The Free (P.S.) (18 page)

“Then what?”

“Come on,” Pauline said.

He coughed again but got up and went back to his room. He came out five minutes later wearing jeans and a worn flannel coat.

“I thought you quit drinking,” said Pauline.

“I have, mostly.” He sat on the couch and put on his shoes.

“There are four paper sacks full of empty beer cans.”

“They’ve been there a long time. I recycle now.”

“I bet you recycle. Do you have a gun?”

“Jesus, Pauline,” he cried. “You’re getting me into something where I need a gun?” He walked to the kitchen table where a new pack of cigarettes and a lighter sat. He opened the cigarettes, took one out, and lit it.

“I’m glad you quit.”

“Get off my back. Jesus, you could drive a man nuts. So why do I need a gun?”

“It’s for just in case,” Pauline said.

“I hate guns. Why would you think I’d have a gun?”

“What about a baseball bat?”

“Christ, can’t we go eat first?” he said. “And if you tell me I have diabetes one time while we’re there I’ll get a gun and shoot myself.”

“Don’t worry,” Pauline said and opened the front door. “I want you to eat a lot. You might need your strength.”

The morning was clear and the sun was rising into a dark-blue sky when they arrived at the white farmhouse with the yellow barn. The fields surrounding it were still half-covered in snow, and they could see their breath as they got out of the car. In the early sunlight the house looked even more desolate and tired than Pauline remembered. She opened the trunk, took out a tire iron, and handed it to Gary. They walked past the gravel driveway and up the steps to the back door. Pauline knocked and looked inside, but this time she didn’t see any movement or any sign of a fire. She knocked again and checked the door handle to find it unlocked.

Inside, the kitchen’s cabinet doors were gone as was the wood trim on the baseboards, the doorway, and the windows. The pictures that hung on the walls had disappeared, and there was more trash everywhere. Old wrappers and food containers, fast-food bags, dirty clothes, and soda and beer cans. She walked to the living room where the windows were still covered and called out the girl’s name in the darkness. Gary used his cigarette lighter to see his way to the blacked-out windows. He pulled the garbage bags down and light filled the room.

“Whose house is this?” he asked.

“I don’t really know,” Pauline said. They walked down a hallway into the first bedroom. There were holes in the walls showing old lath and plaster and on the floor was a broken-up wooden dresser and a door they had tried to bust apart. All the baseboard and window trim was gone. The next bedroom was empty except for a pair of stained men’s underwear and a frozen pool of vomit. All the trim on the baseboards and windows was gone. In the bathroom, the toilet and tub were full of shit and piss, and Gary gagged at the sight of it and went to the living room and lit a cigarette.

It was there that he called for Pauline.

In a sleeping bag behind the couch was the outline of a body. Pauline entered the room and went to the bag. She pulled it back to see the redheaded boy, frozen and dead. His young face pale and blue, his eyes still open. Around him on the ground were bloody rags, a box cutter, an empty bottle of rubbing alcohol, and two nails. She could see that he’d been lancing the abscess himself. He wore no shirt and his arms were covered in frozen pus and blood.

“Is there someone in there?” Gary said from the edge of the room.

“Yeah,” Pauline said. “Don’t come over here. You don’t need to see it. It’s not Carol. It’s a boy that I’ve seen here before.”

“Is he dead?”

She looked at Gary and nodded. She walked to the corner of the room where another sleeping bag lay with something inside it. She pulled it back to see an orange suitcase. On the tag it said the girl’s name, Carol. Inside were clothes, two empty notebooks, and a small photo album. There were pictures of her holding a cat, of her standing next to a horse in the middle of a stream, her with a volleyball team, and another of her sitting on a couch with a boy who looked like her brother. She rummaged through the girl’s clothes to find clean socks, folded underwear, and T-shirts. There was a volleyball jersey and a baggie full of medals. There was a plastic sack full of dirty clothes and a pair of sandals. She took a photo of the girl from the album, put it in her coat pocket, and turned to Gary. “Does your phone work out here?”

He looked at it. “Yeah,” he said.

“Will you call the police?”

He nodded and called them and gave them the location, and they went outside, to the porch, and waited.

“Why would they just leave him out here?” Gary asked.

“He was probably too sick to travel and they didn’t care about him.” Pauline sat down on the porch steps. She tried to remember the redheaded boy’s name but couldn’t. “It’s my fault,” she said finally.

“How is it your fault?”

“I’d seen that boy out here before. I knew he was sick. I tried to get him to come to the hospital with me but he wouldn’t. I should have called the police that day. I knew he was in trouble.” Tears began falling down her cheeks and she wiped her face on her coat. “I knew he was in real trouble, but I blocked it out . . . I was so mad at them for being cruel to Carol, for taking advantage of her, that I didn’t care what happened to them. She was safe so I blocked them out. But what does that make me?”

“He could have gone with you. He chose not to.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“Where do you think the girl is now?”

“I don’t know.”

22

It was just a blur of light when he opened his eyes. He could hear the TV. He wasn’t in pain. The tube was out of his mouth, but he could just see that there was now a tube coming out of his windpipe. He could feel someone’s hand holding his, and he knew instantly it was his mother’s hand. It was warm and soft and he could feel the only ring she wore on her left middle finger.

And then for a moment he could see her clearly. She was sitting next to his bed watching the news. A wave of emotion overcame him. He tried to grip her hand to let her know he was there but his fingers wouldn’t move when he asked them. He tried to make a noise, but no noise would come. He tried to move his feet and when that failed he again tried to move his fingers. But all the effort was exhausting him, and his eyes grew heavy and closed.

As she held his hand he remembered years before, her sitting at a high-school football game on a cold fall night. Her shift manager had let her leave work early and she sat in her uniform, in a winter coat, and drank coffee and watched him play. Every time he looked at the stands he saw her sitting by herself. He knew she didn’t understand the rules of the game, and that she had never liked sports. Not any of them. There were groups of families in front of her and cheerleaders on the track in front of them. Around her were various other people: high-school kids, the occasional single parent, and then rows of empty bench seats. Snow began drifting down as the clock neared the end of the game. He was sure she was probably freezing, but he knew she wouldn’t leave. And then finally he caught a pass. It was a good catch but he got hit hard right afterward and the ball sprang loose. He’d fumbled. The opposing team picked it up and ran it into the end zone for a touchdown. The score was now 27–10; his team was behind. The game ended as dusk set into night. The next game began and she went to her car and waited.

He appeared forty minutes later and got into the passenger-side seat with a swollen nose and wet hair.

“Are you freezing?” she asked.

“I’m okay,” he said.

“They don’t have blow-dryers in the locker rooms?”

He laughed. “No, Mom.”

“What happened to your nose?” Under the dome light she could see it was swollen, with dried blood around the nostrils. She took a pack of Kleenex from her purse and handed it to him. “You might need these.”

“I don’t think it’s broke, but it sure hurts,” he said.

“Do you think we should go to the doctor?”

“The coach looked at it and thought it was fine. He said he knew about broken noses.”

“Good. Then are you hungry?”

“Not really,” he said and put his book bag in the back seat and they began driving home. “How much did you see?”

“I got off early and saw the second part.”

“The second half,” he said and laughed.

“I saw the second half,” she said and smiled.

“Did you see me fumble the ball?”

“That guy hit you pretty hard.”

“Not that hard, I just dropped it. I don’t know why. I try so hard not to make mistakes but I make a lot of them. He stuck his hand through my face mask and hit my nose, too. You should see my uniform. It’s all covered in blood.”

“Did you bring the uniform with you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s in my bag.”

“I’ll get the blood out.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. That’s just the game. I feel bad for your nose though.”

“You’re not disappointed in me?”

“Why would I be disappointed?”

“ ’Cause I fumbled the ball and got blood all over my uniform. Plus I missed two blocks and then when I played defense I missed a tackle. I bet I won’t start next week.”

“Everyone has bad games,” she said.

“I hate that you have to sit out there in the cold just to watch me screw up. I know you don’t like football. I don’t think you should come anymore.”

“I like coming,” she said. “I like watching you. Don’t worry about me. You did some good things out there, too. And sad to say your fumbling didn’t change the fact that you guys aren’t very good.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I know.”

They drove through downtown and came to a stoplight. Across the street the marquee for the movie theater shone down.

“Look,
Blade
is finally here!” Leroy said.

“What’s
Blade
?”

“It’s a movie based on a comic book. Blade is a vampire but he’s a good vampire. He doesn’t drink blood. He has this friend who knows how to build guns and they have a hideout and a bunch of cool cars. Blade doesn’t want to drink blood; he wants to be a good guy. It has Wesley Snipes and a guy named Kris Kristofferson in it.”

“Kris Kristofferson’s in it?”

“I guess so. That’s what it says on the sign.”

His mother took her glasses from her purse and put them on. She looked at the marquee.

“I like Kris Kristofferson. Maybe we should see it,” she said.

“Tonight?” he said and suddenly his face lifted in excitement.

“Tonight.” She drove through the intersection and pulled the car over and parked. She looked at Leroy. “When I first started working I was an assistant secretary for a big accounting firm. I was eighteen and I tried really hard. I wanted to do good, just like you want to do good. Like how you tried to do good tonight. Anyway, I filed all these papers wrong. Stacks and stacks of them. I had misunderstood how to do it, but it was two days of work I ruined and my boss was really upset with me. He said he was going to fire me. He even called me an idiot. In front of maybe twenty people he did. I had just moved out on my own. I had bills. I was in over my head as it was. To be honest I was flat broke. I couldn’t lose the job. So I just started crying and I begged him not to fire me. In front of everyone I did.”

“Did he fire you?”

“No, he didn’t. He was just mad and not a very good boss. It won’t help you, but here and there, if you’re a woman, crying can get you out of a jam.” She laughed and put her glasses back in her purse. “Anyway, I kept that job for a year until I found a better one. That filing mistake I made was no big deal. It was only a big deal that day. And that first night after it happened, even though I was broke, I went to a restaurant I’d always wanted to go to. I had chicken parmigiana and drank a glass of wine. Sometimes you have to treat yourself when you get beat up. When someone gives you a hard time, sometimes you have to give yourself an easy time so that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to see
Blade
.”

“Are you sure? You hate these kind of movies.”

“I’m sure,” she said. “If we missed the early show then we’ll go eat and see the later one.”

“Maybe we can get chicken parmigiana,” Leroy said and smiled.

“I’d like that,” she told him.

23

Ernie backed the U-Haul truck into Freddie’s driveway but panicked. He couldn’t find the brake and ran into the garage. He crushed the gutter and fascia board and dented the corner of the truck. It all made a booming crash and Freddie ran up from the basement to see Ernie staring at the damage by the glow of the porch light.

“Are you alright?”

Ernie shook his head nervously. “I’m sorry.”

Freddie looked at his garage and the dent in the U-Haul. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not too bad.”

“You think we can bang the dent out of the truck with a hammer?”

“It looks pretty bad, but we can try.”

“And I ruined your gutter and broke a bunch of boards, too.”

“I can fix those.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Uncle Lowell thinks it’s all my fault, and now I did this.” Ernie took off his glasses, cleaned them, and again looked at the damage he’d caused. He pulled the hair off his face, found a rubber band in his coat pocket, and tied his hair back into a ponytail.

“It’s not your fault,” said Freddie and rolled up the U-Haul’s cargo door. “I have to sell my house. That’s the problem.” He pulled the ramp from underneath the bed and set it on the garage floor and then led Ernie inside the house and down to the basement.

“I guess we have to start, huh?” Ernie asked.

“Yeah,” Freddie said, and then the two men slowly took the eighty-five plants up the stairs and into the back of the truck. They put in the lights, the fan, the extra tables, the space heaters, and the gallons of Lowell’s special plant-food mixtures. When they’d finished, Ernie handed Freddie the truck keys.

“I don’t think I should drive anymore, alright?”

“Okay,” Freddie said and took the keys.

They headed north on the highway and drove nearly two hours without talking. The radio played and they drank generic orange soda that Ernie had brought in a paper sack that sat between them. They came to a mountain range lined with trees and covered with snow, and the U-Haul crawled slowly along. Ernie read out the directions he had written down, and as they neared the summit they exited and took a series of two-lane roads until they came to a gravel logging road. A mile down it they turned into a driveway and stopped in front of a derelict log cabin.

A middle-aged man opened the front door and came out and met them. He was thin with a pushed-in face and was the size of a jockey. Next to him stood an old German shepherd with bad hips that had trouble walking. The man’s fingers were bent from arthritis and he pointed them in the general direction of a barn on the other side of the property. Freddie moved the truck to it and the man opened the barn door. Inside there was nothing but a large vacant room and three card tables.

“They’re gonna freeze to death in there,” Ernie whispered to Freddie as they walked into the barn. He stopped in front of the man. “Didn’t Lowell tell you they need to be warm?”

“I got a kerosene heater,” the man said.

Ernie grew more upset. He paced the room back and forth. Freddie looked at the man and said, “Do you have Lowell’s money?”

“Three thousand,” the man said and took a wad of worn bills from his coat pocket. He handed the money to Freddie. Freddie counted it and gave it to Ernie, who put it in his pants pocket. They opened the back of the U-Haul, pulled down the ramp, and began unloading. The man chain-smoked cigarettes and watched from the edge of the barn, but he didn’t help. They put the lights and the plant food on the concrete floor. Ernie found an outlet and plugged in the two space heaters, and they unloaded the plants and set them on the tables.

When they finished, the man inspected each plant. He walked up and down the long tables. He stopped at a set of four that carried more dead leaves than the others. He took them off the table and set them on the floor.

“I ain’t gonna pay for these.”

Ernie walked over to the plants. “But those are healthy. They’re just a little small. All plants have a few dead leaves, but I swear they’ll give you good buds.”

“I don’t want ’em,” the man said. He took another cigarette from a pack in his coat pocket and lit it. His dog stood alone on the other side of the barn and began barking at the wall. “Give me back a hundred of that money I gave you.”

Ernie stood silent and motionless.

“Give him the hundred, Ernie,” Freddie said finally.

Ernie took off his glasses and cleaned them with his shirt. He began to say something then stuttered, stopped, and took a hundred from his pocket and gave it to the man. They loaded the four plants back in the U-Haul and drove away from the cabin.

They kept silent until they got back on the highway. Freddie got the U-Haul up to fifty and Ernie turned on the radio. Only four more plants, Freddie thought, and it was over.

“Do you mind if we talk?” asked Ernie as he sat hunched over, leaning against the door and the window glass.

“I don’t mind,” Freddie said.

“I didn’t like that guy at all.”

“There wasn’t much about him to like.”

“You know, Lowell said that guy went to prison for raping his wife. How does a guy rape his own wife?”

“Just ’cause you’re married doesn’t mean your wife wants to sleep with you,” Freddie said.

“I wouldn’t want to sleep with him.”

“Me neither.”

“To be honest, Freddie, I thought if you got married your wife would automatically want to. And want to all the time.”

Freddie laughed. “You’re younger than I thought.”

“I’m not that young,” Ernie stated, but he sunk down in the seat even more. “Is it okay if I change the station? I hate this song.”

“Pick whatever station you want,” Freddie said.

Ernie moved the dial up and down on the radio and then looked out the window. “Did you see the guy’s hands?”

“He’s got pretty bad arthritis,” Freddie said.

“And his dog was blind, wasn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“Why would he bark at the wall?”

“Maybe he was crazy, too. So what do you want to do with the last four?”

“I don’t know,” Ernie said. “What do you want to do?”

“Drop them off somewhere.”

“Kill them?” Ernie asked.

“I guess,” Freddie answered. “Or you could take them. I don’t care as long as they don’t come back to my house.”

“I guess we could drown them in the river,” Ernie said.

“Okay,” Freddie replied. He drove until they came to the edge of town. He led them off the highway until they came to the river and parked on a dirt turnout. They got out of the truck and rolled up the back door and Ernie jumped inside and carried out the four plants. One by one he took them from their plastic pots, shook the dirt off the roots, and carried them down to the river and threw them in. When he was finished, they got back into the U-Haul and left. As Freddie drove them to the International House of Pancakes, he was so elated and relieved that he nearly began weeping.

Three days later a blond real estate agent sat in a car in front of Freddie McCall’s home. She took pictures from the driver’s seat, and then got out and walked up to the house and knocked on the front door. Freddie let her inside and showed her around. He took her to the kitchen and told her how he had remodeled it for his mother. How he had built the cabinets himself in a neighbor’s garage, and while his parents were on a cruise he did the tile work and painted. He installed the new cabinets, a new counter top, and a new stove and dishwasher. She took more pictures and then he led her to the dining and living rooms and told her how he’d refinished the fir trim and oak floors. He took her to the office that he had made for his wife out of a walk-in pantry. He showed her how he’d put in a window and built cabinets and shelves and a custom desk from wood his grandfather had left in the garage.

The agent looked in the cupboards and the closets, the basement and the bathroom. When she finished, she stood near the heat of the fireplace. The housing market had fallen out, she told him. The money wouldn’t be great, not like it would have been a year earlier, but she was confident she could sell it. As she spoke, Freddie was unable to look at her. And then finally she asked him if he was certain he wanted to go through with it. “Yes,” was all he told her and then they moved to the kitchen table, came up with a plan, and did the necessary paperwork.

When he arrived at the group home that night he could hardly do his chores. He collapsed on the couch at midnight and fell asleep watching reruns of
Wagon Train
. He slept uninterrupted for six and a half hours and dreamt that he had gotten lost in a blizzard and was stuck up to his chest in snow. He’d given up hope and was certain of his death when he was found by Flint McCullough, the scout from
Wagon Train
. Flint pulled him from the snow and threw him over his horse. He led them into the pure-white freezing hell of the storm. Flint laughed easy as they went. He wasn’t worried. He told Freddie and his horse, Little One, the story of a three-day game of checkers he once saw that ended when one of the men suddenly stood up and shot himself. But the storm worsened and Flint quit talking and then he just stopped and turned around. His face grew frantic and blood spewed from his mouth and he screamed, “Freddie!”

Freddie gasped for air and woke up from sleep, startled. He opened his eyes to Dale standing over him, shaking him, telling him he was going to be late. It was 6:42.