Living Witness(143)

She was really very dizzy. She was so dizzy she didn’t think she could stand up. She hadn’t tried to stand up, though, so she didn’t know. She didn’t want to try to stand up, because then she would have to look at it all: the bars, the woman in the uniform, the corridor where the other cells were. She was alone in this cell. She didn’t know why. From the noise she could hear, the other cells seemed to have lots of people in them. She was glad she wasn’t with lots of other people. She didn’t want to see people. She didn’t want to talk to people. She had no idea what she would say.

“Hello. I’m Alice McGuffie. I’m being persecuted by secular humanists.”

It was the kind of joke they would make on those late-night television shows. Alice hated those late-night television shows—David Letterman, Conan O’Brien. Who were those people? Why did they think they knew so much? She didn’t understand half the things they said. They were always talking about things that made no sense and then everybody was laughing. Alice couldn’t see what there was to laugh at. Lyman couldn’t see it, either. Maybe there was nothing to laugh at and they were tricking people—people who were too embarrassed to admit they didn’t understand what was going on. That was what happened with the Emperor’s new clothes. Nobody wanted to say the Emperor was naked because they thought everybody else could see his clothes. They didn’t want people to think they were stupid. Alice had spent her entire life trying to keep people from thinking she was stupid. They thought it anyway. It was like she had a brand on her forehead. It was all Catherine Marbledale’s fault, and the fault of people like Annie-Vic, and the fault of secular humanists. There were secular humanists under the bed. There were secular humanists in the refrigerator. There was no refrigerator. What was she thinking of?

She was lying on a very narrow cot that was shoved right up against the wall. Alice thought it might be bolted into the wall. She didn’t want to look. She had a blanket on top of her that felt like horse hair. It was rough, and the few times she had opened her eyes she had seen it was gray. There was a sheet under her, but no sheet on top of her. She always had a sheet on top of her at home. Maybe this was what they did to you in prison. Maybe they took away all your sheets. Maybe they would execute her, and first she would have to lie on a gurney somewhere and sing at the top of her lungs to keep from being afraid. She was afraid, though. She was so afraid all her muscles had gone rigid, so that none of her joints had been able to bend. Then they had given her that shot, and everything had melted. It was melted now.

She opened her eyes and stared straight up at the ceiling. The ceiling was filthy. It was as if nobody had ever cleaned it, not in all the years it had been up there. How long ago had this jail been built? Alice didn’t know. She didn’t pay much attention to the news, except for things going on locally, and nothing much ever went on locally. This would be something going on locally. Everybody in town would watch it on television. They would buy newspapers and read about it. Maybe it would be in a magazine somewhere. Look at the crazy Christians. Watch them kill everybody. Her head hurt. The pain was far away, on the other side of a barrier of fuzz. Her mouth was dry.

“There was a picture of me on the dining room table,” she said. The words came out as clear as the sound of her television. There was no fuzz at all.

Over on the other side of the bars, the woman in uniform stood up and turned toward Alice. Alice could feel her looking.

“What did you say?” the woman said.

“There was a picture of me on the dining room table,” Alice said again. “So I took it. I brought it home and I put it in my sewing table.”

The words were not crisp anymore. They were going in and out of blur. She was very tired. She wanted to go back to sleep again.

“I don’t think you should be worrying about your sewing table now,” the woman in uniform said. “There are other things to think about now.”

If she didn’t force herself to speak, she would fall asleep again. The woman in the uniform was making a note. She would probably pass it along to other people in uniform. Alice watched all the cop shows. She liked cop shows. She liked thinking that there were people out there who lived in terrible places full of crime, while she was safe and happy right there in Snow Hill.

If she didn’t concentrate, she would forget. If she didn’t concentrate, she would drift back into space and the secular humanists would be there, they would be there, they were always there, they were all around us. They were that devouring lion. That’s what they were.