Freedom's Child: A Novel

by Jax Miller

  Rebekah usually posts every evening, 7:00 p.m. on the dot. Always scripture. Always links to her family’s church’s website. And lucky me, I’m one of the most faithful online followers of the Third-Day Adventists’ webcast. My username is FreedomInJesus, and every Sunday, without fail, I follow the sermons. On several occasions, and I attribute this to being one of the oldest online members, I’ve gotten to speak through Skype with Virgil and Carol Paul, a real fucking honor to meet you nutjobs; I’m your biggest fan. I spill my heart over forgiveness and obedience and mercy and this, that, and the other. Spreading the gospel in Or-ree-gan, praise Jesus. Anything for a possible glimpse of Mason and Rebekah.

  A few weeks ago I wrote letters to both of them. In fact, I have a massive pile of letters to them I keep at the house, but I never before had the heart to send them. I’ll send them one day, when the time is right, I suppose. They just seemed so happy, so blissfully unaware, I didn’t want to be the tornado to rip through their precious existence. The first time I wrote to them, I brought the letters to work and kept forgetting to take them home. When I did, I must have accidentally mixed them up with my bills. Of course.

  As soon as the mailman collected them, I realized my mistake. I even chased after him, nearly mowing him down with my car to get those letters back. I ripped the mailbag from him and spilled it all over the street out of mere frustration. I knew my apartment complex was early enough in his route that there’d be a good chance I’d find them. When the mailman yelled and tried to stop me, I barked at him. Literally, I barked and growled like a dog with rabies. When he started to call the cops, I dared him. “Go ahead, call the fucking cops, see if I care!” But when the witnesses started looking out their windows, I left with a fleeting “Fuck you, man” and went on my way.

  Working at the Whammy Bar, large brawls between bikers tweeking on meth aren’t all that uncommon. In those instances, I stand on the bar and pull firecrackers from my boots and throw them at the biggest guys I see.

  I found the mailman again nine blocks later.

  I could make him out in long socks and shorts up Lindsey Street with his bag of mail. I snuck into the back of his truck through the front and rummaged in an infinite amount of letters, but nothing was organized, none of it made sense. I looked up every few minutes to check if the nerd was coming back. And he was. But I hadn’t found the letters. And there was no way he wouldn’t see me, as the only way out was climbing over the driver’s seat, which was on the passenger side. Time to do it. Just run faster than him. Shouldn’t be too hard. Just move.

  I pulled the firecrackers from my boots, where I always kept them, and lit the fuses. I usually cut them, so they explode within seconds, but I left the fuses long, to buy us time. I lit three strings, twenty firecrackers on each, and threw them in the back of the truck as I booked it. I nearly busted my ass as my foot got caught in his seat belt. He saw me. He ran. I can’t remember how many backyards I ran through.

  When I reached my street, I breathed a little easier with a cigarette as I caught my breath. I squatted down and leaned against a tree on the side of the road, when lo and behold, guess who sped around the corner…and by speeding, I mean about thirty-five miles per hour, but fast enough that the mail truck’s engine sounded exhausted from the reckless speed. But I didn’t move. I smiled as he throttled in my direction. I waved. You stubborn asshole.

  The truck swerved all over the street with the loud pops of firecrackers going off in the back. And for a second I imagined a scene from some kind of old Prohibition-era film. Smoke poured from the front and back, a gray that matched the layers of fog that hovered over Painter.

  The only problem with this was that I probably just broke a million federal laws.

  Took a lot of paperwork on the whippersnappers’ part and a thousand angry lectures from them to get out of it. It was nothing a little fake crying and a push-up bra couldn’t fix, but I got the warning.

  Later that afternoon, after they’d removed the smoldering remains of the mail truck, I walked by with a bottle of Johnnie Walker to head to Sovereign Shore, my favorite place to hide. On the way, I found a stray envelope on the street. I grabbed Mason’s letter from a puddle and tucked it in my bra.

  I never got Rebekah’s letter back. But I’d signed the letters Nessa Delaney instead of Freedom Oliver and addressed them to the Paul household so that if they never made it to Rebekah and Mason, the parents couldn’t suspect their faithful servant FreedomInJesus.

  At the Whammy Bar, I crack my neck and think about how I should have done more to keep my children, how I didn’t try hard enough. But it’s better this way, at least for them. That’s what I keep telling myself. But the grief still makes me sick to my stomach, even twenty years later. All the milestones I missed out on. At least someone else got those opportunities, to watch two great kids grow up before their eyes. I guess.

  TWO NIGHTS AGO

  Darkness fills the restroom of the truckstop outside Goshen, Kentucky, where Rebekah Paul cries into a dirty mirror with each chunk of hair that falls into the sink. Her own heavy-handed snips of the scissors send whimpers echoing through the greasy, dim stalls behind her. “God, be with me,” she repeats over and over again, the muffled roars of the truck engines outside rolling in her ears. The sounds of hair slicing are loud near her cheeks; her heart races like it will break through her sternum.

  The yellowed lamps over her head buzz with the dying insects they devour at two in the morning. She doesn’t recognize her own reflection, her hair bleached and chopped to the scalp. In the shadows of the restroom, the spots of blood on her collar seem black, similar to the spots on her diary back at home when the pens would leak ink. She looks down, uncomfortable in jeans and a white, tight-fitted Jack Daniel’s tee. She kisses the cross around her neck for the last time with a split lip and tucks it under her shirt so no one can see it. She grabs her backpack. “Lord, forgive me.”

  The cool air feels good on her eyes as she walks out to the parking lot; the smells of autumn leaves and oil surround her. At the corner of the lot, Rebekah makes her way toward the Bluegrass bar, an old and grungy pub, as a few big rigs thunder past. She doesn’t recognize the music, something bluesy with guitars, tunes she was forbidden to listen to, the music of the devil.

  She has to use both arms to pull open the wooden doors to the pub and is met by a wall of stale cigarette smoke and dirty sinners. Bearded men in suspenders with frothy mugs all turn to stare at the skinny girl, her head down, feeling the cross on her chest through her shirt. She looks around, finds an empty table in the back corner, and goes straight to it, her head aimed at her shoelaces the entire way. She can hear the whispers already, undertones of unspeakable acts they want to do to her, words that shame the Lord and secure them seats in hell right next to Satan himself. She uses her short sleeve to dab the tears from her face, the cotton painful on her skin.

  “I know that hurts worse than what it looks,” says an unfamiliar voice. Rebekah looks up to see a thin and ragged man with a nicotine-stained beard and mustache and long, oily hair tucked behind a New Orleans Saints cap, black with a gold fleur-de-lis. “Here, sweetie pie, this oughtta help.” He places a tall glass of beer in front of her.

  Rebekah sniffs it. “I’m not allowed to drink,” she says to the glass. “Drinking is against God.” She doesn’t even realize that it’s illegal to drink before twenty-one years of age; the subject was just never brought up at home.

  “Naw, sweetie pie, you ain’t gotta worry ’bout that.” He sits close to her in the booth so that she has to move over. “Fact is, God sent me here to look out for ya. A prophecy, ya know?” It isn’t uncommon to hear such talk around Goshen.

  She smells the alcohol on his breath and shifts in discomfort but listens anyway. “You’re a prophet?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says with an incomplete smile. “Our Savior told me that you’d be here, ’n that I needed to com’n getcha outta here and help ya turn from yer evil ways and turn back to the
righteous path of God. That’s what He said.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes’m.” He looks back over his shoulder. “Why are you running away from home? God told me you was running away.” She looks at him in astonishment—perhaps he really was sent by God. But then she looks down and doesn’t answer. “Where are ya tryna go, sweetie pie?”

  “The West Coast.”

  “Why, hell, that’s where I’m goin’ too.” He keeps tonguing the sockets of missing teeth in his grin. “I can give ya a ride if you want.”

  Rebekah gets a bad feeling and looks around the bar. The man leans in close, pressing the front of his body against her side, and breathes heavy enough to make her ear wet. He rubs her knee. “Come with me, sweetie pie.”

  She turns her head but can’t get away as he starts kissing her neck, the fog of liquor about to make her sick. God, if you want to send someone, send someone else. Please, God, she thinks to herself. “You’re too close, mister.” She tries to push him away, but she’s too weak against his weight.

  “Hey,” a second man yells behind him. She breathes easier when he’s pulled away from her. “You best just leave her alone.” Rebekah sees a young man in a soiled apron that’s supposed to be white, in a stance that says he’s ready to fight. “Now, I ain’t messin’, Joe, you just get on out of here, ya hear?”

  “It ain’t like that, me ’n the girl was just talkin’, is all.” He puts his hands up.

  “I’ve seen enough of what you call talkin’.” The cook takes the man’s hat and throws it hard into his chest. “Now I suggest you be on your way, I ain’t playing around.”

  “Fine, fine. I’m leaving,” he says as he grabs his cap and drags his feet. Rebekah watches a few men from the bar start to gather around the cook. “But you ain’t seen the last of me, kid.” Eyeballed by almost a dozen other truckers who show signs of backing the cook up, the man leaves. When he’s out the door, the men go back to their spirits. Rebekah finds herself crying again, alone with the tall glass of beer he left behind. She doesn’t know what comes over her, but she puts the foam to her lips to taste it. The bitterness of it makes her cheeks water. Forgive me, Lord. She throws her head back and chugs the first beer of her life, breathing only out of her mouth in between swallows so as not to taste it. It runs down the side of her face and neck before she slams the glass on the table. She uses her sleeve once more to pat away the ale, with heavy gasps to catch her breath. She stands up and the room spins under her feet. She looks around for the man in the apron, but he isn’t there. She can’t explain what possesses her, the need to chase after this stranger. Perhaps this is who God sent.

  “Have you seen that cook with the dirty apron?” Rebekah asks a bartender.

  “Your hero just went to the back for a smoke,” she answers with a smirk as she dries mugs.

  Using too much strength, Rebekah nearly falls through the screen door of the kitchen that leads to the back alley. Outside, the cook sits on top of a few red milk crates near full trash bags, smoking. The vents of the kitchen hum above them. “Thank you,” she blurts out. Suddenly, she feels awkward, with intervals of clearheadedness between the bouts of dizziness.

  “It was nothing.” He smiles at her. She feels a flutter to her stomach, unsure if it’s the beer or the fact that she’s never before talked to such a handsome guy in all her life. He takes a crate and places it in front of him, waving her over to sit. “Where are you heading, anyway?”

  She crosses her arms, too bashful to look into his eyes. “West Coast. Or as far as I can get.”

  “Away from whoever did this to you?” He points to her face.

  She clears her throat and looks down. “I had it coming.”

  “No woman has it coming.” He winces with anger. “You don’t deserve that.”

  “No, I did.” Rebekah looks to him for a moment. “Because I sinned.”

  “Everyone sins.” His cigarette goes out and he relights it. “Doesn’t make it right, though.”

  “I’m Rebekah.” She holds her arms tight, unsuccessfully trying to hide her body in the snug clothes.

  “Gabriel.” He holds his hand out to her.

  She stares at it with hesitation for a moment. “Like the archangel.” She puts her hand in his.

  “Sure.” He sucks hard on his cigarette. “Like the archangel.”

  Rebekah watches him shake his hair from the hairnet, a full head of black and soft locks over jade eyes. He unties his apron to reveal a white undershirt and sleeves of tattoos. “So you’re a cook?”

  “Part-time. I help my ol’ man do drywall on the weekends. Helps me pay for tuition at U of L and my rent.”

  “My brother went to the University of Louisville!” she squeals. “Did you know Mason Paul? He’s a big-time lawyer now.”

  “Never met a Mason Paul, but it’s an awfully big school. Name sounds familiar, though. Oh, wait, sure, I know who he is. He’s the one defending the Becker case all over the TV. That Becker, sure gonna be one hell of a linebacker, I’d say. I knew the name Mason Paul sounded familiar.”

  “What is school like?”

  “You’ve never been to school?” She shakes her head. Suddenly, Gabriel realizes what kind of girl she is. Must be a Mormon or something like it, the sheltered kind. And now she’s running away, rebelling, naive. Those types come a dime a dozen back at the university. “You’re not missing much.” Her purity attracts him and he doesn’t want to stop staring at her. He can see that her frail bones and soft skin have never been touched in a way that they should have by her age. It’s like looking at the sands of a shore that’s never been discovered by the ocean. But he fears she will drown out there, out in the real world, away from her shielded existence. “You shouldn’t be trying to hitch rides cross-country with truckers. It’s dangerous for girls like you.”

  “It’s my only way out.” She rubs the toes of her shoes on the dirt. “Do you believe in God?”

  “I believe in something…” He looks away, not wanting to appear strange when he sees her shy away from his gaze. “When was the last time you ate something?”

  “Yesterday, I think.” He puts his finger up and walks back to the kitchen. He returns with a burger and fries in a foam container.

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “Don’t worry about money.” He watches her inspect the food as if she’s never seen anything quite like it. “You need to eat.” She uses both hands at once to shovel the food into her mouth. “Why don’t you let me take you out one day? Like a proper date, before you head off to the West Coast, I mean.”

  She looks at him wide-eyed. “I’m not allowed to date boys.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty.”

  “You’re old enough to make up your own mind and stop doing what your parents ask of you.”

  “I do what God asks of me.” She continues to shove the food in her face. Gabriel takes his apron and goes to use it on her arm, where some ketchup spilled. But she pulls away, fearful, like an injured bird, broken in the sun and being circled by vultures.

  Gabriel stares at her with wonder, and though she’s spoken only a few words, he’s fascinated by the mystery that surrounds her. He wants to know her more, he has to know her more. He could see her vulnerability from a mile away and feels the need to wrap her innocence in a blanket and keep it away from the cruelty of a world that wants to take it from her. “I’ll take you to the West Coast.” And as he says the words, he surprises himself. But she’s a reason, the excuse he’s been looking for to drop everything around him and see the world. “I know you don’t know me, but you can trust me.” For some reason, he expected more of a joyous reaction.

  “Thank you,” she says, with her eyes down and half a cheeseburger in her cheek.

  “Let me take you home. We can leave in the morning.” Really, his intentions are good. “You can have my bed and I’ll sleep on the couch. OK?”

  “All right.” She believes this is her prayer come true, that
God sent Gabriel to save her from the man who rubbed against her and wanted to take her away. She shows a glimpse of a smile as he takes his apron and throws it in the Dumpster behind him.

  “Let’s go.” He leads her through the alley and toward the truckyard. “I’m parked right over there.” He seems to almost skip in his pace. He stretches his arms over his head and looks up to the night. “Share this moment with me.”

  “What?”

  Gabriel paces around her and tastes what may very well be freedom for the first time in his life. “Make a memory.”

  Rebekah scurries to catch up to him, her french fries shaking in the container. “What are you talking about?” The smile aches her cheeks.

  He stops her in her tracks and looks into her eyes. “Aside from family, have you ever held a man’s hand?”

  “No,” she says and laughs.

  “Good.” He grabs her hands and intertwines his fingers with hers. “Now neither one of us will forget this. Whether we get nowhere or see everywhere, we’re making a memory.” She’s never heard anything so outrageous yet astonishing in her life. The butterflies multiply in her belly and her heart begins to pound. And all of the horrible things that have happened, if only for that moment, seem worlds away.

  What happens next is fragmented. The sounds of bones cracking. Gabriel screaming her name. Tasting dirt in her mouth on the ground. Her most cogent memory is when she lands on her back in the trunk of a car, her hands zip-tied in front of her. She sees the vastness of the trunk come down, like a tidal wave crashing over her. She brings her knees to her chin and uses the soles of her feet to keep it from closing. But it works only the first time. And after that, she remembers the panic that consumes her in the trunk. And the brightness of the red taillights from the inside when the car brakes.