by Urban Waite
Mary May spun again, she couldn’t trust them and there was ever the feeling of a spider crawling up her back. “I never attacked you,” she said. “I was attacked.”
“You were shown the way to Eden’s Gate. You were shown the same hospitality that all who come to Eden’s Gate are shown. You think you are different but you are not.” John looked around now, he looked to each face as if he were searching for a specific one from the crowd. “Where’s Will?” he asked now. “I assume he is out there somewhere waiting, probably putting the crosshairs of that rifle scope on me as I speak.” John looked now to the house, then he turned and looked to a far growth of pine at the edge of the property, his eyes still searching.
“You would think that we came for you, wouldn’t you? But you’ve already been marked, Mary May. You’ve already been given the blessing of ink upon your chest. All that’s left is for you to accept it.” When John brought his eyes back to her, he said, “We did not come for you, Mary May. We came for Will. He has broken the bond of faith. He has turned his back on us. On his brothers and his sisters and The Father. We’re not here for you, Mary May, we’re here for him.” John now motioned to two groups, three people in each, and they cut away. Mary May saw one group go into the house, while the other moved out across the property, keeping to the grasslands and slope below.
“Loyalty is important to us,” John said. “I think I made that clear. We live our lives by specific rules, we listen only, and we learn and take our faith in The Father seriously, and any among us that would go against that faith and The Father’s teachings, will find we do not forget and we do not forgive.”
* * *
WILL JACKED THE BOLT FORWARD ON THE RIFLE AND ADVANCED the fresh cartridge. He lay atop the rock with a view down over the roof of the house to the group below. He had wondered about the walls of tattooed skins he’d seen and now he knew. Many he recognized but many more he did not know. They were from everywhere, from this county and from places far beyond. Eden’s Gate itself was everywhere, like a disease within the system that waits in silence, dormant until asked to attack every conduit of life, sucking blood from the vein and oxygen from the lungs.
Still winded from the climb, Will had moved up the rock face with the bag on his shoulders while Jerome followed, both men trying to move as fast and silently as possible. Both knowing that any missed step would send them falling over the edge, and any loosened rock would bring the attention of those below, and then in that moment they might wish they had fallen to begin with.
Now Will lay atop the rock trying to still his breath as he looked down at those below through the scope. He could see Mary May down there. He could see Drew before her and about ten feet farther on he saw John. At this distance, it was an easy shot and though Will could not tell what they were talking about, he kept his finger on the trigger, the safety already pushed forward, ready at any hint of danger to take a shot. The chaos this might cause was the only way Will could see now that Mary May might escape. But he hesitated. He could not just pull the trigger. He had done it before but he had done it out of fear and in self-defense. This would be simply killing and he did not want to be that man. He was not that cold-blooded and he didn’t want to be. He ran the scope around the circle of people and watched their every move, and he saw in them his own face and his own former desires.
A group of three was sent into the house and then another three were sent out and away from the larger group. Will moved the scope and followed this second group as they ran perpendicular to the house then into the larger darkness. The fire was still burning down at the base of the property and strange shadows were cast here and there that moved one way or another depending on the height and width of flame.
Will watched this group move and then, when he lost them among the far trees, he was quick to run the scope back to John and Mary May. Will called over his shoulder to Jerome, “Those three that went into the trees will likely come out and around on us in the next few minutes. Be ready with the shotgun. If they find us we might have to run. I’d rather that than get into a gun fight here atop the cliff.”
* * *
MARY MAY HELD THE GUN STILL. SHE HAD ONE HAND ON HER brother’s shoulder but she was looking around at John, feeling exposed. “You say you’re not killers,” Mary May said. “But my father went up the mountain and he never came back down. He died up there trying to get Drew and now I’m trying to do the same. That’s what Daddy wanted and that’s what I made my mind up to do.”
“How?” John asked. “You’ve put your brother in front of you like he’s your hostage. You’ve tied his hands like he’s a prisoner. Why would you do that to your kin? Ask yourself that? Ask yourself why none among you, Will or Jerome, would allow this man to go free.”
She looked around the group now, they were waiting on her, but none seemed to have raised their guns or weapons and she turned again and brought her eyes to John. “He’s one of you. The Father or someone got in his head. He’s not the same man he was. He’s not the brother I knew when we were kids.”
“No,” John said. “He’s better than that. His mind is open. His eyes are open. He has been changed. You are right in that.”
“You talk as if it’s a good thing that he turned his back on family.”
John laughed. He looked around at the faces that looked back at all of them, the witnesses to whatever meeting this had become. “You still don’t get it, do you? It was never about Eden’s Gate. It was never a church issue. All The Father does is listen. He supports. That’s something your own father never did. Your own father, and even your own community, turned their backs on Drew a long time before. The Father came to this place and saw what it could be. We had nothing to do with what passed between your own father and his children. That was not a church issue. That was a family one.”
“But you killed him.”
“We welcomed Gary. We knew about his wife, your mother. Our hearts went out to him. But we,” John stopped now and raised his arms to encompass all of them. “We did not kill him. The Father did not kill him. I did not kill him. What your father wanted from Drew was not something we had any say in. Only Drew could answer to your father and his answer was no.”
She felt her hand loosen from her brother’s shoulder. She had known in some way. But it was beyond knowing, it was like an accident seen in the clear bright sunshine of day, but its action was so horrendous that in memory that same moment was as dark as night. Unseen, unwanted, and pushed away.
Drew turned all the way around now, his eyes seemed to her as cold as she had ever seen them. Hardened like two pieces of glass there within the sockets of his skull, unfeeling.
“Daddy made you proud,” Drew said. “He gave you everything like it was your birthright and not mine to share. When we were kids, when we were teens, when we became adults together, he gave to you before he even thought to give to me. He gave you the bar, him and Mamma. And though there was a place there for me it was never mine to have.”
She shook her head. She could not believe what she was hearing, or that their recollections of their life together could be so different in time and place. “No,” she said. “I was just older.”
“Older. Smarter. Funnier. Stronger. Nothing I did could ever measure up. All I tried to do in high school, all I did afterwards. It never was enough.”
“No,” she said. “That’s not true.”
“The truth,” Drew said, “is that they never listened to me. They never tried to understand me. They never wanted me. Do you know what that’s like? To live in a household and a family that doesn’t want you?” He laughed now, the laugh carrying on into the silence. “Of course you don’t.”
“They loved you,” she said. It was the only thing she could think to say. It was the truth and he needed to hear it. She could barely look at him. The hate she saw, the way he had grown taller almost as if talking about the death of their father had given him new life, while taking it from her, causing her to shrink ever farther now
within herself. “Daddy loved you,” Mary May said again, wanting him desperately to hear it.
“No. John is right. Daddy never listened to me. He never understood me. But The Father did. Eden’s Gate did. They gave me a new life when they marked me, and baptized me, and then gave me the birth I always should have had, into the family I should have had.” He turned now and looked at all the members of Eden’s Gate who encircled them, and then he brought his eyes back to her. “I was given a new life and when Daddy came to get me I wanted nothing of the old life and I told him that. But it was like nothing had changed. It was the same between us. He did not listen. He insisted that his way was the true way and that I was in the wrong. He put his hands on me, but I was not the little boy he thought me to be. I had grown. My mind had grown. And whatever power he once had over me was gone.”
“But it was a car accident,” she said in a weak voice, not knowing what to say, not wanting to hear what he was telling her.
Drew looked at her like she was nothing. He looked at her like she was stupid. “You know that’s not true,” Drew said. “You’ve said that yourself. You just can’t see it. You just can’t picture how it was between us.” Drew raised his two hands, banded together by zip ties at the wrist. His palms open and his fingers outstretched but tightening. “Picture him coming to me and trying to tear me out of the life I’d made. Picture his hands on me, trying to drag me away. And then picture the fact that I was finally stronger, faster, and quicker than he had ever been. Picture that and then you’ll understand it was not an accident. That he forced my hand and he paid for all the wrong he’d done to me.” He leaned in now, coming closer. “It was nothing to kill him. It was like sticking a knife into something already dead.”
She fired from the waist and the bullet entered beneath her brother’s chin and exited just behind his hairline. She watched his body go loose then fall all at once to the side. She felt like she was not there anymore. The night did not exist. The people. The pressure that had built within her with every one of his words. It all went out of her. It all ceased to exist for that one second as she watched him fall away.
Mary May was sobbing now, she had dropped the gun and she found herself upon the ground, trying to drag his body up to hers. The feel of his weight, the knowledge of what she’d done, of what she had allowed herself to do. She tried to tell herself that he had done this. But she knew he hadn’t. She knew it was her that had pulled the trigger, that it was her and no one else.
She looked around now, they were all staring at her and as she raised her eyes to them they seemed to shrink back from her, to recede in some way. Soon, Mary May heard the shuffling of their movements. She held her brother in her arms. She tried to support his head, to hold him up. But she could do little for him now, she had shot him, hadn’t she? But it did not feel like that. It did not feel as if it was her. It was slowly changing now. The anger she had felt, the rage, the sheer compulsion of her action that seemed to have come from her like lightning from a storm, natural as anything she had ever felt.
“Your father made you proud,” John said. John stood in the same place he had stood before, but his people were filing past now, moving one at a time away from him and down the slope again. “I gave you the sin of envy, but I see now that you were neither the pride your father gave you nor the envy I saw in you. Now I see that I should have given you wrath. Someday when the time is right for you to accept that, I will be waiting for you.”
She looked at him. He was a blur within the lineaments of her vision, tears now streaming down her face. “You didn’t come for Will,” she said. “You came to tell me about Drew. You came to see what I would do. It was not me that pulled the trigger. It was you.” She was fighting back tears now. Her vision was almost gone in the aftermath of it all.
“Drew went against us when he killed your father. And we could not forget or forgive him for his sin, for he had told us his envy was gone and we, foolishly had believed he followed in the true path The Father had set for him.”
She blinked. She tried to understand what was happening. Somehow her brother was dead. Somehow he was laying in her arms, and John stood over them now, telling her it was her brother who had done this to himself, telling her he deserved all that he had received. “You did this to him,” she said again. “It was you and not some other. It was you and The Father that killed him.”
John stood there. He looked her over as if she were his own creation come to life. “Your father made you proud. He made you think you could not be touched, that you were right in all you did. But you were not. We came as witnesses,” John said, now moving his arms to show her he meant all the members of Eden’s Gate who had come with him and now were moving past him down the hill. “We came to witness what you did to your brother—what your family did to him. We did not do this. You did. And we will hold this over you for all time. We will control you in this way. It is important you understand this, Mary May. You were never right and now you have become the sin I did not see in you. You have become wrath, and I will always remember you and be ready to help you, for I too was wrong. I was wrong about you, Mary May. You are wrath and I will be the one to take that sin from you one day.”
* * *
WILL COULD NOT BELIEVE IT. THE WORLD THROUGH THE SCOPE always acted in silent pantomime. The characters at such a distance as to be rendered mute, only seen in movements that mirrored those of the real world, but that were somehow not of the real world. The sound of the bullet had made it real.
It had cut through the distance as if through glass dividing one place from another. He watched Drew fall. He watched Mary May move to him, and now, as he watched through the scope, Will saw John standing there, speaking to her in silence once again.
He pulled his eye back from the rifle scope. He had to blink and to wipe the sweat away. Through it all his eyes were on Mary May below and John standing over her. Every member of Eden’s Gate now moved back down the hill, as if Drew’s death had been the point all along. As if this somehow was what they had come for, all of them filing past John after bearing witness to this act.
“Was it her?” Jerome asked now. He stood above Will, and with the shotgun and the vest he looked every part God’s sentinel here on earth.
“I think so,” Will said. “I think she shot him. I think she shot Drew and I feel I know why.”
“What does this mean now?” Jerome asked. “What does this mean for Mary May or for Eden’s Gate?”
Will wiped a finger beneath his eye again. He felt the damp moisture of his sweat. His mind was going a hundred different places, but as he put his eye to the scope again, he watched John there and then after some final word, John was gone, following as the last of his people filed past. The back of John’s head now indistinguishable from all the rest, as if they were him and he was them. “It means they have a secret they can hold over her and though she will try to fight it, there is nothing you or I, or even Mary May can do about it. The sooner we all realize that the better.”
“I don’t accept that,” Jerome said. “No one is beyond help. Not you or me or Mary May.”
Will said nothing. It was a mess. It was all a fucking mess and there was no way he could see his way out of it. But he knew they would try.
V
No one believes death is coming until the moment it does. And most still refuse to believe it even then.
—THE FATHER, EDEN’S GATE
Hope County, Montana
WILL HAD ABOUT THE SAME FEELING HE’D HAD WHEN HE came back from the war, like nothing had been accomplished, but he thought now maybe the accomplishment wasn’t about winning a war, it was about surviving. It was about coming back alive from a place so few were able to come back from. That was the accomplishment and it’s what drove him now as he skirted the tree line with the broad Junegrass field before him and the place he had thought of as home for the past twelve years, the cabin Eden’s Gate had given him up there on the hill.
Holly and three men fro
m Eden’s Gate were waiting up there at his place. And as far as Will could tell they’d been waiting for several days now. From out of the shadows he watched them. He watched them up there as they brought furniture out and burned it in the night, bits of wood, the mattress he had slept on, clothes, the single chair and table he had within. Holly often came to the edge of the hill where he had once stood to watch the bear. The woman watching not for bear as Will had done, but watching for Will as if he now were the threat that bear had been—something dangerous out there in the greater wilderness, something lost, something looking for its next kill.
But Will was none of that now. He was a survivor. He had made it back but he could see now that this was not his home, not at least in the way it once had been. Nothing in Hope County was the way it once had been.
But Will took his time, careful now. He watched them through the night then into the day. He waited in the woods as the men went to piss, close enough then to hear the urine hit the ground and to hear the breathing of each man as they relieved themselves. He watched them go for water then return, using the same buckets Will himself had used for so many years. He watched them eat his food and plunder the stores he had set aside and he watched them make themselves at home in the home that had once been his.
When he left, a day later, nothing had changed for him in all his studying of the place. It was not his home anymore and he knew it had stopped being that a while back. He followed the river for a quarter of the day and he often stopped to glass the land beyond. He did not know what he was searching for but he knew wherever he went he would be okay. He could live off the land if he needed to. He could go back to the old ways. He could use the knowledge that had been handed down to him through the generations. He had snares and traps. He had cartridges and the rifle, he had clothes, and anything he did not have he could make or forage.