Liberty

by Kirby Larson

  Erich could not look away, could not stop staring. He kept watching until the boy was a mere speck in the distance.

  Fish was right. Mo was furious. Even though he and Olympia had left a note on Mr. Haddock’s windshield, saying that they’d gone home.

  He could almost see steam coming out her ears. “I don’t care what the reason was.” She’d held up her hand and wouldn’t even let Fish explain. “You didn’t have permission to leave. And I wasted a lot of Mr. Haddock’s time looking for you.” She’d sent Fish to his room and sent Olympia home for Miss Zona to deal with.

  He hadn’t meant to upset Mo. But it had been a matter of life and death. He and Olympia caught the first streetcar home — it was empty enough that they could sit together near the middle — and went straight to Mr. LaVache’s house. His truck wasn’t in the driveway; he and Pie DuFour must’ve driven it to the beach. Still, Fish felt Mr. LaVache’s slimy presence as they approached his place from the back. It made him glance over his shoulder every other step. At first, all they saw was the garden and the chicken coops. Looked like he was doing some repairs to some of them. Then Fish saw it. A pen, a cage really, with Liberty chained to a stake inside.

  “How did he get her?” Olympia’s words came out like a sob.

  Fish shook his head. She’d probably gotten hungry enough, being gone so long, to take food from anybody. And she looked like she was eating well, even gained weight. They eased closer, checking everything out. It didn’t appear they could be seen from the street, thanks to an overgrown prickly shrub. Of course Mr. LaVache would plant something with prickers.

  The moment she saw them, Liberty tugged at the chain, straining to get close to the fence, closer to Fish. But the chain, twisted around the stake, caught her up short. She whined.

  “That’s like to break my heart.” Olympia grabbed Fish’s arm. “We’ve got to get her out.”

  “You keep watch and I’ll undo the latch.” He crept forward as smoothly as he could manage, until he was just about on the pen. Then he got to feeling sick all over again.

  A huge padlock held the gate shut. It looked like it weighed more than Olympia, it was that sturdy. Fish tugged and tugged, but it didn’t budge. He slapped it in his frustration, setting it swinging back and forth, with a taunting scrape of metal on metal.

  “What are you waiting for?” Olympia stage-whispered from behind one of the henhouses. She couldn’t see the lock from her vantage point. “Aren’t you going to let her out?”

  “He’s latched her up, good and tight.”

  Olympia moved closer to see for herself. “That is one ugly man. Who would do that to a dog?”

  Fish started to shake his head, then he made sense of the rest of Mr. LaVache’s conversation with his drinking buddy. “Puppies.” He stared through the mesh at Liberty, pressing his forehead against the warm metal. She was fatter because she was going to have puppies. He told Olympia what he’d overheard. Most of it, anyway. He couldn’t bear to say the part about the plans for the puppies.

  “Could we tell the police?” Olympia suggested.

  “How would I prove she’s my dog?” Fish asked. “It’d be my word against his.”

  Olympia’s eyes darted around the yard as if she might see something there that would answer their problem. “Well, what about Mo? She’s a spark plug. Or wait.” Olympia flapped her hands. “What about that Mr. Higgins? He knows everybody in town.”

  Fish tried to force his hand through the mesh in the fence, tried to pet Liberty, to comfort her. His hand was too big. “I don’t think even Mr. Higgins can fix this problem.”

  “Well, what are you going to do?” Olympia’s skinny arm could fit through, but it wasn’t long enough to reach Liberty. “It’s okay, girl.”

  He kicked at the cage with his left leg. Stupid thing looked solid, not like the pen he’d built at home. “I don’t know.” He held his hand up to the mesh, and Liberty strained to meet it. “But I’m going to do something, that’s for sure.”

  A trip to the library uncovered another book on dogs. “It says it takes around sixty-three days for the puppies to come,” Fish reported back to Olympia. He figured that Liberty got pregnant during the time she’d run away, after the storm. “That means she’ll have them around the third week in September.”

  “I can’t believe he was that rude to your sister.” Olympia peeled the banana she’d brought over and handed half to Fish.

  “I know.” Fish took a bite, and swallowed. Mo hadn’t been happy about going to talk to Mr. LaVache at first, but when she saw for herself how he was keeping Liberty chained up, she boiled over like a percolator.

  “What kind of man are you, keeping an animal restrained like that? In this heat?” Mo wouldn’t back off the porch, even when Mr. LaVache tried to close the door in her face. “My brother was caring for this dog. She doesn’t belong to you. Let him have her back.”

  But Mo’s arguments got them nowhere. Mr. LaVache had told them to get off his property and if they came back, he’d call the sheriff.

  “So we have some time to make a plan.” Olympia pulled at a banana string. “Can’t you invent some gizmo to cut through that lock?”

  “I don’t need to invent a gizmo,” he said. “A hacksaw would do it. But it would take forever. He’d catch us for sure.”

  Olympia took a bite, chewing. “Maybe we could let the air out of his truck tires?”

  Fish looked at her. “How would that help?”

  “I dunno.” She shrugged. “I just saw it in a movie a while back.”

  He finished off his chunk of banana. “Until we think of something, I’m going to go every day and take her some food. Let her know I haven’t forgotten her.”

  “I’ll come along,” Olympia said.

  Fish nodded.

  Her elbow tapped him in the side. “You’ll think of something. I know you will.”

  He appreciated the vote of confidence. He wished he believed it himself. But he was just a kid. A kid with a bad leg. What could he do?

  LaVache should raise swine, not chickens. He would be right at home with them. No, that was an insult to pigs. The way he kept that dog, chained up all day. And any fool could tell she was pregnant. Erich spat into the dirt, watching dust rise behind the saliva, to get the taste of that man out of his mouth. He was not going to be on the truck the next time it came to this place. He’d dealt with enough tyrants in the army.

  The big red hen pecked around Erich’s feet as he finished nailing new treads to the ramp. Bossy old thing: It was almost as if she was telling him to hurry up. He could see why she was impatient; the old ramp had nearly rotted through. These hens had to be part tightrope artists to bed down in the coops at night. Erich briefly fantasized about whacking LaVache over the head with the new ramp. He deserved no better.

  Erich managed to resist the temptation, carrying the ramp over to the coop to nail it in place. Then he stood, swiping at the sweat on his forehead. He had the sense of being watched. He slowly swiveled to look over his shoulder.

  That pale-skinned limping boy. He stood at the edge of LaVache’s property, holding a paper sack. Watching. He had company this time. A wiry, dark girl waited with him, hands on her skinny hips. Erich smiled, waved. The girl waved back, her braids bouncing with the energy of her motions. The boy may have nodded. Erich wasn’t sure.

  The two children put their heads together, conferring. The sack traded hands. With a quick glance left and right, the girl ran straight to Erich, handing it to him. “For Liberty,” she said. “For the dog.” Those last words were louder, as if she thought he could understand English better at high volume.

  “Ah. Der Hund.” He took the sack. “The dog. She needs a friend.”

  From near the house, LaVache began bellowing about something. The girl flew back to the boy.

  Erich faced the children, gave them the thumbs-up sign. Then, dodging around the back side of the coops, away from the odious LaVache, he tossed the contents of the sack — a hot
dog and bun and a warm slice of that oddly yellow cheese the Americans seemed to love — through the chain links to the hungry dog. She devoured it, fixing grateful eyes on Erich. He looked to the back of the acreage again. There was no sign of the children.

  The dog pressed her nose against the wire fencing of her pen, trying to lick Erich’s hand. He did his best to rub her muzzle through the mesh. She sighed.

  Perhaps he would come back to work for LaVache after all.

  Fish clipped a newspaper headline to take to school for current events: BEACH BATTLE AT ANGAUR. He brought a map along to show where the tiny island was, way out in the middle of the Pacific, south of Guam, east of the Philippines. How did the Marines and the Navy even find these places? How did the Japanese? All that commotion for tiny specks in that expanse of blue. But Miss Devereux was big on current events. “Your grandchildren will want to know about these times,” she said. “And if you don’t tell them, who will?” Fish couldn’t picture himself as a grandfather, but if Miss Devereux said something, they all believed it. She was as pretty as Deanna Durbin and as sweet as Miss Zona’s fudge. Fish caught Wally leaving an apple on her desk when he thought no one was looking.

  Sixth grade held some nice surprises, aside from Miss Devereux. It wasn’t until Mo took him shopping for new chinos to wear to school that Fish realized he’d grown over the summer. And she didn’t have to hem his right pant leg up as much as usual. Could be that all that bike riding and walking to feed Liberty were paying off. And only a couple of weeks into the school year, Fish had been picked to be on a dodgeball team at recess. Twice. Working in Miss Zona’s garden had improved his throwing arm.

  All that good didn’t make up for the painful. Mr. LaVache still had Liberty. Fish checked on her every day. Despite Olympia’s faith in him, he hadn’t figured out how to rescue her. Liberty seemed in decent health, no thanks to Mr. LaVache. Fish didn’t know what he fed her, but she gobbled down every scrap he and Olympia brought. It was harder to get close to her now, too, with all those POWs working on the farm. But that one seemed to have a soft spot for dogs. Fish hadn’t wanted to trust him. But Olympia talked him into it.

  “He doesn’t look much older than my cousin in high school,” Olympia had said after she approached the POW the first time. After that, he seemed to be watching for them and always found an excuse to wander to the back of the property to get whatever food they’d brought for Liberty. Hund. That’s what he called her. Once he had called Fish Friedrich. Fish wasn’t sure what that meant. He hoped it didn’t mean “crippled kid.”

  “Don’t forget the spelling test tomorrow,” Miss Devereux reminded Fish and his classmates as they scuffed out of the classroom at the end of the day.

  Lurelle fell into step with Fish. “You did a real nice job with your current events, Fish.” She fussed with the bow in her hair. “I can hardly read the papers sometimes, thinking about my big brother over there fighting. Seems like all I see is the bad news.”

  Fish nodded. On Friday, Mo had gotten teary after reading the front page. Fish guessed what had upset her: an article reporting the number of US casualties so far in the war. Almost 400,000. It didn’t help that it had been forever since they’d heard from Roy.

  “Well, see you tomorrow.” Lurelle hurried off to meet her girlfriends, who were giggling together out in the hall.

  Fish started home. He’d be on his own today to carry food to Liberty because Olympia had to practice for a solo over at their church. After the chicken farm, he’d finish those letters to Pop and Roy. Pop had finally received the Voice-O-Graph. He’d written back that one of his buddies had a record player and that the whole tent had listened to it. “It made it seem as if you were right here, Fish,” Pop had written. “Sure brightened up this rainy day.” Those words made Fish feel pretty great. As if his being right there was something Pop really wanted. Even with his leg the way it was.

  From the icebox, Fish grabbed the scraps he’d saved, including part of a peanut butter sandwich, a slice of Velveeta, and some red beans and rice. And some green beans, because Liberty seemed to like them as much as Roy did. Fish wrapped everything in tinfoil and started off for Mr. LaVache’s.

  The Army truck was parked on the street out front, which meant POWs. Fish had heard that they got paid something like ten cents a day doing work around the parish. But that they couldn’t earn cash money in case they tried to use it to escape. They got paid in tickets or something like that. It would take more than ten cents’ worth of tickets to make Fish want to work for that man. But maybe the POWs didn’t have a choice. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure they didn’t have a choice. Who would choose to work for Mr. LaVache?

  Approaching from the back, as he usually did, Fish saw “their” POW. He nodded when he spotted Fish but held his hand up. Fish stopped. He could hear Mr. LaVache hollering and carrying on. The POW disappeared around the corner of one of the chicken coops. Then a truck door slammed and an engine clattered to life. Shortly after that, the POW came back. He walked right up to Fish and spoke to him for the first time.

  “He’s gone to get more lumber.” His English was almost perfect. “Somehow, the two-by-fours he purchased have been misplaced.” The POW scratched his head, as if genuinely puzzled. “I believe they will turn up later, where he least expects them.”

  “You hid them?”

  The POW shrugged. “I could not say yes. I could not say no.” He motioned to Fish. “Come. You must see the dog.”

  Fish followed him to the front corner of the yard where Liberty was being kept.

  “We are both prisoners, she and I.” He looked very sad, and very young, as he said those words.

  Fish stuck out his hand. “I’m Fish.”

  “Erich.”

  They shook.

  “Thank you for helping us.” Fish knelt outside the pen, tossing the food he’d brought through the holes in the wires. Liberty got up heavily. She gobbled up the scraps, then flopped back down.

  “I am thinking the pups come soon.” Erich studied her, lips pressed together. “I grew up around many animals. On a farm. Tomorrow or the next day.”

  Fish gripped the wire fencing. “I have to get her out of there.”

  Erich nodded. “He is a bad man.”

  Fish glanced over at Erich. His eyes were as blue as Roy’s. His smile as warm as Mo’s. It was hard to think of him as an enemy. Maybe he had been. Maybe he still was, in some ways. But they were allies, too, over Liberty. “It’s that darned padlock.” He yanked on the gate, shaking it hard, for emphasis.

  “Yah.” Erich rubbed his hand through his hair. “I have even looked at his key ring.”

  Fish jerked his head to stare at Erich.

  “But there is no padlock key there.” He turned his hands palms up. “I do not know where he keeps it.”

  Fish felt his eyes water. He couldn’t cry. Not in front of a complete stranger.

  Erich stood next to him, staring intently into the pen. As he started to speak, they heard the rattle of Mr. LaVache’s truck returning. He reached into his pocket, handed something to Fish. It was a carving of a dog.

  Fish stared at it in wonder. It was Liberty in miniature perfection. He’d got her ears, her face, her shape, just right. “For me?”

  “Inside each piece of wood waits its true self, yearning to be revealed by the carver.” Erich turned away from Liberty’s pen. “This is true for people, too. We do not know what lies within until we are prodded into action.” He tapped Fish’s shoulder, indicating that he should vamoose. Then he returned to the chicken coop where he’d been working. Picking up a brush, he calmly stroked bright red paint over the faded boards, as if he could not hear Mr. LaVache carrying on like a wounded bull.

  Fish step-clomped as quickly as he could off Mr. LaVache’s property. He stopped once he reached the road. “Erich!” he called.

  Erich’s head turned, slightly. Fish knew he’d heard. “Thank you!”

  He put the carving in his
pocket, and Erich’s words in his head.

  What was his true self?

  He had no idea. But he sure hoped it could save a dog.

  Erich had fifteen dollars folded neatly into his sock to get him started. He laughed to think of his English instructor praising his gift for language. “I can barely hear your accent,” he had told Erich. The instructor had no idea how handy that lack of accent would be.

  Erich had told no one of his scheme. Not the Professor. And certainly not Oskar. After all his planning, Erich had decided. Today was the day.

  Bouncing along in the back of the truck, away from the camp, Erich was for once glad to be working for LaVache. And for that pair of coveralls the man kept in the back shed. Erich planned to slip them on to hide the white stenciled PW on his pants and shirt. As soon as he could, he would ditch the uniform. Perhaps in that canal they passed on the way to LaVache’s place.

  Timing was crucial. He had planned to make his escape shortly after arriving at the farm. If there was going to be a head count — and there hadn’t been any lately — it would come at the end of the day, as the truck was loaded up for the return to the camp.

  The military truck juddered to a halt in the dusty yard. LaVache held a burlap sack in his hands. He barked instructions at Sergeant Tucker and then disappeared inside his house.

  Dread scorched Erich, worse than the sun. What was that sack for? As calmly as he could, he walked to the dog’s pen. The mother was there, panting from the heat, calmly nursing pups. He’d been right! They had come soon. Looked to be five of them.

  After a time, another man arrived. Unshaven, he reeked of tobacco and an unpleasant something else. He sauntered right over to the dog pen and inspected the puppies.

  LaVache came outside to confer with him, still carrying the sack. “What do you think, Pie?”