The Alliance (12 page)

Jabil is on the inside of the gate, and a few of the Mennonite men are with him. I see their fear and gather from it that they have no idea who’s been shot or what just happened since the observation porthole is blocked by the bodies of the crowd.

“I think everything’s okay,” I tell them. “Charlie was forced to shoot two guys who were about to shoot a helpless father.” I consider pointing out that they shot first,
not
Charlie, but this seems trivial in light of death. “I need through the gate,” I say to Jabil. “I have to calm them.”

He nods and instructs Malachi to help him lift the sliding bolt and heavy metal bar. They open the gate just wide enough for me to squeeze through, and then I hear the bar slide back into place. Being on the other side of that gate fills me with a sense of defenselessness that I know the other people here must also be experiencing.

The two thugs are sprawled across the lane. Their blood is the first of much, I am sure, to taint this hallowed property. The driver is facedown; the passenger is on his back—the latter appearing asleep except for the neat bullet wound bored into his head. As I had guessed, both of them are wearing high school rings on the same fingers where wedding bands will now never be: one gaudy red stone, one blue. Leaning closer, I see the football and baseball insignias, and the year they expected to graduate, which will now never happen.

Once I compose myself and raise my gaze, I see the young wife cradling her husband’s head in her lap. He is still bleeding from where he was pistol-whipped, but I know he will be okay. I stand to address the people. They’re in such a frenzy, I have to whistle between my teeth to make them take notice of me. When they
do
turn their heads in my direction—many faces bearing traces of dirt and tears—I can’t remember what I want to say.

Clearing my throat, I begin, “I’m here on behalf of Mt. Hebron Old Order Mennonite Community. If you’ll please just calmly move back from the gate, we will work at allowing the elderly and those with young children to come in for soup and bread. I’m sorry, but none of you may lodge or camp here. If you would like, you can stay over there.” I gesture to the field that used to be part of one big valley until the highway came through and cut it in half.

Charlie slips out of the gate behind me, and I watch the crowd’s unease ripple outward, like a pebble tossed in a shallow pond. If I didn’t know him, I’d be uneasy too. Then again, do I know him, really? With his dirty flannel shirt, unwashed hair, and gun slung over his broad shoulder, he looks like a mountain-man Rambo. Although the community is decently equipped to deal with the EMP, this place has certainly been no four-star suite. I know the stink of my construction sweat is almost as bad as Charlie’s, but his body odor still forces me to move.

“You heard the man,” Charlie says. The entire group immediately takes one step back. He turns to me. “Jabil says we gotta bring the bodies in and give them a proper burial.” And I can tell he’s just repeating orders he doesn’t want to fulfill.

I turn my back to the crowd and lower my voice. “How’re we going to bring them in?”

Before Charlie can answer, the left gate opens and Jabil comes out through it, carrying two stacked stretchers made from canvas and wood. When Jabil sees the bodies of the young men, his face goes white. He shakes his head, nostrils flaring. I think,
I know, I know.
For all the death I’ve seen, there’s something downright appalling about having to bury some kids who were barely old enough to die for their country—and yet died one week after its collapse.

“Can you help me?” Jabil asks.

I nod and crouch, rolling the limp body of the driver onto the first stretcher and trying to straighten the limbs. The body is warm, but the eyes are glazed. I close the lids, as I have closed the eyes of many of my comrades. And of my brother. But this does not feel the same. Not at all.

Malachi slips through the gate, holding two bundled sheets against his chest. He snaps the blank sheet out over the body, calling to mind a surrendering flag, though I doubt such a flag would hold an ounce of weight in this new war. Charlie and Malachi grip the ends of the stretcher, and Charlie backs up until they fit the driver’s body through the gate.

Meanwhile, Jabil kneels over the boy who was the passenger in the Suburban. He stares down at him a second and then strides across the stretch of pavement, where he retches in the grass with his hands on his knees. He stays like that for so long, I’m not sure—judging by his convulsing back—if he’s crying or still throwing up. Perhaps both.

Then he turns and wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. He walks back over to me, his jaw set. His eyes are almost as lifeless as the boys’. “I remember him,” Jabil rasps. “He used to come into Field to Table with his mom. That was . . . a long time ago.”

Jabil doesn’t need to hear that, over time, people can change, lose their innocence. He just needed to speak, to recognize a spirit that’s passed on, so I don’t say anything.
I pick up the booted feet of the passenger’s body and Jabil takes the shoulders. We carefully maneuver him on top of the stretcher before Jabil covers him with a sheet. The two of us bear the boy through the gate and set him down next to the other body. Jabil goes back outside and returns, escorting the young husband who was knocked unconscious, along with his child and wife.

I watch Charlie give Jabil a look, but he doesn’t say anything, as he must know he’s skating on thin ice as it is. Yes, he probably protected lives by extinguishing two; however, that’s not always how you perceive it when you see dead boys lying beneath white sheets.

Leora comes over from the soup table, the ladle dripping in her hand. “Who got shot?” She looks around the group, and I can tell she’s trying to make sure everyone’s accounted for. Her eyes land on Jabil, and then they land on me. She lowers them and cups her hand beneath the ladle, catching every drop of broth like it’s liquid gold. I know our supplies are diminishing. I wonder if Leora regrets her decision to provide nourishment for the first batch of strangers who came through the gate. But I am starting to learn that she’s not the type to keep the last bowl of grain for herself if it means another person going hungry. I wonder if Leora’s character being so different from mine is what draws me to her, like a magnet unable to resist the opposite charge.

Jabil says to Leora, “These men drove up to the gate with
guns. They tried to intimidate the crowd by shooting, and they assaulted that man over there.” He points to the guy whose head wound is now cinched with a strip of cloth. “Charlie shot them both. They died instantly.”

By filling in the gaps of the story and calling the deceased
men
instead of
boys
, I can tell Jabil’s trying to make this first foray into warfare not seem as ghastly as it actually is.

“I never knew it would come to this,” Leora whispers. “At least not this soon.”

In the distance, I hear Leora’s sister calling for her with her unique cry of “’Ora! ’Ora!” Leora wipes beneath her eyes and walks away. I watch her go, her shoulders slumped with defeat, and I find myself hoping warfare doesn’t strip her innocence like it’s stripped mine.

Leora

T
HE BOYS WHO WERE SHOT
yesterday were buried last night. The men placed their bodies in homemade caskets and lowered them into holes dug at the edge of the property, where the fence separates us from national forest land. I decided to come out here this afternoon while Anna takes her standard Sunday nap—a picture book tented on top of the covers and her arms outstretched, as if everything is the same as it has always been. I didn’t realize, until crossing the lane away from our house, that this is the first time I’ve been alone since the EMP. For a moment I battle guilt, wondering if Anna will be all right without me. But I cannot watch her every second, protecting her from the outsiders and from my own people, whom—considering what happened right outside our gates—I am also not sure I can trust.

The small gravestone is marked only with my
mudder
’s name, Dorothy Ebersole, and not with the dates of her birth and death. Myron Beiler crafted the simple marker out of kindness, since there was nothing, not even a wooden cross, that we could afford. A few weeds have sprouted since I last tended the area. I pull them and leave in their place a fistful of Indian paintbrush—one of the wildflowers she always loved. I glance at the sunken mound, where her own pine
box has settled, and try to picture the transformation that has taken place in heaven rather than the one beneath the earth.

I walk over to the new, unmarked graves, convex with soil. I am sure they are deep, just as I am sure the caskets were as sturdy as they could be, considering the necessary haste of burying the men within twenty-four hours after their deaths. Jabil never does anything halfheartedly, and I know from the guilt I saw lingering around his mouth last evening—when the men hitched up the wagon to carry the bodies across the field—that these burial rites were a kind of penance for such a careless extinguishing of two lives. I don’t blame him for not stopping the shooting; I don’t blame anyone. I merely think there must be another way to approach this end of our world.

I stand by the graves for some time, until the sun begins to descend behind the snow-covered mountain range and, like a parting gift, wraps the valley with a ribbon of fire. Then I look beyond the graves into the forest, thick with feathered pines and spruce, the ground adorned with leftover ferns and cones. I step closer to the fence, gripping the cold wire squares, and see—down the row—an intricate spiderweb waiting to ensnare the creator’s prey. I understand that we could set traps. We could hunt and fish. We could gather roots and nuts and herbs. If what Sal claimed about herself is true—and not a scheme to remain on this
property while everyone else is turned away—she should be the best person to help me discover what we need to survive.

Hope rouses in my chest as I stare deep into the forest. Then, next to a towering pine, I see a contrasting flash of white. I blink hard, wiping the crust of old tears from my eyes. The deer is exquisite, an albino more phantom than whitetail buck, and so unlike anything I’ve seen, I almost think the horrors of yesterday have distorted my mind. Its rack is symmetrical, the tines curling forward into lengthened points. The soft folds of its nostrils look darker compared to the blanched color of its fur. We stare at each other in the fading light, his hide rippling with the primal urge to run, even as his strange pink eyes remain affixed on me.

I know this deer is the one hunters have been seeking for years: the exotic creature left behind when the former fenced-in hunting reserve became national forest. Yet somehow he has remained—adapted and survived—despite the odd color of his own hide setting the odds against him. If he can survive, maybe our community can survive too, through compromise and adaptation. And thus, we must embrace this alliance with the
Englischers
, even if doing so means compromising everything about the sanctity of life that we’ve been taught.

I glance behind me—wondering, suddenly, if anyone
else has contemplated coming to pay their respects to those who may or may not have intended to snuff out our lives, like a hand clamped over a candle flame. Not wanting the whitetail’s survival uncovered, I clap loudly, my palms stinging with the impact. The buck snorts. His tail stands up, the white tip as elongated as a spear. He bounds into the woods without looking back. This is when I comprehend the buck has remained, adapted, and survived not despite having a community, but because he has none.

I walk up the porch steps and sit on the bench to remove my shoes, since the soles are clotted with mud from my graveyard vigil. I set them aside to dry and look up at my house. Illumined by the kerosene lamp, the picture window appears like a shadow box, framing my family as they sit up for a meal my
mudder
, of course, has not prepared. Sal, her son in her lap, has assumed my usual place at the head of the table. Anna and Seth are sitting across from each other.
Grossmammi
Eunice is sitting up as well. Watching the scene, I feel both pleased and heartsick. My family is capable of living without me; therefore, I can no longer hide behind them rather than embracing a future and a plan.

Sal says, when I enter the house, “Hope it’s okay I made my way around your kitchen.”

“Please—” I hold up my hand—“you’re more than welcome to make yourself at home.”

And she
is
welcome, though I typically abhor someone invading my territory—even someone who isn’t a stranger. And food isn’t the only way Sal has helped. She has been staying with us for less than forty-eight hours, and she has swept the house, beaten dust from the rugs, and organized the dried goods and meats and cheeses, which have been brought in from Field to Table, according to product and color, so I have to fight no compulsion to redo her work. Sal believes she must do these things to compensate for her stay. I would console her by saying this is not the case, yet I know it’s true. Melinda—who must be sleeping—has not pulled her share of the weight, and so she should technically be ousted from the community. But the guilt I battle, because of how I first treated her, won’t let me turn her in.

“Has Melinda been up yet?” I point to the living room door that is, once again, closed. Sal shakes her head and fills Seth’s mug with coffee. I never let him drink coffee in case the myth is true and the caffeine stunts his growth—not to mention that it’s right before bed. But Seth just watches me, his eyes crackling with defiance, and takes a sip. Some things aren’t worth arguing over, especially since he seems to be purposely antagonizing me, and I don’t want to give him the reaction he seeks. If he’s being forced to face the
responsibilities of adulthood, I guess he should be able to drink coffee like a man.

My
grossmammi
says, gumming around a spoonful of food, “They talked about the Four Horsemen when I was a girl, but I never thought I’d last long enough to see the end of times.” Her words are muddled by mashed potato and by her native Pennsylvania Dutch accent, which hasn’t lost its potency over the years, despite the different places she’s lived. I’m sure this combination makes it next to impossible for Sal to understand her, and I am grateful. Nothing like mentioning the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to top off the night.

I leave my family to finish their meal in peace, as my stomach is too unsettled to join them, passing through the kitchen and opening the door to the living room. The space is fetid with the scent of trapped air and unwashed clothes, but it does not hold the same dark power it used to. Perhaps that’s because there are too many current issues to remain debilitated by past events. I stride across the room and yank back the curtains. I have been patient with Melinda, but there’s a point when I have to stop letting myself be treated like the proprietor of a hotel. I glance at the couch where she sleeps and see the pillow and crocheted afghan, which we lent to her, stacked on the left-hand side. The end table beside the couch is cluttered with a still life of breakfast remnants, the whole of which I brought to her this morning:
apple peelings, a piece of jelly toast nibbled along the crust, a white ceramic mug whose interior is ringed with a tea stain, the bag withered on the saucer beside it. I turn and survey the entire room, searching for her or for something I may have missed.

Looking at the pillow again, I see a small white square stamping out the embroidered background. I walk over to the couch and peer down at the pillow, finding a note written on a piece of stationery Melinda must have found in the desk. I pick the note up and study the erratic penmanship, for a moment unable to form the letters into words:
Thanks for everything,
it reads,
but just waiting here is killing me.

There is a lump in my throat I would’ve never thought Melinda could summon—despite our moment on the porch, when I viewed her unshed tears. It’s not only because she’s left; it’s because I don’t know what’s going to happen to her now that she’s reentered our disjointed society. We could’ve figured something out if she had spoken with us. I regret not telling her those hollow platitudes, for offering someone false hope is better than offering them no hope at all. But maybe it wasn’t my silence that drove her away; maybe she just couldn’t handle the strain of separation from her family and decided it would be better to risk everything instead of moldering in a stranger’s house, marking the infinite hours of her life with pills.

I close the door behind me, strangely calm in the wake of Melinda’s departure. Sal,
Grossmammi
Eunice, and Seth look up. Baby Colton and Anna—who is stabbing her carrot with a fork—are the only ones who remain oblivious to my face, which must give my news away before I’ve had the chance to speak. “It seems . . .” I pause to breathe shallowly through my mouth. “It seems Melinda left sometime while we were at church.”

Seth sets his coffee mug down at once and rises from the table. He pulls his hat over his shaggy brown hair. I move toward him and hold on to his arm, partially to show my affection and partially to emphasize the severity of the request I’m about to make. He stiffens under my touch but doesn’t move away. How have I not noticed how tall he’s grown? How handsome he’s become? But I have to admit that he has been overlooked since long before the EMP. Anna’s special needs require so much attention that Seth has often been treated more like a cherished neighbor boy than a brother or a son.

“Find Jabil and ask if someone let Melinda through the gate,” I intone. “If they haven’t, she might still be around.” My brother nods at my instructions and leaves, his purposeful stride such a mirroring of my
vadder
’s that I have to turn from the sight.

Sal meets my eyes, and I can tell she understands the severity of what has happened all on her own. If Melinda—as
weak and dehydrated as she was—has already gotten past our gates, she is as close to death as if she had accidentally overdosed—her death the tragic end I had been preparing myself for whenever I entered that same dank room where I found my
mudder
.

I beckon Sal toward me, and she rises with Colton on her hip. I pull the living room door closed behind us and ask quietly, “Does Melinda stand a chance?”

Though I am at least three inches taller than Sal, I feel young and naive standing next to her. I find myself pondering—looking down into her black, bottomless gaze—what those eyes must’ve seen to possess such knowledge. “No single woman stands much of a chance these days,” she says. “That’s why I had to leave town.” Sal turns from me and switches her son to her other hip. “You mind if me and Colton move in here?”

I am so taken aback, I don’t know what to say. Her request seems not only premature, but coldhearted, since we don’t know if Melinda is truly gone. On the other hand, I got so distracted by the arrival of the refugees and the shooting that followed, I never got around to speaking to Jabil about Seth staying at their house. So for the past two nights, my brother has grumbled each time he’s had to make his bed on the laundry room floor. If he were my son, I would teach him a lesson by making him sleep there even when his room opens back up.

But I am not his mother; I am his sister. I don’t want to squander these uncertain days teaching him lessons I am barely old enough to learn. I want the kind of fun relationship with him I’ve never made the effort to have with anyone.