The Harrows of Spring (7 page)

T
WELVE

After Robert returned Belle to the stable, he sought out Brother Jobe in his personal quarters in the converted high school, formerly the principal's office suite. The New Faith honcho sat behind a fine old oak desk composing his sermon for the coming Sunday. He looked up and slid his reading glasses down his button-like nose as Robert was shown in by Brother Boaz.

“Why, good evening, Mr. Mayor,” Brother Jobe began. “I've been studying up on Pentecost. You know, the followers of Jesus were frightened in the days after he took leave of his bodily raiment there on the cross. We take it for granted nowadays that we know how that story developed—the resurrection and the start of a church and so forth—but the disciples, they didn't know nothing at the time, and they were scared. Jesus had wanted to provide for the spiritual fortification of his followers, you see. Now, according to the Nicene Creed, the Holy Ghost was present at the creation of the world and the birth of Jesus and the crucifixion and the resurrection and was lodged also in the hearts of the disciples of Jesus, and he had prayed to the father that this Holy Ghost spirit would be the protection that his disciples needed and would be the very expression of their faith, too, in those parlous days—you following all this, old son?”

“Sort of,” Robert said.

“Well, it don't matter, I guess. But there you have it. You get some cash money out of them apple knockers?”

“Yes, enough to go ahead and look for a boat in Albany,” Robert said. “But on the way back I noticed there's some people camping out on Lewis Hill. A pretty sizable bunch. I don't like how it looks.”

“Campers?” Brother Jobe said. He removed his eyeglasses altogether and rubbed his whole face with both hands. Then he blinked vigorously. “These ain't campin' times. People don't sleep out in the weather 'less they ain't got nowhere to go, or are out ranging for some purpose.”

“What I thought too.”

“Did you go mingle amongst them?”

“No, I did not. It seemed to me that they might be trouble.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.” He swiveled in his oak chair to gaze out the window. A three-quarter moon was rising over Schoolhouse Hill to the southwest in a lustrous blue green sky the color of a tropical sea. “You better show me on the map where these birds are. I'll send my rangers over for a look-see.”

T
HIRTEEN

Mary Beth Ivanhoe, known as the Queen Bee or Precious Mother among the brothers and sisters of the New Faith, lay in bed in her quarters, which was a jewel box–like windowless room at the center and apex of three levels of chambers up in the old high school gymnasium, where she and the young women devoted to her care resided. A cupola at the top of the ceiling let in the first rays of evening moonlight in a room otherwise lighted with a few candles. Mary Beth was the group's epileptic clairvoyant spirit guide. She'd been grievously injured by a speeding Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot of the Hunter's Ridge Mall, outside Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2006, when a boy of sixteen with the laces of his Kobe Bryant Nikes untied managed to jam his loose right shoe between the gas pedal and the floor panel in such a way that the throttle opened to the maximum and stuck. The Jeep accelerated rapidly down the loading lane and was going sixty-three miles an hour when Mary Beth happened to back out of her space in its path to get perfectly T-boned on the driver's side of her Toyota Celica. She was in a coma for weeks and was altogether a different person when she came out of it.

Though she was afflicted with horrific seizures and many other chronic disorders, Mary Beth's massive injuries had also endowed her with extraordinary mental abilities to view events at both a geographical and temporal remove, which allowed her to guide the New Faith people out of the tumult of Dixieland ultimately to the group's “New Jerusalem” in Union Grove, New York. Her health had declined markedly over the preceding year, especially after she gave birth to quadruplets the previous fall. The pregnancy itself had been a matter of intense and mysterious wonder, regarded by the sisters and brothers as a miracle.

Following the brief visit of Robert Earle and his report of strangers encamped on Lewis Hill, Brother Jobe laid aside his unfinished sermon on the Pentecost and hurried to Mary Beth's chamber. At the door, intricately figured with a hexagonal honey­comb pattern executed in marquetry of stained hardwoods, he heard the sound of shape note singing, a musical form derived from the group's place of origin in the southern mountains. This so-called sacred harp music had a shrill and somber beauty to it. Behind the door, eight female voices sang the traditional hymn “Idumea” in a minor key. Brother Jobe knew the song full well and hearing its lyrics in a four-part harmony chilled him.

And am I born to die

To lay this body down

And must my trembling spirit fly

Into a world unknown

A land of deepest shade

Unpierced by human thought

The dreary regions of the dead

Where all things are forgot

The door was heavy but so exquisitely balanced that it opened soundlessly and it took more than a moment for the women to discover Brother Jobe standing there. Their voices stopped in sequence until the contralto Sister Zuruiah finished the verse alone. All faces turned to him expectantly.

“You done that real nicely, sisters,” he said. “Could you give us a moment?”

The women picked up plates, a tray of uneaten food, a wash basin, towels, and other sundries and exited the chamber in a swirl of coordinated activity. When the door clicked shut, Brother Jobe dragged a chair closer to the bed. The room was extraordinarily warm—Mary Beth demanded it that way—and mingled odors of cloying sweetness and decay hung thickly in the air.

“What all is going on?” Mary Beth asked in a phlegmy, reedy voice. “I was enjoying that.”

“They'll come back, dear. Relax.”

“Don't tell me to relax. They was easing my pain. Who all are you, anyways? I can't hardly see no more.”

“It's me, Precious Mother. Lyle,” Brother Jobe said, going by the old times given name she knew him by, Lyle Beecham Wilsey. “You all right?”

“Of course not. I'm done for. What do you think they's singing about?”

“Why, you look a durn sight better than I seen you in years, slimmed right down and all like you done.”

It was true. Mary Beth had weighed in at well over three hundred pounds around Christmastime and had shed a hundred fourteen pounds since. She was no longer virtually entombed in the folds and wattles of her own flesh and was beginning to somewhat resemble the ordinary Carolina girl she had once been, the girl who had worked in an Old Navy store at a Raleigh shopping mall, dated athletic young men, and vacationed at Rodanthe on the Outer Banks in her stepmother's time-share. But now she could hardly eat a thing, and her cells were starved, and the synergies of progressive organ malfunction as a result of her injuries were hastening her toward a definite mortal completion. She remained sentient enough to know it. For a while, Brother Jobe didn't speak but dabbed at his eyes with handkerchief and sniffled.

“I could send down for some pie,” he said, “if that would make you feel better.”

“I'm done eatin'.”

“Don't say that.”

“I'm awful weary of this life is all,” she said.

“Want me to git the doc in here?”

“I don't never want to see no doctor again. Sumbitches treated me like a goldurned science project, and look what I come to.” Her breathing sounded labored. Brother Jobe felt the veil of denial fall away in his own mind as he watched her battered body heave and shudder under the bedsheet. The yellow turban she wore to conceal her hairlessness glowed like a lamp in the meager candlelight.

“I don't know what we gonna do if you leave us, dear,” he said.

“Don't worry. I'll be up yonder with you-know-who and my kin,” she gasped as a rogue pain shot up the back of her neck like the jab of a pithing needle. Brother Jobe cringed in sympathy. “I expect you-all gonna run around like chickens with no heads for a while,” she added. “By-and-by you'll be all right. I known for some time there's a gal out there fixing to replace me.”

“Who?”

“It ain't clear. Some new blood, I think. Say, what all'd you barge in on me for anyways? Surely not just to pass the time of day in idle chitchat. I was at peace with that there sing-along.”

Well, Mary Beth, I was wondering if you got any of that far-seein' mojo left.”

“I ain't hardly tried in a while, I been so weary.”

“I'd be obliged if you give it a go.”

“What's up?”

“That man Mr. Earle, the mayor here, saw some strange doings out east of town. Folks camping on a hillside, he said. Put your mind to what that might be about.”

Mary Beth squeezed her eyes and emitted a set of grunts and groans expressing tremendous interior effort. Beads of sweat appeared on her forehead.

“Ain't no use,” she said with a final rasp. “I'm drawing blanks. I don't see nothin' but bare planting fields and livestock. Wait!”

“I'm here, dear.”

“Green grass,” she muttered.

“Well, it
is
springtime—”

“Naw, this green grass ain't about that. It's green but it's dead.”

“Huh? Pardon me, but that sounds like a riddle—”

“Aw, I ain't tuned in right. It's all a muddle. Something about green grass is all. Oh, dear Jesus!”

With that utterance Mary Beth jerked back so hard the headboard of her bed hit the wall. Her body spasmed, her eyes rolled up under the lids, her mouth clenched, and her lips retracted displaying only a partial array of teeth. Whitish foam began to run out of her nose and mouth. Brother Jobe stolidly waited it out, knowing that there was nothing he could do to arrest her seizure. She emerged from the fugue state panting. Brother Jobe found a rag on a washstand and wiped the spittle from her face as her chest heaved.

“Oooowee, that was a . . . a humdinger,” she croaked, her breathing like chords on a broken harmonium. “I seen something . . . out there.”

“What's that? What'd you see, Mary Beth?”

“That green grass. It's a person.”

“How can grass be a person?”

“I don't have no idear. I'm so tired. Got to sleep. Send them gals back in and leave me be.”

F
OURTEEN

Brothers Seth and Elam, veterans of the war in the Holy Land, the first a wiry half-Cherokee and the other a former NFL prospect in the last days of the old times when pro sports still ruled the land, rode out east of town in the light of the waxing three-quarter moon. They were glad to be at large in the landscape, on horseback, out in the springtime night air, after being shut in much of the elongated northeastern winter. As army rangers specializing in reconnaissance night was their natural element. They had studied a topo map before leaving and committed the rather simple route to memory. Eventually, riding east, they made out the campfires on the side of Lewis Hill. In a little while, they turned off old state highway 372 onto a wagon track in a field. The wagon track followed a hedgerow past other fields not yet plowed and up to the edge of a high pasture where twenty-seven tents were pitched in no discernible arrangement.

“These ain't military types,” Elam observed.

“I don't believe they's even Boy Scouts,” Seth whispered back.

They hitched their mounts in a locust grove at elevation and crept up to a three-hundred-year-old stone wall washed with sprays of bramble canes and wild rose, just barely budding at this time of year. Most of the individual campfires before the tents were merely smoldering now. But, deeper within the encampment, they saw one larger brighter fire, around which dozens of figures sat. The rangers could hear voices ringing in song.

“I know that tune,” Seth whispered to Elam. “What all's it called?”

“‘This Land Is Your Land.'”

“I be dog. They's socialists for sure.”

“Shush.”

They watched at a remove for a time. People came and went. Sparks flew as tree limbs were tossed on the fire. The rangers smelled something sweet roasting. The singers ran through a considerable repertory: “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Joe Hill,” “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” “Goodnight Irene,” “Wimoweh.”

Seth studied the gathering through a pair of compact binoculars.

“Hey, quite a number of them is women,” he whispered. “Young'ns at that.”

“Lemme see.” Elam took the optics. “Hmm. They're wearing men's clothes.”

“Want to introduce ourself?”

“What's our cover?”

“Men of Jesus and like that?” Seth said.

“I dunno,” Elam said. “Nighttime and all. That won't wash. Let's say coon hunters for start.”

“Copy that. Fall back to Jesus.”

“All right, let's go.”

They clambered over the stone wall, entered the pasture, and made their way past the tents to the big fire where the strangers were disposed in various postures: sitting, reclining, couples cuddling, some women with women and men with men, several with guitars and one banjo. They had been singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” swaying in time with the music, when the rangers emerged into the orange halo of firelight.

“How you-all doin'?” Seth said.

“Evening ladies,” Elam said. “And gents. We was out and about and heard you-all.”

The people around the fire greeted them with silence and stared emptily back at them, many with their mouths open, as if amazed or perplexed. Then, a figure on the far side of the fire stood up.

“Are you regulators?” the person asked, rather sternly. Seth and Elam could not tell whether they were being addressed by a man or by a woman. The voice was of middling register, and the standing figure, dressed in high boots, trousers, and layers of flannel and expeditionary polarfleece from the old times and a wool Sherpa hat with dangling earflap ties, presented an ambiguous picture in the firelight. Then the person moved sinuously through the throng of seated campers until a handsome, big-boned woman stood before the rangers. She was just under six feet tall, with wisps of sandy-blond hair curling out of her Sherpa hat and raptor eyes that suggested steely determination. “This is a no-gun zone,” she said, straight deadpan, her delicate mouth downturned into a self-consciously dramatic frown that worked against her natural appeal.

“We just out for coon,” Seth said, adding “ma'am” and making sure to point the muzzle of his rifle toward the ground.

“Please don't use the ‘c' word in our company.”

“Huh . . . ?”

“It's offensive.”

“Uh . . . coon?”

“That's right.”

“Oh, it's the animal, not a person,” Elam tried to explain. “You know, raccoon, ma'am.”

“First of all, we don't call it that anymore,” she retorted. “Too much room for misunderstanding and offense. To us it is the ring-tailed handwasher.”

“You kidding, ma'am?” Elam said.

“No, I'm not kidding,” she said. “Anyway, we're vegetarians. We don't approve of killing animals. And don't call me ‘ma'am.' That term is an instrument of systematic patriarchal oppression. It smacks of binary opposition and invites unwanted penetration.”

“Say what?” Seth said.

“That's our analysis of the associated cultural production,” she continued. “Nobody's privileged here. Now is there something you wanted—besides the meat of little animals that are just out minding their own business, not bothering you in any way, shape, or form?”

“We just saw your campfire from a ways away,” Elam said. “Thought we'd see who was out and about. So what do you want to be called by if ‘ma'am' won't do?”

“By my name,” she said. “Flame.”

“Pardon me,” Elam said. “Like that fire there?”

“Yes . . . ?” she said, the interrogatory uptick meant to display her impatience with yokels.

“She do burn bright,” Seth said.

“And hot,” Elam said.

Flame bristled visibly again. “Did I ask what you two wanted? I thought I did.”

“Well, uh, Flame,” Elam said, “it's part of our duties to keep an eye on things, who's coming and going in the area and like that.”

“Then you are regulators.”

“Uh, no. More like lookouts?”

“Who for?”

“Our people back in town.”

“You sound like you're not even from around here,” Flame said.

“Well, we're not, ma'am—”

“Flame.”

“Darn it you're hard to get on with.”

“Lookit,” she said. “You barge into our camp with guns—”

“I'm sorry about that,” Elam said. “We don't mean any harm and we'll be on our way shortly. To answer your question, we are from down South, mostly Virginia and North Carolina . . .”

“'Cept for me,” Seth said. “Oklahoma born.”

“And with all the troubles back home, violence and fighting and all, we come north, first to Pennsylvania, which didn't work out so well cuz of its proximity to Washington, DC, and then we lit out again further north to find some security. We are the New Faith Covenant Brotherhood Church of Jesus. There are eighty-two of us in all, counting the young ones. We have settled in Union Grove, some five miles to the west of here, and we are getting on pretty good there, considering these times. Now, who all are you, if I may ask?”

“We're free citizens of the Berkshire People's Republic,” she said.

“Berkshire—where's that at?”

“Those are the mountains of western Massachusetts. Our capital is the town of Great Barrington.”

“You got your own country?” Seth asked.

“Nature hates a vacuum.”

“What's there to hate about a vacuum?” Seth said. “Anyways, the electric's out and all.”

“A political vacuum,” Flame said. “What's wrong with you?”

“Nothin'—”

“You never heard the phrase?
Nature hates a vacuum
?”

“I guess I have,” Seth said. “Do the federals know you gone and seceded from the USA?”

“They're irrelevant now,” Flame said. “After Washington was destroyed, we formed our own government. We had to. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has no presence anymore in the Berkshires either, no resources, no law enforcement, no social services, no outreach, no funding. Of course, you can't have no government.”

“Why not?”

“There would be no justice. Rights would be trampled. Oppression and rape would rule. The poor and disabled would be cut loose to die. Discrimination, economic inequality, unfairness in the workplace, gender coercion, environmental degradation, bad schools, and creeping theocracy would be the order of the day.”

“We got some problems here,” Seth said, “but nothin' that bad.”

“How do you monitor excessive privilege?”

“Privilege of what?”

“Race, gender, income.”

“I dunno. We have some rich and some poor. Like always, everywhere.”

“Is it right, though?”

“It's normal, far as I know.”

“Surely you know these aren't normal times, mister.”

“Even the rich ain't that rich—not like in the old times,” Seth said. “They don't have no airplanes and like that. Around here they's just farmers, mainly.”

“And they employ a lot of people,” Elam said. “There's work for anybody that wants it.”

“Is your community diverse?” Flame asked.

“Well, it takes all kinds,” Elam replied, flustered, as though teacher had singled him out for humiliation.

“You know what I mean.”

“Not really.”

“Then you must be politically unconscious, living in happy anarchy as you do, with no government.”

“We're not living in anarchy,” Elam said.

“Who monitors diversity?”

“It takes care of itself.”

“What about your homeless?”

“Homes are a dime a dozen around here. The population's way down. Abandoned properties everywhere you look, and folks just move in where they please. Nobody has to go homeless.”

“It sounds like paradise,” Flame said with a sardonic snort and the others in the big circle around the fire giggled. “Utopia! Satori! Nirvana!”

“We're looking out for our own affairs well enough, considering,” Elam said. “You still haven't said what y'all are doing over here in New York state.”

“Every year we go on an outreach,” Flame said. “We call it the Spring Fling, but it's a serious political organizing mission. The People's Republic wants to invite the neighboring regions into our federation for the greater good. Eventually, perhaps it will become a replacement for the broken United States government, and our poor country will be reborn.”

“Who you got besides yourself so far?” Seth asked.

“The towns of southern Vermont will be coming along, I believe. Brattleboro, Wilmington. We met with the Bennington council the other day.”

“Have you heard of the Foxfire Republic in Tennessee and the New Africa bunch down in Georgia, Alabama, and like that?” Elam asked.

“Of course. We've seen reports.”

“Are you worried that they coming up to git y'all over in Berkshire?” Seth asked.

“Foxfire is fascist and racist,” Flame said. “We're not comfortable seeing that in what used to be America. Maybe that's okay with you.”

“Not really,” Elam said. “We're live and let live.”

“Except for harmless little animals.”

“Well,” Elam said. “We like a little meat with our vegetables. Anyway, Tennessee is a far piece from here. And it appears the leader of that outfit been assassinated. Mebbe they'll change their ways now. Like if someone had nipped that Hitler in the bud before he went and started the second world war.”

“They're still committing atrocities against people of color down south,” Flame said.

“We've heard where it's plenty of wickedness on both sides,” Elam said. “I guess me and my partner'll shuffle along now.”

“Is he your partner?” Flame said, a smile suddenly lighting her face.

“We hunt and patrol together and like that,” Elam said.

“Oh,” Flame said, affecting to look abashed. “But you're not . . .” She made a little twiddling gesture with her index finger. Elam and Seth swapped a glance, both genuinely perplexed.

“We go back to army days,” Seth said. “The Holy Land war.”

“Oh? Did you kill people?” Flame asked.

“Yes, we did,” Elam said. “That's what you do in war, ma'am . . . er, Flame.”

The crowd around the fire groaned and grumbled.

“Have you ever encountered the teachings of Glen Ethan Greengrass?” Flame asked, the tone of her voice rising again.

“Who's that?”

“The founder of the Berkshire People's Republic. Our leader and teacher. You two can read, can't you?”

“Of course we can,” Seth said.

“Someone, give me a green book,” Flame cried over her shoulder. A young man with a sunken chest about twenty stepped up and presented a slender volume with a green cloth cover to Flame's outstretched hand. “This is our bible,” she said, handing it, in turn, to Elam. The title on the cover read:
Birthing the New Knowledge Economy: Teachers as Midwives for the Skills Agenda of the Future
. Elam opened the book and turned to examine its pages in the firelight. He read a paragraph.

“
The path to victory in this great war for the minds of youth demands that we achieve radical inclusion,
” he read.
“It's not enough to know that we are created equally. We have to act on it every day or surrender to ignorance and failure. In the absence of diversity, stereotype rules. It fills the voids of truth that should be occupied by morality and justice.
Is the whole book like that?”

“It's genius,” Flame said. “He'll be coming soon. Do you understand? Glen Ethan Greengrass is coming to your town!”

“We're honored, I guess,” Elam said. “Pardon me for asking but does he have Jesus, your Glen Ethan? Does he carry the word of Jesus? Just wondering. You-all have that missionary tone.”