I call Frank at his office and tell him to expect Cage in the afternoon. His voice sounds tired. He says he will meet the train.
“You’re diving now in the downward part of the cycle, Cage. It’s awful. But you will come out of it.” Pete is wearing his white lab coat. He is driving his Porsche Carrera ninety miles an hour along the yellow concrete highway through a vast expanse of tall reeds due east of Baton Rouge. “It won’t last long. I’ll consult with Dr. Fielding in Memphis. We’ll figure out the right meds.”
I can barely hear him across a vast plain of apathy, as wide and dreary as the flat marsh that runs to every horizon under gray light. I don’t feel like myself, like anyone. I don’t care. I watch the approaching green signs grow larger, then swoop over the open sunroof without reading the words. I think the letters are scrambled but I’m not sure.
“Cage, are you listening to me?” Pete squeezes my thigh.
“Are you obeying the speed limit?” my mouth says on its own.
Pete laughs, cuffs my shoulder. “You’re going to be okay.”
Pete is out of his mind if he thinks that I am going to be okay. I’m not sure where I’m going but it’s not okay. I say things by pure reflex. I make people laugh by reflex. It’s not me who is talking, making you laugh. I don’t know who it is. I don’t particularly care. It takes too much of an effort just to scratch my nose. I look at Pete and I can see his skeleton through his skin, a death’s-head grinning skull shining through his tan face. Pete is Dorian Gray, a facade of virtue—the brilliant young psychiatrist—cloaking a coke-snorting philanderer with a miserable wife and child.
But he cares about you
, I hear Nick’s voice in my mind in stereophonic Dolby sound.
He cares. He has his problems, he needs to do some soul-searching himself, he might even need medication, but he cares about you.
In the Hammond station parking lot he watches me swallow a Xanax capsule and three little lithium pills. He puts his arm around my shoulder as we watch the
City of New Orleans
barrel out of the swamp and pull into the country station.
“Thanks, Dr. Pete,” says the part of myself that talks automatically. “Can’t say you didn’t try.”
“Cage, you’re bright. You’re going to beat this illness. It’s just an illness, like diabetes. There’s no shame. No stigma,” Peter says, walking along the platform. Nobody is riding the train that carried the black diaspora out of the South no mo’. Which is fine with me. People make me nervous. “And you can beat it just like hundreds of thousands beat diabetes.”
He grabs my bag from me and I follow him into an empty car. I stand still as he puts the bag in the rack overhead, then pull out my wallet as if to tip him. “My doctor, my chauffeur, my porter.”
Peter smiles and pats me on the back. “If you want to come back to Baton Rouge, I’m your man.”
I have the sense that I’ll never get off the train. I stare at him, uncomfortable, wishing he would leave, afraid for him to leave. The talking part of my self is quiet. Over his shoulder reflected in the plate glass my face is twisted in a knot, my eyes fear-shot. The talking part says, “Last train to Memphis.”
1974
S
end it to
Zoom,
send it to
Zoom
!
kids in their early teens sang on TV. Nick watched them, thinking how they looked happy and confident like Cage.
Zoom, Box 350, Boston, Mass. 02134.
“Nick.” Margaret stood in the door of the sitting room. “Turn off the TV and finish your Latin.”
“
Zoom
’s almost over.”
“Remember we have a family conference after supper, so you have to do your homework now.”
“Okay, Mom,” Nick mumbled without looking at her. As the words between programs zipped up the black-and-white screen, he thought how everyone he knew had gotten color TVs. His mother said color was a waste of money and if he kept complaining she would throw out their old one. She never stopped worrying about money. Her latest cost-cutting measure was powdered milk. Every day Cage and Nick took turns mixing water in the powder and stirring forever until all the globs were broken up. Harper hated that milk and he was not even four. This morning at breakfast he had thrown his on the floor. Nick could see his mother was trying hard to smile. He thought she was going to cry but she just laughed. Cage had jumped out of his chair and used a paper towel to wipe it up.
Before Harper was born their parents told Cage and Nick that they were going to have a new brother or a sister. They said that it was a hard decision for them to make because there were already too many people in the world and a family should only have two kids, one to replace each parent, so the population wouldn’t get bigger, but they thought that maybe this new Rutledge would turn out to be a great scientist who could help the problem of overpopulation. Nick used to look at Harper and wonder what kind of scientist he would be. Lately he decided that it was just something they thought up to make themselves feel better.
“Nick.” His mother was back in the doorway, wearing an apron now. “Did you hear me? Turn that off.”
“Okay.” Nick crawled slowly toward the TV.
“Mr. Haley is such a nice man,” she said. “And he really likes you. You’re lucky you have a Latin teacher who went to Harvard. He’s so disappointed when you don’t do your homework thoroughly.”
“Yeah.” He switched off the TV.
“Yes, ma’am.” His mother smiled.
“Yes, ma’am.” Nick went upstairs and sat at his desk and looked out the window at the church. Darkness gathered over the empty lot across the street. In Tennessee they didn’t have to live downtown right next to the church. All of their friends lived way out off Mulberry Road and only kids who went to public school lived around them. Nick wished that they had never left Tennessee. The kids here said
ta-mah-ta
instead of
to-may-toe
like they were from England or someplace, snobs, and when the Rutledges first moved to Virginia the year before, their classmates would lick their fingers and touch Cage’s and Nick’s necks, making a sizzling sound that meant the Tennesseans’ necks were so red that they fried the spit on their fingers. One day on the bus when Kyle Kent, the biggest guy in the eighth grade, a lot bigger than Cage, touched Nick’s neck and said, “Tsss,” Cage went crazy. He jumped up from across the aisle and punched Kyle so hard in the nose it sounded like a basketball hitting the backboard. Cage screamed, “Never touch my little brother again or I’ll kill you!” He kept on hitting him until some tenth graders stepped in and pulled him off. After that everyone respected Cage. He and Kyle were good friends now.
Nick turned on the desk lamp and opened his Latin book, then watched his own reflection in the window. He pulled a spiral notebook out of a desk drawer and wrote,
Cage has always been at the top of his class and I am what they call an underachiever. I think it’s my lack of confidence.
He conjugated Latin verbs for half an hour and then went back to his diary:
Every seventh grader at Westminster has to make a speech at morning assembly to the entire school, all the students and teachers from the first to the twelfth grades, like three hundred people. Last year Cage did his on smoke jumpers, the firemen who parachute from airplanes to put out forest fires, because Dad was a smoke jumper in the summers between college. Cage looked really relaxed like Dad does in the pulpit, standing in the gym in front of the whole school. Just like Dad, he started out with a joke. The headmaster and all the teachers gave him an A. I’m doing mine on Sir Francis Drake because Granddad Cage told me that he was our ancestor, and because he was a pirate. It’s in a week and my palms sweat when I think about walking from the packed bleachers across the gym floor to the microphone.
“Nick, get Harper,” his mother sang from the bottom of the stairs. “Dinner’s ready.”
In his room Harper was rolling Matchbox cars along an orange plastic track. He looked up and smiled at Nick, then sent two cars speeding toward each other. A tiny Camaro knocked a Firebird off the track. He raised his arms toward Nick, who picked him up, swung him onto his back. Going down the stairs, Nick told him, “Listen, Harpo, don’t go throwing your milk on the floor, okay? None of us like the powdered milk. But we have to drink it.”
“Why?” Harper said into Nick’s ear.
“Because Mom and Dad don’t have money for real milk right now.”
“Why?” Harper moved his little hands to Nick’s neck.
“Because ministers don’t make very much money.”
“Why?” He stuck a finger in Nick’s ear.
“Just because.”
Harper said, “Dad should be a fireman.”
“Firemen don’t make a lot of money.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
In the kitchen Cage had just come home from football practice. He was standing by the sink, smiling, his hair all mussed up, smudges of black cream under his eyes. “Nick, guess what? I’m the starting cornerback on Saturday.”
“Hey, that’s great.” Nick set Harper on a chair at the kitchen table with a pile of worn cushions. He was proud of Cage and jealous at the same time.
“You want me to help you with your Latin tonight?” Cage smiled and poured the powdered milk into a tall pitcher.
“Nah. I finished it already.” Nick walked over to the counter. “It’s my turn.”
“I’ll do it.” Cage smiled.
“Nick,” his mother said, “please set the table.”
“In the kitchen or the dining room?”
“In here.”
Franklin Rutledge came in just as his wife was removing a casserole of ground beef and red beans from the oven. At forty-five Frank had hair that was still boot black, his weight—one eighty-five—the same as it was in the army. “Hey, Mars, my love. Evening, boys.”
“Hey, Pop,” Cage and Nick said in unison. Harper was singing to himself on the chair with cushions.
“Been visiting parishioners in the hospital?” Cage asked.
“All those who travail with trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity,” Frank said with a faint smile. “How was football?”
“Fantastic.” Cage pushed his long bangs out of his face. “Made the starting squad. I’m the only ninth grader to make varsity.”
“You are a prodigy.” He patted Cage on the back, walking out the door, then came back a few minutes later, still in his black shirt but without the white collar. Sitting down at the head of the table, he held out his arms to Nick and Cage. While they all held hands, he tilted his head down, closed his eyes, and was opening his mouth when Harper said, “Don’t make it a long one, Papa.”
Cage laughed. Nick stared morosely at the floor. Their mother sighed and their father smiled, then said quickly, “Bless this food to our use and us to Thy service. Keep us ever mindful of the needs of others. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.”
Every time their father blessed the food, Nick felt guilty about cheating in confirmation class. The class was supposed to read Bible lessons each day for weekly quizzes. His father told the class he would stop quizzing them if they promised to do the readings. All twenty pledged but not a single soul read the Bible verses. Silently Nick prayed, Dear God, please forgive me for not reading the Bible like I promised, knowing that he wouldn’t read it later on either, wondering, Why does God let us sin and ask for forgiveness and be forgiven again and again? It seems like a license to sin. He watched his father eat, thought he saw sadness in his father’s blue eyes. Ever since they had moved to Virginia his father hadn’t seemed as happy as when they lived in Tennessee. Cage had told Nick it was because the rich people in the church treated their minister like one of the employees at their furniture factories.
Nick cleared the table and handed the dishes to Cage, who rinsed them before putting them in the dishwasher. When they finished, Franklin said, “Well, boys, last week I asked you to give some thought to how we all get along in the family. It’s important to be open about what bothers you about other family members, not to quietly harbor resentments toward one another. Cage, why don’t you start?”
“Okay.” Cage dried his hands and set the towel on a hook over the sink. “The only thing I resent is the ten p.m. curfew on weekends.” He walked to the table. “Buck and Slim Jones, everybody else, get to stay out until eleven.”
“You’re only fourteen, Cage,” Margaret said.
“So what? I made the varsity football team. Most of those guys don’t have a curfew at all.”
“I think he’s grown-up enough to stay out until eleven,” Frank said. “But the first time you’re late, the curfew is going back to ten.”
“Eleven-thirty,” Cage said.
“Eleven. No argument,” Frank said.
“All right.” Cage dropped into his seat. “That’s a deal. GFI, Nick.”
“I hate it that I’m always compared to Cage and told to act like him. Like at the coffee minute after church, Mom always says, ‘Why can’t you be more like Cage. Look at him out there talking to adults.’ I don’t have anything to say. I don’t like to talk to adults.”
“It’s for your own good, Nick.” Margaret placed her hand on his. “You need to learn to be comfortable socially.”
“But I’m not Cage. He can do that. He’s confident. I’m not.”
“You’ll never gain confidence if you don’t try,” Frank said.