“What’s going to happen to us, Jabil?”
He studies my face, as if resigned to whatever is about to befall. “I don’t know, Leora,” he says, and I am not sure if he is only speaking about the community or also about him and me.
I leave Jabil to his consuming work and pass through the gap in the fence. The horses and mules paw the earth, their bridles filling the air with a cheerful jingle contrasting our own alarm. Animals and humans alike sense an innate need to escape the fire that has covered the sky with a dense smog of orange-tinged light.
Grossmammi Eunice is standing at the edge of the group with my brother and sister. Anna’s face is splotched from crying, the same as mine whenever I’m upset. Seth reminds me of one of the horses, resentful of the restraining bridle of Grossmammi’s skinny arm.
I step closer to them. Grossmammi lets go of Seth, and as if her fingers are compensating for her inability to see, she touches my face, my shoulder, and then Colton, who is pulling my kapp strings. “Where’s Sal?” she asks.
“She’ll be back. Can you take Colton a minute? It’s too complicated to explain.”
She accepts Colton, pressing a kiss to his cheek. He snuggles against her, as accepting of love as any oblivious kind. “Stay close,” she warns. “We’re leaving with the next wagonload.”
“I will, but I have to do something first.”
Tension radiates from my fractured family with a palpable warmth, and yet Grossmammi nods, giving me, her eldest grandchild, the freedom to execute my choices and mistakes, which—as contrary as it is—makes me want to stay. But I cannot. Colton begins to rutsch in her arms. Grossmammi attempts to calm him by offering him a knuckle to suck. Using her distraction to my advantage, I disappear into the crowd before she or Seth ask what I have to do.
Pebbles fling behind my heels as I hurry down the lane toward the perimeter, which appears more like a torch than an obstruction, and yet it continues to stand. But for how long? I scan every passing face. Though I spot Charlie and Sean in the distance—supporting Henri between them—Moses is nowhere to be found. I am nearly to Field to Table when someone steps from the shadow cast by the awning. “Leora.” I jump back at the voice and, by the light of the perimeter fire, see a man reaching out for me.
I do not know if I gasp aloud or only in my mind. I remain immobilized, as drained of my lifeblood as the person’s skin appears. He walks toward me, tentative, as if afraid to spook a wild animal. Words will not come. Breath will not come. I am living a nightmare from which I can never awaken and during which I can never scream. The snapshots from our conjoined lives, which filtered through my mind as I stood beside the cellar, are conflicted by reality. My vadder. I can smell the smoke lacing his clothing and the acerbic odor of his skin and hair. His eyes—the same shape and shade as mine—are the only thing about him that remains unchanged.
“What are you doing?” My question sounds more like an accusation.
“I came here to help. I came here to . . . to come home.”
Eyes burning, I watch a portion of the perimeter collapse. I think of the night I wedged Anna’s bloodied nightgown down into the stove, vowing to protect and avenge her honor, no matter the personal cost. I think of Mamm pressing my hand while she lay on the couch and telling me to love someone who won’t make me cry. Even Seth is vulnerable, as he’s longing for a father figure, like Moses, so that he might imitate his life. Father or not, I won’t allow this man to come back to our home until he’s the kind of man our family deserves.
“Do you know that Mamm’s dead?” I ask him. “Because you broke her heart? That I’ve been trying to keep our family together while you’ve been acting like you don’t have one?”
I would think it impossible for him to turn paler if I did not witness the transition with my own eyes. He looks away, his features clenched with pain. “I would’ve never—”
I interrupt, “Don’t tell me you would’ve never left if you’d known she would die. All that matters is that you did.”
“I know that. I know. I’d just like the chance to come home. I won’t mess up this time.”
“Well. As you can see—” I gesture to the community’s vacant acreage—“our home is what we are in the process of fleeing. You can only come back to us when you’re well.”
He nods, but I don’t believe him. Despite the earlier conviction in his voice, I’m not sure he believes himself. Another portion of the wall topples, sending a miasma of ash and sparks high into the air. He touches my arm, and I recoil, my mind not comprehending that this displaced person is the same one who used to let me ride his shoulders as he walked through town. “The wall’s not going to hold,” he says. “They’re going to be here soon. You should go.”
“Aren’t you going to go?”
“Moses told me to. Said he could hold everything down on his own. But I’m tired of leaving, Leora. You and I both know I’ve abandoned my post long enough.”
I brace my eyes against rising tears. “Where is he?”
My vadder looks toward the perimeter. At the base of the scaffolding, which I thought was abandoned, a single man stands. “I have to go,” I say. “Right now.” My vadder nods and retreats into the shadows.
I watch him go, turn and walk away like he’s always done, and then sprint the distance between Moses and me, as if leaving a ghost in my wake. Moses’s corn-colored hair appears singed by the heat of the fire. His profile is so stoic, it is as if someone has already died. He must sense my approach, for he turns. His lips form my name, but I can’t hear anything. I step closer, and the two of us stand in front of each other—a soldier and a pacifist—backlit by the wall of flames. And yet I’m not sure either of us can be categorized as easily as before.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says.
“I had to come,” I murmur, tasting salt. I reach out and take his hand. He flinches, and my fingers braille the blisters bubbled across his palm. “Please don’t do this, Moses,” I murmur. “Don’t stay here. Alone. . . . You can’t hold them back yourself.”
“No,” he agrees. “I probably can’t. But I think I can at least hold them off long enough for everyone to escape.” He withdraws his hand and moves closer, his eyes wide and staring at everything but me. “All this time I wondered why I didn’t die in the desert. I wondered why I didn’t die when I crashed in your field. Now I know. I was given a second chance because I was meant to come here and give your father a second chance too.”
“He lost out on second chances when he left us!”
“Maybe so. But think of your family. Doesn’t your father deserve a second chance for them? Don’t you deserve a second chance as well? A chance to stop living with all this guilt and worry . . . to stop always having to prepare yourself for the worst?”
“The worst already happened, Moses. You know about—”
“Anna?” I nod. He continues, “Anna wasn’t raped. She wasn’t. Charlie confessed to shooting her cat. He threw it into the woods, and she followed him and picked it up, not understanding that it was dead. That’s where the blood came from.”
“A cat?” I cry. “A dead cat is what made me question my pacifist beliefs?”
“If it wasn’t the incident with your sister, Leora, it would’ve been something else. You were just searching for a reason to question. Besides, you can’t doubt something you don’t believe in. In the end, your faith will be stronger for having been tested.”
“Maybe so, but God could’ve avoided the testing altogether.”
“Yes, he could have. Your sister also could have not fallen that day. Or I could have shot that kid and saved my brother’s life. But sometimes life isn’t as cut-and-dried as we’d like it to be. We just have to know that, regardless of what happens, God can work all things together for good.”
“Listen to you. When you came here, you said you weren’t a man of faith. But now your faith’s stronger than mine.”
Smiling at me, he reaches for my hand. “Strange as it is, that’s because of you. Isn
’t that proof in itself that God has a plan? Maybe not just for you and me . . . but for us?”
He pulls my hand closer. I swallow my reserve and lean against Moses’s chest. He wraps his arms around me. Another log topples from the perimeter. I sense the vestiges of my own perimeter crumbling, and I give myself over to it—to the healing love I refused to embrace because I felt more in control, living behind my fear. I lift my face up to Moses’s. Reflected in his eyes, I see the flames’ red glow. His head leans down toward mine. We kiss. A declarative. A pronoun and a verb combined, so simple, and yet each syllable possessing its own language.
He draws himself away and meets my eyes. “Leora, please. Go.”
“Promise me you’ll come find us.”
“I promise.” He dries my tears with his thumbs. Unsnapping his holster, he places his revolver in my hands. “I want you to have this, just in case.”
“You still believe in weapons?”
“Using weapons doesn’t negate faith. But if you’re putting faith in your weapon rather than in God, that’s where the trouble lies.” He presses his hand on top of mine until my fingers wrap around the gun.
I nod, head down to hide my tears, and slip the revolver into my apron pocket: a welcome weight, an extension of my free will. But how can I leave him standing here in front of a crumbling wall, outside of which the marauders are waiting to overtake our utopia?
“I can’t do it, Moses. I can’t leave you.”
“There are no other options. You must.”
A staccato beat of hooves on gravel. I dry my eyes on my sleeve and look up the lane. Jabil is astride his horse, the tired mare’s sides heaving and frothy with sweat. “Come, Leora,” he calls as he pulls back the reins. “We’re the last ones.”
Pressing the revolver against my thigh, I look at Moses once more before accepting Jabil’s hand. He grips my wrist and lifts me without effort onto the bareback mare. He nods at Moses, and Moses nods in return, though both men are grim. Without a word, a promise is being spoken, and I can tell that I am the transacting cargo they want to keep safe.
Jabil says, “Hold tight,” and drives his heels into the horse’s sides with a vehemence so rare for him, I know the abuse stems from his urgency to reach safety.
The wind whistles in my ears as the mare lunges through the darkened maze of Mt. Hebron Community, which I could navigate blind . . . which I might never see again. Tears stream past my temples and saturate my hair. I rest my face against Jabil’s back, not for comfort, but because my hands are wrapped around his waist and I have no other way to stifle my weeping. I inhale his sweat, my salt mixing with his own. Jabil says nothing, but his spine is ridged with strain. He doesn’t steer the mare around the gravestones but drives her forward, among them, as if death itself can be trodden upon.
Before we pass through the fence, I turn and look down the valley that cradles my home but is in the process of being enveloped in flame. Only God himself knows if, like the legendary phoenix, my faith, my love, will one day arise from the ash.
Leora
I HEAR THEM OFF IN THE DISTANCE before I can see them, and my grip tightens around the handle of the ax. With my gloved hand, I wipe splinters of wood from my face and hair and try peering through the thinned trees. I pray it is our men returning and not drifters coming to see what they can take from us. Wrenching the ax blade free, I take one more hit, cracking the stubborn spruce in two. I set the halved piece on top of the pile and look over my shoulder, shivering with cold and with dread as I wait to see the source of the incoming footsteps.
Wind blows through the forest, causing snow to sift down through the pines, speckling my head wrap and sending a cardinal into flight, his red brilliant against the contrast of evergreens. I steady my breathing and bite the inside of my cheek. My lungs strain against the urgency to retreat, yet I find myself crouching even lower beside the stack of firewood. Jabil Snyder is the one who breaks into view first, carrying a stringer weighted with trout, all with mottled backs that glisten in the winter sun.
The exposed portion of his face reveals the stubble that has grown in the past three days since he’s been gone, chopping holes in the ice that covers the lake across the valley in an effort to provide sustenance for our Mennonite community, which has become solely reliant on whatever we can hunt and gather from the waters and woodlands.
He does not see me hiding behind the wood pile, and I do not slip out from behind it. Instead, I rise and let the ax fall from my hand, the blade piercing through the snow crust until all but the smooth, timeworn handle disappears. My adrenaline is replaced with a wash of relief.
We haven’t seen anyone over these past three days, and Old Man Henri and Charlie remained behind to provide us with protection in case our compound should come under attack. But this whole time I’ve been on high alert, unable to convince myself that two armed Englischers and the smattering of mostly elderly Mennonite men—who would not arm themselves and defend the compound if the need were to arise—could hold back even the smallest gang intent on harming us. I wonder if I would defend my siblings and my grandmother, regardless of everything I’ve been taught is right.
Jabil’s men talk and laugh as they make their way up the old logging trail toward the new compound. More than their telltale stringers of fish, this reveals that they had a worthwhile journey. My younger brother, Seth, and Jabil’s brother David bring up the rear of the group. They talk, their toboggan-capped heads bowed in collusion, their rucksacks jangling with stringers empty of trout. I am grateful Jabil took them with him, though supervising two teenage boys, overeager to become men, was surely not an easy task.
Seth snickers and looks around, as if making sure no one can eavesdrop on their conversation, which lets me know they must not be talking about anything good. He spots me against the tree and halts. We stare at each other in silence. I raise my hand and smile. He doesn’t wave back, just turns toward David and continues walking. His slight stings, and yet I deserve it. For too long I have treated him like a son rather than a brother—endlessly reprimanding him without maintaining a bond of friendship—so he is pulling away from me in the natural course of adolescence, without granting me the same respect he would give Mamm.
“Leora?” I startle. So focused on my sibling failure, I didn’t hear Jabil approach. He walks up and places his mackinaw around my shoulders. The fabric wafts of fish, sweat, and snow. “You shouldn’t be out in this,” he says. “It’s too cold.”
“I come out here all the time.”
Without touching me, he draws the lapels of his coat over my sodden wool coat beneath it, an amicable embrace. “I know.” The acceptance in his voice makes me restless. I bend to pick up the ax, but he moves faster than I, slipping it into the rucksack on his back—the stringer of fish trapped in his free hand. Keen for a reprieve from the elements, the rest of the men do not wait for us; they continue hiking together up the trail, their boots marring the runner of snow.
Jabil sweeps his hand before him as if to say, “Shall we walk?” It’s a gallant gesture, which seems inconsistent with his rugged appearance. However, my own appearance shows how very kind Jabil’s gesture is. My femininity, like every other woman’s, feels to have been swept away on the tide of post-EMP destruction.
He asks, as we begin copying the fishermen’s steps, “See anyone while we were gone?”
“Not a soul. You?”
“Two guys trapping.” He pauses. “Making their way to Kalispell.”
“What’s in Kalispell?”
“The airport.”
I look over at him. “They think they can fly from there?”
“No. They want to join the militia.”
My heart pounds. I sense Jabil studying me as if attempting to pinpoint the reason I chose this day—a harsh, mind-numbing day—to split firewood for the community when he made sure we had a plentiful supply before he left. I don’t tell him why, for there’s no need.
As the perimeter’s gate opens to
admit us, and Jabil pulls it open further to let me slip past him, I know—and he knows—that the person I was waiting for today, and every day, was Moses Hughes. The former soldier whose plane crashed in our field the same day the EMP turned my life upside down; who held back the gang attempting to penetrate our community, so we could escape into the mountains. Moses is the one I cannot forget. The one who—despite his absence and my own better judgment—I am waiting for. The one I cannot leave behind.
Moses
TWO DAYS LATER
My eyes blur as they scan the middle distance, but at first all I can see is a bald-eagle, rising and falling with the current of wind. Then I notice the outline of someone peering through the diamonds in the airport fence, near the old cell phone waiting area. Reaching for my gun, I glance over at the hangar and see Josh is still tinkering with the old Cessna.
Gun in my right hand, with my left I shade my eyes. It’s almost impossible to discern details against the glare of sun reflecting off the snow. One thing’s clear: it’s a man, as skinny as a whippet, but after so many months of people scavenging for food, it’s hard to tell if he’s not fully grown or just shrunken with starvation. And then the man steps back from the gates as if startled when he spots me watching him. There’s something familiar in his gait. The clouds shift, throwing the airport in shadow, and I notice his black hat I’ve only seen worn by the Mt. Hebron men. I hurry down the cockpit’s icy steps and sprint across the snow-covered tarmac.
“Seth!” I call. “You gotta be crazy, man! What’re you doing here? How’d you find me?”
His face cracks into a wide, relieved grin, and my stomach lurches, seeing a glimpse of Leora. I wave to Michael and Dean in the traffic control center to let them know all’s well and unlock the gate. Stepping outside it, I scan the road behind Seth, but there’s nobody there—just the empty highway stretching off in the glittering horizon.
“I came alone,” he says, seeing the direction of my eyes. He adjusts the rifle slung across his shoulder, and I hear the jangle of ammo in the pocket of his coat.
The Alliance Page 24
