Freedom Road

by William Lashner

  “You’re not that good an actor, Oliver.”

  “I’ll look on like the angry grandfather bitter about having to fork over his hard-earned cash to buy a piece-of-crap guitar for the talentless child of his worthless son.”

  “Better,” says Ayana, laughing. “That you can pull off.”

  “And then you’ll slip the question.”

  “I got it. Jesus, chill. I can play a scene with the best of them.”

  “I just want to be sure.”

  “I got your number, didn’t I?”

  “When?”

  “Outside Frank’s apartment. I played that smooth enough, didn’t I?”

  Oliver thinks for a moment. “Yeah, you did. And it got the hell beat out of me.”

  “But even after that, I got you to take me west, didn’t I?”

  “As a matter of fact.”

  “And after this you’re going to buy me a hot dog, right?”

  “Shut up.”

  “So if I’m playing you like a violin, Oliver, maybe I can handle a guitar-store jockey. But it’s probs better if you just keep your own mouth shut.”

  “It usually is,” says Oliver.

  Oliver got the name and address of the music store from his GPS. A number of hits came up, but he was looking for a place on the north side, where, from his memory of the city, he figured someone like Frank Cormack, white and scheming, would have lived and sung his bullshit songs. This store, southwest of Wrigley on Lincoln Avenue, seemed to be at the epicenter of that scene.

  “Any idea what kind of guitar you’re looking for?” asks the woman at the front desk. They have entered some sort of fancy guitar emporium with dark wooden shelves behind the counter and what look to be thousands of guitars hanging from its whitewashed walls.

  “Just something I can play anywhere,” says Ayana.

  “What kind of music do you play?”

  “I’m just learning. But like folk and stuff?”

  “And not too expensive,” adds Oliver. Ayana gives him the stink eye. Nice touch, that, Oliver thinks. Like a happy fucking family.

  “Why don’t you check out the acoustic room. Let me know your name and I’ll set you up with Karl. He’s our resident folkie.”

  “Perfect,” says Ayana. “I’m Ayana.”

  The acoustic room, behind a glass door, is long and white with a pile of guitars in the center like some deranged Christmas tree and three rows of guitars dripping off the high walls like tinsel. Ayana walks along one of the rows, brushing each guitar she passes with her fingertips, leaving marks on the buffed wood. Oliver takes one off the wall, big and dark brown. He presses down on the fretboard and flicks the strings with his thumb; the sound is rich and deep.

  “Do you actually play, Oliver?”

  “I used to,” he says. “Just happy little love songs, you know. ‘Eve of Destruction,’ ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,’ and that old classic ‘Shut Up Already and Die.’”

  She laughs. “I never heard of that last one.”

  “I wrote it.”

  “I should have known.”

  Oliver turns the guitar over and checks the price. Almost two thousand dollars. What the hell? When did it become so damn expensive to strum a few chords and complain about the world? Even the simplest pleasures now have the moneyman’s stamp on them. Next thing you know they’ll be pulling bills from your wallet just to let you pee. Oh yeah, Flomax.

  He has the sudden urge to make like Hendrix and burn the goddamn guitar, to burn the whole damn place down. He is watching the flames leap in his imagination when a man strolls into the room with a chin beard and a salesman’s smile. “Hey, guys,” he says with the voice of an earnest kindergarten teacher. “I’m Karl, and I hear you’re looking for a guitar.”

  “You don’t make sandwiches here, do you?” says Ayana.

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Then I guess a guitar will do.”

  “It’s Ayana, right? So what are we looking for, Ayana?”

  “I don’t know, something. Just to play.”

  “That narrows it down.” Karl turns to Oliver. “Do you know what you’re willing to spend? That could narrow it down some more.”

  “Not two thousand dollars, I’ll tell you that,” says Oliver, as he returns the guitar he strummed to its hook on the wall.

  “That guitar is a Martin Dreadnought, a beautiful piece, a true classic, but a little pricey and probably too big for her. Have you played much, Ayana?”

  “A little.”

  “Okay, good. A little is better than not at all. Take a seat,” he says, gesturing to one of the couches in the center of the room.

  Ayana sits as this Karl walks along the rows of guitars before he stops at something pale and not so big, a little small, actually. He pulls the instrument off the wall and tunes it before he props a leg on a stool and plays a bluesy riff, his fingers sliding expertly up and down the fretboard. The guitar sounds clean, strong, like it could play anything, which means that Karl can play anything. That’s a trick, Oliver knows, to make a buyer believe she could sound that good. Even though he has no intention of shelling out actual cash for a guitar, somehow the trick pisses Oliver off.

  “This is an Eastman acoustic, three-quarter size made for travel,” says the salesman. “It’s used but in really good shape, and the price is about a third lower than the price for the same guitar new. Why don’t you give it a try?”

  He hands the guitar to Ayana, who looks at it for a moment like she is looking at a pineapple.

  “Show her how to hold it,” says Oliver.

  “Oh, I think she knows how to hold it just fine,” says this Karl. “Do you want a pick, Ayana?”

  “No,” she says as she crosses her legs and fits the guitar on her thigh. “I’ll just fiddle around.”

  The first few burps she tickles from the guitar are discordant scraps of sound that scratch the ear, but some notes start to emerge that are less jarring and her grip on the guitar becomes more sure. Before long, actual chords slip out from her fingers, chords that build on each other until something close to a melody emerges. And then this girl, whom Oliver thought he had figured out, a little schemer scheming her way west as she lies to him about motorcycles and the Russian, begins to sing in an uncertain voice with eyes trained on the floor before her. The song is vaguely familiar to Oliver, a classic about being trapped in life and a plea to be taken somewhere, anywhere, away in a fast car, along with the feeling that she could be someone, be someone, be someone.

  But it is her voice that slays him. Ayana’s voice is as soft and textured as velvet, with a rough edge that bites and a sweet innocence that transports him into his past. About an hour north of where they are now is the house where he grew up with his mother and father and brother and all the expectations of his class. About two miles southeast is the center of the ’68 demonstrations where he met the love of his life. And now this girl, with a barely whispered voice almost unearthly in its beauty, is breathing back into his regret-laden soul the emotions of his youth, when he needed to break away, to get away, to be someone, be someone, be someone of his own creation, not some clone of his father but his own strutting self, no matter the cost.

  As the girl’s fingers pluck at the strings, the power of her voice fills his eyes. He turns away and wipes his face with the back of his hand. When he turns back, she is someone new, someone he has never seen before. When was the last time he took off his blinders?

  “That was really good,” says Karl when the girl doesn’t so much finish the song as let it peter out. “Your voice is lovely. Where did you learn to play?”

  “Around,” says the girl. “And I took some lessons with a singer I knew. Marisol Something? She lives around here, I think, and plays in some of the clubs. She mentioned this place.”

  “The Marisol who performs sometimes at Armstrong’s?”

  “I suppose. My brother knew this guy Frank who set up the lessons.”

  “Yeah, Marisol Sosa. I’ve pla
yed with her. She’s great, and she comes in now and then just to look around. She really did a job with you. Your voice, I have to tell you, is something special. How did the guitar feel?”

  “A little light, smaller than I’m used to. I don’t know. I haven’t played in a while.”

  “How much does it cost?” says Oliver.

  “Three hundred. Two ninety-five, actually. It will come fully set up, with a gig bag. We’ll even throw in a strap. We can set up a payment plan if you want. It would be like . . .”

  As Karl searches the tag for the monthly payment Oliver says, “We’ll take it.”

  “What?” says Ayana.

  “Do you like it?” says Oliver.

  “I guess, yeah.”

  “You said this is a travel guitar, right?” says Oliver.

  “That’s right,” says Karl. “From Eastman. A very good maker. Spruce top, rosewood fingerboard. A nice bone saddle.”

  “And we’re traveling, right?” says Oliver.

  “I guess so,” says Ayana.

  “And I like my saddles made of bone. Where do I pay?”

  Karl smiles. “Is that cash or credit?”

  “Cash,” says Oliver.

  The Vienna Beef frank is grilled, the poppy seed bun is steamed, the relish is the same radioactive green Oliver remembers. Onions, sport peppers, tomato wedges, and a pickle spear, all sprinkled with a dash of celery salt and topped with mustard.

  “This is good, Oliver,” says the girl, her mouth full as she wipes a smear of relish off her cheek.

  “Good?” says Oliver. “Mama’s boys are good. A B-minus is good. A Chicago dog is the pinnacle of Western culture. Everything else is second-rate. And all you’ve got to say is good?”

  “Really good.”

  “Better.”

  They are sitting at one of the red wooden tables outside a hot dog stand on Clark Street south of the ballpark. Hunter is taut on the leash, staring like a wolfhound at the passersby. The dog joint, called the Weiners Circle, wasn’t here when Oliver was last in the city, but the GPS spit out the location, and it was sort of on the way to Marisol Sosa’s address, which guitar store Kyle, as a special favor, had given them from the customer list so Ayana could start up again on her fictional lessons. When they drove by the stand in the rattling truck he saw nothing more than a shack and a sign, which seemed right. What more do you need?

  Oliver hasn’t touched his unadorned hot dog, but he is enjoying the hell out of watching the girl polish off the first of her two loaded franks.

  “So tell me something, Oliver,” says Ayana after she finishes the first dog and is fiddling with her cheddar fries. “Why did you buy me that guitar?”

  “It was part of the act,” says Oliver. “A cover for getting the address.”

  “Oh, I could have gotten hipster Kyle to spill without you spending a dime, and you know it.”

  “Yeah, probably. He was an eager beaver.”

  “I think you’re getting soft on me.”

  “Piss off. It’ll also be a good prop for when we meet this Marisol whatever.”

  “She’ll know she didn’t give me lessons.”

  “Yeah, but with the guitar you’ll look like one of the tribe.”

  “What tribe is that?”

  “The lost singers of the stockyards.”

  “And what the hell do I do with a stinking guitar after we get what we need?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Maybe I should pawn it.”

  “Maybe you should. At least then someone who knows how to play the thing could own it,” says Oliver, before he snaps off half the dog in front of him and feeds it to Hunter, who nearly takes off Oliver’s fingers as he lunges for the gift.

  “My playing was that bad?” says Ayana.

  “You were good.”

  “Good, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “B-minus. I’ll take it. So what do we do now?”

  “Head on over to that address and find out what this Marisol knows.”

  “How do I play it?”

  “Silently, that’s how you play it. The guitar will say everything you need to say. I’ll do the talking.”

  “And I’ll step in when you screw up.”

  “Yeah, I suppose, something like that.”

  Marisol’s house is in the Humboldt Park section of the city, a light-gray stone structure with a listing porch and a rusting iron fence. Oliver parks a bit down the road.

  While Ayana waits outside the truck, Oliver takes Hunter for a quick walk. As the dog squats, Oliver appraises the condition of the house. The rotting front stairs need to be replaced, the porch probably, too. It would be a couple days’ work, not much more. It is the kind of job Oliver used to like, taking something ruined and fixing it sweet. Sort of the reverse of what he has done to his life. When Hunter is finished, Oliver takes out a blue bag and bends his already bent back to pick up the crap. If anyone is looking from behind the curtains of the gray stone house, it’s time to playact being a civic-minded dog owner. Standing almost straight again, Oliver clasps the leash beneath his arm in order to tie the bag closed.

  Suddenly the dog barks and charges forward. Oliver spins and the leash yanks free. As the crap bag goes flying, Hunter dashes toward a woman walking down the street.

  The woman is tall and thick with long graying hair. For a moment Oliver fears her face is about to be eaten off, but then, as the dog leaps about in some strange dance of the ecstatic, the woman kneels down and grabs Hunter by the scruff of his neck.

  “Hunter?” she says as the dog licks her chin. “Oh, Hunter, where have you been, you bad boy? We missed you so much.”

  24

  RESCUE ME

  Oliver Cross sits in the truck with the dog, keeping watch on an old stone house in South Chicago. A man kicks back on the front steps, a kid really, not much older than Erica, big and young, fiddling with his phone. The kid has looked up enough to eye the truck sitting halfway down the street, but he isn’t concerned enough to do anything about it. Which means, as best as Oliver can figure, there’s more muscle inside.

  “This won’t go well,” says Oliver out loud. Hunter raises his head, but it is Helen who answers.

  “Probably not,” she says. “But you know what I used to tell my students: if it was easy, anyone could do it.”

  “But that’s exactly who I am, just anyone.”

  “No you’re not, darling. You’re the man who charged the big blue line in Chicago.”

  “We all make mistakes. They won’t tell me anything.”

  “Of course they will,” she says. “Because you’ll ask politely. And because people like you.”

  “People don’t like me. People run away as soon as they see me. I make strangers puke from across the street.”

  “I liked you on first sight.”

  “That’s a lie. You didn’t like me until I got my head bashed in.”

  “You were so dashing with the blood pouring out.”

  “Maybe that’s my superpower, being dashing when I get my head bashed in.”

  “Let’s find out,” says Helen.

  This is where the path has led, to this old house on this forlorn street in this forgotten part of the city. Frank asked his old lover Marisol to set him up with her cousin Jorge so he could make a deal, and this is where she sent him. And the fact that she hasn’t heard from Frank since bodes ill for him, and not too well for Erica either.

  “Frank went alone,” said Marisol after she came home from work, let the dog lovingly jump all over her, and learned who Oliver was and what he was after. “He left the car and took the el. Later the girl, your granddaughter, Erica? She got a phone call from someone at this number, and she left right after with the Camaro.”

  “Did she say what she was told?”

  “No. Just asked us to help her find a lawyer. Then she left.”

  “A lawyer?”

  “We didn’t get it either. We never heard from either of them afterward.�
�

  “No calls? No word from your cousin?”

  “I asked him, of course,” said Marisol. “All he said was, ‘Primita, don’t ask.’”

  That was the extent of the information Marisol had for him. A crumb, nothing more. But after giving it, Marisol was gracious enough to invite them both to dinner.

  Oliver and Ayana joined Marisol, along with Sheila, the woman whose face Hunter had tried to lick off, and some of the other residents at the dining table. Papers were stacked up at one end and the food laid out on the other: kale salad with nuts and dried cranberries, lentil soup, thick and black, and then some curried potato and cauliflower stew, along with a bitter red wine. Ayana ate like the hot dogs had been no hot dogs, but Oliver only picked. It all tasted so familiar, so much like the past that it caught in his throat. As they ate, Hunter roamed around the house, sniffing here and there, searching, Oliver supposed, for traces of Frank, and maybe Erica, too.

  But Oliver did some sniffing of his own. The house smelled like false dreams and blighted hopes and fairy tales gone all to hell. How many vegan meals just like this, at a communal table just like this, in a community of lost souls just like this, had he suffered through? He knew the story, knew it in his bones: the group house; artists just trying to find themselves; all for one and one for all until money or sex or failure or, even worse, success gets between them and it all goes to hell. Which, considering the condition of the ramshackle house, was where it seemed to be going.

  “We share most things,” said Sheila at the dinner. “The work, the rent, the political cause of the hour. And we support one another creatively.”

  “That sounds close to perfect,” said Ayana.

  “It is. It’s like we’re living with a family we chose instead of the one we got stuck with.”

  “Dysfunction is dysfunction,” said Oliver.

  “We seem to get along okay,” said Sheila.

  “Give it time.”

  “How long have you been playing guitar?” said Marisol to Ayana.

  “Not long. I’m not very good.”

  “She sings,” said Oliver.

  “Not really. B-minus.”

  “Maybe we can play together some, a little later.”