Freedom Road

by William Lashner

  “Short?”

  “No, why? Do I look short to you? And do you have whipped cream?”

  “We surely do.”

  “Lots. And more coffee. You too, Oliver?”

  Oliver nods.

  “Him too.”

  “Right away, hon.”

  “I’m sort of famous for my appetite,” says Ayana.

  As Ayana snaps a rasher of bacon between her teeth, Oliver swallows a spoonful of oatmeal and winces at the tastelessness. He could add sugar, but then he’d be adding sugar and Helen wouldn’t approve. He feels bad enough about how their last conversation went so off the rails. Instead he eats a melon square, mushy and sour, and drinks the dregs of his coffee. The taste of freedom.

  “When you left I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I started that book you gave me,” says Ayana as she grabs a forkful of potatoes. She is hunched over her food like there is someone plotting to steal it away. “That Ker-o-whatever guy’s not really a very good writer, is he?”

  Oliver doesn’t look up from what constitutes his breakfast as he eats another spoonful of gruel. Please, sir, I want some less.

  “It’s just that his sentences are like weird,” continues Ayana. “I kept on picking out things that were wrong.”

  “I suppose they taught you how to write in school.”

  “I was actually pretty good at it. The teachers always liked my poetry. They said I had a future.”

  “In what, competitive eating?”

  “And now I’m on the way to Santa Monica. Maybe they were right after all.” She looks up at him. “That’s where we’re going, right?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Where are we going now?”

  Oliver hasn’t told her about his meeting with the brother. “West,” he says. “In those English classes, you followed all the rules, right? Thesis statement, logical argument, summary with a kicker at the end, no run-on sentences.”

  “You’re supposed to do all that.”

  “Yeah, well that Ker-o-whatever didn’t give a damn about the rules.”

  The girl laughs. “You’re such a rebel, Oliver.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “What are you now?”

  “Cantankerous.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “When you’re a rebel, you want people to know it. Leather jackets, long hair, attitude. When you’re cantankerous, you don’t give a damn what anybody thinks.”

  “I don’t give a damn.”

  “That thing in your nose says you’re a liar.”

  “Piss off,” she says.

  “Tell me something. Which of the Russian’s assholes has a red-and-black motorcycle?”

  “Red and black? No one, why?”

  “I thought I saw one like it back in Philly and then out here, too.”

  “I think you’re seeing things, Oliver,” she says as the waitress brings a stack of pancakes, covered with whipped cream, and a small glass pitcher of syrup. She finds a spot for the plate and pitcher in front of Ayana and refills their coffees. The girl looks at her pancakes and then at Oliver. “You want some?”

  “Sure,” he says, stabbing his fork into the topmost flapjack covered with all the whipped cream and sliding it into his bowl.

  “Dude.”

  “I’m sick of oatmeal.”

  “Cantankerous is right.”

  With her fork she steals a mound of whipped cream from his pancake, and puts it on what’s left of her stack. He steals some back with his own fork and puts it in his mouth. He forgot how good whipped cream tastes, like a child’s laughter. He scoops another dollop.

  “So where are we going?” she says.

  He looks up at Ayana, whipped cream still on his fork. “I need to see an old girlfriend.”

  “Oh, Oliver, that’s cute.”

  “Not mine,” he says.

  20

  ALL MY FRIENDS

  It wouldn’t be enough for Frank Cormack just to cross America and then the Pacific and then all of Asia and half of Europe in order to breathe in the bracing air of unadulterated freedom, he would have to cross off all the failures of his past, too, one after the other, until his old life was finished off for good, without a vampire’s chance of rising from its grave. Now, with its skyline appearing vaguely in the distance, he was headed back to the big town in the middle of everything to scrub it finally and forever off his list. It had been the first stop on his short-lived journey on the music train, the place where he found success and love and disappointment and finally a violence that had scarred his flesh and soul forever. He was coming home one last time to the city by the lake to put a stake in its fucking heart.

  “‘Hog butcher for the world,’” said Erica as the afternoon sun lit her red hair so bright it looked like a halo. “‘Tool maker, stacker of wheat.’”

  “What’s that, sweet pea?”

  “A poem my grandmom used to recite. She made me memorize it when I was a little girl. ‘Player with railroads and the nation’s freight handler. Stormy, husky, brawling.’”

  “What’s it called?”

  “‘Chicago.’”

  “Ah, there it is.”

  “They met in Chicago, my grandmom and my grandfather. At some convention.”

  “What, like a sales convention?”

  “A political convention. During the Vietnam War. There were these demonstrations. My grandfather went with a friend of his, some lawyer called Finnegan, and met my grandmother at the riot. They always said it changed their lives. I don’t know what they would have been without the war. Accountants maybe.”

  “So the war might have been the best thing ever to happen to them.”

  “In some ways. I wouldn’t be here without it, that’s for sure. On the other hand, my uncle died in it.”

  “That sucks.”

  “They named my father after him. But the city at the time must have been so romantic: the demonstrations, the slogans, tear gas and violence, sex and drugs and rock and roll. Allen Ginsberg was there.”

  “No shit.”

  “He was in a circle, chanting by the lake with these little cymbals on his fingers. My grandparents were such hippies, and they fell in love in the middle of a riot in old Chi-Town. ‘City of the big shoulders.’ I can’t wait to see it.”

  “It’s just a town, and we’re not going to see the sights. I have a friend I need to meet up with. You know, to set things up for California. One stop and then to the coast. And they don’t really call it that. Chi-Town, I mean. Like they don’t call San Fran Frisco.”

  They had stopped at the first rest stop beyond the Ohio state line, parked with their license facing the woods, and slept twisted around each other in the back seat. After waking, weary and sore, they stopped at a Hardee’s and paid for the putrid feast with Todd’s money. Then they headed west and north, before detouring around Gary, Indiana, to avoid the toll road because who the hell wanted to pay tolls.

  “So who’s the friend we’re seeing?”

  “Her name’s Marisol. She’s a singer, too.”

  “Marisol. Just a friend?”

  “Now she’s just a friend. Don’t get jealous on me, sweet pea.”

  “Why would I be jealous?”

  “You know. Everyone has a past and sometimes people start imagining things.”

  “Oh, I’m not imagining anything,” said Erica. “And you shouldn’t worry about me. You should just do what feels right for you, Frank.”

  “Listen to you. It touches my heart to know you care.”

  “And she’s probably more your age anyway.”

  He laughed. “Older, actually. She was twenty-five when I showed up in Chicago, the same age I am now. I liked that she had experience.”

  “What did you have?”

  “Youth.”

  He looked up at the skyline in the distance. It still had the outlines of hope in its tall towers.

  “There was a group of us,” he said. “Living in a house on the west side. Humbo
ldt Park. Mostly artists, paying whatever rent we could. We cooked for one another and slept with one another and got high together. But most of all we supported one another. We went to the awful plays Tim was writing and the bars that put up Sheila’s paintings. Khalia was working in a bookstore and trying to write her novel. She did poetry slams that we would come to and hoot at. Troy danced in these weird modern dance productions that put me to sleep. Marisol and I, when we weren’t playing at this club or that coffeehouse, would sometimes play in the streets and our friends would pass us by like they didn’t know us, dropping money in the guitar case to prime the pump. ‘Thank you, stranger,’ I’d say. And that night at the house, we’d give it all back.”

  “It sounds dreamy,” said Erica.

  “It was.”

  “So what happened?”

  “You know, things turn.”

  “Like they turned in Philly?”

  “That’s the way life is, there’s no fighting it. But not with you. With you I’m going to make sure it stays sweet as honey the whole way through. We’re each other’s destiny.”

  “We’re each other’s something, that’s for sure. Can we get a hot dog? My grandfather always said the hot dogs in Chicago are the best in the world.”

  “Whatever you want. The full works. And I know just the place.”

  They stopped at a squat brick building on a wide commercial strip with the city’s skyscrapers looming over its shoulder.

  Jimmy’s Red Hots.

  Below the menu that stretched above the counter, there was a sign with a ketchup bottle X’d out and the words Never Ever!! Don’t Even Ask About It!! Frank laughed as he pointed it out to Erica. It made him miss Chicago, where they didn’t take crap from anyone. City of the big shoulders indeed.

  They bought three dogs, two orders of fries, and a couple fluorescent-yellow drinks. They stood at the counter beside a big-assed cop as they scarfed, just a couple kids having a late lunch. The cop didn’t even look their way as Frank showed Erica how to squeeze the hot peppers that came with the hand-cut fries so that the juice squirted over the semisoggy spuds.

  “What’s with the whole ketchup thing?” said Erica.

  “In this town there’s a Chicago way and a wrong way. Ketchup on hot dogs is the wrong way.”

  “What about on the fries?”

  “That’s why they give you the peppers. What do you think?”

  “Good,” she said, wiping mustard off her mouth. “Not great.”

  “Tough critic. I used to come here constantly. I was such a regular, I even dated one of the girls who worked behind the counter. Deborah. Her skin smelled like hot dogs. I couldn’t get enough of her. And of course, she gave me freebies.”

  “So you were a hot dog whore?”

  “You bet your life. And the fries, don’t forget the fries.”

  “I like them crispier. McDonald’s-like.”

  “That’s just sad. If you eat these little puppies in your car, they smell up the inside for days and it’s like entering heaven every time you slip into the driver’s seat. More than once in Philly I thought of just driving out here, buying a dog and fries, and then turning back.”

  “That would have been something.”

  “Yeah. But you know, things. When we get to Marisol’s house, play it cool. I didn’t leave on the greatest terms.”

  “What happened?”

  “There were just issues, you know. Money, love, getting on each other’s nerves. Money.” He laughed. “But when push comes to shove, which is where we are now, these are the people I trust most.”

  The house was a narrow two-story pale-stone building with an iron gate and wooden steps, set up next to a small grocery store. To Frank, it looked exactly the same as when he had left it two years before. The trim was still peeling, the steps were still listing, the gate still needed paint and oil. Same stinking suburban landlord. The heat was probably still spotty, too. But even with its flaws, just looking at the pile of stone filled him with an aching nostalgia. What did he miss, the cozy house, the friends, the way he was then in his still aspiring youth? Or was it something else, someone else?

  He hesitated for a moment, screwed up his confidence and enthusiasm—he knew he could always bluff his way past a little hesitance with outsize enthusiasm—and then skipped up the stairs.

  Knock, knock.

  After a few silent minutes, he spun around and kicked at one of the stones in the wall. “There’s a place out back we can sit and wait,” he said.

  “My leg’s been hurting,” Erica said.

  “I suppose that means you want to get high.”

  “Well, if you’re asking.”

  He should stay straight for this, clearheaded, clean. He needed to look serious as all hell, different in every way from the way he left, but Erica’s smile did him in.

  There was a small cement patio in the rear of the house with an old grill and some mismatched lawn furniture. Frank and Erica were sprawled on a couple chairs, their feet propped on a rusting fire pit, laughing about nothing, their minds buzzing with the smoked Oxy and the reefer to chase it, when a window on the back side of the house slid open and a heavy woman with long graying hair poked her head through.

  “I thought I recognized that heap of crap parked outside,” she said.

  “Hey, Sheila.”

  “What’s going on, Frank?”

  “Just passing through.”

  “Anyone know you’re coming?”

  “I thought I’d keep it quiet.”

  “Good idea. You bring Hunter with you?”

  “No. I had to leave him back in Philly.”

  “That’s too bad. He was the sweetest dog in Chicago.”

  “This is Erica.”

  “Welcome, Erica. Anything I can get you guys?”

  “How about a shower?” said Erica. “We could really use a shower. Especially Frank.”

  Sheila laughed and said, “Sure. I’ll meet you at the front.”

  The inside was just as he had remembered it. The same sagging couches in the living room with the turreted windows creating a nook, the same paintings by Sheila, the same bookshelf crowded with old paperbacks. Even the battered oak table in the dining alcove was still messy with envelopes and flyers. There was always organizing of one sort or another going on in that house: protest marches, art shows, theater pieces begging for an audience, the vote for one election after another.

  “Troy’s out with a touring company,” said Sheila, “so you can use his room to change. There are towels in the upstairs closet.”

  “Thanks,” said Frank. “I’ll show her.”

  Frank led Erica up the twisting stairway to Troy’s bedroom. It looked the same up there too, a time capsule. His room with Marisol had been down the hall. When he gazed at the closed white door he felt something tug at a string of emotion anchored deep.

  “You have to wait awhile for the water to heat up,” he said as he showed Erica the bathroom. “And don’t expect it to get too hot. Tepid is about the best we get.”

  She looked at him strangely, as if he had shape-shifted the moment he walked in the door. And maybe he had. He left her in the bathroom and went downstairs to talk to Sheila, who was sitting now at the table, shuffling papers.

  “What are you trying to save now?” said Frank. “The whales? The trees? The middle class?”

  “They’re beyond saving,” said Sheila, without turning around.

  “The whales?”

  “The middle class. She’s pretty. And quite young.”

  “About as young as I was when I first came to Chicago.”

  “You’re not staying long, are you, Frank?”

  “In and out, Sheila. On our way west.”

  “Good. Things have changed here a bit.”

  “For all of us,” said Frank. “I was surprised no one was at the house when we showed. At least Khalia was always at home, working on the novel.”

  “She sold it,” said Sheila. “Got herself a teaching jo
b at Northwestern and a place in Evanston.”

  “Wow. Good for her.”

  “But the rest of us all have to work. Rent has gone up and we were getting tired of beans for dinner.”

  “That’s easy to do. What about Marisol?”

  “What about her?”

  “Is she working, too?”

  “At some advertising agency. Writing copy. But she still gigs when she can.”

  “When does she normally get home?”

  “She’s in a good place now. She’s seeing someone. I think it’s serious. She seems pretty happy.”

  “Good for her. We’ve both moved on. So when does she get home?”

  “Why don’t you leave her alone, Frank?”

  “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?”

  Sheila turned around, slowly and without anger. There was something close to pity on her face. “You’re in trouble again. I can tell. The pressure changes you and not for the better.”

  “I just asked a simple question.”

  “It’s like a skittering little bug slips into your eyes. How bad is it?”

  “I only want to say hello. That’s all.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think you’re bringing your new troubles back to her when the old ones aren’t even taken care of. What happens when Delaney finds out you’re here?”

  “He won’t. We’re on our way west and then overseas. Gone for good. I don’t know when I’ll be back and I just wanted to say goodbye.”

  “I’ll relay the message for you. I’m sure she’ll be touched.”

  “We’ll just wait here, then.”

  “Is she the problem, Frank? The girl? That Erica?”

  “No,” said Frank. “She’s the solution.”

  Sheila nodded and turned back to her papers. “Marisol’s playing tonight at Armstrong’s. She’s going straight there. But if you really cared about her, you’d leave her be.”

  “I’m done,” Erica called down the steps. “Shower’s free.”

  Frank turned and shouted up the stairwell, “Thanks, sweet pea. And put on something fresh, we’re going out tonight.”

  21

  SHAPE OF YOU

  The rise of Frank Cormack’s music career was like the trajectory of a rocket ship aimed for the heavens. Only it was the kind of rocket that struggles to rise off the launching pad and hovers just a few feet off the surface of the earth before tilting out of control and exploding in a massive ball of fire and woe.