Freedom

by Jonathan Franzen

  He nodded, taking note of the word some.

  “Can I ask you one question, though?” she said.

  “You can ask me a million questions.”

  “Well, just one for now. Do you think you might love me?”

  He smiled. “Yes, I definitely think that.”

  “That’s all I need, then.” And she started the engine.

  Somewhere above the fog, the sky was turning blue. Lalitha took the back roads out of Beckley at highly illegal speeds, and Walter was happy to gaze out the window and not think about what was happening to him, just inhabit the free fall. That the Appalachian hardwood forest was among the world’s most biodiverse temperate ecosystems, home to a variety of tree species and orchids and freshwater invertebrates whose bounty the high plains and sandy coasts could only envy, wasn’t readily apparent from the roads they were traveling. The land here had betrayed itself, its gnarly topography and wealth of extractable resources discouraging the egalitarianism of Jefferson’s yeoman farmers, fostering instead the concentration of surface and mineral rights in the hands of the out-of-state wealthy, and consigning the poor natives and imported workers to the margins: to logging, to working in the mines, to scraping out pre- and then, later, post-industrial existences on scraps of leftover land which, stirred by the same urge to couple as had now gripped Walter and Lalitha, they’d overfilled with tightly spaced generations of too-large families. West Virginia was the nation’s own banana republic, its Congo, its Guyana, its Honduras. The roads were reasonably picturesque in summer, but now, with the leaves still down, you could see all the scabby rock-littered pastures, the spindly canopies of young second growth, the gouged hillsides and mining-damaged streams, the spavined barns and paintless houses, the trailer homes hip-deep in plastic and metallic trash, the torn-up dirt tracks leading nowhere.

  Deeper in the country, the scenes were less discouraging. Remoteness brought the relief of no people: no people meant more everything else. Lalitha swerved violently around a grouse on the road, a grouse greeter, an avian goodwill ambassador inviting appreciation of the brawnier forestation and less marred heights and clearer streams of Wyoming County. Even the weather was brightening for them.

  “I want you,” Walter said.

  She shook her head. “Don’t say anything else, OK? We still have work to do. Let’s just do our jobs and then see.”

  He was tempted to make her stop at one of the little rustic picnic areas along Black Jewel Creek (of which the Nine Mile was a principal tributary), but it would be irresponsible, he thought, to lay a hand on her again until he was certain he was ready. Delay was bearable if gratification was assured. And the beauty of the land up here, the sweet spore-laden dampness of the early-spring air, was so assuring him.

  It was after six by the time they reached the turnoff for Forster Hollow. Walter had expected to encounter heavy truck and earth-moving-equipment traffic on the Nine Mile road, but there wasn’t a vehicle in sight. Instead they found deep tire and tractor chewings in the mud. Where the woods encroached, freshly broken branches were lying on the ground and dangling lamely from the overarching trees.

  “Looks like somebody got here early,” Walter said.

  Lalitha was applying gas in fitful spurts, fishtailing the car in the mud, veering dangerously close to the road’s edge to avoid the larger fallen branches.

  “I almost wonder if they got here yesterday,” Walter said. “I wonder if they misunderstood and brought the equipment in yesterday to get an early start.”

  “They did have the legal right, as of noon.”

  “But that’s not what they told us. They told us six a.m. today.”

  “Yes, but they’re coal companies, Walter.”

  They came to one of the narrowest pinches in the road and found it roughly bulldozed and chainsawed, the tree trunks pushed down into the ravine below. Lalitha revved the engine and shimmied and jounced across a hastily graded stretch of mud and stone and stump. “Glad this is a rental car!” she said as she accelerated zestfully onto the clearer road beyond.

  Two miles farther up, at the boundary of property now belonging to the Trust, the road was blocked by a couple of passenger cars backed up in front of a chainlink gate being assembled by workers in orange vests. Walter could see Jocelyn Zorn and some of her women conferring with a hard-hatted manager who was holding a clipboard. In another, not too dissimilar world, Walter might have been friends with Jocelyn Zorn. She resembled the Eve in the famous altarpiece painting by van Eyck; she was pallid and dull-eyed and somewhat macrocephalic-looking in the highness of her hairline. But she had a fine, unsettling cool, an unflappability suggestive of irony, and was the sort of bitter salad green for which Walter ordinarily had a fondness. She came down the road to meet him and Lalitha as they were stepping out into the mud.

  “Good morning, Walter,” she said. “Can you explain what’s going on here?”

  “Looks like some road improvement,” he said disingenuously.

  “There’s a lot of dirt going in the creek. It’s already turbid halfway to the Black Jewel. I’m not seeing much in the way of erosion mitigation here. Less than none, actually.”

  “We’ll talk to them about that.”

  “I’ve asked DEP to come up and have a look. I imagine they’ll get here by June or so. Did you buy them off, too?”

  Through the brown spatters on the bumper of the rearmost car Walter could read the message been done by nardone.

  “Let’s rewind a little bit, Jocelyn,” he said. “Can we step back and look at the bigger picture?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in the dirt in the stream. I’m also interested in what’s happening beyond the fence.”

  “What’s happening is we’re preserving sixty-five thousand acres of roadless woodland for eternity. We’re securing unfragmented habitat for as many as two thousand breeding pairs of cerulean warbler.”

  Zorn lowered her dull eyes to the muddy ground. “Right. Your species of interest. It’s very pretty.”

  “Why don’t we all go somewhere else,” Lalitha said cheerfully, “and sit down and talk about the bigger picture. We’re on your side, you know.”

  “No,” Zorn said. “I’m going to stay here for a while. I asked my friend from the Gazette to come up and have a look.”

  “Have you been talking to the New York Times, too?” it occurred to Walter to ask.

  “Yes. They seemed pretty interested, actually. MTR’s a magic term these days. That’s what you’re doing up there, isn’t it?”

  “We’re having a press conference on Monday,” he said. “I’m going to lay out the whole plan. I think, when you hear the details, you’re going to be very excited. We can get you a plane ticket if you want to join us. I’d love to have you there. You and I could even have a little public dialogue, if you want to voice your concerns.”

  “In Washington?”

  “Yes.”

  “Figures.”

  “That’s where we’re based.”

  “Right. It’s where everything’s based.”

  “Jocelyn, we have fifty thousand acres here that will never be touched in any way. The rest of it will be successional within a few years. I think we’ve made some very good decisions.”

  “I guess we disagree about that, then.”

  “Seriously think about joining us in Washington on Monday. And have your friend at the Gazette give me a call today.” Walter gave Zorn a business card from his wallet. “Tell him we’d love to bring him to Washington, too, if he’s interested.”

  From farther up in the hills came a murmur of thunder that sounded like blasting, probably up at Forster Hollow. Zorn put the business card in a pocket of her rain parka. “By the way,” she said, “I’ve been talking to Coyle Mathis. I already know what you’re doing.”

  “Coyle Mathis is legally barred from discussing it,” Walter said. “I’m happy to sit down with you and talk about it myself, though.”

 
; “The fact that he’s living in a brand-new five-bedroom ranch house in Whitmanville speaks for itself.”

  “That’s a nice house, isn’t it?” Lalitha said. “Much, much nicer than where he was.”

  “You might want to pay him a visit and see if he agrees with you about that.”

  “Anyway,” Walter said, “you need to move your cars out of the way so we can get through.”

  “Hm,” Zorn said, uninterested. “I guess you could call somebody to tow us, if there were cell reception here. Which there isn’t.”

  “Oh, come on, Jocelyn.” Walter’s anger was outflanking his barricades against it. “Can we at least be adults about this? Acknowledge that we’re fundamentally on the same side, even if we disagree about our methods?”

  “Sorry, no,” she said. “My method is to block the road.”

  Not trusting himself to say more, Walter strode up the hill and let Lalitha hurry after him. A flail, the whole morning was becoming a flail. The hard-hatted manager, who looked no older than Jessica, was explaining to the other women, with remarkable courtesy, why they needed to move their cars. “Do you have a radio?” Walter asked him abruptly.

  “I’m sorry. Who are you?”

  “I’m the director of the Cerulean Mountain Trust. We were expected at the top of the road at six o’clock.”

  “Right, sir. I’m afraid that’s going to be a problem if these ladies don’t move their cars.”

  “Well, then, how about radioing for somebody to come down and get us?”

  “Out of range, unfortunately. These damned hollers are dead zones.”

  “OK.” Walter took a deep breath. He could see a pickup parked beyond the gate. “Maybe you can run us up in your truck, then.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not authorized to leave the gate area.”

  “Well, then, lend it to us.”

  “I can’t do that, either, sir. You’re not insured for it on the work site. But if these ladies would just move aside for a sec, you’d be free to proceed in your own vehicle.”

  Walter turned to the women, none of whom looked younger than sixty, and smiled in vague supplication. “Please?” he said. “We’re not with a coal company. We’re conservationists.”

  “Conservationists my ass!” the oldest one said.

  “No, seriously,” Lalitha said in a soothing tone. “It would be to everyone’s benefit if you would let us through. We’re here to monitor the work and make sure it’s being done responsibly. We’re very much on your side, and we share your concerns about the environment. In fact, if one or two of you would like to come along with us—”

  “I’m afraid that’s not authorized,” the manager said.

  “Fuck the authorization!” Walter said. “We need to get through here! I own this fucking land! Do you understand that? I own everything you can see here.”

  “How you likin’ it?” the oldest woman said to him. “Doesn’t feel so good now, does it? Being on the wrong side of the fence.”

  “You’re more than free to walk in, sir,” the manager said, “although it’s a pretty far piece. I reckon you’re looking at two hours with all the mud.”

  “Just lend me the truck, OK? I will indemnify you, or you can say I stole it, or whatever you like. Just lend me the fucking truck.”

  Walter felt Lalitha’s hand on his arm. “Walter? Let’s go sit in the car for a minute.” She turned to the women. “We’re very much on your side, and we appreciate your coming out to show your concern for this wonderful forest, which we’re very dedicated to preserving.”

  “Interesting way you got of going about that,” the oldest woman said.

  As Lalitha led Walter back down toward the rental car, they could hear heavy equipment coming rumbling up the road behind it. The rumble became a roar which then resolved itself into a pair of giant, road-wide backhoes with mud-caked tractors. The driver of the front one left the engine coughing out fumes while he hopped down for a word with Walter.

  “Sir, you’re going to have to move your vehicle up ahead to where we can pass it.”

  “Does it look like I can do that?” he said wildly. “Is that what it fucking looks like to you?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir. But we can’t be backing up. Be near a mile back down to a turnout.”

  Before Walter could get even angrier, Lalitha took him by both arms and peered up fervently into his face. “You have to let me handle this. You’re too upset now.”

  “I’m upset for good reason!”

  “Walter. Sit in the car. Now.”

  He did as he was told. He sat for more than an hour, fiddling with his non-receiving BlackBerry and listening to the mindless waste of fossil fuels as the backhoe behind him idled. When the driver finally thought to turn it off, he heard a chorus of engines from farther back—another four or five heavy trucks and earthmovers were backed up now. Somebody needed to summon the state police to deal with Zorn and her zealots. In the meantime, incredibly, in deepest Wyoming County, he was stopped dead in traffic. Lalitha was running up and down the road, conferring with the various parties, doing her best to spread goodwill. To pass the time, Walter did mental tallies of what had gone wrong in the world in the hours since he’d awakened in the Days Inn. Net population gain: 60,000. New acres of American sprawl: 1,000. Birds killed by domestic and feral cats in the United States: 500,000. Barrels of oil burned worldwide: 12,000,000. Metric tons of carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere: 11,000,000. Sharks murdered for their fins and left floating finless in the water: 150,000 . . . The tallies, which he recalculated as the hour grew even later, brought him a strange spiteful satisfaction. There are days so bad that only their worsening, only a descent into an outright orgy of badness, can redeem them.

  It was getting on toward nine o’clock when Lalitha returned to him. One of the drivers, she said, had found a spot two hundred yards back down the road where a passenger car could pull off and let the big equipment pass. The rearmost driver was going to back his truck all the way down to the highway and phone for the police.

  “Do you want to try to walk up to Forster Hollow?” Walter said.

  “No,” Lalitha said, “I want us to leave immediately. Jocelyn has a camera. We don’t want to be photographed anywhere near a police action.”

  There ensued half an hour of grinding gears and squawking brakes and black bursts of diesel smoke, followed by a further forty-five minutes of breathing the rear truck’s foul exhaust as it inched backward down the valley. Out on the highway at last, in the freedom of the open road, Lalitha drove back toward Beckley at frantic speeds, flooring the gas on the shortest of straightaways, leaving rubber on the curves.

  They were on the shabby outskirts of town when his BlackBerry sang its cerulean song, making official their return to civilization. The call was from a Twin Cities number, possibly familiar, possibly not.

  “Dad?”

  Walter frowned with astonishment. “Joey? Wow! Hello.”

  “Yeah, hey. Hello.”

  “Everything OK with you? I didn’t even recognize your number, it’s been so long.”

  The line seemed to go dead, as if the call had been dropped. Or maybe he’d said the wrong thing. But then Joey spoke again, in a voice like someone else’s. Some quavering, tentative kid. “Yeah, so, anyway, Dad, um—do you have a second?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Yeah, well, so, I guess the thing is, I’m sort of in some trouble.”

  “What?”

  “I said I’m in some trouble.”

  It was the kind of call that every parent dreaded getting; but Walter, for a moment, wasn’t feeling like Joey’s parent. He said, “Hey, so am I! So is everybody!”

  ENOUGH ALREADY

  Within days of young Zachary’s posting of their interview on his blog, Katz’s cellular voice mailbox began to fill with messages. The first was from a pesty German, Matthias Dröhner, whom Katz vaguely recalled having struggled to fend off during Walnut Surprise’s swing through the Fatherland. �
��Now that you are giving interviews again,” Dröhner said, “I hope you’ll be so kind as to give one to me, like you promised, Richard. You did promise!” Dröhner, in his message, didn’t say how he’d come by Katz’s cell number, but a good guess was via blogospheric leakage from the bar napkin of some chick he’d hit on while touring. He was undoubtedly now getting interview requests by e-mail as well, probably in much greater numbers, but he hadn’t had the fortitude to venture online since the previous summer. Dröhner’s message was followed by calls from an Oregonian chick named Euphrosyne; a bellowingly jovial music journalist in Melbourne, Australia; and a college radio DJ in Iowa City who sounded ten years old. All wanted the same thing. They wanted Katz to say again—but in slightly different words, so that they could post it or publish it under their own names—exactly what he’d already said to Zachary.

  “That was golden, dude,” Zachary told him on the roof on White Street, a week after the posting, while they were awaiting the arrival of Zachary’s object of desire, Caitlyn. The “dude” form of address was new and irritating to Katz but entirely consonant with his experience of interviewers. As soon as he submitted to them, they dropped all pretense of awe.

  “Don’t call me dude,” he said nevertheless.

  “Sure, whatever,” Zachary said. He was walking a long Trex board as if it were a balance beam, his skinny arms outstretched. The afternoon was fresh and blustery. “I’m just saying my hit-counter’s going crazy. I’m getting hot-linked all over the world. Do you ever look at your fan sites?”

  “No.”

  “I’m right up at the very top of the best one now. I can get my computer and show you.”

  “Really no need for that.”

  “I think there’s a real hunger for people speaking truth to power. Like, there’s a little minority now that’s saying you sounded like an asshole and a whiner. But that’s just the player-hating fringe. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Thanks for the reassurance,” Katz said.

  When the girl Caitlyn appeared on the roof, accompanied by a pair of female sidekicks, Zachary remained perched on his balance beam, too cool to make introductions, while Katz set down his nail gun and suffered examination by the visitors. Caitlyn was clad in hippie garb, a brocade vest and a corduroy coat such as Carole King and Laura Nyro had worn, and would certainly have been worthy of pursuit had Katz not, in the week since he’d seen Walter Berglund, become preoccupied again with Patty. Meeting a choice adolescent now was like smelling strawberries when you were hungry for a steak.