Eden West (22 page)

“I fell off
one
horse. Once.”

“You’ve only
ridden
once.” She grins, and happy lines crinkle the corners of her blue eyes. “That means you fall off every time you ride.”

I kiss her on the lips.

I
kiss
her.

Our lips are one and I am consumed. I fall like Sister Salah dropping from the Knob, but there is no bottom, no river, no rock. I fall and I fall, and I never want it to stop. In the distance I can hear the beating of my heart, and I can smell the smell of her hair, and the soft, silent click of our teeth touching echoes through my bones, and then it is over, and we are looking at each other, breathing each other’s warm breath, and still I am falling.

“Wow,” she says. “I didn’t think you were gonna do that.” She laughs. “Your beard tickles.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, although I am not sorry at all. I want to do it again, and I do. This time, she kisses me back hard, our lips grinding together, and nothing else is real. There is a sound growing in my head, water tumbling over boulders. I do not know if I am standing, sitting, or still falling. My arms grasp her and pull her against me as if we can become a single entity. My hands run down her back and grasp her hips and pull her hard against me, pressing my swollen phallus against her —

And suddenly her hands are on my chest, pushing hard, and we are apart, gasping.

“Whoa,” she says. “Easy!”

Breathing heavily, my mouth open and wet, I stare back at her dumbly.

“That was intense,” she says, forcing a little laugh.

I don’t know what to do.

“It’s okay,” she says, pushing back a strand of hair and straightening her shirt.

A prickling in my belly grows and becomes embarrassment as I realize what has happened. The lustful beast inside me has shown itself. My groin has become an inflamed and painful knot; my cheeks are burning with shame and desire. I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and look away.

“Jacob, it’s okay,” she says again. But it is not okay.

“I should go,” I mumble. My tongue feels different, as if it belongs to someone else. Some animal.

“Okay, but you have to promise to come back. Okay?”

I do not trust myself to respond.

“I’ll drive you up to the fence, okay?”

The beast within me is thinking of being pressed against her body one more time. Slowly, carefully, I put on my jacket and pick up my pack and my rifle. I feel like a great clumsy animal, as if my every move threatens to destroy all that I touch.

“I can walk,” I say.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I open the door and step outside. I am surprised to find the sun high in the sky. It feels as if it should be night. Lynna follows me out, her crease of caring deep on her brow.

“It was really nice seeing you, Jacob.”

Nice? How can it be nice?

“I’m sorry,” I say, staring at the ground.

“You don’t have to be sorry. I liked kissing you. Seriously.”

How could she have liked it? Is she as base as I?

“I want to show you something before you go. Over here.”

I follow her around the side of the house.

“See?” she says, pointing at a tree growing near a fence.

I look at the tree, not understanding. It is a small tree, no more than twice my own height, bare of leaves, its many branches dotted with small shriveled fruits. And then I see it. It is a miniature version of the Tree.

“It’s a crabapple, like the one you showed me, only not so humongous.” She picks a fruit and holds it out in the palm of her hand. “Crabapples. These are what I made the jelly out of.”

The knuckle-size fruit looks exactly like the fruits of the Tree. I look from the fruit to the small tree, struggling to understand.

“
Our
Tree is
the
Tree,” I hear myself say.

“Yeah, and it’s
huge
. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crab tree that big, ever. You must fertilize the heck out of it.”

“This is not the Tree,” I say.

“I know. My dad planted this the day I was born. But I was thinking — you know your tree? I think my grandfather planted it.”

“What?” I am confused.

“Yeah, you guys — I mean, Father Grace — bought your land from my dad. It used to be part of our ranch. Then when my grandfather died, my dad needed money for taxes, so he sold off the south ten sections. You know where your village is now? That’s where my grandparents’ house used to be. It’s gone now of course, but I think that tree is the same one that used to be in their front yard. My grandfather planted it when my dad was born, and that’s how come my dad planted this one when
I
was . . .” She trails off, seeing something in my face. “Jacob?”

She is smiling, but the crease between her eyebrows is deep as a cut. I feel I am seeing her clearly for the first time, and I am horrified by how close I have come to the abyss. The heat I feel in my loins is the fire of Hell. I have allowed myself to tempted, to be seduced by this Worldly woman. As Adam allowed Eve to tempt him to betray their Lord, so have I been drawn into lechery, grunting and panting like a ram in heat. Was this what happened to Von? Am I
becoming
Von?

“This is a false tree,” I say. My voice sounds like gravel sliding off a shovel. “And you are false as well. I should not have come here. You think me a fool, and you are right.”

Her face crumples, and I know I have hurt her but I do not care. I turn my back and walk away from her, toward Nodd. As I trudge up the long, sloping cattle trail, my mind stutters and whirls with the shameful things I have done, from my foolish, lustful thoughts of Ruth, to the first time I ventured forth from Nodd to eat Worldly fried chicken, to the hellfire of the quesadilla, to the unspeakable trans gressions of today. What will I have to do to seek forgiveness? I imagine the sweet sting of cedar needles raking my back, and I know it will not be enough. I imagine myself confessing my sins to Brother Enos, and I quiver with fear at what he might do. Will Brother Samuel make scars beneath my brow and tear away my soul, as he did to Von? Or will I be cast into the Pit to howl and gnash my teeth until the pain of my transgressions becomes too much to bear and I hang myself with strips of cloth from my sullied trousers? Better to throw myself from the Knob, to shatter my skull on the tumbled boulders of the Pison, or lie naked in the forest and let the wolf lap tainted blood from my yawning carcass.

I hear the sound of the ATV, growing louder. Seconds later, Lynna pulls up alongside me. I keep walking. She pulls ahead and stops, blocking my path.

“Jacob, I’m sorry,” she says.

“I do not wish to talk to you,” I say.

She climbs off the machine. “I’m sorry if I offended you about your tree,” she says. “I’m sorry I made fun of your religion.”

“I should not have come here.”

“Why?”

The plaintive note in her voice weakens my resolve, but I say, “Because you are doomed, and you would doom me as well.”

She draws back as if I have slapped her. I feel a twinge of regret. I push it away and move to walk around her.

“Jacob, tell me what I can do to make things right. Please!”

That stops me.

“You would have to accept the Lord with all your heart and soul, beg His forgiveness, renounce the ways of the World, and come to Nodd on bended knees and request sanctuary.”

“And then what?”

“The Grace offer sanctuary to those who are willing to do these things. You would become one of us, and live a righteous life, and await the coming of Zerachiel.”

“Are you saying the only way we can be friends is if I join your . . . group?”

“If you do not, you will be destroyed.”

Lynna bites her lip and shakes her head slowly. I see tears in her eyes.

“Oh, Jacob, can you even hear yourself?”

“Yes,” I say. I walk around her and continue toward Nodd. Behind me, I hear her start the ATV. The whine of its engine is loud at first, then fading, and soon I hear only the crunch of my boots on the packed snow.

A copse of stunted cedars grows in a shallow draw not far from the Village. I cut several branches and spread them on the snow. I take off my jacket and my two shirts. The skin of my bare torso puckers from the cold. I lay myself upon the prickly boughs and stare up into the deepening blue sky. I imagine Zerachiel descending on his golden chariot, seeing me spread-eagled in my icy bower, passing over me, rejecting my sullied soul. I know that to gain passage on the Ark, I must cleanse myself, make myself clean. I think of Father Grace in the desert, in the hailstorm. I think of his four days and three nights of agony, and how he entered his ordeal as the worst of sinners and emerged as a prophet. I tear the bandage from my forehead and scratch at my wound until I feel warm blood running down my temple. I watch the blue sky darken as my naked breast grows cold and the sharp needles of the cedar boughs work their way into my back and the flow of blood from my brow ceases. For a time my body shivers violently, then that stops as well.

I open my eyes. There are stars, painfully intense, and all around me darkness, and I know I have been sleeping. The night sounds are crisp and bright: wind scraping the tops of the cedars, my breath rasping past my lips, and the distant hoot of an owl, sharp as a blade. I wonder if my body is frozen. I will my right hand to move. My fingers curl without shattering, but they feel distant, as if my arm is miles long. I am still alive. A part of me is disappointed.

I detect a glimmer of moonlight through the branches. From its height above the horizon, I guess that most of the Grace will be at supper.

Do any of them search for me? Am I missed?

A part of me does not care. I imagine them finding my scavenged corpse come spring, and the thought brings with it a glimmer of satisfaction. As for my soul . . . am I as lost as Lynna? If so, then it matters not when I die.

I hear a new sound, the whisper of padded feet on the snow. I turn my head to my right. At first I see nothing but the dark shapes of the trees, then a glint of moonlight reflected from an eye. Not ten cubits from where I lie half naked on my frozen bed of cedar boughs stands the wolf, watching me. Our eyes meet.

I once thought the wolf to be an invader, an evil presence come to plague us, but now I wonder if he is one of Zerachiel’s messengers, come to cleanse the Grace of a sinner.

I am not afraid. If the beast chooses to take me now, then so be it. The wolf knows I see him, but he does not move. We both wait; for what, I do not know.

After a time, my eyes lose the shape of the beast in the shadows, and I wonder if he is really there. Then I see some slight movement, a sway of his shoulders, or the flick of a tongue, and his form once again materializes. It is during one of these periods of clarity that I see his ears prick up. His head turns. I can see his long snout in profile. He takes one last look at me and melts away. His absence leaves a vacuum within the grove, and I am cold again, and the shivering resumes. Moments later, I hear the voices of men. The beam of a lamp scatters through the branches. I hear boots crunching through the crust, and the light strikes my eyes, and behind it I see my father’s face.

How long did the wolf and I remain together in that cedar grove? In my memory, it was hours, but it could not have been so long, because Evensong has only just ended when my father carries me into Elderlodge, where I am wrapped in layers of heated blankets and forced to drink quantities of hot honeyed tea. My mind is working sluggishly, and I am able only to nod and shake my head to their questions. Brother Samuel is there. My mother brought the tea. Others are nearby, talking. I understand only fragments of what I hear.

“. . . hypothermia and frostbite . . .”

“. . . a miracle he is alive . . .”

“. . . thank the Lord we came across his tracks . . .”

Brother Samuel is bending over me, examining my forehead. Someone is massaging my feet. I think it is my father. I cannot remember the last time my father touched my flesh.

“. . . the Lord’s will . . .”

“. . . delirious. He had taken off his garments and made himself a bed . . .”

I feel something stab into my forehead and I think of Von. I struggle, but the blankets are too heavy, too tightly wrapped. I see a needle in Samuel’s hand. I do not care if I die, but to have my soul taken while my body yet lives is terrifying. I curse and snap at him, and he strikes me, a slap to my cheek, and someone grasps my head from behind to hold it steady.