Eden West (4 page)

“Jacob,” she says, “you perform the work of three. Slow yourself, lest you leave poor William feeling unworthy.”

“If Will feels unworthy he should move more quickly,” I say, then regret my remark and look around to be sure that Will is not close enough to have overheard.

“I fear you have inherited my own intemperance,” she says.

“Apologies, Sister. I did not sleep soundly.”

“I hear your voice rings strong at Babel Hour.”

I feel my face redden. This causes my mother to laugh out loud.

“That your loins whisper to you is no cause for shame.”

“I am not ashamed,” I say, although I am far more ashamed than she could know.

“If I may guess, is it Sister Ruth who catches thine eye?” she says.

I cannot lie aloud to my mother twice, so I look down at the fresh-cut corn stubble and nod.

“I pray there are others you look favorably upon as well,” she says.

I look up sharply. This is a very strange thing for her to say. For a moment I fear she knows of the Worldly girl, but the concern I behold upon my mother’s sun-browned features shows no hint of censure. It is something else.

“Brother!” It is Brother Jerome, looking back, telling me with his frown that I am not doing my part.

“G’bless, Sister,” I say to my mother, and return to my work.

We are blessed with a stretch of dry days that are perfect for the harvest. Brother Peter works us hard and long, and I do not think overmuch of Sister Ruth or the Worldly girl. By Manday much of the work is behind us. We trudge in from the fields, looking forward to a hot meal, early to bed, and to waking on Sabbathday, our day of rest. But when we enter the Village I see a black SUV parked before the Hall of Enoch.

All thoughts of food and sleep fly from my head.

Father Grace has returned to Nodd.

For the past six weeks, Father Grace and his wives have been tending the Grace Ministries in Colorado Springs and Omaha, so that others might hear him and join us in Nodd. But few are willing to give up all their Worldly possessions. Father Grace has been preaching the words of Zerachiel for thirty years now, yet only we three score and two have embraced the truth of his calling.

Still, at times he returns from his journeys with converts, and we welcome them. There is always great excitement when new Grace enter our lives. On this occasion, a rumor passes through the Menshome like the wind: Father Grace has brought with him four new souls.

The Convocation to celebrate Father Grace’s return is to begin immediately after supper. I wash with the other men, too hurried to keep my scabbed back safe from their eyes. Brother Will notices, but he makes no comment. We are all sinners. As we dry ourselves and don our meeting robes, the bells calling us to Convocation begin to toll.

The Hall of Enoch is large enough to hold thrice our number, and one day it may well do so. We gather, all of us, from Sister Mary’s youngest, born in August, to Sister Agatha, mother to Enos, small and bent hard over her walker. We are one, crowded at the front of the hall, as Father Grace enters and mounts the platform, followed by his entourage.

Father Grace is a large man, standing a hand above four cubits. His black beard, shot with streaks of gray, spills over his vast trunk. Long gray hair falls straight and thick to his broad shoulders. His right eye, black as his beard, scours our faces. The left eye, pale gray nested in a whorl of scar tissue, gazes upon Heaven, blind to this World of dust and dross.

The Archcherubim Enos and Caleb take their places to either side of him. Father Grace’s three wives arrange themselves to Enos’s left, sitting with their hands folded in their laps, smiling over us with alert, self-satisfied smiles.

It is said that Father Grace has eighty years, though my mother once told me that he is only a few years older than my father, who is fifty-eight. Whatever his true age, Father Grace’s vigor is vast. As he takes his place behind the pulpit and raises his long arms, one can imagine that he could gather all of us together in one mighty embrace.

And so he stands silent before us, as is his custom, arms thrust out, his glittering black eye raking across us, seeing into our stained and spattered souls. I stare straight ahead, imagining with all my might the angel Zerachiel astride his steed of ivory. I wish I had beaten myself harder.

Father Grace holds knowledge beyond the ken of ordinary men. He has been known to foretell a Grace’s sins, and to offer penance for deeds as yet undone. Once, as he was striding past the prayer wall surrounding the Tree, he stopped suddenly and pulled Sister Mara from the wall and struck her a great blow. I heard this from Brother John, who was present at the time.

“Father,” she cried, “what have I done?”

“It is what you would have done,” said Father Grace. He then embraced her and forgave her for her uncommitted sin. Later, Sister Mara confessed to lusting after a man who had been seduced by the World and who had left Nodd some months earlier. Father Grace’s actions had prevented her from following the apostate and dooming her soul to an eternity in Hell.

The Convocation is dead silent, without so much as a rustle of cloth, when Father Grace opens his mouth to speak.

“Brethren,” he says, “it is the Lord’s day.” Father Grace’s voice is not the voice one might expect from a man so imposing and hirsute. It is as light as beaten cream. With closed eyes, one might almost imagine him to be a woman. Nevertheless, his utterances possess the force of thunder. We listen as he relates the story of Moses in the desert and of the prophets Enoch, Jesus, and Joseph. He follows this with his own tale of redemption, of his struggles as a young man to find his Faith. It is a tale he tells often, and of which we never tire.

As the familiar words roll across us, I let my eyes stray to the women’s side of the temple, searching for Sister Ruth’s dark curls, but I cannot pick her out from the mass of identical clay-colored headscarves. I force my attention back to Father Grace.

“And though I had but twenty years, I had tasted all the false religions of the World and found them wanting: Catholics worshipping both graven images and the pope, who is in truth the Antichrist; Lutherans, Baptists, all wallowing in the glorification of their tarnished selves; Jews with hearts of avarice and greed; pagans writhing, painted and naked, at their unholy rites; Muslims eating their children and bowing to the false god Mohammad. Even the Latter-day Saints, who raised me, twisted the Words of the Almighty to suit their mercenary agenda. I was lost, searching the faithless wilderness for the Truth. I rode upon my motorcycle from church to church, from one false prophet to the next, and found my hopes dashed again and again. I even sought wisdom from the American savages. It was then that the Lord struck me down.

“It happened on a Monday, what we now call Heavenday. I had been riding all night toward the land of the Hopi, my mind clouded with false tales of ancient wisdom. I still had hope, even after my many disappointments. The sun had yet to rise; the mesas were a dark slash against the slate-gray sky; the wind tore like eagles’ talons at my face, and it was then that the Lord sent Zerachiel to smite me, first in the guise of a white coyote in the road before me. I swerved to avoid the beast. The tires of my motorcycle lost purchase. I flew through the air and landed hard in the ditch, where I lay stunned amidst the scraps of shredded truck tires, beer cans, and plastic shopping bags fluttering in the wind.

“The heavens opened. Raindrops the size of cherries pelted my body. I rose to my feet, bruised and in pain but without serious injury. My motorcycle had not fared so well. As I stared down at the twisted metal, the raindrops hardened to become hail. I looked around, seeking shelter. There were no buildings, no trees, only patches of brush and cactus. I saw a rocky outcropping a few hundred cubits away. With no promise of shelter elsewhere, I ran for the rocks. By the time I reached them, I was being beaten by hailstones the size of walnuts. The rocks provided partial shelter. I was able to squeeze beneath a shallow overhang to wait out the storm.

“I had been there for but moments when the Lord struck. The rock exploded. Lightning lanced through my eye and into my soul. I was thrown from my rude shelter and landed upon my back.

“There is much I do not remember of that night. In the morning, I awakened in agony, unable to move, the desert sun piercing my flesh. For three days and nights, I lay on my back staring up into the heavens, my blasted eye throbbing with the sublime torment of seeing Heaven in all its plenteous and unstinting glory, even as my untouched eye wept with sorrow for all the sinners, not least of all myself. And as I lay there in misery, with scorpions crawling over my body and the sun cracking my skin and vultures circling high above, I was visited by an angel whose features were too bright to look upon, and he named himself Zerachiel, and he told me I was to bear a message of salvation.

“‘I cannot,’ I said. ‘I am dying.’

“‘You will not die,’ Zerachiel said. ‘You have work to do.’

“But even with this promise, my body would not obey me. ‘Why me?’ I cried out.”

Father Grace pauses, as he always does at that point, with upthrust arms, both eyes seeking Heaven. Slowly his arms drop to his sides and his chin comes down until his black eye once again falls upon us.

“And Zerachiel, whose face was brighter than the sun, looked down upon me and said, ‘The Holy Scriptures contain much truth, but that truth is veiled. The Lord has chosen you to lift that veil.’”

Father Grace stares down at us from the pulpit.

“As he has chosen each and every one of us. And today we rejoice, for the Lord has brought us four new souls.” He holds his hands out toward the front of the room, and a moment later, three figures climb onto the platform to stand before him: an older woman, a younger woman heavy with child, and a boy of perhaps fifteen summers. They have not yet donned the garb of the Grace. The older woman is wearing a long black skirt and a green sweater. Her graying hair hangs unbound on either side of her face. She is smiling but clearly nervous. The younger woman has on stretchy blue jeans so tight I can see the bulge of her thighs. Her belly, swollen with child, presses out against a loose short-sleeved blouse. She looks tired.

The boy is also wearing jeans, but his are loose and puddled over his athletic shoes. Printed in orange upon his blue hooded sweatshirt is the word
BRONCOS
. He has short reddish-blond hair and freckles. His small eyes dart from face to face until they land upon me, and a flat smile creeps across the boy’s broad cheeks.

The boy is called Tobias. He is from a town called Limon, in Colorado. Brother Enos has charged me with helping him to learn our ways.

“This will be your cell,” I tell him, showing him where he will sleep.

“Cell.” He wrinkles his stubby nose at the pallet. “Great.”

I pull open the wide drawer beneath the pallet. “For your garments. Brother John will provide you with four changes of clothing. Two for work, one for meetings, and one for daily wear.”

Tobias looks me up and down. “Which is
that
?”