Aunt Benda, Nick thought, coming awake with a start. By instinct he lay perfectly still like an orphaned cub in tall grass. Before he went to bed Granddad Cage had told them that he’d heard Aunt Benda in the attic the night before they had arrived. Even in the daylight when Nick was in the upstairs of the old house he felt Aunt Benda watching him from the corners where the walls met the ceiling.
“Nick. She’s get . . . get . . . getting close.”
What do you do? Granddad had never said what to do. How do you make a ghost go away? Nick’s heart was racing. He couldn’t bring himself to turn over and look at Aunt Benda. He pictured her in a white nightgown, shriveled like his great-grandmother, with long gray hair, holding a candle. He wanted to cry out for his mother but she wasn’t in the house. The other upstairs bedrooms were empty.
“Nick,” Cage said in a whispered shout, “she’s on the bed! Aaah! Aaah!”
“Mama!” Nick yelled, pushing himself up on his arms. “Granddad!” He jerked around to look but there was only darkness.
“She’s gone,” Cage said. “I thought she was going to kill me.”
Nick was panting, squeezing the sheets in his fists, his eyes wide, listening to the crickets outside in the night. The curtains billowed in a breeze and faint moonlight.
“Aunt Benda?”
“Yeah,” Cage whispered. “What’s that? Hear sompin?”
The floorboards squeaked on the staircase down the hall. Footsteps getting closer, the creaking louder. Someone was coming up the stairs.
“She’s coming back.” Cage pulled the covers over his head.
Nick couldn’t make himself move. His heart pounded louder, seemed to rise up in his throat as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs and came slowly down the hall. He started sobbing. He heard the knob turning and saw the door swing open. He thought God would protect him from the ghost but where was God now? He didn’t want to see Aunt Benda. He squeezed his eyes.
“You boys okay? One of you had a bad dream?”
Nick heard Granddad Cage’s voice and opened his eyes. The room was bright from the chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Granddad walked toward the bed and stopped by the fireplace in front of a portrait of his father, a gray-haired man with a stern face in black old-timey clothes who seemed to look out at them from the world of ghosts, an unhappy place where Nick never wanted to go. “Poppy,” he said, leaping out of bed. “Cage saw Aunt Benda. Here in the room. She almost got him.”
His grandfather raised him off the ground and clutched him to his chest. His breathing slowed as he felt his grandfather’s hand smoothing his hair, smelled the reassuring fragrance of Old Spice. Granddad set him down and looked him in the eye. “Nick, Cage was just trying to scare you.” He pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of a pressed khaki shirt and wiped his tears. “I reckon there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“But you said you saw Aunt Benda,” Nick said.
“I was just having a little fun,” Granddad said. “Cage has taken this too far.”
Already in a T-shirt and shorts, Cage was putting on a pair of worn-out sneakers without socks. He looked up when his grandfather said his name. “Cage Malone, don’t you ever let me catch you scaring your little brother again. I’ll give you the first real hidin’ of your young life.”
“Yes, sir.” Cage grinned.
Granddad leveled his stare until the smile disappeared from Cage’s mouth, though it lingered in his eyes.
“I’ll look after him,” Cage said.
“That’s right, son. You two have to look after each other. Never forget that.”
“Yes, sir.” Cage’s eyes were serious now.
Nick was silent. He looked from his brother to his grandfather, a tall tower of khaki.
“Grandmother has breakfast ready,” Granddad said, leaving the room. “Wash up and come down.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.
“Wipe the sleep out of your face, Nick.” Cage tossed him a pair of cutoffs.
In half-light Cage led them on the path from the backyard through the boarded-up quarters down to the lake, where a gray blanket of mist floated a few feet off the black surface. Granddad cinched tight the straps on the boy’s orange life jackets, then told Cage to let Nick go first to the front of the boat. The last into the flat-bottomed metal skiff, Granddad pulled the starter cord on the outboard while Cage scrambled about, untying the lines. The woods two miles away on the far side of the lake grew distinct as the sun burned through the mist. Nick yawned, wishing he was still in bed. The droning outboard pushed them across the dark, flat glass. Nick leaned over the side, dangling his fingers just above the smooth water. Cage shouted above the engine noise at Granddad, asking him questions about inlets and bait.
About a mile from the dock, in the middle of the lake, Granddad cut the engine. Nick sat up, wondering why he’d stopped the boat far from the coves where they always fished. The sun was high enough to illuminate the tall white house sheltered in a copse of towering oaks on a quarter-mile-wide shoreline hemmed on either side by clusters of low brick ranch homes. Granddad tore off a plug of tobacco and stuck it in his cheek. He looked at Nick and asked, “What’s the name of our place over yonder?”
“Cage’s Bend,” Nick answered.
“Where’s that name come from?” Granddad looked at Cage.
“A bend on the Cumberland River which ran right here below where we are now.” Cage smiled. “Before the TVA dammed the river up to make the lake.”
“Morgan Cage was our great-great-great-”—Nick counted on his fingers—“granddaddy.”
Cage cut in, “He moved here in 1824. The bend in the river got named after him.”
“Smart boys.” Granddad nodded and shot a jet of juice over the side. “Look at those subdivisions. Like cancer, eating up the country.” He shook his head. “Used to be our land, boys. A thousand acres. Now we’re down to twenty acres and the house. We had to sell the land off over the years, to pay our bills, to pay our taxes, to send your mama to college. The Cages didn’t adapt well to modernity.”
“What’s motornity?” Cage asked.
“Modernity.” Granddad spelled the word. “Modern times, Cage, modern times.”
It was hot now. Nick could never understand how Granddad wore long pants and sleeves and a hat on the lake in the middle of the summer. He leaned over the side, splashed water on his face, and looked back at his grandfather.
“No, boys. We didn’t adapt well to changing times.” He spit expertly over the stern. “I never put the time I should into practicing law. I spent too much time fishing and hunting.”
“And drinking,” Cage said with a mischievous half-smile.
A flash of anger passed through Granddad’s eyes, then a look of sadness. “Cage, ol’ son, you’re wise beyond your nine years.” He smiled and shook his head. “Yes, boys. That’s been a problem, too. I remember when I was about sixteen, after a football game we used to go out and get corn liquor and see how much we could drink. That’s the height of foolishness, the summit of stupidity. Promise me that you will never drink to excess.”
“I promise,” Cage said.
Nick wiped the water off his face. “I promise, too, Granddad.”
“Well, the long and short of it, Cage Malone Rutledge and Nicholas Morgan Rutledge, is that you two are the last men in Morgan Cage’s bloodline. He was a pioneer who came here from God knows where and carved out a farm from the wilderness.”
“And killed a lot of Cherokees who lived here first.”
“I’m afraid that’s true, Cage. The soil of our nation is bathed in blood.” Granddad laughed sadly. “Do you get whipped often in school for your tongue?”
“No, sir,” Cage said. “But Nick got whipped this year because he refused to do his homework for a week.”
“Nick? You sound like me all over again.” Granddad raised one eyebrow. “My point, boys, is that Morgan Cage came with nothing and built something. He was a close friend and a
sso-ciate of President Andrew Jackson, worked for his administration in Washington. And look at me now, I’m nothing but a country lawyer, not a very successful one at that. I’m afraid I’ve squandered Morgan Cage’s legacy.”
Nick raised his hand. “What does that mean—squandered his doohickey?”
“Son, it means that I’ve wasted what was left to me.” He raised an arm toward the dock and the house and the tall oaks. “I haven’t held on to the land that we had. I haven’t made the most of my opportunities.” He lowered his arm. “Now, I’m afraid, there won’t be anything left for you. All I can pass on to you is my name.”
“It’s a cool name,” Cage said. “All the girls like it.”
“Boys must grow up a lot faster today,” Granddad said. “When I was nine years old, I had no more interest in girls than I did in mathematics. I worry about your generation. Rootless. Look at that blight of ranch homes over there. Kids who grow up there have no more connection to the land than a tumbleweed. People don’t live in one place hardly long enough for the mail to catch up to them.”
Nick’s eyes followed a dragonfly skimming the glassy surface of the lake while Cage, head tilted to one side, watched his grandfather closely, the frown lines on the corners of his mouth, the furrows across his brow.
“The South is finished.” Granddad Cage expectorated in a high arc that landed some distance from the boat and sent ripples radiating out in circles. “Whether it stood for any worthy agrarian ideals is a matter of debate. Now it’s no different than anywhere else. That might be one reason I drank, Cage—to the memory of the wilderness in which I was born.”
“Amen,” Cage said.
The old man laughed softly and tousled the boy’s hair.
“Let’s go fishing, Poppy,” Cage said.
“Indeed, let’s go.” Granddad Cage pulled the starter cord, splintering the silence.
Cage
I walk up the center aisle at St. James Church. It’s empty. Light streams in through the Tiffany stained glass. Approaching the altar, I’m surprised to see Jesus with his legs crossed and his hands on his knees in lotus position where the chalice usually stands. Getting closer, I see that Jesus has my face. I stare at him quietly for a long time until he opens his eyes and I see myself reflected in them. I realize that he is meditating me, that I am his dream, and that when he wakes up, I will cease to exist.
I hold my hand in front of my face, watch it shake—lithium tremens. Through the barred windows the near-full moon sluices lanes between the treetops across the fenced fields. Avenues of light that promise escape. Pringle is snoring. I sit up in the bunk, ponder the dream. Another week has passed with no word from Dr. Willcox, who makes and breaks appointments to see how I will react. Sylvia is incommunicado, nothing more than a memory. Harper sent a postcard saying that he bought a dune buggy. Got one from my cousin Rutledge Jordan, who’s in the Peace Corps in Africa. Seven college friends have written to express their shock and support, which gave me a moment of warmth but mainly heightened my isolation—all of them through graduate school, married, homeowners. Locked away in the nuthouse, I’m an aberrant miscreant, a fuckup, a failure. The moon rises higher. Pringle turns and mumbles in his sleep.
“Dear Mom and Dad,” I whisper to myself. “You have shown me love and I have only soiled my hands and learned to hunch my shoulders and avert my eyes. Know this has been my choice, a stubbornness and not a lack of training.”
“Buck up, brother,” the voice comes from the end of my bed.
“Nick?”
“The one and only.” The moonlight passes through him, glows around his edges.
“I thought I’d dreamt you. But now you’re back.”
“Feeling sorry for yourself again. I told you last time you’ve got to take hold.”
“I’d like to see you stay calm in a hellhole like this.”
“Yeah, but you were always the toughest of us, the only one who could survive a joint like this. Remember when you hitched across the country after your freshman year at Sewanee, sending back cards you signed ‘High Plains Drifter’?” Nick laughs so loud I think he will wake up Pringle. “I never had the guts to hitchhike. You’re a tough son of a bitch. You can handle it.”
“I must have been half crazy already. Ten years ago.”
“Maybe. But you can’t blame yourself for your illness. I’ve met a lot of manic-depressives on this side. Byron. Shelley. Dylan. All our heroes. Just be glad they’ve made medical advances in the field. Imagine the Gothic asylums where they were locked up.” Nick laughs. “They’re still traumatized.”
I laugh involuntarily, almost against my will. “You know those guys?”
“Well, let’s say, I, uh, sought them out to make their acquaintance. Generally they despise Americans. Other day I ran into some of the victims of the Jonestown Massacre.” Nick’s voice carries a smile, though it was impossible to make out the mouth on his indistinct face. “Reminded me of your Jonestown party in high school. Remember in the backyard in Baton Rouge while Mom and Dad and Harper were at the beach? The grape Kool-Aid with grain alcohol? You put up a sign that said ‘The People’s Temple.’” Nick laughs loud and slaps his knee, which makes no noise, then shakes his head. “You always had a great sense of humor.”
I haven’t thought about the Jonestown party in years. It doesn’t strike me as funny anymore. “That was so decadent and morbid.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t be hard on yourself.” Nick pats my leg. I can’t feel his hand but an iciness shudders through me.
“Nick, have you attained enlightenment?” Shivering, I hug myself.
“No, Cage. Consciousness after death continues at the level of consciousness attained by humanity. One does acquire a more ironic perspective.”
“How disappointing.” Suddenly I’m hot again, feel sweat beading on my forehead.
“I would have thought you would be gratified to know that consciousness survives death.”
“I was always a believer, Nick. You were the agnostic.”
“Well.” He seems momentarily at a loss for words. “Strange dream you had. Really gave you a start.”
I stare at the ghost, wondering if he is real or something my mind has conjured up to console me.
“Have you ever wondered,” Nick goes on, “if unconsciousness, rather than consciousness, is the real existence, if our conscious world is an illusion, a false reality constructed for a specific purpose, like a dream that seems real while you’re in it?”
“That’s the sort of stoned speculation we indulged in in college,” I say. “Are you saying that those bars aren’t real? That this nuthouse is here for my edification? That I am here for a purpose, which, though hidden now, will ultimately be revealed?”
“Clearly,” Nick says. “How did you get here? You have to do some soul-searching. You must try to figure it out.”
“I got here because I passed a lot of bad checks and freaked a lot of people out. That’s how. I shouldn’t be in a maximum-security lockdown with killers.” I press my temples between my palms as though my brain will explode. “Let me fucking out!”
“Shut up, Rutledge,” Pringle yells from below. Nick is gone. I stare out at the near-full moon, so big it’s surreal, and try not to think about Barney the Giant and his broomstick.
Franklin
The guards wheel a young man into the visiting room. Both his legs are cut off at the knees, his hair is close-cropped like a marine’s, he has an appealing mild face and a huge smile. His mother and father stand up, looking at him expectantly. They look like kind, innocent folks and they greet him with great love and he smiles and greets them. Within three minutes he flies into a rage, just a rage, cursing them with the most horrific language, and the parents just sit there silently, their faces fraught with sadness and despair. They try to calm him down but he only grows more angry and slaps at his mother, missing her nose by about an inch. He’s shaking with fury in his chair. A guard comes rushing in and wheels him out and, my God
, the parents are devastated. I squeeze Margaret’s hand and she shakes her head and looks more resolute.
A few minutes later the guards bring Cage out in his prison blues. My mind winces back involuntarily like an engine jerking suddenly at the freight cars behind it and I glimpse him as a baby in my arms, a little boy with a satchel headed off to school, a striking sun-golden teen holding a string of fish, breaking the tape in a track meet, tall onstage in a cap and gown receiving an award, and I think, What did I do wrong? Where did he jump the tracks? How do we get him back?
His eyes light up for a moment. As your gaze telescopes in so that you see only his face and not the appalling room and the miserable people on every side, you forget the circumstances and for a comforting instant you are inside the pure, undiluted love that bonds you to your child. Then you exhale and the world comes crashing back.
“Hello, son.” I hug him close.
“Oh, Papa, I’m sorry.” His smile seems out of place beneath his anguished eyes. He looks like he has aged years in the weeks since I have last seen him. “I mean, I don’t think I deserve to be here. But I’m sorry you had to come all the way up here again and again.”
“Oh, Cage,” Margaret says, hugging him. There are tears in her voice, though her eyes are dry. “We know you don’t deserve to be here.”
“Son, we’re doing everything we can to get you out.” I pat him on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry to cost you so much time and money,” Cage says, sitting down at our little table.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Margaret says. “You just keep telling yourself that you will be out of here very soon.”
“I believe it when I see you or talk to you on the phone but when I’m alone in there, I start to think that I’ll never get out.” Cage’s hands dart from his thighs to the tabletop. His fingertips are newly stained by nicotine. “This place is not part of the world that we come from. It’s a world of its own with its own rules and rulers and—”
“Cage, Cage,” Margaret pleads. “Keep the faith. We will get you out. You just remember that.”
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