Freedom's Child: A Novel

by Jax Miller

  The Amalekite hears the shots, hears him retch. Don’t worry, Amalekite. I got you.

  I aim, a shaky, imaginary line that vibrates on the side of his face while he wipes the puke with his sleeve. I got you, Amalekite. Bang! The hot shell casing stings my cheek, gives me a fright. I didn’t get him where I wanted to; instead, I think I got him on the side of his ribs. But he’s immobile. He’s not going anywhere.

  Beyond him, I see three more deacons, separated, but working in perfect unison, visiting house to house. Occasionally, the sound of a gunshot ringing in the air from one of the small sugar-cube homes. We have to get the fuck out of here. I reach under Rebekah’s bed and help myself to two large handfuls of bullets, dropping them into deep pockets. I poke my head out into the hallway and whistle. “Bring the baby here.” I take the front of my skirt and turn it into a sling for Theresa, fisting a bunch of cotton in front of me and putting it in my teeth to hold it together. I carry Magdalene on the other side of my body, mantled against my elbow, as I make my way down the stairs and through the kitchen. “You must close your eyes now, Magdalene,” I say with the knot of cloth at the side of my mouth, held in my back teeth. “Keep them closed as tight as you can until I say so, all right?”

  “OK, Sister Freedom.” Her sobs have stopped, and the girl displays a level of bravery I could only envy. Truth be told, I’m scared to death. I’m not brave. I am not strong. I’ve only kept moving. That’s all I’ve ever done in times of trouble, when shit hits the fan. I just moved. But I can’t let it show. Just move, just fucking move. React, Freedom. React. “And don’t make a peep, sweetie.”

  I carry the girls out the back door, stepping over Virgil’s dead arm at one point, Magdalene’s head buried in the crook of my neck. When we reach the back of the house and I peek around a corner, I put Magdalene down, maneuvering the makeshift sling to my side, holding Theresa like a football. “Magdalene, you can open your eyes, but keep them looking at the ground, all right? You gotta stay as quiet as you can, but hold on to my elbow and run as fast as I do; only stop if I stop. OK? And if anything happens to me, take Theresa and find the Amalekite behind the shed, understand? Do you understand everything I just said to you?” I take the bunch of cotton and put it back in my teeth, using my finger for the baby to suck on when she starts to move in her sleep, the same arm that Magdalene holds on to, as instructed.

  “I’m so scared, Sister Freedom.”

  “So am I,” I tell Magdalene, my words garbled with the fabric in the side of my teeth, high in my cheek. “But I believe in God. God’s strength will get you through this. Do you believe that?” I’m not sure that I do. But the concept fills her face with determination, for which I am grateful. And out of desperation, I try. I ask the God that I hardly believe in to grant me strength, to help the girls make it out on the other end of this alive. He can take me, just save these girls. Because, while I may deserve what’s in store for me, they don’t.

  We scuttle, dash like spiders across the lawn, the sun returning to the shadows. The rain’s cold, cruel on my skin. I taste my heart; it pumps more blood than should be through my body. Terror moves me, once my enemy but now a friend that helps me go, go, go. And as I reach the shed, I realize I’m slower than the five-year-old, gripping the pistol with my other hand so hard that I can no longer feel my fingers.

  The Amalekite puts her finger to her mouth to keep Magdalene quiet when she jumps at the sight of the old woman. We lean, backs to the side of the shed, the side that doesn’t face the church. “I don’t have a plan.” I think I’m crying. I think I am. Because, once again, there’s no hope, I’ve failed again.

  “We’ve come this far; you can’t give up now,” says the Amalekite. She reaches into her pocket. “Not sure if it’s working right, but I spoke, anyway. I told them, whoever’s at the other end, to come and rescue us. That was only minutes ago.” The wire I was wearing when I entered Third-Day Adventists uncoils at our feet. I hand the Amalekite the infant.

  “Let us pray,” says Magdalene, the childlike innocence almost comforting.

  Our heads jump, noises from the forest that sound like lightning; crack, roar, rev. I look around the corner one last time. No deacons in sight. Weaving through the trees, red, white, and blue.

  Red, white, and blue. The American fucking dream.

  Sirens, bullhorns demanding the deacons to stand down. Military tanks with American flags flapping rapidly on top. The sun breaks through once more. We wait like impatient children, with impatient children. I squeeze Magdalene so she can hear my heart flutter. “We’re going to be OK. It’s over now. It’s all over now,” I weep.

  It could have been another Waco, easily. It could have been a fifty-one-day standoff, history repeating itself. They could have set fire to the sugar-cube houses, turning them into burned candy, members of the congregation caramelized inside.

  It takes an hour to feel safe enough to leave this side of the shed. The hills swarm with the ATF, the FBI, and I’m not sure if that’s actually the military. The newspapers will tell me in a few days. We’re led out by men who resemble insects, black shells for faces, armed to the teeth.

  A parade of white. Myself, Magdalene, Theresa, and the Amalekite. Back to the clamshell roads we march.

  The protesters are gone, but we’re met by hundreds of cops, reporters, cameras. Stuck in the crowd, I see Mason with his uncle Peter. I nod to them. And aside from the suicide, I remember Rebekah. But I stifle the cries. Afternoon creeps closer toward the night. The masses ask for our names. To my left, a good few feet away, I hear the Amalekite. “My name is Adelaide. My name is Adelaide Custis.” The crowd gasps. I guess the world already knows who she is.

  “The wife of Ger Custis?” asks one reporter.

  “Yes,” she cries. “Carol Paul was my daughter. I was held here against my will.”

  The lights and flashes make my retinas crackle. The liberation of the surviving Third-Day Adventists brings only temporary relief. Because after all of this, Rebekah is still dead. She was dead this entire time.

  It’s been twenty years since I felt this: numbness. All the emotions I should have, all the emotions anyone else would have, just aren’t there. I’m not angry. I’m not sad. I’m not anything. Just numb. I need to get away. I need the air. I need one goddamn moment to breathe. I turn from the crowds and sneak away.

  “What’s your name, ma’am?” asks one of the reporters, a blonde with too much makeup on, heels too high for the clamshells.

  It’s the only question I answer. And then I move. I just move.

  “My name is Freedom.”

  My name is Freedom Oliver and I killed my daughter. Perhaps not directly, but I think I’ll always blame myself. It’s surreal, honestly, and I’m not sure what feels more like a dream, her death or her existence. In so many ways, and maybe it’s self-inflicted, I’m guilty of both.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of hanging around outside the compound near God knows how many dead bodies just on the other side, and certainly not to answer the press’s questions. I let Mason and Peter know I was fine before I snuck off. I was still in keep moving mode, I just had to get the hell out of there. So I walked aimlessly down the road, away from town. And then I saw the sign for Whistler’s Field. Whistler’s Field, where a couple hours before at the Paul house, Virgil confessed that here, Rebekah was chopped and buried. “Which part?”

  I tried to imagine it in my head. It wasn’t that long ago when this field would ripple and rustle with a warm breeze, gold dancing under the blazes of a high noon sun. The Thoroughbreds, a staple of Goshen, would canter along the edges of Whistler’s Field. If you listen close enough, you can almost hear the laughter of farmers’ children still lace through the grain, a harvest full of innocent secrets of the youthful who needed an escape but didn’t have anywhere else to go. Like my Rebekah, my daughter. My God, she must have been beautiful.

  But a couple weeks is a long time when you’re on a journey like mine. It could almost cons
titute something magnificent. Almost.

  I catch my breath when I remember. Somewhere in this field, my daughter is scattered in pieces.

  Goshen, named after the biblical Land of Goshen, somewhere between Kentucky’s famous bourbon trails in America’s Bible Belt. The gallops of Thoroughbreds that haunt this dead pasture are replaced with the hammering in my rib cage. The mud cracks below me as I cross the frostbitten field, my footsteps ripping the earth with each fleeting memory. The skies are that certain shade of silver you see right before a snowstorm; now, the color of my filthy, fucking soul.

  But I’ve been followed. From the corner of my eye, I see a deacon. I see Sheriff Don Mannix behind me with an itchy finger and a Remington aimed between my shoulder blades. He, too, got away. I am reminded of my own white-knuckled grip on my pistol, the pistol I still had from the compound, a grip insulated with the gloves sewn to my sleeves. The deacon who made it out alive and uncaptured. It sounds like some western if I’ve heard one before. But he’s here with his job. He’s here to kill me.

  Call me what you will: a murderer, a cop killer, a fugitive, a drunk. You think that means anything to me now? In this moment? The frost pangs my lungs in such a way that I think I might vomit. I don’t. Still out of breath, I use the dirty robe to wipe blood from my face. I don’t even know if it’s mine. There’s enough adrenaline surging through my veins that I can’t feel pain if it is.

  “This is it, Freedom,” the sheriff calls out in his familiar southern drawl. The tears make warm streaks over my cold skin. The cries numb my face, my lips made of pins and needles. There’s a lump in my throat I can’t breathe past. What have I done? How the hell did I end up here? What did I do so wrong in life that God deemed me so fucking unworthy of anything good? I’m not sure. I’ve always been the one with the questions, never the answers.

  Perhaps it was those prayers I made only an hour or two ago that let me make it this far. I’m not sure. But I’m sure I hear him cock his gun. And somehow, I’m accepting of this. What choice do I have, really? Do I cry like a little bitch about it? No, I’ve lived my life. I even had that agreement with God, that He could take my life for the lives of those girls. It’s a good trade, one the world can benefit from. So how can I cry about it? Why should I whine when God keeps His end of a bargain?

  Then, the sound of the shot. It’s the scariest sound I’ve ever heard. It’s the sweetest fucking sound I’ve ever heard.

  With my back still to the sheriff, a murder of crows bark away from the field, a ribbon of black across my vision.

  But I don’t fall. I don’t feel the pain. I’m not hit. And it’s not me who pulls the trigger. I hear the sound of Sheriff Don Mannix falling, a hard crash to the earth, a pile of skin, bone, and Remington steel. When I turn, a harsh wind on my face, I see Mattley. I see motherfucking Officer James Mattley.

  I’m spent, I don’t even have the energy to stand. So he comes to me, this guardian angel from the West Coast, eyes curious and head tilted. From his back pocket, he pulls out a letter. I can barely hear him over the breeze. “I got this from Mimi. It’s how I found you.”

  In the midst of such grief, is a person capable of love? I get the urge to tell him that perhaps it’s possible. But now isn’t the time. I can’t find the words to tell him how thankful I am for him. I can’t find the words to tell him that I can’t find it in me to say such a thing. I can barely speak at all.

  I handle the paper he hands me like it’s dust in danger of floating away. “Can I have a moment, please?” My voice cracks. He squeezes my shoulder and walks away behind me.

  Dear Nessa, or should I call you Mom?

  There is so much to say; there’s so much to take in. I’ve so much to tell you, but so little time, as I hide here in the shed of my church. I look back at my life. I wonder how’d I not see it, and looking here at your photo, I can see it, I can see it all.

  For ages, I’ve been praying for a way out. Praying God takes me far from here. But in all this time, I’ve had nowhere to turn. There’s Mason, but I need to be farther. I have to get away from here. I can’t tell you why. Please, trust me. Trust in God. Because he sent your letter to me.

  I will contact you in a few days when I reach Oregon.

  Rebekah

  Have you ever heard your soul snap in two? Have you ever cried for so long that you find yourself on the verge of fainting? Have you ever clawed at the frozen earth so hard that your fingernails break off? Have you ever screamed so loud that there was no noise at all, your windpipes simply failing you under the pressure? The reaction of a woman kneeling on the several graves of her one daughter.

  I scare away the ghosts of Thoroughbreds. I scare away anything that dares to haunt this field. And in a way that I cannot explain, I’ve never felt more alive. In my own daughter’s death, I never felt so much more alive than this. Because on the other side of such tragedy, of such turmoil, of such a long journey, something waits for me.

  NINE MONTHS LATER

  “My name is Freedom and I’m an alcoholic.” The group greets me. In a church library with cheap coffee rings and stale rum cake, and I’m sure there were a few who rolled their eyes at that, it’s my nine-month anniversary of sobriety. It feels like years. But time’s tricky like that; it’ll make you think you’ve acquired control when really you haven’t.

  I’ve even lost some weight over these past few months. Could be from not drinking, could be that I’ve lost much of my appetite since that dreadful day. That day. I tried to avoid the news and the Internet in the days following, but hearing about it was inevitable. I heard about the leaked photos, the tormenting ones of dead children sprawled along the pews of the church. The crosses and Bibles splattered in blood. The parade of little black body bags leaving the gates and traveling up the crushed clamshell roads. The headlines said on that day 345 men, women, and children committed suicide in the name of God. I also heard that several of the survivors killed themselves in the days and months following. It was the largest cult suicide to occur on American soil.

  In Alcoholics Anonymous, we’re encouraged to “find” a higher power, a power greater than ourselves that can restore us back to sanity. Not sure if find is the right word; I can’t imagine God hiding behind a tree. I’m not so sure what that is, today…God. But as opposed to the days that preceded my short stay with the Third-Day Adventists, I believe something is there. I know I wasn’t alone, and I know something or someone heard me when I pleaded to God back in Kentucky. So I’m giving the Bible a try. Don’t get your hopes up too much. I didn’t say I was born-again or anything like that, I only said I’m giving the Bible a try.

  The news of the Delaney brothers who were killed on the Day of Freedom traveled fast to the topmost of the headlines, a sensational story in New York: a Mastic Beach fairy tale, in its own tragic way. Peter was even asked to write a book about them. He respectfully declined. And by respectfully, I mean he spit on the ground and proceeded to tell the journalist who’d suggested the idea to go fuck himself.

  Peter lives with me now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. He and Mason even Skype every Sunday over a beer. I even got him a job at the Whammy Bar. They love him there, and there’s no wonder. Needless to say, I don’t visit my old place of work anymore. Gotta change my people, places, and things, just like we’re told in the groups. Because if nothing changes, nothing changes. Hear, hear. But I still keep close to Carrie, my old boss, and Passion. Life would be boring without those two.

  From what little I’ve heard, correctional officer Jimmy Doyle, the one rumored to have been hired by Lynn to break my kneecaps, went over to the Delaney house after hearing the news about her sons. It was Halloween.

  I suppose the door was open, and when he let himself in, a massive pile of gray grease lay in the middle of the living room floor. It was Lynn Delaney, literally melting the floorboards of the house with decomposition: six hundred pounds of rancid decay. I’m sure Jimmy threw up at the stench, an odor strong enough that it
woke the curiosity of the neighbors and probably stuck to the back of his skull for hours. The medical examiner would place the time of death at five days before: the day Peter ventured off for God’s country. The Land of Tomorrow. The Unbridled Spirit. Kentucky.

  Nosy neighbors from all over watched, dressed in their Halloween costumes, as the fire department had to tear down the walls because she couldn’t fit through the door. From there on out, the biggest legacy Lynn left behind: the neighbor who had to be taken away by a moving truck because she couldn’t fit in an ambulance.

  Natural causes. Well, as natural as can be with such an unnatural weight. She fell. And she was never able to get herself back up.

  After a Sunday beer with Peter, a couple months after the Day of Freedom, Mason closes the laptop and observes his new office. He uses his fingertips to trace the edges of his name on a plaque: Assistant District Attorney Mason P. Paul. No more defending criminals for him. On his desk, a gift box wrapped in red and gold for his mother. Inside, Rebekah’s cross, the one he’d found at the Bluegrass.

  “Heya, Mason, got something for you.” His new assistant, a young brunette named Bobby Jo, hands him an A4 envelope, postmarked from Frankfort, Kentucky, the capital city.

  “Wow, my very first piece of mail to the office.” Mason smiles, sitting in his brand-new leather office chair.

  “You should frame it,” she squeals.

  “You know what? I should.” He tears into it, delighted, and pulls out the contents.

  “Well?” She holds her hands to her mouth like a giddy child. “What are we framing?” But he doesn’t answer her right away. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” he says as the assistant watches him sink in his seat. “It’s nothing. Say, Bobby Jo, can I have a minute?”