The Great Escape by Frederick K Foote

I do it on a cold December day in Oakland, California. I sign the papers and pass the physical. In three days, I will belong to the United States Air Force, my freedom from her and her freedom from me.

I get off the bus from the Induction Center at the Greyhound Bus Station in Oakland, stepping light, easy, and right on time.

“The bus to Sacramento is now loading on track three. All ticketed passengers should proceed to track three.”

I think I can start to breathe again, be my own self again. Hard to remember the last time I was free… six years is a long time…  I would rather not go back to her house. I’d rather not even see her again. Only, I need to put a period to this six-year sentence and get some answers at least.

If I close my eyes, I can remember freedom—the humid, heavy-scented air of South Carolina. I can smell freedom. I can feel freedom in the soles of my feet.

I break up the dirt clods with my bare feet. I pick up and marvel at the size of some of the earthworms. Grandpa and I have on our bib overalls and our old, stained straw hats. I’m eight years old. I was up at five and had breakfast with my grandparents.

This is where I belong.

I help harness Sampson, our mighty mule. I lead him out to the plow. I hitch him up.

We don’t have a tractor, just Samson and Bessie, our plow horse. Back in the day, Grandpa got burned bad in a tractor accident. He almost died. They did skin grafts all across his back. No more tractors after that.

Grandpa said that was the worst time of his life. The pain was so bad he wished he was dead. He told me that sometimes you don’t know good luck from bad.

I think he was just lucky to be alive. 

“Grandpa, why can’t colored people use the library in Sumter?”

He nods his head to acknowledge my question. He will take his time in answering, maybe days. He takes my questions seriously. I appreciate that.

The rain comes. Big fat drops warm and soothing, a warm spring shower.

Sampson stops. He looks back at us. Sampson will not plow in the rain.

 Grandpa said, “Sampson will not work himself to death. He will not plow in a wet field. He knows what load he can pull and what load he can’t. A horse will die in the harness trying. Samson won’t.

You can beat Sampson. You can beat him to death in the harness, but he won’t work himself to death and do that job for you.

And look out if you beat Samson, be careful now because he’ll use his stone grinding teeth on you. He’ll kick you over the barn and straight into the grave.  He won’t have no mercy, none at all.”

“This is Berkeley. This is our first stop, Berkeley. Our next stop will be Richmond.”

No mercy at all. I remember that now. I remember when I was eleven and Grandpa was dying, cancer had no mercy either.

The house is full: my three uncles and three aunts and their families, my mother, a hundred cousins and relatives I don’t know and don’t want to know.

They’re in our house disrupting things, bringing noise, motion, and something else I can’t put my finger on but don’t like.

I ignore them.

I do the chores.

My cousin Emma arrives from her boarding school. She is six months older than me. She hugs me and joins in doing the chores. There is nothing to say.

Emma and I do everything we can think of to stay out of the house. At last, we sit on the porch and pretend to play checkers. We wait.

Uncle Ed comes for us. He leads us to the dark bedroom. Emma grabs my hand. We go in holding hands.

I’m not crying. I’m not. Not a tear.

We split up and go to opposite sides of the bed. We each take up one of his big rough hands. We hold them tight.

Uncle Ed slips out, closing the door quietly.

Grandpa pulls us close. Looks at us with weak, watery eyes, glazed-over eyes. I know he sees us clearly. He sees through us. He knows all our tricks and games and fears.

He pulls us even closer. He speaks in a low voice as rough as his hands. We can barely hear. His breath is hot and sickly. “Take care of each other… and Grandma… be… be your own self… be… kind…”

And it is over. We flee out the house. We run. We run like it’s summertime and we are chasing the good life, chasing life itself. We run until we drop.

“This is Richmond. Richmond passengers debark here. Our next stop is Vallejo. Vallejo is our next stop.”

My country life stops and detours to California when Grandma dies six months later.

My mother comes for me.

I once asked my grandpa what my mother was like when she was little. He answered me two days later: “Sharp, quick, tough, tough as old leather. She picked up things real quick. She made her own path.”

Now, Miss-Sharp-and-Quick is back here to pick me up, to try to sell the farm, to take me away. Talking like she owns stuff here. Talking like she owns me.

I hate her.

Uncle Ed, Uncle Ross, and Miss-Follows-Her-Own-Path are taking it all apart. I get sick of it. I confront them. They can’t sell Sampson. That’s it, period. No discussion. He deserves retirement. He’s worked hard. No glue factory for him.

Uncle Ross tries to explain why it is impossible to keep the mule, the cost and all the work. Miss-Sharp-and-Quick chimes in. I ignore them. I turn to Uncle Ed. I offer my inheritance from my grandparents if he’ll take me and Sampson. I promise to take care of Sampson.

We take a walk. We strike a deal on Sampson. Uncle Ed will keep Samson for five dollars a month for feed. I can work that off when I come home in the summer. He says he can’t take me without my mother’s approval. We shake hands.

I talk to Miss-Sharp-and-Quick. She ain’t either, more like Dull-and-Slow. I offer her my inheritance if she lets me stay with Uncle Ed. I tell her that she don’t need me. She hasn’t needed me for twelve years. I have nearly ten thousand dollars. I offer it all to her.

She turns to ice and then into steel. We stand there toe to toe. She says I’m spoiled rotten. I need a firm hand. There are more opportunities in California than I could ever imagine. She has already moved to accommodate me.

We are on the train the next morning.

I hope we can make it for the next three days, but I doubt it. I’m not leaving her. I’m escaping her. We are almost in Vallejo. That was quick. I wish I could have turned eighteen that quick.

“We are now arriving at Vallejo. This is Vallejo.”

I remember my arrival in Sacramento six years ago.

We arrive at 3:00 am in a Yellow cab. My first cab ride following my first train ride. I’m not impressed with either.

The trip has not been easy for either of us. I am civil, polite, obedient, distant, and very angry.

She is anxious, uneasy, and short-tempered, always on the edge of striking out. She tries, but she’s not used to having to meet my needs. She’s a lone wolf. She did try, but I am indifferent to her effort.

It’s a small house with three bedrooms and one bathroom. The way she opens the door, the way she looks around, the care with which she has furnished it all say it’s her prized possession, her safe harbor.

She’s so glad to be home that for a moment she forgets I’m even there.

Fine with me because it’s a tiny little box with no basement or upstairs or attic rooms. And the yards are too small to even have a decent garden. Worst of all, there are other little boxy homes so close you can hear your neighbor’s fart.

I really don’t understand what she is so proud of.

I have not been a good son or even a good roommate. I let my anger and fear poison me and her. I turned her place of refuge into a place she dreaded coming home to.

“Our next stop is Davis. We may be arriving behind schedule.  There appears to be an accident ahead of us.”

I pay my way. I do the yard work. I get up early and fix our breakfast. I wash up the dishes and keep the house clean and neat. I pick up after her. She hates it.

The second week there, I’m picking up her shoes from the kitchen. She snaps. “Hey, put my fucking shoes down! You don’t touch my things! You, moping around here like you the only one to ever lose someone. You have been a perfect little shit! I wish the fuck I had left you with your Uncle Ed.”

I jump about two feet in the air and drop the shoes like they’re on fire. In my whole life, no grown-up has ever cursed at me or screamed at me like that. Grandpa never raised his voice to me or Emma. I never heard him utter a curse word.

She is amazed at my response, “Andrew! What the fuck is the matter with you? I didn’t even hit you.”

I’m at a loss at how to respond. I walk out the door and down the street to the park. I’m not sure how to handle the screaming and the yelling. It hurts worse than a whipping. After a while, I return to the house. She’s there smoking and looking angry. She gives me some kind of half ass apology. I ignore her. I start toward my room. I turn back. I walk up to her.

“I’m not a mule or a horse. If you hit me, I will hurt you.”

Her face just freezes solid. Her eyes squeeze down to slits. The veins in her neck stand out like a road map. I can hear her teeth grinding. She hisses at me between clenched jaws. “You don’t, you don’t even know… you…”  At least that’s what it sounds like she’s saying. She jerks away from me. She’s shaking and making a funny kind of growling noise as she slams the front door. I go to bed. I don’t know when she came back.

Next day, I tell her I don’t want to be here, and she doesn’t want me here, so send me home. We wrangle for a while, and we both agree to try to do better, and if things don’t improve, we can look at me living with Uncle Ed at the end of the school year.

And things do get a little better for a while until I dig up the backyard to put in a garden.  A surprise for her. She heard me turning the soil on a sunny spring Saturday morning. She comes to see what I’m doing. She opens the back door.  She turns bright red. Then she turns as pale as a ghost. She is speechless. She can’t even curse me. She just eases back into the kitchen and softly closes the back door. I go in to check on her. I think she’s dying or something. She’s sitting on the kitchen floor with the phone receiver held to her ear. In her other hand is a bottle of red wine. She’s drinking from the bottle. She don’t look at me at all. “Go pack.” That’s all she says. I ask her if she’s OK, and she gives me a look that would turn water to vinegar. I go and pack. I go sit on the fender of the old Ford Super DeLux with my hopes high and fingers crossed. I could already smell the sweet, heavy country air.

Misfortune, misunderstandings, and mistakes ruled our lives. Uncle Ed’s injured in a farm accident. Aunt Ellen, Emma’s mother, my next best hope of escape, is in the midst of a nasty divorce. These two were our safety valves, our emergency escape hatches. It makes us both a little crazy with anger and disappointment to lose both of these. We do not handle our disappointments well.

All that stuff is almost over now. Six years of our lives spent grinding each other up. Barbed wire skin rubbed against sandpaper hide. We never clicked. We had better and worse, but it was never good for very long.

“We are arriving in Sacramento.  This is our final stop. Please collect all your belongings. This is Sacramento.  Thank you for riding Greyhound.”

I’m a mile from her home. I walk there. I shower. I pack. I wait for her. She comes in with her briefcase, purse, and a box of chicken. I look at her. I really look at her for the first time in a long time. She’s exhausted, dead on her feet, running on fumes.

I don’t know what to say or do. I helped make her like this. I never really tried. I wallowed in self-pity and fear. I ran on high-octane anger with a slow-burning engine. She’s not a good mother. No patience. Don’t like touching or being touched. She had me when she was only fourteen. My father, “A boy who promised her things.” That’s all she told me. She’s stingy with my history.  I’m generous with my resentment. It’s just who she is, a loner. I can help her with that.

She knows something is going to happen. She feels the storm brewing. She puts the chicken and her other stuff on the table. She kicks off her heels. She stands there facing me.  A tall, wiry thirty-two-year-old, light-skinned, black woman ready for one final winner-takes-all grudge match with her only child.

“Why did you even come home every year? You were never happy there. You came in angry and left angrier, angry at me, at everyone. Why did you come back at all?”

She crosses her arms under her breasts. She looks at me, all rigid and cold.

“Why did you even bring me out here in the first place? I have never been able to figure that out.”

She takes a deep breath and looks away from me.

She gives me stiff words. “You got bus fare, Andrew? You got a place to stay tonight?” Her anger is barely suppressed.

“Answer me. I just want to know. Why did you hate us all so much?”

She turns and opens the front door.

“You stay safe, Andrew.” I can hear the anger bubbling up in her words.

I walk over and snatch the door from her. I slam the door shut. I lean against the door. I face her.

“I won’t bother you again. I promise. Every year you came home for a week? You didn’t want to be there. You were hateful to everyone. So why come every year? Why come at all?”

“Andrew, get the fuck out of my house. Go before it get ugly up in here.” This is her real voice. The one I hear in my head all the time.

I shake my head, cross to the couch, pick up my travel bag.

“It been ugly since day one. Since I got here.”

“Andrew, did your grandfather ever beat you? Hurt you?”

I cross to her. Quick. I’m up in her face. “Never, never even yelled at me like… like… He only spanked Emma and me once. Shit, Emma hit me a lot harder than he did that time. Why did you ask me that?”

“Back up, Andrew, back up off me now. He was…. Just back up off me.”

I back off her. I don’t know why the question disturbed me so much. I have overstayed my welcome by about six years.

She is standing strong as iron, sturdy as an oak. Her eyes are fixed on me. I can’t figure out the look on her face, not anger, or frustration or impatience, something else entirely. It scares me, chills me to the bone. I move toward the door. She blocks me.

“Never took a belt to you? A razor strop? An ironing cord? His fist?”

I try to step around her. She steps in front of me.

“Ever slap you? Backhand you off your feet?

I’m sweating. I feel dizzy, a little dizzy.

“Why, why are you asking?” I swallow hard.

She turns her back to me, unbuttons her blouse. She takes it off and drops it on the floor. She has on a little silk undershirt. She pulls it over her head. I close my eyes, squeeze them shut. I turn my head.

“Andrew. Andrew look. Look at me! Fucking look at me Andrew.”

I turn toward her. I take a deep breath. I’m trembling, shaking like I got a bad fever. I look.

Her back, her back is a rugged landscape of scars, welts, and craters. A tortured, twisted battlefield… her ruined back… her abused back… like old, injured leather.

I reach out a trembling hand past my fears, through my anger. I reach and reach and reach, stretch my fingers, my hand touches, touches, touches her back… touches my mother’s back.

We sit across from each other at the kitchen table. My hand burns from the touch of her back. I flex it open and close. It still burns.

Everything is upside down and broken. I feel like Humpty Dumpty. I don’t believe her. Her back’s not a lie. The scars are real. It doesn’t prove he did it.   

I squeeze out the critical questions of my life. “Why did you bring me out here with you? Why did you come back there every year?“

Her voice is raspy, harsh, and intense. “Fuck you, Andrew! Fuck you! You had every fucking thing: love, respect, fucking kindness… kindness… things I never had… you… you had the best of them… I hated you for that, and I hated him for giving it to you… and not me. He deserved the fire on his back. I hope he is still burning in hell.”

Her voice trails off, but her eyes grow more intense, hotter, angrier.

“After his flaming back gave him back what he did to me, he changed … changed in time to be a better parent to you than I could ever be. Jesus, even when he changed, he found a way to fuck with me, to keep hurting me. A better parent… a kind parent… him… not me…”

She leans into me with those angry eyes and tight face. At that moment, I’m not sure what she’s going to do. She looks capable of anything.

I’m not going to fight her. I can’t. I close my eyes. I wait for my mother’s touch.

Frederick K Foote

Image: Black and white image of a man ploughing with a mule from Stateboro Herald