“No.”
“Where to?”
“He visited his brother, that’s all I know.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Someplace called something like chilly clothing.”
“How do you spell that?”
“How the fuck I know.”
He puts on his glasses, starts tapping into the GPS unit, tries a couple spellings until Chillicothe, Ohio, pops onto the screen. When the lady starts talking, he slowly pulls back onto the road.
Following the GPS directions, he merges onto Route 1, driving south on a stretch of road lousy with commerce and traffic. It would have been faster to head to the turnpike that sped west across the state, but he tapped the “no tolls” instruction into the GPS unit. He didn’t need tollbooth cameras reading his license plate. With the congestion and the stoplights blinking red every half mile or so, it takes them half an hour to hit Chadds Ford, but then the landscape countrifies and the road turns quick and, before he knows it, they are passing over the swiftly flowing Brandywine Creek.
“Wee haw,” he says in a flat voice.
“What?”
“I’m just saying. Wee fucking haw.”
“Okay, old man,” says Ayana, “don’t make a federal case about it.”
“State,” he says.
“What?”
“It’s a state case. It’s not going to turn federal until we hit Maryland, but that won’t be long.”
“Are you okay?”
“Better than ever,” says Oliver Cross, and, strangely, he means it. Better than the last few years, anyway. As soon as they crossed the Brandywine he was out of the county and officially an outlaw. It feels good, Oliver thinks, breaking laws and crossing lines, it feels right. He is traveling hopefully once again. He is off and running to save his granddaughter, and that is the right thing to be doing, but there is something else that fills his heart with joy.
He is skipping parole, and they will be after him eventually, surely after he misses his next appointment, probably sooner when Jennifer, alerted by his request, visits the house unannounced to check up on him. But let her check, let them chase. He is on the road again, feeling alive for the first time since his Helen died, free for maybe the first time in decades. Made it, Ma! Top of the world! he thinks, and like the grizzled gangster in the old black-and-white, the coppers are never going to take him alive.
II. CHEAP THRILLS
13
RUNAWAYS
Don’t try telling Frank Cormack that the American dream is dead because not only did it dance like a stripper in his heart but he was chasing it full-bore in his baby-blue Camaro with the thick white stripes across the hood, heading west, ever west, where he was surely going to catch her and wrestle her to the ground and make her shout, “Oh, Uncle Frank!”
And don’t try telling Frank Cormack that you couldn’t change your fate because in one fell swoop he had done just that, turning a stalled music career and a life going downhill fast into something so full of promise that it stole away his breath when he stared straight into its wide green eyes.
And don’t try telling Frank Cormack that love won’t save you because the proof of that pudding was sleeping in the front seat of his Camaro, her head resting on a sweater pillowed up against the window and a line of drool falling from her pouty lips.
He and Erica had left their cell phones in the toilet and were staying off the interstates so they couldn’t be tracked or traced, followed or stopped or hijacked.
Freedom!
The road rushed beneath them like the flow of a mighty river running fast and unobstructed to the sea.
Freedom!
They were Huck and Jim, Bing and Bob, Sal and Dean, Bob and Joan, Joan and Jett, a couple of all-American kids beating out a rhythm of discovery mile by mile on the road first to Santa Monica and then right into the mighty Pacific and beyond. And what were they chasing? That’s right, say it together now.
Freedom!
He had to give it to Erica. She wasn’t only the object of his adoration and lust, as well as the pivot around which his future would revolve, she was also his prophet. Where he saw obstacles, she saw opportunity. Where he saw obligation and fear, she saw an open road. She had been telling him for weeks that they should just get the hell away from her parents and his failed life, away from the Russian, out of town, out of state, out of Trump’s grotesque new America, that they should just breathe deep and go, go, go like a couple of experimental subjects escaping from some bizarre testing facility with a red light blinking over the doors and sirens sounding at the breach.
Erica’s call to freedom had been like a hymn playing in his brain, playing in his brain, setting the stage for this breath-gulping sprint into a future of music and art and wine and baguettes slathered with foul-smelling cheese and an attic room with a hissing radiator and sloped ceilings where right in the middle of a long, hard fuck they could turn their heads toward their dormer window to see the spire of the Eiffel Tower rising like life’s promise itself above the slate-gray rooftops.
The sky was blue, the road was straight, and Erica’s bare legs were curled on the seat beside him as the miles slipped madly past. He dropped his right hand from the wheel and stroked love’s ankle.
Between long stretches of rural highway, they herky-jerked through stoplighted stretches of strip malls and pizza joints, chain restaurants, nail salons, discount marts, convenience stores. They even had an Aldi out here.
Before Erica he would have seen it all as part and parcel of the landscape, as natural as the tall grasses and weed trees that grew wild on the side of the road. But now, through eyes unblinkered by love’s radicalization, he knew them as the sad service centers of a failing American life. He shared Erica’s contempt for all those who tried to fill their holes in such places, all those who felt the key to life was getting enough money to frequent better and more exclusive versions of the very same crapholes. They had sentenced themselves to the chain gang, toiling under the reflective glasses of banker guards as they worked the road in an endless bulimic slog of earning and spending, acquiring, devouring, vomiting up the excess just so they could devour more.
But unlike Erica, who had never worked a day in her privileged life, he felt most strongly about those who were sentenced by fate and misfortune to work in such places, part of a faceless corps of first-name-onlys who bartered their raw freedom for a paycheck, spending their lives in boxes as spare as the cages at a zoo, selling shoes, selling soda, filing nails, serving crap on a bun with a side of fries, restocking shelves picked clean by ravaging hordes, pinching their pennies while extravagantly spending the hours of their lives to satisfy the basest needs of the American consumer. Poor deluded sons of bitches. He had been one of them, but no longer.
Sometimes you had to see exactly where you were coming from so you could appreciate where you were headed, and where he was heading now was to a quaint little development just over the horizon, Freedom’s Acre, with plots available to all with the requisite guts and proper financing. And proper financing was exactly what was wedged inside the spare tire resting beneath the floor of his trunk, all the financing he’d need to buy their freedom once and for all.
He wouldn’t have had the guts to pull it off without Erica. He would have just gone on going on until time and the drugs squashed him flat. But Erica had urged him to make a move, so when the moment came and opportunity flashed its shining smile, he bit the lips right off its face and now here they were, he and his great love, on the road to someplace new and glorious. She didn’t know what he had done for them, wouldn’t ever know if he had his druthers, but she was the reason he had brained Sergei with a tire iron—the Russian always sent teams of two to pick up and drop off—snatched the satchel and the computer, and was now heading to the parking lot on the pier in Santa Monica that stuck out into the ocean like a middle finger.
The deal was all arranged with Bongo, a buddy from his time in Chicago, a roadie with contacts who would buy the
merch at premium rates, providing him with the cash that would not only finance their getaway, but also make a sweet go of it as they swished around the world, zigging and zagging, with the requisite bohemian travel stops in Australia, Bali, and Prague, before finding that attic apartment in the City of Light with the Eiffel Tower view, where he could tap out songs on the computer and build on their love. He maybe could have gotten out without stealing from the Russian, but to go globe hopping with Erica Cross there was no other choice; girls like Erica had certain expectations.
It was one of her charms that she never talked about money. Oh, she talked about how money warped, and how money controlled, and how money twisted you this way and that and had the whole country in its sway, but she never talked about what anything cost or how much she needed, or what life was truly like without it, which was why she carried so little on her. But they had left all their credit cards at home, had taken only what cash they could grab and their passports, because to use one of the cards, even once, would put Pops and the Russian right on their asses.
Erica was money innocent in a rich girl’s way; she talked about money the way those who never lacked for it talked about money, and that made him want to wrap her in his arms and lick her face. But Frank knew that to keep her happy on the road meant having some money, real money, and that’s why Sergei had taken the tire iron to the skull and they were running now. Which was good in its way, because fear was the greatest stimulant ever invented, meth had nothing on fear, fear would keep him moving, charging ever west, fear would keep him from stopping too long to rest here or smell the roses there, fear would keep him out of the Russian’s grasp until the deal went down and everything was settled and he and his love were winging their way out over the Pacific toward the new and glorious life they were choosing for themselves.
Freedom!
The only problem was making it all the way to land’s end and his rendezvous with Bongo, because even though he might have had close to a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of product stuffed into the spare tire, he was woefully short of the hard cash needed to make it all the way to the selling ground. He had thought Sergei would have more cash money on him when he made his move. Truth was, right now he had just enough to maybe fill the tank once or twice more before he fell out flat broke.
And the dashboard arrow was jittering its way straight to E.
“What?” she said, waking up with a jolt when he killed the engine beside a pump at the mini-mart.
“We need some gas,” Frank said.
She stretched and wiped her mouth, smiled nervously, looked around at the dumpy little station. Frank’s heart filled with hope just watching her move and stretch, watching her legs rub against each other. Sometimes he feared he was just running away, running from himself, from what he had become, which could only end in disaster. But then he saw Erica, her eyes so alive, her body twisting this way and that, and he knew he was running toward something so bright it was blinding.
“So where are we?” she said.
“The great and glorious Circle K.”
“I mean what state. Last I remember we were still in Pennsylvania.”
“West Virginia,” he said. “Mountain momma, take me home, country roads.”
“What?”
“John Denver.”
“Who?”
“We’re just outside Morgantown.”
“Is that all?”
“It’s a big country, sweet pea, but we’re only a couple hundred miles from my brother. You hungry?”
“Not really. All this driving has made me a little nauseous.”
“How about a soda to settle your stomach. Ginger ale?”
“Okay, sure. I’ll just take a walk, stretch my legs.”
He opened the door to the mini-mart and smelled the hot dogs roasting. He’d been driving at speed for hours while Erica slept, and right then he could have gone for a dog, topped with onions and relish, doused with mustard. Man, he could already taste the thing. But he’d be getting no dog, no chips, he’d be getting nothing but the ginger ale for Erica and thirty bucks’ worth of gasoline. It felt like putting thirty on his number, hoping the 576 finally hit so that he could make it all the way to his brother in Chillicothe before his wallet emptied and the tank ran dry. Getting to Todd was the surest way to fill up both for the sprint west. Todd had a house, a wife, a kid, a job, Todd had the careful life, which meant he had at least three months’ worth of ready cash stored away for emergencies, because that’s what they told you to do on all the careful financial websites. What Frank was facing now certainly qualified for a piece of that emergency fund, and a piece would be enough. Once Bongo came through he’d wire Todd back the money, along with a goodbye gift, before hitting the skies.
He picked up a Canada Dry from the cooler and a Slim Jim for himself, a stick of protein for the final sprint, and placed them on the counter. He was about to ask the middle-aged clerk—“Tom,” it said on his first-name-only name tag—for thirty bucks on pump three when Erica walked through the door, her shirt loose, her feet bare. He watched the clerk watch her as she made her way through the aisles. The clerk caught Frank glancing at the “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” sign. In the mirror behind the counter Frank saw Erica grab a large bag of chips, a box of doughnuts, an iced tea, a magazine, a can of Red Bull, a bottle of Tylenol, and a pack of gum. She came over and dropped the haul on the counter next to the ginger ale and the Slim Jim.
“I thought you were feeling sick,” he said.
“I just needed to get out of the car. Something in your engine smells like it’s burning. Once I started walking I felt better and then I realized I was hungry.” She turned to the clerk. “And can I have a hot dog, please?”
“Sure thing, miss.”
“The long one that’s well done? No, that one, yeah. Thank you.”
When she got the dog she fouled it with ketchup from the counter, took a bite, and then stepped back outside. Frank turned to the clerk, who was still watching Erica. The clerk had a nervous twitch on his mouth. Yeah.
“How much?” said Frank.
The clerk started ringing things up, ringing things up, sweeping the crap into a bag as he rang things up.
“That’s twenty-four-oh-one with the tax.”
“Take off the Slim Jim.”
The clerk hammered at the machine. “Twenty-two sixty-eight.”
Frank took out his wallet and fished out the bills one by one. A twenty, two tens, a five, three ones. “Put the rest on pump three.”
“Will do,” said the clerk as he scooped up the bills. He raised an eyebrow at Frank. “She’s a looker, that one.”
“Yeah? Tell me, Tom, what kind of look is that?”
The clerk stared back at him flatly, without even the hint of a smile.
14
MILLION BUCKS
“I didn’t imagine this would feel so good,” she said. “I’ve been on road trips before, but there was always an expiration date, you know. We need to be back by . . . Got to get home by . . . But this, this is like the greatest drug ever. If we could bottle this, we’d make a fortune. It’s like every mile we go, I can feel the hopes for my future falling away like skins being shed from a snake.”
“And that’s a good thing?” said Frank.
“They weren’t my hopes,” she said.
The miles were thrumming beneath them as they drove through the wild green landscape of West Virginia. It was about as pretty a place as Frank had ever seen, and for the first time that sappy John Denver song made sense to him. He had about three-quarters of a tank of gas, which should be enough for them to make it to Todd’s house. He hadn’t told Erica about the money issue, just like he hadn’t told her about the drugs in the spare tire—he wanted to take care of that on his own before she had second thoughts about the whole enterprise. All she knew was that they were heading toward a moneymaking proposition in Santa Monica—but still, every time she gurgled her iced tea or loudly chomped a potato chip he
couldn’t help but wince.
But let her take what she wanted because she was worth her weight in gold, and it wasn’t just the love he was talking about. Without her knowing, he had taken a drive to case the granite mansion she lived in with her family, and he could smell the money, as thick as the mortar laid between the stones. Once they got settled, and after the drug money ran out, Daddy wouldn’t let her starve. They’d make it on their wits and their wiles, and then they’d make it on Daddy’s bank account, but no matter what happened they’d make it all right. It would all be gravy if he could just make it to the coast.
“All year I’ve been getting the questions,” she said as they powered forward. “Where are you going to school, Erica? What are you going to study? Going to be a lawyer like your dad?”
“You’d be a good lawyer,” he said. “That we’re here just proves you could convince an alligator to give up its teeth.”
“Why would I want to be a lawyer? My grandfather told me the only thing he regretted about dropping out of law school was the wasted year.”
“He’s the one who went to jail, right?”
“Yeah. Good old Gramps. And it’s not like being a lawyer has made my father ever so happy. He growls when he gets home and then drinks himself to sleep. You’re lucky you have no one resting their hopes on you.”
“That’s true. I was born just so my family could have someone to disappoint them, and I’ve played my role to perfection.”
“But I’m the eldest daughter of Fletcher and Petra Cross. The expectations are like an anvil on my head, pressing me down every step I take. And it isn’t like I couldn’t have lived up to them if I wanted to. I mean, high school is just a game, right, and not a hard one at that. Just do a little more than expected and suddenly the teachers start raving. Oh, oh, Erica.”
“It sounds like you were doing a lot more than expected.”
“Oh, stop it, no. Gross.” She took a swallow of the iced tea. “Not that they wouldn’t. Every year or so there’s a scandal; last year it was the physics teacher. In the middle of the year, gone, rumors swirling. But, yuck. Short-sleeve shirts and ties. And they’re so old. Really?”
Freedom Road Page 9
