Freedom's Just Another Word Read online

  Clarence always said that the country’s so flat in the Texas Panhandle, you can see for two days. He was right. And everything he told me about Route 66 was right, too—friendly little geraniums-in-the-window type of towns like Glenrio and Vega, with their barbershops and soda fountains and cafés surrounded by pickup trucks and Texas-style sedans. Now, of course, all the businesses had signs out front that read Save Route 66. And while I agreed that the Interstate was nothing but a passionless slab of monotony, I figured these folks had about as much chance of saving their road as Mother Grace had of saving Roy.

  “Most of the people ’round here live and work right on the highway,” said the grizzled man who filled our tank. His straw hat was stained with sweat, and rain rolled off the rim and over the side as he made change for a five-dollar bill. “Gonna be right quiet when the rest of the Interstate is paved,” he told us, but by the time we’d pulled into his station, we’d passed so many boarded-up diners and broken-hearted movie houses, we could see that the inevitable had already begun.

  It took two hundred miles for Marsha to finish eating a handful of nuts and seeds. What she saw in them, I had no idea; during the entire trip south from Saskatoon she had an endless supply. Despite the fact that she ate nonstop, the bag never seemed to go down. That champing of hers got on my nerves, and every fifty miles or so, when I’d stop to unclench my hands from the wheel, I resisted the urge to grab on to her feet and shake her up and down, so I’d be rid of them once and for all.

  I noticed too, how she always turned up the radio whenever they were broadcasting bad news. After she’d almost put me to sleep with her usual speech about sin and the Captain of Death, she moved on to bad weather around the world—cyclones, floods—and how they were caused by something she called the hubris of humankind, which turned out to mean pride.

  The four-hour drive felt like twenty, but we eventually hit Amarillo, a once-bustling city that now, thanks to the bypass, was nothing but a cluster of beer joints and trailer parks, clinging to the Mother Road and fighting for the attention of every passerby. My eye caught a huge neon sign for the Buckaroo Motel, but Marsha quickly reminded me that we’d be staying in a small parish church on the outskirts of the city. Not the Buckaroo. Too bad, since I imagined a place like that had plenty of stories to tell about its visitors; people who’d driven from Chicago to Santa Monica and the characters they’d met along the way.

  It had stopped raining by the time I found the Wagon Wheel Curio Shop. It was a two-room frame building, and I figured Agnes Foster must live in the back because an old umbrella, table, and chairs were huddled beneath a small, weary-looking tree. Another structure, an oversized metal shed, had a huge sign across the front that read FIREWORKS. The paint was chipped and faded, but an outline of the letters was still visible.

  Marsha waited in the car while I went inside with the medals. There were no customers, just a woman I assumed was Agnes, sitting behind a counter. The place was cluttered with key chains and glasses and maps and flags—all that Don’t-Mess-with-Texas stuff that we had so much of at home. She was smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, and with a voice that was hoarse enough to be bronchitis, said, “I’ve got a special on T-shirts. Today only.” She pointed to a rack; the shirts were printed with a map of the Lone Star State, and every one of them was coated with a half inch of dust.

  Agnes had piercing black eyes and a large bust, and sat directly in front of a creaky old metal fan that blew the smoke from her cigarette around the room. It did nothing to alleviate the heat, however, which was probably why she wore a sleeveless flowered dress that left little to the imagination.

  “Mrs. Foster?” I said.

  “You know me, child?”

  “Yes.” I took a deep (and for some reason, quivering) breath. “My name is Louisiana Merritt, and I’ve brought your son Johnny’s war medals all the way from Saskatoon.”

  She exhaled slowly. Then she stamped out her cigarette into an ashtray that was so full of butts she could barely find room for one more. When she did, the wrinkly flesh that hung from her upper arm wiggled like jelly.

  “God help me now,” was all she said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Thinking Agnes must be shocked from hearing someone mention her dead son, I gave her time to digest the news that I had brought his medals. Neither one of us said a word. Agnes stared at me so suspiciously, I began to feel like a criminal. Although, if anyone ever did try to shoplift that junk of hers, she’d likely consider it an honor. We were both silent for so long, the buzzing of flies and the creaking of her fan began to sound as loud as a jackhammer. I reached inside my purse and pulled out the medals. I unwrapped them slowly and set them on the counter in front of her, being careful to turn each one face up out of respect.

  “Clarence said they might get lost in the mail, so I—”

  “Is that all Clarence said?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Agnes took a swallow of beer, rinsed it around in her mouth like antiseptic, then asked, “How is Clarence? And Thelma, how is she doing?” I expected her to grab for the medals right away, but she didn’t. It was almost as if she was preparing herself to touch them.

  “She died last year,” I said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” She set the beer bottle down quietly. “I only met Thelma a couple of times, when she visited with Clarence,” said Agnes. “I liked her. I liked them both.”

  “They’re good people.”

  “They are.”

  We stared at each other self-consciously until her hand finally reached over the counter. Her hands shook as she pulled the medals to herself and I heard her say “Johnny” under her breath. I expected a few tears, but didn’t get them. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her son; I think she loved him too much to cry. She wouldn’t allow herself the release. The pain was all she had left.

  Her steely black eyes caught mine again. “You drove all this way to give me these, child?”

  “No…no, I didn’t. I made a detour down Route 66. I’m on my way to Austin.” I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the Mother Road, but once I had opened my big mouth, I couldn’t ignore the topic. “I hope the Interstate doesn’t take away your business,” I said, knowing full well that it wouldn’t only skim the top off her sales; it was going to stamp on her curio shop, spit on it, then laugh as it slowly withered and died.

  “Too late for worry,” she said. “Too late for that.”

  “What will you do?” I asked her.

  “This is my home. I’m not leaving.”

  “Oh.”

  “At my age, it doesn’t much matter,” she said.

  I didn’t know how to respond, and was going to start telling Agnes about my meeting with Janis Joplin, but then I noticed a shelf on the wall behind her. Across it were photographs of Johnny—as a boy, at his high-school graduation, and in uniform. Nothing out of the ordinary until I scanned to the end of the row and saw one of him with Wendy Wood, obviously taken in Saskatoon since I recognized our garage in the background.

  Why would Agnes put up a picture of Wendy Wood? She must have hundreds of photos of Johnny to choose from.

  “Did Clarence take that photo of your son?”

  She knew which one I meant right away and answered quickly. “Yes.”

  “That’s Wendy Wood with him,” I said. Then I added, “She never smiles. Maybe because she’s missing teeth.”

  “Maybe.”

  I leaned over the counter to take a better look, and when I did, I could see that she was pregnant in the photograph. Pregnant with me.

  I wondered if Agnes knew—if Clarence had told her that Wendy Wood was my real mother. Maybe Johnny had told her. Agnes had an odd look on her face, which made me suspect that she did know. Either way, Wendy wasn’t worth mentioning. Janis was.

  “I’m going to Kenneth Threadgill�
�s bar to sing with Janis Joplin,” I said cheerily. “I met her in Saskatoon, and she’s going to help me—”

  “You sing?”

  “I do. The blues. And some zydeco with my accordion. Music is my life.”

  “Like your mother.”

  “You mean Thelma?”

  She paused. It was a long, dramatic kind of pause. The kind of pause where you can tell the other person is going to say something big. Or something they don’t want to say.

  “Wendy,” she said.

  “Wendy,” I repeated.

  “Johnny told me, Easy. About your mother.”

  “So he told you my nickname too.”

  “I like your name,” she said.

  Johnny and Agnes must have had nothing to talk about down here in the panhandle. Must have been one of those long, hot summer nights when you can’t sleep, so they had nothing better to do than talk about Wendy Wood. And my nickname.

  “She’s not a bad person,” said Agnes. “Not from what my son told me.” She thought for a second. “You don’t keep contact?”

  “Never met her. Well, not since I was born. She’s in a homeless shelter someplace in Calgary.” Then for impact, I added, “I guess she’s a prostitute.” I heard myself say it and decided I was starting to sound like Marsha.

  Agnes didn’t like that remark; I could tell by the way she frowned and stitched her eyebrows together. What I couldn’t figure out was why she was even the least bit interested in a nobody like Wendy. But for whatever reason, she kept it going.

  “She loved to sing, same way you do. Was really good—that’s what Johnny told me. But I guess her teeth ruined any chances for her to get ahead.” She leaned back in her chair. “Meeting Janis Joplin wouldn’t do her much good. Not without teeth.” She shook her head. “That’s too bad. Poor thing in a homeless shelter.”

  Poor thing? She didn’t even bother to send me one letter. Not one Christmas card. Nothing.

  I looked out the window and saw that Marsha was trying to find shade between the building and a spindly tree, so I figured it was time to get on my way. I was fed up with talking about Wendy Wood anyway. “Well, uh…it’s been nice meeting you. My friend is waiting for me.” As I spoke, my attention was diverted to an old car, parked behind the curio shop. It was a red convertible, and looked to be in decent shape, but it had been there for a long time because the grass had grown up in clumps around the tires.

  Agnes lit another cigarette, stood up and peered out the window to see what I was looking at.

  “Nice car,” I said. “Is it yours?”

  “Johnny’s car. I don’t drive.”

  “It’s a great one. Looks like a Chevy convertible. What is it, a 1950—”

  “1951 Chevy Styleline Deluxe,” she replied.

  I choked on her smoke, and she moved aside.

  The car had a long deck, and a drop top. “You should have it tuned up and learn to drive. A bit of body work here and there, and maybe some new upholstery, it’d be as good as new.” I smiled at her. “And being a Chevy, no problem getting parts for it.” I headed to the door. “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Go ahead, child. But I can tell you, it doesn’t need new upholstery.”

  I told Marsha I’d be another minute, then looked inside the window of the Chevy. Agnes wasn’t kidding; the seats were like new. The odometer indicated that it had only been driven a short time—maybe a year or two—and from the condition of the paint, I could tell that Johnny had kept it away from anything corrosive. Still, being left out in the elements for the better part of twenty years meant that it did need work.

  “Gonna be much longer?” asked Marsha, from where she sat with her back against the tree.

  “No,” I said, but my eyes never left the car. “You don’t often find a twenty-year-old car that’s barely been driven,” I told her. “It’s a gem.”

  Marsha didn’t look at it, and didn’t care about it, but managed to use it as a way of complaining about the yellow submarine. “Too bad you couldn’t have found us a nicer car than the station wagon.” The comment flew from her mouth like a little dart.

  I ignored her and went back inside and told Agnes that the car was well worth getting refurbished, even if she just wanted to sell it.

  “I’d never sell my son’s car. Not even if my last penny was spent.”

  “He didn’t drive it for very long.”

  “Two years. That’s all. That’s all the good Lord gave him.” She looked up to the ceiling, like she was trying to see through it to heaven. “He drove it all the way to Saskatoon to take Clarence and Thelma for a ride—stayed there all summer that year.”

  “Bet he turned around for home when they started salting the roads,” I said with a laugh, and Agnes offered up a little smile—only at the corners of her mouth, but it was there.

  “Well, I think you should fix it up. It’s a wonderful car.” Marsha had made her way back into the yellow submarine, so I had to go. I didn’t want to leave Agnes there, sitting all alone with nothing but the memory of her dead son and a whole bunch of Route 66 junk around her.

  But Janis was waiting for me.

  “On your way to Austin, is that right?” She followed me to the door.

  “Yeah. Have to be there by tomorrow night, and it’s a good eight-hour drive from here.”

  “Not traveling after dark, are you?” She looked out the window again. “Okay for that white friend of yours, but not for you.”

  “I’ll be with her. I won’t be alone. And we’re going to spend tonight at a parish church that Marsha knows about—she’s a postulant. It’s somewhere around here.”

  Agnes let two streams of smoke come out her nose. “You’re in Texas now,” she said. “There’s folks here that don’t take kindly to people like us.” I knew she meant black people. “Some folks are madder than ever these days. They’re out for blood now.” She sat back down. “Be careful, child.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Marsha took a turn at the wheel, since she was the one who’d been given the directions to St. Michael’s Parish. Of course, she managed to get them fouled up, and we ended up in the middle of nowhere. I’d told her to write everything down, but she insisted she could remember. And Marsha making a decision was like carving Mount Rushmore; once it was done it was done, and you didn’t dare suggest any changes. We were so far off the beaten path, I couldn’t even find a mailbox to mail my postcard. After having it in my hand for two hours, the ink was starting to smear, so I jammed it back inside my purse.

  Our plan was to stay overnight at the parish church (the one that was supposed to be near Amarillo), then make our way to Fort Worth the next day. From there, we’d take the I-35 to Austin (although after seeing what was happening to businesses along Route 66, I had become an official hater of all Interstates). But somehow we missed our turn, and soon the long shadows of evening started draping themselves across rooftops and fields. When the first star blinked in the sky, I knew we had about as much hope of finding the parish as Roy did Yasgur’s Farm.

  I was starving by that time. Marsha should have been, having had no lunch, but those nuts and seeds sustained her the way they would a hibernating ground squirrel.

  “That sign said fifty miles to Wichita Falls,” I told her, unfolding a highway map across my lap. I turned on the interior light, and decided that our plans needed to change. “We’ll have to find somewhere to sleep. I can’t waste any more time trying to locate St. Michael’s. Tomorrow we can hit the I-35 which will take us right into Austin.”

  Marsha wanted to try a bit longer, so on we drove, figuring that at the very least we’d find a place to eat. On the way from Saskatoon to Albuquerque, I had enjoyed night driving—the cheerful glimpses of families watching television, a baby in its father’s arms, children silhouetted in a window. But this stretch of highway in Texas felt different. It di
dn’t have the warmth of Highway 85, nor the nostalgia of Route 66. It resonated something dark and sinister.

  When we finally stumbled upon a diner, it had no neon sign, just sputtery little bulbs, most of which were burned out, and trees that were bare except at the very top, like someone had chopped off every branch they could reach. Inside, a long counter was lined with round seats, and tables were scattered haphazardly around the room.

  Everyone’s eyes stood out on stalks when Marsha and I entered the place. I presumed it was her nun outfit that was the problem, although I soon realized that the gapes were aimed in my direction.

  When a guy came out from behind the counter—he was the cook and the waiter and likely the owner too—and headed straight for me, it confirmed that I was the problem, not Marsha.

  The restaurant fell silent—the kind of all-embracing silence that can make the dropping of a fork sound like a pistol shot.

  “You’re not welcome here. Git out.” He pointed to the door.

  A woman with sagging purple cheeks turned in her chair to get a good look at me, and smiled and nodded at the owner as if to say “Good for you, Charlie. Give that black girl what she has coming to her.”

  I’m not sure from whence it came—maybe from watching Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night—but somehow I found a reserve of strength that enabled me to fight back.

  Be careful, said Thelma. Walk, but don’t run.

  “My friend and I have been driving a long way, and we’re hungry. Can I please have—”