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

Martin set down his plastic fork and knife, lowered his head, and wept into his hands. He could try thinking about Dad but odds were he’d just come up with some equally happy image alive with equally cheerful thoughts. Christ! Why was it that the bad memories were always broadcast in high-definition crystal clarity, while the good ones could only be found using an old set of rabbit-ears that obscured them in static and snow?

I’ll do the dishes, Martin, don’t you worry about me . . .

She’d said the same thing to him the last time he’d had dinner with her, the night before she had the massive coronary from which she never awakened. Nine months since Dad had died, nine months with no one else but her son to cook nice meals for, and he couldn’t be there every night, and when he did, by-God she did the dishes . . .

. . . you gotta stop this right now , Martin told himself; but, still, the tears kept coming.

And his food was getting cold.

“Oh, this is fuckin’ great! ”

Martin pulled his hands away from his face, then wiped his eyes to see a young woman of perhaps twenty-three standing there glowering at him.

“It ain’t bad enough that I wind up in fuckin’ Buzzland,” she snarled. “No, I gotta have breakfast with some cry-baby, over-the-hill loser . . . well, fuck that!” She stormed over to the trays and grabbed one, piling on the milk and orange juice containers before heading back toward her room. “Where you going, Wendy?” said Bernard, stepping into her path. “I’m gonna eat in my fuckin’ room, all right? I don’t wanna be around no cry-baby.” Bernard shook his head. “You know the rules, Wendy; you eat out here with the other clients, or you don’t eat.”

“But I’m fuckin’ hungry! ”

Martin wondered if there was some rule requiring her to say either “fuck” or “fuckin’” in every sentence; would she perhaps be heavily fined otherwise? The thought should have made him smile, but he was still stuck back in his mother’s kitchen, watching as she reached for yet another dirty dish, and so looked down at his food so he could cry without drawing too much attention to himself. Besides, he still had another sausage link and a fruit cup to finish.

“I ain’t eating in here, Bernie. Not with that guy! No fuckin’ way!”

“Then you’re not eating, period.”

“ To hell with you and your lousy goddamn food, then! ” screamed Wendy—

—Martin thought: don’t you mean to say , Fuck you and your lousy fuckin’ food?—

—then Wendy spun around and hurled her tray, drinks, and utensils into the wall over Martin’s head. The tray hit with a loud bang! , its lid popping loose and splattering food all over the wall, the floor, and the back of Martin’s shirt.

Bernard grabbed Wendy from behind, throwing both his massive arms across her chest and pinning her arms, then lifted her off the floor, her legs kicking, her head thrashing side to side, a stream of curses and profanities spewing from her mouth that would have made a trucker blush, and before Bernard had even turned fully around, Ethel and the other nurse were there, the redhead pulling out and holding steady one of Wendy’s arms while Ethel stuck a needle in and sank the plunger; Wendy was unconscious before Ethel pulled out the needle. Bernard and Ethel took Wendy to her room. The redhead turned around to make sure Martin was all right, saw that he was crying, and said, “This doesn’t happen all that often.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said.

“No one has to, where Wendy is concerned,” replied the redhead, then set about cleaning up the tray and food. Martin was confused about what the nurse had said; he hadn’t been talking about Wendy at all.

He finished his breakfast in silence, stopping only once more, halfway through the fruit cup, when a particularly hard burst of tears got the better of him. Finally he was done with the food (and out of his mother’s kitchen), showing the redhead his plastic utensils before tossing them in the trash, then being given a towel and a bar of soap for his shower.

“You doing all right?” asked the redhead, whose name tag identified her as Amber Fox; Martin wondered how much teasing she got about her last name, being as pretty as she was. “I don’t mean to sound rude or anything,” he said, “but if I was doing all right, why would I be here?” Amber nodded. “Good point.” “Will Wendy be okay?”

“That’s sweet of you to ask. She’ll be okay. We can’t promise anything more than ‘okay’, but we can promise that.” Martin started toward the bathroom when something occurred to him: “Amber?” She stopped, the nurses’ station door halfway closed. “Yes?” “What happened to my grocery bag?” “You’re not getting any of that stuff back, Martin, so don’t bother asking again.”

Being scolded by a girl maybe half his age; was his life working out, or what? “I wasn’t asking about the drugs. There was a watercolor painting in the bag, and I don’t remember—”

“Oh, that ,” said Amber. “I wondered where that came from. It’s in here, safe and sound. Would you like me to take it to your room?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He took his shower—feeling as if he hadn’t bathed in a month—then cleaned off his shirt, dressed, towel-dried his hair, went back into the main area, plopped down in one of the surprisingly comfortable easy chairs, flipped around the channels until he saw what looked like a movie, and sat back to watch, fighting the effects of the medication every step of the way. Man did this stuff kick your ass in a hurry.

This scene in the movie took place in a dim, shabby room. An actor who looked familiar was lying in a bed. Next to the bed, a large black man, balding, sporting a goatee, sat in a chair with an oversized, dusty, leather-covered book on his lap, its pages opened to reveal—as the camera cut to a close-up—an illustration of a creature that might have been the twin of the camera-thing Martin had seen on the roof of the building last night.

Now it had his full attention.

Next to the illustration, encased in a delicately etched square of trellised lilacs, was a large dark Ascripted in the most eloquent calligraphy Martin had ever seen.

It was, he realized, an ancient book.

The camera cut to a medium shot of the room, showing the bed and the man sitting next to it; the large black man cleared his throat, smiled, took a drink from a silver chalice, and began reading from the ancient book:

“‘An old magic man wakes one morning to find that the magic in his mind has grown so heavy that his head sinks down into his shoulders from the weight of it all. Since only his forehead and eyes are now visible, he knows it’s time to store some of his magic elsewhere, until such time as he needs it, or else he’s going to attract some very odd stares when he goes out.

“‘An old magic man rummages through his kitchen drawers until he finds the steel mallet he uses to soften up the tough but inexpensive meat he buys from the butcher. “Just a little hole,” he says to himself. “Only big enough to drain off the excess magic.”

“‘But an old magic man’s judgment isn’t what it used to be—he hits himself far too hard, and the hole he punches into his head is much larger than he intended; magic pours from his skull like a waterfall. “Well, shit-fire and save the matches! ” he says, watching as his magic assumes various forms: an aviatrix with three rabbits’ heads; oversized clown puppets with severe curvature of the spine; gargoyles in expensive three-piece pin-striped suits; a large wooden mask with onyx-dark eyes that looks like the head of a soldier wearing a crown . . . all of these forms and more ooze from an old magic man’s skull as he searches frantically for something with which he can stuff up the hole.