The Alliance Read online

  Jabil sighs. “Don’t be irrational, Charlie. Nobody’s building a cabin. But if we cut the logs down from fourteen feet to eight, we could use that six feet to build outhouses.”

  “They can use the woods!”

  “We’re talking women and children and elderly, Charlie. Not men who could care less.”

  Charlie steps away from the perimeter. “What you tryin’ to say?”

  Jabil lifts his hands. “Just that it’s time to think of the community’s immediate needs for a change, rather than putting all our efforts into a project that might not need to be done.”

  Charlie’s eyes glitter. He stalks across the flat stretch of earth and hovers over Jabil. The difference in height doesn’t make Jabil look small as much as it emphasizes how huge Charlie is. He spits, “You haven’t lifted one finger doing this ‘project,’ while the four of us—” he juts his chin at Henri, Sean, and me, who are watching this exchange like it comes with popcorn—“have been out here in the heat, working like dogs. So unless you’re ready to climb down from your ivory tower and get your namby-pamby hands dirty, I say it’s high time you kept your trap shut.”

  The air crackles like the prelude to a storm. Jabil lifts his chin and meets Charlie’s gaze. “And if you can’t converse in a civil manner, you can pack up your things and leave.”

  The veins pulse in Charlie’s arms, as if the blood is feeding the muscles contracting his hand, wrapped around the hammer. I’m about to step in, to keep Jabil from getting his head bashed, when Charlie yells and throws that hammer as hard as he can into the field. It flips end over end for yards—the worn metal glinting—before it’s swallowed by the grass.

  All five of us stare in disbelief at that area of grass. Even Charlie looks shocked.

  Tossing my post-hole digger, I pick up my crutches. “Well, think it’s time for a water break.” I take two steps toward Field to Table and then stop. “By the way, Charlie . . . if pole-vaulting over the perimeter doesn’t work out, you might have a career in discus.”

  Leora

  There’s nothing like the demolition of modern society to make me want to clean house. The past two days, under the guise of ascertaining how much food we have, I’ve organized our cellar and pantry. Under the guise of trying to let in as much natural light as possible, since we’re conserving the oil in our lamps, I’ve used vinegar and newspaper to scour our windows. I have no real excuse to clean baseboards, but it’s soothing to get down on my hands and knees and use an old toothbrush to eradicate the grime, which accumulates so quickly because of the firewood brought in twice daily for the cookstove.

  The women in our community clean like this once, maybe twice, a year. I do it every month. Sometimes twice a month if I’m assaulted with some peculiar angst: Anna having more bad spells than good, Seth talking back to me like a teenager, another birthday celebrated without my parents—all of these disparate events making me feel incompetent until I clean.

  The living room is the only room in the house I haven’t touched, as I make a habit of avoiding the place where my mother died, as well as avoiding the memory of finding her. Biting the inside of my cheek, I remain standing in front of the cracked living room door, debating about going inside, regardless of whether Melinda from Colorado is up for company or not. She chose this room rather than sharing a bed with Grossmammi Eunice, who surprised us all by granting permission for a stranger to stay in her midst. But even though I love my grandmother, I wouldn’t sleep a wink if I were forced to sleep in her room.

  Though I do want to clean, dust accumulation is not the only thing I’m worried about. Melinda’s been wearing the same outfit since the EMP. Despite expensive tailoring, the clothing is beginning to soften with body oil, the pressed creases on the silk short sleeves and linen slacks reducing to a wilt. I offered to heat water on the woodstove to fill the tub for her. I explained to Melinda that she could first bathe in the tub and then use the water to wash her clothes. She didn’t say anything, but her expression conveyed that she thought taking a bath in a place where stereotypically “dirty” Old Order Mennonites have been bathing for years would be as barbaric as piercing her lip with a bone. Therefore, for the past three days, she has not washed her clothes or bathed—which I think makes her the barbarian, not us.

  Decision made, I take a breath, open the door wider, and step into the room. Melinda sits up and finger-combs hair from her eyes. She hasn’t moved from the couch except to use the bathroom, and then she had the audacity to complain that the toilet didn’t work. She said this although I’ve told her countless times that the pressurized tank located at Field to Table, which supplied water throughout the community, has also shut down due to the electrical failure. So, if she needs to use the toilet, she must carry a bucket of water in from the hand pump to flush the bowl. Needless to say, she hasn’t. I’ve had to clean up after her every time.

  She squints at me. “What time is it?”

  “Two o’clock. You hungry?”

  “No.” Turning, she stares at the window like the curtain’s not obstructing the view. “Thanks, though. Maybe in a little while.”

  There is at least a fifteen-year gap between us, but I feel decades older. Just as Melinda’s made no effort to follow my instructions, I’ve made no effort to conceal my resentment concerning her helplessness. If I can just get her to eat, to bathe, to go for a walk, it will feel like I am stabilizing this Tilt-A-Whirl, if only for a moment.

  Melinda takes a sip of water. Her fingers tremble as she sets down the glass. She sees me looking at the prescription bottle magnified behind it and says, “I can’t sleep otherwise.” She dabs sweat from her lip with her knuckle and reclines on the couch again, careful not to move her upper body, as if it’s been injured in a wreck. “I don’t have pictures,” she says. “They’re all on my phone.” I glance at her, stunned that she’s trying to communicate something other than a complaint, but then look away—her vulnerability as shocking to me as nakedness. Tears are trickling from the woman’s eyes, darkening the oily temples of her hair, and yet her expression remains the same. “Nobody carries around pictures of their family anymore. Have you noticed?”

  I shake my head while continuing to stare at the curtained window. I have not noticed. No one in our community carries pictures at all, since they’re considered graven images, and the Englisch customers who used to come to Field to Table never bothered to share their family photos with me, as I was just a quaint, kapped anomaly who sometimes bagged up their sandwiches and homemade bread. But Melinda does not care to hear this. She is not speaking to me as much as she is verbally processing the EMP that, for her, brought far more hardships than hauling water and fairly distributing food. For her, the EMP created a vast canyon separating her from her family, a canyon that might never be bridged.

  For the first time since Melinda’s arrival, compassion overtakes my resentment. I take an afghan from the cedar chest. She murmurs as I spread it over her shoulders, smiling lazily, as if already sedated by the prescription drugs. “Thank you, Leora. Really. You’ve been so kind.” My throat burns with guilt. At a loss for words, I nod and stride out of the living room. I turn before I pull the door behind me and see that her breathing is already deepened by sleep.

  Leading Anna over to the kitchen table, I pour a glass of water for her, which she drinks in one long swallow, smacking her lips afterward to show her satisfaction. My sister hasn’t learned to speak beyond basic sentences (“Read to you?”) and requests—yes, no, some for food, ’side to go outside, and our names, including the ones she’s bestowed upon our animals. But now Anna’s handicap has turned into a blessing. For she is the one who continues through this altered world—unsettled by the changes in her daily routine, yes, but without being hampered by worry concerning the morrow—while I remain disabled by our uncertain future.

  I let the kitchen door open to cycle some fresh air through the house, and maybe entice Melinda from her torpor long enough to venture outside; then Anna and I
go down the porch steps. Jabil Snyder is in our side yard, digging a hole for the outhouse that we dismantled less than four years ago. I am sure the deacons and bishop now regret their decision to allow the community to have running water in our homes. Since the EMP has rendered indoor plumbing obsolete, we are forced to go in reverse in order to move forward.

  Wiping his brow, Jabil sips from his canteen and takes off his straw hat. He pours some water over his head, the excess spattering the ground between his feet. I study him a moment—the liquid trickling down the strong planes of his face and turning his white collared shirt into a translucent skin—and try to see if I can conjure forth that same level of admiration I felt for him a few days ago. But I cannot.

  Jabil must feel my gaze, for he puts his hat back on and watches me walk through the uncut grass. Behind me, Anna sings nonsensical lyrics and skips in bare feet across the length of weathered porch before descending another step, an impromptu game of hopscotch. She loves the different textures against her toes, just as she loves the feel of different quilting scraps—velvet, corduroy, satin, silk, lace—that I obtained through a ragbag of Englischer castoffs someone left at Field to Table and turned into a quiet book to keep Anna occupied during church.

  “How’s the roommate working out?” Jabil calls, jutting his chin toward our house.

  Embarrassed about how I’ve been treating Melinda, I say, “Great. How’s living with the pilot?”

  He drops his gaze and sinks his shovel into the earth. He leans on it, his forearm gleaming with sweat. Jabil looks years older than he is; perhaps that’s because, since his father’s death, he has had to carry a mantle of responsibility similar to the one I also shoulder alone.

  “How’s it living with Moses, you mean?” He and I both know full well the person to whom I’m referring.

  “Not too many other pilots around here.”

  My joke falls flat, the silence looming between us like the person who altered my world at the instant everything around us crashed. It’s not that I long to be with Moses, a stranger, and not with the good-hearted man standing before me—the good-hearted man I’ve known for years. Jabil may believe that before Moses arrived I would have been open to his courtship; after all, I have been studying him as covertly as he has been studying me. We are two young people of the opposite sex living in an isolated community—and, even better yet, we are not related, which has become something of an issue for the spearheading Snyders. Mt. Hebron families have been intermarrying since the brothers Lowell and Jacob Snyder, Jabil’s uncle and father, moved from Lancaster with a few other families and founded the community in Liberty, Montana, in 1988. Thus, this intermarriage has narrowed the scope of finding a mate who is not kin.

  But my decision not to let Jabil court me wasn’t made by Moses’s arrival. It was made by my vadder’s disappearance and my mamm’s subsequent death. Ever since that time, I’ve realized I’m not cut out to perform the normal roles of wife and mother, as I am too busy trying to give my orphaned siblings the semblance of a normal home. I wish I could be courted by Jabil, because I know he senses that to marry me would be to claim my family as his.

  Now that the EMP has revealed an unexplored dimension of life, I’m no longer sure I can remain content with the status quo, even if the status quo is more predictable than the alternative. What if the unpredictable road leads to the only destination worth reaching in the end?

  I look over at my sister, feeling as confused and exposed as Moses must have felt when he was bleeding on our kitchen table, gripping my hand and begging me to tell him where he was. I am so disoriented that I cannot understand what I’m doing in this altered world or where—in its daily rotation—I really am.

  Jabil turns and cuts the shovel hard into the earth before jumping on top to drive it farther down. He stays quiet as he gathers the dirt and dumps it onto the pyramid beside the widening hole. He always assumes this taciturn state whenever he has nothing to say or is simply too disturbed for words. I am aware that Jabil longs for more than what this communal earth has to offer. I could see it in his sure, quick movements as he extricated the pilot from the wreckage and instructed the men on how to take him inside. I also saw it when he sliced the shirt from the pilot’s skin and studied the flesh for abrasions that might reveal a greater internal wound.

  “Moses doesn’t say a whole lot,” Jabil continues, breaking into my thoughts. “But we might have to start halving the community rations just to keep him fed.”

  I conceal my smile by turning toward the meadow where the yellow plane is out in the elements. I wonder when Moses will come back to sift through whatever survived the crash. It bothers me to think that he’s been here already, and I simply missed his arrival. It bothers me that I would like to be here when he comes. Of all the places he could have landed, why did he choose our field? Or did Gott choose it for him?

  When I glance back at Jabil, he is watching me again, his eyes moving from my eyes and traveling down to my mouth like he’s trying to read my lips, although I am not speaking.

  Taking off his hat, he wipes the dampness from his hairline and tosses the hat on the ground. Gripping the end of the shovel, he continues pawing the ground and dumping the dirt into a pile. We are the first house to receive outdoor plumbing. I know Jabil has overseen this project for our family, while the rest of the men are working on the perimeter that will encase our community like a fort. Jabil says, “Who knows where Moses comes from.” When I glance at him, he will not meet my eyes but keeps staring at the ground. “Last night, he woke up yelling and then rattled downstairs with his crutches. I looked out the window and saw him stumbling up the lane. I’m not even sure he’s all there . . . to be honest. I’d be careful if I were you.”

  “Didn’t you tell us this community is supposed to be about peace?” I glower at Jabil until he rises to face me. “Just because you . . . you may not like Moses,” I stammer, squinting up into his dark eyes, “doesn’t mean you need to turn this into some kind of competition.”

  Jabil puts the shovel down. We continue staring, our bodies mimicking each other’s rapid inhalations. Since when did he become Mt. Hebron’s sole judge of character?

  A droplet of sweat trails down his jawline and glistens on the protruding cords of his neck. “Leora, I didn’t mean to talk . . . badly of him.” He extends a hand toward mine.

  Anxiety envelops me. I listen to the chickens squawking in their coop, to our windmill’s irregular creak, to the women coming back from Field to Table for lunch, their laughter reminding me of bygone days. I move away from Jabil and call for my sister. She ducks out of the miniature greenhouse. The tomcat scampers along behind her, his bottle-brush tail tipped with white. The apron of her cape dress is filled with green tomatoes. But her smile is so satisfied, I haven’t the heart to explain why the red tomatoes are the only ones ready to be picked.

  “’Ora! ’Ora!” she cries, running to me. In her haste to show me her treasures, a few of the tomatoes bounce out of her apron and roll across the grass.

  “Kumm, Anna,” I call.

  I slide her premature tomatoes into my apron pockets and take her hand. I look back at Jabil and regret my skittish reaction to his kindness and touch. I must not punish every good man simply because one man let me down. But I also do not want to make the same mistake my mamm made by leaping headlong into a relationship I might live to regret. So I will continue guarding my heart while relinquishing my viewpoint of every man as guilty until proven otherwise; I will simply view them as I view myself: trying to do the right thing by those I love.

  Before I lose my nerve, I turn and call out to Jabil, “Thank you!”

  I cannot see him looking because of his hat brim, but I can feel it. He raises his hand briefly in acknowledgment and then sinks his shovel once more into the earth.

  The men have decided to use the large pile of logs, originally destined for someone’s dream home, to fence in the property—creating the “perimeter” Moses suggested. In four d
ays, how have we, the Gentle People, allowed ourselves to become so debilitated by fear that we’ve formed an alliance that is based not on what each can give, but on what each can take?

  Really, in this way, how are we any different from the locusts we are trying to protect ourselves from? But when it comes right down to it, I am just like everyone else: I do not want marauders pillaging our land, consequently forcing me to watch my little brother and sister starve, so I would have made the same decision if I were in Bishop Lowell’s shoes.

  Anna, beside me, continues waltzing down the graveled drive. She is blissful, unaware that the world spinning around her spinning body has changed beyond recognition. Shading my eyes, I look at the wall being constructed and see that the bearded Englischer, Charlie, has paused in his work to watch. I remind myself not to view every man as guilty, and that I should be accustomed to deflecting the attention Anna garners. Yet my stomach still tightens as I see my sister’s cape dress lift and swirl around her strong, tan legs.

  “Anna!” I chide and move my body in front of hers, blocking Charlie’s view.

  She stops spinning, and I bat down her skirt.

  Moses must have heard me call out, for he hobbles over on the crutches Myron Beiler’s letting him borrow and says, “I want to thank you for the signs. They look great.”

  I smile stiffly in return and take Anna’s hand. Glancing over my shoulder, I see that Charlie has turned back to the wall to continue hammering. But I keep watching him, wondering if he’s constructing this perimeter to protect us or to keep us from escaping. The tops are sharpened to pencil points, upended as if to pierce the endless sky.

  “Everything all right?” Moses asks.

  I do not know Moses well enough to confide in him my fears. Then again, I do not confide my fears to anyone, so the risk is no greater with him than it would be with Jabil, whom I’ve known for such a long time. “Know anything about Charlie?”