Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

Yes, I was an asshole. It’s taken all these years of being without her for that to finally sink in.

I looked in the rear-view mirror, saw the lone waving ribbon from the shrine, and felt a brief sting of regret—but for what, I wasn’t sure.

“Baba O’Riley” segued into Grand Funk’s “I’m Your Captain”, and I turned up the volume, forcing myself to not think about the way Dianne detested this song.

The next shrine popped up as suddenly as a slice of bread from a toaster. This one was of the heart-shaped variety, but that isn’t what startled me. It was the sight of the face in the center. It blinked at me. And then smiled.

A sharp movement on the right of the shrine flashed against the windshield and I hit the brakes, thinking that some animal was about to make a mad dash for safety across the road, but instead of a raccoon or cat, what emerged from the side of the shrine was a hand, then a wrist, and then the face in the middle glided upward, leaving a blank space in the center—

—and the girl who was setting up the shrine waved at me.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and waved back at her, easing off the brake but not yet speeding up again.

Pushing back some of her long strawberry-blonde hair from her face, she looked at me, then at the shrine, and then shrugged, her smile looking more and more like that of a child who’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t have been. Her clothing was dark—way too dark to be safe at this time of night, in this location.

Checking the dashboard clock, I saw that it was almost two in the morning, and there was no other car in sight. Had she walked here from whatever town lay at the end of the ramp? Why do this in the middle of the night when there was the chance someone might not see you until it was too late? And what the hell was I doing, sitting here wondering about this when I needed to be moving?

That’s when it hit me that she wasn’t trying to erect the shrine, she was trying to take it down, and I‘d surprised her. This was probably some kind of sorority prank—she couldn’t have been more than nineteen—and the look on her face told me that she was embarrassed but not necessarily sorry.

I looked at her, then the shrine, shook my head in disgust, and drove away.

She came out into the middle of the road and stood watching until I rounded the curve that emptied out into the town proper. I half expected her to give me the finger—after all, I’d been the one who had the nerve to interrupt her little practical joke—but she only stood there, arms at her sides, staring at my tail-lights.

Something about her shape seemed off to me, but I couldn’t pin it down, and then decided I didn’t care.

The second after I crested a small hill and she disappeared from view, I saw the stack of memorial wreaths, crosses, and hearts. They were piled up to the side at the traffic light like discarded bags of trash, plastic lace cracking, ribbons waving in the air, and countless photographed faces staring up through the open spaces in the center.

There must have two dozen of the things piled there. I sat staring at them for several moment before turning to look out the rear window. Jesus, had she taken all of these? How far had she been walking, anyway? There was no way all of these had been taken from the small stretch of road along the exit, unless this particular exit was one of the deadliest in existence, which I doubted.

I looked back at the dead pile—that’s how I suddenly thought if it, and had no idea where the hell the phrase had come from—then decided, screw the light , made my turn, and headed toward the service station about a quarter-mile down the street. I didn’t know what the hell she was up to and I didn’t want to know. I’d gas up, take a piss (well, leave one, actually), get my directions, and mind my own business the rest of the way to Miss Driscoll’s home town.

Still, it angered me to think that, sitting in some sorority house somewhere, a bunch of smug sisters were giggling over this prank and not giving one thought to the additional grief it would bring to those whose heartbreak had compelled them to mark the place of their loved one’s death.

And that thought struck me as funny: Hey, Dianne, here’s a question: What is the sound made by a moral compass shifting?

I exhaled, shook my head, and turned down the radio as I pulled into the service station.

It was surprisingly modern for what appeared at first glance to be a very small town; automated pay-here pumps, a diesel docking area, an attached car wash, and one of those seemingly hermitically-sealed booths where the “attendant” sat behind inch-thick glass and you made purchases after midnight through a series of metal drawers.

I swiped my credit card (I was saving the cash for emergencies), waited for the pump to authorize my purchase, and looked over to see the attendant staring right at me and talking into the phone. He looked nervous, maybe even a little scared, and for a crazy moment I thought, He’s calling the cops.

(Help, dear God,, help me—I’ve got an actual customer! What’ll I do? I’m doomed! Doomed, I tell you!)

Then it occurred to me: I was driving a meat wagon, clearly marked CORONER.That’d freak out anyone at this time of night.

The authorization came through and I filled the tank, got my receipt, and decided to give the windshield a quick wash. I was wiping away the last of the cleaner when I asked myself: What would Dianne do if she were here?

Dianne could never, never see a wrong without at least trying to take some kind of action, even if all that action amounted to was pointing out to someone that the wrong was being committed. I made her believe that this annoyed the hell out of me, which in truth it did—not because it was another way of her proving how moral she was, but because I admired the courage it took to always do it, and in my admiration found that same conviction to be sadly lacking in myself, which irritated me, so more often than not I took it out on her in a series of little cruelties that ran the gamut from deliberately ignoring her to going out of my way to be a pain in the ass. I was a real prince of a hubby, me.

So the question: What would Dianne do?

She’d tell someone, that’s what.

I looked at the kid in the booth, then back at my car, then at my feet. Staring at my feet has been the source of many an epiphany over the years.

I was surprised to discover that I was genuinely pissed at what that girl was doing back there.

Next thing I know, I’m standing at the booth and waiting for the kid to look up from the issue of Guitar Player that he’s reading. Steve Morse was on the cover. I like Steve Morse’s music a lot. Perhaps I could use that as an ice-breaker if the little shit ever acknowledged my existence.

Finally I cleared my throat, and without looking up from the page he was reading, the kid reached out and pressed on the intercom button: “Yeah?”

“There’s a girl about a mile back who’s vandalizing some roadside memorials.”

“You don’t say?” He looked at me with the kind of unctuous, smarmy smirk that doesn’t try to mask the wearer’s amused apathy, and instantly makes you want to step on their face and grind your heel.

Keeping a civil tongue, I quickly explained to him what I’d seen, and where, and finished by suggesting that he call the police or sheriff.

That smirk still on his face, he nodded, flipped to a new page in the magazine, and said: “Anything else I can do for you?”

I tried, Dianne; give me that much. I tried.

“Yes,” I said. “Where are your restrooms?”