Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

8

They came for him at 7:30. The officer pounded on the door twice, then shouted: “Martin Tyler, this is the police. Open up now.” Martin complied. The officer pushed him back into the room, was joined by his partner, and they were joined by Barbara Hayes.

“What the hell did you think you’d accomplish by running out like that?” “You wouldn’t believe me,” said Martin as the officers cuffed his hands behind his back. Dr. Hayes looked at him and shook her head. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, Martin, but there are rules.” “I know.” He was alive. He had done it.

Damn had he done it!

“How irked is Ethel?” he asked as they led him out to the police cruiser.

“Oh, you’ll be finding out soon enough, I think,” said Dr. Hayes.

After the officers had gotten Martin safely into the back seat, Dr. Hayes leaned down and said, “There are consequences for certain actions, Martin. You’re not being charged with any crime, but you just bought yourself the entire ten days at The Center.”

“I figured.”

She looked as if she were going to chew him out some more, but then her eyes softened, her face filling with something . . . something . . . not her.

“There will be other circuses for you, Dipshit,” she said in a voice that could only have been Bob’s—because it wasn’t Jerry’s, and it sure as hell wasn’t hers. “There will be cotton candy and funnel cakes and calliope music. There are always tomorrows, soldier, and other battles done; music in the square, women under flowered trees, as summer slides into soft decay, leaf unto leaf . . .”

Then she stopped, blinked, and gave her head a little shake before looking at Martin again. “You screw up, you deal with the consequences. That’s life.”

“Yeah,” said Martin, barely able to contain himself. “It sure is, isn’t it?”

The cruiser pulled away, taking him back to Buzzland.

Martin looked out the window at the morning world. The sun broke through the heavy thick clouds still lingering from the downtown fire, shining directly into Martin’s eyes.

And larks into falcons rise

from the yellow sleeves of eternal day.

He wished peace to Bob, bade the Substruo much luck, and sent his parents his love.

A new day, a new world. Yet again.

And again.

And again.

The yellow sleeves of eternal day, he thought.

Bring it on.