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

He nodded toward the meat wagon. “You’re under arrest for vandalism, theft of city property, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Little Miss Memorial smiled at us, held up an open can of beer, then gave the gas station attendant a little wave. “This is bullshit,” I said. The sheriff took a step closer to me. “Oh?”

“I didn’t take those goddamn things and you know it. I’d tell you to ask him—” I nodded toward the attendant, “—but something tells me his memory might be a little fuzzy.”

The sheriff looked over at the attendant. For a moment I thought he was actually going to ask the guy, then just as quickly realized what I should have known all along: they were all in on it. No, Little Miss Memorial couldn’t have moved the Dead Pile so quickly on her own, but with a squad car and a couple of guys to help her—no sweat.

At least now I knew who the attendant had been calling when I first pulled in. What I didn’t know was why .

Summoning all the nerve I had under the circumstances, I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

This got a huge laugh out of the sheriff as he pushed back his hat, giving me my first clear view of his face.

He was a kid . Nineteen, twenty years old, tops.

“Here’s the thing,” he said, tucking the FRTP back into my pocket. “It’s after two o’clock in the morning. You’re not where you expected to be—you’re where you’re supposed to be, sure, but my guess is you were figuring on—what?—at least a few more hours of road time. Doesn’t matter.” He got right up in my face then. “It’s the middle of the night. No one, and I mean no one , including you, knows where you are right now. We’ve got guns. You’re in possession of vandalized and stolen property. And there’s an underage girl in your front seat with an open container of alcohol. So you don’t get to say where you will or will not go or what you will or will not do.”

I wondered how many Raymond Chandler novels he’d had to read in order to teach himself to talk that way, but figured this wouldn’t be a good time to ask, so instead I opted for, “I want to talk to someone in authority whose age is higher than my shirt size, if that’s all right with you.” “Fair enough. If you’ll shut the hell up and get into the back seat of my vehicle, I’ll take you to that person.” I nodded toward the meat wagon. “What about—?” The sheriff held out his hand. “The keys.” I gave them to him. “Anything happens to that vehicle or the body, and I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble.”

He smiled. “Nothing’s going to happen. These streets are safe. Hell, a person couldn’t have an accident if they tried .” He walked over and handed the keys to Little Miss Memorial.

“Does Daddy Bliss know that Road Mama’s come home?” she asked him.

The sheriff nodded. “He knows. Everyone knows by now.” He patted the top of the wagon, and then smiled. “I like how that sounds, ‘Road Mama’s come home.’”

Little Miss Memorial smiled back at him. “Me, too.”

Road Mama and Daddy Bliss. Sounded like the name of some faux country & western ballad from 1970’s pop radio, a rip-snortin’, high-ballin’, pedal-to-the-metal toe-tapper you’d hear sandwiched between C.W. McCall’s “Convoy” and Jerry Reed’s theme from Smoky and the Bandit . If I hadn’t been so angry and scared (mostly scared), I might have laughed at the thought.

The sheriff leaned down to whisper something in Little Miss Memorial’s ear. The back of his jacket pulled tight, and for a moment I thought, he’s got five spines , because that’s how it looked. It was only as he stood back up and I heard a pronounced metallic scrape and the rustle of straining Velcro that I realized he was wearing some kind of complicated back brace. Without thinking, I asked, “Does that hurt?” “I beg your pardon?” I gestured toward him. “That brace you’re wearing. Does it hurt?” He stared at me for a few seconds, blinked, then replied, “Sometimes. What’s it to you?’ I shrugged. “I’m just wondering why you weren’t assigned desk duty until you healed up.”

“Because, Mother Theresa, I’m not going to heal up.”

“I meant no offense.”

“Nobody ever does.” He opened the back door of his cruiser. “Any more questions, or can we get on with this?”

I ducked down my head and climbed in behind the shotgun seat, surprised to see no wire-mesh divider separating the back seat from the front.

The deputy who’d been holding the gun in my back slid in on the other side of me, closed the door, and removed his hat. He looked, if anything, even younger than the sheriff. Round face, bright grey eyes, flushed cheeks…sixteen, at most. Plus he was smaller than the sheriff, so his uniform was pulled in and tucked tightly so it wouldn’t hang too loosely. He might as well have been a big-for-his age child playing Policeman. If it weren’t for the metal plate covering the right side of his skull, I might have even believed he was a little kid.

If he noticed the way I stared at him, he gave no indication.

The plate itself was a dull shade of silver, tinged at the edges with a crusty red substance where the jagged flesh of his grayish, moist-looking scalp fused with the metal. There were six screws in all, one at each corner of the plate, with one extra on the upper and lower sides. None of them matched. Some were small and thin, others were thick, and one looked, I swear, like a cement screw. Most were flush, but two rose slightly above the surface.

He finally noticed that I was staring, and so moved to brush some of his hair back in a futile effort to cover at least a portion of the plate. All he succeeded in doing was showing me that part of his scalp had been peeled completely away near the base of the plate, offering me a glimpse of skull.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “This looks a lot better than it did. Shoulda seen it before I got fixed up.”

The sheriff climbed into the driver’s seat, closing his door with more force than was needed. “What have I told you about flashing that thing at people? Put your hat back on, Dash .”

“You took yours off just now.”

“That’s because I’m driving and need an unobstructed view. If you were driving, then you could take yours off. But you’re not driving, Dash. You’r e in the back seat scaring the living shit out of our prisoner for no good reason other than you can. Now put your hat back on, or I’m gonna tell everyone it’s okay to start calling you ‘Chop-Top’ again.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

The sheriff turned around to face him. “No, I probably wouldn’t, but that should give you some idea of how much this bothers me. You know that Daddy Bliss had them make that hat especially for you. It’s got that steel band around the inside and everything.”

Deputy Dash blinked. “I know. Gets pretty hot with it on. And heavy.”

The sheriff gave me a quick look— Kids, what’re you gonna do? —and then sighed. “If you wear the hat, Dash, then you won’t get so many headaches, and you won’t hear so many voices.”

Deputy Dash leaned over toward me. “This plate picks up radio waves sometimes.”

“And sometimes,” said the sheriff, “it interferes with them. Like when I need to call in.” He held up the microphone. “So will you please put it back on?”

“See there?” said Deputy Dash. “All you had to do was say ‘please’.” He donned his hat once again. “Just ask me nice, that’s all. Don’t order me like you’re my boss or something.”

The sheriff hung down his head. “Dash, I am your boss.” “You know what I mean.” We pulled out of the gas station, the meat wagon following close behind. I stared at Deputy Dash. “How come you’re called Dash?” He pointed to the metal plate. “‘Cause that’s where my head hit.” I nodded as if that cleared up everything. “Oh. You get FM with that?” He grinned. “You’re funny. We don’t get many funny ones.” He was still holding his gun on me. “Could you maybe point that toward the floor?” I asked. “If we hit a bump or something, it might go off.” “It don’t work.” “What?”