The Cage by Lloyd Jones

Author:Lloyd Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2018-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

23

Where have all the visitors gone? It is three o’clock on a dreary Sunday afternoon. There are some threatening clouds in the west but not enough to prevent the usual crowd from turning up. Except no one does.

Apart from Mr Byrd, who is the only one of the Trustees still willing to be rostered on. He is standing on the porch in his fedora.

The cloud shifted for the steps to emerge from the shadows, and Mr Byrd stepped onto the grass.

But that was half an hour ago. Since then he’s fallen under the spell of his own company. He has looked interested in a passing thought. Examined his finger nails. Looked at his watch half a dozen times. There is a temporariness to Mr Byrd, and I am reminded of the strangers when they first came to live in the cage. They too had stood apart from their circumstances—anticipating that things would improve. Their physical person might be restrained, but not their hopefulness, which, in those first days of captivity, had a twitchy bird-like quality.

When so little changes in the backyard, it is hard to keep up interest. Mr Wooten, for example, used to bring a book to read. You see the same thing at the zoo. People dashing by the pens of animals they saw on their last visit.

In Mr Byrd’s case, I thought he looked mindful of being on duty, but that duty did not necessarily attach to caring. He jangled change in his pockets. He crossed the grass to poke at the stone rabbit with the toe of his shoe. He spent some time staring at the rusted swing. Then he turned abruptly to look up at the windows, and in my hurry to escape his eye I banged my head. I waited, then looked—I had not been seen. Mr Byrd’s face was frozen in thought, like the rabbit’s.

It is not a condition that extends to the strangers. Their eyes are like those glassy ones you see in mounted deer. Eyes, but they have no sight. In the case of the strangers, I daresay they could get about the cage just relying on smell.

For some time Mr Byrd showed no interest in the strangers, and nor did they seek him out when, eventually, they ventured into the last patch of sunlight on the floor of the cage. Mole followed Doctor to the mesh.

I left the window, and went downstairs to my room.

The next time I looked, Mr Byrd was over at the feeding hole. He dropped onto his haunches and began to call through the bit of mesh I have still to reinforce with stones. He clicked his tongue, made a coaxing sound. A cigarette was in his hand. It would be like him, even though the general public have been told not to give them cigarettes.

Then he bounced onto his feet, hoisted his trousers, tightened his belt, and moved around to the other side of the cage.

I could tell Mr Byrd found the strangers’ silence unnerving, like sitting in a crowded but quiet bus.

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