The Free (P.S.) (7 page)

“I lived with three girls in the same apartment building you came to. But two of the girls got the mark, and disappeared one night. I don’t know what happened to them or if they’re even still alive. The other got married to a soldier and moved away. I rented a smaller apartment in the same building and kept working. I didn’t do anything else, not really. All my friends were going away or vanishing. It was like the world was moving on but I wasn’t. I was stuck. It’s hard to explain. And then it happened. I have a hard time getting up in the morning so I always take a bath first. I’ll be nearly asleep and I’ll light a candle and take a bath and listen to the radio and try and wake up. I do that every morning. When it happened, I remember lighting a candle and getting in the tub as usual. But then I went to turn off the water with my foot. I had my eyes closed and then I opened them just for a second and by the candlelight I saw that my big toe was bruised, that the entire toe was discolored. I panicked. I sat up and touched it but it didn’t hurt. The fact that it didn’t hurt was the worst feeling I’ve ever had. I scrubbed my toe raw, but the bruise didn’t go away. I didn’t know what to do. After that I quit talking to most everybody. At work I forced myself to be happy, to talk and joke around with the customers. I can’t begin to tell you how hard that is to do day after day. Then one lunchtime I heard some soldiers talking. They were saying they’d heard that ice slowed the mark down. I didn’t know if it was true, but I began icing my toe and then as the mark grew, my entire foot. I’d do it every day for hours at a time. I’d spend all night listening to the radio and icing my foot and hoping that someday I’d get out of the country and that somehow I wouldn’t be alone for the rest of my life . . . Now I don’t know about anything and I’m just scared all the time.”

“We’ll be okay here. Don’t worry. They’ll never find this place.” Leroy went to her and held her in his arms. A wave of euphoria engulfed them both and Jeanette kissed him.

Darla turned on the TV and watched the news for a while and then turned it off again. She picked up the book, put on her glasses, and read for another half-hour before stopping for the night. She got up, put on her coat, bent down to kiss Leroy, and then left the hospital.

11

At 5:30
AM
Freddie McCall woke on the group home couch. He silenced the alarm on his phone and sat up exhausted. He found the energy drink in his coat pocket, drank it, and then washed his face in the kitchen sink and made a pot of coffee. He turned on the TV and waited for Dale, but again the day man arrived thirty minutes late. Freddie ran out to the driveway and shouted at him as he parked his car in the drive. Dale half-heartedly apologized and went inside, and Freddie got in the Comet to find the battery dead. The car wouldn’t start, and he had to go back in and ask Dale for a jump.

He drove home as fast as he could. He took his Logan Paint Store uniform and went into the bathroom. He set the clothes near the box heater, shaved, put on his uniform, and left.

When he parked in front of Heaven’s Door Donuts, Mora waved both arms back and forth from inside. He flashed his lights twice and she took the two boxes from the counter and came out to the parking lot where Freddie rolled down the window.

“You’re late again,” she yelled.

“Dale was late again.”

“That Dale, I’ve never met him but I’m really starting to hate him.”

“Me too,” Freddie said. He took both boxes and set them on the seat beside him.

“Did you hear the game last night?”

“Parts of it,” Freddie said.

“It was horrible, huh?”

“It seemed like one long power play against us.”

“Jesus, you look tired, Freddie.”

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t drink those energy drinks. At least take them off the backseat so I don’t see them. Okay?”

“I will.”

She put her hand on his arm. “I only put in a single donut hole for you ’cause that’s all you deserve. This is the third time this week I’ve had to come out here and freeze my ass off.”

“Thanks, Mora. I don’t even deserve that.”

“You’re going to have to buy me a coat,” she said and turned around. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Freddie.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said and left.

He opened the store four minutes late and drank coffee to get through the morning rush. At 11:30, as he mopped the retail floor, Pat parked his wife’s Pontiac Grand Prix in the front lot. He came through the glass doors carrying a frozen chicken-fried steak dinner and a liter of Dr Pepper.

“How was it this morning?”

“Jensen came through with seventy gallons of Aura.”

“No kidding?”

“He cleaned us out. I knew he’d like Aura. There were a half-dozen other hundred-dollar sales. Plus Barney got that job redoing the apartment complex and bought twenty gallons of primer. He said he’s coming back this afternoon for ten more. If he doesn’t make it today, he’ll be in tomorrow.”

“Not a bad day, considering,” Pat said and took off a brown leather aviator coat and hung it on a hook on the back wall. He put the frozen dinner and soda in the fridge, opened the remaining box of donuts, took out a chocolate bar, ate it, and then took another. “I’ll be in my office,” he said. “And look, unless someone comes in and asks for me specifically, tell them I’m out.”

“Alright,” Freddie said.

“And Freddie?”

“Yeah, Pat?”

“Inventory was dead-on except for a missing two gallons of Satin Impervo.”

“Impervo?”

“You have any ideas where the two gallons went?”

“I remember you took two and gave them to your brother-in-law. Do you think it could be those?”

Pat looked at him and took a bite of the second donut. “Maybe,” he said and walked into his office and shut the door.

Freddie finished mopping. At ten minutes to noon Pat emerged from his office, went to the refrigerator and took the frozen dinner from it, and put it in the microwave.

“Freddie,” he said.

“Yeah, Pat?”

“I’ll be using line one with my wife.”

“Alright, Pat,” he said.

The microwave bell rang and he took his lunch and soda back to his office. James Dobson’s voice came through the thin office walls into the retail space and Freddie could hear it for the next hour. When the program finished, Pat came out of his office. He dumped his lunch and his empty soda bottle in the retail trash can, put on his coat, and looked outside at the cold, gray day.

“These damn winters kill us.”

“At least we’re doing better than last year,” Freddie said.

Pat nodded. “I have to meet with the company lawyer and then run some errands. I’ll try and make it back but I’m not sure I’ll be able to.”

“Alright, Pat,” Freddie said.

“And Freddie?”

“Yeah, Pat?”

“Make sure you keep the back gate locked. There’s a bunch of kids around out there today.”

“It’s an administrative day. The kids have the day off. They won’t bother anybody, and tomorrow they’ll be gone.”

“Administrative day?” Pat shook his head and left. Freddie watched him get into his wife’s car and drive away. He waited ten minutes and heated a bowl of water in the microwave, opened a package of ramen noodles and set it in. He ate lunch and placed his restocking orders. Afterward he sat at the counter and leaned against the wall. He tried to stay awake until the afternoon rush began, but he was overcome with such exhaustion that he had to lie down on the floor behind the counter. He lay on his back and his thoughts spiraled toward blackness: the house, the plants, his kids, prison, sleep, Lowell, the group home, his ex-wife. They were all trying to suffocate him. And then the sound of the buzzer rang. A customer walked through the swinging glass doors. He pulled himself together and stood up.

He closed Logan Paint at 5:30 and drove home to find a U-Haul truck backed up to his garage door. The house inside was warm; a fire burned in the fireplace. In the basement he found Lowell and a boy hanging shop lights from the ceiling. There was a twenty-gallon tub of black-looking liquid sitting in the corner as well as a half-dozen gallon jugs set in wooden boxes. There were rolls of black plastic and lengths of two-by-four and a crate of tools. They had two electric heaters and a humidifier running.

“Hey, Freddie, good to see you,” Lowell said and came down off the ladder and introduced him to his nephew.

The kid was standing on a stepstool putting in a three-foot-long fluorescent light fixture. He looked like Lowell but was very thin and young. He had long, dark hair that fell to his shoulders and he wore a faded Black Sabbath T-shirt and black jeans.

“Go shake his hand,” Lowell said, and so the boy got down off the stool and went to Freddie and put out his hand.

“Hi,” he said.

“Nice to meet you,” Freddie said, and they shook hands.

“Ernie’s going to come by two times a week to take care of the plants,” Lowell said. “He’ll trim them and move them around. He’ll water them on the days he’s here, and he’ll tell you what to do on the days he ain’t. The lights are on timers and the heaters all have thermostats so you won’t have to worry about them.”

“What’s in the tub?” asked Freddie.

“Mystery magic water,” Lowell said, grinning. “Ernie will mix it up when we run low. I swear by my nephew, so don’t worry.” He looked over and pointed his finger to him. “Just don’t bring any of your friends around.”

“I wouldn’t,” Ernie said.

“I’m serious.”

“I told you I won’t.”

“What days do you think you’ll come, Ernie?” asked Freddie.

“I don’t have classes on Thursday. I’ll come then for sure and then probably on Saturday. Uncle Lowell said not to bother you on Sunday ’cause it’s your day off.”

“We should have a harvest next couple weeks. You’ll see some money off that. Ernie will be the guy to pay you. You alright, Freddie? You look pretty rough, man. You losing weight?”

“I am a little bit.”

“And you’re going gray.”

“Yeah.”

“I guess we all go gray if we get lucky.”

“I have to admit I’m a little nervous, Lowell. I’ve never done anything illegal, not really.”

“If you weren’t nervous you’d be a dumb shit, and you ain’t a dumb shit, Freddie. You’re just broke. Look, when I get out, the first thing I’m going to do is get my ass over here and move these plants. I promise you that. Like I said, the risk ain’t much, Freddie, but there’s always a chance of something going wrong.”

“I know,” he said.

“We’re going to finish the lights and load in the rest of the stuff and then get some Mexican food. You should come.”

“I’d like to but I have to take a nap and then go to work.”

“Hanging out with the retards, huh?” Lowell asked.

Freddie nodded and walked back up the stairs. He put more wood on the fire and sat down, worried. He stared at the flames and looked at the fabric of the couch. He remembered when his parents bought it from a furniture store brand-new. His mother put a plastic slip over it and then a blanket. When she died, the first thing his father did was take all the plastic off the furniture and wear his shoes in the house.

The old couch had weathered he and his parents, a dog and two cats, and finally his youngest daughter, Ginnie. He thought of all the times she’d lain on the couch recovering from surgeries. How he’d light a fire and set the TV where she could see it. It would be weeks at a time she’d be there, nursed night and day by his wife and him.

“Now I’m gonna end up in prison,” he said to himself, and he said it over and over until he almost believed it as truth. He set the alarm on his phone and lay down on the couch and put the sleeping bag over him. He woke two hours later to hear Lowell and Ernie’s voices come up from the basement. He changed out of his paint store clothes and left for his shift at the group home.

The next evening when he got home, a beat-up white Volkswagen Bug was parked in the drive outside of his house. Inside he could hear Lowell’s voice drifting up from the basement vent. Again the house was warm. There was a fire in the fireplace and on the kitchen table were containers of Chinese food. In the basement eighty-five marijuana plants sat on different tables. The large plants were three feet tall and set in rows; the smaller ones were less than a foot and put in a separate makeshift room made out of black plastic and two-by-fours. There were little blue flags sticking out of some plants, yellow flags out of others, and orange out of others. The humidifier, two space heaters, and four fans were all running. Ernie stood trimming the plants with a small pair of scissors while Lowell wrote out instructions in a binder.

“Off work, huh, Freddie?” Lowell said when he saw him.

Freddie nodded.

“How was the Bible eater today?”

“He put in his two hours.”

Lowell shook his head and drank from a can of beer. “I got Chinese food upstairs and there’s a case of beer on your back porch.”

“It’s his last night,” Ernie said. “We’re gonna celebrate.”

“Ain’t much of a celebration,” Lowell said.

“At least you’ll get to see Uncle John,” Ernie said.

Lowell nodded. “I have an uncle, Ernie’s great uncle, who was convicted of armed robbery ten years ago. He’d be out by now, but they won’t let him ’cause he’s an Indian.”

“He used his dog as a getaway driver,” Ernie said to Freddie. “He’d park down the street from the store he was going to rob, and he’d leave his truck running and his dog would guard it.”

“That’s true,” Lowell said. “It wasn’t much of a plan.”

“What happened to the dog?” Freddie asked.

“That’s a good question,” Lowell said. “The white cops probably shot it.”

“No,” Ernie said and laughed. “My mom kept him. He would bark at shadows and at spots on the wall. And he would steal cubes of butter off the table. But he was a good dog except that he got hit by a car.”

“Well,” Freddie said. “I gotta take a nap before I go to work. Good luck, Lowell. I’m sure sorry you have to go.”

“It’s going to be okay, Freddie,” he said. “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. You’ll see. Ernie will take good care of things.”

“Okay,” Freddie said and went upstairs. He ate a plate of kung pao chicken from a container on the table, and went to the couch to take a nap before his shift. But as he lay there he could smell the plants leaking up through the vents. His mind raced with worry. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, so he changed his clothes, took another postcard from the stack he’d set on the kitchen table, and left.

He drove to the hospital and took the elevator to the sixth floor, and walked down the hall to Leroy’s room. But even as he entered he could see that Leroy’s condition had worsened. His face was more bloated. His skin was ashen.

Freddie took the postcard from his pocket. It was a 1960s vintage color illustration of a woman with wild blond hair standing on a cloud with a ray gun in her hand. Behind her, in the far distance, a rocket blasted toward the sky, and to the left of her a spaceship hovered. She was dressed in a skin-tight red-and-black jumpsuit. He put the card on the table next to the bed and left.