The Divide

by Jolina Petersheim

  Removing the weight from my shoulders, Jabil takes my hand in his. “Come on,” he says. “I’ll go with you.”

  Jabil and I walk into my family’s cabin, but he respectfully stays by the entrance as I hug Anna and cross the earthen floor to sit on the edge of Grossmammi’s bed. Her sallow skin is dry and embroidered with blue veins turned prominent from dehydration. It’s hard to look at her, once timeless, now having rapidly grown old. I touch her hand.

  “Grossmammi?” I whisper. “Are you thirsty?”

  Before she can respond, Jabil fills a canning jar with water from the pitcher and hands it to me. I hold the jar to her lips. The liquid dribbles from the sides of her mouth onto her gown. Jabil hands me a dishcloth, and I press it against her chin while I continue letting her drink.

  “You—you all right?” she asks.

  I rest her hot hand against my forehead and nod against it, tears threatening to fall. “Yes,” I murmur. “I am well.” It is a lie, but I won’t let Grossmammi know what I’ve done.

  “Gut,” she murmurs. “Ich liebe dich.” I love you.

  “I love you too.” But she’s so weak, her eyes are already closing as I respond. I rise too quickly from the floor and have to lean on the bed frame until the darkness clears.

  Behind me, Jabil says, “You all right?” an echo of what my grandmother just asked.

  However this time, I shake my head no. Jabil helps me across the room to my own low bed. I see Anna in the background, her hands flapping in the firelight like birds: an effort to self-soothe her anxiety. I want to go to her, but I haven’t the energy to tell her what I do not know myself. I sit down, and Jabil kneels and wordlessly begins unlacing my boots. His thick, dark hair is flattened from where he was wearing the hat. I stare at his lowered profile, my embarrassment at such an intimate gesture dulled by the fact that I am too fragile to protest.

  “You told me that Grossmammi has it too, Jabil. Who else is sick?”

  He rests his hands on my boots. “Elam Longenecker, young David Good, Esther’s newborn, Claudia . . .” I notice how the laces are pulled equally taut.

  I remain quiet while trying to process this alarming turn of events. My own event seems nearly trivial in comparison. “How’s your uncle handling all this?”

  “Not sure.” Jabil glances down at my booted foot, still cradled in his hand. “With everything going on, I haven’t gotten to talk to him much, but I imagine he feels like I do.” He pauses. “The bishop has an overwhelming desire to protect the community—to keep everyone safe—but sometimes, that desire’s not enough.” Without lifting his gaze, he takes off my boot.

  I look away, toward the wall that is so poorly insulated, there are places where I can view the outside. But I do not see this. Instead, I’m envisioning my day-to-day with Jabil in it. How reassuring it would be to have his stable presence to counter the uncertainty of life. I’m so busy contemplating, I do not hear Jabil heading toward the door until the latch clicks as he leaves. The sound, unsettling in its decisiveness, evokes the sound of another door—or rather, a gate—closing me off from the community. For Bishop Lowell would probably not want me here if he discovered I’ve compromised my pacifist convictions by killing a man. But perhaps he would extend more grace if I had already heeded his advice by entering into a relationship with his nephew Jabil.

  Surely there are worse reasons than survival for allowing a heart to love a good man.

  I didn’t know how much I relied on my brother—or how much strength his presence gave me as I went about my daily household tasks—until he was no longer here to help me complete them. For months, I haven’t had to chop wood, haul water, or build a fire in the hearth. Seth took on all these responsibilities without complaining, though he made it clear he did not do any of them with joy. However, in his absence, I am required to do them—and more, since Grossmammi’s condition has worsened in the past two days.

  Her freshly laundered sheets are drying on the rope suspended above the fire, and she’s sleeping on the sheets that I had to pull from Seth’s bed. It is difficult, in ordinary circumstances, to remain hygienic. But in these circumstances, it seems impossible. The cabin is rife with illness to the point I’ve had to twice open the door—preferring the drastic temperature drop to adding my own retching to the smell. Anna is quiet throughout it all. Just as I did not realize how much work Seth was doing, I did not know how much Anna actually communicated with me until she became silent.

  Someone knocks. I wearily call, “Come in.”

  The door opens. Judith Zimmerman is standing outside, holding a pint jar covered with a handkerchief. “Do you mind if I leave this?” she says. “It’s willow bark tea, for the fever.”

  “Of course not. That is very thoughtful of you.”

  For fear of contaminating her, I neither walk toward Judith nor invite her in, but watch as she sets the jar on the snow-covered threshold. She seems to also fear contamination because she doesn’t take a breath until she steps back.

  I try to smile. “And how is Colton?”

  “He’s fine,” she says. “He’s sleeping better now he’s cut that new tooth.”

  “Good. Have you heard how anyone else is doing?”

  She folds her shawled arms across her chest. I remember, in that instant, how she looked before, in the valley: her hair always clean and tidy beneath her kapp; her dresses without a stain or an unraveled hem. Now, Judith is as I am, or at least as I imagine myself to be, since we have no mirrors and therefore must see ourselves reflected in our neighbors’ deprivation.

  Judith says, “I guess you didn’t hear. Esther’s little girl died last night.”

  I bow my head, throat and eyes burning. “No,” I whisper. “I didn’t hear.” I remember feeling jealous of Esther Martin and her beautiful, perfect family while my own family was holding on to normalcy as well as we could. Such pettiness repulses me. How could I have ever been so blind as to think others needed to suffer so the scales of justice were balanced?

  “How is she?” I ask. “Esther?”

  “Not good. They can’t bury the baby, Claudia, because the ground’s frozen solid.” After a moment, she adds, “Deacon Good’s just come down with it as well.”

  I look away from her, but not quickly enough to hide my emotion. Once I compose myself, I wipe my face and ask, “And how is Deacon Good’s son, David?”

  “He might be okay,” she says. “It’s hardest on the babies and the elderly.” Her eyes shift to the darkened space behind me, where my grandmother sleeps. “I—I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean—”

  I hold up my hand. “It’s okay,” I murmur. “It’s in Gott’s hands.”

  But after Judith leaves, in God’s hands or not, I cannot stop crying. The sorrows marking my twenty years have taught that grief demands to be felt. I have been so busy nursing my grandmother and maintaining the household, I haven’t had time to process what happened that morning in the woods. And yet here, sitting before the fire, as Grossmammi sleeps and Anna sits with a book without turning the pages, the tectonic plates shift. The grief and the confusion and the despair work their way through the crevices, culminating in the seismic sobs that surprise even me. Did my defense of the community bring this plague upon it?

  I hear the scuff of the kitchen chair and the whispered footfalls as Anna comes to stand behind me. Her hand strokes my hair, and she begins to sing a fusion of lyric and melody composed from the songs I once sang to her. Leaning back, I take her forearm and sob against her waist as if she is the mother and I am the child, though these roles have long been reversed, and neither of us should have to play the part.

  “Oh, Anna,” I murmur, tasting salt. “Is Gott punishing our people for my sins?”

  The vibrations filling my sister’s chest abruptly conclude. She leans down and rests one hand against my face. Looking into hers is like looking into our mudder’s; even the gesture is reminiscent. Because I so desperately miss that woman, and because if I do not voice my
culpability, I fear it will come bursting out, I confess to Anna what I’ve done.

  She absorbs the story as I knew she would, without taking her eyes from me. She is the best possible listener: attuned to my every word, dissecting every meaning, and yet she does not offer advice or reassurance or blame. Instead, when I am done and my sobbing renews, she wraps her arms around me and holds me in front of the firelight. She murmurs against my ear after a while, and though I cannot understand her words, my spirit senses she is praying.

  Moses

  “YOU ASLEEP?”

  I lift my head from the airplane pillow. Josh is standing over me, in front of the double windows on the second floor, so his body is just a cutout in the dark.

  I reply, “Not anymore.”

  “Good. We’ve got company.”

  I’ve not had a night off in weeks, but there’s no point bringing that up; Josh would only chide me for complaining, and besides, I’ll never be able to go back to sleep knowing what’s going on outside. I sigh and glance over at Seth. Snoozing on the cot across from mine, he looks younger and far more innocent than the bristling teenager he transforms into when he’s awake.

  “How many?” I ask.

  “Looks like at least two. Hard to tell.”

  “Loaded?”

  Josh shrugs. “Not sure of that either.”

  “So what’re you gonna do? Pick off the bad guys?”

  He nods gravely, even though I’m kidding. He has a self-proclaimed ability to determine, from a distance, the depth of a man’s character. Me, on the other hand? I ask, “How come you didn’t pick me off when I came here? I could’ve been a thug.”

  “Nope,” Josh says. “I knew.”

  “How?”

  “The way you walked.”

  “My military bearing.”

  He laughs and then stifles it, his profile turning to Seth’s cot. “No, your limp.”

  “My limp,” I sneer. “You knew I wasn’t a thug because of that.”

  “Yeah, you had this limp and were looking around the airport like a little orphan boy—all you needed was a bandanna on a stick and you would’ve been Huck Finn.”

  “Thanks so much,” I drawl. “Here I fancied myself with a swagger, like James Dean.”

  “I would’ve shot someone with a swagger.”

  “Well, then, I guess I should be grateful for my limp.”

  “Yeah,” Josh says, completely serious. “You should.”

  He waits outside in the hall while I get dressed, and then he and I climb two flights of stairs up to the fourth floor. Mark, Donald, and Caleb are already carrying guns and standing in front of the windows. I’m not sure if Josh woke them too, or if they just overheard what’s going on and wanted part of the action. Sometimes, believe it or not, we get pretty bored.

  “Caleb,” Josh says, “you go help Nathan and Nehemiah guard the gates. Mark, you guard the entrance to the center. Don, I want you to guard the fuel.”

  They nod, exchange some logistical information, and leave to do as instructed. Meanwhile, Josh walks over to the windows and, leaning around the computer on the desk, pops out the cardboard in the far left pane.

  “How do you know they’re out there?” I ask.

  “I thought I saw them earlier, in the distance, when I went to check on the chickens; then Mark saw them tonight. It’s hard to hide in snow.” He pauses. “Unless you’re wearing white.”

  Despite the anxiety surrounding a possible attack, I can’t help grinning while picturing Mr. Sniper Rifle trekking through the blizzard to see how his chickens are faring in the cold.

  “Too bad we can’t run a heater of some kind in the coop,” I mutter, which isn’t a coop at all, but the cockpit of the crashed Bombardier CRJ200, which stays pretty cold despite the twenty-five cinder blocks we placed inside to help with solar gain.

  Josh nods, and then glances over at me sharply. “You’re making fun.”

  I lift my hands. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  He harrumphs in suspicion and takes out his Sig Sauer P229 from the shoulder holster beneath his vest. Handing the gun to me, he picks up one of the folding chairs circled around the card table and moves it two feet to the right. Standing on it, he pushes up a black tile in the drop-down ceiling and slips out a bolt-action .308 with a scope. It was clearly a rite of passage when Josh no longer waited until I was gone to take the gun from its hiding place, which is easy for him to reach, but not so easy for someone else—even our fellow militants—to spot. He resumes his usual place on the swivel desk chair in front of the window. Snow flurries streak through the void where the glass pane used to be and salt the brim of his cap. He knocks these off and continues to sit, his fists coiled with nerves. After a few seconds, he checks his watch.

  “How come yours still works?” I ask, pointing and taking a seat on the folding chair Josh used like a step stool. I must’ve seen Josh check his watch hundreds of times in the past few months, but some things are so ingrained in my head as normal that, even when they become abnormal, I still don’t categorize them as such.

  He turns the watch face toward me; the glass disk shimmers in the dark. “It’s a USMC-issue Vietnam-era Hamilton mechanical.”

  “You were in Vietnam?”

  He glances out the window, then nods.

  I look out the window too. “So was my grandpa.”

  “What branch?” Josh asks.

  “Marines. Fighter pilot.”

  “Da Nang or Chu Lai?”

  “Not sure. Da Nang sounds familiar.”

  “Later I flew off carriers, but I started in Chu Lai.”

  Hoping Josh will offer up a few more facts if I confide a few more to him, I continue, “I was there, at my grandpa’s farm, before the EMP.” I pause. “I stole his crop duster and took off.”

  Josh removes his eyes from the scope to look at me. “Your grandpa went from being a fighter pilot to a farmer?”

  “I know. Talk about a switch, right? After the war, my grandpa moved my grandma, aunt, and dad from their cattle ranch in Texas to a potato farm in Idaho.” I’ve seen grainy, orange-tinged pictures from that time, and my father, Frank, was just a fair-headed, freckle-faced boy who showed no hint of the residual toughness lurking beneath that split-toothed grin.

  Josh says, “Why’d you steal his crop duster?”

  “I needed to get out of there, like ASAP. My dad wanted me to reenlist.”

  “Your dad military too?”

  “Yeah. He’s the garrison commander at Fort Campbell.” I push up the sleeves of the sweatshirt Josh gave me since I barely have any clothes. “Two days before the EMP, he called out of the blue and said some ‘unnamed’ senior enlisted service member was willing to write out a letter of recommendation for me. I had a high ASVAB score and good evaluations, so I probably could’ve resumed my former rate if I would’ve retaken the ASVAB. But I was not willing to retake the ASVAB or reenlist, and this was something my dad couldn’t understand.”

  My father must’ve pulled some major rank to get that senior service member to take a second look at me. And despite the fact it was one of the kindest things he’d ever done, I again had to let him down. So I just stood there—in my grandpa’s kitchen, with his corded phone pressed against my ear—and stared at the strands of oily flypaper twisting in the open window above the sink. I was quiet for so long that my father asked if I was still on the line. My head cluttered with images from that day in the desert, I told him I had to refuse and replaced the phone in the cradle. I believed some part of my father wished I’d died that day, and not Aaron, who succeeded at everything he put his mind to, whereas sometimes I had trouble putting one foot in front of the other unless I was following in my father’s and older brother’s steps.

  Josh doesn’t say anything for a while, and then he gets up and leans out the window with the rifle, using the scope to scan the distance. “There they are,” he says. “Look.”

  I get up from the folding chair and take the rifle from him. Resting
it against the edge of the window, I move the scope to the far left corner. Their outlines are crisp and dark, severing the line where sky and snow meet. I hand the rifle back to Josh. He takes it, and I move to the table, letting him resume his former position. He is silent as he peers down the scope, allowing the two men to come closer and closer. Time passes like it’s being measured by the clamorous ticking of my pulse. Josh stays still. I’m not even sure he blinks.

  “What’re you waiting for?” I ask.

  “Haven’t made up my mind if they’re trouble or not.”

  “Still don’t get how you can tell the bad from the good through a scope.”

  “I’m an expert at reading people.”

  “How long’s it take to become an ‘expert’?”

  Josh lifts the shoulder not propping the gun. “Twenty years or so.”

  I look at him as the cold blows through. “You’re a sniper?”

  “No.”

  I study him, wondering why I have studied him so many times and never figured him out. But maybe that mystery’s part of his job. His vest fitted with numerous pockets. The tiny gold pinkie ring on his right hand bearing a black insignia. The watch he checks out of habit because it must’ve been imperative that he knew the time as he crisscrossed numerous zones. His nondescript baseball cap. The headset that he keeps in the case hooked to his belt loop. His black leather boots, which seem a little incongruous with his straight-laced appearance. And most of all, the Sig Sauer P229 that Josh keeps in his shoulder holster: the standard gun used by an FAM.

  “You’re a federal air marshal.”

  Josh doesn’t respond.

  “Well, are you or aren’t you?”

  He looks pained. “I might’ve done something like that at one time.”

  I don’t buy it. “Were you working when the EMP went off?”

  Josh remains focused on the rifle scope. Apparently it’s easier to gaze at potential invaders than it is to look directly at me. “No,” he says. “I was coming home.”

  And then he pulls the trigger.