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Authors: Jarod Powell

Tags: #meth addiction, #rural missouri, #rural culture, #visionary and metaphysical fiction, #mental illness and depression

Boys in Gilded Cages (17 page)

BOOK: Boys in Gilded Cages
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It had to be addressed, and that’s the only
reason the people of Hawthorn expressed worry. People judged Daryl
amongst themselves, but did not dare outwardly betray the tradition
of quiet respect for the McAdams bloodline.

 

As the media was yelling itself into a
two-day fever, Hawthorn Baptist insisted on holding a small private
funeral for Jonathon Black. Black's paper-pale corpse laid in the
morgue while his family argued with Daddy Redmond.

 

I think Dad wanted to keep the milk clean.
If he relented about Black’s funeral, then the outside world has
won. And more importantly, everyone watched the world win.

 

In the end, Daddy Redmond did relent over to
Black’s family. They were angry, and, Dad thought, litigious. No
more news coverage. And that was the end of that.

 

Daryl dropped off the face of the earth for
a while. He disappeared even longer than when his own mother died.
He didn’t return phone calls, not even when he knew he could sell
something. When I did see him, he looked like he did when his heart
stopped at school. He owned his paleness, and his stinky clothes.
His eyes went skyward and stayed there to avoid eye-contact at
school. People still approached him, but with caution. He ruled
quietly over our spirit, but kept his feet below him while his
intermediate body of light crept upwards. Daryl was on the edge. He
could have jumped to another realm at any moment.

 

Marcia somehow got my number and called me,
knowing I was becoming a little obsessed with Daryl as she was. She
wanted to have sex with him, whereas I looked at him more and more
like a wise old man and attached him to episodic memories. She and
her minions found a letter Daryl wrote to Black and then threw it
away. She said she found it after he had died. I did not believe
that Daryl would be so stupid as to throw something away when
Marcia Cruz was around to find it, but I let her read it.

Dear Black:
I didn’t know you for that long,
but you have become the archetype. I will be you one day, whether I
like it or not. 
You are legend, just as I am legend among my
dumbass classmates. You point to light, and you stall with the
animals. 
You were not very nice to me, but neither has any dude in
my life been, so far. You’ve got some nerve doing that much dope
when I told you not to. You’ve got me in a mess, and I’m split now.
Even more split than I was before. You can fuck off. You’ve got me
fucked up.

Love
Daryl McAdams

It was not atonement he sought, and he was
not looking for a father in Mr. Black. It was solidarity he was
after. It was the validation that he was more than a messenger,
more than a drug pusher and more than a prostitute. Mr. Black was
not an illiterate native of Hawthorn. He knew big words that Daryl
wanted to know. Mr. Black had knowledge and age and he didn’t have
to fake it. Daryl was taught that in dealing, he was helping people
feel good, that people would never leave this town, and better to
die dumb and numb than feel ordinary and victimized. But he always
doubted this.

Daryl learned that there are no immortal
people. Mr. Black couldn’t handle his dope. He was too dumb to live
through much of anything. He was much dumber than Daryl McAdams, as
it turned out. Daryl didn’t lend his knowledge of survival. He’s no
teacher, and he’s no healer.




III.


CAR WASH

Every Sunday, the Hansens take a joy ride
through Southeast Missouri. Sometimes they’ll cross the bridge into
Illinois if the talking head on the radio catches Jim’s ear, or if
the comfortable silence between them is broken by random
banter.

Conversation between them rarely springs
from anything substantial, such as the death of Judy’s mother in
1991. On the day that the news was broken via telephone
conversation, Jim spent half of the day fumbling his hand around,
caressing an inconsolable Judy’s shoulder blade until she wished it
would just dissolve so he wouldn’t touch it. He just didn’t know
what to say.

She briefly recollects the droll ache of
that day every time the avocado rotary sends its angry clang
through the Hansen house, infiltrating the silence they’ve gotten
so accustomed to, insisting on reminding them that bad news is
always waiting, adjacent to the front door.

No, the conversation Between Jim and Judy
Hansen seems to exist only faintly, and out of necessity. Married
couples don’t have to touch each other, but they do have to live
together and they should speak to each other. Were that to happen,
Jim’s military background would force that the issue be
addressed.

As their rapport sits stagnant, Jim takes
the many empty moments to reflect favorably on his past with his
wife and children and service to his country. In truth, he is
satisfied that his years of obligatory productivity are behind him,
content with the pleasantness of doing nothing, happy to be
retired, fat and well rested. Meanwhile, Judy’s discomfort with the
present intensifies.


Look at that goofy thing.”
Jim points to a plywood raccoon poking out of a giant plastic trash
can, a homemade lawn ornament. “I kinda like it.”


It’s silly,” Judy burbles.
“And ugly.”

Silence, as they cross the bridge into East
Cape Girardeau.

The satellite radio gets
suddenly louder after Jim is seen fumbling with the steering wheel.
There is an advice talk show on, featuring a now-famous local
“doctor,” a woman who sounds sweet and blonde and thin, and who has
a penchant for saying obnoxious, and in Judy’s opinion, anti-women
remarks with a small dose of relationship advice on the
side.
This is the type of bitch Jim wishes
he’d married
, Judy thought.

The emptiness of McClure brought sweet
interference to the conservative tart on the radio. Judy fantasized
about one of the big, butch young ladies from Evergreen, her Alma
Mater, literally stuffing a sock in her mouth. The blips and abrupt
pauses were vain cries of protest.

Since The Death, Judy had actually
manifested a desire to “please her man,” not unlike the advice the
radio-accredited doctor would give to countless self-loathing women
throughout her tenure on Clear Channel syndication, and then
Conservative Talk 98 on the satellite radio: The meat-centric
Sunday dinners with Jim’s disgusting brothers and their zombie-like
wives, the countless pairs of lingerie (which, Judy realized after
her latest Spring cleaning, either resembled Pilgrim or Angel
Halloween costumes, a realization that unsettled her deeply). All
of this was meant, probably subconsciously, to jar some kind of
reaction to The Death other than clumsy groping or desperate
glances, and by extension, to make Jim view their marriage as more
than an obligation to tradition, to manhood. To make him--somehow,
by speaking his language--view Judy as a full-time partner with
psychic energy, dimension, and a libido. The acknowledgment of her
failure to shake Jim was a long journey of strained energy,
resisting defeat the main goal, and it was corrosive as it should
have been.

Everything was expected, and each step down
the drain a natural progression.

Highway 13 between McClure and Anna is a
long tunnel of trees, and light is occasionally reached where a
Wal-Mart or Dairy Queen is visible behind several local businesses,
and Judy is no longer alone with Jim and the silence isn’t as
awkward for her.

In the light, the daze Judy imposed on
herself five miles earlier relents. She considers asking Jim
questions, questions one might ask on a third date. Everything she
knows about Jim she learned through a combination of sleuthing,
supernatural cues and amateur psychology. She knows he’s a
Capricorn; she also knows that as a Scorpio, she and Jim are not a
match.

(That is, depending on which astrology
e-mail spam she takes to. The results are all moderately varied,
but none of them have gushing things to say about their future, or
their present. Had she known this prior to marriage, it wouldn’t
have changed things, but it might have given her a slight,
comforting education. An inkling.)

She adopted a psychiatrist’s or maybe a
mentalist’s persona when speaking to Jim’s mother and brothers, or
at least she persuaded herself that she did. When his mother spoke
of Jim in casually glowing terms, Judy decided that she was not
only trying to convince Judy, she was trying to convince herself,
and probably Jesus too.

There was not a lot of background
information to sift through, and Judy decided that either her gift
of intuition was not as sharp as she’d led herself to believe, or
there was simply nothing underneath her husband’s projecting, dull
eyes.

That’s it. She had given up. Jim, Judy’s
partner and husband and father of her stillborn children, is a body
at motion with no soul, just circuitry.

As they reached Carbondale, Jim’s old
stomping ground, Judy opened her window and pressed her face into
the wind as if she were a curious and anxious Bassett Hound. Jim
shot her a perplexed glance that she gleefully ignored. She was
savoring their final moments together. She was psyching herself up
for months of agony and mourning. She was allowing herself to go
nuts, to look unmedicated and undignified. A sneak peak, perhaps,
or maybe she was testing the water to see if being her own woman
was something she’d be able to sustain forever.


Roll up your window,” Jim
grumbled, unmoved by Judy’s whimsy. “Irrigation’s coming up about a
mile.”


No.”


You’ll ruin the
interior.”


I don’t care.”

Jim, not knowing how to
react, said nothing, but shook his head. The irrigation came, and
when it did, he jerked the transmission to park. He looked straight
ahead.
This is how it’s going to be, Lady.
Act like you have some sense or get wet.

The drops fell really hard, feeling almost
like hail on Judy’s head. Her streamlined silver bob turning black,
she leaned back for a second, smiling. Jim sat in silent protest,
hoping that a stone face would put emphasis on the sheer
ridiculousness of Judy’s behavior. Judy opened the door and got out
as the irrigation made its way past the car and onto the tall crop
of corn. She ran to chase the water, though her hips were tight,
and forced a girlish laugh the world had never heard from her. Jim
just glared at the drops of water, forming a puddle on the leather
upholstery beside him; the vandalism of Judy’s mood swing would
probably warp the seat a little bit. Ten spill-free years at Sonic
Drive-Ins, willfully discarded at the whim of a post-menopausal
wife.

Judy spun around and around under the water.
She opened her mouth to catch it. When it gagged her, she laughed.
She sat in the 3 foot corn.


Judy!”


JUDY!”

She was out of Jim’s sight, and he started
to realize she may not come back to the car for several minutes. He
was thankful they were not near their home, their local VFW, their
church. He was not worried so much as annoyed. Judy did not
crackup; she showed off. She made statements.

Jim honked the horn. He waited several
seconds for a deranged, soaking woman to rise from the crops.
Judy’s response was a ridiculing cackle.

Knowing she could hear it, he turned the
ignition on and revved, as if to signal he’d be leaving soon, with
or without her.

She slowly stood, wafting her face above the
corn as if she was playing peek-a-boo. He thought she might
levitate above it.

Instead, she strutted over to the driver’s
side. The irrigation followed her, as if magnetized. She looked Jim
in the eye through the window, smirking. “Would you like to join
me?” She asked.


What is the matter with
you?” Jim snapped. “Get in this car right now.” Judy motioned for
Jim to roll down the window. Instead, Jim shifted to drive with a
shaky right hand, glaring at her.

Judy stepped backward and shrugged. “Go on
if you want!” She yelled from across the road. “I’ll be okay.”

Jim stayed in the car until Judy was ready
to leave, which would turn out to be over an hour. He flipped
channels between several talk radio personalities, including the
sexy blonde doctor Judy hated so much. Finally he settled on an FM
station, with old faux-psychedelic pop music Judy may have approved
of had she been sitting there with him. He turned up the volume as
he sat, watching his dignified, reserved wife crack up, dancing in
the irrigation. Subconsciously, as one of Judy’s old college mates
might describe it, Jim may have been trying to lure her back to him
with music. His own words would fail. He knew these were probably
their final moments together. He cranked the volume on the classic
rock station all the way up, rolled down the windows, and plugged
his ears. He hoped she heard it, and that it soothed her.


INHERITANCE
Daryl McAdams is a
legend.

When you’re seventeen, the bar for legend is
set pretty low. The base for everything is romance, and every
living creature is coated with the weird blue glow of that romantic
ambiance. Every action of your peers is interpreted, somehow,
someway, as sexual. The charisma of the object of your lust is
greatly exaggerated, and every gesture towards you or towards
anything, really, is a direct call for you to get naked. Though,
this never crosses your mind. You wouldn’t want to cheapen it with
petty human wants. No, it’s much deeper, much more profound.

In the tunnel vision of a child, these
objects obscure the glow on the other side. Even when they’re alive
and well, they die fantastically: A leap off the Victorian balcony.
A stage dive from the foot of the orchestra. Sinking into the
quicksand of an ethereally lit wheat field. An icon or a symbol,
translated by you, and only by you.

BOOK: Boys in Gilded Cages
7.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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