Mother Mary was ill but not yet dead. Susan pregnant with the twins. Rebekah was mirthful, not yet a wife, still sharing cots with the younger girls. There were apples in cold storage. Relish and pickles and tomato sauce and boxes of long, brittle spaghetti. The children would take noodles from the pot and fling them on the bunker walls where they’d stick and dry in shapes that sometimes looked like alphabet letters. Little hands painted them as decorations. After the paint dried, they’d spell out God’s word until the letters crumbled and got swept up with the dust.
They used to throw those pieces away.
Father Ernst’s favourite sermon—he still knows it by heart—never failed to rile up the women. The children would stamp and clap and sing. That’s what the Family needs—inspiration.
Father Ernst looks about the Great Hall. Susan slumps, yawning. “Come, Mother Susan,” he says. “Join us. I shall give a talk from the time before.”
She looks at him queerly. He beckons. She sits, uncertainly, at his left hand. The coveted bride’s place.
Father Ernst says, “Americans are overfed. Unused to honest work. They glutton themselves. Worship the false gods: fast food, television, money, and all of the seven deadlies.”
The children gape. They don’t know television. They’ve never seen money. He forgot that. He must revise.
“Cousins. We may feel pinched from time to time. We may remember something sweet and wish for it again—a milkshake or a piece of Memaw’s pecan pie. My, wouldn’t that tempt a sinner.”
Susan looks aghast. Her hand shakes and drops to her lap.
“But we shall discover truths. Restricting junk food with all those intoxicating fats, those man-made poisons. That will give us years of living the rest of America will never have. We will be lean, spare, and alert.”
Father Ernst looks at the blank, smudged faces around the table. Runny noses. Coughs erupt from concave chests; rounded bellies belie hunger. Beggarly waifs, every last one. Desperation fixes him. This was his best sermon; he toured the Midwest with it, hit the Deep South, town by town, on speaking tours—Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. He won conversions, lucrative donations, and powerful allies: Republican senators, gun lobbyists, ex-military. The CEO of an underground shelter company from El Paso County—that’s who sent the architect to design their bunker, gratis. The man boasted, “If you can build a birdhouse, you can build one of our underground bomb shelters!” A like-minded former Homeland Securities official from Texas procured the retired nuclear weapons, rerouted weapons shipments. The Pentagon used to sell them on the quiet to townships that were convinced they were terrorists’ targets. That man’s strategic mind, his field experience, shaped the retribution plan they named The Great Standoff.
Father Ernst gestures to the girls’ bench. The littlest one, whose name continually escapes him, sniffles. Ernst sees Memaw, Mary, and Deborah, smiling golden, cradling babies, sunlight in their fair hair. “Look at your Cousin Mothers. They are all your mother. How they glow,” he says. “Look at their nurturing arms, full of children.”
Then it’s only Susan, humpbacked and dishevelled. Ruth and the twins, horrified.
Ernst shakes his head. Memaw was right here only a second ago. He’s sure of it.
“Look at me, your one Father.”
Here he would always stop and make fists. He would show his biceps and invite a child to run up from the audience to squeeze the hard muscle. The child would hang off his arm, and Father Ernst would lift and lower him like a weight. ‘I’m strong, aren’t I,’ he would say, and the child would giggle. It always made the other children laugh, and that put parents at ease. ‘I’m virile, aren’t I, Mothers,’ he would say, and his women would blush and nod. That often set the men on edge. But women in the congregation would also blush, wondering at so many satisfied wives.
Here and now. Heads nod around the wooden table. The youngest boy sleeps beside his bowl. The twins huddle for warmth. The sharp wings of their shoulders, their knobby spines, show through their shirts. Silas licks his spoon again and again. He sets it down with a clang. Susan stares into her lap, dismayed.
Father Ernst winds up for his big finale. How they used to cheer. “I am healthier now, happier here, with each one of you than ever before,” he says, pointing into their dull faces. “I am just getting started. Mayhap I’ll live forever!”
CHAPTER 15
Horizon splits. The deep pull of night releases its hold, and the sky begins to brighten. Paul stands and shakes off the stiffness in his limbs. He slings the rifle over his shoulder and resumes walking, leaning more heavily on his stick.
He has the cooked meat, wrapped. There are also the yucca leaves, the root that Susan can boil, and sage for tea. He dug up part of an enormous aloe, slit the juicy spike open with his knife, and ate one bite of the hydrating flesh. He wrapped the rest with the yucca. Memaw used to make an ointment for burns from this. It’s enough food that Paul could return to the bunker, but he wants to scout the forest. If he’s going to bring the girls up, he needs to know what is there, waiting.
The gas mask, clipped to his belt, swings with each step and thuds against his left thigh. His coveralls are unzipped at the neck and he pulls the UV hood off, for now. Scanning with the binoculars, he sees the green details of trees. Vultures still hover above the closest copse. Must be an injured animal. Something dying. Between himself and the trees are outcroppings of yucca, cacti, and sage. He will pick more on his return. The forest will also have food. Each season, Memaw took the children into the woods to teach them medicinal uses for plants, and which ones could be eaten. Evergreen needles, rich in vitamin C, make a strong tea. Amaranth, chickweed, clover, and dandelion are full of nutrients. Mushrooms are tricky—easy to confuse. But summer berries, autumn nuts, burdock, and sunchokes—all good.
Paul needs a water source, and he should build a rough shelter. Ruth and Rebekah will be tired after crossing the sands. Abel and Leah. So tiny. And Susan’s twins, taller but also weak. This is where the plan falls apart. He can’t carry them all. But how can he leave them behind?
“It’s not right,” he told Rebekah.
“You have to choose,” she said. “Be ruthless, or none of us will survive.”
Now Paul wonders at her words. Did she mean he had to be without Ruth? Impossible. He took an oath, Rebekah knows this. He can’t figure out an answer that will save them all. Ruth believes they must Ascend with Father Ernst. That way everyone leaves together. Wishful thinking. Different story if Father Ernst were out of the picture. Paul shakes this thought away and concentrates on simpler things.
What to bring from the bunker? Whoever comes, they’ll need blankets. Knives—carbon steel blades hold their edge better than stainless steel—and a hacksaw and more of the plastic tarp. He pictures a small hut like the ones they built during summer campouts, structured around two large Y-shaped branches with a long ridgepole along the top. They’d lean leafy branches on either side for walls and fill the interior with leaves and forest debris for insulation. A place that Rebekah can guard while he and Ruth scout the white cliff beyond.
Weapons would help. Father Ernst has a secret stash—Paul remembers the men planning for every eventuality. Somewhere there is a serious military cache. The locked door to the kitchen pantry blends with the bunker walls, disguised against potential intruders. There used to be two pistols and an automatic rifle with ammunition hidden in there with the food, but those vanished with Thomas on his last topside mission. Paul has searched for a second false wall with hidden storage, to no avail. Father Ernst’s chamber, always locked, is the only other place. Bad enough to break faith and escape. To trespass and steal from Father Ernst is a whole other thing. Back to that same problem—challenging Father Ernst. Paul wants to disappear peacefully, not fight.
Or does he? How many times has he awakened, dream hands wrapped around that bristling bearded neck? He has battled Father Ernst endlessly in his mind: grappled, punched, lynched,
shot with a cross-bow, axe-hacked him to pieces. It’s getting harder to tamp down his rage. Paul closes his eyes when the old man lifts a hand to the women; he counts to keep his calm—and has never made it past five. Instead, he intervenes and is beaten in their place. Locked up for Contemplation. Made an example of. It might be the real reason Father Ernst permits him to stay. So long as Paul voices his small resistance and is punished, no one else dares attempt it.
A sobering thought: Am I standing in the way of their freedom?
When Paul told Ruth the basic plan—to sneak away—she covered her ears. He didn’t mention Rebekah. He pulled Ruth’s hands apart to reason with her, and she hollered for him to “Act right! Abandoning Father Ernst and the Doctrine. For shame,” she hissed. “Think of Memaw, how she’d weep.”
He said, “We’re dying, Ruth. Don’t you see? Father Ernst has lost his way.” She looked scared then, a child at last. She might have been crying but was too proud to let him see.
Paul’s chest heaves, his breath comes shallow and his hands curl into fists. But he’s got to keep a calm focus. He opens his mouth to relax his jaw. The closer the forest looms, the more vulnerable he is. If he gets there before noon, he’ll rest in that deep shade, and save time not scrounging temporary shelter on the plain. It’s sound. Smart. Yet the further on he walks, the stronger he feels a pull back to the bunker, as if he’d snagged a wool sweater and the whole knitted thing is unravelling behind him, yarn stretched out like guts. Dread pools in his belly. Mayhap the meat. Too rich?
The pastel horizon bleeds gold, and Paul remembers butter melting in Memaw’s large skillet, topside, when he was just a boy. She’d crack eggs, three at a time, slop yolk and whites into the sizzle and scramble them with a fork. In this strangely blazing light, other memories surface too. The sun rises quickly, and after the golden blast there are other hues—silver and cream and the violet-blue trace just like Rebekah’s veins at her wrists. Paul likes to gently thumb them, down to her buttoned sleeves, then imagine following the slender length of her arm to her shoulder, across her pale breast. This sunrise must be a sign. A promise. Rebekah’s poem comes to him again. He’d wanted a keepsake—her handwriting on that delicate slip of quilting paper—but she said no. Instead, he had to memorize and recite the words until she was satisfied that he’d learned them, then eat the evidence while she watched him chew.
For Paul
Hush
It is best uttered like this and like this
A shy mouth and curious tongue
Your dark curls cupped in my trembling hands
Heated, alight
I come this night in silence
Words do not serve in this starless cathedral
So extend your quiet palms,
Accept this gift
Skin letters, our new alphabet,
Spill from our lips
Morning comes at him hard now. Paul pushes worry away, frees himself. He walks toward the glow, the ascending light of the eastern sky, and spreads his arms wide for Rebekah. Dawn is a new beginning, waiting just ahead.
CHAPTER 16
Rebekah will not get out of bed. The children gather round, murmuring their strange syllables, patting her shoulder. One combs and begins to braid her long hair. Why hasn’t it fallen out, grief-stricken?
As a girl, summer humidity induced knotted rebellions at her crown and at the back, at her sweaty nape. “This hair has a mind of its own,” Mother Deborah used to say, brushing and tsk-ing at the pouf of matted curls. There were tears and sometimes scissors fetched to cut out the worst bits.
Young Leah presses a dry mouth to Rebekah’s waxen cheek. “I love you, Mother,” she breathes into her ear, and Rebekah is undone.
“Get,” she says, sharper than she intends, and the girls flee.
Silence again, at last.
But not quite. There are the sounds of the bunker itself: clanging in the pipes, the generator grumbling and humming, lights buzzing. Benches scrape the floor of the Great Hall when someone moves them. If she holds her breath, she can pick out urgent whispers, distant and ghostly. Susan and Ruth? Beyond the voices, the gentle growl and thud of cabinet drawers opening, shutting, the tin music of a hand stirring the cooking utensils, searching for a tool. Knife blade scraping against the sharpening steel. It must be Susan and Ruth in the kitchen, the air vent picking up sounds, carrying them aloft.
Rebekah and Paul sometimes met there in the night. Anyone awake in the women’s chamber might have heard the telltale sounds: hushed voices, zippers, cloth sometimes tearing in their haste. Reckless, pressed against the squat stove. She—lifted to the narrow counter, skirts and slip pushed up around her thighs; he suckling between. Rebekah, straddling him on the cold bare floor. She had to cover his mouth with her hand when he climaxed so as not to wake them all. If anyone had been listening, would they have let on by now? Once Susan discovered a pearlescent button from his shirt on the floor. She raised an eyebrow, more curious than accusing.
Some days, the only miracle Rebekah celebrates is that they have not yet been caught. Under the blankets, her fingers snake into her apron pocket. Two pills. She places one onto her dry tongue and swallows. The tablet sticks. She tries again. Now she sits up, swings her legs over the cot edge, shuffles to the showers. She plunges her cupped hands into the greasy basin and chokes back the grey water. Her parched tongue rejoices. Then it’s just as miserable as before. She drinks again. The bitter aftertaste of lard soap turns her stomach, but she must keep this medicine inside. She gags and swallows, swallows. Peering into the warped mirror above the sink, Rebekah traces the pill’s pathway with a fingertip, cracked lips down to chin, underneath into the shadows of her throat, the sharp collarbones. She loosens her dress, shrugs out of its long sleeves, stares at her rippled reflection.
Who am I?
Gaunt. Angular. Bulging eyes. Her mind almost turned to meanness. She looks like a praying mantis, the stick-legged insect that captured her childhood imagination because of the way it became its surroundings, invisible, a living secret camouflaged by grass. How it horrified her to learn that the female, post-coital, sometimes bites off the male’s head. She has set Paul up for a similar death. Are they doomed to follow nature’s brutal course? Not brutal. It is simply the turn of the wheel: dust to dust, seed to chaff.
There is a bad smell from the latrines again. Sometimes the toilets back up, and an ungodly stench fills the bunker. That alone could drive them topside, Rebekah hopes. Rebekah turns and, without fixing her dress, shambles back down the hallway to the women’s chamber. She wants to lie down, be still. She steps out of the dress and, wearing only her rumpled slip, climbs back into the cot. She wants to blend faceless, nameless, invisible, into a lonesome field.
Today she is missing the sun, the sky, and most of all, the rich black earth. Tending the large gardens, delighting at her daily discoveries as plants mature and offer their bounty. Even turning the compost—hard work, smelly, not for the squeamish. Pitching straw, turning organic matter, rats sometimes scurrying, disturbed in their nests. She misses the complex aromatic layers: decaying produce mixed with the sweet soil. Sometimes a putrescence of liquid rot, a sure sign of imbalance—she would even miss that if they didn’t get the occasional septic problem below. Early spring and late into fall, they would spread the fields with compost-enriched manure, and that heavy perfume declared itself all across the county. It clung to their hair and clothes. Manure caked their boots and could hardly be scrubbed from the stained knees of their work pants.
On their bi-monthly shopping trips, Rebekah remembers townspeople sometimes holding their noses and drifting away from them, like they were lepers. One such trip—Rebekah was about nine, long after her accident and before her sister went completely wild—a boy hollered, “Stink Town, Stink Town,” and his friends laughed, pointing. Stink Town was sprayed on road signs near their property in black paint, and twice drunken boys vandalized the church and the side of the barn. Her brothers would have beaten
them, but that day, it was just Mother Deborah, Mary, Susan, and the girls. Rebekah’s face burned with shame. Her sister marched over to the vandals, dragging Rebekah in her tightened grip. They could have been cousins, she and the town boys looked so much alike: pale, dirt-smudged, and freckled, with terrible teeth and vacant, almost cruel, blue eyes. The one who yelled looked unsure, possibly afraid of Rebekah’s sister, who fairly vibrated with rage. His sneakers were worn thin, holes at the tips where his dirty toes poked through. The boys were no better in the stink department: musk and sweat and unwashed clothes laced with undertones of greasy chicken, boiled cabbage.
The standoff broke when her sister spat into one stunned face. Rebekah watched the frothy white spittle drip down the bridge of his turned-up nose. Then she was dragged by the wrist through the lot of them, into the air-conditioned grocery store behind. Bright lights made Rebekah blink. Her skin prickled with cold. Her sister strode to the taboo junk-food display rack, tore open a bag of Cheetos, and crammed handful after handful of the bright orange twists into her mouth while everyone watched. Silence, but for the song playing over the store speakers. Neil Diamond, her sister later said—how did she know? Gagging, still chewing, swallowing, stuffing more in, eyes watering, nose running, mixing with the orange crumbs that stained her face and fingers. Nobody stopped her. She threw down the empty bag and stalked out, past the disbelieving cashiers and lines of astounded shoppers, out into the parking lot and around the corner. Rebekah had to run to catch up. She found her in the alley, bending behind a dumpster, vomiting a great orange rush onto the asphalt.
Poor beautiful, brave Ezzie.
“Why do we have to be freaks?” she gasped. And a few minutes later, “Let’s go home.” She wiped the drool from her mouth with a sleeve.
Father Ernst roared when he heard. He whipped and locked her sister in the shed again. Pulled all of their teens from the local high school, claiming they could learn what they needed at home. He said, “Government lies and liberal thinking are ruining this great country, and I’ll not contribute to America’s demise.” Henceforth, the girls studied domestic and culinary arts, plus herbal remedies with Memaw, animal husbandry with Susan, and beekeeping with Deborah. Compost and gardening was with Mary. The boys had other pursuits: barn and fieldwork, weaponry, machinery, working the generators and pumps, electrical and carpentry. Boys learned to build, and girls, to maintain.
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