“What are your intentions?” he says.
He looks so serious, I have to fight not to laugh. “What are you talking about?”
“Listen,” he says, “I’m trying to be reasonable here. I let you see Leora, thinking you came back for her, and then you treat her like she means nothing to you.”
“Her grandmother was dying. What was I supposed to say?”
He levels me in his gaze. “It’s more like, what you shouldn’t do, Moses.”
I shake my head. “I’m so confused right now.”
“I just saw you with Sal! You flirt with every girl around!”
I hold his gaze with the same intensity, which is some feat, considering my eyes are watering from the smoke. “I wasn’t flirting with her, Jabil. It’s called being a friend.”
“I don’t hug my friends,” he says.
“That’s because you’re Amish!”
Jabil doesn’t break the stare. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt,” he says. “But you and I both know you’re not staying. You’re just coming here to appease your conscience, and then you’ll head out again when you feel like enough of a hero that you can leave.”
I make a snorting sound. “That’s pretty harsh.”
He finally looks away, staring down at the floor littered with cedar chips that smolder and burn. “Maybe. But I’m just calling it like it is.”
Leora
I didn’t sleep well last night, dreading the burial service for our loved ones, which will take place this morning. However, my heartache is not the only reason I could not rest, or I suppose my heartache stems from two different forms of grief.
The truth is, Moses Hughes has come back, but he has not come back to me. If he had, he would’ve sought me out over the past few days, touched my hand, given me a signal that let me know the memory of us holding each other kept him going all these months too.
Instead, I have nothing but his acute discomfort as he stood in our cabin, and I’m not sure if this confirms his feelings for me or denies them. Getting out of bed, I cross the floor toward the fire and crouch to warm my hands. Seth and Anna are still asleep. It’s hard to gauge when to awaken, since no windows allow daylight inside. I look at Sal, who’s sitting at the table, letting Colton feed himself breakfast mush, though his little fingers are struggling to hold the spoon. He is used to being fed by me. “Mamm.” He keeps saying, “Mamm,” and looks in my direction, beckoning. But I don’t let myself go to him, knowing Sal would see any help as encroachment.
Carefully, I ask, “Did he sleep okay for you?”
Sal pulls a face. “No.”
“Poor thing.”
“I hope you’re talking about me. I was the one up comforting him most of the night.”
Her words are breezy, and yet the tension hangs between us. After a moment, she tugs a chain from her sweater and leans forward so that the pendant dangles in front of Colton. But then I see it’s not a pendant, as the child reaches for the large ring and pulls it into his mouth. I stare at it, hypnotized by the loop’s gentle sway. I feel myself rising and stepping closer. “Where—where’d you get that?” I ask.
Sal straightens, the ring knocking back into her chest. Her eyes snap to mine, and the challenge in them makes me think her casual gesture has intent. Pulling out the stretched neck of her sweater, she drops the chain and ring inside. “I took it from Moses before we went to the warehouse,” she says. “My grandmother’s like a magpie when it comes to shiny things.”
“Then why—” I tilt my head—“didn’t you give it back?”
“Because he left before I could.”
Something indiscernible floods me. Envy? Anger? Remorse? I pull out the kitchen chair opposite hers. “My daed told me that Moses got shot.”
Sal adjusts Colton’s grip on the spoon. “Yeah. At the perimeter, when the gang came in. I dragged him over to Field to Table, where I’d been hiding. He was bleeding bad, so I looked around and found a sewing kit under one of the shelves. I sewed him up and put pressure on his wound. He wouldn’t be alive if not for me.” She lifts her gaze, chin thrust out. There were moments, in the valley, when I felt close to her. But right now, she’s looking at me like a rival.
“Thank you for saving him,” I murmur.
She lifts an eyebrow. “I didn’t save him for you.”
I’m not sure what to say to this. Is the territoriality I’m sensing from her because she likes Moses, or does it reflect the fact that, for months, I mothered her son?
“Sal.” I swallow, unsure if kindness—like help—will only hinder the situation. “I want you to know it’s been an honor to care for Colton, but you’re his mother and always will be.”
“I’m not worried,” she says and lightly shrugs. “He knows who I am.”
Using the spoon to clean Colton’s mouth, Sal scrapes back the kitchen chair and pulls on her coat and hat and then his. She wraps a blanket around her bundled son, and the two of them depart with Colton saying, “Mamm, Mamm,” and reaching one arm out of the blanket toward me. I cannot blame him; I have been his caregiver for almost half his life. But Sal blames me. I can see it in her eyes, as if I purposely tried to teach him what to call me, though children somehow learn all on their own. Sal slams the door but doesn’t latch it. Frigid air blasts through the breach, and the temperature of the cabin plummets. I walk over and close the door. My chest aches as tears sting. I miss her companionship, but I have to wonder if Sal and I were ever truly friends.
Over the years, I have attended about a dozen funeral services overseen by Bishop Lowell. Most notable, of course, was my own mother’s, though I have a hard time recalling much about that day except for how hot it was and how many smiles I had to give to reassure everyone our orphaned family needed no outside help, all while my insides were roiling with dread. This funeral is very different. I have never been to one so poorly attended, which is appalling, considering how many people died in our community. But I know that a majority of the mourners are recuperating from the same illness that took their kin. I am not sure why the rest of our family has been spared, but I do not take it for granted. I find myself wanting to tell Anna and Seth to hold their breath as we stand huddled around the podium, where Bishop Lowell is offering succor to those, like us, who are fraught with grief.
He begins by opening his worn German Bible and reading from the book of John: “Das Licht leuchtet in der Finsternis, und die Finsternis hat es nicht überwunden.” His breath frosts the poetic words. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
I think he’s going to flip to more touch-oiled pages, continue quoting more passages, but unlike the times before, that is the only one. Closing the Bible, Bishop Lowell tucks it under his arm and looks up at us through bent spectacles. “I know,” he says, “as your bishop, that I should tell you all things happen for a reason, and that Gott will turn all things for good. And he will.” He nods emphatically. “He will overcome the darkness.” The bishop pauses, studying the families: the Zimmermans, Goods, Rissers, Lehmans, Snyders, and Ebersoles. Each soul bears the trials of the past year, like scars. “But I also want you to know that Gott hates this. That he weeps with you. That he—the giver and author and sustainer of life—does not rejoice in these temporal deaths.” Bishop Lowell stares at the platform upon which he stands, and I can see that he is crying. “He weeps with you,” he repeats, and then steps off the platform and opens his arms. Initially we are confused by the gesture. Our stoic background has never encouraged physical affection, and yet here this revered bishop—this patriarch of the Mt. Hebron community—is standing before us, asking us to embrace.
And so we do. I am the first to move forward. I stand at Bishop Lowell’s side, wrapping my arm around his hunched back, and the bishop leans down to rest his hoary head against mine. I begin to cry as well, as my broken spirit responds to the secure embrace of a father, for I can feel in his embrace the embrace of my heavenly Father as well, who mourns the loss and t
he pain just as we mourn, even though he can see the finished plan.
Moses, Jabil, and Charlie begin unloading the caskets from the sleds. I step forward to take the smallest of the nineteen coffins. Jabil passes it to me as if the child inside is merely asleep.
Neither Esther herself nor her husband, Benuel, could come. Esther is incapacitated by grief, and Benuel recently came down with the illness that claimed their infant Claudia’s life. I am incapacitated by grief as well, and yet losing my grandmother—whose circle of life was naturally drawing to a close—is not the same as losing a child whose circle never had the chance to begin. Therefore, I promised Esther I’d perform this task, which I am honored she entrusted to me, since I know the heartache of burying a loved one.
I somberly carry the coffin to the mouth of the cave. The landscape, through my tear-filled eyes, blurs into a white backdrop stippled with midwinter brown. I stoop to enter the darkness. The air is musty with trapped smoke. I am shuffling toward the back when I hear someone come in behind me. I look to see Moses, his features illumined by a pine resin torch. The interior of the cavern, abruptly splashed in amber light, reveals a woven blanket and a bowl scooped out of the dirt, the improvised fire pit filled with wood ash and bones. Moses squats. A cinder falls off his torch and lands on the blanket. He curses and stomps it out.
Moses says, “Sorry,” and then glances at me with a sheepish smile. It’s the first time we’ve looked directly at each other since he came back.
“It’s all right,” I murmur. “You think people are camping here?”
Standing, he dusts off the knees of his pants. “They were at some point, at least.”
“We can’t block the entrance,” I say. “What if they need to get in?”
Jabil and Charlie finish bringing a coffin into the cave and set it down. Folding his arms, Charlie says, “I know one thing: I’m not carting all those caskets back to the barn.”
“He’s right, Leora,” Jabil says. “We can’t. Plus, we have no idea if people are still staying here. Maybe they just forgot their stuff.”
“Shouldn’t we wait?” I ask. “See if they do . . . come back?”
“Too risky,” Jabil says. “We have no idea who they are.”
Moses adds, “Nobody’s going to want to sleep in a tomb anyway, so it’s either block the gap to protect the bodies or don’t bury any of them here.”
I exhale in frustration. “But we already promised the families we would.”
“Let’s get the show on the road, then.” Charlie claps his hands. “I’m starving.”
I look at him in disbelief. “Charlie,” I say, “you’re about the only brute in the world who could be in the middle of transporting caskets to a cave and think about hunger.”
He shrugs but appears embarrassed enough to mollify me. The men leave to retrieve the rest of the caskets from the sleds, but I stay toward the back with Claudia’s. Taking the blanket from the cave floor, I shake off the dirt and drape it over the tiny pine box. I close my eyes and say a prayer for the Martin family’s healing—not because it’s something Esther asked me to do but because I would want a prayer said at my daughter’s graveside, if I had to entrust someone to do what I could not.
Leora
I WATCH THE COALS gradually fade from orange to black beneath the cast-iron pot in our hearth. Anna stirs beside me. Sal’s holding Colton on Grossmammi’s old mattress. Meanwhile, the bishop’s words from this morning play over and over inside my mind: “Gott hates this.” But if he hates it so much, why does he let it happen? Giving up on sleep, I rise to stoke the fire. But right then, the curtain pulls back from around Seth’s room. I lie back down but observe him cross the floor in his long johns and socks. He adds two more logs to the fire. A smaller one, beneath, tumbles from the pile, casting a handful of dice-sized embers that land inches from the blanket draping Sal’s straw tick bed. Cursing beneath his breath, Seth takes hold of the poker, rolls the smoking log into place, and brushes the embers with the fireplace broom.
I sit up again and whisper, “That’s exactly what Moses said today.”
My brother startles, then recovers fast enough to retort, “That’s because I learned how to cuss from him.”
I don’t let him get a rise out of me. “What else did you learn at the militia?”
“Nothing.” He stabs the log with the poker, stirring sparks. “There wasn’t time.”
“Thank God for that.”
“What?” He sneers. “That there wasn’t enough time? Or that I didn’t learn?”
I shrug, smoothing the quilts over my lap. “Both, I guess.”
“Stop trying to protect me, Leora. It didn’t work the last time.”
I was foolish to think Seth would never use our experience in the woods for leverage. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?” I can’t keep the frustration from my voice. “Our community’s still here. We’re not all getting carted off to some work camp.”
“Maybe I didn’t want protecting that day.”
I stand. “You’re too young to know what you want.”
“I know that I want you to get a life and leave mine alone!”
As Seth intended, his command pushes me away. I stalk across the room in three steps. By the door, I pull on my coat and boots. My fingers are shaking too badly to tie the frayed laces.
“Where are you going?” Apology is trapped in the changing timbre of his voice.
I turn, hand on the latch, freedom at my fingertips. “To live my own life.”
I stand at the barn’s threshold, breathing in the odor of freshly cut wood and waste. All but one cow and Jabil’s horse got eaten months ago because we couldn’t sustain the animals through winter and, if malnourished, there would not be much use for them come spring. It is strange to remember the time, before the EMP, when eating a horse would have been as horrific as eating the family dog. It is not so horrific now. I see horses like I see any other livestock in our community—means to an end, which always culminates in keeping us from going hungry. “Moses?” I call out, my voice a decibel above a whisper. “You here?”
A scuffling in the loft. Fear of rejection pours through me, but after Seth’s tirade, I fear not living my life more. Pulse pounding, I make my way to the ladder and scale it. My eyes struggle to adjust. I can discern the outline of a man: his bearded face and broad shoulders.
“Sorry to wake you,” I murmur. “I just have to talk.”
The man pulls something over his head and pushes a button. A headlamp, illuminating Charlie’s face. He squints at me in confusion. “About me being a brute?”
I shield my eyes from the light, hoping I’m also shielding my embarrassment. “No, um . . . I—I don’t need to talk,” I stammer. “Thought you were somebody else.”
“Ah.” Charlie nods knowingly and turns, using his headlamp to spotlight Moses, sleeping in the straw on the other side of the loft.
“It’s okay. Really,” I plead with Charlie. “I’ll just . . . go.”
“Stay right there.” Stooping to keep from smacking his head on the rafters, Charlie crosses the loft, takes Moses’s coat that he’s using like a blanket, and uses it to smack him on the back of the head. Moses flips over and jerks the coat from him.
“What’s your problem?” he roars.
Charlie straightens up as much as he can. “You’ve got a guest.”
Moses glares, obviously believing Charlie’s lying. Charlie turns his headlamp on me. I try to smile but I’m near tears.
“It’s a bad time,” I whisper.
Moses jumps up, hitting his head on the rafters. He presses the knot. “No! Stay!”
I look down at the ladder, not sure if I should listen. Moses doesn’t give me time to decide. He walks over and gently wraps my wrist, moving me to the center of the loft. Moses and I blink in the glare of Charlie’s headlamp. Moses clears his throat. Charlie just keeps looking at us. Moses pointedly says, “Some privacy would be nice.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure.” Char
lie switches off the headlamp. I absently wonder how many batteries he has stockpiled. Charlie grabs his boots and walks to the edge. Clambering down the ladder, he jumps the last few feet, the impact like a small bomb going off. “I’m gonna sleep down here,” he says. “In the tack room. I . . . I sleep sound.”
The barn falls silent. I rub my arms for comfort and warmth, not sure why I came. Moses walks over, forcing me to either be rude or face him. “Won’t you get in trouble?” he asks.
“For being here, you mean?”
He nods.
My laughter is pitched with nerves. “Only if they find me.”
“Then why’d you come?”
I tug on the cuffs of my coat. “I wanted to talk about Seth.”
“About Seth.” I’m not sure if I hear Moses’s skepticism or only imagine it.
“Yeah. He seems a little—” I pause—“off.”
“He’s trying to figure things out, Leora. Give him time.”
“And space, apparently. He told me to get a life.”
Moses whistles softly. “What’d you say to that?”
“Nothing. Right away. Before I left I told him I was . . . was going to do what he said.”
Moonlight sieves through the barn boards, striping Moses’s face. After a while, he says, “Seth told me about the man he killed.” He pauses, watching me. “Did he really do that?”
“No,” I murmur. “I did.” I swallow hard. “I killed him to—to save us.”
Moses doesn’t respond, and I wait here, sick with the knowledge that I can’t take that thoughtless confession back. And then he leans forward and touches my hair. “I’m sorry,” he says. “In a perfect world, you would’ve never had to make that choice.”
I stare at the floor of the loft to hide my remorse, and then I remember what Seth said. Looking up, I reach out to press my right hand to Moses’s chest. The erratic thumping beneath my palm articulates everything he won’t say. His hand still in my hair, Moses pulls the baling twine tying off my plait. The tresses loosen, damp and waved from my bath, the soap wafting of rendered fat and coals: the bar a consolation gift from Judith Zimmerman. His arms come around me; his hand on the back of my head presses my mouth toward his. But then he withdraws, and at the same time, pushes me away. “Leora—” he rasps. “I’m not staying.”
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