Out of Heaven's Grasp (20 page)

For one thing, they tasted terrible, but I was beginning to think that was typical of anything wicked and wordly. After all, beer tasted pretty gross too.

But being drunk came on pleasantly. It made me loose-lipped and stumbling and happy. If I drank too much of it, it got bad, but at first, it was very nice.

At first, the mushrooms were not nice at all.

I was about ready to go back to my truck and try to drive away, go somewhere to wait it out, since it wasn’t feeling good, but River found me.

He was making rounds of the bonfire, and he stopped to ask me if I was doing okay.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

He laughed. “Did you eat the shrooms?” His voice sounded strange and distorted, and I was afraid of it—or at least, I would have been if it hadn’t been for something else. A feeling. River
felt
friendly. I don’t know how to explain this, but I knew it was true. Everything around me seemed like it was breaking up and falling apart, but River was a friendly face. The more I looked at him, the more he seemed to glow.

Then I realized it was just the fire behind him.

But no… the fire was definitely… moving. It was twisting slowly, coming around his face and wrapping him in glowing tendrils.

I stared at him, my eyes wide.

His grin widened. “You definitely ate them.”

“Yeah,” I said.

We sat down in front of the fire, and we talked for a long time. Our conversation flitted from one topic to the next, and as we spoke, the world around me came alive with strange, twisting visions. I’d expected hallucinating to mean that I saw things that weren’t there, but it wasn’t exactly like that. It was more that I saw things that were actually there, but that they were different. There were patterns in the night sky, patterns in the fire. River’s face moved and undulated. I was deep inside a thrumming wide system of movement, the whole of the world squirming together in time to some ancient and earthy rhythm.

I interrupted our conversation frequently to comment on the hallucinations, but they weren’t the point of the experience.

It was almost frustrating. I wanted to be able to slow down and look at all the things that I was seeing, but something within me pushed me forward, urging me instead to follow whatever train of thought that I was pursuing.

“I think,” said River, his voice soft and wise in the darkness, “that the world is all just one thing. It’s like everything’s just a piece of that big one thing. And the reason that I think that is because everything turns into each other. When we die, we go back into the earth, and everything eats everything else. But you don’t have to look at it like eating if you don’t want. If you want to, you can simply see it as everything flowing through each other. The water flows into the ground and the plants grow and the animals eat the plants, so the plants flow into them, and then the people eat the animals, and the animals flow into them. But it’s bigger than that too. Things are sluffing off of us at every minute. Right now, you’re losing skin cells, and they’re floating into the air. And I’m breathing the air. I’m breathing in you. You’re breathing in me. The wood in that fire is burning, and we’re taking in the heat and breathing in the smoke. So, it’s all really just the same thing.”

I reached out to the fire, letting it warm my fingertips. There were patterns of flowers crawling over my fingernails. “Why are we always putting up boundaries, then? Why are we always trying to keep everything out?”

“Fear,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Everyone’s afraid.”

“But there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“No,” I said. “Because if we’re all part of the same thing, then nothing can really happen to any of us. Even if we die, we’re still part of it.”

“That’s right.”

“And then there’s no evil, is there? Because if everything’s part of one big thing, then there’s no way you can really hurt anything.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think there’s evil. I think it’s evil to be separate. Whenever you try to break yourself away from other people or from nature or your own mind, I think that’s evil.”

“I don’t even know what evil is.” I gazed into the dancing flames. “People used to tell me that everything that anyone wanted was evil.”

“What?” River laughed. “How could that be true?”

I stared up at the sky. Now… now, the mushrooms felt very, very good. If alcohol started good and got bad, then mushrooms started bad and got good. I smiled. “Desire. They said desire was evil. They said we should accept everything, and question nothing.”

“No, man,” said River. “Question everything. That’s the only way you learn.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“But I think the more you learn, the less you’re likely to challenge, because you begin to realize just how everything works. You see the beauty in everything, even things that are brutal, like animals killing each other in the wild. You see the way it all works together.”

“Yeah, but that’s different,” I said. “Because animals have to eat. But people don’t have to force other people to do things that they don’t want to do.”

“No,” he said. “They don’t. That’s why that’s evil. Because it’s breaking away from the natural order of things.”

I laughed. “It’s funny, because they always told us we were closer to nature. They said that was why we lived the way we did.” I turned to him. “I don’t know if I agree with your definition of evil.”

He laughed. “Good. Don’t. Question everything.”

“I think evil is hurting someone else on purpose. Knowing that what you’re going to do to them a is going to make things better for you and worse for them. And doing it anyway.”

“Well, what about killing to eat? We were just talking about that. I mean, that’s the very definition of what you’re saying. Is that evil?”

I sank my hands into my hair, and for a minute, I wished that my hair was still long. “Well, I used to be a vegetarian, but it wasn’t about animals, it was about being God’s chosen people.”

“I don’t believe in God,” he said.

“I don’t either,” I said.

* * *

Later, after the conversation with River wound down, I lay on my back next to the fire. My eyes were closed, and I could hear snatches of conversation around me. I heard the strings of a guitar, some song I didn’t recognize, and I felt the earth under my back.

The air away from the fire was cold, so I stayed close.

I didn’t go to sleep, but pictures began to move in my mind’s eye, almost like a dream. I didn’t seem to control them. They had a life of their own.

I thought about River claiming that mushrooms could send someone on a vision quest, and I wondered if that was what was happening to me.

I swam in the images and sensations, feeling at one with everything around me—closely connected to the fire and the dirt and the music and the stars. It was easy to feel as if we were, as River said, all part of the same big organism.

In my vision, there was snow on the ground. It didn’t snow often in west Texas, but there would be occasional snow fall in the winter of a few inches. I was back in the community, and the entire place was covered in a white, sparkling blanket. It looked pristine and brilliant, but I knew that it only served to cover up all the corruption beneath the surface.

I stood in front of the meeting hall, in the empty parking area. All around me, the landscape stretched out, white and unmarred.

The door the meeting house opened, and Abby came out.

She was beautiful. Her hair was down, flowing around her face, bouncing against her shoulders. She was wearing a white wedding dress.

Her lips were stained dark red, and her eyes were ringed in coal-black lines. She looked terrible and beautiful and sad.

She saw me, and she flung her arms out wide, stretching them out in either direction. She hung her head.

Beads of red appeared in her palms.

She floated into the air, and I realized she looked as if she was being crucified, as if Abigail London was back in the community, suffering for my sins, while I lay in the desert, tripping on mushrooms and contemplating the nature of evil.

In the vision, I went to her.

But she floated up, out of my reach, so that I couldn’t touch her.

She peered down at me. Tears flowed out of her eyes, and they made black rivets down her cheeks because they smeared the black make-up around her eyes.

I fell down on my knees, throwing my hands into the air.
Forgive me
, I said.

She shook her head.
You don’t need to be forgiven
.

I stared up at her, confused.

Abby threw her head back, and her entire body exploded into snow.

It felt onto me.

Don’t forgive me. Rescue me.

And I opened my eyes.

The fire was burning down to embers, and the air had gotten quite cold.

River crouched down next to me. “Jesse?”

I sat up. “I think I might have had one.”

“What?”

I furrowed my brow. “A vision.”

He chuckled, patting me on the back. “You should probably get some rest. You got a bed to get to?”

I nodded. “Yeah… yeah, I guess I do.”

* * *

But, as it turned out, I didn’t.

When I got back to Ephraim’s house, he was waiting for me. “Get your stuff and get out.”

I was confused. The effects of the mushrooms had mostly worn off, but I still felt a little bit free and relaxed, and everything was still a tiny bit brighter than it was normally.

Ephraim folded his arms over his chest. “Anthony told me that you’re doing drugs.”

I peered around Ephraim to see Anthony sitting on one of the couches in the living room. He gave me a defiant look.

I felt betrayed.

I stepped around Ephraim to address Anthony. “You seriously did that, man? Why did you do that?”

Ephraim stepped between us. “This isn’t his fault, Jesse. I let you know when you moved into this house that there were rules. No drugs. It’s a big deal for me.”

I dragged a hand over my face. “Look, it was one time. And it wasn’t even bad. It was good. It made me see things about the world, understand things better. It made me feel closer to everything, to nature, to the universe. And I feel like I know what I need to be doing now. I feel like something… I don’t know what, maybe it was just something inside my own head, but
something
showed me what I’m meant to be doing. And it’s not chasing girls around and getting drunk, it’s—”

“I don’t want to hear your druggy talk,” said Ephraim. “You’re fucked up right now, and what you’re saying doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Ephraim, you drink beer all the time. How is it different?”

“Beer is legal,” said Ephraim.

“You let us drink beer, and we’re underage,” I pointed out. “That’s illegal.”

“I’m not having an argument with you about this. This is my house, and I don’t want you here anymore. You need to get your stuff and get out now.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “You won’t even let me stay here tonight?”

“Jesse, you’re out of control. You lost your job, you’re doing drugs. You’re in a downward spiral. I told you when you came here that you’ve got to make boundaries for yourself, but you’re not making any boundaries. It seems like you’ll just do anything, no matter how destructive it is.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said. “I’m trying to figure it out. But I can’t just not do something, because you said so. That’s been my whole life. All I’ve ever done is listen to what everyone else said. I’ve never thought for myself. And I have to. I can’t just pick up some other religion like you did, because it’s the same shit over and over again. Maybe it’s not as bad as the Life, but it’s still some other fucking people telling you what to think and what you can and can’t do. I can’t do that.”

“You don’t have to,” said Ephraim. “You can do whatever you want. But you can’t do it under my roof.”

I sighed.

“Get your stuff,” he said.

I went back to my room and got my meager possessions together. I stuffed them all in a big garbage bag and started out into the hallway.

Anthony was there.

“I thought you were my friend,” I said.

“You broke the rules, man,” he said.

I set down the garbage bag and advanced on him. “Nothing’s changed for you, Anthony. You may be out of the community, but you’re not free of it.” I tapped his forehead. “Inside here, you’re just as tied down as you ever were.”

He pushed me away. “You shouldn’t have done drugs. Ephraim lets us do everything except that.”

“It’s not about drugs,” I said. “You know what your problem is, Anthony? You’re still trying to figure out what the rules are, and you’re still trying to follow them. You think that the new rules are to get drunk, have sex with random people, and stay away from drugs. You gotta realize that now that we’re out, there are no rules.”

“You fucked up, man.”