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

Norton.” He keeps his eyes on me for a second then sips from his beer and looks through the windshield at the TV woman behind the counter of the store. “Now I fucked up, it’s true. I didn’t exactly plan this trip over a long period of time.” He turns to look at me. “In fact, it just sort of came with the Grand Marnier.”
    “Then let’s turn around and go back right now.”
    “You know nothing’s ever that easy, kid. I’m surprised at you.”
    “Stop now, McElroy. Man, you don’t even have any money. How are you going to make it in Canada without having to commit another felony there, too?”
    “You don’t understand, Allen. I am through playing life by lesser men’s rules.” He interrupts himself, finishes his beer, tosses the empty onto the backseat, then starts the car and backs out of the lot onto the street. “If we’re goin’ to rob this place, we sure as hell can’t sit in the front of it drinking beer ’til we’re ready.”
    We drive down the road away from the highway and store and gas station. We pass through a neighborhood full of split-level houses that are all lit up with Christmas lights. One’s got a full-sized sleigh and a big plastic reindeer on its snow-covered roof. Inside the sleigh is a stuffed dummy in a Santa Claus suit. Red and green lights outline the whole thing. I see that through my good eye. Then the houses thin out until we’re on a lone stretch of road in the dark. There’s a utility station up ahead on the right, a short square cinderblock building with a tall chain-link fence all around it. My headlights light it up as Elroy pulls off the road and parks around the back alongside a fresh-plowed snowbank. He turns off the engine and lights.
    “It’s snowing, Al. Good sign.”
    “I hadn’t noticed,” I say as I see the tiny white crystals land then skitter over the windshield. “Why’s that a good sign, McElroy?”
    “Snow is a blanket, kid. A cover.” He reaches in the backseat for another beer and I think of the Bowie knife in the lining of his jacket.
    “Don’t you like beer, Alley Oop?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well drink one then. You’re off duty.”
    “No, thank you.”
    “Help you get your nerve up.”
    “For what?”
    “Don’t play dumb with me.”
    “Look, I don’t steal from people, all right?”
    “God damn I can’t believe you really exist, Allen. Nope. I take that back. I
know
you exist. You, and a whole generation like you. Boy, it’s what we deserve, isn’t it?”
    “Who’s we?”
    “Americans.”
    “What do you have against Americans, Elroy? I mean, Jesus, if you don’t like us why don’t you go live someplace else? Like Russia for example.”
    He lowers his beer and looks at me in the dark. “I am goin’ to let you talk to me like that only for the sake of enlightenment: yours. I know that you are looking at a man you have put into a comfortable little pigeonhole: convicted murderer, end of story. But that is not the end of the story, Allen. No, it is not.” He drinks from his beer and I move my fingers back and forth to keep the circulation going. I think of how thick and crooked Elroy’s are, like he has worked with them all his life. I remember the barn in that little oval portrait of his sitting in a garbage bag in the basement of the center, half a state away and so long ago, the words
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typed next to Elroy’s name on the Christmas furlough list. “Where’s your family?” I ask.
    “That chapter is no more, Al. That one is over.”
    He tosses the empty behind me then reaches into my lap and opens the one he dropped there. We are quiet for a while and my eye has gotten used to the dark. When I look at Elroy all I see is my cap above a pale face with smooth features. The collar of his jacket is still flipped up and if you had never heard his voice, you’d swear you were sitting next to a stocky sixteen-year-old kid.
    “I’m sorry about your eye, Allen. I did not mean to close it up like