The Rise and Falling Out of Saint Leslie of Security (20 page)

Save it. Save it.

She squirmed to her hands and knees. The pants, still tangling her calves, tripped her. She landed on her side. Roger grabbed her hip, steadied her. “Take it easy,” he said. “Come on, take it easy."

She gasped, gulped at the gelling air around her. Her abdomen fisted, her body strained, and she opened, and opened, and life burst from her, oily, and she could see to the other side, the side that was death, a side she recognized without question. She clutched at Roger, dug his wrist, clawed his shoulder, as the world grew dull and soft.

Save my baby
, she tried to say.
My baby.
Her lungs were made of lead. Roger still stood over her, or did she imagine him?

"It's over, Leslie, it's okay."

"It's not over.” She gasped. “You get it. You pick it up and save it."

"It's gone,” he whispered.

"You can save the tissue. It can be cloned. You save my baby.”
Please, help me Roger.
She wasn't sure if she actually spoke any more.
I don't care what happens to me, if Washington flays my dark flesh. Just save my baby.

"Yes, Leslie, all right."

She barely heard him through the thickened air. She couldn't be sure if he was really speaking, or if she only imagined his words: ‘
I'll save it for you if I can ... I can put it in the cooler—maybe we ... ‘
His voice had gone distant, had changed. It was Tommy whispering in her ear.
It'll be all right, Les. We'll keep it in the cooler.

Then it was over again, because again she lost consciousness.

She awakened briefly on an examination table, surrounded by men wearing surgical masks. Her legs thrashed weakly. She sobbed once and then tried to call out for Tommy Russell. The inside of her throat felt thick and dry. No words came out, only another sob. The ache inside her was hot, and she was hollow, bloodless. She was empty. She was nothing. Something had been taken away from her. And a vague sense trembled through her she was about to lose something else. One of the men reached down toward her. His surgical gloves were cool and dry against her forehead. A mask smothered her. She was suffocating. She tried to cry out for Russell again, but this time it didn't bother her throat because it was only in her head.

Anesthesia was a blessing.

On Channel 13-39 the chimp story continues.

"We have officially reprimanded the IEPA,” a stern-looking federal court spokesman says, “for its hasty allegations the KKK had anything at all to do with the monkey killings."

"The Academic Committee appointed to analyze the products of the new plot-generating program in California,” the anchorman sneers, “reported today that the work, while derivative of hundreds of older books, was a landmark achievement toward demonstrating the obsolescence of the written word."

A White House spokesman announces Terrorist Readiness Alert Status has risen again to Arrogant Disdain, and Dr. Bankley, Ph.D., appears to give a brief illuminating history of the system. “In the early days,” he drones, “a rather crude system was set up using a spectrum of colors to denote various levels of alertness. Obviously this system was a bit silly, and doomed to be discarded. We later struck on the practice of using various forms and levels of emotion to denote various intensities of threat. This was a superior practice for quite apparent reasons. Using the full spectrum of human emotions serves as a much more subtle and sensitive means by which to describe the nature of a threat, and the nature of our nation's appropriate response to it."

Another White House spokesman stares at the vision eye, his own eyes moist and red. “We've just heard the newly appointed Saint Leslie of Security is missing in action. I repeat, Saint Leslie of Security is missing in action after a brief shootout in the occupied Adirondack Territory. Sources have reported Saint Leslie was on a covert mission conducted by Security against dangerous Atheists cells in the area. When the shooting began, she was pursuing her former captors, Atheist members of the Sons of Man.” He pauses, his upper lip trembling. “Once again, the unselfishness of Saint Leslie leaves us all in awe. This heroic woman, who demonstrated in life such strength of will and honor, has quite probably made the ultimate sacrifice for her country."

The movie that follows has something to do with Christ....

"You know I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything."

—George W. Bush (as quoted by J. H. Hatfield in
Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President)

"Instead of the most enlightened people, I fear we Americans shall soon have the character of the silliest people under Heaven."

—John Adams,
Old Family Letters: Copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle

Her past returns to her in overwhelming dreams; it is exactly the opposite of a flood. Before, when the sharp rocks of memory jutted through to the surface, the soft motion of her head mem provided a tide that rose up and submerged them once again. But now the tide has fallen. The shore bed is exposed. She aches for the flood of the tide to gently wash off the panic of recognition no longer quickly concealed, no longer blurred into a vague sense of a found image fading away once more. Images assail her, disjointed at first because she fights against them.

The strongest, most ubiquitous of all is her father's smell, cinnamon and musk, aftershave splashed on so heavily to mask the underlying rotting smell of alcohol. It's a constant, goes back as far as her memory is exposed. It terrifies her. She feels closed in by the smell, unable to breathe, unable to move or escape, utterly powerless, utterly alone. She remembers the first time it occurred to her there might be something wrong with the way her father treated her. They were at the beach—Potash Bay, a curving ridge of some sand, but mostly sharp stones and pebbles along an edge of Lake Champlain, half-shaded by arms of maple, oak, and birch. Beyond the bay the lake looks amazingly
fat
to her—she's nine years old and has never seen the ocean.

A cold wind pushes off the water as she sits on a rounded stone three times her size, hard and warm against her buttocks. Waves shush against the shore line, leaving their debris of driftwood, empty clamshells, occasional amber and green bottles, and foam exactly the color of what develops on the edge of a root beer ice cream float.

Beyond the bay the lake is divided by strands of dark blue, gray, and touches of a dull green. Bumps have raised up along Terry's arms and thighs, and she shudders, thrusting her wet hair out of her face to rest uncomfortably on her neck and shoulders. She watches her father on the bank, in a T-shirt and red trunks, looking for flat stones to whiz across the water, bouncing on the waves. He had been promising to take her swimming for four days. Now they are finally here, and even though she's cold she doesn't want it to be over. Just Terry and her daddy, laughing and splashing in the water

But he's been giving her that
look
, too. The look she's seen him give women in short dresses on the street in downtown Albany. It makes her nervous and she doesn't know why—after all, she
wants
his attention, doesn't she? She sits on the rock, hoping the sun will shift enough in the clouds to heat her up again.

Just as it does and she has to squint against the brightness, her father hollers to her. “Are you about ready to go?” The sun is hot against her face and body, but her skin feels as if it has shrunk on her frame and she shudders again, but this time it's pleasant.

"Just a little longer,” she says. She watches his face change: His expression goes blank and he stares off into the woods. She knows he's getting frustrated with her, but instead of coming back to shore she slides off the rock toward deeper water. Stones are sharp and slippery against the soles of her feet as she stands there trying to keep her balance, and waves slap her knees. Her arms fly up and flail the air as she wades away from her father. She jumps when a particularly pointed stone stabs the bottom of her left foot. Her right foot slips on a flat rock and she falls forward into the water, hand steadying her on the bottom. She pushes with her legs and floats to deeper water where she can beat the waves with her desperate, gasping dog paddle.

She hears her father yell over the splashing in her ears. “Terry, you need to come back now!” She can't seem to make herself stop swimming just yet and he hollers the same order a second time.

"Just a ... minute, Dad,” she says, swallowing a mouthful of fishy-smelling foam. She stops thrashing the water and lets her legs down. Her toes touch bottom, her body submerged to her shoulders. She hops up and down, motion slowed down by the buoyancy of the lake, and spins to face the shore. Her father is standing there, unmoving, his mouth a tight straight line.

He's just staring at her, the slightest twitch at the corner of one eye. She's scared of him when he looks like this, and now she doesn't want to come to the shore for an entirely different reason. She stops bouncing and says, “Okay Dad, I'm coming,” but she doesn't move forward. He just glares at her—he looks deep in thought, as if distracted by a complex philosophical puzzle that if solved would change the world.

"I'm coming, Dad. I'm coming.” She starts pushing through the water toward him, but slowly—giving him time to maybe calm down a bit. He doesn't move as the water gets lower and lower against her body, until she's hobbling along the stones with the breaking waves pushing at her ankles. She feels water rolling down her thighs in rivulets from the bottom of her one-piece swimsuit. It feels like she has peed herself for a second.

"I'm coming Dad, I'm coming.” She's about ten feet from him when he moves. He bounds forward and clamps her arm with one bony hand. He shakes her once then lets go roughly, and Terry slips and falls back into the water with a small splash. She rakes her back and one forearm in the gravel under the water, and a stinging pain erupts. She knows better than to cry, but she can feel the muscles of her face contorting no matter how hard she tries to fight it. She sobs once, then again, but she forces the sound back down inside her.

"What is the matter with you?” he cries. “Why do you make me do that? You're just like your mother. But she couldn't hack it, could she? Get up! Get up!"

She pushes herself up, flinching, her knees crush into gravel and sand. Her hands dart up, fingers splayed out, to cover her face. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"I said ‘Get up!'” He grasps her arm again. Her eyes clamp shut; when they open again she's on her feet. He raises a palm in the air to spank her and she thrusts her hands behind her so that the blow lands on her wrist as well as her buttocks and the force sends her lurching forward. Then, abruptly, her father grows silent, and he strides to where their towels are laid out in a patch of sun. He slowly picks one up and turns again to Terry. She still stands there, forcing down her sobs. Breaths come in sharp, inexorable gasps, almost like having the hiccups. When he looks at her now, his gaze has softened. She can begin to relax.

"Come here, Terry. Let me dry you off."

"Okay, Dad. I'm sorry,” she says, and hobbles to him. He's affectionate now. He begins drying her by playfully tousling her head, and under the towel she grins. Then he's rubbing her shoulders, her bare back, the wet fabric on her chest. She sways from the pressure of his hands. His touch is reassuring—he's forgiven her and she enjoys the feel of his strong hands on her. Then his movements slow down at her belly, her hips, her bottom. A hand brings one side of the towel around the inside of her right thigh, then up slightly to press her crotch. It isn't the first time he has touched her there, so it doesn't surprise her. But it always makes her feel vaguely anxious—she wants him to finish this portion of the job as quickly as he can.

This time his hand lingers there, almost stops completely. She tries to squirm from his touch without being obvious about it and he rubs more firmly. She looks up at his face. His gaze on her is somehow cold, but he starts grinning on one side of his mouth and he tells her to stop dancing around. She can feel the strength in his arms—tendons and stringy muscle tighten against her and she stops moving. “That's right,” he says. “We've got to bring you up right. Your Daddy is the one in charge here, right?"

"Yes, Daddy,” she says, and stands still as he continues to dry her off. One hand steadies her between her legs as he hunkers down to dry off her thighs, calves, shins. His breathing has changed, it sounds like the slow ripping thrusts of a hand saw. She doesn't move. She's afraid to speak.

When he's finished and he straightens in front of her his expression has changed once more. He looks down at her almost warily. And she's confused when she notices his trembling. “What are you trying to do to me?” he whispers. “You little whore.” She doesn't know what the word means. His chest is heaving and he just stands there glaring at her, occasionally blinking and shaking his head. And then, inexplicably, he is apologizing to
her
! “I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” over and over. He slips to his knees in front of her and puts his arms around her. “I'm trying so hard. Please forgive me, God. Pray with me Terry. Pray with me right now!"

He pulls her down to her knees too and they hold each other. “Lord, please forgive my daughter. She does not know what she is doing. Like Lot's harlot daughters who are filled with a demon spirit of lust, and seduce him in his tent, she is ultimately good deep inside. Please forgive her for driving her mother away, and for possessing the spirit of disobedience. I am trying to be lenient in my discipline. I—"

Terry realizes her father has begun to weep and she finds herself stroking his cheek. “It's all right Daddy. Please don't cry. It's all right. I'm sorry.” But even while drowning in her overwhelming frantic sense of guilt, she's begun to see there is something wrong with her father's looks, his caresses, and his rages. Perhaps she's had reason to feel uncomfortable those other, earlier times. But it was her Daddy. She
liked
it when he touched her. Cinnamon and musk.