The Alliance (6 page)

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 days, 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?”

Moses lifts his shoulders. “He’s single. Was living in some underground house before the EMP. Has a temper that boils like a hot pot. He’s good at taking initiative.”

“Like how?”

“I dunno. He found some construction cones and a sign that says ‘Road Out Ahead.’ He set them up at the end of Field to Table Road.”

“Not sure you can call that initiative.”

“At least he’s trying. Got any better ideas to keep people from coming back here?”

Moses’s voice is thick with frustration. Switching tactics, I ask, “How far did he go?”

“Only to the end of the road. . . .Why?”

“It’s about ten miles until you get to the first major town.”

“They got any antique car dealerships?”

“Not that I know of. Just used lots. What would you want with an antique car?”

He points over to the lane, where the
Englischer
men have pushed the cars and trucks that were in front of Field to Table into a sentinel-like line, so the useless can be used as part of the blockade. “Anything older wouldn’t be fried like the rest of these vehicles with computers.”

I say, “Don’t know about any old cars, but the museum has some old tractors.”

“Now we’re talking. I wonder if any of them run.”

“Why? What could you do with a tractor?”

“Everything. Drive for supplies . . . scout the area. If we could find implements for it, we could use it to work the ground too.”

“You’re not serious. You’re going to steal a tractor from the museum?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “I am. Unless somebody’s already beat me to it.”

“But you still want to try to go get one?”

His reckless grin is answer enough. I think of Anna and Seth and the supplies a tractor might gather that—a few months from now, when our storehouse is empty—might
fill their hungry mouths. I tell him, “I could show you where they are.”

Moses tilts his head toward me. “I know it’s a small town, but we’ve no idea how dangerous things have gotten. You sure you’re up for something like that?”

A question much like Jabil’s before he checked Moses for injuries. “I wouldn’t have offered to go if I wasn’t sure.”