Freedom's Child (28 page)

My name is Freedom and I gear up to walk the crushed white clamshells that make up the narrow roads in this corner of Goshen, Kentucky. The black metal gates of the Paul farm shelve frost. The ties that hold the posters and boards to the palisades shiver in the wind, the kind of wind that sounds like the sharpening of steel that might whistle through an arctic hell, the frostbiting kind that stings my cheeks and makes me tear.

Up ahead, a crowd made up of about a dime and a half protest against the cult, a chant that rolls over the hills, “Burn in hell, Burn in hell!” Tall picketers bounce up and down in the air, like they’re poking heaven with a stick in the hope that their gods might react. Outside our car is a poster as tall as me that displays a list of four names in white, all with a line through them:

Manson. Koresh. Jones. Applewhite
.

A fifth one, in bold red letters, reads:

Paul.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” Mason asks from the passenger’s seat of the ATF surveillance van pulled over at the side of the road and out of sight from the protesters.

“I’m our only shot.” I stare at myself in the side-view mirror. “What’s with the fucking lynch mob?”

“Don’t worry about them,” says Joe of the ATF, the undercover who last saw Rebekah, as he taps the microphone through my shirt. “They’re nothing but Bible thumpers. Crazies, but harmless.”

The sweat makes my armpits itch; it pools to a tarn at the sides of my snatch. On the other side of this gate is my only shot at redemption, my only shot at giving my life just a mustard seed of purpose, my one shot at finding the daughter I only knew for two minutes and seventeen seconds. “There’s no turning back,” I say under my breath.

“Just have a little faith, Mom,” says Mason, the first time I hear the word fall from his lips since he was a child. But I have to wonder if it is only to encourage me as I ready myself into foreign farms of Jesus and quasi-forms of religion.

“Faith…” I trail off. “I don’t need any more crutches.” I press on the mic under my shirt to fasten the adhesive and turn to Joe. “If they make me sign over my car and milk cows or some shit, promise you’ll get me the hell out of there.”

“You’ll be fine, just remember what we talked about.
Looks like a storm’s coming
.”
Yeah, yeah, I know. Throw myself to the wolves, listen, find out what terrorist act they’re planning to channel their zeal and self-righteous delusions of martyrdom. I get it, you redneck. Sub rosa
.

“Ready?” And I can see it in his eyes, the expectance of some emotional tell-my-kids-I-love-them bullshit good-bye. “Take this with ya,” Joe says and hands me a Bible.

“Ah, the better to roll my cigarettes with, my dear.” I leave the van.

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

The aftertaste of antibiotic
flavors the watering of my cheeks and my upper lip carries the scent of a stale Pall Mall. And as I hold my
breath and walk the half-mile stretch toward the front gates, I see a coyote, a coyote that looks identical to the deaf and domesticated one named Aleshanee back in the Snake River Plain of Idaho. He weaves through the woods, a dance with the birch trees. He walks with me from a distance.

The chants’ subject changes from fire and brimstone into something about the Rapture, the Second Coming of Christ, and whatnot.

A pain to the side of my face, exacerbated by the cold. I bring my fingers to my right cheekbone, under my eye, pulling runny egg from my face. The voices of the crowd turn to white noise as it circles around me like a bunch of hunters surrounding wounded game. I see people’s fangs, mouths shouting something pertaining to Jesus, something pertaining to love. In the front, I see a butch woman with dirty-blond hair with only one tooth on the bottom and one tooth on the top, a carton of eggs cradled in her arms. And while I’m outnumbered, I still act on instinct. I walk to her. And when she flashes her two remaining teeth in jest, I use all the rage inside to kick her in the kneecap. I hear something crack; a flutter of nausea ripples in my gut as she falls to the ground. I scrape against the shelly gravel when I straddle her, breaking every egg, even already-broken ones, over her face.

“Stupid fucking bitch.” All these words come to the surface, not sure if any one of them makes sense. I’m too busy egging her to hear my own words, each syllable cried as I ram an egg on her face with the force of a punch behind it.

Shock, gasp, disgust
, goes the crowd.
Sure, make me the bad guy now. Wasn’t so bad when you were on the offensive, right? Hypocrite fucks
. A flashback to the Corona bottle and a Viper’s nose back at the Whammy Bar. Behind me, a scream rings through the air, and when I turn back, a woman falls toward me. A man at her side grabs his own head and crouches to the ground. And like the event that took place at the Whammy Bar, leave it to a cop to save the day.

“Back off the lady.” The man in light blue hits one more protester
with his nightstick, causing him to fall to the ground. “Let her alone,” he yells. He pulls me up by my arm with a jolt, off the top of the horse. I can feel the warmth of his body as he holds me close by the waist and uses the baton to strike gatherers out of the way, heading for the entrance of the gates. I look over my shoulder, past the crowd, to see Mason and Joe. They’re reentering the van. I guess they were on their way to save the day, my capeless crusaders. Instead, I get this redneck with a receding hairline. I barely understand his accent, something about the reverend, something about expecting me, something about keeping this little incident to ourselves. With each word I pretend to understand, the smell of chewing tobacco emanates from his stuffed bottom lip.

He uses a Master Lock key to open the tall gate, rust flaking from hinges that whine. The chants subside as the officer and I start on a long dirt road that disappears ahead over a hill. He indicates toward a clunker of a pickup truck parked to the side at the edge of the forest. I climb in on the driver’s side and slide over. He hands me a navy bandanna from his front pocket. I wipe egg from my face and hair. In the mirror, a welt develops; flesh begins to turn red raw before my eyes.

A Confederate flag sticker taped to the dashboard, a shotgun displayed right behind my head.
I’m in redneck hell
, I think. As we rattle up past several small white houses that resemble sugar cubes, the man, who said he was the sheriff, I think, spits his used tobacco into an old Chock full o’Nuts can he leaves on the side of his door.

“This here’s the ol’ Paul house.” He puts the car in park beside a cop car, presumably his. As I look up at the porch from the truck, Carol and Reverend Virgil Paul step out from the house, a young girl running behind them to hide behind Carol’s skirt. I think my heart stops beating.

I’m at the home where my children were raised, a place I’ve only conjured up in my dreams. And for a second, I swear I can feel them, as if they’re right here, standing next to me at the foot of the porch.

The Pauls mean to be warm as they greet me. But their embraces are awkward, like they’ve only done it maybe once in their whole lives. Their dress, conservative: white turtlenecks and dirty Keds, a sight contradicting my ripped jeans and combat boots, wild, unbrushed hair that smells like smoke. They try to smile like they’re happy to see me; their teeth show, but their cheeks hardly move. Not knowing what to say, I fix my attention to the young girl.

“And who might this princess be?” I hear the girl giggle through the cotton.

“Boo!” she yells out before nicking her head back. Out of everyone here, she looks like the only one truly happy. And I could only hope that that was the case for Mason and Rebekah, being raised here.

“This here is our daughter, Magdalene.”

“Hi, there, Magdalene.” I smile at her. “My name is Freedom.”

“So what’s your real name, anyway?” the reverend asks, more like an interrogation.

I shrug. “That’s it. Freedom Oliver.”

He curls his lip and looks at me like I have three heads. “So your parents were
those
kinds of people…” He trails off. Three minutes in, I already know I might end up biting my tongue right off through fake smiles that hurt my cheeks.

Virgil shakes hands with the sheriff before he takes off in his cop car. He stands close to me, like he’s trying to remind me that he stands a good foot taller than I. “No luggage, I see?” I hold the jacket tighter around me, on the off chance that he can see the wire down my shirt.

“It’s a funny story,” I start, not really knowing where I’m going with the answer. And I’m glad it’s not one I have to think up, as an old woman steps from the house to tow everyone’s eyes. The soles of her leather sandals scrape against the peeling whitewash of the porch. Gray marbles peer from a black scarf that hangs on to lazy shoulders, eyes that look like they can tell a million stories but
choose to keep them in their respective decades. She holds the door open for us.

Inside it smells like lemons and banana bread. A second hand ticks through the coziness of the living room. Old couches look like they’ve never been sat on, and balls of pink yarn and a pair of knitting needles rest on and near a black rocking chair in the corner of the room, near a small window that overlooks the driveway.

The house looks like something from the Colonial period: large wooden beams supporting the ceiling, a wood-burning stove, creaky hickory boards for floors, and about a dozen needlework frames around
HOME SWEET HOME, HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
, yadda, yadda, yadda.

“Well, let’s get you settled, shall we?”

I jar with the entrance of a cuckoo bird. The bird sings, slightly out of tune. In fact, his words are my exact sentiment toward these people: cuckoo.
But be polite, Freedom. Act like one of them. Act human
. “I’d really love a shower more than anything, Reverend Paul.”

“Plenty of time for that.” He opens the front door. He gestures with his hand for me to follow. With a snap of his fingers he demands of the old lady, “Amalekite, come.” The woman acts as his obedient lapdog. On instinct, I want to tell the man to go fuck himself. He continues to me, his voice matter-of-fact, “In this community, a man is not allowed alone with a woman without the presence of another female, I’m sure you understand.” I’ve no fucking clue what he’s talking about.

If ever there were an internal creep-o-meter instilled in humans, mine rings off the charts: the women walk on eggshells, eggshells on the tongue, like they’re afraid to say or do anything unless it’s confirming or in direct obedience to the reverend. Magdalene jumps to her stomach on the living room floor to resume with her coloring book of Christ’s Resurrection, with only a purple crayon. “I’ll start lunch,” Carol says and disappears into the kitchen, probably an excuse to leave the awkward situation. “Magdalene, come with Mommy.”

Magdalene goes to run past me and stops, stretching her head all the way back to see me. “You’re awfully pretty for a grown-up, Sister Freedom.”

For the first time in God knows how long, it’s a compliment I cherish. “Why, thank you, Miss Magdalene.”

She smiles a toothy grin. “But Sister Freedom is one funny name.” Carol tries to pull the girl away with one of those
sorry-about-that
chuckles.

“It sure is.”