Cages

by

Michael Weston

Darrel awoke, but did not open his eyes. He played the "Where the hell am I today?" game. "Utah," he thought, "Provo fucking Utah."

The sleeper smelled like it always did: stale sweat, semen, and socks. Darrel opened his eyes and slid into a pair of Levis. He climbed out of the sleeper and into the driver's seat and flipped on the radio. Willie Nelson's shaky voice lamented something or other. Darrel lit a Kool and waited for a station break to deliver a time check. His watch was lost in the truck again. It was 2:15 in the afternoon and 82 degrees in beautiful downtown Provo. He sat at the wheel and drove nowhere for a while.

Darrel pulled on a t-shirt and his Dodger's cap. He opened the door and dropped to the ground. The cougar was watching him from the bed of the truck. "Hey, Quincy. How you like Utah?" Quincy made a cougar noise.

Darrel worked for Caison and Baines Combined Shows, a mud show out of southern California. Darrel was a roustabout, and drove the tent transport truck from lot to lot. He'd joined the show five years ago, after dropping out of high school. He was sick of the life, but he couldn't see quitting again. He's quit before, for a townie woman in Denver, and another in Fresno. Quickly, though, the lousy jobs and crummy apartments would force him back on the road. He just couldn't deal with it. The other day, an old circus hand had called him a lifer. Darrel wasn't sure he whether he felt complimented or insulted. He had options, didn't he?

Quincy was a new addition, the family pet of a doctor in Salt Lake City. A cougar kitten is for the kids, but 160 pounds of aggressively playful mountain lion is another story. After a few close calls, the doctor sold Quincy to Wally Schmidt, the big cat man with the show. He had hoped to incorporate Quincy into his act, but it was no go. Quincy was just too damned friendly, and would not respond to discipline. He just wanted to play. He had been resold to a roadside zoo in Arizona. Quincy had two weeks left with the show.

Darrel checked the water bowl, and paused for a moment to rub Quincy between the eyes. Quincy purred, and purred loudly and deeply enough that Darrel could feel it through the soles of his feet. The big cat's tawny pelt was flecked with black. His undercoat was a brilliant white. It wasn't visible until Darrel rubbed Quincy's fur against the grain. He lifted a handful of the cougar's loose skin and rubbed his massive shoulder muscles. Quincy's huge yellow eyes stared deeply into his, and Darrel felt uneasy, restless, and strange. He jumped to the ground and walked quickly away. He looked back once. Quincy was crouching, watching his movement away. The long, black hairs on his

Performers' trailers and show trucks ringed the tent. He slipped between two of them and lifted the canvas sidewall to enter the tent. The jugglers were working on a trick they had blown the night before. The pins and balls and rings flashed and fell in the half-light of the afternoon. The style and rhythm calls echoed and bounced in the nearly empty tent. "Hut! Hut! Hey"!

He walked out the main entrance, where the souvenir vendors were preparing for the 5:30 show. Paco, the Peruvian Indian who owned the pony ride and also sold balloons, was arguing with Frank, the snake-show man. They argued at every lot over the positioning of their concessions. The ponies didn't like the smell of the snakes, and neither did Paco. Frank didn't like the smell of Paco. Darrel listened for a while, and walked over to the

The candy stand was operated by the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order out of Germany that ministered to travelers, specifically carnivals and circuses. There were three of them, so alike in their faded blue habits and wire rimmed glasses, suspended on monkey faces, that they might well have been triplets. He had never learned their names. They were so shy they spoke only to each other. "Hello, sisters. How about a cup of coffee?" He added some creamer and two sugars to the oily coffee and watched the elephant lines. They rocket and ate and shit and thought their elephant thoughts.

Darrell walked through the fairgrounds parking lot, his bare feet kicking up little explosions of fine powdery dust. On the highway, he turned left towards the U-Totem convenience store, a couple of miles down the road.

The fairgrounds were next to a rural airport. The day before Darrel had walked over and traded four tickets to the show for a ride in a

He hitchhiked as he walked, not even turning to face the sporadic traffic, not really expecting a lift. The cement highway was cracked by hot summers and cold winters, and patched with tar. Darrel stuck a bare toe in the sun-softened tar like he had as a child. It wasn't as much fun as he remembered.

At the U-Totem he bought a microwaved burrito and a Royal Crown soda from the blank-faced teenager behind the counter. She stared at her bitten nails and slumped on her stool. An open copy of Sassy lay on the counter. Never mind her, he thought. No more townies.

He dropped a quarter in the "Wild West" pinball machine. In between bites of the burrito and sips of the soda, he played and won game after game. Darrel had once placed third in a California State pinball championship. Pinball was creative, forced order over chaos. There was a beginning, a middle, and an end. The rules never changed in the middle of the game. He smoked and played, smoked and played.

Lost in pinball Zen, he didn't notice the time slip away. It was suddenly dark. There was a shift change clerk, and the clock over the counter said 9:00. He bought a twelve pack of Old Milwaukee and walked back to the lot. He thought about Quincy; was he bored? Was he angry? Was he a lifer?

By the time he returned, the 8:00 o'clock show had ended. The cars had stirred up the dust in the parking lot. It was thick and yellow under the halogen lights. It looked for all the world like a chemical fire. Darrel skirted the crowd and headed for his truck.

It was still warm enough to sit outside. Darrel found a UNLV game on the radio and sat in a beach chair on the bed of his truck. He faced Quincy, who paced back and forth, back and forth, making low, lonely sounds, somewhere between a moan and a scream. The basketball game went on and on, but Darrel barely heard. He drank beer after beer, looked at the sky and the stars and the moon, but mostly at the cougar.

The game ended, and a talk show started...something about property taxes in Reno. Darrel stood, and realized he was drunk, very drunk. He carefully climbed down from the truck and turned off the radio.

Moving with the exaggerated care of the truly inebriated, Darrel lurched toward the tool truck. He stopped once to pee in a ditch. The sound of the piss hitting a pile of litter sounded a little like rain on leaves.

He unlocked the tool truck with a key he wasn't supposed to have. Carefully, he removed a pair of three-foot bolt cutters from the tool crib. All was quiet, with the exception of occasional muffled coughs from the big cat trailer. The warm smell of exotic animal crap accompanied him back to his truck.

The lock on Quincy's cage was no match for the bolt cutters. Darrel swung open the cage door and moved ten feet back to watch. He popped open a beer, and sat in his beach chair, and waited.

Quincy sniffed the air delicately, and paced nervously, faster and faster. The cougar put one paw outside the cage, then another, then was completely free. It froze, eye to eye with Darrel. His heart pounded, and he trembled involuntarily. The moonlight picked up the black and white flecks on the cougar's muzzle. A car on the highway flashed its brights, and Quincy's eyes glowed a fluorescent bottomless green for the briefest moment.

The cougar turned, and leaped back into the cage. It leaned against the wall furthest from the door, and panted rapidly. It stared at Darrel with a sidelong look.

Darrel sat riveted, suspended by disbelief. After a time, he walked over to the cage and slammed the door. Quincy moaned and purred and rubbed his head on the door. "Stupid cat. Stupid fucking cat!" He screamed at the top of his lungs, "Stupid fucking cat!"

Darrel winged the bolt cutters into the night with all his strength. They crashed against sheet metal somewhere. He walked into the night; order restored, game over, no replay.