The Free

by Willy Vlautin

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “It gave me something to do on my weekend.”

  “But I’m going to be honest with you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I know we just met, but I don’t want a boyfriend. I don’t ever want one. That’s the truth.”

  “Fair enough. You already told me that on the phone. I’m not the smartest, but I do remember you saying that.”

  “And I don’t want your stuff at my place, and I won’t give you a key.”

  “That’s alright,” he said. “You’re jumping the gun anyway.”

  “I just want you to know that.”

  “Okay.”

  “And we’ll have sex only when I want to have sex.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t like being pressured.”

  Ford sat back in the bench seat and took a drink off his glass of beer. He smiled. “Anything else?”

  “I just want you to know I won’t depend on you. Not ever.”

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “And we’re not going to do it at my place.”

  “That’s okay, too. I have money. I like the Red Lion.”

  “I’ll pay half.”

  “I’m not worried,” he said. “Relax, this is our first date.”

  “I know.”

  “We don’t have to be like everybody else,” said Ford.

  “I wish that were true.”

  “It is true, if we want it to be. I’m on the road all time. The truth is I like thinking about you, and it’s easier to think about you if we spend time together. Is that alright?”

  Pauline nodded.

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m not gonna end up doing your laundry and calling you to see where you are. I’m not . . . I’m not going to fix you dinner to hear you say you hate it, or for you to not say anything at all. I’m not going to do any of that. If you say I’m too fat or if you start being mean to me or make me feel bad about myself, I won’t ever see you again.”

  “Look,” he said. “I might upset you sometimes. That’s the way people are. They upset each other, but I won’t do any of the stuff you said. I don’t want to own you. I just want to be friends with you. Truth is I’m lonely and I’m getting older, and I like you. I think I know what you’re talking about, but I don’t get like that. I’ve never been like that.”

  “I just want to be clear.”

  “Fair enough. I think you’re pretty clear.”

  “And I don’t want you to say I’m your girlfriend. I’m not anybody’s girlfriend.”

  “It’s our first date,” he said. “You have to relax a bit.”

  “Don’t fuck with me,” she said, her voice beginning to tremble.

  “We’re just bowling,” Ford said. “You got to lighten up, chief.”

  “I need a drink.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “Are you scared of me yet?”

  “Not really,” he said and smiled. “We both got some miles underneath us.”

  “Good. Do you like Mexican food?”

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe we can get Mexican food and margaritas after this.”

  “Sounds good to me,” he said and stood up.

  “You’re not married or got a girl somewhere else?”

  “I was engaged once but I was just twenty-three. I was gone all the time and she met someone else. I’ve had a few girlfriends here and there, but I don’t have kids and I’m not seeing anyone now.”

  Pauline stood up and smiled. “Well, alright then, I guess I said what I had to say.”

  25

  A nurse came into Leroy Kervin’s ICU room followed by two men in military uniforms.

  “I don’t know if you’ll remember me,” one of the men said to Jeanette and Darla, who both sat in chairs near Leroy’s bed. “But I’m Harvey Lowery. I was Leroy’s boss at Lowery Electric and his platoon leader in the National Guard. This is John Barr, a chaplain with the Guard.”

  Harvey Lowery was heavyset and bald. The chaplain was a gawky young man in his midtwenties. He was wearing a new uniform and carrying a Bible underneath his arm.

  “I know this must be an extremely difficult time for you both,” the chaplain said. “We are here to support you in any way we can.”

  Darla kept her eyes on Leroy as they spoke, while Jeanette just stared at them with a look of terror across her face. Nearly a minute passed in silence and then Jeanette cleared her throat. “How can you think we want you here?” she said quietly. “Either of you? . . . Mr. Lowery, you’re the one who convinced him to join. I was there. I remember. One weekend a month and two weeks a year. How the money would help, how it would help us with retirement. How it would help our country if there was a disaster like in New Orleans . . . I know Leroy was naïve and I know he signed the papers himself, but you didn’t say anything about him being shipped to Iraq. You didn’t say anything about him being sent to a foreign war. The National Guard never advertises that on TV or on their billboards. And where were you when we were in San Diego? I didn’t see you quit your job and sit by his bed and take care of him. Praying every day and night that he’d get better . . . Both of you got him here so you don’t get to say good-bye to him. We get to say good-bye to him.”

  Harvey Lowery stepped back. He began to sweat and he looked as if he were going to be sick. “I didn’t know we were going to war,” he said softly. “I didn’t know they’d take us. I’m almost fifty years old and they took me. I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t feel awful about what happened to Leroy and the other men I lost.”

  Harvey Lowery looked at the chaplain and the chaplain looked back at him but didn’t say anything. Darla stood up. “I’m sure you’re both decent men,” she said. “And I don’t blame you personally for what happened, but still I don’t want you here either. My life stopped when Leroy got hurt. I’ve done nothing but fight the military and the hospitals. For seven years I’ve had to advocate for his care and look after him, so I think it’s my right . . . Harvey, I work at the Safeway on Fifth Street. I see you in there once in a while with your family. All I ask is that you shop somewhere else from now on. I just don’t want to see you again.”

  Hours later Jeanette woke in the chair across from Leroy’s bed to rain beating against the hospital window. She moved her chair closer to him and held his hand.

  “Are you awake? Do you hear it?”

  Leroy opened his eyes and put his hand on her leg.

  “I’ve never heard it rain so hard,” she said. “It’s like they’re hammering on the roof.”

  “I should get up and make sure everything’s alright,” he said.

  “Please, don’t get up.”

  Leroy turned on his side and moved closer to her and held her.

  “What happened to your underwear?”

  “Somebody stole them last night.”

  “Somebody stole them?”

  “Every time I’m sleeping this man says it’s too hot and he makes me take my underwear off.”

  “What does him being hot have to do with your underwear?”

  “That’s the question I ask every night,” she said.

  Leroy pulled back the blankets.

  “What are you doing?”

  He ran his hand over her. Her body up past her breasts was covered in the mark. Her arms had it to the elbows and it covered her entire back.

  “Hey, it’s freezing,” she cried and pulled the covers back over them.

  “I was just looking at you,” he said.

  “Well don’t. I hate when you see me like this. You promised.”

  “But I like the way you look.”

  “How could you? I look awful.”

  “To be honest I like you better this way,” Leroy said and pulled her into him.

  “You’re so full of it.”

  “I’m serious,” he whispered and kissed her.

  When they woke next it was almos
t noon. The weather had cleared and they could start moving again. They made breakfast and looked over their maps. They had decided on a route when they heard a series of blasts come from a ship’s horn. They rushed topside to see the ship from Seattle entering the cove a half mile away.

  “How could they have found us?” Jeanette cried.

  “Maybe they don’t know it’s us,” Leroy said. He pulled the anchor while Jeanette started the engine, and slowly they hugged the opposite coastline and headed toward open water. Through binoculars Leroy could see three men at the stern of the Seattle ship observing them with field glasses. They watched but didn’t follow.

  As night came they ran the boat blindly with only a single spotlight guiding the way. They headed north. They kept a lookout for the ship from Seattle but they saw no signs of it. The weather worsened and the wind blew sheets of rain sideways and the boat’s engine lugged as it worked against the rough waters. It took them an hour and a half to go less than three miles and the boat took on water. It was 4:00 in the morning when they finally found a small bay, but as they moved into it they spotted, in the distance, a group of boats strung together. No lights came from inside them, not even running lights were visible. They anchored a hundred yards from the cluster and collapsed.

  At dawn Leroy went topside again and began observing the group of boats with binoculars: three sailboats, two smaller fishing vessels, four cabin cruisers, and a large commercial fishing boat. They were all tied together. He could see no movement, no people, no lights, and no smoke from generator engines. He was pale with worry when he went below and woke Jeanette.

  “We’re almost out of gas,” he told her. “I’m not sure we’ll have enough to get to the next town. That weather last night might have ruined us. I think we’re gonna have to see if they have any gas on that group of boats. Maybe if anyone’s still there they’ll let us buy some, but the thing is I haven’t seen any people. There’s been no sign of anyone, no movement at all and I’ve watched them for hours.”

  “Maybe they’re all dead,” Jeanette said.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Under the galley sink he took out a .22 pistol that was hidden in an empty soap box and loaded it with bullets while Jeanette steered toward the gathered boats. As they came closer they saw THE FREE written in black spray paint on the side of the nearest sailboat. Next to it they saw a man hanging by his neck from a rope off the side of the commercial fishing boat. He wore no shoes and was in his underwear, his hands bound behind him. His entire body was covered with the mark. His neck had stretched under his own weight. They saw more bodies, two men with the mark hanging the same way off the opposite side and four more leaned against the cabin of a sailboat with their heads blown apart.

  Jeanette moved the boat alongside a partially sunk cabin cruiser and idled.

  “The second I get onboard I want you to move back fifty yards from here, okay? I’ll wave to you when I’m ready to get picked up. If anything goes wrong, head north as fast you can.”

  “I won’t leave you,” Jeanette said.

  “You’ll have to,” he said. He put the pistol in his coat pocket and jumped aboard the cabin cruiser and waved her off.

  There was a tent on the stern made of tarps and two-by-fours. Under it were two propane stoves set on a tin table, but the propane tanks were empty. In the main cabin he found two young children, dead, in a bunk. He went to the controls but the battery was gone and he couldn’t read the gas gauge without it. He looked toward the bow and saw five red-plastic gas cans, but when he lifted them, each was empty.

  He moved on. He jumped to a twenty-eight-foot fishing boat. Inside its cabin there were two half-burned bodies lying on the floor, their faces hidden underneath a fallen table. The smell was burnt and rotten and damp. In the cockpit he found a dead woman. She was young, maybe thirty, with blond hair. Both her legs had the mark and she was handcuffed to a cleat with black plastic ties. He stared at her bloody face and thought of Jeanette, and no longer could he block out what he was seeing. He was suddenly overcome with the horror and his breathing became shallow and strained.

  He boarded the fifty-two-foot commercial fishing boat and went toward the main cabin, but the door was blocked by a man with a bullet hole in his forehead. Both of his marked hands were nailed to the deck of the boat and a pool of blood surrounded him.

  Why was he seeing what he was seeing?

  He went to the opposite side of the cabin and entered from there. Below deck was a galley and a larger area that looked like a makeshift schoolroom. There was a blackboard and chairs and tables; there were children’s drawings on the walls and Halloween decorations. Behind a desk were a dead man and woman. They were face down, their hands tied behind them. The man’s wallet lay on his back. Leroy went through it for money but there was none.

  He began to feel sick. He ran topside and tried to catch his breath, but he no longer could. He looked out into the inlet to see Jeanette watching him. He put one arm up, which meant he was okay, and then went to the next vessel, another twenty-eight-foot fishing boat. There were two dead dogs chained to a concrete weight in the middle of the deck. Blood was everywhere.

  In the main cabin there was a naked old man dead on the floor nearly covered in the mark. Leroy moved past him to a see a broken door leading below deck. He went down the stairs to a galley that smelled of gasoline and found a half-full five-gallon can sitting on top of the galley stove. They had doused the main cabin in fuel, but for some reason hadn’t set the boat afire. He searched the galley cupboards but found nothing. He began heading topside again when he heard a noise, a faint scratching sound.

  He took the pistol from his coat pocket, as his chest seized in pain. He stood for nearly a minute in complete terror. He tried to listen. The scratching came from the forward cabin door. He moved toward it. He held the gun and opened it nervously to find a half-dead kitten on the floor.

  He picked up the tiny black cat and held it in his hand. He looked at the small room. It was stocked with boxes of restaurant-size canned food. He put the kitten on the ground and found a cardboard box, put it inside, and went topside and signaled Jeanette.

  She moved the boat alongside the fishing vessel. Leroy tied their boat to it and put the kitten onboard. He loaded box after box of food and then untied them and Jeanette started the motor and moved them fifty yards away and cut the engine.

  “Was it bad?” she asked.

  “It was like the other place,” he said, barely able to speak.

  “What’s wrong?” she cried.

  “I can’t breathe.”

  “Keep trying.”

  “Why do I see such horrible things?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t want to see things like that anymore.”

  “They’ll go away.”

  “I don’t think they will.”

  “Was there any gas?”

  “Just the one can and it was only half-full.”

  “What are we going to do?” Jeanette asked.

  “I don’t know,” Leroy said and then remembered the kitten. He went to the box and opened it, but there was nothing inside.

  Jeanette turned on a CD player. She set it on the table next to Leroy’s bed. Amália Rodrigues’s voice came quietly through the small speakers. She went into the bathroom with a washcloth, put it under the faucet, and came back and washed Leroy’s face and arms and hands.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “You were having a nightmare and I didn’t know what else to do. In the movies when someone has a fever they always put a cold washcloth on them. Does it make you feel better?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Are you okay now?”

  “No. I swing from drowning in you to drowning into these violent thoughts . . . I want to die inside you but I’m scared I’ll die inside one of those ships. I don’t think my mind knows what to do and I can’t control it anymore.”

  “You’re just having bad dreams,” s
he said. “They’re just dreams. So shape up, alright? No more nightmares for you, okay?”

  “I’ve never had a girl wash my face while I was sleeping.”

  “Now you have.”

  “I like it.”

  “I’ll do it every day if you like,” she said and laughed. “Well maybe not every day, but a lot of days. You’ll be lucky if you keep trying. I swear you will.”

  Jeanette turned on the stereo and Amália Rodrigues began playing.

  “I love her voice.”

  “I know.”

  “It makes me think of my uncle.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Maybe we can just stay here and listen to her and rest.”

  “We’ll rest for a while,” Jeanette said. “But we have to keep going.”

  “But I’m so tired.”

  “Don’t think about how tired you are.”

  “Last night I dreamt, and in my dream we were at Home Depot. We saw a dog wandering around in the parking lot. It was late, almost nine at night. I was buying something for work and you went with me. In my dream you’d always go with me, but for payment I’d have to take you to Dairy Queen.”

  “I love Dairy Queen,” she said.

  “I know you do . . . So we see this dog. He’s a mutt and he’s missing part of his ear. He looks like he’s been sleeping under cars but he’s young and pretty healthy, considering. Across the street from the Home Depot is Dairy Queen, so afterward we’re in line at the drive-through and we see the dog cross the street coming toward us. He almost gets hit by a car, but he doesn’t. Then we see a man on a bike nearly run him over. The guy starts yelling at the dog. But the dog keeps on moving. A happy-go-lucky dog, a dog about town. He didn’t seem worried about anything. We have two cars in front of us and a few behind so we have to wait, but after we get the ice cream we decide to look for him. We spend half the night trying. We talk about where we’ll keep him, what we’ll name him, and that we’ll have to buy him a collar and put our phone number on it. How we’ll have to find a good vet to take care of him and we’ll make sure to keep him up on his shots. We have his whole life planned, and it’s an easy life. Will he sleep on our bed or won’t he? What will his name be? Will he like camping? Will he like swimming in the lake? We’re already in love with him. And then finally after searching up and down street after street, we find him. He’s lying on the side of the road, shot. Somebody had shot him. He was still breathing when we got to him, but his eyes were closed. We pet him and talked to him. We told him not to worry. We tried to comfort him. Why would anyone shoot him? Why would anyone shoot a dog walking by? How would someone have a gun at the exact time he passed them? Not everybody carries guns, do they?