Freedom Road Read online

  Yet beneath the simple dreams and frets that build the night gardens of America, on Avery Road there are tendrils of a unique malevolence reaching up from the depths, wrapping ghostly fingers around the sleeping throats of children and adults alike. As boys and girls gambol along storybook paths, monsters lurk. Planes crash into baseball diamonds, transformers slay dragons, beach lovers turn into venomous snakes, and the Angel of Death, looking very much like Aunt Iris, looms. If you follow these dark tendrils back, back, dive with them in and out of the dream earth, trail them to their very root, you will see them rise like living tongues from a puckered mouth of blight in the middle of the landscape. And this malignant maw of darkness and doom has a single address—128 Avery Road—and a single source, a man who sweats feverishly through the night and dreams of death as others dream of Popsicles and trampolines.

  Oliver Cross wakes from his howling, growling night dreams to the growls and howls of the dog he stole that very afternoon. Oliver scratches his chest and rubs his head to soothe the disappointment of once again waking into the world of the living. He would shut his eyes tightly and try to return again to the quiet death of sleep, but the dog’s yapping makes it impossible.

  It has been four years since he had to care for anyone but himself—after the years of daily, hourly care for Helen—and he doesn’t like once again being responsible for another creature. What does the damn thing want? To eat? To drink? Most likely just to piss in the yard. Maybe he should let the damn dog out and lock the door behind him. But, truth is, Oliver could go for a piss in the yard himself.

  Oliver grunts as he writhes his way off the sodden sheets of the bed, ignoring the screaming from his back. In just a T-shirt and white briefs, he clambers ungainly into the kitchen and turns on the light. The dog is barking at the door, dancing back and forth like a windup doll. Oliver went to the pet store and bought a brush and shampoo and cleaned the thing in the bathtub, so his coat is no longer matted with his own crap, but curly and pert. When he reaches the door, Oliver scratches the dog’s side with his foot as he puts his hand on the knob. When he looks up at the door’s window, he sees a bearded face staring back at him.

  The door smashes open, the dog howls, a sharp blow on the head drives Oliver to his knees. And all along Avery Road, dreams shudder with a darkness darker than black.

  When Oliver rouses, he is lying on the floor of his living room. The light is on and someone is talking and his stomach is sick. He thinks of sitting up but when he tries his back seizes and the nausea flares, and so he remains lying on the hard floor. He realizes he doesn’t hear the dog. What have the bastards done to the dog? He turns his head and sees the leashed animal lying still and contented in the lap of a woman sitting on the floor, a woman whom he vaguely recognizes. Oh yes, now it becomes clear. The girl from the apartment. Ayana.

  That explains something, though what he’s not yet sure.

  He looks around, trying to get his bearings. A tall, beefy man with a bandage around his head is standing by the television, the man whose bearded face he saw in the window before the door smashed open. The bandaged man is drinking one of Oliver’s beers. There’s also a pale man, round and bald and flabby, sitting in a kitchen chair, and next to him a tall woman with platinum hair. The flabby man is wearing a tracksuit and has another of Oliver’s beers; the woman has long legs, a skirt the length of a credit card, and high red heels. A young man, with his head shaved up to the tops of his ears and the long brown hair above it gathered into a ponytail, is sitting in Oliver’s recliner with a leg slung over the arm. Oliver stares for a bit at the hairstyle. Is that a thing now? Every day there’s a new damn thing worse than the old damn thing.

  “Which brings up an interesting issue,” says the ponytail in the recliner, his voice riding a West Coast wave. “It looks like he’s coming around, but I wonder if Sergei here could have been held responsible if the old man died because he has a fragile skull. I mean, look at all the dents in it already. Sergei took a harder blow than that and he’s still standing. So is Sergei to blame if a little tap cracks an old man’s head in two?”

  “Who else would be?” says the platinum-haired woman in a surprisingly deep voice. “The tooth fairy?”

  “But Sergei clearly didn’t mean to kill the guy.”

  “I did not, I swear to it,” says the man by the television.

  “It’s just the old man’s toddling around with this crazy brittle skull of his,” says the ponytail.

  Oliver grits his teeth to fight the nausea and sits up with a grunt. His bare legs are stretched before him, his feet are knobby and impossibly ugly, his back is screaming. Everyone looks at him for a moment, before turning back to their discussion.

  “I mean, what if the old man’s on his lawn,” continues the ponytail, “and a kid throws a football and he misses his target and the ball hits the old man on the head and his skull just cracks like an eggshell on the lip of a bowl. Is the kid up on a murder charge?”

  “That would not be fair,” says Sergei, nodding in approval.

  “No siree, it would not. The same thing applies to Sergei.”

  “He hit him with butt end of revolver,” says the flabby, bald man, speaking with a strong Russian accent. His tracksuit is baby blue with gold stripes. The front zipper is mostly down and gold chains glint through the thick black hair of his chest.

  “Well, there is that,” says the ponytail.

  Oliver twists his head to look at the girl with the dog. She is still smiling, the girl, and the dog looks quite content, happier than he’s been since Oliver found him.

  “You’re not getting the fifty,” Oliver says to the girl.

  “I wouldn’t be so certain,” says the girl with a sly smile.

  “You could use some furniture, old man,” says the kid with the ponytail, “and some premium liquor if you want to entertain in style. Get yourself a new pad, a new life. If you’re not living large, are you really living?”

  “Are you sure this is your dog?” says Ayana.

  “It’s my dog.”

  “That’s not what the collar says.”

  “Look, we don’t care about the mutt,” says the kid in the recliner. “And we don’t want any of your crap, I can promise you that. The television is a CRT, are you kidding me? And if you got any hidden stores of cash, well, man, you’re hiding that fact pretty damn well.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We want Erica Cross,” says the Russian in the tracksuit.

  Oliver’s stomach turns. He shakes his head with confusion, the joints in his neck crack. “Why?”

  “Because she’s run away with Frank Cormack, dog’s real owner,” he says, “and we want Frank.”

  “Why?”

  “Why, why, why,” says the kid in the recliner. “The why is none of your business, old man. It’s just a distraction. Let’s not lose focus here, although I know it’s hard at your age.” The kid starts shouting. “Maybe it’s your hearing. How’s your hearing? Is this better?”

  “Just because you’re young,” says Oliver, “doesn’t mean you have to be stupid.”

  “Hit him again,” says the kid.

  “But what about eggshell thing?” says Sergei.

  The ponytail rises from the chair and kicks Oliver in the head, causing an explosion of light that blinds him. When Oliver recovers enough to sense himself in space, he realizes he is lying on his side, bent like a wire hanger, his cheek resting in a pool of vomit. The dog is barking wildly and the kid is leaning over him.

  “Can you hear me now, asshole?”

  “Sergei,” says the Russian.

  The bandaged man steps over, grabs Oliver under the arms, and lifts him until Oliver’s bare feet make contact with the floor. When he lets go, Oliver is standing, bent forward as if in a low bow, vomit dripping from his chin. Slowly he straightens up as much as he can. The dog quiets and returns to Ayana’s lap.

  “All you need to know is that we are serious as death about finding Frank C
ormack, that son of a bitch,” says the ponytail as he walks around Oliver. “And when we do, the shit is going to royally hit the fan.”

  “It could be dangerous for anyone stupid enough to be with him,” says the Russian.

  “What is she to you, this Erica girl?” The ponytail is standing behind Oliver now, talking right into his ear. “Same last name, right? Daughter, granddaughter, niece? Or is she just someone you’re screwing?”

  Oliver raises his hand to rub his head and then slams his elbow into the face of the man behind him, feeling something squash beneath his bone. As the man backs away, hands to his nose, Oliver spins awkwardly. As Oliver falls forward he hits the man again, and this time his fist lands solidly against the man’s jaw. The blow sends the man sprawling over the recliner, even as Oliver hits the recliner’s arm with his head and flops backward onto the floor, his head bouncing once off the wood. The whole move was as graceful as a hippo dancing with a porpoise in a vat of oil.

  Oliver lies there, stunned for a moment, his mind woozy from the thumps on his head, his hand thick with pain. “You touch her,” says Oliver to no one in particular, staring at the ceiling, “and I’ll smash your nose into your brainpan.”

  “That might be hard to do, sweetheart, from way down there,” says the platinum-haired woman.

  The young man, trying to keep the blood in his nose with one of his palms, says in a muffled voice, “I’m going to fillet you like a—”

  “Shut up, Kenny boy,” says the woman, calmly. “You let an old man sucker punch you. We’ll deal with you later. Take him outside, Sergei.”

  As Sergei lifts Ponytail and helps him toward the kitchen, Oliver picks up his hand and stares at it. His knuckles are oozing blood. His skin is as thin and dry as the husk of an onion, and the Warfarin makes every little cut into a tragedy. Brushing his teeth in the morning is like visiting an abattoir. But for some reason, the sight of the bloody hand calms his stomach and fills him with a strange elation. He popped the little sucker but good, and it was the realest thing he’d felt in years.

  “So now that the pleasantries are over,” says the woman, “listen carefully to Teddy so we understand one another.”

  “We don’t give shit about law,” says the Russian, “eggshells, and such. And we don’t give shit about family, at least not about your family. We have embraced great American spirit and care only about money. So it is enough to know Frank Cormack has stolen something from us. We are trying to be good Americans and so we cannot allow such to happen. When we find Frank Cormack there will be blood on floor. Maybe blood of your Erica, too. Maybe we’ll even blame her for what happened and make sure that she gets everything Frank Cormack will also get. And then, in your grief, you will try to kill us and then I’ll give Ken permission to kill you, and it will all be such a waste.”

  “Life’s a waste.”

  “You have point. But if you find him first, this Frank Cormack, and you tell us where he is, then we can assure your Erica’s safety and we’ll be square.”

  “I don’t want to be square.”

  “Suit yourself. Tell us what we need and, once your Erica is out of way, we can have fun trying to kill each other. They are headed west.”

  He stands, takes a swig from the beer, tosses the bottle. It hits hard against a wall, bounces without breaking, and rolls, foamy beer spilling onto the floorboards.

  “You might want to catch them,” says the Russian, “before they reach end of road.”

  As the Russian heads toward the back door, the platinum-haired woman looks down at Oliver and speaks in that low voice. “Nice shot on Ken, old timer. I’ve been wanting to see that for the longest time. But he’s easy. Teddy’s a hard man from a hard land. Give him what he wants and walk away and everyone will end up happy except Frank. And, really now, who the hell cares about Frank?”

  After the blonde walks out of the room, her posture model straight and her heels clicking, Ayana brings the dog over to Oliver, stoops down, and hands him the leash. The dog starts licking at his face and the tongue turns red.

  “Do you need help getting up?” she says.

  “Not from you.”

  “I’m sorry about this. It didn’t need to turn violent.”

  “Yes it did,” says Oliver.

  “You talk tough for an old dude. Do you even have a gun?”

  “I’m not allowed.”

  “You might want to break the rules and get one before you head after Frank.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?”

  “If you want to save Erica you will. He has family in Ohio.”

  “What did he do, anyway?”

  “Something stupid,” she said.

  “Something stupid? Jesus, why don’t they just kill us all.”

  11

  SIGNS

  Oliver Cross didn’t need permission to abandon law school in the fall of 1968 and catch a bus to Philadelphia. And he didn’t need permission to wander among the stodgy buildings on the Bryn Mawr campus until he found the green in front of one of the old Gothic dormitories, or then to camp on the green like an old hobo until he saw Helen sauntering up the walk. And he didn’t need permission to haunt the campus like Benjamin Braddock for as long as it took to convince Helen to drop all the expectations others had imposed on her life, drop her fiancé, drop out of the future she had seen for herself, as well as out of college, and join him on the hopeful journey west into a radical freedom that would be constrained only by the love they felt for each other. And he didn’t need permission to stand with her on the highway and stick out his thumb and hitchhike all the way to the West Coast, bumming rides because they both believed, in their misreading of Kerouac, that hitchhiking was the purest way to experience the breadth of the American continent along with its people.

  Oliver Cross always prided himself on living his life without anyone’s damn permission.

  But as he stands at the mirror, pressing Band-Aids over the cuts in his scalp, he knows that his freedom to move freely over the surface of the globe is now as dead as Helen. He didn’t ask permission before killing his wife and now he can’t leave the county without a note from his guardian. He is sixteen again, asking his father if he can borrow the car.

  As he stares at the hodgepodge of bruises and cuts on the flesh that hangs slackly from his skull, the dog lies calmly on a bloodstained towel tossed carelessly on the tile floor.

  “How do I look?” Oliver says out loud.

  The dog doesn’t answer but Helen does. “Like my hero,” she says. “Like the boy waiting for me outside Denbigh Hall.”

  “So you’re blind as well as dead,” he says.

  “Are you scared, Oliver?”

  “Just for her.”

  “You’ll bring her home, I know you will.”

  “And if she doesn’t want to come home?”

  “Then you’ll at least make sure she’s safe.”

  “It’s easy enough for you to say.”

  “Do you think it’s easy just to watch and fret?”

  “Then stop looking.”

  “Do you think it’s easy to see what they’ve done to you these past few years?”

  “You did it to me, too, you know.”

  “I know that. Who was with you every day in prison?”

  “Whether I wanted you there or not.”

  “Wear a clean shirt.”

  “Should I also strangle myself with a tie?”

  “Do we still have one?”

  “No.”

  “Then just go with the shirt.”

  He puts clean flannel over his T-shirt and tucks it into his jeans. Into a green duffel bag he tosses shirts, underwear, socks, another pair of jeans, his leather Dopp kit, anything he thinks he might need on the road. He stows the bag in the truck, along with the crap he needs for the dog and the little GPS unit with a dashboard holder he picked up at Best Buy. When he opens the passenger door, Hunter jumps onto the bench seat as if he knows exactly where he is going. That makes one of them.<
br />
  Before driving to the courthouse, he stops at his son’s stone monstrosity. Fletcher will be at the office serving his corporate masters. Oliver grabs a brown bag and climbs gingerly out of the truck. The dog barks, but Oliver leaves him inside as he clambers up the hill to the high house and knocks on the door.

  When the door opens and Oliver finds his son on the other side, he steps back at the conflicting rush of emotions that rise within him: love and anger, fear and forgiveness and hate. Somehow his son brings it all to the surface and it’s more than he can deal with this morning.

  “What happened to your face?” says Fletcher.

  “I fell. Where’s Petra?”

  “Out.”

  “I thought you’d be at work,” says Oliver.

  “I took the day off.”

  “I wouldn’t have come if I knew you were home.”

  “I wouldn’t have answered the door if I knew you had knocked.”

  Oliver throws the bag to his son. “This is Erica’s phone. And the phone of the boy she’s with.”

  “Wait a second, what?”

  “I thought you should have them.”

  “Where were they?”

  “In the boy’s apartment.”

  “Who the hell is he?”

  “His name is Frank Cormack. He’s a folk singer.”

  “Of course he is. And how did you find him?”

  “I got off my butt,” says Oliver.

  Fletcher opens the bag, takes out one of the phones. “She didn’t take her phone,” he says, staring at the thing with wonder, holding it like it is some sort of divine object, the finger bone of a long-dead saint.

  “I found them in a toilet.”

  Fletcher quickly drops the phone back into the bag. “Where did they go?”