The Alliance (8 page)

“He’s not advocating the use of violence. He’s advocating the use of common sense.” Angry, I turn from Jabil to face the display of buttons from different time periods, many of which are pieces of art in themselves, intricately carved from wood or bone.

He grabs my arm and turns me around. “Are you changing your beliefs?”

“No. But
you
need to compromise, rather than carrying on as if nothing is different.”

“Don’t you think I know that everything’s different?” Jabil says, his tone equally sharp. “Don’t you think I wish none of this had happened? That I—I still had time to court you properly, the way you deserve? But I can’t. Soon we’re going to be busy just trying to stay alive.”

Stunned by his declaration, I try to set my anger aside and view him not as someone I should love, but as someone who holds the power to keep my family safe. He lets go of me and steps back, leaning over the booth’s protective divider, which cannot impede someone of his height. He runs his fingers through the beads and buttons, letting each one slip through his fingers and clink to the base like hail. I tell him, “Everything else might be different, but my family’s problems aren’t going to change. Anna needs me. Seth needs me.
Grossmammi
Eunice even needs me, though she acts like she’d prefer to be alone.”

Jabil pulls a jar out of the display and sets it on the floor. “Seth
does
need you, but he also needs a man in his life, someone to help guide him during these critical years. I could be that for him, Leora. You all could move into our house, and we could start our own family there.” He touches the side of my face with the back of his hand. He leans his head down closer to mine. My spirit feels so numb, I flinch.

Straightening, he removes his hand. “It’s because of him. Isn’t it?”

“Because of whom?” But I know who he’s going to say.

“Moses. Ever since he crashed here, you’ve been distant from me.”

“That’s not true. We’ve just never been close.”

He sidesteps my words, knocking over the Mason jar.

“I’m sorry, Jabil. I never meant to hurt you.”

“You haven’t. Really.” He smiles again, the second time in one night, when I don’t remember him smiling more than a handful of times in all these years. “The buttons.” He gestures to them, strewn across the floor. “Thought you could put them on your clothes if we run out of pins.”

“I’m sorry, Jabil.”

“Stop apologizing. You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”

Then he strides across the cement flooring and leaves me standing there, alone, marooned in a lake of variegated buttons—a few of which the heels of Jabil’s boots have inadvertently ground to powder.

Moses

Old Man Henri slams the hood. “Engine’s cracked,” he says.

“And this one’s no better?”

He eyes the other tractor, mustached lips twitching. “Least not without the tools to fix it.”

I sigh. “Guess that’s it, then.” I turn to look for Jabil and Leora but see they’re coming out of the museum, which irritates me since Jabil never said he had a key. Leora moves across the grounds, holding something to her chest. “We’re ready,” I say. “Both tractors were a bust.”

Neither of them acknowledge me. They just climb up into the wagon, keeping a space between them large enough for a linebacker to sit in. I’m no genius at body language,
but even
I
can tell that something’s happened. The kind of something that means you could cut the carnal strain with a knife. Ignoring a pang of jealousy, I climb up and sit between Jabil and Leora. Jabil keeps hold of the reins as he steers us out of the museum’s lot.

Leora must be so tired that she could sleep anywhere. I take my eyes off the road to glance over at her. Scared she’s going to topple right off the bench onto the asphalt, I shake her shoulder. “Leora, hey . . . you could really hurt yourself if you fall from here.”

She recrosses her legs and steadies the jar in her lap. “I’m resting my eyes.”

“Then maybe try resting one at a time.”

She smiles, both eyes still closed. I’m not smiling at all. The sky’s lightening to gunmetal, but I can feel us being watched from deep within the shadowed alleyways between the brick buildings. I tell myself,
We’re in a wagon being driven down Main Street by a man in a straw hat. Of
course
we’re being watched.
But there’s more to it than that. I can perceive danger ahead like I can see the smoke drifting up from the oil drums on the corners. Whatever they’re burning—plastic or tires—the black smolder and acrid smell make my pulse race, taking me back to the explosion in the desert. To say I’m lucky to be alive is an understatement; I’m lucky to be alive
twice
. If not for Leora—and yes, Jabil and his loggers, who rescued me from my grandpa’s
demolished crop duster—a bum ankle would be the least of my problems.

Leora puts a hand on my forearm, and the unexpectedness of it makes me jump. I follow the direction where she’s pointing, but I can’t tell where the brick building stops and the hard pack of people’s bodies begins. I unsnap the top of my holster. My fingers crave the reassuring heft of the weapon in my hands, yet I also don’t want to alert Leora to the fact that I think we’re being hunted. I should’ve known it was too quiet on our way through town. For all we know, they could’ve been waiting for us since we passed in the wagon, thinking we might return with something they’d want to confiscate.

I look at Jabil, trying to communicate the danger we’re in. He nods, shifts his attention to the building, and then looks at me, holding my gaze before returning his eyes to the road and snapping the reins on the horse’s back. Then he leans forward until his tailbone is hardly on the seat. It takes a second for me to comprehend that he’s trying to shield Leora. And for the first time since we met, I have a sense of respect for the man. Though I unsnapped my gun holster for protection, I never thought about using my body to protect her.

Leora’s back straightens, her skin a corona of nervous energy that warms my own. “What do they want?” she whispers, nodding toward the building.

“Probably the horse and wagon.”

In addition to whatever is being carried by the horse and wagon. Maybe they also want her. The sweat on my neck goes cold. It was stupid of me to allow Leora to come along for this. What was I thinking? The truth is, I wasn’t thinking about keeping her safe. I was thinking more about one-upping stuffy Jabil by granting Leora her independence. My muscles tense, retired coils ready to spring into action. The men file from the shadows. They aren’t carrying anything that I can see. It’s too dark to make out their individual features, and many are wearing baseball hats or ski masks with the brims pulled low.

These men could very well be fathers, husbands, brothers, sons . . . lawyers, doctors, politicians. Not much more than a week ago, this gang could’ve been upstanding citizens who prided themselves on keeping the neighborhood watch. But now—
now
—they’re beginning to panic, to turn rogue out of desperation and fright. Now they realize food might soon become scarce, and their families could starve before their eyes. Therefore they’re seeing this mode of transportation as the golden ticket to domination of the food supply, and survival, which means they will do everything they can to steal it from us. Even kill or maim, when before they would’ve never thought themselves capable of such iniquity.

“Sit close, Leora,” I murmur, my eyes fixed on the approaching line of men.

The length of her thigh presses against mine. I take the revolver from the holster and set it on my lap. The tense clack of the horse’s shoes sparking over the asphalt can’t cover me pulling back on the hammer—that sound of a gun preparing to fire as distinct as a dying breath. The men might be armed themselves, but the sight of my weapon still gives them pause. I squint into the blackness, trying to see the direction of their eyes and anticipate what they’re preparing to do. Jabil doesn’t say anything, but Henri leans over the wagon to also peer out at the men, as threatening and shriveled as a turkey buzzard.

The shortest of the group appears to be the ringleader, and I wonder if he held this position before the EMP, or if the decimation of the law has placed his shady qualities in a whole new light. He swaggers toward us—potbelly thrust forward, thick shoulders squared—and the men automatically fall back into a V. “How you boys tonight?” he asks in a genteel voice. If he wore a hat, he’d tip it. His hair is cropped close to his head and dyed black to cover up the gray, so that his receding hairline looks smeared against his anemic skin. He has on a biker T-shirt with coppery flames, dress pants, and cowboy boots. Snakeskin boots, I surmise, simply because he looks like the type to wear them.

“Wait—you sure no boy I ever seen.” He grins with a mouthful of teeth too white and uniform to be real. The ringleader moves closer. The moon pokes out from behind a
cloud and reveals the direction of the man’s gaze, as it lingers over the taut angles of Leora’s face balanced with curves, which somehow reveal the attractiveness her glasses and shapeless cape dress cannot hide. “Where you come from?” He raises one bushy silver eyebrow. “A time capsule?”

Two of the men laugh and inch closer to the ringleader . . . closer to us.

Beside me, Leora keeps her chin raised. But I can feel how she shakes.

“You all need to keep moving,” I say.

The ringleader steps forward. “You’re the ones who came into
our
town. So don’t think you got the right to tell us which way to head.”

“Last I checked,” I say, “the town wasn’t owned by a group of thugs.”

“Well, boy—” his eyes shrink to a glint—“time to check again.” He pauses, turns to his group. “What you think they should pay us for passing through? How ’bout they give us this here contraption? I ain’t seen too many wagons rolling around tonight.”

“It’s not worth much,” Jabil says, the first he’s spoken.

“That right?” the ringleader asks. “Actually, I think it is. And you know what else I think? I think you’re trying to pull one over on us.” The ringleader moves closer. A henchman follows like an overfed shadow, his eyebrows so bushy and glowering, they almost distract me from the hair
missing from his oval-shaped head. One lousy revolver isn’t going to be enough to protect us, and I feel sick to my gut, knowing I’ve exposed Leora to these lowlifes.

I’m trying to figure out how to take the henchman, and then the ringleader, considering I’m not up to par because of my hurt foot. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Henri turn in the wagon and reach under the feed sacks. He pulls out a twelve-gauge shotgun as smooth as an assassin and growls, real low, “You got five seconds flat to hightail it from here.” He clicks the safety off with one gnarled old thumb, but his face says that he’s very capable of pulling the trigger. Twenty pairs of eyes are locked on two barrels. Nobody blinks. “Git,” Henri says, waving the shotgun like he could care less if it accidentally goes off. The men nod and begin reversing into the alleyway with their palms raised.

“Hey—you,” Henri calls. The ringleader looks over his shoulder. “Yeah,
you
.” He taps the barrel of the shotgun, then smiles. “What’s in that there shirt pocket of yours? Cigarettes?” The ringleader rolls his eyes, then fishes in his shirt pocket. He tosses a pack through the air and they land in the back of the wagon, cushioned by the sacks. “Much obliged,” Henri says.

The ringleader murmurs, “You’ll pay for that,” before he slips, like a rat, into the alley between the walls.

Leora

I
TAKE A SIP OF COFFEE
and watch the peach-colored sun melt the fog that softens the edges of the community like a low-hanging cloud. But I haven’t been awake long enough, or slept long enough since our return from town, to appreciate this beauty. The door opens behind me. I turn, expecting to see
Grossmammi
, who’s always been an early riser. But Melinda is the one who stumbles like a sleepwalker across the porch and leans against the railing. Her hair is disheveled, her eyes livid red slits peering out of a wan face. As far as my knowledge, this is the first time she’s been outside since she moved in.

“Would you like some coffee?” I hesitantly ask. “We have some sugar left.”

Melinda’s laughter is so laced with bitterness that it’s hard to hear. “I need something a little stronger than coffee.”

Yesterday, I worked up the nerve to enter the living room and change the sheets on the couch bed. I also worked up the nerve to inspect her prescription bottle while I was there. When Melinda first arrived, the tiny blue pills appeared to be a full month’s supply. Now, nine days post-EMP, she has only enough to last her until the end of the week. I have little tolerance for someone who relies on escapism to dull their pain. But whenever I feel frustrated with Melinda, I
try to remind myself that being around our family must bring the loss of her own family back, not to mention the loss of being able to come and go as she pleases.

She whispers beside me, “I wish I were dead.”

How do you respond when someone makes such an admission? Any uplifting platitudes would sound dull since I have no hope to offer. So I say nothing. I stand beside her in silence and stare down at my coffee, which seems a frivolous indulgence in comparison to her plight. When I risk glancing over at her again, she’s looking at the sun without blinking, as if she’s willing it to permanently burn memories from her mind’s eye. The stark illumination reveals the faint etching of lines around her mouth, the freckles spanning the bridge of her nose, the unruly hair reclaiming her perfectly shaped brows.

The building blocks fortifying Melinda’s life—her family, her money, her power—have been demolished, leaving her standing in the center of the devastation, bare and exposed. I cannot claim to possess any of the assets she has in abundance, but I
do
have a family. Despite our brokenness, they bring me security. It hurts me to envisage standing where Melinda’s standing right now, knowing that this security is gone, that this is both the beginning of a life . . . and the end. “I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you.”

Melinda finally closes her eyes, the lashes fluttering
against the changing light like moths. Tears cling to the individual strands, but she looks upward at the sky’s faint tracing of stars and doesn’t let them fall. “Thank you,” she says, and then turns and walks back into the house, closing the door so quietly that I think, for a moment, I dreamed her standing beside me.

Jabil must’ve been watching our interaction. Less than five minutes after Melinda goes back inside, he crosses the field with a scythe across his shoulder. His suspenders are straight and his hair is combed. But his eyes—even from this distance—are bloodshot. I wonder if he misled his family, telling them he wanted to get an early start cutting the hay field between our houses, and yet I fear he
really
wants to talk to me again about combining our homesteads.

My mouth goes dry as I watch him tread through the grass, his footprints cutting a darker pattern as they strip away the dew. Forcing a smile, I hold up my cup—diluted coffee, once more the only balm I have to offer—but he shakes his head. He sets the scythe down and climbs the porch steps. He doesn’t offer a greeting, just looks at me with his signature austere expression before glancing toward the kitchen window that is backlit by the kerosene lamp.

“Someone reported seeing Moses leaving the community,”
he says. “My uncle and the deacons came over to our house this morning. To ask where he went.”

“There is no crime in leaving. We are not on lockdown.”

Mt. Hebron has no enforced curfew. But it’s understood that nothing moral happens after midnight. Therefore, the only law we broke last night was illicitly entering the museum—and, discounting the jar of buttons Jabil poached for me, only the
attempted
theft of the tractors. Yet I know there is more to it than that. It took only nine days post-EMP for me not only to violate physical boundaries, but also to violate my ethical parameters. This is why I had such trouble sleeping after our return from Liberty, even as my sister was nestled without fanfare in our bed. I can blather on about my desire to provide for my family, but the truth is that when life becomes hard, I am no different from my
vadder
. I am willing to do almost anything to avoid feeling out of control.

I glance down at my mug, but anything acidic would just combine with the acid climbing up my throat. Leaning over the rail, I dump the rest of the precious coffee on the ground, aware—even as I watch it seep into the earth—that I will soon regret the impulse when we have no coffee left. I ask, “Do they know we were trying to take a tractor?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I mean . . . yes. They know that Moses attempted to steal a vehicle, but he wouldn’t say we were along.”

Jabil studies me with those somber, dark eyes, but I am unable to decipher them. What do they convey? Sadness, jealousy . . . a fusion of both? He shifts his gaze away. “I overheard that they’re thinking about expelling him from the community, allowing him to take only his belongings like the edict says.”

My protective instinct rises up, righteous and maternal. “Forget the edict! He can’t be expelled. He can barely walk! How’s he supposed to survive in a place like we saw last night?”

Jabil shrugs. “He should’ve thought it through. We
all
should’ve thought it through. It was an unlawful attempt: trying to get ahead by taking what is not ours. If I could do it over, I wouldn’t have gone along, and I wouldn’t have let you go.”

“‘Let’ me go?” I repeat, incredulous. “Moses was right: it’s not your place to tell me what I can or cannot do, Jabil Snyder, just as it was not your place to vote on my behalf. You know I’m not interested in courtship, and yet you
still
try to tell me what to do and think.”

Jabil folds his arms, his eyebrows raised in shock. I take my glasses off and stare up at him in defiance, forcing him to blink first. He turns from me to stare down the lane, his breath coming out hard and fast. I feel a bittersweet satisfaction, knowing I have the upper hand.

The silence continues. I turn to stare down the lane as well, trying to comprehend how someone could’ve spied on
us when we left so early in the morning, since even dairy farmer Elias Lehman would have been asleep. “Wait. Did
you
tell on Moses? Did
you
turn him in?”

Jabil doesn’t say anything, only stares at the pilot’s wreckage with his jaw throbbing.

“Are you jealous of him? Is
that
it?” I step closer until I can smell the unwashed tang of his skin. Our breaths rise, the morning sun knifing between our bodies. “You thought that because I turned you down, I must be going after someone else?” I stare at his profile until he looks over at me. Then, guiltily, he looks away. My body trembles with rage at the hypocrisy of this man standing before me, pacifist though he might be, who would wield his power to crush a man he perceives as his foe. It seems I know the real Jabil as little as he knows the real me.

He says, “I’m just trying to protect you.”

“I don’t need protecting.”

Jabil pivots from me, his face stricken. “I hope you’re right,” he murmurs, so quietly that I have to strain to hear. We don’t say anything else, just stare at the field between our two houses, as if joined and separated by the wreckage of Moses’s plane.

I cannot stay here once Jabil begins cutting hay, but neither can I go back inside to face
Grossmammi
’s inquisitive
expression. So I cut across the yard and stride down the lane, not aware where I am headed, just aware that I need to put as much distance between Jabil and me as the community’s perimeter will allow. The fog has mostly dissipated, yet the sun struggles to shine through the embellishment of stiff, meringue-white clouds. The workers’ hammers ring across the valley like the repetition of a gong bidding us to come and dine on whatever food is to last us until planting season comes again.

The Snyders’ chimney is devoid of its spool of smoke, the hitching post lacking the horse and buggy typically waiting in their yard, leaving me to assume that everyone has left. Perhaps Moses has left as well. My heart sinks at the thought, deeper within myself than I would care to admit. I should’ve never let him close enough to have that kind of power over my emotions.

I walk up the back porch steps, which are laid out identically to ours, and enter the kitchen after knocking on the screen door. Moses is seated at the table, dust swirling in the natural light filtered through the smudged windowpanes. A plate of food is before him: sunny-side-up eggs with toast, tarnished pepper and salt shakers beside a tin cup of coffee. Other than the eggs, every bit of that fare should be rationed, and I wonder if anyone else in our community has reached that level of comprehension of what is soon going to be lost. But I imagine that Widow Snyder, Jabil’s
mother, would give Moses her last scoop of coffee grounds and granule of salt because she is as besotted with the pilot as I, regretfully, am.

“Hey, Leora,” Moses says.

I don’t look at him but focus on the backpack leaning against the wall beside the pile of scuff-toed shoes displaying the age range and sex of everyone living in this house—a backpack with a green bedroll attached to the bottom and a stainless-steel canister with a black, screw-on lid. This must be all Moses could salvage from his plane. I stare at these items, yet remain clinging to the doorframe. When I glance inside, Moses is watching me too.

“Where will you go?” I ask.

“Join the locusts, I suppose.” He smirks, but his light eyes are dim.

“We were accomplices.” My vison blurs, voice breaks. “It’s only right that if you get punished, we get punished too.”

Moses shakes his head. “It was my idea. . . . Let me take the blame.”

“I’m not just thinking of you.” I point to the line of shoes, as if they are filled by the children who own them. “What will happen when the locusts come? When we only have three men in the whole community who are willing to fight back?” These are contradictory words for a pacifist. But suddenly my genuine convictions are unveiled, even to
me: though I would probably never lift a hand in violence, I do not mind if others lift theirs to protect those I love.

“Maybe you should learn how to shoot.”

“My
vadder
already taught me how to shoot.”

Moses unfolds his hands and leans back in the chair. “Why are you so defensive?”

My eyes burn. I stare through the Snyders’ window to our house, which my
vadder
painstakingly built and then abandoned. I look back at him. “Because you’re cornering me.”