The Cage Keeper and Other Stories

by Andre Dubus III

  At the second-floor landing I check the gauge of the fire extinguisher. The needle is still on the high-pressure numbers. I walk down the stairs to the first floor past the closed doors of counselors’ offices I’ve already checked, but stop and check them again. Wilson’s nasal-blocked voice is coming from the office. He’s just come in out of the cold for his one A.M. to nine A.M. shift. I check Tony Giordano’s door, think of Elroy being Tony’s client. I know he’s going to be surprised. I walk into the office.

  “There he is,” Leon says, looking over at me from where he sits at the desk. It’s December in Colorado but black Leon Mavery is wearing a purple short-sleeved shirt that shows all his lumps. “Everything cool, Mr. Norton?”

  “No problems. Hi, Wil.”

  “Al.”

  I look at him still in his Alaskan fur-lined parka. His wire-rimmed glasses are all steamed up and he’s got ice in his beard. Then I see the wet leather chaps strapped over his jeans. “You’re riding your bike in this stuff?”

  “Had to.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “That’s Wilson,” Leon says.

  “You been briefed on Elroy’s escape, Wil?”

  “Yep.”

  “What do you think?” I ask.

  “Me? I’m glad he did it. I hope he fucking freezes to death out there.”

  “Good chance,” Leon says.

  I hand my clipboard to Leon. “What did my brother have to say?”

  “His exact words? He said, ‘Fuck that ornery old son of a bitch.’ He’s calling his PO in the morning. You off?”

  “Yep.” I pull my leather jacket off the hook on the supply closet door. Wilson sits down across from Leon and picks up the logbook to sign in. He looks up at me while I’m zipping up. “Who inventoried Elroy’s gear?”

  I look at Leon. Leon looks at Wilson then looks at me. I take off my jacket and hang it back on the hook before he can say anything. I’m the junior employee around here, and the youngest too, twenty-four. I get this kind of bull tossed at me all the time. But it’s not just because of my age; it’s because my brother runs this place.

  ELROY LIVES—well, used to live—up here on the third floor. The ceiling is painted an aqua blue and slants down almost to the floor on two sides. There’s a small square window set in the wall between them, and if I get down on my knees, I can look through it and see the occasional light of a cabin in the foothills just outside of town. I put my inventory sheet and box of trash bags on the dresser then stoop beneath the ceiling and sit on Elroy’s impeccably made bed. Everywhere I look in this room things are in total order. His desk has nothing on it but a small lamp with a little blue light bulb in it, a jar of pens and pencils, and the yellow legal pad he composes all of his bullshit propaganda on. But they’re on the desk in perfect arrangement, spaced equally apart, and the legal pad is set directly in front of the chair where at night I have seen him sitting, hunched over his desk, writing away under his blue light. Course, I’ve had to interrupt him at these times and tell him that it’s lights out and to please hit the sack. The looks he has given me from his desk under his slanted ceiling in his blue light could kill, really. With his bushy eyebrows and gray hair and heavy shoulders, I have thought more than once that he resembles a troll under a bridge somewhere, a killer troll. But he has never said anything to me; he has just put his pen down on his pad, and with that look still on his face, turned off the light.

  I looked away from the desk to the small bookshelf beside it. He built it himself. Not a bad job, I guess. I watched him whip it together this past September in the courtyard between the mess hall and the women’s wing. He got a hammer and some nails and a handsaw and built it in about thirty minutes. But even then his face didn’t change from that constant tight-jawed look it always has. I look over the titles of some of his books as I take them off the shelves: Living My Life by Emma Goldman; Masonry for the Carpenter; The Paris Review; Farming Without Banks; The Unrevised Shakespeare; 1984 by George Orwell. I skim through the last one. I read it in my freshman English course back at Syracuse five years ago. I see the words “The Ministry of Truth.” I think about Elroy’s essays to the house paper, about him putting down our president all the time, about him putting down us and the Department of Corrections. Screw you, Elroy.

  I drop the books into a green trash bag then clear the shelves of the rest. On the bottom shelf is a pile of magazines, neatly stacked. There are some National Geographics, a few copies of something called Mother Jones, and some of Time and U.S. News & World Report. But beneath them all, at the very bottom of the stack, is a worn and slightly tattered magazine called African Mamas Sucking Hog. I flip through it real quick; a bunch of young black girls dressed up like Kenyans giving fat-ass bikers blow jobs. I smile at this; Elroy the scholar. Elroy the sicko killer masturbator. I drop the magazine in the bag and tie it off then get another one and empty his drawers of all his clothes. There’s not much; navy blue Dickey work pants and sweatshirts, white boxer shorts and socks, all matched and folded and set in the drawer alongside each other as neat as can be.

  I move to his bedside table, pick up his white wind-up alarm clock, and drop it into the bag. Then I see something I have never noticed before: a small gold picture case, the kind that can fold up and fit in your pocket. I sit on the bed and look at the black-and-white picture in the oval frame. It’s a family portrait taken outside somewhere. Elroy’s standing in the middle with one arm around a woman, the other resting on the shoulder of a boy who looks to be around fifteen or sixteen. They are all dressed up. The woman is in a light-colored dress with some kind of flower pinned above her breasts, and McElroy and the boy are wearing dark jackets and pants with black ties and white shirts. Elroy’s hair is completely black, not a gray hair anywhere, and he is squinting into the sunshine with an actual, honest-to-God smile on his face. The kid’s got a crew cut and the same Cro-Magnon forehead as McElroy, but his hair is blond like the woman’s. I close the case and put it into the bag on top of his clothes.

  After I gather his shaving kit and legal pad and jar of pens and pencils, I tie off the second bag and start lugging them downstairs to the basement. When I get there I drop them and fumble with my security keys. The furnace rattles in the room next to me. I find the storage room key, unlock the door, flick on the light switch, and step into the tomb. That’s what it feels like, a semisacred underground place for escaped, dead, or terminated inmates’ belongings. The room is rectangular and the two long walls have storage bins built against them. But they’re not really bins; they’re made of wood and look more like the concrete coffin shelves you see in mausoleums. There are about twenty of these against both walls. I pick up McElroy’s bags and drop them in front of an empty space beneath the shelf that holds Muddy River Johnson’s trunk. I packed that myself. There’s nothing in it but an old corduroy coat, a toothbrush, and a pair of army boots. Nobody has bothered to come by to pick it up. It’ll probably be auctioned with the rest of the unclaimed belongings in May. Leon says I’d be a fool not to show up and bid against the guys from the sheriff’s department for some of this stuff. I heave McElroy’s bags into the shelf and write in his full name: Douglas Agnes McElroy, then the date: Tuesday, December 14, 1982.

  In the office, Wilson is leaning back in his chair with his feet up on the desk reading a copy of Time magazine. Something smells awful, like a cross between piss and burning hair. I look around and see his chaps draped over the heating vent.

  “Tough shift, Wilson.”

  “Screw.”

  “Where’s Leon?”

  “Gone.”

  “That makes two of us.” I take my jacket off the hook, and when I pull it on and zip it up, Wilson lowers his magazine and says: “See you tomorrow, Al.”

  “Uh-uh. This is my weekend. See you Friday.”

  “Whatever.” He raises his magazine back over his face and I leave the office, walk down the back hall, and pull my security keys off the brass ring clipped to my belt. On the first
-floor landing I glance down at the mess hall and see the half-empty coffee cup on one of the tables, an opened Sweet ’N Low next to it. I go down the stairs, pick up the cup, crumple up the sweetener pack, and wipe the table off with my hand. I really don’t care if these animals have a clean dining room or not, but I don’t want Wilson thinking I can’t handle night clean up detail. I put the cup in the rack that’s set in the wall then turn to check for any other messes. There’s a Christmas tree in the corner, a big one, some kind of native Colorado spruce. Raoul White and another inmate work a day job with a logger near Loveland. They cut it down and brought it in for everybody. Mark let Tony and Sherry Anne buy some new Christmas lights for it, and they had Maggie and Paulina put them on the tree. But there are no other decorations on it, just the lights, and right now they’re not even plugged in.

  I unlock the door and step into the night, pushing back on the door handle until it clicks then pulling it to make sure. I put on my wool cap and walk down the concrete path that is dry except for strips of ice here and there. Up the side street at the corner in front of the house, the cruiser is gone. Crusty piles of snow line both sides of Tenth Avenue; they glitter under the streetlight, and I yawn and think of my electric blanket and bed. In the back alley Wilson’s motorcycle leans against the building in front of my Monte Carlo. He’s got it chained to the iron railing of the back stairs; there’s ice on the chain; Wilson’s soft in the head. I unlock my door then get in fast and start her up. I put on my seat belt, rev the engine a couple of times, turn on the headlights, then flick on my wipers so I can see. They flap in front of me but the fog on the windshield stays. I start to wipe it off with the back of my hand but then stop. I sit still. My whole car smells like booze. I take a breath then turn right around into a hand that grabs my face and squeezes my cheeks so tight my molars are about to cave into my mouth. I see a big knife blade about three inches from my face. Then I am looking into eyes I know. They are glassy. Wide-set beneath bushy gray eyebrows. They are mean; they belong to Elroy.

  “Hello, Alley Oop. How are you?”

  I don’t say anything. I don’t try. He holds the knife up for me to see.

  “This is a very sharp knife, Al. Do you know what kind it is?”

  My teeth are stinging my cheeks. I shake my head as best I can.

  “I thought not. It’s a Bowie knife, Al. I have castrated horses with knives like this. They do the trick. Believe me.”

  His breath hits me straight in the nose.

  “Now I am going to let go of your face, Allen. And when I do, you are not goin’ to move. You get me?”

  I nod my head. My eyes are watering.

  “Good.”

  He loosens his grip then lets go completely. I take a deep breath and rub my jaw with my hand. I see myself jerking open my door and running out into the alley and around to the front door and Wilson, but I can’t move. He leans between the bucket seats and holds the knife loosely in his hand. It is huge.

  “We’re going on a little trip, kid. Put this car in gear. I’ll direct you.”

  “Mr. McElroy—”

  “Shut up. Just back this car up and drive down the alley to Broadway Street.”

  I put her in gear and back over the potholes behind me. When the car jolts a little I almost apologize. I’ve got to stay calm. I look once to my left, at the white brick wall of the center, at Wilson’s motorcycle. Then I drive straight ahead between the back-door lots of fraternity houses. I look to see if a party is going on in the ground floor of any of them, but everywhere there are dark rooms and closed curtains. My mouth is all dust inside.

  “Take a slow and careful left when you get to Broadway, Al.”

  Elroy’s voice has never sounded so low and rough. I stop where the alley intersects Broadway and look to my right up the hill where there are streetlights and Pau-Pau’s Variety Store. Across from that are the tall pine trees surrounding the university campus. The university police.

  “Left.”

  I see the knife turn a little bit. I put on my indicator, wait for a green Jeep to pass me, then pull out onto the street and head down the hill towards the shopping district.

  “How much petrol have you got, Al?”

  “Half a tank.”

  “That’ll be enough for now,” he says as he squeezes his body between the seats and sits beside me with a grunt. “That’s better, Al. Yes, it is.” He lowers the knife and I feel it press against my side on the outside of my jacket. He reaches behind him between the seat and the door and pulls a bottle from the back. It’s brown and shaped funny. He takes a sip then points straight ahead with a thick crooked finger.

  “You just take another slow and careful right turn when you get to the corner before the bank. Take that right and then get on 119 to Niwot. And Al, do not fuck with me. I am in complete control of my senses.”

  2

  My mind is one big training manual. I’m seeing white pages flip over and over in my head; I’m trying to remember anything I might have read about being kidnapped by an inmate under your jurisdiction, how to handle a knife. My palm slips slightly as I take the turn in front of Rocky Mountain Bank. There is a red traffic light in front of us. I have to stop. Okay, I’ll speed the car up just a little then jam on the brakes and put Elroy through the windshield. I see it all clearly in my head but my body isn’t going along with it. I pull the car to a gentle stop in front of the red light, look to my left, past the darkened parking lot of the bank, to the outdoor mall, where just yesterday I saw a movie before I came to work: Star Wars. McElroy takes another swig off of his bottle, the knife point pushing at my side. I don’t believe this. The light changes and I drive straight ahead.

  “We might have some fun tonight, Al. You never can tell.”

  “We should talk about this, McElroy.”

  “Talk?”

  “Yes, talk. You are escaping from a correctional facility, Elroy. You are kidnapping a corrections employee. Jesus Christ, they’ll lock you up forever.”

  “Wrong.” He pushes the blade a bit more into my jacket. “You’ve got that wrong, Allen.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  He takes another drink and I keep my mouth shut.

  We go through seven more traffic lights before we are out of the city and driving alone in the darkness up two-laned 119 towards Niwot. At the third traffic light, the one right before The Rhino, I almost did it. The blade had pulled far enough away from my side so that I didn’t even feel it, but when I leaned forward a little to prepare myself I felt my seat belt pulling across my chest. I went limp as I tried to imagine getting free of the belt and opening the door before Elroy had time to put it in me. And I couldn’t take the seat belt off before I hit the brakes or I’d go through the windshield with him. So that plan is out. But right now, I’m not thinking about plans. Elroy’s keeping that foot-long, two-and-a-half-inch blade right at my side. I’m almost afraid that if I do think up something, the thought will travel down through my body, be picked up by that Bowie, absorbed into Elroy’s hand then brain and slice—that’ll be all she wrote. So I’m just sitting here with both hands on the wheel looking straight ahead at my headlights cutting through the darkness, lighting up this road that passes over the flatlands of Colorado just east of the foothills. On either side, as far as you can see, is white frozen snow about a foot deep and a week old. If it were daytime I could look out of my window to my left and see a blue-gray wall of mountains looming out of the fields on the horizon. I know this because just last Saturday when I was working I had to drive up here to monitor a furlough, Maggie Nickerson’s.

  “You’re doing just fine, Allen. I want you to know that.”

  “Do you think you could pull the knife away then?”

  “Yes, Al, I can do that, and will, but when we get into Niwot you can count on it being pretty close.”

  “What are we going to do there?”

  “That’s my concern, kid. Not yours.”

  His voice jus
t went down a notch, but he keeps his knife in his lap. I can see a ball of light up ahead in the distance: Niwot. It looks to be three or so miles more. I sit tight and drive and keep my mouth shut, but I’m watching him as best I can out of the corner of my eye. He looks a lot smaller sitting in a car seat. With his sloping shoulders and his short torso, he almost looks like a monkey, but old, dangerous, too. He’s wearing his thick winter-lined dungaree jacket, and he has on a blue workshirt with a T-shirt underneath. We’re driving under the streetlights on the far outskirts of Niwot and I can see his face better. His chin is jutted out forward a little like when he takes out his teeth, and his eyes are narrowed so that there are real deep furrows in the skin of his forehead; he looks like he might be pondering some kind of deep philosophical question, but I know he’s just trying to keep his booze in line. I look down at the brown bottle in his lap: Grand Marnier. It sounds like something a sailor would drink. Drink up then, Elroy. Guzzle yourself to death.

  “You know that I used to teach literature, don’t you, Al?”

  He snaps that question at me so fast I jerk a little bit in my seat.

  “What’s the matter, boy?”

  “Nothing, I just—”

  “You just don’t expect me to be cognitively in charge, isn’t that it, Al?”

  “Whatever you say.” I look at him for a second and he is looking back at me, smiling.

  “Yes. I taught literature at Greeley. Now I’m no writer, but I do know literature. The Elizabethan period is my specialty, Al. And Al. Do not think for a second that one little bottle of French liqueur is goin’ to rob me of my senses and render me stupid.”