Freedom Road

by William Lashner

  “That would be . . . But I don’t know. Oliver?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “You can stay the night if you like. There’s an open room. Troy is still on the road and we can put some fresh sheets on. It’s where Erica and Frank stayed when they were here.”

  “Go ahead,” Oliver said. “You’ve bunked out on worse.”

  “We could find a place for you, too, Oliver,” said Marisol. “There’s always a couch.”

  “I’ll take the couch,” said Ayana.

  “I’ll find a motel,” said Oliver. “Something crappy and cheap to fit my mood. You said Erica wanted to find a lawyer?”

  “That’s right,” said Sheila. “Someone specific. Something Finnerman, or Fingerman, or something. She didn’t say why. I showed her a bar association list online.”

  He pushed his chair out, stood as straight as he was able, and threw his napkin on the table. “I have things to do.”

  “I’ll go with,” said Ayana.

  “Stay. Play your little toy. I’ll pick you up sometime tomorrow. You guys got a knife I can borrow?”

  “A pen knife?” said Sheila.

  “More like a cleaver.”

  “Where are you going, Oliver?” said the girl, a note in her voice like worry. As if she cared, the little actress.

  “Out,” said Oliver, and that’s where he is now, in his truck, out: out of Humboldt Park, out of any zone of sanity, out of his fucking mind.

  He takes the phone from his pocket, turns it on, and waits for it to reboot. He has a message. From his son. Marisol’s address. A little late, but it’s something. When was the last time he received anything from his son, other than his dead wife’s ashes? He does a little search and makes a call, leaves a message with the switchboard, closes up the phone, and looks again at the house. He has more than an inkling that he’s going to die tonight and, of all the places in the world to do it, that craphole house isn’t where he would choose. But then who the hell ever got to choose, other than his wife?

  “Don’t worry so much,” says Helen. “You won’t die tonight. I won’t let you.”

  “You might not have much to say in the matter.”

  “Oh, Oliver, don’t bet on that. We’ll be together, soon, I promise, but not yet. Not until you find her.”

  “There might not be anything left to find.”

  “She’s not here with me, Oliver. What does that tell you?”

  He doesn’t respond. What is there to say? That her vision of the afterlife is as narrow as his father’s? Wings, harps, clouds, Christ. Or worse, that she is just a figment of his psychosis, an aftereffect of the universe cracking under drugs too pure for his brittle brain? But real or false, he never could refuse Helen, even at the end, even after the end. He opens the door of the truck and climbs down to the pitted street. He grabs ahold of the dog’s leash and Hunter raises his head, as if he, like Oliver, would rather stay in the truck.

  “Let’s go, dog,” he says. “The master has spoken.”

  “Oh, and Oliver,” says Helen, after the dog jumps down but before Oliver can shut the door on her. “Don’t forget the knife.”

  He meanders up the sidewalk toward the house, the dog sniffing here and there, before taking a quick piss to impart his scent on the scene. It’s cute that the dog still thinks leaving his mark on the world matters. For Oliver that fiction died long ago. When he gets to the house, he starts climbing the steps as if the big kid isn’t even there. The kid, still looking at his phone, kicks out a leg like a tollgate.

  “What you want, old man?”

  “Jorge. He in?”

  “You the one he’s waiting on?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Then he not here.”

  “Maybe I am the one he’s waiting on.”

  “Then he still ain’t here.” As he says this, while looking at his phone, the kid lifts his T-shirt to show the fat handle of a gun sticking out of his belt.

  “Mommy must be so proud,” says Oliver.

  “Leave her out of it,” says the kid as he stands, pockets the phone, and then reaches for his gun.

  Before Oliver can react, the gun is out and waving at his chest, the hole in its fat barrel as black as all eternity, growing larger and more inviting as Oliver stares. It looks like a licorice taffy: you either like licorice or you don’t. The sight of the hollowness makes Oliver smile even as the dog starts to growl.

  The kid’s gaze darts to the dog, and as it does, the aim of the gun slips to Oliver’s right. Oliver drops the leash, reaches to pull the cleaver from behind his back, and smashes the flat of the blade hard against the gun, which flies out of the kid’s hand.

  The kid and Oliver both turn their heads to look at the gun as it bounces twice down the stone steps, smack and then another smack, before spinning onto the cement of the walk.

  The dog howls.

  The kid turns toward Oliver as Oliver reverses the swing of his arm and backhands the flat of the cleaver into the kid’s jaw, sending him sprawling onto the level stone by the door. The force of the blow sends Oliver tumbling down after him, his shoulder landing painfully atop the kid’s stomach, forcing a loud exhale. Oliver scrambles forward and lays the knife blade at the kid’s gasping throat.

  The dog barks and growls. Oliver’s back shrieks. “Let’s try this again,” he says.

  The kid’s eyes widen and he looks at Oliver as if at some kind of monster looming over him, a half-human, half-goat thing with big yellow teeth and gray hairs sprouting from its ears.

  “I’m here to see Jorge,” says Oliver between gritted teeth, with his back seizing and his blood boiling.

  It is all so stirring and painful and life-affirming in its own violent way that Oliver barely notices the front door opening until the dog stops his howling, growling.

  With the blade still against the kid’s neck, Oliver turns his head to see Hunter dancing all over a tall, thin man with tattoos up his arms and neck. The man is kneeling down, scratching the dog’s ears. Behind this tender scene stand two men with guns trained at Oliver’s face.

  “Look at you, such a good dog,” says the kneeling man, in a lispy accent. “I’ve missed you, Mr. Hunter. How have you been? Has this old buzzard been treating you nice?”

  The dog, in the midst of his love dance, turns his snout to Oliver and appears to grin.

  “Ungrateful cur,” sneers Oliver.

  “You talking to me?” says the man.

  “To the dog.”

  “Yeah, well, what else do you expect from a dog?”

  “Are you Jorge?”

  “I am. And you, I suppose, are the geezer my cousin said was probably stopping by. She says I’m not allowed to kill you, which is a pity. Now why don’t you get off my boy Rami before you accidentally lop off his head?”

  “I can’t,” says Oliver.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because my back went out.”

  A woman appears, standing behind the two men with guns. She’s pretty, with blue hair and bad teeth, and she laughs brightly.

  “Get him up,” says Jorge.

  The men with the guns step forward, grab Oliver by the armpits, and raise him to standing. It feels like his vertebrae are connected only by pain, and the pain itself is snapping. The agony takes his breath away.

  “Go pick up your piece, Rami,” says Jorge, “and be more damn careful next time.”

  As Rami rolls over and pushes himself to his feet, Oliver says, “You know what you need, kid?”

  “What’s that?” says Rami.

  “A bigger gun.”

  The woman laughs. Jorge takes hold of the leash and heads into the house, the dog trotting happily beside him. Oliver, back bowed, follows.

  They are sitting at the kitchen table, Jorge, the blue-haired woman, and Oliver, who once again has a hold of the dog’s leash. There are beers, there’s a joint, there’s the cleaver, and there is a gun. The nausea from the violence is settling nicely with the beer
in Oliver’s stomach.

  Oliver doesn’t care about the gun, but he looks at the joint longingly. It would help his screeching back, so it would be medicinal, Really, Officer, but he needs his wits about him, so he lets it pass when offered and sticks to the beer and the handful of Advil the blue-haired woman gave him.

  “Marisol told me about your granddaughter,” says Jorge as he holds the smoldering joint. “It’s a shame she mixed up with that Frank. I never liked nothing about Frank except the dog. The dog I liked. Smarter than Frank, you ask me.”

  “And just as loyal,” says Oliver.

  “There you go.”

  “Was she here? My granddaughter?”

  “Nah, man. Just Frank.” Jorge takes a hit. “He said he needed a quick infusion of cash to keep him on the road.” Exhale. “He had some stuff, good quality. Theresa here checked it out. It was good, pure. We made a deal and that was that.”

  “That was that?”

  “Simple as stone, man.”

  “I’m trying to track him down before it all goes to shit. This was the last place I knew he had been to. Did he say where he was headed?”

  “California is what he said. The sun, the sand. Truth was, I would have paid him just to get him out of town and away from Marisol. He was no damn good for her. She’s family, right? You do what you need to do for family. You know what I’m talking about, you riding out here like the Lone Ranger on a broken-down horse, looking for your granddaughter with nothing but a cleaver and a dog. I admire that. And what you did to Rami, man, he won’t be living that shit down for years. For years.” Another hit. “The things we do for family. Am I right?”

  “Are you?” says Oliver before he takes a swallow of beer. He thinks about grabbing the cleaver and taking off one of Jorge’s hands, just for the fuck of it. Teach the lying bastard a lesson about lying. He makes a quick calculation about whether he could get away with it. Probably not, but he bets blue-haired Theresa would be amused. He can tell right off she’s too good for him.

  “I got an aunt, Marisol’s mother,” says Jorge, droning on like he’s got to get something off his tattooed chest. “Auntie Alejandra. She’s one of them women who is forever mourning the man who was no damn good for her in the first place. Pepito, that son of a bitch. Gave her Marisol and then the clap and then he died in a knife fight in Pilsen. It’s more than twenty years later and Alejandra, she still wears black. Hasn’t been laid in decades, drying up like a raisin. But that Marisol, she is her sweet little princess.”

  Oliver is sort of listening. There’s something to digest here, he knows, but his back is hurting and the beer tastes good and the dog is acting strangely. There’s an open door leading down to the basement and the dog is facing it at the end of a taut leash, his body tensed, one front leg reaching out and his nose pressing forward as if against a piece of glass. What’s down there, a brace of pheasants?

  “And now there’s not a Sunday dinner that don’t go by without Auntie Alejandra going on and on about how Marisol is wasting her life with her guitar and this no-good idioto or that no-good idioto. And Frank was the worst of all the idiotos, man. It got to the point where mi madre, she told me I had to do something just to shut her big sister up, you know what I mean. So I convinced him to make a move and then made sure it all went to fuck. Family. Shit. The messes they make. Am I right?”

  Oliver takes another swallow of beer and nods, like this is all as fascinating as the northern lights, like Jorge is another Allen Ginsberg spouting Buddhist truths with his poetry and finger cymbals. Oliver nods and nods as he gently lets go of the leash.

  It takes a moment for the dog to realize he is free. Feeling the leash slack, he looks at Oliver as if to say, Hold me back, don’t let me go, but then he’s off, charging at the door and down the stairs, the leash rattling after him.

  Jorge is blathering on about something or other to do with his sour aunt Alejandra when he stops, mercifully, in midsentence and looks at the doorway the dog just darted into. Oliver slams down the beer and raises himself to what almost qualifies as standing.

  “I’ll get the little bastard,” says Oliver as he grabs the cleaver off the table.

  The moment it takes Jorge and Theresa to react is long enough for Oliver to stagger to the doorway, flick on the light, and start down the rickety wooden stairs. Jorge shouts after him, but Oliver keeps heading down. Until his boot hits the wet cement of the basement floor and a shock reverberates up his spine, along with a pathetic disappointment.

  For a moment he thought Hunter might have found her, finally, Erica, bound and gagged in that foul basement. For a moment he thought he would be the hero of the day with the dog and his cleaver—slash, slash. For a moment his hope soared, but reality has a way of always slapping him straight.

  The basement is empty, except for a furnace, the rusting hulks of a washer and a dryer, and a metal table in the middle, with a couple chairs. Empty. Like his hope, his life, his prospects, his leads for ever finding his granddaughter.

  But the dog is having none of Oliver’s melancholic self-pity. Hunter is deep in sniff, as if there is something precious buried among the crap. Hunter barks and sniffs, scampers to the table, to a corner, and back to the table, where Oliver spies stains on the cement floor.

  Oliver totters over to the stains, toes them with his boot. Blood? Hunter pushes Oliver’s leg away as he gets another sniff. Frank Cormack’s blood? The stairs shudder with pursuers. His back cracks as he reaches down to finger one of the stains. Nothing smears. He can’t tell the age. New? Days or weeks old? What the hell does he know about stains? When he straightens up as much as he is able, he turns to face the wooden stairway with the cleaver in his hand.

  Jorge stares at him from the bottom of the steps. Theresa stands above Jorge with the gun.

  “Where is he?” says Oliver.

  “I told you already, old man. We made a deal, I gave him cash, he left for the coast.”

  “And every word a lie.”

  “Yeah, well, what else did you expect? Frank never should have come back. I save his ass last time, set it up so he gets gone without being killed. That was the deal. And Auntie Alejandra was so grateful, mi madre so happy with me for once.”

  “My heart bleeds,” says Oliver.

  “But then he comes back? Hitting up Marisol all over again? What the hell was I going to do? And it wasn’t like Frank left square. He owed big time still. He knew what was waiting for him in this town. What you care about him anyhow? He just doing with your granddaughter what he do to Marisol. Taking her for a ride to nowhere. You should be thanking me. You should be kissing my ring.”

  “I should be putting this cleaver in your face.”

  “You got spit for an old man, I’ll give you that.”

  “It’s bile,” says Oliver. “At your fucking gall.”

  Oliver imagines it all just then, the hurl of the cleaver, the purity of violence, bone on flesh, the cleansing spray of blood, the flash of the gun, the taste of licorice. It is so inviting, so soul thrilling, so soul filling, that the temptation shakes him in his boots.

  It is the sight of the blue-haired woman on the stairs that brings him out of his reverie and into the world where his desire for self-immolation will do nothing to help find Frank Cormack or his granddaughter. He never fails to disappoint himself, and this little jaunt to South Chicago is no exception. But what is that there, right there, on the woman’s pretty lips: a malicious sneer or the hint of an encouraging smile? It matters because she’s the one with the gun.

  He lets out a grunt as he pulls back the chair beside the stains on the floor. He sits down hard, tosses the cleaver onto the table. It bangs and then rattles, metal on metal. He realizes he’s going to have to talk his way out of this one. Fuck.

  “You make me so goddamn weary, Jorge,” says Oliver in a slow, calm voice as he rubs his huge hand over his skull. “No matter how shit your life is, and I know a shit life when I see one, you still think it’s your duty to prote
ct cousin Marisol, whose life is not shit, whose life is pretty damn sweet from what I can see. And why are you stepping in? Because of Aunt Alejandra, a desiccated witch, who wants only to squeeze the balls of the entire world in her shriveled little fist. And she’s sure as hell squeezing yours.”

  The blue-haired woman laughs, something rich and personal, as if she’s had a run-in with Jorge’s dear old aunty.

  “I am so sick of this goddamn country and its fucking tribes,” continues Oliver. “You’re in or you’re out, and if you’re out, fuck you. Frank Cormack wasn’t in your tribe, so you sold him out twice. All for your wretched aunt Alejandra? Who’s next to go? Who else are you going to sacrifice on the altar of that witch’s sexual deprivation? If I was you, I’d take the cleaver and slice my own goddamn throat.”

  “Careful, old man.”

  “I’m tired. Are you tired? I could sleep right here. I think I might, except that someone needs to save the son of a bitch you set up to die.”

  “And you think you’re the one?”

  “Who else is there?”

  “Why would you even try?” says the woman on the steps.

  Oliver looks at her. “Because no one else wants to. And because I made a promise. And because the only tribe I know is the tribe of the tribeless, and Frank Cormack belongs.”

  “Go back to the nut farm,” says Jorge.

  “At least he’s trying,” says the woman. “And he’s right, Jorge. What you did to Frank was wrong, egging him on to do that deal and setting him up to fail. That was low.”

  “It was a family thing.”

  “You and your family,” she says. “Fuck your family. There’s a man named Delaney.”

  “Shut up.”

  “He’s the one Frank owed. He has a place on the west side, an abandoned factory where he keeps everything, his motorcycles, his drugs. Jorge gave Frank to him. He’s the next stop on your trail.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Theresa?”

  “It wasn’t right what you did, Jorge. I don’t know what this old man is going to do about it, but what you did wasn’t right. And this way it’s Delaney who has to kill him, not us. It’s cleaner that way. I got the address. You want me to write it down?”