Boys in Gilded Cages

by Jarod Powell

  “Nah, I think I’ll stay out here for a few.”

  “Suit yourself. ‘Night all.” Off she went.

  “I don’t care for her,” Wilma whispered.

  Sam laughed. “I know. You can sleep in Jake’s room if you want,” he said. “He’ll be here in the morning, and then you can meet him.”

  “No, Hon, that’s okay. I’ve got to get going. Five hours to Mississippi, and I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “Thanks for coming by.”

  “Next time,” she said, walking towards the front door, “Keep that baby here. I’d like to see him.”

  “Sure,” Sam said.

  She blew a kiss, and made a quiet exit. Sam closed his eyes and listened to the front door clasp, that clunky van engine start, and sputter away.

  HYPNOS

  Jack woke up every morning in some sort of fog. It is apparently a myth that “special” children are sharper than your average dope. His observations moved about the room, his mind too crowded to hold much of anything. As he slept a restless sleep, thoughts projected on the back of his eyelids. He never snored. He never fluttered his eyes, they way people do. He just laid there, held captive to lucid dreams or racing thoughts that clanked together and made endless noise.

  He basically had his nights alone. His mother worked nights at the Cue‘n Brew. Sometimes he imagined how she was at work. Was she just a polite woman who poured drinks and gently took tips, maneuvering around the drunk truck drivers’ come-ons? Did she dance on the table, get wild, drink with customers?

  Some nights, like tonight, she stumbled in, giggling, being held up by a burly patron who kindly offered to drive her home. Then he led her to bed.

  The next morning was quiet and gloomy at the breakfast table, tense for only the adults. Jack was indifferent.

  Jack’s mother was near the toaster with a box of frozen waffles, two of them ready to go, her hand on the trigger.

  “Do you want waffles, Jack?”

  “I guess so.”

  Jack’s mother yelled across their mobile home.

  “Frank, you want waffles?”

  A thick, hairy mass of goofy grin wearing briefs walked groggily to the kitchen table. He eyed Jack, perhaps looking for some sort of approval. Jack made eye contact with him blankly.

  “Uh, sure,” Frank said. He sat down next to Jack, giving him a pleading smile. As if to say: “Please don’t embarrass me in front of your mother.” Or he could have been saying, “Please don’t think of me as a potential father figure.” Jack acknowledged Frank, but paid no mind to his demeanor. His eye was on the waffle maker.

  To Frank, it seemed that hours had gone by before anyone said anything. His eyes darted from the window to the wall to the table, and she slouched back in his chair. In his mind’s eye, he looked to the sealing and imagined being beamed up. “Deer huntin’ season coming up, Jack,” Frank said as he tipped up his coffee mug. Jack blinked, arm crossed. “I don’t hunt.” Frank shuffled his feet. “Why’s that, bud?”

  Thelma, Jack’s mother, interrupted. She snapped her head back from the waffle maker to the uncomfortable men at her kitchen table. “Jack, do you have Speech class today?” Jack simply nodded yes.

  Thelma’s voice pitch raises, as if patronizing a child. “Okay. Can you give your teacher a note for me?” Jack’s brow furrowed a bit. “What note?” Jack asked.

  Thelma smiled a tense, saccharine grin. “Just a ‘Thank You’ note for all the extra time she’s spent with you.”

  Frank stared down at his plate during the conversation. Finally, he looks up, as if he just thought of something to say. “You know, Jack, I had an awful stutter when I was a young boy. You talk real good compared to…”

  Jack cut him off. “I don’t stutter.

  “Oh,” Frank answered, sounding defeated and bewildered. “Jack!” Thelma snapped.

  Frank jumped at the opportunity to prove himself to Jack. “No, it’s okay, Thelma! I know you don’t stutter, Jack. I was just…

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Going to school,” he said, completely deadpan.

  “Have a good day, ‘hon,” Thelma said. “Take it easy, partner,” said Frank.

  Jack ignores them, picks up his backpack, and leaves.

  At the bus stop, he finds his only friends, whom he doesn’t actually care for. There’s Harris, a studios boy with the glasses to match; Petor is an aspiring bodybuilder and fitness model, aged 14. He is a diminutive pocket-sized young man. The type of boy who likes to scrap, but always loses, except when he recounts the story to his friends. The only friend of Jack’s that wasn’t completely insufferable was Santos, Marcia Cruz’s cousin. He was a quiet boy, seemingly disaffected, but nice enough to get fucked over on a regular basis. Jack approached the boys. Santos noticed right away, and waved. Jack vaguely heard from one of the boys, “Who are you waving at, gaywad?” Petor arched his back around Santos to see who was approaching. “Hey,” he said with drawn-out vowels, in his trademark alpha male voice. “Look who it is!” “Hey, Jack,” Harris and Santos said in unison. “Hypnos!” Petor yelped out. “Bright and early, as usual!” “Yup,” Harris said in a monotone voice. “Stay up all night gettin’ in?” Petor asked. Jack looked straight ahead. “Shut up.”

  “You do look tired, bro,” Santos said, sounding concerned. Santos was right. Jack spent the night listening to his mother and Frank having sex. At one point, Jack’s Alice and Wonderland poster – the Tim Burton version, of course – was knocked off of his thin bedroom wall. “What’s up with you?” Petor demanded.

  “Nothing. Why?” Jack perked up slightly. Harris, not listening, looked at his watch. “Fuckin’ bus is late again.”

  The neighborhood bus stop was on a gravel road, a County Highway. It was before a cornfield that was harvested and burned away. As Jack’s friends goofed around, Jack himself looked straight ahead. His eyes glazed over. Jack was silent, eyes gazing across the cornfield, and he saw a figure standing there. It was a boy about his age. Maybe younger. He was wearing a T-shirt his dead brother used to wear. The boy waved. Jack waved back.

  Distracted by a playful punch to the arm from one of his idiot friends, when Jack turned back to greet the boy once again, he was of course vanished.

  Speech therapy was always a peculiar mixed experience. Ms. Luptas had the kind of body from the MILF porn Jack sneakily watched on his iPhone after his shower. But there was also the humiliation of the incessant stuttering in front of Ms. Luptas.

  She was sweet with an angelic voice and breasts to match, and Jack often had fantasies of being twenty years older, and stealing Ms. Luptas from her husband, the philandering deputy Sherriff of Hawthorn, Missouri.

  Sex and humiliation had always intertwined in the drifting time-fluid consciousness of Jack. Whether he was aware of it or not, Youth was not something he considered. As far as Jack was concerned, he was the same age as Ms. Luptas, the Dalai Llama and Marilyn Monroe. Truth be told, he often felt like he transcended person-hood all together.

  Ms. Luptas, who was always late, entered the room with a lively energy, as if she had just been for a brisk job. Jack liked to imagine that she was one of those busy types; the kind of lady whose time was valuable, and she thought Jack worthy of it. “Sorry I’m late!” Ms. Luptas cooed.

  Jack froze. “That’s…that’s good.” His stuttering seemed flip by a switch.

  “Ready to begin?” Ms. Luptas asked. Sunshine pored through her eyes. All Jack could manage was to nod his head. “How is your medication treating you? Is Doctor Ewen helpful to you?” Jack nods.

  Ms. Luptas switched gears. “Let’s start with some word association. We’ll start with the easy ones, as a warm up. Then we’ll get a little more challenging.” “Okay,” Jack said. Great,” said Ms. Luptas. She then grabbed some index cards. She read from them, and spoke slowly. “A pilot drive a…” She looked up at Jack with a smile. “Plane,” Jack said. His tone could have been mistaken for a little boy’s. “Good,” Ms. Luptas
said. She looked at Jack, whose gazed drifted off suddenly. “Are you okay, Jack?” Jack nodded.

  Ms. Lupus saw an opportunity to probe a little more. “Are you a little nervous?” She asked, ever-so-gently.

  Jack nodded again. “It’s…a…it’s a little…” Unable to get the words out, he fans his face to show what he means.

  “A little warm,” Ms. Luptas finished Jack’s sentence.

  “Um, no. Just… like, stuffy.”

  Ms. Luptas reached behond her. She placed a red, palm-sized aluminum fan on the desk. She turned it on. “Here’s a fan for you. Do you want to take a break?” She asked.

  “No, I’m fine.” Jack said.

  “Okay, let’s continue,” Ms. Luptas said.

  Jack doesn’t speak very often, but over the past week, his few words were regarding his younger brother Nathan’s visit. The boys were somewhat surprised, as they had known Jack since kindergarten and had never heard of him speak of a brother, except for brother who died last year. As Harris and Jack walked home from the bus stop, Harris reached for a topic of conversation.

  “So, is your brother coming to stay with you?” He asked, in a tense tone.

  Jack flinched internally. “Um…I don’t know if he’s staying with us. His dad is with him.”

  “Where’s he staying?” Harris asked.

  “I’m not sure. I might not even see him,” Jack said. “I think they’re staying in Springfield, or Lampe.”

  “Man, I haven’t seen that motherfucker in years, dude. Wonder with he looks like now? He look like you?”

  Jack looked down. “Wrong brother.”

  Harris was mortified. “Oh…no, I’m sorry. It’s just that you never talk about them, I forgot…”

  Jack intercepted the rambling. “Nathan. He looks like me a little. I haven’t seen him either, really. Just for a few minutes, here and there.” Harris looks at him, confused. Jack continued: “All I’ve seen are, Just, um…pictures of him on, the um…uh, computer. And sometimes I see him out, but he doesn’t really talk to me.” Their walk became dead silent for a few minutes. As soon as Harris sees Jack’s mobile home – the light at the end of this confining conversational tunnel – he tries once more.

  “How’s your mom doing?” Harris asked.

  Jack barely blinked. “She’s all right, I guess.”

  “She found a man yet?” Harris smirked.

  Jack looked grim. “No.”

  “Still on the prowl, huh?” Harris chuckled nervously. Jack stared daggers. Harris has stopped walking. “We’re here, Hypno!” Jack looked around. “Oh,” he muttered. Awkward pauses were always dips into the abyss with Jack. “Well,” Harris said, “take care man.”

  Jack walked away. “Bye,” he mumbled. Harris watched him walk inside, himself in a sort of trance.

  Most teenagers avoid jobs like the plague. Not Jack. His mother was never one to put her money to good use, and Jack decided at age 16 to take a job at the local 7-11, which because of its poor location, never seemed to do much business.

  Jack sat behind the counter reading a book called The Herodian Messiah, which was written by a local researcher who was featured on a Discovery Channel special about the true ancestry of Jesus Christ. He took a piece of gum from a pack he stole from the store after closing it the night before.

  Beep. The gas station pump.

  Jack cleared his through and gave himself of a moment of concentration, as if he were about to sing opera. In a voice perfect for radio, he said, “Pump one, you’re ready.”

  Jack looked over his shoulder, sensing that someone was in the store. But there was no one. He sat back down.

  Jack stretched, yawned, and sat back down. A shadow in the back of the store caught his eye. Jack walked around the store. He catches the fast-moving shadow float behind the potato chip shelf. Just a grey-black mass, wisking itself away: No sound, and almost transparent, but emanating an energy that required attention. Jack let out a shaky, “Can I help you?” Into the ether, hoping that whoever – or whatever – was in the store would reveal itself. Suddenly he heard an alto voice. “Hypno?” The voice said, an ethereal but human-esque sound. Jack turned around swiftly. It was Nathan. His skin was grey, he was glazy-eyed, and it looked like he needed a bath. “Hey, big brother,” Nathan said.

  “Hey, little brother,” Jack said with his best poker face.

  “Follow me,” Nathan said playfully. He briskly walked behind the shelf, and Jack followed him. He looked up and down the short aisle, and peered around it. Nathan was not there. He became frightened.

  “Nate?” He shouted.

  “Nate?”

  Home was both a soft place to land for Jack, but a painful place. It felt as if ghosts lingered. Jack imagined the ghosts of the trailer park’s murdered drug dealers and hookers floating from trailer to trailer, magnifying the home’s bad energy.

  As Jack watched his mother asleep in the ratty recliner, he observed a military documentary playing on The History Channel. Thelma woke after a few minutes of him standing over her sleeping body, as if she noticed impending danger.

  “How was work?” Thelma said, groggy.

  “It was okay,” Jack said.

  “School go okay?” Thelma asked, seemingly uninterested.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “I didn’t go to history class. I had Ms. Luptas.

  Thelma’s expression hardened a bit. “Yeah, she called.” Thelma scooted over to make room for Jack. “Come sit by me.” Jack sat on the arm of the chair, but Thelma pulled him closer. “It’ll get better babe,” Thelma cooed, stroking Jack’s hair. You’ll grow out of it.”

  Jack looked embarrassed.

  “Wanna watch something else?” Thelma asked. Jack was silent and sullen. “Heard from your dad?” Thelma asked, desperate to get something out of her son.

  Jack, with his trademark distant look, said somewhat harshly, “I saw Nate today at work.” Thelma froze, and her eyes widened. “You saw Nathan again?” Thelma had a look of grave concern.

  “Mmhmm.” “You miss your brother?” Thelma asked with genuine concern in her voice.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  Thelma was trying to get information without seeming like an interrogator, or worse, a therapist. “You just…try no to think about him?”

  Jack blinked. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Thelma got up, and handed Jack the remote control. “Here. Why don’t you watch something else? I’ll make some popcorn.

  Jack doesn’t turn the channel. Instead, he gazes at the black-and-white historical military documentary, not really watching it.

  Thelma popped popcorn in the outdated microwave. Her chin trembles started small, before a cavalcade of silent weeping washed over her face. Even with her back to Jack, he knew she was crying. It didn’t occur to him, for whatever reason, to ask what was wrong. Instead, his eyes dilated, his eyes rolled back, and he fell asleep peacefully.

  He awoke to a creaking bed coming from Thelma’s room. Jack walked down the hollow-walled hallway, but he inexplicably tripped. He looked back to see Nathan with his foot mischievously out. Their eyes met, and the disdain and accusatory feeling Nathan appeared to have filled the room. Thelma let out an especially offensive sexual moan, and Jack reflexively looked forward to see through the crack in Thelma’s bedroom door. He saw two men, one of which was probably Frank, having sex with Thelma in a most unconventional way. He looked back. Nathan was gone.

  Petor could talk Jack into anything. So when Petor said to Jack, “Let’s go to 7-11,” Jack knew that meant a trek to find a five-finger discount. Pushing snack cakes down his pants, Petor gave Jack a stern look. “Well?” He whispered. “I can’t hold all this shit in my pockets by myself.”

  “I don’t have pockets,” Jack said. A frustrated Petor grabbed handful of processed snacks and stuck them down Jack’s pants. Jack resisted.

  Officer Luptas noticed the playful scuffle, and approached the bo
ys. Petor notices. “Oh, hey, Luptas.” Jack muttered a half-hearted, “Hello.”

  Officer Luptas glared disapprovingly. “Let’s cut the horseplay, okay?”

  Jack looked down. “Yes, sir.”

  After the obligatory scolding, Officer Luptas regained his friendly demeanor. “How you boys doin’?”

  “We’re good,” Petor said, anxious for Luptas to leave.

  “Yeah?” Luptas chuckled. “How’s your daddy doin’, Petor?”

  “He’s good. Working a lot.” Petor was tapping his foot by then, which law enforcement typically recognizes as a “tell.” Luptas ignores it.

  “Hey, Jack? Can I talk to you over at the table for a second?” Luptas asked with care, even a tinge of sympathy. Jack looked at Luptas nervously. Petor tried to contain his laughter, thinking Jack was probably in trouble for smuggling the packaged baked goods.

  The two make their way to a corner table, which was covered with crumbs from the fried chicken and donuts sold at the convenience store. Jack sits down, sweating a bit and folding his hands. Luptas smiled at Jack endearingly.

  “Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble.” Jack looks at Luptas, waiting for an explanation. “Okay,” he said.

  “Did you see your mother last night?” Luptas asked, looking serious.

  “Yeah,” Jack said.

  Relief washed over Luptas. “Okay, good.” “Why?” Jack asked.

  “Well, you know my wife is your speech teacher, and…uh…” Luptas shuffles his limbs, searching for the right phrasing. “This is kinda hard, knowing you and your family for so long, so I don’t want you to take offense to my offer.” “What offer?” Jack asked, more puzzled than before. Luptas sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to prepare himself for delivering the news. “I almost had to arrest your mother last night. She got into a spat with her boyfriend…uh, this fella…” Jack rolled his eyes. “Frank. I’m sorry.”