“Why would I be disappointed?”
“ ’Cause I fumbled the ball and got blood all over my uniform. Plus I missed two blocks and then when I played defense I missed a tackle. I bet I won’t start next week.”
“Everyone has bad games,” she said.
“I hate that you have to sit out there in the cold just to watch me screw up. I know you don’t like football. I don’t think you should come anymore.”
“I like coming,” she said. “I like watching you. Don’t worry about me. You did some good things out there, too. And sad to say your fumbling didn’t change the fact that you guys aren’t very good.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“You know what I mean.”
“I know.”
They drove through downtown and came to a stoplight. Across the street the marquee for the movie theater shone down.
“Look, Blade is finally here!” Leroy said.
“What’s Blade?”
“It’s a movie based on a comic book. Blade is a vampire but he’s a good vampire. He doesn’t drink blood. He has this friend who knows how to build guns and they have a hideout and a bunch of cool cars. Blade doesn’t want to drink blood; he wants to be a good guy. It has Wesley Snipes and a guy named Kris Kristofferson in it.”
“Kris Kristofferson’s in it?”
“I guess so. That’s what it says on the sign.”
His mother took her glasses from her purse and put them on. She looked at the marquee.
“I like Kris Kristofferson. Maybe we should see it,” she said.
“Tonight?” he said and suddenly his face lifted in excitement.
“Tonight.” She drove through the intersection and pulled the car over and parked. She looked at Leroy. “When I first started working I was an assistant secretary for a big accounting firm. I was eighteen and I tried really hard. I wanted to do good, just like you want to do good. Like how you tried to do good tonight. Anyway, I filed all these papers wrong. Stacks and stacks of them. I had misunderstood how to do it, but it was two days of work I ruined and my boss was really upset with me. He said he was going to fire me. He even called me an idiot. In front of maybe twenty people he did. I had just moved out on my own. I had bills. I was in over my head as it was. To be honest I was flat broke. I couldn’t lose the job. So I just started crying and I begged him not to fire me. In front of everyone I did.”
“Did he fire you?”
“No, he didn’t. He was just mad and not a very good boss. It won’t help you, but here and there, if you’re a woman, crying can get you out of a jam.” She laughed and put her glasses back in her purse. “Anyway, I kept that job for a year until I found a better one. That filing mistake I made was no big deal. It was only a big deal that day. And that first night after it happened, even though I was broke, I went to a restaurant I’d always wanted to go to. I had chicken parmigiana and drank a glass of wine. Sometimes you have to treat yourself when you get beat up. When someone gives you a hard time, sometimes you have to give yourself an easy time so that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to see Blade.”
“Are you sure? You hate these kind of movies.”
“I’m sure,” she said. “If we missed the early show then we’ll go eat and see the later one.”
“Maybe we can get chicken parmigiana,” Leroy said and smiled.
“I’d like that,” she told him.
23
Ernie backed the U-Haul truck into Freddie’s driveway but panicked. He couldn’t find the brake and ran into the garage. He crushed the gutter and fascia board and dented the corner of the truck. It all made a booming crash and Freddie ran up from the basement to see Ernie staring at the damage by the glow of the porch light.
“Are you alright?”
Ernie shook his head nervously. “I’m sorry.”
Freddie looked at his garage and the dent in the U-Haul. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not too bad.”
“You think we can bang the dent out of the truck with a hammer?”
“It looks pretty bad, but we can try.”
“And I ruined your gutter and broke a bunch of boards, too.”
“I can fix those.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Uncle Lowell thinks it’s all my fault, and now I did this.” Ernie took off his glasses, cleaned them, and again looked at the damage he’d caused. He pulled the hair off his face, found a rubber band in his coat pocket, and tied his hair back into a ponytail.
“It’s not your fault,” said Freddie and rolled up the U-Haul’s cargo door. “I have to sell my house. That’s the problem.” He pulled the ramp from underneath the bed and set it on the garage floor and then led Ernie inside the house and down to the basement.
“I guess we have to start, huh?” Ernie asked.
“Yeah,” Freddie said, and then the two men slowly took the eighty-five plants up the stairs and into the back of the truck. They put in the lights, the fan, the extra tables, the space heaters, and the gallons of Lowell’s special plant-food mixtures. When they’d finished, Ernie handed Freddie the truck keys.
“I don’t think I should drive anymore, alright?”
“Okay,” Freddie said and took the keys.
They headed north on the highway and drove nearly two hours without talking. The radio played and they drank generic orange soda that Ernie had brought in a paper sack that sat between them. They came to a mountain range lined with trees and covered with snow, and the U-Haul crawled slowly along. Ernie read out the directions he had written down, and as they neared the summit they exited and took a series of two-lane roads until they came to a gravel logging road. A mile down it they turned into a driveway and stopped in front of a derelict log cabin.
A middle-aged man opened the front door and came out and met them. He was thin with a pushed-in face and was the size of a jockey. Next to him stood an old German shepherd with bad hips that had trouble walking. The man’s fingers were bent from arthritis and he pointed them in the general direction of a barn on the other side of the property. Freddie moved the truck to it and the man opened the barn door. Inside there was nothing but a large vacant room and three card tables.
“They’re gonna freeze to death in there,” Ernie whispered to Freddie as they walked into the barn. He stopped in front of the man. “Didn’t Lowell tell you they need to be warm?”
“I got a kerosene heater,” the man said.
Ernie grew more upset. He paced the room back and forth. Freddie looked at the man and said, “Do you have Lowell’s money?”
“Three thousand,” the man said and took a wad of worn bills from his coat pocket. He handed the money to Freddie. Freddie counted it and gave it to Ernie, who put it in his pants pocket. They opened the back of the U-Haul, pulled down the ramp, and began unloading. The man chain-smoked cigarettes and watched from the edge of the barn, but he didn’t help. They put the lights and the plant food on the concrete floor. Ernie found an outlet and plugged in the two space heaters, and they unloaded the plants and set them on the tables.
When they finished, the man inspected each plant. He walked up and down the long tables. He stopped at a set of four that carried more dead leaves than the others. He took them off the table and set them on the floor.
“I ain’t gonna pay for these.”
Ernie walked over to the plants. “But those are healthy. They’re just a little small. All plants have a few dead leaves, but I swear they’ll give you good buds.”
“I don’t want ’em,” the man said. He took another cigarette from a pack in his coat pocket and lit it. His dog stood alone on the other side of the barn and began barking at the wall. “Give me back a hundred of that money I gave you.”
Ernie stood silent and motionless.
“Give him the hundred, Ernie,” Freddie said finally.
Ernie took off his glasses and cleaned them with his shirt. He began to say something then stuttered, stopped, and took a hund
red from his pocket and gave it to the man. They loaded the four plants back in the U-Haul and drove away from the cabin.
They kept silent until they got back on the highway. Freddie got the U-Haul up to fifty and Ernie turned on the radio. Only four more plants, Freddie thought, and it was over.
“Do you mind if we talk?” asked Ernie as he sat hunched over, leaning against the door and the window glass.
“I don’t mind,” Freddie said.
“I didn’t like that guy at all.”
“There wasn’t much about him to like.”
“You know, Lowell said that guy went to prison for raping his wife. How does a guy rape his own wife?”
“Just ’cause you’re married doesn’t mean your wife wants to sleep with you,” Freddie said.
“I wouldn’t want to sleep with him.”
“Me neither.”
“To be honest, Freddie, I thought if you got married your wife would automatically want to. And want to all the time.”
Freddie laughed. “You’re younger than I thought.”
“I’m not that young,” Ernie stated, but he sunk down in the seat even more. “Is it okay if I change the station? I hate this song.”
“Pick whatever station you want,” Freddie said.
Ernie moved the dial up and down on the radio and then looked out the window. “Did you see the guy’s hands?”
“He’s got pretty bad arthritis,” Freddie said.
“And his dog was blind, wasn’t it?”
“I think so.”
“Why would he bark at the wall?”
“Maybe he was crazy, too. So what do you want to do with the last four?”
“I don’t know,” Ernie said. “What do you want to do?”
“Drop them off somewhere.”
“Kill them?” Ernie asked.
“I guess,” Freddie answered. “Or you could take them. I don’t care as long as they don’t come back to my house.”
“I guess we could drown them in the river,” Ernie said.
“Okay,” Freddie replied. He drove until they came to the edge of town. He led them off the highway until they came to the river and parked on a dirt turnout. They got out of the truck and rolled up the back door and Ernie jumped inside and carried out the four plants. One by one he took them from their plastic pots, shook the dirt off the roots, and carried them down to the river and threw them in. When he was finished, they got back into the U-Haul and left. As Freddie drove them to the International House of Pancakes, he was so elated and relieved that he nearly began weeping.
Three days later a blond real estate agent sat in a car in front of Freddie McCall’s home. She took pictures from the driver’s seat, and then got out and walked up to the house and knocked on the front door. Freddie let her inside and showed her around. He took her to the kitchen and told her how he had remodeled it for his mother. How he had built the cabinets himself in a neighbor’s garage, and while his parents were on a cruise he did the tile work and painted. He installed the new cabinets, a new counter top, and a new stove and dishwasher. She took more pictures and then he led her to the dining and living rooms and told her how he’d refinished the fir trim and oak floors. He took her to the office that he had made for his wife out of a walk-in pantry. He showed her how he’d put in a window and built cabinets and shelves and a custom desk from wood his grandfather had left in the garage.
The agent looked in the cupboards and the closets, the basement and the bathroom. When she finished, she stood near the heat of the fireplace. The housing market had fallen out, she told him. The money wouldn’t be great, not like it would have been a year earlier, but she was confident she could sell it. As she spoke, Freddie was unable to look at her. And then finally she asked him if he was certain he wanted to go through with it. “Yes,” was all he told her and then they moved to the kitchen table, came up with a plan, and did the necessary paperwork.
When he arrived at the group home that night he could hardly do his chores. He collapsed on the couch at midnight and fell asleep watching reruns of Wagon Train. He slept uninterrupted for six and a half hours and dreamt that he had gotten lost in a blizzard and was stuck up to his chest in snow. He’d given up hope and was certain of his death when he was found by Flint McCullough, the scout from Wagon Train. Flint pulled him from the snow and threw him over his horse. He led them into the pure-white freezing hell of the storm. Flint laughed easy as they went. He wasn’t worried. He told Freddie and his horse, Little One, the story of a three-day game of checkers he once saw that ended when one of the men suddenly stood up and shot himself. But the storm worsened and Flint quit talking and then he just stopped and turned around. His face grew frantic and blood spewed from his mouth and he screamed, “Freddie!”
Freddie gasped for air and woke up from sleep, startled. He opened his eyes to Dale standing over him, shaking him, telling him he was going to be late. It was 6:42.
24
Pauline called in sick and e-mailed the photo of Carol and her own contact information to every runaway shelter she could find in the Northwest, and then got in her car and drove to Seattle. It was night and raining when she arrived downtown and parked and began looking for the girl. There were thousands of people living on the streets there: staying under overpasses or sleeping in cars or worn-down old Winnebagos and camper vans, covered in tarps outside of closed businesses or sleeping in vacant lots or squatting in empty buildings. Old and young, men and women, kids and dogs. There were alcoholics and drug addicts, schizophrenics and sociopaths, ex-cons and war veterans, prostitutes and hustlers, gutter punks, runaways, and street kids.
She stopped every homeless person she could but no one had ever seen Carol. She went to the bus station and the train station, but most people there seemed threatened or uninterested when she’d show the picture of her to them. Everywhere there were buildings and alleys and people. Miles of concrete with endless places to hide. Hours passed and a cold rain fell in a constant downpour. She saw four street kids with backpacks, one of whom she thought might be a girl, passing on the other side of the avenue. She chased them down, only to find they were all boys. They wore newer packs and black leather coats with white writing on them. Two of them had huge ear piercings and they all had tattoos and one boy carried a puppy in his arms. She took the photo of Carol from her purse and showed it to them, but none of them had seen the girl, and in the end they just asked for money.
Through Pioneer Square she asked along the bars where drunk people stood outside, under awnings, smoking cigarettes. But no one seemed to really look at the picture, and of course no one had ever seen her. She walked farther on until only the main streets were lit, and then she began walking down the darkened alleys, searching.
She came to two men standing under an alley doorway.
“I don’t mean to bother you,” she said. “But have you seen this girl?” She took a lighter from her purse and put it next to the photo. The men, both over thirty, looked at it but shook their heads. One was dressed in tattered raingear, and the other had cut two plastic garbage bags and taped them together in a makeshift poncho. Two grocery carts covered in a blue tarp stood in the rain, and at the end of a rope a pit bull slept underneath the door well. A third man came from between two buildings.
“I about fell in my own shit,” he coughed as he came to them. “I slipped and nearly went flying into my own mess. And still my guts ain’t right and it’s been, what, a week now?”
He came upon the two men and then saw Pauline.
“Who are you?” he said roughly.
“I’m searching for this girl. Have you seen her?” Pauline again lit the cigarette lighter and put it near the photo.
“I ain’t seen her. What are you, her mother?”
“I’m her friend.”
The man had long, gray hair and an olive-drab rain poncho on. There were tattoos on his neck and one on the side of his face. He grabbed a bottle of malt liquor from the man in the tattered poncho and d
rank from it as Pauline put the photo back in her purse.
“What else you got in there?” he said.
“Nothing,” she replied nervously and began to retreat, but the man with the garbage-sack poncho went after her. He grabbed for her purse but missed, and then the gray-haired man went after her. He took her arm and stopped her. His grip was strong and he pulled her into him. The dog woke and began to bark.
“Please,” Pauline said. “I’m just trying to find this girl.”
The man didn’t answer. He grabbed her hair with his other hand. He pulled her head down as hard as he could but she kicked him at the same time and momentarily he let go and she ran down the alley toward the lights of a main street.
It was 4:00 in the morning when she finally returned to her car. She got inside and locked the doors. Carol was lost out there, in that, alone. She looked at her watch. For five minutes she let herself cry, and then she forced herself to stop. She started the car, turned on the radio, but she couldn’t help it and began crying again. She shut the engine off and broke down.
Eagle Lanes bowling alley was also the home of the town’s only Fraternal Order of Eagles. It was a weather-worn brick building in the industrial section of town. There were three trucks parked in front when Pauline got out of her car and headed for the front doors. Inside was just one old man bowling, his ball hitting the pins making the only noise in the place. In a back room was a small bar with a handful of people drinking and watching TV. Among them was Ford Wrenn. He was the same tall and skinny man with a baseball hat that she remembered. She went to him and said hello. He ordered a pitcher of beer, and they rented bowling shoes and a lane.
“I’ve never been good at bowling,” Pauline said as they sat next to each other on a bright orange plastic bench seat, putting on their shoes.
“I’ve never been very good at it either. And now my fingers are too bent up to fit in the holes. Truth is I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” he said and laughed. “I haven’t been on a date in a long time. But we don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
The Free (P.S.) Page 19
