The Cage Keeper by André Dubus III

as I drove down that highway to get what was left of my boy? Lorraine cryin’ beside me like somebody had stuck her with a knife? I thought: When did it happen? Lord, when did I die? Because the wind off the road was hot as fire and my wife was a screaming demon and I knew sure as shit that I had died in my sleep and gone straight to hell. At the gate they were very nice, two young corporals, and they had Lorraine go in the air-conditioned Officers’ Quarters. Then a young E-3 got into my truck and directed me to a big hangar. And man, that concrete was so blindin’ bright I didn’t believe any of it was real. And you know? It wasn’t. Not like any of the real your average man has ever lived. We drove into the hangar and turned off the ignition and, for a second, my eyes couldn’t adjust to the dark of the place. Then while I was standing and leaning against my truck, and trying to get used to the light, a man came over and said: ‘Name?’ And I said, ‘McElroy.’ By this time my eyes had adjusted to the place and, by God, I couldn’t believe what they were seeing. I was looking at fifty or sixty of those gray metal coffins lined against both walls like lumber in a lumber yard, and this man, who was some kind of a sergeant, was flipping through the names of dead boys on his clipboard. He said, ‘McElroy, James A.’ Then he handed his list to the E-3, who got into a forklift with it and drove off. Now Jesus, my knees were about to give way and I had to lean against the hood of my truck. I watched that machine drive along that awful row of boxes ’til it stopped. Well, that’s when I had to turn my head. I looked outside over the concrete to the security gate and Officers’ Quarters beside it. When I turned back around that sonuvabitch was coming at me with my Jimmy’s coffin. When he swung around to the back of my pickup he stopped and said: ‘Please lower your tailgate, sir.’ I did this. Then he lowered that thing into the bed of my truck and I watched it go down, and I looked at that E-3 and saw him chewing gum. He was looking just as
bored
as could be. He wanted to finish this detail and go fuck his
girl.
The last few inches he let it drop, and that is when I lost it, Allen. I tore after that sonuvabitch like a bulldog. I got in about four good punches when that clipboard sergeant jerked me from behind. Well, that is the last thing he ever did, kid, because I pushed him outside and got on top of him and knocked his head into the concrete until he was no more. I mean to say I
killed
him. I never saw my boy’s funeral either. The Honorable Judge Barton didn’t think I deserved it. His exact words, too. ‘You’ve lost that privilege,’ he said.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Yep.”
    “Elroy, I—”
    “It was an election year, too. And that old judge wasn’t about to appear soft on a man who kills soldiers who are getting killed enough as it is. Never mind the fact that one of them was my boy. Don’t mind
that.
He gave me the full twenty.”
    We are quiet. The radio antenna makes a long low ringing sound as the wind hits it in just the right place, but I can’t see it. The snow on the windshield must be a good half inch deep. My nose is stopped up. My eye feels full of something, too. I can no longer feel my fingers and toes. I don’t know if it’s from the cold or from the rope. I don’t know anything right now. “Could you turn on the heat, please?”
    Elroy starts the engine and the heat. He turns on the headlights then flicks on the wipers. They move slowly, but push away the snow. It’s coming down in swirls in front of the headlights. I see a fresh layer of it on the snowbank in front of us.
    “Could you loosen the rope on my hands and feet, Elroy? I think they’re going to fall off.”
    He looks at me, and in the light I see his eyes glisten. God. He even cries without a sound. He sniffles, wipes his nose on his sleeve, then pulls the Bowie from the inside lining of his jacket, leans over, and