The Free (P.S.) by Willy Vlautin Page A

a brown leather aviator coat and hung it on a hook on the back wall. He put the frozen dinner and soda in the fridge, opened the remaining box of donuts, took out a chocolate bar, ate it, and then took another. “I’ll be in my office,” he said. “And look, unless someone comes in and asks for me specifically, tell them I’m out.”
    “Alright,” Freddie said.
    “And Freddie?”
    “Yeah, Pat?”
    “Inventory was dead-on except for a missing two gallons of Satin Impervo.”
    “Impervo?”
    “You have any ideas where the two gallons went?”
    “I remember you took two and gave them to your brother-in-law. Do you think it could be those?”
    Pat looked at him and took a bite of the second donut. “Maybe,” he said and walked into his office and shut the door.
    Freddie finished mopping. At ten minutes to noon Pat emerged from his office, went to the refrigerator and took the frozen dinner from it, and put it in the microwave.
    “Freddie,” he said.
    “Yeah, Pat?”
    “I’ll be using line one with my wife.”
    “Alright, Pat,” he said.
    The microwave bell rang and he took his lunch and soda back to his office. James Dobson’s voice came through the thin office walls into the retail space and Freddie could hear it for the next hour. When the program finished, Pat came out of his office. He dumped his lunch and his empty soda bottle in the retail trash can, put on his coat, and looked outside at the cold, gray day.
    “These damn winters kill us.”
    “At least we’re doing better than last year,” Freddie said.
    Pat nodded. “I have to meet with the company lawyer and then run some errands. I’ll try and make it back but I’m not sure I’ll be able to.”
    “Alright, Pat,” Freddie said.
    “And Freddie?”
    “Yeah, Pat?”
    “Make sure you keep the back gate locked. There’s a bunch of kids around out there today.”
    “It’s an administrative day. The kids have the day off. They won’t bother anybody, and tomorrow they’ll be gone.”
    “Administrative day?” Pat shook his head and left. Freddie watched him get into his wife’s car and drive away. He waited ten minutes and heated a bowl of water in the microwave, opened a package of ramen noodles and set it in. He ate lunch and placed his restocking orders. Afterward he sat at the counter and leaned against the wall. He tried to stay awake until the afternoon rush began, but he was overcome with such exhaustion that he had to lie down on the floor behind the counter. He lay on his back and his thoughts spiraled toward blackness: the house, the plants, his kids, prison, sleep, Lowell, the group home, his ex-wife. They were all trying to suffocate him. And then the sound of the buzzer rang. A customer walked through the swinging glass doors. He pulled himself together and stood up.
     
    He closed Logan Paint at 5:30 and drove home to find a U-Haul truck backed up to his garage door. The house inside was warm; a fire burned in the fireplace. In the basement he found Lowell and a boy hanging shop lights from the ceiling. There was a twenty-gallon tub of black-looking liquid sitting in the corner as well as a half-dozen gallon jugs set in wooden boxes. There were rolls of black plastic and lengths of two-by-four and a crate of tools. They had two electric heaters and a humidifier running.
    “Hey, Freddie, good to see you,” Lowell said and came down off the ladder and introduced him to his nephew.
    The kid was standing on a stepstool putting in a three-foot-long fluorescent light fixture. He looked like Lowell but was very thin and young. He had long, dark hair that fell to his shoulders and he wore a faded Black Sabbath T-shirt and black jeans.
    “Go shake his hand,” Lowell said, and so the boy got down off the stool and went to Freddie and put out his hand.
    “Hi,” he said.
    “Nice to meet you,” Freddie said, and they shook hands.
    “Ernie’s going to come by two times a week to take care of the plants,” Lowell said.