The Free (P.S.) Read Online Free Page A

door. She was slender, in her twenties, with black hair.
    “Do you know why they aren’t open?” she asked. Her pale face was red from crying.
    “No,” he told her. “They’re supposed to be. They’re always open.”
    “Oh, I hate this place.”
    “What’s wrong?” he asked her.
    “My friend’s disappeared,” she cried. “I begged him not to join but I think he did. I used to see him every day but now I can’t find him. I’m hoping they’ll tell me where he is. Why are you here?”
    “I’m joining,” he told her.
    “You’re joining?” she said in horror.
    “Yes.”
    “But why?”
    “My boss wants me to. He’s a captain in the Guard. It sounds crazy, but I know I won’t get laid off if I join. He’s let half of the crew go already, but he likes me. I’m an electrician. Jobs are hard to find where I live. No one’s building anymore. There’s two guys that have more seniority than me, but I know he won’t lay me off if I join. He thinks of me as a son. Someone to carry on the business when he gets old. I don’t mind. I just want to keep my job. Anyway, he said I can be an electrician for the National Guard so I won’t have to go overseas. I won’t have to be in the wars.”
    “I think they’ll send you wherever they want to send you,” the woman said. “That’s how it works. It has nothing to do with what you want or what you think.”
    “They won’t send me to the wars,” he said.
    “You’re wrong,” she said and wiped her eyes with a Kleenex. They waited for nearly twenty minutes, staring at the closed brick building. It began raining and grew colder. Wind began howling against them.
    “I’m starting to get hungry,” Leroy said and turned to her. “Are you hungry?”
    “Me?” she said as she leaned against the glass door.
    “Yeah, you.”
    “Worrying always makes me hungry.”
    “There’s a restaurant up the street. I think it’s called Paul’s Place.”
    “That’s the last place I want to go,” she said.
    “Why?”
    “I work there, but you should go. The food’s pretty good.” For the first time she looked at him. She had green eyes and a small face with freckles and a nose that sloped upward. He thought she was about to smile when across the street a group of twenty soldiers walked past them. They were dressed in new uniforms. One of the soldiers at the back of the pack, a haggard man of forty, noticed her and stopped. He walked across the street toward them and lit a cigarette. When she saw him coming, tears filled her eyes and she moved closer to Leroy. “If you walk me home, I’ll make you breakfast.”
    He looked at the soldier. “He makes you nervous?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then let’s go,” Leroy said and put his arm around her. When the soldier saw this and that she was crying he turned around and jogged back to his group.
    “Everything is falling apart. So now it seems like all I do is fall apart. I’m sorry I keep crying.”
    “It’s alright,” he said. “You should see what I’ve been like. You should see where I’ve been living.”
    “My name is Jeanette.”
    “I’m Leroy.”
    “Please don’t join the guard, Leroy,” she said. “I know I don’t know you, but I’m begging you not to.”
    “But I’ve already committed,” he whispered to her.
     
    They walked through hundreds of passing soldiers to her apartment, men and women, young and old. A sea of soldiers next to the sea. The uniforms were new, as were the packs on their backs and the boots on their feet. They spoke loudly and freely among themselves, and all of them stared as the two civilians walked by. Then Jeanette took Leroy’s hand and led him off the main road and down a side street. They walked up a long hill to where she lived, a brick building from the 1930s that sat alone overlooking the bay.
    The main entrance door was broken-down, as were the windows around it. They stepped over shattered glass and splintered boards and passed busted furniture and bags of