Eden West (25 page)

His breath washes over me, and it is foul, as if his teeth are rotting in his head. If Father Grace is the voice of the Lord, then why would the Lord give him rancid breath?

“You cannot have all you desire, but do not lose heart. I understand the urges and needs of a young man such as yourself.” He pulls me closer yet, so that his beard almost brushes my chin. “I give you my daughter Sister Beryl.”

“Beryl?” I croak, nauseated both by his breath and by what he is saying. “Beryl has but fourteen years!”

“I first had Fara, who has borne me three daughters, when she was but thirteen.”

I stare at him, hardly able to bear what he is telling me. From the time I was small, I have been taught that to be chaste and abstemious is to be close to Heaven, and who is closer to Heaven than Father Grace?

Breathing shallowly, I reply, “I do not want Beryl.”

“Ha!” He pushes me away. “So you say now, but let your loins starve a bit longer and you might settle for Sister Dalva.”

Sister Dalva is older than my mother.

“I wanted Sister Ruth, but you took her,” I say, stunned by my own boldness.

Father Grace is taken aback for an instant, but he quickly recovers.

“I had wondered,” he says slowly. “Ruth is a lovely child. Was this the reason you sought out the Worldly girl?”

I stare back at him. I know the answer to his question, but I am loath to share it with him. If he wants to think himself responsible for driving me to Lynna, then so be it.

“Speak, Jacob.”

“I cannot,” I say.

“I see.” He turns to face the graves of his children. “Let me tell you how it is. The Worldly girl has been returned to her home, where she will stay. You will put her out of your mind. In the spring, when the Tree blossoms, you will wed Sister Beryl. Your transgressions are forgiven. Put the Worldly girl out of your mind. There is much work to be done. Return to Menshome.” He looks at me. One eye is hard and dry, the other a moist wound. “You have my trust, Jacob. Do not disappoint me.”

I am watched.

Father Grace has told me I have his trust, but they are watching me: John, Enos, Samuel, all of them. No one speaks of Lynna’s visit to Nodd. Even Will does not ask me about her. Yet I feel their eyes on me, judging my every move.

I think about what Father Grace believes, that his marriage to Ruth drove me to seek out a Worldly girl, and I smile to myself, for I know it is not true. My feelings for Ruth were of Nodd; my feelings for Lynna reach beyond our borders and into the World. It is the difference between a leaf and a tree. I think of her constantly, in that pink house. What is she thinking? Does she hate me for failing to protect her? Is she thinking about me at all?

One day when no one is watching me I will go to the Rocking K, and I will know. Father Grace says that I am being tested. He says that the Lord has an infinite capacity for forgiveness. Can that be true? I will test His clemency with my sins. This is a concept so blasphemous, so brimming with hubris that it sends shivers through my body, but I know I must do it.

But when second Landay arrives, it is not I who is sent to walk the fence: it is Will. He tells me this as he arranges his pack. “Enos wanted to send Jerome, but I told him I was able. It has been many months since I have performed my duty.”

“What about your knee?” I ask him.

“It is much better,” he says, but I can see that he is favoring it.

“The Mire will be treacherous,” I tell him.

“I have walked the Mire many times,” he says.

I wish him well.

That night, Will returns late to the Village, dragging one mud-coated leg as if he would as soon leave it behind. He began his walk at the southern edge of the Mire, where he sank up to his waist in a bog hole. It took him an hour to free himself, and the rest of the day to make his way out of the Mire and back to the Village. His knee has swollen to the size of a melon. Brother Samuel prescribes ice and rest. It is clear that Will cannot walk the fence again.

The following Landay, Enos once again overlooks me. He assigns Aaron to the task. I am not trusted. If I am to visit the Rocking K, I must simply slip out of Menshome at night and leave Nodd. But what do I do when I get to Lynna’s house? They will all be sleeping, and I won’t know which room is Lynna’s. I am more likely to awaken her father. Still, I am willing to take the chance.

On the day I plan to go, I am delivering wheat flour from the mill to the kitchen when my mother opens the door.

“Jacob,” she says. “It is good to see you. Are you well?”

“Yes, thank you,” I say.

She gives me the look of a mother who sees past the lie and into the soul of her child. Even though it is cold and she has no coat, she steps outside.

“Jacob?” she says, leaving my name hanging in a way that demands a response.

“I am all right,” I say. “Father Grace has forgiven me.”

“Father Grace.” She sniffs. “It is not he whose forgiveness you need.”

I am surprised by this, and she sees it in my face.

“Tell me of your feelings for this Worldly girl,” she says.

“I met her at the fence and we talked. Her name is Lynna.” I’m not sure what else to say. My
feelings
? I have no words. “She has blond hair,” I say stupidly.

My mother laughs. “I met her at the visitation,” she says. “She is very pretty.”

“Oh.” I am embarrassed. My mother always seems to know more than I think she knows. “I am worried for her,” I say.

She nods, serious now. “Lynna is safe, Jacob. Your father and Brother Enos went with the Everts to West Fork to make sure the girl was treated fairly.”

“They did?”

“Yes. Your father feared that her story would not be believed.”

“He did?” I am amazed by this. Why should my father care about Lynna?

“They also wanted to let Max Evert know that his daughter is welcome here in Nodd.”

My heart lurches. “Lynna is coming to Nodd?”

“I did not say that. Only that, should her situation require it, she would be welcome here as a guest. But Max Evert has sent his daughter to stay with relatives in Arizona.”

“Is she coming back?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

This news opens a chasm inside of me.

“Jacob? Are you certain you are all right?”

I am not all right. I say, in a shaky voice, “Father Grace says I am to take a wife.”

My mother inhales sharply. “Who?”

“Sister Beryl.”

“Beryl? She is barely fourteen!”

“He says we are to wed in the spring, when the Tree is in bloom.”

She considers this, her lips pressed tightly together, then asks, “Do you have feelings for Beryl?”

“I do not know her.”

She nods. “Jacob, have I ever told you how your father and I met?”

I shake my head.

“We were in college. He was in law school; I was studying literature. He was one of the few Jewish boys on campus; I was raised in a Christian home.”

I knew that my father was once a Jew. The same could be said of Enoch, and of the prophet Jesus.

“I knew from the moment I met him that I wanted to spend my life with him. Your father had great passion and strength, and he was very handsome.” She smiles. “We moved in together a few months later. Our families disapproved. My parents, who were very devout Christians, refused to have Nate in their home. Nate’s mother, who lived in Minneapolis, was polite, but she hated that I was with her son.

“When your father got his law degree, we moved to Omaha, where we knew no one, and your father opened a small law practice. We talked about getting married, but for several years we kept putting it off — there seemed no reason to hurry. We had no close friends, and neither of us had any family who cared whether or not we were married. We had only each other. For a time, it was enough. And then I became pregnant with you.”

“Conceived in sin,” I say.

“Conceived in love. We were married as soon as I found out I was pregnant. The day you were born was the happiest day of our lives.” She smiles and reaches out and presses her palm to my cheek.

“We were content, just the three of us. I became pregnant again when you were two, but lost the child in my seventh month. A boy like you. We would have named him Matthew.”

“How did you . . .? What happened?” I ask.

“It was an auto accident. Other than losing Matthew, I wasn’t badly injured, not physically. But my world grew dark. I felt the loss of my baby every moment of every day. If I hadn’t had you to care for” — she touches my face again —“I could not have gone on. I moved through the days in a fog. Your father made me see a doctor. The doctor gave me pills, but the fog only grew thicker.

“Then one day I was walking with you in a stroller, and you were crying, and there was nothing I could do, and I noticed several people coming out of a small church, Grace Ministries. Their faces were glowing as if they had just experienced something wonderful. The next Sunday, what we now call Firstday, I attended a service. Some of the things I heard seemed very strange, but I liked the people, and the fog did not follow me into the church. I went back the next week, and the next. Your father began attending with me. He was not a believer at first. I think he came only to make me happy.

“And then Father Grace came to the ministry, and he spoke to us. He, too, had lost a child — his son Adam. He listened to me, and he took my pain onto himself, and I knew he could see into my soul. When he learned that your father was a lawyer, he hired him on the spot to deal with some tax problems he was having with the government.

“At first, your father thought Father Grace was just another religious fanatic, but he was a client with money, so we continued to attend services as your father provided the Grace with legal advice. Father Grace was different back then — more joyful and open and approachable. He and your father became close friends, and as I emerged from my fog, I saw that your father had been suffering in his own land of darkness, and that Father Grace had saved him as well.

“Father Grace invited us to visit Nodd, and we came, and we breathed the air, and we knelt before the Tree, and we saw the happiness of the Grace, and we knew the Truth. We saw that our life in Omaha was empty and meaningless. A few months later we moved here to Nodd, to await the coming of Zerachiel.”

I have heard parts of that story before, although I never knew I had lost a brother. I wonder why she is telling it to me now. As if she can read my thoughts, my mother answers.

“Jacob, I am telling you this so that you will understand that your father and I turned our backs on our lives not once, but twice. We left our families and built a new life in Omaha, and then we left Omaha to begin anew here in Nodd. Do you understand?”

“No,” I say.

“Then consider this.” She puts her warm hands on my cheeks and looks into my eyes. “Father Grace is a great prophet, but he is a man. You say he has forgiven you, but the person you need first to forgive is yourself — for what you have done, and for what you must do; for who you believe yourself to be, and for who you really are.

“There is more than one path to salvation, Jacob, my son. G’bless.”

With that, she returns to the kitchen and closes the door.

I am not sure, but I think my mother has just given me her blessing to leave Nodd.