Wild Thing: A Novel

by Josh Bazell

“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.”

  26

  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.

  “What are you doing?” Violet says as I’m looking through my pack. “Did you find Bark?”

  “Shh. No. There’s a boat on White Lake.”

  “What?” She sits up on her elbows. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t really see it.”

  “You’re going back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “I did.”

  “I mean intentionally.”

  “Because it’s probably just another opportunity to get shot at.”

  Violet starts patting around for her clothing. “I’m coming.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “Who gives a shit?”

  “We have to hurry.”

  “Fine. I’ll take a shower instead of a bath. What’s wrong with you?”

  Something. I watch her unzip her sleeping bag and, still lying down, pull her jeans up over the gooseflesh of her thighs. They snag for a moment on her mound. She has to pull them free to get them up to her bare stomach.

  When I look up at her face, she’s watching me watch her. Not judgmentally, but still.

  Not a lot you can say to that one.

  I unzip the tent flap. It’s raining heavily now.

  The boat’s a big Zodiac, twenty feet long or so with a fixed pedestal in the center for the steering wheel and metal fishing struts that angle up and out over the sides like construction cranes. Even with the binoculars it’s hard to see any more detail than that through the fog. My digital camera, which I also brought, is useless.

  “Here,” Violet says, handing me the nightscope. The rain’s loud enough that we’re not worried about talking. “He’s still shoveling powder from the bag into the water.”

  The first thing I do with the scope is sweep the beach behind us. I made Violet hold my hand as we snuck out of camp, so that anyone seeing us would think we were going off to fuck. But as she pointed out, some people wouldn’t consider that a deterrent.

  In any case, having to talk someone into holding my hand didn’t make me feel like a creep and a six-year-old at all.

  I use the scope to look out at the lake. Both the downpour and the fog are more opaque under infrared, but I can see that the boat has one fat, heavily treaded tire drawn up in front of it like the figurehead on the prow of a ship, and identical raised tires on both back corners. Next to the front tire is something that looks a lot like a loaded harpoon gun. On the fantail there’s a large motor leaned out of the water and a much smaller one with its prop still lowered. That must be the electric one.

  “It’s amphibious,” I say.

  “Yeah. Sorry, I thought you could see that through the binoculars. What’s he doing?”

  “I don’t see him.”

  There’s a cloud of glare above the steering structure, possibly from a sonar display, but I don’t see the guy until he stands up from where he was hunched between the wheel and what looks like a large built-in ice chest at the rear. He’s holding something in one hand like a shot put.

  “Now I see him,” I say.

  “Can you see his face?”

  “No. He’s on the far side of the boat with his back to us.” Also, like Violet and me and probably everybody else who’s awake and outdoors right now in Minnesota, he’s wearing a hooded anorak. At least we can guess what he’s hearing: the drone of raindrops on Goretex.

  I sweep the nightscope over the beach again and hand it to Violet.

  “Now he’s putting something on a big hook that’s on a line on that thing that goes over the side,” she says after a minute. “I think it’s meat.”

  A few moments later I can hear the winch motor, even above the downpour. It’s louder than the electric outboard was.

  Violet hands back the scope, and I watch the man straighten up and turn toward us.

  Where his face should be, there’s a searing spotlight.

  “Fuck!” I say, jamming the front end of the scope into my jacket. Too late, though, I know.

  “What?”

  Without the scope, there’s nothing out there but darkness. The light coming off the guy’s face is invisible.

  “He’s wearing active infrared goggles,” I say. “The same technology we’re using. He can see the light our scope’s putting out.”

  “But can he…?”

  “Yeah. He’s probably looking at us now.” I put the scope back to my eye.

  He’s staring right at us, face still shining like a lighthouse. Now, though, he’s also holding a rifle.

  Classic Remington 700, with a big scope and a rainguard. I’m not saying it’s the gun used to kill Chris Jr. and Father Podominick, but the two would get along.

  So apparently this is the part where we get shot at again. If the rifle has night vision, it’s going to be a long fun run back to the woods silhouetted against the bare face of the cliff. It probably makes more sense for us to dive into the lake and try to swim for the boat.

  The man doesn’t aim the rifle, though. He just holds it low across his body, like he’s showing it to me or trying to make up his mind. Then he tosses it into the front of the boat and goes the other direction to tilt the big motor into the water.

  “What’s he doing?” Violet says.

  I give her the scope. “Getting out of here.”

  In the narrowness of the canyon, the gas engine turns over like a Harley. Deep blat-blat noises that continue even as other, higher-pitched noises build on top of them. Then the boat turns hard and retreats back into White Lake, trailing its hook line behind it.

  It’s gone from sight around the next bend before the flashlight beams of the people picking their way along the beach reach us.

  “What the hell was that?” Reggie says.

  “There’s a boat on the lake,” Violet says.

  Its wake is still rippling into our shoes.

  27

  Lake Garner / White Lake

  Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota

  Still Thursday, 20 September

  “Bul
lshit,” Violet says.

  “Exactly how it happened.”

  We’re in our sleeping bags, lying on our backs. I’ve just told her about my conversation with Palin.

  “She’s fucking nuts,” Violet says.

  “Why? Just because she thinks having one set of chromosomes is the same thing as having single-stranded DNA even though her father was a science teacher?”

  “Her father used to wait for seals to come up for air and then shoot them in the head.”

  “Maybe he thought they were the Antichrist. And how do you know that?”

  “How do you know about Westwood Whatever?” she says.

  “Westbrook Pegler. He used to be famous.”

  “And she’s famous now. And rich. If there’s an Antichrist, it’s probably her. She’s a complete opportunist.”

  “I think she believes this, though.”

  “She probably does. The problem with the world isn’t people who are irrational. It’s people who can turn their rationality on and off depending on what’s more likely to get them something.”

  “Maybe, but what’s believing in this likely to get her?”

  “Besides whatever Reggie’s paying her? Don’t underestimate the appeal of thinking you’re the center of God’s attention. Babies have been digging it for years. Fuck. I wish I could be like her.”

  I laugh. “No you don’t.”

  “Sure I do. Being selectively delusional would rock. Why do you think I love being drunk?”

  “Being drunk wears off.”

  “That’s the problem with it.” She sees me looking at her. “I’m serious. I hate reality. Everybody does. People love to say ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’ now. But when Laocoön said it during the actual Trojan War, and got ripped apart by snakes, they laughed their fucking asses off. Same with Cassandra.”

  “That’s another Trojan horse thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “So maybe it’s just a bad idea to be rational about the Trojan horse.”

  “And maybe someday I’ll figure out why I bother to talk to you.”

  “It’s not like you do, very often.”

  “Good for me.”

  She turns away.

  “Chicken Little is another one,” I finally come up with.