Read Online The Cage Keeper by André Dubus III - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: André Dubus III
Tags: United States, Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Short Stories (Single Author), United States - Social Life and Customs - 20th Century - Fiction, Manners and Customs
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when I remember the popped lock on the passenger’s side. I walk around the center just in time to see the streetlamp go off on the corner of Tenth Avenue. The dawn sky is vast and gray and what little light there is looks like it might be coming more from the snow on the ground. I walk to the side door and unclip my keys, look through the glass down at the mess hall that is partly lighted from the kitchen. I can barely see the Christmas tree in the corner. I find the right key, work it in the lock, and pull the door open. But the handle is metal, and sticks to my fingers like the bottom of an ice cube tray.
DUCKLING GIRL
In a Salvation Army box in El Cerrito Lorilee Waters dreams her face and head are huge, but they keep growing and growing and are getting so big now that they hurt; she opens her eyes fast like somebody just called her name and when she sees rust streaks on the dark green sheet metal above her, a ray of daylight coming in at the wall near her head, she knows right away where she is and so touches her face, pushes lightly on the puffy part where the bones underneath feel like they are being stung by a bee.
“You dumb ugly bitch. You ugly fucking whore,”
he had kept saying, nothing else, and it had lasted so much longer than the other times, and he never let go. In the dark Lorilee can see the thin white threads of a spider’s web in the corner, then his face, red and more bloated than normal, his eyes all shiny and mean-looking. But Papa was drinking, she thinks, her skin and eyes remembering his fist gripping the hair at the side of her head, jerking on it while he yelled about things Lorilee didn’t understand or even hear when the hot light flashed through her head. Then he kicked her shins and she’d bent her knees to the kitchen floor, had smelled the beer on his favorite shirt that was stretched tight over his big belly. She had said,
“Okay, you can stop now, okay,”
before she had let go of his fist then unzipped his pants, reached in and grabbed that thing that she knew would soon empty itself inside her, would make him loosen his grip on her hair. But then he bent her over the TV and was pushing into the wrong place, cutting into her with his fatty hardness.
Lorilee hears the steel choke and mesh of something big coasting to change gears outside. She pulls the damp-smelling wool coat off of her then licks a sweat drop from her upper lip. He had been asleep when she slowly, so slowly, slid out from under his heavy arm, got off the couch, then walked naked into the bathroom and sat on the toilet. Then she was dressed, and just before she crept through the kitchen then out the door into the night, she had looked down at his sleeping bulk on the couch, had seen in the TV’s flickering blue light the peace in his face, in his closed eyes and slightly opened snoring mouth. And she had felt nothing but that hot stomach-turning hate for the power she knew she would always have but lately could not control.
See. Something bad happens, Lorilee thinks as she crawls over the huge pile of clothes away from the smell of pennies and wet sneakers toward the light. Something always happens. She slides back the metal door then climbs out of the steel box into the brightness of the day, blinking at it. She tastes her spit and wishes for a toothbrush then pulls her long stringy blond hair back out of her face and tucks it behind her ears. And with a sore ache living now in the exact center of her body she walks down San Pablo Street, walks with the sun hot on her head, a queasiness growing in her stomach.
FREEZE LOOKS AT THE plum-purple bruise on Lorilee’s cheek, blue-black around the edges. “Check it out. Who you been playing with?”
“Nobody.” She moves over the front seat and sits beside him. “My dad was mad ’cause I forgot to make his lunch.”
“Can’t fuck with a man’s stomach,” Barry says. He gets in beside her and pulls the door shut, looks down at her big breasts pushing
DUCKLING GIRL
In a Salvation Army box in El Cerrito Lorilee Waters dreams her face and head are huge, but they keep growing and growing and are getting so big now that they hurt; she opens her eyes fast like somebody just called her name and when she sees rust streaks on the dark green sheet metal above her, a ray of daylight coming in at the wall near her head, she knows right away where she is and so touches her face, pushes lightly on the puffy part where the bones underneath feel like they are being stung by a bee.
“You dumb ugly bitch. You ugly fucking whore,”
he had kept saying, nothing else, and it had lasted so much longer than the other times, and he never let go. In the dark Lorilee can see the thin white threads of a spider’s web in the corner, then his face, red and more bloated than normal, his eyes all shiny and mean-looking. But Papa was drinking, she thinks, her skin and eyes remembering his fist gripping the hair at the side of her head, jerking on it while he yelled about things Lorilee didn’t understand or even hear when the hot light flashed through her head. Then he kicked her shins and she’d bent her knees to the kitchen floor, had smelled the beer on his favorite shirt that was stretched tight over his big belly. She had said,
“Okay, you can stop now, okay,”
before she had let go of his fist then unzipped his pants, reached in and grabbed that thing that she knew would soon empty itself inside her, would make him loosen his grip on her hair. But then he bent her over the TV and was pushing into the wrong place, cutting into her with his fatty hardness.
Lorilee hears the steel choke and mesh of something big coasting to change gears outside. She pulls the damp-smelling wool coat off of her then licks a sweat drop from her upper lip. He had been asleep when she slowly, so slowly, slid out from under his heavy arm, got off the couch, then walked naked into the bathroom and sat on the toilet. Then she was dressed, and just before she crept through the kitchen then out the door into the night, she had looked down at his sleeping bulk on the couch, had seen in the TV’s flickering blue light the peace in his face, in his closed eyes and slightly opened snoring mouth. And she had felt nothing but that hot stomach-turning hate for the power she knew she would always have but lately could not control.
See. Something bad happens, Lorilee thinks as she crawls over the huge pile of clothes away from the smell of pennies and wet sneakers toward the light. Something always happens. She slides back the metal door then climbs out of the steel box into the brightness of the day, blinking at it. She tastes her spit and wishes for a toothbrush then pulls her long stringy blond hair back out of her face and tucks it behind her ears. And with a sore ache living now in the exact center of her body she walks down San Pablo Street, walks with the sun hot on her head, a queasiness growing in her stomach.
FREEZE LOOKS AT THE plum-purple bruise on Lorilee’s cheek, blue-black around the edges. “Check it out. Who you been playing with?”
“Nobody.” She moves over the front seat and sits beside him. “My dad was mad ’cause I forgot to make his lunch.”
“Can’t fuck with a man’s stomach,” Barry says. He gets in beside her and pulls the door shut, looks down at her big breasts pushing
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