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

That’s what this day had felt like to me.

Like I’d told Ethel, I hadn’t been sleeping too well the past few days, and I figured that had a lot to do with the way I was seeing things. It wasn’t like some slimy, big-ass tentacled monster was going to come dropping down on Cedar Hill like a curse from Heaven once the clouds parted and the rain stopped. I was just tired. That had to be it.

Once the van’s engine was all warmed up, I turned the heater on and in a few minutes had the inside all toasty. I pulled around in front and waited for the Reverend, who came out almost right away, carrying a cooler that I knew was full of sandwiches, as well as three Thermoses; two of hot coffee, one of hot chocolate. He slid open the side door, shoved the cooler inside, then closed the door and climbed into the front passenger seat.

“Me, too,” he said.

“What?”

He shook off the rain, ran his hand through his hair to push it back from his face, then looked right at me. “I’ve been feeling it, too.”

I blinked. “Feeling…wh-what? What’re you—?”

He shook his head. “Don’t play dumb with me, Sam. All day you’ve felt like something’s been off, haven’t you? Like something’s about to happen?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. Yes.”

“Hence my saying, ‘Me, too.’ Try to keep up.” He leaned forward and looked out the windshield, his eyes turning up toward the rain. “Makes you crazy, doesn’t it? That sense that something’s going to happen and you don’t know if it’ll be something good or something…not.” “Either way,” I said, putting the van into gear, “we got the perfect night for it.” The Reverend turned to me and smiled. “That’s just like you, Sam. ‘The perfect night.’ Saying something like that.” “Oh, it’ll be all right, Mr. Frodo, you’ll see.” I pulled away from the curb and the Popsicle Patrol officially began.

Believe it or not it was the Reverend, not me, who started calling it that. It strikes some people as offensive—Ethel, in particular, thinks it’s pretty tasteless—but the Reverend defends it by saying: “Would it be in better taste if I called it the ‘Corpse-sicle Patrol’? Because that’s what they’ll be if we don’t get to them in time. If you wish for us to change the name, then you have to make at least two runs with us. Otherwise you get no say.”

Ethel declined the offer and never complained about it again after that.

There are five pickup points on Popsicle Patrol, and on nights like this, when the rain and the wind and the cold conspire to freeze you in place, the homeless folks all know where these pickup points are and know which routes to take in order to get there; that way, if we pass each other while they or us are heading in that direction, we just stop and pick them up. Cedar Hill isn’t that big of a place when compared with a city like Columbus or Cincinnati, but it still takes a while to drive through it on bad weather nights. The Reverend established the pickup points about five years ago, when he first showed up in Cedar Hill, and since then not one homeless person has frozen to death here in winter—or any other time of the year. Let’s see Columbus or Cincinnati try and claim that.

The first pickup point is on the downtown square at the east side of the courthouse. Like all pickup points, we pull up and wait fifteen minutes, then drive on to the next if no one shows. As soon as we have a full van, we go back to the shelter, drop them off, then head to the next pickup point, and so on. The Reverend took a lot of time figuring out the route, making sure that the trips to and from each pickup point takes us past the previous ones again in case anyone new has shown up in the meantime. All in all, we pass each pickup point a minimum of five times during Popsicle Patrol, which is why it usually takes us a couple of hours.

We pulled up the courthouse and I automatically killed the headlights.

“ Sam ,” said the Reverend.

“Sorry, force of habit.” I keep forgetting that the out-of-towners are wary of approaching a dark van. I turned the headlights back on just in time to see a man with no legs rolling himself toward us on a makeshift cart built from two skateboards and a wooden crate, using two canes to propel himself forward.

The Reverend looked at his watch. “He’s late.”

“Probably didn’t want to get stopped for speeding.”

The Reverend started to laugh, stopped himself, said, “Sam, that’s not funny,” and then burst out laughing. The man in the cart heard the laughter, pulled back his canes, adjusted the gloves on his hands, then folded his arms across his chest and stared at us. With the canes forming a giant ‘X’ across his body, he looked like some ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, only crabbier.

The Reverend reached back and slid open the side doors, calling, “Come on, Linus, your security blanket hath arrived.”

“Oh, jeez—I’ve never heard that one before.” Linus—I don’t know his real name, he calls himself that after that character Humphrey Bogart played in Sabrina, not the Peanuts character—pulled down his canes and pushed himself over to the van. “You were laughing at me.”

“No,” said the Reverend. “I was laughing near you. There’s a difference.”

“Especially when you ain’t the one who’s wet and cold.”

“Now-now, Linus; don’t get short with me.”

“Oh, that’s a stump-slapper, all right.” He tossed his canes into the back, then pulled himself up into the van while I got out and went around to retrieve his cart, watching as he maneuvered himself around and up into one of the back seats. Most people would take one look at Linus and feel revulsion or pity; me, I marvel at the strength of the man. His arms are the most muscular I’ve ever seen in person. You had to feel bad for anyone who might be on the receiving end of one of his punches. “You got any more carny worked lined up?” I asked him. “Starting in early June,” he replied. “I will once again be touring the tri-state area as Thalidomide Man.” “You gonna carve out any more of those little wood figures you used to sell?” “Always.”

Linus makes a seasonal living with whatever touring carnival will hire him. He calls himself “Thalidomide Man” because of his legs—tells people it was because his mother took the drug during her pregnancy. Every season he whittles a couple of hundred little wood figures of himself—long arms, hands, no legs—and sells them for a couple of dollars each. I have a few, and have noticed that he tends to change the look of the figure every year, usually making himself much more handsome than he really is...and I tell him that every year. One of these days he’s going to carry through on his threat to bite off my kneecaps.

I put the cart on top of the van, covering it with the tarpaulin we keep there, then secured it in place with a length of clothesline. The Reverend reached back and slid closed the side door as I was climbing back in just in time for their traditional Godzilla Trivia game.

“All right,” Linus was saying. “I got a toughie for you tonight.”

“I doubt that.” The Reverend knows his Godzilla trivia.

Linus made a hmph sound, then cracked his knuckles like some card dealer ready to toss out a losing hand to an opponent. “Okay, Mr. Chuckles, try this one: Name the first movie where Godzilla was the good guy and tell me the other monsters who were in the movie and how long into the movie it is before good-guy Godzilla makes his first appearance.” The Reverend looked at Linus and grinned. “Is that it?” Linus looked at me. “’Is that it?’ he asks me. A lesser man would feel insulted.” “A lesser man would have no arms and be hanging on a wall and be named Art,” I replied.