Free All We Want Is Everything by Andrew F. Sullivan Page A

I try to spin the radio dial away from country stations where Paisley sings about mud on the tires, Southern girls and the endless bounty of America. All I can see is Alice writhing on the stage under some kind of smoke machine and a bunch of cigarettes burning in the audience before her, burning until I start to cough. A stoplight pulses into my vision and reminds me to make a left onto the busted gravel. Only one set of lights glows down the row of bungalows. There are snowmen watching us as we pass.
    Donna used to work with Alice at the Stockyard back before Paisley and his tour bus. Her old boy Delany got her some Oxys after he was run off the road a few months ago by the cops. They keep her from dreaming, she says. Keep her from all the boys leering in her sleep. She’s always got cash laying around, tucked between underwear and couch cushions. No bank account. I have Cal knock at the door and try not to let her see me standing beside him in the cold.
    The Panasonic sits in the backseat and stares at us.
    “Five in the morning, Cal. Five in the goddamn morning. You got some need? I don’t have anything for it. Told you that once before. Now get off my porch before I wake up Del.”
    “We got something for you, Donna. Why you always gotta spin it back at me?”
    Donna leans her head out the door into the cold. Her hair is wet.
    “Oh hell no. Fuck that. You wanna bring that asshole in here?”
    I jam a hand into the doorframe before Donna can close it.
    “We’ll make it worth your while, alright? I promise I won’t do any crazy shit.”
    Donna knows all about the phone calls. She knows about the messages I left on Alice’s voicemail, the ones that allowed her parents to come and grab the kids. Alice played them for her. I told the officers I wasn’t in a very good state of mind at the time. Alice played them for everybody, even got me suspended from the mill for a month. That didn’t stop the bills though, and it didn’t stop the lawyer. Voice mail ruined all of that. Voice mail and Brad Paisley’s hairless chest.
    “Yeah? You won’t—what was it—string me up like a kite? Chop me up so I’ll fit down the drain better? What else did you say to her? You’d lock the kids up in a hole before you’d let her touch them? Got enough holes on your property to do that, Jimmy. Got enough holes to bury everyone if you wanted to. Get off my porch.”
    Cal turns back to the car.
    “Hey, grab that thing and show her off. Don’t just run,” I say.
    Headlights roll up the street, and Cal skitters back up to the porch.
    “I can’t get fired again, man. If they find out about this—”
    “About what?’ Donna says. Her hair is starting to freeze and my hand turns red inside the doorframe. “You really got something for me, or is this all just bullshit to figure out where Alice is at now?”
    “We actually have something,” I say and the pressure loosens up off my fist. I crack my knuckles and look at the damage. Donna shakes the ice in her hair and we follow the droplets down the hall. Her living room is stacked with magazines and lingerie and all the furniture is orange. Donna lives inside a pumpkin, and her TV is a piece of shit.
    “Two hundred bucks for a Panasonic. Thirty-two inches of glory. What do you say?”
    Donna flips through a magazine and ignores us on the couch. Cal is pacing back and forth. He needs to get back to his apartment before he starts freaking out again. Twenty years dealing with Cal and I never understood why he won’t carry his meds on him.
    “Not even a scratch on it, alright? You can replace this piece of crap and save yourself five hundred bucks in the process. Cash. Right now. All we gotta do is pull it outta the backseat.”
    Sometimes Donna babysat Jason and Marlee. She used to play hide and seek with them until Marlee climbed into the dryer and hid there for a few hours. Alice almost took off Donna’s head when she came home from a shift covered in cold sweat and make-up to