Eden West

by Pete Hautman

  Father Grace’s face, hands, and chest are red with blood, and he is shouting words I cannot understand. “Domus mortis! Malum et nequitiam!” He drops to his knees, and the wet sounds of his fists striking his face keep coming. Marianne and Juliette are herding crying children toward the doors. Samuel and my father rush onto the dais and try to grab Father Grace’s arms. He swings wildly at them, knocking Samuel to the floor. Everyone is on their feet now, and I can’t see. Chairs are being knocked over. Some of us are trying to see what is happening, while others are moving toward the doors. I climb onto my chair and see several of the men gathered around Father Grace, trying to restrain him. My father and Brother Enos are on their knees, holding him down, while Samuel produces a small kit from within his robes and takes out a syringe. Father Grace is screaming hoarsely and kicking his bare feet. Samuel gets behind him and stabs the needle into his shoulder. Father Grace roars and, with a sudden convulsive movement, frees himself. He staggers to his feet and lurches forward. His eye rolls up in its socket, his body goes slack, and he falls from the edge of the dais into Brother Peter’s arms.

  For a few seconds, the men on the dais just stand there staring down at him, stunned by what has happened, by what they have done. Brother Enos recovers first. He looks at our gaping faces and speaks.

  “It is over. You may all go.”

  Nearly everyone complies. I remain behind, along with a few others. Samuel puts his fingers to Father Grace’s throat and feels his pulse.

  “He will sleep for a time. Let’s get him back to Grace home.”

  Brother Peter, as stout and sinewy as a scrub oak, steps forward. I have always been impressed with Peter’s strength, but never so much as now. Father Grace is easily half again his weight, but Peter picks him up as if he is a lamb and carries him out the back entrance. Samuel follows.

  My father, looking after them, says, “It has been getting worse.”

  “It was a mistake to allow him to speak,” Brother Enos says.

  “What were we to do? He is Father Grace.”

  “The women and children are frightened.”

  “As am I. The death of his son, the death of the Tree . . .”

  “I should have seen this coming,” Enos says. “He had an episode in Albuquerque.”

  “I heard that as well, but it was not like this.”

  “No.” Enos shakes his head. “Not like this.”

  My father notices me standing off to the side and comes over to me.

  “Jacob, you should go about your business,” he says in a low voice.

  “Father Grace is mad, isn’t he?” I say.

  “He is distraught. It will pass.”

  “He commands me to marry Beryl.”

  My father does not speak.

  “Beryl is a child,” I say.

  He looks away. “Yes.”

  “Father Grace commanded me to wed Beryl when the Tree blossoms, but the Tree is dead.”

  He presses his lips together, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath through his nostrils. After a moment he says, “The Tree is but a symbol. It lives on in our hearts.”

  “I don’t care. I will not marry Beryl.”

  He looks at me, his eyes oddly shiny. He says, “You will be of age soon. In a matter of weeks. Your mother fears you will leave us.”

  “How can I leave? I have nowhere to go.”

  He nods and places his hand on my shoulder.

  “Go,” he says. I think for a moment that he means I should leave Nodd, but he says, “Go to the Heart and pray. Leafless though it is, the Tree stands. The Lord will guide you through this time of trouble, as He will guide us all. Our faith will prevail.”

  As I walk away, he adds, “G’bless.”

  I go to the Heart. The gate is open. I kneel at the wall. I am not alone. Will is there, his bad leg stretched awkwardly to the side, his long, thin body curved over the wall like a question mark. Sister Agatha is there, not kneeling but sitting on her walker, her broken arm still bound in a splint. The unmarried Sisters Rebecca, Louise, and Olivia kneel close together on the far side of the wall, their eyes closed, their lips moving. Four of the younger children are gathered with Sister Dalva at the koi pond, kneeling at the stone bench. I have a peculiar thought: now that the Tree is dead, will we be praying to the fish huddled in the muddy bottom of the pond? And what are we supposed to be praying for? A miracle to restore the Tree? For Father Grace to recover from his illness? For the Ark to come and take us all away?

  What would I pray for, were I praying?

  None of those things.

  I look at the Tree and I see dead branches and shriveled dry leaves. I think about the poison that seeped into its roots and oozed through its veins, a chemical made by men in some faraway factory and delivered to the Tree in a bucket by Tobias. All these things and creatures made by the Lord, all acting in accordance with His will, all known to Him in every filament of their being. Could this truly be the Lord’s final test of the Grace?

  If so, I have failed, tainted by the World as surely as the Tree has been poisoned. I rise from the wall and return to Menshome and take myself to my cell and think long into the night. Dawn is breaking when sleep takes me.

  Jerome awakens me by kicking at my pallet.

  “What?” I say, glaring at him and pulling my thin blanket higher.

  “You have slept through breakfast,” he says. “The sun has been up for hours. It is fourth Landay.”

  I groan. I had completely forgotten about my edge-walking duty.

  “Brother Enos wishes to see you before you go.”

  I dress slowly, perform my morning ablutions, and breakfast on a leftover heel of bread with huckleberry preserves. I think of crabapple jelly. I am in no great hurry to see Enos. He will be no angrier if he has to wait another quarter hour.

  Outside, a storm cloud has risen in the west, squatting over the mountains like a great toad, while the sky to the north is a streak of brilliant empty blue. I watch the cloud, its forward edge roiling, advancing upon Nodd. I will have a long, wet, miserable walk ahead of me.

  I cross the Village to Elderlodge, steeling myself for the chastisement to come. I have disappointed Brother Enos several times already, and I am not looking forward to his scolding. I know he overheard when I told my father I would refuse to wed Beryl.

  Brother Enos is seated at his desk, somberly regarding his pipe, turning it in his hands, peering into the bowl at the dead ashes. His features are even more drawn and severe than usual; I sense that he slept no better than did I. He flicks his eyes at me, then points with the pipe stem to the chair in front of his desk.

  I seat myself and wait.

  Enos, fascinated by his pipe, does not speak for what feels like an eternity. Finally he sighs and sets the pipe aside and speaks without looking at me directly.

  “Today is fourth Landay. Why are you here?”

  “You sent for me,” I say.

  “Precisely. I sent for you because you are here and not out walking the fence. Why do you shirk your duty, Brother Jacob?”

  “I am sorry,” I say. “Much has been happening.”

  “You are referring to last night?”

  I nod, but it is much more than that. To walk the fence looking for marmot holes seems laughably trivial.

  “The most important thing,” Enos says, “is that we go on. Father Grace tells us that our time is upon us. He believes that Zerachiel will arrive within days, perhaps even hours. He refuses all food and will not even permit a drop of water to touch his lips.” He leans over his desk and fixes me with his eyes, and I see that his fierceness has not left him. “Do you believe, Brother Jacob?”

  I try to speak, but the words catch in my throat, and I can only look back at him with my mouth open and my heart pounding. He holds my eyes for several heartbeats, then sits back, nodding, as if satisfied by the answer I am unable to speak.

  “I thought as much,” he says. “It is one thing to believe in a future that is distant, bu
t another to embrace the reality that is tomorrow. Still, we must go on. Do you understand?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Faith is a greased pig. The harder you clutch it, the more likely it is to slip from your grasp. We strive to believe with all our hearts in the Lord, and yet daily we transgress. The pig slips from our embrace. We sin, then we must chase it down and beg the Lord for forgiveness. Consider your recent acts, Jacob. Where was your faith when you pursued the Worldly girl? Did you truly believe that the Lord was present and watching, or did you set aside your faith and act as if He did not exist?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, and I truly don’t.

  “And so it is with all of us. We believe that the Lord speaks through Father Grace, yet we ignore his pronouncements and bow to our basest desires. And now, even as he asks us to believe that the hour of our fate is upon us, we go on as if nothing will happen. As we speak, Brother Jerome is grinding wheat for bread that will not be baked for weeks, while Peter is making plans for the sheepshearing and Sister Naomi mends winter clothing for the snows that may not come until next November. We believe the End Days are upon us, yet we go on as if they will never arrive. Is this a failure, or a simple expression of the human condition?”

  Is he asking me to respond? I do not know, so I wait for more.

  “The answer is, we go on. Today is fourth Landay. You will walk the fence.”

  “It is late.”

  “And who is to blame? Walk what you can today. Tomorrow you will walk again.”

  I head toward the High Meadow, planning to begin my walk at the northwest corner of Nodd, where the fence meets the Pison. It takes me only half an hour to reach the escarpment. I stay on the narrow trail as it switchbacks up the steep slope. By the time I reach the Meadows, the sun is high and bright, and I am sweating. I stop to drink. I take off my pack and peel off my jacket and sit on a rock that looks like the shell of a giant turtle and look to the west. The thunderheads are great gray towers a mile high, boiling and frothing above a base as black as the bottom of a cast iron pan, walking on claws of lightning from the mountains to the plains. The air is effervescent; I detect the sharp scent of ozone even though the storm is still twenty miles distant.

  Is this what the End Days look like? I imagine Zerachiel in his chariot of gold bursting forth, followed by the great Ark that will carry the Grace to their reward. The image is vivid. It fills my chest with wonder and awe. But at the same time, I know that if Zerachiel is truly to come, he will not be coming for me.

  I look to the east. The sky is lurid blue.

  I head north across the Meadows, storm to my left, blue sky to my right. The earth is spongy; blades of fresh green poke up through last year’s dead grasses. Soon the new growth will take over. Peter and Jerome will herd our remaining sheep from the Low Meadows. I set a strong pace and listen to the sound of my feet, the muted crunch of dead grass, the softer squelch of moist soil. I pass Shepherd’s Rock. It feels like a lifetime ago that I sat inside that stone shelter and watched my clothes dry, the same day I had a picnic with Lynna and rode her ATV.

  I angle to the northwest, to where the fence meets the Pison. By the time I reach the corner post the storm is visibly closer; I can hear its faint rumbling. I turn my back on the clouds and follow the familiar path along the fence, heading east.

  I remember all the other times I have walked this route, and the sense of safety and freedom and pride it brought me. I never thought of us as being imprisoned by the fence. It was more like a strip of armor, a strand of chain mail that made us stronger, a shield to protect us.

  My fingers trail along the chain-link. The metal is cold and dry and rough on my fingertips. It is sufficient to prevent the cattle, the pronghorn, and the deer from coming and going, but the smaller creatures — coyotes, marmots, gophers, snakes, insects — pass though easily. Birds fly over it. Men can cut their way through it. It will not stop the wind or the rain or the sound of thunder. It is a symbol, I think, and little more.

  Is that true, as my father suggested, of the Tree as well?

  The sound of thunder is getting louder. I look back. The clouds are higher and darker and closer, and in the lightning flashes beneath them I can see columns of rain falling slantwise upon the western plain. Above me, the sky is still blue. I may soon have to make a dash back to Shepherd’s Rock. A lightning storm is no time to be standing in the open, and certainly nowhere near a steel fence. I set a stern pace and continue along the path. I think I can reach the place where the marmot dug through. The place where Lynna and I had our picnic. That will be enough for today. From there it is but half a mile to the stone shelter, where I can ride out the storm.

  I am almost to my goal when the sun falls behind the clouds. The air is eerily clear. Behind and above me is shadow, and before me the greening hills still sparkle with sunlight. I see where Lynna and I piled rocks to fill the hole beneath the fence. They have been disturbed, pushed aside, and there is a pile of earth. The marmot has been busy. As I approach the spot, a cold wind strikes from the west, bowing the grasses and tugging at my clothing. My scalp begins to prickle; I can taste ozone. I look at the back of my hand. All the hairs are standing up. I touch my beard, and it crackles with static electricity. I know I should move away from the fence, but a flash of yellow catches my eye. A square of paper on the fence, fastened to the chain-link with a yellow ribbon. I reach out to touch the paper. When I grasp it, a shock travels up my arm. Startled, I let go. The wind snatches the paper and sends it fluttering off. I back quickly away. My entire body is tingling, and the fence is crackling with energy, sending out blue sparks. The first drops of rain hit. The clouds above are seething. I can see great sheets of rain sweeping down toward me. My hair is standing on end. My skin is buzzing. The grass is hissing.

  “I’m sorry,” I hear myself say, and the firmament is torn asunder, and all goes to white, and there is a sound like the end of the world.

  I hear ringing. Not the ringing of bells, but a high-pitched sound deep inside my head. I smell ozone and the nose-wrenching reek of hot metal, burned cloth, and wet ash. I open my eyes and see deep-blue sky. I turn my head. I am on my back, about ten cubits from the fence. The last I remember, I was much closer to it, and the fence was whole. Now, for several cubits of its length, it is a twisted molten wreck.

  I turn my head the other way. Brown grasses, and a marmot perched on a rock, watching me. I sit up slowly. I can feel every muscle complaining, but I do not seem to be seriously injured. The marmot whistles and scurries off. I am soaking wet. The ground is sodden and steaming in the bright sun.

  Carefully I rise to my feet. My legs feel long, loose-jointed, and unfamiliar. My body aches, but my thoughts ring with painful lucidity. As I look around, I am struck by the sharpness and detail of all I see. Each leaf of grass, each droplet of water, each strand of lightning-blasted fencing stands out, blade-crisp and quivering. I look down. My tunic is singed. I am wearing only one boot. My backpack is over by the ruined remains of the fence, split open, blackened, its contents scattered. My food, a few tools, water, nothing of any consequence. I breathe in and feel the air swirling through the passages of my lungs; I feel the slow, steady pulsation of my beating heart and the heat of the sun on my face. I narrow my eyes and look up at the great orb, now halfway to the western horizon. I turn to see the back end of the storm rolling east over the plains.

  Thoughts and perceptions clatter through my mind with astonishing rapidity. Was this what it was like for Father Grace, when lightning pierced his eye? But I see no angels, and the only presence I sense is the presence of that which I can see, hear, smell, taste, feel. The storm sent down uncounted lightning bolts. Was the one that struck me down a message from the Lord? If so, and I am uninjured, what can it mean? What does it mean that I have never felt so alive?

  It was just a storm, I tell myself. I was foolish to let it catch me so near the metal fence, and I am blessed to have survived.

  I lift the remains of my
backpack. The charred fabric tears. I walk in widening circles, searching for my missing boot. I find it not far away, and near it a soggy square of paper I tore from the fence. There is writing on the paper, but the rain has rendered it illegible.

  I pull on my boot and return to gaze in awe at the fence. What power such a storm must hold, that one single thunderbolt should do such damage. I climb over the tortured metal, over the molten tangle of chain-link and razor wire, and I step out of Nodd. A few cubits away, I notice a small, deliberately arranged pile of flat stones. Resting upon the topmost stone is a glass jar with a yellow ribbon tied around its top. The jar is filled with red jelly. My heart pounds as I bend over and pick it up. I twist off the top and dip a finger into the jelly and touch it to my tongue. It is crabapple tart and sweeter than honey. Using two fingers like a spoon, I scoop out more jelly and spread it across my tongue. The explosion of sweet and sour is almost too much to bear. I close my eyes, draw a shaky breath, and feel a smile spread itself across my face. I screw the lid onto the jar, loosely, and start up the cattle trail toward the Rocking K, licking crabapple jelly from my fingers as I walk, slowly, to make the journey last.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I began writing Eden West in 2002, working on it in fits and starts over the next dozen years with the help of several people along the way. Here are a few I would like to thank:

  Mary Logue, who reminded me on a regular basis that I should not forget about this book, even as I threw it aside repeatedly and became distracted by other projects.

  Bruce Anfinson, who provided enormous helpings of pad thai and shelter during my research in Montana.

  Candlewick editor Deb Noyes, whose thoughtful and incisive editorial letter (with input from Carter Hasegawa and Sarah Weber) was nearly as long as the book itself, and who was entirely correct in all her exhaustive particulars.