“Well, Father ...” Susan licks her lips again. “I’d say we’d likely need to go topside. Before—”
“Before what, Mother?” Father Ernst’s voice is solid, thick with emotion.
She hears it now. “Before it’s too late,” she whispers.
“Get up.”
She whimpers. Tricked again.
Susan presses weight into her hands, pushes up despite the pain, and swings heavy feet back to the floor. She slowly stands and steadies herself with the mattress. She dare not look at him.
“What divine influence informs your opinion?” Father Ernst enunciates crisply.
“Father, I beg you, don’t mock me.”
“Does God Himself come to you with insight?”
“Heavens, no. I never said that.”
“You said the girls are soft, the children weak, the water and food all gone.” Father Ernst spits as he shouts. “You said we should leave this haven!” His neck strains and his eyes are wild.
Susan clasps her hands. “Forgive me.”
“We shall not Ascend until I have completed the seventh. Until I have a worthy tribe to offer. Until God comes to me Himself!”
Susan whispers her prayer. How will this rage pass? She knows. A beating. A despoiling. A sermon. Or, his favourite, a combination of the three—a punishment performance that will extinguish her puny fire within. “I only said what I know, what’s plain. I don’t pretend to be nothing special.”
The blow comes, exacting and pitiless. Her bad leg buckles on the carpet. She lands hard. Cries out. Her back spasms. An agony writhes through her left side. She cannot fend him off. She’s trapped, curled on the rug, and Father Ernst looms above.
CHAPTER 19
Morning comes and Susan is not in her cot. Ruth forces herself to sit up. She rubs her eyes until the blurry beds come into focus. There is a pain chipping at her skull, needling her scalp, making it hard to think. Her mouth is very dry. Morning. The hard fast.
Ruth should wake the children. She moves stiffly in the cold room. She shouts and claps. Nothing. Ruth swallows panic and shakes Helen by the shoulders. The girl’s eyes roll.
Then, “You’re hurting me.”
“Scared me.” Ruth straightens Helen’s nightgown and bed sheets. She lowers herself on the girl’s cot. She rubs her eyes again.
“It was wonderful,” whispers Helen. “My dress was purple and red and I had gold jewellery with stones and pearls. I sat upon a red horse, and I was in charge of everything. I had piles of gold and slaves to do my bidding.”
“The Whore of Babylon,” says Ruth. “Don’t say nothing about that to no one.”
“Is it the Devil?” Helen frowns.
“Mayhap.”
“Oh, what will I do?”
“Pray, I suppose,” says Ruth.
“I will. I’m hungry.”
“I know.”
“Will we eat today?”
Ruth shakes her head. “Hard fast,” she says.
Helen falls back to the mattress. “Can’t we just stay? Mother Rebekah does.”
“She’s sick and you’re not. Get dressed. Lots of layers. We got the Sit today, so try and keep warm. Help me wake the cousins?”
Helen shakes Rachel, and the two of them rouse Leah.
“What’s Abel doing here? He’s a boy.”
“None of your business,” says Ruth. “Wash faces and hands and get dressed. Take Abel with you.” Mothering, it seems, has come upon her with or without the bridal contract. For once she is glad there is no meal to prepare. She can’t do it all on her own. But poor Susan has been, she realizes.
After Ruth helps the children dress, she hovers near Rebekah. A foul odour blooms. No one helped her to the latrine, and Ruth can’t bear to clean this right now. She can’t think for the pain in her head. Regrettably, Rebekah will have to wait.
One note swells and fills the bunker. It rattles her ribs. She has not yet toileted or checked her blood rag. A dress. She must wear a dress or she will provoke Father’s ire again. Ruth rifles through Rebekah’s under-bed storage box. “You won’t mind,” she mutters. Rebekah’s new quilt is folded and stacked on top of her other things. Finished, at last. Ruth finds the worn blue dress and yanks it out. She drops the bodice and skirt over her regular long-sleeved shirt and trousers. It hangs long at the sleeves and hem. Sags at the chest. The waist has been let out recently, a strip added to each side, so it fits over the lumps of Ruth’s belt and knife pouch. She is not ready to give up the hunt yet. Who, other than Paul, can procure? Silas thunders about like a forest boar. He is adept at Scriptures and peddling the generator but little else.
Paul. Where in God’s light might he be? His name is a tumbling rock, a landslide, and Ruth pinches herself to stop the rush of feeling.
“Come back,” she whispers. “Please.”
In the Great Hall, the others are already sitting cross-legged. A bedraggled crew, for certain. Hannah, released from Contemplation, faces the Family beside Father Ernst. Wrapped in a thick robe, she frowns, looking vaguely victimized whenever Father Ernst glances at her and vindicated when he looks away. She sits upon the red Vestal Cushion, declaring her moon time, which bodes well for Ruth and their secret. Cousin brides need not fast like the rest, else they might never conceive. So Hannah lifts her favourite cup and sips noisily, then sets it back down. Each time she reaches for her cup, Ruth and the children lean forward, licking their parched lips. When Ruth makes eye contact with her, Hannah shrugs as if to call her a fool.
The Great Hall used to have a warmth that lingered well into the Sixth and Seventh. Cousin mothers baked bread and slow-cooked stews throughout the other days. They’d bulk up on the fifth—complex carbohydrates and whole grains that digested slowly, helping to keep them going through the fasts. The Sixth was a day of tonics and vitamin supplements. Once it felt good and right to restrict meals each week. Like their insides were getting a cleaning. And in that quiet time on the Seventh, when they sat neighbour to neighbour, they shared a great aloneness and awaited God’s command. Ruth looked forward to it. The Hall was full of mothers and cousins, and when they hummed and chanted and held the one note together, she could feel her mind begin to open to God’s Holy outpouring.
Today Father Ernst sits on the Holy Dais. He strikes the dinner bell with a tiny stick, a different sound than their regular call to meals. Lights flicker. Will Silas break the Sit and power the stationary bike instead? That would be a first. But if they sit in darkness, when God Himself peers down below the blackened earth to gift his visions, how will He see Father Ernst and know with whom to break bread?
Father Ernst says, “Observe your breath, in and out. Release hate, release fear, release doubt. Release hunger, there is none. Release thirst, it is a lie. Release all pain from your body, for that is Satan’s false body. There is no resistance. Open wide the mind. Hollow the heart.”
Release Paul. But she cannot. He is lodged inside. The lonesome dregs of his memory grip her and shall never be hastened away. Ruth closes her eyes and breathes in time with the others. In and out. The sound of air inhaling and exhaling is a gentle surge. “Like the ocean,” Memaw used to say, but Ruth has never heard the ocean. Never seen it, not even in a picture.
Ruth peeks. The children in front of her are on their way to trance with dropped shoulders, slack mouths. The twins sway in gentle orbits upon their crossed legs. Abel slumps against Silas, who pushes him up, but the little boy shudders an exhale and falls again. Silas sits tall, rigid. There is a rattling in his congested lungs—a rasping louder than the others’—that would have Rebekah worrying with ointments and a poultice if she were feeling more herself. If they still had medical supplies. Beyond Silas, a misshapen figure broods in the corner. It’s Susan, more humped and dispirited than usual, almost unrecognizable.
There’s no real work on the Seventh, just the task of sitting still and not falling asleep while they’re meant to be visioning. The hardest part is not allowing the mind to wander
and hook itself into the Devil’s fertile fantasies. Ruth closes her eyes again. She breathes deeply and tries to loosen her mind to unite with the Family. She likes to picture a warm quilt unrolling over them all, blanketing them with calm and quiet. But today it’s as though the rest have gone ahead down a country road and she cannot catch up. Her abdominal pain ramps up, and she can hardly stop thinking of water. Of food. Of the last thing that passed her lips—a cube of Father’s sugar. She falls farther behind the others with each breath. An image of Paul receding in the opposite direction chains her, anchored.
Father Ernst chimes the bell again. Now they sing the one note. A sustained chord warms the air. Usually Ruth loves to let sound fill her belly and chest, pour out her mouth in song. Today she feels detached. Hopelessness swells. Ruth joins in with an involuntary sob.
“You are God’s soldiers,” says Father Ernst.
“One Family, God’s army,” they say.
“You are the future.
“We are the lambs. We follow His command.”
Ruth does not feel like a soldier. She is cold, famished, and her knees bruise on the concrete. Her belly rolls with pain, and wetness spots the crotch of her underthings—more blood. She wants a blanket, a biscuit, a mother. Now that womanhood is at her doorstep, she tastes fear—metallic, like the rust of an old spoon.
Father Ernst’s footsteps grow louder. His smell is powerful, close.
“Kneel.” His voice comes from above. His hand rests on Ruth’s head. She moves like water in a bucket, her arms slop and hang at her sides. “Pray,” he says.
She brings hands underneath her chin, palms together. Should she open her eyes? He’ll think she’s inviting the Devil’s idle thoughts. Her breath comes ragged.
“Pray,” he insists.
Ruth says, “God in Heaven, watch over the Family. Shine Your light upon us and keep us safe. Amen.”
Father’s robe brushes against her clasped hands. His feet straddle either side of her knees. Heat comes off him like a small fire, and his pungent smell fills her nose—sour, with a strong hint of latrine. Ruth listens to deep inhalations and the slow air unfolding—the Family breathing as one. Except for Father, whose hot snorts blow on her chastened hair. And except for Ruth, whose eyelids pinch out a single rolling tear when he finally steps away.
Minutes are hours, hours a season. The Hall grows colder, darker.
Words echo and subside. Ruth’s knees ache, then burn beyond feeling. Her limbs tingle and go numb. Her face is stone, but inside, her mind veers. It plunges unbidden, submerges thousands of leagues below.
Memories—her birth father, now traitor, toasting contraband marshmallows for Ruth and Paul through the open door of their woodstove. The smell, burnt sugar, the crisp bubbled outer skin and gooey pull of the molten insides. A mug of hot cocoa. And, like a shock from the frayed generator cord, she recalls a wet nose nuzzling her neck, snuffling her ear, a dog’s tongue lapping sticky crumbs from the corner of her mouth. Their dog. Warm fur—enough to bury Ruth’s face in. Ears that stood at any far-off sound, a tail that whip-whip-whipped, then curled to his own nose in sleep.
Oh! she nearly says aloud.
Their whitewashed log cabin with creaking veranda and garden out back. The purple flowers that flourished each spring. That happy, safe past slams into her. Ruth pushes each picture away, just as they’ve been taught. She clears her mind. Imagines a zero, a sphere of nothing. But the thread of memory is stitched deep in Ruth’s body. It circles her bones and pulls, old truths knotted in time.
CHAPTER 20
Paul creeps through forest shadows. It is disorienting, this old growth and needle-dropped carpet. Twigs and branches crackle underfoot. Foliage closes in, and his shoulders hunch. Wary sets of eyes follow, he’s sure—but when he whirls to look, there is only pine and sapling, brush and soil. He wants a perch with a vantage point, someplace hidden. If he were stronger, he’d climb a great tree. Instead he must make do with a hollow under a thick bush of understory covered in ropey wisteria. He stick-prods matted leaves, checking for copperheads and cottonmouths and black widow spiders before nestling in.
Sunspots dapple the green. He breathes earth and moss and pine, a hint of decay. Mosquitoes swarm, buzzing his ears, landing on his neck and face to bite. He pulls on the UV hood to keep them at bay. As his body stills, the forest noises distinguish themselves, layered and distinct. Birds trill their call-and-response. Leaves dance the breeze, shimmying. Something scampers in the overhanging branches—grey squirrel or opossum? Bobcats are unlikely. Intermittent shedding of twigs and nuts and animal droppings thud on the mulchy forest floor. Everything around him sings, alive.
He lifts the UV hood to drink from the canteen. It’s getting low and must be refilled. Somewhere an underground river bubbles up in the heart of these woods, forming a pool that feeds the forest. Years ago, they came to fish and hunt here, and Paul’s dad explained how the natural caverns in the bedrock had been weakened by oil drilling that sucked the county dry, and by the mining companies decades earlier. The result—underground chambers could shift and buckle. During flash floods and in spring thaw, they filled with water, which seeped through the ground. The pool sometimes spilled over, begetting a slough like the marsh at the base of the white cliffs.
But the Big Drought changed all that. Dramatic drops in the water table meant that topsoil was no longer supported and the underground caverns could collapse, giving way to sinkholes at the surface. No warning—the earth would simply open its maw and swallow itself whole. The forest was also shrinking. Each year, the outer stand of dead and dying trees with desiccated understory grows; the hot sands and lethal winds erode it endlessly, driving moisture from branch and soil alike. If Paul lights a campfire, he must tend it carefully.
He chews another small piece of meat, thinking about the hare’s sacrifice and his remorse for taking another life, however hungry he is. Once they settle in the forest, they can focus on plant-sourced food; they can stop all this killing. Paul sends his pledge skyward, beyond darkened treetops, to the imagined hearts and minds of all the earth’s creatures. How will they cultivate land without seeds? Rebekah confessed that she and Susan, in desperation, had broken into the seed bank months ago. Many samples were already ruined due to a faulty moisture guard. They rinsed and sprouted the rest in dark cupboards and quietly fed them to the children, a few at a time. Father Ernst still doesn’t know. They will have to collect and store fresh seeds their first year above ground and forage in the meantime. Tricky, but it can be done.
Paul is ready to move. He stuffs the UV hood and gas mask into the food pack and strings it out of reach by knotting a rope around it and throwing the other end over a thick branch. He pulls the loose end, hoisting the pack high in the air, then weights the loose rope end with a rock. Leaves the throwing stick at the base of the tree. He keeps the rifle, his knife, the canteen. The half-crushed can is in his pocket, in case.
He steps lightly, but he’s sure the whole forest hears this intrusion. It’s darker; the overhead canopy thickens. Wisps of spiders’ webbing catch and pull on his face. Sticky threads stream behind as he makes his way deeper. A woodpecker shadows him for a while, gliding to low-hanging branches and onto stumps that he drills for ants or beetles. Paul can’t take his eyes from the scarlet flash at the crown and bold pattern on the body feathers. Magnificent. The woodpecker swoops to a fallen log, attacking it. It looks directly at him, then hops down behind the log. When Paul steps closer, the bird pops up and laughs that ridiculous call. It glides farther and hides. Pops up again, and they both laugh.
Silence descends. The woodpecker startles. It flies up, away from the trees, is gone. Paul looks around. He’s off course—got distracted following the bird. Everything is changed since he last camped out. Lost people tend to circle in the direction of their dominant hand, no matter how convinced they’ve followed a straight line. He can try looping backwards, veering to his left. Cursing himself, he pats the coveralls, hoping f
or a compass in one of the pockets. He doesn’t normally rely on one, but he’s got no time to waste wandering.
Shooka-shooka-shook. That unholy rattle. Paul scans the ground around him, back and forth, and cannot locate it. Peering over his shoulder, he catches the swaying head of a pit viper—tongue flicking, grey body coiled. The black v-shaped crossbands and raised black tail confirm it’s a rattler. Too long for a pygmy, and without the tell-tale patterns of the eastern diamondback, the most dangerous snake in America. Probably a timber rattler—venomous, but generally less prone to attack. Paul licks his lips. His old fear grips him. He fights the panic rising in his belly and, still crouching, shifts his weight imperceptibly. He backs away carefully, giving it a wide berth. He’ll have to leave the kit and the Ruger for now.
Sweat stands on Paul’s upper lip. It beads along his hairline, itching its way down his face. The black vertical eye slits unnerve him, and when it hisses, the viper’s bared fangs repel. Paul springs to one side and in that same instant the rattler explodes its full length. It falls short. Paul scrambles to the other side of a fallen log. The snake coils to strike again but Paul scuttles away, keeping a safer distance between them.
Standing tall, Paul presses himself against the sturdy trunk of a spruce pine. Gradually his breath steadies, his pulse slows. He watches the snake’s head sway, its tongue dart, scenting the air for danger. Paul’s canteen remains within the rattler’s reach, the Ruger lies beside it. He could die without them. He’s still got the knife at his belt. Paul’s toes tingle, go numb, but he must wait. His muscles tremor. Still, he cannot draw his gaze from the large snake. When it begins its retreat, Paul marvels at its supple movements, black markings inching forward, fluid, full of grace. It crosses the clearing, camouflages itself with the forest floor and disappears entirely.
His mother’s voice fills his head: They deserve a life, too.
Paul exhales deeply. This was a close call. He stretches his limbs to dispel the adrenaline, and returns to the clearing for his things.
Tarry This Night Page 10
