Free The Free (P.S.) by Willy Vlautin

did you build them?”
    “Some from kits. Others I built on my own.”
    “It must have taken years.”
    “Yeah, it did.”
    “Does the train work?”
    “It used to,” Freddie said. “But I’ve taken it apart.”
    “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lowell said.
    Freddie looked at the battlefield. “Fifty-seven thousand men got hurt or killed during this one battle. More people than live in our entire town. And it was summer and they were left in the sun to die. Can you imagine what that must have been like? And what did it get them? Most of them were kids, hadn’t even kissed a girl. Most of them were dirt poor. All that death and destruction and I’m here a hundred and fifty years later painting fake blood on them like it’s a game. Look, I’m broke. If you’re serious about the money, you can use the room. If I go to jail, I go to jail. I don’t have my kids and I’m going to lose the house if I don’t do something soon. So what does it matter.” He went to the diorama and pushed one of the tables over and half of it crashed to the floor. Soldiers and trees and houses and buildings spilled out on to the bare concrete, and tears welled in his eyes. He wanted to stomp on the buildings and papier mâché mountains, but he couldn’t. He had worked so hard on them for so long. He went for the other table leg, but Lowell stopped him.
    “Don’t break the table, Freddie,” he said. “We can use it to set the plants on.”

9
    Pauline stepped out of the elevator, clocked in, and was prepped by the day nurses. A CT scan had discovered a nick in Leroy Kervin’s bowel and he was in surgery. Mr. Delgado, the alcoholic with the GI bleed, was back, and there was a new patient in room 2, a middle-aged woman recovering from a ruptured appendix. The teenage girl, Jo, still hadn’t eaten, and the old rancher, Mr. Flory, was going home the next day.
    Pauline began with Jo. The TV and the main lights in her room were turned off and she could see the girl by the dim bedside light, closing her eyes as she walked in.
    “You can’t fool me,” Pauline said. “I know that trick. I’ve used it a lot myself.” Jo remained still, with her eyes shut, and Pauline took a tube of lip balm from her shirt pocket and set it on the bedside table. “I got you something. It’s like Chapstick but better. This place always makes my lips chapped and this stuff really works, and it looks like you could use it.” She waited for a moment but the girl remained motionless so she turned on the overhead lights and moved to the side of the bed where Jo’s abscessed leg was. “Alright then, straight down to business. I have to check the packings. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Just let me know if anything hurts. If it does, all you have to do is tap on my arm and I’ll stop. Okay?” She waited for a moment but still Jo didn’t respond. Pauline pulled back the white bed sheet and blanket, lifted the gown, and inspected the three packings.
    “They’re looking better, Jo,” she said and covered up the girl again. “So how’s it been going with the food? They say you haven’t eaten yet.” She again looked at her but still the girl lay with her eyes closed. “How about some TV, then?” She turned on the set and went through the channels until she came to a car race. She kept it there and turned up the sound. She charted in the corner of the room and left.
    In the hallway she looked at her watch and went to room 7.
    “How are you this evening, Mr. Flory?” she asked. The old man was awake and lying on his side.
    “I’m going home tomorrow,” he whispered.
    “I heard they were cutting you loose tomorrow morning.”
    His face looked pale and exhausted, and she thought he’d aged years in the short time he’d spent in the hospital.
    “I’m going to miss you, Mr. Flory. You know I’d never met a real cowboy before you.”
    “I wasn’t much of cowboy,” he said.
    “I bet that’s just you being cowboy