The Free

by Willy Vlautin

  “I try to.”

  “I’m old but I’m not completely dim,” Terrance said.

  “I know that,” Freddie said.

  “I can see it in your face. You’re having a hard time.”

  “I’m okay. Really, I am. I’m having a bit of trouble sleeping. That’s all.”

  “The hospital bills have got you, huh?”

  “They’re a lot but I’m working on them.”

  “You’ll let me know if I can help?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Do you need money, Freddie? I have some money. I can help.”

  “No, I’m okay, Terrance. You should hang on to your money. You might need it.”

  “I’m not gonna need it.”

  “You might,” Freddie said. “You showed me those brochures. Those homes cost a lot.”

  “I don’t have to go there yet,” he said.

  “But you have to save your money in case you do. You’re the one that told me that it costs a lot to get old. That I should save my money. I don’t want you to stay in some place where they don’t take good care of you just ’cause you gave me money. The place you’re looking at, it’s a nice place. So if you have to, you should stay there. So please keep your money.”

  “Alright,” he said. “Your kids okay?”

  “They’re fine.”

  “You must miss them quite a bit.”

  “That’s true. I do.”

  “You’ll get them back, Freddie. I have a feeling.”

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “I’ve had some hard times, too, Freddie. They go away; at least most of them do.”

  “Thanks for saying that, Terrance. I’ll be fine.”

  “I hate to be a pest to you, Freddie, but you do look so tired.”

  “I know, but it’ll pass. Please don’t worry. Anyway, I like the new trestle.”

  “It was a lot of work, but I like it, too.” Terrance picked up his cup and tried to take a drink, but his hands shook violently as he did and he set the cup back down. A pack of straws sat near the control panel and he took one from the package and put it in the cup. He bent down and took a drink while an engine chugged past him and headed up the new trestle and into a tunnel.

  When Freddie arrived back at his house the Volkswagen Bug was parked in his drive. A fire was burning in the fireplace, and there was a half-full Hostess donut box on the kitchen table next to two empty plastic chocolate milk bottles. He could hear music and the sound of two voices coming from the basement. He went down the stairs to the back room and opened the door, and as he did the smell of the plants and marijuana smoke poured out. The fluorescent lights shone down as Ernie trimmed the plant’s branches with a pair of small scissors while another boy watered them.

  “Hey, Freddie,” Ernie said.

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to come on Sunday.”

  “I meant to come yesterday, but I got too busy. It won’t happen again. We won’t be long. We’re almost done. I’m doing some trimming right now. You have to stay on top of these guys if you want them to succeed.”

  The other boy laughed. He was also Indian and was tall and heavy. He was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. He had short, dark hair and wore army boots and had a red scarf tied around his left arm. There was a bong and a sandwich bag full of weed sitting next to a portable CD player that was playing.

  Ernie took his glasses off and cleaned them with his shirt. There was a pack of Life Savers near the baggie and he took five and put them in his mouth.

  “You’re gonna eat the whole pack again,” the other kid said and laughed. “I ain’t even had one yet.”

  “You better get on it, then,” Ernie said and laughed.

  Freddie looked at the other boy. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “This is Angel,” Ernie said.

  Angel nodded.

  “Can I talk to you upstairs, Ernie?”

  “Sure thing, Freddie,” he said and set down the scissors. He chewed the Life Savers and took a drink off a can of generic orange soda, and followed him up the stairs into the living room where they stood next to the fire.

  “You said you wouldn’t bring anyone else here,” Freddie whispered nervously.

  “It’s just Angel,” Ernie said. “Angel and me go everywhere together. He won’t say anything.”

  “Lowell told you no other people. I was there when he said it.”

  “Angel would rather die than tell anyone about this. He’s Indian. It’s an Indian thing.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Ernie. Lowell and I worked together for eight years. I know all about, ‘it’s an Indian thing.’ ”

  Ernie laughed. His eyes were bloodshot and they looked worse behind his glasses. “Lowell told me you’d say that. But see I’ve known Angel my whole life. His mom and my mom are best friends. He hates cops.”

  Freddie leaned against the mantel. His legs felt like they were going to give out. “Look, Ernie, I don’t want you smoking in here. Lowell would be upset if he knew. You know he would. I’m worried enough about the smell as it is. I don’t need you smoking it, too.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Ernie said. “When it’s cold out you can’t smell anything.”

  Freddie sighed and sat down on a chair near the fireplace. He was beginning to have trouble breathing. He covered his face with his hands.

  “You alright?” Ernie asked.

  “I’ll be okay in a minute.”

  “Do you want a glass of water?”

  “No.”

  Ernie looked about the room and put another log on the fire. He went to the kitchen table, took a donut from the Hostess box, and ate it.

  Freddie stood up and leaned against the mantel again. “Just no more smoking and no more Angel, alright? And no more coming on Sunday.”

  “Okay, Freddie,” he said and finished the donut. He went to his wallet and took out an envelope from it and handed it to Freddie. “It’s a thousand dollars. Well, nine hundred and eighty, really. Angel and I had to get something to eat. Angel ate twelve bucks at Burger King. He eats a lot. I only spent seven.”

  “What’s the money for?”

  “Lowell said you aren’t a criminal, and that you’d start having a hard time. I’m supposed to give you the money when you start freaking out. It’s seems to me like that’s what’s going on.”

  Freddie looked in the envelope and counted the money.

  “We’ll have a harvest in three weeks. You’ll make more money then. White boys at my college buy a lot of weed. It’ll be okay, Freddie. Don’t worry.” Ernie wiped his glasses once more, and then turned around and went back to the basement.

  Freddie looked at his watch. He was taking the Sunday night shift at the group home. He had two and a half hours until it started. He stared at the nine hundred-dollar bills and four twenties in front of him. He put a hundred underneath the sink in an empty coffee container and put the rest in his wallet. He took a shower, changed, put two stamps in his coat pocket, grabbed the folder with his past-due bills in it, and left.

  He drove to the grocery store and purchased money orders for his past-due water ($263) and electric bill ($556), leaving him with $80. He put the bills and money orders in envelopes and dropped them in a mail box and drove to the hospital. As he entered he noticed the sign for the cafeteria and went inside and bought dinner. He was looking for a seat when he noticed Leroy’s mother in the back, at a small table sitting alone. She was dressed in her Safeway uniform and had black-framed reading glasses on top of her head. On the table in front of her was a half-eaten piece of pie and a cup of coffee.

  “How’s Leroy tonight?” he asked as he stood in front of her carrying his tray of food.

  “Hello, Freddie,” Darla said and shrugged her shoulders. “Not well, I suppose.”

  “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” she said.

  He sat across from her and began eating his supper.

&nb
sp; “Can I ask you a question, Freddie?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “I hate to bother you when you’re eating but I can’t help it.”

  “It’s alright,” he said and set down his fork.

  She cleared her throat and looked at him. “Why do you keep visiting Leroy? You must have a family or people that need your time. I know you work two jobs. Did anything happen that night? Anything at all? You can tell me if it did. I won’t get you in trouble, Freddie. I won’t.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” he said. “I can see how you’d think it, but it’s not why I’m here. When it happened I was asleep. I woke up ’cause I heard the sound of him falling down the stairs. I can only guess at why he did what he did.”

  “But still, you come here night after night.”

  Freddie looked at his food on the table, but he wasn’t hungry anymore. He pushed the plate forward and set his elbows down. “I guess more than anything Leroy reminds me of my daughter,” he said quietly.

  “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

  “I have two daughters. The youngest, Ginnie, was born with hip dysplasia.”

  “What is that?”

  “Both her hips had serious problems. So as an infant we had her in different harnesses to correct the problems, but they didn’t work. So eventually she had four different surgeries, but only one of those was successful. The doctors were always hopeful, but then she would never recover the way they wanted, the way they hoped. She was in a lower-body cast three different times, and she was in them for months each time. The doctors here couldn’t do the operations. We had to go to Seattle and San Francisco. It was expensive to just get there and stay there, and then on top of that the medical procedure and medications were only partially covered. Medical bills began piling up. That’s why I have two jobs.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  “What did your wife do for work?”

  “She worked at a rental car agency, but she quit to take care of Ginnie. One of us had to quit, and I made more money. But obviously it hurt us losing her paycheck. We were going broke as it was. I’ve worked at a paint store since I was in high school. I’ve only had one real job. I never went to college.” Freddie rubbed his face with his hands. “I used to lay awake for hours trying to think of a way out of our situation but I never could.”

  “I was like that when Leroy got hurt,” Darla said. “I could never sleep.”

  “I started going down to the basement in the middle of the night and putting together a model train set,” Freddie said and laughed in embarrassment.

  “You have to do something,” Darla said.

  “I started building a train set that had a huge Civil War scene, the Battle of Gettysburg. I’d always read about the Civil War. Anyway, I’d pass half the night down there. It was the only thing I did that made my mind stop. It calmed me down. But I was spending money on it that we didn’t have . . . I bought these little Civil War soldiers and I’d paint them. I’d put fake blood on them and have them stabbing and shooting each other. I painted them dead and on stretchers in field hospitals or walking down a road, wounded, with one leg or one arm. All that violence I re-created, and it comforted me . . . I’m sorry to go on like this, Darla. You must think I’m pretty awful.”

  “It’s fine, Freddie. I know what you’re saying. I understand. But please keep eating, I don’t want to ruin your dinner.”

  “It’s alright. I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Our money got so bad we mortgaged the house twice, and I got the second job at the group home. A couple years went by and my wife started having an affair.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  Freddie nodded. “I never would have thought of it happening, but it makes sense. All I ever did was work, and to be honest by then I never really thought about how she was doing or how she was holding up. I was so worried about money and Ginnie that she’d become invisible to me. She left with my daughters almost two years ago. She’d fallen in love with someone else and they moved out of state together. It happened four years after Ginnie was born. So, four years of falling apart. By the end I didn’t even have the energy to fight for them. To be honest I thought maybe they were better off without me. I thought maybe their new dad would be an improvement. At least he made more money. It was like waking up from one nightmare and falling into another.” He paused for a minute, staring at his dinner. “I liked being a dad, more than anything else maybe.”

  “Not a lot of men say that,” Darla said.

  “I’m not telling you this to complain. I’m just telling you ’cause I don’t want you to worry that something bad happened to Leroy ’cause of me.”

  “Thank you for telling me, Freddie.”

  “I owe you that . . . You know, when we first went into Afghanistan and then Iraq I was excited. I read about it like it was a sport, like an adventure story. All the different kinds of guns and helicopters and jets, and the strategies. And then Leroy came to the group home. I learned he was in the National Guard and got hurt in Iraq. I started realizing things. I started opening my eyes to things.”

  “I’ve never understood people’s fascination with war,” Darla said. “You know my brother went to Vietnam. It felt like I hardly breathed the whole time he was there. And what did it mean him being there? Why was he there? He made it back alive but he wasn’t the same. He lost who he was, and for what?”

  “Is he still alive now?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He killed himself, Freddie. He shot himself in the head. He lived in the back of my house in a trailer. Leroy went to see him after school one day as he always did, but my brother was dead. He found him in the trailer like that, his head destroyed and all that blood. My Leroy had to see that. Just a week before my brother had gotten so down he went to the VA for help. They put him on some kind of medication, set up an appointment with a counselor, and sent him home.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Darla nodded.

  “Why after all that would Leroy join?”

  Tears welled in Darla’s eyes. “His boss was in the National Guard and that had a lot to do with it. This was before 9/11, before Afghanistan. There wasn’t a lot to worry about and it was the National Guard. At the time I didn’t know they sent the National Guard to foreign wars, and Leroy promised me he’d never have to go. Even so, I was sick about it. The only real fights we ever got in were over him joining. I begged him not to and his girlfriend begged him not to. I broke down crying and begged him because of my brother.”

  “But he joined anyway?”

  She nodded. “I can blame his boss but Leroy was always impressionable, especially to men. In the end I think he just wanted to see.”

  “See what your uncle saw?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I hope that’s not the reason but I think it might be.”

  18

  Pauline walked down the sixth-floor hall and entered room 3, Mrs. Dawson. She helped her from bed and walked her up and down the hall, and when she was finished she clocked out for dinner break. She went to the cafeteria, ordered two egg sandwiches and two orders of chocolate cake, and took them back to the sixth floor, to Jo’s room.

  “Hey, you’re finally up,” she said as she walked in.

  “Hello,” Jo said shyly.

  “I’m glad you’re getting some sleep.”

  The girl nodded.

  “I’m on dinner break. I was thinking we could eat together.” She set the food on the bed tray. “I hope you like egg sandwiches. The cook makes them especially for me. It’s a scrambled egg and cheese on a toasted sesame-seed bagel. It’s my favorite. For dessert we have chocolate cake. What do you think? You want to eat with me?”

  Jo nodded.

  “Good,” Pauline replied and took one of the sandwiches and s
at down in the chair across from her.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” Jo said quietly. “I didn’t mean to be like that. I didn’t mean what I said. I know you’re not like that.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m sorry I said it.”

  “I thought we did pretty good last night, considering. We’re just getting to know each other. It takes a while for people to trust each other. So don’t worry, okay?”

  “You don’t hate me?”

  “Of course not. You were pretty normal, if you ask me. Anyway, I can take it. So how was your day?”

  “Nothing happened, really.” She moved the sandwich in front of her and took a bite. “Linda repacked the bandages and I went for two walks.”

  “I’ll have to do them again in an hour or so, okay? But I’ll keep my mouth shut and go fast as I can, and then you’ll have the whole night to sleep. Pretty soon you’ll only have to change them once a day and then after that they’ll be healed.”

  “Did you do anything before work?”

  Pauline set her sandwich on the bedside table and bent down and took off her shoes and set her feet on top of them and moved her toes back and forth. “My dogs are tired again. Let me see. Today, well I went to the dentist. And after that I went grocery shopping, and then on the way home I stopped by my dad’s and made him lunch. I guess that’s about it.”

  “Do you always make him lunch?”

  “A few times a week.”

  “Are you a good cook?”

  “No, but my dad only eats a few things.”

  “What does he like?”

  “Right now all he likes is chicken noodle soup, crackers, iceberg lettuce, and frozen burritos.”

  “That’s it?” Jo said and smiled.

  “He used to only eat TV dinners, but his cholesterol got so bad that I made him stop. After that everything had to be Taco Bell. He’d throw fits if it wasn’t. But his cholesterol got even worse. So now it’s soup and frozen burritos and I try to keep him away from candy unless I’m bribing him. Candy is a sure way to get him to do something he doesn’t want to do. Anyway, more importantly, is there anything on TV?”

  “I don’t really like TV.”