Eden West (11 page)

Lynna loosens her grip around my middle, reaches past me, and puts the gearshift in neutral.

“You’re kind of wild, you know that?” She sets the brake and hops off the ATV.

I am shaking. I fear to look at her. I am ashamed. It is true what Father Grace has long told us. Machines can devour us; they are eaters of souls.

“What’s the matter?” Lynna asks.

I climb off the machine and begin walking back up the trail. Seconds later I hear the growl of the machine but I do not look back. The sound grows louder and she is on my right, pacing me.

“Jacob? Are you okay?”

“I must not do this thing,” I say.

“What thing?”

I do not answer.

“Just stop for a second,” she says.

I stop.

“If you’re leaving, you could at least give me back my helmet,” she says.

I didn’t realize I was still wearing it. I remove the helmet and hold it out to her, looking at the ground. She takes the helmet. I walk quickly to the hole beneath the fence and wriggle beneath it. The bottom of the chain-link catches on my front; I force myself through, tearing my garment.

Lynna is watching me.

“You’re kind of weird.” she says.

“I have work to do. Thank you for letting me drive your machine.” I turn my back and wait for her to leave so that I can repair the gap beneath the fence in peace.

“Jacob . . .” she says. Her voice creeps over my shoulder and hangs there.

I don’t say anything. I sense that she is not going to leave. I turn to her, intending to say something that will drive her away. The expression on her face stops me. She looks sad and hurt.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She nods carefully, then ventures a smile. “Are you hungry?”

I think of the food in my backpack. I have not eaten since leaving Menshome.

“I have food,” I say.

“Me too. Hang on a sec.” She runs to the ATV, opens a compartment behind the seat, and unstraps a small pack from the back. “Catch!” The pack comes sailing over the fence. I catch it. Lynna smiles and claps her hands. “Touchdown!”

I set the pack on the ground. I don’t know what a “touchdown” is.

“Why did you do that?” I ask.

In answer, she walks over to the breach and starts to wriggle beneath the fence. The bottom of the chain-link catches on her jacket.

“A little help here?” she says.

“You’re not supposed to come in here,” I say, but even as I am speaking, I grab the chain-link and pull up, freeing her. A moment later, she is standing beside me.

She looks around and says, “Wow, the grass really is greener on the other side.”

“That is because we do not crowd our land with cattle.”

She unzips the pack, pulls out a checkered cloth, and spreads it on the grass.

“What are you doing?”

“Making a picnic.”

I watch dumbly as she lays out a meal: several plastic tubs containing unfamiliar foods, a bright-red-and-blue bag of potato chips, and an assortment of candies with wrappers in a rainbow of colors.

“I wasn’t sure what you like,” she said. “Or even if you’d be here. So I just threw in a bunch of different stuff.”

I realize then that she has planned this, and a shiver of fear runs up my body. Is this all a part of some Worldly plot? At the same time, I am flattered and excited.

“What is that?” I ask, pointing at two bottles of orange liquid.

“Pop,” she says. “It was the only kind we had.”

“Pop . . .” I remember soda pop from when I was little, the tickle and fizz of it going down my throat. Suddenly I am desirous of it, and my decision is made. I think of the food in my pack: soda bread, hard cheese, a seedcake, and a bottle of water. My drab offerings would be an insult to this colorful feast.

I sit down on one end of the checkered cloth as she kneels and opens one of the plastic tubs. It is filled with golden, irregular lumps.

“What is that?” I ask.

She smiles. “Fried chicken. Do you like chicken?”

I nod. Chicken is a familiar food, but I have never had it so prepared. She puts pieces on two paper plates and opens another tub.

“Beans,” I say. They are dark brown, swimming in
sauce.

She loads the plates with beans, pouring them directly from the tub. I feel as if I am in a dream. She tears open a bag of potato chips and adds the thin crisps to our plates. I remember potato chips. My mouth is watering. She hands me a plate. I place it on the cloth before me, uncertain how to proceed. She hands me a fork and one of the orange sodas. The bottle is icy cold in my hand. She twists the cap off the other soda; I do the same with mine.

We drink. The soda is excruciatingly sweet. Occasion ally, as a special treat, the Archcherubim return from their travels with crates of oranges or other exotic fruits. This soda does not taste much like an orange, but it is very good. I gulp greedily, emptying half the bottle.

“It’s good,” I say with a gasp.

“You never had pop?”

“Not since I was little.” I bite into a piece of chicken. It’s crusty and flavorful. The beans are as sweet as the soda, and the potato chips are astonishingly salty, but seductive. I eat quickly, in part because the food is delicious and partly so that I do not have to talk.

“You must be hungry!” she says as I finish what is on my plate. “Do you want more?”

“Please,” I say. She gives me more chicken and beans and chips.

“What kind of food do you usually eat?” she asks.

“Just . . . regular food.” I think again of the drab food in my pack. “I can show you.” I open my pack and unwrap what was to be my lunch. “The seedcake is good.” I offer her a piece; she tastes it.

“It’s like a granola bar,” she says, chewing carefully. “What kind of cheese is that?”

“Cheese. We make it from the milk of our ewes.”

She breaks off a small piece, sniffs it, puts it in her mouth. “Kind of gamy,” she says. I don’t know what she means. “So you guys make all your own food?”

“Mostly.”

“Does it get boring?”

“It is what we eat.”

“Do you have to work all the time?”

“We work as it is needed. We study. We worship. We hunt. We play.”

“What kind of play?”

“A game called chess. Have you heard of it?”

“Chess? Sure, lots of people play chess.”

I look at the checkered tablecloth. “We could play chess here. We could use candies for pieces.”

Lynna thinks that’s funny. I am embarrassed again.

“I’m afraid you’d beat me,” she says. “I don’t even know the moves.”

“I could teach you.”

“I’d rather eat the candy than play with it.” She tosses me a small brown bag. M&M’s, it says. I open it and pour several candies into my palm and stare at them, so smooth and bright. I pick out a blue tablet and bite into it. Sweetness floods my mouth. Lynna is eating a strand of red licorice. I remember red licorice.

She says, “Is it true that you guys are polygamists? Like, the men have a bunch of wives?”

“Father Grace has four wives. Brother Enos has two.” I have the feeling this is a dangerous subject. “Most men take one wife only.”

“Do you have more than one mom?”

“No.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“Are there other teenagers besides you?”

I think of Ruth, and Tobias.

“There are Grace of all ages,” I say.

Lynna has many more questions, and soon I find myself talking easily. We sit in the autumn sun and I find myself telling her of Father Grace, and of the Ark that will come.

“You mean you think that some kind of spaceship is going to carry you all away just before the end of the world?” she asks.

“Not a spaceship. The Ark. Father Grace has seen it. It will come from the west.”

“Like from Idaho?”

I sense she is making fun of me. I stop talking.

“Sorry,” she says, looking serious. “I guess it just seems weird to me.”

“It is the Truth.”

“When is it supposed to happen? The end of the world.”

“Not until the Tree bears sweet fruit and dies.”

“Tree?”

“The Tree is why we are here.”

“What sort of tree? Ponderosa? Oak?”

“It is just the Tree.”

“Every tree is
some
kind of tree.”

“I do not think it is a
kind
of tree. It is
the
Tree.”

“What kind of fruit does it make?”

“Small round red fruits.” I make a circle with my thumb and forefinger.

“Do you eat them?”

“No!” The thought horrifies me.

“I was just asking. So what makes this tree so special?”

I hesitate, as I remember Brother Peter saying that our missionaries do not speak of the Tree to Worldly folk.
It induces them to ridicule
, he said.
They laugh at that which they do not understand
.

I do not want to be laughed at by Lynna, but the Tree is a part of me, and I feel I must tell her something of it.

“Have you read the Bible?” I ask her.

“Some,” she says. “I’m not all that churchy.”

“But you know the story of Genesis, don’t you?”

“That’s the part with Adam and Eve, right?”

“Yes! You know that in the Garden of Eden, the Lord placed the Tree of Knowledge, and he commanded Adam and Eve never to eat of it, but they did, and they were banished.”

I pause to gauge her reaction. She is not laughing. She nods and says, “Yeah, I know about that.”

Encouraged, I continue. “Adam and Eve were sent away, and the Lord placed Cherubim and the whirling sword at the east of Eden to prevent them from ever returning. And that’s where we all came from.”

Lynna is looking at me intently.

I lick my lips and say, “The Lord has given us a second chance. Years ago, when Father Grace discovered the Tree, he bought this land. The Tree now grows at the Sacred Heart of Nodd.” I am speaking more quickly now, I want to get it out, to share the Good News with her. “It lives that we might create a new Eden around it, a Garden as beautiful as Eden, and only then will the fruit of the Tree grow large and sweet, but still we must not eat of it, and the Tree will die, and the Ark will come with the Archangel Zerachiel at its helm to carry the Grace to the arms of the Lord while all else withers and dies.”

“
All
else? You mean like me?”

“Unless you join us,” I say.

Lynna’s eyes are enormous; she is staring at me as if I am the only thing in all of creation.

Then she laughs.

“It is not funny,” I say, embarrassed and uncomfortable, as if I have shown her my naked self and been found wanting.

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s just sort of . . . um . . .
biblical
, I guess. The whole ark thing, and the magic tree.”

“It is the Truth.”

“When’s all this stuff supposed to happen?” she asks.

“Brother Andrew believes it will be soon. The Garden grows more beautiful each spring.”

She is shaking her head. I feel her withdrawing. She does not believe. I wonder what she
does
believe, and I realize that I have asked her nothing of herself. I search my mind for a question. All I can think to say is, “What about you?”

The question seems to startle her.

“What
about
me?” she says.

“I mean, what’s it like being . . . you?”

“It’s okay,” she says. “Kind of boring sometimes. I mean, we’re just a little operation, thirty-three sections, half of it rock or arroyo. Max says it’s too big anyways. Too much work for me and Max and Cal and Chico.”

“Who are they?”

“Max is my dad. Chico’s a hand. Cal is my asshole uncle.” She takes a folding knife from her pocket and opens it. The blade is four inches long, with a wicked hook at the end. She takes an apple from the basket, uses the odd blade to slice it, and offers me half. I take the half apple and set it on the cloth before me.

“Brother Peter has a knife like that,” I say. “He uses it to neuter the rams.”

“I call it my
Cal
-strating knife,” she says, then laughs. “I told Cal I’d use it on him if he ever tried anything.”

I don’t understand, and then I think I do. A cold, unspeakable lump manifests in my gut.

“He . . . touched you?”

“Nope. He wouldn’t dare.” She wipes the apple juice from the blade on her jeans and snaps the knife closed with one hand. “He knows I can take care of myself. Cal’s actually not such a bad guy when he’s sober. Except for being a total lech sometimes. Anyway, it’s mostly just the three of us. Max hires in other guys when we need them, but it’s seasonal.”

“What about your mother?” I ask, although I am afraid I know the answer.

“She died.”

That is the answer I was afraid of.

“She got breast cancer when I was eleven. I was twelve when she went.” She says it matter-of-factly, but I sense she does not want to talk about it.

“Do you go to school?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I did until last year when I kind of got in trouble. This year I’m homeschooling. Mostly just my dad making me read boring stuff. I’ll take some tests in the spring and get my diploma. It’s no big deal.”

“You got in trouble?”

“I got caught smoking weed.”

“Some of the Archcherubim smoke,” I say, thinking of Enos and his pipe.