Freedom Road

by William Lashner

  “We had it before you threw it out the window.”

  “What’s that you say?”

  “It was on my phone.”

  Oliver drives on, nodding silently, chewing his cheek. “And you didn’t think,” he says finally, “to tell me that before we drove off?”

  “My mind went blank from the shock. I couldn’t believe you would do anything so stupid.”

  “You don’t know me very well.”

  “But I’m getting the idea. If I had a phone I could, like, type in the name and the town and Google would spit it out.”

  “If you had a phone you could call the Russian,” says Oliver.

  “I’m in this stinking truck with you to get away from that fool. Why would I call him?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I wouldn’t. Not even on a bet. You don’t trust me.”

  “Not an inch. Where do you think you’re going to end up anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Frank’s headed all the way to California, right? Maybe we’ll have to chase him there to find Erica. That would be something. You ever been to California, old man?”

  “The name’s Oliver.”

  “Oliver, yeah. Like the movie. ‘Please, sir, I want some more.’”

  “I never heard that one before,” says Oliver.

  “It was a line. In the movie.”

  “I’ve lived in California. Nothing special, just a place, same as everyplace else.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Oliver. Palm trees, surfer movies, In-N-Out Burger, sunsets over the Pacific, Humboldt County.”

  Oliver snorts. “What do you know about Humboldt County?”

  “Nothing but what I smoked. That’s the point. I bet you can just get high sitting in the mountains in Humboldt County.”

  “What you get is wet and cold mostly.”

  “When were you in California?”

  “In my twenties.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  Oliver shucks up a glob from his throat, rolls down the window and spits. How to answer such a question? He lets the wind wash his face before he rolls the window back up and says, “When I got there the times they were a-changin’. Then they changed.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I was in high school, Oliver, it’s the same thing.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “You don’t need to jump down my throat all the time. Why are you so mean?”

  “I’m old and I don’t have time for bullshit.”

  “I’m just trying to keep the conversation flowing.”

  “We don’t need flow. No flow.”

  “What about just being nice?”

  “You know what nice gets you?”

  “I don’t know. What?”

  “I don’t know either.”

  “So who was that Andrew Carnegie?” says Ayana. They are walking along Orchard Street, treed and dark and residential, not far from the Chillicothe Library, where Ayana used the computers to find this address. Oliver thought it best to park around the corner in case neighbors were watching.

  “Some rich, dead guy,” says Oliver.

  “The plaque said he built that library and thousands of others.”

  “It’s easy to be generous on the backs of the working man.”

  “It’s also easy just to drink mai tais.”

  “He did that, too,” says Oliver. “Which one is it?”

  “It should be that one.”

  “Good. Okay. You keep your mouth shut, right?”

  “What do you think I’ll say?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the point. But I have a story. What do you have?”

  “Charm?”

  “Stop making jokes.”

  The house is small, boxy, with a picket fence and a sedan in the driveway. The lights are off, and for a moment, as Oliver knocks on the door, an almost dainty tap for him, he wonders if no one is home, but eventually the living room light switches on. When the door opens, Oliver sees a stout blond man, shoeless in jeans and a T-shirt, with a beer in his fist and a face full of bruises.

  “Todd Cormack?” says Oliver.

  “What about it?” Cormack says.

  “Got a minute?”

  “It’s late.”

  “Not too late for a beer.”

  Cormack looks at Oliver and then at Ayana, giving her a quick and nervous double take before stepping back in resignation and opening the door wide for them to come inside. The house is cheaply built, Oliver can tell, the walls thin, the floor laminate, the furniture distressed and redolent with the faint scent of mold. The American dream in Chillicothe.

  “What’s it about, this time?” says Cormack before slopping a slug of beer into his mouth.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “I stepped on a rake.”

  “We’re looking for your brother.”

  “You and the marines. I’ve got nothing new for you.”

  “How about a beer?”

  Cormack is about to bark at Oliver, but then he glances at Ayana and his chin drops. “Her too?”

  “Sure, thanks,” says Ayana.

  “How old are you?” says Oliver.

  “Nineteen.”

  “Just me,” says Oliver.

  “What?”

  “Sit down and stay quiet,” says Oliver.

  The girl pouts as she drops onto a green couch, stretches out her arms on the sofa back, and props her boots onto the edge of the coffee table. Cormack stares at her for a moment before turning and limping into the kitchen.

  “He’s sweet on me,” says Ayana over the sound of the refrigerator opening.

  “He’s scared of you,” says Oliver.

  “Why would he be scared of me?”

  “I don’t know,” says Oliver. “But I shouldn’t have brought you.”

  “That’s funny, Oliver, I thought I brought you.”

  Cormack returns with two fresh beers and keeps one for himself. “So you’re still looking for him,” he says.

  “Still?”

  “Which means he got away again. Too bad. Like I told you before, I don’t know where he is, I don’t know where he’s going. All I hope is that he never appears in my life again. Is that clear enough? Drink up and then say goodbye.”

  “Who did you tell all this to before?”

  Cormack looks at Oliver and then at the girl. “Who are you again?”

  “Ayana,” says Ayana.

  “When your brother showed up here,” says Oliver, “was there a girl with him, about her age?”

  “Sitting right there,” says Cormack gesturing at the couch with his beer, “with the same snarky smile and her boots muddying up my coffee table just like that.”

  “That was my granddaughter,” says Oliver Cross.

  Cormack narrows a swollen eye. “What was her name?”

  “Erica,” says Oliver. “Erica Cross.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Oliver Cross.”

  There is a moment when sympathy leaks out of Cormack’s swollen expression before he glances again at the girl and his face hardens. “Who’s she, then?”

  “Ayana,” says Ayana.

  “A friend of my granddaughter’s. Helping me look for Erica.”

  “Is that a fact,” says Cormack. “Well, it’s a shame about your granddaughter.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s messed up with my little brother, and once again he’s done something stupid. I don’t know all of it, but I know they’re both running. It’s been like that with him since the day he was born. He was always looking for the big score and trying to get it the easy way. He stole from my parents, he cheated in school. He was a good musician but cared more about the lifestyle than the hard work of banging out songs and plying them on the road. Now I’ve worked too hard and have too much on the line—a wife and kid, a job, this house, a goddamn life—to get messed up any more in his troubles. That’s why I sent him
packing when he came, no help, no money, nothing but the door. And when he left, she went with him.”

  “You didn’t give him anything, your own brother?”

  “To buy more drugs with? To get in more trouble with? My whole family’s learned to say no. So that’s what I did. And what did Frank up and do?” Cormack takes another swig of beer. “He robbed a mini-mart in my damn town. My own damn town. And a few hours later the police ended up right where you’re standing now.”

  “Shit,” says Oliver Cross.

  “That’s it right there.”

  “How long did Frank stay?”

  “Long enough for me to tell him to get going and not to come back.”

  “He say where he was heading? Any clue at all?”

  Cormack glances once again at Ayana, as if she is a stand-in for Erica and is just as in over her head. “Not a word,” he says finally, shaking his head. “He just asked for money and I told him to go to hell, and that’s where they went. Granddaughter. Isn’t that a shit pie? I thought you were a little old to be working with them.”

  “You’re talking about the Russian?”

  “I don’t know who they are, the thugs, but they’re looking for him, too. And they didn’t like my answers either.”

  “Thus the rake.”

  “They finally realized I had nothing to tell them, but they had their fun first. From the bandages on your face it looks like they might have had their fun with you, too.”

  “I got in a shot of my own.”

  “Then you did better than me. I just took it. Like I deserved it for even opening the door for Frank one last time. So he’s got them on his ass, and the police, and now you. Let’s have a toast.” He hoists his beer. “My brother. I guess he finally hit the big time after all.”

  Back in the truck, with a darkness descending over his skull far blacker than the Chillicothe night, Oliver slams the steering wheel. The dog yelps and Ayana winces. Whatever elation he was feeling has been swallowed whole by a far more familiar emotion: a sense of abiding futility. The journey to save his granddaughter is getting ever more urgent and ever more hopeless at the same time. He is failing again. Everything he ever touched has turned to shit, and that he thought this little jaunt should have been any different is just a testament to the rabid self-delusion that has scarred his entire life. He slams the steering wheel again, and then a third time. Yelp, yelp.

  “What do we do now?” says Ayana.

  “How the hell should I know?” says Oliver.

  “Should we just head on to California?”

  “By the time we get there it will all be over.”

  “Maybe we can fly to Santa Monica?”

  “I skipped parole. I can’t do shit.”

  “You want me to call the Russian, find out what they know?”

  “If they know where he is they’ll pick him up themselves. We have to beat them, not follow them.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I don’t know.” Slam. “I don’t know.” Slam. “I do not fucking know.” Slam, slam, slam.

  “Do you want to get high?” says Ayana.

  Oliver turns to his right, peers past the dog to the girl, and feels the darkness of his depression turn red with anger. His breathing grows short, and what’s left of his teeth start to grinding. He tastes the thick stream of rising bile and closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens his eyes again he feels the slight burgeoning of a distant calm. It’s not much but it’s enough to unclench his teeth.

  “Sure,” he says. “Let’s get fucked up.”

  18

  NIGHT BIRD FLYING

  Oliver Cross lies fully clothed on his motel bed, his boots still on, his fingers webbed behind his head, his throat dry, his eyes closed, and his mind twisted in on itself.

  He dragged the tape player from the car and now Jimi Hendrix’s guitar envelops him in a cloud of nostalgia. There was a moment when everything seemed possible, without any limits on what his life could become, and the soundtrack to that moment was Hendrix. Smoking weed and listening to “Night Bird Flying” with Helen in his arms as they dreamed of a perfected future was as natural then as breathing. He can still feel her lying close, her smooth skin, her bare leg rubbing against his, her back pressed against his chest. He can still smell her, the essence of Helen, mixed with the sweet jasmine candles she used to burn in old Chianti bottles.

  After the disappointment at the Cormack house—another dead end in a dead-end life—Oliver found a cheap motel not far away, and rented a single room so he could keep an eye on the girl. He didn’t tell the clerk about the dog, but he asked for a first-floor room—for his arthritis, he said—and getting the dog from the truck to the room without being noticed was a breeze. Of course, as soon as Hunter was inside he barked and barked until Oliver filled one metal bowl with water and the other with food. Then Oliver staggered into the bathroom with his Dopp kit to brush his teeth. Blood swirled down the sink like he was jabbing a knife into his gums. He swallowed his night pills and grimaced into the mirror like an ogre.

  Ayana was waiting for him when he came out, sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, fiddling with a joint. He sat across from her with an eagerness he didn’t recognize.

  “When was the last time you got high, Oliver?”

  “I don’t remember,” said Oliver.

  “Sure you do.” She put the joint in her mouth and pulled it out slowly, wetting it.

  “When my wife was dying.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  “I bought it for her, for the pain, and when she smoked she wanted me to smoke with her. She wanted the company. And then we pigged out together, which was good because by the end she had no interest in eating. But after a while she got too sick for even that, so we stopped.”

  “And not since then?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It didn’t seem right, me without her.”

  “So why now?”

  “I’m missing her. Maybe she’ll join me.”

  “It’s pretty good shit,” Ayana said firing it up, “but not that good.”

  And with his head now swirling as he lies in the bed, he figures it was some pretty good shit, because he is no longer an old man, or a young man, or anything in between. He is simply Oliver Cross, divorced from time and floating free above the whole of the nation.

  The journeys back and forth across the continent conflate into a mosaic of his adventures with Helen: the pickup truck that stops for them outside of Pittsburgh; the deco jukebox in Butte, Montana that winks with the bass line; the strutting funeral procession on Bourbon Street; the diner in Denver that still serves Orange Whip; the jazz combo playing in a field outside Baton Rouge; the great American landscape rushing outside the rattling van’s window as if he and Helen are the stillest things on earth. And San Francisco, San Francisco, when they first spy the Pacific from atop one of the city’s endless hills and they know with that precious certainty of the young that the life they are beginning together will be nothing less than glorious.

  Lying now stoned on the cheap motel bed, Oliver remembers everything. They lived in a ramshackle group house, linked themselves with a community of artists, and moved through that world as if everything under the sun was possible. Helen painted her astonishing free-form canvases, along with rogue murals on crumbling brick walls and great theatrical backdrops for productions all across the city; he wrote and acted, recited his poems, learned guitar and sang songs in the park, organized and protested, danced in leotards. It was perfect freedom, a perfect life, the promise of his breakout perfectly fulfilled.

  Even with his eyes closed and his mind whirring across the land and into the past, Oliver can hear the girl puttering around the room, getting ready for bed. The image of her pulling the joint out of her mouth has stayed with him, the eroticism of the act bringing a whole batch of writhing flesh-colored memories to the fore. He licks his lips at the images of his sexual liberation. In the truck on
their way to Chillicothe, the girl asked him why he had left California and the answer he gave seemed tersely profound at the time, but now, amidst the memories, proves itself to be weak and glib. Why did they leave California? Why did they walk out of such perfect freedom?

  “You know why,” Helen whispers to him, and a spurt of joy bursts into his chest at her arrival.

  “Where have you been?” he says.

  “Watching.”

  “I missed you.”

  “I miss you every moment.”

  “I’m lost, Helen, on the road to nowhere with nothing anymore to go on.”

  “You’re on the road, at least.”

  “So why did we leave California?”

  “It started going wrong,” she said. “Remember? Right after Hendrix died.”

  Yes, that’s right. He turns onto his side, away from the second bed and the girl so he can be alone with Helen. Hendrix died, and then Joplin right after, and the war that killed his brother continued churning despite their protests. And, slowly, amidst what seemed like perfect freedom, hard truths started breaking through. With all the choices, he had chosen everything, which meant he had chosen nothing. Helen had her studies and her art, but he had only drifted, which was sweet at first, since his previous life had seemed so stolid and planned, but soon slipped into a depressing purposelessness. And then the tourists came in their buses, gawking at the hippies, which made them feel like exhibits in a zoo. Oliver began searching for a larger truth to hang on to, flirting with all kinds of spirituality and drugs, determined to find the answer. He felt so close to it, so close to something bigger than everything.

  And then the universe cracked.

  When he recovered enough to see his new world clearly, he realized the great shifting freedom he had found in California solidified into something just as parochial as the suburbs of Chicago. There were just as many tropes to follow, just as much ambition and money hunger. As long as he kept his hair long and wore sandals or Frye boots and rolled a tight joint, he still fit right in, but Oliver never found purpose in fitting right in. His father fit right in, and so did his brother, and where had that gotten them? So they left San Francisco and tried heading north to live with an alternative community in the mountains, but that was more of the same. When Helen became pregnant, they both knew this was not the scene in which to raise their child. It was time again to hit the road.