‘That was like a month ago. Rock Star Ken has been back with your Ballerina Barbie since then,’ I protest.
‘Still gotta be a payback. Just because I bided my time doesn’t mean she’s getting away with it.’ Pooh snatches the doll from my hand, grabs the Barbie car, lays my doll flat, and proceeds to run her over, back and forth. ‘Steal my man, you bitch cunt whore,’ Pooh chants under her breath. I watch in silence as she rips off my doll’s clothes and then decapitates and delimbs her. ‘Try that again, cunt,’ she whoops.
Pooh calmly wipes away a lock of hair that fell into her face, brushes her hands together, and smiles a relieved smile. ‘So what do you want to play today?’ she says in her sweetest voice.
Pooh and I don’t play much after that. I usually say I’m sick or tired. And finally I ask Le Loup to take the dolls in their vinyl cases away, saying I’ve overheard some of the truckers wondering why a messenger from the Lord would play with Barbies.
‘I knew it!’ he yells, raising his voice to me for the first time.
Business has been slowing down. Fewer and fewer truckers show up everyday. Some truckers have even summoned up the guts to ask Le Loup for their money back, citing an increase in being pulled over by Highway Patrol, their logbooks inspected with a fine-tooth comb, and having scales overweigh their haul, even when their rig was half empty, all after they had had a visitation with me. After a few truckers leave with shoe prints and large indents in the seats of their pants, no refunds are requested again.
Le Loup puts in flashier lights, but the crowds thin as talk spreads of luck turning malevolent after a visit with me, the patron saint of truckers.
I don’t even have to tell Pooh that Le Loup has taken the dolls. She just suddenly stops flopping down on my bed to try to cajole me into playing. At first I feel relief, but soon I began to miss her company.
As the wads of cash that Pooh turns over have grown fatter, Le Loup can no longer ignore her growing fame as a lot lizard with blessed second sight. The truckers who used to wait to see me now line their trucks in a queue that stretches out of the truck stop and runs along the highway for some distance.
For the first time I really start to put some effort into my sainthood. I incorporate every enigmatic phenomenon I have ever observed. I shake my body attempting to mimic the supernatural way Mother Shaprio’s massive body pulsated when she laughed. I roll my eyes the way I’d seen truckers do in the mysterious throes of climax, and I claw at the air the way I’d seen Sarah do in her epilepticlike fits of rage. I even place my palm on the heads of kneeling truckers and mutter the bits of mangled Choctaw chants that Glad would bless his lizards with before each night of work. And while my newfound gusto picks up business a little, it never brings the
World News
or any camera crews over. And it isn’t long before even my most steady worshipers take their business to Pooh.
‘After I seen Saint Sarah for the tenth time, I got five blown-out wheels in a row and I still can’t love my wife proper!’ I overhear one trucker warning another. ‘Now, after I’d seen that Saint Pooh, well, my tires stopped blowin’ out and when I see my wife I’m always hard as honeymoon dick.’
‘That’s for me. I’m heading to Saint Pooh.’ I hear them walk away.
‘Saint Pooh.’ I shake my head and let out a little sarcastic laugh.
‘Least she don’t need no trick lighting,’ Le Loup says in a low grumble, surprising me from behind.
He leans above me, reaches his hand down, his fingernails extended, and lets his arm swing over me like a pendulum with an ax attached to its tip.
‘You’ve started to cost me…’
‘I can work like Pooh,’ I whisper up to him, following his hand barely grazing my stomach. ‘I saw the Jackalope too. I can develop my second sight too.’
In a flash I see his fist blazing toward me. My stomach clenches and I close my eyes and steel my face for the impact.
The wall shatters next to my bed and I open my eyes to see Le Loup pulling his hand out of the splintered hole his fist has made. He cradles his hand like a paw wounded in a blade trap and stalks out silently.
I get up slowly and my body aches as if I had just taken his beating. Nobody is waiting to have a visit with me and a tray of food is sitting on the table for me. Stella no longer cradles me in her arms to feed me like her lapbaby, since she finally accepted the camera crews were not to come and all her TV-friendly shades of clothes and makeup was money wasted. The only words she says to me are to recount all the miracles Pooh is reported to have achieved. Blind men coming so hard it unblocks their retinas, the lame having their spinal cord so electrified they can now do gymnastics, and the true miracle of Pooh suck-starting a Harley, which might bring the camera crews yet. I look at the food—a huge mound of ramps and liver fry.
‘Might as well feed her ramps,’ Petunia had told Le Loup. ‘Ain’t no one to be offended by her gas anyhows.’
I walk to the window in the back, the one I had flung my raccoon penis bone out of, and push it open. I squint at the brightness I’m unaccustomed to. To help give me a saintly ghostly pallor, Le Loup forbid me to venture out until the sun sets, though I’m hardly ever allowed out even then.
‘I’ve seen truckers who only night-drive with third-degree burns from the moon’s reflection,’ Le Loup told me. But even when the moon was away or hidden by thick fog, I was to stay in. ‘Plenty of pimps wouldn’t mind stealing my saint away,’ he said locking the door behind him.
A sweet breeze of bog rosemary, moss, and coniferous trees with an underlying trail of diesel slides across my face. I picture Glad’s arms spread out to receive me, his hands holding a slightly bigger bone to reward my impressive, though unsuccessful, initiative. I imagine a big welcome back party for me at The Doves, all my old customers weeping with joyful anticipation of being able to show me their new underwear in the girlish pastel colors of Lucky Charms cereal. Even Mother Shapiro would defrost some of the delectable treasures from her freezer to celebrate my return. But what makes me suddenly push half my body out the window is the thought of Sarah’s face. Her eyes, ringed red with tears from missing me, help me to propel my right leg out of the window frame.
I look down at the chopped-up skunk cabbage under the window and am pretty sure it will cushion my drop from eight feet up. I need to wipe Sarah’s tears and promise never to leave her again.
I push up and begin to bring my left leg to the sill, but it catches on something. I pull at my foot, but it stays stuck. I whip my face around inside the room to see what I’m stuck on.
‘Where’re you heading,’ Le Loup says without asking. He’s holding on to my foot with his hand.
‘I—I…’ My eyes blink like a stuttered word. ‘I just wanted some air.’ I squeeze out.
‘Get on your bed and lay there. You have a customer.’ Le Loup holds his arm up, pointing toward my show-bed in the next room. I extricate myself and follow his direction silently.
Later that day as I lie staring at the darker shade of unfaded paint where the Pope poster had been, I hear hammering and the clang of metal.
‘I put gates on all the windows, so if you need to get any air you might want to try the front door first,’ Le Loup says and leaves, slamming the door behind him. I watch the locks turn as he seals me in with his keys.
I run to the windows as soon as I hear his car pull away. Thick bars hang from every window. I wrap my hands around them and scream.
I scream and scream until folks gather beneath the window to see what in all hell’s the matter. I keep screaming even when they run and fetch Stella who has a copy of the keys. I keep screaming even as she comes behind me and puts her hand over my mouth. I bite at her hand and thrash my feet, hitting onlookers in the face, groin, and shins. I scream and kick out even harder as I see Petunia heading toward me with a big fat syringe that I heard she usually uses on herself.
‘Quick, hold her arm!’ Stella directs one of the men trying to keep my limbs still.
I feel a sharp jab in my shoulder and warmth spread through my arm.
‘I told you she was really a black snake.’ I hear the dishwasher hiss as I struggle to keep fighting.
‘You can never underestimate the power of a black snake to charm and change forms,’ Mary Grace says peeping her head up from behind the dishwasher.
The room starts to slant and fade. My muscles slacken and I fall into the hands pinning me down. Before my eyes close I see Lymon looking at me with his head tilted and his eyes filled with empathic warmth, like a passerby mourning a car-hit deer being moved to the side of the road.
‘Wake up, c’mon, wake up!’ I feel something shaking at my side and I open my eyes to watch a gigantic shiny black snake swallow my entire arm. I bolt up screaming, shaking the snake off me.
‘Grab her, grab her, grab her!’ I turn to see Lymon reaching out and Pooh pointing at me. I look at my arms and can’t find the snake.
‘Where’s the snake?’ I gasp and let myself collapse into Lymon’s arms.
‘Well, you’re the snake is what I heard tell,’ Pooh says with a small smile playing on her lips.
‘Aw, she ain’t no snake, she ain’t no saint, she just a baby girl that needs some lovin’ is all,’ Lymon says and pats my hand in his quivering hand.
‘Well, they all think you’re a snake,’ Pooh says nonchalantly. ‘Except Lymon here, and me of course,’ she adds.
I stare up at Pooh and notice for the first time her face isn’t swollen and her hair has all grown in, no bald patches. ‘You look great, Pooh,’ I whisper.
‘She quit drinking,’ Lymon says.
‘I’m almost the most famous lizard in all of North America!’ Pooh says, annoyed. ‘Drinking has nothin’ to do with anything. But, yeah, I don’t drink no more.’ She puts her hands triumphantly on her hips.
‘I heard, Pooh. Congratulations.’ I reach out my limp hand for her to shake.
‘Thank you.’ Pooh squeezes my hand hard.
‘Le Loup must be so proud of you,’ I say.
Pooh gives me a look, but with her face partially averted and her lids half-drawn, I can’t catch it.
‘You’re the one living here in his house,’ she says slowly, as if I don’t speak English.
‘I think he’s gonna throw me out any minute, Pooh.’ I push myself up out of Lymon’s arms. ‘I wish he would, so I can join you.’ I try to smile at her. Since Pooh had stopped coming to play, I often daydreamed about us living in our own trailer, playing dolls and having a red neon sign out front so folks would all know where to find the most famous lizards. ‘I can’t wait to develop my second sight too.’
‘First off, what makes you think you can be as good as me?’ Pooh says, leaning over me. Her breath gives off a sweet grass scent, and not the usual rubbing alcohol smell.
‘I saw the Jackalope too,’ I say.
‘What’s with you?’ Pooh tilts her head at me. ‘You want to steal everything I own, don’t ya?!’
‘Girls,’ Lymon says and gently pulls me back, down onto his lap. ‘Now, Pooh came to me to help save you.’
Pooh smoothes out her new slick black leather dress and pats her hair in a ladylike manner.
‘Lymon is the only one that has a key copy besides Stella,’ Pooh says.
‘Won’t Le Loup be here any time now?’ I ask.
‘Nope.’ Lymon shakes his head in his sad donkey way. ‘After the truckers have a visit with Pooh here, they are so shocked by the strength of their awakened passions, only large quantities of drink will calm them.’
Pooh nods proudly.
‘Even with all the local stills pumping as much white lightning as possible, Le Loup still had to gather a few men and hunt down more.’
I turn and look at a jailed window. ‘Why don’t Le Loup just turn me out? I’m not making any money for him here.’
‘Well, for one’—Pooh bends back one of her fingers—‘if he turns you out, that would be admitting he knew you weren’t no saint. Nobody turns a real saint out to whore these days.’ She bends back two fingers. ‘Plus, folk really think you’re just black magic.’
Lymon flaps his head again. ‘Your miracles have all turned sour, they say. I try to tell ’em you’re just a little girl needin’ lovin’.’
‘Ain’t no trucker gonna put his piss pump anywheres into a black snake!’ Pooh snorts.
‘Anyways, it’s bad for Le Loup’s stature in the pimp community.’
‘Plus, some folks say he’s sweet on you,’ Lymon says slyly.
‘I severely doubt that, Lymon!’ Pooh snaps.
Lymon shakes his head earnestly. ‘Has he ever hit you?’ He leans around to face me, his breath coming at me in minted-over ramp freshness.
I shake my head no.
‘He ever touch ya?’ Lymon wags his head.
I shake my head again.
‘He watch ya get dressed?’
I again shake my head.
‘But he buys you all kinds of lacy little pretty things, don’t he?’ Lymon chuckles to himself.
‘Don’t prove nothin’!’ Pooh winces.
‘He lay your clothes out for ya?’ Lymon’s voice goes breathless and high. ‘Even your darling little panties? I know he don’t give ’em to us to wash like the rest of his laundry…’
Pooh sways her head in a long disbelieving sweep and rocks back on the heels of her high-heeled pumps. ‘Stop, Lymon.’ Pooh’s voice sounds splintered and loose like a piece of driftwood not yet worn smooth.
‘I says he does those little sweet things himself, by his own hand!’ Lymon squeals and convulses with pleasure at the thought.
‘Shut up, Lymon! Shut up!’ Pooh pulls back her hand to slap his face, but the look of utter horror on Lymon’s face stops her. ‘Shut up,’ she repeats quietly.
‘He hangs them on a clothes line behind one of the locked doors,’ I say softly to Lymon, avoiding Pooh’s eyes.
We sit there in complete silence, just the crickets and the bog mosquitoes starting to fill the dusky light filtering in past the window bars.
‘Well, Lymon,’ Pooh finally says, her voice slightly hoarse, ‘every now and then, even a blind pig finds an acorn. Maybe you’re right, okay? Maybe Le Loup does love her, but it ain’t gonna last. I know him deep in, better than you, and I know he loves money more than any pretty little girl!’ She spits the last word out at me.