Free Froelich's Ladder by Jamie Duclos-Yourdon Page A

up—it’s angled against his back. The ladder’s heavy, like you’d expect, but he’s the size of a baby bear. That’s the story I’d have them write—big ladder, big guy, big heart. Not the family history, I mean. About Froelich, sure, but nothing about how Harald died.”
    For a brief interlude, Gak was preoccupied by this information, if not a little confused. Gordy appeared to luxuriate in the silence, closing his eyes against the tobacco smoke and rocking with the wagon.
    “But what if he’s not up there?” she finally proposed. “Your uncle?”
    “Of course he isn’t there—I told you that already.”
    “But what if he never was?”
    Opening his eyes, Gordy sat up a little straighter. The vacant look on his face suggested he’d never entertained the question before. “You say he’s been up there your whole lives,” Gak continued, unable to contain her smile. “But how do you kno w? Has anybody ever seen him? Have you?”
    “No,” Gordy sputtered, “I haven’t seen him. Have you seen the Queen of England? Does that mean she ain’t real? Of course he’s up there—sure he is. If he isn’t up there, then why’d we have the ladder?”
    “I don’t know—to reach stuff? Lots of people have ladders.”
    “Don’t be idiot ic. Anyway, is your daddy any less real, just because—”
    Immediately, Gak could feel her ears turning a fiery red. In less time than it took to expel the smoke from her lungs, a rash had spread across her entire body, starting south of her collar and spreading to the tips of her ears. Flicking her cigarette past Gordy’s face, she growled, “What’re you trying to say?”
    “Nothing! What I meant is—”
    “I know what you meant, you horse’s a—. I want to hear you say it.”
    When Gordy failed to respond (prudently electing to keep his mouth shut), she stuck her hand into the mail satchel and started digging around. Angrily producing a fistful of letters, Gak discarded one, two, three envelopes, before identifying a missive that suited her needs.
    “My daddy’s real,” she sneered. “Believe me, there ain’t nothing pretend about Gaylord. His belt’s real, his hands are real. S—t, even his moods are real, and they can change with the wind. He’s just missing, is all—same as these. Each of these is a person who’s gone away. Here’s one from Colorado. That’s real, ain’t it—the Territory of Colorado? Or is the person who wrote it just a figment of my imagination?”
    “Hey!” Gordy exclaimed. “You can’t do that!”
    “Can’t do what—read? Why, because I got dirt under my nails?”
    “No,” he admonished her, glancing at the driver and lowering his voice. “Can’t touch the mail. It’s private property!”
    Gak took another handful of letters and defiantly tossed them in the road. “What, you don’t like it when I do this? I’ll tell you what I don’t like—you saying what I can and can’t think! It’s bad enough I’ve got to find the bastard and bring him home. You act like it’s pretend? Like I want to leave my brother and sister behind? Because, trust me, if I could change my daddy into something he ain’t, the first thing I’d do—”
    But she was unable to finish the thought; with a lurch, the mail jitney shuddered to a halt. Failing to anticipate the shift in momentum, Gak was bowled over, dislodging the mail satchel from underneath her and dumping its contents into the road.
    “Now you’ve done it,” Gordy hissed.
    The driver had already dismounted from the carriage, hopping down and circling to the rear. In his hands, he was throttling his leather-knit whip, his shoulders bunched. Before he even addressed them, Gak had followed his eyes down the length of the road, to where the letters trailed around the bend.
    “D—n it,” he cursed. “I told you not to touch ’em. Nobody ever listens.”
    As he began to unfurl his whip, Gordy also leapt down from the wagon. It was only with some difficulty that Gak,