Wild Thing: A Novel (28 page)

“Did you see it?” I say.

“See what?”

I don’t answer her. I’m searching the surface.

“Oh
fuck
,” she says.

Lake Garner / White Lake

Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota

Still Wednesday, 19 September

“Knock knock,” someone says.

I’m leaning against a tree I don’t remember leaning against. Out of my wetsuit, dressed, and supposedly helping search for Bark, but in reality having jumped at the chance to get away from everyone. Particularly Violet, who’s mad at me for not telling her I was going in the lake, and because she thinks I’m holding out on her about what I saw.

I tried to explain: just because I saw something doesn’t mean it was there.

“How
are
you? I’ve been looking for you.”

Naturally, it’s Sarah Palin. Glassy-eyed and feverish, with a smile that flickers on and off. One of her security guards, with his back to us, moves into place down by the shore of Lake Garner.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“I heard you saw it.”

“I didn’t see anything.”

“What was it like? Was it frightening?”

“Like I say—”

“Did it talk?”

I stare at her. Any hope I had that Palin would make me feel sane, at least by comparison, is fading fast. “No. It definitely didn’t talk. Why would it?”

“But you faced it.”

I almost laugh. “Whatever happened down there, it wasn’t me facing something. It was me fleeing from something. Fleeing from nothing, more like.”

“Hey, now. Come on. Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s
evil
. It’s not supposed to feel good.”

“Ms. Palin, if there’s something you’re trying to tell me, you
could
just go ahead and do that.”

“Call me Sarah. Or Governor. I’m not that kind of feminist.”

“Sarah, then. What are you talking about?”

“You still don’t understand?”

“No. I don’t.”

She chews her lip. “I’m not sure how much Reverend John would have wanted me to tell you.”

The guy who can’t tell a Fed from a street hooker? I know what I’m about to say is manipulative, but I’m in a bad mood.

“Sarah, maybe there’s a
reason
Reverend John isn’t with us now.”

She nods slowly, turning it over. Finally says “Did you read the passage?”

“The one in Isaiah? Yeah.”

“Did you understand it?”

“I’m not sure. Is the idea that there’s some kind of sea serpent in White Lake?”

She nods.

“And that whoever wrote Isaiah somehow knew about it?”

“And whoever wrote Revelation. And Genesis. I mean,
your
people know about Genesis.”

My people also know about Revelation, because what—we don’t go to horror movies? But whatever. “You’re talking about Jonah and the whale?” I say.

She looks puzzled. “I’m talking about Genesis.”

I guess Jonah’s not in that one.

“You know, Adam and Eve?” she says. “The Serpent?”

“You’re telling me the White Lake Monster is the snake from the Garden of Eden?”

“No.” She looks around. Lowers her voice to a whisper. “I’m saying it’s the
Serpent
.”

Now, ordinarily I would just roll with this. Validate and back away. But right now I’ve got a strange need for things to make sense.

“I’m pretty sure ‘serpent’ and ‘snake’ mean the same thing,” I say.

“Science has
taken
them to mean the same thing. But in the Bible, the Serpent’s the Serpent. Then it gives Eve the forbidden fruit, and God turns it
into
a snake. God says ‘Go crawl in the dust, now.’ Which has to happen
after
Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden, because otherwise why is there dust? It’s the same with the forbidden fruit: everybody thinks it’s an apple, but the
Bible
never says it was an apple. And the Bible
does
talk about apples. It’s like how everybody thinks the Bible says there were three wise men—”

“I got it,” I say. “So if the Serpent wasn’t a snake, what was it?”

“
Exactly
. What was it?”

“I’m asking you.”

“I don’t know. All we have are clues. Have you ever heard of the Number of the Beast?”

“Six six six?” I say.

I suppose I could physically run away.

“Well it
looks
like six six six.”

They say she jogs, though.

“Is it actually nine nine nine?”

Palin laughs and socks me. “
No
. Be serious.” She looks around again, then reaches up and twists a green stick off a tree branch, like our Reggie’s young guides have just spent four days telling us not to. Uses it to draw three sixes in a descending diagonal row, right to left, with one continuous stroke. It looks like a spiral.

“What’s this?” she says.

“A pubic hair?”

“Dr. Lazarus!”

“I don’t know. What?”

“What about a strand of DNA?”

I look at it. “Well normally DNA is drawn as two strands, but at that scale it would probably look like one. It’s not like it really all hangs out in a line anyway. There’s also single-stranded DNA, I suppose—”

She claps her hands together.

“What?”

“You
do
know!” she says. “You may
think
you don’t, but you do!” She mimics me: “ ‘
DNA is usually drawn with two strands. Maybe it’s single-stranded DNA
.’ ” It’s not pleasant. “But what if it’s just one strand of
double-
stranded DNA?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “There’s one missing?”

“
Exactly
. The one that matches. Do you know what the ‘H’ stands for in ‘Jesus H. Christ’?”

“No.”
^*

“Do you know what ‘haploid’ means?”

“You mean having only one set of chromosomes?”

“Yes. Like a sperm or an egg.”

“Oh,” I say. “You’re saying Jesus has only one set of chromosomes.”

She grabs my arm. “
Yes!
Because he’s half Mary and half God. And God doesn’t
have
chromosomes. That’s why Jesus is the link between the people world and Heaven. And why he had to have a temporary soul for when he was on Earth, which we call the Holy Ghost.
But here’s the thing
.”

I wait for it, with a not unpleasant feeling it could be anything. It could be a rubber chicken.

“Where’s the other part of the DNA? The strand that matches this one?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s the
opposite
one.”

“Okay.”

“Who has it?”

“I still don’t know.”

“The
Other Guy
.”

“The Other Guy?”

“That’s why he’s called the
Anti-
Christ. You know who I’m talking about.”

“The Devil?”

“The
Serpent.”
She points to the spiral she’s drawn. “See? Why do you think it looks like that?”

“You mean like a snake?”

“We’ve almost reached the point where people can re-create themselves by cloning. Which means they’ll only
need
one strand of DNA, instead of one from each parent. Which they
think
is going to make them immortal. But it’s the wrong immortality, because it means no one gets into the Kingdom of Heaven. Because the Tree of Knowledge isn’t
supposed
to be the Tree of Life.”

“Cloning?” I say.

“But
we are not going to let that happen
. And you know what? We are
up to it
.”

I look at her. The “we” puts kind of a new spin on it.

“Up to what?” I say.

“Killing it.”

“Killing a piece of DNA?”

“Killing the
Serpent
.”

She stands on her toes, puts her hands on my face, and kisses me. Hard and sexless, like how bar toughs might greet each other in some European country you’ve never visited.

“Don’t be afraid,” she says.

When she backs off, she sees something in her peripheral vision and turns.

It’s Violet Hurst, staring at us. Palin’s security guard behind her all sheepish.

Palin throws her hands up to her cheeks and runs back toward the camp, trilling “Not what it looks like! Not what it looks like!”

“Don’t care! Don’t care!” Violet calls after her.

“It’s not,” I say.

“I could give a shit. Seriously. I was just coming to find you to ask if you’d found Bark. I guess you haven’t. Thanks for looking.”

Lake Garner / White Lake

Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota

Thursday, 20 September

At three-thirty in the morning I get sick of the sweaty heat of my sleeping bag and decide to get up. Violet’s still got her back to me.

Outside in the black-and-white-TV moonlight there’s a low-lying fog on the ground of the kind I thought only happened in discos and vampire movies. It’s all over the camp and out onto the surface of Lake Garner, exhaled by the warm earth and water. The moon’s a sliver again, like it was when Reggie and I
were talking on his porch, although I suppose it’s facing the other direction now, if that’s how the moon works.

I hear soft voices and see a red ember on the far side of the campsite. For fun I sneak past Reggie and one of Palin’s security guys while they discuss why bears are the only animals that are grizzly.

“Tuna fish are the only animals called tuna,” the guard says.

“You’re right, son,” Reggie says. “It’s not like there’s a tuna bird.” For the record, I don’t actually see the security guy take a hit off Reggie’s joint.

Right before I enter the woods I notice someone else and almost hit the ground, but it’s just one of Wayne Teng’s bodyguards, watching me without comment.

It starts to lightly rain as I stand at the base of the spit, which extends like an arm into the fog coming off both lakes. I’m not sure what kind of bullshit face-your-fears exercise this is supposed to be, but as long as it doesn’t require getting back in the wetsuit I’m okay with it. I can’t even see the surface of the water. And if the clouds manage to cover the moon, I won’t be able to see anything.

I do hear something, though.

It’s a hum. Subtle—not much more than a change of pressure in your ear canals, like when the refrigerator goes on in the apartment next door.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what it is, though. I follow the beach north along the edge of the widening ravine that contains White Lake. The beach is narrow and uneven but easy to follow even in the fog: it’s got a granite wall next to it.

The hum gets louder as I go. After a while I reach the point where both the cliff wall and the whole ravine angle to the right, revealing a new stretch of water. On it something that has to be a boat: glinting of metal through the drifting mist, and a faint green glow.

I left my binoculars and nightscope back in the tent, of course.

The humming stops. The boat’s just drifting.