The Cage Keeper

by Andre Dubus III

  “Hiiiyuh.” Freeze kicks his leg high in the air between them, then spins around, slashing the space his foot has vacated.

  Barry laughs so hard Lorilee can see a vein come out on each side of his forehead leading into his skull. Freeze stands still. He holds the knife in his right fist at his side, his arm extended in front of him. He turns and narrows his eyes straight ahead at the brick wall above and behind Lorilee. “Ho go sho tau.”

  Lorilee hunches her shoulders slightly when Freeze’s face lets go.

  “Iiieeee-fuck.” He snaps the knife forward in his right hand, pulling back his left.

  Lorilee shrieks as Freeze squats in front of her, his eyes two dark slits. He rests his left arm against the wall then runs the flat of the blade cool along her cheek. “Don’t fuck with Mastuh Fleeze, mama-san.”

  “Don’t, Freeze.”

  Freeze lowers the blade to the soft of her upper lip, lets it rest there. “Call me mastuh, white bitch.”

  Lorilee feels the tickle of a tear as it rolls down over her swollen cheek. She presses the back of her head against the brick.

  “Come on, High Master, you’re scarin’ the piss out of her.”

  Lorilee looks from Freeze’s tight lips to his eyes, and just before his face spins away from hers, she sees in them the dark gaze of a child. He springs and spins out of his crouch, lands on his feet in front of smiling Barry who raises his hands, then turns his head to the slam of the screen door, to the short Oriental man in a white T-SHIRT who stops as soon as he sees them, a bulging plastic green bag hanging beside each leg.

  “Hey, you get out of here.”

  Freeze steps away from Barry then turns toward the man. Lorilee wipes the tears from her good cheek and starts to stand up when she sees the man’s eyes lower to the blade. Freeze goes into his stance, his left arm stretched out, his right hand raising the knife in front of him.

  “You got a problem? Chink fuck?”

  Lorilee sees the man’s face stay as flat and as unmoving as in a picture. She looks at Barry slowly bending over to pick up the brown paper bag from the liquor store.

  “Huh?” Freeze steps forward over the grease-soaked ground. “You fuckin’ deaf? Motherfucker no speak English?”

  Lorilee is shivering. She crosses her arms then holds back a scream that wants to come. She sees a fly land on the man’s forehead just before his face changes and he drops both bags, jerks open the screen door, and runs back into the kitchen.

  “Book it,” Barry says, hurrying past Freeze; then Lorilee is running too. Hearing Freeze behind her, she bends low under a metal box built into one of the brick walls then turns on the sidewalk where Barry did. She ignores the alternate lift and jarring pull of one breast then the other and runs wide-hipped and heavy through the clean cotton smell of tanned people after his bald head and moving blue-jeaned back, after Barry Raymond, who Glennie used to call a moron shitbag.

  THE SUN HANGS FIERY in the haze above Sausalito Hills and Dave remembers studying maps every night of his first week west, sees himself sitting on the floor under the eye-numbing glare of his fluorescent light. Using his weight bench as a desk, he drew diagrams of all the major parallel streets then tested himself by sketching in the ones that intersected them and at what point. By the end of the week he felt ready enough to walk off San Pablo Street into the tiny fake marble-floored office of City Cabs, to lease a taxi from the huge woman behind the counter, a dirty red Peterbilt cap on her head, the name Ernestine printed on a black nameplate in front of her.

  After his second night working the city he drove down Market Street looking for a place to park his cab and get a beer. He had just passed the darkened lobbies of tall office buildings, had looked through the ground-floor windows of some and seen the red-and-green light from security lamps reflecting off their shiny marble floors. Then he got to the plaza with the statue of the sailor in the middle. Before turning left onto Seventh he glanced over and saw them for the first time: all the men and women who live there at night. Under the hazy lime of the streetlights they lay curled up on the benches around the base of the green bronze statue, where, during the day, he had seen office workers sit to eat their lunches and read their papers. But then, his hands on the wheel, oblivious to the flash and tick of his indicator, all he saw were faces, some caked with drool and blood-vomit, the men’s heavy-whiskered, the women’s sagging, a few with soft fuzzy-looking beards under their chins. Another cabbie honked behind him, so Dave took the turn to the corner of Seventh and Market then locked his cab and walked into the neon light of the sidewalk past the open doors of bars breathing out electric beats heavy with bass. And just before stepping into the piss-wood cigarette smell of The Cat House Lounge, he looked over his shoulder at the plaza, a shiver skipping down his back.

  Then he was walking out of the jukebox dark of it into a cold rain. The taste of peanuts and draft beer on his tongue, his hands in his pockets, he rocked back slightly on his heels, then caught himself when a man dressed in tight jeans and a bright red athletic club T-shirt stopped in front of him.

  “God it’s cold and wet, isn’t it?”

  But Dave was looking across the street to the rain-mist under the streetlights of the plaza, turned to the man as cool as if he had just been interrupted in conversation and said, “Yep.” Then he crossed the slick asphalt of Market Street alone, and when he got to the sidewalk was already shaking his head. The rain was coming down slowly, but the droplets landed cold and heavy on his forehead and nose. He saw close to thirty of them lying on the benches, each in a cardboard box, their heads sticking out one end, their legs out the other. He stood and watched them, his shoulders hunched in his jacket.

  Dave looks over his shoulder and backs out of the space, then drives straight ahead and turns left off Citadel Drive down the hill toward Berkeley. In the last gold light of day he passes neatly fenced-off gardens and trimmed lawns in front of wood and brick houses. He stops at the bottom of the hill then turns right onto Telegraph into the thick of the afternoon traffic. He looks to either side of him at students and well-dressed working people and a few of those scraggly-haired bearded creatures in torn clothes he knows someday he will be able to help, but not right now, not tonight. And he turns on the radio that is only AM but gets Springsteen rapping out a Jerry Lee Lewis beat. He begins to tap the wheel in time, moving his head to the screaming saxophone, smiling out his rolled-down window at two of those brown-eyed beauties walking on the sidewalk who he knows have probably lived in the States their whole lives and are as American as he, but still he can’t stop seeing them on a torchlit veranda in white dresses, their black hair pulled to one side of their faces, the sky dark with stars over a mesquite desert; he would dance with them all night long over creaking boards, would kiss, then lick the taste of lime and salt out of their mouths. “I’m going to find one of you,” he says loud enough for the two women to hear; they turn their heads to him and he puckers his lips for a kiss.

  The red taillights of the cars ahead of him look brighter now. He drives past the cafés and bookstores of Berkeley, and he sees in them the comforting light that those places always seem to have. He looks to his left down San Jacinto, the sun completely gone now behind the dark stretch of hills across the bay, the sky filled with long thin clouds that hang crimson against the tangerine Pacific air. Tomorrow he would write that letter before he did anything else and if his father didn’t like it then too goddamned bad because he wasn’t paying for it anyway. Then he is looking straight ahead again, reaching to change radio stations, when he sees to his right just before the dark arch of the brick tunnel that takes San Pablo Street under a hill into El Cerrito, three people, one of them dark and slim, wearing sunglasses and a sleeveless denim jacket, his thumb out in the air.

  WHEN THE BIG yellow taxi pulls over with a screech in front of Freeze, Lorilee turns her face away from Barry’s warm open mouth and says, “But we don’t have any money.”

  Barry looks at her with half-closed eyes. “Do
n’t worry about it, Waters.” Then he pulls her after him and Freeze, who has just opened the front door at the passenger side and climbed in. A hot wave rolling through her stomach, Lorilee follows Barry into the backseat then pulls the door shut beside her.

  “El Cerrito, right?”

  “Yeah,” Freeze says.

  Dave guides the old taxi back into the lighted stream of traffic and into the tunnel.

  “You Berkeley students?”

  “No,” Freeze says.

  “Just hanging out and taking it easy, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dave feels the silence before it comes; he reaches down to turn up the radio.

  Freeze is tapping the armrest with his knuckles, trying to keep the rest of his body still. Lorilee sees him look at the thick sheath muscle in the driver’s upper arm, its slight roll when he turns the knob on the radio, and as she watches, Freeze glances too at the swell of chest muscles that push tight against his T-shirt. They come out of the tunnel into the twilight and start down the hill.

  “Where in El Cerrito, buddy?” Dave asks, smelling the booze now, the combination of that and young people and silence beginning to feel wrong to him; he reaches up to scratch a nonexistent itch at his temple then flexes his arm before bringing it back to the wheel.

  “Don’t matter.” Freeze turns around to Barry and Lorilee sitting in the growing dark in the backseat, Barry’s face looking oatmeal-colored, moonlike. Freeze lets his left arm drop behind the seat to touch Barry’s knee. Lorilee looks at the hand, sees it tap Barry’s leg then turn over fast and open-palmed. She watches it do the same movement again, this time faster. Then Barry’s bulk shifts beside her as he moves to reach into his back pocket. She watches his pale closed fist move slowly to cover Freeze’s hand. Freeze clears his throat loud as his thumb and forefinger flick open the blade of the black wood-handled knife. Dave looks over at the lean sunglassioed face to his right. “I can take you as far as Ernie’s Pizza on San Pablo Street.”

  Freeze nods his head and Dave looks back at the road lit yellow now from the streetlamps. He looks in the rearview mirror at the pudgy one with the shaved head, at the blond girl with the most hound-doggish face he has ever seen, then he sees the huge bruise on her cheek and as quickly as Jell-O sliding off a plate, he feels the elation of just a few moments ago leave him.

  Barry puts his arm around Lorilee but she doesn’t let him pull her to him. She is looking at how tight Freeze seems to be gripping the knife, the blade pointing straight at the door behind the driver. She looks at the back of the driver’s head then sees the clean-looking boylike face in the rearview. He’s nice, she thinks. Then the driver’s eyes move up to the mirror and are looking into hers. Lorilee looks away so fast she is afraid she might have made a noise. She looks at the side of Freeze’s face, at his black oily hair, and she sees his eyes looking at the driver from behind his dark sunglasses, hears the tap of his knuckles above the radio, and she begins to rock back and forth on the seat, looks down again at the blade that shines every time they pass under a streetlight. She breathes fast and shallow as they uncoil dark and slick inside her, the pain of her buttocks having melted into something else now. And as Barry burps then drops his hand to her breast, she smells the stomach stench of his rum and closes her eyes to her nipple hardening under her shirt, to the moon-fixed feeling that this is it, this is what she has finally brought everyone to.

  She feels the nervous squeeze of Barry’s hand, and hears the static whine of radio music, the tappity tap tap of Freeze’s knuckles in the front, the click of the lighted box that is showing how much they already owe. Then she hears sharp and clear the voice she has not let herself hear in months. You’re my ugly duckling girl, aren’t you? She opens her eyes.

  Freeze’s arm is pressed closer to the top of the seat, the knife just out of the driver’s view, and Barry is squeezing harder and faster. Her heart is speeding and she hears her father again. She closes her eyes to the pinch-throb of Barry’s fingers and gives in to it, is back in that hot bright kitchen, the fan broken and her father still dirty from the plant, his face sunburned and red from drinking too. You’re my ugly duckling girl, aren’t you? She looked at his mud-caked boots when he crossed the floor to her, and when he stood in front of her and unbuttoned her blouse she lifted her chin to his wide flat face.

  Aren’t you?

  Yes, Papa.

  Then he carried her into the room and laid her on the warm sheets. In the dark he undressed all of her. My little ugly duckling, my little one. Then he was inside her and it felt like tearing a scab and when the burn was gone it ached and she started to cry. He moved faster and then stopped and lay next to her and held her, and she pushed herself back against his hairy warm stomach, feeling so wrong.

  Lorilee opens her eyes then pulls away from Barry’s crazy hand, hears the driver’s voice ask, “Are you all right, miss? Is he bothering you?”

  Freeze says quietly, “She’s all right.”

  “I’m not asking you, pal,” Dave says into the dark sunglasses.

  Barry’s hand stops squeezing but still holds the flesh tight. “We’re getting married, man,” he says. “What’s the problem?”

  “What happened to your face, miss?”

  “What’s it to you?” Freeze asks.

  Dave snaps his face to Freeze. “That’s it. Ride’s over for you, buddy.”

  “I ain’t your buddy.”

  Dave pulls fast to the curb under the stringed and hanging lights of Arnold’s Auto Sales. He points to the meter. “Four-sixty, smart ass.” He picks up the notebook beside him. His hand is shaking. He lays it back on the seat then looks in the rearview to the big one looking back at him, a thin clear drool sticking to his chin. Dave looks at Lorilee rocking back and forth on the seat. “You don’t have to go with them, miss.”

  “You hear me? I ain’t your buddy.”

  Dave turns to Freeze. “Pay up and get out.”

  “We don’t have no money,” Barry says.

  Dave looks away from Freeze to the mirror, to this smiling Frankenstein creature with his arm around this scared-to-death girl; his fleshy hand holding her breast. His heart beating in his throat, Dave turns around to look at Lorilee. “You don’t have to go with these guys.”

  She is rocking, looking into the clean face of this driver. She sees the muscles in Freeze’s forearm dance for an instant as the blade tilts up slightly. “Yes, Papa.”

  Barry jolts into laughter beside her, and then Freeze too; and Lorilee thinks, Now, you guys. Now. And she feels the cumulative weight and deed of her life rising up in her like a roller-coaster car nearing the peak of the highest and final run, the wind blowing different way up there, pushing quiet and steady against the side of her face. She rocks faster as the driver turns away from her and Barry to face Freeze who is smiling behind his sunglasses, who is raising the blade almost into view.

  “Just get you and your freaky friends the hell out of—” Dave grunts as his head is jerked back against the headrest. He sees the stretched gray of ceiling above him and digs his fingers into the fat ones around his chin and mouth. “You fuck—”

  Lorilee stops rocking; everything is moving fast now, and a laugh begins to well up from deep in her gut as Dave gets one hand free, then reaches back to grab a warm bristly head. Then his eyes are slapped over and covered by the hand of the dark quiet one. He begins to twist his torso and pull forward, hissing in air between the fingers that pull him; he sees himself pushing a barbell off his chest and tries to bring that same guttural cry out now as he yanks forward again.

  “Suck this, faggot.”

  The hand of the dark one presses over his eyes then Dave feels the deep burn and rip of his insides; nausea shimmers through him then beads out clammy on his skin. He jerks away from the hard thing that slides out of him now and opens his eyes as the hand leaves too but his vision is hazy and he tastes the old metal of his blood rising in his throat. He opens and closes his mouth, trying to pump it
out faster to breathe; he starts to spit as the liquid of him gushes warm down over the gripping hand of the big one. He is no longer able to pull now but just hold on, and he hears her high nasal laughter behind him, feels the buckle of his belt being pulled loose by the dark one, his coin box ripped free from his waist. He hears her laughing and feels the terrifying stop of everything as a groan comes up from his chest then ends in his throat. He breathes in deeply through his nose but his chest stays flat as he feels and hears his breath flap wetly out his side. Then the hands are gone and the car shifts as the doors open and he hears the dark one: “Leave the bitch. C’mon.”

  He hears the asphalt-patter of their running, his heart fluttering briefly in his chest that feels strapped now to the seat, then he opens his eyes to her horrible sound. From behind the mist of his nausea he sees her bending over, holding her stomach, her breasts hanging heavy. Her mouth wavers open but silent, she is laughing so hard. He pushes his loose-clenched fist into the heat of his side as Lorilee straightens, gets her breath, then shrieks and cackles tears down her bruised cheek. His chest beginning to lighten, the top of his head seeming to dissolve now into the air of his cab, Dave looks at the hanging stringed lights above her, watches how prettily the salt-shine of Lorilee’s cheek catches the white glow of them. The pulse of him rises from his legs then passes quietly but quickly into his chest and he no longer hears the falsetto-wail of her laughing, so gives all of himself to what he can still see: her tear-filled blue eyes, and the long stringy blond hair that hangs in front of her reddened face. As his weight pulls itself in then up, through the hollow of his neck and to the top of his head, he looks back at the laughing girl, at the plum-purple bruise on her cheek, blue-black around the edges.

  WOLVES IN THE MARSH

  For Ande

  When Dean awoke, the room was still cast in shadows and he smelled pee. He looked over at Kip’s bed and saw him curled up with his knees almost touching his chin, his blanket sticking wet to the side of his leg. He was a year younger than Dean, eight, and he still wet his sheets at night, but so did Dean.