I was relaxing in my hammock on the day when the ditchdigger arrived. I didn't hear him coming at all. I was three quarters asleep and having a dream about SpongeBob Squarepants having a rather heartfelt talk with Tinky Winky. He was apologizing to Tinky after an argument following an unfortunate misunderstanding which I do not care to discuss at the moment.

SpongeBob had just finished saying, "That's not the real reason why I voted for John Kerry," when I felt a tap on my right shoulder. The remaining fourth of me awoke, and the hammock turned upward like a seed pod.

"Excuse me," the shoulder-tapper said, "but we need a moment of your time. We want you to help us lift the piano out of the downstairs. There's a family that your mom and dad know from church who want to buy it for their condo in Palm Springs." The man's body was very dirty. It looked as if the dirt had been growing on his body like wrinkles as he was growing old.

"I'm sorry, but you must have the wrong house," I told him. "There's no piano downstairs. We just have a small digital keyboard."

Standing behind the age-soiled man was another man who looked much younger. He was wearing a hard hat and had the name of some construction company on his T-shirt. I assume it was a road construction company, as there was a large cement-mixing truck in the driveway.

"He didn't say it was downstairs," the cement mixing man said. "He said it was in the downstairs." He smiled, proud of his correction.

"Never mind him," the first man said. "He's always correcting people's tracks. Anyway, can you help us get the piano out from the downstairs?"

"I told you, we don't have a piano downstairs."

"Not true," the construction worker said. "Here, let us show you." He handed me a shovel.
The three of us walked over to the right-hand side of the house. We stopped near the window that revealed the downstairs family room.

"You see," I told them, pointing at the window, "that's just a little keyboard down there, not a real piano."

"Take this," the older man said, handing me a shovel. "Now start digging."

The two men wedged their shovels between the bricks underneath the window and the edge of the lawn. They glided their shovels back and forth until there was a half inch-wide, ten centimeter-deep chasm separating the house from the lawn.

"Well, you might as well start," the younger man said. "You don't have anything better to do."

I stuck my shovel in the ground and started digging with the two men. It was easier than I thought it would be. After a few minutes I could see something shining below the white bricks. It was glass.

And so we kept digging, going deeper and deeper into the Earth like reverse tornadoes, until a large glass door was revealed.

I opened the door very carefully as if I was opening a letter from a congressman.

What I saw looked familiar and surprising at the same time: a minature family room. Actually, it looked more like an upper-class hotel room -- at the far end, past the dull gray carpeting was a small kitchen area with a table to the left, a stove on the right and a white, 1950's-style Frigidaire freezer in the middle. I didn't even want to think about what might be inside it.

The living room itself was simple and pleasant. It had a small fireplace on the right, next to a playful-looking red and blue couch, and against the front wall, just to the right of the sliding door, was an old upright grand piano.

"Wow," I said. "I never knew this room was down here."

"Trust me, you knew," the ditchdigger said. "It was underneath you your whole life. Without it, your house would have had nothing to be founded upon."

I shook my head and walked over to the piano. I played a C major-seventh chord. The piano sounded like a cross between a bass guitar and a toy harpsichord.

Before I could play another chord, my mother came into the living room from behind the stove. I wanted to ask her how she got down here, but before I could open my mouth, she said "Away from the piano. Let the men do their work. They have other places to go today when they get finished here."

Looking up through the glass door, I could see the construction worker lowering a giant platform lift into the living room. It looked like it could have moved a whole football team.
"We'll be a while," they said. "Why don't you have a look around? It might be good for you."

I turned to my left and saw a hallway with four bedrooms -- two on each side of the hall. The doors to all of the rooms were closed except for the one closest to me, which was open just a crack.

I walked up to the door farthest down the hall and knocked. I knew there probably wasn't anyone in there, but as I knew from looking at the fridge earlier, sometimes even leftovers need their privacy.

There was no one in the room. A dusty brass bed reflected the light of the sun and shone at me from the corner of the room. After getting used to the smell of incense-and-marijuana soup that must have been cooking somewhere, I walked in and saw posters of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Beatles that had molded themselves to the wall. Next to the bed was a nightstand with a red and purple lava lamp on top. The lava had been burning for so long that it had no remaining memory of ever being a rock.

There was also a high school and a college diploma on the wall. I didn't know whose it was, but the name sounded familiar.

I left and walked over to the second bedroom. This time I heard a flat squish as I entered. The waterbed had sprung a leak, and the green and orange shag rug was suffering a low-scale version of the fate of New Orleans. The bedroom was surrounded by plywood walls which were covered with posters of Led Zeppelin, Three Dog Night and the Bay City Rollers. Next to a small 8-track player and a stack of 45's was a black-and-white drawing of Elvis Presley which was smeared with glittery smiley faces and neon lipstick prints.

I felt a bit more comfortable in the third bedroom. It had a nice, conservative bunkbed next to a bureau dresser. Inside the top drawer was a Rubix Cube that had obviously never been solved. An Atari 2600 sat on the floor next to a tape player stacked with empty cassette cases for U2, Prince and Huey Lewis and the News.

The fourth bedroom, which was already partially opened, was mashed with posters of Phish and Blues Traveler, along with a ring of chrysanthemums surrounding a picture of Kurt Cobain. I found a lonely-looking strobe light hanging from the wall. It was broken and it looked like it wanted to stay that way.

I didn't feel like going into that room, so I shut the door the rest of the way. I closed the door very gently, yet I thought I could hear the echo of a harsh slam bouncing around the room behind me.

I returned to the living room to see the men hoisting the piano out of our little trench. My mother tapped her hips in approval.

"What had to be done is done," she said.

I looked around the room one more time after she said that. I felt a little sad. I then climbed a ladder out of the ditch and, as I knew it would be, when I looked behind me, the men were already filling the ditch with shovels and shovels of dirt until the downstairs was invisible once again.

"What had to be done is done," my mother said again. She always did like saying that, especially when she had a paddle in her hand.

I returned to my hammock and my animated friends, when once again the ditchdigger tapped my shoulder.

"Wait," he said. "I've got a better idea."

He led me to his red truck. It had grown a good coat of rust that would give even his body soil some hearty competition.

"Hop in," he said, opening the passenger-side door. Ahead of us, the construction worker walked proudly into his concrete truck. The concrete truck left the driveway, and we soon followed.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," the ditchdigger said, "but we'll find out when we get there. There's nothing to worry about; just trust the old fart. He knows what he's doing."

We followed the cement truck around for a few hours, around town, down a series of highways until we saw a construction site ahead of us in a developing town. After a while, we had to wait until the cement truck had laid down the road in our path before we could continue traveling.

***

Jeff Hillstead is a 2001 graduate of UW-Stevens Point with a bachelor's degree in English. I currently work as a quiz writer for Renaissance Learning (an educational software company) in Wisconsin Rapids, WI.