THE DAMNDEST THING I EVER SAW
Cora talked with Beth for only 2 minutes. She then hung up, turned to me and said, "Ok, we're good. And we're in luck. A truck is heading out, but it's all the way back in the city. Apparently, there's some sort of emergency - but it's a cover to get someone else out. Cora says we can piggy-back. But you have to go there."
The EMT's arrived and they stabilized Lydia. One wanted to know where the Red Centre Van was, but the other said they were probably at the emergency in town. I told him that Lydia had gone up to see the Handmaid, and that as far as we knew the Handmaid had attacked her and fled the house. That last part was not true. She was still locked away.
Once they left, Cora said, "You, sir, need to load Ofjoseph into your car, and head out to the old railway overpass…". She gave the location.
I went in and got Emily. Did I mention that she was prone to being catatonic? She was very resistant to any touching, but it could not be helped, we needed to get her down the stairs to the car in the garage. She had a long journey ahead of her. (In retrospect, it had never occurred to me to simply turn her in. I suspect that Eleanor played big in my decision. She already regarded me as a war criminal - yes, my love thought that. I was going to be damned if I gave her more proof. That's my excuse. Do you buy it?)
The EMT's gave us a good review for the way we handled this. Cora had got a commendation for treating Aunt Lydia in situ. Lydia's survival got our house off the hook - if it had been us trying to kill her, why would we have then given life-saving measures and immediately called the authorities?
The next bit was iffy. As to who had done this nasty deed, we had to blame Emily Malek. No choice. All the while, spiriting her out of the city. We also had to say that after the attack that she'd fled. That after the EMT's had left, I went out to pursue her. That that rather shaky story worked is borne out by my availability these days to write all this up.
Suffice it to say that Aunt Lydia recovered. She was bionic. Better still, she did not turn on our household. Apparently her preexisting hostility towards 'rug-munchers', as she called them, blinded her to anything she might have held us to account over. I did not know what a 'rug-muncher' was, when I asked Cora, she told me to stop being gross. Okay.
The short of it was that Lydia hated gender traitors. It turned out that Emily also hated that Lydia had had her mutilated. What can one say about such a lovely relationship, except: 'Gilead'!
One last thing. Dr. Emily Malek, Ph.D. did get out. Wait for it… with the baby.
Wait a minute, 'with the baby'!? Time to let others fill in the narrative and pray it fell in our favour.
A TWOFER
Yes, with the baby. It turned out, Cora's and Beth's martha network was already in action, by a method I know not how - nor do I want to know. The Waterford house also went into action. The house across the street from them was going up in flames. Such was the night. Yes, across from the Waterfords. Those crazy fuckers. And that night's craziness was not their last, not by a long shot.
The story was that Emily Malek had somehow made it into town, cased the Waterford neighbourhood and somehow lifted Baby Nichole from Serena Joy's loving arms. Emily even got blamed for the arson across the street. The reality was different. The narrative kept evolving. In our favour, no damage to Dr. Malek because she'd got out. Ofjoseph the murderer, they settled on, had gone on a rampage.
But the real story was otherwise. By all that's holy, while I was loading Dr. Malek into the truck at the underpass, who should show up? Offred, from the Waterford house clutching their little baby Nichole. Marthas had made this evening a two-fer. Just so that you know that I'm not making any of this up, Offred handed baby Nichole to Dr. Malek and despite the latter's pleas, did not herself get in. The truck drove off, I drove off, and there she stood alone at night. Offred.
It was the damnedest thing I ever saw.
FOCUSSING THE MIND
As in, one's impending execution has the effect of.
Sitting there with time on my hands, what was left of it anyways. I've not written since handing off Dr. Malek at the truck. So it is a lot was missing from my soon-to-be-ending narrative. I also needed a proofreader. Called her "Dr. Halek" once. No time to fix those mistakes. Many regrets.
Much has happened. For one thing I wound up there. Not exactly a prison. More of a basement with high, barred windows. A heavy locked door with two, sometimes three large Guardians outside. A very serviceable cot. The food is take-out. I mean, who is going to read this?
A good selection of my books were there, some of which I had authored. Who says Gilead is without feeling? "Brink of Extinction", about the fertility crisis. That one was big. "Problematic Populism: Upheaval during the Infertility Crisis and Long-Term Effects on American Prosperity". For the record, I had no hand in choosing the titles. The Title I held out for was, "Women's Work and Coffee Spoons: The Empirical Model of Women's Work Hours." I held out for, and won, keeping 'Coffee Spoons' in that one.
Eleanor had always blamed me for The Colonies. The one thing I tried to defend myself with her about. The Colonies as part of Women's Work can only be inferred from that last book. Serena Joy's writing often got conflated with mine.
I didn't invent Colonies, even as Eleanor blamed me. Come on, no one in their right mind actually puts on to paper that unwomen's labour should not be wasted. That they should at least be sentenced to die cleaning up radioactive waste. Who writes that?
I thought June Osborne would be good for Eleanor. Indeed she was. None of us knew how far Eleanor had descended. Not enough of the good pharmaceuticals to ease her burdens, just enough so that she could take her own life. I can draw a straight line between Eleanor's suicide and me being there in prison. Us playing weekend-radical was not enough to keep her alive. It was enough to condemn me.
I'll be with you soon, my love.
I'm told 86 kids got out. Nine Marthas. On Billy the Bartender's cargojet. Eleanor's masterpieces in the basement disappeared, probably to finance Billy's move to South America. No handmaids mentioned as being on the airplane. No word yet on June Osborne, but I'm not exactly in the loop.
The loop will soon be around my neck.
COMMANDER NICK BLAINE
It looks like these writings of mine just might survive to be read afterall. Son-of-a-bitch.
Maybe even my accounting of first getting involved with the Sons of Jacob, way back when. Let's face it, I still think they are a bunch of rubes, idiotlogs. They almost salvaged Aunt Lydia over the child-trafficking. Nineteen days - they had that old bat in prison for 19 days. I'm talking a real prison, not this cold basement with an otherwise comfortable cot and serviceable blanket.
Blaine told me at the end of that three weeks, she was called to address the Chancery. Battered and bruised - but alive to face my brothers. They tried to humiliate her before sending her back to the Red Centre.
Ha! Humiliate Lydia!? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. They should never have tried, they'd never call Aunts to heel. I mean, that woman was made of iron. According to Blaine, she spewed invective at her captors, my brothers. She had a major deal about June Osborne. Blaine said that in her presence one Commander had called Handmaids, "whores". Through her bloodied eyes and swollen lips she lectured the highest Sons of Jacob in the land on their duty. As well as her vow to make June Osborne pay.
Who would have thought that Fred Waterford's (and then my) handmaid would have amounted to anything? She certainly turned my house upside down. But she was good for Eleanor. Eleanor needed to see subversive stuff up close and personal. Plotting against Gilead was better for her than anti-depressants. After her death I vowed that I would stay behind to clean up the mess I had made. For women. Yes, arriving in Canada with 86 kids would have bought me a lot of exoneration.
I'm an economist of transaction after all.
But the Jaws of State are big. Even in the hands of morons. Maybe especially because.
Now? Blaine is my benefactor. I get the feeling he thought I could keep Osborne alive. If only.
So it is that because of Blaine, you, gentle reader, have the opportunity to read all this. My guess was that he was always linked with my Eye-guy, my frat brother. No way to verify from in here. High Commander's Pryce's ghost loomed everywhere Blaine trod.
Blaine wanted me cleaned up. I didn't think I looked that bad! I'll be moved back to the basement of The Chancery - not to another locked room, but my old office. No upstairs office for me, although Blaine tells me I'm needed. The child-trafficking that Osborne pulled off meant that the Districts have to fast-track their Magdelene Colonies. At least that's what my brother Commanders want.
Not to promote fertility, but to have a more ornate place in which to fuck their Handmaids, while their Wives watched. Make a weekend out of it.
To repeat, there's no real, empirical evidence that any of Gilead's fertility policies had moved the needle, none at all. Commanders bragged about the birthrate within their homes with Handmaids, but then again the Handmaids may be the only truly fertile women in Gilead. The stats were always skewed, dudes, but those morons were ideologs.
They've left science at the door. But what the hell, it rescued me.
Blaine said that Putnam was now firmly in charge of the New Gilead Chancery. That Putnam had assigned locating missing handmaids to him, including Osborne. I sense something going on. Before distinguishing himself in Chicago he'd been a mere humble driver at the Waterfords where Osborne had been in Handmaid service.
Now he's the one searching for her, along with another half-dozen of her colleagues. Makes you go 'hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm'. I get the feeling he wants to find them before Aunt Lydia does.
But I could not know a lot from in there. Blaine said that when my new Commander-duds were delivered, I could go home. Beth and Sienna were gone. Probably dead. Me, I'd stay low at The Chancery. He said that my name was not 'mud' there, not like he'd thought. One Commander said of his own, kidnapped kid, "It's not as if he was mine."
Out of all this I can only think of only one word. "Gilead". So it is I can now focus my mind on other, less time-limited things. Long-term, fertility policy. Economic border security.
In other words, more Gilead bullshit - enough to keep me alive.