The Divide

by Jolina Petersheim

  “You all right?” Seth asks, and I’m not sure if he’s referring to the plane or to our home.

  I nod, and together my brother and I walk up the steps. The majority of the fire damage took place around the front, so the back porch is relatively sound. Seth enters first to ensure no squatters have taken up residence, and it makes me want to cry, seeing how he battles fear in an effort to protect me. But when I follow him inside, I can’t imagine anyone living here. The place is nearly uninhabitable, even by apocalyptic standards. A portion of the roof collapsed over the dining room, and two seasons’ worth of rain and snow have leaked down through the rafters, saturating the insulation until it got waterlogged and fell, draping the floor in soggy strips. Someone wrenched the kitchen cabinets from the walls and hacked them into kindling, provender for a small fire where the table used to be. The ornate grandfather clock, which metered my adolescence, is gone. Perhaps turned into kindling as well.

  I walk over to these ruins—representing hours and hours of my vadder’s work—and pick up one of the oil-rubbed bronze cabinet pulls he used because a woman for whom he was making custom cabinets decided she wanted pewter instead. My mamm took such satisfaction in those secondhand pulls, hiding her pride so she wouldn’t feel guilty for having them.

  Seth comes back into the kitchen after searching the rest of the house. “No one’s around,” he says. “But we shouldn’t stay long. Looks like someone’s been camping out in your and Anna’s old room.” He studies me when I don’t respond. “Are you crying?”

  I shake my head, though I should answer yes. “It’s just so . . . hard to believe.”

  “I know,” he agrees. “It’s awful. But seriously, we need to get out of here, Lor.”

  I hear him, but I don’t respond. In a daze, I walk across the warped floor into the living room. Water and fire have destroyed this space as well. The braided rug in the center borders the area where I suppose the couch, coffee table, and cedar chest—full of priceless mementos—were burned, the strands of the rug charred into an indistinguishable mess. Besides the cedar chest, I don’t mind the damage. In fact, I am almost glad I cannot identify the room where my mamm died, as if the physical loss will make the emotional one easier to bear.

  The sound of footsteps on the porch rouses me from my stupor. I turn, eyes wide, and see that Seth’s gangly frame is outlined by the back door. “Who is it?” I call.

  He doesn’t answer. Alarmed, I cross the kitchen and look around his shoulder.

  Our vadder is standing on the porch wearing a moth-eaten wool coat. His arms are filled with kindling. His eyes are clear, but the skin cinches tight over the bare structure of his face. “Seth . . . Leora,” he rasps in surprise. “You’re here.”

  I think to myself, And so are you.

  For years, I prayed for his return, but this is not the return I wanted. I wanted my mamm to be here, and well; I wanted my brother and sister to run out to greet him. I wanted our life to be sparkling and perfect so he could see—at first glance—that abandoning us was a mistake.

  Instead, we are facing each other on the threshold of this broken house, and I can see that we are all as broken as it. My vadder motions to the door, and only now do I realize that Seth and I are subconsciously barring his path. We back up, into the kitchen, as our vadder enters the house with the armful of wood. His surprise appearance causes the reminder of his leaving to hang between us, as nebulous as smoke.

  He walks around the destroyed cabinets and crouches in front of the woodstove. The flue is rusting, but beyond that, it looks unchanged. Opening the door, he places kindling inside and then stacks the larger pieces on top. I reach into my rucksack and draw out the box of matches, passing it to him. My vadder smiles his thanks and strikes a match against the box, cupping his hand around the flame until the fire ignites the wood. The door squeaks as he closes it. He stands and turns to face us. The three of us haven’t exchanged a word since he walked into what used to be our home.

  My vadder, seeing his children struck mute, takes the initiative. “Been here a while?”

  Seth and I shake our heads. “No,” I reply. “We actually just came.”

  “How is everyone?” He nudges his head to the left. “On the mountain.”

  “Okay,” I murmur. “Winter’s been hard.” That’s putting it mildly, and he knows it.

  Daed looks down. Duct tape serves as laces for his shoes. “I’m sorry I’ve not been there,” he says. “For you.”

  I reply, “It’s okay,” but Seth remains quiet. I glance at him in my peripheral vision. His expression looks like it did when he was standing near mamm’s grave.

  “After you all left,” Daed continues, “I didn’t last long.”

  “You relapsed?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “And then what?” I prod. “You came here?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t come alone.” He pauses. “Moses brought me.”

  I don’t allow myself to believe I heard correctly, and then I tell myself that perhaps the timeline is confused. “You—you came here.” I point to the house. “With Moses. After we left.”

  “He helped me come back.” He drags a hand over his face, and yet I can see the sweeping flush of shame. “I was in no shape to walk from Liberty on my own.”

  I clench a fist to my stomach. “So—he’s alive?” My question is a whisper.

  My daed nods, and that single movement requires me to take a seat on the floor. The wood is mildewed from constantly being wet, but I do not care. I am numb to all but relief.

  “He got shot, that night you all left,” he explains. “Sal helped him get to the warehouse in town. But then, about the time he started getting better, he could see I was getting worse and told me he’d take me back to Mt. Hebron on his way to a militia.”

  At this, Seth responds for the first time. “Did he go to the one in Kalispell?”

  “Sounds right.” Daed shrugs. “I can’t say for sure.”

  My brother’s grin catches me off guard. “That’s where I want to go,” he says.

  Getting to my feet, I exclaim, “Don’t talk like that!” Mostly this is because Seth’s declaration steals my joy surrounding the knowledge that Moses Hughes is alive.

  Our vadder intervenes by asking if we’re hungry. I glance around the destroyed kitchen, trying to see what there could possibly be left to eat. “I got a rabbit this morning,” he says.

  “Good for you,” I reply. “We haven’t seen a rabbit in months.”

  “So,” my vadder says, smiling slightly. “I take it you’re staying for supper?”

  I nod and glance over at Seth. After a while, feeling my gaze, he nods too.

  A pinesap torch, wedged in a Mason jar like a single stem, blooms in the darkness. My vadder pulls up loose floorboards next to the wall where the grandfather clock once stood. He reaches underneath and lifts out an antique Good’s Potato Chips tin and twists off the lid. Carefully, he removes a net of coins, the tarnished silver glinting in the palm of his hand. And then he removes a clutch of serving spoons, also silver. There is a small mother of pearl pocketknife I recognize as the one Seth lost summers ago. I am glad my brother is sleeping on the floor of my old room and, therefore, cannot see what I am beginning to understand. All of these items our vadder stole from us. The very one who was supposed to provide.

  But then he withdraws the final item from the tin: white silk wrapped in butcher paper. My mudder’s wedding dress, which she meticulously sewed, although almost no one supported her decision to say her vows to such an unstable man.

  My vadder passes the package to me. Trembling, I unwrap the paper and scan the cape dress, yellowed at the seams, even in firelight. The silk snags on my fingertips.

  “When did you take this?” I ask.

  He doesn’t say anything at first. “Years ago,” he admits. “I would slowly take things from the house and sell them, but I couldn’t sell the dress and the knife. Even back then.”

  His outline blurs.
I blink hard and look at my vadder, forcing myself to face the pain, separating it from my anger at the one who inflicted it. Then, only then, can I see the pain that is afflicting him, too. There was a reason my vadder could not cope when my sister fell and so turned to opioids to dull the ache. Whether it was the imperfect love he experienced in childhood or the imperfect world in which he was raised, something caused him, as an adult, to reach the point where he could not cope. However, all along the way, he was also making choices: forgive and move on or remain. The same choices I am also being presented.

  “I forgive you.” My words come out tentatively. A whisper. I repeat them and say, “I don’t know why you did what you did. I may never know. But I forgive you anyway.”

  “That means—” Emotion severs my vadder’s voice. He looks down. “So much.”

  I walk closer to him, this broken man, and touch his arm. He cries violently, as if from pent-up release. The same as I have always done. “Look,” I say, soothing him. “All things work for good.” The silver coins in his hand and the white silk in mine refract the winter moonlight cascading through the hole in the roof. “If you hadn’t hidden the dress, it would be burned.”

  He looks up, wiping his eyes. His smile is bittersweet. “And now, one day,” he says, “maybe you can wear it.”

  My brother says nothing as we prepare to leave, as he has said almost nothing since our arrival. Shutting his heart down toward our vadder has become his means of protection, the same as it was for me. In the meantime, my vadder and I shuffle around each other, not sure if the words we exchanged last night now require an exchange of physical affection along with a good-bye. But at this point, neither of us are willing to take the risk. So we just smile at each other cautiously as Seth and I descend the back porch stairs.

  “You sure you won’t come?” I ask for the second time.

  He shakes his head. “I’m not ready.”

  I wonder how long until he is. I say, “I respect that.”

  “Thank you.”

  I can tell he is as sincere as I. Halfway down the lane, I turn and wave at our vadder, who is still standing on the back porch with that snow-crusted plane stranded out in the field. Only then does my brother snap, “Stop it already, Leora. You’re making a fool of yourself.”

  I glance over in shock, trying to understand how someone who once worshipped our vadder could presently abhor him. But then, I do understand, don’t I? Didn’t I feel that same churning animosity when Moses Hughes told me our vadder was not dead, as I thought, but alive? That he had been living within miles of his children, who believed themselves orphans?

  “Seth,” I murmur, reaching out to force him to stop moving. “I’ve been where you are. I have felt what you’re feeling. You do not need to forget everything our vadder did; you do not even need to trust him. But if you are ever to find complete healing, you do need to forgive.”

  He is quiet for a while, and then he starts walking away from me. “Don’t act like you understand,” he snaps. “’Cause you don’t.”

  “Then help me understand!” I call this against the wind, and my words are futile in every direction. “I want to be here for you, but I don’t know how to do that unless you let me in.”

  My brother turns, rage in his eyes. “I don’t want him to come back. I want no part of him. I don’t even want to find ‘healing’ or whatever it is you say.”

  “Oh, Seth.” I begin to cry. “Don’t you see? You’re only trying to protect yourself.”

  “No. You’re the one who needs to see.” He pauses. “I’m also trying to protect you.”

  Seth and I snowshoe for miles in silence. Fury seems to propel my brother so that, even though I have tension of my own, it is hard to keep up. “Slow down,” I call. He does not listen but heads off through the woods. “Where are you going?” Again he does not turn. “Seth!”

  “Would you just chill out!” he yells.

  His tone, clipped and acerbic, draws me up short. Breathless, I rest my hands on my waist and watch my brother struggle through the snow until the pines close like a curtain behind him. I wait for a moment, unsure how I should proceed, or if I should proceed at all. And yet the memory—of me trying to find Seth through a squall of sleet—is all too fresh. Sighing in frustration, I begin to follow his tracks. Unlike before, it doesn’t take me long to find him, but it does take all my willpower not to march up and take hold of his hand, as if he’s a misbehaving child, and force him to retrace the path that will take us back up the mountain, to safety.

  But then I see my brother’s destination: the place where he must’ve come numerous times when he also needed to escape the community. He is standing on an outlook devoid of pine trees, which must’ve been a vantage point used by hunters before the EMP and perhaps even now. The highway is visible in the distance. Green metal road signs—reduced to hyphens—reflect though the white. It’s too far to read them, but I know the arrow pointing one direction says, Kalispell, 25 miles; the arrow pointing the opposite direction says, Liberty, 6 miles. Below us, through the snowfall, Liberty itself appears: an architect’s model of a dystopian city built to scale, the circumference stitched with train tracks straddled by abandoned railway cars. From here, the destruction is not visible.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say, and it strikes me that beauty is not often commented on anymore.

  Seth doesn’t look back at me, so I walk up until I’m standing beside him on the ridge.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  He nods, but the tears I saw in his eyes earlier are now dampening his cheeks. “I don’t want to go back up there,” he replies, wiping his face with the back of his glove. “It’s like—” He swallows. “It’s like I need to start over again. Somewhere new. Where nobody knows me. Or is always watching what I do . . . to see if I’m gonna turn out just like him.”

  He doesn’t have to elaborate. I know who he means. I touch my brother’s shoulder, but he draws away. “Sometimes,” I begin, “I wish our family could leave too, Seth, but the reality is, there’s nowhere to go. We need the community. We wouldn’t survive without them.”

  “Then just let me leave,” he says.

  “To go to the militia.”

  My brother intentionally meets my eyes for the first time in a day. “Yes. Please, Leora.”

  It both touches and saddens me to hear him plead. “You’re too young, Seth.”

  “In normal life, yeah, I’d say I’m too young, but this isn’t normal.” Shaking his head, he stares out at Liberty. His voice is subdued as he murmurs, “Nothing really is.”

  “We’ll see,” I reply. “Let’s just not be hasty about this.”

  Seth’s posture stiffens, as if he knows this is my way of avoiding confrontation and that I have no real intention of letting him go. Abruptly, he turns and starts forcing his way through the trees. I stand still for a moment, watching him, and then follow. He is anger personified: his pace headlong and unflinching, so he will not so much as acknowledge that I am behind him, trying to keep up. We are in the midst of descending the mountain, and about to reach more level ground, when Seth abruptly stops. His hand is raised out to his side, as if in warning.

  “What is it?” I whisper, taking a few more steps to span the gap between us.

  And then I see why my brother stopped. Ahead, just off the path, a man is sitting against the base of a massive ponderosa. My body tenses as I see the man’s rifle, balanced across his lap. He smiles dryly beneath a black hat, obviously enjoying watching us startle and freeze in fear. “Well, well,” he says. “Where you two lovebirds off to on this wonderful day?”

  My brother’s jaw tightens beneath its dusting of facial hair. I take a small step, putting myself just in front of Seth. “We are brother and sister,” I tell the man. “We took a trip back to Liberty, and now we’re simply trying to make our way up to our community.”

  Interest flickers across the man’s face. “Community, eh? You need to take me there.”

  Dread cor
ners my mind as I realize my mistake. I’ve not only risked my life and my brother’s by going through with this venture; I’ve now risked our entire community. For even if this man is simply a deranged refugee who somehow believes himself the patrolman of these mountains, he is now aware of the group of people who inhabit them. The muscles of my shoulders bunch into knots. “I’m sorry,” I reply. “That’s not possible.”

  “Besides,” Seth snaps coldly, “who do you think you are that you can ask us where we’re going?” If I would not have to turn my gaze, I would give my brother a look.

  With his right hand, the man purposefully positions the rifle so that it is pointed directly at us. With his left, he pulls out what looks like a wallet from his jacket pocket. He lets it fall open, revealing some kind of identification card. Holding it up, he states, “I am an informant for the Agricultural Resurgence Commission.”

  Seth smirks. “Agricultural, huh? Hate to break it to you, but you’re not gonna be able to grow anything right now.”

  Letting the wallet fall closed, the man’s riled eyes again shift to my brother. I can see, around his mouth and in the softness padding his jaw, that he is probably only a few years older than Seth. Their tempers are both trigger happy, and I try to gauge how to defuse the situation. “We cannot participate in anything like that,” I reply, “but we appreciate the offer.”

  The man laughs, but his smooth face remains oddly unchanged. “You misunderstand me, sweetheart.” He pauses, slipping the wallet back into his jacket pocket. “This isn’t voluntary, and if I say you gotta help, then you gotta help.”

  “What is this, a joke or something?” My brother speaks yet again.

  Fury twists the man’s mouth. “You’re about to find out just how much of a joke it is.” He lifts the rifle to his shoulder. “Either of you make a run for it, and this’ll be the day you die.” Keeping the rifle trained on us, he gets to his feet.

  Somewhere in the woods, a songbird trills a soothing melody that clashes with my pounding heart. All of life, it seems, boils down to two choices: fight and flight. But there’s no way we can run in the snow when it’s difficult to walk. I hear Seth’s breathing quicken and can sense his mounting panic. I grab his arm and grip tightly, mostly out of my own panic and because I know nothing else to do. With my one hand, I am gripping my brother, but with my other, my fingers slowly slide around the revolver, which is in the pocket of my coat.