Eden West (5 page)

“This is my meeting robe. It is made of wool from our sheep.”

“It looks like a dress. You look like a long-haired, fuzzy-faced girl,” he says.

“It is comfortable and clean,” I tell him.

“It’s the color of mud.”

“Vanity is a sin.”

He rolls his eyes. “I’ll wear my own clothes, thanks. Wool makes me itch. Besides, this place could use a little color.”

I doubt that he will be permitted this conceit for long, but I say nothing.

He says, “And what’s with all the hair?”

“What do you mean?”

“Doesn’t anybody ever get a haircut? Or shave?”

“It is not our way.” I wonder if I am being tested.

“What about that bald-headed dude? What’s his deal?”

“That is Brother Von. He is . . . special.”

“Yeah, he
looks
special.”

“You must turn your mattress every morning,” I say. I do not want to talk about Von.

“Yeah, yeah.” He looks around the cell. “I’ve been in bigger closets. And what’s with the no door? You don’t believe in doors?”

“Why would you want a door?” I ask.

He shakes his head, looking at me as if I am a mindless fool. He is so disdainful. I want to impress him, to show him something that will strike him deep and hard. My first thought is to take him into the Sacred Heart, to show him the Tree. But I am loath to show this Worldly boy our most sacred place, at least not right away, so I suggest we take a walk up the Spine.

“Spine?”

“That which separates the Meadows from the Mire.”

“What’s on this
spine
?”

“You will see. We will go in the morning.”

“Whatever,” he says with a shrug.

I awaken Tobias near the close of the morning meal service. He is not happy. He thrashes aside his covers. He has slept in his clothes. He mutters something about it being still dark out.

“The sun is rising,” I say. “It will be full light by the time you finish eating.”

“I’m not hungry,” he says.

“We have a long walk. You should eat.”

Grumbling, he follows me to the dining area. We have the tables to ourselves. Everyone else has already eaten and gone about their tasks. I show him how to serve himself. This morning, we have oatmeal, bread, and apples. There were egg cakes earlier, but they have been eaten. He wrinkles his nose at the oatmeal, but he loads his plate with slices of bread and several spoonfuls of huckleberry preserves. I make no comment.

“Aren’t you eating?” he asks me.

“I have eaten,” I say.

He grunts, bites into a slice of bread, chews, scowls.

“Sour,” he says. “Don’t you have any regular bread?”

“This is our bread.”

He eats the rest of his slice, then half of another, and declares himself done. I show him what to do with his plate. I wrap his uneaten bread in waxed paper and hand it to him.

“You may want it later,” I say.

“I doubt it.” But he takes the packet and shoves it into the belly pocket of his sweatshirt.

“Are you ready?” I ask.

He nods glumly and follows me out of Menshome.

I turn up the pathway leading west, toward the Spine. Tobias follows me for a few paces, then stops, looking up at the Tower, which stands behind Elderlodge.

“Weird-looking silo,” he says. “I never seen one made out of rock.”

“It is not a silo. It is the Tower.”

“What’s it for?”

“It is a lookout.” The Tower, made of stone blocks cut from the walls of the Pison gorge, stands thirty cubits tall.

“Lookout for what?”

“Whatever may come.”

“Weird.” He turns a slow circle, surveying our surroundings: the Tower, Elderlodge, Menshome, and the tall hedge enclosing the Sacred Heart. “It’s kind of like a little pretend town.”

“There is no pretending here.”

He makes a sound that is half laugh, half snort.

Irritated, I start walking up the pathway without looking back. After a dozen or so long paces. I hear him run to catch up. He may not be impressed by our dress, our food, our grooming, or our buildings, but it is my hope he will be roused by what lies at the head of the Spine.

On the north side of the Low Meadows, the land rises steeply to form a twisting ridge that separates the Meadows from the cedar bog we call the Mire. The Mire is the least favored of our lands, good for collecting mushrooms and medicinal mosses but little else. The Spine itself is a tree-studded, rocky hump that snakes to the west for more than a mile, climbing slowly, then ending abruptly at the Pison River. From the rocky outcropping high above the gorge, the place we call the Knob, one can see, on a clear day, the teeth of the western mountains nibbling the horizon.

But this day is not clear. The sky is low and gray; a chill wind cuts through the loose weave of my woolen tunic and my cotton shirt as we follow the trail west. Tobias puts up his hood and tucks his hands in the front pocket of his thick sweatshirt. I pretend not to let the cold bother me, though a part of me envies him his heavy, colorful garment.

We reach the Meadows and turn north. The land slowly rises. As we walk, I tell him of our sheep, our milk cows, and the harvest. “There is much to do here,” I say. “The fences always need mending, the animals need care, the crops need tending.”

“At least you don’t have to go to school.”

“Brother Benedict and others school us in the winter, when there is less to do. We are very well educated. I have learned writing, and numbers, and the geography and peoples of the World, and the Holy Scriptures.”

“You’re a regular Einstein,” Tobias says.

“What is ‘Einstein’?” I ask.

He snorts. His scorn is palpable; I feel myself growing angry, but I press on.

“The Cherubim are granted many interesting tasks.”

“What is ‘Cherubim’?” he asks.

“All men of thirteen years, if they are pure of heart and willing to work, become Cherubim and move to Menshome with the other unmarried men. Before that, we live in Elderlodge with our parents.”

“So at thirteen your folks kicked you out?”

“There was no kicking. It is an honor to be a Cherub.”

“What about the girls?”

“It is the same. At thirteen, they leave Elderlodge and go to live in Womenshome until they are wed. At eighteen, men who have applied themselves become Higher Cherubim. They have the right to audit the Council of Elders, and to take a wife. Higher Cherubim who distinguish themselves might one day join the Archcherubim.”

“One-Eye — I suppose he’s one of them.”

I stop walking and turn to him. “One-Eye?”

“You know. Father Grace.”

“Father Grace has
two
eyes.”

“Yeah, but one’s all goofy.”

“His blasted eye remains fixed upon the Heavens, waiting for Zerachiel.”

“In Colorado Springs, he wore a patch.”

I am not surprised; Father Grace covers his blasted eye when he leaves Nodd.

“Father Grace is first amongst the Elders. He lives in Gracehome, behind Elderlodge.”

Tobias snorts. “You guys got weird names for everything, don’t you? What do you call the toilets?”

“The toilets,” I say.

“You really believe all that stuff about the Apocalypse and all?”

“It is the Truth.”

“Yeah, right. The thing is, the world was supposed to end in 2012, according to the Mayans. Only here we are.”

“The Mayans are Lamanite heathens. The Apocalypse is foretold in the Scriptures.”

He gives me a doubtful look. “Whatever.”

We continue our slow climb. Neither of us speaks for a time. I push aside my irritation at his contemptuous attitude. It is not Tobias’s fault that he is ignorant. His soul is stained by a life of garish colors and Worldly vice. I think of Lynna and once again feel the sting of the cedar switch upon my back. It itches now, a reminder of my own sins.

Tobias, at least, has ignorance as an excuse.

The way steepens. The sun finds a rent in the clouds and warms my side. Soon we are both perspiring; Tobias pushes his hood back and unzips the front of his sweatshirt.

“I thought you said it wasn’t far,” he says. We have been walking for a scant twenty minutes and have yet to reach the trees.

“It will be worth it,” I say.

He grunts in response. We follow a twisting path up a boulder-strewn hillside, and then we are in the trees and everything changes. The foliage filters the sound of the wind, replacing it with the soft, grainy murmur of the high forest. We follow the needle-carpeted path deeper into the trees. Tobias is several strides behind me, but I can hear him breathing. I stop and turn toward him.

“What?” he says, trying to cover up the fact that he is out of breath.

“Do you want to rest?”

“I’m okay.” He looks around. The reddish trunks of the pines rise like the pillars of Heaven. I hear the croak of a raven and the vexed chatter of a pine squirrel. “These trees are, like,
huge
,” he says.

“They are ponderosa pines.”

“I saw redwoods once, in California, with my dad. They get twice that big.”

I find it difficult to credit his claim, but I do not wish to argue.

“How much farther?” he asks.

“Not far.”

The path along the crest of the Spine is tortuous and uneven, but well trodden and easy to follow. I notice Tobias falling behind again, so I stop and wait for him to catch up. He is panting, not even trying to hide it.

“It’s the altitude,” I say as we move slowly up the path. “You will become accustomed to it, Lord willing.”

“Yeah, well, the Lord can relax on account of I don’t expect to stick around here that long,” he says.

“Where are you going?”

“Costa Rica.”

I know that Costa Rica is a tiny country in Central America. Brother Benedict has drilled us well in the geography of the World. But I cannot imagine going there, for it seems as unreal and distant as the moon.

“My dad lives there. With his girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend!” I say. The concept is both thrilling and disturbing.

“I had a girlfriend,” Tobias says. “Back in Limon. Only we broke up.”

Much as I want to hear more about his girlfriend, I say nothing and start walking again.

“What about you?” he asks. “Do you have a girl?”

“Yes,” I say. “Sister Ruth. We will marry soon.”

“Ruth. Is she the skinny one with the long nose and the zits?”

“No!” He is describing Rebecca.

Tobias laughs. “I was kidding. I bet I know which one’s Ruth. The one with green eyes, right?”

“They are the color of honey, with green flecks.”

“Yeah, I know who you mean. I was looking at her when we were up on that stage last night. She’s hot!” He laughs again. “I mean, she has a cute face — I don’t know what else she’s got under all that stuff they wear. For all I know, she’s got three boobs or something. . . . Hey, what’s the matter?”

I have stopped walking. I turn on him. “You will not speak of her that way.” My voice is tight, and my face is hot.

“What way? I just —” He steps back and holds up his hands. “Whoa, take it easy!”

The fear in his face stops me. I loosen my fists. Was I about to strike him?

“I
get
it,” he says. “Ruth is your girl. I
get
it! Jeez! I was
kidding
!”

Suddenly I am embarrassed. I turn away and start walking quickly. Tobias runs to catch up with me.

“Wait up! I’m sorry!”

I do not trust myself to speak.

“Look, back in Limon —”

“We are not
in
Limon.”

“I’m just saying, back in Limon, all the guys kid around a lot. The girls don’t mind. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“You should not say what you do not mean.”

I walk faster, almost running. Behind me I hear him muttering his Worldly curses. Soon, he is far behind me, and for a time I walk in peace. My thoughts go to Ruth, and then, oddly, to Lynna. I stop and wait. Tobias catches up, panting.

“I know another girl, too,” I say. “A Worldly girl.” I don’t understand why I am telling him this, but it comes out of me. “She lives on the ranch to the north. Her name is Lynna.”

“So you have two girlfriends?” He laughs. “I guess it makes sense, what with Father Grace being married to three women.”

“That is not what this is,” I say, startled by his suggestion. “I just know her — that’s all.”

“Is she cute?”

I see Lynna’s face in my mind.

“She is very beautiful,” I say.

“Maybe the three of us could hang out sometime,” he says.

“I don’t know her that well.” I wish I hadn’t mentioned her.

The path takes a sharp turn to the right, then climbs a hillock. We are close.

Tobias says, “What’s that noise?”

“You will see,” I say.

The trees become smaller and more sparse, and the carpet of needles gives way to bare rock. We leave the last of the trees behind to face an enormous outcropping of gray stone: a boulder more than thirty cubits across, its sides mottled with lichen and moss, its top scrubbed smooth by the wind.

The sound is much louder now. I scramble up the side of the massive boulder and stand on top, leaning slightly into the wind. Tobias joins me. Together we look down into the gorge. He gasps.

It is said that there are men and women who believe the Almighty does not exist. I would bring them here, to this place. From the Knob, one can look straight down past layer after layer of ancient rock to the roiling, rocky silver ribbon that is the Pison. Here the hand of the Lord sliced through stone like a knife through ripened cheese, tearing a slot for the river to pass through the ridge. Below us, the Pison bellows and thunders, using the walls of the chasm as its megaphone. Who could stand here and deny the magnificence and truth and power of the Lord?

Tobias is struck nearly, though not entirely, speechless.

He says, “Holy shit.”