Eden Mine

by S. M. Hulse

  “I got it taken care of.”

  “I saw.”

  He probably saw before today. He’d have driven out when I didn’t call him back, but ordinarily he would’ve let me know. If I hadn’t lied to him about South Dakota again. I consider changing the subject now—I think Hawkins would let me—but I say, “Asa Truth cut it up for me. The pastor from that church?”

  He didn’t know—I can tell from the way he takes an extra-long pull on his can—but all he says is, “Good of him to do that.”

  “Yeah.” I look away. Find the flag on the mantel, look away from that, too. “I think he wants there to be a reason for what happened.”

  “He finds one, you let me know.”

  Hawkins and Samuel must run into each other in town once in a while, and I assume they at least exchange pleasantries, though they’re both the sort of men to reduce those pleasantries to terse nods. I can’t remember the last time Samuel mentioned Hawkins. When I do he mostly listens silently. Wasn’t always like that. My brother spent plenty of time here as a kid, with Kev, and he came for a while after that night at the house, bunking in his friend’s room. Practically family. Practically, Samuel would have said, but not.

  “How come you and Samuel fell out?”

  Hawkins takes another swig of his soda. “I don’t know I’d say we did.” I think he’s going to leave it at that—it would be typical of him; he often still treats me like a kid who might forget about an awkward question if it’s just ignored long enough—but I look at him, and he sighs, sets the can down. “Wasn’t any one thing, Jo. I don’t mind saying I did get tired of hearing him talk about how the—what was it he was always saying, the ‘Zionist Organized Government’?”

  “Occupied,” I correct wearily.

  “Right. How the ‘Zionist Occupied Government’ staged 9/11 so we’d back the wars. That it was all about money. You know he once told me Kev wasn’t a patriot? My boy not even in the ground a year. Said it in front of Lila, too.”

  I close my eyes, wish I’d taken the aspirin after all.

  “Kev wasn’t a patriot, but a pawn, Samuel said. Duped. I still remember the exact words he used. ‘Conned into trading his life for a few pennies in a Jew’s pocket.’”

  That was a bad year. Kev gone. Money at its tightest. Samuel wholeheartedly embracing the ugliest of the ideologies he’d adopt. “I never said anything to him about that tattoo,” I say. “That swastika. I should have. I wanted to.” I pull at a loose thread on the side of my jeans. What I’d always wanted to say was, What would Mom think? But it would have made me cry, and I never did.

  “You were still a kid. What, thirteen, fourteen?”

  Fifteen. But I never said anything about the tattoo later, either. Samuel came to regret it quickly enough, or seemed to, and once he started covering it with long sleeves I hadn’t seen any point in bringing it up. I even convinced myself he kept it as a kind of penance, a reminder not to fall back into that kind of thinking.

  “Well,” I say quietly, “I can’t blame you for not wanting to talk to him after that.” I look again at Hawkins’s thinner frame, at the junk in the living room. I feel a habitual impulse to justify them, to numerate the reasons they might not be connected to the pills in the bathroom. Should I resist the impulse, say something to Hawkins? Or am I overreacting because I failed with Samuel?

  “You know I’m the one introduced him to the militia?”

  I stare at Hawkins. I’ve always assumed it was someone Samuel worked with, maybe one of his old schoolmates.

  “He was eighteen, nineteen,” he says. “I could see he was having a hard time with what happened that night your momma died. I didn’t take him to their meetings or nothing,” he adds quickly. “Just bought him lunch with a couple guys I know. I thought it’d do Samuel good to spend some time with men who took kind of a no-nonsense approach to things. Who’d help him see himself as having done right.” He drums his fingers against the can in his hand. “They were just old mining buddies. One of ’em was friends with your dad. I never thought…”

  My first instinct is to ask what kind of sheriff introduces a troubled teenager to the local militiamen. But I know as well as Hawkins that the “local militiamen” comprise a solid chunk of the town; they get together and play war games in the woods the way other men golf or watch football. I can almost see what he meant by it. And it’s not as though Samuel wouldn’t have found his way to them on his own; that side of Prospect’s never been hidden. He never even joined; they were one of the first groups he sampled only to find fault with: The Second Amendment’s the only one they’ve ever heard of. But when I look back at Samuel at eighteen or nineteen, when I try to understand now what he kept from me then, I see a young man who no longer knew what to believe. Who tried clinging to the things that had once made sense to him, like family and church, only to find them damaged or diminished. Who angrily rejected the patriotism that might have become his life, had things gone a bit differently. Who tried on one thing after another, looking for the one that would make him feel strong, whole. And that young man is not someone I would introduce to the militia.

  Hawkins seems to know my thoughts. “It was a mistake, Jo. Don’t you think I know it was a mistake?”

  “You’re not responsible for Samuel,” I say. I try to mean it, and sort of do. “You always did what you could for him.”

  Hawkins laughs, and it’s an utterly humorless sound. “I said that to him once, or something like it.” He moves to rub a palm over his absent mustache, catches himself in the middle of the gesture; his hand falters and settles uneasily on the arm of the couch. “I didn’t stop talking to him after he said what he said about Kev. I never did give up on him. Know that much. Whatever mistakes I made—and God knows I made plenty—I had the best of intentions.”

  The road to hell, I think, before I can stop myself.

  “I talked to him a lot, Jo. Whenever he’d let me. I could see he never stopped hurting. I could see he was in trouble. But he got less and less interested in listening to me, and eventually I practically had to beg him to hear me out. One time I said, Samuel, please, you know I care about you. You know I’ve always been there for you.” Hawkins meets my eyes. “And your brother looks right at me and says, Not always.”

  That night. The emergency call. The long minutes before Hawkins’s arrival.

  “You got there quick as you could.” The words sound rote, and I know it’s because I’ve said them to myself so many times. Because knowing something and believing it aren’t the same.

  “Not quick enough.”

  “It’s not right for Samuel to blame you for that.”

  “He might as well; I blame myself plenty.” Hawkins looks at me, something hollow in his gaze. I wonder if he plays his own version of the game I’ve played too many times myself. What if. What if Archer hadn’t managed to kick the door in. If Samuel’d had time to open the gun safe. If Hawkins had been closer. “He never would talk to me much after that. I kept trying for a while, but … I’m sorry to say I let him go.”

  I want to tell Hawkins to snap out of it, reject this weight of responsibility. Samuel is responsible for himself. We all are. Whatever Hawkins should have done, or shouldn’t have—whatever I should have done, or shouldn’t have—we didn’t force Samuel into anything. We didn’t force him to build that bomb. To detonate it. I want to tell Hawkins he better not dare let his guilt pull him down, because if he does, what chance do I have?

  Hawkins shakes his head now. “I should have done more to stop this.”

  “You couldn’t imagine he’d do what he did.” The reassurance is for me as much as him, and the words come out tentatively, like a lie I haven’t fully committed to.

  “I knew he was capable of it.”

  “That’s not fair.” He’s thinking of that night at the house again. But anyone would’ve done what Samuel did that night. Anyone who loved his family. Who loved me.

  Hawkins looks at me. Shrugs. He wants me to leave it.


  You weren’t there. What I want to say. Don’t judge my brother. What he did. What he’s become. Because you weren’t there. But that would be an echo of Hawkins’s last conversation with Samuel, and he’s shown me how deep that echo would cut. I stop myself where Samuel didn’t. I hold back the words he let loose.

  “Come on,” I say instead. “Samuel isn’t such an outlier, and you know it. How do you think some of the other men in this town would’ve reacted if it’d been their house was gonna be razed for a highway?”

  “Don’t think they would’ve bombed a building.”

  “Oh, really?” He looks away. “You think there aren’t some folks supporting him behind closed doors? There’s no great love for the government in this valley. If that little girl hadn’t gotten hurt, Samuel would probably be a folk hero.”

  Hawkins sits silent for a moment. Doesn’t look at me when he finally speaks. “But she did,” he says quietly. “Get hurt.”

  I close my eyes. It only makes the image of Emily’s school photo crystallize into sharper detail.

  “Do you know where he is, Jo?” His voice still soft. Gentle. The voice he used that night in the house, the voice he uses with victims, probably the voice he uses with people who have done something wrong and regret it enough they might confess.

  “No.”

  “Do you think you know where he is?”

  I say nothing.

  He sighs. Lifts his hand as though to put it on mine, lets it hover a couple inches off the couch, settles it back onto the cushion. “Don’t make you a bad person if you tell me.”

  I look at my own hands, run the tip of one finger up and down my thigh. So strange, still, to feel only half that motion. “Does it make me a bad person if I don’t?”

  I wait a long time, but he doesn’t answer.

  * * *

  The cabin seems smaller without you. Isn’t that strange? You’d think it would seem bigger. Your cot isn’t here, and neither is your wheelchair, your duffel bag with your clothes, your cath supplies, Black Beauty, the hurricane lantern I brought so you wouldn’t have to face the dark. And of course you aren’t here, and I’m not kidding myself, Jo; I know that’s the real reason the cabin seems smaller. I’m lonely.

  Boo-hoo, right? Poor terrorist Samuel (that must be what they’re calling me; they impose the label on any citizen who stands up to their tyranny), all alone in the woods. But you were the reason we were here last time. It was all about staying together. It was about keeping you safe. We just had to wait long enough. Remember how we counted the days? You made little hash marks on the wall with my pocketknife like prisoners in old movies. I looked for them a few days ago but didn’t find them.

  So there are no stories this time, no games of gin rummy or go fish or war, no three-course camp meals. There’s only me, the rifle, a sleeping bag, a flashlight, a water bottle, this map, a little food. I found the huckleberry patch right where it was years ago, but they’re not ripe yet. Once I hiked over the ridge and shot a deer. Stupid. I shouldn’t have gone so far, shouldn’t have made so much noise, and in the end I had to leave most of it. I just wanted to get out of this cabin, because it’s only me and the floor and the walls and a papered-over window, and it’s so damned small. I’m waiting again, but for what? I could scratch the days in the wall, but what would I be counting toward?

  I shouldn’t complain. A prison cell would be smaller. A grave smaller still.

  * * *

  Wednesday I find Samuel’s birthday present while I’m packing. He won’t turn thirty until August, but I’ve already bought him a gift: a new multi-tool with a black leather case. After work I drive to Elk Fork and return it. Don’t have the receipt, so they give me a gift card for the equivalent of a sale price ten dollars less than I paid. I hand it to an elderly man who is coming into the store as I leave.

  Before leaving Elk Fork, I stop at two apartment complexes. Both tell me all the accessible units are occupied. Would I like to add my name to the waiting lists? No.

  Back at the house, I haul my easel and supplies and the mud paints outside. The muds have evaporated into small cakes, like pan watercolors, and I’ve experimented with them enough to know they paint like watercolors, too. At first I was afraid the monochromatic palette would be limiting, but I’m enticed by the necessary emphasis of value when working in just one or two colors, by the power it gives light over shadow. I’ve decided to do a new painting of the house, intended to start it today. I sit and look at my easel for a long time, at the blank sheet of stretched paper taped to the board. I sit until dark, and for a little while after.

  * * *

  Asa comes to help me pack on Friday morning. I don’t ask about Emily. I know I should, but I think he’d tell me if something was wrong, and every time I mean to ask, the moment passes before I can say her name. For his part, Asa seems content to make small talk as he removes things from cabinets or tapes boxes. Maybe it’s as much a relief to him as it is to me to pretend he’s just helping an acquaintance move. We finish the downstairs first, though there isn’t much left. After we pack the last couple boxes in the kitchen, Asa labels them with neat, blocky letters and stacks them in the living room with the rest. “What else?”

  I glance upward, just for a second. “You’ve done plenty.”

  Asa walks to the hallway, nods toward the second floor. “You need help packing upstairs.”

  “I can get Hawkins—the sheriff—to help me sometime.”

  “We can get it done now. Just tell me what to do.”

  Maybe he wants to see Samuel’s room. Asa hasn’t asked about him today, but he must still be searching for answers. I doubt he’ll find them in Samuel’s bedroom—especially not after the FBI carted most of its contents away—but I feel I owe him the chance to look. “You’ll have to help me up the stairs.” I let the words out slowly, give him time to object. “Carry me, I mean.”

  It’s different than when Samuel carries me. My brother picks me up easily, as though only the parts of my body I can feel have weight. His hold is always confident, almost casual, his arm pressing against my upper back just firmly enough for reassurance. Asa is less certain, one moment cradling me like I’m made of china, the next squeezing as though he’s in real danger of dropping me. It’s not a particularly comfortable experience, and I hold my breath until we’ve reached the landing.

  “Just set me on the floor there,” I say, and when he has: “And bring me my chair, please.” He carries it upstairs and sets it beside me, then goes back down to the living room for boxes and tape. I transfer to my chair while he’s gone, and when he comes back he looks at me as though I’ve performed a magic trick.

  The second floor is cramped, just a short hallway with a small bedroom on either end, a tiny closet of a bathroom opposite the stairs. “Been a while since I’ve been up here,” I say. The nightmares don’t come often anymore—or didn’t until the bombing—but when they do, I have two choices: I can lie awake the rest of the night in the downstairs room, or I can call for Samuel and ask him to take me upstairs to my childhood bedroom, where I’ll be asleep in minutes. Most of the time I choose to lie awake, but once or twice a year I come up here.

  I haven’t been in Samuel’s room since we were children, though—he sometimes let me sit on the floor and draw pictures while he did his homework, if I promised to be quiet—and since I caught that glimpse of the Nazi flag in high school, he’s kept the door shut whenever I’m upstairs. It’s closed now. I nod to it, feeling a small surge of curiosity myself. “Let’s start there.”

  The room is even sparser than I expected. The FBI took box after box out of the house, and Samuel isn’t sentimental about material objects—our father’s watch notwithstanding—but I’m still surprised by how remarkably little there is to pack. The first object I see is one of my paintings (an autumn-gold meadow, a stand of aspens, a bugling elk); it’s the only thing on the wall. The closet door stands open, and most of Samuel’s clothes are gone, presumably to be
tested for residue of whatever he used to make his bomb. The bookshelves are almost empty; I’d expected them to take whatever extremist titles he might have had, but they’ve taken the homesteading references, too, the hunting books, even his collection of secondhand veterinary textbooks. Samuel’s desk is nearly bare, nothing left but a sticky note reminder to call the farrier. The drawers of his filing cabinet are ajar; in them I find only my own report cards from middle and high school.

  “I guess there’s not much left to do here,” I say. “I’ll pack the papers and books. Maybe you could put what’s left of the clothes in a bag? I’ll drop them at the thrift store next time I go to Split Creek.”

  “You don’t want to keep any?”

  “Samuel won’t need them again.” Not if he goes to prison. Not if he … doesn’t.

  We work in silence. I glance at Asa a couple times, but his expression is neutral. I wonder if he finds anything significant in the off-brand parka; the swim trunks that, to my knowledge, Samuel has never worn; the Prospect High baseball cap, its brim discolored by a season’s worth of decades-old sweat. Asa joins me at the bookcase when he’s done with the closet—do the few books there tell him anything? A thesaurus with the cover bent in half, an encyclopedia of baseball statistics, The Call of the Wild.

  I glance at that last one. I remember the story. Remember where I heard it the first time. I didn’t tell Devin or Hawkins about the mountains, but I could tell Asa. He’s a pastor; he must have heard confessions before. But I don’t know Samuel’s at the cabin. Why would he go to a place I know? It doesn’t make sense. It would be stupid, and Samuel is a lot of things, but he isn’t stupid. I try to find the words I would use to tell Asa, to explain that Samuel might be in the mountains but probably isn’t, that we went there once but I don’t know why he’d go back now, and then Asa is putting the book into a box and closing the flaps and I still haven’t said anything, and I don’t say anything.