The Free (P.S.)

by Willy Vlautin

  “Not much of a break, huh?”

  “No,” Leroy said. “I guess not.”

  “What happened in your nightmare?”

  “My uncle went to the VA hospital one morning and told the staff there he was disappearing in depression. He was distraught. They sent him home with medication, antidepressants. I’m not sure why it was right then that he fell apart. Maybe people just get worn out. I never thought that was true, but now I think it is true. Maybe people can only take so much. Anyway, they gave him the pills and he came back to the trailer. He was there for a while longer. Then one day I came home from school and he’d written separate notes to my mom and me and left them on the kitchen table. And that was it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I just remember in my nightmare I saw him and it was awful and full of blood. He was alone in his trailer and he wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t my uncle anymore.”

  A ship arrived from Seattle, Washington. There were eleven men aboard and they docked at Bella Bella with engine problems. They had to fly in parts and a mechanic from Vancouver to repair it. They were stuck there for weeks. A few of the men rented rooms at the local motel. Jeanette had heard through her boss that they were tracking down thousands of Green Loaders who were living illegally in Canada. The men on the boat were a part of a vigilante group called The Free, a collective who caught and killed people with the mark. There was a rumor that while they were there awaiting repairs, they’d found and killed two middle-aged women who were living alone in the forest. There was another rumor that they had gone thirty miles inland and found two couples hiding in tents near a lake and killed them and their dogs.

  One morning Jeanette pushed her cleaning cart in front of a room and stopped. She knocked three times on the door and yelled, “Housekeeping!” When no one answered she unlocked the door and went inside to find one of the men from The Free ship lying on top of his bed, naked. She turned around and headed for the door, but as she did he told her he had been watching her for days. He told her he knew she had the mark, and that he just couldn’t make up his mind if he was going to let her go or kill her.

  She got out of the room and pushed her cart to the laundry where she locked herself inside and tried to think. She began crying. Leroy was at work for five more hours, and she wasn’t even sure what island he was working on. Her boss wasn’t there and if he were, what would she say? She was illegal and she had the mark. She’d be fired, and then what? She stayed in there for twenty minutes and, not knowing what else to do, she went back to work. She pushed her cart to the next room and knocked three times. She again called out “Housekeeping!” and went inside. But as she changed the sheets in the empty room the man from The Free came in dressed in muddy hiking boots and a camouflage uniform. He sat in a chair in the corner and stared at her.

  “I know why you’re up here,” he said. “And I know who you are and where you’re from.”

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” she said. “It’s against the rules.”

  “I’m spending more money in this dump than they know what to do with. They don’t care.”

  “Will you leave the room, please?”

  “It’s people like you who are ruining the country.”

  “But I’m not even in the country.”

  “You’ll come back,” he said.

  “I won’t.”

  “You will.”

  “Why are you here?” she cried.

  “It’s easier to find you. You stick out. Anyway, somebody’s got to do it. You’ll be back sooner or later and we don’t need that. You’ll be crawling under some fence or hiding in the back of some truck. What you don’t understand is that at one time we had the greatest country in the world. The greatest country that had ever existed. Now it ain’t shit and it’s people like you who’ve ruined it. People who don’t stand up for the flag. Who don’t take their hat off when the anthem plays. Who won’t sacrifice. For years the politicians gave everything to people who were too fucked up to hold a job or too lazy to do anything but lay on their backs and pump out kids who end up in prison or on welfare. But your turn is over. The test solves it and it’ll save our country.”

  “How does the test solve it?”

  “It gets rid of the weak and lazy. It gets rid of people like you.”

  “But you don’t even know me.”

  “I know you,” he said.

  “How can you say that?”

  “ ’Cause you’re all the same.” He stood up and walked over to her until their faces nearly touched. She could smell his breath. There was dried toothpaste on the corners of his mouth. She didn’t run or push him away. She just sat down on the bed, defeated, and tears flowed from her eyes.

  “See, you already gave up and I haven’t even done anything yet.”

  She came back from work that evening so upset she could hardly speak. Once aboard she locked herself in the cabin and drew the curtains shut and waited. It was two hours before Leroy came down the galley steps. But when he did she just greeted him as she always had, and didn’t mention the man from The Free at all. Through dinner she struggled not to break down, and acted as cheerful and calm as she could. She read to him in bed as usual and he held her when he fell asleep. But the night passed slowly and she tossed and turned. She was wrecked with worry, and finally near dawn she woke Leroy and told him about the man and what had happened the day before.

  They left Bella Bella that morning.

  They headed farther into Canada, and hid inside the inlets of Princess Royal Island. Weeks passed until they came to the town of Kitimat and got a motel room for the night. The next morning they meandered through the shops of downtown, and in a sporting goods store they were drawn to a family shopping. The man and the woman both wore turtlenecks and the man wore gloves. They had two young children with them. Jeanette introduced herself to them and found out they were American. Recklessly she lifted her pant leg, showing them her marked leg. The man took off his right glove and showed her his marked hand.

  In the back of the empty store the couple told them they had heard of a settlement a hundred miles inland. A settlement that the Canadian authorities left alone, where it was safe, where there was a school and a makeshift hospital. It was its own country inside of a country, they were told. The man wrote down the maps they’d need, and gave them the exact location of the settlement.

  On the boat that evening, Leroy and Jeanette counted their money, and with less than four hundred dollars in savings, decided they would try to find it. The following morning they moved the boat to the bay and anchored. They took what they thought they would need and rowed the dinghy ashore. Jeanette went for supplies and Leroy looked for transportation. Three hours later he came back with a rusted-out red 1984 Ford Fiesta, which he’d hotwired and stolen from a hospital parking lot. They loaded it and left.

  They drove a hundred and fifty miles on rough roads. They went farther into the wilderness, past clear cuts and dense forests, past rivers and lakes. As dusk approached they came to the mile marker they were looking for, and past it the logging road that led to the settlement. For ten miles they made their way on washed-out gravel until they came to a series of abandoned cars on the side of the road.

  They continued on until they could see, in the distance, a series of pole barns and shacks: the settlement. They parked and got out. Farther along on the road they came to a dead woman in a green parka, her legs bent toward her head. She’d been shot in the stomach, and they could still see steam rising from her.

  They passed more bodies, kids and old people, men and women. Some naked, others with no heads, some with no limbs. THE FREE was spray-painted on every building, and vultures flew overhead by the dozen. Coyotes trotted in and out of the buildings, and in the distance gunshots rang out.

  “Leroy, let’s get out of here,” Jeanette cried.

  But Leroy couldn’t move. He could hardly breathe; he fell to the ground wheezing. Jeanette struggled to get him up and back to the
car. She drove them away from the destroyed settlement while Leroy fought for his breath, his eyes closed, his body huddled against the passenger-side door. When they came to Kitimat they abandoned the red car near the dinghy and Jeanette helped Leroy into it and she rowed them back to their boat.

  In the middle of the night she woke to Leroy’s arm over her, pulling her into him.

  “How are you feeling?” she whispered.

  “I’m better,” he said. “But seeing all that was so horrible.”

  “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” Jeanette said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Jeanette said, “You know I was just having a dream I’d graduated from college. You and I were living in a one-bedroom house we’d bought together. You should have seen this place. The plumbing didn’t work, the wood floors were spattered with paint, and everything was covered in grease. I don’t know why there was so much grease on everything but there was. Anyway, we fixed it up until it was a really nice house. And the yard that had been all weeds and trash became a real yard. You poured concrete and built an awning so we could sit in the shade during the summer and barbecue. We planted trees . . . In my dream you had just come home from work and you were bleeding. You’d cut yourself on a job site. The cut was on your forearm. I tried to wash it out in the sink but it wouldn’t stop bleeding. We decided to go to emergency. In the dream we didn’t drive. It was like all of a sudden I was in the waiting room and you were gone. But you weren’t in the doctor’s office. You’d vanished. You were in the National Guard. You were deployed in Iraq. In the dream I panicked and when I panicked everything changed. All the walls turned gray and suddenly I was in an empty building that I couldn’t get out of. I was alone and I couldn’t find you, and I knew I’d be stuck in there forever.”

  “But that’s not real,” he said gently and kissed her neck and brought her closer to him.

  “Maybe it is.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “In our house there were pictures of us all over. One photo had your uncle in it. He has long black hair and is wearing a corduroy coat. Your mother has short, brown hair and freckles. She’s hugging your uncle and they look very happy. They’re surrounded by snow and there’s someone behind them that I can’t quite make out. The image is blurry.”

  “I have that picture framed,” Leroy said. “When I was thirteen my mom rented a cabin in the mountains and we spent the weekend there for my birthday. I’m the person behind her that you can’t really see. My uncle took the picture on a timer, but I moved at the last moment. That’s why it’s blurry.”

  “How would I know that picture?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re going to join the army and get killed,” she whispered. “That’s what the dream means.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  She moved her hands up and down his arms and stopped over a long scar. She turned on the bedside light and looked at it.

  “See,” she exclaimed. “You have a scar and before you didn’t have a scar.”

  “No, I’ve had this scar for years.”

  “You haven’t. I know. I feel your arms every night.”

  “I swear.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “I cut it on a job,” he said. “Like your dream said.”

  “I don’t understand anything anymore,” she said. “I don’t understand what’s real and what isn’t real.”

  He kissed her neck again.

  “In my dream I could see the couch we bought at the Salvation Army and the table and chairs we bought from a garage sale. I can remember us painting the walls and you wiring the basement so we could put in a washer and dryer. I remember buying towels and sheets and inviting your mom over for dinner. We had movie posters on our bedroom walls and a framed picture of Amália Rodrigues on our dresser. We had a bathtub and a fireplace and we used to make love in every room ’cause you convinced me it was good luck. We had everything you could ever want . . . Why would I know all these things that aren’t real? Why would I be dreaming about things like this if they weren’t true?”

  It was early morning and the woman who sat holding Leroy’s arm couldn’t stop weeping. Her name was Jeanette, and her thin fingers moved over a long scar on his arm while she spoke.

  “A couple weeks ago I was going to the store and in the parking lot I saw an old red Fiesta like the one I had. Like the one you always had to work on. I just stood there and looked at it and I couldn’t stop crying. I kept thinking about all the places we went in that car, of all the times you tried to fix it, of when we went camping in it or went to the beach or to the movies. I just stood there staring at that car, and I couldn’t leave.”

  20

  Freddie McCall woke up on the couch to the alarm on his phone ringing. The fire had died out and the room was now cold. He rose and folded the sleeping bag, changed his clothes and washed his face, and drove to the group home and clocked in. He helped put everyone to bed, and then cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, did four loads of laundry, and fixed a cabinet door that was broken. It was past midnight when he finally gave out. He sat at the kitchen table and read the newspaper and fell asleep.

  He woke up an hour later to his phone ringing and fumbled for it in his coat pocket and put it to his ear to hear his ex-wife’s voice.

  “Is that you, Freddie?” she asked.

  “It’s me,” he said, trying to wake up. “Are the kids alright?”

  “They’re okay,” she said quietly.

  “What’s going on? It’s late.”

  “I’m not sure what’s going on,” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  “At home, in the basement. The girls are upstairs asleep.”

  “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  She didn’t speak for a moment and then she cleared her throat. “I have to tell you that I’m sorry I made such a mess of things.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you and me.”

  “I made a mess of things, too,” he said and sat up. “But we didn’t get a lot of breaks.”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “It was a mistake to move in with Rob. I knew that before I even did it. I guess I was just tired of living like we were living. I’m a fool, Freddie.”

  “You’re not a fool. You were having a hard time.”

  “I always blamed you, and I’m sorry for that.”

  “Maybe you should blame me,” he said.

  “I can’t blame you for Ginnie.” She paused. “Do you ever think what it would have been like if she wasn’t born?”

  “No,” he said.

  “I do,” she whispered. “I do all the time.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “It’s an awful thing to say but it’s true. It would have been so much easier.”

  “Why are you calling?”

  “I don’t think Rob understood what having kids around would be like. I think it’s too much for him. Tonight we started arguing during dinner. He’s got a bad temper, and I can pick on him. I do pick on him. I can make things worse. I know that’s true. Both the girls started crying so I yelled at him to stop scaring them. I said some nasty things to him and he got so mad he stood up and went to the fridge and pushed it over. It crashed to the ground and broke. It was really loud, and it scared everyone. I know he was shocked he did it. And then he stormed out and he hasn’t come home.”

  “But the girls are okay?”

  “They were upset but they’re asleep now . . . Freddie, I have to ask you a favor.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want you to take the girls for a while.”

  “Of course I’ll take them.”

  “I’m having a hard time right now, Freddie. In a lot of ways I am.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

  They didn’t speak for nearly a minute af
ter that. In the silence Freddie could hear Donald talking to himself in the back room. He knew that soon Donald would be coming from the darkness of the hall naked and screaming. “Why don’t you just come home with them,” he told her. “No pressure or anything like that, just temporarily. See how it goes. I can be better than I was. I will be better.”

  “I like that you say that, Freddie. I do. But I can’t. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Can you buy plane tickets for the girls?”

  Freddie sighed. “You know I’m broke and that I don’t have a credit card anymore.”

  “I’m broke, too,” she said.

  He thought of all the money he sent her each month, month after month after month. He knew Rob made three times the money he made and owned his house outright, but he didn’t mention any of that. All he said was, “I don’t get paid for two weeks.”

  “I think they should come up sooner.”

  “Maybe once things calm down you can get Rob to buy the tickets and I’ll pay him back.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, but I have to go now, Freddie,” she said and then hung up the phone.

  The rest of the night he was sleepless. He started drinking coffee at 4:30. He sat at the kitchen table and tried to think, but he was too tired to think. Dale arrived at 6:35. Freddie, again late, rushed home, changed, and drove to Heaven’s Door Donuts. He parked and flashed his lights twice and Mora met him in the parking lot with the donut boxes.

  “You’re even later than you were last week,” she said. She wore her white apron and gray sweats and a red ski cap with a white cotton ball on top. She handed him the boxes and leaned down, resting her arms on the car.