Chapter 23. Welcome to the Freedom Club

06/04/07 • -1 min

The old van struggled along the hilly roads, coughing and sputtering as it labored up toward each crest and revving frantically in a motorized scream as it careened down from the heights. To Max, it felt less like a trip in a panel van than a ride in a creaky trawler that was climbing the petrified waves of an ancient storm, frozen in time and encrusted with ribbons of asphault.

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Max had only a vague notion of where they were headed. But the angle of the shadows on the road ahead indicated that they were traveling north. Considering they had been en route for several hours, that placed them somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania. The rocky, tree-covered hillsides seemed to confirm his guess.

The asthmatic engine relaxed a bit as their travels took them to slower secondary routes, and soon was drowned out by the rattling spray of gravel against the wheel wells and jarring rhythms of washboard dirt roads. At last, Joel stabbed the break pedal and killed the engine. The van ground to a halt.

Linda slid open the side door and Max followed her out. He stretched his aching legs and scanned a hodgepodge of cabins nestled into groves at the edges of a tiny valley that was ringed with tree-lined hilltops. The largest building in sight was a clapboard house at the far end of an oval-shaped expanse of severely mowed grass. It was two stories tall and painted in pristine white with black tar roofing and a screened veranda that extended the full length of the first floor. The building was brightly illuminated by the sun, which was on the verge of sinking behind the hills. A pair of gables poked up through the rooftop. In combination with the veranda and jet black door at the very center of the structure, the gables created the impression of a squinting, angular head, as if some wooden giant was buried up to his chin. Max couldn’t decide if the behemoth was rising out of the ground or being sucked down in. Either way, the expression seemed an indication of his irritation at the glaring sunshine blinding him as he strained against the earth.

The brilliant white farmhouse was in such glaring contrast to the rest of the shadowy valley that it took a few moments for Max to make out the figures on the veranda and strolling about near the other buildings. There were perhaps a few dozen people. It was impossible to guess their genders, partly because of the distance and partly because they all seemed to be dressed as Max was, in denim overalls and white t-shirts.

Joel leapt from the driver’s seat and waved his hand in an attempt at a grand flourish. “Welcome to the Freedom Club, our Shambhala of the Poconos.” He dropped to his hands and knees to kiss the dirt.

“Shit,” he said, wiping grit off of his lips. “It don’t taste like paradise.”

He sprang back to his feet, but stepped on the hem of his robe in the process, which prevented him from standing fully erect.

“Unless,” said Joel, contorting his bent body so that he could grin at Max, “paradise is supposed to taste like crap.” He tugged at his robe with both hands, tearing the hem. “It sure smells like crap. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

Max had noticed indeed. It was an amplified version of the fragrance - if so delicate a word can be applied to such an odor - that Joel had been emitting the first time they met at the café back home. Out here, Max guessed, the smell was probably due to nearby stables and animal pens of some kind. Joel may have picked up his stench from tending livestock, but it seemed just as likely that he was capable of generating it all on his own.

Linda reached for Max’s arm. “Come on.”

“Are we going to give him the grand tour?” asked Joel as he struggled to disentangle his foot from his robe.

“It’ll be too dark soon," said Linda with a shake of her head. "We can show him around tomorrow.”

“The dark,” said Joel, “ is when this place is in it’s best light. ‘Course, you’re the boss.” He winked, nodded, and hitched the rope around his waist a little tighter.

“Hold on Joel.”

“What?”

She extended her hand, with her palm open.

“Oh,” said Joel, reaching into his robe and searching around near his crotch. “You want these?” He pulled out two blister packs of pills and laid them in her hand. They were Max’s Phenobarbital tablets.

Linda turned to Max.“Is this all?”

“I had three packages.”

Joel hung his head and reached into his robe again. “Really? Three? Are you sure it wasn’t just two?”

“Three.”

“Right.” Joel produced anothe...

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Chapter 22. Roadtrip

Max fingered the buckle on one strap of the stiff denim overalls as he shuffled to the restroom at the highway convenience plaza, where Joel had parked the van so that Max could pee. The plaza was a bustling collection of hydrogen recharge points, a few gas pumps for older combustion-engine cars and farm vehicles, fast food joints, and convenience shop counters where travelers in a rush could pick up gum, coffee, newspapers or condoms.

Joel hadn’t wanted to stop, but when the girl, whose name Max had learned was Linda, threatened to let Max have another swing at him, Joel had given in and pulled off the road.

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Max passed up the rows of urinals that lined the ceramic-tiled walls, and chose one of the larger stalls designed to accommodate the handicapped. He was going to need extra room to maneuver the overalls. They were dark blue and stiff, with creases at the calf, thigh, waist and chest from where they had been folded when Linda pulled them out from under a pile of blankets in the van. She had also given him a stretchy, white cotton shirt with long sleeves, and a pair of workman’s boots that were a few sizes too large. All the garments were brand new, as though they had just come off the shelves of a department store, except that the places where the tags would have been, - at the back of the shirt collar, the bib of the overalls, and the uppers on the boots, - had ragged tears where the manufacturer information had been cut out.

Just in case anyone cared to glance at his feet under the wall that surrounded the stall, Max undid the second strap and pushed the overalls to his knees to pretend to urinate. He didn’t really have to go. He just needed a few minutes away from his two companions.

Joel had driven north toward Pennsylvania after they had whisked Max away from the mob, muttering and ranting the whole way. The lunatic act, it seemed, hadn’t been an act altogether. Linda was constantly on guard; ready to snap at Joel to keep him focused on the road. To make matters worse, the van’s heads-up display was out and the avoidance collision system was apparently malfunctioning, allowing Joel to take the van screaming up on other cars from behind, which would force him to pump the brake and holler obscenities at innocent drivers. Then he would pass, swerving across oncoming lanes to the left, or onto the shoulder to the right. Fortunately, the collision avoidance systems in all the other vehicles they encountered were working well enough to deal with even Joel’s erratic driving.

For the first half hour or so, Max had sat silently, wrapped in a blanket and wedged against the wall of the van as it rocked and jerked along the road. Linda watched him patiently, when she wasn’t chastising Joel, and occasionally raised her eyebrows or cocked her head in gestures that invited Max to speak up and ask the obvious questions.

The shock of the assault in the parking lot kept him quiet. When he finally spoke, he only mentioned the need to relieve himself. While Linda dug out the clothes and boots for him, Max decided to simply walk away once the van stopped. But as he stood in the urinal with his pants around his knees, he didn’t feel that he had the strength to take off by himself, in the middle of nowhere with no car, no plan, and no drugs.

He hitched up the overalls and opened the stall door. It closed automatically behind him. Water rushed in the self-flushing toilet, and the disinfectant spray hissed briefly before the stall door reopened to await the next patron. He passed his hands under the faucet to keep up appearances in front of another man who was entering the bathroom as Max was finishing up. He tried unsuccessfully to avoid looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He had aged a lot in the past few weeks. His eyes were bloodshot, and the bags underneath were deep and dark. There were creases around his mouth and across his brow that he couldn’t remember having seen before, and his hair was getting long and jagged around the edges where it was starting to grow down over the tops of his ears. The white shirt and overalls made him look more like a day laborer than a lab technician, except that he was too pale for a person who worked in the sun.

As he walked out of the restroom he found Linda and Joel sitting at a picnic table in the grassy stretch between the fuel station and the convenience store. He stuffed his hands into the deep, crisp pockets and wandered over to join them.

“Everything work out okay?” Linda asked.

“Yes,” said Max, “thanks.”

As Max approached, Joel stood and gathere...

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Chapter 24. In the Garden

Max squatted among the rows of tomato plants, turning over leaves one by one in search of hornworms. When he plucked them off the plants, they would squirm and twist in a sort of slow motion panic, as peristaltic ripples flowed from one end of their bodies to the other. The largest of the hornworms were about the length and thickness of his pinky. There were plenty of the pests to find munching on the pesticide-free plants in the Freedom Club gardens. After only an hour of searching, he had already collected enough to cover the bottom of the rusty coffee canister resting on the dirt by his knee. They weren’t really worms at all, but a fleshy type of caterpillar with rich, emerald green skin and a menacing though apparently harmless horn at the tail.

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As a rule, Linda had told him, everyone staying at the Freedom Club compound was assigned chores. Although in Max’s case it wasn’t required, considering the circumstances of his arrival. He did essentially nothing for his first three days in the compound except breathe deeply of the manure scented air, eat mounds of organic food, and wander about observing the rest of the residents hard at work planting, harvesting, and tending to animals.

It wasn’t long before boredom and a twinge of guilt at his privileged leisure inspired him to volunteer for work. Lacking any other identifiable skills, he’d been assigned to the vegetable gardens. He’d never had much luck at gardening in the past, but given the choice between working with plants or the commune’s collection of pigs, sheep, and goats, picking vegetables and clearing hornworms off of tomato vines seemed the best option for a soft, son of the suburbs.

When Joel first led him out to the garden, Max cringed at the thought of picking hornworms by hand, and gagged when Joel picked a juicy one from a leaf, pinched off its head and tossed the squirming remains into his mouth.

“Best way to make sure they won’t be comin’ back,” Joel said. He grinned to reveal bits of emerald hornworm skin on his yellowing teeth. “Or you can do it the sissy way and put ‘em in a bucket.”

Max had opted for the bucket.

When he reached the end of the row of tomato plants, Max tucked the captive hornworms into the shade under the vines and stood, pressing one hand against his lower back to ease the crick that had resulted from squatting in the garden. He was, at best, a quarter of the way through. Considering the density of hornworms and lack of viable tomatoes, there seemed little chance that the plot would ever be very productive, unless the goal was to harvest the hornworms rather than the fruit.

He arched his lower back until the muscles spasmed in protest, and listened for the telltale clatter of cooking pots and utensils that would have indicated that the communal lunch was near. For the moment, he could make out only an occasional hammer blow, along with the mews and brays of farm animals and the syncopated cough of the archaic engine that ran the camp’s generator. Although there was a promising sign in the wisp of gray smoke that snaked from the stovepipe poking out of the long, low tent that served as a dining hall.

The Freedom Club compound was tucked in the Amish hills of Pennsylvania. Buggies, scythes, and horse-drawn ploughs littered the outdoor spaces. Of the several dozen people in the camp, most dressed like Max in denim overalls, t-shirts, and work boots. Every article of clothing as far as Max could tell had a ragged patch sewn in where the label had been torn out. A few residents, like Joel, preferred linen wrappings that may have been intended to evoke scholarly dignity, but achieved something closer to a frat boy toga party look. Universally, hygiene was a lower priority at the camp than Max was used to, even in comparison to the grad students back at the university. No one looked particularly dirty, other than Joel of course, but regular bathing, antiperspirants and deodorizing soaps were clearly uncommon at the Freedom Club. After a few experiences with the poorly heated shower water, Max was inclined to let himself get a bit ripe before washing up as well.

The Freedom Clubbers were about as friendly as they were fragrant. Which is to say, just a little friendlier than Max cared for; offering a hug rather than a handshake, for instance, or a pat on the back instead of simply saying goodnight after supper.

Idle conversation, however, was generally limited to speculation about the weather and observations on the size and quality of the vegetables and plants. None of them expressed much interest in revealing anything...