The cellar stairs were steep and narrow and they went down into the dark. Wooden steps worn thin in the center. No railing or a railing made of pipe that wobbled when you grabbed it. The cellar stairs started behind a door in the hallway that looked like every other door except it opened onto nothing. One step and you were going down. Two steps and the temperature changed. Three steps and you were underground.

The cellar stairs had a smell. Damp stone and old wood and something mineral that had no name. The smell of a building's foundation. The smell of the earth holding everything up. You breathed it in going down and you breathed it out coming up and the smell stayed in your clothes. The cellar smell was the building's oldest resident. It was there before the tenants and it will be there after.

The light was a bulb on a string. You pulled the string and the bulb came on and the shadows moved. The cellar stairs threw shadows that climbed the walls like animals. The super's kids told ghost stories on the cellar stairs. The stairs were the scariest place in the building because the stairs went toward the dark and children understand that going toward the dark is what courage means.

My father kept his tools in the cellar. A workbench against the stone wall. Hammers and saws and jars of nails sorted by size. He went down the cellar stairs every Saturday morning and the sounds came up through the floor. Hammering. Sawing. The radio playing through the floorboards. The cellar stairs connected the apartment to the workshop. The living room to the making room. Upstairs was where you rested. Downstairs was where you built.

They sealed the cellar stairs. Fire code. Put a steel door with a closer on it. The door slams shut behind you and the slam echoes down the stairs and the echo is the last sound you hear before the dark. The steel door is safer. The steel door is correct. But the old wooden door had a gap at the bottom and you could see the light leaking through and you knew somebody was down there working. The steel door tells you nothing. Safety and silence. The modern trade.

See also: Coal Cellar, Boiler Room