Freedom’s Child
“Let’s take it in the house,” Lynn shouts from the doorway.
Matthew holds the beer up against the light of an overcast sky. “Christ, eighteen years in the joint, this is certainly overdue.”
“What’s it like not getting laid for eighteen years?” Luke jokes on the way into the house. Lynn smacks him on the arm.
“Almost worth it, after tonight.” Matthew laughs. “Sorry, Ma.”
Inside, Metallica plays in the background as they spend the morning catching up. But the time’s come to talk about the very topic that has brought such a cloud over the family for so long: Nessa Delaney.
Find her.
Find her kids.
Bring them home.
Make the family complete once again.
* * *
The spines of the other Delaney brothers surge with currents of electricity when around Matthew and their mother. With the back doors open, leading to a small backyard, the kitchen smells of wet autumn leaves and marijuana. It’s impossible to tell where the October fog begins and the smoke ends.
“Eighteen years is a lot of time to think. To collect. To dream,” says Matthew, between sips of his Heineken. He tilts his head to the side. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want the cunt dead,” his voice always smooth and velvety, like a song at a funeral. As he says the words, he swears he can detect Nessa’s scent. How could he possibly explain his love for her to his family? Who would understand? And despite being caged like an animal for nearly half his life, his eyes always smile, like he’s dying to tell the world all the secrets of the universe. The rest of the guys fidget in their seats around the kitchen table. They nod and pretend to understand, out of fear.
“She murders Mark. Your brother. My son,” Lynn begins, stoned on her Xanax-and-cabernet cocktail. “She takes my grandchildren and hides them away so that we can never see them. The children of Mark.” She absently picks the red nail polish from her fingernails. She feels the blood in her body start to curdle. She feels her feet start to swell, start to retain water from not being back in bed, decides it’s because she needs sugar and proceeds to stuff an orange Hostess cupcake into her cheek. “And then she frames you, my innocent Matthew, and sends you to prison for eighteen mother-fucking years.” Lynn shakes her head with a smile, citrusy crumbs falling in the folds of her neck. She crosses her hands, those fat little sausages with red tips like she’s ripped through someone’s flesh. “Nessa Delaney.” She sticks her tongue out and cringes, resents the fact that they once shared the same last name. “The audacity of the cunt. She must pay.” Lynn begins to sweat with the efforts of chewing and swallowing. “And we must find her children. After all, isn’t that what family’s all about?” Her sons recognize that gleam, the flames behind her eyes starting to ignite with ingenious plotting, often seen right before she shoplifts or rips a guy off from Craigslist or sends her sons to get something she wants but can’t have. “I wish we did this twenty years ago.”
“Yes, Ma, but it’s my revenge too,” Matthew says as he puts his hands on hers. “As much mine as yours.”
“They should make a saint out of me for waiting so fucking long.”
“Yes, Ma. And you waiting for me to get out so this revenge could be mine means more to me than you’ll ever know.” Lynn bats her eyes at his appreciation.
Peter starts to object but stutters over his own words. Matthew shoots him a glare so ferocious and hateful that it paralyzes him in his own wheelchair. With a flat, soulless tone he says, “And we’re all in this together.”
Peter gets his first good look at Matthew. He notices the thin threads of white at the edges of his black hair only make him look more monstrous than before, like a mane beginning to ice over. His blue eyes are still too light to match the rest of his face, those eyes that nearly turn to white when he’s doing something evil. He looks more like Lynn than ever, except he’s lean and hard. Prison hard.
“But how the hell are we supposed to find her and the kids? We know she’s been a protected witness since she killed Mark,” says Luke as he rolls another joint.
“O ye of little faith. In prison, everything is accessible for a price. Information is no exception.” Matthew taps his finger on his temple. “Everything you need to know about Nessa Delaney is in here.” He looks over to Lynn and smiles.
Lynn Delaney has never been prouder of her sons in all her years. At the sight of Matthew, the long wait almost seems worth it. In this way, her Matthew can guide the rest, be Lynn’s eyes and ears on their journey to kill her ex-daughter-in-law. “I only ask that you do things to Nessa that no mother would want to hear about until she begs to die. And I don’t need to tell you to be sure none of it gets back to this family, do I?” She sighs. “And as for your niece and your nephew, just … break the news slowly to them. Show them love. Tell them Grandmother has waited patiently for twenty years and looks forward to hugging them.” She takes a cigarette from Luke and puffs away. Her teeth are burned.
“She goes by Freedom Oliver these days,” says Matthew.
“Freedom?” Lynn scoffs. “Fucking clever.”
“Let’s leave in the morning, then.” Luke smiles at the thought of bloodshed.
“Fuck that.” Lynn kicks the bottom of the refrigerator from the motor scooter. “I’m not waiting any longer.” The steam seems to rise from her, liable to ignite the Aqua Net if she gets too angry. She brushes black cat hair from her sleeves, composes herself with a wheezing from the throat, and puts her cigarette out on the kitchen counter, no ashtray or anything. “My boys, my boys …” From her sleeve, she pulls out two fifty-dollar bags of cocaine and cuts five lines with her driver’s license in front of them, a driver’s license long expired since she hasn’t left the house in more than three years. The boys’ spines become a little more erect. When she’s done, she licks the edge of the card before turning a twenty-dollar bill into a straw. Peter can’t help but wonder how a habitual coke addict could be such a morbid size. “You don’t want to keep your mother waiting, do you?” She inhales a line through her left nostril before handing the twenty-dollar bill to Matthew. Her jaw sways back and forth, her pinkies twitch with the mechanical taste.
Matthew stares straight ahead before he snorts the next line. “No, you never have to wait for us, Mother.” The others nod, agreeing with anything to get a turn at the coke. They watch as her nose starts to bleed, as it usually does, down her face and landing on the remaining orange cupcake, the white drizzle of frosting now spotted with crimson. But Lynn doesn’t mind her warm blood falling down on her dessert, and she stuffs it in her gob anyway. She stares each one of her sons in the eyes. “Let John drive.” Lynn throws a set of keys on the table. “The plates are fake and the E-ZPass is stolen, so tolls for the bridges and turnpikes are free. You guys better head off to avoid rush hour.”
With their hearts racing with drugs, anticipation, and obedience, they leave.
Lynn watches Matthew, Luke, and John take off from the window. This is payback for Mark, you stupid bitch, she says to her reflection. She is a queen, releasing her wolves into the wild, on the hunt. As the car leaves the driveway, she sees the next-door neighbor. An old man from Puerto Rico, he paces in circles in an old and ragged green dress with black polka dots. His daughter’s mentioned before that he was showing signs of dementia. Is anyone normal anymore?
She licks the blood from her lips, hears the creak of Peter’s wheelchair turning toward her. He stammers, as if his vocal cords are trying to disconnect from his body.
“Yu, yu, you’re … a … f-f-fucking ba-ba-bitch,” Peter says.
Lynn uses the back of her hand to wipe the blood across her face, up her cheeks like war paint. She leers and says, “And here I was thinking you my-my-my-might want to eat ta-ta-ta-today …”
5
The Need to Know
Today
My name is Freedom and I hate this woman’s looks. Yeah, it’s an antipsychotic, just give it here so I can go. Walkers Pharmacy, the Botox bitch, I call her. Too much collagen in the lips. Maybe she’s not giving me a dirty look after all. That might just be her face.
Seeing a psychiatrist is not my idea. Whippersnappers make me do it. Every week for the past eighteen years. That’s 936 hours. What good has it done? I grab my prescription and leave.
* * *
My name is Freedom and I’ll be happy the day I never have to hear ZZ Top again. As always, I leave myself about half an hour to hang out in the back before my shift starts. I sit in the office where we keep the safes, computers, security cameras, accounting and inventory records, cluttered manuals, and magazines. It’s where I take advantage of the Internet, being that I don’t actually own a computer and the service on my cell phone sucks like an eager Vietnamese prostitute.
Carrie stands behind me, but she isn’t the nosy type at all, just eyeballs the office.
“What are you doing?” I ask. I already know the answer and say it with her: I’m moving things with my mind. She’s always rearranging something. Carrie’s my boss, but a good boss. A husky lesbian, she’s one of my only friends here in Oregon. She’s rough around the edges but has a huge heart and never makes a pass at me, aside from the occasional “If you were a lesbian, my God!” She’s the gay pride-ish type, too, with tats of rainbows and naked pinup girls all over her thick arms.
I return to the computer screen and open three windows after I log in to Facebook. On one page is Mason Paul, attorney-at-law. On the second is Rebekah Paul. The third is a young girl named Louisa Horn, but I suspect it’s a fake profile: one friend, and the only activity is random posts on Rebekah’s wall. My money is on Mason, since he and his sister aren’t Facebook friends. On Facebook maps, Louisa’s locations match Mason’s. And by the looks of things, Mason has little, if any, connection anymore with his adoptive family, with the church.
I look up Galatians 5:19–21 in another tab. Above it, from yesterday, is a post from Louisa Horn that reads: “My sister in Christ, where have you been? I miss you.” It’s been a couple days since she’s posted anything or there’s been any activity from her account. It’s unlike her. “She hasn’t posted anything in a while,” I say to Carrie. I’m not supposed to talk to anyone of my past life, my life before I was Freedom Oliver. But I do. She knows who I am, who I was, who I’m looking at. I trust her. Nothing I disclose to her goes anywhere else. She even knows the things I can’t disclose to the whippersnappers.
“You know how those young’uns are.” Carrie arranges magazines that don’t need to be arranged in the first place.
“No, something’s wrong.” I don’t look away from the computer.
“You don’t know that, Freedom.” She focuses on me.
“I can feel it.” It’s true, something just isn’t right. “I hate that name, Rebekah.” I tap my nail on the screen. “Her fucking Amish Walton parents.”
“They’re not Amish.”
“No, but they might as well be.” We both smile a little as she leaves for her shift.
I browse through her photos. There’s a certain purity about Rebekah, and I don’t think this just because she’s my biological daughter. And while I’ll throw a heap of sarcasm at how she was brought up, I’m happy with her upbringing. She was raised by a good family, raised in the church. I sift through her photos: long, curly hair of ginger with spots of rust across the bridge of her nose. She has a million-dollar smile that stretches between those cute dimples, the only radiance from very conservative attire: long denim skirts over old white Keds, frilly long-sleeved button-downs.
As for Mason, it’s clear he’d found his own way, beyond the graces of God. Girls, bars, smoking, a form of rebellion that wouldn’t do too much harm, typical youth crap. With a full head of brown hair, Mason is incredibly handsome, as seen in the photos tagged to his page through Violet. Trips to Gatlinburg’s Smoky Mountains, tequila sunrises, washboard abs. Christ Almighty, he’s the spitting image of his father, that piece of shit.
Mason and Rebekah were raised by an esteemed reverend in Goshen, Kentucky, Virgil Paul and his ever-so-obedient wife, Carol. I’ve seen him preach via the Internet: a very charismatic man with a smile that makes it look like he’s in excruciating pain. He always sweats and huffs his way through his sermons in his deep southern drawl. He’s average-sized, with black hair and a square head. Tan compared to the pale children and wife he stands with after the service, to bid farewell to the born-agains and thankfuls and the newly restored. But goddamn it, it beats the hell out of the life they’d have had with me, had I tried to get them back. Then again, I don’t think I’d be in this state if I hadn’t had them in the first place.
Rebekah usually posts every evening, 7:00 p.m. on the dot. Always scripture. Always links to her family’s church’s website. And lucky me, I’m one of the most faithful online followers of the Third-Day Adventists’ webcast. My username is FreedomInJesus, and every Sunday, without fail, I follow the sermons. On several occasions, and I attribute this to being one of the oldest online members, I’ve gotten to speak through Skype with Virgil and Carol Paul, a real fucking honor to meet you nutjobs; I’m your biggest fan. I spill my heart over forgiveness and obedience and mercy and this, that, and the other. Spreading the gospel in Or-ree-gan, praise Jesus. Anything for a possible glimpse of Mason and Rebekah.
A few weeks ago I wrote letters to both of them. In fact, I have a massive pile of letters to them I keep at the house, but I never before had the heart to send them. I’ll send them one day, when the time is right, I suppose. They just seemed so happy, so blissfully unaware, I didn’t want to be the tornado to rip through their precious existence. The first time I wrote to them, I brought the letters to work and kept forgetting to take them home. When I did, I must have accidentally mixed them up with my bills. Of course.
As soon as the mailman collected them, I realized my mistake. I even chased after him, nearly mowing him down with my car to get those letters back. I ripped the mailbag from him and spilled it all over the street out of mere frustration. I knew my apartment complex was early enough in his route that there’d be a good chance I’d find them. When the mailman yelled and tried to stop me, I barked at him. Literally, I barked and growled like a dog with rabies. When he started to call the cops, I dared him. “Go ahead, call the fucking cops, see if I care!” But when the witnesses started looking out their windows, I left with a fleeting “Fuck you, man” and went on my way.
Working at the Whammy Bar, large brawls between bikers tweeking on meth aren’t all that uncommon. In those instances, I stand on the bar and pull firecrackers from my boots and throw them at the biggest guys I see.
I found the mailman again nine blocks later.
I could make him out in long socks and shorts up Lindsey Street with his bag of mail. I snuck into the back of his truck through the front and rummaged in an infinite amount of letters, but nothing was organized, none of it made sense. I looked up every few minutes to check if the nerd was coming back. And he was. But I hadn’t found the letters. And there was no way he wouldn’t see me, as the only way out was climbing over the driver’s seat, which was on the passenger side. Time to do it. Just run faster than him. Shouldn’t be too hard. Just move.
I pulled the firecrackers from my boots, where I always kept them, and lit the fuses. I usually cut them, so they explode within seconds, but I left the fuses long, to buy us time. I lit three strings, twenty firecrackers on each, and threw them in the back of the truck as I booked it. I nearly busted my ass as my foot got caught in his seat belt. He saw me. He ran. I can’t remember how many backyards I ran through.
When I reached my street, I breathed a little easier with a cigarette as I caught my breath. I squatted down and leaned against a tree on the side of the road, when lo and behold, guess who sped around the corner … and by speeding, I mean about thirty-five miles per hour, but fast enough that the mail truck’s engine sounded exhausted from the reckless speed. But I didn’t move. I smiled as he throttled in my direction. I waved. You stubborn asshole.
The truck swerved all over the street with the loud pops of firecrackers going off in the back. And for a second I imagined a scene from some kind of old Prohibition-era film. Smoke poured from the front and back, a gray that matched the layers of fog that hovered over Painter.
The only problem with this was that I probably just broke a million federal laws.
Took a lot of paperwork on the whippersnappers’ part and a thousand angry lectures from them to get out of it. It was nothing a little fake crying and a push-up bra couldn’t fix, but I got the warning.
Later that afternoon, after they’d removed the smoldering remains of the mail truck, I walked by with a bottle of Johnnie Walker to head to Sovereign Shore, my favorite place to hide. On the way, I found a stray envelope on the street. I grabbed Mason’s letter from a puddle and tucked it in my bra.
I never got Rebekah’s letter back. But I’d signed the letters Nessa Delaney instead of Freedom Oliver and addressed them to the Paul household so that if they never made it to Rebekah and Mason, the parents couldn’t suspect their faithful servant FreedomInJesus.
At the Whammy Bar, I crack my neck and think about how I should have done more to keep my children, how I didn’t try hard enough. But it’s better this way, at least for them. That’s what I keep telling myself. But the grief still makes me sick to my stomach, even twenty years later. All the milestones I missed out on. At least someone else got those opportunities, to watch two great kids grow up before their eyes. I guess.
6
The Music of the Devil
Two Nights Ago
Darkness fills the restroom of the truckstop outside Goshen, Kentucky, where Rebekah Paul cries into a dirty mirror with each chunk of hair that falls into the sink. Her own heavy-handed snips of the scissors send whimpers echoing through the greasy, dim stalls behind her. “God, be with me,” she repeats over and over again, the muffled roars of the truck engines outside rolling in her ears. The sounds of hair slicing are loud near her cheeks; her heart races like it will break through her sternum.
The yellowed lamps over her head buzz with the dying insects they devour at two in the morning. She doesn’t recognize her own reflection, her hair bleached and chopped to the scalp. In the shadows of the restroom, the spots of blood on her collar seem black, similar to the spots on her diary back at home when the pens would leak ink. She looks down, uncomfortable in jeans and a white, tight-fitted Jack Daniel’s tee. She kisses the cross around her neck for the last time with a split lip and tucks it under her shirt so no one can see it. She grabs her backpack. “Lord, forgive me.”
The cool air feels good on her eyes as she walks out to the parking lot; the smells of autumn leaves and oil surround her. At the corner of the lot, Rebekah makes her way toward the Bluegrass bar, an old and grungy pub, as a few big rigs thunder past. She doesn’t recognize the music, something bluesy with guitars, tunes she was forbidden to listen to, the music of the devil.
She has to use both arms to pull open the wooden doors to the pub and is met by a wall of stale cigarette smoke and dirty sinners. Bearded men in suspenders with frothy mugs all turn to stare at the skinny girl, her head down, feeling the cross on her chest through her shirt. She looks around, finds an empty table in the back corner, and goes straight to it, her head aimed at her shoelaces the entire way. She can hear the whispers already, undertones of unspeakable acts they want to do to her, words that shame the Lord and secure them seats in hell right next to Satan himself. She uses her short sleeve to dab the tears from her face, the cotton painful on her skin.
“I know that hurts worse than what it looks,” says an unfamiliar voice. Rebekah looks up to see a thin and ragged man with a nicotine-stained beard and mustache and long, oily hair tucked behind a New Orleans Saints cap, black with a gold fleur-de-lis. “Here, sweetie pie, this oughtta help.” He places a tall glass of beer in front of her.
Rebekah sniffs it. “I’m not allowed to drink,” she says to the glass. “Drinking is against God.” She doesn’t even realize that it’s illegal to drink before twenty-one years of age; the subject was just never brought up at home.
“Naw, sweetie pie, you ain’t gotta worry ’bout that.” He sits close to her in the booth so that she has to move over. “Fact is, God sent me here to look out for ya. A prophecy, ya know?” It isn’t uncommon to hear such talk around Goshen.
She smells the alcohol on his breath and shifts in discomfort but listens anyway. “You’re a prophet?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says with an incomplete smile. “Our Savior told me that you’d be here, ’n that I needed to com’n getcha outta here and help ya turn from yer evil ways and turn back to the righteous path of God. That’s what He said.”
“He did?”
“Yes’m.” He looks back over his shoulder. “Why are you running away from home? God told me you was running away.” She looks at him in astonishment—perhaps he really was sent by God. But then she looks down and doesn’t answer. “Where are ya tryna go, sweetie pie?”
“The West Coast.”
“Why, hell, that’s where I’m goin’ too.” He keeps tonguing the sockets of missing teeth in his grin. “I can give ya a ride if you want.”
Rebekah gets a bad feeling and looks around the bar. The man leans in close, pressing the front of his body against her side, and breathes heavy enough to make her ear wet. He rubs her knee. “Come with me, sweetie pie.”
She turns her head but can’t get away as he starts kissing her neck, the fog of liquor about to make her sick. God, if you want to send someone, send someone else. Please, God, she thinks to herself. “You’re too close, mister.” She tries to push him away, but she’s too weak against his weight.
“Hey,” a second man yells behind him. She breathes easier when he’s pulled away from her. “You best just leave her alone.” Rebekah sees a young man in a soiled apron that’s supposed to be white, in a stance that says he’s ready to fight. “Now, I ain’t messin’, Joe, you just get on out of here, ya hear?”
“It ain’t like that, me ’n the girl was just talkin’, is all.” He puts his hands up.
“I’ve seen enough of what you call talkin’.” The cook takes the man’s hat and throws it hard into his chest. “Now I suggest you be on your way, I ain’t playing around.”
“Fine, fine. I’m leaving,” he says as he grabs his cap and drags his feet. Rebekah watches a few men from the bar start to gather around the cook. “But you ain’t seen the last of me, kid.” Eyeballed by almost a dozen other truckers who show signs of backing the cook up, the man leaves. When he’s out the door, the men go back to their spirits. Rebekah finds herself crying again, alone with the tall glass of beer he left behind. She doesn’t know what comes over her, but she puts the foam to her lips to taste it. The bitterness of it makes her cheeks water. Forgive me, Lord. She throws her head back and chugs the first beer of her life, breathing only out of her mouth in between swallows so as not to taste it. It runs down the side of her face and neck before she slams the glass on the table. She uses her sleeve once more to pat away the ale, with heavy gasps to catch her breath. She stands up and the room spins under her feet. She looks around for the man in the apron, but he isn’t there. She can’t explain what possesses her, the need to chase after this stranger. Perhaps this is who God sent.