The Free (P.S.) (10 page)

14

Freddie McCall walked down the sixth-floor hall to find Leroy moving his legs around in his bed. It was as though his whole body were twitching in pain. His eyes were wide open. A faint moan came from the tube in his throat. His face was pale and wet with sweat. One nurse was holding him still while another added restraints to his legs. They increased the pain medication on the drip and waited until he settled. Then one of the nurses left the room.

“It’s okay, buster,” he heard the other nurse say gently. Pauline looked up and saw Freddie in the room. “I know this looks scary. Leroy’s tolerance to the pain meds is increasing again so he’s waking up. He’ll be okay. It’s pretty normal for this to happen, but he moves around more than I’ve ever seen when someone’s intubated. We’ve restrained his arms but now we’re going to have to restrain his legs.”

She sat with him until his breathing settled and his movement stopped, and then she double-checked the ventilator and the chest tubes. “I think he’ll be okay now,” she said and began typing on the computer in the corner. “The doctor will be down in a couple minutes.”

Freddie nodded and then she left the room. He looked in his coat and took out a postcard, an illustration of a woman riding a rocket. She wore gold goggles and had flame-colored hair. The bikini she was wearing was blue and white and the rocket was cherry red. On it, in white cursive letters, it read,
THIS IS THE SPACE RACE WE WANT TO WIN!

He put the picture in front of Leroy’s face. “Look at this,” he said gently.

Leroy began to open his eyes.

“Don’t worry. It’s me, Freddie,” he told him. “I brought you a present.”

For a moment it looked as though Leroy saw the picture, but just as he seemed to realize it his eyes closed again. Freddie put the postcard on the bedside table and took off his coat and sat down in the chair next to him. The nurse came back with the doctor. They examined Leroy and talked about him and again left. Freddie turned on the TV and clicked through the stations until he found an episode of
Bonanza
. He had twenty minutes until he had to leave for work.

At 6:00 the next morning he left the group home and drove to his house. Even in the freezing cold the smell of the plants drifted up from the basement. Would the smell travel? Would his neighbors smell it? He’d been avoiding them for almost two years, since his wife and daughters left. What did they think of him now? And if they smelled the marijuana, would they know what it was? Mr. and Mrs. Hughes were old and they didn’t worry him, but the Jacksons weren’t. Richard Jackson worked for the fire department. Maybe he suspected something already.

He started the shower and turned on the box heater. He put his paint store clothes next to it, set the kitchen timer for ten minutes, and got in. As he stood under the hot water he looked at the old white shower tile and remembered his grandfather installing it. His grandfather smoking a cigarillo, with his greased-back hair, making sure each line was straight. He had been a perfectionist. It was his bathroom, it was his house, and now Freddie was losing it.

He dressed and drove to Heaven’s Door Donuts and parked. He walked inside to see Mora leaning against the glass counter in red sweats and a white apron. She was watching the news on a portable TV that sat on a shelf in the corner of the room.

“You’re ten minutes early,” she said.

“Dale was on time for a change,” Freddie said. Mora moved her large body back and bent down and sighed from the effort. She took five donut holes from the lowest shelf, put them in a plastic basket, and set it in front of him. She poured him a half a cup of coffee.

Freddie drank from it and took an old hockey puck from his coat pocket and set it on the counter. “I was looking through some boxes last night, and I found this. It’s from the ’82 season when the Winterhawks won the WHL championship. I’m not sure what game it’s from, but there’s writing on it. It’s my dad’s handwriting. It says ‘Hawks ’82’. It’s my after-Christmas Christmas present to you.”

Mora picked it up and flipped it over and read the writing. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Thank you,” she said. “Maybe it’s from the championship game.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“Let’s just say it is.”

“Alright.”

She took her purse from the shelf below the register, put the puck inside it, and leaned down on the counter again. “You look really beat this morning, Freddie.”

“I know, but I’m okay,” he said.

“Are you sure? Maybe you should go to a doctor.”

“I’m okay, really.” He ate a donut hole and washed it down with coffee.

“Did you get a chance to talk to Ginnie and Kathleen last night?”

“I did what you told me and wrote down a list of questions. That seemed to work better. We were on the phone twice as long that way, but you can tell they get bored.”

“Kids have no attention spans. You know that.”

Freddie picked up another donut hole but set it down. He looked at Mora and suddenly tears flooded his eyes. He couldn’t explain why it happened right then, but he began to sob in front of her.

“What’s wrong, Freddie?” she asked.

He stared at the rows of donuts below the glass counter. He leaned across to her and whispered. “I can’t keep going on like this.”

Mora reached over and put her hand on his arm. “I know,” she said. “How could you?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered and wiped his eyes.

“Don’t be sorry. It’s okay,” she told him. “Tell me what’s going on, Freddie.”

When he finally spoke, his voice was raw and so quiet it was barely audible.

He couldn’t look at her when he spoke. “I keep making bad decisions. Why are all my decisions bad? I’m going to lose everything.” He wiped his eyes on his coat sleeves. “And I’ve failed everybody.”

“Ah Freddie, don’t say that.”

“But it’s true.”

“It’s not . . . You’ve known me here for thirteen years, right?”

He nodded.

“Think of all the nice things you’ve done for me. When Raymond left me you’d come in here every morning and you could tell, just by looking at me, that I needed help. I didn’t even have to say anything and you’d invite me over for dinner. Your family took care of me. And you listened to me, Freddie. No one listens to me . . . You made me want to keep going when I didn’t want to. So don’t say you’re a failure. You’ve never failed me, Freddie.”

She walked out from behind the counter and went to him and put her arms around him. She smelled of donuts and soap and she was soft and warm. He collapsed into her and closed his eyes as two white work vans pulled in front of the donut shop with their headlights shining in on them.

He opened Logan’s Paint at a minute before seven. There was the early morning rush but by 10:30 it had cleared out, and he sat down and nodded off until 11:30, then got up, made another pot of coffee, and began placing restocking orders when Pat came in.

“How was it today?” he asked with a frozen spaghetti dinner and a bottle of Dr Pepper under his arm.

“Just over two thousand,” Freddie said. “The good news is they got the electrical and plumbing done on the Eccles apartment job. I stopped by yesterday on my way home. Drywall is going up next week and they ordered a hundred gallons of primer. My guess is they’ll probably do a hundred and fifty of primer, then take two hundred top coat by the time it’s over. Also, Gary came in. He’s starting a couple jobs on the reservation. He spent three hundred today and he says it’s just the start of it.”

“Not bad,” Pat said and went to the refrigerator. He put the soda and frozen dinner inside and went into his office. Twenty minutes later he came out and heated the frozen dinner. “If anyone calls for me, tell them I’m in a meeting. I’ll be on line one with my wife.”

Freddie nodded and continued his restocking orders, and the voice of James Dobson leaked through the wall.

“This is
no
time for Christian people to throw up their hands in despair. The moral principles in scripture have guided this great nation since the days of its founding, and we must remain true to them. This is a moment for greater courage and wisdom than we have ever been called upon to exercise. If we now choose to stand by idly while our foundational social order is destroyed, the family, as it has been understood for millennia, will be gone. And with its demise will come chaos such as the world has never seen.”

Freddie arrived at the group home that night in such a state of exhaustion he could hardly do his chores. He collapsed on the couch at midnight and fell asleep only to be woken an hour later by shrieking. He ran down the hall to find Donald naked and screaming at Hal, who was trying to hide in his bedroom closet. When Freddie entered the room, Donald panicked and began physically attacking Hal. He hit the middle-aged man a half-dozen times before Freddie was able to break it up. Hal collapsed in a ball on the closet floor, and Donald ran from the room. Freddie helped Hal to his feet and out of the closet but when he did, Hal suddenly became hysterical. He ran in circles and screamed and punched his hand through the bedroom window. The glass shattered and his hand came back wet with blood.

Freddie ran to the bathroom and got the first-aid kit. When he came back to the room Hal was motionless. He just stood staring vacantly at his blood-covered hand. Freddie took him to the kitchen and put his hand in the sink, and blood poured from it. He turned on the water and put Hal’s hand underneath the faucet and cleaned the wounds. There were three large cuts that would need stitching. He’d have to go to the hospital. Freddie sat Hal at the kitchen table, opened the first-aid kit, wrapped the wounded hand in gauze, and then put a kitchen towel around it.

When he finished, he made a hot chocolate and went to Donald’s room. The naked man sat on his bed, crying. Freddie gave him the drink, waited until he finished it, and then helped him into pajamas and got him back into bed. He turned off the light and shut the door and went back to the kitchen, and to Hal. He called the manager of the group home to let her know what had happened, and then he called Hal’s parents, who said they’d be right over. Freddie hung up and took Hal back to his room and dressed him and they waited at the kitchen table for his parents to arrive.

It was twenty minutes later when the sound of a truck was heard and the headlights from it shone into the front room windows. Hal’s parents were an old, gray-haired couple. The woman was dressed in a red coat that came down to her knees. Her husband was thin with a leathered smoker’s face. He wore a baseball cap and a worn canvas work coat.

“Oh Hal,” his mother said. “Why did you do it, baby?” She kneeled in front of him and put her arms around him.

“Donald attacked him,” Freddie explained. “I broke it up but Hal got so upset he punched out the window in his room.”

“Poor Hal has always been picked on,” she said. “His whole life has been that way. Instead of fighting back he just gets mad and smashes things or puts his hands through things. Windows or walls. He punched his fist through a TV once, didn’t you, honey?” She kissed Hal’s forehead while Hal’s father remained silent at the edge of the kitchen.

“I think he’ll need stitches,” Freddie said.

“You poor little boy,” she said.

The man coughed and turned to her and said, “He ain’t a little boy.”

“I know, Pop,” she said. “I know.” She looked at Freddie and whispered, “He thinks I baby him too much but what are you going to do? He’s our boy and he’ll never be anything but a little boy.”

“He was a good patient, though,” Freddie said. “I think I got all the glass out, but the hospital will know for sure.”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “Once the drama’s over he becomes catatonic. It’s the only plus side. It makes him easier to fix.” She took his hand and unwrapped the towel. The gauze was soaked with blood and she lifted it to see the cuts. “Oh boy, looks like he really did it.”

“How bad is it?” her husband asked.

“Hospital bad.”

“Figures,” he said.

“Well, Freddie, thanks for not calling an ambulance. Our insurance doesn’t cover ambulance rides. It would have cost us a fortune and we just don’t have that kind of money. Okay, Hal,” she said to her son. “You just stay here and I’ll be right back with a travel bag.” She kissed him again and then walked down the hall and came back carrying a small suitcase.

“I’m sorry about the window,” she said.

“It’s okay,” Freddie said. “I can replace it.”

“Just send us the bill,” she said.

“It won’t be that much. I can do it myself,” Freddie said.

She thanked him and put Hal’s shoes on, draped a coat over his shoulders, and they left. Freddie went to the garage and found a piece of cardboard and cut it to size and taped it over the broken window. He picked up the glass he could find, vacuumed the carpet, and locked Hal’s door. He checked on Rolly and Donald, who were both asleep, and then he went back to the couch and watched TV. Dale was twenty minutes late but it was Sunday, his day off from Logan’s Paint.

He ate breakfast at a diner on the way home as he always did on Sundays, and it was just past dawn when he entered his freezing house. He left his jacket on and started a fire and sat on the couch and watched TV until he fell asleep. When he woke next it was dusk and the fire had died. He got up and relit it and then took a piece of paper from his wallet. A long list of questions was written out, and he looked at them and called his kids and spoke to each of them. When he hung up, he tried to sleep some more. But as he watched the flames he thought of his mother sitting next to the fire, warming herself. His father had always gotten off work earlier than she did, and in the winter he’d start a fire so when she came home she could sit near it and drink tea. She drank a mug of tea and ate four Oreos every day after she worked as a present to herself.

As he lay there, he thought of them and of all the times they had stood by the mantel. His parents and grandparents, his children. They all had framed pictures sitting on it. He tried to sleep but he couldn’t. He was breaking the law, and he’d never really broken the law, not like he was now. He hoped his parents and grandparents, wherever they were, weren’t watching him.