Becker

Fingers numb and bent from gardening, we walk the stairs to bed.

It makes no sense why Tommy was afraid of elevators, yet there he was. 3 years old and he knew without a doubt they were wrong, intent on taking him to sinister places without his consent. We would travel by stair, escalator, tram, bus, Big Wheel - anything so long as it wasn't an elevator. Once we joined the monastery I was already used to stairs, but the dorm stairwell was different. Steep, shallow, spiraling, ill-lit, with a platform every 28 steps, the design brought to mind London Towers in reverse. The craftsmen building this ancient cellar stairway were clearly members of the AGC; tradesmen, free masons, followers of the craft. Dangerous as they were, Tommy never fell: always walking stairs at the perfect speed, never in any hurry or having any dread, safe from the elevators.

Theory - every thing must have an opposite. Corollary - any thing without an opposite is not a thing.

What is the opposite of elevator? A box perhaps which prevents free vertical travel? Wouldn't be a box... How would an elevator look outside-in? Heavy steel wires would support roof and floor by attaching to one-another in the middle of the elevator. Free weights slide down one wall, up another (do elevators still use free weights?). Dust falls toward the middle of the floor as rats scurry along the u-joints fastening each lift wire. Outside the elevator wood paneling and polished metal line the open shaft, while calm music permeates from the main level down to the 5th sub-floor. Could we hear creaking and groaning only inside the elevator, while outside you hear the occupants converse - the quieter they speak the clearer they sound? No, the riders wouldn't be inside the negative elevator, they'd be outside.

By the time we reach our bunks the lowest level Tommy's song comes to an end, my reverie of elevators forgotten. I can hear Tommy chewing the dirt from his fingernails. There were only one hundred and forty steps today, he says.

I told you to stop counting them. Go to sleep.

But mom won't come until we've walked one hundred and forty TWO steps. That's what you said. I don't answer, pretend I'm asleep.