Free Jesus Saves by Darcey Steinke

warmed by his groin.
    Like a searchlight turning figure eights over the highway, she beamed her need out, so the numb drivers in their cars would flash to a girl in a diaper tied diagonally under a motel bed. But even if it worked, they'd just shake their heads, dismiss the image as a half-remembered scene from a bad B movie, assume their mind had lost its way with fatigue and was wandering places it shouldn't.
    Her stomach quivered. He hadn't fed her for several days, just a couple swallowfuls of warm Coke. Maybe he'd bring her back some food; anything would do, a package of chowder crackers or an old candy bar. She wanted french fries, the thin kind, sweet and delicate. Saliva gathered between her gums and cheek.
    At the beginning of summer, before camp, she layout in her bathing suit in the backyard, reading and daydreaming, mostly about the boy she'd gone into the closet with during a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. She'd expected a pretend kiss, but once the door closed he pressed into her with such longing she thought she'd faint. In the hottest hour of the afternoon, the bedding flowers wilted and the sun electrified her dream of a bare-chested boy in white satin basketball shorts lying among her stuffed animals, the pink rabbit with the bow tie, the downy yellow duck. She'd heard her glass of Coke tip over, opened her eyes to a deer's thick tongue licking spilled soda out of the grass, antlers covered with fine white hairs and its eyes dark as corn syrup. A dog barked and the deer jerked its head up, stood perfectly still, then ran back into the woods, its white tail moving as expressively as a face. She'd gone into the house and got lettuce from the refrigerator, spread it out on a gray stump just insidethe tree line. The deer came back that day and nearly every other, slowly beginning to rely on the fetid produce. Even now it probably lingered during the day in the woods between her backyard and the highway and at night stepped right up to the sliding glass doors.
    That wasn't the only strange omen. A few days before camp, she'd gotten bored, put a few stale hamburger buns in a zip-lock bag, and walked along the highway guardrail to the park. Mosquitoes hovered like static electricity and the air was so thick with humidity it was hard to breathe. A woman with blonde hair was reading a romance novel and smoking at one of the picnic tables. Her chubby baby lay nearby on a blanket spread out on the grass, wearing only a diaper, its hair wet with sweat. Sandy asked her how old the baby was and the woman said two without even lifting her eyes from the page. Its head was too big, its eyes dull and unfocused. There was something wrong with the baby; it was sick or retarded. She'd walked quickly around the small man-made lake, the dirt path dusted with downy feathers, toward the wooden dock. Opening her bag, she took out the bottom half of a bun and threw it into the water. Mallards swam over to her, but before they got near a huge black carp surfaced, took the bread in its mucusy mouth, and swam backward until she could no longer see its shape in the muddy water.
    Shadowed legs of chairs, the heating panel, the haywire shag carpet might as well be seaweed, rusty cans, and silt-covered stuff found on the bottom of the lake. She pointed her toes, pretending to wind across the room, belly grazing the carpet, her movements as easy and unhampered as air.
    Back and forth she flipped her wrists until the pins and needles came and then the warm rush of blood. She listened, cars onthe highway, a distant TV, and the sweet smell emanating from a spot near the nightstand where someone once tipped over a can of beer. She released her bladder and let pee soak the paper crotch of her diaper. It was hot at first and sort of comforting, but then it turned cool. She shivered, felt goose bumps raise up on the backs of her arms.
    Listening to the motel door shut, to one link rattling against the next as he secured the chain, she flattened her