The Cage Keeper

by Andre Dubus III

  McElroy nudged me with the knife and I took the bag, put the car in gear, and got back on the highway. But I was still in some other focus. Elroy handed me a taco but as starved as I was I didn’t eat it right away. I sipped my Coke through a straw, looked straight ahead at the taillights of cars full of people who had homes to go to, and thought of my mother. I saw her getting into the little red Opel Sport my dad had given her as a present for their sixteenth wedding anniversary. I saw her getting into that in front of our house, driving up the street, stopping, waiting for a car to pass, then taking a right. This I saw walking up from where the high school bus had just dropped me off. It’s the last action I ever saw my mother make. It’s what I see instead of memories— warm greeting card memories you are supposed to have of dead people you love. Laughter and tears. Home-cooked meals. All that shit. I don’t see any of that. I just see my mother drive a hundred yards, stop, then take a right to her destiny, to some punk who snatches her purse then shoves her through a plate-glass window before he runs and gets away, that’s right, never gets caught. And my mother’s sweet head is just about severed on the floor of Adler’s pharmacy in downtown Syracuse.

  My brother Mark was a junior at Syracuse University then. For about a month he and Frank Walters and another friend of theirs, John McLaughlin, they drove the streets looking, just looking. Twice they beat the shit out of kids because they wore leather jackets and carried big radios that they had probably stolen anyway. But then Mark almost got busted for drunk driving, stopped cruising for revenge, and became a hermit student. He changed his major from business to criminal justice. He said he wanted to be a cop but then he met Anne and married her a month before they both graduated. She told him she would not be one of those women who wait up nights to find out whether her husband has been shot down in the streets or not. So now Mark runs the tightest community corrections center in the mountain region. All of the inmates hate him there. They call him King Screw. But he’s got respect. He tells me community corrections is just a stepping-stone for him to penitentiary work. He wants to be a kick-ass warden. Then, who knows? Maybe even run for office. Get capital punishment legislation passed in every state in the country.

  That’s how he’s handling things. And I guess I’ve taken a similar road. I have always wanted to be like Mark, not in every way, but in most. For me a criminal justice career became inevitable, was kind of an organic reaction to the new family I found myself living in all through the rest of high school and into college. My father, who never fired a weapon after his time in the army back in the early fifties, he’s got a complete arsenal now: shotguns, rifles, and ten kinds of handguns. Soon after my mother’s funeral he joined a rod and gun club, and after he became proficient with his first purchase, a .357-magnum revolver, he started taking us down to the range to learn too. Every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon for almost a year my father, Mark, and I would go down to the club, put earphones over our heads, then for close to an hour we would blow away the shadowed silhouettes of men hanging from the north wall of the place. My father started drinking less, even socially, and stepped up his tennis playing from just once or twice a week to five or six times. That’s where he met Julie, down at the Maple Leaf Health Club. She’s ten years older than I am and six years older than Mark. She’s been with my dad for five years now. Whenever they go out on the town for the night my dad carries his .380 semiautomatic in his pants pocket. It’s small enough and flat enough it’s not conspicuous, and he can get it out of his pocket pretty fast. One night he drew it on a kid who stepped around the corner of Luigi’s restaurant to ask for a light.

  I reach between the bucket seats for my second taco and napkin when my headlights light up a green sign that says: CASPER 49 MILES. Elroy hasn’t said a word since before the Jack in the Box, but he just burped without covering his mouth; it’s the Elroy I know and hate. The anarchist essayist. The silent killer troll. Fuck you, Elroy. Just see how much farther I drive you, you sonuvabitch. I wipe my face, look straight ahead, and sip from my Coke. Then Elroy opens the glove compartment and pulls out my Rand-McNally map. He stares at it, kind of weighs it in his hand, then looks straight ahead and says: “Pull the car over, Al.” His voice is low and steady. I get into the breakdown lane and stop. I wait a second then turn to face him when his fist slams into my left eye, snapping my head back against the window. Then he is holding me by my jacket collar, touching his knife to my throat.

  “I have lived without insurance all my life, kiddie cop. I can finish it now. I can cut your fucking throat right this second. It is up to you.”

  “I forgot it was there. I swear.” I am looking into his steely eyes. They look hurt. I feel nothing.

  He lets go of my jacket. “Get out at the same time I do.”

  We get out of my car together. Cars light us up as they pass us. A freezing wind hits me in the face. My eye aches. It’s closing up.

  “Come over here.”

  I walk around the front of the car to the passenger door and Elroy. The wind is blowing his gray hair back from his face, and his eyes are red and watery. I get inside, and as he ties my hands and feet and leaves the rest of the coil in front of me, I think how crazed he looks. He still smells like that French booze, but it’s gotten worse after sitting inside his guts. He smells like sweet formaldehyde and sweat.

  We’re back on the highway and Elroy’s driving, hunched up behind the wheel. “I guess I’m just about the lowliest creature you’ve ever come across, Al.”

  “One of them.”

  “You’re being generous, kid. It’s not like you.”

  “I didn’t say you were a frigging saint, did I?”

  “Oh well, then what am I?”

  I’m looking straight ahead out of my right eye. My left is completely puffed out and closed up. “A murderer.”

  “That’s not what they called me in Normandy, kid.”

  “You never got any medals. I read your file. You’re a failed farmer and a half-assed carpenter who drinks too much and kills people.”

  He whacks my chest with the back of his fist. “Watch your fucking mouth, pig boy. I am old enough to be your goddamned gran’daddy.”

  “My grandfather would never kill an American soldier just for the hell of it.”

  “That’s it.” He extends his arm and presses the blade against my throat. “I do not want to hear another word come out of your young totalitarian sheep of a mouth. You get me?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulls the knife away and I let out my breath, look straight ahead at the traffic we’ve gotten into. We’re getting closer to Casper. Elroy reaches down and turns on the radio. He plays with the knob until he hears an organ squeezing out “White Christmas” and I lay my head against the seat and close my right eye to give it a rest from doing all the work. I forgot about the holidays; maybe because I’m scheduled to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I don’t know. Most everybody at the center got furloughs to friends’ and relatives’ anyway. The list of those who didn’t was a lot shorter than those who did. Elroy was one of those who didn’t. Typed next to his name was: No Available Sponsor. No shit.

  I feel the car slowing down. I open my eye and see we’re taking an exit. There’s an Exxon station at the end of the ramp, a 7-Eleven next to it. Elroy gets off the ramp than pulls right into the gas station. I don’t believe this: my eye is closed up, my hands and feet are tied, and he’s pulling into an oasis of light.

  “Give me your credit card, Al.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  He parks the car under the self-service sign then pushes my head down to my knees. He pulls my wallet out of my back pocket and empties it. I sit up straight as he picks up my corrections ID. “DOB, 1958.” He looks at me and squints his eyes at my beat-up face, then he looks down at my ID again and shakes his head. He goes through the rest of my wallet and only pauses to look over my firearms identification card. Then he finds the Brandt Studio picture of me and Dad and Mom and Mark. He holds it up
in the light.

  “Pretty lady.”

  “She’s dead.”

  He cocks his head at me, his slits-for-eyes weighing the possible truth of what I just said. He puts the picture back in my wallet, drops it on my tied-up hands, and starts tapping the steering wheel with his knife. He looks out the windshield at the lights of the 7-Eleven on the other side of a snowbank and shakes his head. “Allen Norton. Why, oh why, don’t you have any credit cards? How in hell are we going to get to Saskatchewan like this?”

  I don’t say a word.

  “You’ve heard of the seven p’s, haven’t you, kid? Well, I could have planned this escape just a wee bit better, but I thought for damn sure you’d be a credit card carrier. Well, that’s that. We’re going to have to resort to the Desperate Clause.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s right, Al. We are goin’ to have to commandeer some cash.”

  “Count me out.”

  He lifts his knife and studies the way the fluorescent light from above the gas pumps hits it. He takes a deep breath and lets out a lot of air. “Allen, do you really think I killed a man ‘just for the hell of it’?”

  He’s holding his Bowie the way schoolyard bullies hold loose-clenched fists just before they sucker you. I don’t answer.

  “Do you?”

  “I didn’t read all of your file, Elroy.”

  “Is that what you do to understand a man; you consult the written records of the powers that be?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You guess not.” He turns to face me. “You’re going to get us some cash.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you will.” He reaches over and turns my tied wrists until he can see my glowing watch. “Eight thirty-four. We’ve got a three-and-a-half-hour wait.” He digs into his pants pocket, pulls out the rest of my money, and counts it. “Two dollars and seventy-seven cents.” He gets his wallet from his back pocket and takes out four ones. “We’ve got enough for a twelve-pack anyway.” He tugs my cap down over my swollen and throbbing left eye, then drives away from the pumps into the 7-Eleven lot and parks right next to the snowbank away from the light of the store where he turns off everything then sticks all of that Bowie into a hole in the inside lining of his jeans jacket. He looks at me, takes my cap, then puts it on his head and rolls it up tight around the edges like sailors do. Flipping up his jacket collar, looking at himself in the rearview mirror, he rubs the white stubble on his chin. “Handsome motherfucker, don’t you think?”

  I watch him with my good eye as he enters the store and walks down one of the aisles to the glass beer coolers in the rear. There’s a heavy middle-aged-looking woman with black frizzy hair sitting behind the counter. She turns her head to Elroy a second then goes back to watching the tiny black-and-white TV on top of the cash register. Elroy takes a twelve-pack out of the cooler then turns and walks to the other side of the store where I can’t see him. I imagine he’s checking out the camera situation or something. My eye really aches now. Goddamn, where are the police when you need them? Go on Elroy, do something in there that’ll make that woman call the cops, anything, you half-assed murdering prick. I see him again. He walks to the counter, places the beer on it, and pulls the last of my money, and his, out of his front jeans pocket. The fat woman rings up the amount then takes the money and bags the beer without even looking at Elroy. She sits down and glues herself back to the TV as he picks up the bag and leaves the store.

  Back in the car, Elroy pulls out two beers and drops one in my lap.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Suit yourself.” He pops open his, downs half of it, then wipes his mouth. “It’s awful quiet in there, Al.”

  “So.”

  “Don’t get mouthy with me, Norton.” He keeps his eyes on me for a second then sips from his beer and looks through the windshield at the TV woman behind the counter of the store. “Now I fucked up, it’s true. I didn’t exactly plan this trip over a long period of time.” He turns to look at me. “In fact, it just sort of came with the Grand Marnier.”

  “Then let’s turn around and go back right now.”

  “You know nothing’s ever that easy, kid. I’m surprised at you.”

  “Stop now, McElroy. Man, you don’t even have any money. How are you going to make it in Canada without having to commit another felony there, too?”

  “You don’t understand, Allen. I am through playing life by lesser men’s rules.” He interrupts himself, finishes his beer, tosses the empty onto the backseat, then starts the car and backs out of the lot onto the street. “If we’re goin’ to rob this place, we sure as hell can’t sit in the front of it drinking beer ’til we’re ready.”

  We drive down the road away from the highway and store and gas station. We pass through a neighborhood full of split-level houses that are all lit up with Christmas lights. One’s got a full-sized sleigh and a big plastic reindeer on its snow-covered roof. Inside the sleigh is a stuffed dummy in a Santa Claus suit. Red and green lights outline the whole thing. I see that through my good eye. Then the houses thin out until we’re on a lone stretch of road in the dark. There’s a utility station up ahead on the right, a short square cinderblock building with a tall chain-link fence all around it. My headlights light it up as Elroy pulls off the road and parks around the back alongside a fresh-plowed snowbank. He turns off the engine and lights.

  “It’s snowing, Al. Good sign.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I say as I see the tiny white crystals land then skitter over the windshield. “Why’s that a good sign, McElroy?”

  “Snow is a blanket, kid. A cover.” He reaches in the backseat for another beer and I think of the Bowie knife in the lining of his jacket.

  “Don’t you like beer, Alley Oop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well drink one then. You’re off duty.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Help you get your nerve up.”

  “For what?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me.”

  “Look, I don’t steal from people, all right?”

  “God damn I can’t believe you really exist, Allen. Nope. I take that back. I know you exist. You, and a whole generation like you. Boy, it’s what we deserve, isn’t it?”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Americans.”

  “What do you have against Americans, Elroy? I mean, Jesus, if you don’t like us why don’t you go live someplace else? Like Russia for example.”

  He lowers his beer and looks at me in the dark. “I am goin’ to let you talk to me like that only for the sake of enlightenment: yours. I know that you are looking at a man you have put into a comfortable little pigeonhole: convicted murderer, end of story. But that is not the end of the story, Allen. No, it is not.” He drinks from his beer and I move my fingers back and forth to keep the circulation going. I think of how thick and crooked Elroy’s are, like he has worked with them all his life. I remember the barn in that little oval portrait of his sitting in a garbage bag in the basement of the center, half a state away and so long ago, the words No Available Sponsor typed next to Elroy’s name on the Christmas furlough list. “Where’s your family?” I ask.

  “That chapter is no more, Al. That one is over.”

  He tosses the empty behind me then reaches into my lap and opens the one he dropped there. We are quiet for a while and my eye has gotten used to the dark. When I look at Elroy all I see is my cap above a pale face with smooth features. The collar of his jacket is still flipped up and if you had never heard his voice, you’d swear you were sitting next to a stocky sixteen-year-old kid.

  “I’m sorry about your eye, Allen. I did not mean to close it up like that.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You asked me about my family. Why?”

  “I saw a picture when I was packing your things. When was it taken?”

  His weight shifts in the seat. I see him raise his beer and drink from it a long time before he lowers it. �
�Summer of ’sixty-six.” He belches and I think how in 1966 I was eight years old and still had a mother.

  “That was the last of the good years. Before the proverbial shit hit the fan, you could say.”

  “Where’s your wife?”

  “Living with a fat-ass car dealer in Gulfport, Mississippi.”

  “Oh.”

  He finishes his third beer and goes for his fourth. It’s gotten cold in the car. I can hear the wind whistling past my radio antenna outside. Dry snow swirls against the windshield then settles on the wipers.

  “Do you have a girl, Allen?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you like girls?”

  I think of that porno magazine back in Elroy’s gear bag. “Nice ones.”

  “You ever been in love?”

  I shrug my shoulders in the dark.

  “Jimmy had a girl when he was your age. No. He was younger.”

  “Is he in Mississippi, too?”

  Elroy begins to burp but then covers his mouth. He is absolutely still and quiet. Then he rests his cupped hand on the steering wheel. “Jim had a girl named Maura. Boy she loved him, too. She’d come down to the house every time she got a letter from him and she’d read it to us. All but the personal parts. Damn, she loved him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My boy Jimmy.” He bottoms up his beer, drops the empty onto the backseat, and opens another. “You see, Al, my eight-year experiment with self-sufficiency just did not pan out. Man, I went from herbs to corn to chickens and eggs, with part-time building jobs the whole time—most times all five. But all that work just wasn’t enough for those striped-tied motherfuckers down at the bank, nossir.” He stops talking and looks straight ahead at the thin layer of snow covering the windshield. He drinks again and I’m thinking how cold my body is and how I don’t give a shit about his failed farming ventures.

  “The week we lost everything was blisterin’ hot. I mean it was hot. It was June of 1970 and you would not believe the timing of it, Allen. It was the Lord’s blackest hour, I’m telling you.” He swallows more beer and I lay my head back against the seat and close my eye.