Free Live Free

In A Wall

“Ah, there you are, Mr. Free,” Barnes said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Not in the right spots, I reckon. Me and Miz Garth was out to breakfast.”

The fat girl smiled at Free. “I’m going to go upstairs now and get ready for that soak. I’ll be seeing you.” On the second step she turned and blew him a kiss.

“Got to fix up the hot water,” Free said. “Promised I would, and it’ll take a bit for it to get hot.”

“Of course.” Barnes drew his threadbare topcoat around himself more tightly. “I’ll come along and help, if I can.”

“Don’t need no help, but you can come. You want to see me?”

Barnes nodded. “It’s rather … I can’t say personal. Private, right? Perhaps we should go—”

Free interrupted him. “You come with me, then. I got to go pipe up that heater, and down there’s about as private as anyplace.” He shouldered his way past Barnes and without looking back to see if he were following strode off toward the rear of the house.

“I think I should explain that I’m not really here on my own behalf,” Barnes began, hurrying after him. “Madame Serpentina asked that I talk with you.”

“If she’s cold, I can’t help it—they shut off my gas. You tell her if she’s got any more complaints to make them herself. I’ll listen, and I don’t bite much. I got nothing to work with here, but I’m doin’ the best I can.”

“I’m sure you are, Mr. Free. And believe me, all of us appreciate it more than you know.”

The old man pulled a rusty key from his pocket and opened a door. Warm, stale air, musty with time and decay, poured out. He started down creaking wooden steps into the dark.

“Aren’t you going to turn on the lights?” Barnes called after him.

“Ain’t none.” Free’s voice seemed to float like a ghost in the blackness. “Never has been. Come on down, Mr. Barnes. Just keep a hold of that railin’.”

Hesitantly, Barnes came.

“Some steps’s broken. Got to be careful.” There was a rasping noise and the flare of a match. “She’s a deep one, I guess you can see. Just keep on comin’.”

The stair had been repaired often and badly. Or perhaps it had never been repaired at all, only built of such odd scraps as had come into the builder’s hands. Some treads were no more than two or three unplaned sticks laid side by side; some showed paint at their edges, fragments of letters and pictures.

The match flickered and went out.

“Naught to worry about, Mr. Barnes. I never strung none because I didn’t want no one coming down here, but I been up and down them steps a hundred times. Good thing, too—they’ll be shuttin’ off the electric any minute. S’pose they caught us down here? You say that witch asked you to talk for her?”

A second match flared. For a moment, Free’s big, hunched body was interposed between Barnes and the light, then the golden radiance of a candle appeared.

Barnes managed to say, “She was up on the roof with you.”

“I know that. She got up on that little wall that goes around it. It was a damn fool thing to do.”

“She said you—ah—confided certain important facts.” Barnes’s foot touched the grimy surface of the floor, and he heaved a sigh of relief.

“She did, eh? I hadn’t reckoned she’d pass that on.”

“Madame Serpentina and I are friends.” Barnes cleared his throat. “You might say we’ve a relationship, if you know what I mean. I’m sure she didn’t tell me anything you asked her to hold confidential.”

“I know, but I ain’t sure you do. There wasn’t anything like that.”

In the flickering light, the ancient furnace seemed a monster, lifting tentacles as thick as a man’s body to the overhanging dark. The monster was dead, its rotting flesh weeping asbestos, corroding the old-fashioned cabinet that spun wiring in its shadow.

“I didn’t mean anything improper—”

“Neither’d I. Just thought you thought maybe I said somethin’ I didn’t want spread around. I didn’t. I’ll be on my way to meet with my daughter ’fore sundown, I reckon, so what do I care? You like women, don’t you, Mr. Barnes?”

“Like them?” Taken off guard, Barnes considered for a moment. “Not really. I want them, and since I can’t have them, usually, I don’t like them. But I want them, I suppose you could say that. I admire Madame Serpentina.”

“Do you now?” Free said. A length of hose ran from a small propane tank into the mouth of the monster. Stiffly, he bent and reached inside.

“She has pride, intelligence, and vivacity. Her profile is wonderful, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman with finer eyes.”

Free looked over his shoulder. “Interestin’ you should say that. Because, Mr. Barnes, I been just now wonderin’ about yours. The black part in a man’s eye usually gets big in the dark, just like a cat’s. When I lit this here candle, I noticed only one of yours acted so. Your one there looks about the way it always did, I believe.”

“It’s glass,” Barnes admitted. “You don’t think it looks too unnatural, Mr. Free?”

“Never noticed it till now.”

“I’m glad of that. Sometimes I think I see people looking at it when I’m making a call. Appearance is very important in sales, and someday, when money’s easier, I’ll buy a better one. The best are made in Germany, but they cost a bundle.”

“It looks fine,” the old man told him. “It’s the most natural thing about you.”

“It would be better if the others, especially Madame Serpentina—”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be gone anyway, just like I told you. When I got you people in here, I kind of hoped they’d leave the old place stand because folks was still livin’ here. It ain’t goin’ to work, though, and I know it. I look at my walls, and I can see that big, black ball comin’ through ’em.”

“I’ll do what I can, Mr. Free,” Barnes said. “I know the others will too.”

“I believe that, Mr. Barnes.”

“I know that none of you—except for Madame Serpentina—think a hell of a lot of me. Just a bunch of talk, a hand-pumper and a back-slapper. But I don’t walk away from my friends, Mr. Free. Not unless I’m forced to.”

Free nodded. “You’re a bigger man on the inside than on the outside, Mr. Barnes. I knew it when I seen you hadn’t got nothing for yourself last night ’fore you brought our grub to us. There’s a few like you.”

Barnes smiled and squatted beside the old man. “I’m glad you feel that way, Mr. Free, because it’s going to make it quite a bit easier to talk to you. When you were up there with Madame Serpentina, you told her—this is what she says—about something valuable you hid away and more or less lost some years ago.”

Free nodded. “Quite a few years. I’m surprised, though, she told you. I guess I said that.” He had picked up a screwdriver, and his hands were busy. He did not look at Barnes.

“Believe me, I would never betray Madame Serpentina’s confidence, and she knows it. She’s asked me to help her.”

“Well, now.”

“Just as you’ve asked me to help you, Mr. Free. And I’m going to try to do my best for both of you.”

“Good for you,” Free muttered. “Now you have a look at that bottle gas. See the valve? Shut her off.”

Barnes did as he was told. “Madame Serpentina’s a very intelligent woman, but she has a certain view of life. A view of the world. She sees things in, um, spiritual terms.”

Free straightened up, the hose end, a hose clamp, and the screwdriver all in one big hand, like a bouquet of soiled flowers. “That’s got her loose. Smells funny, don’t it?”

“Speaking man-to-man,” Barnes continued dauntlessly, “what she told me was nonsense. What I mean to say is, it was nonsense to me, right? I don’t look at things the way she does, but I suppose if you look at them that way, she might be right. Anyway, what she indicated to me was that you told her you once had a—ah—crown, or something of that sort, and you had hidden it. Last night, she said, you told her where, more or less, and that it would be all right with you if she got it. When you—ah—have met your daughter and have no further use for it.”

Free chuckled. “A crown? That’s what she said?”

“Something like that. She used a lot of words I don’t know, but that’s what it seemed to boil down to. Regalia? I always thought that meant a yacht race, but I believe it was one thing she spoke of.”

“And she said I told her where ’twas? Mr. Barnes, don’t you think if I had a crown, and knew where it was, I’d go get it?”

“Not where it was, exactly.” Barnes was stubborn. “Only that you had hidden it away a long time ago.”

The old man chuckled again. “I gave her more than that, Mr. Barnes. I doubt she told you everything.”

Barnes smiled. “Then there is a crown. That’s wonderful, Mr. Free.”

“Not a crown.” Free’s voice grew grave. “I never said it was a crown.”

“I didn’t think so. It doesn’t seem probable, after all.”

“Trouble is, I want to tell you what it was, Mr. Barnes. Only I can’t.”

“I would respect your confidence, Mr. Free. Trust me.”

“’Taint that.” The old man shuffled awkwardly, like a boy. “It’s a treasure. That’s all I can say. A treasure. Something I brought from the High Place, and there’s no words I could use to tell you what it was and make you believe it now.” He held up his hands as if depicting a fish or a putt. “It ain’t too big. Not much wider than that.”

“But it would be worth a great deal,” Barnes persisted, “if we found it?”

“Oh, you could sell it for a sight of money, I s‘pose. ’Cept you never would. Once you had it, you couldn’t part with it. Not for money. Maybe not for anything. I never meant to, you see, Mr. Barnes. I’d used it, and I’d learned a whole lot. I only wanted to put it to one side for a while and stay where I was at. Then one thing and t‘other happened. I thought about it sometimes, but the time never seemed right to go. There was always corn to plant, or this or that. Anyway, I got older—which we all do, Mr. Barnes, treasure or none. And I knew it would be harder. I kept thinkin’ one day I’d feel better, and some days I did, only it never lasted. Then it was too late for me. I started askin’ myself what I’d do with it now, and I’ll tell you the truth, there wasn’t much of a answer.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t, Mr. Barnes. You don’t see a thing.” The old man shambled off in the direction of the water heater.

“I only meant that I can sympathize. My grandfather had a farm and lost it. I still remember how depressed he was. I understand how you feel.”

The candle went out.

“You’re wrong, Barnes.” The voice was Free’s and yet not Free’s, as though a new and different Free had come suddenly with the dark.

Barnes gasped, “Where are you, Mr. Free?” and patted his pockets helplessly. “I’ve been trying to quit smoking, and now the candle’s—”

“I know that, Barnes. Don’t be any bigger fool than you can help. A moment ago you said people don’t respect you. I said I did, and I do. But you’re involved in something you don’t understand. That’s the simple truth.”

“Don’t you have—”

“You’re trying to ask me where I put my gizmo, and what it is. A way to make me tell you what I hardly know myself about something you don’t understand. Well, I put it where I told you. In a wall. I could have put it someplace else, but it was a wall I chose.”

Barnes took a step. He hoped it was toward the stair, though he felt a chasm had opened before him.

“And I put a sign on it. I’m not sure you’ll ever see that sign, Barnes, but if you do I think you’ll know.”