The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell (readict books TXT) 📕

still has parents? Which is weird to think, because whenever Bunny’s seen murderers in the news, it’s as if they were created (poof!) out of thin air, somehow landing on earth without ever having a family, a mother, a father, a daughter or son, without having ever been human.

“What about my parents?” he asks.

“Are you in touch with them?”

“Course,” Anthony says, but Bunny’s bias is skeptical.

“Where are they?” she asks, prodding his boundaries as if he doesn’t have the right to any.

“Mom’s home.…” he says, but doesn’t continue.

“What about your dad?” She sees Anthony fidget. “Where’s he?”

Anthony rubs his forehead and looks down, still holding the receiver to his ear. She hit a heartstring.

Feeling uncomfortable, Bunny fills the silence. “My dad’s not around that much either. He works a lot, he’s working so much right now I haven’t really seen him in weeks, and I turn—my birthday is coming up and he’s probably going to miss it. But he’ll certainly buy me a nice shiny present to make up for it!”

Anthony looks up into the screen. “My pops would never miss my birthday,” he tells her with conviction. Bunny’s racial bias shatters across her feet, her hope of finding something—anything (the dad card, surely?)—in common with Anthony.

“Oh,” she replies, embarrassed. “Well, that’s lucky.”

“My dad’s dead, if you think that’s lucky too, and if he were alive, he’d never miss a birthday.”

Shame flips on inside Bunny’s head. “I—I didn’t realize, I’m sorry.…”

“You probably don’t realize a lot of things,” he says.

Bunny grips the phone tight, clenching her jaw, trying not to show how suddenly fragile she feels. “How did he die, if… you don’t mind me asking?” Unsure of how a journalist might ask, she opts for good manners.

The screen goes static. “Anthony?” Bunny grunts and waits a few seconds before smacking the side of the screen. “Ughhhhhh.” She grits her teeth, looks behind her to see the officer glaring do not hit the monitor, ma’am.

“Anthony, you there?”

His face appears and then disappears into long squiggles across the screen. “Yeah, I can hear you,” he says.

Bunny leans over toward the screen, holds the receiver against her chin, and says in a very low voice, “This system fucking sucks… it’s garbage.”

“Easy, they don’t like anyone starting shit over there.”

Bunny likes the irony of Anthony telling her to behave, seesawing from believing in his guilt to believing in his innocence. She redirects the conversation back to his father. “I’ll behave—and I’m sorry,” she admits. “For saying that, or thinking that, about, you know, your dad. And, I shouldn’t have.”

She looks down at her lap; when validation does not come to her, she looks back up at Anthony, who is silent in his gaze. Bunny wonders about his unwillingness to contain and hold her revelation, as if he somehow owed this to her? Is his silence a semblance of his guilt, or a semblance of his responsibility to protect himself? She stirs, uncomfortable in the nuance; she doesn’t understand, cramped inside her own white skin.

“Oh, are you waiting for some kind of forgiveness?” he says.

Bunny, tripping over her thoughts: “I… no. I’m sorry.” She is careful in her tone; a beat between them. “I’m sorry, I’m… but can I ask how he died?” Still afraid he’ll hang up again, but willing to take the risk.

Anthony examines her, noticing the lump in her throat building. “Lung cancer,” he says.

“Was he a smoker?”

“Never smoked a day in his life.”

“How do you think he got it?”

Anthony breathes in. “From the chemical plants.”

“Chemical plants? Did he work for one?”

“Yep.”

“Which one?” Bunny opens her journal again, pins the receiver between her ear and her shoulder.

“Same one I worked for,” he says, looking straight into the monitor.

Bunny takes the receiver back in her hand and looks up at him. “But, the company—the Banks family company?” Bunny’s heart starts to pound. So is he guilty? Confused and refraining from assumption, it hits her in the gut.

Commotion again in the background, inmates fighting, a television blaring, the sound of metal clanking metal, doors opening and locking, static lines again.

“Anthony…” Bunny says, hitting the side of the monitor. “this fucking thing.”

He appears again. “I’m not supposed to be talking to you,” he says.

“If you don’t talk to me, how am I supposed to help you?”

“You wanna help me? That why you’re here? Really?”

“I—I want to know the truth so I can help… but I need to know what happened,” Bunny says, trying to keep it vague, trying not to lose her sense of self, the reason she came here to begin with, selfish and self-seeking.

“You’re not my fucking lawyer,” he says, growing frustrated, mistrustful, angry.

“I know I’m not.… Who is, by the way? And why isn’t anyone talking about this? About your dad? I don’t understand—”

“Who’s my fuckin’ lawyer? A broke-ass public defender is my fuckin’ lawyer, you think I got money to get a fuckin’ lawyer for myself? That’s for people like you.… It wasn’t in the news because they don’t want people like you knowing the company did anything wrong, that they’re all fuckin’ killers, that’s why.”

“But… it would give you a motive, it would look clear why you did it, because of your dad.”

“I didn’t fucking do anything!” he yells into the phone.

Startled, Bunny jumps back into her chair, then composes herself so as not to look vulnerable in front of the guard. “Okay, wait, I didn’t mean it like that.…” she says, breathing faster.

“I stormed into the owner’s office one afternoon, David Banks,” Anthony says in angst, “and I cussed the motherfucker out, screaming at him. He killed my pops. He didn’t even apologize, he just stood there with blood on his hands and pressed some button on his phone, then security came and took me away. So they blamed me for the deaths.”

“I—I’m so sorry, Anthony.”

“My father was a good man. He didn’t deserve that. I didn’t deserve that.” He shakes his head in trauma and disbelief.

A moment of silence passes between them, neither one looking into the