They Cage the Animals at Night

by Jennings Michael Burch

  “I know I’m going to be sorry I brought you here, Doggie,” I said to his nose as I held him next to my lips. “But I can’t make it through these places without you.” I started to cry into his fur. He didn’t mind.

  After waiting a long time and scratching another inch of paint off the arm of the bench, I put Doggie back into the bag and lay down at one end of the bench with the bag tucked under my head. I closed my eyes and listened to the sputtering radiator hiss and spit out its insides. It sounded angry.

  “Sonny,” a voice called softly.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder to wake me, but I had already been awakened by the voice.

  “Yes,” I said to the back of the bench. I turned my head to see who it was.

  “What are you doin’ here, darlin’?” a lady asked.

  I shielded my eyes from the light of the overhanging globe lamp so I could see her face. She was an elderly lady with gray hair. She had something tied around the top of her head, and was wearing a flowered dress, all faded and worn.

  “Darlin’?” she repeated.

  “The lady at the desk told me to wait here.”

  “Damn son of a bi…” She swallowed her last word. “Well, come along.”

  She took my hand and led me down a number of dark hallways. It was obviously late and past everyone’s bedtime. She pushed open the dormitory door. The smell of pee rushed at me. I gagged. She took me over to a row of small cabinets. She rummaged through a number of them until she found an empty one. She handed me a pair of pajamas.

  “Your number’s fifty-one, darlin’. Don’t forget it,” she whispered.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “Change and find your bed,” she said, and left. She mumbled something about having to do everything. She reminded me of Larry.

  I changed into the pajamas. They were about forty sizes too big. I positioned Doggie in his usual spot under my arm and held my pajama pants up with my free hand.

  “Now to find my bed,” I said aloud to myself.

  The room was huge. There were windows on three walls. I checked the numbers of the beds as I walked. I reached bed number fifty-one. It was against the right wall near one of the windows. The shadows of the bars were cast across my bedcovers. It was like climbing into a cage.

  There was a smell of bug spray in the blanket and the bed was clammy and damp. I didn’t know if the pee or the bug spray smelled worse. I laid my head against the pillow and closed my eyes. I held Doggie against my cheek and listened. I heard a car passing on some nearby street. I heard an occasional cough and a few sniffles. I heard Mom crashing down the stairs. I fell asleep.

  I was jolted awake by someone bumping into my bed. I popped from beneath the covers to see two boys fighting. I returned my head to the darkness beneath the covers and felt around for Doggie. He was safe under my pillow.

  When the fighting quieted down, I came from beneath the covers again. I pulled Doggie from under the pillow and stuffed him under my pajama top. The pajamas were so big he was well hidden. I crossed the room. I reached cabinet number fifty-one and slipped Doggie inside. I stripped off the pajamas and dressed.

  “I’ll see you later,” I whispered into the cabinet before I closed the door.

  Doggie was well hidden behind the pajamas and a laundry bag. I followed some kids into the bathroom.

  The room was very much like the bathrooms at the other homes, except there were no numbered hooks. I wet my face and wiped it dry on my shirt sleeve. I saw some kids brushing their teeth, but I wasn’t about to ask them where they got their toothbrushes from. Until I learn the rules, I thought, I’m not going to ask anyone anything.

  I stood beside bed number fifty-one and waited. I studied boy number fifty.

  “Line up!” shouted a lady in a gray dress as she pushed open the dormitory door.

  Kids scrambled to their places.

  “Walk!” she shouted, then clapped her hands.

  The line started moving. At first, the sounds of the shuffling feet were disorganized. But as the line moved from the room into the hallway, the shuffling feet became organized, rhythmic. We marched into the dining room. Girls shuffled in from the opposite side of the room, adding to the sound. On the command “Stop,” we did. I was standing in front of chair number fifty-one.

  Breakfast was a lump of lukewarm sticky stuff served in a heavy white bowl with a thin green line running around the outside. Hot cocoa was served in the same dented metal cups that were used at St. Teresa’s. As soon as the lady poured the cocoa into my cup, I looked down at the floor. It was tiled and couldn’t splinter even if it wanted to. I felt better.

  All the ladies in the dining room wore the same kind of gray dress that the dormitory lady wore. There were no nuns anywhere.

  I ate a little of the white sticky stuff but then decided a piece of bread and butter would taste better. It did.

  We were taken from the dining room into a playroom. There were actually two of them side by side, with a large doorway between them. Girls stayed in one room, while the boys stayed in the other. Along one wall of each playroom were two sets of glass-paneled doors, opening out into a courtyard.

  I drifted over to one of the doors and looked out. A number of kids had already gone out and were playing. The yard was made of the same gray stone, with the same wire-mesh fence, only this fence had barbed wire running all across the top. It frightened me. For the first time, I felt as though I were a prisoner. I kept staring at the barbed wire.

  “Jennings!” someone shouted.

  Mark was standing not ten feet away from me. Chills ran all over my arms and legs.

  “Mark,” I said weakly.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. My hands met his.

  “Mark.”

  I couldn’t say more and risk crying. I think he felt the same. His eyes filled with tears. They were magnified by his big owllike glasses. We stood looking at each other.

  “You got taller,” he said.

  “And you got fatter.”

  We laughed. The laughing seemed to make talking easier.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Same thing you are,” he said. “Waiting.”

  We laughed again.

  “I got sick at the Home of the Angels, so they sent me to the hospital.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. You know nobody talks to us kids. When I got out of the hospital, they sent me here.”

  “How’s this place?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Sloppy. There’s never anyone around.”

  “They don’t need anyone around,” I said. I looked out toward the fence and the barbed wire.

  He followed the path of my eyes. “Oh, you mean the wire?”

  I nodded my head. “I feel like a prisoner.”

  “You are. I mean, we are.”

  “I know,” I mumbled. “I just never thought about it until now.”

  “When did you get here?” he asked.

  “Uh…last night.”

  “What’s your number?”

  “Fifty-one. And yours?”

  “Seventy-two.”

  “They sure got a lot of kids in here.”

  “They sure do.”

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “You know, every time I meet you, you don’t know where you are.” He laughed. “Don’t nobody tell you nothing?”

  “They don’t talk to us kids, remember?”

  We laughed.

  “Well, you’re in the Brooklyn Shelter. It’s in Brooklyn.”

  We laughed again.

  “Hey, Mark! I got something to show you.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t tell you. I wanna show you.”

  “Come on, then. Show me.”

  “Can I? I mean, now?”

  “Of course.”

  We left the playroom and went to the dormitory. I opened cabinet number fifty-one and pushed back my pajamas. I removed Doggie and placed him in
to Mark’s arms.

  “Oh, Doggie,” he whispered. He held Doggie to his cheek and closed his eyes. A tear ran down the side of his cheek.

  “They took Brownie away from me,” he said almost to himself. “I got sick and threw up in bed. They got real mad at me and took away Brownie.” He seemed to be somewhere else while he talked, so I didn’t say anything in response.

  I stood alongside him as he replaced Doggie and covered him up. We were walking past the cabinets toward the door when he remembered something.

  “Hey, wait!” he said. He went over to his own cabinet. He opened the door and pointed.

  I walked over and looked in. There on the door was the angel I had made for him.

  “I still got it,” he said. “Sister Frances came to visit me in the hospital, and she brought it to me.”

  “Sister Frances?”

  “I was surprised too.”

  We talked on the way back to the playroom. He’d been at this shelter for three months. He told me the food was lousy and the shower water was too cold. We went out into the courtyard.

  “Is your mother sick again?” he asked.

  I nodded my head yes. “She fell down the stairs and broke her neck and back.”

  “Oh, wow,” he gasped.

  I closed my eyes and tried to shake off the sight of her all twisted up on the staircase.

  “It’s good to see you again, Jennings. I missed you,” he added. “I never thought I’d hear myself say that, but it’s true, I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” I said. “I thought about you a lot, especially after meeting Jerome.”

  “Jerome?”

  “He’s the brother who was in the hospital.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember now. You met him?”

  “Yeah, he came home for about two months. Let me see, now…it was just about a year ago. Gosh, he was nice. He reminded me a lot of you.”

  “Was he fat?”

  “No,” I laughed. “He wasn’t fat. He was just nice, like you.”

  “I made believe you were my brother after you left,” he said.

  “Did you?” I smiled.

  He nodded his head, but then lowered it. He was embarrassed.

  “I sure would like it if we were brothers,” I said.

  “Well, that’s impossible. That’s just make-believe.”

  “Why? Why is it just make-believe?”

  “’Cause we’re not brothers. Simple as that.”

  “No.” I waved my hand in front of his face. “That’s where you’re wrong. Jerome once told me just having the same last name didn’t make two people brothers.”

  “It’s a good start, though.” He laughed.

  “Wait! He said it’s what you feel inside about someone that makes you brothers, not the last name.”

  Mark didn’t say anything. He just pushed his glasses back on his face and sort of stared off into space.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “If that’s true, and it sounds pretty good, then we could be brothers.”

  “Sure! Why not?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Why not!” He put his hand out to me.

  We shook hands.

  “What’s your last name?” he asked.

  “Uh…Burch,” I said. I wasn’t expecting the question. “What’s yours?”

  “Burch!” he shot back. “What else?”

  We laughed.

  “Actually”—he got serious—“I don’t know if I have a last name. At least I don’t know what it is.”

  “There! You see? It could be Burch, couldn’t it?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I guess it could be.”

  “Then we could have the same last name too, couldn’t we?”

  “Yeah, we could.”

  “Then let’s say we do. All right?”

  Mark got very quiet all of a sudden. His eyes filled and his lip quivered.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He shook his head. I understood that meant he couldn’t talk, so I waited.

  “Until now,” he broke the silence, “the only present I ever got was the angel you gave me.” He sighed deeply. “Now I got a brother and a last name.”

  A bell rang.

  “What’s that?” I asked as I jumped to my feet.

  “Relax,” he said. “It’s just the lunch bell.”

  “Already?”

  “What do you mean, already? I’m starving.”

  We had franks and beans for lunch. They weren’t too bad.

  After lunch, the lifers went to class while the rest of us went into the playroom or the courtyard. I sat at one of the tables in the playroom and played checkers with myself.

  “Burch Jennings,” a lady called me from the doorway.

  “Yes,” I said. I stood up.

  She motioned for me to follow her. I did. She led the way to the classroom and stopped just outside the door.

  “You’re to attend class each day.”

  “But…”

  “But what?”

  “I thought, uh…I thought class was only for lifers…I mean, orphans.”

  “Ordinarily that’s true,” she said. “But there’s no telling how long you’ll be with us. According to our records”—she held up a folder—“your mother has received some very serious injuries.”

  “And I’ll be here a long time? Is that it?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Oh, gosh.” I pouted. “Uh…could I ask a question?”

  “Make it brief.”

  “Well, I once stayed with a family named Frazier…”

  “Frazier?” she said. She opened the folder and looked through it. “I don’t see any Frazier here. Was it arranged privately?”

  “Sister Regina arranged it.”

  “Who’s Sister Regina?”

  “She’s the principal at St. Michael’s. My school.”

  “Well, that was a private placement. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “You mean I can’t stay with them again?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Oh, gosh. Why not?”

  “Well, if the Fraziers, or anyone else for that matter, wanted you, they’d request you.”

  “Request me?”

  “Ask for you. They’d want you, and ask for you.”

  “Oh, they want me, all right.” I smiled. “Martha wants me.”

  “Son,” she said. She crouched down. “I think you should forget about the Fraziers.”

  “Forget about them?”

  “Please. Listen. I’ve experienced these things for a great many years. It’s better if you just make the best of it here and forget about anyone coming for you. When your mother gets well…”

  “Even Sal?” I asked.

  “Sal? Who’s Sal?”

  “He’s my friend. He used to drive the bus I took to school, but now he drives a truck. I left him a note to come for me. I shouldn’t forget about Sal coming for me, should I?”

  She looked away for a moment. “Son,” she said, “I don’t know how else to explain this to you except straight out. If someone really wanted you, like this Sal or the Fraziers, you wouldn’t be here. Do you understand that?”

  “You mean, they don’t want me?”

  “I’m sorry. Try to make the best of it here. Your mother…”

  I didn’t wait for her to finish. I pushed open the classroom door and went in. I sat down in the first empty seat I saw. She couldn’t be right. Sal does want me. I tried pushing the thought of him not wanting me out of my head. I tried to pay attention to what was going on in the class. I couldn’t.

  “Hey, what’s up? Whatcha doing here?” Mark asked.

  Class had ended and I hadn’t even realized it.

  “Uh…I’m a…”

  Mark sat down in the seat across from me. “What’s the matter, Jennings? Did something happen to your mother?”

  “No, no,” I said. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Oh, good.” He
touched his chest with his fingers. “When I saw you come in, I thought…”

  “Oh, no. It’s not my mother. They just think I’ll be here a long time. And…” My eyes began to fill at the oncoming thought.

  Mark tapped my arm gently. “I know,” he said. “It’s hard to think of having to stay here a long time.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. I began to tell Mark about Sal and about the Fraziers. I told him about Martha and about the note I had left for Sal. Mark listened. I told him what the lady in the hall had said about nobody wanting me.

  “You know, Jennings,” he said, “it’s possible Sal’s still on the road and hasn’t found your note yet.”

  “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”

  “’Cause the lady got you all upset.”

  “I’ll bet you’re right. I’ll bet Sal is still on the road.” I smiled and squeezed Mark’s arm. “And I’ll bet the Fraziers don’t even know I was lent out again.”

  “There you go,” he said. “You’re probably right.” He wiped his hand across his upper lip to remove sweat.

  “Why are you sweating?” I asked. “It’s not hot in here.”

  “Sez you! It sure is.”

  “No, it’s not.” I put my hand up to feel the air. I touched my forehead and then I touched Mark’s. “Wow! You’re burnin’ up. Are you sick?”

  “Naa. It’s just hot in here.” He got to his feet, but he staggered. He held on to the desk.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Don’t you think you should go to the nurse or something?”

  “No!” he snapped. “It’s nothing.”

  We left the classroom and went into the playroom.

  “Wanna go in the yard?” he asked.

  “Ah…I don’t think so. Maybe we should just sit in here for a while.”

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  He made a funny face as if to say: “Don’t be silly.” He pushed open the door and walked into the yard. I followed.

  We sat near the fence on the far side of the yard.

  “This guy Sal, he sounds awfully nice.”