On the Free

by Coert Voorhees

  He knew it was a lie when he said it, but what were his other choices? Santi and Amelia had been threatening to go down, and he’d had to think fast, to say something. This was the only way he could convince them. He didn’t start out believing it.

  He’d only come to believe it because he’d wanted it to be true.

  His ankle throbs against the leather of his boot. Maybe the ankle really is hurt. He’ll take the boot off in a little while. Right now, he just wants to close his eyes. Everything will sort itself out. He knows this place. He has the advantage. He just needs some rest.

  ***

  A woman’s voice says his name. Victor. Gentle, kind. And again: Victor. He’s back home and none of this has happened and his mom is waking him up.

  “Victor?”

  He opens his eyes to see Amelia squatting down inside the water room doorway. Her feet are bare, and she’s wearing dry clothes: Jerry’s hemp shorts and a loose white T-shirt. She’s reaching out to Victor with her good arm, her bad arm still held close against her stomach, and he sees down her shirt, and she’s not wearing a bra because her bra must be wet, and is she coming on to him right now? That doesn’t make sense, not at all, what with Santi upstairs and everything—

  “We found another first-aid kit. We should take a look at your ankle.”

  “Huh?” Victor says.

  She seems to recognize where he’s looking, so she sits back. “What are you doing down here?”

  He presses his palms into his face. “Just waiting for the tank to fill up.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he says, pushing himself to his feet and limping over to the green tank, which is full and has been for who knows how long. “Of course. We’re good now. Should be good.”

  “Santi made some cheese and bagels. You should come upstairs.”

  Victor flips a switch on the wall between the two tanks, and the whir of the small pump fills the room, drowning out the other sounds. “We’ll have water soon.”

  The downstairs sink sputters, spitting out air like a car with a faulty muffler, then finally comes to life. There’s water coursing through the house now, so they’ll have to close all the faucets. It’s on the checklist.

  “Where’s the phone?” she says. “We should make the call now so they can come get us first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “In a minute,” Victor says. “In a minute.”

  The tank is cold against his palm, full of water that would otherwise be flowing beneath the house. How lucky they are! Does he have any idea, Winslow always says, how much value the underground spring adds to the property? Not that they’ll ever sell it, of course. The cabin is priceless.

  Victor stands there long enough, says nothing for long enough, that Amelia goes back upstairs. He’s bought himself some time, maybe five minutes, but even he knows that there’s no more stalling to be done.

  29

  By the time Victor was sixteen, he had gotten used to the helicopter. The slight forward lean as it gathered speed, the roller-coaster-like tilt from side to side when it banked a turn, the uneasy wobble when it hovered above the landing zone.

  They’d spent more time at the cabin that summer than ever before, because that’s what you do when you’re a family. You take a helicopter into the middle of nowhere, dragging your stepson away from his friends.

  There was no television, no cell service. There was nothing at all to do, which was the whole point, wasn’t it? Victor would just have to figure out how to entertain himself.

  It was only after he ran out of books to read and hikes to take that he discovered Winslow’s old Remington .22. A lever action rifle with a walnut stock, it was leaning on the corner of the mantelpiece—had in fact been there all along—and one morning Victor asked if it was real.

  Winslow smiled as he pulled it down. “My father gave it to me.” A click sounded as he pulled the lever forward and snapped it back into place. “Have you ever shot one of these?”

  “We don’t believe in guns,” his mom said, but it was as though she didn’t mean it. An instinct, a reflex, and then a trace of regret in her eyes.

  Winslow smiled. “It’s a kid’s gun, Lisa.”

  “Yeah, Mom. If I can’t even handle a .22, what good am I?”

  A quick tutorial, a box of bullets, a warning not to shoot himself in the foot, and Victor was off. He hiked uphill and set up a row of empty cans. The first time he actually shot the gun, he was surprised at how fake it sounded. The pop was high-pitched, almost like a cap gun, nothing like the low brashness of the guns in the movies.

  He sucked at first. Little tufts of dirt exploded behind the cans. Then he realized that, like a dumbass, he was closing his eyes a split-second before pulling the trigger. It was a good thing Winslow hadn’t been there.

  After that, though, Victor only got better. He taught himself to control his breath, to settle his hands, to keep his eye on the target throughout the whole process. Starting with cans, then wildflowers, and then birds sitting on branches. The first time he shot a marmot, his cry of victory echoed throughout the valley. Sometimes it felt like the only time Winslow wasn’t sneering at him was when Victor asked him to buy more ammo.

  One afternoon, chased inside by a sudden thunderstorm, Victor walked into the cabin to the sound of his mother and Winslow yelling at each other.

  “This place used to be about getting away from business,” she said. “You said so yourself.”

  “I’m talking real wealth, Lisa. Long-term, generational wealth.”

  “Why do you need more?”

  Victor almost didn’t believe his ears. As what seemed like a matter of policy, his mom and Winslow never so much as raised their voices at each other around him, to say nothing of actually fighting in front of him.

  He drifted toward the top of the stairs even though he knew he shouldn’t have.

  “And what about Victor?” his mom said. “This is your time with him. Up here, you promised.”

  Victor could only imagine the look on Winslow’s face; his mom might as well have suggested that Winslow spend more time drinking his own piss.

  He darted away at the sound of approaching footsteps, and by the time Winslow emerged from downstairs, Victor managed to fake having just come into the living room, his rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “I got a chipmunk,” Victor said. “Really tiny one too.”

  Winslow brushed past him, grabbing his raincoat from a hook by the front door. “I’m going for a walk.”

  “It’s pouring outside,” Mom said, but the door had already closed.

  She plastered on a smile and sat on the makeshift couch with a stack of magazines. Not having any idea what to do, but certain that he didn’t want to linger awkwardly in the same room as his mom, Victor took his rifle downstairs.

  The door—the one Winslow always locked—was cracked open. Victor pushed slowly against the wood, slid through the opening, and . . . How boring. An office with a desk.

  He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but a simple office didn’t seem worth all the lock-and-key business. Lying open on the desk was a briefcase with a phone inside, like some sort of mobile command unit. The big liar. All this time, Victor had been told that there was no way to contact the outside world.

  Still, a secret satellite phone didn’t seem worth the locked door either.

  Next to the phone was an oblong golden paperweight about the size of a tennis ball. Dented and bulging, it looked like a clump of dried play-dough. Victor moved around the desk and looked up at the walls, which were papered with maps.

  Old maps, new ones. Some with topo lines, some that looked hand drawn. Aerial-view photographs tacked on top in places. Each map with a distinctive stamp in the bottom right corner. San Juan Mining Company. Gold Cloud Mining Company. Elias Bristlecone Mining Company. Felton Mining Incorporated. Rectangles on the maps, highlighted in blue and yellow and orange, isolated here, overlapping there.

  Victor looked fro
m the maps to the gold paperweight on the desk and then to the maps again. He stepped closer to the wall, squinted at a series of circles that must have been drawn in red marker.

  “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  He jumped at the sound of his mom’s voice. She stood in the doorway, wringing her hands together. “What is all this stuff?” he said.

  “He wouldn’t want you to be in here.”

  “You’re not afraid of him, are you?” She said nothing. Victor stepped back around the desk toward the door. “Are you?”

  “He doesn’t like it when people . . . you know.”

  Any questions Victor had about the mining maps were pushed aside by the way his mom kept glancing over her shoulder.

  “Mom, you married him.”

  “Come upstairs. Let me get you some hot chocolate. You must be chilly.”

  She ushered him out and closed the door. They stepped wordlessly up the stairs, and by the time Winslow had returned from his walk, she had a cup of hot chocolate waiting for him too.

  30

  Victor pauses just below the top of the stairs, tries to listen to them talking, but he can’t make out any words. They sound oddly happy, though. Occasional laughter punctuates the muffled conversation.

  He’s trapped. So many times over the last two days he could have avoided this. Could have left Santi during the storm. Even after they found Amelia, he could simply have refused to go anywhere with them.

  No, he thinks, that’s not entirely true. He’d needed the map. Once the mountain lion came into the picture, once he’d lost his own map, he’d had no choice. It wasn’t his fault—he couldn’t have anticipated those things.

  But now he doesn’t have any choice. They’re here, and they need to be gone.

  He takes a couple of tentative steps with his ankle, getting the limp right, and then turns the corner into the living space. They stop talking—of course they stop; they must have been talking about him—and watch as he opens the cabinet, pulls out a glass, and fills it at the kitchen sink.

  He has to give Winslow credit. It is the clearest, cleanest, coldest water Victor has ever put to his lips, and he takes the glass down in one pull. Fills another, then another. The others still haven’t said anything.

  “Do you want to play cards?” he says, setting the glass in the sink. “I’m pretty sure we have a couple of decks up here.”

  The look Santi gives him is priceless. Open-mouthed. Eyes blinking. Head shaking slightly in disbelief.

  He moves over to the table, careful to remember the limp, careful not to overdo it.

  “Maybe we can play cards after we call for help?” Amelia says, her arm in the sling again. He notices she’s wearing a black bra now, can see it through the thin fabric of her T-shirt. Jerry’s shorts come down past her knees. She looks ridiculous.

  “In a minute. I’m starving.” The bagels and cheese feel dry in his mouth, so he limps back to the sink and fills up another glass of water. He can sense their impatience in the air. How is he supposed to get them out of here?

  “I wonder what they thought, you know? What went through their heads when the mudslide came. Or if they even thought of anything. If they were so tired that it just took them before they even woke up.” Victor finally turns to them and leans back against the counter. “Amelia, what did you think?”

  Santi finally speaks. “Come on, Victor—”

  “I’m not jumping over the net, am I? Notice how I’m asking about her feelings? Notice how respectful I’m being?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says, keeping her gaze on his.

  “You survived. Why not talk about it? I’d be celebrating.” Little crumbs of bagel tumble from Victor’s mouth, landing on the counter next to the sink. Mice will come if he doesn’t clean them up. Winslow hates mice.

  His mouth has never been so dry. It reminds Victor of the time Davis Higley challenged him to eat ten saltines and whistle. They were eight years old, and they giggled like little girls as Victor blew cracker powder all over his friend.

  “Victor?” Amelia says.

  “You guys need to leave.” He doesn’t look up when he says it. Doesn’t want to see the reactions because he doesn’t know what to say after that.

  But he imagines the looks on their faces. Santi probably all angry, sneering, or the opposite, a disbelieving laugh, like Good one, Victor. Amelia probably with the same vacant expression as when she’d stumbled upon them after the mudslide. Eyes seeing but not believing.

  Then Amelia says, “What?”

  And Santi says, “We need to use that phone, is what we need to do.”

  “There is no phone,” Victor says.

  “You said there was a phone.”

  “I can’t find it.” Victor keeps his voice calm, trying to lay out the basic facts of the situation. “It’s not here. We shouldn’t be here either. You need to go.”

  Where they should go when they leave doesn’t really occur to him, only that they need to leave. And frankly, he doesn’t care. They can take their food and the map and hike straight downhill and they’ll run into the trail eventually.

  It’s not even his fault that they’re here. He told them to go down, and then he told them not to follow him. His hands are clean on this one.

  “Bullshit,” Santi says. “You want to tear up your stepdaddy’s crib, go right ahead. The hell do I care? But you better let us use the phone.”

  Victor plants both feet firmly on Winslow’s reclaimed hardwood floors—from an old pickle factory in Pennsylvania!—and says again, “There is no phone.”

  Santi steps toward Victor, who tenses his fists, ready. “If there’s no phone, why are we even here? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “You should have gone down when you could.” It takes everything Victor has to keep his voice measured and even. He’s never been very good at that part. “I told you to go down without me.”

  “Where are we supposed to go now?” Amelia says.

  “Why are you even on this trip?” he says to her, contempt trickling into his voice. “What are you doing here?”

  “Where’s the phone, Victor?” Santi says.

  “What part of ‘There’s no phone’ do you not—”

  Before Victor finishes, Santi runs over to the bookshelf to the left of the fireplace and starts pulling down books. It happens so fast—Victor trying so hard to remain calm—that he doesn’t react until at least a dozen volumes, including his mom’s dog-eared Southern Colorado Birder’s Anthology and two of the leather-bound guest books—oh God, not those—have already been tossed across the room.

  “Santi!” Amelia says.

  Victor leaps across the small room, but Santi has already cleared the shelf. Books litter the floor like dead pigeons. Spines cracked, pages bent, covers splayed open. “Where’s the phone? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Santi keeps the coffee table in between them. He feints right, then darts left, and he’s past Victor and to the stairs before Victor can react.

  Amelia jumps up between Victor and the staircase. “You guys—”

  She yelps in pain as Victor pushes her aside. He’s got his full weight on both ankles now, doesn’t care anymore about pretending he’s hurt.

  Doors downstairs open and close and then Victor catches up to Santi just as he’s slamming the door to the storage closet.

  “Stop,” Victor says, and he’s trying to be strong but his voice comes out pleading. “Let’s talk about this.”

  Santi runs to the office door. Victor is bigger, and he should be able to stop him, but Victor can’t make himself react. He can’t match Santi’s rage or energy. The best he can do is yell, “Stay away from there!”

  Santi stops with one hand on the doorknob. Looks at Victor. Cocks his head as if he understands.

  Amelia appears at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I don’t have the key,” Victor makes himself say. “He never lets anyone in there.”

  Santi jiggles the kn
ob a little, but of course it’s locked like it always is, and the slight pause in the action is enough. Enough for Victor to step forward, to break out of his trance. He dives at Santi, tackles him around the waist, and their momentum rips Santi’s hand off the knob. They stagger away from the door.

  Santi knees him once in the stomach, and Victor loses his breath for a second and lets go of Santi’s waist and steps back to recover. He gasps for air, but now the adrenaline has come. He’s going to kick Santi’s ass like he should have a long time ago, and he hardly feels anything. Adrenaline coursing through his body, making him strong again.

  Victor swings wildly and misses and loses his balance, but he manages to pull Santi down to the hardwood with him, and now they’re not even really punching each other anymore, just rolling on the ground, clawing, pushing at each other’s faces.

  Then an elbow to Victor’s cheekbone, a lucky elbow, and his eyes start to water and he can’t see. It doesn’t hurt, not really, but he can’t see, and he feels another hand on him, on his leg, pulling him back, and he squints through the tears and sees Santi escaping ahead of him.

  He kicks the other hand away, hears a high-pitched yelp from Amelia. Then two loud thuds. He pulls himself up to his feet just as the sound of splintering wood fills the room.

  The door is open. Santi is inside.

  Victor takes a step toward the office, but his legs don’t want to work, and he stumbles to his knees. His fingers tremble uncontrollably until he makes fists, shakes his hands out, makes fists again. His heart crashes against his damaged ribs. He wipes tears away with the back of his wrist.

  Santi runs back past him, enraged, and disappears upstairs yelling words Victor doesn’t understand, leaving Victor there on the basement floor. Amelia stands at the foot of the staircase, glowering at him. Victor wishes she would say something. Then a clattering comes from above and she follows Santi upstairs without a word.

  Still breathing heavily, Victor turns back to Winslow’s office and pushes himself to his feet. The doorjamb is shattered. Shards of wood, some as big as his arm, litter the floor inside. The maps that had papered the walls lie crumpled and shredded around the small room. The desk lies on its side, drawers half open, contents scattered about: stapler, pens, note cards, paperclips, hundreds of sheets of paper.