Freedom’s Child

Fuck this umbrella if it doesn’t want to close. I chuck it to the dirt lot and climb into the rusty hooptie of a station wagon. I remove my nose ring and put the smoke out in an overflowing ashtray.

“Jesus Harry Christ,” I scream, alarmed by a knock on the window. I can’t see through the condensation and open it a crack to find a couple suits. “Whippersnapping jack holes.” They look at me like I’m nuts, but I’m pretty sure they expect it. People have a hard time trying to understand what I say most of the time. “Isn’t it late for you guys?”

“Well, you keep making us come out here like this,” says one of them.

“It was an accident.” I shrug as I get out of the car.

“Trying to blind a man with Tabasco sauce was an accident?”

“Semantics, Gumm,” I say as I fiddle with the keys. “Guy got rough with one of the girls, so I slapped him on the cheek. Only I missed his cheek and got his eyes. I only just so happened to have Tabasco sauce spill in my hand not a moment before. Besides, he’s not pressing charges, so I’m sorry you guys had to make the trip from Portland.”

“You’re walking on thin ice,” says Howe.

“Tabasco won’t blind you.” I shake the rain from my hair. “Just hurts like fuck and keeps you awake.”

“Well, he was mad enough to call the cops. If it weren’t for us, you’d be sitting in jail right now,” says Gumm.

“Besides, an eye patch suits him.” I lead them into the closed pub, turn on the power, and grab three Budweisers. They eyeball the beverages. “Relax. I won’t tell,” I offer.

The lights are dim, borderline interrogational, above the island bar in the middle of a large, old wooden floor furnished with the occasional pool table. The scent of stale smoke hangs heavy, etched in the wood’s grooves like a song impressed on a vinyl record. The music turns on to Lynyrd Skynyrd. U.S. Marshals Gumm and Howe each flip a stool down from the bar and sit.

“You know how it goes,” says Agent Gumm, with his salt-and-pepper hair, handlebar mustache, and sagged jowls. He doesn’t want to be here, I can tell. I don’t want him here either. Court-mandated. Fuck the system. Let’s get this over with. We’ll fill out the forms, I’ll get a lecture. Consider this a warning. Yeah, yeah, it’s always considered. To Gumm’s side is Agent Howe, who does a quick read over the files in their manila envelopes. “How’s this job treating you, Freedom?”

“I’d come up with a clever remark, but I’m too tired for the bullshit.” I wipe my leather jacket with a bar towel. “Just slap me on my wrist and we can all be on our way, why don’t you?”

“Was just asking about the job, is all,” says Howe, a handsome man in his early forties with jet-black hair and green eyes. I’d bang him. Well, maybe if he wasn’t such an asshole. Though I doubt that’d stop me anyway.

“Let’s cut the shit. You two didn’t come all the way here from Portland to get on my ass about a tiny bar scuffle.”

They twirl their bottles between their palms. Gumm uses his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his beer off the wood. They look at each other with those raised eyebrows, the kind of look that says, Are you going to tell her or should I?

“Will ya just spit it out?” I roll my eyes and hop onto the bar in front of them. I pull their envelopes from under me and sit Indian-style, their eyes level with my knees.

“Freedom, Matthew was released from prison two days ago. He was granted an appeal and won.” Gumm pretends to cough with the words. Well, isn’t that just dandy? I rest my elbows on my knees, chin on my fists. Which facial expression shall I feign? I go for ignorance, as if I have no idea who this Matthew is that they’re talking about. But I do. It’s why I am a protected witness. In the Witness Protection Program. WPP. Whips. Whippersnappers. But lucky me, I was dismissed with prejudice, meaning I cannot be charged for the same crime twice. Thank God for small favors.

“And?” I don’t want them to know that my heart is pounding and I’m starting to sweat.

Gumm leans in closer. “For a time to be determined, we are heightening your protection. We’ll have one of ours come see you on a weekly basis. Keep a low profile.”

“You mean lower than a biker bar in the middle of nowhere?”

“A small cross to bear for killing a cop, Freedom.” And there are those nasty looks and curled lips from these guys that I know all too well. “C’mon, you’ve got nothing to lose if you admit it already. I mean, you can’t be tried again for it. We know you did it.”

“Good luck proving it. And nice of you assholes to give me a heads-up.” I chug my beer and aim my chin at the door. “Be careful driving back to the big city in that rain. Don’t want you two dying in some terrible accident.” I finish the beer. “That’d just be terrible.”

At least they take the hint. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they overstay their welcome. Sometimes they do it on purpose just to piss me off. “By the way.” Howe rises from his stool and closes his coat. “I have to ask. Procedure, you know …” He speaks through his teeth like he has thorns in his ass.

I’ll save him the trouble, if only to get them the hell out of here faster. Their files stick to my wet boots as I bounce from the bar. I grab the soggy pages from under me and hand them over. “Don’t worry, I’m still on my meds,” but this is a blatant lie. And I think they know it’s a lie but don’t care. “No need to ask.”

* * *

I think about Matthew, released from prison after eighteen years; eighteen years of his imprisonment that secured my eighteen years of freedom.

Alone in the shitty apartment, I crawl out of wet clothes and dry my naked body against the cushions of a musty tweed couch. Alone I cry. Alone I look at an old picture of my dead husband, Mark, the one photo that survived an incident with a sink and a book of matches a couple decades ago. Alone I open a bottle of whiskey. Alone I whisper two names in the dark.

“Ethan.”

“Layla.”

Alone. Fucking whippersnappers.

2 (#ulink_e72e47aa-73ce-580b-8ebb-828e1562a31f)

Mason and Violet (#ulink_e72e47aa-73ce-580b-8ebb-828e1562a31f)

I am a boy. This woman’s arms protect me from the vastness of the ocean, blue as far as the eye can see until it forms a gray line dotted with ships. I bury my face in her neck; her laughter moves my small body. But I don’t know who she is. I look up at the sky through her red hair; pockets of sunshine flash spellbindingly through wet locks. Her body, warmer than anything I’ve ever known, a blanket in the coolness of the waves. Her skin smells of coconut and lime. The sounds of seagulls roll in my ears, and I know I love this woman, I just don’t know who the hell she is. “Who are you?” I ask. She never answers in these dreams, just a straight row of blinding white from her mouth. I can’t wake up and I’m not so sure that I want to. She turns so the waves crash into her back, screams of delight in my neck. I wrap my legs tighter around her waist. And during the stillness between the wallops, I trace the tattoos on her shoulders, pick grains of sand from the ends of her hair, and tell her I love her.

“Where is your sister?” she asks.

Mason Paul wakes, shivering in his own sweat, the air still thick even hours after making love, her taste still on his lips. What makes this recurring dream a nightmare, he doesn’t know. He uses his thumb and index finger to gently grab the bones of Violet’s wrist, moving her arm from his stomach. Mason grabs a pack of cigarettes hidden in his sock drawer and sneaks outside, his movement delicate so as not to wake her.

Still too warm for an October night in Louisville, Kentucky, Mason stands naked at the double doors of his balcony, unsure whether his shoulders are an inch higher because of the satisfaction she left with him or with trepidation from the dream. Behind him, Violet snores, sprawled on top of silk sheets the color of her name. He pulls on the Marlboro and watches the stars that glow orange to correlate with the nearing of All Saints’ Day. He pours a bourbon Manhattan with a splash of butterscotch schnapps. It smells like candy corn. It smells like Halloween. These dreams, you’d think I’m some damn mental case. He clears the phlegm of a mild hangover from his throat.

The branches of black willows swing in the large backyard of the Victorian home, a Queen Anne architecture of ivory with black fringes, one that probably housed masters and slaves more than a century ago. He brings his silver necklace to his lips, warming the cross with his breath, but it’s just habit. In recent years, Mason decided it might be less disappointing to consider God as a loosely thrown noun instead of something profound. But it reminds him of his younger sister, Rebekah, the only member of his family who hasn’t shunned him. He misses her greatly. The bourbon doesn’t help.

The home was born of old southern money from Cavendish tobacco fields that line the property’s edges, well-to-do bankers who made lucrative investments when the American economy was at its golden peaks. And now Mason, a promising twenty-four-year-old with a possible future in one day becoming the state’s most successful defense attorney after sticking his foot in the door of one of the most profitable law firms in Kentucky only weeks after acing the bar exam. Impressive at his age, but not entirely unheard of. Currently an associate at the firm, rumors of him being the next senior associate attorney swirled around the offices, which would make him the fastest to reach such a position. The result of a lot of interning, many many hours, and being smart as a whip. He flicks the cigarette down to the grass when he hears Violet turn in her sleep and pretends not to notice her.

A moment later, she wraps her lanky arms around his bare chest from behind. “You’ve been smoking, haven’t you?” Mason hears her smile bleed into the question. I always knew I’d end up with one of my coworkers. Of course, she’d be a corporate lawyer embroiled in the campaign against big tobacco companies.

Cicadas shrill in the distance and bullfrogs croak in the nearby swamps and weeping willows. Mason smirks. “Who, me?” The Manhattan glistens in the moonlight as he places his hand on hers, his gaze still in the backyard.

She squeezes him and breathes onto his back. “I can feel your heart racing with my lips.” She kisses between his shoulder blades.

“Another dream …” He takes a long draw from the martini glass.

“It’ll be OK,” but she worries her attempts at comfort fall on deaf ears.

Mason walks out of her arms and into the bedroom, sitting down on the ottoman with his bottle of Maker’s Mark, his laptop, and papers on the floor around his feet. He goes to his fake Facebook account, Louisa Horn. Thoughts of his sister Rebekah swim through the furrows of his brain. No word in days is odd for her. Hope she finally got the sense to get out of that place. Mason tries to distract himself with the pile of papers that form a cyclone around him. He shuffles through the work, breathing the vapors of bourbon between each page. He feels bad that he can’t make love to his girlfriend because of the distractions of his sister not writing and the rape case finally about to end tomorrow. It’s always that kind of stuff that gets to him. Who could get a hard-on with siblings and court trials on the brain?

“You’re still working on the Becker case?”

“Just double-checking that all my ducks are in a row for tomorrow, is all.” He looks up at her and smiles. “Otherwise, you can forget about Turks and Caicos.”

“Not a chance in hell.” Violet stretches and yawns.

He studies the photos from Saint Mary’s Hospital, the victim’s rape exam. Tender patches colored eggplant branded under her eyes and between her thighs stir something that merits another sip. Behind him, Violet looks down at the same thing.

“How many times do you have to look at those?” she asks.