The Cage Keeper

by Andre Dubus III

  “All right, babies!” Barry says, sticking his head out the window. The two women turn to the car smiling, then turn back around and walk faster to the other side of the street.

  “College chicks,” Freeze says. “Their faces are always on fuckin’ automatic pilot.”

  Lorilee looks after them as Freeze speeds up, thinks of her own white thighs, which are sweating now under her jeans. She feels better after the food, is no longer afraid that if she moves too fast her brain will float up and tap at the inside of her skull just before she blacks out, but still there are the dark places that are not going away; usually they do.

  When she is on her hands and knees scrubbing the carpet in the hall of her father’s apartment building, the sweat breaking out under her clothes like a warm thin oil to move better by, the shadows and voices that make her body feel like the home of other people become small, seem to go to sleep inside her; when she is opening a can of peas or shaking salt and pepper over a tuna and potato chip casserole after having just cleaned the whole apartment, sipping a diet Pepsi, they are quiet. Sometimes she has thought about it and wondered if it is the work that makes them that way, or is it being alone that does it? For they always come alive when she is not alone, when men look at and talk to her and she has to look and talk back. Any kind of man.

  Whenever she walks down to the 7-Eleven for cigarettes or for her father’s beer, she tries not to look into the eyes of skinny Clifford standing behind the counter. Once he pointed to the plastic name tag on his chest and told her his name and he always wants to talk, standing there in his orange-and-white checkered shirt. But things begin to happen inside her when she can’t leave right away; warm spots twitch and breathe, stretch, then come alive in her mouth and down between her legs, inside the crack of her bottom. Like uninvited guests moving to let in more, they make her face grow hot. She leaves as soon as his hand drops the change into hers, not once looking up past the moving Adam’s apple of his too-white throat, and as she walks out into the parking lot she thinks he thinks, and all of them think, it’s because she’s embarrassed about her looks.

  But then she can be curled up alone almost asleep and they will just be there; it will get bright in her head and she will see and hear them behind her eyes just before her bones relive their weight, her flesh their entry. She will sit up and light a cigarette in the dark. Drawing deep on it, she’ll rock back and forth on the bed. At first they will tingle and there will be loud whispers. Then their voices will come sharp and clear, swimming through her like electric heat, and they will start to fill her. Sometimes she will feel like spitting as she tastes their juices again and she will have to stand up and pace in her panties over the linoleum floor of her room, all of them becoming one inside her so that she is not she at all but them, until it feels as if she has never been her but just a part of them that they have kept in their lives for whenever they needed to let things out, a dark and evil part.

  Then, as sudden as summer rain comes after the smell of hot street dirt in the air, they stop. She will put out her cigarette, lie back down in a sweat she can smell, then wait for her heart and stomach and breathing to slow down enough for sleep or the first gray light of day.

  But things are yawning and squirming now so Lorilee moves over the seat to the window behind Barry. The pain is sharper now beneath her and she wonders vaguely if the dampness she feels there is from Freeze or is it blood? She looks away from the people of the street moving by to the two who she knows have got it now, the sickness; Freeze has put on his dark sunglasses and has an unlit cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and Barry, his face halfway out the window, is moving his shaved head in time to the music, tapping the outside of the car with the palms of his hands and smiling, Lorilee thinks, like a crazy person whenever anybody looks his way. She wonders if they will get as mean and ugly as her father. No. This is real bad, she thinks, looking at the side of Barry’s pudgy face staring out at everyone on the sidewalks, the bass of the rock and roll behind her reaching out and tapping at the back of her head, constant and teasing. She leans forward and folds her arms on the front seat, lays her cheek on them.

  “Cooper still working that corner by the chink place?” Freeze asks Barry.

  “Fuckin’ a, Freeze. Now you’re cookin’, now you’re fuckin’ cookin’, man.” Barry reaches over and tousles Freeze’s oiled hair. “Toot town here we come.”

  “Hands off.” Freeze knocks Barry’s arm with the back of his hand then reaches up to fix his hair.

  “What is your problem?” Barry says. “We haven’t had a day like this in friggin’ weeks. And you got a stick up your ass like we’re busted or somethin’. I mean Jesus, enjoy it, huh?” Barry turns around to Lorilee. “Hey Waters, you ever do coke before?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?” Freeze asks, turning his head to see her face near his shoulder.

  “With Glennie.”

  “With Glennie,” Freeze says, raising the pitch of his voice. Barry laughs. Lorilee looks at him.

  “Don’t forget you owe me still,” Barry says.

  “What?” Lorilee asks then immediately wishes she hadn’t.

  “What?” Barry turns to Freeze then to Lorilee. “A hot fuck, bitch.”

  Freeze laughs so hard his cigarette falls out of his mouth into his lap. Barry laughs then turns around and knocks out a hard fast drum roll on the dash. “All right.”

  THE DARK-SKINNED OLD MAN clears his throat in the backseat. “Here’s good.” Dave pulls the cab over in front of a brown two-story building, its porch sitting so crooked he imagines laying a basketball on it then watching it roll quickly down and out the broken-toothed railing into the weed and asphalt lot next door. The old man is out of the cab, unfolding with stubby fingers that shake slightly a five-dollar bill. Dave reaches his hand for it, thinks two-thirty after a two-seventy fare. He puts the five with the others, reaches for his coin belt then stops, counts out three one-dollar bills, and hands them to the old man standing outside in the sun.

  “Gracias.”

  Dave watches him push the bills deep into the pocket of his flappy khaki pants then turn around slowly for the climb up the worn steps to the shade of his broken porch.

  He is driving south on 57, the dead weed smell of the bay blowing hot at the side of his face. He picks at the chef’s salad in the clear plastic container on the seat beside him and thinks maybe it’s because he is polite and clean shaven that they don’t stand and count it to make sure he has not short-changed them like some of the other cabbies do. Once a big white woman in a dirty peach cotton dress found the extra dollar and started to put her arm through the open window at the passenger side, but Dave pulled out fast and loud onto San Angelo. He looked up into his rearview mirror and saw her standing there open-mouthed, her arm outstretched, the dollar still in her hand.

  Dave flips the visor down and gets in the right lane. He takes the Berkeley exit and looks over the guardrail at a black freighter out on the bay. He follows the curve left and crosses the overpass into the first shaded neighborhood of Berkeley. When he comes to Gardenia and Telegraph he slows almost to a stop then pulls into the intersection for the climb to Berkeley Hills. He looks to his left down the crowded narrow street to the white stucco walls of the university, sees all the people only two or three years younger than he walking on the sidewalks, some crossing the street with books or ice cream cones in their hands, others standing alone waiting for buses, and their faces hold that look he has only become aware of recently but now sees all the time; it is a look of complete confidence, not so much in themselves, Dave knows, but in their steadfast belief that the world owes them something for the trouble they are taking to become educated. He looks straight ahead again and presses on the gas pedal until he hears the engine of the old Ford taxi straining against the hill. He turns right on Citadel Drive, parks in front of an empty space where there is nothing but sky then the tops of buildings poking out of the haze of San Francisco across the bay. H
e turns off the motor and looks out at the bright specks of sun on the water, sees that same freighter passing under the bridge now, its movement barely detectable, the long arrow-shaped wake behind it looking stationary too. He steps out of the car and walks to the edge of the overlook, shoves his hands into his pockets and feels the automatic flex of his triceps and upper back muscle. He looks down at the red slate rooftops of the Berkeley campus stretched out below, flat and bright in the sun, and the green fluff of trees that thins out as he looks westward and sees the wide expanse of the bay with its two long curving bridges. This spring he said no to his tennis-slender gray-haired father, and his offer to be a paid summer intern at the Baltimore office.

  “I want to warm up to California over the summer, Dad.”

  “You haven’t even gotten your letter of acceptance yet.”

  “I know.”

  “What about money? You know my policy there.”

  “I’ll find something.”

  Dave walks to the open door of his cab, reaches in for his lunch. He sits on the hood, which is hot beneath him, and begins to eat then stops. He looks out over the bay to the thin blue lip of Pacific Ocean just beyond the city, and sees the letter to his father that he has not yet been able to write: the letter that will say what?, he asks himself, that I have no soft place in my heart for those men and women I pick up at the Hyatt and Sheraton here? That I cannot do what you do? Dad, I will not make the focus of my life’s energy the designing of tax shelters for men who never have to worry about starving or freezing once they can no longer work; men who have not looked at and tried to help those who have to worry about such things. Yes, I’m still going to law school, don’t worry about that. You can still refer to me as your lawyer son at parties, Dad. But I won’t be working for the people you do.

  TALL BLACK MARCUS COOPER takes Freeze’s money then hands him the white packet. Freeze walks back down the narrow passage between the two restaurants, the smells of fish and french fries and fried rice hanging there, then ducks under a dripping air conditioner and comes out onto the sidewalk. Lorilee leans against the trunk of a slim tree, watching how he crosses the narrow one-way street without looking either way, his hand in his right jeans pocket, pressed flat over what that money has just bought him. He reaches her under the shade of the tree, and says: “Which one did he go in?”

  “He’s in there.” She points to a small bottle-cluttered window set between two record and stereo stores. “Did you get what you wanted?”

  Freeze nods his head then turns from her and puts his sunglasses back on, looks out at all the young people passing by. Lorilee watches how straight he is standing, his hair so dark and wet-looking; she wants to reach over and touch his face.

  “Shit if it ain’t Cruisin’ Bruisin’ Benito,” Barry says, coming up from behind them and hugging Freeze with his free arm. Freeze spins away from him; smiling so his face looks frozen that way, he slaps Barry on each cheek with two hands like a boxer. “The deed is done, motherfucker. Let’s go.”

  Barry looks at Lorilee then grabs her by the wrist and pulls her after him. “C’mon. Don’t you want to watch?”

  They walk down the sidewalk, Lorilee in the middle, a step or two behind them. She keeps her head bowed low away from all the people’s faces, wishes Freeze let her stay in the car or at least get some makeup to try and cover her cheek with. They step off the curb and walk across the street, Freeze and Barry taking their time, walking even slower when a small orange car brakes and the woman driving it honks her horn. Lorilee starts to walk ahead of them when she sees Freeze reach down and grab himself over his pants then push his hips out at the lady in the car.

  Lorilee walks faster. She steps onto the sidewalk and ignores her reflection in the shoe store window as she hurries around the corner out into the open parking lot of Ameri-Bank. Oh no. She stops and stands there on the smooth black asphalt in the sun. She hears Freeze and Barry come up behind her and then stop too.

  “Where’s my car, man? Where the fuck’s my car?” Freeze walks past her, his shoulder bumping hers. He looks down at the space he parked the Chevy in like he expects the faded yellow lines to tell him where it went.

  “What the fuck.” Barry walks past her too, stands next to Freeze.

  “Look at this.” Freeze points to a large square sign mounted on the white brick wall of the shoe store.

  “The motherfuckers,” Barry says. “Why don’t they put ’em closer to the friggin’ parking lot?”

  Freeze turns and walks fast to the bank’s green glass door, near the drive-in teller’s window. Barry and Lorilee follow, Lorilee walking slow and guarded, the way she does whenever men start to shout. Freeze slams the glass with his open hand.

  “Cocksuckers.”

  “What?”

  “They closed at noon.”

  “Fuck, man.” Barry steps closer to the building and pulls the bottle out of the bag, opens it and takes a big sip, then with his cheeks full, reaches back into the bag for the plastic container of Coke. He swallows the rum then chases it. “Nothin’ we can do, buddy.” Barry offers Freeze the bottle.

  “The motherfuckers.” Freeze takes the rum then drinks it until Lorilee sees two big air bubbles move up then pop in the bottom of the bottle pointing to the sky. Freeze lowers it fast to his side, his face spread tight. Barry holds out the bottle of Coke.

  Freeze ignores him, looks to his left and right then at Lorilee. “What the fuck are you looking at? Get over here.”

  Lorilee walks into the shade of the building, stands next to Barry leaning against the drive-in teller window. Barry reaches over, grabs her buttocks, and squeezes.

  “Goddamn,” Freeze says, lighting a cigarette.

  “Paisan. We can’t do shit about this ’til tomorrow so don’t worry about it, all right?”

  “You don’t worry about it. I ain’t got thirty something bucks.”

  “Waters’ll lend it to us, won’t you, Lore?” Barry puts his arm around Lorilee’s shoulders, pulls her into his soft chest. “Won’t you?”

  Lorilee feels her face smile. She purses her lips over her teeth. “I don’t have any money.”

  “No shit,” Freeze says, handing the bottle over to Barry. “And if you could fucking read we’d be cruising with some tunes right now.”

  Barry begins to sip from the bottle then stops and holds it under Lorilee’s flushed face. She lets him tilt it up then swallows until she coughs. Barry laughs, his face looking to Lorilee as smooth and plump as a clown’s. Then he drinks and Lorilee puts her arm around his back, pulls herself in as close as she can.

  “Freeze, baby,” Barry says. “Let’s just do the toot and then friggin’ flow with it, all right?”

  Lorilee looks at the way Freeze is drawing in on his cigarette like it’s the last breath of air on earth.

  “Yeah, fuck it.” He drops the butt then steps on it. “Let’s go.”

  LORILEE IS SITTING on the ground against the brick wall of the restaurant with her knees drawn up to her breasts watching Freeze divide the small pile of powder into thin straight lines on the glass. He is doing it with Barry’s knife, his little pocket mirror resting on his Indian-crossed legs, and Barry is standing between the wall and the Dumpster looking at Freeze then back over his shoulder toward the metal-clanging, water-spraying sounds coming through the screen door of the kitchen. Freeze looks up at Barry.

  “Chill out, General. Nobody in there gives a shit what we’re doing.”

  “How do you know?” Barry drinks from the bottle of rum then the Coke.

  Freeze holds his stare on Barry. “Because they’re a bunch of wetback chinks, dummy. What the fuck are they gonna do?”

  Barry turns a metal milk case on its side and sits against the Dumpster across from Lorilee. He looks at her face. “You look peek-ed.”

  Lorilee smiles and lowers her head, the shadow voices stretching like flatworms inside her, long and thin, twisting through her middle; they smile there in her dark. Barry holds the bot
tle to her. Lorilee stands up and walks over to him then sits on the ground between his legs, her back against him. She takes the bottle dangling in front of her and drinks. She looks at Freeze lowering his nose to the tightly rolled one-dollar bill. She lays her head against Barry’s soft belly, her arms resting on his legs, but she gets no peace from his stillness. She turns on her side and lays her ear on the hardness in his pants. Barry rests a hand on her head but they are not slowing down: You fucking dumb ugly bitch. And she smells her father’s boozy yelling mouth spraying spit in her eye, on her nose and lips, and she thinks of men and women in white washing her in a bath she must stay in for days then giving her shots and more shots. She cannot remember it ever getting this bad, her flesh feeling so tender that very soon her body will split wide open with the whirling pus of all that she has done. She raises the bottle to her mouth again. Then she has moved and a smile pulls itself across her face. She is holding one nostril closed with her finger, trying to keep the rolled dollar steady in her hand, breathing in and making a snorting noise. Then she sits back against the wall and looks up at Freeze and Barry watching her, Barry smiling, his face looking so round, his head big and ugly with no hair. She looks at his face as if for the first time; she sees every faint wrinkle and line in his forehead, then a small white scar on his nose; and little indentations where flesh is stuck to bone, and pimples she has not noticed, and she imagines herself tiny enough to lie between the black nubs of whiskers, where oil lies on his pores. Naked, she would look out at the world holding on to the hair roots of his chin, fighting the slip of it with her feet. She begins to laugh, sees Barry’s clown face laughing too, and she laughs so hard she is bent over, her breasts swaying and bobbing under her shirt. She raises her laughing head to see Freeze on his feet doing a dance with Barry’s knife, the light blue veins coming out in his lean arms. He swings open the blade, letting it click against the air, then jabbing with it, his face reddening. Lorilee stops laughing when Freeze takes knife swipes at flies buzzing up and away from the Dumpster.