took mine off a few years ago. But there, in West Fizz­witch, it sure does seem like peo­ple move about slow­er. I think they even smile more, but I can’t claim to have made a cred­i­ble sur­vey of that.

My tun­nel comes out in an iso­lat­ed thick­et just out­side West Fizz­witch prop­er, the vil­lage. I’ve nev­er seen any­one near the tun­nel en­trance when­ev­er I emerge out of my hole, like a rab­bit pop­ping its head up for a look­see. In truth, I feel like no one in West Fizz­witch would both­er to look for it, or do any­thing about it, even if they ac­ci­den­tal­ly dis­cov­ered it. 

But I think in East Fizz­witch, the tun­nel would some­how be­come a point of con­tention and so it’s good it’s se­cret­ed in my cel­lar away from pry­ing eyes and nosy minds. In East Fizz­witch, a tun­nel would be re­gard­ed with sus­pi­cion. Its very ex­is­tence would cause a stir. 

In East Fizz­witch, a tun­nel in someone’s cel­lar would be alarm­ing — threat­en­ing. Why do you need a tun­nel? Why would you want to go to West Fizz­witch, of all places? The may­or of East Fizz­witch might con­vene a com­mis­sion to study a tun­nel. Peo­ple might con­gre­gate ner­vous­ly out­side my home and point and ges­ture and ap­pear be­fud­dled. The lo­cal pa­per would pub­lish ed­i­to­ri­als sug­gest­ing the tun­nel un­der­mines so­ci­ety. Peo­ple would ask why I felt the need to have a tun­nel and wring their hands anx­ious­ly over it. Peo­ple would de­vel­op tun­nel en­vy. Every­one would want one.

But in West Fizz­wittch, I think it would just be thought of as a hole in the ground and of no spe­cial im­por­tance at all. Peo­ple there would re­spect the tun­nel, I be­lieve, as some­thing that ex­ists and doesn’t need to be ques­tioned or as­signed a val­ue. There would be no fight over own­er­ship of a tun­nel, like there would in East Fizz­witch, if some­one hap­pened to dis­cov­er a tun­nel out some­where in a for­est. At my end of the tun­nel, I have a door and I can tell you I’ve nev­er heard any­one knock on it. I have nev­er felt that any­one from West Fizz­witch trav­eled the length of the tun­nel, hunched over slight­ly, to poke their nose in­to my cellar.

Nat­u­ral­ly, some peo­ple — like many of those folks in East Fizz­witch prop­er, the vil­lage — would as­sume if you have a tun­nel, you have some­thing to hide. You’re smug­gling some­thing, maybe. Hid­ing from some­thing, from some­one. You’re up to no good down there in that tunnel.

Just the oth­er day, I’d gone through the tun­nel and strolled about the out­skirts of West Fizz­witch, tak­ing in the clean­er, more fra­grant air — it smells of laven­der over there — and a gen­tle­man I know from oth­er tun­nel trips stopped me for a chat. Old Gen­try still car­ries a sil­ver cane, even though I know he’s been over an in­jured knee for quite some time.

“Well, Winchell,” he says, “I see you’re out and about again. What’s it been now, at least a few weeks?”

“Eas­i­ly,” I say. “More like a month.”

“Mer­cy me,” he says. “I’d lost track of the time.”

“That hap­pens a lot over here.”

“Sure­ly it does,” he says, gen­tly pok­ing the dirt with the tip of his cane, “So, what might you have for me this time? It’s like­ly prov­i­dence I ran in­to you. Go on, man — de­liv­er the goods.”

I shade my eyes with a hand and squint at Gen­try be­cause the sun has slipped from be­hind a cloud over his shoulder.

“A spe­cial, just for to­day,” I say. “None oth­er than the may­or of East Fizzwitch.”

“My ab­solute fa­vorite, bar none,” Gen­try says, his voice near­ly a squeal of de­light. His eye­brows arch and his eyes sparkle. “Oh, now you have my at­ten­tion, Winchell. You sure­ly do.”

“The may­or of East Fizz­witch,” I say, slow­ly, stretch­ing out each word, my smile grow­ing and deep­en­ing as I lean in close, con­spir­a­tor like, “has passed his fam­i­ly val­ues agen­da through the coun­cil, and to cel­e­brate, he went by his mistress’s house with Champagne.”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Gen­try says. He brings his hands to­geth­er in front of him, like a man com­pelled to abrupt­ly pray. “Tru­ly it is, Winchell. Mer­cy me, mer­cy me.”

“It’s a zinger, ain’t it?” I say, palm up.

He looks at my palm and nods.

“Worth every bit of coin,” he says, as he digs out a few bills from his trousers pock­et and de­posits them, like a bank teller count­ing mon­ey, on­to my flat palm.

“Much oblig­ed, Gen­try,” I say, not both­er­ing to count it. There’s no point since there was not a set price and I just left it to him to de­cide. Be­sides, it would be rude to do that in West Fizz­witch. I slip the bills in­to a pock­et, and we shake hands, firm­ly, and Gen­try trots off, his cane danc­ing in his hand. There’s a spring to his step and I watch him go un­til he turns a corner.

When I get back to East Fizz­witch, I eat lunch, take a short nap, and then stroll around the town square, nod­ding at the few faces that nod back, that both­er at all to smile. Throngs of peo­ple are a sea of frowns. I run in­to May­or Holmes out­side the hard­ware store.

He re­gards me with hands on his hips, his jaw set firm­ly, his gaze a bit haughty.

“Well, Winchell. Have you trav­eled about far today?”

“Across the Riv­er Jor­dan and back,” I say, winking.

“And what news came back with you?” he says.

I open my palm and wait un­til he re­luc­tant­ly fills it with a few bills, a smirk on his face.

“Old Gen­try still walks with a cane,” I say, count­ing the bills, “but his knee is better.”

Filed under Fiction on September 9th, 2022

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