The Free (P.S.)

by Willy Vlautin

  “I don’t really like TV.”

  “You don’t like TV?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve never heard anyone your age say that.”

  “We could never watch it at home. I guess I got used to it,” she said and took another bite of the sandwich.

  “Home where you grew up?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Why’s that?”

  “My mom thought it was a bad influence. We had to quit watching it for real when she found God.”

  “She found God?”

  “A born-again Christian.”

  “No TV after that?”

  “No, just sports. My dad watches sports.”

  “Did your dad become a Christian, too?”

  “Not at first,” Jo said and set the sandwich down. She pulled the sheet and blanket up over her chest and pursed her lips together, and then relaxed and closed her eyes. “He thought she was completely crazy for a while. All of a sudden the only thing she talked about was the Bible. It was the weirdest thing in the world. She works at a meat-packing plant. A lot of the people there are Christian. She started going to church with them. At first my parents got in fights about it. But my mom said it was just the devil and God fighting inside my dad . . .” Jo opened her eyes and looked at Pauline. “He left us for a few months. He moved in with a guy we called Uncle Brian, but his wife got tired of my dad being there. She kicked him out and he didn’t know what to do so he came back home. After a while he became sort of like my mom. Then we all had to go to church. But my brother was seventeen by then and he hated it.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  Jo nodded.

  “Did you like going to church?”

  “I didn’t mind it, but my brother thought it was the worst. He ended up running away.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He went to Portland and lived there with some guys he knew. Then he got arrested for shoplifting. The police called my parents and they drove down to pick him up. They brought him home and made him go back to school. But he hated being home. They used to get in huge fights. One time he and my dad even got into a fistfight. After that he just quit saying anything. It was like he became a ghost. He never talked in front of them, not ever. Not even at dinner. It used to make my mom really mad. It used to drive her crazy. He only talked to me once in a while. One time, right before he left, he came into my room late at night and told me that if you quit talking, people forget you’re there. They forget about you, and they leave you alone . . . He got a job for a logging company and quit school and moved into a trailer with one of the guys he worked with. He was there for a while but I don’t know where he lives now. I think he works in Alaska somewhere, or at least he did last year.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “I don’t know him that well. He’s four years older.”

  “Maybe you could find him. Maybe he could help.”

  “I don’t know,” Jo said. “To be honest, he never liked me.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “It is.”

  “What happened to you after he left the house?”

  “I stayed for almost two years but I hated it there, so then I ran away.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Seattle,” she said and reached for the lip balm.

  “You must have been scared.”

  Jo nodded. “I’d never been anywhere by myself. Not anywhere at all. I took the bus. I wouldn’t have stayed but I had a fake ID that my friend gave me. It said I was nineteen. And I had enough money. My parents kept their savings in cash in my dad’s closet. There’s a row of books on a shelf and one of them is fake. You open it and it’s just a box inside and they put their money there. Over a thousand dollars and I took it. That’s pretty bad, huh?”

  “It’s not the best thing,” Pauline said. “But you had your reasons.”

  “I guess,” she said.

  “What did you do in Seattle?”

  “The first day there I just walked around. I didn’t like it. There’s so many people and it’s so big. And then night came and I didn’t know what to do. I almost called home right then, but I would have gotten in so much trouble that I didn’t. So I got a hotel room. It was called the Inn at Queen Anne. I’d never gotten a hotel room before that, but it was easy. It was just expensive, over sixty dollars a night. Once I was there I stayed. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I was just too scared to find another place.”

  “What did you do during the day?”

  Jo scratched the skin around her IV needle and looked out the window. “I tried to get a job. I knew I had to, but every time I filled out an application I’d lose my nerve. I’ve never had a real job before. I’d hand in an application but I’d never go back. I lost all my nerve. I stayed in the room for almost two weeks. I didn’t do anything but walk around and eat and look in shops. I even bought clothes. I bought two pairs of shorts and a pair of sandals ’cause it was winter and they were on the clearance rack.”

  “You’re a smart shopper.”

  “Maybe, if you call buying sandals in the middle of winter smart.” Jo giggled and covered her mouth.

  “You have a cute laugh,” Pauline said.

  “I hate the way I laugh.”

  “You shouldn’t. Believe me I’ve heard a lot of weird laughs and yours isn’t . . . Anyway, when did you meet those guys?”

  “There was a group of them sitting down by the water. Kind of by Pike Place. I’d seen them before. Bob started talking with me . . . It’s weird when you don’t talk to anybody for a long time and then you do. Anyone being nice to you feels so good. It doesn’t matter who they are, or what kind of person they are. I started hanging out with them during the day, and then they stayed in my room until my money ran out.”

  “How long was that?”

  “Maybe five days more.”

  “All the same guys that were in the house?”

  “There was another guy there, too.”

  “Four guys and you?”

  Jo’s face suddenly fell. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m not thinking anything,” Pauline said.

  “I know you are,” she said.

  “I’m not,” Pauline said. “I just wanted to know the situation. What happened after you ran out of money?”

  “I started staying with them,” she said faintly.

  “Where?”

  “Most nights on the street. It wasn’t that bad, really. They stole a sleeping bag and a coat and rain gear for me . . . But I got tired of it.”

  “Which part, having no money or sleeping outside?”

  “I guess I got tired of them. Then I got pregnant.” She stopped and covered her face with her hands and turned her head away and began crying. “You must think I’m disgusting.”

  “I don’t think that at all. So what did you do when you got pregnant?”

  “Nothing for a while.”

  “Did you know who the father was?”

  “No.” She began sobbing harder.

  “Take a deep breath. It’s okay,” Pauline said.

  “You don’t understand what it was like. I was around them day and night and that’s all they ever talked about. First they wanted to see my breasts. They’d go on for hours just begging me. Day after day after day. So finally I showed them, but after I did it wasn’t enough. It didn’t stop. It got even worse. They wanted to see more . . . So one night it happened with Bob, and Bob told them all. So they all thought they could if they kept trying . . . They were always trying, always. They would get me drunk and stoned. They’d get me to pass out and then . . . I got so tired of it . . . Even when I was sleeping they’d try . . . It wasn’t like they were my friends, really . . . When I told them I was pregnant they totally freaked out. They got really mad at me. It was scary how mad they were. They pushed me against a wall and yelled at me. Captain even pulled a knife on me. So I told them I wanted to get an abortion, but I didn’t
have any money . . . They were nicer after that. After that they left me alone. Then somehow a week later they got money and knew where to go. I think one of the guys, Monty, had money.”

  “I don’t remember Monty at the house. Was he there?” Pauline asked.

  “No, he left before that,” she said and wiped her eyes with her hands. Pauline took Kleenex from the box on the bedside table, and handed some to Jo.

  She wiped her eyes again and blew her nose. She looked out the window. “You don’t know him,” she said. “But he had a credit card. I saw him use it a couple times to get cash. I think he’s from Arizona or somewhere like that. Once when we were alone he told me his family lived on a golf course and were rich. But I’m not sure if that’s true. Sometimes he’d just disappear. When he’d come back you could tell he’d taken a shower and washed his clothes. He didn’t ever use needles. Only Bob and Cal, the kid you met who had the abscess, and Captain did. Captain’s the fat kid you saw. They all liked heroin. Monty was alright, really. He didn’t even want to do it with me. Anyway he gave me the money so I got an abortion. But after that I never felt very good. I started feeling really sick a week later. One night I asked Monty for some more money, and he gave it to me. The next morning I got on a bus and went to Yakima and then hitchhiked home.”

  “Back to your parents?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “How was that?”

  “It was alright at first. They still had my room the same way, and my mom said she prayed for me to come back. But I kept feeling bad so she took me to a doctor. I wanted to be alone with him, you know? But she wanted to be in there with me, and there’s no arguing with her. So she found out that I’d had an abortion. She found out that I had chlamydia, too, and that I had a really bad bladder infection. The doctor asked me if I did drugs. At that point I’d only smoked weed and drank, but I told him I didn’t do anything. But it didn’t matter to my mom. She hated me after that day. She really did . . . My dad would hardly speak to me when he found out. They were both really ashamed.” Jo reached to the Kleenex box and took a few more and wiped her eyes. She turned her head away from the nurse. “They made me start seeing the youth pastor from our church. He held meetings at night in his house. My mom made me tell everyone at the group that I’d had an abortion. She wanted me to talk about the pain it had caused my family and myself and God. She said it would help other people . . . I didn’t mind doing it, though. I don’t know why I didn’t, but I didn’t. And I didn’t mind school either. I just hated when I was home alone with them . . . When I was, everything bad about me seemed ten times worse. Then one night my mom said she couldn’t believe that she’d given birth to a girl who could kill a baby. She said the pain it caused her was almost unbearable. That only God gave her the strength to get up and go to work each morning. She told me that God would never forgive me because I killed a baby. The way she said all that, it’s hard to explain but it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. ’Cause I believe in God.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “I wanted to kill myself,” she said in a near whisper. She closed her eyes and then opened them, still staring out the window. “But I just couldn’t do it . . . I was going to cut my wrists but I don’t like blood at all. My dad has a gun locker and I know the combination. He has a loaded pistol inside it. The locker is in the garage and I sat out there for a long time but I couldn’t do that either. Once I almost pulled the trigger but then all I could see was blood everywhere. It just seemed so violent and awful . . . So a few days later I just left. This time I didn’t have any money, but my best friend from school, she gave me enough to get back to Seattle.”

  “You went back to the guys?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  19

  With her shift over, Pauline sat in her car in the hospital parking lot and waited for the defroster to warm the windshield. As she waited she called a twenty-four-hour diner and ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and a strawberry milkshake to go.

  At home she sat on the couch and ate and watched TV. When she woke the next morning her throat was sore and her head was congested. She was getting sick. She looked through the grocery store ads and found two specials. She dressed and drove to Safeway. She put twenty-four cans of vegetable soup, an eighteen-pack of frozen burritos, five Hershey bars, and a bottle of daytime cold medicine in her cart and pushed it toward checkout. There were two clerks working. She saw Leroy’s mother behind one of the registers, and went to it.

  “I don’t know if you’ll recognize me,” she said as she set her items down on the belt. “But I’m Pauline, one of Leroy’s nurses. And you’re Darla?”

  She smiled. “Of course I recognize you.”

  “It’s always strange seeing a person out of context.”

  “It is,” Darla said and began checking the cans.

  “You must think I’m crazy. Your son’s nurse buying a case of vegetable soup, a family pack of frozen burritos, Hershey bars, and some cold medicine.”

  “Don’t worry. I never pay attention to what people buy anymore,” she replied.

  “The cold medicine is for me but the rest is for my dad. He only eats chicken noodle soup and frozen burritos. I’m trying to get him on salad but it’s hard going. So now I’m thinking vegetable soup. Maybe he’ll eat vegetables that way. Anyway, I’m coming with candy bars.”

  “A bribe?”

  Pauline nodded.

  “Are you working tonight?”

  “I’m supposed to but I woke up with a cold. I’ll try and get some sleep this morning. If I feel better I will. You get there around seven, right?”

  She nodded.

  Pauline took the coupons from her purse and said, “What are you reading to him now?”

  “The Caladriken Caves,” she said and laughed.

  “What’s this one about?”

  Darla looked behind Pauline to see no customers coming. “This one’s pretty good. It’s set on a planet like Earth but it’s not Earth. There’s two tribes who live there. One has all men. Their tribe kills women and girls and steals their male children. They think women control the weather and that they intentionally ruin it. It’s always storming there. Blizzards and floods and heat waves. There’s volcanoes everywhere and hurricanes and tornados and earthquakes. The all-man tribe is crazy and really violent. The other tribe has men and women and kids. They’re normal but they have to go underground and live in a series of caves to hide from the other tribe. They only come out once in a while to scavenge food, and they’re always getting killed when they do. Their children, some of them, have never seen daylight. But the male tribe won’t go into the caves because they think they’re haunted.”

  “Are they haunted?”

  “Yeah,” Darla said and finished checking the groceries. “There are these huge worm bats that attack all the time. They come out of the dirt like a worm but they can fly and they have fangs.” She laughed and put lotion on her hands from a bottle that sat next to the register. “Between you and me I can’t put it down. It’s all I’ve been thinking about. The main guy from the good tribe is named Luc, and he’s really something.”

  “It sounds like a good one,” Pauline said. She took out her purse and paid for the groceries. “If I’m feeling better I’ll see you tonight, and if not I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “I hope you get some rest.”

  “Me too,” said Pauline and she left. After her, an arguing couple with three kids came pushing two full carts of food to Darla’s register. They began stacking groceries on the belt and behind them a line slowly grew.

  At 11:30 Darla received an emergency message to call the hospital. Leroy’s doctor informed her that Leroy had been given a tracheostomy and moved to intensive care. He’d come down with pneumonia. When she hung up the phone she walked into her manager’s office and asked for the rest of her vacation days, and put on her coat and left. She drove home and broke down crying at the kitchen table.

  As she sat alone in
her house she knew she had to make the call to Jeanette. A call she could no longer put off. She sat for a long time with the phone in her hand in a state of panic, and then slowly dialed Jeanette’s work number and told her the news. She changed out of her work clothes and got in her car and drove to the hospital. On the third floor, in intensive care, a nurse led her to him. She could tell from the first moment she saw her son that afternoon that he was going to die. She went to him and kissed his forehead, each cheek and his chin, and sat down. She took the novel from her purse, put on her reading glasses, and read to him until her eyes grew weary.

  At a marina in Bella Bella, British Columbia, they stopped with less than a quarter-tank of gas and rented a slip for seven days and with that they were flat broke. Each morning they walked through the small island town looking for jobs, and eventually Jeanette found work as a maid in a motel, and Leroy got on a construction crew building a vacation home on a nearby island.

  They never went to the local restaurant or the local bar. They didn’t socialize in any way. At night they would go to bed early and Jeanette would read to him from a stack of novels they’d collected from a paperback exchange. Months passed and winter set in and the sky never cleared. It grew darker until it was always either dawn, dusk, or night, and day disappeared completely.

  One evening Leroy sat back in the cabin booth. He had just gotten off work. They had the radio playing and he drank Rainier beer and nursed a pint of whiskey that sat on the galley table while Jeanette made stew on the small propane stove.

  “Last night,” he said, “I woke up and I could hardly breathe. As I lay in the dark all I could think about was my mom. About how hard she worked for my uncle and me. I know I never talk about her, but that’s not ’cause I don’t love her. I think it’s just ’cause my whole life she’s always been so solid and steady. There are so many other things in the world that are troubling or failing. The truth is I always think of those things, and not the things that keep me from failing. I know that’s selfish and wrong, but it seems like that’s the way I am. When I think of her I . . . I just feel easy. It’s like she’s my liver or arm or leg or heart. She’s a part of me. When I finally shut my eyes I felt peace and it was easier to breathe. But then I woke an hour later and I’d had a nightmare about my uncle.”