Boys in Gilded Cages

by Jarod Powell

  I personally don’t know how he could go through with fucking all those old scabs and pervs with him being glassed, I think I’d want to slow it down; go the opposite direction and eat a xanie or something. People would see him come in with nasty out-of-town women, and sometimes regulars, and sometimes he’d show up alone and leave with them.

  He didn’t care who saw him, really, but if he got with a dude it would have to be done in private, and was really dangerous because even hustlers get fag bashed even if they’re not gay. I don’t really know where they met or how they met. There are parks in nearby towns. I guess they met there. Though I know for a fact he got with guys he already knew. Not many people know that high school teachers were sometimes regular customers.

  Mr. Black was fucking scary. He, out of every speed freak in town, made it the most obvious. He’d wander the county roads with no shirt, hairy paunch drooping from a hunched back. He couldn’t handle his shit and had to be thrown out of the gas station several times. Then, the next morning at school he’d always have it together, and teach us about Shakespeare with slicked-back hair and droopy hawk eyes, his mind a tin-can interrogation room from one of those melodramatic cop shows, if you fucked up. I don’t know how he and Daryl hooked up, can’t imagine how it went down or how Black even broached the subject. The idea is crazy to me. Money’s money, and everything starts with an idea.

  The only thing I can think of, is that Daryl always liked to write really terrible poetry. He’d come over, eyes fiery and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, scribbling something on a piece of paper. “You think that would get me an A in Black’s class?” He’d say. I always said yes. Mr. Black never assigned poetry homework.

  I never spied on Daryl, but Marcia Cruz did with her buddies. How I found out Black was Daryl’s customer was that Marcia found him going in and out of his house at night. Crazy ass bitch probably held up binoculars and everything. But anyway I believed her and asked Daryl about it. He got defensive but he admitted it. I don’t know exactly what he was buying besides dope, if anything. I don’t really want to know. But I probably know.

  The night Black OD’d, Daryl stayed almost the whole night until Marcia went to bed at 1a.m. We don’t know when he left, but he probably watched Black die. The fucked up part was that Black’s kid was visiting and watching TeeVee the whole time.

  So for like the millionth time that month, the cops came to the McAdams residence. And for like the millionth time that month, no charges were filed. It was close though. Daryl was a “person of interest” according to the news. They never mentioned his name but, who else would it be?

  This is what I’m trying to convey through all these stories. This is a good example. Everyone’s got a task. Everyone is tasked with some form of sabotage. Maybe not sabotage, but a means to an end. I don’t know exactly, but if the town dies and everyone is an emotional slave or zombie in the process, so be it. I don’t think that They are trying to kill us, but if we don’t pass the test, we could die.

  Daryl was a victim, but Daryl was just getting initiated. Now he’s one of them, and carries on with the experiment. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?

  I think Hawthorn is in twilight. It has wild, gray hair, and a bulb on the end of its nose with disgusting spider veins, like an old man who has seen too much. The weight is bearing down and, while not taking part, Hawthorn has acquiesced. This shit about Hawthorn doesn't really scare me, though, as I consider myself a pretty formidable opponent. I don’t want to save Hawthorn. Nothing can really save it. We’re far too stupid. I just want you to know. You, out in left field. You, in the city. You people with educations. You people with intuition. Just, everyone. I hope you listen.

  So anyway, of course people talked. They knew Black was a dead man for a while, but now there was a visible ripple in the pond. Everyone had to acknowledge the death and acknowledge how it happened. Newscasters talked about it. School administrators were interviewed. Since Mr. Black was an absentee member of Hawthorn Baptist Church, St. Louis and Kansas City media were all over it, then national media for a hot minute.

  Hawthorn Baptist Church had gained a nationwide reputation as a watered-down version of the infamous church in Kansas, which was mostly referred to as a cult. The difference between the two churches was that Daddy Redmond hated too much attention, because it had been demonstrated that a lot of attention brought no new members to the church in Kansas—it was proven to not be a smart move to court so much attention for such an inflammatory ideology, and it was his goal to capture the town’s respect, as well as its tithes. Hawthorn was to be a compound of mystical money. It was to be an indestructible ivory tower. If the world is laughing at him, that would make it difficult to maintain what he saw as his reign over Hawthorn.

  It had to be addressed, and that’s the only reason the people of Hawthorn expressed worry. People judged Daryl amongst themselves, but did not dare outwardly betray the tradition of quiet respect for the McAdams bloodline.

  As the media was yelling itself into a two-day fever, Hawthorn Baptist insisted on holding a small private funeral for Jonathon Black. Black's paper-pale corpse laid in the morgue while his family argued with Daddy Redmond.

  I think Dad wanted to keep the milk clean. If he relented about Black’s funeral, then the outside world has won. And more importantly, everyone watched the world win.

  In the end, Daddy Redmond did relent over to Black’s family. They were angry, and, Dad thought, litigious. No more news coverage. And that was the end of that.

  Daryl dropped off the face of the earth for a while. He disappeared even longer than when his own mother died. He didn’t return phone calls, not even when he knew he could sell something. When I did see him, he looked like he did when his heart stopped at school. He owned his paleness, and his stinky clothes. His eyes went skyward and stayed there to avoid eye-contact at school. People still approached him, but with caution. He ruled quietly over our spirit, but kept his feet below him while his intermediate body of light crept upwards. Daryl was on the edge. He could have jumped to another realm at any moment.

  Marcia somehow got my number and called me, knowing I was becoming a little obsessed with Daryl as she was. She wanted to have sex with him, whereas I looked at him more and more like a wise old man and attached him to episodic memories. She and her minions found a letter Daryl wrote to Black and then threw it away. She said she found it after he had died. I did not believe that Daryl would be so stupid as to throw something away when Marcia Cruz was around to find it, but I let her read it.

  Dear Black: I didn’t know you for that long, but you have become the archetype. I will be you one day, whether I like it or not. You are legend, just as I am legend among my dumbass classmates. You point to light, and you stall with the animals. You were not very nice to me, but neither has any dude in my life been, so far. You’ve got some nerve doing that much dope when I told you not to. You’ve got me in a mess, and I’m split now. Even more split than I was before. You can fuck off. You’ve got me fucked up.

  Love Daryl McAdams

  It was not atonement he sought, and he was not looking for a father in Mr. Black. It was solidarity he was after. It was the validation that he was more than a messenger, more than a drug pusher and more than a prostitute. Mr. Black was not an illiterate native of Hawthorn. He knew big words that Daryl wanted to know. Mr. Black had knowledge and age and he didn’t have to fake it. Daryl was taught that in dealing, he was helping people feel good, that people would never leave this town, and better to die dumb and numb than feel ordinary and victimized. But he always doubted this.

  Daryl learned that there are no immortal people. Mr. Black couldn’t handle his dope. He was too dumb to live through much of anything. He was much dumber than Daryl McAdams, as it turned out. Daryl didn’t lend his knowledge of survival. He’s no teacher, and he’s no healer.

  III.

  CAR WASH

  Every Sunday, the Hansens take a joy ride through Southeast Mi
ssouri. Sometimes they’ll cross the bridge into Illinois if the talking head on the radio catches Jim’s ear, or if the comfortable silence between them is broken by random banter.

  Conversation between them rarely springs from anything substantial, such as the death of Judy’s mother in 1991. On the day that the news was broken via telephone conversation, Jim spent half of the day fumbling his hand around, caressing an inconsolable Judy’s shoulder blade until she wished it would just dissolve so he wouldn’t touch it. He just didn’t know what to say.

  She briefly recollects the droll ache of that day every time the avocado rotary sends its angry clang through the Hansen house, infiltrating the silence they’ve gotten so accustomed to, insisting on reminding them that bad news is always waiting, adjacent to the front door.

  No, the conversation Between Jim and Judy Hansen seems to exist only faintly, and out of necessity. Married couples don’t have to touch each other, but they do have to live together and they should speak to each other. Were that to happen, Jim’s military background would force that the issue be addressed.

  As their rapport sits stagnant, Jim takes the many empty moments to reflect favorably on his past with his wife and children and service to his country. In truth, he is satisfied that his years of obligatory productivity are behind him, content with the pleasantness of doing nothing, happy to be retired, fat and well rested. Meanwhile, Judy’s discomfort with the present intensifies.

  “Look at that goofy thing.” Jim points to a plywood raccoon poking out of a giant plastic trash can, a homemade lawn ornament. “I kinda like it.”

  “It’s silly,” Judy burbles. “And ugly.”

  Silence, as they cross the bridge into East Cape Girardeau.

  The satellite radio gets suddenly louder after Jim is seen fumbling with the steering wheel. There is an advice talk show on, featuring a now-famous local “doctor,” a woman who sounds sweet and blonde and thin, and who has a penchant for saying obnoxious, and in Judy’s opinion, anti-women remarks with a small dose of relationship advice on the side. This is the type of bitch Jim wishes he’d married, Judy thought.

  The emptiness of McClure brought sweet interference to the conservative tart on the radio. Judy fantasized about one of the big, butch young ladies from Evergreen, her Alma Mater, literally stuffing a sock in her mouth. The blips and abrupt pauses were vain cries of protest.

  Since The Death, Judy had actually manifested a desire to “please her man,” not unlike the advice the radio-accredited doctor would give to countless self-loathing women throughout her tenure on Clear Channel syndication, and then Conservative Talk 98 on the satellite radio: The meat-centric Sunday dinners with Jim’s disgusting brothers and their zombie-like wives, the countless pairs of lingerie (which, Judy realized after her latest Spring cleaning, either resembled Pilgrim or Angel Halloween costumes, a realization that unsettled her deeply). All of this was meant, probably subconsciously, to jar some kind of reaction to The Death other than clumsy groping or desperate glances, and by extension, to make Jim view their marriage as more than an obligation to tradition, to manhood. To make him--somehow, by speaking his language--view Judy as a full-time partner with psychic energy, dimension, and a libido. The acknowledgment of her failure to shake Jim was a long journey of strained energy, resisting defeat the main goal, and it was corrosive as it should have been.

  Everything was expected, and each step down the drain a natural progression.

  Highway 13 between McClure and Anna is a long tunnel of trees, and light is occasionally reached where a Wal-Mart or Dairy Queen is visible behind several local businesses, and Judy is no longer alone with Jim and the silence isn’t as awkward for her.

  In the light, the daze Judy imposed on herself five miles earlier relents. She considers asking Jim questions, questions one might ask on a third date. Everything she knows about Jim she learned through a combination of sleuthing, supernatural cues and amateur psychology. She knows he’s a Capricorn; she also knows that as a Scorpio, she and Jim are not a match.

  (That is, depending on which astrology e-mail spam she takes to. The results are all moderately varied, but none of them have gushing things to say about their future, or their present. Had she known this prior to marriage, it wouldn’t have changed things, but it might have given her a slight, comforting education. An inkling.)

  She adopted a psychiatrist’s or maybe a mentalist’s persona when speaking to Jim’s mother and brothers, or at least she persuaded herself that she did. When his mother spoke of Jim in casually glowing terms, Judy decided that she was not only trying to convince Judy, she was trying to convince herself, and probably Jesus too.

  There was not a lot of background information to sift through, and Judy decided that either her gift of intuition was not as sharp as she’d led herself to believe, or there was simply nothing underneath her husband’s projecting, dull eyes.

  That’s it. She had given up. Jim, Judy’s partner and husband and father of her stillborn children, is a body at motion with no soul, just circuitry.

  As they reached Carbondale, Jim’s old stomping ground, Judy opened her window and pressed her face into the wind as if she were a curious and anxious Bassett Hound. Jim shot her a perplexed glance that she gleefully ignored. She was savoring their final moments together. She was psyching herself up for months of agony and mourning. She was allowing herself to go nuts, to look unmedicated and undignified. A sneak peak, perhaps, or maybe she was testing the water to see if being her own woman was something she’d be able to sustain forever.

  “Roll up your window,” Jim grumbled, unmoved by Judy’s whimsy. “Irrigation’s coming up about a mile.”

  “No.”

  “You’ll ruin the interior.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Jim, not knowing how to react, said nothing, but shook his head. The irrigation came, and when it did, he jerked the transmission to park. He looked straight ahead. This is how it’s going to be, Lady. Act like you have some sense or get wet.

  The drops fell really hard, feeling almost like hail on Judy’s head. Her streamlined silver bob turning black, she leaned back for a second, smiling. Jim sat in silent protest, hoping that a stone face would put emphasis on the sheer ridiculousness of Judy’s behavior. Judy opened the door and got out as the irrigation made its way past the car and onto the tall crop of corn. She ran to chase the water, though her hips were tight, and forced a girlish laugh the world had never heard from her. Jim just glared at the drops of water, forming a puddle on the leather upholstery beside him; the vandalism of Judy’s mood swing would probably warp the seat a little bit. Ten spill-free years at Sonic Drive-Ins, willfully discarded at the whim of a post-menopausal wife.

  Judy spun around and around under the water. She opened her mouth to catch it. When it gagged her, she laughed. She sat in the 3 foot corn.

  “Judy!”

  “JUDY!”

  She was out of Jim’s sight, and he started to realize she may not come back to the car for several minutes. He was thankful they were not near their home, their local VFW, their church. He was not worried so much as annoyed. Judy did not crackup; she showed off. She made statements.

  Jim honked the horn. He waited several seconds for a deranged, soaking woman to rise from the crops. Judy’s response was a ridiculing cackle.

  Knowing she could hear it, he turned the ignition on and revved, as if to signal he’d be leaving soon, with or without her.

  She slowly stood, wafting her face above the corn as if she was playing peek-a-boo. He thought she might levitate above it.

  Instead, she strutted over to the driver’s side. The irrigation followed her, as if magnetized. She looked Jim in the eye through the window, smirking. “Would you like to join me?” She asked.

  “What is the matter with you?” Jim snapped. “Get in this car right now.” Judy motioned for Jim to roll down the window. Instead, Jim shifted to drive with a shaky right hand, glaring at her.

  Judy stepp
ed backward and shrugged. “Go on if you want!” She yelled from across the road. “I’ll be okay.”

  Jim stayed in the car until Judy was ready to leave, which would turn out to be over an hour. He flipped channels between several talk radio personalities, including the sexy blonde doctor Judy hated so much. Finally he settled on an FM station, with old faux-psychedelic pop music Judy may have approved of had she been sitting there with him. He turned up the volume as he sat, watching his dignified, reserved wife crack up, dancing in the irrigation. Subconsciously, as one of Judy’s old college mates might describe it, Jim may have been trying to lure her back to him with music. His own words would fail. He knew these were probably their final moments together. He cranked the volume on the classic rock station all the way up, rolled down the windows, and plugged his ears. He hoped she heard it, and that it soothed her.