“I missed you, Oliver,” says Wendy.
“I know these sons of bitches,” continues Oliver. “I’ve known them all my life. They’re about money and power and leeching the blood off those too weak or too filled with their bullshit to fight back, like Frank was before he got the balls to turn the table on the sons of bitches.”
“We’ve seen their like before, that’s for sure,” says Crazy Bob.
“Vampires,” says Flit.
“The same vampires who sent Toby to Vietnam,” says Oliver. “The same vampires who killed my brother. The same vampires who are stealing the country right under our noses. They have money and might and the will to kill. The young like Erica and Frank are just loose change to them, not worth stooping over and picking up off the asphalt. Their deaths won’t register on their profit sheets so their lives don’t matter. But like every bully, deep down they’re afraid, and what they’re afraid of is us.”
“What do we have?” says Gracie.
“We have each other, and we don’t give a shit about their money, and we’re too old to be scared of dying. We’re going to get Erica back our way, without giving up anybody because we don’t give up on anybody. What are they going to do, kill us? Do us the fucking favor.”
“I can put out a call,” says Crazy Bob. “There’s still a network of the old-timers ready to raise their fists and start the revolution.”
“Defend the farm.”
“Defend the cause.”
“Resist.”
“Defy.”
“Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh.”
“Who?”
“Fascist pig bastards.”
“Hell no, we won’t go.”
“This farm belongs to us.”
“Well,” says Oliver, breaking the spell, “technically to me and then to Fletcher.”
“What? Oliver?”
“I bought it with my dad’s money to stop old man Oates from kicking you guys off. And we have plans for it.”
“Development?”
“Weed.”
“Really?”
“Crazy Bob’s special crop.”
“I always wanted to be an icon,” says Crazy Bob.
“Put out the call.”
“We’ll need more guns.”
“And some explosives.”
“And Advil.”
“Those bastards won’t know what hit them once we get the Advil.”
“I tell you, I feel twenty-five again.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says Oliver. “Let’s not get carried away.”
“Hey, who’s that?” says Flit, and the group’s attention and guns whip around to see a pale, stolid figure jogging heavily toward them along the northern edge of the valley.
“Crap,” says Oliver when he recognizes the pink golf shirt and realizes who it is.
It takes a few minutes for a gasping Fletcher to make his ungainly way to the crew. He stops running, puts his hands on his hips, bends over, and takes off his glasses. Sweat cascades across his face in a sheet.
“So,” gasps Fletcher as he catches his breath. “What’s up?”
After Fletcher is brought up to speed on the events of the morning, and while the others are figuring out a plan of action, Oliver grabs his son by the collar of his golf shirt and pulls him to the side. “Get the hell out of here,” he says. “Get off the farm before it all blows to hell.”
“They have my daughter.”
“And you still have a wife and another child to take care of. Let me handle this.”
“Would you run? Would you even think of running?”
“Don’t start suddenly using me as an example. Why did you let her go anyway?”
“She said we had to. She said she’d jump out of the van if we didn’t let her out. So I took her to the station. I even gave her money so she wouldn’t starve. What else was I going to do?”
“Maybe just say no. You’re her father, you could have stopped her.”
“Did your father ever stop you? Did Mom’s father ever stop her?”
“That man hated on me so hard,” says Oliver, “it kept him alive for ten years after his stroke.”
“Did you ever think of just giving the bastards what they want?” says Fletcher.
“They want Frank.”
“It seems a fair trade.”
“He’s somebody’s son, somebody’s brother. As a lawyer, is that what you would have us do?”
“No.”
“And as a father who doesn’t want his daughter to call him a murderer the rest of his life, is that what you would have us do?”
“You’re right, you’re right, you’re always right. Happy?”
“Yes.”
“Jeez, you’re almost smiling. It looks weird. Stop it.”
“I’ve been looking for a fight for the past fifty years and here it is. But you don’t have to be part of it.”
“Why do you always do this to me? When you fixed my teeth, when I quit guitar lessons, when I went to the wrong college, when you took care of Mom without letting me help, and then when you went off after Erica without me, you’ve always made me feel like I’m letting you down.”
“That’s on me, not you. I had a father, too, who let me know exactly whose shoes I could never fill.”
“I often wondered what your brother would have thought of me carrying his name.”
Oliver looks at his son, then looks away. “If he was here right now he would look at us both and think us the worst kind of fools.”
Fletcher laughs.
“But he would stand with us,” says Oliver. “I have no doubt.”
“And I will, too.”
“Okay. But you do as I say. Follow my lead and I’ll deliver Erica into your arms. I promise.”
“And then you’ll come home? You’ll come home and get that thing in your neck looked at? And you’ll let me handle the legal things? You’ll let me take care of you?”
“Sure, yeah. If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want.”
“Done.”
“So what now?”
“Now?” says Oliver, rubbing his head. “Now I need to take a nap.”
Oliver leaves his son and heads toward the truck. “Where are you going?” says Gracie.
“To the stable,” says Oliver.
“For your afternoon siesta, old man?” says Frank, who stands there grinning, awaiting some flippant witticism as a response.
“Shut up, grab hold of Hunter, and get in the truck,” says Oliver.
The boy, the dog, and Oliver drive quietly toward the stable but then Oliver passes it and keeps going, toward the mouth of the road before dodging around Gracie’s cabin to the edge of the southern hill of the valley. There he stops the truck.
“What are we doing here?” says Frank.
“Saying goodbye,” says Oliver, before he opens the door and climbs down. As Frank follows, Oliver walks around to the side of the truck and unlocks the aluminum toolbox at the front of the bed. He pulls out a hammer, a T square, a box of nails, a bundle of cash bills, and another bundle of cash bills. He can hear Frank’s intake of breath.
“You can’t take your car, because they’re waiting for you at the end of the drive,” says Oliver as he pulls out still another bundle.
“What are you doing?” says Frank.
“I’m giving you enough to buy another when you can. You only need to get to an airport anyway, preferably in Mexico. You could just take a bus and keep the extra cash.”
“I don’t understand.”
Oliver closes the lid of the toolbox, stacks the bundles one on top of the other. “This is what you were after all along, isn’t it? A stake for your new life. A bankroll to freedom.”
Frank looks at him until his eyes are drawn back to the money.
“You did everything I could have asked for,” says Oliver. “You let her go for her sake, not for yours.”
“I didn’t say no to Erica for the fucking money.”
&nb
sp; “It doesn’t matter, though, does it? If you stick around they’re probably going to kill you, and the hell with that. Over that hill is your road to freedom.”
Frank turns to look at the hill and the path over it, then turns back to look at the money.
“Take the money, take the dog, and go.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say goodbye,” says Oliver.
The dog barks and Oliver rubs Hunter’s side with his boot. “You I might miss,” says Oliver to the dog, “but probably not.” Then Oliver looks at Frank flatly. “Try to figure out a better way to live.”
There’s a hesitation in the boy, something Oliver didn’t expect, but it doesn’t last long. Frank Cormack grabs at the money like a hungry man grabbing at a pie.
It feels like Oliver is melting into the seat of his truck as he drives along the rutted path back to the stable. It feels like his consciousness is leaking out through his ears. Weariness has come upon him like a sickness. He staggers beneath the stable’s portico and through the wide front door. He expects to fall into sleep the moment he collapses onto the bed, but instead he falls into memory.
He is surprised that sleep is evading him, but not that the memories arise. This place has been a memory dispenser since he first stepped into it upon returning to the farm. He sees again the fight with his wife, the visit from Lucius, but new memories, too: teaching his son at the workbench how to hold a hammer and a chisel; sitting on the bed, peeling an orange while Helen sleeps naked beside him, her ribs rising with each breath. Images of sex and love and anger and work, all in this place, ascend and overlap and twist into new images that take away his breath.
It reminds him of the way his mind bent after drinking the potion in the sweat lodge in the New Mexican mountains. That night the images rose in front of him like sand paintings floating in the air, dissolving one into the next. And that memory, from outside this place, brings new ones without any connection to the heap of rot and rust in which he lies.
Protest songs in Buena Vista Park.
Football with his school pals by the lake.
Spinning wildly at a music festival in Monterey.
His mother staring at the famous diner painting at the Art Institute with tears in her eyes.
Teaching little Fletcher how to hold his new bat in the fields of the farm, and Oliver’s brother, Fletcher, teaching little Oliver the same thing when he was only five.
A birthday party in Highland Park when he turned seven with candles on a white cake and a piñata.
A birthday party at 128 Avery Road when his son turned nine with candles on a blue cake and a piñata and Oliver wearing clown’s makeup and juggling for all the little kiddies, laughter bursting out each time an orange fell with a wet slap onto the ground.
And those aren’t the only memories from his time after the farm. Doing construction work on the developments to keep his family fed. Watching his son graduate from middle school, high school, college, his white teeth gleaming as he was handed his diplomas. Giving out Halloween candy to the kids on Avery Road as Helen exclaimed at the costumes. You are such a beautiful princess. Waiting outside the hospital room when Erica was born.
They rise, these memories, one after another, a stream of images so painful and pure they turn his stomach. He can’t keep track of them all as they fill the space around him and above him until the inside of the stable has become a galaxy of memory, each recollection a pinprick of light piercing the darkness. And the brightest of the stars, the red giants and supernovas that guide his eyes from one sector to the next, all include her, yes, the one true thing, the very North Star of his life. A dam cracks in his heart and the overflow fills him with tears.
“Don’t get misty eyed, you old fraud,” says Helen.
“You’re back,” he says, wiping at his face with the back of his big old hand. “I didn’t know if you’d make it in time.”
“I couldn’t miss the big finish.”
“Where did you go?”
“Where I always go when you get too full of yourself.”
“To that speed addict Dereck, with the blond hair and the leather hat who was always hitting on you in the Haight?”
“Death has mellowed him.”
“One can only hope. I missed your hectoring.”
“I know you did.”
“They have Erica.”
“Which makes it a good thing that you are here.”
“You sent me here.”
“Then good for me.”
“What am I going to do about it?”
“I don’t know, dear. That’s out of my realm. Like dealing with Fletcher is out of yours.”
“I tried.”
“I know. Remember what I used to tell my art students who were devoid of any talent?”
“Good effort.”
“And it was, darling.”
“You’re heading back east in the urn. Little Elisa insisted. So we’ll be separated, finally. She says she talks to you.”
“Sweet thing.”
“But you don’t talk back to her.”
“Only to you.”
“Just my luck. I think I make you up. I think you’re a figment of my fancy.”
“You’ve finally figured it out.”
“Now you’re playing with me.”
“Why were you crying?”
“Memories. They say your life flashes before your eyes in the moments before your death.”
“And that’s why you’re sad, because you think you’re going to die?”
“My dying will be nobody’s tragedy, especially not my own. No, because of what I saw, what my life had been. Did the memories come for you at the end?”
“Some.”
“Did they make you happy?”
“Joyful.”
“What did you see?”
“Only you.”
“That’s what I want, too, but everything has come back. All the failures, the wrong turns, the thwarted plans and missed trains. I was given everything and accomplished nothing.”
“What did you expect? To cure cancer? To save the world?”
“Why not? If I had put my heart into something, if I had taken up my brother’s mantle, there’s no telling . . .”
“You put your heart into me, into the boy, into our life.”
“That’s not enough for a Cross.”
“I hear your father talking from the grave.”
“He’d be the first to tell me I didn’t cure cancer, I didn’t save the world.”
“You saved my world, you cured my cancer. Wasn’t that enough?”
“No.”
“Well then, you’re in luck, dear heart. You get to save Erica, too.”
37
OLD MAN
They had come for him, the Russian and his minions, Delaney and a crew, even Jorge with his gang, including the kid from outside that house in South Chicago, all the frightening figures of Frank Cormack’s past had come for him, as was inevitable from the start. And this henchman army, twenty strong, had brought with them their guns, their ill will, and Erica, held tight by that asshole Ken with his stupid ponytail in case she had the deranged notion to run. They had also come for the computer, and they had also come to rape and pillage, but most of all they had come to put Frank Cormack, who had betrayed them all, out of his misery.
And in a way, in this primary purpose, they had succeeded.
Years after the battle of the blood farm, it is difficult for Frank to remember the way he was before he returned to live at Seven Suns for good. Life on the farm is hard for a boy who only wanted to wander, but he knows each day what needs to be done and finds comfort in the doing of it. There are the cows to milk twice a day, and the chickens to care for, and the vegetable garden to plant and weed and harvest. He had even found another peacock to strut around the grounds and unfurl his iridescent shield, like a superhero whose only power is beauty. The old folk want to keep these parts of the farm alive so they can stay in to
uch with the land and their pasts, and who is he to argue?
But the rest of the farm, the great expanse from the juniper to the west end of the valley, is now rich with Crazy Bob’s Special Blend. That’s what they call it since that’s what it is. A whole new irrigation system had to be put in, with feeder lines running from the reservoir across the fields, and greenhouses were raised to start the seedlings, and a great wooden barn was built next to the cow pasture where the plants are hung to dry. It is not an easy business—all their competitors are big agra concerns or the pet projects of billionaires from the Bay—but they have found their niche, hiring workers from as far south as Pueblo to keep things humming, under Frank’s direction.
What the hell had Frank known about running a farm when he took control four years ago? Nothing, that’s what. But Fletcher Cross, the farm’s owner, had told him he needed to learn everything he could about the legal cannabis business, and that’s what he did, with the help of some business and agricultural courses at the University of Colorado–Colorado Springs.
Now Crazy Bob’s Special Blend is a big seller, with a high reputation all across the west. They put Crazy Bob’s picture on the label, and that seems to have done the trick. There is Ben and Jerry, there is Famous Amos and Mrs. Fields, there is Orville and his popcorn, there is Burt and his bees, and now there is Crazy Bob. These days everyone wants bud from Crazy Bob, and Frank Cormack is the man who makes it happen. Too bad Crazy Bob himself didn’t make it past that day of blood, because he would have loved the hell out of what he has become.
When the Russian came calling, his makeshift army arrived with their trucks and their cycles and their heavy boots, ready for a war. But when they looked around, they saw nothing arrayed against them other than the old man’s truck, sitting in the middle of a vegetable garden with Crazy Bob behind the wheel and Oliver Cross sitting atop the hood. A laptop computer rested on the hood beside the old man and a pump-action shotgun was cradled in his arms. And it looked as if . . . No, it couldn’t be . . . But it was, yes, the old man was napping.
Freedom Road Page 32
