Julianna Baggott

Hillary Rodham Clinton: A Fairy Tale with Coyotes

Thank you. Thank you all…. Thank you all very much.... Thank you, my friends.... Thank you, thank you so very much for being…. I love you all too. On behalf of our country… built… vast…. unruly. This is painful and it will be for a long time, but… remember this… America… big-hearted nation, divided… America… accept this….

The bedroom is kept so dark that it’s hard to tell if it’s night or day. No light bleeds through the thin edges of the blinds so it must be night. Hillary is still fevered. This is the second day.

…every corner of our country… the American dream is….

Which speech is this?

This is a game that her mind likes to play. She’s haunted by the memorization of so many rows of ink. Tidy soldiers all lined up. They marched out of her mouth. Now ghost battalions run drills, looping through her mind.

And so we need—we need you women…. Now, I—I know… that glass ceiling. And —and to all the little girls who are watching….

She remembers the speeches with all of these fissures. Words slip through, get lost. Something new emerges. A vivid redaction. Sometimes it’s what she wishes she could have said.  

My friends… weary…. There is… work and this chance…. All of you, God… you and… God… America.

Now she recognizes it. Her concession speech. Even with the lost words, even though she only gave it once, she knows it well. It’s an easy one to spot, so tinged with grief.

She starts coughing. It cinches her ribs like an old-world corset made of whale bone. She has some version of the flu. Not the actual flu. The test—that small feathery instrument to swab her nostrils—came back negative. She hates this particular cough. It’s an elderly person’s cough, not unlike her mother’s jags. It makes her feel frail and old. She inches up, props pillows behind her back, and sips water.

The wind kicks up outside. The windows rattle percussively. The storm. She’d nearly forgotten. She wonders if it’s already started to snow. She picks up her glasses from the bedside table and pats around the sheets for her cell phone.

There’s a text from Chelsea. She wants to come out and help.

Stay in the city, she texts her daughter. I’m fine. I don’t get sick. It’s an old family joke. She’s never been allowed to get sick. Your dad can help if I need him. She can call Bill, if necessary. He’s just next door in what they call Chelsea’s house, though she’s raising her kids in the city. She can call Bill anytime. 

She won’t.

Because being sick now, after it all, is an act of rebellion. She’s been given her body back. She can be fetid and real. She can have systems that work and sometimes fail to work. It’s a kind of control. She’s suddenly too hot. She kicks off the sheets, remembering the tarmac of an Arkansas airport, mid-summer. Bill had arranged for Dotty to pick them up—her blue dress, her sharp beauty. Hillary knew immediately that Dotty and Bill had been together. She could sense this on a cellular level. And there Hillary was in her glasses and ill-fitting clothes, looking more like Bill’s grandmother Edith, the steadfast rudder of the family. Hillary had gone sour in the Arkansas heat.

She had to be someone else for so long, but now she can wear soft clothes, a cardigan, her old thick glasses: a reclamation. The upsides of failure. 

And, just like that, she’s chilled. The sheets are cold. Her joints ache. People of all ages get sick; why does this feel like a rehearsal for death?

We are the same future spent squandered endured failed. Another speech arrives, chopped up with so many words dropped and now compressed. She can’t recall the interstitial tissue that held it together. It’s new. My need to remember is really the air. It comes to you bound up in duty love. You made me. You became part of mine.

I will always remember. I will always remember. I will always remember. I will always be lost, dear friend. Steadfast heart eroded. We lost a wing… I will always remember… I will always remember … She knows this one. It’s from the DNC address, 2016. The litany had a nice rhythm, a canter, a build-up. She remembers the crowd; there was so much applause she could barely speak.

The edges of the curtains glow, ever so slightly. But it’s not the sun. The motion detector has gone off in the backyard. They’re sensitive like that. Secret Service will be on top of it.

Hillary coughs. Clenching like a fist in her chest. How long will this go on? She should take Tylenol. She’s too tired to get up again. Her eyes are burning. She closes them. The heating system pings lightly and it’s as if she feels each ping in her joints—an ache that flares in her elbow, her back, a hip. Her body, it’s a lit-up map of suffering.

The snow must be heavy by now. It was supposed to sweep in overnight. The storm has provided good cover. She canceled tomorrow’s events due to inclement weather. The others were vaguely addressed—an unavoidable conflict has arisen.

I don’t get sick.

Maybe the snow has set off the motion detectors. It’s happened before, a few winters back, and they had it fixed. Her rest is fitful. The air vibrates. It’s churring. Like when the songs of certain birds seem stuck in their throats.

And she’s inside of the bird’s throat. She’s the stuck song.

She keeps waking from sleep. The aches lift her toward wakefulness. Up and up. She feels a bit breathless.

The wind. That’s what’s making the room shudder. The winter snow storm is going full bore. The windows keep rumbling. A wind this fierce could only have been born in the Grand Prairie. She’s seen so much farmland. So many wheat fields, rippling and bowing. How fiercely the wind rattles corn husks. How deafening corn husks can be, the chorus of them.

Wind rummages through this country. Stirring us up. Making what’s dead feel very much alive. The wind is the nation’s voice. And now, prairie wind is in her own chest, a wheeze in her lungs. The country within her body. The country rooted—and rotting?—within her. And then a hum. A hum she knows. It’s never too far.

Now she hears it–the windy breath born from the Grand Prairie. It had been waiting for release. The wind-box—the larynx of the country—choose its word. It wasn’t airy after all.

Mon-i-ca.

Mon-i-ca, Mon-i-ca, Mon-i-ca.

Hillary is back at the podium. Independence Hall. Mon-i-ca. One lone voice then others join in. Is it staged? Or has it arched up from the earth itself, charging into the throats, and being released into the air, all of these detonations….

Mon-i-ca, Mon-i-ca. 

She whispers her own name to erase it. But Hillary happens so quickly when said, most of it lighting up the tip of the tongue. Prudish.

 “Monica,” she says. “Monica.” It starts on the lips and touches the roof of the mouth and clicks in the back of the throat.

I didn’t deserve it. This is what she wants people to know. Despite what everyone has said of Hillary, of her ambition and greed, she’s always wanted to do good. She’s failed. She’s failed in the most obvious of ways. Be more… human. What do you do with that?

I am human, Hillary thinks. I’m so deeply fucking human.

This is my body zipped and buttoned into a pantsuit. This is my laugh. This is my midwestern voice. This is what you call shrill, over and over again.

This is my love for my husband. You want it to be simple. It’s not.

This is my face when I’ve been humiliated on the world’s stage. Don’t you see the blunt force trauma beneath the surface? I’m trapped inside of myself.

How can I be more human if you refuse to see my humanity?

This is my smile. If it looks pained and forced, then that is my humanity.

All this time, you’ve wanted me to break down. Would that allow you all to express your pain? Is that what I should be for you?

I’m just part of the story now. I’m just one of the scars. We’ll hide them under some sleeves and march on.

Or what?

Do you want me to be your gravedigger, America? Do you want me to lug your dead body to that Grand Prairie and bury you deep?

You hate me so much? You have no idea how much I hate you.

And love you.

I’m not your mother.

I won’t be your gravedigger.

And I’m not your scar.

She’s exhausted. How many times does she have to go over this? She has more. She’s about to start over. Her brain knows this loop. Outrage can be a comfort.

But then she hears growling. It comes from the back yard. Some small vicious animal…. Low and deep, it sharpens quickly into a bark. It’s coming from the backyard. 

A coyote.

Ah, Chappaqua and the endless debate over what to do with the coyotes.

She thinks of the coyotes wanting out of the storm, into the house…. A houseful of coyotes.

Come and get me. Is that what you want? To tear me up piece by piece?

She rips off the blankets. Sits on the edge of the bed. Her head feels heavy. She puts on her glasses, gets to her feet and shuffles to the window that looks out on the backyard.

Furious snow, at a sharp slant. Brightened by the floodlights, the flakes seem to glow. Snow is filling the yard. Covering everything.

She doesn’t mind snow. She grew up with it. But this snow feels like it’s suffocating the yard, the house.  

The coyotes—there’s more than one. Caught in the spotlight, their bodies are bright like cancerous clouds on an x-ray.

Growling, barking, circling something. 

Where’s the secret service?

Where’s Bill?

Why do I have to take care of everything myself?

She opens the window. The wind rips in. Freezing. The snow flitting around wildly—as if all it wanted was to be inside of the house, too. It melts on the sill, in the warm air, suicidally.

Her glasses fog.

She shouts from the window. “Knock it off!” And she feels like her father, shouting at his family from his armchair.

She takes off her glasses and wipes them on the edge of her night shirt. When she slips them back on, she can see—ever so briefly—that the coyotes have cornered a small animal. Blood on the snow.

She should go back to bed. She knows this. She should sleep this fever off.

But there’s something about the snow and the wind and the coyotes and the blood. Something she can’t ignore.

She feels like this is a test. America has its eyes on her when she’s alone. It watches her. 

Or is that her father?

Or God?

She wants to save someone, some thing. Her faith requires it. John Wesley’s words ring, beating in her head like some kind of pneumatic pump. “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, as long as ever you can.“

All the means. If she’s failed, it was because of this bit. She made compromises. She was vicious. She fought back. You can’t do all the good you can if you don’t survive.

But it’s the last part—as long as ever you can—that seems to linger in her mouth. Has she been talking to herself? Is she saying these things aloud—into the wind, into the ferocious snow?

What if it’s a baby in the snow, about to be gutted by the coyotes? This is the fever talking. Of course it isn’t a baby. A baby couldn’t wander out in a storm, couldn’t find her way in through the fence.

It’s a smaller animal. That’s all.

This is what animals do to each other.

We’re all animals.

If she’s realized one thing over the last couple of years, it’s this: humans are far more primal than she’d ever assumed. Far more brutal. Far more fear-based and ugly.

She leaves the window open. “You want in?” she says to the snow. “You want to die here? Come in.” 

She puts on her bathrobe and heads downstairs, gripping the railing tightly. Don’t fall. Don’t die at the foot of the stairs.

The coyotes are still barking and yowling. So is the wind.

She pulls her puffy, long down coat from the closet. She slips her bare feet into thick-lined, rubbery snow boots. Her pajama pants bunch at her knees. She tightens the coat’s belt but doesn’t bother with the zipper. She holds core heat. The fever is its own engine. It propels her like the airplanes over her childhood home, drumming the sky.

She works the security system at the back door then pushes it open and, without pause, steps into the yard. The snow is at least six inches deep and still coming down hard. But it’s soft and dry—so dry that when the wind blows just right, it pushes snow up from the ground in large gusting swirls, like a dust storm. Like there’s nothing holding the world together.

The coyotes have not noticed her—or they have and don’t care. There are three of them. Hadn’t there only been two before? One of the three is smaller than the others, maybe not yet fully grown.

She can’t see the animal they’re circling. Some of the blood has turned pink, dispersed by the snow. Some of it is fresh, bright and loud.

She’s read the notices on what to do if you encounter a coyote. Be big and loud, throw your arms around. Shout and clap.

Do not show fear. Don’t turn and run.

“Hey!” she shouts. “What are you doing? Get out of here!” She claps her hands. The coat stretches tightly across her back, cuffing her arms. “Git! Git!” She sounds like an old farmer and it feels good. “Git!”

The coyotes lift their heads, nearly in unison. They sniff the air, trying to catch her scent. And what would she smell like to them? Old, yes. But there would also be the sickly sweet scent of illness. She’s sweat through these pajamas, the sheets. She remembers seeing Meryl Streep after she won an Oscar. She took a moment to pick at her gown, muttering as an aside, “I smell like a camel.”

One of the coyotes, the biggest, the alpha, she presumes, edges away from the prey and, with a few sideways steps, seems suddenly closer to her. This isn’t what’s supposed to happen. She lifts her arms again. “Leave that thing alone!” she shouts. “Get out of here!”

The coyote inches forward again. 

“Ma’am!” It’s a man’s voice, behind her. Not one she recognizes. She turns. He’s a young agent. The new one she met last week? “What is it?” she asks. “Where’s Vickie?” Vickie often works nights.

“Ma’am, we are aware of the situation and we’re monitoring it. Vickie’s out tonight.” He looks like he’s from another era. Short hair, suit, heavy dark jacket. But it’s not just his appearance. Deep down, he seems like he identifies as 1954, aesthetically.  

“You realize that I’m allowed to move around at will, right?”

“Please walk very slowly back to the house, ma’am.”

“Don’t call me ma’am.” All the ma’aming. She’s not his elderly auntie or mother. She wants to yell at the agent to leave her alone. The secret service has made her feel penned, childish, and now doddering. They’ll turn on you, the ones duty-bound to protect you. Never let them think they know you. The rules for the Secret Service aren’t unlike the rules for coyotes. Be erratic and unpredictable. Don’t let them get close.

“This is a serious situation. And I’m going to have to ask you once again to move back into the house. For your own safety.” He glances behind her and pulls out his gun. He takes aim—at her.

No, not at her.

Behind her. 

One of the coyote’s growls is closer still. She spins and the snow spins with her. The largest coyote is only a few feet from her now. So close she can see its teeth, its bared muzzle. The snow collects on its coat. 

She glances at the other two. Now she can see that the smaller one isn’t a coyote at all. It’s some suburban dog in a thick brown coat. It’s taken up with the pack. Sometimes the coyotes kill pet dogs, she knows this. But sometimes they enlist them?

The coyote eyes her and the agent, shifting its gaze between them.

But Hillary looks past the coyote to the creature bleeding in the snow. She takes a few clumsy steps. She’s dizzy. The snow is deep and windswept and disorienting.

With the kid here, she feels safe—safe enough to ignore his warning. She staggers forward. She came to save the creature being attacked. She doesn’t even know what it is. Her glasses are dotted with droplets. The snow cold and wet on her face. It stings.

“Please,” the agent says. “I’m asking you to move back into the house or I will have to shoot.”

“Shoot?” Hillary says, still walking. “Shoot me?”

“No,” the agent says, his voice disturbingly calm. “The coyote.”

A gunshot on Clinton property? It will draw the cops. It will dominate the news cycle. She’ll have to explain why she was out of the house in the storm. Or lie about it. She’ll be despised by animal rights groups. “Hell’s bells! Don’t do that.”

The bleeding animal lets out a strange noise—something from the back of its throat. It twitches, twists and stands.

It’s a cat. Still young, not full grown. A cat with a purple tail. She imagines delinquents have spray-painted it. Delinquents in Chappaqua? They’d hardly make the effort. How far has this cat traveled? How did it get here in a storm?

As she takes another step, so close she could reach out and touch the cat, the coyote growls louder and lunges. It startles her and she lurches away from it, falling to one knee.

The agent doesn’t shoot. He runs at the coyote, full speed, throwing himself between the coyote and Hillary. He dusts up snow—a cloud of it—and the coyotes run back toward the opening of the gate, which must be unlocked.

The cat gets its bearings and darts off.

Only the suburban dog has stayed. It circled, running away and then back again. It’s just a few feet away from Hillary. Fur up on the back of its neck, it sniffs the air and growls. She must look fragile, wounded. The dog senses weakness.

The agent turns. He lifts his gun again.

“Put it away,” Hillary says, her voice is steady now. She stares at the dog. She puts her hands out, palms up. “It’s okay,” she says gently. “Go home now. Go on.”

The dog starts to back off. It looks toward the spot in the fence where the coyotes disappeared. But doesn’t move.

Then Hillary starts coughing. Her breath feels short and labored. With each deep quick inhalation, snow is drawn into her mouth. The dog lunges at her. It’s so fast that she barely has time to brace. Its teeth puncture her puffy down coat, her pajamas, and bite into the meat of her calf. It wags its head. Down low on its haunches, it drags her forward a few inches. The pain is a shock, but she barely registers it because she’s so flooded with fear.

This dog will tear her to pieces. She imagines her body not as her body chopped and scattered. Her body as the images of her body as seen on televisions all over the world. That body being shredded. Each piece of her floating off, drifting and whirling away like so much snow.

The dog won’t release her.

But the agent is there. His body is on top of the dog. She hears the grunts of his breath. The dog’s growl. The mix of utterances, guttural and quick—Mon-i-ca, Mon-i-ca. She’s sure that’s what she’s heard.

Then the dog lets go, whips away, skidding out from under the agent. It bolts for the fence and is gone.

Hillary grabs the wound. She feels the warm gush of blood through her fingers.

The agent kneels next to her. He’s breathless. “We have to staunch the blood,” he says. “We have to get you back inside.”

Her instinct is to say no. She’s fine. But she isn’t fine. She should be in bed. She has a fever. She’s bleeding in the snow. And the cat will likely die out in the woods. She nods and the agent takes her arm, puts it over his shoulder. He positions himself so that he can help her up, taking much of her weight. He eases her to her feet.

The agent is talking to back-up. The dog could be rabid. They’ll have to hunt it down. But she knows that the dog will be impossible to find. It’s done its damage. It’s long gone. She’ll have to take a series of shots, right? An inoculation against a suburban dog that may have gone feral. None of this feels real. She cuffs the neck of her coat with one fist. She’s chilled now. She’s shaking. “I’ve got a fever,” she tells the agent.

“I know,” he says. “It’s going to be alright.”

She stops walking for a moment. The snow has eased. It finds updrafts, rises, and then falls. It’s not saying a word. Warm air over land rises. Cooler air over water is drawn in to fill the space. Wind is air made of molecules, trading places. America isn’t speaking. It has no singular voice. It certainly would never agree on one word. The truth is far simpler. She is an old woman being helped across her back yard, leaving a trail of blood in snow.

Kelli Russell Agodon