The Alliance (24 page)

“Get that guy,” I hiss, the battle with my conscience conquered by sheer instinct for survival. We all open up. One of our bullets hits him low in the leg, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. Charlie curses as the man continues his pace like a demented robot, not even favoring his wound. In seconds, the man makes his way into the shadow of our perimeter, so close that he’s out of our range. The rest of the gang are sending a wall of lead our way, trying to give their runner some cover. And it’s working. There’s no way I’m going to stand up to peer over the edge of the wall with
bullets whizzing inches above my head. Soon, we can smell smoke and then see the telltale noxious cloud rising over the perimeter.

Luke calls over to us, “He’s higher than a kite and can’t feel much of anything. That’s probably how the gang got him to do it in the first place.”

The man has almost made it back to the barricade without the gas can, having surely dumped everything over the logs. Charlie takes aim.

I put up my hand to stop him. “It won’t do any good.”

He sighs and lowers the weapon. “Now we’re even for that cat.”

“I think a person’s a little more important than a cat.”

“Maybe in your book.”

Sean says, “Stop jabbering, you two. Who’s going to get the water?”

I say, “That fire’s not going out like last time. Besides, they’d shoot us if we tried.”

“Great,” Charlie says. “We’re dead either way you slice it.”

Across from us, Luke starts choking on the smoke. Slanting his gun against the scaffolding, he leans over and coughs so hard that, this time, I expect to see blood. There’s nothing. He raises his head and meets my eyes. His are a mottled rendition of Leora’s. I look back at him without seeing him. Instead I’m seeing his daughter when she reunites
with her father after two years apart. Though he’s a shell of the man who raised her, he’s still her flesh and blood. I know what it’s like to lose that fetter to the earth—or to simply cut yourself free from it because you’re too ashamed of what you’ve done. Or of what you didn’t have the courage to do. I can’t let that level of loss happen to her. She’s lost enough.

“I think y’all should go.” Nobody responds to me—not Charlie, Luke, or Sean. All three just stare—as if hypnotized—at the flames licking the sides of the logs, at the sound of the wood cracking from the heat. “I’ll hold down the fort while you help everyone finish escaping.”

“Hold down the fort?” Charlie rolls his eyes. “Don’t talk stupid, Moses. We’re about out of bullets, and our cover’s in the process of getting burnt to the ground. What’re you gonna do then? Throw rocks at them?”

“You said yourself we’re dead if we put out the fire, and we’re dead if we don’t. There’s no point in all of us just sitting here, with guns and no ammo, waiting to get overrun.” I glance away from Charlie to the other set of scaffolding. “I’ve already had my string of second chances, Luke. Now I’m giving you one: I want you to get better, to get clean. I want you to reunite with your family. To become a father to them again, like you should’ve been all along.”

Luke Ebersole stares like he can’t decide if I’m serious or insane. Brushing a hank of hair away from his face, he says, “Why would you do that? You don’t even know me.”

I look away from him, and my eyes burn. I tell myself it’s from the heat and the smoke of the flames. “I don’t know you, but I do know your daughter. And for her, I’d do anything.”

Leora

It’s as if I can see my
vadder
’s fate being sealed as Sal picks up the one bag of cocaine, which she’s taken from the cellar, and tucks it into her backpack—proof, she says, that she’s not telling a lie. For the gang’s not going to allow someone who increased his debt with stolen property, which he then had the gall to damage, to just walk away. No, they will find him, I’m sure, and they will kill him. Though I am angry for his abandonment—for the two years my family spent not knowing if he was dead or alive—my stomach lurches at the thought of him actually dying.

My
vadder
wasn’t always a drug addict. He didn’t always shirk his responsibilities surrounding his children and wife. I remember him sitting at the head of that beautiful table he made, teasing a smile from my
mamm
’s mouth at suppertime as his callused hands passed her steaming bowls. I remember him carrying Anna, then eight years old, back from the pond after she fell skating—his booted feet stamping patterns in the snow as he cradled her, like someone newly born, against his chest. I remember glancing up
after my baptism into the Mennonite church and seeing my
vadder
watching me with an incalculable mixture of sadness and warmth, so that I was grateful for the water dripping down my forehead, a screen for my eyes. For the first time since I’ve learned that he is alive—has, in fact, been living in Liberty this entire time—I feel my heart softening toward him, not because I know I should honor him despite what he’s done, but because I realize, despite everything, I love him still.

Sal closes the trapdoor and kicks leaves over the plywood. She tucks strands of hair that have come loose from her braid behind her ears. I can see the crescents of brown beneath her strong, pink-and-white nails where she was peeling back the dirt to reach the cellar, and I know that this telltale dirt was what she was trying to hide from me that day she came into my room to make sure I was all right. I reach out and take that soiled hand.

“Please,” I beseech her, thinking if I can protect her life, perhaps I can protect my
vadder
’s as well. “Please stay. You are not alone. We want you here . . . with us.”

Sal drops my hand and looks away from me, toward the entrance of the woods. Jabil’s so engrossed in unloading the wagon, I am almost certain that he has not noticed us. “I’m an informant, Leora.
Not
your friend. There has always been a deal. If I don’t return . . .” She gestures toward the cellar concealing the cocaine. “If I just disappear and leave with
you all, they’ll come after me . . . the same as they’ll come after your dad.”

She says this as if she’s recited it, but I can see how her eyes gleam in the waning light. We have become friends, despite her many walls and my own; it just makes it easier for her to leave if she says we are not. I search the pockets of my apron, trying to think of something I can offer. I hold my hands up and force myself not to cry. “I have nothing to give.”

“You’re wrong,” she says, and her facade shatters like that heirloom platter at the feast. Tears slide down her cheeks. She smears them away like contagion. “You can give by taking from me.” Colton lifts his head from the sling and smiles, sated from his mother’s milk. In spite of her pain, I cannot help but smile back. Without looking at him or at me, Sal hooks her hands beneath Colton’s arms and gently pulls his legs out of the sling. She hugs the child against her. Tears fall freely now and cling to his hair, dew on blades of ink-black grass.

Straightening, she dabs her nose and places the sweet bulk of him in my arms. Sal chokes down a sob and turns away from the searing image of me holding her son. “Don’t try talking me out of this,” she says, her voice rigid. “Where I’m going’s no place for a child. I’ll come back for him when it’s safe.” Honoring her wishes, I remain silent. Sal loosens the straps of the sling and passes it to me, warm with their body
heat. Then she shoulders her pack and slips into the woods, disappearing as the eventide gradually wraps her like a blanket.

I shield Colton’s head with my hand to keep him from getting slapped with brushwood as I hurry back toward the opening in the fence, which Jabil cut for easier passage. Behind his wagon, I can see the outline of my people, along with their horses and mules that are packed down with everything they anticipate we’ll need to establish a new community on the mountain, if the one in the valley indeed gets destroyed. Some families are already making their way up the old logging path. Bishop Lowell is leading them, his straw hat donned, a walking staff supporting his weary—albeit determined—stride. I think of that verse in Exodus, which he quoted yesterday to encourage the community after they found out about our plight:

And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.

My irritation abates and my heart swells to witness my people’s resilience in the face of such adversity. They
are in the process of leaving—and losing—so much, and yet, despite this, they are already willing to build again. Leaving does not always equal apathy; in their case, leaving instead of hiding behind firepower is indeed the fearless thing to do.

I look toward the skyline, drinking in my last twilight viewed from Mt. Hebron land. The final rays of sun appear like fingers traced behind the stark cutout of the perimeter, reaching up into the darkening sky. My breath catches, as the peaceful moment is juxtaposed with the understanding that I am not merely viewing the final rays of sun, but also the flames leaping into the air on the perimeter down by the gate.

Seeking an explanation, I turn toward Jabil, who’s unloading the last load of supplies at such a furious pace, he doesn’t notice me until I yell at him.

He sets down the box and wipes his forehead with an arm equally saturated with sweat. “I see the perimeter. I do. But I can’t stop to think about it now.”

“What’s going to happen to us, Jabil?”

He studies my face, as if resigned to whatever is about to befall. “I don’t know, Leora,” he says, and I am not sure if he is only speaking about the community or also about him and me.

I leave Jabil to his consuming work and pass through the gap in the fence. The horses and mules paw the earth, their
bridles filling the air with a cheerful jingle contrasting our own alarm. Animals and humans alike sense an innate need to escape the fire that has covered the sky with a dense smog of orange-tinged light.

Grossmammi
Eunice is standing at the edge of the group with my brother and sister. Anna’s face is splotched from crying, the same as mine whenever I’m upset. Seth reminds me of one of the horses, resentful of the restraining bridle of
Grossmammi
’s skinny arm.

I step closer to them.
Grossmammi
lets go of Seth, and as if her fingers are compensating for her inability to see, she touches my face, my shoulder, and then Colton, who is pulling my
kapp
strings. “Where’s Sal?” she asks.

“She’ll be back. Can you take Colton a minute? It’s too complicated to explain.”

She accepts Colton, pressing a kiss to his cheek. He snuggles against her, as accepting of love as any oblivious
kind
. “Stay close,” she warns. “We’re leaving with the next wagonload.”

“I will, but I have to do something first.”

Tension radiates from my fractured family with a palpable warmth, and yet
Grossmammi
nods, giving me, her eldest grandchild, the freedom to execute my choices and mistakes, which—as contrary as it is—makes me want to stay. But I cannot. Colton begins to
rutsch
in her arms.
Grossmammi
attempts to calm him by offering him a
knuckle to suck. Using her distraction to my advantage, I disappear into the crowd before she or Seth ask what I have to do.

Pebbles fling behind my heels as I hurry down the lane toward the perimeter, which appears more like a torch than an obstruction, and yet it continues to stand. But for how long? I scan every passing face. Though I spot Charlie and Sean in the distance—supporting Henri between them—Moses is nowhere to be found. I am nearly to Field to Table when someone steps from the shadow cast by the awning. “Leora.” I jump back at the voice and, by the light of the perimeter fire, see a man reaching out for me.

I do not know if I gasp aloud or only in my mind. I remain immobilized, as drained of my lifeblood as the person’s skin appears. He walks toward me, tentative, as if afraid to spook a wild animal. Words will not come. Breath will not come. I am living a nightmare from which I can never awaken and during which I can never scream. The snapshots from our conjoined lives, which filtered through my mind as I stood beside the cellar, are conflicted by reality. My
vadder
. I can smell the smoke lacing his clothing and the acerbic odor of his skin and hair. His eyes—the same shape and shade as mine—are the only thing about him that remains unchanged.

“What are you doing?” My question sounds more like an accusation.

“I came here to help. I came here to . . . to come home.”

Eyes burning, I watch a portion of the perimeter collapse. I think of the night I wedged Anna’s bloodied nightgown down into the stove, vowing to protect and avenge her honor, no matter the personal cost. I think of
Mamm
pressing my hand while she lay on the couch and telling me to love someone who won’t make me cry. Even Seth is vulnerable, as he’s longing for a father figure, like Moses, so that he might imitate his life. Father or not, I won’t allow this man to come back to our home until he’s the kind of man our family deserves.

“Do you know that
Mamm
’s dead?” I ask him. “Because you broke her heart? That I’ve been trying to keep our family together while
you’ve
been acting like you don’t have one?”