The Cage Keeper by André Dubus III Page B

front, the click of the lighted box that is showing how much they already owe. Then she hears sharp and clear the voice she has not let herself hear in months.
You’re my ugly duckling girl, aren’t
you?
She opens her eyes.
    Freeze’s arm is pressed closer to the top of the seat, the knife just out of the driver’s view, and Barry is squeezing harder and faster. Her heart is speeding and she hears her father again. She closes her eyes to the pinch-throb of Barry’s fingers and gives in to it, is back in that hot bright kitchen, the fan broken and her father still dirty from the plant, his face sunburned and red from drinking too.
You’re my ugly duckling girl, aren’t you?
She looked at his mud-caked boots when he crossed the floor to her, and when he stood in front of her and unbuttoned her blouse she lifted her chin to his wide flat face.
    Aren’t you?
    Yes, Papa.
    Then he carried her into the room and laid her on the warm sheets. In the dark he undressed all of her.
My little ugly duckling,
my little one.
Then he was inside her and it felt like tearing a scab and when the burn was gone it ached and she started to cry. He moved faster and then stopped and lay next to her and held her, and she pushed herself back against his hairy warm stomach, feeling so wrong.
    Lorilee opens her eyes then pulls away from Barry’s crazy hand, hears the driver’s voice ask, “Are you all right, miss? Is he bothering you?”
    Freeze says quietly, “She’s all right.”
    “I’m not asking you, pal,” Dave says into the dark sunglasses.
    Barry’s hand stops squeezing but still holds the flesh tight. “We’re getting married, man,” he says. “What’s the problem?”
    “What happened to your face, miss?”
    “What’s it to you?” Freeze asks.
    Dave snaps his face to Freeze. “That’s it. Ride’s over for you, buddy.”
    “I ain’t your buddy.”
    Dave pulls fast to the curb under the stringed and hanging lights of Arnold’s Auto Sales. He points to the meter. “Four-sixty, smart ass.” He picks up the notebook beside him. His hand is shaking. He lays it back on the seat then looks in the rearview to the big one looking back at him, a thin clear drool sticking to his chin. Dave looks at Lorilee rocking back and forth on the seat. “You don’t have to go with them, miss.”
    “You hear me? I ain’t your buddy.”
    Dave turns to Freeze. “Pay up and get out.”
    “We don’t have no money,” Barry says.
    Dave looks away from Freeze to the mirror, to this smiling Frankenstein creature with his arm around this scared-to-death girl; his fleshy hand holding her breast. His heart beating in his throat, Dave turns around to look at Lorilee. “You don’t have to go with these guys.”
    She is rocking, looking into the clean face of this driver. She sees the muscles in Freeze’s forearm dance for an instant as the blade tilts up slightly. “Yes, Papa.”
    Barry jolts into laughter beside her, and then Freeze too; and Lorilee thinks,
Now,
you guys.
Now.
And she feels the cumulative weight and deed of her life rising up in her like a roller-coaster car nearing the peak of the highest and final run, the wind blowing different way up there, pushing quiet and steady against the side of her face. She rocks faster as the driver turns away from her and Barry to face Freeze who is smiling behind his sunglasses, who is raising the blade almost into view.
    “Just get you and your freaky friends the hell out of—” Dave grunts as his head is jerked back against the headrest. He sees the stretched gray of ceiling above him and digs his fingers into the fat ones around his chin and mouth. “You fuck—”
    Lorilee stops rocking; everything is moving fast now, and a laugh begins to well up from deep in her gut as Dave gets one hand free, then reaches back to grab a warm bristly head. Then his eyes are slapped over and covered by the hand of the dark quiet one. He begins to twist his torso and pull forward, hissing in air