Boys in Gilded Cages (22 page)

The Thursday before her bachelorette party,
Daryl approached her desk after class, asking to be tutored.

“
There are fliers in the
office and library for that,” she said, ignoring his piercing eyes
on her chest. He touched her shoulder, and it felt like a serpent
crawling up to her ear.

“
I just feel like I need
to learn from someone more experienced,” he cooed. When he becomes
older, she thought to herself, boy, are we both going to feel
ridiculous. She dismissed him, though she wanted to take him home,
make him bathe and eat, and teach him about the world outside
Hawthorn, should a person ever escape.

The inside of the Cue ‘n Brew was clean.
There were streamers borrowed from the church basement, and a big
glittery “Congratulations” sign over the bar.

There was a young man in the corner, taping
up a fallen streamer. She didn’t know who it was at first, but then
she realized it was Daryl in clean clothes. There were her
colleagues sitting at tables across the bar, chatting amongst
themselves—the pretty blonde Home Economics teacher, with her
knockoff Gucci bag from near the airport. She was chatting politely
with the school secretary, which also happened to be Danforth’s
cousin. All women, of course, except for Daryl.

It took the women a minute to notice
Danforth, but when they did, they cheered and squealed to welcome
her. Daryl hopped off the ladder, strutted over to Danforth, and
extended his arms as if to give a stiff hug. “Congratulations,” he
said. “Your freedom ends soon. Enjoy the night.” She thought this a
peculiar thing to say.

Esmeralda embraced Danforth, already drunk.
“Heeey! Congratulations, honey!”

“
What is Daryl McAdams
doing here?” This slipped out before she remembered to say thank
you. Esmeralda winked, and turned to everyone. “She’s here! Let’s
all get fucked up.”

Daryl was the first to go. He leaned over
the jukebox all night, chain-smoking and playing every Tom Waits
and Hank Williams song contained within, more than once.

After the gifts were exchanged, everyone
seemed to be itching to leave, including Danforth. Daryl took shot
after shot. Esmeralda offered him more, but he said “nope, can’t
have whiskey-dick tonight.” Home Ec and Esmeralda both squealed and
looked at him lustfully.

Daryl sat on a stool, away from the exiting
herd. He flicked his lighter, staring at the flame. Danforth picked
up her gifts, and Daryl offered to help her. “Can I get a ride?” he
asked at her car, eyes glazed and voice raspier than usual.

“
I’ll give you a ride!”
Esmeralda chimed in. “Get in.”

Danforth got home, and tossed her gifts in
the newspaper box her grandfather made.

In bed, she saw headlights in her driveway.
She heard a car door slam and tires squeal.

Someone knocked on the door.

Danforth, irritated, got up to check through
her window. Daryl sat outside the glass door, knees to chest and
smoking a cigarette. She cracked the door open. “What are you doing
here, Daryl?”

“
Esmeralda’s drunk ass
took me here.”

Daryl sat at Danforth’s kitchen table,
squinting at the lights harshly violating his eyes. Danforth made
him coffee, which he chugged, and snorted dust off knuckles. She
ignored it.

“
What do you want to do
now?” He asked, sheepish.

“
What do you have in
mind?” Danforth asked with surprising assertiveness.

“
I’ve already been paid,
and I’ve got the whole night.”

Danforth lost her nerve and looked down at
her mug.

“
I’m down for whatever,”
Daryl said to fill the silence.

“
I’m going to finish off
the season of Golden Girls. You’re welcome to join me in the living
room.”

You should have seen Daryl’s face.

But he did join her, flicking his lighter
all laid back in the plush recliner.

“
Bored yet?” Danforth
said.

“
I don’t get
bored.”

“
No?”

“
No.” Then all of the
sudden, “are you a virgin?”

“
What?”

“
You heard me.”

“
Are you?”

“
You’re kidding,
right?”

“
I don’t make
assumptions.”

“
Yes you do.”

“
No, I don’t.”

“
Yes. Know how I
know?”

“
Know if I’m a virgin, or
know that I make assumptions?”

“
That you make
assumptions.”

“
How?”

“
You don’t smile. You
always look pissed.”

“
Maybe I’m not assuming.
Maybe I’m scowling at things that actually happened.”

“
Or things that you
predict will happen.”

“
Perhaps. But always based
on what history tells me.”

“
Whatever. Judge
not.”

“
You’re quoting the
Bible.”

“
Yeah.
Surprised?”

Danforth was silent.

“
So what do you know about
me?”

“
I know you should pay
attention in class more often.”

“
You look at me like you
know something you don’t like.”

“
I don’t know
anything.”

“
Do you think I killed Jon
Black?”

“
Gossip.”

“
Is it true? Is it true
gossip?”

Silence.

“
You don’t make
assumptions.”

Danforth looked him in the eye for the first
time. He was starting to cry. He rubbed his face and looked down,
staring at his lap. He slumped over, like someone had pulled the
trigger on him.

“
You could change, you
know. You’ll graduate. You could get out of here.” Danforth acted
like she understood why he was crying. She really didn’t think she
understood.

“
This is the only thing I
know how to do.”

“
You’re a very bright boy.
You’re too young to give up.”

He moved deeper into his slouch, and took a
couple of deep breaths. His body started to vibrate, and he fell
into the floor, just as he did in Danforth’s class. He curled up
into the fetal position, and his thumb edged up into his mouth.
Daryl shook violently.

She understood for the first time that this
was not involuntary. He was conscious.

Danforth was taking her own advice. She was
escaping her universe’s perception of her. For Daryl, there was
pretty much no escape dramatic enough to work.

She watched him shake until he got tired,
and he melted into deep sleep.




MAYDAY



To escape the morning heat
blasting through the window, he hung his body into the open cab of
the refrigerator. His brown knuckles anchored over the top of the
freezer, his eyes closed. His paunchy torso bent forward, as if he
had given up the ghost and was mistakenly being drawn toward the
friendlier light inside the refrigerator. The tetrafluoroethane
penetrated his boxer shorts. This was bluntly painful, but kept him
from completely wilting and became a familiar sensation after a few
seconds.

He did not sleep the night before because
the head of the household caught him in the act. Panicked, he ran
home. He thought the old man would come for him—either alone, or
with his friends.

Anyone’s house is easy to find in a small
town. His home was especially marked, as he was the only black man
to stay in that trailer park past Vietnam.

His morning meditation--awkwardly leaning
into the refrigerator dazed and numb--was an unplanned pose between
struggled sleep and a psychic augury, and when the angry beating on
the door started moments later, he did not respond.

He mockingly welcomed them into his home. He
let them come in with bruised hands and swollen knuckles.

He became okay with what would happen. In
the midst of his demise, he sought oblivion. He opened his eyes and
fixed them on the refrigerator light until the spots took up his
whole vision. He saw nothing and felt nothing, and once he was
completely blinded, shut his eyes tight so that no light could pass
through.

He imagined where his own body might be
found later on, and tried to send the images in signals to his
mother back in Mississippi. He took one more moment to fantasize
about the old white men’s mug shots on the local news. They were
red-faced and scrunched and wrinkled and constipated, aligned in a
chart and captioned by their Christian names.

He opened his eyes when the trailer door
swung open. The husbands were breathing like cattle and were tense.
He could only smile.

He turned around to face them. They assessed
him with a collective look of physical arousal. Until they met, he
figured that they didn’t want to kill him, but they were forced by
an obligation to protect their property, or maybe Caucasian peer
pressure. He liked to think they wouldn’t enjoy it.

As they approached him he considered talking
his way out of it. Instead he stared up at the ceiling as if to
tell them to get it over with, and it was over quickly. Even he
thought so.

When they found his bones in an old silo, no
one was able to identify them.



HOUSE FIRE



Whereas Daryl McAdams sold
the shit but grabbed hold of his soul before it shot out, Kenneth
McAdams was just your typical bagwhore. As far as dope fiends go,
he was the weakest piece of shit in the world because he couldn’t
handle it. He zipped it on up his nose one time and motherfucker
was hooked. He was born with a taste for it.

When Daryl and Kenneth’s mom died, both boys
went nuts in different ways. It was talked about that maybe Daddy
Redmond was their father, as Dad was caught several times with
whores and that’s what everybody thought of the McAdams boys: Sons
of a whore. Toby, who they knew as their dad, didn’t know what to
do with Kenneth once he set the family dog on fire. That was way
before their mom bought the farm.

Toby married Darlene back in 1981. She
worked the pole at Cathy’s Cabaret over in Cape Girardeau, and they
met while Toby was in blowing off some steam with the other boys he
worked with installing feed tracks in chicken houses. Toby was a
doofus, and he didn’t know that when they fucked that night, she
thought of it as another turned trick. He proposed to her the next
morning, and since Darlene wanted to quit the biz, she
half-heartedly accepted. They were married two weeks later on the
condition that Darlene quit stripping.

They made their way into Hawthorn, and
joined Daddy Redmond’s church promptly, because you really don’t
live in Hawthorn and not be active in church. Nine months after the
house note was signed, she squeezed out Daryl and Kenneth,
identical twin boys.

Kenneth would scream and cry and curl up and
stop breathing; Daryl would stare into the abyss and make baby
sounds.

Before Kenneth could talk or walk or even
crawl, he knew about colors and shapes. “Point to the diamond,”
they’d say, and he’d point to his mama’s ring. “Where’s your eye?”
He’d point to his eye and squint the other one out of reflex. So
everybody said he was a genius, but he was really just too open for
his own good. When you’re that smart, you’re too sensitive. When
you’re older, you’re expected to dull that shit down, because
you’ll never survive otherwise.

Kenneth’s brain just shattered at some
point, and he’d get violent—so violent, that no babysitter in
Hawthorn could contain him. No punishment went unpunished. So he
was sent away at age 13, around the time Daryl started his hustling
biz.

He was sent to Darlene’s sister, and her
family’s home. There were three kids: Dani, the middle sibbling and
only girl, Toby, the oldest one (named after the man who got
Darlene off the pole), and Trent, the youngest.

Kenneth arrived, and was silent for two
weeks. It seemed to be a silent protest. At the dinner table, he
was asked something, and he said nothing. Lloyd, the father, was
often on third shift and was hardly there, otherwise he might have
backhanded Kenneth for being so rude. He didn’t know the half of
it.

The first time Kenneth said anything, it was
to 10-year-old Trent.

“
I watched you sleep last
night.”

“
Nuh-uh.”

“
Yeah. You snore loud. I
could have taken a pillow to your face.”

“
Why?”

“
To kill you,
Dummy.”

Trent started crying. When Dani overheard
and asked why, Kenneth stomped on her foot.

It didn’t take long before Sally noticed her
bags were light, and her meds were going missing. Kenneth was
obviously snorting her shit, but knowing his back-story, she never
confronted him about it. She let it go on, and soon they were
sharing openly. They’d stay up, night after night, and Kenneth
would sometimes go missing for days while Sally slept. He’d come
back with something heavy and wallop Toby with it, while Trent and
Dani watched and screamed.

Lloyd got off third shift eventually, and
that’s when the trouble really began.

At dinner one night, Kenneth, all spun out,
showed up to the table in Lloyd’s hunting gear and sunglasses.

“
Boy, what are you
wearing?”

“
It’s mine now. You were
gone too long.”