Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys Part 12

of Road Mama and Daddy Bliss.

"Well it's a winding highway that never seems to end..."

-Rory Gallagher, "Lonesome Highway"

"...Abe said, 'Where you want this killin' done?'

G.o.d said, 'Out on Highway 61...'"

-Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited"

It could have been a scene from any drive-in B-feature from the 1950s or early 60s featuring juvenile delinquents as Everyman and drag racing as heavy-handed social metaphor: FADE IN: a seemingly endless stretch of smooth two-lane blacktop emptying into shadows. Crowds of people line both sides of the road, the men looking tough while clutching at their bottles of beer, the women looking anxious while clutching at the filtered tips of their cigarettes, and the kids-especially the really young ones-looking like they aren't sure how they should be feeling while they clutch at the hands or coats of the tough beer drinkers and anxious cigarette smokers.

There are dozens of cars parked at haphazard angles off to the side, their headlights illuminating two vehicles that crouch rumbling in the center of the strip, rabid animals straining at the leash. A YOUNG GIRL, early twenties (if that), dressed in a skirt and tight short-sleeved sweater, blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, a scarf tied around her neck, stands a few dozen feet from the front of the cars, raising her arms above her head with a slow dramatic relish, a bright red kerchief clutched in each of her hands...

I was trying very hard to imagine all of this as being a scene from a movie that I was watching, half-expecting one of the SUPPORTING CHARACTERS to scream something profound like, "Burn rubber, Daddy-O!" so I could smile at all the cliches being firmly in place. If I could achieve some kind of half-a.s.sed Zen state, if I could convince myself that I wasn't really a part of all this, if I could delude myself into believing that I was just viewing it from a safe distance, then I might be able to survive the next two minutes with mind and body in one piece-providing I could force myself to overlook the physical appearance of most of the spectators, or the thing that was driving the car I was about to race against. I could try focusing on the blonde girl who was about to signal the start of the race, but that would mean looking at her arms, both of which were easily a foot longer than a normal arm is supposed to be, her elbows having been replaced by the type of steel hinges used to fasten car hoods to their vehicles; what sinew, veins, and muscle remained to connect her forearms to her biceps wound through and around the hinges like vines, all of it kept functional with a combination of machine grease and petroleum jelly.

And she was one of the more normal-looking spectators here tonight. Those who were still alive and mobile, anyway.

"On your marks," she shouted, her arms now raised to their full height, the crowd silent, wide-eyed, leaning forward.

The other vehicle gunned its engine, its driver letting fly with a phlegm-clogged laugh from a throat equal parts metal and meat.

Tightening my grip on the steering wheel, I wondered if I squeezed hard enough, would my knuckles just rip through my skin. Maybe they'd postpone the race if I were injured.

One quick look at my opponent answered that question in short order.

The blonde girl was smiling a smile that might have been radiant in any other place, under any other circ.u.mstances. "Get set..."

Her grip tightened on the kerchiefs in her hands. In a moment, she'd swing down those impossible arms in a swift, decisive arc, and off we'd go.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, wondering how long I'd be missing and dead before anyone took serious notice of my absence. It was quite the revelation, it was, to realize that out of all my friends...I didn't really have any.

Have to move that to the top of your "To Do" list right away, I thought. Numero uno: make some friends...and try to keep them this time. Abso-freakin-lutely.

Oh, yeah-I was so boned.

The other vehicle gunned its engine once more, snapping me out of my maudlin reverie with an earsplitting gla.s.s.p.a.c reminder that very likely I would be dead one-hundred-and-thirty seconds from now.

The blonde-haired girl stood frozen, ready to snap down her arms.

The spectators leaned farther forward, still and silent.

I took a deep breath and without consciously trying achieved the elusive faux-Zen state I'd been hoping for, only I wasn't watching this scene from a distance, no; I was watching the me of roughly forty hours ago, the me who'd been safe and sound in the world he knew well enough to take for granted, the me who was about to learn that

1.

"...sometimes the bodies leak."

I looked over at the man driving the meat wagon in which I was currently a court-required pa.s.senger and said, ever the fellow armed with a witty retort: "Huh?"

The driver-a fifty-something guy named Fred Dobbs (I'm not kidding; just like the character Bogart played in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, swear to G.o.d), a man built like a walk-in freezer who was also a twenty-two-year veteran driver for the County Coroner's Office-nodded his head and sighed as if empathizing, though he was trying hard to conceal a grin. "Yeah, whenever we get a call like this one-y'know, when the folks have been dead a day or two-sometimes you're gonna find that the bodies have been laying in the bed or on the floor, and if the weather's all hot and humid like it's been and they ain't got air-conditioning, the internal ga.s.ses build up a whole lot faster and then things start to strain and tear and rupture and the bodies, well...sometimes they leak when you move 'em." He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again his tone was much lighter, as if telling a joke: "I once had so much trouble trying to get this one old gal out of her bed-her bedsores were so bad that I thought her skin was gonna peel off and dump her guts right on my shoes-I finally just had to wrap her up in the sheets she'd died in before transferring her to the bag. If it's bad, then we let the wizards in the doc's office do the peeling. Our job is to just get in there and remove the bodies."

"Which sometimes leak."

Another nod: the teacher pleased that the student wasn't as dim as he'd feared. "I'm not trying to make you sick or nothing, understand, but I figured maybe you ought to prepare yourself for the possibility." He shrugged, honked the horn for reasons I'd never know at someone or something I couldn't see, then removed one of his hands from the steering wheel and flexed his fingers, the bones crackling like dry twigs on a campfire.

I reached out to turn down the radio; the news had been talking about a ma.s.sive (what they called "...spectacular") eight-car accident in Columbus on the I-71 loop last night that so far had left five people dead. The radio station had someone broadcasting live from the scene which still hadn't been cleared. It appeared the accident had been caused when someone driving a Hummer cut across all four lanes without signaling and slammed into a Ford Gargantua or some other four-wheeled yuppie tank that in turn hit a semi...and I didn't want to hear about it. There's only so much death and destruction I can take when the sun is s.h.i.+ning and there's still the possibility of having a nice day.

"'Course, now," said Dobbs, "if the bodies're on a rug or carpeting, that makes it a bit easier in some ways. If they're leaking all over a rug, we just roll 'em up in it and save the county the cost of a bag."

"And if they've leaked onto the carpeting?" Pause for a moment and consider: how many people get to start their workday with conversations like this? Was I the luckiest guy on the planet, or what?

"Then we haul out the carpet cutters and..." He mimed scissoring around a body. "But then you've got the added problem of some extra weight if they've really been leaking, and especially if it's s.h.a.g carpeting."

I shook my head. "d.a.m.n the s.h.a.g carpeting!"

"Oh, you got that right. Me, I think that s.h.i.+t makes any room look like something that belongs in a p.o.r.no movie-not that I've seen all that many p.o.r.nos, you understand, it's just there's something kinda...I dunno...sleazy and tacky about it."

Gas-ruptured bodies and home decorating tips. With lunch still hours away. My life was an embarra.s.sment of blessings.

I looked in the back of the wagon where a crate hand-labeled Retrieval Gear sat with its unlocked lid bouncing up and down every time we drove over a pot-hole. Symbolic thoughts of Pandora's Box notwithstanding, the sight gave me the creeps, knowing as I did what was inside.

"Do you think we'll have to use any of the science-fiction paraphernalia?"

Dobbs seriously considered this; I knew he was considering it seriously because the right side of his face knotted up as if he were having a stroke. "Hard to say. I kinda like putting on them HazMat suits myself. Scares the h.e.l.l out of people and they keep outta your way. I used to feel silly wearing that stuff until the doc explained to me that dead, leaking bodies produce their own kind of toxic waste." He looked at me and, for the first time that morning, outright smiled; there was a lot of genuine kindness it. "Don't you worry none. If it's bad, I'll walk you through it. I know this ain't exactly what you had in mind, and I may act like a royal horse's a.s.s most of the time-at least according to anyone who's known me for more than twenty minutes-but I got sympathy."

"You've had a.s.sistants like me before?"

He barked a loud laugh. "h.e.l.l, buddy, how do you think I got started on this job?"

"You're kidding?"

"If I was kidding, don't you think I'd try to come up with something funnier than that?"

"Good point."

He gave a short, sharp nod. "They got me same way as you. Had one too many before hitting the road one night and got stopped by Johnny Law. Since I'd drove an ambulance in Vietnam, judge figured that me and the meat wagon was a perfect community-service match." He shrugged. "When my CS period was done, they offered me a permanent job." He looked at me. "I actually kinda like it. Dead folks're quiet, and I treat them with respect, even when I gotta roll 'em up in sheets or rugs."

"Or s.h.a.g carpeting."

He almost grinned. "I don't make no jokes when I'm taking care of them. The doc likes that, likes my att.i.tude, which is why I can get away with some of the s.h.i.+t that I pull, and whenever the city does its budget-cut dance, like they done here last quarter, I don't have to worry about being left out of work."

"That explains why I wasn't given a choice in the matter." My lawyer had told me that the courts try to match your own individual abilities to a county department where those abilities could best be used, which is why I'd expected to find myself cleaning offices-I'm a crew manager with a local janitorial company-but Judge Walter Banks was in a bad mood, evidently being pressured to a.s.sign more defendants to CS duty (d.a.m.n the budget cuts!), and said he'd had his fill of "...people who think they've got the const.i.tution of an ox so they don't think twice about getting behind the wheel while under the influence..." and slapped me with both a five hundred dollar fine and one hundred hours of community service. My lawyer argued that, by law, I was to be given a choice of a.s.signments; Judge Banks pointed out that the matter of being offered a choice was up to the discretion of the bench, and his particular bench felt that I d.a.m.ned well ought to be exposed to the dead in order to remind me of what could have happened had I hit a pedestrian or another car.

So I was a.s.signed to the budget-strapped County Coroner's Office. As Fred Dobbs' a.s.sistant. In the pa.s.senger seat of the meat wagon. Talk about your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

"By the way," I said, "I wasn't drunk."

"Of course you weren't. And every man on Death Row is innocent."

"I'm not trying to say I didn't deserve my fine and the rest of it, I just want it made clear that I wasn't drunk."

"But you were half-snowed on Demerol."

"I'd gotten slammed with a migraine, I went to the ER, they gave me a shot-"

"-and probably told you not to drive yourself home, isn't that right?"

I shrugged. "I thought I could make it home before the stuff really kicked in."

"Appears you were mistaken."

I shrugged. "h.e.l.l, I was probably more dangerous driving to the hospital than I was driving home afterward."

"Hate to be the one to break the news to you, but 'under the influence' don't just refer to drinking, you know."

"I do now."

Dobbs sighed, rubbing one of his eyes. "You're not gonna grouse like this for the next three weeks, are you? Unless it's the sound of my own voice-which I find soothing and not without a certain musical quality-I kinda prefer to keep the conversation upbeat."

"I didn't think I was complaining."

"Maybe not, but you were in the neighborhood. Speaking of-double-check the address for me, would you?"

I picked up the clipboard and read the address to him.

"You sure that's right?"

I offered the board to him; he stopped at a red light, took the board, and read it for himself. "Huh. That's odd."

"What?"

"When Doc said East Main, I just kinda a.s.sumed it was the Taft Hotel. A lot of old folks and welfare cases wind up croaking there."

I was familiar with the Taft; h.e.l.l, anyone who's lived here for more than a year knows about it. Once the most popular and expensive hotel in the city (named after William Howard Taft, who'd frequently stayed there), the last fifty years have seen it slide not-so-slowly into disrepair and decay, becoming nothing more than a glorified flop-house where those who've reached the end of their rope can crawl into poverty's shadow and just give up. I'd a.s.sumed, as well, that the Taft was our destination, but it turned out we were headed for The Maples, an apartment building located two miles farther down East Main Street. The Maples' residents were exclusively those elderly who still had their wits and retirement funds very much about them, and who were capable of living unsupervised. The Maples had good security, two doctors who lived on-site, an exercise room, a small chapel for Sunday services (some residents could not drive to church, so church came to them), and touted itself as the place to go for "...those seniors who can still do it on their own." My grandmother had lived there until her death three years ago. Though I hadn't set foot in its lobby since then, I had no reason to think that The Maples had suffered a fate similar to that of the Taft.

"Well," said Dobbs, tossing down the clipboard as the light turned green, "I think we can rule out having to wear the s.p.a.cesuits today."

"Another thrill my life will have to do without."

"I can feel your heartbreak all the way over here."

I picked up the clipboard and looked at the sheet again. Under Caller's Name, the s.p.a.ce was blank.

"Aren't they supposed to take the name of whoever calls it in?" I asked.

"Supposed to. The city's supposed to have fixed all the potholes in the road, I'm supposed to weigh thirty-five pounds less than I do, and you're supposed to be doing something else besides helping me. For that matter, this whole to-do was supposed to be handled by the book, but there ain't been nothing about this has gone like it's supposed to."

"Meaning...?"

"Meaning that the doc was ordered by the mayor to examine the body hisownself. Doc doesn't do that unless it's a murder scene. Some old lady croaks in her apartment or a hotel room or at a nursing home, he sends one of his flunkies to look over the body and make the call to whatever funeral home is gonna be handling it." He shook his head. "Not this time, no sir-this time the doc is ordered to do it personally. Mayor called him at home around five this morning, made the man get out of bed and go to it p.r.o.nto. Doc was awfully tight-lipped about everything when he called me about the paperwork. Can't say I'm too happy about being kept out of the loop."

I remembered the call; it had come into the office just as I arrived for work. Dobbs had seemed confused as he looked at the forms left on his desk by the coroner-his end of the conversation consisted of, "Yes sir", and "But why-?", and "We'll get on it right now." It seemed like an awfully short exchange, considering what we were being sent out to do.

"So," I said, "you're supposed to be given more information than this?"

Dobbs nodded. "Yeah, but like I said, supposed to don't always cut it. My guess is that one of the neighbors found her, told the building manager, and the manager called the police, cha-cha-cha-though why in h.e.l.l the mayor got involved in this is beyond me. We can always ask whatever poor doofus the department left on the scene."

"There's gonna be a cop there?"

He nodded. "There's always a cop there until we show up. Once foul play has been ruled out-and that's already been done-what you're left with is a body that's just laying there stinking up the place and making everyone else nervous as h.e.l.l. The law doesn't require that an officer remain with the body until it's picked up, but it ain't exactly like Cedar Hill is Miami. They can spare an officer to corpse-sit for an hour or so."

"I'll bet that puts them in a cheery frame of mind."

"Well, we're gonna be finding out here in a minute or three."

He drove the wagon into the Maples' underground parking garage, expertly backing up so that the rear doors faced the freight elevator. We got out, unloaded and unfolded the collapsible gurney, grabbed the clipboard, Latex gloves for each of us, some scissors in case there was carpet work to be done, a couple of filter masks, and then, finally, the body bag.

Dobbs pressed the b.u.t.ton, stood waiting for a moment, then shook his head and said, "s.h.i.+t, I forgot, come on." He started walking toward one of the parking garage doors that led into the lobby. "We have to get the elevator key from whoever's manning the front desk."

A set of gla.s.s doors opened into a warmly-lighted hallway with gold carpeting. On the walls hung bulletin boards with announcements and fliers tacked on them-Bingo Night, a pot-luck dinner at a local church, a lecture on living wills to be given at the library next week-as well as tastefully-framed prints of bowls of fruit, glamorous cityscapes, and myriad pastoral scenes. The furniture was clean and over-stuffed, the sofa pillows fluffy, the doilies and afghans perfectly folded and arranged, the whole setting designed to make you feel Right At Home. Smells of soup, cornbread, and meatloaf wafted from the cafeteria (The Maples Dining Room, as it was called by the sign), and the murmuring of the voices coming from the dining area suggested that it was filled with people who'd known each other for decades and could easily fall into the kind of familiar, friendly conversation that, between lifelong friends, becomes a kind of art unto itself.

Despite my increasing anxiety over what Fred and I were about to do, I slowed down, chancing a glance into the dining room, then stopped in my tracks entirely when I saw how everyone was dressed; the women wore either dresses or attractive suit outfits, while all the men were in slacks, jackets, and ties. I looked around, trying to see if there were anything posted about a dress code, and then just as quickly realized there wouldn't be. This dining room was filled with people who remembered what it was like to treat mealtime as an event, every day. You dressed for meals not only out of respect for yourself, but for those with whom you would share the meal. Looking at the diners at that moment, I found myself wondering when, how, and why we'd come to view what was meant to be a sociable event of the day as just another excuse to grab some chow. Me, I frequently ate alone while wearing only my underwear, and the last time I'd had a dinner date, I'd worn khakis and a polo s.h.i.+rt, while my date arrived resplendent in her jeans, sandals, and OSU sweats.h.i.+rt. Maybe we think it's too old-fas.h.i.+oned or outright corny to dress like this for meals every day, but I'd've bet a week's salary that every person in there had spent a lot of time deciding what to wear, then just as much time getting ready, and were probably enjoying their meal more than we of the jeans-and-T-s.h.i.+rted pizza nights could or would ever understand.

Somebody has to come up with these commonplace profundities. Might as well be me.

I smiled at an old woman who looked up and saw me looming in the doorway, then double-timed it to catch up with Dobbs, who was speaking to the receptionist at the front desk.

"...moved in about seven months ago," the woman was saying, "and in all that time I don't remember her ever having a single visitor."

Dobbs gave his head a slow, sad shake. "That's terrible," he said, sounding like he meant it.

"One of the things we try to do here at The Maples is make sure that none of our residents feel isolated-it's a terrible thing to be getting on in years and feel alone and lonely. We encourage everyone to interact with their neighbors-you know, sort of keep an eye on each other's well-being so that no one feels ignored or forgotten...but Miss Driscoll never really allowed herself to become part of The Maples' community. Oh, she'd be pleasant enough at meals and come to the weekly residents' meetings, but aside from those times, she rarely left her room."

Fred put on his stroke-face again, considering this. "And she never had any visitors?"

The woman behind the desk shook her head. "Not unless you count delivery people. And the thing is, she has-had-one of our bigger apartments. People who can afford anything on 7 or above are, well...comfortable, you know? They've been careful with their money. And-oh, G.o.d, this is going to sound so mean-our older residents who have a little money, they tend to get visitors. You know-family and friends who want to be left a little something in the will. Not to imply that they don't love their grandma or grandpa or great aunt or whoever, but...oh, my; I'm really putting my foot in it here, aren't I?"