In Search of Eden (5 page)

Not everyone approved of his isolation.

“It's your choice if you want to live out there in the backside of nowhere,”
Susan Cummings, the mail carrier, had sniped.
“But I don't have to drive to your doorstep every living day.”

“It's not the end of the world,”
his mother had complained, snug in her house in town,
“but you can see it from there.”

Joseph turned on the burner under his coffee. Leaving it to brew, he shrugged on his jacket, pulled on his boots, and went outside. The wind cut at his cheeks and his hands. It blew hard and moaned between the empty branches. He guessed the temperature was somewhere in the twenties. The snow clouds were gray and low and looked like dirty cotton.

He walked toward the river's edge, Flick bounding along beside him. The ground was frozen hard under his feet. He stopped at a place he had always intended to plant a garden, a little flat spot that got good sun and was near the river. Maybe someday. For now, his mother kept him supplied with vegetables. In fact, she was expecting him for supper tonight, and that thought along with the responsibilities of the day began to line up like patient children waiting for a word with the teacher.

He went to the riverbank, squatted down, and looked out over the river. It was swift here but not deep. The water was frozen along the banks and out in the middle by the log snag. Most of the trees along the bank were a gray tangle. There was something about winter out here that let a little hope remain. He supposed that was why he chose to live here. Even though the bareness was more stark, at least here he could see the first promises of thaw, the first swelling of buds.

He stood and walked a ways into the woods. The air was
heavy and still. He smelled earth and mulched leaves and pine. He could see the scuffs and scat from the deer he had spotted yesterday. He followed the signs of crushed leaves and broken twigs and found the spot where the animal had bounded off into the brush. There beside it were old prints in the frozen ground that looked like a small dog's. No doubt from the red fox he had spied crossing the road last week during the warm spell. He raised his eyes a little higher and saw a possum's nest in a hickory tree. Higher still and there was the gray sky again, the blanket of clouds low and heavy. He turned and made his way back to the river.

He tossed a stick absently across a smooth deep spot and watched the ripples meet the white current along the shallows. Flick bounded in after it, despite the cold. They played their game again and again. Finally Joseph put his hands in his pockets, the signal to Flick that the game was over. He turned and headed back toward the cabin while Flick ran in circles, shaking himself.

He had built this house for Sarah. It was to have been their home together, but he well remembered how that had ended. He could still close his eyes and call the whole pitiful scene back. He could see his brother, guilty and miserable, unable to look him in the eye; his mother, grief-torn and swollen-faced at this rift between her sons. And Sarah, the one who had caused it all, had hidden from him. He had been reduced to searching her out, but when he found her, he had seen the evidence himself. On her face. In the wide eyes, guilty and half afraid. On her hand, the glinting diamond his brother had given her winking slyly at his pain. And he knew what he could not see: she had given the hidden places of her heart and her body to David, and she carried his child. His brother's face flashed before his eyes. His handsome, happy brother and his beautiful wife, their happy marriage and fulfilling ministry, and their lovely daughter, whose very name bespoke perfection.

He felt the hard lump of iron that his anger had become and touched its familiar shape, much as a person will run their tongue over a broken tooth they have long since learned to accept. The
weight of that anger, though familiar, was heavy and had shaped him over the years. It had pressed him into someone he hadn't been before. The fight to forgive his brother and his wife was a battle he had given up as lost, and he understood what love became when it turned.

They had seen each other only a handful of times in the years since that first good-bye. David had taken his wife and budding family and moved up north, just west of D.C. Up to the big city where their daughter went to private school, and David and Sarah hobnobbed with fancy people.

Joseph had left home, as well, after Sarah had left him for his brother. The marines had been a good distraction. Within hours of his arrival at Parris Island, his aching heart had been the least of his worries. He smiled wryly, thinking about it, and turned to go inside. He left his boots by the door, hung up his coat, then fed some wood to the banked fire as Flick settled in beside the woodstove to dry off.

He had fled heartache for chaos. First in Somalia, then in Haiti. Initially it had seemed to be just what he needed. For at least during war there were weapons at his disposal. There was a plan and a well-defined mission. Good was good and evil was evil. He remembered a kid in his company—a boy, only nineteen or so—who had taken a bullet to the head from a sniper in Mogadishu, and Joseph had wondered why it hadn't been him instead.

He didn't want to accuse God of doing wrong, but really it would have made more sense for him to have been taken. Oh, his mother would have grieved, of course, but she'd have healed. Sometimes he looked around at the beautiful scenery, the peaceful-looking town where he worked, and he knew it was an illusion. He had wondered if he was just being pessimistic, but he'd remembered a Scripture, and finally he'd taken down his long-forsaken Bible and looked up the verses. They had resonated with feeling as he read them.
Nature itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and corruption and gain an entrance into the glorious freedom of God's children.
He imagined what it would feel like to
step into a place where the pinpoint of light would become wide and full. But now even the pinpoint seemed covered over, blocked by an invisible hand. Here in this world. Below.

He suddenly felt the pressure of his mother's unanswered prayers on his shoulders. He had always been grateful for her prayers before, and he wondered what had changed. When he'd been in the desert fighting, they had felt like a shield covering him.

He played again with the idea of leaving this place. He had first thought of it when he had left the marines. He'd thought about moving to New York City. He could have joined the police force there, but in the end, home had called him back. But if he had thought simply being here would heal what ailed him, he was sorely disappointed.

He thought of his great-grandmother, who had been able to feel the weather changing deep down in her bones. He felt an ache like that nearly all the time, and he knew it had more to do with the state of the world and the state of his soul than with the falling barometer. He felt a cold shrug of fear and wondered if grace had a limit. Was there a time for repentance and after that the door quietly closed? Was there a window for reconciliation, but after a season it sealed shut? Would there be a penalty for the coldness of his heart?

He checked his watch, then showered and dressed for work, looking at himself in the mirror as he combed his hair and brushed his teeth. He was thirty-five. His hair was lighter around the edges, not gray yet, but the sandy pigment was slowly fading. His face had changed, as well. It still had the firm leanness of a young man, but when he looked closely, he could see lines where trouble and sorrow and weariness hadn't quite covered their tracks.

He finished dressing, then glanced toward the leather Bible on the dresser. A few old habits still called to him, but he did not pick it up. He did pray the Lord's Prayer, though. He had done it since he was a boy, and though he wondered if his prayers were
answered any longer, he still formed the words with his mouth if not his heart. “Deliver us from evil,” he said, the one sentiment about which he was fervent, and when he was finished he strapped on his gun.

He drove in slowly, as he always did, and surveyed the town. Inside its demarcations the generally kindhearted and peaceable citizens of Abingdon lived, eight thousand or so souls at last count. He made his rounds every morning, driving slowly around his territory, beginning in the heart of town.

Abingdon was idyllic in its own upright way, not changed all that much from the days of its founding when it was a fort, an outpost in enemy territory. It still was, Joseph supposed, and at the heart of the outpost were the churches he passed now, the four old mains, he thought of them, and they reminded him of the four chambers of a heart. Across from each other on opposite corners were St. James and St. John, the sons of thunder, as the town called them.

St. James was the Methodist church, built of old red brick with tower, steeple, and spires, and surrounded by a tidy hedge of boxwood. Legend told that it had been visited by the Wesley brothers themselves soon after it was established by the same circuit-riding preacher who had first brought the gospel to the town—or so the Methodists claimed, outraging the local Baptists, who had been here since dirt and
sent
missionaries, not the other way around. St. James Methodist was led by the Reverend Hector Ruiz, and a more lionhearted father in the faith could not be found. Hector had ministered to youth in his youth, and now that those days had passed, he tended his flock with love and fierceness. Joseph knew firsthand that he pursued the lost sheep with a gentle tenacity. He was generous, prone to speaking his mind, and would give away the altar candlesticks to the first desperate beggar to cross his doorstep. Then he'd come to the city council and try to get someone to donate their replacements.

St. John Episcopal Church was across the street, a bit more
ornate in Vermont granite with intricate stonework, and a rectory beside it. The Reverend Dr. E. Julius Stallworth presided and had come to them only lately—twenty years ago or so. He was continually outraging his parishioners with some blunt statement or another. A few of them would be angry enough to cross the street to the Methodists, whereupon Pastor Hector would promptly send them back, only to have the favor returned when a group from his flock strayed. Not an uncommon occurrence, since both pastors were staunch believers in speaking their minds.

On the third corner was the Catholic church, Shepherd of the Hills. Father Leonard was nearly seventy but showed no signs of slowing down. He organized the hospital chaplaincy and had begun Catholic Community Services of Abingdon, which had been thriving for over thirty years. They ran four group homes for foster children as well as programs for pregnancy counseling and adoption. He was busy and always on the move. Joseph saw Father Leonard every morning at the Hasty Taste, where the priest ate breakfast, read the
New York Times,
the
Washington Post,
and the
Roanoke Times,
jotted notes in his Day-Timer for the next week's homily, and made nonstop calls on his cell phone.

Abingdon Presbyterian was on the fourth corner. It was a plain wood-frame structure and had been led for the past thirty years by Pastor John Annenberg. He was the soul of gentleness but passionate about defending his understanding of doctrinal truth. The only time anyone ever remembered him raising his voice was during a skirmish with Pastor Hector. The two of them had begun discussing predestination in the city hall after a town meeting, and the only thing that had saved the entire event from becoming a conflagration was the intervention of Pastor Mike, the young Foursquare minister who had established himself on the front lines out along the interstate with a strategically placed outpost of independent churches. They were the young folks, ecclesiastically speaking, and their houses of worship could be anything from a Quonset hut to a sheet-metal hangar and generally looked much like a warehouse grocery store.

The four old mains were silent sentinels, guarding their corners in the center of town. A few blocks down was the Barter Theatre, so named because when it was begun in the Great Depression, admission to a play was forty cents or livestock or produce of corresponding value. Across the street was the Martha Washington Inn with its red brick, white columns, and black wrought-iron fence. A little farther east Joseph crossed the creek that ran through town on his way to the Virginia Creeper trailhead. There were a few runners out already. He turned around in the parking lot and headed west. Past the Visitors' Center, the museum, the library, the post office, the historical society. He passed the police department. All was still, the windows still dark. The grass in the ball field across the street was frozen and spiked with hoarfrost, the trees alongside so bare he could almost hear their branches clicking together in the wind.

He drove past the homes, the attorneys' offices, the tourist shops all adorned with wreaths and garlands. Later on today there would be banners flying, twinkling lights in the windows, inviting smells and sights, but now things were dark. The bakery was the only lighted storefront. He slowed and could see the warm beads of condensation on the window, and in the back he glimpsed yellow light and movement. He rolled down the window, and sure enough, the yeasty smell of baking bread rushed to meet him. It gave him a brief surge of well-being.

He sent the window back up with a flick of his finger and continued on his way, past the motels and fast food restaurants on the edge of town, past the elementary school.

He drove a bit farther out because it gave him peace to do so. He loved to see the farms and fields, spread out wide and green but neatly marked off with well-mended fences. He felt a warmth that he played a part in keeping his people safe and shielded. He stopped his car just past Herman Pfaff's farm, stepped out for a moment, and looked around. The Amish had been coming down from Pennsylvania in search of good land and welcoming people. They had found both here. The fields were frozen and fallow
now, but come spring they would be crumbling with life and ready to sow.