Freedom's Child: A Novel

by Jax Miller

  “Chanteyukan.” He leans his shoulder in the frame of the door. “It means ‘benevolence.’ ”

  “I thought you were going to say Dances with Wolves for a moment there.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Freedom.”

  “You’re lying to me, aren’t you?”

  “Just a little.”

  He smiles. “I’ll grab some breakfast. You’ll need it. Just stay there.” If there’s one thing that can be said by any doctor who has ever treated me, it’s that I don’t stay down. More than once, I’ve opened stitches, and even found it worthwhile, just to keep from not moving. Hell, nothing’s going to keep me down. I get up.

  Chanteyukan doesn’t see me, his back facing me as he prepares breakfast. It’s a one-room space, the living room shared with the kitchen and eating area. Dozens of pieces of white twine stretch from one side of the room to the other. Clothespinned on each line are individual hundred-dollar bills, approximately one hundred of them, drying in the heat from the wood-burning stove. On top of it, a small, silver percolator where Chuck made the coffee.

  “You ought to be resting,” he says without turning around.

  I pay no mind to him. I suppose there are still good people in the world. I can’t say I would have done the same, salvage ten grand from a complete stranger when pocketing it seems so much more pragmatic. Life likes to throw curveballs at you once in a while. “Breakfast smells swell.”

  “Venison steak and quail eggs. Your clothes are hung over there.” He points.

  “So, you live here?”

  “No. I live in a condo about an hour from here, in town.” He sets the table made of twisted tree bark. “I come by to check in on him every few days. He shouldn’t be on his own. But he’s the most stubborn man on the planet.” Sounds like a challenge to me. Still wrapped in a sheet, I walk to the back screen door and see the man who saved me for the first time in the light. I only pretend to ignore Chanteyukan as I step out to the porch. “Or we can eat outside…” he mumbles behind me.

  The old man looks at me for just a second from the rocking chair before he resumes his stare back into the vastness of the wilderness, a far-reaching view of both desert and prairie. Sporadic trees protrude from the earth to look like upside-down paintbrushes dipped in reds and yellows and oranges. Rain cascades from the eaves of the home. The air tastes cleaner in this part of the world. Chanteyukan follows me with the plate of breakfast and a medical bag.

  “Hello,” I offer the old man. He doesn’t answer. I take a seat when I notice a wolf resting beside the man’s chair. “A wolf? Really?”

  “A coyote. Her name is Aleshanee. She’s an old pup,” Chuck tells me. “Can’t see or hear anymore.”

  “Does your father know English?”

  Chanteyukan goes to put the meal on my lap, but I take it from him first. “He knows it.” He squats down, takes my leg, and puts it on his lap. “He just refuses to speak it.” The old man says something in his native tongue of Shoshone. He speaks straight ahead to the rain from a gray flannel and black jeans, feathers hanging from two braids. Chanteyukan translates, “He says last week he dreamt of a white woman with hair like that of a cardinal.” Chuck pulls out gauze, surgical tape, and Neosporin. The old man laughs, a full set of pipe-tarnished teeth. His son repeats, “Crazy white women.”

  “He didn’t say that.” I smile down to Chuck, but his father laughs. Apparently it wasn’t lost in translation. The father’s voice rattles like that of an old smoker. The laughter dies and he recommences with the gravity of what he has to say.

  “Last night, I was certain you were the woman in my dream. But it wasn’t you.” As he unwraps my bandages it feels as if the muscle is rotting from the inside out.

  So not to interrupt the shaman’s words, I whisper to Chanteyukan, “You have a drink or something for the pain?”

  “No drinking while on antibiotics.”

  “C’mon, man,” I whine.

  “No, and I mean it.” He cuts a piece of gauze. “Besides, something tells me that that’s the last thing you need.”

  “But it’s killing me.” But Chuck isn’t stupid, doesn’t buy my excuses of pain. I sigh with frustration when his father says something like ta ta ka and hands me a pipe. “What is it?”

  “Nothing legal, I’m afraid,” says Chuck. The old man raises his eyebrows and nods toward the pipe. The smoke is sweet, smells like flowers cooking in a wok. It starts warm at my toes and rises up. For a moment, I think I urinate on myself. And then the warmth hits my head, something that can be compared only to some orgasm of the soul. The pain is gone. The anxiety withers to nothing. Peace. Peace, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. In this moment, I swear I can feel God. Wherever he is.

  I light a cigarette. Chanteyukan squeezes a small plastic bottle of antiseptic on the carved X that the old man crafted on my calf with a knife. He continues to translate for his father, who doesn’t realize he’s just become my new best friend. “The girl in my dream was young. She has an understanding with the spirits. She is innocent. She is not like you, in these ways. But, like you, is a tortured soul.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  Chanteyukan pats my leg gently and answers for himself in English: “Yes.” In each droplet of rain that beads off the eaves is a panoramic view of the landscape, as if each drip of the sky carries the entire world inside. “This girl wanders the Earth, she searches for somebody she doesn’t know. But wherever she walks, there is no one.”

  “What happens to the girl?” I ask.

  “That’s not my story to tell.” I wonder if he’s talking about Rebekah. I wonder if he’s talking about a younger version of me.

  “Where am I, anyway?” I ask Chanteyukan.

  “Where do you think you are?”

  “Nevada?”

  “You’re about five hours from the Nevada border.” He moves to the bite on my arm. “You’re in Idaho, right near the Wyoming and Utah borders in the Snake River Plain.”

  I give the cherry-flavored wooden pipe back to the old man. “I’ve made better time than I thought.”

  “Where are you heading?”

  “Kentucky.”

  “Kentucky,” the old man repeats, a wave of his arm forming a curve across the land.

  “In Shoshone, Kentucky is translated into ‘Land of Tomorrow.’ ” It’s fitting.

  “What’s your name?” I ask the shaman.

  For the first time he looks at me. “Deseronto.” His eyes have a permanent squint to them.

  Chanteyukan finishes with the cleaning of the wound on my arm. “It means ‘lightning has struck.’ ” Also fitting, I think. “Try and eat your steak and eggs.” I rip a piece off and hang my arm and wave the piece of deer so Aleshanee the coyote will detect it and come.

  “What’s Alesh, or whatever her name is, mean?” I ask.

  “She who plays.”

  Deseronto says something in Shoshone and Chuck translates. “My father wants to tell this story”:

  “It wasn’t far from here, during the Snake War of 1864, when the white man came and invaded our tribes. They killed our children, they raped our wives. This was a war forgotten over time, though it killed more than the ill-famed and superior Battle of the Little Bighorn. Nearly two thousand Shoshones were murdered by the white devil. Soon after, the Europeans settled on the land they stole from us. But there lived a man named Freedom, once the strongest warrior around, but he acquired blindness from an outbreak of influenza. When his family died at the hands of the Europeans, he spent his days brokenhearted and alone.

  “Years before the white man took his home and murdered his wife and children, Freedom was famous in the village for this tree behind his home. This was a tree of knots, a tree that stood for thousands of years before him. It was big and beautiful and unlike any other tree of its kind. People would pass it and say, ‘I’ve never seen such a strong and beautiful tree in all my life.’ They would say, ‘This tree knows the hearts of men a
nd has witnessed generations before us.’

  “When the homes of the village were demolished, Freedom was left with nothing, the only survivor of his tribe. He retreated to the woods where his wife and children were buried while big houses were built where he once lived, fences, and roads. And believing the woods were haunted, no white man ventured their establishments past Freedom’s old tree.

  “Freedom, in all his years, loved that tree. As a child, he’d tell this tree all his thoughts and dreams and worries. He cared for it more than any other tree or crop. But after he moved to the woods, the tree belonged to a white man named Colonel Woolworth, who built his home so that the tree was in the center of his backyard. Colonel Woolworth hated that tree and more than once did he try to chop it down; he found it ugly and it obstructed his view. But the tree was too big, too strong for the likes of Woolworth’s strength and ax. He hated how it still seemed to grow even in the cold season; the branches grew out, nearly touching his house. And so every morning, Woolworth went out there with his axes and saws and would cut the branches off. He would try to dig it out, but the roots were too deep. By night, in fear of the forest and tired from trying to destroy this tree, Woolworth would retire.

  “This would break Freedom’s heart. Though blind, Freedom could hear Woolworth’s actions and feel the branches being chopped down. By night, when the whites had retired and he couldn’t be seen, Freedom would sneak from the forest with a bucket of water for the tree. He would water it and sing to it and pray with it. And while he was never able to see this tree, he loved it and cared for it, despite Woolworth’s attempts to take over the tree and destroy it.”

  —

  My name is Freedom and I follow this story very closely. Chanteyukan finishes his mending. Aleshanee rests her head on my lap and looks for more venison steak. I take this story as something symbolic, my children and I, I being the blind Freedom who cares for something while not being able to see it, while the world tries to destroy it.

  “What happens to Freedom and the tree and Colonel Woolworth?” I ask.

  Chanteyukan translates once more: “The dance between Freedom and Woolworth lasted for many years, until both were old men. The colonel’s defeat against the tree made him even more bitter than before. But the tree that Freedom cared for with all he had gave Freedom a reason to live, something to love.

  “Because he didn’t cease in his love, no matter all he had already lost, Freedom won the war he never knew he was fighting. But do we say that Freedom won because the man gave up and turned bitter? The answer is no.”

  “So then what made Freedom win the battle?”

  “Because Freedom, with a good heart and good intentions, kept the tree growing and strong. And because of this, the roots of the tree grew under Woolworth’s home, right where Freedom and his family lived first. The roots lifted the house from underneath and destroyed it. Woolworth was forced to uproot and move elsewhere. Not only was Woolworth driven away, but the roots grew under the entire town and forced everyone to leave the homes they built on the raped land of the Shoshones.

  “This, in your language, might be called karma. But where we are from, it’s all part of the circle of life. And Freedom completed that circle, as everything in life happens in a circle.” The old man draws a circle in the sky with his finger. The rocking chair continues to creak under him. “And to this day, that very tree continues to grow.”

  —

  I wash up and get dressed in the bathroom. The rain is dying, the pain is easing. I wrap my money back in rubber bands and splash my face with cold water to get rid of the fuzzy edges of this high before I’m on my way. On the windowsill are magazines: a Native American newspaper, a Reader’s Digest, a TV Guide. Sticking out of the newspaper, probably hiding, next to a Shoshone crossword puzzle, is the corner of an envelope addressed to Deseronto. My nosy ass opens it and reads it. Inside is a letter from the county: a final notice from Margefield Properties that because of the 2011 border shift, his property is no longer part of a federal Indian reservation. He owes back taxes of nearly twenty thousand dollars to the state or he will be forced to vacate the premises. I get the feeling that his son doesn’t know.

  I look into the mirror and make a decision.

  Outside, I start my recently repaired bike and get ready to leave. I dry-swallow another antibiotic and put the bottle back in my coat. Deseronto and Chanteyukan see me off. On the side of the house is an old, abandoned motorcycle with Utah plates.

  “How much to switch plates?” I ask. No doubt there’s an all-points bulletin out on this bike. The father and son look at each other.

  Chanteyukan walks to the old motorcycle and uses his hands to unscrew the plates and hands them to me. “Whatever’s chasing you, I hope you make it.” I smile to him, and with no response I head for the road.

  I drive eighteen hours straight, with five-minute breaks every hour to fuel up on nicotine, Red Bull, and the occasional glazed donut to keep my sugars up against the alcohol withdrawals. It makes the ride long; seems I’ve been riding for weeks. I can’t tell where the tremors end and the shakes of the bike begin. The wind doesn’t stop the sweat. And even I’m surprised I don’t end up pulling over to vomit on the sides of the interstates. My tendons feel like lead and my skin of glass. But I have to get Rebekah. I have to find her. Because like the story of Freedom, what the fuck else do I have to live for?

  I wonder how long it will take Deseronto and Chanteyukan to find the money I left for them, dried and neatly wrapped in rolls, under their bathroom sink. Deseronto needs it more than I do, so I gave him all of it, minus just enough to get me where I have to be. You’re welcome, Reds.

  I am now entering Louisville, Kentucky.

  “I don’t want to see that at the dinner table, you understand?”

  “Yes, Mama.” Magdalene takes her cat’s-cradle string and puts it under her.

  Carol Paul’s leg shakes. A bowl of baked chicken sits in the center of the table. She sees a piece of skin and pulls it off before Virgil comes home and sees it. A bird springs from the hole of the cuckoo clock and sings nine times, for 9:00 p.m. Magdalene rests her head on her arm across the table. “But I’m so hungry and tired,” she whines.

  “You know the rules. We don’t eat until your father arrives to the table.”

  “But it’s so late.”

  “I know, dear.” Carol wraps her own hair around her finger, a nervous habit she’s acquired over the years. Magdalene mimics her. Carol offers her a little smile to boost her spirits.

  “Where’s Michelle and Baby Theresa?”

  “Well,” Carol says as she folds her hands and tucks them between her thighs. “Theresa is asleep upstairs. And Michelle is resting back at her house. She’ll be asleep for a while.”

  The two of them sit straight when Virgil comes through the front door. The chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits and gravy, and sugar snap peas are cold enough that they look like wax artifacts on the dining room table for display. Carol wipes the sweat from the pitchers of hand-squeezed lemonade to look like she’s doing something when Virgil arrives.

  “Yay, Daddy. You’re home,” Magdalene squeals with delight, her stomach growling like a monster. And while this is the part where Virgil usually pats her on the head or kisses her cheek, he brushes her off. And even the five-year-old knows when a room becomes heavy.

  He sits down without washing up. His knuckles cracked and bleeding, his palms calloused to stiffness. Magdalene recognizes that look on her mother, the one that says it’s best not to say a word or even point an eye in Virgil’s direction. She can feel her father’s hands tremble when he reaches out to hold the girls’ hands to say grace.

  They try not to seem too eager to eat. The one time Magdalene did that, he denied her strawberry ice cream, and she wouldn’t want that, now, would she?

  “I suppose my punishment for being late is cold dinner,” he says as he shoots Carol a cold stare, a ball of anger in his throat he subdues to hide from their daugh
ter.

  “I can reheat it if you’d like, dear,” Carol gushes.

  He puts his hand up. “No, no. I’m far too hungry to wait another second longer.”

  Carol avoids eye contact with Virgil, always looking off to the side, hiding her half-smiles like they warrant punishment. And for supper being cold, she knows she’ll suffer. Over the years the punishments got worse, but who is she to second-guess her husband, who was appointed by Christ himself to be a leader? She entertains the thought of pointing out to him that he could have called to let her know he’d be four hours late so she could have prepared the meal a little better, but it will make things worse for her. After all, he’s usually never later than five for dinner. And for this, what will their God deem deserving? Sleeping in the closet? In the backyard on this cold night without a blanket? Kneeling on rice with buckets of water? A whipping with the belt would be easy, but she knows Virgil wouldn’t be so gracious, not this time. The more God speaks to him and uses him as a soldier for God’s army, the more heavy-handed he’s become.

  And yet he’s never so much as raised a voice near or at Magdalene; she’s the apple of his eye, the joy of the household, the innocent. God told Virgil in a dream that Magdalene was divine like he, but it’s to remain a secret until the Lord approves that the divinity be exposed.

  Magdalene shovels mashed potatoes into her mouth. She gazes at her father’s pink button-down shirt with blood on it. Carol clears her throat and gets her attention, glancing at Magdalene’s plate so she stops staring.

  But Virgil catches her. “I hit a deer on the way home tonight,” he says as he gulps his first glass of lemonade, Carol quick to refill it before the glass hits the table.

  “Oh, no. Did the deer die, Daddy?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. So I had to bury him in the woods, that’s why the blood on my shirt. But I said a prayer over him. He’s in heaven with all the other deer that’ve died.”

  Virgil eats the meat off the bone of a thigh with bloodied knuckles and a dirty face, making him look primitive, masculine. Carol sees this. And she also knows the story of the deer is a lie. But it’s a white lie, a righteous one. After all, who could expose such a cruel truth to a five-year-old who cannot understand?