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

Of all the things I have lost in this life, it is music that I miss the most.

I can’t listen to it now, and it’s not just because I’m deaf in my left ear; I can’t listen to music anymore because I have been made aware of the sequence of notes that, if heard, recognized, and acknowledged, will bring something terrible into the world.

(The progression seemed so logical ; leave the G string alone—tuned to G, of course—so the high and low E strings go down a half step to E flat. The B string goes down a half step to B flat, the A and D go up a half step, to B flat and E flat. The result was an open E flat major chord, which made easy work of the central riff. For the intro, I started on the 12th fret, pressing the 1st and 3rd strings down, dropped down to the 7th and 8th fret on those same strings for the next chord, and continued down the neck...as the progression moved to the 4th string, more and more notes were left out and it became a disguised version of a typical blues riff. The idea was to have a rush of notes to sort of clear the palette, not open the back door to Hell...but that’s a road paved with good intentions, isn’t it?)

Some days I’m tempted to grab an ice-pick or a coat hanger or even a fine-point pen and puncture my good eardrum; total deafness would be a blessing because then I wouldn’t have to worry about hearing that melody ...but the tune would still be out there, and I’m not sure anyone else would recognize it, so who’d warn people if

( ... B string goes down a half step to B flat, the A and D go up a half step, to B flat and E flat ...)

the Mudman hears his special song and shambles in to sing along?

2

The Reverend and I were out on our second Popsicle Patrol of the night when Jim Morrison climbed into our van.

That Friday evening was one of the crappiest nights in recent memory. It was November, and it was cold, and it was raining—the kind of rain that creates a gray night chiseled from gray stone, shadowed by gray mist, filled with gray people and their gray dreams; a dismal night following a string of dateless, nameless, empty dismal days. The forecast had called for snow, but instead we got rain. At least snow would have been a fresh coat of paint, something to cover the candy wrappers, empty cigarette packs, broken liquor bottles, losing lottery tickets, beer cans, and used condoms that decorated the sidewalks of the neighborhood; a whitewash to hide the ugliness and despair of the tainted world underneath.

Can you tell I was not in the best of moods? But then, I don’t think anyone was feeling particularly chipper that night, despite the soft and cheerful classical music coming through the speakers, one in each of the four corners of the main floor. (I think it was something by Aaron Copland because listening to it made me feel like I was standing in the middle of a wheat field on a sunny day, and that only made me feel depressed.) The shelter was about a third full—there were twenty-five, maybe thirty people, not counting the staff—and the evening had already seen its first “episode”: a young guy named Joe (I didn’t know his last name, people who come here rarely have them) had kind of flipped out earlier and took off into the dreary night, upsetting everyone who’d been eating at the table with him. The Reverend (the man who runs this shelter) spent a little while getting everyone settled down, then sent one of the regulars, Martha, out to find Mr. Joe Something-or-Other. Neither one of them had come back yet, and I suspected the Reverend was getting worried.

The Cedar Hill Open Shelter is located just the other side of the East Main Street Bridge, in an area known locally as “Coffin County.” It’s called that because there used to be a casket factory in the area that burned down in the late sixties and took a good portion of the surrounding businesses with it, and ever since then the whole area has gone down the tubes. Most of the serious crime you read about in The Ally happens in Coffin County. It’s not pretty, it’s not popular, and it’s definitely not safe, especially if you’re homeless.

As hard as it may be to believe, there’s not all that many homeless people in Cedar Hill. If pressed to come up with a number, the Reverend would probably tell you that our good town has about fifty homeless folks (give or take; not bad for a community of fifty-odd thousand), most of whom you’ll find here on any given night, which explains how he knows all of them by name.

The shelter is in the remains of what used to be a hotel that was hastily and badly reconstructed after the fire; the lobby and basement were left practically unscathed, but the upper floors were a complete loss, so down they came, and up went a makeshift roof (mostly plywood, corrugated tin, and sealant) that on nights like this amplified the sound of the rain until you thought every pebble in the known universe was dropping down on it; luckily, the lobby’s high ceiling and insulation had remained intact after the fire, so that—combined with the soft classical music the Reverend always has playing—turned what might have been a deafening noise into only an annoying one. When it became evident that “Olde Town East” (as Coffin County used to be called) was not going to recover from the disaster, the city decided its efforts at a face-lift were better employed elsewhere. As a result of the Reverend’s good timing in getting the city to donate this building, the Cedar Hill Open Shelter was the only one in the state (maybe even the whole country) to have Italian marble tile on its floors and a ballroom ceiling with a chandelier hanging from it. Makes for some interesting expressions on peoples’ faces when they come through that door for the first time.

The shelter has one hundred beds on the main floor, with thirty more in the basement adjacent to the men’s and women’s showers and locker rooms. (Aside from storage, the basement was used by the hotel’s employees, many of whom worked two jobs and came to work at the hotel after finishing their shifts at one of the steel mills or canneries—those too now long gone.) A third of the main floor is covered with folding tables and chairs—the dining area—and the Reverend’s office, which is a pretty decent size and doubles as his bedroom, is past the swinging doors on the right; go straight through the kitchen, turn left, you’re there.

During the holidays you’ll see more unfamiliar faces and crowded conditions because of transients on their way to Zanesville or Dayton or Columbus, bigger places where there might be actual jobs or more sympathetic welfare workers. The shelter turns no one away, but you’d damned well better behave yourself while you’re here—the Reverend might look harmless enough at first, but when you get close to him it’s easy to see that this is a guy who, if he didn’t actually invent the whup-ass can opener, can handily produce one at a moment’s notice. (Opinions are divided as to who the Reverend more resembles: Jesus Christ, Rasputin, or Charles Manson. Trust me when I tell you that he can be very scary when he wants to.)

Almost no one does anything to piss off the Reverend. The business earlier that night with Joe was a rarity—even those folks who come in here so upset you think they’ll crumble to pieces right in front of you and take anyone in the vicinity with them know that you don’t ruin things for the rest of the guests. That’s what the Reverend calls everyone, “guests,” and treats them with all the courtesy and respect you’d expect from someone who uses that word. Still, the business with Joe was enough to set everyone’s nerves on edge a bit. It wasn’t even ten-thirty yet, so the regular guests who weren’t already here would be wandering in by midnight. Of the two dozen or so guests who were here, I only recognized a few.