Freedom Road

by William Lashner

  “I remember.”

  “I visited as often as I could, but I regret not moving out there now.”

  “What would we have if we didn’t have our regrets?”

  “Memories. Fond memories. At least some of them are. I missed you, Oliver.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “Maybe I didn’t, but I would have if I ever gave you much thought.”

  “You know,” says Oliver, “I think I will work on the old stable. Give me something to do.”

  “Of course you will. It’s a stupid and futile gesture.”

  “The only kind I like.”

  At that she smiled. “Same old Oliver.”

  He is scavenging in a pile of crap behind the stable, searching for building materials, finding a few cinder blocks, some twisted metal fencing, rotting planks of wood among the weeds. He is trying to lift a steel beam when he looks up and sees his granddaughter, and a blade of ice slips into his heart. He can deal with Ayana and Gracie, sure, but with Erica he is so afraid of making a mistake he is paralyzed. For a moment he wishes his wife would pipe up, but she remains obstinately silent.

  “Hey, Grandpop,” says Erica. “What are you doing?”

  Still gripping the beam, Oliver says, “Looking for something useful in this pile of crap.”

  “Gracie says you’re thinking of fixing up the stable.”

  “I did it once, I can do it again.”

  “It’s a wreck.”

  “So?”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to knock it down and build something new?”

  “What would be the point in that?”

  “You’d end up with a nicer place.”

  “But it wouldn’t be this place.”

  “I get it,” she says, nodding her head, though he doubts that she does. “My father talked about the farm more than you would think. It’s why I decided that Frank and I would hide out here. What was it like, living in the stable with him and Grandmom?”

  He drops the beam, stands as straight as he is able, and claps the rust off his hands. “It was as sweet as honey cake,” he says. “Different than out in the world.”

  “How so?”

  “What mattered in the stable were love and art, family and community, the land and the sky. What matters in the world are money, status, power, domination. Where would you rather live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Get back to me when you figure it out.”

  “Do you think I made a mistake?”

  “Leaving home?”

  “Or leaving with Frank.”

  “Where would we be without our mistakes?”

  “Back in AP chem, I suppose.”

  “I never much cared for chemistry,” says Oliver, “although Crazy Bob could teach you a thing or two.”

  “It must have been dreamy here back in the day.”

  “It was something, all right.”

  “Maybe I should stay for a bit.”

  “Here?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I needed to get away to clear things in my head; maybe I can do it here. And it might be safer than being on the road with Frank, which hasn’t been a picnic, let me tell you. Instead of just leaving, like I should have, I convinced him to go with me, you know, because I was scared to be alone. And when you went you had Grandmom.”

  “I only went because of her. She was what I was running to.”

  “The farm is so peaceful. Things might be able to calm down for me here.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “You know, every stupid thing Frank did he did because of me. Somehow I feel responsible.”

  “Maybe you are.”

  “What do I do about it?”

  “It’s your story; write it yourself.”

  “Aren’t you, like, supposed to give me sage advice?”

  “It’s good with millet.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not easy, that’s all I can tell you. Living your own life is hard. It’s easier just going along, doing what they tell you to do.”

  “Was it worth it, though, running off on your own? Do you regret it?”

  “You’ll regret it either way. That’s Kierkegaard.”

  “Who?”

  “Maybe college wouldn’t be the worst thing. Look, Erica, living your own life means living your own life. The rest is dicta.”

  “What’s dicta?”

  “Useless crap.”

  “You don’t have anything to tell me?”

  “Your mother and father love you.”

  “I know that.”

  “And your grandmother too.”

  “If she was here, what would she say?”

  “She’d say she never liked millet.”

  When the girl goes off, he can feel her disappointment. They all want answers when they don’t even know the questions. They read Robert Frost to decide which path to take without realizing the poet is talking about fatuous old fools justifying their own lives with false flashes of bravery. What could Oliver tell her about the beauty or costs of the life he chose? He tries to finger again the memory of the perfect winter’s day with his wife and child, but that’s not what comes to him now. It is as if the stable itself has raised a memory of its own, a shadow cast on the side of the building, the shadow of a man, tall and dour, with all hunger and no hope in his heart.

  “You weren’t at the assembly last night,” said Lucius.

  Oliver was working on a maple bowl, slamming the curved blade of his adze into the meat of the thick wooden disk, when Lucius appeared. Oliver took two more shots before putting down the tool. He had always felt uneasy around Lucius. There was something of a street preacher about him. San Francisco had been rife with the type, peddlers of the true and only faith, selling it to those searching for any piece of hype to hang on to in the storms of their lives.

  “The assemblies are an important part of our democratic process here,” said Lucius. “It hurts the whole community when we’re not all together.”

  “Do you have a point?”

  “The point is, we’re running short of money, which you would know if you attended last night. We have rent to pay, electricity. And the food we’re growing isn’t enough to keep us fed year-round. We’re in danger of losing the farm.”

  “I’m not much for meetings.”

  “You’re not much for fieldwork either.”

  “I put my time in at the orchard. And when I’m out there in the spring I don’t see you plowing. But I can be of more use in here.”

  “Making bowls? We can’t eat bowls.”

  “They sell at the market.”

  “For how much, Oliver? Helen’s art brings more than your little pieces, but together it’s still not enough to keep you in wood and paint, water and food.”

  “It’s nice you’re keeping such careful track of our earnings, since we don’t see a penny of it.”

  “Some of us talked it over, without Helen, and we thought you might want to ask your father for help.”

  “Some of you talked it over, did you?”

  “The farm’s in trouble. We’re not going to make it through the winter without making some changes.”

  “If you want to give me a helper, I could boost production. More bowls, bigger pieces of furniture.”

  “Let’s be honest, Oliver. Bowls aren’t going to save us.”

  “Neither will my father.”

  “Why do you think you’re here? How do you think you ended up with such a sweet setup in the stable? When she put you up for inclusion, Gracie said you had money. Fire gets some from her family and that helps. You need to step up, too. It’s only fair.”

  “If I wanted to live off my father’s money, I’d be back in Chicago, drinking martinis at the club.”

  “Just ask him.”

  “No.”

  “Oliver.”

  Oliver lifted the adze high before slamming it down, chewing out a thick shiver of wood and splitt
ing the roughed-out bowl at the same time.

  “That’s not going to be worth much now,” said Lucius.

  It wasn’t time that killed this place, it was the world. It creeps in like fog—the money cares, the corruption and politics—and fills the air with a noisome mist that devours flesh like acid. Oliver is standing now behind the ruin it has wreaked, still with his eyes closed, counting the losses, when he hears sounds approaching, a grunt, a swing step.

  “You got a minute?” says Frank Cormack, limping toward him without his crutch, his injured leg stiff as pine.

  “No.”

  “Too busy standing around a pile of crap with your eyes closed?”

  “I’m thinking,” says Oliver. “I’m crafting a plan of action. Something you might consider.”

  “That’s exactly what I came to talk to you about.”

  “The answer is no.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whatever plan you came up with, you’re not asking my opinion or looking for my permission. What you want is money.”

  “You think you can read me that easily?”

  “Like a cheap paperback. You’re a money-mad dog, that’s all you are, rushing here or there in a desperate attempt to fill the holes they tell you need to be filled.”

  “If I was looking for money, would I be coming to someone tooling around in a truck like yours? I was just thinking, I don’t know, about Erica.”

  “Jesus, the two of you.”

  “You know this whole get-out-on-the-road thing was her idea. She wanted us to follow your example.”

  “That’s funny, I don’t remember stealing heroin from a Russian drug lord before my wife and I headed west. And I sure as hell don’t remember sticking up a mini-mart on the road.”

  “Yeah, I screwed up. I was trying to get a stake for our trip. And Erica had nothing to do with any of it. But the way it worked out has gotten me thinking about everything.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “I don’t know what to do from here on in. I can’t go back, I know that. But I’m not sure how to move forward. All I want to do is what’s best for her.”

  “Then do it.”

  “But I don’t know what that is. She wants to be free, man, she wants to see the world, chart her own path, all the jive you put into her head. That’s what I thought I was giving her.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I see I’m giving her nothing but trouble.”

  “So you decided to blame me.”

  “All I want is some advice or something. You said you were going to help me.”

  “I lied.”

  “I want to do the right thing.”

  “No one wants to do the right thing. They want to do the easy thing and be convinced it’s the right thing.”

  “You’re a boiled old peanut, aren’t you? The word is you’re thinking of fixing up the stable?”

  “I thought I’d try.”

  “You want some help?”

  “You’re a fuck-up with a bum leg who knows nothing about carpentry. Why would I want your help?”

  “Because no one else is offering?”

  “Well,” says Oliver Cross, before hocking up a wad of phlegm from his throat and spitting it onto the ground. “There is that.”

  Oliver surveys what’s left of his workshop as the injured boy awkwardly sweeps the leaves and garbage from the stable’s wooden floor, the little dead animals, the shivers of roof timbers that have fallen to the boards that Oliver laid over the dirt decades ago.

  The workbench is in place with the vises still bolted onto the surface, the big hunks of metal a deep maroon from the rust, but what’s left of the tool set is scattered on the floor: planes and saws, adzes, an ax, a set square, a brace, scattered auger bits. One by one he picks up the precious tools, brushes off the crust of dirt and loose rust. Each piece holds the memory of the trees whose wood it gouged, the force of his hands on their grips. He lifts his old spokeshave, brushes dirt off the handles, takes hold. Still balanced, still ready to shape another fucking bowl.

  He wonders for a moment why he left all his precious tools here to rot, and then, with a wince, he remembers.

  “Well now, what a nice little coffee klatch,” says Erica from the open door of the stable. She is standing next to Ayana, looking in at the two men working quietly on opposite ends of the building.

  “I’m helping your grandpa resurrect his old homestead,” says Frank.

  “Really? Why?”

  “He’s trying to wile money from me,” says Oliver.

  “Trust me, Frank, that won’t work,” says Ayana. “Like getting blood from a stone, which is what Oliver’s heart is made of.”

  “My father was born in here,” says Erica. “Isn’t that right, Grandpop?”

  “Right there,” he says, nodding to the corner where the bed had been.

  “What do you remember of the day he was born?”

  “It was night,” says Oliver. “And there was blood.”

  “Such a romantic, Oliver,” says Ayana. “What about the joy of seeing your baby boy for the first time? What about sharing the moment of birth with your wife?”

  “It also stank,” says Oliver.

  “How did somebody born here end up like my dad?” says Erica.

  “You were in my father’s club in Chicago, right?”

  “Such a snooty place.”

  “How did somebody born to that,” says Oliver, “end up here?”

  Erica thinks on that for a moment and then smiles.

  “We were going to go swimming in the reservoir, Frank,” says Ayana. “You want to come?”

  “Maybe I should keep working,” says Frank before looking over at Oliver.

  “Just go,” says Oliver. “I see you hop around on that bad leg anymore I’m going to get seasick.”

  “You’re still not getting any money,” says Ayana before the three head out to the reservoir. “I can promise you that.”

  After they all leave, Oliver puts the spokeshave on the workbench with the rest of the tools and walks over to the part of the stable Frank started cleaning. The kid worked a bit, not too well considering his leg and his lack of interest, but he tried, at least. No one else came in to lend a hand.

  On the floor, Oliver can finally see the splintery surface of the wood. From the workbench he grabs a rusted chisel, returns to where Frank swept, stoops down, and slams the blade into one of the boards. Fibers separate like chewed-over pieces of string. The roof gives out, the rains fall, the insects come from underneath. Ruin cascades.

  “I think it’s time,” said Helen, one night in their bed, with the boy asleep between them. “It feels here like it felt in San Francisco.”

  “It’s not the same,” said Oliver. “It’s just something the farm is passing through on its way to its next evolution.”

  “And what will that be, Oliver?”

  “We don’t know, that’s the point. Maybe something brilliantly spiritual. Something to give hope to all humanity.”

  “Or something dead. It feels played out. It feels like it’s time to leave.”

  “And go back to the world? For what?”

  “Maybe to take care of our son.”

  “Fletcher loves it here. He has nature, he has friends. He is becoming his true self.”

  “He’s not speaking.”

  “He’ll speak when he wants to.”

  “And his teeth, Oliver. We need to fix his teeth.”

  “Can we not talk about his fucking teeth anymore? I can’t go back. I can’t fail again.”

  “It’s not failure to know when to move on.”

  “Tell that to my father. I need to make this work.”

  “Where we are is not important. Wherever we are we’ll have each other.”

  “Easy for you to say. You grew up in a split-level in Havertown. You’re not a Cross. You’re not living in the shadow of the perfect life the perfect brother w
as not allowed to live.”

  “Oh, Oliver.”

  She reached out to caress his cheek and he slapped her hand away.

  They decided they needed a break. They decided that without a break something irreversible would happen between them. And within that break he fell into the embrace of Crazy Bob’s pharmaceuticals and Gracie’s slender arms. Even as he once again felt the universe cracking above him, he could imagine that he was finally leading the life that was supposed to be his destiny, a brilliant life of pure freedom that held the possibility of changing a world that desperately needed changing.

  He knows things now he didn’t know then. He knows freedom isn’t in a drug, or on a road, or in a snarl of defiance. Instead, it lives in the bones of your relationships. He knows he was always free with Helen because Helen never wanted chains on his body or his soul. And he knows the goddamn world is well satisfied with what it is and will knock the crap out of anyone who tries to change it. But back then he still hadn’t learned those truths, and so he ran around the farm like a jackass with his tail on fire, at least until Fletcher showed up at Gracie’s cabin, jabbering about a coyote and Lucius and the blood—a searing moment that brought him back to himself.

  A day later, with the ruins of the main house still smoldering from the fire he had set to destroy a crime scene he didn’t understand but that he knew held only misery for him and his kin, he and Helen and the boy pulled away in the same van in which they had arrived seven years before. They left with the fiction that they were visiting Helen’s ill mother and had every intention of coming back. No one needed to know they were fleeing for good; no one needed to read the guilt and fear that were sending them back to the world.

  And as they prepared to flee, to keep his cover, Oliver left his precious tools in the stable, consigned with all his outsize dreams of creating a new kind of life to the dustheap of his history.

  31

  FINAL MASQUERADE

  “Aren’t you coming in?” called out Erica from the reservoir.

  Frank Cormack sat on the bank, among the weedy grasses, facing one of the high hills that framed the farm. Erica was swimming with Ayana, two naked women, young as spring, with the sun shining off their slicked hair and soft shoulders, kicking their long legs in the swimming hole. Why wouldn’t he be in? Well, the pain for one reason. And he was tired after working all morning on that stupid stable for another. And then he wondered what the old goat would think if he saw Frank skinny-dipping with his granddaughter, even though he had to know that Frank was banging her silly. It pissed him off that Erica’s grandfather had wormed his way into his head, but if he was going to make this hustle work, every move had to be right.