The Cage Keeper Read Online Free PDF

their way to work. I look over at McElroy and he is looking at me. I wonder how long he has been doing that. Then I see him stick his thumb and forefinger into his mouth and pull out his teeth. He wipes them on his pant leg but keeps his bloodshot eyes on me. The center of his face just caved into the gaping hole under his nose. He looks like a lamprey eel. I look back at the road as he clicks his teeth into his mouth, then sits up and spits something onto the floor of my car.
    “There is a plan here, Al. There
is
a plan.” He looks at me, waiting for my reaction like we’re two chums on a vacation together or something. “We’re going straight up into Canada, kid. You are goin’ to drive. But we will travel only by night. We will sleep by day. The border can’t be more than seven hundred miles north of us if I am not mistaken, course we will have to get a map. Do you have a map?”
    I shake my head, though I think my Rand-McNally is still folded up in my glove compartment.
    “No matter.” He puts the knife between his legs and rubs his hands together. He looks out the windshield then reaches over and turns off the heat. “With luck and proper precautions I see no reason why you can’t have me safely in the province of Saskatchewan by midmorning tomorrow.” He picks up the knife again and then points it straight ahead at the highway. “I want you to pull into the next rest area. That is all you need to know for now.” He lowers the Bowie to his lap and I look to my right hoping somebody might have seen this ugly man with the bushy gray eyebrows waving a knife around. I see a guy in an orange Datsun 240 Z. He is looking straight at us but not with the expression of someone concerned. He’s got on glasses and is going bald. His shirt collar is too tight for his neck. He looks like my dad.
    We are halfway to Casper before I see a rest area sign and get into the right lane to exit. I glance at my watch. It’s seven twenty-two. We are driving through some of the flattest country I have ever seen, and it’s all covered with snow. A sign says: WHEATLAND 8 MILES. I pull into the rest area, a plowed parking lot lined with a few trees. There’s a concrete rest-room building in the middle and Elroy has me go way off in the corner away from a parked eighteen wheeler. I pull in under the snow-weighted branch of a tall spruce and I think of the Christmas tree standing in the corner of the mess hall back at the center. I’m tired. My bladder’s full. I don’t even feel very scared right now.
    “We will both go to the latrine, Al. You will walk in front of me. That trucker is fast asleep in his rig, so you can stop thinking of him coming to your rescue. Also, I am quite adept at throwing this knife and making it stick. Get the picture?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. Get out of the car after me.”
    After we finish urinating and splashing water on our faces Elroy has me open my trunk to see I don’t know what. He lifts my spare tire and looks at the empty space beneath it. Then he opens my toolbox and rummages through that. There’s a slow wind coming from the ice fields behind the rest room. It’s going right through my jacket. It’s freezing the water left over on my face. I look at Elroy bending over into my trunk then think of myself taking one step forward and slamming the lid down on his head. My blood’s rushing through my temples as I see it happening, but again, my body doesn’t make a move. Then he finds what I forgot I had there: a short coil of heavy tow rope Mark lent me this past August after my car stalled for the second time in downtown Denver. Elroy straightens then closes the trunk, his knife handle sticking out of his heavy jeans jacket pocket, my brother’s rope in his hand.
    “Get in the front seat, Al. It’s bedtime.”
    IN THE LAST SIX or seven hours I have probably slept two. My leather jacket is bunched up between my shoulder blades. My toes are frozen solid. And I see my breath shoot in front