The Alliance

by Jolina Petersheim

  I ask Sal outright, and she pauses, as if trying to decide if she should tell me the truth. Then she nods. “Uncle Mike raised me from five years old, when my dad OD’d, until I turned eighteen. He thinks this means the rest of my life should be handed over to him like one big IOU. He forced me to sit by the road that night we met, waiting for anybody who might come by and feel bad for a single mom and her baby. You were so easy.” Sal sighs. “So eager to help out. It wasn’t until I reported seeing you—a Mennonite—in a wagon going down Main Street that my uncle realized you might be from the same community where Luke hid the drugs.”

  Hid the drugs? “What . . . drugs?” I ask, reeling. Sal reaches past her anger to balance me.

  “Leora, listen,” she says. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, but there are things going on here that you know nothing about. Your dad used to be one of my uncle’s biggest drug runners. His furniture business was just a front. But then he got so addicted, he became worthless and my uncle couldn’t trust him. After the EMP hit, Uncle Mike’s supply started drying up because no one could get the stuff into town from the cities like before. But at the same time, the demand went through the roof because nobody could get ahold of anything. People went nuts. Think fresh drinking water’s scarce? Try crack cocaine.”

  Sal smiles; she actually smiles, like this story has a punch line. Meanwhile my mouth is so dry I can hardly swallow. I haven’t reconciled the vagrant Moses talked about with the man who raised me, and Sal’s saying a majority of my vadder’s life—even before he left—was a lie?

  “Your dad was in bad shape,” she continues, “and desperate to get ahold of something too, but had nothing to barter, so he ’fessed up that over the years he’d taken some of the cocaine he was supposed to sell for my uncle and stashed it in the community where he used to live—thinking he’d go back for it one day. How he was able to pull that off, I have no clue. But after the EMP, he was delirious from withdrawal and said he couldn’t remember where he’d hidden the stash. Uncle Mike was spitting mad and tried getting information out of him by using force, but your dad was so out of it that eventually Uncle Mike figured he really didn’t know what he’d done with the drugs, if it was even true that he had them.

  “You’d already given me an open invitation to the community, so Uncle Mike sent me as his informant. I was supposed to find out where the drugs were hidden and report back to him. But then there were a bunch of days where I couldn’t get out to communicate with him, and he panicked, I guess. Uncle Mike sent those boys up here in the old Suburban to basically bust in and force people to talk, and we both know how that turned out. I hadn’t said anything about the guys guarding the place, so no doubt they were shocked by what happened.”

  “But my vadder had a driver,” I insist, as if this fact alone can undo all the others. “An Englischer. Named Ronnie.”

  Sal laughs. “Yeah, good ol’ Ronnie. He’d pick your old man up and bring him into town and then come back at the end of the day to take him home again. It was all just for appearances. Your dad had a car that he kept at my uncle’s garage.” She looks at my face. “What? Did you really think he delivered drugs by horse and buggy?”

  I stand perfectly still, as if trying to offset my whirring mind. I don’t know what to think. I know nothing about drugs. Not how they are taken or how much they cost. “Why is my vadder staying at the civic center? Is that where he lives?”

  Sal gives me a one-shoulder shrug. “He does now. He used to have an apartment in the same complex as me. Then he lost everything when he couldn’t keep paying my uncle. Honestly, he’s lucky he’s alive. He’s been trying to get clean for a while, I reckon. But now he has no other choice. I didn’t find the stash of cocaine until a few days after the teenagers were killed, and it looked like it’d absorbed a bunch of moisture and turned or something. I don’t know how long it’s been stored like that, but if it’s still worth anything, it’s probably not much. I’ve been trying to buy us some time, smuggling out food to the gang and telling Uncle Mike I haven’t found anything else, but I’m not sure he believes me anymore.”

  Sal strokes her baby’s fine, dark hair, and I can see her fingers are shaking. I realize that, while I’ve been judging her, she’s been putting herself and her child in jeopardy to keep our community safe. “Your dad’s in over his head, Leora,” she murmurs. “He used the cocaine he stole as collateral to get more drugs. The word is out about the cocaine and people are waiting for it. Some have already paid, in one form or another. If my uncle discovers the cache is not worth much, your dad’s a dead man. And to tell you the truth, the only reason he’s not dead already is because Uncle Mike’s hoping your dad’s head will clear up enough that he’ll be able to find the stash himself because, after all, he’s the one who hid it.”

  The two of us wait, listening to the off-kilter creak of Jabil’s wagon wheels as he comes through the breach in the fence. I say, “If not remembering’s what’s keeping him alive, then that’s probably exactly why he can’t.”

  “That’s the trouble,” Sal responds. “I think my uncle’s starting to realize that your dad’s not remembering on purpose too.”

  “But where’s it hidden?” I ask. “The drugs?”

  Sal looks at me in confusion, as if she can’t believe I don’t know. Then she points behind her to the cellar. “That’s not just flour in those containers,” she says. “Some of it’s cocaine.”

  Moses

  I never expected a drug addict to know how to shoot. I also never expected it from a pacifist—or former pacifist. But I was clearly wrong on both counts. Luke Ebersole sends a storm of bullets downrange. His hair keeps getting in the way of his line of sight, and he wipes the oily threads back from his face before firing again. Sometime since I discovered him in the center, he must’ve tried bathing as best he could, because he at least looks cleaner than he did that day, though he smells about the same. But the years of hard living can’t be wiped away the same as the filth. They mark him down to the pores, like coal residue.

  Thanks to Luke’s marksmanship, which came on the heels of Charlie’s mortar explosion, the gang has retreated until they’re almost out of reach. They’re still shooting, but I think they’re trying to figure out how to escape and then overtake us from a different approach or at a different time. No doubt Charlie would rather finish them all off and not give them the chance.

  Before he gets the opportunity, a yellow Pontiac streaks down the center of the highway and lurches to a stop behind the perforated conversion van. A man clambers out, unfolding his huge body from the car’s low-slung frame. His bald, ovule-shaped head catches the light. It takes about five seconds before I place him as the henchman, working for the gang member we met the same night we went to the museum in town.

  Luke gestures to our new arrival. “That guy’s part of Liberty’s gang. They must’ve merged with the gang you all’ve been fighting. I bet the Liberty boys told them what’s here.”

  Charlie barks, “‘What’s here’? We got nothing. We’re running out of ammo, and we barely got food, so maybe you should tell that to the gang, and then maybe they’d leave us alone.” Disgruntled, he doesn’t look across at Luke, but continues watching his scope.

  Luke’s hand, which was controlled seconds ago, quivers as he picks up the rifle. “I wasn’t talking about food. I hid cocaine here a while back. But I was out of my mind when I did it and can’t remember where it is. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I had no idea it’d come to this.”

  Sean and Charlie stare at Luke in shock. Having known more of his history, I try to clarify by asking, “So . . . you’re saying this whole shoot-out’s over some drugs you stashed here and the gang’s trying to get back?”

  Luke turns to the side, away from Sean, and coughs down the front of his shirt. He finishes and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Mike showed up yesterday, along with that guy there—” he points to the Pontiac—”and said I had twenty-four hours to find the cocaine and h
and it over, or else they’d burn Mt. Hebron to the ground. I came here to warn the community that I thought the gang was on their way. But then, when I went to cross over the fence in the back, I saw all the commotion and guessed everybody was already heading out.”

  “You got yourself some impressive powers of observation.” But then Charlie stops his grumbling and points. We turn to see one of the gang members stepping out from behind the barricade and darting across the grass toward the pine trees along the left. He’s carrying a red container, probably fuel.

  “Get that guy,” I hiss, the battle with my conscience conquered by sheer instinct for survival. We all open up. One of our bullets hits him low in the leg, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. Charlie curses as the man continues his pace like a demented robot, not even favoring his wound. In seconds, the man makes his way into the shadow of our perimeter, so close that he’s out of our range. The rest of the gang are sending a wall of lead our way, trying to give their runner some cover. And it’s working. There’s no way I’m going to stand up to peer over the edge of the wall with bullets whizzing inches above my head. Soon, we can smell smoke and then see the telltale noxious cloud rising over the perimeter.

  Luke calls over to us, “He’s higher than a kite and can’t feel much of anything. That’s probably how the gang got him to do it in the first place.”

  The man has almost made it back to the barricade without the gas can, having surely dumped everything over the logs. Charlie takes aim.

  I put up my hand to stop him. “It won’t do any good.”

  He sighs and lowers the weapon. “Now we’re even for that cat.”

  “I think a person’s a little more important than a cat.”

  “Maybe in your book.”

  Sean says, “Stop jabbering, you two. Who’s going to get the water?”

  I say, “That fire’s not going out like last time. Besides, they’d shoot us if we tried.”

  “Great,” Charlie says. “We’re dead either way you slice it.”

  Across from us, Luke starts choking on the smoke. Slanting his gun against the scaffolding, he leans over and coughs so hard that, this time, I expect to see blood. There’s nothing. He raises his head and meets my eyes. His are a mottled rendition of Leora’s. I look back at him without seeing him. Instead I’m seeing his daughter when she reunites with her father after two years apart. Though he’s a shell of the man who raised her, he’s still her flesh and blood. I know what it’s like to lose that fetter to the earth—or to simply cut yourself free from it because you’re too ashamed of what you’ve done. Or of what you didn’t have the courage to do. I can’t let that level of loss happen to her. She’s lost enough.

  “I think y’all should go.” Nobody responds to me—not Charlie, Luke, or Sean. All three just stare—as if hypnotized—at the flames licking the sides of the logs, at the sound of the wood cracking from the heat. “I’ll hold down the fort while you help everyone finish escaping.”

  “Hold down the fort?” Charlie rolls his eyes. “Don’t talk stupid, Moses. We’re about out of bullets, and our cover’s in the process of getting burnt to the ground. What’re you gonna do then? Throw rocks at them?”

  “You said yourself we’re dead if we put out the fire, and we’re dead if we don’t. There’s no point in all of us just sitting here, with guns and no ammo, waiting to get overrun.” I glance away from Charlie to the other set of scaffolding. “I’ve already had my string of second chances, Luke. Now I’m giving you one: I want you to get better, to get clean. I want you to reunite with your family. To become a father to them again, like you should’ve been all along.”

  Luke Ebersole stares like he can’t decide if I’m serious or insane. Brushing a hank of hair away from his face, he says, “Why would you do that? You don’t even know me.”

  I look away from him, and my eyes burn. I tell myself it’s from the heat and the smoke of the flames. “I don’t know you, but I do know your daughter. And for her, I’d do anything.”

  Leora

  It’s as if I can see my vadder’s fate being sealed as Sal picks up the one bag of cocaine, which she’s taken from the cellar, and tucks it into her backpack—proof, she says, that she’s not telling a lie. For the gang’s not going to allow someone who increased his debt with stolen property, which he then had the gall to damage, to just walk away. No, they will find him, I’m sure, and they will kill him. Though I am angry for his abandonment—for the two years my family spent not knowing if he was dead or alive—my stomach lurches at the thought of him actually dying.

  My vadder wasn’t always a drug addict. He didn’t always shirk his responsibilities surrounding his children and wife. I remember him sitting at the head of that beautiful table he made, teasing a smile from my mamm’s mouth at suppertime as his callused hands passed her steaming bowls. I remember him carrying Anna, then eight years old, back from the pond after she fell skating—his booted feet stamping patterns in the snow as he cradled her, like someone newly born, against his chest. I remember glancing up after my baptism into the Mennonite church and seeing my vadder watching me with an incalculable mixture of sadness and warmth, so that I was grateful for the water dripping down my forehead, a screen for my eyes. For the first time since I’ve learned that he is alive—has, in fact, been living in Liberty this entire time—I feel my heart softening toward him, not because I know I should honor him despite what he’s done, but because I realize, despite everything, I love him still.

  Sal closes the trapdoor and kicks leaves over the plywood. She tucks strands of hair that have come loose from her braid behind her ears. I can see the crescents of brown beneath her strong, pink-and-white nails where she was peeling back the dirt to reach the cellar, and I know that this telltale dirt was what she was trying to hide from me that day she came into my room to make sure I was all right. I reach out and take that soiled hand.

  “Please,” I beseech her, thinking if I can protect her life, perhaps I can protect my vadder’s as well. “Please stay. You are not alone. We want you here . . . with us.”

  Sal drops my hand and looks away from me, toward the entrance of the woods. Jabil’s so engrossed in unloading the wagon, I am almost certain that he has not noticed us. “I’m an informant, Leora. Not your friend. There has always been a deal. If I don’t return . . .” She gestures toward the cellar concealing the cocaine. “If I just disappear and leave with you all, they’ll come after me . . . the same as they’ll come after your dad.”

  She says this as if she’s recited it, but I can see how her eyes gleam in the waning light. We have become friends, despite her many walls and my own; it just makes it easier for her to leave if she says we are not. I search the pockets of my apron, trying to think of something I can offer. I hold my hands up and force myself not to cry. “I have nothing to give.”

  “You’re wrong,” she says, and her facade shatters like that heirloom platter at the feast. Tears slide down her cheeks. She smears them away like contagion. “You can give by taking from me.” Colton lifts his head from the sling and smiles, sated from his mother’s milk. In spite of her pain, I cannot help but smile back. Without looking at him or at me, Sal hooks her hands beneath Colton’s arms and gently pulls his legs out of the sling. She hugs the child against her. Tears fall freely now and cling to his hair, dew on blades of ink-black grass.

  Straightening, she dabs her nose and places the sweet bulk of him in my arms. Sal chokes down a sob and turns away from the searing image of me holding her son. “Don’t try talking me out of this,” she says, her voice rigid. “Where I’m going’s no place for a child. I’ll come back for him when it’s safe.” Honoring her wishes, I remain silent. Sal loosens the straps of the sling and passes it to me, warm with their body heat. Then she shoulders her pack and slips into the woods, disappearing as the eventide gradually wraps her like a blanket.

  I shield Colton’s head with my hand to keep him from getting slapped with brushwood as I hurry back toward the openi
ng in the fence, which Jabil cut for easier passage. Behind his wagon, I can see the outline of my people, along with their horses and mules that are packed down with everything they anticipate we’ll need to establish a new community on the mountain, if the one in the valley indeed gets destroyed. Some families are already making their way up the old logging path. Bishop Lowell is leading them, his straw hat donned, a walking staff supporting his weary—albeit determined—stride. I think of that verse in Exodus, which he quoted yesterday to encourage the community after they found out about our plight:

  And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.

  My irritation abates and my heart swells to witness my people’s resilience in the face of such adversity. They are in the process of leaving—and losing—so much, and yet, despite this, they are already willing to build again. Leaving does not always equal apathy; in their case, leaving instead of hiding behind firepower is indeed the fearless thing to do.

  I look toward the skyline, drinking in my last twilight viewed from Mt. Hebron land. The final rays of sun appear like fingers traced behind the stark cutout of the perimeter, reaching up into the darkening sky. My breath catches, as the peaceful moment is juxtaposed with the understanding that I am not merely viewing the final rays of sun, but also the flames leaping into the air on the perimeter down by the gate.

  Seeking an explanation, I turn toward Jabil, who’s unloading the last load of supplies at such a furious pace, he doesn’t notice me until I yell at him.

  He sets down the box and wipes his forehead with an arm equally saturated with sweat. “I see the perimeter. I do. But I can’t stop to think about it now.”