Freedomland

by Richard Price

  Jesse felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped. It was Marie, smiling at her kindly, slowing her down, Elaine and Brenda suddenly out of earshot. “You know, Jesse, this weather, this bitch of a heat wave makes me think about something I haven’t thought about in a dog’s age. One time, maybe twenty-five, thirty years ago, I was with my mother in this shopping center. It must’ve been a hundred degrees outside. And we see this young woman, and this guy pulls up in a car, comes out, they kiss, and they go off holding hands. I say to my mother, ‘Ma, it’s nice to see a happily married couple for a change.’ I was pregnant with Teenie or one of the boys at the time, I can’t remember right now. And my mother says to me, ‘They’re not married.’ I say, ‘How can you tell?’ She says, ‘Married people never touch in a heat wave.’ I’ll never forget that. ‘Married people never touch in a heat wave.’ Anyway, Jesse, listen. Karen really needs you to keep your distance from Brenda right now.”

  “What, she’s afraid I’m going to screw up Operation Gaslight?”

  “Please.”

  Jesse backed off a step. Elaine, still supporting Brenda with that steel band of an arm, stopped at the last cottage leading out of the field, the others shaping up around her, quiet, eyes to the ground, Karen touching a knuckle to her lips. Jesse was thrown, the group going nowhere, doing nothing for the moment. Then they were on the move again, heading out of the field onto the potholed remains of a driveway.

  “What was that?” Jesse asked Marie.

  “What.”

  “Back there, the cottage.”

  “We always stop there. That’s six.”

  “Six what?”

  “Cottage 6. Where we found Christina. We always say hello when we’re in the neighborhood.”

  To Jesse, they seemed to be rambling now, to have broken free of their assigned quadrant, following this potholed path in something of a different mood, both more and less intense, not as minutely observant of the landscape as before but with a charged alertness tied into some intangible. The only sound was Elaine’s drilling monotone, which continued to pour unrelentingly into Brenda’s ear. Ignoring Marie’s request, Jesse stepped up close enough to hear again.

  “Karen saved my life, Brenda. She came right up to my door, it wasn’t even six hours into the police report. She sat me down, she took everything out of my head, put it on paper, hit the phones, said, ‘Let’s go.’ I would go out with her until two in the morning. We had miner’s helmets for the dark. Go home, go out again at six. Six till two, six till two. We went out seven days in a row like that. People would say to me, ‘Elaine, you got to rest, you got to.’ But how? You can’t. You can never stop looking for your child. A mother never calls it quits. She’s a hunter for all time. Tell me he’s dead, I’ll sleep for a week. But we can’t stop. How can we say it’s over until we know? I am telling you, Brenda, it’s four years he’s gone and every time I leave my house, every day, I look up the street, I look down the street. Maybe he’s coming home. Three o’clock, the kids coming from school? I’m out there on the stoop. You can never stop.”

  Brenda’s knees went out and Elaine had to seize her in a side-arm bear hug, legs spread wide to keep her from crashing to the ground. Jesse hurried to the opposite side to help, and Brenda’s eyes, coming into focus, looked directly at her. “Don’t you touch me,” Brenda said, a passionate whisper.

  Jesse, stunned, stepped back, leaving Elaine to struggle by herself, Brenda’s body and mind completely separated now, her arms and legs flopping like a puppet with cut strings but her eyes still fleetingly clear. “You stay the fuck away from me.”

  Jesse, her stomach floating, continued to step back until she was with Marie again, then turned to her. “What did I do?”

  Marie looked at her with mournful, almost apologetic regret. “I really think you need to stay away from her right now.”

  The group took a turn off the road, disappearing into the woods again, and by the time Jesse got a grip on herself, she had only the soundtrack of Elaine’s harangue to guide her as she crashed through the thick underbrush. She finally came on them in a clearing atop a cement platform of some kind, a six-by-six square with two more encrusted metal lawn chairs, old food tins and beer cans littering the immediate area.

  The women didn’t seem that interested in the signs of habitation. They broke out cigarettes, unzipped the fronts of their paper suits, and took a breather, Elaine easing Brenda into one of the rusted chairs, squatting alongside her to be at eye level as she continued to pour words and visions into her ear. Jesse, bloated with anxiety, tried to catch Brenda’s eye, but Brenda wasn’t having any of it, gracefully raising a padded hand, palm out, in a shunning gesture that was almost regal.

  “Hey, Jesse, come here.” Karen beckoned with a cigarette, Jesse thinking, It’s Karen I love. Putting an arm around Jesse’s shoulder and walking her out of earshot again, Karen plowed through the foliage until they came to a mesh fence beyond which a massive crumbling swimming pool lay. Its size and proximity were so startling it was as if someone had led Jesse blindfolded to the lip of a cliff.

  “What the hell…”

  “Yeah.” Karen hung a hand on the mesh.

  The pool had to be a hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide, its bottom a gentle, gradual slope from a few inches at the shallowest end to perhaps six feet at midpoint, after which it made a sheer perpendicular drop to twenty feet. Bisecting the front half, from the entrance to a few feet before the drop, was a rusted two-tiered rail. Jesse guessed it had been installed for the wheelchairs and the generally feeble. The pool had been painted bright blue at some point, but the color was almost gone now, bleached out by the sun, save for large blotches in the more shadowed areas. Vegetation foamed down from the surrounding edges, a cascade of ferns and vines and moss, making this ghost pool into yet another jungle ruin, its dimensions and sunken aspect suggesting a Mayan ball court or some other arena of a lost and forgotten people.

  “Can you believe this?” Karen smiled at her tightly.

  “Why is Brenda mad at me?” Jesse asked.

  “What do you mean?” Karen lit a cigarette.

  “She’s staring daggers at me.”

  “Yeah?” Karen took a deep drag, then flicked the butt through the mesh and into the pool. “Maybe she’s tired.”

  “What’s going on here?” Jesse impulsively demanded. “What kind of head fuck are you pulling on her?”

  “You know what gets me?” Karen squinted at the pool. “This whole place, limestone, cement, brick, all falling to shit, but look…” She pointed to a lifeguard’s chair standing directly across from them on the far side of the pool, the seat perched atop giraffe legs, impossibly slender and frail but intact.

  “You know why that’s still standing? It’s never been sat in. This is a dummy pool. No pipes, no pump. Never had a drop of water in it. Somebody made out like a bandit.”

  Turning her gaze back to the cement platform, Jesse saw Brenda through the brush, ensconced in her rusted throne, Elaine still pumping her head full of madness.

  “I remember this pool from when I was a kid,” Karen said, turning Jesse back around. “I mean everyone knew it was some kind of boondoggle, that it never had any water in it, but it was supposed to be haunted. You know, somebody would tell you that they knew somebody who knew somebody who just happened to be walking by this fence one night and they heard the sound of splashing water, and when they looked, they saw a little girl or a little boy swimming and playing in there, you know, the thing all of a sudden filled with water. And then that little girl or boy would see the person and try to get them to jump in and play. And you know, occasionally, the story, it would be, like, somebody did jump in. And then they’d find them the next day dead with a broken neck or something, in the deep end of the empty pool, right? But the kicker was, when they did the autopsy? They found water in the lungs. Boom.”

  “Huh.” Holding on to the mesh for support, Jesse turned again to Brenda and Elaine.

  �
��You know, and when it shut down, this place? I was a teenager. We’d sneak in, climb the fence, go down in the pool, and get stoned. It was great for getting stoned, you know, with the vines, the size of it, the secrecy of it. Man, I had a blast here. Little did I know, huh?”

  “What?” Jesse’s head was on a swivel. “Yeah,” she said, turning back to Brenda and Elaine. Then—thinking, Fuck it—she just walked away from Karen, and, as she headed for the cement platform, Karen let her go. Jesse joined Teenie and Marie’s smoking circle, a respectful ten feet from Brenda but within earshot.

  “Even your own family turns against you after a while.” Elaine’s low voice was raw and gravelly, her face immobile except for the fluid sheen of her eyes. “You become like a millstone. You come downstairs, the other kids are, like, ‘Mommy? Are you going to be sad today?’ That’s the only thing that can bring you back to some, some charade of normal life—when it hits you what you’re doing to your other children, to your marriage. But with me, I couldn’t even rally for that. I couldn’t fake it, I couldn’t help it. This bastard, he took away my life, he took away my family.” The mulberry splash that stained the side of Elaine’s face seemed to deepen, darken, her lips thin as wafers now. “And my husband, he was, like, ‘Elaine, think about the other kids, think about me. Elaine, we got to get on with the business of living.’ That’s what he called it, ‘the business of living.’”

  Brenda jackknifed, forehead to kneecap, rocking again, the ancient rusted metal of her chair squealing in a rhythm suggestive of sex. Jesse watched, fascinated.

  “See, men, they always cave in. Talk to you about the business of living. Tell you to think about the others, the rest of us, them. And then they leave because they just don’t have the heart, they just don’t have the belly. We are the hunters. We… And, and, what can I say to my other children. They’re with my husband now. All I can say to them is the truth. That if it had happened to either of them instead of their brother, I’d be the same way for them. I want them back, my family, I want them back, but until someone can tell me my son’s gone? Here I am. And the thing that frightened me? Brenda? Is that I’ve been like this for four years, and I know I still have love in my heart, but if it goes on too much longer? I don’t know if I’ll have anything left for them. It’s going to be too late.”

  Karen quietly sauntered up to join the others on the cement platform.

  “Sometimes I just want to grab that murderous perverted son of a bitch,” Elaine continued. “Say to him, ‘Look, Jimmy, you did it. I know it, you know it. Now, don’t say a word—just nod your head—is he dead, yes or no. Do that for me and I’ll never bother you again. Nobody’s gonna nail you for nodding your head and I swear, I’ll go away, you’ll never see me again. Is my son dead? Just nod your head.”” Brenda’s knees trembled like jackhammers. “I need to know. I need to know now. Is he dead?”

  Marie and Teenie stood back off the platform, silent, smoking, waiting—everybody waiting.

  “Sweet Christ in heaven, Jimmy, won’t you please just tell me. Just nod your head.” Brenda began to weep, Elaine kneading her neck. “A nod of the head. Such a little thing, and night becomes day.” Brenda slumped between her knees, stayed there for a long moment, then came up groaning God’s name, struggling to take possession of herself again.

  Torn between wanting this to cease and wanting it to come to its natural conclusion, Jesse looked to Karen, who returned her glance with a steady eye, a finger pressed to her lips.

  “Is he dead, Brenda? Yes or no. That’s all I ask. Yes or no.” Elaine’s kneading hand slid down Brenda’s back, massaging her spine.

  Brenda straightened up from her crouch on the chair, then almost immediately slumped over again, her knees pressing into her rib cage, rocking again, Elaine whispering, “Put my heart at rest, Brenda, put my heart at rest,” then falling into silence along with everyone else.

  After a long moment, Brenda rose up from wherever she had gone, sat erect in the rusted chair again, a bandaged palm pressed into her left eye. “It’s so hot,” she said softly. “I feel like I’m in hell.” The women remained silent, continuing to stare at her, but Jesse could feel it—the moment had passed and it was as if the air around them had somehow become deflated and slack.

  “It’s gonna be OK, Brenda.” Elaine stood over her, tight-lipped, dry-eyed. “It’s gonna be OK.”

  “Are we ready for the dorms?” Karen asked Elaine. “Think it’s about that time?” Marie dropped her cigarette onto the cement, slowly crushing it with the toe of her sneaker.

  Elaine looked at her hands a moment before answering, “I think we need to explore out here a little more.” Rising to her feet, she grasped Brenda by the elbow. “Come on, you’re almost done,” she said, and hauled her up.

  They were moving through the campus proper now, skirting the large, abandoned dormitories and sticking to the overgrown blacktop footpaths that linked the ruined buildings—the chapel, the gym, the theater—all of them boarded up, busted through, and boarded up again. The walkways were flanked by craters from the great manhunt of 1967, each bowl sprouting its own self-contained thicket.

  There were no trees here, just the drilling whine of cicadas and the white-out heat. The Friends of Kent were basically going through the motions now, poking through the brush with their broomsticks in a desultory manner, as if biding their time.

  Elaine took hold of Brenda again, and the group moved on. Jesse saw some of the other search parties emerge from the forest that separated the adult cottages from the rest of the grounds. Then she saw something else—Louis and the dog standing at the tree line, intercepting each group as it appeared and sending them back into the woods. He was waving everybody off, making sure that his wife’s small party had the institute to themselves.

  “You know, Brenda.” Elaine abruptly stopped walking and, from inches away, spoke directly into her eyes. “When I said I just wanted to know if my son was dead or alive, that’s not completely true.” Brenda moved to put her headphones back over her ears, but Elaine slid them back down on her neck. “I would also want to be able to give him a proper burial in sanctified ground. The idea of him lying in some ditch, in some shallow grave in the forest, where the animals—” Brenda reared back and then plunged forward to vomit, bent at the waist, one hand across her midsection as if bowing. Jesse moved to her again, but Elaine still had possession, standing there, one hand on Brenda’s spine, fending Jesse off with a fierce glare.

  Marie collapsed. After staggering for a minute like a drunk, she dropped to her knees and listed sideways, managing to prop herself up at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground with an elbow-locked arm. Karen and Teenie swooped in on her, one on either side, Teenie unzipping her mother’s paper suit, Karen feeding her a salt tablet and dousing her head with bottled water, then serving her sips of what remained.

  “Christ.” Marie laughed, looking around as if trying to remember where she was, what she was doing here.

  “Ma, you want to go back?”

  “No, I’m OK. Just help me up.”

  With everyone’s attention focused on Marie, Jesse made her move, sliding up to Brenda and reaching for the headphones glued to the back of her neck. “Let me carry—” Brenda stepped away.

  Elaine moved between them as if to shield Brenda from Jesse’s overtures. “She said you told her you had a son?” Elaine flashed fire, giving Jesse the once-over, head to toe, then added, “You don’t have any kids. How dare you.”

  Jesse turned to see Karen, stone-faced, take in this encounter, then shrug and look off. Jesse stared at the ground, almost smiling, thinking, Well, of course.

  “I have to lay down,” Brenda gasped between wrenching barks.

  Elaine looked to Karen. “Let’s do the dorms.”

  As the women moved off, Jesse hung back, absorbing what had just gone down and knowing that no one, including Brenda, especially Brenda, gave a damn if she continued on with them or just turned around and went home. She had done
her job, had gotten Brenda out of the house and into these woods, had delivered her to Elaine’s whispered assaults, and was now disposable. From the moment she had stepped inside Brenda’s apartment that first night, flying the flag of Motherhood, Jesse had agonized over the immorality of her lie; but as it turned out, no one really cared about it, or her, in that way. The Friends of Kent saw Jesse’s fictional child as a hook to get her to toe the line with them, then as a blade to sever her from Brenda once her services were no longer needed. These women were as ruthless, as manipulative, as driven as any reporter Jesse had ever known.

  Letting the irony of the situation wash over her, Jesse watched Brenda and Karen and the others as they approached the black bulk of the dormitory, then found herself trotting after them, feeling light-headed, liberated. Screwed, used, manipulated, she was still on the job, and the job was right here.

  The children’s dormitory was sealed off, the steps to the front door removed, and in order to get inside through a shattered window that was six feet above ground, the women had to boost one another up. Despite the comic possibilities, the clumsy climbing, the wobbly athletics, there was neither laughter nor wisecracks, just focus and effort, Brenda being airlifted from Elaine on the ground to Karen leaning out the window.

  The interior of the building was as vast as an airplane hangar and dim, the meager light seeping in through filthy ground-level windows and swirling up into an amorphous darkness again. The great height of the building was apparent only by virtue of a hole that had been punched into the roof for a long-gone chimney, sunlight slanting through up there, too, projecting a slightly oblong disc against the highest section of wall.

  The women were dwarfed by the emptiness, surrounded by rags, beer cans, crushed cigarette packs, and shards of plywood, all faintly illuminated by a poverty of watery sunlight fighting its way in through the grimy glass. There was graffiti on the walls—Fuck, Suck, satanic pentangles, genitalia, nicknames—random garbage for the eye. Something small ran past the group, too fast for anyone to react, Jesse thinking of the scuttling sounds inside Cottage 9.