Untitled.

She looked over at him.

“B…b…b.”

In three strides he was at her side.

“It’s me,” he said putting his arm around her shoulders. She flinched. He pulled back.

“It’s me,” he repeated, “It’s Boone. Boone Wilson.”

Her eyes were glassy and her mouth tightened into a thin straight line. Her narrow back straightened up and she frowned at him.

“I know who you are,” she said in her prissy tight voice.

Boone took a deep breath. She was insufferable. But he could hear Grandma Rose’s voice in his head, all at once strong and soft and sharp and clear. Every iteration of her voice resonated within him.

Matthew 25:40. That’s probably what she would say right now. That’s what she would say right now.

Whatsoever you did for the least of these, you did for me.

Boone looked around the room. There was the door to the hallway. There were two other doors. One was a regular door which most likely led to a bathroom and the other was made to close completely hidden, he could just barely see the seam of it in the paneling and wallpaper.

“This way,” he said grabbing the child’s hand. Surprisingly she followed. Taking small stuttering steps behind him. He couldn’t move too quickly or she might balk.

The hidden door opened onto a dark stairwell. He pulled the girl onto the landing and shut the door behind her. Downstairs was probably best.

“I want to see my mummy,” her voice floated up in the darkness.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. He took a step backwards and tilted his head towards the door. There were no sounds from the other side.

“Why not? She’s upstairs from here.”

Boone took a deep breath. If there was one thing he had learned from Grandma Rose was that telling the truth was difficult and the more difficult it was the more necessary it probably was.

“I think she knew what was happening to you in there.”

There was a sharp intake of breath and then a sound as if all the air had been punched out of the girl’s lungs.

“Why?” her voice was sharp and insistent, “Why do you say that?”

“She brought you the hot chocolate every night. And… and,” his face flushed in the darkness as he finally admitted to himself how long he had known as well. And he had done nothing.

“She brought the clothes in, later, when you were asleep.”

“I want to see her,” there was a change in her voice. It was softer. Pleading.

“It’s not a good idea. She’d just take you back to those people,” even though she could barely see him he waved his hand in the direction of the room from which they had just exited.

A small hand grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly. He stood still. Giving her time. It was a lot to take in.

*****

The opportunity arose at a time when he wasn’t expecting it. He had finished high school with middling grades. Nothing horrible but nothing superlative. Still he knew how to use the world superlative. And a stint in the military. Honorable discharge when completed. Honorable was just a word that meant he never got in trouble. Never made any trouble. He finished his contract and went to college. Community college. He tried a big university and it just didn’t fit.

Fresh out of college he began applying for work which turned out to be challenging for someone with no superlative accomplishments to their name. He wasn’t the best. He knew that. At the same time he hadn’t expected it to take quite so long to find work.

When he heard about the government hiring more guards he applied. He wasn’t expecting to be hired. He assumed there were thousands of applicants with more impressive resumes than his.

The first thing he did though was check to make sure it wasn’t for immigration. He couldn’t do that. Even though his faith was shaky at best he knew there was some bible verse about being kind to strangers and immigrants. Kidnapping people off the streets was just wrong. And he didn’t want to have anything to do with that.

He was glad Grandma Rose had died before the world had turned into what it was. He wasn’t sure what she would make of it. Well, he had to stop himself right there. He did know. She would have been horrified. And sad. And she would have been down on her knees praying every day for the poor and the homeless and the vulnerable. And she would have brought more of the fruit and vegetables from her garden to the food bank. She would have volunteered there or some where else. She would have found more things to donate. She would have taken up knitting or sewing to make things for those who needed them. She would have checked on her neighbors and people she met at the grocery store. She would have done all those things and more because she believed with all her heart that is what Christians were called to do.

He had a clear memory of her standing in front of the television, the tv evangelists shouting away but with the sound off so that only their wild physical performance was noticeable, and in her hand was her beloved bible and she would nod to Boone as he came through the door, coming home after school, and then she would tilt her head towards the kitchen, without stopping her recitation, where a snack and a glass of milk were waiting for him on the table. Usually he grabbed the snack and the milk, there was a small table against the wall in the living room with a chair next to it where he could sit and watch, the only place in the living room he was allowed to eat, carefully of course, and went to watch her.

She held up her bible and read. Often she would begin with Matthew five and when she got to verse twenty she would pause, dramatically Boone often thought but never would he say it aloud, and her voice would get louder until she was almost shouting.

“For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven!”

At the time he wasn’t sure exactly what Grandma Rose thought she was doing when she shouted bible verses at the tv evangelists. When he got older he asked her. She looked at him for a moment and then nodded.

“It a stupid thing. It was only for my own comfort. You know I always said the devil can quote the bible just as easy as a preacher. And those tv preachers, they’re the devil’s voice box. All that prosperity, all that making sure the world hates you. It’s all backwards. They want the prize and the reassurance that their doing God’s work without doing the work. You can’t get any lazier than that.”

She paused for a moment and then,

“I suppose it’s just a way of getting my frustration out. It helped me.”

Afterward reading the bible at the tv, they would sit down at the kitchen table and say a prayer. Grandma Rose always began with Matthew 18:20.

“For where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.”

Which is why she never went to church. Well at least one of the reasons she gave. The others involved how well the devil could quote the bible and something else about false prophets and such. Boone didn’t really care. All it meant to him was that he had a free day to play on the weekend. Most of his friends had to go to church while he was playing in the creek or, after all his homework was done to Grandma Rose’s satisfaction, playing a video game.

When there was the huge scare about video games making kids more violent Grandma Rose didn’t ban them even though Boone thought she might. No, she sat down with him and picked up a controller and asked him to teach her how to play. And then she played. And when it was over she stood up and walked around the house for while. Then she came back and told him he could play when his homework was finished but he had to balance it with playing outside as well.

When he got the courage he asked her about that. What was she thinking when she walked around.

“I was checking to see if it made me more violent. It didn’t. It did make me feel awake and alert in a way I hadn’t in a long time. You know,” she continued, “When you’re at school I often play. At first it was just to make sure it wasn’t a mistake that first time. To make sure it really wasn’t making you violent. But now it’s because I enjoy it. I play every once in a while. A few times a week.”

Remembering this moment, he could still feel his mouth hanging open. His eyes widening. He hadn’t known what to say but he remembered shaking his head. Finally he was able to ask her what games she liked. They talked about games for a while and every once in a while after that he noticed the controller hadn’t been put back in quite the same place as it had when he last played. It was a comfort to him, knowing his Grandma Rose played the same video games he played.  

It took him a long time to apply for the job. And even longer to think about it once while he went through the vetting process. It was simple enough. Guarding doors within the White House. Just standing outside a door. Being assigned to one door. Not even guarding people.

In the end he took it. It would have been ridiculous not to. More out of curiosity than anything else. He had never been inside the White House even through he had heard that people could take tours. He wanted to see what it was like.

The first day he actually went into the White House his heart beat so fast as he was passing through security he thought he might be having a heart attack. He met his boss and his boss’s boss and then he met the president. He was shown the door he would have to guard. It had been several weeks of training before reaching this point. Now he was in place.

It was boring. For the most part the door he was standing in front of opened to an empty room. And the hall he was standing in was empty. He didn’t understand the reason for having a guard in front of any empty room in an empty hallway. Although he supposed there could be other entrances through which someone could enter the room that were not being guarded.

To pass the time he thought of many things. Sometimes he replayed movies in his mind that he loved. Sometimes he repeated his Grandma Rose’s favorite bible verses. Sometimes he mentally played through video games he hadn’t played in a long time, trying to remember the parts he hadn’t liked as much, giving much time to the sections he enjoyed the most.

He thought it would just continue like that for the rest of his employment. But something changed. He didn’t know the chain of events that happened to bring around the change. But one day when he arrived his boss told him he wasn’t going to guard the empty hallway anymore. He was being moved.

His new post was in a shorter hallway. Standing in front of a solid door which opened onto a conference room. This hallway was carpeted and a couple doorways away was a large sitting room.

There were more people here. Hurrying down the hallway. Busy in their work. Not looking at him. He kept his eyes focused on the wall across from where he stood but there was a lot you would see when you exercised your peripheral vision.

Although there were more people here the job was just as boring. He just stood in a hallway guarding a door. No one ever wanted to enter through the door and no one ever exited through it. At least not while he was standing there.

The day came when his boss asked him if he could work a night shift. Of course he said yes. And then another. And then it was several weeks and he found himself at work all the time. He had been given a small cot to sleep on out of the way and was shown which bathroom he could use. His hours lengthened.

The people changed around him as well. The Big Rat was there. He didn’t know why he had started calling him the Big Rat. There was something about the cartoonish look of his face when he tried to smile. It made Boone wonder if the Big Rat had ever had a genuine smile in his entire life. The stretch of his lips wide across his face made Boone think of a cartoon rat. His eyes crinkled like they were supposed to but that couldn’t hide the deadness of them.

And then there was the little rat. He actually hadn’t seen the little rat very often. And when he did he was always heading somewhere. Boone had never spoken to him at all. But when things changed he saw the little rat quite often.

Because they began having meetings in the room he was guarding.

Boone was caught off guard when the first of them showed up. In all his time there no one had ever wanted to use a room that he guarded. The first was a thin woman with hair colored too dark for her face. She swayed slightly in front of him. When she tilted in his direction the fumes of her breath washed over his face. He felt intoxicated just standing next to her.

“Can I help you ma’am.”

“Open the…the…that.”

“The door ma’am?”

“Fu…fuct. Of course the… the door.”

Smartly he pushed the door open and stepped to the side. She went in. He allowed himself a moment to look around the room as if he was checking for safety breaches but really he just wanted to know what she was doing. When he turned his head back towards the hall the little rat was passing by him into the room. Then one by one more and more came in to the room and finally the Big Rat himself was there.

“Get out,” the little rat said waving at him.

“Noooo,” the Big Rat crooned, “Let him stay. He can hear. We’ve got the best on the job…”

The Big Rat continued rambling while the little rat gave one sharp nod and sat down.

Boone closed the door and stood with his back to it. He stared at the wall opposite. It was the first of many meetings he was allowed to witness. He wasn’t sure why. Although it was true that he never left the building any more. And they had taken his phone away when he first arrived so he had no way to contact anyone. He wasn’t even sure he knew how to get out of the building.

Several times a week he stood in on the meetings. And over time a pattern developed. The Big Rat started the meetings, talking without allowing anyone else to say anything, but, intermittently at first and then consistently, he began to lose focus. When that happened his eyes dimmed and a tiny spill of drool slid down his chin. As soon as that happened, as if he had been waiting for it, the little rat picked up his phone, and a couple minutes later guards knocked on the door. They hefted the Big Rat up and shuffle him out of the room. The little rat looked at Boone with a smarmy smile on his face and told him to shut the door behind him. Boone was never sure if he was supposed to keep guarding the door after that or not. But no one told him not to so he stood waiting until the door opened and then he would jump to the side and let them out.

The real reason he called him little rat was because one evening when Boone was heading towards his cot for the night he heard the little rat talking in the sitting room. He paused. He wasn’t sure why. There wasn’t anyone else in the hallway and the voice he heard had startled him. Not just because he hadn’t expected it.

“Just wait,” the voice said, “it won’t be long now. And they think HE’S vindictive. They haven’t seen anything yet. And then it will all be mine. Mine mine mine mine mine.”

It was such a perfect imitation of what a cartoon villain would say that Boone had an impeccable image of a tiny rat rubbing its hands together and twitching its whiskers with evil laughter. After that he was always little rat.

And so it continued.

He didn’t think much about it when an older woman, fussy and nervous brought in her daughter. The daughter couldn’t have been more than thirteen. She had flat blonde hair and a round face with a pinched mouth. Her mother fluttered around her. They came in once and then were at almost every meeting.

Boone couldn’t imagine why she was there until one night the television was turned on in the room next to where he slept and he saw a news briefing. The girl, barely tall enough to look over the podium, stood in front of the blue white house sign and several American flags.

Usually he didn’t watch tv at night. But this time he stopped and waited. The girl was reading from a paper, listing all the accomplishments the Big Rat had supposedly achieved. As far as Boone understood he hadn’t actually done any of them. He could hear the mumbled voice of a reporter and the girl looked towards group in front of her and grimaced.

“That’s a stupid question,” she said, her thin hard voice reminding him of one particular kid from high school whom no one liked. He wondered why anyone thought it was a good idea to have a child give the news briefing.

The months moved on. Boone stood by different doors but all of them in the same hallway. And there seemed to be more and more people staying there. One of the secretaries took to walking around after hours shirtless, flexing his muscles and showing off his tattoos. He reminded Boone of kids from high school, and even some in the military whose confidence only rested on their exterior, they had no internal guide lights or values, they were hollow, dried out inside even though they were still so young. They were able to recite things as if they believed them, but it was only part of their façade.

More than once Boone stood at his door and wondered, what are all these people doing here?

The little rat showed up more and more. Boone could hear his voice coming from different rooms. If he thought he was alone he would talk out loud to himself, reiterating the same themes, vindication, exploitation, revelation. Boone had a feeling the little rat was only waiting now, waiting for the Big Rat to die so that he could slide into his place.

He often saw the girl’s mother scurrying around, carrying limp bundles of clothing and sometimes a tray of drinks. She paraded her daughter through the hallway each night, into a doorway and then returned later with a hot chocolate on a tray. At first Boone didn’t think anything of it. He had never been through that doorway and didn’t know what was there, but he guessed it led to bedrooms.

It must have been a couple weeks or so after the girl moved in that the Big Rat began showing up at night. He shuffled along and grimaced at Boone as he passed by. It took a moment before Boone realized it was supposed to be an expression of inclusion. A wink and a smile. It made Boone feel vaguely ill.

He showed up only after the mother had brought the hot chocolate through the doorway to her daughter. After she left with the empty mug. And then the Big Rat shuffled through the doorway, contorting his face into an approximation of human expressions. Boone shifted at his post. It was uncomfortable just standing.

His attention was diverted by the tattooed secretary flexing his way past and then backing up.

“So,” he said giving Boone a once over, “Do you think he’d let me come in there with him?”

“Excuse me sir?”

“Do you I could have a private audience with him? Do you think he’d let me?” A flicker of hope fled across his face making him look more like a boy than a man. He stepped closer to Boone. The fumes of his breath wafted over Boone’s face. He breathed carefully through his nose.

“I.. I’d just stay for a minute. I just want to be next to him. You know. Not in a homo way. But in a respectful way.”

Boone looked at the man. It was hard to call him a man. Like this he looked like a boy. His eyes shining and hopeful.

“I’m sorry sir. No one is allowed in.”

The tattooed boy’s face fell for just a second and then he tightened it up. He pumped a fist in the air and flexed his way down the hall. 

“You’re a doob. A fucking doob!” he shouted at Boone from down the hallway. A giggle rose in Boone’s throat. He coughed discreetly. He could hear Grandma Rose’s voice clearly in his mind saying, well now, aren’t you a big boy.

Several nights passed. The mother ushering her daughter in every night. Most of the time the Big Rat following after the hot chocolate was taken out. Boone began thinking. He had already been looking for opportunities even before he realized what he was doing. He wanted, he needed, to get the girl on her own. Tell her not to drink the hot chocolate. But she was always surrounded by her fluttering mother. Her mother, who, Boone suspected, had to know what was happening. Sometimes she even brought in different clothes after removing the empty hot chocolate mug. Flimsy things. Things a child shouldn’t be wearing.

This wasn’t right. He didn’t need Grandma Rose to tell him that. There was something rotten about this whole place. Adults who acted like children. Children being forced to act like adults. Drunken secretaries and vindictive little rats. He wished he had never applied for the job.

But here he was. And he couldn’t turn away. He had knowledge and if there was one thing Grandma Rose taught him was that knowledge was responsibility. He couldn’t turned away. That would be leaving the girl in this swamp. To fend for herself.

Grandma Rose had always called Reagan a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She said he was like the Pharisees who had the outward appearance of righteousness but who were dead inside. But these people. There were no costumes here. They weren’t trying to hide who they were. The whole basket was rotten, apples and woven wood alike.

The opportunity came when he wasn’t expecting it. So much so that he almost didn’t take it. A still small voice. He almost didn’t hear it. He almost didn’t listen.

He was standing outside the door of the conference room. The Big Rat had already been taken away. The girl came running down the hallway and stopped in front of him.

“Open the door you have to let me in.”

Boone already had his hand on the door knob. But then he looked down at her. She was frowning at him. Her pinched face stared up at him, her chin lifted. He felt no pity for her. She was just a child. He glanced up and down the hallway. She stamped her foot and opened her mouth to speak again.

“Don’t drink the hot chocolate,” he said.

“What? Why?”

“It might be drugged.”

“Oh,” she tossed her hair and laughed, “I know. My mummy says it’s to help me sleep. Because I have an important job. Not like you.”

Boone took a deep breath, “It’s more than that. It’s not safe for you.”

“What do you mean? You’re not making any sense. Mummy says this is the safest place in the world. We’re protected here.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “You’re not even supposed to talk to me.”

“Who told you that?”

“I just know it.”

“That’s not true,” and all at once Boone realized he had never been told not to talk to anyone. It wasn’t in any of the information he had been given.

“Well I don’t want you to talk to me.”

“Just one night. Don’t drink the hot chocolate.”

The girl sniffed and looked at the door. Boone pushed it open for her and watched from the corner of his eye as she flounced through.

A moment later there was a knocked on the door. Boone opened it. The girl stood there. Her lower lip trembling. Her eyes watery. She marched out without looking at him. As he closed the door Boone caught a glimpse of the little rat, his smarmy smile plastered on his face. 

He waited. He wasn’t sure if he should try again. He didn’t think she would listen to him. And for several nights it seemed she didn’t. Then there was a night when he heard raised voices from behind the door. He couldn’t hear what was being said, their voices were muffled. But it sounded like the mother’s voice. He stood straight and impassive when she fluttered out of the room, an empty hot chocolate mug on the tray. His heart sank.

Every night Boone waited and watched. Hoping the girl wouldn’t drink the hot chocolate. He waited so long he thought it would never happen. He began to imagine other scenarios where he could get the girl out of there.

He had been in the middle of one of these scenes in his head when the scream happened. He jumped and looked up and down the hallway. It had been empty for an hour or so. The Big Rat had stumbled his way through the door after the mother had fluttered her way out of the room. The hot chocolate mug had been empty.

 No one came running. No one seemed to have heard the scream. Boone stepped away from his post and leaned his head against the door. There was a thump and then silence. Slowly he turned the handle and pushed the door open.

*****

He didn’t know what he was going to do with the child. She cried and she yelled at him and she cried again. After an interminable time sneaking through hallways and across cement gardens, climbing fences and ducking through dark streets, they paused.

“This is your fault,” she said, wiping tears across her face. Dried blood cracked on her fingers, “None of this would have happened… .” She didn’t continue.

“Do you have any other relatives?”

The girl shook her head and sniffed, “It was just me and mummy.”

Boone nodded. He wished, more than he had ever wished, that his Grandma Rose was still alive. She would know exactly what to do.

He had a clear memory of Grandma Rose taking in people who needed help. It had happened so many times when he was growing up. He’d come home from school and someone new was sitting on the couch. Grandma Rose would say they needed a place to stay for a night or two. And there would be something special in the oven. A cake or a stew. Something delicious. And then she would make sure they felt safe using the shower and while they were in there she would get their blankets ready and pillows. It’s funny now that he thought about it, how much of helping others was just making them comfortable.

He looked down at the skinny girl, almost swaying with exhaustion in front of him. He looked up and around at the world.