The Slide: A Novel (33 page)

The grapes hanging from vines were alive with dust. A trellis system supported the vines, anchored by stakes set into the earth at regular intervals of exactly two natural steps. I kept going. I saw a tour group coming toward me and cut across a row to avoid the sound of their crass, outside-world chatter. I smiled at two cultists who were categorically not Ian’s mother, working on an irrigation system. I kept walking deeper into the vineyard and soon reached what appeared to be a perimeter of sorts, where the rows of plants stopped and a field of barely kempt grass began. Turning back, I saw the Irenia building far in the distance, along with a figure slowly making its way down the aisle. Sun perched up there like some massively dispersed searchlight. Of course it was Opal coming toward me, a propane lamp in one hand. I considered my plan and turned back to the western reaches of the property. There was activity out there; I could see tiny bodies moving out in the field, a truck approaching them from the north.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re allowed to go out there.”

Plans, what they say about them. I had hoped to find Mrs. Worpley in the Irenia building, somewhere closer to my car. Stepping into the field of grass would take me one ring farther from escape. Opal’s eyes were deer eyes, wide and vague, but without suspicion.

“There has to be a leader,” I said. “Someone who sleeps with the women and runs the meetings.”

“That’s a bit crass. Nobody here has to sleep with anyone unless they want to.”

With her head cocked she looked younger than I’d initially thought, and this was the sort of thing on which one could easily dwell, and there was no time for dwelling. If the sun was to be trusted, it was getting on into late afternoon.

“I need to find Mrs. Worpley. You don’t seem to want to help. Fine. But I have to think whoever your leader is might.”

“You’re wrong. I want to help. He’s out there working with everyone else. He’s the hardest worker I ever met. That’s the point. But he’s also willing to speak. He’ll answer your questions.”

Somehow I had entered into a world of assumed names or sheer namelessness.
Opal
this woman and her talk of some man, only
he, he
the professional noun. Perhaps she deemed his name unutterable. Or she wouldn’t say the name out loud for fear of tarnishing it. Or if she said his name once, she was required to say it two more times.

“What would it take to make you say his name?”

“Who?”

“The leader. Your leader.”

“Rich? His name is Rich.”

We hadn’t moved. I looked at Opal again and reminded myself that the point was to do something for another human being. Help the boy. Selfless gesture of love.

“Come on,” she said.

Luckily I had been trained for this. Adaptation, applying several fields of knowledge to solving a problem. Liberal as derived from
liberalis,
Latin, meaning
for free men
. As opposed to
servile
arts. Trades. Opal stepped into the grass and I slipped back into my shoes before following. The field was huge and encased by trees. North of us, the trees climbed to a wall of bluffs, topped by some nature of radio or other such tower. West and south were more gentle hills rising with the forestry.

“Tell me something,” I said. “How did you come here?”

“I don’t want to answer that, so I’m not going to.”

We stepped high over an arid expanse of sparse, tall grass. The people we were approaching all wore the pale-blue cultist raiment. Once we’d walked twenty or so yards into the grass, Opal stopped.

“Of course you can ask about the past if that’s what you want. But you’re going to find that a lot of people here don’t want to talk about it. It’s all the same, anyway. So what’s the point?”

We were walking slowly now, side by side, toward the activity in front of us. Everything was open out here; endless sky, ground stretching outward as far as trees would allow, we creatures standing still. The occasional insect fluttering between stalks of grass, buzzing. When she spoke next, her voice had an energy to it, the charge of conviction.

“People out there? Everywhere you go, people are real good at giving reasons to do things. But if you stop for a minute and look at them, the reasons can be so crazy. Like you love God so you do this. You know?”

I would speak to Rich the Cult Leader and tell him a lie about heart disease. I would say,
Look, man, I respect what you’ve got going
out here, but a boy is dying. He is emaciated and losing his hair and
coughing blood and all he wants is one last glimpse of his mother’s face.
I would say his name,
Ian,
and this would humanize the disease. I would promise to have her back by nightfall.

Opal and I came to a stop close enough to the workers that I could make out faces. Next to us was a fallen tree on which she sat, and I soon sat next to her. And it wasn’t physical as such, the thing I felt. No terrible urge to press my chest against her waist or taste her biceps or any of the other normal desires for flesh. But this thing included those, somehow, and was bigger, somehow. I reminded myself what I knew about cults.

“They have all the contracts and signatures they could ever need. But people still lie and people still cheat. All over the place, all the time.” She paused and turned to face the field. “Look out at them.”

I counted somewhere between twenty and thirty people moving around the base of what would someday soon turn into a building. Currently it was no more than a knee-high wall of stones forming a perimeter wall, about fifty feet wide and a bit less deep. I looked at Opal. There were things I could have said, and there were things I could have admitted to myself about what was going to happen next.

“What do you think is going on?”

“Normal cult activity,” I said.

“Don’t be silly. What do you see?”

“The rocks are brought here by that truck over there, then unloaded by those people. And then these people take stones from the pile over to a place on the wall, where these other people lay the stones and then fill them in with some kind of concrete.”

“It’s limestone from the quarry.”

“So what is it? What’s the project?”

“A building,” she said.

“They’re building a building,” I said.

“The body wants to work. That’s what I learned here. That’s biology. Think of your cells working. The cart comes and goes from here to the processing station, where the limestone from the quarry is cleaned and broken up. Right now people are down there mining rocks.”

“Work,” I said. “The point is to work.”

“Yes! Some days you carry and other days you mine and some days you drive the truck. You lay concrete. Because in times like these, hard work is the only thing that can ever save the world.”

“So why aren’t you working now?”

She smiled. “The body also wants Recess.”

I had seen her smile before, along with these dents on her cheeks. The shape of a human face, all the similarities.

“There are three stations. This one is called Building. The other stations are Farming and Marketing, but we usually call Marketing
the House
. Farming is about the earth. You open it up and refill it and move it around. You water it and accept what it gives. At the House mainly what you’re doing is selling. It’s a different kind of work, but it’s still work. That’s the point. We rotate stations once a month. Marketing for a month, then Farming, then out here for Building. A month’s just long enough to settle in. Then you switch and do something else.”

I moved my right hand down to the log just behind her and leaned forward enough that the inside of my arm touched the outside of hers. I leaned back because this was obviously too much but kept my hand where it was.

“Are there guns here, on the premises?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Are they being stockpiled?”

“This is the United States of America.”

We sat quietly on the fallen log and took in the movement of the workers. One time my father returned from a business trip with an ant farm, carefully pouring the sand, sending away for ants by mail. The point being: a child requires role models who are, above all, diligent. I looked again at Opal, and this time I was a little more sure than the last.

“It’s not work alone,” she said. “It’s why. Because they work out there in the world too, but it’s always for someone else or some piece of paper. Here the work is for you. Six workdays a week and everyone has one full day of Recess built into their personal schedule. Everyone here is really great.”

I looked at her again and tried very hard not to know but knew anyway.

“Can I tell you something?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“I’ve been devoting a lot of focus to my hands. Examining them and thinking about them.” I raised them in front of me, palms away. “They’re changing all the time. Growing and thickthe ening or acquiring new scars. The hands I have at twenty-two are not the same hands I had at eleven. You ever seen an eleven-year-old boy’s hands?”

“I might have,” she said.

“At eleven, hands are growing faster than any other part of a boy’s body. When we’re old, it’s the nose and ears that keep growing. At eleven, though, hands are an indication of who the boy will turn into. There’s that X-ray they do to know how tall you’ll grow. That’s all the
nature
side of the story. There is still nurture to consider.”

Her smile remained. I had completed the first step of the plan. Here she was, right next to me. The next steps were less clear. I could try lifting with my legs and carrying her back across the field, through the aisles of vines and past the building to my car. Drive her back to the dirt path and the porch, unlatch the screen door and complete the miracle.

“You’re still his mother.”

“You know what I remember? On my wedding day, I remember all of us going into that room in the back and there was that piece of paper. I honestly thought they were joking. Then they gave me a pen and I understood, and I remember sitting at the table and crying, just bawling over the baby inside me and the wedding on the other side of the door and this piece of paper with the places to put our names. I see your eyes. You already made a decision about me. It’s okay. I could tell you every detail and you still wouldn’t understand. But I know who I am and I know my boy. I know he’s okay. Nobody knows what’s going to happen to anyone, but I know he’s going to be okay. And so right now, today, I’m not going anywhere. Look. Here comes Rich.”

I recognized the bald man approaching us, recalled his skill at carrying water, his energetic assistance. Now he was sweating heavily and the thighs of his khaki pants were streaked with dirt. He nodded as he approached and raised a hand in greeting.

“Well, I know this guy! Decided to come back and see us. Good. I’m glad to see you.”

He took my hand into a firm American shake, held my eyes, then nodded to Opal. I hadn’t remembered him being so handsome. Out here in the grass, working with these others, context, context.

“You helped me with the delivery a few weeks ago.”

“That’s right. I was working the house with Tall David when you came with all the water. Receiving donations is a big part of Marketing. Had a feeling you’d be back sooner or later.”

“He’s come to take me away,” she said.

“Oh, now, that sounds kind of silly, doesn’t it?” he said.

I watched Opal leave us and move off into the grass. Here is what a cult does: it passes you among people who appear to care. Their language was one of interest and concern, inclusion. The key was to see behind the words. To spot the mechanisms within, the wheels spinning. I allowed myself to be led a few steps away from the log, toward the building project. Rich stood at my side.

“So what’s on your mind?”

“Mrs. Worpley. Opal. I came looking for her. I have to speak with her about motherhood.”

“What about motherhood, exactly?”

“What the term entails as far as extent and duration.”

“Huh. Didn’t know she had a child.”

I had no idea how much he knew. Presumably everything. He knew that I’d made it here and that my quest was partially complete. Presumably he would use this partial completeness against me somehow, lull me into a state of contentment. Rich began to massage his shoulder with a hand chipped and scarred with toil. Behind him in the distance I saw Opal bent over in the grass, picking up a piece to bring to her mouth and blow, making it buzz.

“What’s it for?” I asked. “The building.”

“Depends what you mean. Right now, it’s for Building. Once finished it’ll be something else. Housing, most likely. Storage. Eventually it will be for tearing down. Some machine will tear it apart. That all comes later.”

“Someone could come along in a few years and buy you out. Turn the house into a Gap or Wal-Mart or something. This field could be paved over, some roadway or parking lot. And this would be a gas station.”

“Then it will be a very well-made gas station.”

“It’s selfish,” I said. “All the work.”

“Our family is no different than any other family. Except we acknowledge the selfishness. We know denying it is just one more level of selfishness, if you follow.”