A New Eden

by Quent Cordair

  “I think that that would be a wise choice. I’ll look forward to your sermon on Sunday. I hope it’s as inspiring as last Sunday’s.”

  “I’m so glad that you enjoyed it, ma’am. All credit and praise to God, of course. I am humbled whenever He chooses to speak through me to His flock.”

  “Until Sunday, then, Reverend.”

  “Yes, ma’am, and – if I may, one more thing, ma’am – and I’m really sorry to bother you with this, Mrs. Hale, but I was meeting with our attorneys this morning, and they mentioned that we haven’t yet received a signature on the authorization for access through the property for the Passion Procession next Friday. I know the document is just a formality, and I’m sure it’s entirely unnecessary after all these years, but still, attorneys being attorneys, they insist that we should keep dotting our i’s. . . .”

  “I don’t know why you wouldn’t have received it yet, Reverend, but I suggest re-contacting our legal department to see if the document has perhaps been mislaid or overlooked. My husband usually takes care of that kind of thing.”

  “Of course, of course – we just want to continue to be completely respectful of the family’s wishes, and we were just hoping – well, I assume that there isn’t any problem. . . .”

  “Not that I’m aware of, Reverend, though we haven’t discussed it.”

  “Okay, well – we’ll check again in the morning then. Thank you, Mrs. Hale. God bless, and I’m delighted we’ll be seeing you again Sunday.”

  “Good evening, Reverend.”

  Sophia was never quite sure how much of Cole Lundquist’s solicitousness was genuine kindness and how much was due to the substantial donations she made to various church projects. She had been happy to help fund the Church’s community health clinic, the food bank, and several foreign mission schools. It was only of secondary benefit that her generosity gave the family influence in matters such as the Angels’ activities and with local government departments and commissions, in which there were nearly always church members in positions of influence, right up to the city council. It was leverage the family used sparingly and tactfully, but as necessary.

  She paused in the gazebo to watch the sunset. The edges of the brushed cirrus clouds were turning violet. The sun itself had disappeared behind the Garnet Range, where the snow in the northerly crevices of the upper reaches would remain well into July. The mountains’ long shadows were marching slowly across the valley floor, swallowing the curves of the river that snaked through city, absorbing the grids of homes that extended southward towards the reservoir. The glass-faceted jewel that was the church cathedral was already darkened, save for the top of its towering spire and cross. Ahead of the shadows, the sunrays reflected in fiery orange bursts from the windows of the taller buildings and the houses dotting the eastern hills, and for a few short minutes, from the panes of the Hale mansion itself, set in the grove of pinyon pine on its own private hill. Except for the staff, the house would be empty now, with her husband still at the office and her son not due to return until tomorrow. She was in no hurry to leave for home.

  She hardly considered herself a convert to the church’s brand of religion – her parents had been staid Episcopalians, and she herself was not attached to any particular denomination or creed – but admittedly, she found comfort and uplift in the sermons and in the sense of community and extended family amongst the congregation. There were times in one’s life when one needed comfort and uplift. Above all, with rare exception such as during last Sunday’s service, she did enjoy the music, which could be rapturous, especially when the choir sang. Especially when the soloist was Skye Emberly.

  She stood in the gazebo until the sun shone its last, reflected from the tip of the cathedral’s cross.

  * * *

  Cole Lundquist composed a text on his phone: The Sophia property is off limits for now. Will discuss at morning meeting. Bathem.

  He sent the message and waited for confirmation.

  “Bathem,” came the immediate reply.

  Blessed are the meek . . . B-a-the-m . . . Among members of the Flock, Bathem was the good morning and the good night, the hello and the goodbye, the call to worship and the command to obey. Bathem! The benediction and the banner –

  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

  The pastor had finished composing the Sunday sermon an hour before Mrs. Hale had called. He was particularly proud of his latest script, a sustaining call to hope in deeply uncertain times, with the promise of a new dawn after even the darkest of nights. With some fleshing out and reworking, it would make for a good chapter in his next book.

  When the secretary had interrupted with the call, he had been perusing a magazine interview to which he now returned his full attention.

  The subject, Denver Fleming, was the leader of the valley’s clique of environmentalists. In the interview he alluded obliquely to the imminent launch of another legal battle in the valley, though he wouldn’t divulge his target or any additional details.

  Fleming and his cohorts had been a thorn in the side of the Church for nearly two decades, first over water rights for the Flock’s residential developments on the south end, then over the alleged negative effects the new Bible college would have on local resources and infrastructure, then over the construction of the new cathedral itself.

  Fleming had claimed initially that the site for the cathedral – though it was squarely in the heart of the Church’s campus, where several outbuildings had been in use for over a century – was located on what was claimed, with only scant anecdotal evidence, to be an old Indian burial ground. A further protest was lodged that the cathedral’s considerable height would block or interrupt too much of the community’s views of the Garnets, with a threatened suit against the city if it granted a variance to zoning height restrictions. Fleming’s efforts had cost the Church two years of legal and political jockeying prior to the cathedral’s construction and several millions of dollars in the purchase of adjacent view-blocked properties. Then there was the considerable time and money spent for the anthropological excavation, which had turned up only a few broken arrowheads, some gnawed antelope bones and part of a rotted woven basket. The Church’s board of deacons speculated that Fleming and his cohorts were likely gearing up to contest the construction of the additional Bible college dorms. The building site was on previously undeveloped land near the river; it was rumored that Fleming’s group had managed to discover a rare species of salamander that existed solely along the valley’s riverbanks.

  Cole’s long fingers drummed the edge of his desk in a slow, deliberate march. When he let the magazine drop into the wastepaper basket, it fell with the photo of Denver Fleming, wearing his signature fringed buckskin jacket and bolo tie, lying face up.

  “Dear Lord, may Thine enemies be brought to their knees before the bright light of Thy glory. . . .”

  He unfolded his limbs from the high-backed leather chair. Being unusually tall, standing was less an act for him than a process. As a teenager, his physique had been considerably awkward, but he had grown into an eagle of a man, with dark, angular features and a commanding presence before which women swooned and men faltered.

  From the northerly window of the parsonage office, he looked toward The Sophia. His eyes lifted to the hill rising above and behind it, the prominence dominating Aurum Valley like a throne at the head of a great royal hall. In contrast to the lushly green, irrigated grounds of the resort and the golf course, the hill’s upper two thousand feet were a waste of stone, sand, boulders, loose scree and smatterings of clinging, scruffy sagebrush. An old dirt road climbed and crossed the face like a long bootlace, rising in long slow grades and tight hairpin turns, winding to the barren plateau of the peak.

  To Cole, who had dreamt the most vivid dreams of the wondrous beauties promised in Heaven above, the barren hill at the head of the valley was the most beautiful sight on Earth below. For it was the Prophet Obadiah’s hill. It was God’s hill.


  A verse from the sacred hymn began to flow from his lips, his voice a deep, lustrous baritone –

  As the Prophet has prophesied, so shall it be,

  When His Flock is humbled and on bended knee,

  When His Cross is raised upon yon mountain high,

  The Age of Christ’s Reign upon Earth will be nigh.

  “Soon, dear Lord,” he whispered prayerfully, “let it be soon. The lambs of Your Flock cry out to prostrate themselves before the majesty of Your glory. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Bathem.”

  Two

  Between the resort and the plaza, through the heart of Old Town, lay a wide boulevard with flowers in the medians and working fountains in the roundabouts, lined with streetlights of a gas-lamp style, historically accurate in design. On the large lots of the neighborhood, extending five blocks east and west, stood stately, spacious Victorians – Second Empire, Queen Anne, shingle-style and gingerbread – of which all but a scattered few were restored and well kept, with manicured gardens and lawns, wrought-iron fences and detached carriage houses. These had been the addresses of the first affluent citizens of the valley – the mine owners, bankers, merchants, doctors, lawyers, land speculators, transportation-line operators, and dealers in equipment and machinery. Many of the residences were still maintained as single-family homes; some had been divided into apartment rentals; a few nearer the plaza housed law firms, title companies and real estate offices. A sprinkling of charming bed-and-breakfasts garnished the neighborhood.

  The plaza itself was an open square, a feature not uncommon to the early towns west and south of the Rockies, modeled after those of the Spanish-mission villages along the coastal Camino Real. Originally a grassless, vacant lot in the center of town, with a flagpole planted in the center, it was first used for livestock trading, teamster camping, and holding public meetings, but as the town developed and grew, the proud and prosperous founders planted oak and spruce, which had matured over the years to provide ample and majestic shade over a well-watered green. With the addition of benches, paved walks, flowers and a marble fountain between the flagpole and South Street, the plaza had become a town treasure, affording residents a refreshing venue for socializing, constitutionals, picnicking and sunning, with weekends often featuring farmers markets, art fairs and live music.

  Facing the plaza, across the four bordering streets, were clothing boutiques and purveyors of books, gifts, stationery, cheese, western tack and turquoise jewelry. Intermixed with the retailers were three restaurants, a coffee shop, a bakery, a beauty salon, and two banks. On the plaza’s west side, the old opera house had been converted into a single-screen movie theatre; a clapboard, double-balconied hotel still accommodated guests on the second floor as it had since the late 1800s, with the shoe store and barbershop flanking the ground-floor lobby dating to the 1940s. On the plaza’s east side, the old stone courthouse, erected after the original wooden courthouse had twice burned down, now served as the county’s museum and historical society, the county offices and courts having been relocated to a modern campus on the south side of town in the 1960s. On the plaza’s north side, a thick-walled adobe was touted by a bronze plaque as being the valley’s oldest surviving structure, dating from the days of the first gold and silver rushes. The swinging double doors had been replaced by a solid door of white pine, the painted wooden sign over the door had been replaced by orange neon, but the oak bar inside was the original bar and little else had changed about the Elbow Room: it was still a saloon. A florist shop kept the drinking establishment at arm’s length from the Christian bookstore, in the front window of which were displayed three stacks of the new national best seller, The Joy of Surrender, by Reverend Cole Lundquist.

  Paige perused the shop windows, finding herself preoccupied with the town’s atmosphere, which on a pleasant Thursday evening seemed so quintessentially, old-fashioned American that it felt almost like a foreign country to her – enchanting, as if having been suspended in time a half century ago. The shopkeepers were warm and welcoming. No one watched her in the suspicious or predatory way she had become accustomed to abroad. No one seemed in the least concerned about theft. There was no haggling over prices. Behind the counter of the coffee shop, the boy who took her order couldn’t have been more appreciative of her business. The girl who made her latte was devotedly conscientious, as though there could be no higher mission in life than making a latte to perfection and to her customer’s satisfaction.

  On the street corners and beneath the trees in the plaza, scattered cliques of teens pushed back against the standards of fashion with torn, wrinkled clothing contrived to look careless, and conspicuous piercings, tattoos, artfully disheveled hair and exposed swathes of underwear. But more teens, similarly congealed, were as conservative and wholesome in appearance as fresh dairy – the boys wearing ties, neatly pressed trousers, dress shoes and long-sleeved collared shirts, the girls in dresses hemmed just below the knee, wearing neither makeup nor jewelry, their long hair pulled back or pinned up. Only a few teens seemed willing to brave the no-man’s land of tasteful, moderate fashion between the trenches. For these, the social options apparently were more limited – they went about in twos or threes at most, or alone.

  The more conservative style wasn’t sitting well with Paige for some reason, though it was quite attractive, even refreshing, in its own right – certainly more so than the other end of the spectrum. But she had been out of the country for a couple of years, she reminded herself. Fashions can change quickly. The flamboyance of the seventies and the folksiness of the sixties had been back in vogue not so long ago. Maybe the regressive, nostalgic trend had continued to a resurrection of the buttoned-down styles of the fifties or even the forties. But in the forties and fifties, the girls were wearing makeup and cutting their hair. As Paige began to note the number of adults about the plaza similarly attired – the men in long-sleeve dress shirts and ties, the women in dresses, with no makeup and pinned-up hair – it became difficult to avoid the impression that this wasn’t merely fashion but a manifestation of something more deeply ideological. The look wasn’t quite Mormon or Amish or Adventist, but save for the rebel outliers, it felt to Paige as if she had stumbled into the filming of a story set in the post-war Midwest. It was all very quaint, even charming – but unsettling.

  A boy and girl of the tie-and-dress type, fourteen or fifteen years of age, were sitting next to each other on one of the plaza benches. The girl’s hand had come to rest on the bench near the boy’s leg. His hand had settled such that two of his fingers lay lightly over two of hers. As though she hadn’t noticed – though surely she had – she was chattering animatedly while enjoying an ice cream cone, laughing at a joke she had made, her feet swinging casually and carefree beneath the bench. The boy was captivated, smiling nervously, hardly able to speak a word, his limbs awkwardly static. Paige was so engrossed watching the young couple, adorable enough to have been plucked out of a Norman Rockwell painting, that she didn’t notice the man in black with a black brimmed hat approaching them. Neither had they. As he passed, without breaking stride, he tilted his head and gave them a quiet word or two.

  The boy instantly shifted his hand into his lap, blushing. The girl fell mute, mortified. The man in black continued his stroll, hands behind his back, attentively surveying the area. By the time he reached the corner, the girl was walking briskly towards the coffee shop and the boy was crossing dejectedly towards the bookstore.

  Paige was fairly certain that, though identically attired, the man was not the same man who had been watching her through the hedge that afternoon – this man seemed older, his face rounder, his jaw line less pronounced. When he neared a group of boys in ties, the first to notice him adjusted his posture just perceptibly, an unconscious signal causing the other boys in the group to stand a little straighter and take their hands out of their pockets. As the man reached them, he nodded a greeting, to which they responded in kind, reflexively, respectfully, with no more or less co
ncern than would a cluster of students upon the passing of a vice principal in the school hallway. Once he had passed, they relaxed to their former state.

  It was curious to Paige that the man neither addressed nor acknowledged the knots of rebellious youth, some of whom were openly smoking, cursing, laughing loudly and being publicly, physically affectionate with each other. For their part, they noted and monitored the man as he neared and passed. It seemed a détente of sorts – if not respectful, without open hostility.

  From across the street, his scrutiny found and lingered on Paige herself – but if he thought anything of her, approving or otherwise, it couldn’t be discerned.

  When he turned away, she slipped into a nearby dress shop. When she emerged, not ten minutes later, nearly all of the wholesome youths had disappeared. Her watch showed only a quarter till nine. The man was addressing one of the few conservatively dressed boys still present, resulting in the boy hastily retrieving his bicycle from a rack and pedaling away. She wondered if there might be an event somewhere that the youths were attending. But it was a school night, no doubt. Was there a curfew? The rebels lingered, unperturbed. She was browsing the storefronts again, pondering the curious appearance and ways of the locals, when something in a window caught her eye.

  There on a pedestal, featured in a display of still-life and landscape paintings, was a bronze sculpture. The figure was a woman rising off the ground, as though breaking free from the bonds of gravity. She would have been nude except for an enveloping, gossamer fabric through which she floated upward, the material so ephemeral that it seemed more water or wind than cloth. Her hair was flowing, her eyes were closed, her lips parted, her arms held loosely away from her sides, hands open. She seemed in a state of dreamlike, serene ecstasy.