Taste of freedom

The glorious taste of freedom

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Fiction

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Moral rights

S.E. Saunders asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

External content

S.E. Saunders has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Designations

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

Authors Note:

While the assertion above states the stories found in this book are fictional, I will include notes where the stories aren't fiction. The following is based on events from my life.

We live in an old motel with a partition between the kitchenette and a double bed at the back. There is a single lane of train tracks that runs behind our window. If I could open the window, I could reach out and touch a train as it passed. The first night, as the trains inched up and down the tracks and clacked together, I could not sleep. Another year of junior high is starting. Mom's working three jobs, and I've been tasked with getting my baby brother to a daycare up the road. I look back at this location and wonder how we didn't go missing.

I would go out back of the motel, look up and down the tracks to ensure we didn't get mangled by a train and then traverse the yards with all its cars and sea cans. I never stopped to wonder if anyone might have paid exorbitant amounts of money to cross the ocean in one of those containers back then. Whenever I see them now, these unnatural worries crop up. It's highly irrational, but I worry about the desperate people trying to find their way to North America for a better life.

The highlight of my day is a coffee/snack shop with the latest tabletop version of Ms. Pacman. I've forever been interested in video games. I'm a roller skater too, and I figure if I can learn how to balance my baby brother on one hip, we can make the trip in record time, and I'll have more time to be chased by ghosts. Priorities, right?

I must have looked a hoot racing up and down the side roads with my pasty white legs, bleach-blonde hair, and a precious, curly-haired black baby on my arm. As I write this, I wonder if I've ever told my brother about this and think I should send him a message. These stories won't matter much to you, but at least ten people will connect on another level. You've lived this life, and it seemed as normal as hell then. But adulthood and closer introspection make you sit back and go, what the {beep} did we live through? Maybe you even lived through worse. I see you, and I promise you it will be okay. Just keep moving forward.

After Ms. Pacman, I would reluctantly skate away from the shop, back up the road, cross several other streets and make my way to the junior high school we used to live behind. We were forced to move to the motel because Mom's loser boyfriend, my brother's father, hadn't paid Mom for her work as a cleaner at his company. This man is still alive, and I don't give two damns about how he feels if he reads this. If you hate what you see, you should have behaved differently.

He lives in the lap of luxury, something akin to a mansion compared to what we live in across the city's south end. We're midsouth. He's far south. Mom works every night faithfully, cleaning five contracts, then comes home to tend the phones and walk-ins at the motel. In her downtime, she has another job on a production line. If I had been old enough, I would have started working just to be able to see her more often.

In this motel, several things happen. If you're looking for it on a map, it's the Trailway Motor Inn on what used to be Calgary Trail. It's still there and still seems as disreputable as it always was. But it holds a precious memory, and that memory makes it a place I drive by and reminisce over.

This motel is where I made a much older friend, his name was Mike, and he's long dead now. He was a kind soul with no ill intent who read books like they were postcards. Thick ones. He was the first bachelor I'd ever met who shared my hunger for reading. He was outside his motel room, reading a romance novel, so I started talking to him. I wondered how it was this man read what fans in the genre would call bodice rippers. Maybe he was gay. I didn't care anyway. What he did was his business. He introduced me to Louis L'Amour and his brand of old-west stories. Mike's place was like a library, and if I were Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid, Mike would have been my Mr. Miyagi. Except we waxed nothing except the reams of books, we read through. He had no family left, no kids and worked part-time at the airport, and this seventy-some-year-old guy was the first real friend I ever made.

I have one shameful story from that time, and because it still burns a hole in my heart, I'll put it on paper and let it go. A friend of mine was a thief, and unbeknownst to me, I had become her lookout. It wasn't until after she returned with clothing from one of her 'shopping' trips did I realize I'd been a patsy. It took a talk from Mom to realize this, though. The girl had given me a gorgeous shirt with a tiger on the front. It was the only new thing I owned, and I proudly exclaimed she'd given it to me. After closer examination, Mom made me give it back. I never had the courage to, but I dropped her as a friend when I buried that shirt beside the tracks. I doubt the shirt's still there, but maybe archaeologists will dig it up thousands of years from now and wonder how or why it's there. This is a record. Some daft girl between thirteen and fourteen made a lousy friend. That silly girl smartened up, though, and she was alone again. I learned another valuable lesson while living at the motel. I didn't need friends who were enemies behind my back.