During the service Cage’s face is contorted with pain, his cheeks squashed up in worry lines from the corners of his eyes. I try to get him to sing. He has a good singing voice and I think the hymns might take him out of his misery for a few moments but he just shakes his head. I put my arm around his shoulders but he shrugs it off and mumbles, “They’ll think we’re gay.”
“Who will?” I say. “Nobody will.”
Cage nods at four men in colorful sweaters sitting on the pew in front of us.
“So what? They’re gay and nobody cares.”
“You don’t know,” Cage whispers, his face drawn like the agony of Christ.
“Gays aren’t damned for their sexuality anyway,” I say.
“We are damned,” he whispers.
“No, we’re not. Nobody’s damned. Just repent for whatever’s tormenting you and you’ll be forgiven.”
Cage shakes his head. Mom says softly from my other side, “Shush.”
Dad mounts the pulpit in his robes and the pointed miter hat. He begins the sermon by quoting from the Gospel of St. John: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. We have beheld his glory, glory as the Son of the Father.” It never made much sense to me, an omnipotent God who sent a savior two thousand years ago into a world full of pain, disease, and violence to bring us eternal salvation, and whose arrival did nothing to diminish everything terrible in the world.
“From after Thanksgiving to before New Year’s, the stories of Christmas are told and retold. They are read to wide-eyed children from large illustrated books or heard on the radio or seen on television.” Dad preaches without notes, gazing out into the congregation. Nick used to say that Dad would have made a good politician. As a boy I wished that he were more important than a preacher, a word Mom disliked. Call him a minister, not a preacher, she used to say. I think she was embarrassed to be associated with Baptist fundamentalists.
“They range from the heroics of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to the death and resurrection of Frosty the Snowman, from the reformation of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas to the repentant Scrooge of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol,” Dad goes on in his ridiculous hat. I’ve heard this sermon several times over the years.
The men in front of us whisper to each other. Cage leans toward me and says, “See? They’re mocking Dad because he isn’t the real bishop.”
“Oh Jesus, of course he’s the bishop.” I wonder how God could have inflicted this disease on Cage. Is it a trial to test Mom and Dad’s faith?
I flunk the test.
“The secret of these stories is that they are maps of the human heart. They tell us about basic human responses.” Dad’s voice is deep and sincere, magnified by speakers through the nave. “They cut through the adult world of moral ambiguity to state basic truths that have the power to renew the human spirit. How many times have we heard Charlie Brown proclaim that the true meaning of Christmas is the love that gives life to a broken-down tree? How many times have we followed the dastardly doings of the Grinch knowing full well that no one can resist the grace of a star? And how many times have our hearts warmed when Scrooge finally sees the errors of his ways and responds to the spirit of Christmas?”
Too many, I think. Too many times have I heard these stories, for now they fall on deaf ears.
Cage
At the end of the service, while Mom and Harper are greeting parishioners, I know with certainty that my end is nigh. My fears were confirmed again and again through the midnight mass. The ushers placed us in the far left of the church like outcasts. The trumpets sounded like snorting pigs. The fags poked fun at Dad’s sermon. The reading said that a light would be focused on the wicked. After the reading I had waited for a spotlight to shine down on my pew but it never came and I understood that they were teasing me, drawing out my capture, telling me secretly that they would come in the night and find me and drag me away and boil me in oil. I see myself tossed into an enormous bubbling pot, the oil scalding my flesh and flaying it from my body until my skeleton floats in the thick yellow liquid, all the impurities, all the sins of my flesh burned away with the flesh, the final cleansing which destroys as it purifies.
Harper is standing in the aisle talking to the McFarlands. He smiles at them as if they were not among the old families, part of the old order that has condemned me. They smile back so as not to betray the secret. They will not tolerate the profane and the unproductive. The old order will crucify me for the common good. The world will be better off without me.
Harper walks over. “How you doin’, brother?”
I can think of nothing to say that he would understand.
“There’s the Jenkinses. They like you. Let’s go say hello.”
“They smile but they don’t like me.” I sit back down in the pew and pray, Dear God, make it fast and painless.
“Come on, Cage. Get up. Let’s go say hello to the Jenkinses.”
“Look deep in their eyes, Harper. Look deep and you’ll see they’re part of it.”
“Part of what?” Harper asks as Mom arrives beside him.
“The old families.”
“Old families?” Mom asks.
It is time now to tell them. “I can see something that has been hidden from us forever. Now I can see the design. Memphis is named after the ancient Egyptian city because there is an ancient order that runs thousands of years back to the city on the Nile,” I say slowly so they can follow. “Everyone who is not a productive member of society, everyone who has not had children and raised them well, everyone who has violated the laws of nature will be boiled in oil.”
“You’ve been productive, Cage,” Harper says quickly. “You’ve worked hard and you’ve helped a lot of people. You haven’t committed any unforgivable sins.”
“We are not one of the old families. Our whole family will be put to death.”
“We may not have much money but we come from one of the oldest families in Tennessee,” Harper says.
“Very old families,” Mom says.
“Besides,” Harper says, “they wouldn’t crucify the bishop.”
“Dad is not the real bishop. Dad is an impostor.”
Harper smiles in disbelief but he will see. Soon he will see for himself. Dad has gone back to the sacristy to change out of his vestments. The church is nearly empty now and I apprehend that when it is vacant they will come for us. “Let’s go.”
“You boys go on.” Mom gives the keys to Harper. “I’ll come with your father.”
I walk warily at Harper’s elbow outside into the cold, watching for the hooded figures who will come to take me away. I see one standing in the shadows by a stone wall and I break for the parking lot, too scared to look over my shoulder. Behind me Harper yells, “Cage, what’s up?” I hear footsteps behind me and I run harder but my overcoat is slowing me down, so I shed it where the lot meets the street and turn right onto the sidewalk, heading for the lights of the Mississippi River Bridge. Harper shouts, “Cage, stop! Where are you going?” Ahead on the sidewalk the hooded men move slowly toward me, cutting off my escape. I slow down, looking right and left at the bare trees and derelict buildings. The footsteps behind grow louder, like hammers hitting the concrete, hammers that will smash my skull open and spill my brains over the sidewalk like a broken jar of jelly. Running is pointless. They will find me. They know where I’m going even before I do. I fall to the sidewalk and sit up on my knees, looking up at the few stars visible through the glow of the city lights. I beg for forgiveness but God is not listening. The footsteps are upon me now. I twist my head around expecting to see an angel of death but it is only Harper. He sets my overcoat on my shoulders and pulls me to my feet and hugs me.
“Cage . . . Cage . . . why are you running from me?” Harper looks into my eyes. “Why are you sobbing? Everything’s going to be okay. Look, your hands are bleeding and you’ve torn a hole in your pants.”
Behind him the three figures come out of the darkness. I whisp
er, “Harper, watch out!”
Harper turns and gazes at the figures, three old black bums, weaving unsteadily in a row, and says, “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Chris’mas, chief,” says one in front.
“Looks like yo’ frien’ done had too much Christmas spirit already!” another says, tittering, and the others guffaw like a chorus.
“Running like he saw a ghost!”
“Christmas kind of a rough time of year, ain’t it, chief?” one of them says to me.
I open my mouth but no words come.
“Got the Christmas blues,” a bum croons. “Ain’t nothing sadder than the Christmas blues.”
“Gentlemen, we wish you a happy holiday.” Harper laughs. “But I must be getting my brother home.”
“He be your brother, huh?” One peers intently from Harper’s face to mine. “A brother be a lot of trouble sometime.” He looks at me hard. “You mind your brother, now. Don’t be running off into the street in the middle of the night.”
“Bes’ git ’im on home.” One of the black men offers a bottle toward Harper. “He don’t look right in the head.”
“How ’bout a little Christmas gif’ for three pilgrims on a cold night?” the tallest asks Harper.
“Yeah,” the shortest one says. “We ain’t even got a manger to lie in.”
Harper pulls out a wallet from inside his coat and holds out a ten.
“Merry Christmas, chief,” the tall one says, snatching the bill, his hand darting out from his ragged ski parka like a piranha. “And a happy new year to ya, too!”
The other two crowd in on the tall bum, the shortest yelling, “I’m the treasurer of this outfit, remember! We voted on it. I’m the only one can be trusted with cash.” Harper turns me around by the shoulder and we walk back to the church parking lot, the sounds of the bums’ argument fading behind us. As we reach Mom’s station wagon, Harper puts his arm around my shoulder and says, “What were you running from? There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“Nothing!” I shout. “Harper, if you think hell is simply some sort of symbol, then just look at me!”
Harper
We drive all the way home from the church in silence. Waiting for Mom and Dad, I turn on the cable and surf until I find some soft porn.
“What are you watching?” Cage asks with a horrified expression.
“Cinemax.”
Cage says, “It’s evil.”
“You’re right.” I start surfing through the channels aimlessly.
Cage ascends the stairs in slow motion, as if with each step he cannot make up his mind whether to go up or stay down. When he’s halfway up, I switch back to Skinemax. Watching two half-naked, fake-titted blondes kissing and fondling gives me the urge to go to the guest room and choke the chicken to memories of Savanna’s small breasts, her mouth on me. I resist for five long minutes and I’m about to scout Mom’s cabinets for some hand lotion when I hear the sound of the side door opening and Mom singing out, “Boys, we’re home!”
Ever since I was ten and Nick and Cage were both at college, the family has opened our gifts after the midnight service. I persuade Cage to come downstairs and join us in the living room, where old oil portraits of Rutledge preachers and Cage planters glower at us as if the latest generation of their progeny has bitterly disappointed them. Which one of them passed on the gene of Cage’s illness? I suspect it was the first Morgan Elijah Cage, who carved out a little frontier empire. Family lore says he was a generous man who donated land for a church and reared a Cherokee boy orphaned on the Trail of Tears. Then he lost it all in whiskey and poker chips. Must have had a lover or two if he was anything like the last Cage.
The Christmas tree, beautifully decorated as long as I can remember, even after Nick’s death, looks like Mom sort of threw on a few ornaments. Wearing a bathrobe over his pajamas, Dad sits in a wingback chair, sipping a glass of wine. Cage slouches on the sofa, staring at the reflection of the room in the window, and Mom, still in her church clothes, perches on the other end, holding a steaming cup of tea. The only sound is the crackle of the fire.
“Well.” I stand in the middle of the room. “Shall we begin?”
“Yes,” Mom says brightly. “Christmas brings back so many lovely memories.”
I start passing out the gifts. I think of Cage and Nick, before I was born, their matching bicycles and identical UT football uniforms, Granddad quarterbacking plays in the big living room at Cage’s Bend, the pictures of them sledding in the mountains of East Tennessee, the huge bonfires of Christmas trees they used to have in front of the church in Bristol, all photos in an album older than me. One Christmas in Baton Rouge, Cage stormed off because the bronze statue of a Labrador like his dog Trapper that Mom had given him didn’t measure up to the gifts his rich friends would receive. That was the rub of growing up Episcopal minister’s sons. We were thrown in with the wealthiest kids in any given community but we were basically poor by comparison. Cage was angry in high school that he didn’t have a car or a stereo or as many clothes as his friends. Was that simply adolescence or was the anger made deeper by the illness, years before it was detected, before it blossomed like a poisonous flower?
“I have a special gift for Cage,” Mom announces after the last boxes have been opened. She leaves the room, then returns with a large, baggily wrapped parcel.
Cage runs his hands along it, says, “I know what it is. But I don’t believe it.” His hands shake as he tears it open and reveals a wooden sled, a Flexible Flyer with red runners.
I laugh. “It never snows in Memphis and when it does there’s not a big enough hill to sled for a hundred miles.”
“You were so upset when we moved to Baton Rouge and left yours behind in the attic in Virginia,” Mom tells him.
“You’re trying to heal my inner child.” Cage smiles at the futility of the gesture.
I’m a little stunned at the absurdity of giving a thirty-year-old man a sled and saddened by the desperate logic of replacing something that they had taken from him a decade and a half before.
“Thanks, Mom,” Cage says hollowly. “I’ve been so scared.” He laughs with some of the old glimmer in his eyes. “The other day in Baton Rouge, Walter Fairfield sent me to a store to buy some ice for the Christmas party he throws for all his crews. There was a big black man behind the counter. I tried to speak and my voice came out all high and trembling, May I have a bag of ice? The man nodded toward a cooler across the room. I got a bag and set it on the counter. Walter had given me a twenty and I was worried that the man couldn’t make change for a dollar-fifty bag of ice, so I asked him if he had change. He looked at me as if I were mentally defective. He made the change, pushed it across the counter, and my voice came out a little peep, Thanks. He followed me to the door and said, Come back again, big money.
Everyone laughs at the sad little anecdote, grasping for holiday cheer.
On the first day of 1990 Dad, Cage, and I are watching a bowl game while Mom is cooking in the kitchen. During some commercials, Dad changes to CNN. An anchorwoman is talking about the execution of Ceausescu. Cage’s face is twisted with fear or horror, impossible to say exactly what.
“She’s watching me,” he says.
Dad and I look at Cage, then at each other, then back at him.
“No, son, she’s not watching you,” Dad says.
“Come on, Cage,” I say. “No one’s watching you.”
“You don’t know. You think you know,” he says, suddenly rising out of his torpor. “You think you know how reality works. But you don’t. I know. I can see it now. She’s watching me. She’s part of the Order.”
“There is no fucking Order, Cage,” I nearly shout. “Sorry for my language, Pop.” I’m sick of his obsession with the Order, the secret society of vengeful old families who control everything and are going to punish him for being a fuckup, for all the sins of his life. His conscience is turbocharged, out of control, its Sunday school morality taken to paranoid Old Testamen
t extremes. The psychiatrist is dosing him with antipsychotics to dispel his delusions but apparently they take weeks to kick in. You can talk to him till you are blue in the face but you can’t break through.
“You can’t see it because you’re not a part of the Order,” Cage rattles on. “They spurn our family.”
“You know what I just figured out?” I look at him and Dad and at Mom, who came to the door of the den when I yelled. “His delusion is about not really belonging to his circle of friends in all the cities he lived in because he wasn’t as rich as any of them. He felt like he never really belonged. We never belonged. We weren’t as respected because we weren’t rich. That’s the root of it.”
“That’s very insightful, Harper,” Mom says.
“Yes, it is, son,” Dad says. “That could be it.”
Mom puts her hand on Cage’s shoulder. “Do you see, Cage? Do you see the root of your delusions? You were always ashamed that we didn’t have as much as your friends.”
“Oh, you just don’t see.” Cage shakes his head. “I can see because they are letting me in on it now. They let you know before they come for you. Part of the punishment. I’ll just disappear. You won’t ever know what happened to me.”
“Cage.” Mama is crying. She bends down and hugs him. “No one is going to come for you. Nothing is going to happen to you.”
Dad moans a deep animal sound of despair, changes the TV back to the bowl game.
I spend the next week with Cage, trying to get him to go outside and take a walk around the Chickasaw Gardens lake near the house. The most I can get him to do is go out in the backyard, which Mom in her grief over Nick turned into a lovely garden of azaleas, camellias, ferns, and shrubs. There is a moss-green statue of Buddha that was in the garden when they bought the house that she chose to keep. This is the first house that they’ve owned, the church having abandoned the rectory system for a mortgage allowance to give ministers equity in real estate. I try to get Cage to meditate. He will only talk about the Order. Every hour he thinks they are coming. He thinks the mailman is watching our family. He’s convinced that he has a womanly body, that he is a ninety-pound weakling, though he is a fit hundred and seventy-five pounds. He will be exterminated because he is so puny. He runs upstairs whenever the doorbell rings. Every football bowl game could be the occasion when they come for him. Every public holiday. Or the middle of the night. His obsession is endless, unceasing, his every waking hour hell.
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