Boys in Gilded Cages

by Jarod Powell

  Esmeralda giggled and propped her head on her chubby fist. “Want more?” She batted her eyes. Danforth wanted to vomit.

  “Miss Raymond, you’re trying to get me drunk! You’ll have to carry me home, if you keep it up.”

  “You’re a big boy, Daryl. You can handle it.”

  At school the next day, Danforth avoided both Daryl and Esmeralda, but the latter had her radar on.

  Over lunch, the two women talked about Danforth’s bachelorette party.

  Danforth was never one for a party, and wanted to keep it simple. In fact, she wanted to have it in the rec center at Hawthorn Baptist. Esmeralda laughed at her.

  “We’re having it at the Cue ‘n Brew”, she said. “Billy Joe won’t care. Or we could go with my original idea…”

  “We are not having my bachelorette party at the strip club in Springfield. Jim would call of the wedding.”

  “You should call off the wedding.”

  For the next few days, Danforth noticed that Daryl McAdams was a more attentive student. During lecture, he eyed her—analyzing something, with a look of focused, clinical objectivity. It would have creeped her, if it wasn’t so curious.

  For a moment, she wondered if she had fucked up by allowing Daryl to sit at their table, drinking. But she knew, as did everyone, what Daryl did, and when she thought about how many people—sitting in the bar, on that night alone—had been his client, she realized that truly nobody gave a shit about Daryl, or Danforth herself. Daryl was more or less a slave, and Danforth invisible. She remembered that everyone in Hawthorn had a role to play. Who cares, she realized.

  The Thursday before her bachelorette party, Daryl approached her desk after class, asking to be tutored.

  “There are fliers in the office and library for that,” she said, ignoring his piercing eyes on her chest. He touched her shoulder, and it felt like a serpent crawling up to her ear.

  “I just feel like I need to learn from someone more experienced,” he cooed. When he becomes older, she thought to herself, boy, are we both going to feel ridiculous. She dismissed him, though she wanted to take him home, make him bathe and eat, and teach him about the world outside Hawthorn, should a person ever escape.

  The inside of the Cue ‘n Brew was clean. There were streamers borrowed from the church basement, and a big glittery “Congratulations” sign over the bar.

  There was a young man in the corner, taping up a fallen streamer. She didn’t know who it was at first, but then she realized it was Daryl in clean clothes. There were her colleagues sitting at tables across the bar, chatting amongst themselves—the pretty blonde Home Economics teacher, with her knockoff Gucci bag from near the airport. She was chatting politely with the school secretary, which also happened to be Danforth’s cousin. All women, of course, except for Daryl.

  It took the women a minute to notice Danforth, but when they did, they cheered and squealed to welcome her. Daryl hopped off the ladder, strutted over to Danforth, and extended his arms as if to give a stiff hug. “Congratulations,” he said. “Your freedom ends soon. Enjoy the night.” She thought this a peculiar thing to say.

  Esmeralda embraced Danforth, already drunk. “Heeey! Congratulations, honey!”

  “What is Daryl McAdams doing here?” This slipped out before she remembered to say thank you. Esmeralda winked, and turned to everyone. “She’s here! Let’s all get fucked up.”

  Daryl was the first to go. He leaned over the jukebox all night, chain-smoking and playing every Tom Waits and Hank Williams song contained within, more than once.

  After the gifts were exchanged, everyone seemed to be itching to leave, including Danforth. Daryl took shot after shot. Esmeralda offered him more, but he said “nope, can’t have whiskey-dick tonight.” Home Ec and Esmeralda both squealed and looked at him lustfully.

  Daryl sat on a stool, away from the exiting herd. He flicked his lighter, staring at the flame. Danforth picked up her gifts, and Daryl offered to help her. “Can I get a ride?” he asked at her car, eyes glazed and voice raspier than usual.

  “I’ll give you a ride!” Esmeralda chimed in. “Get in.”

  Danforth got home, and tossed her gifts in the newspaper box her grandfather made.

  In bed, she saw headlights in her driveway. She heard a car door slam and tires squeal.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Danforth, irritated, got up to check through her window. Daryl sat outside the glass door, knees to chest and smoking a cigarette. She cracked the door open. “What are you doing here, Daryl?”

  “Esmeralda’s drunk ass took me here.”

  Daryl sat at Danforth’s kitchen table, squinting at the lights harshly violating his eyes. Danforth made him coffee, which he chugged, and snorted dust off knuckles. She ignored it.

  “What do you want to do now?” He asked, sheepish.

  “What do you have in mind?” Danforth asked with surprising assertiveness.

  “I’ve already been paid, and I’ve got the whole night.”

  Danforth lost her nerve and looked down at her mug.

  “I’m down for whatever,” Daryl said to fill the silence.

  “I’m going to finish off the season of Golden Girls. You’re welcome to join me in the living room.”

  You should have seen Daryl’s face.

  But he did join her, flicking his lighter all laid back in the plush recliner.

  “Bored yet?” Danforth said.

  “I don’t get bored.”

  “No?”

  “No.” Then all of the sudden, “are you a virgin?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Are you?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I don’t make assumptions.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes. Know how I know?”

  “Know if I’m a virgin, or know that I make assumptions?”

  “That you make assumptions.”

  “How?”

  “You don’t smile. You always look pissed.”

  “Maybe I’m not assuming. Maybe I’m scowling at things that actually happened.”

  “Or things that you predict will happen.”

  “Perhaps. But always based on what history tells me.”

  “Whatever. Judge not.”

  “You’re quoting the Bible.”

  “Yeah. Surprised?”

  Danforth was silent.

  “So what do you know about me?”

  “I know you should pay attention in class more often.”

  “You look at me like you know something you don’t like.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Do you think I killed Jon Black?”

  “Gossip.”

  “Is it true? Is it true gossip?”

  Silence.

  “You don’t make assumptions.”

  Danforth looked him in the eye for the first time. He was starting to cry. He rubbed his face and looked down, staring at his lap. He slumped over, like someone had pulled the trigger on him.

  “You could change, you know. You’ll graduate. You could get out of here.” Danforth acted like she understood why he was crying. She really didn’t think she understood.

  “This is the only thing I know how to do.”

  “You’re a very bright boy. You’re too young to give up.”

  He moved deeper into his slouch, and took a couple of deep breaths. His body started to vibrate, and he fell into the floor, just as he did in Danforth’s class. He curled up into the fetal position, and his thumb edged up into his mouth. Daryl shook violently.

  She understood for the first time that this was not involuntary. He was conscious.

  Danforth was taking her own advice. She was escaping her universe’s perception of her. For Daryl, there was pretty much no escape dramatic enough to work.

  She watched him shake until he got tired, and he melted into deep sleep.

  MAYDAY
/>   To escape the morning heat blasting through the window, he hung his body into the open cab of the refrigerator. His brown knuckles anchored over the top of the freezer, his eyes closed. His paunchy torso bent forward, as if he had given up the ghost and was mistakenly being drawn toward the friendlier light inside the refrigerator. The tetrafluoroethane penetrated his boxer shorts. This was bluntly painful, but kept him from completely wilting and became a familiar sensation after a few seconds.

  He did not sleep the night before because the head of the household caught him in the act. Panicked, he ran home. He thought the old man would come for him—either alone, or with his friends.

  Anyone’s house is easy to find in a small town. His home was especially marked, as he was the only black man to stay in that trailer park past Vietnam.

  His morning meditation--awkwardly leaning into the refrigerator dazed and numb--was an unplanned pose between struggled sleep and a psychic augury, and when the angry beating on the door started moments later, he did not respond.

  He mockingly welcomed them into his home. He let them come in with bruised hands and swollen knuckles.

  He became okay with what would happen. In the midst of his demise, he sought oblivion. He opened his eyes and fixed them on the refrigerator light until the spots took up his whole vision. He saw nothing and felt nothing, and once he was completely blinded, shut his eyes tight so that no light could pass through.

  He imagined where his own body might be found later on, and tried to send the images in signals to his mother back in Mississippi. He took one more moment to fantasize about the old white men’s mug shots on the local news. They were red-faced and scrunched and wrinkled and constipated, aligned in a chart and captioned by their Christian names.

  He opened his eyes when the trailer door swung open. The husbands were breathing like cattle and were tense. He could only smile.

  He turned around to face them. They assessed him with a collective look of physical arousal. Until they met, he figured that they didn’t want to kill him, but they were forced by an obligation to protect their property, or maybe Caucasian peer pressure. He liked to think they wouldn’t enjoy it.

  As they approached him he considered talking his way out of it. Instead he stared up at the ceiling as if to tell them to get it over with, and it was over quickly. Even he thought so.

  When they found his bones in an old silo, no one was able to identify them.

  HOUSE FIRE

  Whereas Daryl McAdams sold the shit but grabbed hold of his soul before it shot out, Kenneth McAdams was just your typical bagwhore. As far as dope fiends go, he was the weakest piece of shit in the world because he couldn’t handle it. He zipped it on up his nose one time and motherfucker was hooked. He was born with a taste for it.

  When Daryl and Kenneth’s mom died, both boys went nuts in different ways. It was talked about that maybe Daddy Redmond was their father, as Dad was caught several times with whores and that’s what everybody thought of the McAdams boys: Sons of a whore. Toby, who they knew as their dad, didn’t know what to do with Kenneth once he set the family dog on fire. That was way before their mom bought the farm.

  Toby married Darlene back in 1981. She worked the pole at Cathy’s Cabaret over in Cape Girardeau, and they met while Toby was in blowing off some steam with the other boys he worked with installing feed tracks in chicken houses. Toby was a doofus, and he didn’t know that when they fucked that night, she thought of it as another turned trick. He proposed to her the next morning, and since Darlene wanted to quit the biz, she half-heartedly accepted. They were married two weeks later on the condition that Darlene quit stripping.

  They made their way into Hawthorn, and joined Daddy Redmond’s church promptly, because you really don’t live in Hawthorn and not be active in church. Nine months after the house note was signed, she squeezed out Daryl and Kenneth, identical twin boys.

  Kenneth would scream and cry and curl up and stop breathing; Daryl would stare into the abyss and make baby sounds.

  Before Kenneth could talk or walk or even crawl, he knew about colors and shapes. “Point to the diamond,” they’d say, and he’d point to his mama’s ring. “Where’s your eye?” He’d point to his eye and squint the other one out of reflex. So everybody said he was a genius, but he was really just too open for his own good. When you’re that smart, you’re too sensitive. When you’re older, you’re expected to dull that shit down, because you’ll never survive otherwise.

  Kenneth’s brain just shattered at some point, and he’d get violent—so violent, that no babysitter in Hawthorn could contain him. No punishment went unpunished. So he was sent away at age 13, around the time Daryl started his hustling biz.

  He was sent to Darlene’s sister, and her family’s home. There were three kids: Dani, the middle sibbling and only girl, Toby, the oldest one (named after the man who got Darlene off the pole), and Trent, the youngest.

  Kenneth arrived, and was silent for two weeks. It seemed to be a silent protest. At the dinner table, he was asked something, and he said nothing. Lloyd, the father, was often on third shift and was hardly there, otherwise he might have backhanded Kenneth for being so rude. He didn’t know the half of it.

  The first time Kenneth said anything, it was to 10-year-old Trent.

  “I watched you sleep last night.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Yeah. You snore loud. I could have taken a pillow to your face.”

  “Why?”

  “To kill you, Dummy.”

  Trent started crying. When Dani overheard and asked why, Kenneth stomped on her foot.

  It didn’t take long before Sally noticed her bags were light, and her meds were going missing. Kenneth was obviously snorting her shit, but knowing his back-story, she never confronted him about it. She let it go on, and soon they were sharing openly. They’d stay up, night after night, and Kenneth would sometimes go missing for days while Sally slept. He’d come back with something heavy and wallop Toby with it, while Trent and Dani watched and screamed.

  Lloyd got off third shift eventually, and that’s when the trouble really began.

  At dinner one night, Kenneth, all spun out, showed up to the table in Lloyd’s hunting gear and sunglasses.

  “Boy, what are you wearing?”

  “It’s mine now. You were gone too long.”

  “Take that shit off and stay out of my closet.”

  Kenneth calmly reached into his pocket and pulled out a switchblade knife. “Eat your dinner, Fam, and then afterwards I’m going to kill you and pile your bodies up.”

  Lloyd laughed, lunged across the table and pinned Kenneth to the wall. “What was that, boy? You’re gonna do what?”

  “I’m gonna kill…” Lloyd spit in his face.

  “You’re gonna do what?”

  “I’m gonna kill…” Lloyd kneed Kenneth in the groin. Then he slammed Kenneth’s face into the table. Kenneth bounced off and landed on the floor.

  “You’re gonna get up, wipe the blood off your face, and eat this nice dinner your aunt has prepared, is what you’re gonna do,” Lloyd said. “Then, you’re gonna take that shit off, and if you behave, there might be a clean pair of drawers waiting on you after your shower, you fucking glass dick-sucker.” Kenneth did as he was told.

  The next morning, Kenneth awoke to Lloyd and the family at the table, doing the morning routine. Sally smoking her cigarette, and the kids eating cereal while Lloyd read the paper over bacon and eggs.

  “Morning, everybody!” Kenneth said.

  “Morning,” Sally said. There was a silence in the room that was usually there, but made weird by Kenneth’s presence.

  “You know, Lloyd,” Kenneth said, “One time, my old man didn’t give me what I wanted, and his wheels came off as he was driving. Almost died.” Lloyd did not look up from his paper.

  “You better hope I die, if that ever happens,” Lloyd said. He knew Kenneth hadn’t messed with the tires, because Kenneth had passed out and was checked
up on several times during the night.

  On his way to work, Lloyd almost crashed into a ditch. The lug nuts had been loosened.

  Lloyd beat the shit of Kenneth when he got home. Kenneth then beat the shit out of Trent the next morning, for no particular reason.

  Sally walked in on the boys, and hit Kenneth in the back of the head with a greasy frying pan from that morning.

  “You done fucked up, bitch,” Kenneth said. He casually walked to the kitchen, and the family was preparing to exit on foot, as Lloyd had the car. He came back with a huge kitchen knife. “I wasn’t playing when I said your bodies will be piled up,” he said.

  It was Kenneth vs. the family, as he tried taking swipes at them, dodging and jumping on furniture to avoid being slashed. Dani approached Kenneth as he cornered Sally, and knocked him out cold with a frying pan.

  It was at this time the children planned Kenneth’s exit.

  Dani, a plump-faced, blond 8-year-old girl suggested that Trent use the gun he had been keeping under his pillow since Kenneth moved in. Toby suggested they crush a bunch of xanax and put it in Kenneth’s Kool-Aid. They talked a lot, but mostly they just had to wait for the right opportunity.

  Kenneth was gone for over a week, and they thought they were rid of him, until Trent peeked out the bay window to find Lloyd pistol-whipping Kenneth against the tree. Kenneth was bawling, and Lloyd didn’t care.

  Kenneth came in, nose broken again, sobbing quietly. “I have a concussion,” he said. Sally said, “I think Kenneth needs to go to the hospital.” Lloyd scoffed.