“See that kid?” Benita asked.
“You mean Diego? Does he speak Spanish?”
“He doesn’t speak anything. His mom was from the Philippines. She ran off a few weeks ago, when she couldn’t hack it anymore. She used to speak Philippine to him.”
“Tagalog, probably. That’s the main language of the Philippines.”
Benita frowned. They tipped over another tire. “Whatever. The Disciple told her to knock it off, speak English, and now the kid doesn’t say much at all.”
Eliza watched Diego work. He was filling coffee cans with sand and stacking them next to one of the teardrop campers. More busy, pointless stuff, like they were all doing. Moving tires around, shifting piles of garbage from one location to another, digging a pit in the hardpan. And in the middle of the day it seemed especially dumb. Diego’s arms looked as thin as sagebrush branches and she wondered how he managed to lift the cans high enough to stack.
“He looks hungry.”
“We’re all hungry,” Benita said.
“Yeah, but he’s just a boy. Look how skinny he is and his face is pinched, like he’s actually starving.”
“You should drop that.”
“Come on,” Eliza said. “It’s cruel not to give him food. He’s too young, he doesn’t even know what this is all about. When he’s older, when he can decide for himself, I mean, then it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“I’m serious, Eliza, I wouldn’t pursue that, if I were you,” Benita said. “Not unless you want to earn a rite of purification.”
“A what?”
“Never mind. Come on, we have to move fifty tires, I don’t want to be here all day and you’re just blabbering. We’ll get in trouble.”
They worked in silence for a while. It was Eliza’s second day at the dump and apart from the hunger, things had gone innocently enough. A cup of milk for breakfast, some stale bread for lunch, and a shared jar of peanut butter for dinner. Eliza had grown up with a monthly fast; she could handle a little hunger. And she started to wonder if maybe they were just a garden-variety sect. David was strung out on drugs and Allison Caliari was desperate to find her daughter. Those two could have easily been wrong.
As for the doomsday part, she didn’t find that particularly strange or alarming. Half the people she’d ever known thought that the world was about to end in fire, pestilence, and war. Her mother hoarded wheat in giant barrels, and an uncle had a stash of assault rifles in his cellar, plus enough ammo to fight a small war. Her father held thousands of acres of land in Alberta, Montana, and Utah, and before she was born, had spent eighty thousand dollars building a bomb shelter. When the threat of nuclear war passed in the 90s, it had proven a good place for his wives to store their wheat.
“Have you done any rites yet?” Benita asked.
“What do you mean by rites?”
“If you don’t know, that means no, you haven’t. You’re in for a treat.”
Eliza didn’t like the undercurrent in her voice. “You mentioned the rite of purification. How many are there?”
“Purification, sanctification, and the rite of cleansing.”
“That all sounds like the same thing.”
“Not in the slightest,” Benita said. “The only thing they have in common is that they’re all hard. Cleansing is the worst, but you get numb to that. You never cleanse yourself, just other people. You just have to remind yourself that it’s for your own good, that if you don’t do it, you won’t be ready and you’ll be separated with the chaff.”
“What about sanctification?”
Benita shrugged. “Not so fun at first. The first time is the worst, then you get used to it. Madeline even asks for extra rites of sanctification.”
Eliza felt a thrill at the name. “Who?”
“Never mind, you’ve got me talking and I’m too weak right now for another purification. Probably deserve it, though. You’ll find out what the rites are about soon enough. Probably start with sanctification. Just don’t fight it and you’ll be fine. Come on, seventeen more tires to go.”
Purification, sanctification, cleansing. Coming out of Benita’s mouth, each one of them sounded more sinister than the last and Eliza began to doubt her earlier confidence. Three dead cult members, a starved child, and the beating they’d delivered to her brother.
Eliza renewed her determination to find Madeline and get out.
#
That evening, the Chosen Ones ate their scavenged leftovers under an edict of silence. Eliza served stale saltines with peanut butter, and made sure to give as much of both as she dared to Diego, who shoved the food in his mouth as if he was terrified someone would steal it from him.
And they might. Some people had ignored the boy during the day, while others gave him a pat or a kind word, but there were a few men and women who literally kicked Diego around the camp like he was a stray dog, covered in mange. The worst was a man named Christopher, who backhanded the boy three times in about ten minutes until Eliza and Benita told him to knock it off. Christopher had glared down at Eliza and for a moment she thought he was going to hit her, too. She told him to go ahead and try. The Disciple came out of the trailer where he’d been meditating and told everyone to get back to work.
At dusk, the Disciple left in the truck and returned an hour later with three more women. They carried bags of scavenged food and five-gallon cans of diesel fuel for the generator that never seemed to run. Madeline Caliari wasn’t with them.
Eliza held Diego’s wrist when she gave him the third and last cracker at dinner. He met her eyes and she tried to pass him an encouraging look. I’m going to get you out of here.
He snatched the cracker and scurried back to the corner to eat it. When she glanced over a minute later, he was watching her.
After dinner, they studied the Bible by the light of kerosene lanterns. It was mostly the Book of Revelation, together with anything escatalogical out of the Old Testament, or anything to do with God’s wrath: Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues of Egypt, any verse that mentioned hellfire or brimstone. Eliza recited verses from memory, and this seemed to impress many of them.
“Very good, Eliza,” the Disciple said. There was warmth in his voice and she saw what looked like envy on Benita’s face. “Do you know Revelation 13?”
She nodded and stood up, summoned her clearest, most articulate voice. “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”
She recited all eighteen verses. When she finished, she could see the intensity in their eyes, and knew that she’d penetrated their defenses, and she felt an unusual stirring in return. This is what Jacob feels, this is what he can do.
The Disciple rose from where he’d been sitting cross-legged and took her arm. “You are one of us, Eliza. It’s time for your first rite.”
“Which rite?”
“The rite of sanctification.”
#
Christopher had stripped her naked and laid her down on a filthy mattress, and then Benita brought in a bowl of olive oil warmed over a kerosene stove. And then the Disciple put his hands all over her body. She tried to get up, but Christopher held her down and told her to be still or it would be worse, and when she cried out, nobody came to help.
Lying at the bottom of the pit with no sense of time, waiting for her next meal of lettuce, Madeline Caliari found herself obsessing over her first sanctification. It hadn’t felt like sanctity at first. Anything but, in fact. It had felt like a violation. Benita had brought in more olive oil and the hands over Madeline’s body grew harder, more insistent.
You deserve this. Remember that football player you hooked up with at the frat party? And the kid in English class? How about junior year in high school? And all the impure thoughts, what about that?
And so Madeline had stopped screaming and clenched her eyes shut. She let the Disciple run his hands over her breasts, alongside he
r inner thighs, even slide his oil-soaked hands between her buttocks.
“Try to think pure thoughts,” he said. “It is a rite, not carnal pleasures.”
And yet when he’d disrobed, climbed on top of her, rubbed his body against hers until he was also soaked with olive oil, he was hard enough for the task at hand and his breathing came in shallow gulps.
“Sanctify her,” Christopher said, and the way he said it, the word sanctify came out like a vulgarity. “Harder, she needs it harder.”
He’d kept talking until the Disciple finished. When Madeline opened her eyes, she could see Christopher watching with narrowed eyes and a flushed look. A bulge in his pants that he didn’t try to hide. She expected the Disciple to tell Christopher to take his turn sanctifying, but instead, the Disciple took the other man’s arm and pulled him from the room.
Benita knelt by her side, covered her with a sheet, and held her hand. “Was it bad?” she whispered.
“No worse than I deserved.”
“I didn’t want to watch, but it’s my turn next, and he said I needed to see.” She stroked Madeline’s hand. “You seem like a good person, I don’t think you needed to be sanctified. Not that way.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Other people need it more.”
“Like you?” Madeline asked. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Of course not, but I need it. I need it all.”
Madeline had a sudden image of two anorexic girls standing next to the mirror, praising each other for being so skinny, while finding their own bodies hideous and bulging.
To be honest, the sanctification had grown easier over time. Unlike this hunger that consumed her in the pit, the rite of purification. Starving, eating one head of lettuce every twenty-four hours and gnawing on her doubt and guilt and self-loathing. At least the sanctification ended quickly, at least it was one human being touching another. Shivering alone in the dark was worse.
A scraping sound from overhead startled Madeline from her thoughts. It sounded like someone pushing the fridge out of the way and a wild hope rose in her chest. The twenty days were up. Somehow, she’d miscounted, maybe slept through the announcement of most passing days and left all those heads of lettuce uneaten. No wonder she was so hungry.
A cool breeze blew into the hole. She lifted her head and filled her lungs with the sweet, fresh air. At one edge she could see a shade of gray, a little lighter than the surrounding blackness, where the fridge had slid out of the way to reveal a sliver of the night sky.
Night. Not day, and not day twenty in the pit with lettuce and water. She hadn’t miscounted at all, but was still near the beginning of her ordeal, with more than two full weeks of purification stretching ahead of her.
“Who is it?” she called. “Benita?”
No answer.
“Who is it?” she asked. “What do you want?”
No answer. Just a darker shadow, a head. Someone peered into the darkness and listened. A tight fear clenched her gut.
Please, Lord Jesus, save me. I’ll be good, I promise. I won’t whine or complain, I’ll purify myself. Just don’t destroy me. I promise.
Something dropped, bounced off the mattress. Madeline flinched. The fridge scraped again, and black replaced the sliver of gray. She tried to catch her breath, calm down. And then grew curious about whatever had fallen down.
She groped in the dark until she found it. Three bananas, soft and squishy and no doubt turned brown. It was the sort of thing the Chosen Ones scavenged from dumpsters in the city. Someone had saved them for her, dropped them into the pit. Food to help her survive.
Unless it was a test. Unless the Disciple had told Christopher or Benita to drop the bananas to see if she’d break the purifying fast to eat them. And if the Disciple sent someone down in the morning to check and he found the banana peels, would that mean three more weeks of purification? It would be summer before she got out. If she got out. She’d probably die.
And you’ll die if you don’t eat the bananas.
She peeled open the first banana. Her fingers found the soft, mushy flesh and she lifted it to her nose. Her senses filled with the rich, musty odor of overripe banana. Her stomach groaned in anticipation. She’d have to eat a little, maybe no more than half. Couldn’t risk throwing it up again and if she saved the rest, she could get half a banana a day and make them last almost a week.
It tasted like sin. She felt a sick feeling of guilt as it touched her tongue. She almost chewed and swallowed. Instead, she spit the bite into her hand. For a long moment, she sat with two and a half bananas in her lap, a mushy, partially chewed half banana in her hand and the delicious taste lingering on her tongue.
“You promised,” she whispered. “You promised God that you wouldn’t whine or complain, that you’d be good. This is Satan tempting you, lifting you up out of the desert during your fast and offering you bread. Get thee behind me, Satan.”
Quickly, before she could change her mind, she groped for one of the milk gallons that held urine and her thin, runny diarrhea, the result of a diet of lettuce. She would squat over a bucket every few days, then pour it into the gallon jug with extreme care and tighten down the lid. It cut down on the smell. She opened the lid, then forced the partially chewed banana through the narrow opening. She peeled the others and pushed them in, one after another, where they oozed through and plopped into the liquid at the bottom, then she forced in the peels after them so she wouldn’t be tempted to lick them later. Finally, she swished her mouth with water and spit it into the waste jug to get the bits of banana out of her mouth. She almost gagged at the smell when she lifted the waste jug to her mouth. She shoved it into the corner with a cry.
Madeline collapsed on the mattress and sobbed. So close. One second longer and it would have been too late. She squinted her eyes shut and thought about the Disciple with olive oil on his hands, rubbing them roughly over her body. And then, lying on top, sanctifying her.
No worse than I deserve.
Chapter Twelve:
David sat up in bed to find a woman standing over him. She held a gun in her hand. “Do not speak,” she said, “just listen.”
It was dark except for light from the hall. He must have slept the whole afternoon into the evening. His body ached and his head throbbed. He’d finally come down, and hard. And he felt curiously detached as he looked up at the gun.
“Go ahead, kill me.” His voice came out flat. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I’m not here to kill you.” She pulled the chain on the lamp and he squinted against the shards of light.
“Then why are you holding a gun?”
“It’s for protection. Someone broke into your house during the day.”
“I know she did,” David said. He started to wake up and pulled himself upright and leaned against the headboard. “She’s standing over me with a gun.”
“Someone else broke into your house. The back door is forced, a bunch of broken stuff in the kitchen. You didn’t hear anything?”
“No. I took a little something to help me sleep.”
“In the middle of the day? Yeah, while you were sleeping off whatever crap you put in your body, someone broke in with a crowbar and could have caved in your skull. You’re lucky to wake up.”
“Too bad they didn’t cave it in. I could use someone to put me out of my misery. I’d do it myself if I had any guts.”
“Oh, you look like you’re doing a great job to me. You’re not wondering who I am, a strange woman in your bedroom with a gun?”
“I figure you’ll tell me when you’re ready.” Under other circumstances he knew he’d be alarmed, terrified even, but he felt so miserable that he didn’t care. “What time is it?”
“Dinner time.”
He thought about Eliza, setting off into the desert. When had that been? Yesterday? The day before? Then the trip to visit Meth Guy. Needle, injection, a fantastic rush and then a long, tapering euphoria. And a crash. Another injection
, rush, crash. It was a fading stain in his memory, but now the drugs were gone and he’d have to go back to Meth Guy. Except he had no more money.
The woman checked his closet, then slipped the gun into a bag she wore slung over one shoulder. He was paying attention now, and recognized the prairie dress, the lack of makeup, the braided hair. His brain—what was left of it—started to work at last.
“So whose wife are you, my father’s or my brother’s?”
She turned with a smile. “Neither. My name is Sister Miriam, and I’m a widow. Has anyone told you that you look like Jacob?”
“Uhm…thanks, I guess.”
“No worries, that’s a compliment.” She walked around the room with a look of concentration and David had a sudden impression not of a polygamist wife, but law enforcement, studying every detail, looking for clues. She turned back to him with a hard look. “But you seem to lack his moral backbone. Unlike Jacob, you’re adrift in the world, buffeted by whichever way the wind blows. That’s why you’re here and not back with your family and friends and why I’m guessing you’ll end up dead sooner or later. My vote is on sooner. That, I’m afraid, is not a compliment.”
“No, I guess not.”
“Let me get to the point,” Miriam said. “Before we waste any more of each other’s time.”
“Too late for that, but go ahead. Unless there’s some way I can persuade you to go home and leave me alone.”
“Alone with this, you mean?” She opened the top drawer of his dresser, tossed socks and underwear to the floor and pulled out a Ziploc baggie filled with a dirty-brown powder.
“Hey, where did that come from?” It wasn’t the heroin that shocked him, but the quantity.
“Oh, and look at all these pills. That’s quite a stash.”
“Those aren’t mine.”
“Of course not. If they were yours, you’d have taken them by now.”
“Then, what—?”
“I planted them,” Miriam said. “What else? I’m going to call the police, tell them that you’ve got all these drugs, and they’ll bust you as a dealer. You won’t get rehab, you’ll get twenty years.”
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