The Free

by Willy Vlautin

  “When he opened his eyes and saw us, he relaxed. Somehow he knew who we were. I know it sounds crazy but he told us he had waited his whole life to meet us so he could die in peace. So he could die being loved. He told us he spent so many nights on his own just barely scraping by. Hiding out and hungry and lonely. We were right. He did live under cars, and in vacant fields and in culverts. He got food wherever he could. Trash cans and under bleachers and on the side of the road. As hard as all that was, he said he knew if he could hang on long enough he would meet us, and then he would be able to disappear into us when he died. That if he could just make it until then he would never be lonely again . . . Maybe that’s how things work. Who knows. In my dream we buried him in our backyard. And guess what music we had playing while we did it?”

  “Amália Rodrigues,” Jeanette said.

  “Right,” he said.

  When dawn appeared The Free ship stopped a hundred yards from their boat and began blowing a horn. Soon after, an anchor splashed and disappeared into the black water and a dinghy was lowered and two men boarded it. Leroy dressed and ran to the bow and began pulling the anchor, but the men aboard The Free ship began firing rifles at him.

  It was the third shot that hit Leroy in the chest. He fell to the ground and Jeanette rushed to him and dragged him back to the cabin. She pressed a towel over the bleeding while the two men from the dinghy boarded the boat. They came to the cabin and forced them to the dinghy and blood poured out of Leroy as they took them back to The Free ship. They were put in a small, dark room, a porthole giving off the only light. Jeanette put her hands over the wound, desperately trying to stop the blood, but Leroy grabbed her arms.

  “Don’t,” he murmured.

  “You have to keep trying.”

  “I can’t anymore.”

  “Please,” she cried.

  “It’ll be okay this way. I want to be with you when I die and you’re here. I think all along that’s what I’ve been waiting for . . . See, for years my mind was in a fog, a fog that was all blurs of emotion. There was so much darkness. It was a horrible way to live. But then one night, for no reason, I woke up and I could see things clearly. I could think again. My brain wasn’t injured. I was like I was before. I don’t know why it happened like that, or why it happened that night, but it did. And when it did all I wanted to do was die.”

  “I don’t understand why you’d want to die then. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s because I wasn’t sure it would last. I thought maybe it was just another emotion that would pass, that the clarity would disappear and I’d be stuck again. I can’t begin to tell you how awful my mind was, how my emotions just bounced around day after day. I tried to kill myself so I could die with clarity, inside clarity. But of course I failed. I didn’t know for a long time why I failed, but now I realize I wasn’t meant to die until I saw you again. Until I was with you again. Because maybe when I die I’ll disappear into you. I’ll be inside you. I’m almost certain now that that’s how it works.”

  “But you can’t leave me.”

  “It’ll be okay. You’ll have a family someday. You’ll have a lot of things. I know you will.”

  “But we’re going to have a family together.”

  “We can’t now.”

  “Yes we can.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t talk like this,” she said. “We just have to get out of here.”

  “We’ll get out of here as soon as I die. Then you’ll be free from them. You’ll be free from every story about it, from every memory, and someday you won’t hyperventilate when you see someone dressed as a soldier. And you won’t cry when you pass a hospital or see an old red car or hear Amália Rodrigues. Those things will go away.”

  “No they won’t.”

  “They will.”

  “But my memories of us don’t stop. It’s like they’re always playing. Do you remember when my dad broke in on us? Do you remember that?”

  “Of course,” he said. “We were in high school and it was our big trip. You told your parents you were staying with a friend and I told my mom the same thing and we took my mom’s car and drove to the mountains. It was in the middle of winter and we rented a room in this little town. The place was above a pizza parlor. When we first got there we walked around in the snow. It was near Christmas. Everyone had lights up. Snow always looks nice reflecting off streetlights and Christmas lights. It was the first time I’d ever been anywhere on my own, where it wasn’t a part of school or where my mom or uncle weren’t with me. I can’t even begin to explain how nice it was there with you. It’s one of the best memories I have.

  “I remember we walked through the town for hours and everyone we passed was nice to us; everyone was kind and said hello. When we went back to the room we got in the bathtub to warm up. I remember us just sitting there in the hot water talking. Talking about what kind of place we’d get when we could move out on our own. We were really in love. The funny thing is you had a notepad with you and you took notes about what we liked and what we didn’t like. Which neighborhoods we thought were okay and which weren’t. You sat back in the soapy water writing like a secretary. I remember the bathtub was one of those old big ones and the water spigot came out on the side so we were facing each other from opposite sides of the tub. Then you began reading a Star Trek novel to me. I can’t remember which one but I remember that it was a Star Trek one and that Khan was in it. I had a bag of M&Ms and I’d give you one every time you said, ‘union break.’ ”

  “Union break,” Jeanette whispered. “I remember union break.”

  “I don’t know why we didn’t hear it, but the owner of the hotel opened our door and your dad came in. He found us like that in the bathtub. He grabbed you by the arm and pulled you out. You were standing there naked and sobbing. He was so mad he was shaking and his face went so red I thought he would explode or have a heart attack. He pulled me out of the tub and shoved me into the main room, naked. He yelled at me so hard I thought he would kill me. Every time I tried to move away he would grab me and throw me against the wall. I had never been that scared in my whole life. You came out of the bathroom crying and holding my clothes. You begged him to leave me alone. ‘Don’t hurt him. Please don’t hurt him,’ you cried. He looked at you and grabbed you by the arm so hard that you fell to the ground. He called you awful things. He said he was going to get the police and have me thrown in jail. He was sure I was raping you. He said I’d spend my whole life in prison. There were veins on his face bulging, and he was spitting as he yelled. ‘But I love him,’ you said. ‘We’re in love. We’re really in love.’ And then he stopped. He just grabbed you by the arm again and made you dress, and then dragged you down to his car.

  “I remember the worst part of that night was that we didn’t get to say good-bye to each other. He just drove you away. I didn’t know what to do after that. I was scared that maybe he would come back so I took our things out of the room and left the key inside and shut the door. I got in my mom’s car but it had snowed since we’d gotten there, and my mom had an old Buick and those things are horrible in the snow. I couldn’t get it out of the parking spot. The wheels just spun and she didn’t have chains. I couldn’t get back in the room because I’d left the key in there so I just spent all night freezing in her car. When I finally got back home the next day, my mom was really upset with me. They had called my house to confirm the reservation, and that’s how she found out. But the thing is, even when my mom was upset with me, all I could think about was you. I was just hoping you were alright, that your dad didn’t hurt you. That he didn’t drive too fast in the snow.”

  “See,” Jeanette said. “We’ll never be free . . . What you don’t understand is all those years I was away from you, that I tried to forget about you, I never did. I was always certain you’d come back to me. That somehow, during our time apart, you had miraculously recovered, that you’d become my Leroy again. Sometimes at work I’d sit at my desk and
I’d hear someone behind me and I’d be certain it was you. You were coming back to save me. At home, late at night when I’d hear a noise, I wasn’t scared ’cause I thought the noise was you trying to find my apartment. When the phone would ring . . . You know what I’m saying?”

  “Your memory will fade. You’ll start a new life. That’s the way it works.”

  “That’s not fair. You’re going to leave me all alone.”

  “I’ll be a part of you. Like the dog, me and the dog.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “I don’t. But we were lucky.”

  “How can you say we were lucky?”

  “We know what it’s like to be in love.”

  “Really in love.”

  “Right.”

  “But please don’t leave me, Leroy.”

  26

  At 9:00 AM Freddie McCall parked at a gas station in Redding, California. He had driven for nearly eleven hours straight. He cleaned up in their bathroom, got a cup of coffee, and called his ex-wife. She gave him directions to her aunt Muriel’s apartment two miles away and he wrote them down with a ballpoint pen on his palm.

  “But Freddie, don’t hang up yet,” she told him. “I won’t be here when you arrive. I’m leaving right after I hang up.”

  “Why?”

  “I just can’t see you right now.”

  “Tell me what’s going on with you.”

  Her voice fell apart. “I don’t want them back, Freddie.”

  He looked out of the windshield. He saw a group of hunters in camouflage get out of a black truck and go inside the gas station mini-mart. “You won’t always feel that way,” he said.

  “I’m gonna go now, Freddie, but I’ll call you,” she said and hung up.

  He got lost twice but finally parked in front of a rundown apartment complex. When he knocked on the door an old woman answered. She wore green shorts and a red Christmas sweater with a reindeer on it. Her feet were bare and looked blue, and her toenails were long and bent and discolored. She was a heavy woman in her seventies and smelled of urine and perfume.

  “Hello, Muriel, it’s me, Freddie,” he said. “Do you remember me?”

  “I remember you,” she said, stone-faced. Her eyes looked infected, red and sore and bloodshot.

  His oldest daughter, Kathleen, screamed when she heard her father’s voice. She ran toward the front door through the clutter of the cramped apartment and pushed her great aunt to the side to get through. His youngest daughter, Virginia, moved behind her, dragging her left leg. Freddie kneeled down and both of them fell into his arms.

  An hour later he crammed the girls’ suitcases into the Comet and they piled into the front seat and he drove them to a pawnshop.

  “Why is there all that stuff in the back?” Kathleen asked.

  “We’re taking it to a pawnshop,” Freddie said.

  “What’s a pawnshop?” Virginia asked.

  “It’s when you sell your stuff to a store. They give you money for it. You can have them hold it for you, and they give you money in return, and then if you pay them back you get your stuff back. Like a loan. But I’m just going to sell this stuff.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have enough money to get us home. Your mom called out of the blue. I wasn’t ready. I almost have money, but it’s a couple weeks away. So I have to sell this stuff instead. What did your mom tell you?”

  “She just said to get in the car and that we were staying with you,” Kathleen said. “She woke us up in the middle of the night and told us.”

  “That’s true,” Freddie said. “You are staying with me. It happened pretty quick, and I know that’s hard. But I think your mom thought it was the best thing to do it right then. Anyway, we’re going to have a good time together, but first we need money.”

  He drove through the streets of downtown Redding until he found the pawnshop. They all carried in the things he’d brought with him: a table saw, chop saw, stereo, phone, CDs, TV, DVD player, air compressor, paint sprayer, Sawzall, two cordless drills, electric sander, router, and his mother’s acoustic guitar.

  He left with $730, and they got back on the road. He drank two cups of coffee and an energy drink. He took seven calls from Pat, who was struggling to fill in for him, until he finally lost him in the mountains and turned off his phone. When night came he stopped in a small town off the highway. They checked into a motel and then walked down the street to a Chinese restaurant.

  His daughters sat across from him in a booth as they ate. When they finished, Freddie set his elbows on the table and leaned over to them. “Are you both okay living with me?”

  The girls nodded.

  “You know your mom still loves you though, right?”

  They looked at each other, but they didn’t say anything.

  “She does,” Freddie said. “Sometimes people need to be alone to figure things out. Sometimes people just need a break for a while. It doesn’t mean she’s not always thinking about you.”

  “Is she going to come live with us at our house?” Virginia asked.

  “I don’t think so. I think she might stay in Las Vegas. But let’s not think about that, okay? Let’s just let her have a break. Alright?”

  His daughters nodded uncertainly.

  “The only other news is that we’ve moved. I’ve got us an apartment. It’s a nice place right by the school.”

  “We’re not living in our house anymore?” Kathleen asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “I couldn’t afford it, but the new place is good. It’s really nice. You guys will like it. It’s smaller, a one bedroom, but you guys will have bunk beds and I’ll sleep in the living room. We’ll paint your room a bunch of good colors. It’ll be cramped but it’ll be a lot of fun. The best news is that you can walk to school now. You won’t have to take the bus, which means you can sleep in a bit longer. Plus, in two weeks I’ll get money from the house so we’ll be in good shape.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kathleen said.

  “You’ll see. It’ll be fine,” he said.

  When they left the restaurant, Freddie carried Virginia in his arms, and they walked down the sidewalk toward the motel. The night was dark and no stars shone, and a cold wind off the mountains hit them as they went.

  “I think you’re getting too big to carry,” he told her and sighed.

  “I’m not too big,” she said and hugged him harder.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe I’m just out of shape.”

  “If you don’t carry her, it’ll take us forever,” Kathleen said.

  “I’ll go another block and then my arms might need a break,” Freddie said. “Is that okay?”

  “It’s okay,” Virginia said. “I can walk.”

  “But she’s so slow!” Kathleen said. “And it’s freezing.”

  “We’ll be okay,” Freddie told her. “It’s not her fault she can’t walk as fast as you. She’s on our team. You have to remember that, alright?”

  “Alright,” Kathleen said.

  “Whose team is she on?” Freddie asked.

  “Our team,” she said.

  “We have to stick together. There’s no point if we’re not nice to each other. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good,” he said.

  Inside the motel room they watched TV until his daughters fell asleep. The girls in one bed and Freddie in the other. And finally, after being awake for twenty-six hours, he collapsed, only to be woken up two hours later by his daughters’ giggling.

  “What are you guys doing?” he said softly. “It’s really late.”

  “Ginnie’s been hearing noises,” Kathleen whispered.

  “You have, too,” she replied.

  “I have, too,” she said and they both began giggling again.

  “What did it sound like?” Freddie asked.

  “A mountain lion,” Virginia said.

  “Don’t worry, a mo
untain lion could never get in here.” He rolled over on his side and began to drift off when his daughters again laughed.

  “What’s so funny now?” he asked.

  “You’re the mountain lion!” Virginia said.

  “You snore louder than anyone ever!” Kathleen said. “Louder than a mountain lion probably.”

  “Oh, so that’s it.”

  They erupted in laughter.

  “I know I snore like a mountain lion,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. I’ll try to stay awake until you guys fall asleep, okay?”

  “Okay,” they both said.

  “It’s hard to sleep in motels but we have a long day tomorrow so no more giggling, alright?”

  “Alright,” they said.

  Freddie tried his best to stay awake. He could hear them rustling in their bed and whispering. But he didn’t say anything more. He slept soundly, and the next thing he knew it was late morning and his girls were crawling on top of him, begging him to get up.

  They ate breakfast at a diner and got on the highway. They had traveled for three hours when the Comet began to shake violently. It was followed by a loud hammering from below the trunk, and then something began dragging on the pavement. The engine revved to a whine, but the power was gone. He moved the car to the side of the highway and turned off the motor.

  “What’s wrong?” Kathleen asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Freddie said.

  “Where are we?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said and looked around. There were no houses or ranches that he could see. Just miles of sagebrush, gullies, and hills surrounded them. In the far distance there were mountain ranges and clouds that were slowly engulfing them. “Alright,” he said. “You guys sit tight. I’ll be right back.” He got out of the car and kneeled on the gravel to see the end of the drive shaft lying on the ground. He got up and leaned against the trunk. He called for a tow truck and then he got back in the car and turned on the hazard lights.