CHAPTER 24
Paul lies trussed in the dirt, the taste of blood in his mouth. Rope binds his ankles and wrists, tied tightly with a short length between. Everything hurts, especially his head, which feels like it was struck with a rock. More, it’s humiliating. He’s completely helpless, and it’s all his fault. An unforgiveable lapse in vigilance.
He can hear the scuffle of feet in the undergrowth, but from this angle he can’t see his attacker. From the glimpse earlier: slight build, similar height to him, but stronger. Very good with a rope. Darker skin, dressed in forest colours—bark and cone and leafy green—two black braids. Not one word out of him, despite Paul’s attempts to talk. Maybe he doesn’t speak English.
“Por favor,” he tries again, the way his mother taught him. He licks his lips. “Dejarme tranquilo.”
A snicker.
Paul strains his ears toward the sound. “Speak Spanish? Habla española?”
“Your Spanish is pretty bad.”
He hadn’t spoken it in years. Not since the Family stopped selling produce in local county markets in order to prepare for the Great Standoff. Memaw and the women had made friends with many farmers and field workers, and all of the children had played together.
“But at least you know some.”
The voice is softer than he expected. Female?
“Who are you? What do you want? I got nothing,” says Paul.
“Lie. You’ve got a knife, canteen, waterproof matches. Oh yes, and a nice rifle.” The click and release of the magazine, the roll of cartridges in the case as they are counted. “Fully loaded. All mine now. Let’s see what else.”
Hands unzip Paul’s coveralls. Pat him down. “Coke can? Where’d you get this?” The hunter tosses it to the ground—obviously doesn’t know it can be used to start a fire. Paul might know more about survival in the wild, and that could be useful. Hands reach inside his coveralls, smoothing the length of his chest and belly, down to his genitals, which they squeeze, and around to his buttocks. “Not much meat. You’re a bony one.” Again, a chuckle.
Paul shivers. Could this hunter want to defile him? Or roast him, feast on his malnourished limbs?
“Thought that rattler was going to get you.” The hunter crouches over him and holds his face between both hands. They stare at one another. “You move fast.”
Paul has never seen such eyes—darker than Ruth’s, darker even than his father’s, a deep velvety brown with the blackest centres. Colours so rich he could fall into them, obliterated. He—a miniaturized white figment—reflected back. The face is composed, symmetrical, with strong brows, high cheekbones, full lips. Skin clear and smooth, a beautiful brown. Not male, but not particularly feminine. “Are you a girl?” he whispers.
“I’m a woman,” she says, and knees him in the gut.
Paul groans. He should have known better.
“Where are your people? Talk.”
“I’m alone,” says Paul. “Promise.”
“In the forest, yes. I was watching. Before that. Where d’you come from?”
“Across the sands.”
“Where you been living? You’re so white you’d scare a maggot.”
Paul says nothing.
“Who are you with? What side are you on?”
Paul is dazed. He says, “I’m on God’s side.”
“God,” she says. “What does that even mean anymore?” She sighs. Leans back, shifting her weight, crushing him, and he stifles a cry.
“Sorry,” she says, and then she is off of him, holding the Ruger, towering above, as though considering her next move. She cocks her head to one side.
“Please let me go,” he says. “I’m no threat to you.”
“Obviously.” She smiles. “But maybe you’ve got friends nearby. Maybe you’re scouting ahead. If I let you go now, it could be me tied up and left to die.”
“It’s not like that,” he says.
She lifts the rifle and squints down the site, raises it as though aiming at the sun, then swings it back to point at his forehead.
“Forgive me my sins and trespasses,” he whispers. “Prepare me for the final journey. May I rest with Your love in the Garden forever.”
“Okay, that’s enough out of you, God Boy,” she says. She lowers the rifle and slings it over a shoulder. Unties the short rope connecting his wrists and ankles and pulls it, forcing him to his feet. She loops the rope around his neck as though he’s a dog on a leash. “We’re moving out,” she says.
Paul stumbles through bush and branch and vine, hands tied. He moves his wrists up and down as quickly as possible while rotating them in half circles. It’ll take time, but this will loosen the ropes. On the Farm, children used to have to compete to see who’d break free from bondage first. Young Thomas had set an impressive record, escaping the trunk of Father Ernst’s locked car in under two minutes, while a weeping Silas had to be rescued time and again. Paul did okay but loathed being trapped in confined spaces.
Paul is forced to walk quickly, and without his arms free he loses balance. She yanks if he is too slow, if he misses a cue about veering left or right around trees, and hisses when he makes too much noise, floundering in dry leaves or cracking dead branches underfoot. Twice she stops, listening to the forest like an animal. A fox, Paul thinks. She has the small-footed grace of one, the cunning resourcefulness, too. His breath comes ragged. He can’t help it—he’s weak and tires easily. This annoys her when she is listening to the trees, the earth, and she covers his mouth with a hand, quieting him. Her fingers are warm, small, and calloused. They smell of pine and topsoil. Paul considers biting, but he knows this will only beget more violence.
“Where are we going?” he asks again.
She makes a chirping sound, repeats it, then releases a mournful call from deep in her throat, one that raises gooseflesh on his skin. She waits, calls again. An answering trill, not far away. She’s bringing him to her people. He’ll have even less chance to escape. There is space between his wrists now, almost enough to slip a hand out.
“You’ve got my stuff. Let me go!” He resists the tether when she pulls.
“If you were really alone, you’d be glad for the company,” she says.
“Please!”
“Kneel,” she says.
But Paul is not listening. He’s circling, panicked. Movements, sly and sure, in the treetops and down among the gnarled roots, behind piled leaves and dripping vines. Eyes fall upon him. He works one wrist free, then the other. Tears at the rope around his neck. The huntress sweeps his feet out from under him with the rifle and, tied or not tied, Paul crashes to the ground.
CHAPTER 25
Rebekah’s naked body is laid out on the pantry counter, neck bruised and broken, her shorn head at an odd angle. Blood at her nostrils. Tongue stiff, protruding. Ruth tries to look away. She is to help, a first.
Susan, draped in the rubber apron, holds the carving knife, the cleaver. She explains how it will go. She worked in a meat processing plant as a teen. Later, she butchered cattle, sheep, and goats on the Farm. “Not too different,” she says. “Repulsive but unavoidable.” Hours of grisly work ahead of them. “You been sheltered ’til now,” she says, “but no more.”
“Can’t we take her topside?” whispers Ruth. “Bury her in the orchard. The sands?”
“Father’s orders.”
“Then why don’t he do it?”
Susan hands her a deboning knife, sinister and curved, longer than the one Ruth keeps at her belt. This is really happening. Rebekah’s body is violet and cold. When she touches it, it feels like thick rubber, like the hot water bottle, the latrine plungers. Not at all like skin. The small meat of her breasts falls to each side. Nipples are darker, puckering. Slight rounding in the belly. Wiry hair between her thighs. Ribs and hips and all the delicate bird bones of her wrists, shoulders, collar.
An urgent thrum whispers: run, run! Hysteria bubbles up, and a trembling overtakes her. “Mother Susan, I can’t,” she says. S
he drops the knife. Gags.
Susan slaps her, to no avail.
“No, no.” Ruth collapses on the floor.
“Get up or get out!” Susan’s foot prods her. Pity? Or total exasperation? Either way, Ruth scuttles to the Great Hall, wiping her face on her sleeves. She slinks to her bed and weeps until, exhausted, she drops into a confused sleep.
It feels like mere minutes later she is being shaken. Mother Susan is at her bedside shouting, “Wake up.”
“Already?”
“Father Ernst called us.”
“Now?” Ruth blinks. There’s a battering, a breach inside her head.
“Get the others.”
Ruth falls back to the pillow. Her temples throb. She is fogged by a terrible dream that stokes her grief and horror: Rebekah’s nude corpse shuffling toward her in the long exit tunnel. Ruth could not escape—the Mission Pole and ladder were gone, just the inner blast door bolted above her, out of reach. Backed into the farthest corner, she had to look upon Rebekah’s broken face advancing. Rebekah raised her arms and moaned. The surprise—she did not strike, only held her arms aloft for a final embrace.
Ruth says, “Think he’s calling the Ascension?”
“Not for you or me to say.” There’s a wildness about Susan. Clearly, she has not slept, and she has not cleaned herself. The stain on her long skirt—blood and gore.
Ruth licks her lips. She tries again. “If we don’t go now, we won’t be able to. It’s hard to climb the ladder.”
Susan says, “Get up.”
“The children will need help. Carrying.”
“Enough!”
Ruth hugs her knees to her chest. She tucks her feet under the hem of the nightdress. Susan is frozen, glaring. Her cheek is a ripe plum, soft and purple, in the otherwise gaunt face above her cadaverous body. Tension surges like a static charge, the promise of violence.
Ruth owes her something. What? She swings her legs off the mattress and lowers her feet. Steadies her breath. Pounding in her ears. “Shall I stitch the sacred pouch? For the cairn?” Ruth’s blood rags are hidden there.
“No pouch for the unnamed. No burial. Father Ernst instructs us to Martyr and none other. This was the Devil’s work.”
“Oh.” A ragged noise comes from her horrified mouth. Poor Rebekah: outcast, orphaned in the afterlife, locked out of God’s Garden. Gentle Rebekah, alone, pressed to the wrong side of His gate for eternity.
Then relief, too, curdled by guilt: Ruth’s secret will stay safe.
“Both of you, shut up.” Hannah huddles in the bedclothes in her own cot for a change.
“He didn’t send for you?” Susan asks Hannah.
“He has a lot on his mind. But your wicked words will make their way to his ear.”
“Please, no,” says Ruth.
Susan, brave or indifferent or savage from her night of labour, tears the top quilt from Hannah’s bed. “Time you did something useful,” she says. “Sort her things. Find something to burn.” Susan leaves—to wash, Ruth hopes.
At Rebekah’s bare cot, Ruth squats and pulls the trunk out from underneath. She unclasps the latch and lifts the wide lid. Rebekah’s scent. All her belongings. Not hers, actually. She outgrew everything since coming to ground. She was only a child of eleven, then. These are hand-me-downs from previous mothers.
Hannah, hovering, says, “You can handle this,” and leaves in a huff.
Ruth picks up the new quilt. The edges have a crisp finish, but when she flips a corner, she sees that the backing layer is an old bed sheet, worn thin and stained, a map of those earthly elements the body cannot contain. Strange choice for Rebekah, who prided herself on creating pretty, reversible patterns. No one has seen it yet. Ruth can’t bear to look, either. It’s as though Rebekah is still here, folded up with these coveted cloth squares. She sets it aside. Four dresses and slips, which she piles on the mattress. Three flannel nightshirts. Underthings, also inherited. Woollen stockings, patched and darned and almost worn through again. Sweaters: those can be unravelled and reknit or simply worn large, layered. Baby clothes that Rebekah stitched and embroidered. Her handiwork.
At the bottom in the trunk’s far corner, Ruth discovers a small packet. Inside, a beautiful jade comb. She traces it with her finger—flowers on a vine dripping with leaves. This comb sat in the centre of her dad’s dresser, just out of reach. “Off limits,” he said. It belonged to her mother. Why is it in Rebekah’s trunk? Ruth presses it to her nose—dust and the barest hint of lavender from the sachets they tucked in with their clothes. Inside the packet are faint pencil scratchings, words and more words, when she carefully unfolds and flattens it on her lap. A diary? A letter?
Susan returns in a fresh set of clothes. “Well?”
Ruth hides the comb and its wrapping between her thighs. She has nothing for the burn pile. She tosses a slip. “Her scent is all over it.”
Susan nods and takes the bundle when she leaves.
In the Great Hall, Father Ernst’s pulpit has been wheeled out and the benches set one behind another. A pall lingers like sickness in the warmed room: singed hair, burning gristle, charred bone. Wafts of roast every time Susan opens the oven door.
More sermon than funeral. That’s how Ruth remembers the Unnaming Ceremony for her father. It was held during the first heady days of bunkering, when her father’s absence felt theoretical still.
At Father’s bidding, Silas climbs off the squeaking stationary bike. Soon there will be lard to grease it.
“Places, everyone,” he says.
Hannah takes her Vestal Cushion to the front. Ruth and the children fit on one bench. Their lost tribe fills the others: Memaw, Deborah, Mary, Deborah’s teen boys, all the sickly infants, the countless stillborns. Ruth sees them, plain as Silas standing in front. Rebekah and her gruesome rope hold court in the centre. No Paul, which is a relief. But none of the Standoff Martyrs are there and not her traitor father, either. She blinks and the images dissipate, leaving friendless wooden benches in their wake.
Susan sinks her ladle in the pail, and it clangs against the side. Ruth can hear the water sloshing. Her tongue is as dry as an old shoe. Each child gets a mouthful. Susan comes to her last. Fills the ladle right up and nods. “Go on.” It’s more than her share, but Ruth can’t stop once she tastes it. One, two swallows. She holds the last bit in her mouth as long as she can.
Leah crawls onto Ruth’s lap. She wants a hug, a kiss. Ruth lets the last of her water fall into the girl’s surprised mouth. Should have never identified the poor thing’s birth mother. Now look. Ruth opens her shawl to let her in.
Father Ernst strides to the pulpit, brisk, full of purpose. He grips the lectern, and his mouth moves imperceptibly as he scans the room. Could be he’s counting heads. His voice booms. “Sin is a fire that catches all kindling. Now, one among us is gone.”
“Her name is lost forever,” they say.
Ruth squeezes Leah.
“Yea, that darkness swallows the light. Yet we do not hide in fear. We walk the perilous night armed with the truth, with the Doctrine, and with God’s light in our hearts. We offer ourselves up to fight in God’s Great Army. Amen.”
“Amen.”
Father looks at the vent guard in the ceiling. He cocks his head, like he’s listening. He says, “Samson fought the Philistines and knowingly sacrificed himself to smite the enemy. This most Holy martyr we embrace.”
“Holy Martyrs, most blessed sacrifice,” they say.
“Just so, we sent our soldiers to battle. They released the Burning Light. Staged a war on wicked America in the Great Standoff.”
“Holy Martyrs, who wait for us now in God’s Garden,” they say.
“Judas Iscariot, traitor, betrayed God’s only Son.”
“Enemy of God, we fight thee,” they say.
Leah buries her cries in Ruth’s wet neck.
Father Ernst continues. “Later, filled with remorse, Judas hung himself. Laid his life to waste. But him we do not embrace. For th
e sinner’s cowardice ended in self-murder. There is no rest or redemption for him. God, in his wisdom, did not grant him peace. Father of Life.”
They say, “Your will be done on earth as in Heaven.”
“Lord of Life,” intones Father Ernst.
“Hear our prayers,” they reply.
“Just so, this Cousin took her life, that which is God’s and mine alone. She shall rove the pestilent earth, the polluted seas, for eternity. She shall pace outside the gate of God’s Holy Garden and shall never enter, and she shall never find rest. In our hour of need, she forsook God and the Family and there is no forgiveness for her. Your kingdom come.”
“Your will be done. Amen.”
Words echo and ring. Ruth stands to respond, sits to listen, just like the others. Stands. Sits. She is stupefied. How will she explain this to Paul? He knew something was wrong. Why else bid her check on Rebekah? That uncanny silence, her despair. The urgent message she spelled on Ruth’s hand: guilt, or was it quilt? All for what? One final act, terrifying and irrevocable. Ruth is not ashamed for Rebekah, as Father is. She is ashamed that she, that none of them, helped her. Her teeth grind. Heat runs in her veins. This is anger. Ruth is beginning to feel dangerous.
After the ceremony, Mother Susan and Hannah carry trays to table. Grey water porridge with an oily heft in each bowl. On Father’s invitation, Silas commences. Then Hannah. The children grab utensils. Father Ernst savours each spoonful, eyes closed, moustache trembling as his mouth slowly works. Ruth watches, horrified. She will not join them. She grips her skirt under the table. She wants to scream, to kick.
Susan leans in the kitchen alcove. She says, “Go slow, children. Bellies been empty a while.”
“Join us, Mother Susan.” Father Ernst beckons her toward the girls’ bench.
Tarry This Night Page 12
