Beyond the Cabin

  “Yeah, that’d be great,” I said. “My arms are getting kind of tired.”

  Aaron smiled. “Cool. I guess I needed a break. Sometimes I feel like I see computer screens and code in my sleep.” He stepped into the cabin.

  I put some distance between the wall and me and pointed at the saw. “Do you want to cut?”

  “Sure,” Aaron said. He inspected the cut that I had made. “This will work better if we plan around the logs.”

  Irritation flashed through me. I know that. I don’t need you telling me what to do. I gritted my teeth. Stop being a jerk, dummy. “Yeah. I realized that. I was thinking if I—I mean we, did three logs on each side, we could push them out. That way we wouldn’t have to cut down the length of any of them.”

  “Right,” Aaron said. “Hand me that drill and I’ll start doing holes on this side.”

  I gave my brother the drill. I remembered the shoes and looked down. I knew it. Aaron’s left shoe had that chewed-up heel. It must have been him that night.

  Aaron got to work right away, but he didn’t have much gas. After a couple minutes, he wiped his forehead. “Man, sitting all day doesn’t prepare you to drill holes through tree trunks, does it?”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “Here, I’ll drill. Then we can take turns sawing.”

  Aaron gave me the drill with a small smile.

  I realized that this was the first smile of any kind I had ever seen on Aaron’s face. I thought it would be a bad idea to mention that fact. But I couldn’t stop myself from bringing up the shoes.

  “I noticed your left heel’s kind of messed up.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron said. “Chewbacca got it once and did a number on it.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t eat the whole thing,” I said.

  “No kidding.”

  “So it was you, wasn’t it?” I said. I turned when Aaron said nothing in response.

  “Me what?” Aaron asked.

  “That night that I took off. I was running away, but you knew I would be here.”

  “I didn’t know, but I thought you might be. I hoped you’d be here,” Aaron said.

  “And you came out here and checked on me. Then you went back,” I began to drill again.

  “How’d you know?”

  “I saw your footprints in the mud in the morning. Your heel’s kind of recognizable.”

  Aaron laughed. “You’re like Davy Crockett or something.”

  I laughed too. “It’s not very hard when Chewbacca’s eaten part of your shoe. It kind of leaves a mark. In the mud too.”

  We both laughed at that. I had never heard Aaron laugh and couldn’t help but notice how it changed the way my older brother looked. Instead of looking severe like Miriam, when Aaron laughed he looked like the kind of guy you would want to spend time with.

  Neither of us spoke again for a while. The rhythm of the work acted as conversation. When one of us got tired, it was easy to say so by stepping back from first the drill, then the saw.

  Working together, we had the second cut finished in maybe an hour.

  “It’s getting late,” Aaron said as he stepped back from the saw, shaking his hands to get the blood flowing again.

  “Yeah, but we can finish this, then get back.”

  “Sure,” Aaron said. “But first we have to fix your sloppy cut.” This last sounded almost careful. What? Did he not know how to tease somebody?

  I knew I had to make sure I answered right, knew I couldn’t say something stupid. “Well, I guess we could use a computer to figure out what went wrong.”

  Aaron laughed. Relieved, so did I.

  “No, it’s simple. We’ll just have to cut upwards a few inches.”

  “Yeah, no big deal. Gravity can’t stop us,” I said.

  Aaron grinned at that. He pulled the saw out of the other cut in the wall and held it out to me. “You go first.”

  “Fine,” I said, mock resignation in my voice.

  The few inches upwards took almost as long as the entire second cut had taken. But finally we finished it. Then we used the screwdriver and a putty knife to scrape away the mud from between the log sections we had cut around.

  “I think that’s good,” Aaron said, mopping his brow.

  “On three?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “We’ll push on three. I’ll count.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  We both leaned gently on the sections of logs. I got to two before the logs simply fell out under their own weight. Aaron almost followed them out, but caught himself at the last second. I fell backward, laughing at the image of Aaron’s legs flailing like crazy.

  He’s sure not Mal. But he’ll do.

  Chapter 27

  “Well that worked,” I said, picking myself up and brushing the dirt off my butt.

  “Yeah. Didn’t make it to three, I guess,” Aaron said.

  “Yup,” I said. I looked out the new window. I caught my breath.

  “What?”

  “Look at that,” I said in a whisper. Awe or wonder or something else froze me.

  “What?” Aaron asked again, stepping next to me. Then he must have seen it, because he made a noise too and fell silent.

  The flower stood proudly in what must have been one of the only places that the sun shone straight to the forest floor. It looked like a star had fallen from the sky and then been caught on a pale-green stem. A pink star in a cup shape. But then I noticed that it was actually in a cluster of five blossoms like it and that it was part of a pretty big bush.

  “That’s amazing,” I said. I’d never seen anything like it. “Why haven’t I seen that before?”

  Aaron said nothing.

  “I wonder what kind of flower that is,” I said.

  At Aaron’s continued silence, I turned. Tears slid down Aaron’s face.

  “It’s a mountain laurel,” Aaron said, his voice rough. “It’s Esther’s favorite flower.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know where to look. Finally I faced the flower again. “A mountain laurel? I’d never seen one.”

  I instinctively followed the movement to my left, watching as Aaron dropped bonelessly to the dirt floor, tears pouring from his eyes.

  “Aaron?” Alarm sent icicles down my arms. “Are you okay?”

  Aaron shook his head.

  Holy crap, he’s like I was. He was holding it all in. I wondered if I should leave and let Aaron get through this on his own.

  That didn’t make sense. An hour before, I’d been certain I was alone. Then Aaron had proved that wrong. I couldn’t leave Aaron alone.

  I sat next to Aaron. I fought my fear back enough to put my arm on Aaron’s shaking, hunched shoulders. His sobs seemed loud in the cabin, loud enough to reach the house.

  At my touch, Aaron looked up. His eyes red, he said, “Why’d he have to die?” He coughed and sucked in a breath. “It sounds so stupid, it’s like those dumb movies. But why’d he have to die?”

  I said nothing. I tried to think of a good answer to that question and all that came to mind were the words of Miriam’s diatribe about a lesson we could learn. That was not why Mal had died. No way. No. Way.

  I thought I’d been emptied out earlier, but I couldn’t stop more tears from falling. I don’t know. I’ll—we’ll never know, will we? An image of the rose I buried came back to me. I remembered the glass altar top covered in roses. I saw Esther’s face, red and wet, but somehow unafraid and proud of it. Grief seeped from me in a small stream, nothing like the torrent that had dropped me earlier. I went to wipe my eyes, wanting to stay strong so that Aaron had someone to depend on. But then a thought came to me and I stopped. Did that make any sense? Yes. I have to let him do this for me too. I remembered the rose again, remembered Esther’s words: “It’s okay to be sad.”

  All this time, I suddenly understood, it had been fear that had kept the feelings inside. Instead of being strong for Malachi, I’d been a coward. The knowledge hit me hard, making me jitter. I’d be
en living in fear of showing my true self, what was really inside, to anyone and everyone. I was a coward. All at once my body was cold, my face hot. Shame at my fear made me feel sick. I leaned forward, clenching my stomach with my free arm and wishing I could go back and do it differently. I felt like puking.

  Aaron coughed again, obviously trying to get himself under control. He wiped his face with his shirt sleeve, then squeezed his eyes with his fingers. “Sorry.”

  I had no idea how to respond to that either. Doing a great job being here for Aaron. Couple of basket cases. “Me too.”

  “It’s okay,” Aaron said, clearing his throat.

  “Really,” I said, trying to force the shakes away. My breath caught somewhere in my chest. “I did this already.” I wiped my face with my hands, blinking fast to clear my eyes. “And I did it loudly, right here.”

  “That was you?”

  I looked up. “What do you mean?”

  “You mean a little while ago?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah,” I said.

  “I heard you when I hit the woods. I thought it was like a mockingbird or something.”

  I snorted. “A mockingbird. Great.” I laughed at the image. It was dumb and embarrassing, but hilarious. The laughter rolled out of me, soothing something hot and raw deep in my chest.

  Aaron tried to speak around his own laughter. “I mean, sorry… but that’s what it sounded like.”

  “I’m such a twit,” I said.

  “I guess,” Aaron said.

  I turned a glare on Aaron. “What?”

  Aaron was still laughing. “Just kidding.”

  As our laughter faded, silence returned to the cabin. I realized I still had an arm around Aaron’s shoulders. Now it was pinned between Aaron and the cabin wall. I pulled.

  “Sorry,” Aaron said, leaning forward so I could get free.

  “It’s okay.”

  Silence again.

  “I have something I should tell you,” Aaron said. “But it’s probably gonna make you mad.”

  “What?” I met my brother’s gaze.

  “I’ve been in touch with Esther.”

  “What?” Tingles shot from my neck to my scalp, goose-bumps covering my arms.

  “I should have told you. She thinks I have, but I wasn’t sure if…” Aaron stopped. “No, the truth is that I wanted to keep her for myself.”

  I flushed. “What?”

  “I’ve liked Esther for a while. Then when she and Mal started spending time together, I couldn’t really do anything. But before she left, I gave her my e-mail address and―”

  “You have an e-mail address?” I said. One of the standing rules of the Faith was that we kids were supposed to have little to no contact with the outside world. So e-mail was out of the question. It was also supposed to be useless for us, since we knew nobody that we could e-mail. Or maybe not.

  “Yeah. So did Mal.”

  Why hadn’t I known any of this? I felt like I was living in a completely different world from Aaron, felt like a world I didn’t know was spinning just outside of view.

  “Anyway,” Aaron said, “I asked Esther to keep in touch. She contacted me a few weeks ago, telling me she had found her mom, but that her dad had left and couldn’t be found.”

  “That’s great!”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Aaron said. He looked down at the cabin floor.

  “What? What else?” Idiotic hope sprung up in me. Had Mal faked his death? Was he with Esther? No. No way. Aaron wasn’t crying over a flower.

  “Esther’s mom is kind of an alcoholic, so Esther’s got a lot to deal with,” Aaron said.

  “That sucks.” She goes from this to an alcoholic mom? Poor Esther. Why couldn’t things turn out better? It would have been so easy if… if everything really. Stupid. Life sucks sometimes.

  “But she’s happy,” Aaron said, “even though it’s hard. She’s heard a lot from her mom about how the Faith started.”

  Something didn’t make sense. “Wait. If both Esther’s mother and father were out of the Faith, why was Esther here?”

  “She’s said something about that, but it’s obvious she doesn’t want to talk about it. It sounds like her mom and dad had a fight with Miriam, then one day they were gone. They left a note saying they’d be back for Esther, but obviously they never came back,” Aaron said.

  “But how could she want to be with a mother that left her?”

  “I don’t really get it, either, but she’s there and says she’s happy,” Aaron said. “Or at least, happier.”

  I wondered if Esther would have been better off staying in the Faith. I couldn’t believe I was even considering the possibility.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Aaron said.

  “That’s okay.” I stared at the dirt floor. “I miss Mal.”

  “Me too.”

  “And I’m sorry about the Esther thing. I had no idea,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m good at keeping things quiet,” Aaron said.

  I turned to him. “You know, you really are. Why don’t you ever—you know—talk or something?”

  “I talk.”

  “Not much. And not to me.”

  Aaron stared at the dirt too. “That’s true.” He picked up a wood chip, rolling it in his fingers. “It’s just that I’m trying to stay off the radar as much as I can.”

  “Seems like a good idea,” I said.

  “Yeah. It’s better than what I used to do.”

  What he used to do? For as long as I could remember, Aaron had been the perfect example of flying under the radar. “What do you mean?”

  “A few years ago, I’d get pretty mad at some of the things that happen around here. The punishments for doing nothing, Ezekiel screaming at one of the younger kids… you know, stuff like that.”

  “Right.”

  “But then I’d get in trouble and it turned out I was making it worse. So I realized if I let everything roll off, I could make it through until I’m eighteen. Then I’ll be gone. So I started learning about computers so I could get a good job when I leave.”

  So Aaron was planning on getting out too. This made me feel better about my own plans. But it sounded like Aaron knew exactly what he was doing. “So are you leaving as soon as you turn eighteen?”

  “Yep. I’ll be ready to go the next day.”

  “Wow, that fast?”

  “It’s been a long time coming,” Aaron said.

  Mal had said the same thing on the day he’d left. Fear pushed the words out of me. “But you have to be careful. Mal said the same thing and—“

  “I know,” Aaron said, turning to meet my gaze. “I think maybe Mal wanted to get away so bad that he tried to use the drugs to help him. Maybe he remembered what life was like before Miriam brought him into the Faith, you know?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “But I have a plan. I’m not gonna do anything stupid.”

  “Do you think the others feel the same way?” I asked.

  “You mean the other kids?”

  “Yeah.”

  Aaron sat quietly for a bit. “I guess.” He shrugged. “I mean, if life was just boring, maybe not. But we can’t have friends outside the group. How Mal managed to get with Hank, I don’t know. And we all get punished if one person does something stupid. And we get lectured about shampoo and socks and everything else under the sun.”

  “And don’t forget that there’s a cat named Waffen. Can you believe that?” I said.

  “What about it?”

  “I read in our history textbook that the Waffen SS was a group of elite soldiers, who originally started out as bodyguards for Adolph Hitler,” I said.

  Aaron snorted, a disbelieving smile spreading across his face. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Seriously! And they were elite also because they were extra racist and stuff.”

  “I can’t believe it, but I’m actually surprised. I mean, I knew some of these people were missing some screws, but whoever named that c
at has problems.”

  “You know,” I said, chewing on each word before I said it, “it’s kind of like the people who join the Faith are people with screws loose in a way that the world can’t tighten. So they join the Faith and then try to impose their screw-loose-ness on us. And they give us no choice in the whole thing, and they expect us to love them for it or something.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron said, “it’s like we’re being groomed to take over the Faith and ‘continue the work.’ But what if we don’t want to? It’s like Miriam never even imagined that could ever happen.”

  “Did you hear what she said to Mal when he left? She said they educate us, we have acres to play on… I mean, looking at it like that, it sounds fine,” I said.

  Aaron broke in before I could continue. “But it’s not. Choice is kind of important. Being able to see the real world helps too.”

  “It’d be nice if we could go to the library when we want, too,” I said. “And maybe having families would be nice.”

  “I guess,” Aaron said. “I mean, what is a family, anyway?

  I mulled that over. “I have no idea, really. In my books, it usually sounds great, but I don’t really get it.”

  Aaron nodded. “Right? And in the Faith, everything’s about control.”

  I stared at my brother. That was exactly what Mal had said.

  “They control who we can have as friends. They control what we learn in,” Aaron paused to make a face, “school.” He grinned a little. “Of course, not for me anymore.” He continued. “They control as many seconds of our day as they can. It seems like they want to control what we do today so that we will do what they want down the road. Any real choices that most people can make, we can’t.”

  “But that’s not all of it. It’s like there are two sides, the kids and adults,” I said. “We always have to be on our guard so that we don’t offend one of them, cause if we do, the whole group of grown-ups comes down on us. It’s like a battle or a war where we try to stay out of sight and off the radar and the adults try to show how much they’re in charge. I don’t think it’s supposed to be that way.”

  “Yeah, but the worst is that there are like ten of us living in the same house,” Aaron said. I had no trouble understanding that when Aaron said ‘us’ he meant the kids of the Faith. “And we should be as close as family, whatever that means, but we’re sometimes friends and sometimes mortal enemies.”