“She didn’t feel a thing, yank, not a thing.” Red stood up and walked through the blood that was coming slower now from the hole, was turning into a trickle. He held the stick out to Reilly.
“No thank you.”
Red smiled then stopped and looked down at the head, inspecting it for a moment like he would a splinter in a small child’s finger. He dropped it into the fire.
“Let’s have the knife, Red,” Billy Wayne said loud and hoarse behind them.
Red Willie handed him the wet blade handle-first. Billy took it then held it between his teeth as he bent over and with a groan pulled and turned the shell upside down, its pale yellow bottom facing the sky, the turtle’s claws hanging out of the holes. He took the knife in his hand and worked quickly, pushing its point between the light-colored plates of the bottom and where the shell becomes dark; he pulled toward him and with a dry ripping sound cut and tore all the way around the shell. Then he pulled it out and pressed the tip of the blade below the head hole and moved it straight down the center of the plate, never pushing more than an inch or so until he got to the end of the shell. He dropped the knife then pried the dissected bottom up from the claw holes and pulled it up, flesh and gristle sticking to it; Billy Wayne picked up the knife again and cut through until he could pull the half piece free and toss it behind him.
“That’s it, Billy. You’re doin’ all the good, friend, you’re doin’ all the good.”
Billy Wayne cut free the other half of the plate, threw it over his shoulder without looking, then began to work around the flat mass of entrails that Reilly was now looking down at, standing over Billy Wayne and the dead turtle.
Red Willie leaned over to him. “Pay attention, son, there’s somethin’ here you oughta see.”
Reilly backed away a step to make room for more light from the fire. He listened to Billy Wayne’s heavy breathing and occasional grunting, watched him working away with the knife under the pale organs that gleamed now in the firelight, that was giving off a smell stronger than Billy’s, a hot smell, almost sweet, and Reilly was struck by it; he couldn’t smell anything else and it suddenly occurred to him that he was smelling more than just the guts of an old turtle, and he knew what it was, that if secrets have a smell, this is it.
“They’re unconnected now,” Billy Wayne said. “Stand back, Cap.”
Reilly and Red Willie stepped away from the shell as Billy Wayne got around one side and pulled it up then held it for a moment as the entrails began to slide out of it onto the ground in front of the fire. He raised it a bit higher and Reilly watched as they sloshed out in a neat shiny heap onto the dirt. “Show him, Red.”
Reilly looked at Billy Wayne then at Red Willie.
“See it?” the old man asked, looking from Reilly to the ground then back again.
Reilly looked down at the entrails, saw big and small pieces; some were light-colored, others were dark, almost red, and they all seemed to fit together perfectly even as they lay now in the dirt, cut away from the body they had been part of for years. Then he saw the movement in the middle, saw one of the small parts there twitching. He bent over and looked closer. “Jesus Christ.”
“How do you like that, yank?”
“I can’t believe it.”
“It’s somethin’ ain’t it, Cap?”
Reilly was squatting now and could hear it too, a soft flapping against two bigger parts, its small dark mass jerking at a controlled and regular pace, not twitching Reilly could see, but beating.
“We timed one at sixteen minutes once, Cap.”
Reilly looked up at the two men; they were standing close together, looking down at him, Billy Wayne’s face yellow and beaded with a bad-smelling sweat, the white whiskers of Red Willie’s face almost glowing with the light from the fire, and for a second Reilly felt he was in the presence of two very wise and friendly ghosts. “I don’t understand it.”
“I’ve only seen it in the old loggerheads, yank. I’ve kilt younguns, but I’ve only seen this in the old ones.”
They both looked down again at the turtle’s heart, still beating slow and calm, the only movement in the pile of entrails.
“I call it the last dance, yank.”
Reilly was shaking his head. He heard Billy Wayne working again behind them, scraping the shell of its meat. He felt the fire on his face, the tickle of a sweat drop as it rolled down off his nose into the pile, and he caught the soiled leather smell of Red Willie, looked at the old man’s face watching the heart, his hard blue eyes softened now, the fire’s flames flickering in the wetness of them, and they held a gaze that Reilly recognized, that gave his face the look that comes to faces whenever they restudy a thing that exposes a truth they have already come to know very well, a look both respectful and resigned, and Reilly knew where he had seen it before; on Billy Wayne, when he would talk about Jude or jail and his drinking, and on his grandfather’s face too, when he would have to reach for the cane leaning against the fence of the garden after less than an hour’s work, his shoulders slumped and tired-looking. And on Jude, when she would light a cigarette with her coffee and silently watch her husband. Red Willie’s eyes moved to Reilly’s. “You’ll have a good amount of meat to give your gran’maw, yank.”
“Yeah.” Reilly stood up. “Yeah, that’s right.” He didn’t feel like he was outside anymore; he needed air. He looked behind at Billy Wayne and watched as he dropped big pieces of dark flesh into Red’s sack, then he turned away from the fire and Red Willie and the heart he believed must still be beating and walked toward the creek, his body cooling slightly as he moved into the darkness.
“We’ll get the net in the mornin’, yank.”
“I gotta piss.” He walked down the embankment and over the sand and heard the black water moving by in front of him. He peed into it, looked straight ahead into the night and saw himself getting out of Billy’s truck after having already dropped Red off, having watched him in the headlights’ glare walk barefoot through the beer cans, his gaff over one shoulder, a portion of turtle meat wrapped in a piece of burlap under his arm; then they would be at his grandparents’ place and Billy would squeeze his shoulder, would say, “G’night, Cap. My love to your gran’maw.” He would close the door softly then take his share of turtle meat inside and put it someplace cold, would wash up, then climb into the top bunk and lie still in the cool wind of the electric fan, would breathe deep through his nose and wait for sleep. And as Reilly stood so close to the water that he heard but could not see, something popping in the fire behind him, the tired voices of Billy Wayne and Red Willie hanging in the air as they finished their work, he felt himself become part of the darkness, part of the sand and creek and hickory trees, part of whatever was living out there around him, and in his solitude there he felt again the coolness of the hollow place inside him that still belonged to Mimi, but it was different now, and as he rolled his head until his neck cracked, his body let him know that the place had lost some of its pull, that it had merged with other things inside him.
He turned quickly and walked back up the embankment to the fire, to where the two men were squatting over the entrails, looking from the pile to Billy’s watch then back again. He walked over and squatted too, saw the softened eyes of Red Willie, caught the final smell of Billy Wayne. He looked down and waited with them, waited for the end of the soft flapping sound the dark piece was making, jerking slow and controlled against two bigger parts.
ANDRE DUBUS III
THE CAGE KEEPER
Andre Dubus III is the author of two other books, the novels House of Sand and Fog and Bluesman. House of Sand and Fog was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award, a selection of the Oprah Book Club, and an American Library Association Notable Book. Dubus has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize for his essay “Tracks and Ties,” and a National Magazine Award for Fiction for his story “Forky,” which is included in The Cage Keeper.
His work has appeared in The Best Spiritual Writing 1999 and The Best American Essays 1994. In 1994 Dubus was one of three finalists for the Prix de Rome given by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts, with his wife and three children.
Also by ANDRE DUBUS III
Bluesman
House of Sand and Fog
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, OCTOBER 2001
Copyright © 1989 by Andre Dubus III
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The stories included here have been revised slightly since first published in book form.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dubus, Andre, 1959–
The cage keeper and other stories / Andre Dubus III.
p. cm.
I. Title
PS3554.U2652C34 1989b
813’.54—dc20 89-1213
CIP
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eISBN: 978-0-307-42823-3
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Andre Dubus III, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories
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