Freedom's Child (34 page)

We scuttle, dash like spiders across the lawn, the sun returning to the shadows. The rain’s cold, cruel on my skin. I taste my heart; it pumps more blood than should be through my body. Terror moves me, once my enemy but now a friend that helps me go, go, go. And as I reach the shed, I realize I’m slower than the five-year-old, gripping the pistol with my other hand so hard that I can no longer feel my fingers.

The Amalekite puts her finger to her mouth to keep Magdalene quiet when she jumps at the sight of the old woman. We lean, backs to the side of the shed, the side that doesn’t face the church. “I don’t have a plan.” I think I’m crying. I think I am. Because, once again, there’s no hope, I’ve failed again.

“We’ve come this far; you can’t give up now,” says the Amalekite. She reaches into her pocket. “Not sure if it’s working right, but I spoke, anyway. I told them, whoever’s at the other end, to come
and rescue us. That was only minutes ago.” The wire I was wearing when I entered Third-Day Adventists uncoils at our feet. I hand the Amalekite the infant.

“Let us pray,” says Magdalene, the childlike innocence almost comforting.

Our heads jump, noises from the forest that sound like lightning;
crack, roar, rev
. I look around the corner one last time. No deacons in sight. Weaving through the trees, red, white, and blue.

Red, white, and blue. The American fucking dream.

Sirens, bullhorns demanding the deacons to stand down. Military tanks with American flags flapping rapidly on top. The sun breaks through once more. We wait like impatient children, with impatient children. I squeeze Magdalene so she can hear my heart flutter. “We’re going to be OK. It’s over now. It’s all over now,” I weep.

It could have been another Waco, easily. It could have been a fifty-one-day standoff, history repeating itself. They could have set fire to the sugar-cube houses, turning them into burned candy, members of the congregation caramelized inside.

It takes an hour to feel safe enough to leave this side of the shed. The hills swarm with the ATF, the FBI, and I’m not sure if that’s actually the military. The newspapers will tell me in a few days. We’re led out by men who resemble insects, black shells for faces, armed to the teeth.

A parade of white. Myself, Magdalene, Theresa, and the Amalekite. Back to the clamshell roads we march.

The protesters are gone, but we’re met by hundreds of cops, reporters, cameras. Stuck in the crowd, I see Mason with his uncle Peter. I nod to them. And aside from the suicide, I remember Rebekah. But I stifle the cries. Afternoon creeps closer toward the night. The masses ask for our names. To my left, a good few feet away, I hear the Amalekite. “My name is Adelaide. My name is Adelaide Custis.” The crowd gasps. I guess the world already knows who she is.

“The wife of Ger Custis?” asks one reporter.

“Yes,” she cries. “Carol Paul was my daughter. I was held here against my will.”

The lights and flashes make my retinas crackle. The liberation of the surviving Third-Day Adventists brings only temporary relief. Because after all of this, Rebekah is still dead. She was dead this entire time.

It’s been twenty years since I felt this: numbness. All the emotions I should have, all the emotions anyone else would have, just aren’t there. I’m not angry. I’m not sad. I’m not anything. Just numb. I need to get away. I need the air. I need one goddamn moment to breathe. I turn from the crowds and sneak away.

“What’s your name, ma’am?” asks one of the reporters, a blonde with too much makeup on, heels too high for the clamshells.

It’s the only question I answer. And then I move. I just move.

“My name is Freedom.”

My name is Freedom Oliver and I killed my daughter. Perhaps not directly, but I think I’ll always blame myself. It’s surreal, honestly, and I’m not sure what feels more like a dream, her death or her existence. In so many ways, and maybe it’s self-inflicted, I’m guilty of both.

I couldn’t stand the thought of hanging around outside the compound near God knows how many dead bodies just on the other side, and certainly not to answer the press’s questions. I let Mason and Peter know I was fine before I snuck off. I was still in
keep moving
mode, I just had to get the hell out of there. So I walked aimlessly down the road, away from town. And then I saw the sign for Whistler’s Field. Whistler’s Field, where a couple hours before at the Paul house, Virgil confessed that here, Rebekah was chopped and buried. “
Which part
?”

I tried to imagine it in my head. It wasn’t that long ago when this field would ripple and rustle with a warm breeze, gold dancing under the blazes of a high noon sun. The Thoroughbreds, a staple of Goshen, would canter along the edges of Whistler’s Field. If you listen close enough, you can almost hear the laughter of farmers’ children still lace through the grain, a harvest full of innocent secrets of
the youthful who needed an escape but didn’t have anywhere else to go. Like my Rebekah, my daughter. My God, she must have been beautiful.

But a couple weeks is a long time when you’re on a journey like mine. It could almost constitute something magnificent. Almost.

I catch my breath when I remember. Somewhere in this field, my daughter is scattered in pieces.

Goshen, named after the biblical Land of Goshen, somewhere between Kentucky’s famous bourbon trails in America’s Bible Belt. The gallops of Thoroughbreds that haunt this dead pasture are replaced with the hammering in my rib cage. The mud cracks below me as I cross the frostbitten field, my footsteps ripping the earth with each fleeting memory. The skies are that certain shade of silver you see right before a snowstorm; now, the color of my filthy, fucking soul.

But I’ve been followed. From the corner of my eye, I see a deacon. I see Sheriff Don Mannix behind me with an itchy finger and a Remington aimed between my shoulder blades. He, too, got away. I am reminded of my own white-knuckled grip on my pistol, the pistol I still had from the compound, a grip insulated with the gloves sewn to my sleeves.
The deacon who made it out alive and uncaptured
. It sounds like some western if I’ve heard one before. But he’s here with his job. He’s here to kill me.

Call me what you will: a murderer, a cop killer, a fugitive, a drunk. You think that means anything to me now? In this moment? The frost pangs my lungs in such a way that I think I might vomit. I don’t. Still out of breath, I use the dirty robe to wipe blood from my face. I don’t even know if it’s mine. There’s enough adrenaline surging through my veins that I can’t feel pain if it is.

“This is it, Freedom,” the sheriff calls out in his familiar southern drawl. The tears make warm streaks over my cold skin. The cries numb my face, my lips made of pins and needles. There’s a lump in my throat I can’t breathe past.
What have I done? How the hell did I
end up here? What did I do so wrong in life that God deemed me so fucking unworthy of anything good?
I’m not sure. I’ve always been the one with the questions, never the answers.

Perhaps it was those prayers I made only an hour or two ago that let me make it this far. I’m not sure. But I’m sure I hear him cock his gun. And somehow, I’m accepting of this. What choice do I have, really? Do I cry like a little bitch about it? No, I’ve lived my life. I even had that agreement with God, that He could take my life for the lives of those girls. It’s a good trade, one the world can benefit from. So how can I cry about it? Why should I whine when God keeps His end of a bargain?

Then, the sound of the shot. It’s the scariest sound I’ve ever heard. It’s the sweetest fucking sound I’ve ever heard.

With my back still to the sheriff, a murder of crows bark away from the field, a ribbon of black across my vision.

But I don’t fall. I don’t feel the pain. I’m not hit. And it’s not me who pulls the trigger. I hear the sound of Sheriff Don Mannix falling, a hard crash to the earth, a pile of skin, bone, and Remington steel. When I turn, a harsh wind on my face, I see Mattley. I see motherfucking Officer James Mattley.

I’m spent, I don’t even have the energy to stand. So he comes to me, this guardian angel from the West Coast, eyes curious and head tilted. From his back pocket, he pulls out a letter. I can barely hear him over the breeze. “I got this from Mimi. It’s how I found you.”

In the midst of such grief, is a person capable of love? I get the urge to tell him that perhaps it’s possible. But now isn’t the time. I can’t find the words to tell him how thankful I am for him. I can’t find the words to tell him that I
can’t
find it in me to say such a thing. I can barely speak at all.

I handle the paper he hands me like it’s dust in danger of floating away. “Can I have a moment, please?” My voice cracks. He squeezes my shoulder and walks away behind me.

Dear Nessa, or should I call you Mom?

There is so much to say; there’s so much to take in. I’ve so much to tell you, but so little time, as I hide here in the shed of my church. I look back at my life. I wonder how’d I not see it, and looking here at your photo, I can see it, I can see it all.

For ages, I’ve been praying for a way out. Praying God takes me far from here. But in all this time, I’ve had nowhere to turn. There’s Mason, but I need to be farther. I have to get away from here. I can’t tell you why. Please, trust me. Trust in God. Because he sent your letter to me.

I will contact you in a few days when I reach Oregon.

Rebekah

Have you ever heard your soul snap in two? Have you ever cried for so long that you find yourself on the verge of fainting? Have you ever clawed at the frozen earth so hard that your fingernails break off? Have you ever screamed so loud that there was no noise at all, your windpipes simply failing you under the pressure? The reaction of a woman kneeling on the several graves of her one daughter.

I scare away the ghosts of Thoroughbreds. I scare away anything that dares to haunt this field. And in a way that I cannot explain, I’ve never felt more alive. In my own daughter’s death, I never felt so much more alive than this. Because on the other side of such tragedy, of such turmoil, of such a long journey, something waits for me.