Cages & Those Who Hold the Keys

by Gary A Braunbeck

  All of this I saw in her eyes for that brief moment; I nodded my head in understanding, and was rewarded with one of the most luminous smiles of gratitude I’d ever seen. These kids had nothing to worry about, not with this woman as their mother. I felt sorry for anyone stupid enough to try and pull anything on them. If Daddy did suddenly come back from the dead and show up in Indiana, my guess was he wouldn’t be out of that grave for long.

  I pointed to the VCR, triumphant. Missy and Kyle applauded my efforts. I took a bow, then said: “Would you guys like some popcorn and sodas to snack on?”

  I expected both of them to shout yes, but instead they looked at their mother, who shrugged and looked at me. “Can I have some too?”

  “You were here in time for dinner, right?”

  “Oh, uh…yes, we were. I just…the kids don’t get treats too often and….”

  “I’ll make extra,” I said. “And don’t worry—we keep plenty on hand.” Which we did, at the Reverend’s insistence. Don’t ask me why, but somehow eating popcorn and sipping a soda while watching a good movie or a cartoon seems to make everyone happy, at least for a while. A mouthful of popcorn and you’re a kid again, at the movies with all the other kids, having a good time and enjoying the hell out of life, not at the end of your rope in a homeless shelter right before Thanksgiving and wondering where’d you’d be come Christmas morning. I guess for a lot of the people who come through here, the smell of popcorn is the smell of childhood, and that can make things easier, if only for a little while.

  I made two bags (one butter, one plain), popped open three Pepsis, and put a couple of ham-and-cheese sandwiches on the tray, as well. (I didn’t remember seeing them at any of the tables during dinner.) I even found a can of dog food, which I put in a bowl for Lump, who seemed to have a higher opinion of me after I set it in front of him.

  Everyone thanked me, then snuggled together under a blanket on the couch, watching Charlie Brown and munching away.

  “Ahem?”

  I turned to see the Reverend standing right behind me. He looked at Beth and her children, then at Lump, then at me, raising his left eyebrow like that actor who used to play Mr. Spock on Star Trek.

  “I know, I know,” I said, moving past him toward the rear doors. “What was I supposed to do, ignore them?”

  He fell into step beside me. “No, you were supposed to do exactly what you did. It just seemed to me that you were basking in the moment a little too long…you knight in shining overalls, you.”

  “They weren’t here for dinner, were they?”

  “They were, but they were sleeping and I wasn’t about to wake them. You did good, Sam.”

  “Your praise is everything to me.”

  The Reverend grinned. “Could you maybe be a little less sincere?”

  “I could give it a whirl, but it costs extra.” We smiled at each other, then the Reverend moved toward the kitchen to stock up on hot coffee and sandwiches while I made my way out back to get the van started for Popsicle Patrol.

  As I was closing the door behind me, I took one last look inside; Timmy was sitting down in one of the chairs in the lounge, Lump’s face seemed permanently fused to the bowl, Beth and her kids were munching happily away (on both the popcorn and the sandwiches, which they shared with Timmy), and the other guests were either settling into their cots, playing cards, or chatting quietly. Sheriff Jackson was sitting at Ethel’s table, reading a paperback novel. Everything was quiet, warm, pleasant enough, and safe. It made me feel good, knowing that I’d helped make this a good, clean, decent place for folks who weren’t as fortunate as me. I wanted to freeze this moment in my mind so I could take it out again sometime and look at it when I was feeling blue.

  They were all fine; they were all safe.

  I try very hard to remember that now; how safe it all seemed.

  3

  It wasn’t just the freezing rain that kept my mood more on the downside that night; I’d felt like something was…off all day. Ever since I’d arrived at the shelter—well before four that afternoon—it seemed like the whole world was moving at a slow, liquid crawl. People looked out their windows at the dark skies as if they sensed there might be something looking back down at them but taking care to keep itself hidden from their gazes.

  I guess that sounds a little on the melodramatic side, and I’m sorry I can’t make it any clearer than that, but there was just this feeling in the atmosphere. The closest thing I can think of to compare it to is the day the World Trade Center buildings went down. Remember how, when you went outside, even if there were no radios or television sets to be heard, even if you were alone, you could feel the weight of it in the air? As if the wind itself had been stopped dead in its tracks, stunned by the horror of it, and everything around you was holding its breath, wondering, What happens now?

  That’s what this day had felt like to me.

  Like I’d told Ethel, I hadn’t been sleeping too well the past few days, and I figured that had a lot to do with the way I was seeing things. It wasn’t like some slimy, big-ass tentacled monster was going to come dropping down on Cedar Hill like a curse from Heaven once the clouds parted and the rain stopped. I was just tired. That had to be it.

  Once the van’s engine was all warmed up, I turned the heater on and in a few minutes had the inside all toasty. I pulled around in front and waited for the Reverend, who came out almost right away, carrying a cooler that I knew was full of sandwiches, as well as three Thermoses; two of hot coffee, one of hot chocolate. He slid open the side door, shoved the cooler inside, then closed the door and climbed into the front passenger seat.

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “What?”

  He shook off the rain, ran his hand through his hair to push it back from his face, then looked right at me. “I’ve been feeling it, too.”

  I blinked. “Feeling…wh-what? What’re you—?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t play dumb with me, Sam. All day you’ve felt like something’s been off, haven’t you? Like something’s about to happen?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. Yes.”

  “Hence my saying, ‘Me, too.’ Try to keep up.” He leaned forward and looked out the windshield, his eyes turning up toward the rain. “Makes you crazy, doesn’t it? That sense that something’s going to happen and you don’t know if it’ll be something good or something…not.”

  “Either way,” I said, putting the van into gear, “we got the perfect night for it.”

  The Reverend turned to me and smiled. “That’s just like you, Sam. ‘The perfect night.’ Saying something like that.”

  “Oh, it’ll be all right, Mr. Frodo, you’ll see.”

  I pulled away from the curb and the Popsicle Patrol officially began.

  Believe it or not it was the Reverend, not me, who started calling it that. It strikes some people as offensive—Ethel, in particular, thinks it’s pretty tasteless—but the Reverend defends it by saying: “Would it be in better taste if I called it the ‘Corpse-sicle Patrol’? Because that’s what they’ll be if we don’t get to them in time. If you wish for us to change the name, then you have to make at least two runs with us. Otherwise you get no say.”

  Ethel declined the offer and never complained about it again after that.

  There are five pickup points on Popsicle Patrol, and on nights like this, when the rain and the wind and the cold conspire to freeze you in place, the homeless folks all know where these pickup points are and know which routes to take in order to get there; that way, if we pass each other while they or us are heading in that direction, we just stop and pick them up. Cedar Hill isn’t that big of a place when compared with a city like Columbus or Cincinnati, but it still takes a while to drive through it on bad weather nights. The Reverend established the pickup points about five years ago, when he first showed up in Cedar Hill, and since then not one homeless person has frozen to death here in winter—or any other time of the year. Let’s see Columbus or Cincinnati try and claim th
at.

  The first pickup point is on the downtown square at the east side of the courthouse. Like all pickup points, we pull up and wait fifteen minutes, then drive on to the next if no one shows. As soon as we have a full van, we go back to the shelter, drop them off, then head to the next pickup point, and so on. The Reverend took a lot of time figuring out the route, making sure that the trips to and from each pickup point takes us past the previous ones again in case anyone new has shown up in the meantime. All in all, we pass each pickup point a minimum of five times during Popsicle Patrol, which is why it usually takes us a couple of hours.

  We pulled up the courthouse and I automatically killed the headlights.

  “Sam,” said the Reverend.

  “Sorry, force of habit.” I keep forgetting that the out-of-towners are wary of approaching a dark van. I turned the headlights back on just in time to see a man with no legs rolling himself toward us on a makeshift cart built from two skateboards and a wooden crate, using two canes to propel himself forward.

  The Reverend looked at his watch. “He’s late.”

  “Probably didn’t want to get stopped for speeding.”

  The Reverend started to laugh, stopped himself, said, “Sam, that’s not funny,” and then burst out laughing. The man in the cart heard the laughter, pulled back his canes, adjusted the gloves on his hands, then folded his arms across his chest and stared at us. With the canes forming a giant ‘X’ across his body, he looked like some ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, only crabbier.

  The Reverend reached back and slid open the side doors, calling, “Come on, Linus, your security blanket hath arrived.”

  “Oh, jeez—I’ve never heard that one before.” Linus—I don’t know his real name, he calls himself that after that character Humphrey Bogart played in Sabrina, not the Peanuts character—pulled down his canes and pushed himself over to the van. “You were laughing at me.”

  “No,” said the Reverend. “I was laughing near you. There’s a difference.”

  “Especially when you ain’t the one who’s wet and cold.”

  “Now-now, Linus; don’t get short with me.”

  “Oh, that’s a stump-slapper, all right.” He tossed his canes into the back, then pulled himself up into the van while I got out and went around to retrieve his cart, watching as he maneuvered himself around and up into one of the back seats. Most people would take one look at Linus and feel revulsion or pity; me, I marvel at the strength of the man. His arms are the most muscular I’ve ever seen in person. You had to feel bad for anyone who might be on the receiving end of one of his punches.

  “You got any more carny worked lined up?” I asked him.

  “Starting in early June,” he replied. “I will once again be touring the tri-state area as Thalidomide Man.”

  “You gonna carve out any more of those little wood figures you used to sell?”

  “Always.”

  Linus makes a seasonal living with whatever touring carnival will hire him. He calls himself “Thalidomide Man” because of his legs—tells people it was because his mother took the drug during her pregnancy. Every season he whittles a couple of hundred little wood figures of himself—long arms, hands, no legs—and sells them for a couple of dollars each. I have a few, and have noticed that he tends to change the look of the figure every year, usually making himself much more handsome than he really is...and I tell him that every year. One of these days he’s going to carry through on his threat to bite off my kneecaps.

  I put the cart on top of the van, covering it with the tarpaulin we keep there, then secured it in place with a length of clothesline. The Reverend reached back and slid closed the side door as I was climbing back in just in time for their traditional Godzilla Trivia game.

  “All right,” Linus was saying. “I got a toughie for you tonight.”

  “I doubt that.” The Reverend knows his Godzilla trivia.

  Linus made a hmph sound, then cracked his knuckles like some card dealer ready to toss out a losing hand to an opponent. “Okay, Mr. Chuckles, try this one: Name the first movie where Godzilla was the good guy and tell me the other monsters who were in the movie and how long into the movie it is before good-guy Godzilla makes his first appearance.”

  The Reverend looked at Linus and grinned. “Is that it?”

  Linus looked at me. “’Is that it?’ he asks me. A lesser man would feel insulted.”

  “A lesser man would have no arms and be hanging on a wall and be named Art,” I replied.

  Linus made the hmph sound again and shook his head. “You know what you two are? You’re limb-ists.”

  “That’s not a word,” I said.

  “Then how can I say something that isn’t a word? Huh? Answer me that one, Kato.”

  “Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero,” said the Reverend. “Godzilla, Rodan, and Ghidra. And it’s thirty-seven minutes into the movie before both Godzilla and Rodan first show themselves.”

  Linus was visibly crushed. “I thought for sure you’d miss it. A three-parter. I’d’ve bet money you’d miss at least one of them.”

  “Try another one.”

  Linus shook his head. “No, thank you; one disgrace a night is my limit.”

  “I got one,” I said. Both the Reverend and Linus looked at me in surprise. I shrugged, then said: “What was the name of the giant rose bush that Godzilla fought with?”

  “Biollante,” they both said simultaneously; then Linus chimed in with: “The best special effects they save for the dumbest story line. It’s a damn shame.”

  “Well, I tried.”

  Linus reached over the seat and patted my shoulder. “It was a good question, though, Sam. Most people don’t know that any new Godzilla movies were made after Terror of Mecha-Godzilla. And I don’t count that big-budget abortion from ’98…although Jean Reno kicked ass in it.”

  “Yeah, he’s great,” said the Reverend.

  After that, the three of us fell silent for a few minutes. The rain was turning into serious sleet, and a few pebble-sized chunks of hail bounced off the windshield. I turned up the defrost and ran the wipers, turning the world outside into a liquid blur of shapeless colors.

  “A fit night for neither man nor beast,” said Linus.

  I turned around and grinned at him. “That’s a line from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, right?”

  Linus rolled his eyes and sighed. “We three are just a fount of useless information this evening.”

  “No, I fixed up the VCR back at the shelter so this woman and her kids could watch Rudolph before we left.”

  “That’s some truly unnerving syntax,” said the Reverend.

  “I work hard at it.”

  The Reverend poured Linus some hot coffee and gave him a sandwich, and while he ate I checked the time and saw it was about time to move onto the next pickup point. I put the van into gear and was just pulling away from the curb when a police cruiser rounded the corner doing about sixty, its visibar lights flashing but the siren turned off: silent approach. It sped past us, followed by an ambulance whose lights were flashing but whose siren was turned off, also.

  “Okay, that’s interesting,” said the Reverend.

  Both of the vehicles stopped at the mid-way point on the East Main Street Bridge. One of the police officers got out and looked over the side of the bridge.

  Without being told to do it, I spun the wheel and headed in that direction. There’s an old fisherman’s shack on the banks of the Licking River below the bridge that some of the homeless folks in town use as a flop when the weather’s bad and they can’t make it to the shelter.

  By the time we got to the bridge, two more squad cars had pulled up and I could see that there was already another ambulance and at least three other squad cars parked down near the river bank.

  “They must’ve taken the access road,” said the Reverend, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t want to try and drive back up that thing tonight.” He threw open the door and climbed out. The police officer who was lookin
g over the railing caught sight of him and turned around, his hand automatically resting on the butt of his gun, but then he saw who it was and relaxed. The Reverend went over and spoke to him for a few moments, the officer nodded his head, asked a question, and on hearing the Reverend’s answer turned his head slightly to the side and spoke into the radio communications microphone attached to his collar. The Reverend thanked him, and then came back to the van.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as he climbed in.

  “I don’t know. Looks like Joe was at the shack for a little while. He’s not around and they’re still looking for him. They’ve got Martha, though, and I guess she’s in bad shape. The paramedics had to sedate her. That ambulance down there is for her.”

  “Then who’s this other one for?”

  The Reverend ran a hand through his soaked hair. “Not just yet, Sam. Drive over to the other side of the bridge and pull over.”

  Asking no more questions, I did as he asked, and saw there was an unmarked car idling by the curb, its cherry-light whirling on the dashboard. A beefy man was sitting inside, talking on the radio. When he saw the van pull over, he climbed out of the car, pulled up the collar on his coat, and ran over to the side door. It took Linus a moment to get it opened, but once he did the man climbed inside and shook the freezing rain from his hands. “I smell coffee. Why has none yet been offered to me?”

  “And a good evening to you, too, Bill,” said the Reverend, unscrewing the top of a Thermos and pouring. Detective Bill Emerson took the cup in his thin, dainty, almost-feminine hands (he gets a lot of grief from the guys on the force about them), took a few tentative sips, said, “Starbucks charges you six bucks a shot for stuff this good,” then stared down into the dark, steamy liquid as if expecting to see some answer magically appear. “Okay, so Joe was at the shelter earlier and got upset and took off and you sent Martha after him, right?”