I tell my family I’ll be right back and leave, scoping the premises for my brother.
Someone, in the past half hour, has lit the community bonfire, which Judith Zimmerman is using to make some kind of stock from bones. She stirs the liquid with a wooden ladle, the steam beginning to rise and mix with the frigid air. The copper pot she’s using—an heirloom that once held blankets in her cabin in the valley—has turned green for want of polish. No one has time for such vanities now. I smile and nod at Judith, and she smiles wearily in return. In the context of our harried morning, even light conversation, it seems, has become too much work.
A quick pass over the community does not reveal my brother, but I’m not willing to tell anyone about his absence just yet. Disheartened, I return to the cabin and keep busy by cleaning up breakfast and folding clothes. As strange as it sounds, I usually enjoy doing laundry. The chore is so repetitive, my mind can drift from the task at hand and focus on contemplation and prayer. But as I fold Seth’s stiff pants, I can’t help worrying. I set a stack of clothes on his straw tick mattress, a faded sheet partitioning off his room from the rest of the cabin. My booted foot strikes something. I bend and see the snout of our vadder’s rifle case peeking out from beneath the bed. The case is empty. I glance over at my sister and my grossmammi. Neither seem too concerned about Seth, and I want to keep it that way. Grabbing my vadder’s old snowshoes, hanging on a peg by the door, I again prepare to leave the cabin.
Grossmammi calls from her chair at the table, “Where’re you going?”
I swallow hard, trying to quell the panic rising in my voice. “To look for Seth.”
“Outside the compound?”
“I’ll ask Jabil to go with me.” I have no intention of asking Jabil, and I know I should feel guilty for this falsehood, but I also don’t want her to worry while I’m gone.
“Be careful,” she says, adjusting the angle of her threadbare kapp. “I can’t lose you too.”
Crossing the room, I lean down and stamp a kiss on the thick, cream-white leaf of her hair, trapping the scent of bacon and smoke. My grandmother’s hands on mine are as dry as parchment now that there’s no more coconut oil to moisten her skin. I promise her, “I will.”
In two hours, the dingy gray world has been transformed by the white on white of a fresh snow. Judith now leans over the cooled kettle of broth while scraping off the film of fat, which she will probably turn into tallow for candles or soap. Jabil is standing beneath a lean-to next to the barn. Snowflakes cover the table like a cloth as he threads what appears to be cow’s hair through the cast-iron rings. The three strands will twist together as he turns the crank, becoming one nearly unbreakable rope. I can feel his eyes on me. I dread having a conversation with him, especially considering the conversation I had with his uncle.
Charlie is sitting at the rock table with the men, who are taking turns using the whetstone to sharpen their knives. I must look at him a beat too long because he stands and walks over. I brace myself for confrontation—my default mode whenever he comes around.
“Where’s your brother?” he asks. “Haven’t seen him since the meeting. His guilty conscience wearing him down?”
I say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Reaching into his coat pocket, Charlie holds out his hand. A rifle shell glints gold in the center of his large palm. “Wouldn’t have even known he’d stole from me,” he says, “if the idiot hadn’t dropped this on his way out.”
I murmur, staring straight ahead, “How do you know you didn’t drop it?”
Charlie snorts, pocketing the shell. “These are as rare as hen’s teeth and getting more so all the time. Believe me, I wouldn’t have been so careless as to drop one in the snow.”
I glance at Jabil. He shakes his head, a warning. I turn back to Charlie and meet his gaze head-on. “I don’t know where he is.”
Charlie scoffs. “Well . . . if you see him, you tell him I’m building some stocks.”
“Stocks?” I rear back, incensed. “What’s next, a guillotine?”
“He stole from me and needs to be punished.”
“And you’re the one hoarding ammunition while telling the rest of us to use snares.”
“It’s for our own good,” he snaps. “We’re keeping the ammunition for emergencies, and I don’t think your snot-nosed brother going off on a tantrum counts.”
Pivoting in the snow, I leave Charlie before he can say something else. I strike the triangle as if an outlet for my fury, but Jabil intercepts me before his brother Malachi has a chance to open the gate. He touches the snowshoes I’m holding. “You’re going out in this?”
“Seth disappeared after the meeting. I thought he’d come back if I gave him some time.”
“He will come back. But I wouldn’t go after him, Leora. It’d hurt his pride.”
“I could care less about his pride,” I say. “He’s not thinking straight. He stole ammo from Charlie, and he has Daed’s gun. I don’t have a good feeling about it. At all.”
Jabil glances around. “Well, then I should go with you. Or look for him myself.”
I shake my head. “This is something I have to do, Jabil. Alone.”
Malachi must be eavesdropping on our conversation from the crow’s nest because he pulls the chain hooked to the latch. I see the top of his fleece hat and the tips of his gloves as he waves me through. I wave back and push the gate, the uneven logs plowing lines in the snow.
I stop and turn to Jabil. “I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to him.”
“He’s fourteen, Leora. If he’s to succeed at life, you have to let him grow up.”
“Yes,” I say. “I know that.” I drop my snowshoes to the ground. “But not today.”
The wind’s picked up since I left the compound, spraying snow in my face, the pellet-like flakes as grating as sand. My throat is sore from calling Seth’s name. My gloves are coated with ice particles—my frozen breath—from my hands being cupped around my mouth.
“Seth!”
My yell sends more birds into flight. I steady my breathing by biting the inside of my cheek. Where could he be? The silence holds no answers. I continue walking. My vadder’s old snowshoes are far too big, so it takes effort to lift and move one forward before setting it down. And then, mercifully, I see Seth’s tracks punching through the drifts ahead of me. Two hundred yards away, I come upon my brother’s lanky form standing over a dog—no, a coyote. Blood stains the snow melting beneath it, causing steam to rise.
Seth turns while holding our vadder’s rifle. His pale eyes remain unfocused even after they are fixed on me. I draw closer. “Stay!” he says hoarsely. “It’s still alive.”
The coyote’s eyes roll in my direction. Panicking, it snarls, showing fangs and flinging its head from side to side. A hopeless effort to escape death.
My brother wipes his face on the sleeve of his coat and gasps, “Why won’t it die?”
“Why’d you shoot it? Do you want the pelt?”
He shakes his head. “I—I just wanted to prove I could.”
My anger rises. “Proving something’s a foolish reason to kill.”
Seth sneers, “Tell that to Charlie.”
“What does he have to do with this?”
My brother doesn’t answer. “Can you do it?” he rasps.
“What?”
“Finish it off.”
“You want me to shoot it.”
Seth nods.
I look over as he tries to hand our rifle to me, and then I reach into the pocket of my coat and pull out the small revolver I’ve carried every day since Moses left.
I tell my brother, “You started this. You should finish it.”
He shakes his head, thin voice cracking. “I can’t.”
I lower the revolver to the coyote’s head. The points of its ears, the black pads on its paws, even the russet feathering of its sleek, ashy pelt are so doglike that I have to close my eyes as I pull on the trigger m
uch harder, I am sure, than is needed. The revolver bucks in my hand; my ears throb from the explosion. I realize my eyes are still closed. I open them slowly and see that my shot was true. Fresh blood surrounds the coyote’s head. He is quiet and suffering no more. I slide the revolver back into my pocket and look at Seth.
“Now what?” I ask. “You going to carry it back up to the compound and skin it out, or will I need to do that too?”
“I’ll carry it,” he snaps. I can see by his face that my words have been too much.
“I am sorry for being angry, but where’d you get the bullets in the first place?” I ask this believing I know the answer, and yet wanting to see if my brother tells the truth.
To my surprise, he does not hesitate. “Charlie.”
“Charlie.”
“Yeah.”
“Why does everything revolve around him?”
“He’s a jerk.”
I tighten my jaw in an effort to keep from saying something I might regret—such as that, lately, Seth’s been acting like a jerk too. “Is it because of what he said during the meeting?”
He shrugs, glaring into the snow.
“Whatever happened, Seth, you can’t go running off like that. And you can’t steal.”
“Daed did.”
Run off or steal? I wonder. Daed did both. “He was unwell.”
“He’s a loser.”
“Says the thief.”
“Better a thief than a coward!”
I roll my eyes. “Says who?”
My brother erupts, “Everybody!”
“Define everybody.”
“Charlie, Henri, Sean.”
I give him a pointed look. “The Englischers. Two of whom deserted us.”
“I’d rather be a deserter with a gun than a Mennonite who gets himself killed.”
My sweat’s begun to cool now that I’m still, and the dampness chills me to the bone. “You think a rifle and a handful of bullets are going to protect you?”
Seth glances at my coat pocket, where I’m holding the revolver. “Why are you carrying?”
“Someone . . . gave it to me.”
“Moses.” But then his smirk disappears. “You think he’s dead?”
I take my hand out of my pocket to fold my arms. “I don’t know.”
“I think he just doesn’t want to come back to us.”
My breath catches. “You don’t know that. Maybe he can’t.”
Seth mutters, “Yeah. Just like Daed can’t.”
“Seth, don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Angry.” I lean forward and rest a hand on his fingers that are relentlessly picking at a hole in his pants. They stop moving. Seth glances up, his lashes brittle with ice, and in his eyes I see the same hunted look as in the coyote I killed. Sighing, I sit in the snow beside my brother. “It’s going to be okay, Seth. These teenage years are the hardest of your life.”
“These are the hardest years of everyone’s life. It’s not like it’s going to get easier.”
It’s true. It probably won’t. We’re quiet for a while as the white falls around us. I knock my shoulder into his. “What if we slip off for a day? Just the two of us.”
Seth glances over, his tone incredulous as he says, “Where would we go?”
“I don’t know.” I pause. “Maybe back to the community? See if there’s anything left?”
He shrugs.
“The compound gets a little tight after a while, doesn’t it?”
He nods, looking down. “I don’t feel like I belong there. I don’t think I ever did.”
I should tell him I often feel the same way. That I love him and will always be here for him, and yet I fear I’ve already overstepped my bounds and would therefore cause him to interpret those overused phrases as parental condescension rather than sisterly concern.
Rising to my feet, I just say, “Let’s go take the coyote back up to the compound and skin it out. We’ll talk to Grossmammi and see if we can leave in the morning.”
But as my brother and I struggle through the snow with the animal’s stiffening remains, I recall his words about Moses: I think he just doesn’t want to come back, an echo of what’s been running through my head for months.
The cabin’s darkness makes it hard to believe it’s early morning, but Seth stands facing the door, a thinly veiled hint for me to hurry up and finish packing. Wanting to oblige him, I stuff a rucksack with jerky, dried apples, socks, a book of matches, and a blanket I first place in a plastic grocery bag to keep it dry in case I drop the rucksack while out in the snow. I walk over to Colton’s crib. He is sleeping deeply now, despite cutting a tooth, so the white fir oil I rubbed on his gums must be doing the trick. I brush my fingers across his forehead, about the only portion of him exposed to the cool air. His lips pucker in his dreams.
To my right, the straw tick mattress crackles. I turn and see that Anna is sitting up. Walking over, I touch the side of her face. “Go to sleep,” I murmur. “It’s all right.”
She smiles at me, confused but thankfully not anxious. I had hoped we would be able to slip out without saying good-bye, since Anna cannot comprehend time, and thus, to her, leaving for a day is the same as leaving for good. “We’ll be back,” I promise, tucking her in.
My sister nods, already soothed by the weight of the blankets. Still watching her, I motion for Seth to go and hear him step outside. I follow and begin to close the door when I’m suddenly touched by the vision of those three sleeping forms, illumined by the fire. I cannot sit an hour in our cabin without feeling the walls closing in, but it’s different when I get to leave.
Jabil and Seth are talking when I join them on the path. Seth is holding a pair of snowshoes that Jabil presumably lent to him for the trip. Jabil nods at me. “I told your brother I’ll build a fire in your cabin at lunch and then again at supper. Is there anything else you need?”
“No, no.” I shake my head. “This is more than enough. Thank you.”
He nods but does not look pleased.
“Jabil.” I smile, tilting my head. “Seth is coming with me. It’ll be all right.”
“I just don’t know why you have to do this.”
I say nothing, for the worry in his eyes tells me he does.
Leora
A PERIODIC SCURRYING in the underbrush or tinny trill of a black-capped chickadee is the only evidence Seth and I have of other living creatures on the mountain. It’s hard to gauge if Moses’s prediction is true—that six months post-EMP, less than 10 percent of the population remains—or if there are many survivors who have simply learned it’s better to lie low than to fight. Either way, I keep one hand in the coat pocket with the revolver as tumbling snow distorts my vision, distorting my sense of direction as well.
The Montana sky is filigreed with clouds, and the sun struggles to shine through the snow-drenched pines, sketching a negative pattern across the white. But the tranquil appearance is deceptive. Wind pounds my upper back, and my toes and fingers tingle, and then grow numb, as my body struggles to circulate blood against the cold. Seth and I don’t talk as we force ourselves to transform feet into yards and yards into several miles, and I wonder if he’s just as miserable as I am but too stubborn to admit it, a flaw that is keeping me quiet as well.
There is no way to know how far we’ve come—or how far we have left to go—until the terrain finally begins to level out. Encouraged, my brother and I increase our pace, and soon we come upon the fence that once separated the community from national forest.
“Over here!” Seth calls.
My brother trudges through the drifts blanketing the gap in the stretch of wire and log, but I remain on the other side. My head aches with the memory of riding through that opening on the back of Jabil’s mare. How could I have left Moses behind, knowing what he would face? He knew what he would face too, and the impossibility of it pervaded our meeting. But I remind myself not to romanticize that moment; that vulnerability is not such a
risk when the odds of a reunion aren’t in your favor.
Forcing my eyes to remain dry, I walk through the gap onto community land. The small graveyard is to my left. I stop to look for the place where Mamm is buried, to pay my respects, but the snow’s so deep, it is impossible to tell. I catch Seth’s gaze as he glances away, and grief is as visible there as the day, three years ago, we watched the earthen hole swallow her pine casket. His cheeks are scalded by either cold or embarrassment.
“We should keep walking,” he says.
I nod and struggle through the snow until I’m standing beside him. Our snowshoes lift and plant in smooth, circular tandem as we continue trudging across the property. It is strangely beautiful, and calm, covered with unblemished white that hides the worst of the devastation the fires inflicted. We come upon the Lehmans’ homestead first. The area is unrecognizable, nothing but jagged mounds of rubble with patches of black peeking through the snow that, upon closer inspection, materialize into charred pieces of log.
Seth and I cross the lane. Three-fourths of the perimeter, in the distance, has collapsed. Whatever is left standing has weathered with time. Field to Table, the makeshift hospital, the schoolhouse, and the pavilion all appear about the same as when we fled up to the mountains, but the latter half of the community—from the Rissers’ to the Goods’—is so utterly destroyed, it is like a graveyard relinquished to the elements after its faithful caretakers also died: I know a monument of life and love once existed there, but I cannot find it.
My stomach tightens as I view Moses’s plane in the field next to our house. The crop duster’s yellow paint is vivid against the snow and ice clinging to the cracked windshield. Decaying vines, left over from summer, climb over the body, as if gradually drawing it back into the frozen earth. The outside of our cabin is licked with charcoal from the flames. Such audacity the gang members had, to try to destroy what we’d already abandoned.
The Divide Page 4
