White Rabbit Chapter 36

36.

           

“I have to believe you are reading this…”

Delores wrote thirty two letters to Alexander De Wolfe, c/o Keyser United States Military Prison, by mid-February. She wasn’t able to put the pieces together about what happened that night but she was sure that somehow he was there. She studied the prison online and stared at the bland looking complex in pictures. When it was built the local people were told it was going to be a military factory of some sort but when they started anticipating jobs they were then told that it was a military weapons depot and completely off limits. But in truth it has been holding men and women against their will, Habeas Corpus exempt, since 2003. The US and West Virginia state flags fly proudly on a large pole in front. For effect, so does an MIA flag on a separate and slightly less impressive phallic pole. Contents: terrorists or would-be terrorists or people suspected of being terrorists. Most of who were detained without any criminal or military trial, stowed away because they were of interests or they knew people who knew people who knew people, et cetera. That is how the game works. The real big bad wolves, no pun, were at other undisclosed locations yet to be discovered. There aren’t many of those sorts of people left at KUSMDC. A few, not many. The majority of the detainees are vampires and werewolves, or of some other non-human variety. No one knew any of this outside of the Pentagon, the White House, the CIA, and staff. Well, sure, probably some people but certainly no one that would or could do anything with the information.
             The guards, cooks, scientists, investigators, weren’t some local folk who would hoof it to some bar after a shift have a few Buds and blabber about their miserable lives and jobs. Crying “FML” in their suds hoping for a blow job to fall out of the sky. Everyone who worked there was ex-military, hired only after an extensive clearance examination and a brutal background check. Virgin birth was nearly a requirement. Requisite for employment each had to sign a waiver vowing not to say anything. At orientation, as an example, the opening line of the CIA agent responsible for training, cucumber cool Senior Agent Dick Shimmer, was, “This job is for your eyes only.” No specific threats were made but everyone knew if they talked they were dead, plus they would lose their free lifetime health and dental care and pensions. The employees of the prison lived in a small cozy village called Libertyville and each was given a house built for them by the fed in one of those editions where every third house looks the same and they are called things like The Georgian, The Hancock, The Jefferson and The Victorian. The kind of neighborhood delivery drivers loathe—where it’s nearly impossible to find your house drunk. Streets were purposely named Kennedy Circle, Lincoln Lane, and Washington Boulevard to subconsciously remind the employees of their duty. Lubed up with patriotism. They were allowed to submit requisitions for things they needed and more often than not they were quickly granted. Each was also given a free car—a Ford Taurus or a Ford Escape, any color reasonable. Their choice. They didn’t have to pay insurance or for their yearly car registration. Instead, they got a birthday card from the federal government signed by The Secretary of Defense’s personal autopen. Every year it was the same card, a bald eagle soaring with the backdrop of the American flag rippling through the sky. Inside it said, “Freedom isn’t free. Happy birthday!”

In a fit of resentment, some retiring wiseass that had worked for the federal government since the LBJ administration, who was responsible for sending the cards out, took the time and with his own pen inserted a carrot between free and happy and wrote, “but everything else in your goddamn life is!” No one cared. Most smiled at the personal touch, however indignant. They were forbidden to have children or spouses. Dogs and cats were okay. Free vet on site. And a good one. But according to the employee satisfaction cards, also required, the overwhelming favorite part of their job was the free sex. There were entertained by robot men and women (according to preference) known as Betties. The most lifelike and desirable robot men and women created by Dr. Alfred Bettie, formerly of MIT, with a government-funded grant. Blonde, brunette, short, thin, fat, tall, freckles, small chest, big chest, small penis, big penis, cut, uncut, dumb, smart, turn it in at any time like a Netflix rental or keep it. Dr. Alfred Bettie was the world’s smartest pimp.

In Delores’ letters she dedicated Alex songs and sent him the lyrics carefully handwritten, not in big swooshing cursive typical teen female love letter writing, in quick but steady disciplined tight cursive, tilted 110 degrees, perfectly concise, always in red ink from her Pelikan Pelikano fountain pen and on expensive Strathmore parchment paper she bought at a high-end stationary store. She sealed each letter with a red wax seal so that Alex would know if it had been read. Most of those lyrics were to Beatles songs. She said she would see about getting him out though at first she had no idea where to start. She wrote adamantly and called and left messages on the voicemails of dozens of congressmen and women and a half dozen senators. She lost herself in those letters, poured everything she had in them. She had a lot of questions for him, she admitted to the paper. Nothing, though, she would ask in a letter but by letter twenty eight, or twenty nine, who could be sure, she began asking desperately. She had figured they kept him locked away in isolation and though she wasn’t sure if he was receiving the letters or not she was going to keep writing them. Though she received no confirmation over the months that elapsed, she had to believe he was reading; it kept her going. Someone would have sent them back, she told herself, optimistically. She would have received a dreadful return to sender. The old man at the post office told her that, saying they would have sent it back with their outgoing mail marked “return to sender/recipient not at address.”

“I don’t know what happened that night or how they found you,” one letter went, “I only know that I will be here when you return. You must return. They cannot keep you forever. Stay optimistic. Publicity of the prison will help. I am not certain if you can see out your window, or even if you have a window, but there are protests daily rallying for your freedom. I joined Amnesty International and the ACLU; both are demanding everyone’s immediate release, or at least public trials. You have given me so much Alex; you have given me a cause. Will they allow for conjugal visits? Haha.” She almost dared say for underage girls but then she realized that the mail was probably being read if at all delivered. She averaged three letters a week and when Whitney, or Lady Goodyear, asked to whom she was writing she would lie and say to American servicemen in Afghanistan.

More excerpts: “I have even thought of unscrupulous ways of seeing you. Faking cancer and applying through the Make-A-Wish Foundation to pull some strings so I can see you. You would have to be my father…or older brother. Do they know how old you are? Are there werewolves older than you? Are you a wolf locked up or a man? Use your…scratch that. Just in case…an Ace to play later, perhaps? I miss you. I love you. There is no limit to what depraved thing I would do to see you, to feel you again. And there are no rules I wouldn’t break, rules, fuck, laws, to free you. Shit, I should stop, in case…They say absence makes the heart grow fonder but I am so lost without you. Not knowing for certain…only feeling. The feeling is enough to carry me optimistically to when you are free and when I may run into you, somewhere, somehow so fortuitously like before.” Her letters were sometimes bitter, doubting themselves and that he was even reading them but in the next she would apologize profusely for doubting him and quote some Biblical verse about faith and patience.” Groundhog’s Day hit her hard. Valentine’s Day was nearly unbearable. Close to cutting again. Suicide. There was a dance at St. Anne’s and boys from another Catholic School were there. Delores was coerced in to going by Whitney. She stood there in a black dress with heavy mascara looking as though she had just walked out of a funeral. “Who died?” she heard more than once from those catty bitches.

“Your fucking mom.” she replied stoically. The boys stood across the room like British soldiers and she was set with her musket determined to kill as many as she could. She danced with a few and told herself to give up. Then she told herself to have faith and left early. Whitney was worried but Bruce was around and they were happy at least they wouldn’t have to worry about entertaining her.

“What is wrong with her?” Bruce asked as she fled the crowded gymnasium.

Whitney watched her leave thinking of begging her to come back but not. Though she and Delores were good friends she told Bruce the sordid details. Nothing of the werewolves, she had given up in believing that. “I think Delores is madly in love with a soldier in Afghanistan,” she said romantically. 

            That is all that was said. It was raining when Delores left. The cold freezing rain that makes everyone wish for more snow. The snow-covered ground glazed over with ice and Delores hailed a taxi from the curb and went home. A few of the boys on the steps whistled at her and she told them promptly to fuck off with the words and American sign. The taxi ride was very unmemorable but for a hula dancer Delores stared at on the cabbie’s dash. He was apparently African and wore a Green Bay Packers toboggan and a thick blue vest—the sort that looks like a life jacket made for dry land. Lady Goodyear was sitting in the front room with Thomas waiting for the girls to return when Delores arrived. Delores feigned a headache. “I just want to go to sleep,” she sighed miserably fleeing for the stairs.

“Delores!” Lady Goodyear called from downstairs as she ran to her room. Delores didn’t answer. Thirty two letters and nothing, not one scrap of reward or acknowledgement for her part. The letters, the poems, the expensive Strathmore parchment paper. The postal worker’s optimistic words weren’t bolstering her confidence any longer. It was fast approaching two months. Two long months. She lied in bed and thought of a TV show on a nature channel she had seen at home about wolves. A passing male wolf snuck into a pack and had mated with the daughter of the alpha male. But the alpha male discovered the pair on a snowy hillside locked together in their tryst and attacked. The male was able to break free and run away. Delores’ eyes followed him helplessly off the screen and she bawled. She was the ashamed daughter. Maybe she didn’t understand werewolves. Maybe he was only in passing. But he had told her so much, made her believe things she never imagined she would believe. She was a fool. Duped! He wasn’t 147. He was probably 37, she thought bitterly. He probably never disappeared or turned into a wolf. Maybe there was a magic trick. She reached for her notepad and pen and wrote a note to read up on magic tricks, “Disappearing Wolves,” she wrote.

She lied in bed still in her black dress. Mascara all over her face. Lady Goodyear knocked at the door. “Come in,” she said apologetically for slamming the door. She wanted to say go away but she didn’t.

Lady Goodyear smiled sympathetically and sat on the side of her bed. “Delores, is it a boy?”

“Yes.”

“Has this boy gone away?”

“Yes,” Delores replied almost passively. “How did you know?”

 Long pause. “I was only trying to protect you, Delores...”