The Russian nodded, a shot rang out, the old man twitched his eyes open.
“Sorry to disturb,” said the Russian as he and Delaney walked together toward the truck. “But we come to finish deal.”
Delaney was wearing a black leather jacket and heavy boots. A rifle was slung over his shoulder like a guitar. His earring shone in the sun. The Russian was wearing a baby-blue tracksuit with three lines running down the side. His sneakers were white and high, his jacket was halfway open, the gold chains on his fat hairy chest glistened like his bald head in the setting sun. As they stepped forward, Ken turned Erica over to Madam Bob and followed behind. At the same time, the henchman army divided into three, with Delaney’s crew heading to one flank and Jorge leading his gang to the other, creating a semicircle of potential fire with Oliver Cross and his truck smack in the middle.
“You did good, old man,” said the Russian, “exactly what we told you do. It would have been better you made call, but we can’t have everything.”
“Piss off,” said Oliver, slipping down off the hood and giving the shotgun a pull.
The Russian and Delaney stopped their approach. “The name’s Delaney,” said Delaney.
“I don’t care,” said Oliver.
“Where’s Frank?”
“Waiting.”
“I hope the boy’s not waiting alone. He’s a runner, don’t you know, and runners run.”
“Is that my computer?” said the Russian.
“Let my granddaughter go and you can find out.”
“This is like old days of Soviet Union on bridge of spies, no?” said the Russian. “You have, we have: crisscross. But first I need check that is not some useless clone from Best Buy.”
“As long as you can do it with my shotgun at your head.”
“Ken can do it with shotgun at his head,” said the Russian, and Delaney laughed.
The Russian gave a tsk along with a head tilt and Ken, with the busted nose and his arms raised, walked past the Russian and Delaney to the front of the truck. Oliver trained the shotgun on him for the whole of his little walk.
“I won’t be long,” said Ken as he took hold of the laptop.
“I told you what I’d do if you touched my granddaughter,” growled Oliver lowly. “You touched my granddaughter.”
“Don’t be so prickly, old man, everything’s copacetic. We’re going to work this out and she’ll be in your loving arms in no time. What you do with her then is up to you. Now just let me check the device. Is it charged?”
With the shotgun barrel aimed at Ken’s head, Oliver nodded. Ken opened the laptop, waited, tap-tapped, waited some more, tap-tapped again. “You guys got wireless?”
“Shut up,” said Oliver.
Ken took out a cell phone, checked it for service, frowned as he put it back in his pocket. Closing the lid, he took hold of the computer and turned to the Russian. “This is it, and the wallet’s still active. I couldn’t check the connection because there’s no fucking internet and I only got a single bar. But I don’t see anything messed up and he’s not clever enough to have done something without me catching it.”
“This is good,” said the Russian.
“Leave the computer and step back,” said Oliver, wagging the gun. “And then release the girl.”
“What I think we’ll do is take the computer now,” said Delaney, “and when you give up Frank, we’ll turn over your precious granddaughter.”
“You can trust us,” said Ken with a wink at Oliver, his hands still gripping the laptop.
Oliver spun the shotgun and jammed the stock into Ken’s face once, twice: crack, crack.
Ken dropped to the ground like a sack of onions spurting blood.
As the rustle of guns rose from the semicircle, Oliver spun the shotgun again and pointed it at the Russian and Delaney. The Russian raised his hands, Delaney grinned. Oliver stooped down, knees popping, and lifted the computer off the ground. He kept the gun aimed at the two for a moment before he turned and jammed the barrel against the computer’s side.
A gasp rose, and not just from the Russian.
“Send over my granddaughter,” said the old man, “or the laptop gets it.”
True to form, with the old man’s money in his pocket and Hunter by his side, Frank had resumed his run to freedom. Freedom! He hitchhiked to a car lot in Colorado Springs and then drove a battered old pickup over the mountains and across the desert to the coast, actually making it to the end of the pier in Santa Monica, where the fishermen were sitting with their lines dipping into the water, sitting and waiting, waiting. He understood: Who knew when a fresh bag of cash would rise up on the end of that line?
He could have kept on keeping on, could have found somewhere new to play his game of hustle and pain, a fresh place to screw things up enough so that he’d have to be off and running again within a few months. He could have gone back to his life, Frank Cormack’s wonderful life of footloose shittery, but the time he spent on the farm had altered something in him.
It was the old man, it was the stars, it was Crazy Bob’s special weed, it was the warm welcome he had received and the camaraderie around the fire, it was the land itself with its tendrils of memory and loss, but it wasn’t only that. There was also a spirit from a time before he was born, a spirit that sought fights worth fighting and didn’t hesitate to wade into the fray, a spirit that exalted things other than possessions and position and power, a spirit that made money itself seem something ill and infectious, a yellow fever that boiled you from the inside. He saw that spirit in Crazy Bob; he saw it in Wendy with her goats; he saw it in Toby, who still wore his army greens like he owed it to the dead; and he saw it in those who had answered Crazy Bob’s call and risen to join the upcoming battle.
From the knoll where he had been hiding with the dog and the stacks of bills he had just been given by the old man, he spied them climbing down the hills in ones and twos and fives, a gray army marching to the fight with their hunting rifles and shotguns and pistols. They smoked reefer and chewed flaxseed and hobbled on ruined knees and hugged each other and spoke a language of their own, born of fire and loss and the music of a dying generation. And they came not for the cash or for the kicks of it or to gain for themselves a place in the world; they came because one of their own had asked.
All of it, somehow, put Frank Cormack outside himself. Even as he could feel the fear and the wanting, the greed and the need twist his body and soul like a wet rag, outside of himself he was filled with something as clean and fresh as the mountain air of the farm, as cool as the water trickling from the creek into the reservoir, as bright as the stars he had seen in the sky above, as pure as Crazy Bob’s herb.
It took him a moment to recognize it, this new thing, this calm, so strange it was and unfamiliar. But it was a calm that allowed him to see the world and his life with a clarity that stunned. He saw his skittering madness within the beauty and serenity of the natural world. He saw his unquenchable need for more matched against the infinite vacuums that lived between the stars. He saw his utter selfishness contrasted with the determined selflessness of the gray-haired and poorly regulated militia that poured down the mountainsides. And it was that newly acquired vision that convinced Frank to stash the money beneath a rock, come down off that hill where he was hiding for his life, and join the fight.
He thought the old man would at least smile when he saw him, but the old man didn’t smile. He just shook his head as if shaking it at a fool, and then told Frank with a scowl to put the dog safely with the others and get himself a gun.
But here’s the thing. After the battle had been waged, after the bombast and blood, and after Frank Cormack had headed back onto the endless road, hitching that ride to Colorado Springs and buying that pickup and driving west, ever west, he had finally, after far too many months, had his gutful of running. And the Frank Cormack who came back to the farm was the one who had been on the outside looking in, the calm one with a vision of searing, shaming clarity.<
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The calm hadn’t yet left him, and that was a surprise. Every day he woke up with the serenity in his heart he was thankful, and every day he knew whom to thank.
With Oliver’s shotgun now aimed at his precious computer, the Russian ordered Madam Bob to let Erica go. Erica, when she was freed, ran straight to her grandfather, as if to give him a great hug.
“Get in the truck,” he grunted at her, halting her in her tracks. “Crazy Bob will drive you to the stable and bring back Frank.”
“What?” she said. “You can’t give over—”
“I told you not to come back,” said the old man. “Trust me this time and do what I tell you.”
She looked at her grandfather for a moment, this crazed old man in his crazed posture, and then lowered her head and slipped into the passenger seat of the truck. Crazy Bob put the truck into gear and backed away before he turned around and headed for the stable.
“Now that your pretty little granddaughter is safe, why not give Teddy boy his computer,” said Delaney, “so we can avoid any accident that will only cause much needless destruction and death.”
“Get off my lawn,” said the old man.
“That’s not going to happen,” said the Russian, “until we have everything we come for.”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to get,” said Oliver.
When the truck reached the stable, Erica left the cab and hurried under the portico where her father waited. He took hold and pulled her through the front door into the stable, and then brought out a figure in Frank’s jeans and jacket, his head covered by a white hood, his hands bound behind him. Fletcher Cross led the hooded figure to the truck and placed him inside.
“You took no chances on the little bastard escaping,” said Delaney. “I’m impressed.”
“I told you he’d be reasonable,” said the Russian. “I told you there be no problem.”
The truck, in the distance, slowly, made a U-turn and started rumbling back to the mouth of the farm. At that exact moment the music started, distorted and loud, coming from speakers hooked up at the ruins of the ranch house and the cabins across the way, echoing crazily across the landscape, four bass-heavy riffs, down and up, up and down, followed by a snarling guitar. It was unmistakably Hendrix, rough and ragged and oh so beautiful.
As the truck made its slow way back to the Russian, and Hendrix started singing an adventure story written by Dylan, the invaders looked around disconcertedly, uncertain where to aim their guns.
The truck grew closer, the music grew wilder, Hendrix spun his magic as the truck kept coming, slowly, inexorably. The soldiers were still looking around, distracted by the music, when the truck doors opened on either side of the cab and the figures behind the windshield disappeared even as the truck kept coming, kept slowly coming.
The gunshots started from the Russian’s army, staccato snaps of a snare aimed at the engine of the truck, shots that seemed to have no effect as the truck kept trundling forward, rumbling forward. The soldiers easily avoided the slow-moving vehicle, like bullfighters swishing away from an arthritic cow.
Then came the explosion.
Frank spied all the action from his vantage within the ruins of the old ranch house, protected by one of the stone walls, a speaker blaring just above his head. He saw the exchange, the rumble forward of the truck, the explosion that took out a handful of fighters, including Madam Bob, and the fighting that broke loose after as the smoke billowed. And at that point he should have been firing, madly, crazily, loading and shooting like a wild man out to protect his own damn hide, that was the plan all along. But instead he was frozen behind the stone, transfixed by the most extraordinary sight.
Frank Cormack can still see Oliver Cross as clearly as if he were again right in front of him, standing sideways before an unyielding force, feet splayed, knees and back bent, chin high, holding a shotgun against the body of an Apple laptop as if ready to blast the present-state things into smithereens just for the sheer anarchy of it. And if Frank squints just a bit, yes, in the old man’s gritted teeth Frank might just see a grin, and in the old man’s sideways stance and bent posture he can almost imagine the old man surfing some monster wave into the shoals of destiny.
Frank is married now, not to Erica, who is off somewhere in Africa building wells and trying to save the world, but to Loretta, whom he met one night when he was out drinking at the cowboy bar with Wendy. They have a daughter, Olivia. Olivia laughs and spins and totters around the farm with Hunter, who keeps the coyotes at bay. And Frank’s brother, Todd, comes west summers with his wife, Kerrie, and son, Peter, to visit. And whatever roots he has in this world are now buried deep into this land.
They live in the stable, Frank and Loretta and Olivia. Frank set up a small studio within the remains of Oliver’s workshop where he writes and records his music. The acoustics are only okay, but he cut a few EPs he can sell when he performs at the local joints. It is less of a music career than he dreamed, but probably more than his talent deserves. On one of the EPs there is even a song he recorded with Ayana, and that EP, understandably, sells better than the others.
Ayana has become a thing. After playing at Armstrong’s for a couple years she was accepted for one of the TV singing game shows, and though she didn’t win—some white country singer took the top prize like they always do—she made a name for herself and ended up signing with a small frisky label that squeezed out a couple hits. Then she found a role in an indie film, scored an award nomination, and is now looking down the barrel of an acting career. Her success should have jittered Frank up and sent him back on the road, desperate to claim his rightful spot in the limelight. It should have tainted what he had built here, but all it does is make him happy for Ayana.
It isn’t that he has become a saint—no one is further from sainthood than Frank Cormack, as his six-month stint in the pen in Ohio, negotiated by Mr. Prakash, had proven—but whenever he feels himself grow sick with envy, which he still does, or when the walls close in on him as he thinks about all he is missing in the world, which they still do, he closes his eyes and summons a singular image that calms his heart, a sight he spied that day of violence from behind the ruined stone wall.
Bullets were flying, raining down from the hills, from the ruins, and from behind the cabins where the gray-hairs hid as they fired and fired, even as the invaders shot back from whatever cover they could grab. But in all that carnage, none of the firing was aimed at Oliver Cross, for fear of what might happen to the most valuable of hostages. They hobbled Toby, they shot Crazy Bob in the throat, a wound from which he never recovered, they laid down withering blasts into the hills and pinged a few against the ruined stone wall behind which Frank hid, but the old man raged unharmed.
Then there came a moment when the fire slackened against the Russian’s army and Delaney was able to lead his gang to more advantageous ground, a moment when two of the gray-hairs were hit and the battle seemed to turn. It was there, at the crux, when Oliver Cross, still in his crazed bent-knee, bent-back surfing stance, grinned wildly and cursed one last time, before he pulled the trigger of his shotgun.
Shards of the computer’s shell and its innards burst forward like a great party popper shooting celebratory streamers into the air.
The sight shocked the battle into quiet as the truth of what the crazy old man had done began to sink in. And in that moment all that could be heard, other than the howls of the Russian, were the glorious strains of Hendrix’s savage, psychedelic guitar in a loop that promised nothing less than eternal salvation.
It is this image that Frank Cormack holds close as he walks across the farm through the seasons, carrying his daughter and smelling the fragrant air of his own freedom, while Hunter leads the way. In the hopeful springs, in the fruitful summers of growth and green, in the autumns of celebration, and in the white frigid winters whenever the sirens sing to him their sweet and bitter songs of worldly things, it is this image that he carries in his pocket like a lucky penny
to quiet the yearnings of his still hungry heart. This image. This.
Oliver Cross, holding the shards of a shattered laptop as if they were the cracked remains of his mortal bonds, standing like a giant, triumphant and transcendent, upon the smoldering ruins of his past.
38
TIME IN A BOTTLE
Oliver Cross has lived this day too often to keep track of the number. Before it happened, he lived it over and again in dread; after it happened, he relived it over and again in torture. Time is less an arrow than the tonearm of a turntable, seemingly moving ever forward until, upon reaching a fault in the vinyl, it repeats on itself mercilessly until someone knocks the needle out of its insane loop. This day is the fault.
As always, he doesn’t so much wake into the morning as decide in his sleeplessness that it is time, finally, to rise from the bed he still shares with his wife. He gets his sleep when the hospice nurse arrives, goes into the boy’s room and honks out a few snores as Helen is cleaned and dressed, medicated, comforted with ice chips, and fed teaspoons of broth. But at night, lying by her side, he stays mostly awake, listening to her breathing and sensing the tiny tremors as she makes slight alterations in her body position. She is too far gone now to make the side-to-side shifts that shake the bed, but her legs bend and straighten, her arms twitch, her head turns on its castle of pillows. Each movement brings him to alertness. And then, through the night, her breath catches and stops for a moment and he lies there wondering if this is it, hoping and dreading it all the same, before the labored breathing starts anew.
Usually, when he arises, she is still asleep, as worn out by her difficult night as he. But this morning, as always in the skip of time, her eyes are open, her muscles are stiff, her skin is dark and grotesquely taut over the bones of her face, her green eyes, dulled by time, shine strangely, and she is smiling with the purse-lipped smile that she can barely still manage. And already he knows. He has been here before and he knows.
Freedom Road Page 33
