On the Free

by Coert Voorhees

  Santi was six years old the first time he built a fire in the woods. Not with matches and newspaper but with his hands. Gathered the kindling, made a bow out of string and a bent stick, notched the end of another stick into a small groove in a flat piece of wood.

  He went back and forth with the bow, rotating the stick faster and faster until smoke began to rise from the little tinder pile he’d collected at the stick’s base.

  “I did it!” Santi said. He stopped the bow and looked up triumphantly, but his dad only raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  “You sure?”

  Santi looked down again. The smoke was gone. He pushed the tinder away, only to find a slightly charred groove in the board. The tears came then, even though he tried to hide them. His dad watched, waiting.

  “I can help you if you want.”

  Santi waved him away and wrapped the string back around the stick. Jammed the stick in the little smoke-stained indentation. Back and forth once more with the bow. Smoke appeared again, but just smoke, so he kept at it. He piled more tinder at the base of the stick, blowing gently, still working the bow.

  When the little tuft burst into flame, Santi did not look up. He tossed the bow and stick to the side and placed kindling over the fire in a small teepee. He blew again, stoking the fire, then added bigger sticks, and still bigger. For five minutes, he worked. Silently. His dad said nothing.

  When he finally backed away from the fire, the sticks of the teepee were the width of his arm. Flames danced before them, over two feet tall. He felt his dad’s hand on his head. Tender at first, then a full-on mussing of his hair.

  “The time will come, Santiago, when there’s nobody else. That time comes sooner for some people than for others, but it always comes.” His dad grabbed a big log and tossed it onto Santi’s fire. The teepee crashed, but the flames rose, and soon the log was crackling.

  9

  Santi notices the jacket first, a brief glimpse of red among the trees in the distance, moving steadily toward the ghost town. Soon they’re all yelling, and then Victor emerges in the clearing. Meandering through the tall grass with his hood covering his head. Finally he looks up and waves, but he doesn’t walk any faster.

  “Where the hell were you?” Jerry says—now hoarse and frantic—when Victor reaches the cabin.

  “I got lost.” His expression is calm. Bewildered, even, as if he’s just come back from a quick bathroom break and can’t figure out what the big deal is.

  “What are you talking about, lost? I told you to join us in here. You promised you wouldn’t dawdle.”

  “I wanted to do some exploring, and I figured, you know, better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

  Jerry opens his mouth but catches himself, trembling as he struggles to get himself under control. When he finally speaks, his voice is almost a whisper. “You could have asked. You should have told me.”

  “I’m fine,” Victor says. Then, as if sensing that’s not quite enough, he offers to shake Jerry’s hand. “I’m not lost anymore and I’m not dead. You’re not going to get sued or anything.”

  Amelia steps forward. “That’s not what he was worried about, Victor. He was worried about you.”

  Victor says nothing, and Jerry grunts and moves to his own pack. “We don’t have time for this right now.”

  Jerry stomps out of the cabin and up the trail, followed by Rico, Amelia, and Victor, who ducks into the open mine entrance for his backpack as they pass by. Santi and Celeste bring up the rear.

  “What did you mean about Jerry getting sued?” Amelia says. “Why would anyone sue him?”

  Victor laughs. “You’ve never met my stepdad.”

  “Is he the one who sent you out here?” Santi says.

  “Shut up, Santiago. I don’t remember including you in this conversation.”

  “You’re next up for sharing tonight. Might as well get it all out right now, don’t you think? Try out some lies with us so they’re ready for the whole group.”

  Amelia glares at him with those massive eyes. “Santi.”

  “Sorry,” Santi says. “Please go on about your awesome stepdad.”

  They hike in silence for a few minutes. Then Victor says, “He’s pretty much the baddest-ass lawyer in Colorado. If anything happened to me, he would go apeshit.”

  “You’re lucky he cares so much,” Amelia says.

  “He’s cool. My mom and he got married a couple years ago, and even though he already had some kids in college, he told my mom that he’d been a bad dad before and wanted a second chance.”

  “You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met,” Santi says.

  “You’ve probably met a lot of them, haven’t you?”

  Santi doesn’t really know what that means, but it makes him hesitate just enough for Victor and Amelia to freeze him out.

  “My parents met in college,” Amelia says. “Princeton, which is why they were desperate for me to go to an Ivy League school.”

  “Didn’t get in, though, right?”

  “Didn’t apply.”

  Victor laughs. “What?”

  “I’m sure it would have been awesome, don’t get me wrong. But I’m pretty sure the whole thing was all about them.”

  “No doubt.” Victor’s right there with her, and their rich kid bonding continues. “My favorite is when they get on you about where all your friends want to go, because all the parents talk about where their kids are going.”

  His sister will get into a good school. That’s what Santi knows. She’ll get out of Albuquerque—out of New Mexico, even. Somewhere. She’s so much smarter than he is. So much better.

  “Everyone’s in on it,” Amelia says.

  “Yep. Why else would there be so much competition for my SAT tutor?”

  “You have a tutor for that stuff?” Santi can’t help blurting out.

  Victor scoffs. “Everyone has tutors for that stuff.”

  Santi needs a comeback, something about how the world really works. It’s going to be a good one, too, so both Victor and Amelia feel nice and guilty. Confidence rises in his chest, and a smile comes to his face.

  “What the hell, Santi?” Celeste says, nipping at his heels. “Let’s go.”

  He looks up to see Amelia and Victor twenty feet up the trail.

  “Zoned out, I guess.” He steps to the side and waves her by. “After you.”

  Instead of passing completely, she stops next to him and whips a wet strand of purple hair out of her face. “I was kind of worried that nobody on the trip was going to be as messed up as me, but I don’t even come close to your sorry ass.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m just playing,” she says with a smile that actually looks genuine. “But you have to admit that you did beat the crap out of yourself today.”

  Santi returns the smile and gestures up the trail. Amelia and Victor are now a good fifty yards away. “We should go.”

  She nods and pushes the pace until she almost reaches the others, but then she stops again and waits for him. When Santi finally catches up, Celeste says, “That was a nice little moment we had back there, don’t you think?”

  He can only shake his head. “Someday, I’m going to figure you out.”

  “Doubt it.” Her eyes widen as she notices something in the forest behind him.

  Her pack scrapes against a tree as she pushes past him, dousing them both with a cascade of raindrops from the branches above. Taking a few steps off the trail, she approaches a bush about three feet high, with arrowhead-shaped dark green leaves and clusters of yellow berries the size of Santi’s pinky fingernail.

  “What are you doing?” he says, flapping the rain off his poncho.

  “I’m starving,” she says and picks a handful of berries.

  “You can’t eat those.”

  “I don’t know how you ate anything with that disgusting dead marmot smell filling the cabin.” Celeste looks at the berries in her hand and then smiles at him. “I’m a real mountain woman now.”r />
  “No!” He lunges forward and knocks the berries from her hand before she can put them in her mouth.

  “What the hell?”

  “White and yellow, kill a fellow,” he says instinctively, quoting part of a rhyme his dad once taught him. “Those are poisonous.”

  She glares at him. “How do you know that?”

  Santi looks away and shrugs. “Jerry told us,” he says, trying to mean it.

  “I don’t think so. I would have remembered.”

  “Nah. I bet most days you don’t even remember your own name.”

  “Fuck you.” She stomps past him.

  “No, I’m sorry.” He reaches for her, wincing, and spins her around by the shoulder. “Órale, I didn’t mean it. That was stupid. Here. There’s some trail mix in my bag.”

  Santi drops his pack and pulls a plastic baggie of trail mix from the side pocket.

  Her eyes narrow, and she tilts her head forward slightly, like a bull about to charge. After a few seconds, she lifts her head up again and snatches the bag from his hand. “I’m still pissed at you. But I’m not as pissed as I am hungry.”

  She opens the baggie and digs her hand inside. Santi feels like he should say something more, but he doesn’t know what. “So. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Not gonna happen,” she says with her mouth full. “My sharing circle isn’t for two more days.”

  A long pause follows. She lets him take a handful of his own trail mix, at least.

  “Okay, fine,” she says. “Oldest of four. I’m the worst first child ever.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, if you’re the first child, you’re supposed to be all responsible, aren’t you? That’s what everybody keeps telling me.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re not the worst first child ever,” he says, but before he can tell her who is, Jerry’s voice rescues him, shouted from a long distance.

  “Santi! Are you okay?”

  “It was me,” Celeste shouts over her shoulder, keeping her eyes on Santi. “I had to tie my shoe!”

  Without another word, she twirls away and marches up the trail. She probably wouldn’t have died from the berries, but maybe he saved her from getting all sick, so that’s something. Santi struggles to put his pack back on, fighting to get his left arm underneath the strap without scraping his elbow.

  Belt strap buckled and tightened, he drops his head and leans into the rain, wondering again how the hell his life got this way. Out here in the woods, he knows exactly how to survive, even though he pretends that he doesn’t. Back home, it’s the opposite. Back home, he has to pretend that he knows—that he’s not afraid, that he’s hard enough to hang with dudes like Eric Ayala—even though he has no goddamn clue.

  10

  Santi’s first time out with Eric was a blur of nervous excitement and veiled fear. More than the shock of Eric wanting to roll with him. More than the buzz of the 40 oz., or even the thrill every time they passed the cops, that first night out was all about limitless possibility. It didn’t matter that they had no plan. Having no plan was the whole point. They’d see what the city had in store for them. Maybe run into some ladies, find a party. Maybe they’d come across a fight, or maybe they’d jump into one.

  The last time, though, that excitement was nowhere to be found. They’d been in the car for more than three hours. Darkness crept across the city until it had strangled the red glow of the Sandia Mountains. They hung with a crew over at the McDonald’s for a while, but had to jet when the manager called the cops. They hit a parking lot over by a dried-up arroyo, but the dude-to-chick ratio was about twenty to zero. Eric announced that he wasn’t in the mood for no damn salchicha party, and he and Santi peeled out, the tires pelting everyone else with bits of gravel and a fine cloud of dust.

  At one point, a BMW cut them off at a light, and they spent half an hour following the rich kids inside all over town. Even that got boring, though, and when the kids pulled into a gated community, Eric rolled slowly past and smiled at them, squeezing the trigger of an imaginary gun.

  Santi didn’t get up to this part of the city very often—the Northeast Heights, where the yards were bigger, the lawns greener, and the streets smoother. Some of the houses even had pillars at the front.

  The forty was half gone, and Santi had a nice buzz going when Eric said, out of the blue, “That chick Diana’s fine, bro. You better get on that, or someone else I know will, if you know what I mean.”

  “The hell you will,” Santi muttered, looking straight ahead.

  “Oooh, look at you, all protective and shit. Something tells me she could take care of herself, though. Those lips on her? She knows how to get down.”

  Santi ignored him and took his longest pull yet from the forty. A warm sensation spread through his chest, tingling out to his arms.

  “Check it,” Eric said, swerving the car into a neighborhood street. He pointed out Santi’s window as they cruised by a silver Lexus sedan tucked against the curb.

  “What are you doing?” Santi said.

  “Don’t you wonder how that bitch corners?”

  “Come on, ese.”

  “Look at us. Look at you, stuck in that shit house with your uncle. Look at me. Why shouldn’t we be the ones to drive a pinche Lexus? Don’t we deserve it?”

  From the moment Santi had walked out his front door three hours earlier, he should have known this was going to happen.

  Sure, he could say no, but he’d have to deal with Eric the next day, and the day after, and forever. Not to mention everyone else.

  “Just for a little spin,” Eric said, as though the issue had already been decided. “We’ll bring it back before anybody notices.”

  Eric ditched the Cutlass around the block, and from that point forward, everything played out as though Santi were watching it on TV. There he was, getting out of Eric’s car, following Eric at a brisk walk down the sidewalk, avoiding the streetlights. There he was, lingering in the shadows as Eric worked the driver’s-side door with a slim jim, flinching in the flash of the headlights when the alarm blared. Three seconds later, the alarm went silent, and the door was open.

  You’d better get your ass in that car, he thought. And there he was, getting his ass in that car.

  The black leather seat felt somehow firm and soft at the same time. The inside still smelled new too. The engine hummed when Eric put it in gear.

  “Just a spin, right?” Santi said.

  Eric smiled at him and punched it.

  They flew down Academy, the engine whining as the RPMs ticked past 8,000. A left on San Mateo, and Santi had to brace himself against the door. When they straightened out again, he strapped on his seat belt, his desire to live past tonight outweighing any concerns about the smirk on Eric’s face.

  Blue and red lights leapt out from a side street behind them, flashing in the rear view, getting so much closer so fast. “Shit, that’s the cops!” Santi said.

  “Shut up.”

  Eric hit the gas through a red light, and Santi’s ribs pressed backward into the seat. It was no use. The cops matched their speed. The Lexus clipped the curb as Eric swerved a left turn, and a loud pop filled the air.

  “They’re shooting at us!” Santi said, but by the time the words were out of his mouth, he knew better. The sound was too loud, too close to have come from the cops. The rear tire was gone, shredded flat.

  Eric turned again, fighting the steering wheel. Only half a block away from the cops now, he slammed on the brakes, pressing Santi forward into his seat belt. Eric opened the door and dove out.

  Santi tried to follow, but his seat belt buckle was stuck. Jammed. A luxury car, and the seat belt didn’t even work. Eric glanced back only once, and the look on his face told Santi everything. Then his friend was gone, disappearing into the shadows. A cop started to give chase, but Eric was too fast.

  Santi knew what Eric’s look had meant, even as the police opened the door, yelling at him with their gun
s drawn, even as they dragged him out of the car, as they pressed him face down on the sidewalk, wrenching his arms behind him, a knee in the small of his back. He knew.

  11

  “We have to stop here,” Jerry says at dusk, dropping his pack at the edge of a ravine like a narrow groove chiseled down the side of the mountain. The ravine had at one point been large enough to be labeled Fall Creek on the map, but now—even with the rain back to a steady pour—only a faint trickle dribbles down the center. “Tomorrow will just need to be a longer day than we’d planned.”

  “Thanks a lot, Victor,” Celeste says.

  Victor scoffs. “I’m not the one who fell down a cliff.”

  The look in Victor’s eyes is different now. Resentful. Maybe he’s embarrassed about getting lost. Or maybe he’s just tired. Tired of the wilderness, tired of the rain. Tired of having to spend the night in a tent with a juvenile delinquent. Whatever the reason, Santi doesn’t like it.

  Jerry rigs up a tarp between some trees near the ravine. “We need water, too,” he says as he unpacks the camping stove. “Everybody refill their bottles in the stream before dinner, and don’t forget to purify. Giardia would ruin your trip.”

  “Yeah,” Victor says. “’Cause it’s been a blast so far.”

  ***

  Packs finally off, everyone gathers wordlessly under the shelter. It’s Celeste’s turn to cook, so Santi tosses her a big bag with macaroni, cheese powder, and dehydrated ham. Another pound lost. He can hardly lift his left arm above shoulder level. No matter how exhausted the rest of them are, nobody is remotely as beat up as Santi. His blisters, his elbows, his back, not to mention all the extra bruises from his fall.

  He’s going to sleep like a dead man tonight, no matter the leaky mattress or his shifty-eyed tentmate.

  Night comes too quickly, and they have to set up camp before dinner. Victor tucks their tent and rain fly under his arm, Santi grabs his headlamp and the tent poles, and together they leave the cover of the tarp and trudge back out into the rain.