Eden West (28 page)

I do not know how long my mother stood watching me, but when she kneels beside me at the wall, I sense that she has been there for some time.

“You have seen Father Grace,” she says.

I nod.

“I hear he is not well.”

“I think he was drunk,” I say.

She does not seem surprised. “It has been a dreadful winter. He mourns the loss of his child, and the others who have left us.”

“He told me that the Tree will bloom one last time, and that I am to wed Beryl, and that Zerachiel will come by summer’s end.”

She does not reply at first. I can hear her breathing. After a time, she speaks.

“Do you believe him?”

“I believed it when he said it. I heard it from his lips.”

“Even a prophet can be wrong.”

“A prophet who prophesizes falsehoods is no prophet.”

“Perhaps not, but his words give us hope. That is why we are here.”

“For hope?”

She nods, smiling sadly. “What will you do?”

“I cannot marry Beryl. I will tell Father Grace that the Lord has spoken to me.”

“Is that the truth?”

“No,” I say miserably.

“Are you certain?”

“If he has, I have not heard him.”

“You must have faith, Jacob.”

I hear footsteps and look back to see Brother Wallace entering the Heart, followed closely by Brother Peter. My mother and I watch silently as they step over the wall and approach the Tree. They are speaking in low, urgent voices. Brother Peter plucks a dried fruit from a branch and crushes it between his fingers. He drops to one knee and brushes aside the dried leaves and digs into the earth with his hand, then sniffs his fingers. I hear him speak a single word.

“Razar.”

I know what
Razar
is. Last summer I spent a day in the south meadow with Brother Jerome, masked and gloved, applying a toxic herbicide called Razar-X4 to the thistles that had invaded our sweetgrass. The sharp, acrid smell of it had stayed on my clothes for days. And now I remember smelling that same chemical more recently, the day Lynna and I saw Tobias come out from the Heart carrying an empty bucket.

My prayers have been answered. The Tree will never bloom again.

I tell no one that Tobias poisoned the Tree. What good would it do? The Tree is dead. Brother Peter speculates that Brother Andrew, who could hardly see and whose sense of smell had left him, must have made a terrible error, mistaking the Razar-X4 herbicide for fertilizer. Since Brother Andrew is dead and gone, and the Lord knows he is innocent, I say nothing.

I think of what Lynna told me, that it is only a tree, a crab apple tree planted by her grandfather half a century ago. It may be so, but I ask myself, Why did it die? Why would the Lord allow Tobias to pour poison over its roots? For whose sins are we being punished?

News of the death of the Tree travels swiftly through the Village, but days pass with no word from Father Grace. Nodd feels drained of life. For seven days and nights, we go dully about our daily tasks, awaiting the next terrible event.

On fourth Heavenday, Father Grace calls for a Convo cation. This news is received with equal measures of relief and dread.

All are required to attend.

The Hall of Enoch feels enormous and hollow. The many empty seats remind us of those who have left. Elders Abraham and Seth are seated on the dais, as timeless and stern as stone lions. Minutes crawl by as we shift and whisper and wait for Father Grace to appear. Even the youngest children sense the fear and uncertainty that pervades the hall.

We have been waiting for nearly half an hour when the doors open behind us. I look back and am shocked by what I see: a man, tall and deathly pale, his head and face shorn naked, dressed in nothing but a cotton feed bag with armholes torn from the corners. For a moment I think it is Von, returned to life, but the lightning-blasted eye has not changed, and I know I am looking at Father Grace. I hear gasps and whimpers. A child starts to cry, and then another.

Father Grace is followed into the hall by Marianne, Juliette, and Ruth. As his wives seat themselves in the front row with their children, Father Grace mounts the dais slowly, as if every movement causes him agony. His legs are thin and white and hairy. He turns to face us, and spreads his arms wide.

“Brothers and Sisters.” It is eerie to hear Father Grace’s voice coming from this bald and shaven apparition. “The Beast walks among us.”

He pauses to let that sink in. I wonder if the others are thinking, as I am, that this new version of Father Grace is the most beastly-looking thing ever to appear in Nodd.

“He spreads his poison among us — we have seen his work. He takes our people, our sheep, and now the Tree. He is here in this room, attempting to steal our souls, as he has taken the souls of those who have left us. As he took Brother Taylor, as he took Fara. How many of you have felt the writhing maggots of doubt over these past weeks and months? How many of you have suffered the wicked whispers of the serpent? How many of you have secretly questioned the word of the Lord? Look into your hearts and know that you are being tested, even now.”

His eye pierces my breast, and I am certain he is speaking directly to me. I look away, unable to bear it, and I see Will, beside me, looking as stricken by guilt and shame as I feel. Even Jerome is quavering, and I realize that Father Grace is talking to every last one of us.

“Do you think that evil cannot touch you? Do you think that darkness does not dwell within you? It does. None of us is proof.”

He strikes himself in the cheek with his open hand. The sound of it echoes from the walls.

“Every thought is a battle —” He slaps himself on the other cheek. Abraham and Seth are looking at him in shock. “Every one of us is a sinner.” He hits himself in the face again, this time with a closed fist, and the skin under his blasted eye splits open. “And we have killed the Tree.” He swings his fist into his nose, twice. A gush of blood runs over his mouth and down his naked chin. Brother Abraham stands and tries to restrain him, but Father Grace shoves him aside and continues to club himself in the face. “Every one of us a sinner!” he cries in a hoarse voice, and strikes another blow.
“Hadeum domi!”

Father Grace’s face, hands, and chest are red with blood, and he is shouting words I cannot understand.
“Domus mortis! Malum et nequitiam!”
He drops to his knees, and the wet sounds of his fists striking his face keep coming. Marianne and Juliette are herding crying children toward the doors. Samuel and my father rush onto the dais and try to grab Father Grace’s arms. He swings wildly at them, knocking Samuel to the floor. Everyone is on their feet now, and I can’t see. Chairs are being knocked over. Some of us are trying to see what is happening, while others are moving toward the doors. I climb onto my chair and see several of the men gathered around Father Grace, trying to restrain him. My father and Brother Enos are on their knees, holding him down, while Samuel produces a small kit from within his robes and takes out a syringe. Father Grace is screaming hoarsely and kicking his bare feet. Samuel gets behind him and stabs the needle into his shoulder. Father Grace roars and, with a sudden convulsive movement, frees himself. He staggers to his feet and lurches forward. His eye rolls up in its socket, his body goes slack, and he falls from the edge of the dais into Brother Peter’s arms.

For a few seconds, the men on the dais just stand there staring down at him, stunned by what has happened, by what they have done. Brother Enos recovers first. He looks at our gaping faces and speaks.

“It is over. You may all go.”

Nearly everyone complies. I remain behind, along with a few others. Samuel puts his fingers to Father Grace’s throat and feels his pulse.

“He will sleep for a time. Let’s get him back to Grace home.”

Brother Peter, as stout and sinewy as a scrub oak, steps forward. I have always been impressed with Peter’s strength, but never so much as now. Father Grace is easily half again his weight, but Peter picks him up as if he is a lamb and carries him out the back entrance. Samuel follows.

My father, looking after them, says, “It has been getting worse.”

“It was a mistake to allow him to speak,” Brother Enos says.

“What were we to do? He is Father Grace.”

“The women and children are frightened.”

“As am I. The death of his son, the death of the Tree . . .”

“I should have seen this coming,” Enos says. “He had an episode in Albuquerque.”

“I heard that as well, but it was not like this.”

“No.” Enos shakes his head. “Not like this.”

My father notices me standing off to the side and comes over to me.

“Jacob, you should go about your business,” he says in a low voice.

“Father Grace is mad, isn’t he?” I say.

“He is distraught. It will pass.”

“He commands me to marry Beryl.”

My father does not speak.

“Beryl is a child,” I say.

He looks away. “Yes.”

“Father Grace commanded me to wed Beryl when the Tree blossoms, but the Tree is dead.”

He presses his lips together, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath through his nostrils. After a moment he says, “The Tree is but a symbol. It lives on in our hearts.”

“I don’t care. I will not marry Beryl.”

He looks at me, his eyes oddly shiny. He says, “You will be of age soon. In a matter of weeks. Your mother fears you will leave us.”

“How can I leave? I have nowhere to go.”

He nods and places his hand on my shoulder.

“Go,” he says. I think for a moment that he means I should leave Nodd, but he says, “Go to the Heart and pray. Leafless though it is, the Tree stands. The Lord will guide you through this time of trouble, as He will guide us all. Our faith will prevail.”

As I walk away, he adds, “G’bless.”

I go to the Heart. The gate is open. I kneel at the wall. I am not alone. Will is there, his bad leg stretched awkwardly to the side, his long, thin body curved over the wall like a question mark. Sister Agatha is there, not kneeling but sitting on her walker, her broken arm still bound in a splint. The unmarried Sisters Rebecca, Louise, and Olivia kneel close together on the far side of the wall, their eyes closed, their lips moving. Four of the younger children are gathered with Sister Dalva at the koi pond, kneeling at the stone bench. I have a peculiar thought: now that the Tree is dead, will we be praying to the fish huddled in the muddy bottom of the pond? And what are we supposed to be praying for? A miracle to restore the Tree? For Father Grace to recover from his illness? For the Ark to come and take us all away?

What would I pray for, were I praying?

None of those things.

I look at the Tree and I see dead branches and shriveled dry leaves. I think about the poison that seeped into its roots and oozed through its veins, a chemical made by men in some faraway factory and delivered to the Tree in a bucket by Tobias. All these things and creatures made by the Lord, all acting in accordance with His will, all known to Him in every filament of their being. Could this truly be the Lord’s final test of the Grace?

If so, I have failed, tainted by the World as surely as the Tree has been poisoned. I rise from the wall and return to Menshome and take myself to my cell and think long into the night. Dawn is breaking when sleep takes me.

Jerome awakens me by kicking at my pallet.

“What?” I say, glaring at him and pulling my thin blanket higher.

“You have slept through breakfast,” he says. “The sun has been up for hours. It is fourth Landay.”

I groan. I had completely forgotten about my edge-walking duty.

“Brother Enos wishes to see you before you go.”

I dress slowly, perform my morning ablutions, and breakfast on a leftover heel of bread with huckleberry preserves. I think of crabapple jelly. I am in no great hurry to see Enos. He will be no angrier if he has to wait another quarter hour.

Outside, a storm cloud has risen in the west, squatting over the mountains like a great toad, while the sky to the north is a streak of brilliant empty blue. I watch the cloud, its forward edge roiling, advancing upon Nodd. I will have a long, wet, miserable walk ahead of me.