Thumped (6 page)

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”

—Luke 16:10

ONE ADVANTAGE TO MY FAME IS ACCESS TO THE FASTEST
first-class transportation. This autopiloted air taxi to Goodside will only take fifteen minutes, which is just enough time for me to get in costume and in character.

“It’s safe to look now!” I command Ram, who insisted on covering his eyes while I changed. “What do you think?”

There isn’t a lot of room in the cabin, but I do a slow, clumsy spin to model the Conception Couture maternity gown Lib borrowed from a vendor at the party. We figure it will be easier to sneak me into Goodside if I’m dressed as Harmony.

Ram inspects me carefully. “You don’t have freckles on your nose like she does,” he says. “But I doubt anyone else will notice.”

Jondoe would notice
, I think. I feel bad that he’s not here with us right now, but that’s his own fault for going off the grid. Besides, Jondoe and Ram have gone out of their way to avoid each other for the past eight and a half months. Now certainly isn’t the time for Harmony’s husband and babydaddy to bond.

“How are we going to get her out of there?”

“It’s Sunday night. Zeke Yoder will be at the main gate,” he says. “He’ll let us in and out if we’re right quick about it.”

I’m relying entirely on Ram here. I have to trust him, but he’s not the sharpest pitchfork in the barn.

“How do you know?”

Ram reveals the tiniest hint of a smile. “I just know is all.”

My own sketchiness has made me more attuned to others’ secret-keeping. There’s definitely something Ram isn’t telling me right now.

“It sounds like you’ve got experience with sneaking around,” I say in a leading way that I hope will encourage him to keep talking.

“I reckon I do.” He blushes. Then, to take the heat off himself, he asks, “So what’s going on with you and Zen anyway? That other girl was getting mighty familiar.”

Gaaah. My stomach swoops and drops, and it’s not because the air taxi has just flown through a turbulent air stream.

“I don’t know anymore,” I say honestly.

Zen was right when he said he isn’t contractually obligated to do anything with anyone. He’s a free agent. He doesn’t have to wait around for me. He can sperminate anyone he wants to.

Or no one at all.

Zen
is
still in possession of one black-market condom, after all. He wouldn’t use it with Ventura, would he? WOULD HE? Because as eager as she is to bump, Zen is equally committed to the Mission.

The
stupid
mission.

“We’re almost there!” Ram calls out as the air taxi slows down its descent. “Just let me do all the talking.”

Ram has changed dramatically since I’ve known him. Eight and a half months ago, Zen and I had to dose Ram with Tocin just to get more than monosyllabic responses out of him. Now he’s masterminding escape plans. These public appearances have really helped him come out of his shell.

The air taxi decelerates considerably before hovering over the green space in front of the main gates to Goodside. Ram glances out the window.

“Oh dear Lord!” he yelps, unbuckling himself from the seat.

And before I can even ask what’s wrong, he slams open the Emergency Exit door. The air taxi is still hovering a good ten feet in the air, but that doesn’t stop Ram from jumping out and landing with a roll onto the grass.

“Ram!” I scream. “Are you crazy?”

I try to get a look at what’s going on outside. Ram quickly picks himself up and runs toward two other men at the entrance to the settlement. It’s too dark and distant to see what’s going on and I have to impatiently wait a few seconds for the taxi to finally touch down. I dart out the door as soon as it’s landed, and try to move as fast as I can toward the scene of the commotion, which isn’t easy to do in this ankle-length gown. I don’t know how Harmony has put up with this dress code for so long.

“Put the gun down, Zeke!” Ram is shouting.

“I’VE GOT A TRESSPASSER!” squawks a tall, skinny guard pointing the gun at a third bearded man in black with his hands up in surrender. What is this? A bit of Church-on-Church infighting? A ruckus over a stolen goat or whatever Goodsiders feud over?

“Don’t shoot! I know him! He’s with me!” Ram shouts, putting himself in front of the human target.

This seems to agitate Zeke even more. “What do you mean
with you
?”

The barrel of the gun is shaking. If Zeke aims for the heart, the bullet just might miss Ram altogether.

“Now is not the time for this, Zeke,” Ram says in an assertive tone I’ve never heard before.

“When
is
the time for it?”

“Not when you’re carrying a loaded shotgun!”

“Who is he, anyway? Is he from another settlement?”

There’s something odd going on between these two, and it has absolutely nothing to do with me or the captured man in question. The trespasser must also be picking up on the strange tension, because he lifts his head and smiles bemusedly at me.

And that’s when I see him for who he really is.

It’s Jondoe in disguise.

That crazy, lovestruck sonuvahump is here to free Harmony too.

I’M SCURRYING AROUND THE HOUSE, TRYING TO DECIDE WHAT I
should pack (cloth diapers, knitted booties, cotton jumpers?) and what I should leave behind (cloth diapers, knitted booties, cotton jumpers?) when I’m stopped in my tracks by the lowing and braying of the animals in the barn.

Someone’s coming. Again.

I peek out the front hall window and see three lantern lights approaching my driveway. Oh my grace. The Elders! They must know that I’ve called my sister! Will they force me to stay here until the twins are born? It would have been better for everyone if I had never come back here. But it’s too late now. For a brief moment I consider making a run for it. But at eight and a half months pregnant, I’m not going to get very far very fast.

There’s nowhere for me to hide, nothing more for me to do but slump into a kitchen chair and surrender.

I’m helpless. Hopeless.

The lights reach the front landing. There’s no knock, just rattling of the doorknob.

“Open up!” I’d recognize that squawk anywhere: It’s Zeke Yoder. Unarmed, he’s about as intimidating as a baby chick. With a shotgun, however, he’s the most dangerous man in the settlement.

“It’s me, Harmony!”

Oh my grace. It’s Melody! She came just like she promised! She must have been stopped by Zeke at the front gate. I wonder why he didn’t turn her in to the Elders straightaway.

And then the bearer of the third light speaks.

“And me.”

Are my ears playing tricks on me?

For the first time since I returned to Goodside, I don’t feel weighted down by hopelessness. I turn the lock and allow myself to acknowledge this feeling—a wish, really—as to whose voice I heard, and who it might be on the other side.

Please, please, please
, I silently ask a God who should have stopped listening to me long ago.

I open the door to find my sister looking just like me in a green maternity gown.

“Harmony,” she gasps. “Your hair!”

Well,
almost
like me.

Next to her stands Zeke, who is dwarfed by a second bearded man dressed in a black hat and black suit. His identity is unmistakable, if inexplicable.

Jondoe.

And yet, in that Goodside suit, with an abundant fake beard, he doesn’t look all that different from Ram or any other young man in the settlement. It’s easy to convince myself, if only for a moment or two, that he is the Church member in good standing that I married eight and a half months ago, not Ram.

Until he smiles at me with those startlingly white teeth.

Jondoe’s teeth are brighter and straighter than anyone’s in Goodside have ever been, or ever will be. He illuminates the porch better than any lamplight, and it feels like my every prayer has been answered. And though I know I shouldn’t under these serious circumstances, I can’t help but smile back.

Zeke clears his throat. “These Othersiders say they need to call on you, Sister.”

My tongue is trapped in my throat.

I haven’t said a word to Jondoe since the morning after our one night together, when I slipped out the window and ran away. I remember how angry I was that morning, how humiliated and betrayed I felt after giving Jondoe the part of myself that I was supposed to save for my husband.

“She’s my sister,” I say. “And I know him.”

And it’s only after the words have left my lips and reached Jondoe’s ears that the alternative meaning of those words come to mind.

Oh yes, I know him. I have known him.

I blush. And unless I’m imagining things, I see red creeping across Jondoe’s cheeks too, just above his counterfeit beard.

“Ram said they want you to minister to them.”

“He did?” Then I redirect the question to Jondoe and Melody. “You
what
?”

“We came to convert,” Melody says, clasping her hands together at her chest.

“Yes,” Jondoe adds. “We want to join the Church.”

The sound of his voice makes me woozy. I close my eyes in a long, exhausted blink.

“Reckon I’ll leave you to it,” I hear Zeke say. “I gotta get back to my post.”

I listen to Zeke’s footsteps fade away. When I slowly open my eyes again, Jondoe is all I can see.

“Harmony.”

I try to focus on his face.

“Jondoe.”

Oh, what a joy to say his name again, not hidden behind a pronoun. All these months I’ve been unable to resist talking about Jondoe in the only way I knew how: by praying for his anonymous soul in prayerclique.

Please pray for a man who put his material riches before Heaven’s rewards.

Please pray for a man who shared his body outside the marriage bed.

Please pray for a man who lied to the girl who loved him.

Every time I clasped hands and looked Heavenward in secret prayer, my heart sprang up and sang inside me:

I’m praying for you, Jondoe! Can you hear me?

He heard me. And now he’s here.

His face is the last thing I see before all the lights go out.

JONDOE CATCHES HARMONY BEFORE SHE DROPS TO THE FLOOR.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s obviously in shock!” I say, helping Jondoe pull Harmony’s limp body into a sitting position. “I told you it would be too much for her! You should’ve waited with Ram in the air taxi!”

“Oh, sure!” he says, as he frantically fans Harmony’s face. “So he could borrow Zeke’s shogun and blast my balls off!”

“He just saved your life, remember?”

Ram told Zeke that Jondoe and I had paid big money to be ministered by Harmony in person. He also convinced him not to turn us in to the Elders until after we’d accepted the Lord.

“They’ll know you were responsible for the highest-profile conversions in the Church history!” Ram had claimed.

From the skeptical look on his face, it seemed less likely that Zeke obliged because he believed what Ram was saying, but more because Ram is the one who had asked him to believe it. Zeke did insist that it was his duty to escort us to Harmony’s household while Ram covered his post. I’m just relieved he was so eager to get back to it. Again, I’m guessing that had more to do with some business with Ram than with us. Zeke made Ram promise that they would “have a talk” when he returned. I can’t help but think that Zeke is going to be very disappointed when he gets back to find Ram already gone. The whole incident made no sense to me; then again, very little on this side of the gates did.

“I don’t know,” Jondoe is saying now as he fans Harmony’s face with his hands. “Ram could have spared me just to have the pleasure of punishing me for sleeping with his wife!”

“Ram wouldn’t do that,” I say. “He’s not the vengeful type.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Harmony mumbles, her eyes fluttering open.

“Harmony!” I exclaim, relieved that she’s come to. “We’re here to take you out of here. Ram should be here any second with the air taxi. . . .”

The words aren’t out of my mouth when I hear the buzz of the air taxi. Something must be wrong because Ram is standing at the open hatch, gesturing frantically for us to get inside. Jondoe doesn’t need to be told what to do. He simply scoops Harmony up into his arms and carries her out the door and across the yard.

“Oh my grace!” Harmony shrieks.

This is serious business, and yet the expressions on both of their faces can only be described as ecstatic, in the truest sense of that word.

“The Elders are on their way out here!” Ram shouts. “We have to go now.”

Harmony is pulled inside first, then me, followed by Jondoe. It’s only a two-seater, so for a few awkward seconds we’re all kind of stumbling all over each other to try to fit inside the tiny cabin. The taxi lifts and dips, lifts and dips, in a struggle to take off.

“Oh no,” Jondoe groans. “We must be over the maximum weight limit.”

Harmony’s eyes fly open in panic. “It’s the Elders!” She points out the window at the truck tearing down her driveway. “They’re going to force me stay! They’re going to take the babies away!” Such vehicles are used only in emergencies, so it’s safe to assume that Harmony is right.

The taxi is still wobbling in midair, just a few feet off the ground.

“I’m not going to let that happen to you!” Jondoe says.

“No!” Ram says pushing past Jondoe and toward the door. “
I’m
not going to let that happen to you!”

He reaches behind him and thrusts a small canvas rucksack into Harmony’s hands.

“This is for you! Use it well!”

And before we can do anything to stop him, Ram jumps out of the air taxi and we zoom upward and away.