25

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.”^[63]

“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.”