Darcey Steinke - Jesus Saves

Sagging burlap grazed the tip of her nose; the coarse threads tickled and she squinched her features and sneezed, soaked her flannel bit with saliva. Not that it wasn't already wet, her tongue rimming around its velvety nuance, until she knew its sinews as well as the geography of her own teeth. The mysterious smell of lust and loneliness seeped through the hotel mattress into the musty box spring. The powerful scent shrunk her tiny as a figurine left under a doll house bed. He wouldn't need the van now; he could carry her in a velvet flute case, or in his pocket, like a Barbie doll, her tiny toes brushing his leather belt, her head resting against a copper penny warmed by his groin.

Like a searchlight turning figure eights over the highway, she beamed her need out, so the numb drivers in their cars would flash to a girl in a diaper tied diagonally under a motel bed. But even if it worked, they'd just shake their heads, dismiss the image as a half-remembered scene from a bad B movie, assume their mind had lost its way with fatigue and was wandering places it shouldn't.

Her stomach quivered. He hadn't fed her for several days, just a couple swallowfuls of warm Coke. Maybe he'd bring her back some food; anything would do, a package of chowder crackers or an old candy bar. She wanted french fries, the thin kind, sweet and delicate. Saliva gathered between her gums and cheek.

At the beginning of summer, before camp, she layout in her bathing suit in the backyard, reading and daydreaming, mostly about the boy she'd gone into the closet with during a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. She'd expected a pretend kiss, but once the door closed he pressed into her with such longing she thought she'd faint. In the hottest hour of the afternoon, the bedding flowers wilted and the sun electrified her dream of a bare-chested boy in white satin basketball shorts lying among her stuffed animals, the pink rabbit with the bow tie, the downy yellow duck. She'd heard her glass of Coke tip over, opened her eyes to a deer's thick tongue licking spilled soda out of the grass, antlers covered with fine white hairs and its eyes dark as corn syrup. A dog barked and the deer jerked its head up, stood perfectly still, then ran back into the woods, its white tail moving as expressively as a face. She'd gone into the house and got lettuce from the refrigerator, spread it out on a gray stump just inside the tree line. The deer came back that day and nearly every other, slowly beginning to rely on the fetid produce. Even now it probably lingered during the day in the woods between her backyard and the highway and at night stepped right up to the sliding glass doors.

That wasn't the only strange omen. A few days before camp, she'd gotten bored, put a few stale hamburger buns in a zip-lock bag, and walked along the highway guardrail to the park. Mosquitoes hovered like static electricity and the air was so thick with humidity it was hard to breathe. A woman with blonde hair was reading a romance novel and smoking at one of the picnic tables. Her chubby baby lay nearby on a blanket spread out on the grass, wearing only a diaper, its hair wet with sweat. Sandy asked her how old the baby was and the woman said two without even lifting her eyes from the page. Its head was too big, its eyes dull and unfocused. There was something wrong with the baby; it was sick or retarded. She'd walked quickly around the small man-made lake, the dirt path dusted with downy feathers, toward the wooden dock. Opening her bag, she took out the bottom half of a bun and threw it into the water. Mallards swam over to her, but before they got near a huge black carp surfaced, took the bread in its mucusy mouth, and swam backward until she could no longer see its shape in the muddy water.

Shadowed legs of chairs, the heating panel, the haywire shag carpet might as well be seaweed, rusty cans, and silt-covered stuff found on the bottom of the lake. She pointed her toes, pretending to wind across the room, belly grazing the carpet, her movements as easy and unhampered as air.

Back and forth she flipped her wrists until the pins and needles came and then the warm rush of blood. She listened, cars on the highway, a distant TV, and the sweet smell emanating from a spot near the nightstand where someone once tipped over a can of beer. She released her bladder and let pee soak the paper crotch of her diaper. It was hot at first and sort of comforting, but then it turned cool. She shivered, felt goose bumps raise up on the backs of her arms.

Listening to the motel door shut, to one link rattling against the next as he secured the chain, she flattened her cheek on the carpet, watched his disembodied shoes move, as if enchanted, around the edge of the bed. He clicked on the TV, the screen lit up the bedspread fringe. He walked to the nightstand between the two double beds where the push-button phone and the ugly glass lamp sat silent and the gold Gideon's Bible lay unopened in the drawer below. His toes wilted up like a piece of burnt paper and the frame rocked as he leaned his weight onto the bed, lifted the spread, and poked his head underneath. She saw the white beard strands at the corner of his lips and the whites of his eyes magnified behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He untied the cord around her wrists, swung down to her ankles, then patted her leg to signal she should shimmy out. Sitting up between the two beds she pulled down the gag; it hung around her neck like a wet bandanna.

He threw a T-shirt into her lap and she put it on, sat up on the bed; a brown paper bag stood next to the phone.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Open it.”

She lifted out the plastic spoon, the wax paper baggy of soy sauce and fortune cookies, then the warm white carton, and undid the flaps. Thin strips of beef and red pepper floated in a brown curry sauce. He stared at her, as if she'd cast a spell over him.

“You like it?” he asked, and when she looked up to nod, his eyes were wild and grateful as a stray dog's and she realized all this was happening because he was very drunk.

One spoonful followed another. She ate as fast as she could, afraid the food would be ripped away. The curry was strong, with lots of gooey gravy. When it was gone, she ran her finger along the sides of the carton, then licked the warm sauce from the tips.

Still he stared at her with his fishy eyes. He reached across and put his hand on her bare knee. She looked at the hairy knuckles, the sapphire ring. He was dressed in a colorless shirt made of thick white cotton and a pair of khakis.

She asked if he was going to tie her up again. Things were so much more certain that way. His expression, which she'd catalogued as hopeful, even friendly, turned sharp and he smiled stiffly, called her a stupid bitch, and with the heel of his shoe he kicked out at her. She was so surprised she lost her balance and fell off the bed. Quickly she righted herself, crawled underneath the bedspread, but he grabbed her by the ankle and yanked so her face slammed into the nylon carpet and he flung himself down, strode her chest, like she'd do to her brother when she'd won a fight. He pinned her hands under his knees as she bucked up a few times, arched her back, tried to get him off, but the troll just smiled, reached around for his wallet. It was Western style, with roses stamped into the leather. He flipped it open, took out a piece of paper, and unfolded it. His birth certificate, worn fuzzy on the edges, the typed information fading out.

“See,” he held it up to her, “it doesn't matter whether you have a girlfriend or not.” Sandy felt herself trembling. It was worse than she thought. The man was completely insane.

He got off her. Sandy felt her chest expand with air.

“Stand up.” He yanked her up, his hands on her hips, then tripped her down onto the bed. With one hand he clenched the pee-heavy diaper so the tapes broke, and he threw it against the nightstand, where it fell wet and lumpy behind the bed. Brown sauce spurted up her throat and the sun flared out; tendrils of fire ignited the clouds, violet and bloody blue-red. Fire fell like rain, the trees hissed and smoldered, branches full of dry leaves flared up. If she let him do it this time, the whole world would come to an end. Using the muscles in her upper legs and her knees to push off, she lunged forward and out of his palms’ grip. Her hand was on the chain, the other twisting the doorknob, and she was out. The sweet humid air tasted of car exhaust; white lights and red ones blurred on the elevated highway. Pebbles stuck to the pads of her feet and the asphalt grated her skin; the cement supports were too tall to scale so she ran up the exit ramp and tried to wave down a car on the interstate.