The Cage Keeper (2 page)

I’m in Paxton’s room now. He shares it with one other guy usually, but tonight, because we are full these days, there are three in here. I’m standing in the middle of the room and have my flashlight pointed at the mountain of meat that is Big Bill Paxton. He weighs two hundred and ninety-five pounds and is black. He is the largest guy in the house next to Buck, and I am staring at him because I can’t believe that even a body the size of his can be making the incredible sounds I am hearing snortle out of his sleeping face. I’m beginning to feel bad about turning down Raoul’s radio; this is worse. I look over at Glenn Peters and Russ Haywood sleeping in the bunk. Glenn’s on top. He’s got his body to the wall with his pillow pulled over his head. Russ is sleeping on his back in the bottom bunk. He’s got a fresh tattoo on his chest. I can’t see the detail of it now, but he showed it to me yesterday. Buck did it for him. I don’t know what he charged and I’m surprised Russ’s counselor let him do it. Buck did it right in the middle of his chest. It’s a big green snake with a dragon’s head breathing out red and purple fire. Over it, just under Russ’s throat, it says, FUCK OFF, in blue letters. Under it is written: AND DIE. When Russ showed it to me yesterday he looked like he had just been told he could go home or something. He said: “Hey, Al, this is it, right? I mean, ain’t this fucking
it?
” Russ is ten years older than I am, and he looks it too, with his black moustache and goatee, his hairy forearms; but he’s not playing with a full deck at all. I look down at the dark patch of ink on his sleeping chest, shake my head, then mark off names and leave the room.

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 Geographic
s, 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.