Read Online The Cage Keeper by André Dubus III - Free Book Online Page A

streetlights are almost blue in this town, and as I pass the park on my left, I look at the way that light looks natural when cast upon the snow. Muddy River Johnson died in that park, and I think how Elroy’s and Muddy River’s gear share the same space in the basement at the center; but Johnson’s dead and Elroy is lying in a hospital in Wyoming with three .38-caliber holes in him. I pass The Rhino, then the mall and Rocky Mountain Bank on my right. I see the green glimmer of the electric-eye alarm system cast over the floor of the bank’s lobby. When I get to Broadway I stop, put on my indicator, then take a left up the street. My heart flutters a second in my chest, stops, then flutters again. I feel very strange. Not tired really, but past tired, not fully in my body. At the top of the hill, a dairy truck is pulled up to the side of Pau-Pau’s Variety Store. The driver is wearing a hat and gloves and a thick-looking coat and is unloading full milk crates into the light of the store. He doesn’t notice me or my Monte Carlo as I turn right and drive past him onto University down through fraternity row. Over the roofs of the big houses are the white rise and dip of the foothills. I look in the direction of the French restaurant but only see the steep icy face of Dead Goat Ridge.
    I turn into the alley in the back of the center, park behind Wilson’s motorcycle, turn off my engine and lights, and just sit here. There’s the faint buzzing of someone’s alarm clock going off. I look out my windshield up at the darkened windows of the men’s wing and see one of them wide open: Buck’s. I imagine his three-hundred-and-thirty-two-pound body waking up to piss and wash, then dress and put on his forty-pound custom made Satan’s Siblings leather jacket that he keeps draped over a chair beneath the window. I think of Bill Paxton’s snoring face doing subtle brain damage to Glenn Peters and Russ Haywood. And I imagine Maggie Nickerson waking up then walking to the women’s rest room with her blue sleeping cap pulled tightly over her scalp, her old face still puffy with sleep. I think of these people and I wish Leon was working now. Then after I finished writing my report, he and I could go down to the Montview Hotel for breakfast, order blueberry pancakes and syrup with three eggs over easy and two double orders of bacon with lots of hot coffee. We’d sit and eat, and in between bites I’d tell him all about my night with Elroy. Leon’s face would get very serious and he’d stop chewing when I’d tell him about Elroy’s son. Then he’d shake his head and tell me I’d better go home and rest and put ice over my eye. We leave the waitress a big tip, then walk to our separate cars and make plans to get together for a few beers at The Rhino later on. I would get into my Monte Carlo and leave Boulder heading east towards Denver and my apartment, electric blanket, and bed. I would be driving, wired as all hell, but I would see Elroy looking over that shimmering stretch of concrete to the air-conditioned Officers’ Quarters for his wife, then turning to see his son’s coffin coming at him then being dumped into his pickup truck like a load of bricks, then him going after the kid and the clipboard sergeant grabbing Elroy from behind, and Elroy slamming the guy’s head against concrete until he was dead and Elroy wasn’t just Elroy anymore, but a murderer.
    When the EMTs strapped him into the gurney I opened my left eye, sticky burn or not, and looked down at his face. His eyes were closed and his cheeks were the color of oatmeal. There was a big spot of blood coming through the sheet near his neck, and even his eyebrows looked a little less bushy, but I knew he wasn’t slipping away; he was simply being silent. Like when he sleeps, and cries. He was lying low when vulnerable, not about to let another creature hear him then get him in the night.
    I get out of my car and close the door. I start to lock it but then stop