The Free (P.S.)

by Willy Vlautin

  “Does she know what’s happened?”

  “No,” Darla whispered and looked at the floor. “I know I should call her but every time I try I can’t. Maybe I don’t have it in me to make those kind of calls anymore. Maybe I’m just worn out. She always wants me to call and tell her how Leroy is. Call if anything has changed either good or bad. But I never do. She doesn’t need to be constantly reminded of it. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think so. And if I tell her what’s happened now, she’ll just come here and spend all day and night with him and ruin her life again. I wish she’d just get married and have kids. She’d be free from it then. At least mostly. I worry about her like she’s my own daughter. You know we only have one rule when we do talk, and it’s that we can talk about everything except the military.”

  “You know, I almost became an army nurse,” Pauline said as she began charting on the computer. “They pay off your student loans, and your starting pay is better than what I make now. But when I got out of school they had an opening here, and here doesn’t seem as bad as seeing all those soldiers get hurt.”

  “I don’t even know how you do it here,” Darla said. “I break out into a cold sweat every time I just see this place.”

  “Sometimes I do, too,” said Pauline and laughed. “Alright, I guess I better get back to it.”

  “I’ll see you later,” Darla said and put on her reading glasses. She picked up the novel again, but was too tired and set it down. She leaned back in the chair, and closed her eyes.

  The soldier with the painted face pulled the knife from Leroy’s chest. He wiped the blood from it on Leroy’s shirt and put it back in its sheath. He took a pistol from his holster. He cocked it and pressed it to Leroy’s forehead, but as he did Jeanette grabbed a lamp and swung it at the soldier’s head and hit him with all her strength. The soldier crashed to the ground unconscious. She rushed to Leroy and helped him to his feet as blood poured out of his chest. She led him to the kitchen. With a frying pan she broke out the large window above the sink, and glass spilled out onto the fire escape.

  “I can’t make it,” he whispered.

  “Of course you can make it.”

  He leaned against the kitchen table in such pain he could hardly stand. “Go without me.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” Jeanette said and grabbed his arm and helped him onto the counter. She got him out the broken window and onto the fire escape. They climbed down four floors on rusted metal stairs. Leroy could barely walk by the time they got to the street, and blood leaked from his chest and poured out on to the ground. They stumbled toward the city. He leaned on Jeanette and she carried him along and dusk became night. They went until Leroy could no longer walk. Behind an abandoned car they hid and rested. For hours he slept on the dirt and asphalt. When he woke, Jeanette was holding him and running her hands through his hair and he felt no pain.

  They began walking again, and he felt almost normal, like nothing was wrong or had ever been wrong. None of it made any sense. They passed a military shipyard where an aircraft carrier and a destroyer were being built. Beyond that was a large construction site where a series of military office buildings were being built. Beyond that was a new ten-story fitness and rehabilitation center. And then came block after block and story after story of new military housing.

  They left the city along a two-lane road. Rain began to pour and caravans of military trucks passed them in long lines, their taillights glowing red and disappearing into the night. Leroy held on to Jeanette’s hand and for hours they continued along. They passed dozens of overturned cars on the side of the road and the remains of three derelict houses. They came to the top of a hill and saw, in the distance, a small coastal town.

  They took a side road and the pavement turned to gravel and they headed toward the ocean. There were neither lights nor moon, but it was a road Leroy knew. They came to a log house set on the edge of the woods. Leroy unlocked the door and turned on the lights. The walls and floor inside were stained wood, rustic and plain. He lit a fire in the woodstove and went to the fridge and took two Rainier beers from it.

  “I’ve always wanted a place like this,” Jeanette said.

  “It was my uncle’s place,” said Leroy. “When I was a kid I used to spend weekends here.”

  “And you even have beer,” Jeanette said happily as she warmed herself next to the fire.

  “My uncle said it was bad luck to leave a fridge with no beer in it. He said it was lonely enough being a fridge, that the least you could do was leave beer so it would have something to look at and admire all day.”

  Jeanette laughed and looked around the room. A loft was above them, and a bathroom in the corner. The main room was bare except for a couch, a desk, and an old table. The kitchen was plain and small, with shelves instead of cabinets. There was a sink, a stove, an oven, and a fridge. The walls were bare except for an old water-stained poster near the woodstove.

  “Is that Norrin Radd?” she asked.

  “You know the Silver Surfer?”

  “I love Shalla-Bal.”

  “You know Shalla-Bal?!”

  “Of course,” she said. “I own the entire Silver Surfer collection.”

  “Man oh man,” he said.

  “Where did you get the poster?”

  “One time my uncle and I drove to a comic-book convention. He had an old Pontiac LeMans and we drove it all the way to Vancouver, British Columbia, where the convention was. We spent three days there. On the last night we walked back from the convention to the motel, but when we got there his car wasn’t parked in the space in front of our room. Turns out somebody had stolen it. It was a car he bought when he got back from Vietnam. He’d had it almost twenty-five years. We called the police and filed a report, and then we went out looking for it ourselves. We spent hours going up and down all the neighborhoods we could walk to. My uncle said he knew we would never find her, but that at least we were suffering for her, at least we were grieving and trying to help her at the same time. My uncle had ideas and theories and superstitions about everything.

  “Anyway, by the time we got back to the motel it was dawn and we went to sleep. We were woken hours later by the police telephoning. They hadn’t found the car but they had found a bunch of my uncle’s things. Whoever stole the LeMans threw everything from the car out on some guy’s lawn, and the guy was so mad he called the cops. The funny thing is we’d put all the posters and comic books and souvenirs we bought from the convention in the trunk in case our room got robbed.” Leroy laughed and took a drink off the beer. “But it rained during the night so most everything we’d bought from the convention was ruined. That’s why the poster looks like it does. My uncle had an old suitcase with jumper cables and flares and spare belts in it. The suitcase had his name, phone number, and address on it. That was on the lawn, too, and that’s what led the police to call us.”

  “Did they ever find his car?”

  “No, we had to take a bus back home. After that he bought a Plymouth Valiant, but the head gasket blew after a couple months. Then he got a white Ford pickup, which I still have. But it’s in storage.”

  “In storage because you were going to join?”

  “Yeah,” Leroy said.

  “But you’re not going to join now?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? They’ll come after you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

  “You didn’t. You were just gonna make me breakfast. Anyway, we can stay here,” Leroy said. “They won’t find this place.”

  “I’ve gotten you in serious trouble.”

  “It’s alright. But can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “How long have you had it?”

  “The mark?”

  Leroy nodded.

  “A few years. Like I told you, my father made my mother and I go. We had to strip down naked, both my mother and me together, with my father there. My fat
her and I never got along, not even when I was small. It was hard being in a room with him like that. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal but it was. My mother and I both stood there for a long time and then a nurse and a soldier came in. The nurse gave us each the shot and then she left the room. The soldier stayed. We had to wait an hour and we couldn’t dress and it was cold in the room. When our time was over neither of us showed any signs so they gave us our release papers and our new ID cards that said we were okay. I moved out of the house a year later when I was eighteen and worked as a waitress.

  “I lived with three girls in the same apartment building you came to. But two of the girls got the mark, and disappeared one night. I don’t know what happened to them or if they’re even still alive. The other got married to a soldier and moved away. I rented a smaller apartment in the same building and kept working. I didn’t do anything else, not really. All my friends were going away or vanishing. It was like the world was moving on but I wasn’t. I was stuck. It’s hard to explain. And then it happened. I have a hard time getting up in the morning so I always take a bath first. I’ll be nearly asleep and I’ll light a candle and take a bath and listen to the radio and try and wake up. I do that every morning. When it happened, I remember lighting a candle and getting in the tub as usual. But then I went to turn off the water with my foot. I had my eyes closed and then I opened them just for a second and by the candlelight I saw that my big toe was bruised, that the entire toe was discolored. I panicked. I sat up and touched it but it didn’t hurt. The fact that it didn’t hurt was the worst feeling I’ve ever had. I scrubbed my toe raw, but the bruise didn’t go away. I didn’t know what to do. After that I quit talking to most everybody. At work I forced myself to be happy, to talk and joke around with the customers. I can’t begin to tell you how hard that is to do day after day. Then one lunchtime I heard some soldiers talking. They were saying they’d heard that ice slowed the mark down. I didn’t know if it was true, but I began icing my toe and then as the mark grew, my entire foot. I’d do it every day for hours at a time. I’d spend all night listening to the radio and icing my foot and hoping that someday I’d get out of the country and that somehow I wouldn’t be alone for the rest of my life . . . Now I don’t know about anything and I’m just scared all the time.”

  “We’ll be okay here. Don’t worry. They’ll never find this place.” Leroy went to her and held her in his arms. A wave of euphoria engulfed them both and Jeanette kissed him.

  Darla turned on the TV and watched the news for a while and then turned it off again. She picked up the book, put on her glasses, and read for another half-hour before stopping for the night. She got up, put on her coat, bent down to kiss Leroy, and then left the hospital.

  11

  At 5:30 AM Freddie McCall woke on the group home couch. He silenced the alarm on his phone and sat up exhausted. He found the energy drink in his coat pocket, drank it, and then washed his face in the kitchen sink and made a pot of coffee. He turned on the TV and waited for Dale, but again the day man arrived thirty minutes late. Freddie ran out to the driveway and shouted at him as he parked his car in the drive. Dale half-heartedly apologized and went inside, and Freddie got in the Comet to find the battery dead. The car wouldn’t start, and he had to go back in and ask Dale for a jump.

  He drove home as fast as he could. He took his Logan Paint Store uniform and went into the bathroom. He set the clothes near the box heater, shaved, put on his uniform, and left.

  When he parked in front of Heaven’s Door Donuts, Mora waved both arms back and forth from inside. He flashed his lights twice and she took the two boxes from the counter and came out to the parking lot where Freddie rolled down the window.

  “You’re late again,” she yelled.

  “Dale was late again.”

  “That Dale, I’ve never met him but I’m really starting to hate him.”

  “Me too,” Freddie said. He took both boxes and set them on the seat beside him.

  “Did you hear the game last night?”

  “Parts of it,” Freddie said.

  “It was horrible, huh?”

  “It seemed like one long power play against us.”

  “Jesus, you look tired, Freddie.”

  “I know.”

  “You shouldn’t drink those energy drinks. At least take them off the backseat so I don’t see them. Okay?”

  “I will.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “I only put in a single donut hole for you ’cause that’s all you deserve. This is the third time this week I’ve had to come out here and freeze my ass off.”

  “Thanks, Mora. I don’t even deserve that.”

  “You’re going to have to buy me a coat,” she said and turned around. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Freddie.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said and left.

  He opened the store four minutes late and drank coffee to get through the morning rush. At 11:30, as he mopped the retail floor, Pat parked his wife’s Pontiac Grand Prix in the front lot. He came through the glass doors carrying a frozen chicken-fried steak dinner and a liter of Dr Pepper.

  “How was it this morning?”

  “Jensen came through with seventy gallons of Aura.”

  “No kidding?”

  “He cleaned us out. I knew he’d like Aura. There were a half-dozen other hundred-dollar sales. Plus Barney got that job redoing the apartment complex and bought twenty gallons of primer. He said he’s coming back this afternoon for ten more. If he doesn’t make it today, he’ll be in tomorrow.”

  “Not a bad day, considering,” Pat said and took off a brown leather aviator coat and hung it on a hook on the back wall. He put the frozen dinner and soda in the fridge, opened the remaining box of donuts, took out a chocolate bar, ate it, and then took another. “I’ll be in my office,” he said. “And look, unless someone comes in and asks for me specifically, tell them I’m out.”

  “Alright,” Freddie said.

  “And Freddie?”

  “Yeah, Pat?”

  “Inventory was dead-on except for a missing two gallons of Satin Impervo.”

  “Impervo?”

  “You have any ideas where the two gallons went?”

  “I remember you took two and gave them to your brother-in-law. Do you think it could be those?”

  Pat looked at him and took a bite of the second donut. “Maybe,” he said and walked into his office and shut the door.

  Freddie finished mopping. At ten minutes to noon Pat emerged from his office, went to the refrigerator and took the frozen dinner from it, and put it in the microwave.

  “Freddie,” he said.

  “Yeah, Pat?”

  “I’ll be using line one with my wife.”

  “Alright, Pat,” he said.

  The microwave bell rang and he took his lunch and soda back to his office. James Dobson’s voice came through the thin office walls into the retail space and Freddie could hear it for the next hour. When the program finished, Pat came out of his office. He dumped his lunch and his empty soda bottle in the retail trash can, put on his coat, and looked outside at the cold, gray day.

  “These damn winters kill us.”

  “At least we’re doing better than last year,” Freddie said.

  Pat nodded. “I have to meet with the company lawyer and then run some errands. I’ll try and make it back but I’m not sure I’ll be able to.”

  “Alright, Pat,” Freddie said.

  “And Freddie?”

  “Yeah, Pat?”

  “Make sure you keep the back gate locked. There’s a bunch of kids around out there today.”

  “It’s an administrative day. The kids have the day off. They won’t bother anybody, and tomorrow they’ll be gone.”

  “Administrative day?” Pat shook his head and left. Freddie watched him get into his wife’s car and drive away. He waited ten minutes and heated a bowl of water in the microwave, opened a package of ramen noodles and set it in. He ate lunch and placed his re
stocking orders. Afterward he sat at the counter and leaned against the wall. He tried to stay awake until the afternoon rush began, but he was overcome with such exhaustion that he had to lie down on the floor behind the counter. He lay on his back and his thoughts spiraled toward blackness: the house, the plants, his kids, prison, sleep, Lowell, the group home, his ex-wife. They were all trying to suffocate him. And then the sound of the buzzer rang. A customer walked through the swinging glass doors. He pulled himself together and stood up.

  He closed Logan Paint at 5:30 and drove home to find a U-Haul truck backed up to his garage door. The house inside was warm; a fire burned in the fireplace. In the basement he found Lowell and a boy hanging shop lights from the ceiling. There was a twenty-gallon tub of black-looking liquid sitting in the corner as well as a half-dozen gallon jugs set in wooden boxes. There were rolls of black plastic and lengths of two-by-four and a crate of tools. They had two electric heaters and a humidifier running.

  “Hey, Freddie, good to see you,” Lowell said and came down off the ladder and introduced him to his nephew.

  The kid was standing on a stepstool putting in a three-foot-long fluorescent light fixture. He looked like Lowell but was very thin and young. He had long, dark hair that fell to his shoulders and he wore a faded Black Sabbath T-shirt and black jeans.

  “Go shake his hand,” Lowell said, and so the boy got down off the stool and went to Freddie and put out his hand.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you,” Freddie said, and they shook hands.

  “Ernie’s going to come by two times a week to take care of the plants,” Lowell said. “He’ll trim them and move them around. He’ll water them on the days he’s here, and he’ll tell you what to do on the days he ain’t. The lights are on timers and the heaters all have thermostats so you won’t have to worry about them.”