Cage's Bend

by Carter Coleman

  “That’s right, son.”

  “That’s not what the guards say.” His face suddenly looks more terrified than I have ever remembered. “They say that no one ever gets out. Same with the inmates. No one can remember the last time anyone got out.”

  I clasp his right hand with both of mine. “No, son. The lawyer says it’s difficult and it does take time but it is not impossible. He thinks the best strategy is to get you transferred to a lower-security facility where the patients are less, uh—”

  “Crazy?” Cage is smiling now, a glimmer of his old self.

  “Chronic,” I say.

  “That sounds reasonable.” He suddenly seems to relax. “Let’s not talk about this place anymore. We only have a few minutes. It must be a hundred degrees in Memphis right now. I can’t believe I missed a whole summer in here. You know, I think I would have gone off the deep end if it weren’t for Nick.”

  “Nick?” Margaret glances at me, then back at Cage.

  “He visits me at night after lights-out.” Cage does not appear to be joking. “Isn’t that exciting? I mean, I always had problems with ‘life after death,’ but there you are. Nick is still alive. Or his spirit is. Like you, he keeps telling me to take hold.”

  “You mean he comes to you in your dreams? There are many biblical precedents for dreams as forms of revelation.” I try not to sound as if I doubt him or suspect that he has indeed gone completely crazy.

  “No, Papa. Sometimes I wake up from a nightmare or just wake up in the middle of the night anxious and sweaty.” His smile is skeptical as if he himself doubts what he is saying. “And there is Nick, sitting on the end of the bed, ready to comfort me in his old smart-ass way.”

  “I wish he would visit me sometime.” Margaret laughs.

  “Son, have you told this to your doctors here?”

  “Are you crazy, Dad?” Now Cage laughs. “Obviously they would assume I was raving.”

  “That’s wise,” I say.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” Cage peers into my eyes.

  “I do.” Margaret smiles.

  “Two minutes!” a guard says from the far side of the room.

  “I think you might be dreaming, Cage.” I shrug and smile. “But who knows? The ways of God are manifold and mysterious. Anyway, keep it to yourself if you want to get out of here quickly.”

  Around the room, patients in blue denim are rising from the tables. The babble of low conversation rises and a few women begin weeping all at once.

  Cage chuckles and says, “This place is like a misery factory, huh?”

  I nod, coming around the table, hug him. “Keep your chin up, Cage.”

  Margaret squeezes him like she’s holding on to a tree in a windstorm, her head on his chest.

  “Let him breathe.” I laugh uncomfortably.

  The guard by the prisoners’ door glances over at us and shouts, “Time to go, people!”

  Margaret finally lets him go.

  Cage walks backward, slowly, holding us with his eyes, until he reaches the door, where the guard puts his hand on Cage’s shoulder and spins him around, not ungently. Cage glances back over his shoulder, raises his fist high in a sixties Black Power salute, and disappears through the doorway. I remember when he stunned an audience at the Fourth of July follies at the country club as a boy with that gesture. Cage, always the provocateur. We are the last to file out of the room. No one is talking.

  Outside, along one end of the parking lot on the gray brick wall of the administration building is an enormous sign two stories tall that reads Bridgewater Correctional Center. Why on earth did they have to send him here of all places? The individual is powerless against the state once it has you in its grip. Even Ted Kennedy is powerless against the bureaucracy of Massachusetts. Rowan Patrick, Nick’s old high school friend who may well be elected the youngest congressman ever from Louisiana in November, is a friend of some of the senator’s staff from his years at Harvard and his work with the Democratic Party. Ted Kennedy’s office sent a letter and made some phone calls. Nothing happened. It seems possible that Cage will languish in there for years, the evaluation periods extended again and again.

  A black gentleman wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard walks up the sidewalk toward the crowd of visitors slumped and defeated, making their way toward their cars.

  “I’m going to talk to that doctor,” Margaret whispers to me.

  “Honey, leave the man alone. You can’t just accost him on the sidewalk.”

  “Well, we still haven’t been able to see a doctor.” She pats her hair. “I don’t see how it could possibly hurt.”

  The young doctor comes closer, looking at his feet as the crowd parts around him like a school of fish, then closes behind him.

  “Beg yah pah-dun, Dahkta.” Margaret’s voice must sound like Blanche DuBois to this New England Negro, who looks up with a slightly annoyed, hurried expression.

  “Yes?” He slows down but doesn’t stop. We move a few steps with him back toward the wall with the sign.

  “I wonder if I might take just a moment of your time?” Margaret’s smile is her strongest feature. It’s so open and sweet that it can’t fail to hit the heart of its target. It was her smile that caught my eye in 1957.

  The doctor glances at his watch, then says, “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Why, you’re from the South, aren’t you?” Margaret brushes her fingertips lightly on his white sleeve, then brings her hand back to her heart, as if she’s saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The doctor is smiling now. “Lafayette, Louisiana.”

  “Why, how providential. We lived in Baton Rouge for ten years.” Margaret laughs at the lucky coincidence. “I’m Margaret Rutledge. This is my husband, Bishop Franklin Rutledge.”

  “Frank,” I say, sticking out my hand.

  “Hubertus Plauche.” His grip is firm. “What can I do for y’all?”

  Margaret looks at me, so I begin. “Our son has been here for three months. He was remanded for a forty-day evaluation from Nantucket, where he assaulted a police officer who was trying to take him in because he was acting peculiar and writing bad checks. His current diagnosis is manic depression. He’s twenty-nine years old. He has no previous criminal or psychiatric history. He clearly doesn’t belong in an institution for the criminally insane. We are trying to get him transferred to a more therapeutic setting. We—”

  “What’s his name?” Dr. Plauche takes a pen and notebook from his breast pocket.

  “Cage,” Margaret says. “Cage Malone Rutledge.”

  “It’s a big organization.” He scribbles on the pad. “Mistakes happen all too often, I’m sorry to say. But eventually we sort them out.” He hands me his card. “I’ll look into it. Call me on Friday.”

  “Oh, Doctor, I just can’t thank you enough.” Margaret touches his sleeve. “You’re so kind.”

  “I hope I’ll be able to help. Try not to worry.” He smiles. “I know that’s impossible. I can just imagine my own mama if she were in your shoes.”

  “She must be very proud of you, Dr. Plauche.” Margaret’s smile would melt ice in Antarctica. The doctor shakes our hands and hurries toward the big main doors.

  “I do believe that man will help us,” Margaret says as the sadness rushes back into her face. “He seems like a mighty fine doctor.”

  Cage

  The small courtroom at Bridgewater reminds me of Dad’s office in the parish house in Virginia—tall ceilings, dark paneling, ornate trim from another era. I’m sitting with Dr. Plano, an MIT forensic psychiatrist who’s costing Dad about a grand an hour, and my attorney, Wainwright, who’s costing Dad four hundred bucks an hour. Mom and Dad are behind us, the only people occupying a few rows of metal folding chairs. The presiding judge is a very distinguished gray-haired gentleman who looks like he will see right through me. Dr. Willcox is there, not in one of his flannel shirts but a button-down and a corduroy jacket. Willcox is so odd that I’m scared he will
tell the judge some complete fiction about my behavior. I have seen him a total of two hours in the four months I’ve been locked up in this hellhole. Either dealing for years with thousands of lunatics has rubbed off on him, or, as they say, the reason that he went into psychiatry was that he was crazy to begin with. As far as I can fathom, Willcox is an enigma.

  Some functionary from the state of Massachusetts calls the hearing to order and the judge asks for Dr. Willcox’s evaluation.

  “Your Honor”—Dr. Willcox’s voice is lower than the grating screech of the one-on-one sessions in his office—“it is the opinion of the evaluation team that Mr. Rutledge requires further psychiatric treatment. We assert that he suffers from a schizoaffective disorder with potentially violent tendencies.”

  I hear my mother gasp softly behind me, though I doubt that the judge does.

  “He has displayed violent episodes as recently as June and we believe that he continues to harbor hostile, antisocial attitudes,” Willcox goes on while the judge listens with a stern poker face. I want to shout out, What in God’s name are you talking about, you fucking quack? Tell the judge that you’ve hardly seen me in the last four months, that I was only defending myself, but I keep quiet while Willcox rattles on. Then Wainwright stands up, introduces our distinguished MIT shrink, and sits down, and then it’s Dr. Plano’s turn. He is a tall guy with gray hair a little longer than most businessmen wear theirs, sort of professorial hip, and he has a rich voice.

  “Your Honor,” Dr. Plano says, with his hands resting on the edge of the table, “Mr. Rutledge suffers from textbook bipolar disorder, a disease that commenced some years ago and has gone undiagnosed until now. I understand the June episode here, an altercation with a patient with a record of harassing others, to be a situation of self-defense. He is not given to violence. He is, in fact, a sensitive person with great powers of empathy. He needs therapy more than incarceration in a prison. He needs therapy which is not available here. In fact, his incarceration in Bridgewater is counter to his recovery. I believe very strongly that he should be transferred immediately to a therapeutic facility.”

  The judge nods and says, “Mr. Rutledge, do you have anything to say?”

  “Your Honor,” I say, thinking, It must go to their heads hearing everyone say, Your Honor, Your Honor, Your Honor, all day. I clear my throat. “Your Honor, I understand now that I was spinning out of control in Nantucket and caused a big mess but I am not a brute beast. I am not dangerous to society. I am not a criminal. I am not a killer. This is the scariest place that I have ever been, one not conducive to pulling oneself together, and I very much need to get out of here.”

  The judge nods and shuffles through a file on his podium. “It is the judgment of this court that Mr. Rutledge is neither a danger to society nor to himself and that he should be transferred to the Taunton State Hospital to undergo therapy for bipolar disorder as soon as a space is available in said facility.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I say. That’s it. Ten minutes to put an end to months of torture. Dr. Willcox doesn’t look at me. He studies a folder for the next case coming before the judge. Mom is beaming and Dad looks relieved. We all leave the courtroom together. A guard gives me just enough time to shake everyone’s hands and hug Mom before leading me back to Max 2.

  Coming onto my unit, I run into Barkely, the friendly guard whom I’d told about some pot plants that I’d seen growing in abandoned fields beyond the perimeter of an exercise yard that’s rarely used. I say, “Yo, Barkely, I think they’re sending me to Taunton soon. It ain’t freedom but I hear it’s like a college campus.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He doesn’t smile, which is odd. I thought he liked me.

  Lunchtime, gentlemen, a loudspeaker says. Everyone out of your rooms and line up.

  Barkely walks off and I stand by the electric door. Thirty uniformed lunatics line up behind me and the guards run a count. Boyles and Jones, two guards who are never nice, come up and Jones says, “Rutledge, come with us.”

  For a second, walking between them toward a stairwell, I think that I’m being transferred but I know that it would take days or weeks, not minutes. “What’s going on?”

  Boyles shoves me from behind into the dim light, then pulls the door closed and stands in front of its little window, while Jones slams me against the cinder-block wall. He lifts me up by the throat so that only the toes of my sneakers are touching the floor.

  “If you ever talk back to us again, we’re going to kick your ass down five flights of stairs,” Jones says.

  I try to say okay but it comes out a gurgle. I nod my head enthusiastically.

  “If you ever say anything to anyone about what you think you saw out in the fields, we’re going to kill you.” Jones squeezes my throat harder.

  I choke out a few sounds and nod my head again. Jones lets go of my neck and I drop to my feet, gagging and wheezing. Boyles presses my shoulder against the wall and says, “We’re watching you, corn bread. Remember that.” He grabs me by the collar and throws me out of the stairwell into the hallway, which is empty now, with everyone gone to lunch. The door clanks shut behind me. My gut growls, since I missed breakfast, waiting around for the hearing. When my stomach is empty too long, I start to feel queasy from the lithium. I pick myself up and stagger into the TV room and collapse on a lumpy sofa in front of Days of Our Lives.

  Independence Day

  1973

  From the pool the blue fairways fell down to a shaggy carpet of treetops that ran across the flats to the green ridges of the Appalachians reaching into a clear sky where the summer sun cast long afternoon shadows from the high dive and tall poles with speakers playing “Sha Na Na Na, Hey, Hey, Goodbye.” On one side of the pool, under a canopy where the greasy odor of frying hamburgers mixed with the acrid chlorine off the water, kids pushed french fries through little puddles of ketchup on paper plates. On the other side, at the edge of a slope that angled down to the parking lot, a line of lounge chairs in the grass was occupied by sunbathing women.

  Just below the top of the slope Nick walked slowly behind the chairs, darting between them occasionally to steal a half-smoked cigarette from an unguarded ashtray. With a handful of butts he circled the hill beyond the deep end and sat down with two boys on the concrete slab over the big humming filters. He cracked the bottom of his fist and let the butts spill out one by one like gold dust.

  “No one saw you?” Billy Kimball asked.

  “I think Mrs. Thomas saw me but didn’t say anything.”

  “Mrs. Thomas is cool,” Norman Blevins said. “But Mr. Thomas is scary.”

  “We don’t have any matches,” Billy said.

  Nick dug a white pack with the country club logo from his cutoff shorts and flicked it with his thumb onto the little pile.

  Billy lit three-quarters of a Virginia Slim and coughed.

  “Greedy creep,” Nick said. “That was the best one.”

  “Here, take this.” Norman handed Nick half a Camel, then selected a slightly shorter Pall Mall with lipstick marks. “Who was smoking this?”

  “Mrs. Reynolds.” Nick coughed.

  “The one with the big bazooms?” Billy asked.

  Nick nodded, inhaling. He felt dizzy.

  “Nick’s mother has the biggest boobs of all,” Norman said with a tone of awe.

  “I fingered a pussy yesterday,” Billy said.

  “Really?” Norman said.

  Nick pumped his jaw to blow a ring and the smoke only curled out of his mouth.

  “What’s it like?” Norman asked.

  “Warm and slimy, like . . .” Billy tapped the ash, sighed. “Like Play-Doh with warm baby oil.”

  “Jenny Wright?” Nick tried another ring, failed.

  “Yeah.”

  “Never kiss and tell,” Norman said. “That’s what my brother told me.”

  “Jenny Wright lets anyone finger her.” Nick ground his cigarette into the concrete.

  “Try to be gentlemen.” Norman waved his pudg
y arms back and forth like a referee.

  “You never fingered her,” Billy said.

  “I’ve never tried.” Nick looked hard at Billy. “I don’t want to.”

  “You’re scared. Scared of girls.”

  “I’m scared of girls.” Norman laughed. “Especially my sisters. Hey, did you hear that next year we won’t be able to wear cutoffs in the pool anymore. The threads clog up the drains or something.”

  “I won’t be here next year,” Nick said. “We’re leaving next month for Virginia.”

  “Really?” Norman didn’t inhale. He blew out a mouthful of smoke that hung motionless in the humidity. “That sucks. When did you find out?”

  “My parents have known for a month. They just told Cage and me last night.”

  “Is Cage mad?” Billy lay down flat on the slab and blew smoke up at the sky.

  “He’s really mad. He doesn’t want to lose his friends. He wants to stay here, live with the Campbells.”

  “Will your parents let him?”

  “No way.”

  “Your dad got transferred?” Norman asked.

  “The church is not like a company.” Nick let his legs dangle over the edge. “They don’t transfer you. When a church needs a new minister, they go out looking until they find one that they like.”

  “Oh,” Norman said. “So why did he take it?”

  “It’s a bigger church. More salary.”

  “Norman’s always changing the subject,” Billy said. “Let’s go.”

  The men’s changing room was damp and smelled of disinfectant. Norman, peering around a wall at the outside door, gave them a thumbs-up sign behind his back. Billy and Nick scrambled from a bench to the top of the lockers, slid aside a board of thin plywood, from which Cage and some of his friends had removed the nails the year before, and crawled into the darkness on the top of a cinder-block wall. Nick slid the board back almost in place and moved slowly behind Billy, who scraped his knee and cried out. Nick whispered, “Shsh!” Billy rose up and looked through a hole in the plywood.

  “Shazaam,” Billy whispered.

  Nick clenched his fists. He remembered seven years before, in kindergarten, where the girls’ and boys’ bathrooms were adjoining stalls, and he and Norman had climbed over the top to watch a cute dark-haired girl sitting on the toilet. Where is it? What happened to it? he’d asked Norman after the girl left. Girls don’t have wee-wees, Norman had said with the authority of having sisters. Wow, Nick had mumbled, dumbstruck by the great revelation, which was his first lesson in the differences between the sexes.