Diane Payne
Freedom's Just Another Word
1.
Driving down the road, I feel like a lucky girl, a loved woman, a decent human being. The radio picks up a staticky country western station, music I'd otherwise turn off, but today I hum along. I glance into the rearview mirror and look at my bike and camping gear. Everything I need is piled back there. I still can't believe Helen brought me the keys to her truck. "Truck's yours for one week. Get outta' here. Go have some fun," she said. Helen was flying to Florida to visit her parents. "No use it just sitting here." When she put the keys in my hands, I thought I'd cry. It was the nicest thing anyone had done for me.
2.
I lived in a shabby trailer park surrounded by forest in Flagstaff. A friend had once said my trailer looked like a generic beer can, and the more I thought about that, the more I wanted to plant a garden, make it seem more like a home. Helen would sit on the fence with a beer watching me turn the soil and making preparations for the garden. "You know, it's rather windy here. No shade either. This could be a tough garden to grow." "It'll grow, Helen." Other neighbors would come by to watch me work on the garden. I was passionate about this. Almost fanatical. They'd find a log or crate to sit on while I planted, drink a few beers, and before they'd leave, they'd always say half-heartedly, "It's coming along."
It was coming until the sun took a beating on my flowers. I kept a steady supply of seedlings growing in peat moss beneath the bathroom sink. Neither the plants nor I were giving up.
One afternoon, there was a ferocious windstorm. Peering out the window, I felt like Dorothy, and wondered when I'd join the chunks of aluminum and boards that were flying through the sky. When the wind calmed down, I ran outside and witnessed the havoc wrecked on my garden. Even the hardiest of plants couldn't withstand this wind.
Later, when friends came for dinner, they looked at the garden and sighed. Adamant, I said they'd have fresh onions and beets in no time. How could anyone go wrong with onions or beets? They ate my dinner and smiled politely. Before leaving, they wished my garden well, and said their faithful farewell greeting: "It's coming along." I could tell my friends were certain they'd never eat a fresh beet or onion from my garden.
"This is the Hospice Garden," I explained as they were leaving. "This is what happens to plants. They come. They go."
"But your plants don't seem to last long," Jim said.
"Oh, well, it's coming along," Helen said, wanting to spare me any hurt feelings. Late September, the first snow fell, and friends came out to ski. After skiing through the woods, they gathered around my snow-covered garden and did a little ski dance. Only days earlier this garden seemed so dismal, so hopeless, but now, with the plants blanketed by snow, it felt like a shrine, the plants resting peacefully, free of all the burdened effort required to simply survive. Suddenly, the marigolds and onions were released to do their own snow dance. Though no one really said anything, somehow the garden became a celebration for all of us.
Perhaps it became a celebration simply because we had gathered as witnesses, quietly recognizing just how far the garden had come along. It was a personal celebration done in unison, a lot like gardening and salad making, and watching the moon, and feeling the seasons change. A lot like being lost in memories while surrounded by friends. Watching my friends admire the garden, I felt a certain sense of freedom, relieved to know I'd have a long cold season free of all this emotional gardening, a season to be awake while so many hibernate, a season of simply skiing down snow-covered roads.
The next day, Helen brought me her keys. "Go take a trip. It'll do you good," she said.
3.
When I moved to Flagstaff, a friend helped me move by bringing my stuff in his pick-up. We left it at a storage unit, spent one night at a motel, and then he took back off to Tucson and I rode my bike around town looking for a place to rent. My panniers were loaded with camping gear, and I had the key to the storage unit, but there was nothing I could afford to rent. I finally started pedaling further away from campus, hoping to find cheaper rent. That's when I saw the abandoned trailers. These trailers seemed to be hauled there, maybe they were repossessed, maybe someone collected them. I didn't know why they were out there, but I was tired of camping in the woods near the park in town, because too many people hung out there after the baseball games ended. I decided to set up camp by the abandoned trailers. While heating up a can of soup, I noticed a candle burning in one of the trailers. I could see a man playing his guitar so I knocked loudly. He opened the door and invited me inside. Sean explained this was a place people stored trailers, and that he was illegally using his own trailer because no one was supposed to live in them, since there was no water or electricity connections. When Sean was in Flagstaff, this was his home. I brought my soup inside and he shared his beer and bread. After we ate, I guess he decided I'd make a good neighbor. He told me of an empty trailer in the park down the hill. "I saw them move out last week." We walked outside and he pointed to the trailer. "Don't give up. It should be cheap rent. For Flagstaff's standards."
After spending a week crying, certain I'd never find a place to rent, and not knowing anyone there, I fell asleep with Sean and finally felt like there was hope for me in this town.
I rented the trailer, and little by little I found furniture that was intended for the dump to drag inside my home. Sean helped me get my few things from the storage unit. He'd disappear for weeks at a time, to go climbing, biking, be with lovers, I don't know what, but at night, I'd look to see if his candle was burning, and if I saw that flame, I'd walk up the hill, peek inside the window to make sure there wasn't a woman inside, then knock. It was a good arrangement.
4.
Giddy with my new freedom, I slow down to give a hitchhiker a lift. "Hop in," I say. He throws his duffle bag in the back of the truck. "Thanks. I've been out there a helluva long time."
"That's too bad. I'm usually the one with the thumb out. Feels good to finally be able to give someone a ride. Where you heading?"
"North."
"Good."
"You?"
I don't like talking about my destination, just in case. "North also."
He takes out a cigarette and I stop him. "No smoking."
"Maybe I should ride back there," he says.
"You can."
"Fuck it," he grumbles. "I can live without one."
I'm wishing I had taken a dog. There are dogs all over the trailer park. I could've asked a neighbor to lend me one. Looking at this man, I can see how a dog would make me appear more protected. Behind the wheel I feel more vulnerable than I do standing along the road with my thumb out. Something about this man makes me feel like a target, the recipient of another's anger.
"Name's Billy," he says.
"Rhonda," I tell him.
"Rhonda," he repeats nodding his head. "Rhonda."
We're driving through Navajo country. Nothing around for miles and miles.
"How long have you been on the road?" I ask.
"One night."
I shake my head, then look at him more closely. He looks like he's been standing along a freeway with that wind blown, oily film covering his hair.
"Most single women wouldn't pick up a hitchhiker. What do you do, carry a gun in here?"
"Think that's what it takes to give someone a ride?"
"Yeah. How do you know I don't have a gun?"
"I can only hope."
"Hope. Ha. Hope. Screw hope."
I look ahead for a trading post, any place I can pull over to say I've reached my destination, ride's over, but there's nothing, except for miles of dirt.
"I just got outta prison. Yesterday."
"And no one came to pick you up?"
"Guess I ain't got many friends. I left prison with a friend, another inmate. Inmate. Ha! Soul mate. But we got in a fight outside of Phoenix. We had all these plans. All this shit we were going to do now that we're free. First thing we did was get shitfaced, then beat the shit out of each other. Frankie's an asshole. Before the week's up he'll try to kill someone. Mark my words. You're an idiot to pick up hitchhikers."
"Maybe I should stop."
"Maybe."
We drive in silence for a while. A long while. He's getting fidgety for a cigarette and keeps pulling out his package, then mumbling, "Damn." I reach on the floor for a bag of chips and he panics. "Thought you were reaching for a gun," he says, holding my arm tightly.
"Was going to see if you were hungry."
"Sorry."
I figure he doesn't have a gun or he would've reached for it. I look at my arm and see the redness. He's strong.
"Are you moving or something?" he asks.
"Just going out to hike and bike. Taking a break from school."
"A vacation. That's what I'm on, a vacation," he says laughing. "Heading to Yellowstone to see the geysers."
"Sounds like fun."
He laughs meanly. "You think I get outta prison and my first stop is Yellowstone?"
"Could be."
"Yeah, right. Someone owes me money. I'm going to collect on old debts and then I don't know what."
"Hard to plan things."
"Tell me about it. I ain't had a chance to plan my day in seven years. First day of freedom, and look what I did?"
"Today's a new day. You don't need to beat anyone up. Try something new."
"Aren't you the optimist? Try something new." He laughs weirdly for a while, then starts singing, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
"Wow. I never heard a man sound so much like Janis Joplin. You have a great voice. You could make money singing."
Billy laughs, then says, "I could dress like Janis. Be a drag queen."
"I'd come to your show."
"You know what they did to drag queens where I just come from?"
"You're not there anymore."
"Nope, I ain't," he says closing his eyes. He's had enough talking, enough of everything.
I think about my garden, yesterday's snow. I wonder where Sean's been. Hasn't come around for about three weeks. We both have lovers, we come and go, seem like strangers in public when we cross paths, but there's something about those nights in his little trailer overlooking my hospice garden that restores me. We rarely talk about each other. He sings. I draw. We make love slowly. I walk back down the hill.
A blackbird falls from the sky and crashes into the windshield, waking Billy. "Damn, that scared me," he admits.
Then another bird falls from the sky.
"What the fuck is going on?" Billy yells.
A flock of birds that seem to be heading somewhere, somewhere upward, start dropping one by one onto the windshield. Billy reaches out and pulls them free. Most end up on the road, dead. I turn my wipers on hoping to remove the birds on my side of the windshield but they're stuck to the blades.
"This is so awful," I say. "Must be storing uranium or something toxic on this rez."
"I think there's some funky voodoo going on. Bad Karma."
If these birds represent people Billy's done wrong, I doubt they'll disappear anytime soon. A sickening feeling comes over me and I wonder if the birds could be people I've done wrong.
"This is really fucked," Billy says removing another bird."
Billy stares straight ahead and starts to sing in a rich sincere voice, while we drive beneath a mass of dark feathers and broken beaks along a desolate road. Something about his voice assures me that he’s basically safe, decent, worthy of riding in the car for awhile longer.
©2004 by Diane Payne
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