The Free (P.S.) by Willy Vlautin

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