Eden West

by Pete Hautman

  We take shelter in Menshome and stare out through the windows. The deafening rattle of hailstones on the roof makes conversation impossible. It lasts only a few minutes, and then the hail becomes sleet, and the sleet becomes rain, melting the ice and snow, turning the walkways to rivers of slush.

  “I have never seen the like,” Aaron says. None of us has. It rains for hours, and by the time the clouds lift, the snow is melted and the temperature has risen into the sixties. It smells like spring.

  The promise of spring should fill me with hope, but each day arrives like a drumbeat of doom. Father Grace is still in Albuquerque, but he will return soon, and when he does, when the Tree blooms, he will expect me to wed Sister Beryl.

  On the second Landay of March, I walk the fence again. When I reach the spot where Lynna and I picnicked, I discover a new breach. A marmot has tunneled beneath the chain-link again, just a few feet from where it did so before. Wearily I begin to gather rocks, but before I fill the gap, I crawl through to stand on the other side. I imagine the sound of Lynna’s ATV, imagine it appearing over the horizon, bouncing and skidding along the cattle track toward me. But there is no ATV, nothing but the mating call of a meadowlark.

  I find myself walking along the muddy track. I come up over the rise, and the valley comes into view. I keep walking until I can see the pink house. There is a pickup truck parked in front. I stand on the ridge between banks of melting snow and watch. There is little to see. No one comes or goes. I walk down the slope until I am standing in the yard in front of the house. It feels empty. I look through the window into the kitchen where Lynna fed me quesadillas. I see a red light glowing on the coffeepot, and an open box of cereal on the table, and a single bowl.

  “Can I help you, son?”

  I whirl around, so startled my soul threatens to leap from my body. For a moment I think it is Cal, but it is Lynna’s father, standing quietly by the corral gate, a coil of rope looped over his left shoulder. He has been watching me the whole time.

  My heart is pounding. I don’t know what to say.

  “You’re Jacob, right?”

  I nod.

  “Let me guess. You come looking for my daughter.” His weathered face is carved from granite. I cannot read it.

  “No! I mean, yes. I was wondering if she’d come back.”

  “Nope.”

  “I just want to know if she is all right.”

  “She’s fine. Sent her off to live with her mom’s sister for a time.”

  “Is she coming back?”

  “Not your concern, son. She’s not joining up with your little cult, I can tell you that.”

  “I don’t want her to join us!” I say, anger overcoming my nervousness. I take a breath and say calmly, “I just . . . If she comes back, I’d like to see her.”

  “See her? You saying you want to date my daughter?” He smiles at that, but it is a hard smile, a smile made of stone.

  “I just want to see her,” I say.

  “I believe that like I believe in jackalopes, son.” He tips the brim of his hat up. “Tell me something. You ever think about getting out of that cage and taking a look around? Check out what the rest of the people in this world are up to?”

  I stare back at him, afraid to voice my thoughts, but he sees the answer in my face.

  “That’s what I figured. Evelyn told me you were a smart kid.”

  “Evelyn . . . Lynna?”

  “I call her Evelyn, her real name. She hates it.” He laughs, and his stone face softens. “Fact is, with her and Cal gone, it’s kind of quiet hereabouts. How are things on your side of the fence? Hear you lost some folks.”

  “It has been a hard winter.”

  “Yeah, that it has.”

  “I shot the wolf.”

  He regards me silently for a few seconds, then says, “I suppose I should thank you. I’d have shot him myself, given a chance. But an animal like that, I’m always a little sorry to see it go. How old are you, son?”

  “I will have eighteen years this summer.”

  He nods. “Evelyn just turned seventeen a bit ago. Well, son, I can’t tell you when or if my daughter will be coming home. She’s finishing up her last year of high school in Phoenix. She seems to like it better than the homeschooling we were trying to do. I ain’t no teacher. She’s talking about taking classes at ASU in the fall. But I expect she’ll be back for a visit at least, and I’ll tell her you were asking after her. I’m sure if she wants to see you she’ll get in touch.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  I kneel at the praying wall, intending to open my heart to the Lord, but all I can do is wonder how many days or weeks it will be before the Tree blossoms. I stare at the branch nearest me, almost close enough to reach out and touch. When has it flowered in the past? Sometime in late April, I think. I would ask Brother Andrew, were he still with us. Maybe Brother Peter knows.

  Other Grace are gathering at the wall. I see a small, slim figure take her place at the far side. Sister Beryl. I wonder what she will pray for. To be wed? To have children? Or will she pray as I do, for the Tree never to bloom?

  Our eyes meet; she looks away, and I see fear on her face, and I have my answer.

  I am awakened late that night by the sound of a vehicle, and voices outside. I look out the door of my cell as Brother Jerome walks past in his nightclothes.

  “What has happened?” I ask.

  “Father Grace has returned,” he says.

  There will be no Convocation. Father Grace has sequestered himself in Gracehome and will see no one. Only Ruth has returned with him. Fara stayed behind in Albuquerque with her three young children. I hear from my mother, who heard it from Ruth, that Fara will not be returning to Nodd.

  Every morning I kneel before the Tree, praying for it to hold back its blossoms, praying that Father Grace has forgotten about me and Sister Beryl, praying for the courage and will to face him if he has not.

  Brother Wallace has taken over the Garden since Brother Andrew’s passing. I am watching him one morning as he examines the flower beds, bending over from time to time to brush last year’s leaves from the emerging shoots. He completes his survey of the beds and steps over the wall to inspect the Tree. He pulls down a branch and examines the tips of the twigs, then walks around the Tree, frowning. Wallace is a carpenter, more comfortable with wood that has been cut, stacked, and dried. He did not ask for Andrew’s job, but there was no one else. I do not envy him the responsibility, but with so many of us gone, we must do what we can.

  I complete my devotions and am leaving the Heart when I encounter Jerome.

  “Brother Jacob,” he says. “Father Grace requests your presence.”

  Sister Beryl greets me at the door.

  “He is waiting for us,” she says, eyes downcast. She turns to lead me down the long hall that runs through the center of Gracehome.

  “Sister, wait,” I say. She stops, her shoulders hunched, and slowly turns toward me. She will not meet my eyes.

  “Do you know what he wants?” I ask.

  She nods. “We are promised to each other,” she says in a small voice. Her cheeks are red.

  “Now?” My heart thumps, and it is all I can do not to turn and run.

  She shakes her head. “Father says it is the Lord’s will that we be wed while standing before the blossoming Tree.”

  “Is that what you want?” I ask.

  She says nothing.

  “I will not marry you if you do not want it,” I say, and as the words leave my lips, I know myself for a coward, for I am asking her to choose.

  She says something so quietly I can’t understand her. Her eyes flick briefly to my face, then away. Realizing I couldn’t hear her, she says, “It does not matter.”

  It is true, I realize. What we want means nothing. Not to Father Grace.

  “The Tree blooms every spring,” I say. “Perhaps we can ask him to wait another year.”

  “Father says this will be the last time. He is waitin
g for us.”

  I follow her down the hall. Gracehome has a gloomy aspect. The blinds are drawn. The air smells of wood smoke and mutton. I think they should open some windows. At the end of the hall, Beryl knocks on a heavy wooden door carved with the image of the Tree. At a faint mutter from within the room, she pushes through the door and we enter Father Grace’s private chamber.

  The room is even more cheerless than the rest of Gracehome. The curtains are closed, and the only light comes from two flickering wall sconces and a small blaze in the fireplace. The air is thick with the sour smell of old perspiration and something else, a yeasty smell, like rotting silage. Father Grace is in bed, in his nightclothes, propped up against the headboard, his beard spilling raggedly over his chest. Beside the bed, in a wooden chair, sits his eldest wife, Marianne, Beryl’s mother. The wall next to her is covered with shelves filled with books and papers.

  “Young Jacob,” he says. His voice sounds normal, but he looks wrong. His nose and forehead are dead white, but his cheeks are glowing red, as if with fever.

  “Father,” I say. “Are you well?”

  “I burn with the knowledge of what is to come,” he says. He lifts a mug from the small table beside his bed. “I have been thinking of you.” Sister Marianne watches expressionlessly as he sips from the mug, closes his eyes, and swallows.

  “I have been speaking with Zerachiel.” He says it as if Zerachiel has recently been standing at the foot of his bed. “He knows of our struggles these past months, and he has made me a promise. This spring, the Tree will blossom one last time. The Ark is coming, Brother Jacob.”

  Father Grace’s conviction is absolute and undeniable. I hear the sound of my pulse rushing, my heart pounding. There will be no wedding-date negotiation. Sister Marianne’s eyes are shining with tears. I look quickly at Beryl, who is standing beside me. Her lips are opening and closing like those of a gasping fish.

  “The Ark will come,” he says again, and it is as if he has reached into my chest and squeezed my heart with his thick fingers. I sense Beryl stiffen, and I sense her fear. I am no less frightened, for I believe, in that moment, with all my heart and soul, that Father Grace is speaking the Truth. The Ark will come, and I will be left behind.

  “But not before you are wed.” His tongue is thick in his mouth. The air in the room is so heavy and close I can hardly get it in and out of my lungs. “The Tree will flower. The boy will become a man. The fruit will set sweet and full, and it will be the last time.” Father Grace salutes me with his mug. “And the Ark will come, the Ark will come.” His voice is slurred.

  Sister Marianne stands and takes the mug from his hand. “G’bless, Brother,” she says to me. “It is time for you to leave.”

  There is nothing I would rather do.

  I step out of Gracehome and take in huge breaths of the clean spring air and I know that I cannot marry Beryl, even if that means I must live out my days in the Pit, even if it means I must follow Sister Salah off the Knob and into the Pison, even if it means I must spend eternity in Hell, even if it means I must wander the earth alone until Armageddon destroys me along with the rest of the sinners.

  I move aimlessly through the walkways of the Village, disconnected from all I see. The Grace go about their daily tasks: Brother Will wheeling a barrow filled with sacks of flour; Sisters Olivia and Louise in the yard outside the nursery directing several of the smaller children in a game; Brother Peter driving the ATV from the garage toward the south meadow. I have tasks of my own to perform, but I cannot think of what they might be, so I take myself to the Sacred Heart, where I am alone. I kneel at the wall and clasp my hands together and gaze into the naked branches of the Tree and pray for guidance — a sign, a miracle — for a way out. But all I see is a tree, possibly planted by Lynna’s grandfather, with a scant few of last year’s withered fruits still clinging to its branches.

  I do not know how long my mother stood watching me, but when she kneels beside me at the wall, I sense that she has been there for some time.

  “You have seen Father Grace,” she says.

  I nod.

  “I hear he is not well.”

  “I think he was drunk,” I say.

  She does not seem surprised. “It has been a dreadful winter. He mourns the loss of his child, and the others who have left us.”

  “He told me that the Tree will bloom one last time, and that I am to wed Beryl, and that Zerachiel will come by summer’s end.”

  She does not reply at first. I can hear her breathing. After a time, she speaks.

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I believed it when he said it. I heard it from his lips.”

  “Even a prophet can be wrong.”

  “A prophet who prophesizes falsehoods is no prophet.”

  “Perhaps not, but his words give us hope. That is why we are here.”

  “For hope?”

  She nods, smiling sadly. “What will you do?”

  “I cannot marry Beryl. I will tell Father Grace that the Lord has spoken to me.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  “No,” I say miserably.

  “Are you certain?”

  “If he has, I have not heard him.”

  “You must have faith, Jacob.”

  I hear footsteps and look back to see Brother Wallace entering the Heart, followed closely by Brother Peter. My mother and I watch silently as they step over the wall and approach the Tree. They are speaking in low, urgent voices. Brother Peter plucks a dried fruit from a branch and crushes it between his fingers. He drops to one knee and brushes aside the dried leaves and digs into the earth with his hand, then sniffs his fingers. I hear him speak a single word.

  “Razar.”

  I know what Razar is. Last summer I spent a day in the south meadow with Brother Jerome, masked and gloved, applying a toxic herbicide called Razar-X4 to the thistles that had invaded our sweetgrass. The sharp, acrid smell of it had stayed on my clothes for days. And now I remember smelling that same chemical more recently, the day Lynna and I saw Tobias come out from the Heart carrying an empty bucket.

  My prayers have been answered. The Tree will never bloom again.

  I tell no one that Tobias poisoned the Tree. What good would it do? The Tree is dead. Brother Peter speculates that Brother Andrew, who could hardly see and whose sense of smell had left him, must have made a terrible error, mistaking the Razar-X4 herbicide for fertilizer. Since Brother Andrew is dead and gone, and the Lord knows he is innocent, I say nothing.

  I think of what Lynna told me, that it is only a tree, a crab apple tree planted by her grandfather half a century ago. It may be so, but I ask myself, Why did it die? Why would the Lord allow Tobias to pour poison over its roots? For whose sins are we being punished?

  News of the death of the Tree travels swiftly through the Village, but days pass with no word from Father Grace. Nodd feels drained of life. For seven days and nights, we go dully about our daily tasks, awaiting the next terrible event.

  On fourth Heavenday, Father Grace calls for a Convo cation. This news is received with equal measures of relief and dread.

  All are required to attend.

  The Hall of Enoch feels enormous and hollow. The many empty seats remind us of those who have left. Elders Abraham and Seth are seated on the dais, as timeless and stern as stone lions. Minutes crawl by as we shift and whisper and wait for Father Grace to appear. Even the youngest children sense the fear and uncertainty that pervades the hall.

  We have been waiting for nearly half an hour when the doors open behind us. I look back and am shocked by what I see: a man, tall and deathly pale, his head and face shorn naked, dressed in nothing but a cotton feed bag with armholes torn from the corners. For a moment I think it is Von, returned to life, but the lightning-blasted eye has not changed, and I know I am looking at Father Grace. I hear gasps and whimpers. A child starts to cry, and then another.

  Father Grace is followed into the hall by Marianne, Juliette, and Ruth. As
his wives seat themselves in the front row with their children, Father Grace mounts the dais slowly, as if every movement causes him agony. His legs are thin and white and hairy. He turns to face us, and spreads his arms wide.

  “Brothers and Sisters.” It is eerie to hear Father Grace’s voice coming from this bald and shaven apparition. “The Beast walks among us.”

  He pauses to let that sink in. I wonder if the others are thinking, as I am, that this new version of Father Grace is the most beastly-looking thing ever to appear in Nodd.

  “He spreads his poison among us — we have seen his work. He takes our people, our sheep, and now the Tree. He is here in this room, attempting to steal our souls, as he has taken the souls of those who have left us. As he took Brother Taylor, as he took Fara. How many of you have felt the writhing maggots of doubt over these past weeks and months? How many of you have suffered the wicked whispers of the serpent? How many of you have secretly questioned the word of the Lord? Look into your hearts and know that you are being tested, even now.”

  His eye pierces my breast, and I am certain he is speaking directly to me. I look away, unable to bear it, and I see Will, beside me, looking as stricken by guilt and shame as I feel. Even Jerome is quavering, and I realize that Father Grace is talking to every last one of us.

  “Do you think that evil cannot touch you? Do you think that darkness does not dwell within you? It does. None of us is proof.”

  He strikes himself in the cheek with his open hand. The sound of it echoes from the walls.

  “Every thought is a battle —” He slaps himself on the other cheek. Abraham and Seth are looking at him in shock. “Every one of us is a sinner.” He hits himself in the face again, this time with a closed fist, and the skin under his blasted eye splits open. “And we have killed the Tree.” He swings his fist into his nose, twice. A gush of blood runs over his mouth and down his naked chin. Brother Abraham stands and tries to restrain him, but Father Grace shoves him aside and continues to club himself in the face. “Every one of us a sinner!” he cries in a hoarse voice, and strikes another blow. “Hadeum domi!”