The Divide

by Jolina Petersheim

  I groan and keep hacking. “It’s just that . . . I’m not sure how to be a husband.”

  Josh looks over. “Sorry, but, uh . . . you need some fatherly advice?”

  I roll my eyes and splash water on my face. “I think I’ve got that part figured out.”

  “Then what part’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know, Josh. Every part. Leora’s different. Beautiful. Good in a way I can never be.” I swallow and look at myself hard in the mirror. “I don’t want to wreck her life.”

  Josh stands and passes me a bar of soap that feels like a brick. “You love her?” he asks.

  I sigh. “So much sometimes it almost physically hurts.”

  He claps my back. “Don’t forget that, and you’ll do fine.”

  Leora

  I call, “You can come in.”

  My vadder opens the door and steps inside, holding a butcher-wrapped package and a bouquet of Indian paintbrush, which flares bright against the gray-on-gray walls. He glances around at the break room Moses turned into my bedroom: my cot in the corner next to the defrosted mini fridge I use for a cupboard. He turns to me. “You look beautiful,” he says.

  I touch my cape dress. “It’ll have to do. I didn’t pack for a wedding.”

  After a moment, he passes the package to me. “You didn’t take it with you that morning after you and Seth spent the night.”

  Mamm’s wedding dress. Again I unwrap the brown paper, and the waterfall of white silk cascades into my hands. “You brought it?”

  He shrugs, lightly. “It’s been in my backpack since I left the valley.”

  “You don’t mind if I wear it today?”

  “Of course not. I’d be honored.” Daed passes the bouquet. “They’re Mamm’s favorite.”

  Present tense. Once we’ve loved, a part of us never stops caring. “I remember.” I stare down at the flowers, forcing myself not to cry. “Are you shocked I’m marrying him?”

  “Shocked?” He shakes his head. “No. Not shocked. I guess, though . . .” My vadder hesitates, tracing the rickety card table with the flat of his hand.

  “What?”

  “I guess I just never expected you to marry a guy like me.”

  “Daed.” My tone is both affection and admonishment. I cross the small room to where he’s standing, his shoulders hunched like he’s become accustomed to warding off blows. “Mamm married you,” I say, “not because she was rebellious, but because she could see the worth in you that some other people were too blind to see.”

  He looks up, his eyes red. “I didn’t deserve her.”

  “Maybe not,” I murmur. “But that never stopped her from loving you.”

  He extends his arms. “I don’t deserve you either.”

  “Maybe not,” I reply, welcoming his hug. “But the same goes for me.”

  My wedding day is not like I imagined, but it is better than anything I could have planned. Moses and I get married in the flat airport field tucked against the wall of trees. Birds wheel across the cloudless Montana sky, and I raise my gaze to watch them, the warmth bathing my face and the wind tangling my unbound hair. It is ethereal, this moment—Moses’s hand holding mine, reminding me of all the other moments that he and I have spent together, each a granule of sand in the hourglass of my life, culminating in this point.

  Josh, obviously coerced into officiating the ceremony, holds a worn Bible in his hands and reads the love chapter from 1 Corinthians, asking us to repeat the vows after him. Our vows are simple and yet profound—’Til death do us part takes on new significance when you are going to be parted soon. There are no rings exchanged, and because of my Mennonite heritage, I am not sure I would exchange them even if they could simply be purchased and slipped from a velvet bag.

  However, Moses surprises me by bringing out a folding chair he must’ve leaned against the tree beforehand. I see the towel over his shoulder, the basin in his hands, and I know.

  Blanching, I cover my mouth. “Are you serious?”

  His eyes hold mine. “I’ve wanted to wash your feet since you limped beside me to town.”

  I glance beyond my vadder and brother toward the traffic control center, but all the other men are working on their individual projects, as if this is just another ordinary day. I look back at Moses and nod my compliance. He dusts a piece of grass off the chair, and I take my seat.

  The soles of my feet are thick and hard, the nails ragged and bloodstained from where they’ve been daily bludgeoned by so many miles of walking without proper shoes. I want to weep with embarrassment, and yet Moses takes my feet and places them in the water, warmed by the sun, and bathes them. Gently, as if I’m a child, he bathes my wounds until the water darkens and my emotions run clear down my face, dampening the neckline of my mudder’s dress.

  “I love you,” he says, squeezing the rag so that droplets fall. “I will care for you, lay my life down for you, and esteem you better than myself, until my dying day.”

  I lean forward on the chair and clasp my arms around his neck. I feel the rag against my back, and he holds me there—against him—and overhead the birds sing against the blue.

  Moses and I fly off right after the ceremony. As the Cessna rises, he lifts up my headset and plants a kiss on my ear, and then forges a trail of them down my neck. The thrill of desire runs through me, and yet I find myself nearly jittery with the details surrounding our wedding night, which we’ve had no chance to discuss. I gather from what he hasn’t said that I will not be his first, but Moses will not only be my first, he is also the first man I ever kissed.

  It is difficult to talk over the noise of the engine, and this only heightens my nerves as the plane continues slicing diagonally through low-hanging clouds. What does he expect from me? I have no nightgown—no fancy Englisch peignoir—my vadder even lent the clothing covering my back. Moses reaches over and rests his hand on my thigh. “You okay?” he asks.

  My whole body trembles, but I nod, for how can I explain?

  The topography of the earth resembles a roll of crinkled cardboard paper, parts slathered with green overlaid with threads of road. And then we begin descending as quickly, it seems, as we ascended. Interspersed among the pines are the roofs of the buildings we saw only a few days ago. Glacier Park. Lake McDonald. Avalanche Lake.

  I look at Moses’s smooth profile, the bottom portion of his face paler from where he shaved off his beard, and I embrace the peace that comes from the awareness that this man has been part of my life for a year, and yet he knows how to meet my needs better than anyone.

  Leaning over, I kiss his cheek, and then I kiss his neck just like he kissed mine. He glances over, smiling with surprise. “Wife,” he says, “you’re going to make me wreck.”

  Moses

  Leora and I walk away from the plane, parked in an open field, just as the sun is beginning to sink behind the Rocky Mountains. I take my wife’s hand and can feel the rhythm of her pulse against mine. I adjust the backpack I’m carrying. Two blankets and a pop-up tent are tucked inside. I see, with relief, that nobody is around.

  “Where would you like to camp?” I ask.

  Leora’s grip tightens. “Avalanche Lake.”

  I look over, heart thudding, both of us cognizant of what’s going to take place. And so we begin: finding our way over rocks and decaying stumps as dusk blends the trees into an indeterminable smudge of forest. Miles pass before we arrive at the shore of the lake—the Big Dipper perfectly aligned above the point of the ridge. I hold my pinesap torch aloft and search the perimeter, but there are no signs of shoeprints, just as there were no signs all the way here.

  I say to Leora, propping the torch in an old fire pit, “I wonder where everybody went.”

  She looks down at the sand. “Maybe they’re at the camp too.”

  I touch her back, and she turns to me, waltz-stepping into my arms. I kiss the top of her hair, feel the warmth of her body through her white silk dress. “Should I set up the tent?”

 
Leora shakes her head.

  “It’s all right,” I whisper. “We’ve got time.” It’s an adage from the old world—something you say to calm someone down. But in this world, it is a lie, and we both know it.

  “I’ve never been here before, Moses,” she says.

  “To Glacier Park?” I look out at the water so perfectly tranquil, the surface reflects the blemishes on the moon’s tired face.

  “No,” she says. “I’ve never been . . . with someone.”

  Lining my fingers up with the nodules of her spine, I press her closer to me still. My whole body trembles with the responsibility. Oh, God, I pray, kissing her hair again, let me do right by her. For the first time, I notice that she is trembling too.

  “I would be content all night, Leora, just holding you in my arms.”

  She pulls back and looks up. The torchlight glimmers on her skin. “I wouldn’t be,” she says, and steps farther back until she’s centered between the lake and me. Leora begins unfastening her cape dress. She watches my burning face as I look at her, and I have to fight the inclination to turn away, to protect her from men like me. But that was before, I remind myself: before I realized there’s no shame when I’ve already asked for forgiveness.

  Leora, my Leora, turns and walks down to the water—her hair drinking up Avalanche Lake before it closes over her hips. She enters and hugs herself against the cold, and then she calls to me. “Come on,” she says. “It’s great. Aren’t you going to come in?”

  An echo of what I once said to her. My throat tightens with gratitude for such a gift. And so I do follow my wife down the shore, until there is nothing between us but water.

  Leora

  I awaken to the long shadows of trees sweeping back and forth across the top of our tent. Dewdrops cling to the edges of the material, which is as vibrantly colored as flags. I look over. The sunlight filtered through the screen gilds the stubble on Moses’s jaw.

  “Good morning,” I say, kissing him.

  Half-asleep, he links arms behind my back, pulling me closer. “Morning, Mrs. Hughes.” He cracks one eye. “Or is it Ebersole-Hughes?”

  I laugh, brushing back his tousled hair, but that’s when the cruelty of our timeline crests over me like a wave. I lie on my side and press my body against his.

  Moses leans toward me, eyes cleared of jest. “Are you crying?”

  I lift my hand to my face, as if I can’t tell. He takes that hand and kisses the tears from my palm. I tell him, “I want to putter around in our kitchen on Saturday mornings, making pancakes and coffee. I want to get annoyed that you keep three water glasses next to the sink. I want to find your socks balled up at the bottom of our bed when I make it in the morning.” I pause. “I want to get so wrapped up in ‘normal’ that I forget what a gift normal really is.”

  “I want normal too,” he says. “But just think—” he traces my collarbone with his thumb—“if we got normal, each moment wouldn’t be priceless.”

  “That’s where the heartbreak lies,” I whisper. “Normal would be priceless, after this.”

  I glance at my husband, who’s sitting on a log, eating his lunch. His jeans are pushed up to his knees and his feet are in the water. I tentatively spoon a bite from the pouch and grimace. Moses says, “Now don’t get too excited. We still haven’t tried the—” he digs into his backpack to read the label of another MRE—“vegetarian taco pasta from 2009.”

  “Vintage entrees,” I quip. “Give my compliments to the supplier.”

  “Pretty sure this was just Charlie’s way of apologizing for harping about the mission.”

  “He doesn’t need to apologize,” I say. “I never expected him to go to Liberty. He doesn’t have a personal reason for wanting the families out like I do.”

  Moses says, “And what is your reason?”

  “I care about Colton and Sal.”

  “Do you think she would care about you if the tables were turned?”

  I pause a moment, watching him. “Probably not, but that’s because Sal doesn’t know how to care. Even with Colton . . .” I pause, trying to think before I speak. “I can tell she’s scared to love him because she doesn’t want to get hurt.”

  Moses asks, “Does she remind you of yourself, before you let yourself love?”

  His revelation hits hard. “Yes,” I admit. “I guess I want to save her so she can have a second chance to love and be loved the way she deserves. Isn’t that what we all deserve?”

  Reaching into his backpack, Moses pulls out a smaller package. “Here’s to second chances.” He tears the thick brown wrapper and extracts a saucer-sized chocolate chip cookie that he breaks in two. I choose the smaller piece. He grins. “You can tell we’re newlyweds.”

  “Just wait ’til next year.” My laughter is shaky. “I’ll be eating both.”

  We go quiet again. For who knows if we’ll have next year? After he enters the camp, we might not even have tomorrow. He rests his hand on my thigh. I look over, his features blurred.

  “Leora? If something happens, I just want you to know that—”

  I rest my finger against his lips. “Don’t. Nothing will.”

  Moses

  I approach the fairgrounds at dusk and force myself not to look over my shoulder at Motel 6, where Josh, Luke, and Seth are watching from the second-floor balcony to see if I make it in. A large-boned man I’ve never seen before steps out onto the road as I draw closer. He’s holding a gun and dressed in the black uniform of the ARC. “What do you want?” he says.

  I look down, wanting to appear desperate but not deranged. “Work.”

  The soldier doesn’t say anything at first; then he about-faces and marches back to the barbed-wire gates, checking with a higher command of authority before deciding if he should let me in. He returns, the gravel crunching beneath his boots. With one hand, he pats me down like he’s done this a hundred times before. I left my gun and holster with Josh at the motel, knowing the ARC would confiscate it, but I forgot they’d also take my boots. He sets them to the side and shakes out my backpack. The bracelet Leora wants me to give to Sal falls onto the gravel, along with a ratty T-shirt and jeans. I hold my breath as the soldier studies the tarnished silver. I’m not willing to sacrifice my life to make sure Sal gets her gift.

  But then the soldier says, “You’re clear,” and gestures for me to pick up my stuff. “You can stay in the camp tonight,” he adds. “You’ll be assigned your number in the morning.”

  “Thanks,” I reply. As the metal gates open and then close behind me, I pray, Oh, God, be with Leora, because I don’t want to make her my widow so soon after I made her my bride.

  Sal

  MOSES IS EASY to spot the next morning since he’s the only one on the grounds wearing civilian clothes. I’m not sure if I should approach him because I’m not sure who is a spy, reporting back to the guards anything they overhear in exchange for a few extra hundred calories of food. But after I check to make sure Angel’s safe and asleep, I still find myself striding down the dirt path worn between the rows of tents where, at the end, Moses is sitting on a plank of wood.

  I call his name, and his head snaps up, sun-blanched hair hanging over his forehead. I subconsciously reach to touch my own botched layers, which are even shorter than his. I miss the weight of the locks the ARC stripped off of me, like they’ve stripped just about everything.

  “Hi, Sal,” he says.

  Moses’s face is startlingly handsome without his beard, making it difficult to look him in the eye. But I can tell he’s not as surprised to see me here as I am to see him. I take two steps to the right, blocking his view, along with the view of anyone who might be watching in an effort to read our lips. The refugees use gossip not only to barter for food, but also to distract themselves from fear.

  “How did the ARC find you?” I ask.

  He gives me a rueful look. “They didn’t.”

  “What do you mean, they didn’t? Then why are you here?”

  “I turned mys
elf in.”

  I repeat, “You turned yourself in.”

  He nods and stands up, smoothing his sleep-wrinkled shirt, and I’m suddenly filled with such fury, I want to smack his crooked smile straight. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done!”

  “I have some idea,” he says, displaying a nonchalance that causes me to understand this was a very purposeful move.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask, fear in my voice, but he doesn’t respond to my question. Instead, he turns and unzips his backpack. I see that he’s holding something up. I step closer and see my grandmother’s poison bracelet. I say, “Did she put anything inside it?”

  Moses says, “I have no clue. Papina gave it to Leora and said it was for ‘just in case.’”

  I put the bracelet on my wrist and bend it tighter, my eyes burning with the contradiction of such a strange gift. My grandmother made an effort to smuggle in poison, but she has made no effort to talk Uncle Mike into freeing me and Angel from the camp. And what is she suggesting I do with the poison? Kill myself? The guards? Surely not the latter, since her son is among them.

  Moses says, “Leora and I found out the ARC locked you and the families inside, and we couldn’t stand the thought of you being trapped in here alone.”

  “So you decided to trap yourself with me.” I roll my eyes to cover how touched I am.

  Moses cocks his head, trying to look cheerful. “Isn’t that what friends are for?”

  My heart pounds with hope. “We’re not friends.”

  “Yes, we are,” he responds. “Or you wouldn’t be so upset that I’m in here too.”

  After the day’s first meal, I go with Moses to the camp’s registration office, where a pudgy woman is sitting inside the old ticket booth. She slides open the plastic door and hands Moses pages of handwritten forms held in place with a paper clip. Moses takes them and clicks the pen. He holds it over the small, square writing. I notice his hands are shaking, in spite of his tireless good humor. He steps away from the booth and sits at one of the weathered picnic tables near the concession stands. I sit across from him.