Keepers (25 page)

I stood there pondering meteorologic conundrums for a few more seconds, anything to not step in and hear that door clunk shut. If I’d followed baseball, I might have reviewed stats for the season. I could have counted the freckles on the back of my hand. Or recited all the lyrics to “American Pie” until the Chevy reached the levy only to find it dry.

“Do it, you fucking coward,” I whispered. Three seconds later I stood on the other side, listening to the door clunk shut behind me. The sound reverberated with the same cold, metallic finality a lifer must hear every night when the prison bars electronically screech into their magnetized locks.

Once the door has been closed
,
the animal cannot be retrieved from outside
.

I was in a dim corridor whose sides were delineated by a string of ankle-level safety lights that stretched its entire length, then bent around a corner roughly a hundred feet away. The walls on either side were vaguely familiar. I could see the boards that had been used as forms for the concrete because several of them had warped before the concrete had set properly; they looked like ghosts trapped in the walls, stuck forever between this world and the one they came from and now wished they had never tried to leave.

Where had I seen this before?

It didn’t matter. I had to find Beth. She was in here somewhere, she
had
to be, there was nowhere else she could have gone, so I followed the lights until I took the corner and slammed my shin against something left haphazardly in the middle of the floor.

A wheelchair.

I bent over to rub my leg and saw the bright bumper sticker attached to the back of the chair:
I Accelerate for Fuzzy Bunnies.

I thought of
The Waltons
with the sound muted, of a handmade quilt neatly folded at the foot of a bed, of a book of poetry and some lines from Browning and faded photographs on a wall and—

—and knew why I’d recognized the cat.

I wondered if Miss Acceleration’s file was one of those lying on the floor beside Mabel’s bed, and if Whitey’s was among them, as well.

The dial clicked, another set of tumblers fell into place, and I moved on.

The air back here was slightly warmer but much more damp and smelled of a farm: wet straw, urine and feces, moist fur...but there were other, more disparate smells mixed among them: freshly-laundered sheets, antiseptics, talcum or baby powder (I couldn’t tell which), and an eye-watering assortment of medicinal odors—cough syrup, rubbing alcohol, iodine, Mercurochrome, gauze and bandages. I assumed this was the area used for ministering to animals that were ill or hurt at the time they were dropped off.

Except there were no animal sounds: no dogs barking, no cats hissing, no birds chirping or pigs snorting, nothing. Even this late at night there should have been a
few
animals awake and making their discomfort or hunger known, but the only sounds I could detect were the hum of a hidden generator, the steady exhalation of the air-conditioning, and my own footsteps. I was so anxious about the silence I failed to notice the metal lip rising out of the floor ahead of me and tripped on the damn thing.

Stepping up and grabbing the rail to regain my balance, I discovered that this section of floor was raised and covered in a long strip of rubber tread; the railing extended the rest of its length on both sides; an automated walkway, one of those moving sidewalks used at malls and airports. To the left was a large red button with which to activate the motor.

I chose to move under my own power; the lack of noise might be disturbing, but at least it didn’t betray my presence.

As soon as I took my first step a light blinked on to my right and a dog leapt at me. I cried out and jumped to the other side of the walkway, lost my balance, and landed on my knees. Crossing my arms across my face, I took a deep breath and readied myself for the thing to sink its teeth into my arm.

Nothing happened.

I looked up and saw that the light was from a twelve-inch television screen and the dog nothing more than an image from a home movie.

Screens activated by my weight on the tread lined the walls on both sides, displaying videos and photographs of dogs, cats, birds, horses, and countless other animals, all underscored by soft music piped through unseen speakers. It took a moment, but I at last recognized the music as Aaron Copland’s
Appalachian Spring Suite
.

I stood up and continued moving down the walkway, looking from one side to the other as the show continued.

Each video or photo of an animal was displayed for perhaps ten seconds before cross-fading into a video or photograph of a person, then the person’s image cross-faded into a photo or tape of someone else, and this someone else cross-faded into another animal. Once the sequence played through, the screen went black and the words
To Be Loved
appeared before everything started again. The screens on the left ran through a similar sequence, only this began with a person, went to an animal, then another animal before coming back to a person, ending with the words
To Have A Place
.

I came to the end of the walkway and stepped down to the floor.

I stood before a set of large swinging metal doors. Over the entrance was a bronze plaque with the words
There Is A Reason In Nature For Something To Exist Rather Than Not
. I stared at the words for a few moments before pushing open the doors to reveal a long hallway with more concrete walls, lighted intermittently with bare bulbs cradled in bell-shaped wire cages dangling from the ceiling. This, too, was familiar, but I couldn’t place why or from where. Back here the smell of a farmyard was just as potent, but stronger still were scents distinctly, unmistakably human: sweat and strong body odor unsuccessfully masked by perfumes and after-shaves.

Aware of barred doors on either side up ahead, I moved forward and caught a glimpse of a framed painting hanging on the wall to my right: René Magritte’s
L’homme Au Chapeau Melon
. Written on a square placard underneath it were the words
To Be Human
. On the wall across from it hung an exact duplicate of the painting, only this time a small light trained on it from above highlighted the dove in front of the man’s face; the placard underneath this had a simple one-word statement on it:
Or?

I could still hear the richness of Copland’s masterpiece through unseen speakers; the sound quality grew clearer and fuller the farther down the corridor I moved.

On the left was a large cage with an ox standing inside. It was skin and bones and covered in whip scars, some of them so fresh they were still seeping. Its eyes were milky red and its lolling tongue yellow. It stood on trembling legs streaked with dried liquid shit that had squittered from its diseased bowels, not making a sound, turning its head toward me as if asking for help. Its scalp had been peeled away to reveal the skull, a series of red Xs decorating the surface.

Something large, wide, and unpleasant-smelling lay sleeping in the shadows of the cage across from the ox. I stepped over to see if I could get a better look at it, then decided I didn’t want to know.

Each cage was separated from its neighbor by about two feet of wall space, and in the center of that space was another twelve-inch monitor displaying the same bizarre series of home movies I’d seen in the corridor. I wondered if whoever had designed this area thought the animals would understand what they were seeing.

The next cage—cell, cubby, whatever, like it makes a difference—was empty, but the one directly across from it was occupied by Miss Acceleration.

The sight of her in that cage hit the “pause” button on my entire somatic nervous system; I couldn’t have moved at that moment if someone had been emptying an AK-47 at my head.

The monitor next to her cage showed the image of a dog jumping around for no other reason than it was happy to be outside in the sunshine.

She was sitting in well-stuffed leather easy chair with her handmade quilt spread across her lap and covering her legs. She held a small book in her hands and was gently rocking forward and back, forward and back, forward and back, her faced pinched with intense concentration, as if remaining still would bring some terrible curse from Heaven down upon her head. The framed photographs from her room at the nursing home decorated the wall behind her.

I gripped the bars and tried to open the door but it seemed welded in place.

She looked up at me, smiled, and said: “It’s all right. Everything’s all right now. Yes.” Forward and back, forward and back.

“Do you know where you are?”

“I’m home,” she said, her voice cracking on the second word as if it were the most beautiful thing she’d ever spoken. “I mean, I’ll be going there soon.”

I started to speak again and then remembered the new security measures at the nursing home. Was I being watched? Was I on-camera this moment? I hadn’t noticed any when I entered.

I checked now and could see nothing, but just because I couldn’t see any cameras didn’t mean they weren’t there; and if there were cameras, there were microphones, as well. But if I were being watched, if they knew I was trespassing, why hadn’t any of them shown up to get me?

“Listen,” I said to Miss Acceleration, “I’ve got to find somebody, and as soon as I do, we’re going to get you out of here. Do you understand?”

“Is it time for my programs yet? I do so hate to miss them.” Forward and back, forward and back, staring at me. “Are you my son?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? You look like him.”

“I’m sure.”

“It doesn’t matter. Everything’s all right now. I’ll be there soon.” And with that, she closed her eyes and continued rocking.

If you saw her out in the world she would have been just another old woman, the type who usually holds up the line in a grocery store or is waiting for a bus that’s always running late and wants to strike up a conversation in the meantime; one of those meticulous old gals who knows and cares about the exact type of gift you’re supposed to give on a particular anniversary, who has so many interesting stories to tell but no one to listen to them because you don’t want to bother with a dry, old, used-up little bit of carbon whose hands are arthritic claws covered in liver spots and grotesque, plump purple veins. You would have looked at her and seen only another humorously annoying old woman counting out exact change as if it were a holy chore assigned to her from above, and you wouldn’t have stopped to think that underneath this monumental punchline of dying cells, wrinkled skin, astigmatised eyes, and fading memories there existed someone who’d always been, but now was rarely seen as, a real human being, one with hurts and hopes and lonely places in their life they filled as best they could by standing in the line at the grocery store, or chatting with strangers at bus stops, or endlessly bending the driver’s ear while counting out exact change. You would never see her as ever having been in love, or dancing with her favorite beau to music from the Glenn Miller Orchestra, young and vibrant, with a laugh that rang like crystal and a long, promising, full life ahead of her. You would never wonder or care if she often cried alone at night, or how many times she’d offered her heart only to have it crushed and spat upon, or if her children—if she had any—remembered to call her on the weekend or visit at Christmas. Maybe there was a Great Love who lay slumbering in some graveyard and she was the only person who took the time to replace the wilting flowers with fresh blossoms—you might have imagined that, maybe, and then smiled at the sad, sentimental absurdity of this image from a fairy tale:
There once was an old woman who lived in the past where someday all of us will be
.

At that moment I wanted to know everything about her and her life, every detail no matter how extraneous or trivial. I did not want to walk away from her because she might be gone when I came back; they collected them fast around here.

A sound a few yards down startled me and I looked in its direction.

Someone had coughed.

“Don’t worry,” I said to Miss Acceleration. “I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

She continued chatting as I walked away: “I think being a bunny would be nice, don’t you? A big, round, fluffy, grey bunny with great floppy ears. Yes, I think a bunny would be
so
nice....”

I blinked back something clouding my eyes, swallowed against something vile roiling up from my stomach into my throat, wiped some more blood from my hands onto the sides of my pants, and found the next occupied cage.

Behind these bars a little boy with massive facial deformities lay on a cot, his lower body covered by a sheet. From the ceiling there extended down a pencil-thick cable that spread out at the bottom like the wires inside an umbrella, each one attached to one of the matchbox-sized rectangles implanted in his skull. The skin of his exposed scalp was crusty and red where it fused with the metal. His jerked underneath the sheet as if in the midst of a seizure, arms and legs twitching as the silver matchboxes sparked and faded in a precisely-timed sequence. His eyes were held closed by two heavy strips of medical tape; and fresh, glistening stitches formed a “W” across his face from temples to cheeks, meeting above the bridge of his nose. A clear plastic tube ran from one of his nostrils into a large glass jar set on a metal table beside the cot; with each jerk, dark viscous liquid crawled through the tube and oozed into the jar. With each sequence of sparks he bit down hard on his lower lip, breaking the skin and dribbling blood down the side of his face. His skin was red and glistened with sweat and every time he convulsed, jerking back his head, I saw the pinkish-white scar across his neck.

...
when there’s this many, they cut out their vocal cords
....

I kept moving, movement was good, movement reinforced the illusion of an assured destination and a guaranteed way out once you reached it and I needed to believe that I was going to get out of this.

I passed beaten, bandaged dogs of every shape and size, kittens and cats who had been kicked nearly into pulp or whose fur had been doused in gasoline and set aflame; they lay still, taking shallow breaths as tubes fed them both oxygen and liquid protein and—I hoped—painkillers galore.