ALSO BY ROB BENVIE

Safety of War

Maintenance

Bleeding Light

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Copyright © 2025 Rob Benvie

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. Published in 2025 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

Knopf Canada, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada

320 Front Street West, Suite 1400

Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3B6, Canada

penguinrandomhouse.ca

Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

The authorized representative in the EU for product safety and compliance is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68, Ireland. https://eu-contact.penguin.ie

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The damagers : a novel / Rob Benvie.

Names: Benvie, Rob, 1975- author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20240478819 | Canadiana (ebook) 20240485467 | ISBN 9781039055681 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781039055698 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCGFT: Historical fiction. | LCGFT: Novels.

Classification: LCC PS8603.E58 D36 2025 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

Ebook ISBN 9781039055698

Text design: Emma Dolan, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Emma Dolan

Image credits: Bathing Nymphs and Child by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

Original public domain image from Art Institute of Chicago, via Rawpixel.

a_prh_7.2a_151758888_c0_r0

For Lila

Of those days, I recall so little. I possess no photographs, no letters, no keepsakes. The fires, our flight through the forest, those strange vagrant souls who took us in—of all these things, I keep no record. Nothing survives as proof of those seasons. Even my father and mother exist now only as remnants, fragments imprinted in memory.

But then I recall the morning sun on Lake Tenskwatawa, and the snarl of wintry winds descending from the mountains, and I’m still there. I still know the desperation of our hunger and the bliss of our feasts. I still feel the clawing of unrelenting hands, and I still hear that girl’s whimpers as she lay bloodied out in the drainage ditch. And I still have my sister with me, and I remember everything she did: for me, and for the flock.

Wonders abounded then; death felt very close.

Many days I find myself reflecting on the unknowability of my past, and of all pasts. Nature comes ruthless in its cycles, yet we forever fight against its limits. We ache in futility, perplexity, forgetfulness. I’ve come to see how such slipperiness is what allows the ascent of ambitious men, those who collect power and bask in its delusions. I’ve seen these men and the horrors of which they’re capable.

There’s still so much confusion in this world, and still so much to fear.

ca. 1952

THE SUMMER

They ran hand in hand across the meadow, away from the burning farmhouse. Two girls, sisters, the elder leading the younger, matched in hand-stitched leather sandals and shin-length dresses of grey cotton, the hems swishing through the rye and buckwheat as they raced west into the blinding of early dusk.

Reaching the firewood piles where the meadow met the forest’s edge, they stopped to look back: the farmhouse pulsed with inner fires, thick smoke eructing from its windows. The elder sister watched as the eaves’ brow drooped then gave way, rousing a flare of sparks. The splintering echoed across the meadow, their family’s five acres. Nothing human appeared from the flames. The older girl squeezed her sister’s hand and led her into the forest.

They pushed through walls of trees, their outstretched hands tearing away twigs and branches. Cables of roots underfoot jarred their balance with every step. Warblers and blackbirds sang above. The younger girl, struggling to keep pace, took back her hand. Her sister led on, leaving any admonition unsaid.

A steady downward grade drew them farther into the woods. Arriving at a clearing marked by a series of rabbit snares they’d themselves set, they recognized this as the frontier of their permissible boundaries. Beyond this limit lay certain peril. Many times their father had warned: Out there you’ll be bewildered. The farm, the meadow, their parents’ wardening—staying close meant security, certainty, protection. This had been the promise.

But that promise was broken, and any authority regulating these boundaries was now null. The elder sister located a break in the barrier of brush past the snares and beckoned for the younger to hurry through.

They kept on.

Zina knew these forests, but only from God’s perspective. Their topography had risen from the folding AAA map among the papers stashed next to her mother’s rolltop desk, and with a probing index she’d traced a path over its creases, coiling concentrically outward from the Adirondacks’ pale-green splotch into a webwork of service roads and highway routes, denotations of villages and outposts pinpricks in the vastness. Farther: the borders of Vermont and Pennsylvania, the infinite ocean and the inscrutable north. Here was her place, her wellspring, her latitudinal grounds. The map was badged with New York’s state crest and motto: Excelsior, ever upward.

But now, plunged into the woods with nightfall imminent, she saw how short her knowledge fell. The forest came in waves, any progress made imperceptible. She recalled Coleridge, verses from the beaten anthology kept by her bedside: Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow, have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. Nature, terrifying and harsh. One could starve, lost and addled in these mountains; rapacious timber wolves were known to patrol these ranges. Her father had often recalled how in the first weeks following the family’s retreat to Alstyne Farm, he and their mother had initially cowered from the bats and bobcats that held reign over the neglected plot. Only once he’d asserted himself as the land’s rightful occupant, waving a shovel at every critter who dared sniff at their porch, did they cede control.

We’ll never be lords of these woods, he told her, but we can earn a seat in the kingdom.

Presendia, eyes on her feet, had let her course drift off in another direction. Zina called her back and took her hand again.

Tired, Presendia said.

To this Zina said nothing. To head westward, chasing the setting sun, had been an arbitrary choice, not even a choice at all. In truth, she had no notion of where they were headed.

Eventually they reached an impasse where a cluster of rotting trees drooped across a wide trench. With light vanishing, locating a way around this proved difficult. By the time they’d resumed some semblance of a course, the darkness had deepened and Zina had lost what little sense of their bearings she’d had. Panic and frustration stirred, but she fought to not betray any such worries, feigning confidence in her navigation as Presendia looked to her, seeking reassurance.

Just a bit farther.

As she said this, a clearing materialized out of the loom ahead. They hopped across another dry ditch to find themselves on a narrow gravel road, stretching ruler-straight in opposite distances. No signs, no signals. Zina scanned the surrounding woods and the road behind, then selected a direction and they continued. The road, clear and level, made for easier progress. Questions: how much time had passed, how far had they gone, how much farther must they go. And, of greater concern: who might be seeking them, and what would happen if they were found.

To these questions, there were no answers. The day had effaced all reason, leaving them stranded in every imaginable sense. They would keep on.

They followed the road until they simply had to stop: Presendia’s eyes fluttered as she walked, and Zina felt her own head weighted with fatigue. About a hundred yards off the road the brush grew sparse, and there they took their rest under a sugar maple. Zina leaned her back against its coarse bark as Presendia placed her head in her lap. The splay of branches overhead admitted only a peek of night sky. Cicadas and mosquitoes droned. Neither spoke, and their breath fell into a synchronized rhythm, slow and heavy.

Often Zina sent Presendia to sleep by pointing out constellations through the window over their shared bed, weaving together nonsense stories bastardized from mythology: Bellerophon and Chimera, Artemis as a doe. But right now her weariness stalled any work of imagination.

I’m hungry, Presendia said.

I know. I am too.

When will we go back?

Don’t think about going back, puppy. Just think about the future.

But the future was a dark sea, and they were adrift, anchorless.

The forest creaked around them, alive with the appetites of untold beasts.

Her half-dreamed dream was of the fire and how it moved, darting upward, relentless, the fuming tendrils reaching for the rafters, howling like a trapped thing fighting its way out from a cage. The farmhouse’s foundations were stone, but the walls were cedar and yellow pine; the flames consumed it all. The fire was an inevitability, long gestating, predating the advent of the dry season. The tinder had sat ready for years.

When she woke from this shallow sleep, the sun was rising. Woodpeckers hammered above. Zina brushed hair from her sister’s forehead, nudging her awake. They had to continue.

About half a Mile farther down the road, they came upon a brief wooden bridge spanning a running brook. There they bathed and drank. Red clusters dotted the bushes along the bank, fat berries they picked off the branch and wolfed down by the palmful. They sat with their hair dripping, their feet in the water. The relief of cool water and light sustenance almost dispelled the previous night’s miseries. But the early sun was already fierce, another hot day ahead.

To the south, a raft of loons circumnavigated the brook. Presendia looked on, delighted by the haunted melodies of their calls. Eleven years old, she was still the blinking child Zina had chased through the meadow’s knee-high grass, to whom she’d illuminated the mysteries of milking and sung old Welsh lullabies, passed to their mother Eliza from her mother before: Do not fear, it is nothing but a leaf, beating, beating on the door. Do not fear, only a small wave. Murmurs, murmurs on the seashore; sleep child, there’s nothing here. This girl before her, sucking on juice-splattered fingers, was an entity unto herself, of her own spirit. But this selfhood—this wasn’t the same as strength.

Zina slipped her wet feet back into her sandals. Fill your pockets, she said, and let’s get going.

The road continued as before, west, in an arc swinging south. By noon the sun was in its full unfiltered brutality. Zina felt her skin broiling as they walked, bands of sweat coursing down her back. Eventually they’d find another brook, she assured Presendia, but none appeared. Presendia had quickly finished their stores of berries on her own; Zina had left them to her, finding them off-puttingly tart.

They passed lengthy stretches of tilled land, with signs of upkeep, occasional tags of red twine demarcating boundaries and fat bales punctuating the fields like grazing beasts, but no farmers in sight. When they came upon a bright-red Massey-Harris tractor parked along the roadside, Zina fleetingly entertained a plot of hijacking it, then abandoned such a plan as foolhardy, courting attention when it was crucial they remain unseen.

And yet a plan, any plan, was needed. Continuing as they were could mean wandering these forests and back routes for eternity. Zina attempted calculations of the distance they’d covered so far, again visualizing the map and its scale, and what lay within range. To the north would be the Moose River Plains and its network of Indian rivers, a vast swath of territory designated by the Blue Lines of 1902 as Wild Forests, state conservation lands, largely uninhabited, with only non-commercial farms like their own or lakeside cottages rented to outdoorsmen and Manhattanites lugging kayaks and beach umbrellas. Farther to the south, Albany, and Syracuse to the west. Beyond, Boston, Providence, the oceanic coast.

But these places were hundreds of miles away, locales of which she’d only read—unfathomable, mythological. Their concerns were immediate, here. Soon enough two girls in dirty dresses staggering along these roads would surely attract the attention of any manner of fiend. Fearsome antagonists, slavering maniacs. Or, perhaps more terrible, pistol-toting officers in police cars. Orson had described eluding their batons in his youth in Newark, those jackbooted enforcers ruling the streets of the Ironbound, those enemies of liberty who’d smile winsomely for neighbourhood grandmothers then beat you half-dead if encountered on a sidewalk after dark. A run-in with such authorities now, out here, would mean—what? Imprisonment in a gruesome state-run orphanage, some mill of subjugation, a fate worse than any imaginable.

Still there was Presendia, again asking, When will we go back?

Zina sighed. We can’t go back. You understand, don’t you? The farm is gone.

Presendia scowled. Gone: a daunting concept.

We could build it again, she said.

Zina winced, gently reproachful. Come on, puppy. Build it again. Think. You mustn’t weaken.

From their earliest days they’d been unshielded from the callous cycles of rearing livestock. The gore of a calf’s delivery, the bluntness of a chicken’s beheading. Any parallels of these processes to their own lives, the stakes one faced, were mostly left for them to draw on their own. Presendia, though young, was no dunce; when called upon, she could dispose of a hare’s carcass with dignity and dispassion. But it was unclear whether she understood the finality of what had just occurred, and the uncertainty they now faced.

As the elder sister, it fell to Zina to provide solace, to sing those old lullabies and quiet those fears. This was what she was meant to do.

They walked in silence.

The day stretched on. No brook, no river, no passing cars or carriages—only the spoiling summer heat and this dusty road, climbing higher into the hills. Their pauses for rest in the shade increased in frequency; they were both reaching their limits. Presendia complained of a strangeness in her stomach, beyond the pangs of hunger. Zina felt it too. As they chewed on blades of grass to quell the churn, she again tried to estimate how far they’d walked, and again found herself at a loss.

I don’t want this, Presendia whined. I want to go back.

In another scenario, Zina would scold her sister for such grousing, such childishness. Now, here, she could only relent, saying: Yes.

The land was transforming, the rolling meadows giving way to dense balsams and uneven rocky terrain. Zina’s hopes of coming upon a barn or pumphouse where they might take refuge, even luck into scavengeable provisions, diminished. It was still possible to turn back, gambling on another route, or wait by that dormant tractor until someone arrived. But that would mean a loss of hours, or longer, with no certainty of any better luck.

Presendia halted in the centre of the road, wavering, her face livid and slick. Zina asked what was wrong. Presendia closed her eyes, then spewed frothy red matter onto the gravel. Her tiny shoulders convulsed with the recoil. Zina sprang to her, folding her into her arms as she cursed herself. It should have been obvious: the bushes they’d raided were baneberries, nightshade, poisonous fruit mistakable as edible to a novice.

Zina hoisted Presendia up onto her own back and secured her legs around her waist. The small body upon her was as slack as a sheaf of wheat. As she resumed walking, she felt Presendia’s tears falling warm on the back of her neck.

If I see a badger on this road, Zina thought, I’ll gnaw out its belly before it’s even dead.

Night fell quickly; time could not be trusted. They moved slowly, trudging along like lepers. The steepening road took several swings, foiling any sense of direction. The emergent moon offered no clue. Headlights on the road, before a thing to fear, now seemed their best chance of deliverance. None came.

To their right, a valley expanded below. This was promising: the relief of a downhill trajectory, possible streams running at the base. Altering their course for these dense roughs, however, meant leaving the road and the hope of rescue.

Zina told Presendia to hold on for a moment, just a moment, so she could think.

Coleridge, again: with lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll, and would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?

A sharp crack rang out from somewhere below, violating the stillness. Collapsing trees, maybe. Or a shotgun. Zina, befogged, scarcely registered it. Then it repeated, clearer, ringing across the valley.

Look, Presendia said, pointing.

Barely visible, within the tenebrous mass of forest below: a prick of light. They held their position, trying to make anything out. This light seemed about a half mile away, but any gauge of distance could only be the roughest of guesses.

Zina took Presendia’s hand and led her off the road, over the shoulder’s ditch and into the trees, moving carefully over a precarious floor of mud and fir needles. The hill’s grade took a treacherous drop, and Presendia took back her hand as they both fought for balance, gravity destabilizing any control of pace. Stepping over a knot of fallen branches, Zina misjudged the angle and her feet failed her. She fell back, landing on her coccyx, and went skidding down the slope. The valley swallowed her, the darkness as tar. Time again flowed unreliably, and in seconds she’d slid what felt like storeys before colliding with a balsam trunk.

She lay there, immobilized. Her heart clobbered her chest. Her skin burned. Her tailbone screamed. Presendia cried out, asking for her.

I’m all right, Zina answered. I’m fine.

They regained level ground in a gorge-like depression and continued on in pursuit of that light. The earth down here was pliant beneath their feet, the breezeless air rife with flies. Presendia, mostly quiet since beset with sickness, now issued a faint moan. Zina shushed her.

I’m frightened, Presendia whimpered.

Nothing’s here, Zina said. It’s just us.

Presendia said it again, quietly to herself: frightened. As if she’d just invented the word.

The forest thinned around them, even as the clouds of mosquitoes thickened. Forsaking the road for this valley, Zina saw, had been an egregious misstep. The road had at least been firm, a direction portending a destination, whereas now they were hopelessly mired in this dismal basin, exposed to an infinite range of danger. But fighting their way back uphill was an impossibility. The way ahead, however grim, was the only way.

She’d been avoiding Presendia’s eyes, and the question they posed.

Why had she done what she’d done?

That light beckoned again through the trees. Zina steered their course toward it, finding a clearing of sorts, light brush latticed with fallen maples. They found a ridge of jutting rocks and crouched there. The light, they now saw, was a fire, lapping with fresh flames. But no attendants were evident among the shadows.

What do we do? Presendia whispered.

Patience, Zina said.

Haste, she knew, would be their undoing. Yet any viable strategy was beyond her present reach. They waited, watching for movement, any clue as to the fire’s implication. That pointed noise, the probable gunshot, still resounded.

I need to move closer, Zina said.

No.

There could be food. Stay here. Just watch and listen.

Presendia’s fear hummed like a motor. Don’t leave me, she said. Please.

Everything will be fine, Zina said. Just stay attentive.

She crept down the ridge, scoping the radius with each step. This was an unlikely place for a hunting camp, with no roads leading in, no proximal water source inviting traffic of deer or small game. Drawing closer, she discerned shapes in the firelight: three bundles, heaps of some sort. The fire sputtered, the wood still damp, but nothing moved. She edged her way around the periphery, every tendon clenched.

Excelsior, ever upward.

The heaps were large burlap sacks, piled and bound with frayed lines of rope. Slumped atop one was a man, facing the fire, hatless. Zina raised a hand in greeting, but her approach went unacknowledged. The man’s own hands were spread to either side of his lap, palms upward, as if in expectation. Coming closer, she saw his face was unshaven, rutted by sun, his lips chapped raw. His eyes were open, his pupils flickering in the flames, an expression of bafflement. A scarf of still-wet blood covered his throat, spilling down to his chest.

The sequence of events that had brought her fumbling to this moment was now irretrievable, as ungraspable as smoke. The forces compelling her had no care for this man or what grisly fate had befallen him. The only certitude now was in the solving of essential problems. To move, to hurry.

She knelt and patted the man’s chest. Keys jangled in his breast pocket, useless to her. On the ground lay a canvas haversack; she unbuckled it and turned it over, finding cigarettes, a plastic comb, a metal tin of shoe polish. A saddle-stitched wallet contained six dollars, a few folded stubs of paper, identification. She stuffed the money in her sock and ignored the rest—she didn’t need to know the man’s name. A screw-top hip flask contained whisky, not water. No food, nothing of real use. A cardboard booklet revealed a pad of personal cheques, unsigned, bearing ornate insignia: THE BANK OF NEW YORK. These she briefly considered pocketing, then left them with the rest of the things.

Time’s passing had again gone molten. How long had she stood there, looking over this man? Traces of fever persisted, a pressure in her temples and throat, a keeling in her bowel. Remembering Presendia’s fear, she started back the way she’d come.

Well. Hello there.

In her faded state, she hadn’t detected the tall man’s approach. He was just there, rising like mist out of the brush. Wool coat, leather boots, a hunter’s cap high on his head, a Remington slung over one shoulder. A cigar burned in his teeth.

Zina moved to scramble past him, but he was quicker and met her move, blocking her with a forearm, tsking—this was easy for him.

Zina.

At Presendia’s cry, the man swung to look. He made no preventive move as Presendia came rushing into her sister’s reach. But the man’s size, his presence, had them ensnared.

Now, what’re you gals up to out here, he asked.

We’re not up to anything. We’re just passing through.

Passing to where, I wonder.

Presendia sank deeper into Zina’s hold, shaking; she seemed on the verge of fainting. The man looked past Zina, to the fire, then back at her.

Where’s your folks. You alone?

We’re not required to tell you anything. I doubt you wield any particular authority here.

The man sucked his cigar, pluming rank smoke. True enough, he said. I’m just a stranger, expressing concern for the welfare of some girls hopping around the woods at night. You camping or something?

No business of yours. Do you have any water?

Might in my car, back up a ways, the man indicated. How about you come along and we’ll get you safe. None of us need to be out here, in the middle of nowhere.

I don’t think so.

Your little friend there doesn’t look so well, he said, grinning.

Neither does yours. Zina nodded back at the fire, the dissevered man. The tall man’s grin faded. He tossed his cigar aside and came closer. In his advance she sensed mechanisms at work, threats yet unclassifiable. Here was a denizen of realms unknown. The path behind them had shut, and the only way available was forward. Keeping one hand on the rifle’s butt, he extended the other, its creases sooty and its fingers tobacco-tinted, reaching for her.

Her father told her: The truth of a man can only be known in its entirety when viewed from a great height. This knowledge came to him in the wintry paralysis of the Ardennes Forest, during day-long tramps through the hedgerows amid a tattered landscape of ash and debris, the clatter of M4 engines, an ocean of snow. The real fear came not in combat, Orson had said; in the heat of a fight there was no time to string two thoughts together, let alone fret for one’s safety. It was just unload and reload, unload and reload, non-stop. The terror came in the waiting. Days and nights, hungry and sleepless, immured in frozen trenches and sunken emplacements. Hours upon hours to explore every neglected crevice of your mind, the end present in every breath, until the frenzy of enemy engagement came almost as a relief.

The Germans had their Stuka tablets to keep them going, he said. Us dogfaces, all we had was tobacco and nerves. It was like that for all the fellows, weeks along the front. It made you think. It forced a reckoning.

Most nights after a day’s toil, Orson sank exhausted into the wooden rocker he’d salvaged from the clutter in the farmhouse basement, facing the stove with a book in his lap. He and Zina were always the last ones still up—Presendia tucked in, Eliza early to retire—and often he shared passages from his night’s reading. With his voice lowered almost conspiratorially, he would intone from Whitman: I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your soul somehow to live in other spheres—I do not know how, but I know it is so. His eyes roved from the page to the stove’s glowing coals, the trickery of shadows on the walls. In those moments Zina understood: his thoughts had again been lured back to the fields, the agony of the approach to St. Vith.

Out there, Orson said, I was shown the truth. God Himself came and plucked me upward. I’m there, squirming against my aching legs, not knowing what day it is or which way’s which. I’m looking out across the snow, the tanks lined up by the train tracks. A whole world of death and fear out there. But there is this silence, and this sensation of everything becoming locked into place. And then God was with me. I could feel his hands on my shoulders. Next thing I know I’m rising up out of the trench, above the field and the perimeter, above the rest of the company, the other men oblivious. I’m looking down on them, the whole thing. And in his lifting, his grace was conferred to me. What was shown to me was the smallness of it all. The futility. The folly of man.

Whitman saw it too, Orson told her. He saw the laugher and the weeper and the dancer, the midnight widow and red squaw, the consumptive, the erysipelite, the idiot, the wronged. All of man’s parsimony and wickedness. That’s what he saw. And in the same way it came clear to me then, in the pit of that freezing hell, and I laughed out loud like a feeb. The foolhardiness of it. Man himself is nothing, just a shell. But the soul, the soul is something else. My soul is my only true ally. I do not know how, but I know it is so. And I know that’s what kept me in one piece. And that’s what brought me home. To you.

He leaned forward in the rocker, the fire gleaming on his teary cheeks, old fear quivering in his eyes.

A man can only be free, he’d said, if he shakes himself from that smallness. So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll live here forever, under God’s protection. That’s my gift to you.

With her own eyes heavy with fatigue, she looked out from the hulking Estate Wagon’s back seat. They shuttled through a headlighted void of black woods, the tall man bent over the wheel as he peered out through the gunk-streaked windshield, ever accelerating, then stomping the brakes at each curve. Presendia lay asleep, hugging herself, her head on Zina’s lap. The man had provided water as promised, a fat ceramic jug, along with candy bars, which they’d devoured in seconds; the silver foil now lay on the floor among wadded tissues, crushed beer cans, dead leaves. The rear windshield was held together by Cellophane packing tape, its cracked glass rattling against the wind.

The Buick was a comet, its plasma stream tracing a path through the cosmos.

Curious to know where you two are coming from, the man said over his shoulder. Maybe you hiked up from Otter Lake or something. You sure aren’t dressed for it. You look like ghosts.

Zina kept her silence.

You aren’t ghosts, are you?

At her continued silence he struck a match to light a cigar, then turned up the radio. A woman’s voice came, swoony and soft: Here is a heart that is lonely, here is a heart you can take, here is a heart for you only, that you can keep or break. Presendia stirred at the purring voice, the plummeting violins, then fell back asleep. They kept no radio in the farmhouse, just a windup portable Decca Junior of her mother’s, its needle worn to frays, their only discs old Sousa marches and Brahms concertos, a pair of Dorsey Brothers 78s. The radio in Orson’s Ford pickup remained silenced, by his edict. So Zina knew of radio’s powers, but it was a thing of arcane practices, transmissions from faraway zones. These mysterious sonics lulled, the melodies intervolving into the engine’s unebbing grumble. Here is a heart for you only.

She woke to the car slowing and slashes of bright light. A single-pump gas station, logoed SOCONY, flanked by picnic tables. The man parked and twisted in his seat to face them. The leather upholstery creaked like the parting of time-worn hinges.

Filling up. You want a couple Cokes? he asked. Or whatever they have.

Zina had never tasted a Coke, never sat at a soda fountain, never sucked through a straw, though she knew what these things were, and what they might signify.

Do they have food? Zina asked.

Probably an icebox. You carrying a couple bones?

The six dollars were still in her sock.

We don’t have anything, she said.

The man nodded. Now, he said, when I hop out, you’re probably going to think about skipping off. I’m not keeping you from going nowhere. But I can tell you, you’re way better off where we’re headed than stomping around out there in the dark. So I’d say stick with me. I mean no danger to you gals.

Only now did she get a clearer look at him. Younger than he’d first seemed, his beard thin and his cheeks dappled with vestiges of acne. A softness there—he was no grizzled mountain man, no beast. Encountering them in the forest, she was beginning to understand, had complicated whatever scheme he’d been part of, and bringing them along now was an act of self-preservation. He was as thrown by the present situation as they were.

All right then, he said, moving to go.

Wait, she said. Leave the radio on.

They drove deeper into the foothills. Fortified with white bread and packaged bologna, washed down with the soda’s fizzy strangeness, she felt sleep’s pull on her once again. Only when the Buick came to another stop did she wake. According to the dashboard clock it was almost three in the morning. At some point they’d left the main route for a dirt road, tunnelling again into thick woods. The radio was off.

Presendia, still sleeping, now had her face buried in the seat’s leather, her bare feet resting on Zina’s lap. Drained soda bottles clinked on the floor.

Blocking the way was an imposing metal gate, with a hand-painted sign: PRIVATE ROAD NO ACCESS. The man exited the car, leaving it running. Zina watched through the windshield as he worked the chain and lock, its clang inharmonious to the forest’s hush. Watching him executing these moves, Zina’s unease was rekindled. He’d assured their safety, but who was this man? He knew what she’d seen. That astonishment, that blood.

The chain fell away, the fence swung open, then he hurried back and eased the car forward a few yards. Once they were through, he again hopped out to shut the fence behind them, then returned to the driver’s seat. They drove on.

Zina rolled down her window and a scent of watery putrefaction wafted in. To their right, through dense thickets: suggestions of light on waveless water. She asked where they were.

Lake Tenskwatawa, the man said. Centre of the universe. This one and the next.

He extinguished the headlights as they pulled off into an opening. Through the dark Zina made out a pair of wooden shacks, each chimneyless and not much larger than an outhouse, with no indications of occupancy. Presendia sat up, taking in this scene with sleepy eyes. Zina placed a hand on her leg, her best attempt at comfort.

For a moment the man sat gripping the wheel, mulling something over, flattening his forelock with a palm. Then he turned off the engine and again turned to face them.

Situation’s this, he said. You sack down here. Should be fine for tonight. Like I say, no one’s keeping you nowhere. But if I was you, I’d lay low and get some rest. Everything can get worked out come morning.

The exact meaning of this, what would get worked out, was unclear. The man looked to Presendia. She hadn’t uttered a sound since they’d entered the car. This reticence: shock, depletion. Or creeping awareness of what really had happened, and what was happening.

She going to be okay? he asked Zina.

Ask her yourself.

The man sniffed, weighing this, but said no more. He led them to one of the shacks, its door a flimsy plank secured with a hook of rope. Inside was a pair of bunks, side by side, both outfitted with ragged blankets, a single shelf bearing a couple of semi-molten candles. As Zina and Presendia felt their way forward into the dark, the man kept to the door, sparking another of his cigars.

Give us a few of those, Zina said.

What.

Matches. Have some consideration, at the least.

He sniffed that same sniff, then handed over his matchbox. With this, he left—there seemed little else to discuss. He still hadn’t given his name, nor had he asked for theirs. Zina hooked the door shut behind him, looping the rope twice and knotting it tight.

To rest now was hopeless. Zina and Presendia huddled together in one of the bunks, the blankets’ wool as coarse and musky as a bearskin, and locked eyes by candlelight. This was how they did it, gradually homing in until wordlessly hypnotizing one another in a steady, synchronous lulling—a method refined over many nights of tension as Orson babbled his remonstrances while Eliza hid away in the bedroom—that worked to soothe Presendia, securing her, and when performed with the proper concentration she’d soon cease resistance and relent to sleep. Tonight, rattled with nerves and dislocation, it took longer than usual to wind her down. But Zina maintained the connection, her gentle pressure unfaltering, until Presendia’s bothered breath slowed and she surrendered to the pull. Zina waited, listening, then slid out from the blankets and crept outside.

The Buick was still parked in the clearing, unoccupied. Here, amid the rough forest, this ornate machine of curving steel and chrome seemed improbable, a joke. She looked inside, hoping for keys, finding none. She leaned against the car while considering her next move, rubbing her fingers over the sleek ornament adorning its hood, a fighter plane trapped in a circular bombsight. This too seemed like some sort of joke.

Then: distant music. Voices raised together, a searching melody. At first Zina doubted its reality, as if this sound might actually be emanating from some source inside her. She held fast, listening, and determined its origin somewhere down the road. There was no choice but to follow its call.

Down the muddy track were more shacks like the one they’d been assigned, motley, slapped together, arranged in uneven rows. All lay dormant. The road swerved again, then opened into a grassy concourse. Here was some sort of compound, with tributaries of roughly hewn paths extending throughout and back into the woods. The way was littered with a farrago of mismatched impedimenta, cords of lumber, engine parts, wheelbarrows stacked with debris. Metal barrels were packed with soil next to unjoined lengths of fencing, cinder blocks lying among sawdust. She passed a pair of banged-up Shasta camper trailers and a motorcycle with sidecar, unattended. But still those singing voices sounded, calling through the trees.

Skirting the concourse’s margin, the road dwindled to unworked terrain and overgrowth of laurel and crabgrass. Another, narrower trail branched off, leading downhill to where, she surmised, lay the lake, and the source of those voices. She followed this trail down its rock-strewn slope, on alert with every step.

On the beach ten, maybe more, people were gathered around a roaring bonfire. Men in work clothes, women in plain dresses. Zina took cover in the brush to watch. Figures gyrated and meshed in the fire’s glow, wild in the throes of celebration, raising jugs and shouting. One man tooted a sort of wind instrument, a lazy waltz in a minor key, accompanied by another man beating a pair of bongo drums as others stomped and clapped along. This carousing conveyed something more than mere jollity. Some communal purpose, a process at work. Wildness, or defiance.

The players launched into another tune, peppier in march time, alla breve, invigorating the revellers as they clapped along. A woman began to dance before the fire, her hair loose, face wine-flushed, hips swinging. Her onlookers barked approval; someone shouted Go Linda go. She drank up this encouragement, hiking up her cotton dress to bare her large thighs. Her flesh rolled and rippled, like fresh milk swishing in a pail.

Someone pitched a pine log on the fire, instigating a wave of crackling sparks. The woman continued to sway, immersed in the smoke. Zina watched as the woman craned backward and turned her face to the night sky. In one move she lifted her dress over her head and flung it aside, casting her arms into the air. A thin brassiere and underwear barely concealed her dark nipples and freckled flesh, a thick panel of pubic hair. Around her men wagged tongues and whooped approval. And as she danced, smacking her buttocks and thrusting, a multi-hued gleam formed around her hair and bobbing neck, the refractions as blades, shearing her outline from the surroundings. Like an iris opening, a glimpse of something past what was apparent. In it, the woman transformed, dematerialized. The presence of forest and lake, the lurking mountains, the drunken men spurring her on—all was backdrop to this concentrated point of radiance.

Crouched in the weeds in her filthy dress, her forehead sunburned and her knees quaking, Zina felt herself lessened. She’d been warned: Out there you’ll be bewildered. The path she’d taken had led her past the limits of any trusted map. Now, here, her foolishness, her callowness, was made achingly clear. She remained hidden in the dark, watching.

In their escape to the mountains, Orson and Eliza Morley had perhaps envisioned some idyll of truth, some version of peace to be found in this burbling wilderness, the ashless sky and cacophony of birdcalls. There, in the sphagnum bogs and coiling eskers, whipped by inexorable winds, one might exist free from the city and its viciousness, its treacheries, its diminishment of soul. Maybe there could still be ground where a man and his family might thrive on honest terms. Surely not every mile of this earth was a battlefield.

It was John Trotter Alstyne, Eliza’s grandfather, who first fought that rugged terrain and its tapered growing season, laying sod and clearing brush himself even as the Vanderbilts and their ilk summered at the sprawling boathouses not far north on Saranac Lake. J. Trotter had envisioned a mountain estate accommodating a bountiful, industrious brood, but his wife’s protracted plight of diphtheria after birthing their first child dashed those hopes. Mary suffered first on the farm, hacking and twisting in her bedsheets, then passed in a hospital room in Ticonderoga. Left a widower, Alstyne became melancholic, and any designs of the farm’s expansion went unrealized into his last days. The farm was passed on to his only son, the eventual Hon. John Campbell Alstyne, Rensselaer County court judge. But J. Campbell had no real fondness for it and only brought his family there late in the summers when weather was at its fairest. The property was kept chiefly as an investment, one that might have seemed shrewd, as the post-Depression years found the Adirondacks overrun with nature-going New Yorkers, arriving by newly tracked motorways in pursuit of tranquility and nourishing air.

But wartime halted the hospitality industry, and property values plummeted. By the time of the judge’s passing in 1938, Eliza and her siblings were scattered throughout the northeast with families of their own, and settling the estate proved a convoluted affair. For the time being, the property was left in trust. The farmhouse fell into neglect and the barns sat empty.

Zina remembered little of her father as he was before the war. A crystalline form, an Ionic column. Leather gloves clasping a work satchel, breath of Pepsodent. Standing at the kitchen sink in their apartment in Carroll Gardens, looking out at the morning garbage collectors, downing a pint of water in two gulps before heading off for his train into the city. Then came the day they followed him, Eliza with baby Presendia in her arms, down the crowded platform as he joined the tide of men boarding the train to Fort Bragg. What words were shared as they parted, she couldn’t later recall.

The man they found almost three years later, waiting at a water fountain in Jamaica Station with his shoes untied, stood in Orson’s place and spoke in his voice, shaved with the same powder, wore the same scars. But his every motion was delayed, as if submerged in water. Shoulders once broad had gone concave. He stalked the apartment clutching a spatula, chasing creaks in the walls, unscrewing light bulbs. Whenever the telephone rang he leapt to answer, but almost every call ended with the receiver slammed against the living room baseboards.

Zina, then eight years old, had no way of understanding what drove these outbursts—unremitting echoes of the 6th Panzer Army, blood-hued gusts of snow on replay, phantoms detectable only to him—much less what he so restlessly awaited. But even in his quieter moments, when he quit his pacing to fall exhausted on the sofa, she could see: whatever had been done to him in Europe was still being done, over and over.

When Eliza stated her designs to take her share of the judge’s bequest and relocate to the farm, she and Orson intending to rejuvenate it from its derelict condition, none of her brothers or sisters raised objections. A preposterous venture, but her claim was legitimate, or at least as legitimate as any. One could only imagine what the judge himself would have thought: he’d long made plain his disapproval of his youngest daughter’s dithering whelp of a husband, a man he’d dismissed as a sluggard devoid of civic responsibility, and the resonance of this censure persisted, even posthumously.

The farm obscured Orson’s transformations by transforming them all. Survival became their daily imperative, through fortification and breeding, the desperate goading of the soil, the buttressing of the haylofts’ rotted beams, the raising of raw-boned cattle and panicky hens. What minor victories they claimed led only to further problems. The crops are husks; a hailstone shatters a windowpane; a calf succumbs to pneumonia.

But Orson believed it all just another stage in a divine plan, revealed to him back in the Ardennes during those dark nights of ceaseless shellfire. Transcendence had been promised, and it would come only through determination and will, withstanding adversaries both immediate and looming, the woolly adelgids and phragmites, autumn wildfires, the Bureau of Internal Revenue. In this struggle, Eliza remained faithful alongside her husband. But there was only so far she could follow. And so she and her daughters watched, at first at a distance, as he prowled the grounds from perimeter to perimeter.

Years passed, and they kept on. Even in the blinding albedo of the snow-capped peaks, the calmness of dewy spring mornings, even in the imminent promise of their puny harvest—day in and day out, for them all, there was only, always, work to be done.

Zina woke in a panic. She’d slept too long, and Presendia wasn’t in the bunk next to her. She pulled on her shoes, hurrying against the heaviness dragging her down, her legs aching and her lips cracked dry. A single thought dominated: to flee this place.

Exiting the shack, she winced against the light. The forest, drained by morning of any menace, reverberated with trilling grouses, the air swirling with blackflies. The Buick was gone. In its place was a wiry black-haired man wearing only jeans and boots, kneeling alongside a kickstanded bicycle.

Found this old Schwinn by the roadside, he said to her. Pretty banged up, chain’s rusted to shit. But I think I can get her going. What you gotta use is saddle soap and suede. Tin of Fiebing’s, rub her down, grease it up.

Zina scanned the vicinity. Presendia was nowhere to be seen.

The man stood, eyeing the bicycle, then turned to Zina, only now seeing her.

Hey now. Who’s what are you?

But Zina was already moving past him, to the road, in the direction she’d gone the previous night. The man followed, saying, Little girl. Hold up, you.

She continued on, ignoring this. By day the compound was something different. Among its disparate shacks and cabins people now circulated, scruffy and attired in plain work clothes, most executing chores: men working at stacks of timber, a pair of women lugging metal washtubs, others milling about. A smell of coals wafted, mingled with a tang of sewage. A hammer’s knock interplayed with woodpeckers’ patterns. Toil in progress, like a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, engravings of which she’d seen in a book.

Girl. I said hold up.

The shirtless man stopped her with a sweaty hand on her arm. Granules of bicycle grease rubbed off on her skin.

Get off, Zina said, pulling back her arm. I need to find my sister.

What you need to do is get proper. You listen when a grown-up gets after you. Where’d you come from, anyway?

This man was crude and loud, and neither he nor his baseless directives held any jurisdiction over her. She felt herself growing frantic, but stamped down those stirrings and hurried away. Down a path to her left, two men stood outside a rusty, unattached trailer. She headed their way, calling hello. The larger of the two, wide-torsoed in a shop apron, folded his large arms, their flesh splotched with faded ink: a serpent, a pair of crossed cannons, a banner of jagged bluish text reading UAAF FLY FIGHT WIN.

Hello there yourself, he said.

The other was a Black man in dirty overalls, also of brawny build. Bottles of beer in hand, these men eyed her with something like amusement as she explained: a girl, eleven, unaccompanied, she had to be close by. Their expressions changed when they saw the shirtless man coming up behind her.

What’re you saying there, Giaretto, the larger man said.

This girl just showed up, the shirtless man told him.

They came in last night. Situation’s being managed. Don’t get yourself in a jumble.

She’s got a sassy disposition. Needs some education in basic decorum.

Don’t think that’s your duty sector.

The shirtless man, this Giaretto, spat on the ground. I’m thinking this falls under intermutual, he said.

The Black man cast a closer look at Zina, leaning in. You must be all out of sorts. Where’re your parents?

I just need to find my sister, Zina asserted.

As she said this, her head woozed. The rush of worry had staved off the nag of hunger and thirst, these two days of loss, but it was now catching up.

She’s looking rough, the Black man said to the larger one. Bottle of brew for her, Gwozdz.

Ah, yup, said the large man, and he went into the trailer. While he clanked and thumped inside, Giaretto circled.

Dammit, Frank Gannon. You’d waste provisions on this kid? Smacks to me of a breach. We don’t know a damn thing about her. Or who sent her.

The Black man, Gannon, winked at Zina. You a federal agent, darling? If you’re here to slap on the cuffs, first let’s polish off a few cold ones. Dog days of summer.

Giaretto again spat. Hell with you. This’ll come up at committee. Be keen to hear what Peter has to say.

He stomped away. Gannon pointed after him, chuckling. The larger man, Gwozdz, returned from the trailer, handing Zina an unlabelled bottle of dark, almost black beer.

Don’t let that pipsqueak rattle you, he reassured her. We’re always bickering. Conflict is a source of power. Part of the covenant we abide by. Friction converts energy, kinetic to thermal. That’s what keeps the lights on.

Wait now, Gannon said. Since when do we have lights?

Both men guffawed. Zina sipped the beer; warmish, a taste like fermented birchbark, it nonetheless gave comfort to her parched mouth.

This place, strange beyond strange: too ragged for a sportsman’s resort, too rudimentary to resemble anything like a village. Questions multiplied in her mind. Did they live here, in the mud and trees? What did they do? Strange men with unsure purposes, quantities yet undisclosed—they spoke of a we. She wondered if they might be Communists.

Please, she said, her voice breaking, I really must find my sister.

The men looked to one another, only now recognizing her urgency. Gwozdz downed the rest of his bottle and peeled off his apron. He bid her to come with him, back along the trail. They’d do some asking around, he said, and see what happens then.

Roman Gwozdz, son of Maspeth, Queens, former private first class of the 21st Marine Regiment, had little interest in the circumstances that had brought her here. In the months he’d had his Airfloat coach trailer parked along Lake Tenskwatawa, he’d seen many transient souls arrive only to soon vanish. That’s what you get with a truly independent society, he said as they walked. The commonality means you got some looseness. But doesn’t mean no structure. There’s a chain of command, just like we had in the corps. Only difference, here we’re led to a higher purpose. Higher and lower. Semper fidelis.

Zina followed him, past stacks of firewood and boulders, a bivouac of canvas on poles under which two women bathed a Labrador retriever. They cut through the woods to a rivulet flowing off the lake, spanned by a slipshod bridge made of a hacked-off cedar trunk and slung ropes. Gwozdz extended a hand as he started across, but she eschewed the offer and stepped across unaided. Her legs were shaky, her footing unsure on the slippery bark, but she made it over.

On the opposite side was a pebbled shore and an uphill stretch. Another wood shack stood atop the crest, larger than the others she’d seen. A clothesline was strung from its eaves, flapping with bedsheets.

Wadderton and his missus should be here, Gwozdz said. Think they were talking to the other kid.

Gwozdz announced their arrival with a loud whistle. A man, thin and fair-haired, emerged from the shack and came to meet them. A woman, also fair and smallish, followed behind. And with her was Presendia, a crumbling wad of cornbread in her hands. Zina rushed forward and took her sister by the shoulders.

Puppy. You wandered off.

She opted to let you snooze, the woman said. We hear you’ve been on the move.

You should eat, the fair-haired man said. Come inside.

Gwozdz hung back, lighting a cigarette. She ran afoul of Giuseppe Giaretto, he said. Instinct tells me she’s better off checked in here with you.

The man scratched his neck. Instinct, he said. Indeed.

The shack was outfitted with mismatched furniture and flimsy shutters, a wooden trunk, a rusty cast-iron stove. A thin curtain divided off a corner where a ratty mattress lay. Wooden milk crates stuffed with papers and miscellanea were stacked against one wall. Pinned there was a large creased poster, about three feet wide, a detailed architectural drawing of some sort of hexagonal complex, margined with rows of dense handwritten text. Zina made out: ROTOINVERSION POLYCHROMIC SYMMETRY ORDER H / SHOCK WAVE LENS FOCUS /Δ PHASE EXPONENTIAL.

The woman introduced herself as Hannah Wadderton. The fair-haired man was her husband, Thomas. Hannah proffered parsnip soup, plus fresh well water. Zina was unsure how to read these people or their intentions, but was powerless to resist these lures. She and Presendia sat on the bare wooden floor while the woman ladled out bowls of beige goo sided with the cornbread—flavourless, oversalted as compensation, but it flooded her digestive tract as an instant calmative. Thomas and Gwozdz smoked by the front door, their voices lowered. Zina tried to listen, but made nothing out.

Presendia told us of your excursion, Hannah said. How industrious.

I don’t understand what you mean, Zina said between mouthfuls.

Just, quite an undertaking for two intrepid lasses, Hannah said. You came down from the north?

From our farm, Presendia said. We have chickens. We had a cow named Gladys but she died.

Zina shushed her.

We’ve had no children here, Hannah said, so your arrival presents a real thrill. The opportunity for true wonder. The open eyes of the young.

Zina considered this woman: slight, beak-nosed, frizzy hair in a braid. Like most of the others she’d seen here, she wore basic, unadorned clothing of grey cotton. Her voice carried a singsong cadence, a lilt suggesting an upbringing of manners. What details Presendia might have already imparted to her, how she’d even describe the last few days’ events, Zina couldn’t imagine. Presendia’s easy trust, her young credulity: another hazard to measure.

At the door, the two men shook hands, then Gwozdz headed away. Thomas crushed his cigarette under his heel and turned to them.

Zina and Presendia, he said, drawing out the syllables, as if testing their names’ legitimacy. Tell me, who’s your father?

Sir, Zina began. My sister and I are grateful for your hospitality and kindliness. And we intend no incivility. However, we would rather not share any intimate personal details. In return, we ask none of you. Fortune, good or bad, has brought us here. Best we leave it at that.

Thomas and Hannah exchanged a look. Thomas tensed his jaw.

But you solicited Ignatius Walker’s assistance, he probed, a flash of silver glinting in his teeth. He said he found you in the forest, over by Wanakena.

Ignatius Walker, Zina deduced, was the man in the Buick.

No solicitation at all, she said. Our encounter was purely by chance. He offered a place to rest. We accepted his offer.

You were just larking around the bog by night, Thomas pressed further. No fear of any…ghouls out there?

Ghouls, Presendia echoed. Zina cast her an admonitory look, quieting her.

What was Ignatius doing out there last night? Hannah asked, a question that seemed as much for Thomas as for them.

Yes, Thomas said. I wonder if he mentioned what he was up to there.

He just gave us a drive, Zina said.

To where? What were you getting away from?

The girls have said they don’t care to divulge, Hannah said to him. Let’s respect their wishes.

So it seems I must, said Thomas, resigned for now. Created free, and free they will remain.

Please don’t demean either of us with condescension or inconsonant misquotations, Zina said.

Thomas looked to his wife. A child crawls out of the forest to correct me on my Milton, he said. What a thing.

Zina set aside her finished bowl, though she could have downed three more helpings. There were many objections she thought to raise, not the least of which was being termed a child. But she saw it in their interests to maintain peaceable relations with these people, for the time being. They couldn’t lower their defences, but they could eat from their pot.

Would you mind if my sister and I used your facilities, to wash up? Zina said.

Hannah led them to a basin with a bar of tallow soap at the ready. A pit toilet was located behind the shack, she said, where they could take their time. Zina gave Presendia a prompting nod.

As they went about these tasks, Thomas returned to the doorway. Facing out, looking down the hill toward the lake, he lit another hand-rolled smoke. Zina watched him closely. His brows’ furrow, his clamped mouth—his entire bearing seemed bound and strained. There was effort there.

Time on Alstyne Farm had been structured in daily obligations, the minding of house and fields, interminable bouts of scrubbing, the elemental tasks of upkeep and subsistence. To know one’s self, Orson decreed, was to know what had been done and was yet to do: repetition and refinement, tracking sunrise to sundown. The chores were more than them; the chores were godly. Before each dawn Zina visited the coop and shed, scattered feed, milked. But when she found her duties complete, and with weather propitious, she’d head out to the meadow to park herself on a blanket with a volume plucked from the basement’s crates and a flask of strong tea. There, time vaporized. The uncut hay was her fortress. She received these favours in silence, and in reading was transported. Often the sun was low in its occident before she’d even heard another human voice. And so another day went, thrown upon her and endured.

This place, this compound, was nothing like that. It crawled with people. They came out of the trees loaded with overflowing laundry sacks. They gathered among heaps of mulch and stared at the clouds. They lolled about on the grass, passing jugs, some barely clothed.

Following Hannah down one of the central paths, Zina noticed a woman with alarmingly long hair rush past them, mumbling to herself, led by that Labrador.

Canis familiaris, Presendia whispered. Zina tightened her grip on her hand.

They stuck close to Hannah, her delight obvious in explicating the utility of things, assigning names. The clearing of the paths and the levelling of the access road, a dock under reconstruction. Hannah’s personal project was overseeing the ever-expanding vegetable gardens. Last year she’d had some luck with the beets and pattypan squash, she told them, but not much else; things were presently in what she called an experimental phase. It was unclear to Zina exactly how long these people had occupied the camp, though the shacks and privies bore evidence of years, and of incremental integration with the forest: rain-deteriorated siding, roofs tilting with eroded earth, wild grasses overtaking sunken foundations.

Everyone here has a sector of duty, Hannah said as they crossed the concourse. That’s a central precept. We’re creating something astounding, together. If we succeed, it will truly be unlike anything before. It will be outside history. Or history as it’s traditionally conceived.

Zina’s head swam. The pounding sun, the unfamiliarity of it all—much conspired to drain her scant reserves of energy.

Is there somewhere we might sit? she asked.

Hannah seemed to find this question funny. Of course. We can sit anywhere.

The pines edging the concourse to its east offered shade and a cushion of needles. Here they stretched out on the grass. Zina and Presendia’s dresses, mud-blotched and threadbare, stood in contrast to Hannah’s own of crisp clean cotton.

Farther down the tree line, a trio of men circulated among sacks of cement. Two were lean and bare-chested; the third was older, stocky with large black spectacles. The object of their attention was a hole carved in the earth, its depth indeterminate from this distance. They smoked and perspired, staring into the hole as if waiting for something to come crawling out of it.

Two summers previous, Orson discovered a skunk had fallen into the well on the boundary of their lot, its corpse rotting at the bottom of the old brick shaft. Rather than wager renewal on the existing aquifer, he’d taken it upon himself to dig a new one thirty yards to the east, despite knowing nothing of how such work was done. In the morning he’d set out with pick and shovel. Zina watched with fascination as he hacked for hours at the earth, his head disappearing beneath the lip of his dig, the hole widening more than it deepened as the ground crumbled and gave way. Ankle-deep in sludge, he threw aside his pick and swore at the sky. Eventually he crawled back out, dirt-black from collar to bootsoles, stormed to the truck, and peeled away. He returned hours later armed with two hardbound volumes, Builder’s Handbook of Practical Excavation Methods, 3rd ed. and Modern Farm Machinery and Hydraulics from the Edison Electric Institute, along with a stainless-steel well point, lengths of metal piping and screens, and a massive sledgehammer. His labours continued unabated into the night. Zina, Presendia, and Eliza sat on the porch listening to the metrical clunk of metal on metal long past bedtime.

Come morning, Orson stood before them, his hands trembling, to announce with manic glee: the pump was now functioning, and after running the flow through to clear it of sediment, potable water was theirs. But even this victory couldn’t be savoured: tomorrow there would be something else, always another battle.

These men before her now idly passed a jug as they stared into the borehole in progress. The man in the black spectacles appeared in command of the project, gesturing broadly, imparting plans. The other two were unroused, and disagreement seemed to be brewing as to their next steps.

Are your people churchgoing folks? Hannah asked.

No.

Hannah seemed to want more of an answer.

My mother’s family is Lutheran, Zina said. She sang chorales.

How lovely, said Hannah. Is she a gifted singer?

Zina nodded. Hannah projected nervousness, flightiness—a squirrel in a lightning storm.

She never took us to church, Zina said. She read to us.

And what did she read?

Many things.

Such as.

The Romantics. Walter Scott. Jacob Burckhardt. Often, the works of Friedrich Schleiermacher. In translation.

I see, said Hannah, and Zina suspected she might be ready to let the subject be.

The man in spectacles was now advancing on one of the other two, his face reddening, his voice raised in accusation—Zina made out something about slackening standards. He accentuated this by poking another of the men in the sternum. The argument escalated. The third man, the more musclebound of the younger two, swung an arm around the spectacled man’s neck, forcing him downward, and soon all three were on the ground, wrestling among the rubble and cement sacks. Seeing this, Hannah tsked, but seemed unconcerned.

We settlers can be an unruly lot, she said. But building something great, something imperishable, demands spirit.

What are you building? asked Zina.

Hannah smiled a knowing smile. Oh, you’ll see for yourself.

The scuffle broke up as abruptly as it began, with the bespectacled man huffing off in defeat, spitting and palming dust off his trousers. The other two were left staring into the hole, passing the jug. Neither seemed eager to take any further action.

Hannah stood. Pardon me, girls. Must bend Mr. Liversedge’s ear for a moment.

As Hannah followed after the spectacled man, Zina slid closer to Presendia, sweeping strands of hair from her forehead and brushing dirt from her dress’s collar. This was the first they’d been alone all day.

Who are these people? Presendia asked.

They’re nobody, Zina said. We needn’t be concerned with their affairs.

Presendia: auburn hair, like their mother’s, and her father’s chalky blue eyes, ever discerning. And her question remained: When will we go back?

The lie would be so easy in its telling. Just to say: Soon, soon we’ll return and all will be undone, realigned. All that must be forgotten will be forgotten, and together we’ll look to the future with hope. But Zina said nothing.

Schleiermacher the Prussian ecclesiologist had written, and so Eliza had read to her daughters:…how well you have succeeded in making your earthly life so rich and varied, that you no longer stand in need of an eternity—having made a universe for yourselves, you are above the need of thinking of the universe that made you. This they had done, constructing a microcosm of their own under Orson’s directive. He’d seen progress’s blade carved into the valley of the Meuse, then wielded by diabolical generals and magnates with the collusion of the National Security Industrial Association, the Lockheed Corporation, the YMCA, the entire spectrum of the world’s malice, and he wouldn’t stand to see himself or his fledgling family comply with such travesties. He would defy, and in so doing, achieve liberty.

Rarely did they venture beyond the boundaries of Alstyne Farm. On occasion Zina was permitted to join Orson on errands in town, most often to the general store on the outskirts of Newcomb an hour away. These trips invariably drove him into gritted fury. His revulsion for the ordinary strangers they encountered was plain, all the busybody farmers, the wives pushing carts in dry goods aisles, the holidaymakers towing dinghies up to Oseetah Lake straddling dual lanes along country roads. Everyone, everywhere, was against them. When, at the dinner table, Eliza gently inquired as to why he’d refused invitations to meetings of the Adirondacks North Country Farmers Coalition and pitched repeated envelopes from Consolidated Edison into the stove, why he’d closed off the bounds of their plot with chicken wire and foreclosed any suggestion they introduce themselves to their closest neighbours at the produce farm to the west—he gave no real answer, only muttered about the gasoline prices at the store’s pump and stirred his soup. When she pressed the question, he rose from the table and left the room without another word.

Over time, their trips to town became fewer, what ties they had to the wider world gradually severed.

One Saturday last March, returning from the quarry near Crary Mills, with the truck bed packed with seed bags and bricks, Orson had suddenly turned off Route 11 onto an unfamiliar back road. Veering west, they drove through waves of thick birch forest until emerging at the side of a rocky cliff. Orson parked and got out, bidding Zina to follow. They climbed the bank to look down upon a fissure that cut westward for about a quarter mile until opening into a clearing incised into the earth. There, Orson said. And, in the distance, she saw: a crew of men, circulating among pickups and a supplies trailer. A man in a long leather coat stood planted atop a metal platform, leaning over a theodolite.

They’re coming to civilize us, her father had pronounced, his voice tremulous. Once that interstate opens, all of this will be a turnpike. His point was clear: adversaries were advancing, and soon their sovereign home would be under threat. He stared out at the scene before them, biting his lip. Zina waited for him to say more. But after a moment he simply turned and went back to the truck. She followed, and they rattled back to the highway in silence.

Night, again. Lamps were ignited, torches sparked. Led by Hannah, Zina and Presendia joined a line forming at the large tent that served as the compound’s mess. Its interior was stuffy with competing aromas: pipe smoke, stewed lima beans, mustiness. Everything, even the food, appeared scavenged, patched together. Moths mobbed unadorned bulbs overhead; on a canvas awning, Zina made out a faded stencil reading PROP. MCGUIRE AIR FORCE BASE.

When they reached the front of the line to receive their bowls, Zina recognized the woman working the pots as Linda, the woman she’d seen dancing by the fire. Here she smiled demurely as she ladled them out portions of the steaming gunge, then moved on to the next in line.

Hannah directed them to the tent’s rear and a log bench. Curious stares traced their arrival. A man with a shaggy, smoke-stained moustache slurped his spoon and grumbled: toot toot little girl. Zina countered his sleepy gawp, holding fast until his watery eyes turned back to his bowl.

The tent filled quickly. Just as the compound’s widths and breadths resisted delineation with its many winding, uncleared paths and slapdash shelters, any precise tally of its population seemed impossible—maybe forty, possibly more, fluctuant. Some, like the Waddertons, were city exiles, transplants remade as settlers. Others took indistinguishable, shadowy forms, sliding in and out of view. Semi-feral creatures, risen from the bogs. Among the gathering she sighted Giaretto, leaning across a table to jab a mahogany-haired woman’s shoulder with a toothpick. And, at the tent’s farthest sideline: the man from the woods, the one named Ignatius. He sat facing in their general direction, puffing a cigar. If he saw them there, Zina couldn’t tell.

Thomas joined them on the bench. Mopping his forehead with a swatch of cloth, he retained that concerned, restless manner.

Looking for Peter, he said to Hannah, his voice lowered. Any sign?

Hannah shook her head no. Here was mention again of this Peter, spoken of in deferential tones. One more mystery among many.

The tink of metal on metal turned heads. Near the tent’s opening, the spectacled man seen earlier by the well, named by Hannah as Liversedge, mounted a bench while striking a tin cup with a butter knife. The tent went quiet.

Kinfolk, settlers, comrades. Praise to you all.

Liversedge’s listeners returned in refrain: Praise.

First, he said, praise to Maud and Annabelle Karp for this fine supper. Praise to the teachings and the light of all worlds. Praise to the people.

Praise.

I know concerns weigh upon us tonight. Do I need to inventory? Last month’s crops. That fracas with the seed dealers in Finger Lakes. And the well excavation…for the next forty-eight hours, all are asked to keep a tight rein on their water usage. Refrain from excess, as ever. We’ll have matters sorted soon enough. But do know this, parched soil grows supple in its thirst.

Lamplight flickered in his glasses, making fires of his eyes.

Yes, we face many ardours. As always. But even when our resources grow scarce, never doubt the defeatability of our enemies.

Someone, again: praise.

The ruling class and their cadres may grow bloated in overextension, he continued. But demagogues know no morality in their program of control over the subordinate classes. Here I’m paraphrasing Gramsci.

He was losing his listeners’ attention. A line for second helpings of stew began to form. Others proceeded back into the compound. Liversedge continued, changing tack.

On a less dire note, as some of you know, Peter soon returns to us. I’ve been told he brings promising developments regarding our communication resources.

This was met with scattered cheers. Telephone, someone shouted. A woman to Zina’s right sighed Yes. Liversedge took this in, then looked over to a man at his left. Maybe our Mr. Bowne cares to chime in on that?

This man, Bowne, leaned on a cane with his head held low, projecting a coolness of powers withheld. Tomorrow, he said, the way forward will become clearer.

Yes, Liversedge resumed. Tomorrow, tomorrow. Wondrous things indeed await us. As long as we remain vigilant and attentive to our mandate. The old world dies, the new world struggles in birth. Gramsci again. Well, then.

With this, he stepped down from the bench. The other man, Bowne, hobbled away, making a quick exit. The tent was already clearing, the stewpots scraped dry and the bowls stacked for rinsing. Presendia knelt on the ground, watching as the Labrador lapped at a spill of soupy glop.

Zina set aside her bowl. The heat, the stir of people—it was getting to her. Never had she been among so many, or been bombarded by such a profusion of energies. The image returned, unshakable: the man by the fire, palms upturned, his expression embalmed in shock. The blood coating his torso like an apron.

Soon, she decided. Soon they would leave this place.

Back in the Waddertons’ shack, Presendia and Zina lay together on a thin mat, facing the stove’s steady light. Zina dabbed Presendia’s sunburned neck and shoulders with a cloth soaked in a concoction of Hannah’s, a paste of milk and cornstarch. Presendia remained sullen—how the last few days might be coalescing in her mind unknowable still. There was really no conclusion to be drawn, or none worth drawing yet.

Once Presendia was asleep, Zina rose from the mat. Behind the room’s curtain divider a lamp burned: Hannah, up reading. Slowly, carefully, Zina slipped on her shoes and stole a coat from a pile among the Waddertons’ research materials. The door whined slightly as she eased through, but all remained unstirred.

A moonless night, cool and still. Only the revving calls of bullfrogs from all sides. She headed down the slope and back over the cedar bridge, watchful for any observer. On nights like this the High Peaks were an endless shadow, spacious and close, neither young nor old, a feracious wilderness inverted into desolation.

But as she entered the central concourse, she heard voices, strange incantation in unison. Two men came running side by side along the perimeter. With their backs straight and their pace synchronized, tight in their formation, they together intoned a crude military melody: The risers swung around his neck, connectors cracked his dome, the canopy became his shroud, he hurtled to the ground, and he ain’t gonna jump no more. Zina crouched behind a stack of chopped wood as they passed, then crept quickly out of sight.

At the path to the lake came strains of revelry, another rowdy singalong. Cruising down the river on a Sunday afternoon. Then laughter, a woman’s titter. Instinct told Zina to avoid this way. She went in the other direction, down the overgrown path past Gwozdz’s trailer, farther into the forest. The way ahead was obscure, smelling of extinguished fires.

A voice: You perceive the globe.

She hadn’t seen him there, backlit under a hanging lantern at a forking of paths, smoking a cigarette.

The globe of stars, he said. You perceive it. You see it. But do you recognize it for what it is?

Zina looked up. Trees tracked veins into the sky, but no stars were visible.

The Almighty calls to us here in the womb of nature, he said. But no one sees the true shape of the universe. Not yet, at least.

He spoke at an unhurried clip, accented with a peculiar lean, each word oozing into the next. She stepped cautiously closer, into his light. He was tall and lean, with dark hair greased and combed, his denims’ cuffs rolled over leather ankle boots and a bandana slung around his neck—like a storybook cowboy, Zina thought. A fat apothecary jar of clear liquid sat at his feet.

And the true shape is what, she said.

My cabin’s back up there, he said, gesturing to the path leading behind him. Cozy as hell. Come have a drink with me, I’ll tell you all about it.

Zina was fairly sure what having a drink meant.

I’d prefer we stay here, she said. But I’ll drink something.

He offered the jar and Zina came forward. He watched as she drank. The alcohol’s scald was fierce, and she fought the impulse to retch. This sting was new to her; Orson considered liquor a weakness that made beasts of men, and kept none in the house.

Been putting in some hours on the still, he said. Magic potions learned in the hills of West Virginia. You meet men of great knowledge up there. White lightning soothsayers. Marvellous ideas of civilization and its undoing.

She again tilted the jar. The second sip went easier than the first.

Drink your fill, he said, flicking the stub of his smoke into the bushes. Plenty to go around. He came closer. In the limited light she made out a mangled rack of teeth, a skewed smile.

Ignatius tells me you girls were humping around the mountains all on your own.

That’s true, she conceded. Mostly.

Beautiful. I salute your courage. Small-minded people, they see all the empty spaces on a map as a problem. They see dams to build, they see boulder passes to dynamite. They see the emptiness as breeding grounds for danger. But the wilderness, it gets you acquainted with divine cruelty. And that opens possibilities. This land, these hills, it isn’t the end of anything. It’s a way to get somewhere.

He paused. His face’s contours were sharp, a thick vein snaking from scalp to brow. His eyes bore intent.

I don’t quite see what you mean, Zina said.

What I mean is, you want to start digging, you’ve got to get your claws in the soil. You don’t discover your true essence by knocking around aimlessly. Especially a thing like you, or that little cookie you brought along.

At this reference to Presendia, Zina tensed.

So how do you? Zina asked.

Do you what.

Discover your true essence.

Again, intent in those eyes.

First, he said, you stay put. Then you listen.

He took the jar back from her, drank, then returned it.

I want you to do something, he said. How about it?

She waited.

I want you to look. Look past all of this and try to see.

To see.

Just try.

And what shall I see?

A house. You see a house in Guadalajara. A bungalow in the Tlaquepaque suburbs. Late on a rainy Saturday afternoon. The neighbourhood is quiet. No one on the sidewalks, no automobiles, no dogs in the alleys. Quiet, quiet. The house sits at the end of this street. Do you see it.

Zina didn’t answer. But his voice, its meter constant, its pitch unmodulating, was having an effect. Something was opening in the darkness, mists parting.

A family lives in this house. They’ve lived there for years. In this family there are three sisters. You see them now, in the bedroom they share on the second floor. Sitting on the carpet, each with their hands on their knees. Matching nightgowns, their hair in ribbons. The house is silent, only the unbroken drip of rain spilling over the roof gutters. Do you see it.

Zina nodded. She saw them, these sisters, though only vaguely, as if through damp cotton.

The house is the world of the sisters’ devotion. The house is absence. The girls are waiting for a signal. The house is their waiting. Do you see.

Zina did.

All three, they close their eyes and fall into a deep sleep. And together they dream their shared dream. The witnessing of things they can’t understand, only feel. They dream of a globe of stars. Like a kaleidoscope, like a cinema screen. Spirals within spirals. The heart of a cyclone. Do you see.

She did, as if peering up from the ocean floor into an infinite murk. Much was there to behold, and nothing could be distinguished.

The dream, the globe, that’s the future of man, he said. It contains everything. The noise and the confusion. The downfall. The revelation and the reckoning. We’re the sisters, waiting for it all. You see it.

She saw.

But we’re also the dream. You see it. You hear it. But do you see it for what it is?

She saw. She heard. But his question only prompted questions of her own.

What happens when they wake up? she asked.

The man smiled, then smacked his lips: pwah.

Then the dream is over. You ever have a dream that came true?

I don’t know, said Zina.

The man stepped backward, into the lantern’s light. Okay, then. Now I’m headed up to my place, sugar. You take that hooch with you, there’s plenty more to go around. We live in blissful plenitude here. Everything you’ll ever need, it’s in your hands and in your intellect. Direct from the Almighty to your bloodstream. This is the dream.

If this was all merely a dream, it was as vivid as any waking experience, as verifiable as any account of history. Only once back at the Waddertons’ shack, sliding in again beside snoring Presendia, did Zina regain herself. Vanished were the sisters, the neighbourhood, the apparition and its suggestion of new pathways, unmaligned by the fitful scufflings of fearful men. What had briefly opened was again shut.

Two men strode into the lake, floating a raft of beech timber and twine. A third man knelt on the raft, giving directions. Once clear of the shore, the men in the water scrambled aboard, sending the raft teetering; the third yapped at them Easy easy. With all on, they gathered their rods and lures as one worked a narrow plank as a paddle, steering them toward an inlet down the bank.

Lake trout, Hannah said. Walleye. It’s not quite the season, so not sure what they’ll catch out there. But we can only follow the patterns and adjust as best we can.

Zina pulled her sunbonnet forward to shade her eyes; it was barely morning and already the sun was in its full rage. She and Hannah sat on a half-built boulder wall, watching Presendia ahead, knee-deep in the water, poking around in the silt with a twig, attempting to spear the black quivers of minnows coiling around her shins.

Such poor fortunes with the crops, Hannah said. We’ve planted tomatoes, turnips, buckwheat. So much corn. But nothing for the effort but chaff. It confounds me. I look at the salinity, the porosity, nothing adds up. It’s possible I’m approaching the question too edaphologically. My real home’s in a laboratory, not in the field.

From across the water, one of the men swung his rod in the air, griping: Slippery cocksuckers.

Hannah had been telling Zina about her days at the University of Minnesota. Her postgraduate work there had been rooted in bridging classical botany with modern cytology and advances in genetic theory, all toward a higher ideal, Hannah said, of enhancing agricultural input-output total factor productivity. There was a growing understanding among her colleagues of how the components defining heredity and the carriage of genetic information bore a real form, a real molecular structure, a transforming principle. The current enthusiasm concerned deoxyribonucleic acid, found in all organisms.

That’s the key, she said. It’s the bond. If properly understood, this will reconfigure all understanding of biotics. Life itself, in all its forms.

Zina saw: Hannah, younger, in a lab coat, fingering beakers of exotic compounds, wandering a leafy campus. A life of textbooks, study, classrooms, eagerness.

A scientist carries the burden of the past in every hypothetical gambit, Hannah said. Just as the history of a species is embedded in every nucleotide of this DNA. Do you understand?

Zina said she did.

Minneapolis had been paradisiacal to a studious girl from Fillmore County. Boys and books, Hannah said, everything. She and Thomas were first introduced at a campus event featuring Oswald Avery and colleagues from the Rockefeller Institute, where the most compelling research in molecular biology was being done. Thomas, then an ambitious Ph.D. candidate in the physics department, admitted to her with little prompting that he was only there to talk up faculty toward endorsement for funding prospects. The star of his cohort, his ascent seemed sure, and his severity of purpose entranced her.

Oh, was I obsessed with him, Hannah smiled, first love and all that. Thomas’s own object of obsession was uranium, fissile and electropositive, mined in Kazakhstan and Saskatchewan. It was, he said, the element of the future. In the early forties the kind of work he did required navigating the interests of military research. When he asked her to move with him to Los Alamos, she did so without equivocation. But once they were installed there at Site Y with the rest of the staff, things went a bit awry.

Anyhow, Hannah said, another story for another time. Now we’re here, and everything’s very different.

Presendia tossed aside her twig and came to join them. Hannah waved away a mosquito; her eagerness to regale them with her personal history had faded. They were here now. Yes, everything was very different from how it once was.

Midday Impressions were undertaken in a hut on the compound’s north edge. The interior was unembellished and unfurnished, the shutters closed. About a dozen settlers, men and women, sat on the wooden floor in a semi-circle around Nadia, the session primary. All were quiet as she balled her fists to her chest, pivoting as she spoke to engage each in turn.

God came to Amos, she said, the sycamore farmer of Tekoa. A man like any, selected to hear the voice. To be a prophet and a carrier of the message. Praise be to Amos.

Praise be, the others in the circle returned.

Where is this? Israel, the northern kingdom, near the Dead Sea. An era of prosperity. But also, extravagance and inequity. Injustice to the downtrodden. Man blind to his neighbour’s plight. And so the Almighty, upon seeing such wrongdoing, delivered word to Amos, warning the Israelites would receive the full brunt of his vengeance. Devouring fires delivered to the houses of Hazael and the palaces of Bozrah, and it goes on and on. Locusts, everything. So what were their transgressions? The oppression of the poor, idolatry, the selling of righteous men into slavery, the immoral treatment of women. Material comforts achieved at the expense of spiritual failure. What I’m saying is they mistook acculturation for righteousness. And this was their undoing. This is what the Judaic religions call sin. But what is sin, really? A lapse. An error. Akin to what the Greeks call hamartia. Not necessarily what we want to call evil. More a symptom of basic human confusion. Sin is confusion. Let’s say that together.

They did, together: Sin is confusion.

Wonderful, Nadia said. That feels good, don’t you think, just to say it? The word is the idea, and the word is the feeling.

She paused, indulging in several extended breaths before continuing.

So. Amos, our timorous prophet. Gifted with true sight of the divine spirit. The way to a higher plane of thought that comes only through striving. Which is what we see today, with psychoanalysis and whatnot. We live in a time of marvels. Skies crowded with aeroplanes. Computers the size of houses. The atomic bomb. Yet all this knowledge…it’s knowledge without discovery. And discovery only comes from connectedness with purpose. That’s how we elude the confusion of the Israelites, and how we escape their fate. By keeping our eyes open. Open eyes. Open eyes.

The others: Open eyes.

And so Amos went forth and told of his vision. The Lord would darken the day and turn feasts to mourning and shake the earth. Punishments, reckoning. This is how these things operate. Amos saw a destiny fulfilled. The plowman shall overtake the reaper and the mountains shall drop sweet wine and all the hills shall melt. The world that was given will be taken away. The shallowness of men’s prosperity will be revealed. Because everything on which man relies, all his innovations, it can all so easily just disappear. The material…dematerializes.

The hut was stuffy and unventilated, thick with bodily warmth, and Zina, among the circle, felt her breath shallowing. The man seated to her left gave off a powerful smell of something like rotten fruit and sweat. With Nadia’s pause, he raised his hand.

We got to be like Amos! he cried.

Yes, Nadia said. Be like Amos, and speak with divine assurance. The confidence that only comes with understanding. Our era is, of course, much like Amos’s. A great system of power and madness is running out there, and its governors are wily in their deceptions. But as Peter shows us, their days are numbered. The corrupt will be exposed and their systems will be dismantled. And out of this, our new society rises, joyous and true. Joyous and true.

They all said it together: Joyous and true. And Zina said it along with them, even if the utterance felt like a lie. Joyous, true.

Nothing outside the farm made sense. But season upon season, less and less within it made sense either. The needs of the place were never-ending. Never enough timber, enough milk, enough thread. The wheat delicate as feathers, the wind as resolute as a machete. The self-sufficiency to which Orson and Eliza aspired often seemed unattainable.

Self-mastery, however, was another matter. As far back as Zina’s memories allowed, her parents, primarily her mother, had upheld the value of an education founded in quiet purposefulness. Eliza prized dearly her years at the Albany Academy for Girls; there, even in the rigid dominion of a school day’s schedule, time and effort justified by the solidity of semesters’ examinations, progress could be marked, and she could be an autonomous individual—her name emblazoned across a report card, a locker. At home, she was left drained of any such assurances. Her father the judge—known to Zina only in a single photograph, framed and mounted on a wall beside the farmhouse’s rear entrance, his collar crisp and high, the perfect sphere of his bald head centred by a tight moustache and a lipless mouth—ran his household as fastidiously and briskly as he lorded over his chambers. His children were treated in the same officious manner with which he treated clerks and underlings: as functionaries of his will. In the early evenings he would stand at the end of the downstairs hallway, eyeglasses perched on his nose, and execute a sequence of loud claps, always in the same military cadence, at which his children were expected to appear in due haste: the boys Horace and Joseph, then Adelaide and Marjorie, finally Eliza the youngest. Corralling them all, their mother, always addressed by her children only as Mrs. Alstyne.

Among themselves, the five children felt as unlike as any five of the same close genealogy could. But under the judge’s penetrating survey they were inspected as one, answering questions about their day’s activities, their scholastic itineraries and progress, the status of domestic chores. Obedient parts to a whole, all functioned in conglomerate. Any lapse in duty was an affront to familial dignity.

Later in the evenings, after the judge had retired to his study with his Armagnac and the single nightly cigarillo he allowed himself, they were released. Eliza often described to Zina those solitary hours each night, after Adelaide and Marjorie were in their beds. Engrossed in volumes plucked from the library shelves, she sat pressed into a corner on their bedroom floor turning pages, aware of complex processes occurring in her mind, twisting in her imagination, fortifying her against the next day’s trials.

Zina’s memory of her own public school days were limited: winter mornings trudging from their duplex near Carroll Park to the doors of P.S. 124 Silas B. Dutcher, the gymnasium assemblies and teeming hallways, ferine boys barking across schoolyards, faceless teachers, the grinding of a communal pencil sharpener. Through this, or against this, her mother continued to stress personal enrichment, the endeavour of literary and aesthetic refinement, the primacy of the inner self.

Upon Orson’s return stateside and their relocation to the farm, Eliza took the helm of her daughters’ learning. Around the stove they sat with books drawn from the crates in the basement, spillover from J. Trotter’s substantial collections: Modern Library editions of the Republic and Summa Theologica, Bentham’s Principles and Morals of Legislation, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, a well-worn edition of The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. Under her mother’s tutelage Zina was led to the strangeness of Blake, the vigour of Dickinson. She read Dante and Petrarch, veering into Tolstoy and Rousseau; she methodically absorbed Johnson’s Rasselas and Ruskin’s Modern Painters, wrestled with the intricacies of Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry and Hume’s History of England. She committed passages of Keats to memory and fed them back to Eliza, who listened with her eyes closed, absorbing every foot of each line, and then thanked Zina for her assiduity.

Reading was both insulation and ammunition. It took one elsewhere, into dusty alcoves where the self could thrive less hindered. And so it was for Eliza on the farm, with her own family: amid nature’s wonders, so harsh and demanding, sustained contemplation was as essential to survival as the cultivation of their land. It was, in its own way, joyous and true. But this, like so much else, had come to an end.

The garden to the compound’s west was indeed a failure. Despite its location in a cleared zone drenched by morning sun, its integrity upheld in neatly laid rows, any potential it offered had proven abortive: the tomato vines and buckwheat sickly, the cucumbers emaciated, the corn like gravel. Hannah crouched at the garden’s periphery and turned a desiccated stalk in her fingers, muttering to herself while consulting a spiralbound notebook.

Exchangeable sodium adsorption. Smectites.

Pacing these rows, Zina quickly identified the true culprit: saprophagous wireworms, the same persistent type which had devastated Alstyne Farm’s crops two years ago. Their destructive reach was evident throughout the breadth of the soil, negating any hope of a successful harvest. But she didn’t relay this information to Hannah, not yet.

How these people had come to occupy this place was still unexplained. Everyone they’d met seemed to have only been there a few months, a year or two at most, though the camp bore signs of a deeper past and long-gone inhabitants: the paths branching through the camp and environs, the shacks and stone firepits, foundations of unfinished walls left to rubble. A copper weathercock sat unspinning atop a slab, paralyzed with rust. But whatever had happened here before, the place had since been taken by its new settlers to be used or disused as they wished.

As Zina and Presendia followed Hannah away from the gardens, a pickup truck came chugging down the main road and parked near the semi-constructed well. Two men jumped out from the bed and lowered the tailgate, revealing a large mass wrapped in rope and a bedsheet spotted with what looked to be blood. Gwozdz was there to meet them, and together they lifted this cargo out and onto the grass. They spread the sheet, then considered what lay before them: an enormous hog, its fuzzy hide the colour of ash. The men prodded the beast with their toes, laughing.

While Zina and Presendia watched this unfold, Thomas came hurrying across the concourse toward them. His nose was sun-blistered, his shirt patched with sweat. Hannah hailed him, but he went to Zina.

May we speak. A question or two.

Earlier, he’d made his disquiet at their arrival plain, although Zina wasn’t sure what portents he might see in them. She was reminded of Giuseppe Giaretto’s outcry: We don’t know a damn thing about her.

Tell me, Thomas said, what do I need to know about you two?

I don’t understand what you’re asking, Zina said.

Thomas cocked his head, looking at her feet. Our intermutual sectorial principles depend upon a degree of isolation. We can’t have Criminal Justice Services out here, tracking runaways. That’s bad for everyone, and bad for our collective progress. And I think you do understand.

No one’s looking for us, she said.

Your parents, or someone.

Zina shook her head. Thomas was unpersuaded.

A school.

My education was at home.

Conducted by your mother. Who is not looking for you.

Yes.

Many people would think young girls should be in a classroom, not in a cow pasture.

Institutional education stamps out liberty, Zina said. Like a prison.

Thomas’s eyes widened. Well, now.

Rest assured, Mr. Wadderton, Zina said, neither my sister nor I care in the slightest what your opinion might be of us and our education.

The men had flipped the carcass over onto its back, spreading its haunches and exposing its bald belly. One of the men flicked aside his cigarette and dropped to his knees before the hog, bobbing his neck as if to bury his face in its groin. His onlookers guffawed.

Let’s try again, Thomas said. You talk about liberty. Look around. We’re not dealing in idealized abstraction here. A real project is under way, invested in the very manner of liberty you seem concerned to preserve. But if you intend on staying here, you’ll have to be forthcoming.

Zina looked to Presendia, watching the men at the truck with deep concentration. The man, goaded on by his onlookers, had torn off his shirt and was now fully mounting the hog, probing it with his crotch. The animal seemed resigned to its disgrace: its black eyes gawking upward, mouth agape, snout trickling mucus.

A girl as bright as you could find much to do here, Hannah said. But there must be trust.

Gwozdz came around the truck clutching a cleaver. He shoved aside the man, who backed away with a hangdog look. Presendia remained transfixed as Gwozdz pinned the hog’s face under his boot, then drove the cleaver into its throat and tore the blade downward, furcating its midsection into flaps. Entrails gushed. Presendia clasped her dress’s hems and shuffled her feet, but didn’t avert her eyes.

We give praise through studying and understanding the unity of self and nature, Thomas said. Interchangeable and intermutual. That’s what’s truly holy.

I have to wonder what Ignatius considers holy, Zina said.

At this, Thomas looked to Hannah, a flash of apprehension.

Ignatius? Hannah said. What makes you ask that? Did he do something?

Zina gave no reply. Thomas picked a sliver of peeling skin from his nose.

I’ll ask you one more time, he said. Where are your parents?

Pressure mounted. Orson reread Whitman, his evocations of nature’s treacheries: the earth turning harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses, distilling such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor. But to curse nature for one’s own botched efforts was to excuse one’s own failures; the globe must forever gyrate harmless and stainless. A sudden bout of mastitis could besiege a cow’s udder, and battalions collided over snowy pastures, waves of men concentrated into reddish char. One bad year flowed into another—just one outcome within a span of possibilities.

One long autumn afternoon, a sudden gale attacked the farm. Barefoot in a flimsy shawl, Zina dashed from the farmhouse against flaying sheets of rain, away from the banging windows and her father’s growling at wobbly roofbeams. In the meadow, staked as a flagpole, she was transported. To find places seen only in encyclopedia pages, faded Kodachrome facsimiles of sights only imagined, hypothetical: she was looking down at the limitless range of the East African Rift; she was gaping up out of the Tsangpo Canyon at the foot of Mount Kailash in the Tibetan Trans-Himalayas; she was tossed atop the Austral Ocean into a tidal oblivion. She could be excised from all circumstance, and remade as something new. When a voice called—her father’s, or her sister’s—it went swallowed by the wind. In that instant came a feeling, previously only hinted at, but then clear and true: there was somewhere deeper than soil or crust or obligation, untouched by the rain.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, Whitman cried. It is that calm and patient, it grows such sweet things out of such corruptions.

Eventually she returned to the house and lit a fire, peeling off her socks to warm her feet at the stove’s grate. Eliza and Presendia were at the kitchen table, pressing touch-me-nots between sheets of wax paper. Orson came in following his late-day check on the stable. Still dripping, he sat at the table and folded his hands before him. His expression betrayed disconsolate prospects for the cow Gladys’s future, decisions of consequence looming. The windows rattled; the walls shook. He mashed his palms together and stared long at each of them in turn: his wife, his elder daughter, then his younger.

A man can slam doors, throw plates at mirrors, wave a hatchet at a hay bale, and the sleet will still pound. He can scream at the mountains, but any answer he receives in return can’t be trusted. For their bad fortune, fault could be placed anywhere, ascribed to anything. But lying there by the stove, watching her father hunched over his hands, Zina then saw: the blame had to fall somewhere.

Again they convened for the evening meal. The tent was raucous, a feeling of jubilation in the air. Many were tipsy; the women ladling out tonight’s tomato slumgullion sang Did you ever see a lassie go this way and that, with lewd improvisations on the verses. Giaretto, the man with the Schwinn, arrived led by some sort of furry rodent on a rope leash, sending the Labrador roaming underfoot into a frenzy. Amid this cacophony, Zina and Presendia again procured bowls and found seats among the benches at the tent’s rear, hoping to avoid undue attention.

I have fly bites on my ankles, Presendia said. It makes it hard to concentrate.

Concentrate on what? Zina wondered. But before the question was posed, a shift tremored through the crowd. And he was there: rising before the rabble, a bench for a pulpit, a lantern swinging above. Peter, the shepherd. He raised a hand, his long fingers spread. All quieted.

Evening, everyone. Praise be.

All: Praise be.

This was the man Zina had encountered the night before. The globe of stars. He still wore that bandana, now with a blue plaid shirt tucked into dungarees. His cowhide belt was centred by a large buckle with something inscribed in its brass, but Zina couldn’t make it out. In the darkness he’d been something sinister; here, his presence was sharpened to a pinnacle, focalizing the aggregate energy of this derelict assembly.

Goodness. It’s a wonderful thing to be back. Lake Tenskwatawa, our Euphrates, our Ganges. My, how time moves. Only been gone ten days, but feels like an epoch’s passing. I look out upon all these bright and lovely faces and what I see is evidence of true transformation. I see the splendour of our mutual communion brought to full flourish. But what captures the eye is never the full story, is it.

No sir, someone shouted.

Just two days ago, Peter continued, I experienced a vision. My acquaintance with such phenomena is, as many of you know, long-standing. I’ve been shown so much, and I’ve passed on what I’ve been shown. As I now share this with you all.

Zina looked around the tent. Magnetized by this man, his visionary claims, all were primed to receive.

Early Tuesday morning. I’m hotfooting north up the 81, down near Blacksburg. Nothing but farmland all the way along that strip. I’m driving Thomas’s tired old Plymouth and she’s growling like a starved bear. Bad bearings on the crankshaft, I figured out later. But right then I’m worrying will I even make it to Charlottesville, where I’m supposed to meet a guy that night. But I’m in a particular state of mind, that way of mental disassociation that opens you up to the possibility of cosmic intervention. When the pathways are clear. When the frequency’s tuned just right.

I come to this steep incline, and looking ahead I see it rising for easy another mile, and all I think is, this old heap isn’t going to make it. I take it easy on the gas, watching the tachometer needle twitch, and hold tight. It’s touch and go, but the bear holds firm. At the top of that climb I heave a sigh of relief. Small victories. And as I’m coming over the summit, the morning sun hits me in a blinding wave. And that’s when she unfurled before me. I’ve experienced such wonders before. Like Ezekiel, witnessing the wheels of God’s unity. Or like the young Ramakrishna, whose own path to enlightenment began in childhood, overcome with profound and totalizing joy on seeing a spiral of cranes against a thunderous sky. A sight, the ecstatic jolt, confirms the message. The pathways and such.

What I saw then was a woman, the scale of a mountain. Naked, skin dark. Thighs spanning the horizon, a huge pendulous bosom. Her face, her face was obscured up there in the clouds. I was so rattled I lost the wheel for a second and the truck careened across the road. But I held tight, because I understood what was occurring. This was occurring. I sped forward, and the angle of her hips tilted downward and a brilliant shaft of light came blasting out from her mighty quim. Aimed at me. For me. No one else.

Peter smiled. All in the tent sat rapt.

The light engulfed me like a warm shower. Time became inconsequential. I’ll tell you, I’ve felt the presence of the Almighty in many forms, at many times. And this light streaming from that giantess, with it came not only comfort, but a message, clear as a dinner bell. It, she, told me then, Peter, you are blessed with great powers, but you must strive harder. You have to push and push. Be resolute. Lead your people without the timidity that enslaves this world.

Zina again regarded those gathered, this herd. The sloppiness of just moments before was gone, banished by solemnity.

You’ve all seen that fear. You know it, whether you’re a son of Mississippi or of Moscow. This planet and its sorrows. The puny minds who doggedly wage war in Indochina, then turn around and pick our pockets. You all know it. Praise be.

All in response: Praise be.

So then what. The goddess’s legs came together in a final surge of light, rinsing everything away. When I had my eyes back, the highway was clear. I was on course, coming up on Roanoke. The world I knew looked unaltered. But this…this is the true mirage. Concealed within these contrivances are the fruits of our destiny, waiting for us to pluck them out. In doing so, we’ll see the material conditions of our fate intertwined with the spiritual conditions of our mission. Inextricable. This lake and these mountains. Saint Stephen and the magnificence of the Iroquois. The United States of America, as known by the founders and known forever in the perfection of the holy soul. And us, endowed with our great inheritance. Praise be, praise be.

Louder, wilder: Praise be.

Together in unwashed oneness—the notion that any glory, anything of any real value, might rise out of this, here, had so far seemed to Zina utterly improbable. Yet when Peter spoke, she felt herself lulled, just as she’d calmed Presendia through how many unsettled nights. His words induced a certain narcosis, suppressing any doubt.

The Almighty’s forbearance will bathe us in that light, he said, right here, if we act in accordance with his will. Work harder, and harder still. Clear your minds and find liberty in that goddess’s flowing light. All now. Praise be.

All, once again, definitively: Praise be.

Peter cast his gaze upon his devotees, sweeping the tent, until falling on Zina. Her breath halted. Like a signal, like a song over the radio, captured from the ether, defying geographical limits, a conduit seemed to open between them. The tent shrank and went dim. Even when his attention had moved on and he’d stepped down from his pulpit, the sensation lingered: out of the mass, she’d been recognized.

By dusk the lake was another thing entirely. Its surface glittered like embers while the forested banks lay in shadow. Zina swam, wearing only her cotton underwear, relying on cover of darkness to preserve her modesty. Backstroking, face up, she let her legs flutter behind her while keeping a view of Presendia splashing back near the shore. The water was a relief, cooling her flesh to release days of embedded grime. To float unhurried, unhassled—this was the first thing since their arrival that felt right.

She twisted around and treaded farther into the lake. Her strokes lacked power, for she was a tentative swimmer—there had never seemed much utility in it. It was her mother who cherished the mountains’ fresh water, the summers of her youth whiled luxuriating in brooks and springs alongside those vacationing classes who clamoured to their Adirondack getaways. Arterial conduits trickled through the valleys, the moraines and outwash as a circulatory system, the lifeblood of a restless soul within: when her mother talked wistfully of such things, Zina grew impatient. After seeing yearly sequences of rot and regeneration, over and over, one should know better.

Two days ago, she’d forged a new kinship with death. No longer was she merely a witness to its processes.

Now she was here. To the west, the setting sun gashed into the tree line. Ahead, a pair of herons splashed down on the water’s surface.

Peter: The wilderness, it gets you acquainted with divine cruelty.

She swung back around to again face the shore. Presendia was still there, dawdling in the water. But she was no longer alone. A figure was there, a man in shadow.

Zina swam. Alarm weighed her arms and clutched her breath. The water resisted her, the distance back greater than she’d realized. When her feet finally found the quaggy bed, she charged ashore. Presendia turned to her, untroubled.

Look who’s here.

Ignatius smiled, hands on hips. He was half-dressed: hatless, suspenders up but without a shirt, his trousers’ cuffs rolled to the shins.

Looks like you’re enjoying yourselves, he said.

Zina hurried past Presendia to where she’d left her clothes. She threw on her dress; its fabric clung cold to her wet skin. Ignatius averted his eyes.

Must feel good to take it so easy, he said. Fooling around. A jolly old time.

Zina reached for Presendia’s hand. Presendia took the implication and drew closer, into her safeguard. Ignatius noticed.

My dad used to say, you let a pig go loose in the pasture, it’ll snort around for a while, he said. But eventually it’ll just lie down and stay put.

Does it look like I’m lying down?

Ignatius gave no answer, his smile undiminished. Zina considered this man, his hairless chest and narrow jawline, a poky flop of brown hair. Not much older than her.

The man by the fire, she said.

What man?

By the fire. Where we found you. What was his name?

Oh. His name.

That persistent smirk vanished.

His name, if you must know, was Clint Auld. And I found you, remember.

He stepped forward. Zina flinched, but didn’t relent. You’re so antsy, he said. No need to be scared. You’re among friends.

I’m not afraid. Certainly not of you. You strike me more as an object of pity.

How’s that now?

Zina took Presendia by the wrist and led her back up the beach. Ignatius didn’t follow, but even after they’d climbed the slope and were rounding the way back to the compound, she still felt his attention tracking them. At the washhouse, they paused at a cask to wet their lips and rinse their hands.

Tomorrow is Wednesday, Presendia said.

That’s right, puppy.

Wednesday is when we clean the coops. But I suppose we don’t do that now, do we?

Over by the unfinished well dig two men knelt around an overturned milk crate, rolling cigarettes from a cardboard tobacco box. One shot Zina and Presendia a glance that spoke of something other than salutation. Zina shielded Presendia from their view and they moved along.

When we get back to Hannah’s, she told her, dry off as best you can and get your shoes on. Wait there while I go about and gather up some things.

What things? Presendia asked.

Provisions, Zina said, supplies.

But why? Presendia demanded. Because they were leaving this place, Zina told her. She stated this firmly, clamping down any demurral. And when her sister asked when they were going, she told her with as much finality as she could summon: Now.

Again they faced an intractable emptiness. Out of the sheltering forest they hiked the service road back to the highway. Asphalt stretched in both directions, absent any sign or marker. On the opposite roadside a tray of grassy field sat under a foreboding cloud shelf, intimations of rain. No sound or sight of any pursuer came. It was almost full dark.

Presendia reached into the canvas sack containing the few items Zina had hastily pilfered from the supplies shed and dug out a pear.

Where are we going now? she asked.

South, Zina said.

Unasked was Presendia’s true question: When would they go home? We could build it again, she’d entreated. But this was a fantasy. Time couldn’t be reversed, and old sanctuary couldn’t be reclaimed. A new path, however, might still be found. The same caprices of luck that had taken them to the compound could just as easily lead them anywhere. Philadelphia. Washington. Farther, even: Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico. The six dollars she’d lifted from the ill-fated Clint Auld were wrapped in a linen swatch inside her sock. This land heaved with opportunity, if the story as told was to be believed—if the nation had truly triumphed over its tyrant foes. Boundlessness, liberty, the future promised.

Within these contrivances are the fruits of our destiny, waiting for us to pluck them out.

There was just too much to fathom, and too little to guide the way. For now all they could do was move.

The storm finally arrived. They heard a distant rumble, like rusted plumbing forced into service, then the sky opened. Presendia laughed out loud at the rain’s sudden force; Zina didn’t. Among their supplies was a knit quilt, swiped from the Waddertons’ trunk. Zina draped it over them as protection from the downpour; in minutes it was saturated and heavy as concrete. She tossed the quilt into the brambled roadside and they kept on.

Time passed. Again, that state of half-consciousness, the unfocused focus that kept foot following foot. To maintain, even when everything outside and within howls: You have made a terrible mistake.

Headlights appeared through the gloom. Presendia gave Zina a questioning look. Zina motioned for her to step back, then waved to the oncoming car, a cream-coloured Oldsmobile. It slowed as it neared, its windshield wipers thwapping, then passed. But a few seconds later, its brake lights ignited and it came to a stop about thirty yards away. It sat with the engine running and tailpipe seeping exhaust. Zina gestured to Presendia to stay put.

The car heaved forward and executed a squealing U-turn across the highway, pulling up alongside them. The passenger’s side window rolled down, and a young-looking woman with her hair in a kerchief stared out at them. Behind the wheel was a man with mussed blonde hair, also young, a can of beer in hand. Two more figures occupied the back seat. The radio blared what sounded to be a baseball game, an announcer yammering madly, a stadium in full bellow. The driver leaned across the woman and waved.

Hoo hoo.

Before Zina could react he tossed the can at her, just missing her head. He hit the gas and the Olds sped away, back the way from which it had come. The can rolled across the road; its label read SCHLITZ LAGER THE BEER THAT MADE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS.

Why, Presendia said quietly. Why would they stop and just…

Because they’ve failed, Zina said, that’s why. They drive around and around to bury their failures. That’s what people do when their minds are of no use. We have to keep going.

She resumed walking, feeling her face burning. Presendia followed.

Why are we doing this? Where’s Mother? I want to find her.

There’s nothing to find. She’s nothing.

Don’t say that. She’s not nothing. Why do you say that?

Because it’s the truth. Must I spare you the truth? Must I always shield you from reality? Must I, again and again? Tell me. Is that what I have to keep doing?

Presendia began to cry. Zina went to her, placing an arm around her shoulders. Still they walked. Zina cursed herself; she was failing, she knew, in her duties as caretaker of the divide between truth and untruth. What to do, what must be done, was a mystery. All she knew was that time was irreversible, and the way ahead was the only way. Wet gravel and chafed ankles, the storms of night, enemies anywhere. Excelsior.

That they might somehow have buried their mother hadn’t even occurred to her.

The road took a sharp descent, with a railway crossing at the hill’s base. Adjacent to the tracks stood a small structure, some sort of doorless enclosure with a metal canopy and a concrete floor lined with dirty leaves. There they took shelter, huddling together in one corner. Only then were their agonies clear: how fierce the cold, how deep the wetness’s infiltration. In the darkness Presendia was a shivering wraith, her dark hair clinging to her cheeks.

Tomorrow will be sunny, Zina told her. Tomorrow we’ll be somewhere nice.

Above them something was etched into a section of the enclosure’s metal frame, jagged knife-jabs of crudely squared letters. As Zina squinted to discern these glyphs, a field of light washed over them: headlights again, as the same Oldsmobile came down the hill and stopped at the tracks. It idled there. Only two people were inside now, a man in a flat cap having taken the kerchiefed woman’s place in the front. Zina held Presendia tight.

The windshield wipers ticked away seconds. Rain drummed on the enclosure’s metal roof. Then both front doors swung open and the men climbed out.

Hoo hoo, little squirrels, one called.

The men were shadows in the headlights. They wore wool jackets, rainboots—attire worn by weekending sportsmen.

Little critters, said one.

Muskrats, said the other.

The blonde man entered the enclosure in slow, teetering strides. Where’s your man at, he slurred.

Zina shrank away, directing Presendia by her shoulders. What man. There is no man.

The blonde one smiled back to the other. There is no man, he parroted.

The one in the cap looked to Presendia. Tell us your name.

Quietly, she said it: Presendia.

Blah. That’s a mouthful. You look more like a…Mary. Mary the Canary.

Tweety tweet, the blonde one sang.

Zina considered these men: boorish, reeking of beer, faces plump and ruddy. For men like this, the world was a playpen. She wondered if she might find a way to steal their car.

So where you going, birdsy? the man in the cap said.

Down the road, said Zina. We’re fine.

Couple of canaries flouncing off to Kalamazoo. You Smith College girls sure are brazen.

It’s a long skip back to Northampton tonight, the blonde one said. Hop in, we’ll take you where you need to go.

Get away from us, Zina said.

Oh, come on now. Don’t be such a crusty old crust. It’s pissing out here. Let’s go for a ride. Have some fun. We’ll have ourselves a party.

Party time, the man in the cap said. Viking style.

The blonde man spurted in laughter. He reached and pinched Zina’s earlobe. She batted his hand away and turned her face upward. She now made out what was carved into the frame above: PIGFUCK NH 1948.

A boy ever kiss you Viking style? the blonde one asked. I bet you’ve been Frenched, all kinds of ways. But I wonder if you ever got smooched like a Viking.

Like the sack of Paris, the man in the cap said.

From the road came another engine’s putter, more headlights. Then slamming doors, and Gwozdz and Gannon were there, exiting Thomas’s grey-green Plymouth. In matching work coveralls, they looked like escaped convicts. The beery men turned to face them.

What’re you fairies all about? the man in the cap said.

Neither Gwozdz nor Gannon spoke. The four men squared off. Rain drummed the shelter’s roof, blanketing them in its noise.

Gwozdz went to Presendia, taking her by the arm and directing her toward the truck. Zina went to protest this, but saw better. She slid past the blonde man as Gannon advanced with shoulders rounded and fists ready, lowering into a boxer’s stance.

Everyone, the man in the cap said, let’s behave.

In a smoothly connected sequence, like a transmission’s shifting, Gannon lunged and locked the man’s collar in one fist, yanked him forward, and met the pit of his throat with a swift right hook. The man reeled backward, gagging with a rooster-like caw. His accomplice raised his hands but made no move. Gwozdz led Zina and Presendia to the truck while Gannon faced the men, fists still raised, his targets still locked. Incontrovertible, a man as a wall.

The wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience, Gannon said to them. Set your houses in order.

Little was said as they drove back to the compound, Zina and Presendia pressed between the two men. No inquiries were made as to their flight, no threats or assurances concerning their return. Zina looked out at the passing land, dark and endless in the rain. One could imagine kindred armies of girls out there, also wandering through this vastness, unrescued, forgotten.

After a few minutes, Gwozdz sniffed. You ever hear of an Adlai Stevenson cow? It’s when you got two cows, the government takes away one, shoots it in the head, gives it a milking, then pours the milk into the ocean.

Gannon shook his head. Sheesh. Blew that one so bad it’s almost funny.

The road in was already flooding. Mud spattered the windows; the tires spun and lost their grip. But eventually the Plymouth pitched up over the ridge and onto level terrain. As they rolled into the compound, they passed several settlers gathered by the mess tent. Gwozdz rolled down the window as one of the men broke from the huddle and raced over. Gwozdz asked what was going on.

Damnedest thing, the man said.

What, Gwozdz said.

The man wiped rain from his face, shaking his head.

Wolves ate the dog.

THE FALL

The book will be written in a new language. Not in the insulated syntax of the Hebrews or the chastising strains of the Congregationalists, the archaic alphabets of the ancients. Not in the mumbo-jumbo of the oppressors, clad in their neckties and nuns’ habits. The story will be told of a people born in slime and dwelling in muck. A family of outcasts, harmonizing in the foothills. A song sung by weary throats, hearkening to old modes yet nothing like those lifeless roundelays and dusty études. All will be reimagined, and with the eradication of well-worn paths, hope will be bred. Greatness without hierarchy, surety free of sanctity. First sung in coded refrains among this precious cadre, this song will soon be repeated in roars of defiance by the many, ultimately taken up in the yawning of a universe torn asunder.

This book of our flock will be dictated by its shepherd. But its reception, its interpretation, and its canonization—this will be the duty of those who follow.

Zina’s dreams, when she dreamed, were of her mother. Eliza would come unclothed out of the dark woods, her hands outstretched and her eyes milky, her tattered flesh black with blood, her tongue an ashy scab.

Come with me, she’d beckon, come over the threshold.

Her words unspoken, the transference incomplete. And then she retreated into the forest’s maw, lost again.

Evenings came earlier. Wind sliced through the trees as hysterical robins announced sundown, the pre-twilight moon their nemesis. Summer’s end cut sharp with melancholy, associated as it was for Zina forever with Keats’s ode to a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, read from a pocket-sized edition. This old poetry gave no conclusions or points of entry, only interim phases and processes. But to her, autumn’s advent always felt unmistakably like an ending.

Their days had fallen into an equable flow. Zina helped Hannah Wadderton and others in the gardens, joining their attempts at raising crops from soil that so resisted their efforts. From their meagre harvests they pounded meal and scaled pike and scrubbed yams, keeping stewpots full, though the offerings were bland and thin. Simple processes of cultivation were a wonder to Hannah, and she imagined how traditional techniques might be informed by modern advances in synthetic biotics. Trowel in hand, kneeling over a side-dressing experiment, she relayed to Zina her belief that one day there would be no guesswork in agriculture, how the work of human sustenance could be as systematic as automobile manufacturing.

Zina gave no argument to any of this. She knew how to tend a garden and nurture simple crops, and saw little reason to mess around with tested formulae. But it was true, systems existed within the outward chaos. Life on the farm had shown her how nature worked in patterns, writhing with change. To a child, these mountains and fields, teeming with hoof and claw and wing, explosive sun-showers, miraculous snowfall—these were things of unalloyed wonder. But over time, with famishment and frustration, such wonders were revealed for what they truly were: adversaries of survival. There was no real betrayal in a drought or a tempest. Only the ruthlessness of these systems.

By mid-September the well construction was under way. Indications for the harvest were, if scanty, positive: those malicious wireworms seemed to have fled the soil, and not every parsnip was rotted through. Today, and the next day, they would eat. Beyond that, nothing was certain. But things would continue.

Tenskwatawa’s population was growing. New itinerant souls were always appearing, wandering the paths, stringing clotheslines, lining up at mealtimes. All were integrated and assigned sectors. What travails and sorrows brought them there were often unclear. When introduced to Linda Coors, the woman she’d seen dancing that first night, Zina had wondered about her life previous to passing through Tenskwatawa’s gates—word was she’d been a schoolteacher. But when Zina asked, Linda gave a smile that revealed nothing.

Here, she said, everything gets washed clean as new.

These settlers made for unlikely pioneers: scrawny transients, urban discharges, loners swept in from the highways, coastal dross. Often they functioned more as a motley work crew than an ordered parish. But enthusiasm abounded, even glee—gratitude for the assurance of their kindred struggle. And with numbers, the sense of a common identity. The feeling of a future, open to all who stood ready to receive, and ready to give. Every victory, no matter how minor, was momentous.

Crawling up from the mud to sculpt a new world, eyes opening to a dawning age—and in this new morning the claims of their few would be manifested at a grand scale: equity, joyful labour, fulfillment of mind, peace. Praise be.

Days proceeded in programmed routines. Mornings, rain or shine, began early with Exaltations. Men groggy and unshaven, women still in bedclothes, materialized from their tents and shacks to greet the day as one. Metered breathing and physical extension accompanied brief, silent meditation, recognition of the present, the now, the promise of the day ahead. Morning’s animating grace banished any scum or stainage accumulated by night.

Ritualized togetherness, responsibilities borne as one, was essential. Meals were taken collectively, with duties rotated among the women, as per secondary sectors. Dishes and cutlery were forever in short supply and provisions were inconstant. On occasion there was bread or small game; more often, it was thin porridge and burned beans. It was known but not openly acknowledged that a select team of men, managed by Orville Bowne, undertook excursions into neighbouring towns involving acts of thievery, with spoils varying—regrettable but necessary measures. Hunger, felt by all, was another uniting force. Lest any doubt arise, it was iterated: if their faith was steadfast, if they were dutiful in fulfillment of their sectors, their ascendancy was assured.

Afternoons were typically set aside for Impressions, led usually by a man called Truls Raknes—a sprightly self-described humanistic experiential observationalist originally from Bergen, more recently a dropout from the Columbia psychology graduate department—as the session’s primary. Groups of as few as three and as many as a dozen, usually in a designated hut, occasionally on the beach when the weather was fine, would sit facing one another, eyes open with posture alert but relaxed as they traded vocal cues as provided by Truls—with improvisations, when moved by the spirit, encouraged. No honest expression was forbidden. In the mysteries of mind and soul, anything could be a clue.

When you imagine the future, what do you see?

In this future, who have you become?

What is the gift you give to your future self?

Trauma, doubt, covetousness, fear—these were just shackles foisted by a dying civilization. The sinner’s deepest failing was to obfuscate, to deny. By voicing what was unvoiced, the most grievous of spiritual conundrums could be penetrated and, with effort, resolved. This in turn would lead to a mental openness, a readiness to learn and create via the positive assignment of Focus Frequencies—and the psychological agility required to survive in the new world.

Whether uphill or down, the path forward can be frightening, said Truls, himself an avid alpine hiker. And though we resist facing our most lowly aspects, what we actually fear most is facing ourselves at our most godlike.

On occasion Zina sat among these gatherings and observed. She watched people convulse with joyful anticipation. She saw them weep with the bliss of release. Men—gruff, stolid men—asked to unclench their fists and offer their hands to another, broke down trembling, overcome. A stocky man with a severe buzzcut and a psoriasis-stippled face had to be carried away in fits.

By what name do you call out to the universe?

Impressions were alternated with Irradiations. Often led by Henry Liversedge or Thomas Wadderton, these sessions concentrated on specific strains of learning deemed integral to the settlers’ advancement: scriptural interpretation, philosophical inquiry, political texts. The tone and structure varied, from lectures to free-form discussion to rollicking debate. Some settlers were ambivalent to such learning, and either left after a few minutes or sat through in silence. But most thirsted for illumination. They knelt and heard of Obadiah’s warning to the Edomites: The day of the Lord is near for all nations. As you have done, it will be done to you; your deeds will return upon your own head. They read from Augustine and Hegel and likened themselves to stargazers and good-for-nothings on Socrates’s ship of state. On occasion, dispatches were relayed of news relevant to their aims: provocations in Berlin, failed truce negotiations in Panmunjom, the vainglory of Harry Truman. The war and its transformations had touched them all, and it was no sin to be left befuddled, stultified, encumbered with a want for moral coherence, and for someone to blame.

Where was Peter, while the rest of them followed this regimen? Peter’s own appearances were rare, but his command was never unfelt. Zina understood that their sectors came from him, gifts to them all, and that out of their pursuit would come assurance: those of humility and keenness of mind would ascend from the smoulders. The corrosion of the past would be cleansed away. Justice would soon be delivered.

So these days unfurled in preparation. Nights, however, were for Communion—gaiety, conviviality, release. By torchlight they came together with songs and liquor and bawdy humour. Rowdiness prevailed; on occasion, scuffles erupted but quickly fizzled out. The settlers revelled in their unruliness, how the codes of the known social order, the flounderings of the oppressed man, no longer applied, not here. They were lowlings in ascent, hunkered in the forest, possessed with a grand dream.

One September evening, Zina had been assigned mess duties. Against all misgivings, the sweet potato crop had yielded a workable bounty of a healthy russet hue and edible if heavily salted. Zina went from table to table, settler to settler, serving from a metal tray. With stomachs full, the settlers were in lively spirits. Jugs were passed. Spoons clacked against cups. Lively rounds of singing broke out: He made the night a little brighter wherever he would go, the old lamplighter of long long ago.

Bless you, Frank Gannon said to Zina as he scraped his bowl. Never had a potato sweeter.

Several settlers sat together in the corner, at the end of one of the crudely fashioned tables. Among them was Thomas, and as Zina came to serve them she found him in the middle of an ardent tirade.

Satisfaction of our sectors nurtures synchronization, he was saying. I think of Charles Fourier. He conceived of a unity of man achieved through sensual gratification.

Yes, someone shouted.

Synchronization, in the sense of pairing our innermost selves with what’s shared between us, Thomas continued. Disharmony breeds hubris, and that’s our truest foe. Recognizing and ennobling the natural forms of growth and decay is how we make order of past and future. Days ahead and days behind.

Scotty Stokes, a jittery young man from Connecticut, sat across from Thomas, wringing his hands.

When I really dig in, I feel the pressure of time, Scotty said. Like a real bad headache. But, good.

Thomas nodded. Trust me, the nature of that pressure will change. Instead of pressing on you, all that weight will be behind you. This is the way of physis, the natural order of the universe, you understand. As we synchronize with the ways of nature, we achieve greater intimacy with that state of grace.

Spoken like a man of true vision, a voice said.

At this Zina turned, as did the others. Peter came forward, arms folded. The table fell quiet. Most days he remained holed up in his quarters or in locations undisclosed. When he did come forth to wander the compound, to join in the Communion or to address his flock, he met with deference. Here was their founder and chieftain, husband and ally, contractor of the hitherto unimaginable.

He took a seat. Someone handed him a mug of wine. Another slid him a clean plate, which he extended to Zina for serving. She complied with a mound of sweet potatoes, the remainder of her tray. He winked at her and dug in.

Ah. The bounty of the harvest. Do go on, Wadderton.

Peter’s arrival had plainly rattled Thomas. But he continued.

I was just reminding us all how…even as the soil and sun nurture the crops that energize our bodies, so do the wonders of this world enliven our minds. And souls. Man in his ignoble state, he’s meant to look about and speculate. To be open to those experiences we call mystical.

Go on, Peter chimed in with mouth full.

Birth and life and death, these are simply elements in a grand galactic sequence. Subphases in a much greater metamorphosis, from the subatomic level. It’s something I’ve apprehended through my work in particle physics. Where the data falls short, that’s where faith enters. And here, in our humble colony, we should recognize the integrality of that. To take solace in the wisdom of nature. The law that supplants the law of Man.

Peter slammed down his jar. The glass clonked sharply on the wood.

Thomas bristled, taken aback. All others fell silent.

Peter? I’m only…

You only, you only. You only pollute the air.

You object to something I’ve said.

Wisdom of nature. Nature is anything but wise. Nature is insane.

Peter’s outburst had drawn in all within earshot.

Listen. I’ll tell you a story about nature.

Zina looked for a place to set down her tray, but found none.

Listen.

Peter wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

Years back, around ’41, I was travelling alone, passing through southern Missouri, below the Ozarks. There I am, what, twenty-one, twenty-two years old, on my way to Colorado, just following a fancy. Hitching by day, sleeping in the rough at night, eyes open for Forest Service rangers. That’s how I got by then. Just before dawn one morning I wake up under a cottonwood tree, feeling high-spirited and glad to be alive. I stand, but before I get my boots on something crunches under my bare foot. What is it? Lord have mercy, she’s a scorpion. Squashed under my left heel, finito as I could tell. The Arizona bark scorpion isn’t a thing that goes looking for trouble on its own. If you do get in its way, you’d better have lady luck on your side. The venom might not be fatal, but it’ll put you through hell. I knew it was only a matter of minutes before I was in deep trouble. The poison’s probably already wriggling up my ankles. But I’m miles from the main road, hours from any real town. All signs would say, Peter my boy, you’re doomed. But I was not doomed. I was heartened by my own conviction. What I did was I sat down and whipped out my jackknife.

No, a woman at the end of the table gasped.

I sawed the pad of my foot clean off, from ball to heel. Like scalping a Cheyenne. Like peeling a sweet potato.

A few listeners looked forlornly at their plates.

I’m wailing the whole time, skin flapping, blood spurting. But the voice, my inner voice, told me: this is what I had to do. In about a minute I had a foot like raw hamburger. I managed to wrap it up in my shirt, and I might have blacked out for a spell. But soon enough I’m hobbling back to the road, crying like a baby. By nightfall I’d caught a ride with a logging truck to Bradleyville. At the emergency room the nurse told me the wound was clean, not the slightest trace of infection. Maybe the toxin worked as a kind of disinfectant, maybe it was just my own surgical finesse. Either way, in a month’s time I had the bandages off and was back in action. Today, not even a scar. That was my showdown with nature, and the end of any dreamy leanings in that direction.

Peter took a drink. No one spoke.

So, what do you make of that, Mr. Wadderton. Would it have been better to synchronize? Surrender to nature’s cosmic what-have-you? To just lie there and froth at the bit, do you think?

The question hung. Zina waited with ladle raised. Thomas’s jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly.

Solace, Peter sneered. Tell that to the executive board of the Aluminum Company of America. Tell that to the boys lying with their faces shot off in the Chosin Reservoir.

Those are sins of man, Thomas tried. I’m hardly suggesting we be deaf to catastrophe…

But the tent was in Peter’s command. We need to tighten up around here, he said. Look at all this mud. It gets in everything. This is what we’re clawing our way through, not atoms and particles. Let’s remind ourselves what brought us all to this place, at this particular juncture. The inevitable cataclysm, a new dispensation. And what’s really going to usher us through the furor. I can tell you, it isn’t sitting around mooning about synchronization with Newton’s laws of motion or looking down a microscope.

Peter locked eyes with Thomas. You talk about hubris being our foe, he said. Not all our enemies are so obscure.

He stood and cast an assessing look upon the table, at each settler in turn, landing last on Zina. Any remainder of that winking playfulness was gone. He drained his jar and exited the tent, leaving his listeners quieted in his wake.

As she went about collecting dishes, Zina tried to understand what had just occurred. A conflict, yes, but one that seemed rooted in intangibilities, inconsistencies. She recalled Peter in his doorway, that first night, his eyes locating her through the dark. You see it. You hear it. But do you see it for what it is?

Their modest feast finished, most settlers lumbered off to their bunks and burrows, taking shelter against the descending chill. For others, the night went on. Late past midnight unrestrained singing and sporadic yelps rang through the forest. Voices, some hacking with ire. A woman’s cries. Crazed laughter.

Sleep came uneasily here. She’d wake up having lost track of where she was, and when. Summer was evaporating, ceding to tougher times. Keats may have waxed of full-grown lambs bleating from hilly bourn, of hedge-crickets singing and gathering swallows twittering, but Zina knew autumn’s arrival meant something else, more than soppy melancholy. Autumn meant the death of many things, and hardship to come.

She’d told Presendia: We’ll stay on here just through the winter, then be back on our own by spring. Just imagine what we’ll do then. This she’d vowed repeatedly, even to herself.

But when Zina let her own imagination run free, the only future it conceived was one of opposition. These pastoral Adirondack ranges versus the voraciousness of Schenectady, of Buffalo. The sweep of the Saranac against the crush of Manhattan boulevards. The lithologies of eternal geology outdone by skyscrapers that brushed the clouds. Against this chaos, her mind’s reach fell short. In her limitedness she recognized her father’s fearful outrage, his visions of factory smokestacks, of courthouses and stock exchanges, cadres of lawmakers, railyard bulls, tax collectors, drill sergeants.

To try and comprehend the vastness of the world. To try and sleep, when one could never rest.

The women from Wisconsin arrived with nothing. A rusty panel van rolled into the camp and braked by the mess tent. The rear doors parted and four women stepped out, along with a boy and girl, both maybe ten years old. Three of the women wore frocks of subdued colours and buckled shoes, their hair neat. The fourth, by appearances the youngest, came in an olive-green half coat and plastic rainboots, with her burgundy hair falling loose and her face reddened by sun. Orville Bowne, accompanied by two other men, met them upon their arrival; he led them toward a path into the adjacent woods as the van peeled away.

Zina watched this from the concourse’s flank, where she and Hannah Wadderton were loading a wheelbarrow with soil. Presendia crouched nearby, conducting a census of earthworms wriggling in the pile. When Zina asked Hannah who these women were, Hannah gave the same guarded smile she often gave.

Women in need of spiritual assurance, she said.

These women stood incongruous against the background of compound and forest, the grubby men steering them. The burgundy-haired woman in particular seemed inserted from elsewhere, some other plane—a scrapbook token, scissored and pasted here. She walked a few paces behind the other women, holding hands with the boy and the girl, keeping them close.

The feminine obligation can be one of life’s greatest rewards, Hannah said. You girls will see for yourselves. A fine, fine thing.

Once the wheelbarrow was loaded, Zina excused herself and followed in the direction the women had gone. Down that northward path, she found the women outside the supplies shed, corralled by the men, now joined by Nadia. Zina moved into the trees to watch. Nadia went to each of the women in a row, placing her hands on their shoulders, walking her fingers to the crown of their heads, then clasping her arms around them in a firm embrace. If anything was spoken in this, Zina didn’t hear it. When Nadia came to the burgundy-haired woman, the woman detectably cringed at being touched. In this embrace, her face went pale—as if she were only now recognizing something in the present situation she hadn’t expected. Whatever milieu these women had been torn from, whatever conditions had brought them here, that former existence was being effaced, stripped away. Now they were here, where a new life could begin.

I wasn’t there when the bomb was dropped, Thomas said. I left Los Alamos before the plutonium-239 project was sacked, well before they tested the gadget at Trinity. They fired me, essentially. Security clearance annulled, a kick in the pants, thanks for nothing. By the time of the big test that summer, I was already back in Bloomington. I stand behind my work there, and the science I contributed was sound. I suppose it was my personal disposition that had me ejected. Perhaps I voiced too exuberantly my belief in the untapped power of uranium, the divine isotope. Perhaps the research assistants didn’t like the scent of my cologne. Who can say. But I was given the heave-ho, and so I missed out on witnessing the terminus of history. The last person I spoke with at Los Alamos was actually Enrico Fermi. A true giant of statistical mechanics, nuclear fission, the entire gamut. I looked up to Fermi as, if not a mentor, then I suppose a model for how a researcher should conduct his work. And to have this man tell me to my face that I had no future in serious research. To be rejected so callously by such a man. How does one even continue on after something like that.

Thomas wiped his brow with his handkerchief. It was mid-afternoon, and they were seated on stools outside the Waddertons’, drinking well water and rolling cigarettes. Hannah and Presendia were out on the wild grass, stitching handcloths. Presendia had proven a capable seamstress from an early age, and was at her most contented when put to work. She’d adapted to their new locale and its demands readily, easily—too easily, Zina couldn’t help but think. Shadows evaded Presendia, or she evaded them. It was something to envy.

By Thomas’s account, his own past burdened him greatly. The details of his ejection from the New Mexico research project he left vague, and Zina didn’t ask, though there seemed more to the story than Thomas let on. In recounting the chain of events leading to his joining Peter here at Tenskwatawa, he became more effusive.

I went from a scientist of promise to this feckless nobody. Faculty applications, laboratory posts, all to no avail. Without institutional support I was persona non grata. The stripping of my security clearance even left me ineligible for military enlistment. Hannah was having a bad go of it herself, chasing teaching positions with diminishing returns. To make ends meet I drove deliveries in Bloomington for a lab equipment distributor, dispiriting menial work. Meanwhile that summer we saw what the research truly amounted to. The audacity of Truman and his cronies. When I looked around, I no longer recognized my country or my countrymen.

But then I found Peter. Or he found me. One of those serendipitous instances that forever redirect a life’s course. Down the block from our apartment was a tavern where I sometimes went in the nighttime to feel sorry for myself over a glass of beer. On one of these dreary nights, I struck up a conversation with the stranger on the stool next to me, this man from out of town. In my pitying state I ended up telling him all about my misfortunes. About that nagging innervation of thinking something significant had been intended for me, if only I hadn’t lost my way.

My sympathetic drinking companion there happened to be our own Orville Bowne. Orville said he knew how I felt, and though his own situation was nothing like mine, he knew that particular spiritual ennui. He said he was attending an event that night, by his description a kind of philosophical club or something, and he suggested I might benefit from tagging along. I consider myself an open-minded person, so I headed off with him to a coffee shop on Seventh Street.

I’ll never forget it. This seedy little corner place, maybe a dozen attendees half-asleep at tables. Denizens of the night, the very type of lapsed, unrecognized souls we now cherish here as brothers and sisters. And then, standing before us, was Peter. Just there on the floor, no microphone, no podium. This man, unembellished. But crackling with energy. I don’t know if the dozy bunch there really heard anything. But for my part, I was thunderstruck. And what he said…

Thomas again wiped his face. He seemed to be back there again, in that crucial moment.

Here was someone articulating notions I’d had jangling around in my brain for some time, but never had the backbone to voice. How the forces that govern us so barbarously appear, by their very design, as a function of some natural state, like turns in the weather. But in fact they’re sophisticated mechanisms of control, conceived and upheld by those who stand to benefit most from our witlessness. And how the manner of injustice these men trade in isn’t just systemic, but spiritual. An obscene perversion of the spirit. At that instant, through Peter, I saw how I could use my outrage as a transformative force. He has a way of speaking, you know. Even when what he’s saying teeters toward the illogical, something in it surmounts logical sense. When he sees you, something happens.

Afterward, Orville introduced us. We chatted about the Potsdam Declaration, about Rousseau. The possibilities of liberated passions, the NAACP. A great number of things. I gushed a bit. Peter, he seemed…unmoved by my enthusiasm. But he gave me this handwritten card with a Rochester mailing address. He said great things were afoot, plans of grand designs. Little did I know.

We were so aligned then. One could say we’ve since diverged somewhat in our beliefs, or at least in how they apply to our current state of affairs. But to hear him that night…what a thing. I think I still have that card somewhere.

Thomas sipped the last trickle of water from his cup. Lost in narration, he was like Orson: enrapt in his own insights and fixations.

Even still, Thomas said, every day I think about uranium and its potential. The divine isotope. How strenuously I argued. Like Peter, I too had conceived a new world. But I’d seen mine destroyed before it even had a chance.

Hiroshima, Zina said.

Well, that too. But I mean more specifically my research post.

Thomas swallowed and folded up his handkerchief. Proximity to devastation can be terrifically edifying, he said. Seeing man at his most destructive reveals much about our capacity for creation. Those fires of inspiration can be all-consuming. But there’s no value in revisiting all that. Our ordinance demands we continue striding forward with confidence. To be like Fermi, probing the inherent loneliness of our galaxy. Silentium universi.

Thomas fell silent; he’d run out of things to say. He stretched his back, then went inside the shack, saying he needed to get out of the sun. Presendia waved to Zina from across the grass, holding up the cloth she’d been stitching, presenting its bights and wefts for appraisal. Beautiful, Zina mouthed to her sister.

Yes, everyone dragged a history behind them. Through the course of days she encountered more settlers, learned their names, absorbed fragments of the lives they’d left behind. A man from Massena upstate who’d had a wife and two sons, a profitable glass repair business, and a four-bedroom house on the St. Lawrence gave it all up after hearing Peter sermonize one night in a bowling alley tavern. A young couple from Baltimore, both with lengthy records for petty larceny and passing bad cheques, came in a sputtering Mercury after finding one of his early letterpress-printed leaflets in a hikers’ outpost along the Ice Age Trail. Many arrived scarcely able to recall how they’d ended up there. Conveyed from Vermont, from Presque Isle to Des Moines, across the Mason-Dixon Line, they’d arrived seeking haven, relief from encumbrances, new modes of perception. The fallen, the shunned and outcast, seeking society where other societies—their fellowships and splinters, their kin, their country—had abandoned them.

And so they poured in, to live anew awaiting the cataclysm, here among their brethren. Zina: what was she awaiting? Each time she crossed the compound her attention turned to the entry road, envisioning police wagons storming in, other emissaries of the law. It was only a matter of time before her own state of deferment was disrupted. All she could do was be ready for when that time came. She too could be patient.

Even in the full of day, the way up to Peter’s shack lay in shadows. A canopy of bowing branches enclosed a path messy with discarded bottles, scrap wood, trash. The air thickened, traced with charcoal. Zina fought a rush of nerves, and with each step she concocted reasons to turn back. But she’d been summoned, and there would be no avoiding the call.

He was outside the shack, looking over a metal barrel now spewing blackish flames. Working the fire with a crowbar, he wore an unbuttoned shirt and undershorts, his head bare, his boots unlaced. Her arrival went unacknowledged; when he spoke, she wasn’t certain it was her he was addressing at first.

Tell me, how do you imagine one ends up on that New York Times list? The bestsellers.

I don’t know. I suppose the booksellers keep count of the…

He tossed the crowbar aside.

Let’s wet our whistles.

He ducked inside the shack. Zina followed, chancing a look inside the barrel: a sheaf of papers, lengthy sheets of typewritten text, several bearing a wax seal, curling into embers then dissolving.

The door’s closing left them in darkness until Peter lit a kerosene lamp, illumining a single cluttered room. A bunk occupied one corner, alongside a trunk covered in papers and cigarette butts and food tins. Beside it was a frameless slab of mirrored glass, dust-coated and chipped at the edges. A shotgun stood propped in the opposite corner. The room’s most prominent item was the still, a fat copper vat with spigots feeding three lengths of coil, leading to a drip bucket. Jars of clear liquid, some sealed and some open, sat on the floor. The smell of brewing suffused the room. The place was more of a hideout than a home.

Peter located a metal cup from the floor and filled it from a jar. He gave it a sniff, then handed it over.

Ambrosia of the Adirondacks.

She accepted the cup. Peter topped up another for himself, then plucked a disarrayed newspaper from the trunk, the Democrat and Chronicle. He gripped it in his fist like collaring a dog.

It’s all rigged, he said. This effete intellectual class, these marketeers, trading in the abortive sensibilities of housewives and homosexuals. Nothing sadder than those Fifth Avenue sugar-sniffers and their feeble attempts.

There seemed an expectation for her to respond, but she had no idea what to say. Peter tossed the paper aside, darting about as if searching for something.

They don’t even know themselves what they stand for. A book, a real book, isn’t a goddamned cheeseburger. Take a seat somewhere if you like. Did I get you a drink?

Zina showed her cup. Peter went back to the still. She remained standing.

They can’t even comprehend their own lunkheadedness, Peter said as he poured. These self-appointed gatekeepers. They’re diocesan ordinaries. They’re military bureaucrats, recharting treaties like they wipe their behinds. That Omar Bradley, he’s a bedwetter, you know.

Oh, Zina said.

Peter went on.

Men fought and died. Men are fighting and dying, even as we sit here jawing away. Meanwhile these simpering pansies sit reading their Ernest fucking Hemingway, duping menopausal housewives into thinking they know the first thing about the world. Our world, which they contaminate with their spoil. But young men are fighting and dying. They fight and they die.

He sat on the bed and leaned back, drinking, simmering. He still hadn’t explained why she’d been called here. Zina noticed he wore the same belt she’d seen before, the brass buckle which she now saw more clearly, its design a band of stars and flowing script text: BLESS THE USA.

My father was in the Ardennes counteroffensive, she said.

Peter cocked his head. She didn’t know why she’d disclosed this, and immediately regretted it.

Don’t say. Stared down the Panzers, eh. And they left him there like spent ammunition.

No. He made it back.

Did he?

I don’t want to talk about my father.

Not at all, or not with me?

Not at all.

Peter downed his glass and refilled it. His eyes were watery, a drunken shimmer there. You talk a little like a bureaucrat yourself, he said. How old are you?

Fifteen.

Fifteen. What an age. A consciousness still so amorphous. Tell me, where does your mind wander?

I don’t know what that means.

Where. Where does your mind wander to.

Zina didn’t know what to say.

Fifteen, he said again. I see myself at that age. Such tumult. Forever kicking against my oppressors, all those schoolmarms and deacons and truancy pigs. My particular blessing, you see…I was born into it. It’s my birthright. So my adolescence, along with all the usual pitfalls of that age, entailed a higher burden. As an outgrowth of my unique foreknowledge. You understand.

Zina didn’t, but kept silent.

In early pubescence I undertook what I thought would be my magnum opus. The compendium of all my thoughts on theological concerns, the magisterium ex cathedra, the abiding in the vine and the branches and so on. It was a doomed endeavour, in retrospect, as my understanding of the holy word was then still quite unformed. As I say, so amorphous. But there I am, afternoon after afternoon, filling those damnable notebooks, compelled by this yearning for…what is it? Something inexpressible, screaming within. The more I wrote, the more that yearning consumed me. Once a young man begins to truly question his circumstances, all he sees is falsehood and frivolity. The ineffectual clerks. The cake-eating mothers. The oleaginous clodplates and lickspittles turning this land into a cesspool. Even if I was just a young meatball, overflowing with adolescent spunk, my writing was led by that penetrating sight. I was imbued with the spirit. Thousands of pages, all just a preface.

Zina moved to the pile of books against the wall. Most bore the same yellow decal on their spines: PROPERTY OF UTICA PUBLIC LIBRARY. Hardcovers with tattered dust jackets: This Misery of Boots, H. G. Wells; The Conquest of Bread, Peter Kropotkin; Belshazzar, H. Rider Haggard. A Bible, American Standard Version. Atop the stack was a paperback, its cover a watercolour of a coquettish teenage girl, the title in outraged red: Out for Kicks: Three Boys and a Girl on a Doo-Wop Weekend!

What happened to everything you wrote? she asked.

Oh, those pages were lost in yet another scurry. Tragic. But this calling of mine has necessitated rootlessness. Until recently, that is. This book, my book for here and now, will be managed more prudently. Which brings us to.

He slipped a cigarette into his mouth, trapping it between a crooked rack of teeth.

You’ve seen how everyone here is assigned a specific sector of duty. Their personal contribution to the intermutual sector. This binds us in common purpose and gives material value to our days. Structure feeds us. Like our friend Marx says, hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner. Some folks here boast particular areas of expertise, others train toward specific proficiencies. Some are simply men of vigour. In case you haven’t noticed, we have muscle to spare around here. What we don’t presently have is a scribe.

This word, scribe, came with a certain savour.

I’m told by the Waddingtons you possess a literary sensibility, he said.

I suppose. I read.

A flair for verse. The efflux of inspiration.

I wouldn’t…

How capable are you with a typewriter?

Zina had seen typewriters in photographs, but had never laid her fingers on one.

Capable enough, she said.

Peter produced a long wood match and struck it on his boot-heel. He touched it to his cigarette’s tip before the flame had settled, singeing the paper black, then flicked the match aside. Still in just a shirt and shorts, he spread his legs and adjusted himself.

The book, my book, is how we go forward. The word has to be delivered by us, not just through us. A real book of strength and substance, none of this bow-tied gentleman garbage. This will be your primary sector.

Interesting, Zina said. And if I agree?

At this, he took a long look at her.

You’ll be allowed to remain here among kindred spirits in the service of the future. You and that sister of yours.

And what if I decline?

That barely suppressed smirk, those roving eyes. A wetness on his lips.

Then we’ll stick you both like suckling pigs and roast you on a spit.

She headed back toward the Waddertons’, unsteady from Peter’s potent liquor. The wind had picked up, grim weather descending. Easing across the log bridge, she paused to look into the stream below. Fallen leaves swirled in the water, fusing into a carmine-and-ochre clog where the stream debouched into the lake. June was a long time ago.

Reaching the other side, she spotted a figure coming down the slope toward her: Ignatius. He’d made himself a constant presence in these days, always there across the mess tent or in a back row behind her during Impressions.

According to Roman Gwozdz, Ignatius had arrived here after a disfellowshipping from his people, Seventh-day Adventists in Wilmington. The reasons for the expulsion he hadn’t made clear, but once cut off he’d enlisted, in blunt defiance of his church’s principles. In the Pacific he’d been clipped during the landing at the Leyte Gulf; he liked to show off a sliver of shrapnel still lodged in his right arm, visible under the skin. Gwozdz relayed these details with untempered derision, deeming Ignatius flighty, even dangerous. Even here, among other outcasts, Ignatius appeared to be prefigured by his transgressions, whatever they were.

Now he came forward, targeting her, cradling something in his arms.

Brought something. To show you.

As he drew closer, Zina saw: it was a fawn, a bundle of tawny hide and muscle balled into itself, its face buried in its own midsection.

Found her in the woods, he said. Just like you.

It lay limp and unmoving, its fur matted, its hooves encrusted with grit. Zina stepped back.

What are you doing with this?

I brought it to show you. Look. The snout.

Did you…kill it?

Ignatius frowned. I found it in the southwest woods. I thought you’d want to see. You think I could kill such a thing.

Zina took another step back, feeling unmoored. The man by the fire, slashed from ear to ear: was he still there?

She hurried past Ignatius, past the fawn, back uphill. He called after her, begging her back, but she kept on. There were duties to resume, kindling to be fetched, dinnertime preparations, water to be collected. She had a sector of responsibility and an obligation to the mutual good. There was a call that couldn’t be ignored.

And yet: later, as she curled up next to Presendia in the Waddertons’ shack, holding her sister’s shoulders fast as night’s wind jostled the shack’s flimsy walls, the voice she heard was her mother’s, again rising out of the past, calling to her through the shroud of sleep.

Come with me. Come over the threshold.

In the morning the mess tent was a clamour of activity. Scotty Stokes of Connecticut had obtained a half-dozen flats of eggs by undisclosed means, and Zina joined other women in the beating of yolks and the churning of condensed milk, readying a breakfast heartier than the usual daily gruel and black coffee. These duties were undertaken seriously, with gladness.

Leading the preparations was Dot McCollum. Dot and her husband Sam were transplants from Indiana, where he’d worked at a Duke power station along the Wabash. Stirring a pot that morning, she blathered rhapsodically about coal: the raw crux of the earth, extracted from the seams by industrious men, transmuted into essential fuels for thousands of stoves.

A true gift from the Almighty, Dot said, bequeathed to the white man in his new Eden. Glorious, glorious coal.

As the eggs sizzled in the pot, Zina looked outside the tent to see Henry Liversedge approaching from across the concourse, barefoot and still in bedclothes. Orville Bowne followed closely behind, thrusting his cane out before him. A car was pulling in via the main road, a police sedan in black and white, its insignia reading NEW YORK STATE HIGHWAY PATROL. The men came hailing as the sedan braked to a stop. Zina set aside her whisk and made for the door, ignoring Dot’s objections.

Two troopers in uniform exited the car. One jotted something in a notebook. Neither seemed to notice Zina as she came up behind Bowne and Liversedge. Coming up on peak period, one of the troopers was saying, we’re out checking permits.

No problem there, Bowne obliged. But you want to come back when we’re fully open. We’re battening the hatches.

And we’ll require some paperwork before you two go stomping around, Liversedge said. Chapter 205.

Henry Liversedge, more than most of the men here, was forthright in voicing his contempt for established authority and its operatives. She’d heard him narrate his own chronicle, how in the leanest times back in the mid-thirties he’d been among thousands of Canadian transients inadvertently roped into relief camps run by the Department of National Defence. Up north in Barriefield he’d cleared brush for fifteen cents a day; it was soul-crushing, he’d said, like coolie work. Those camps were fertile ground for dissent, and there he’d learned to question and scorn the callous machinations of the federal government. The thing Mackenzie King and those bastards fear most, Liversedge declared around the bonfire one night, is five thousand dirty-faced men who’ve read a thing or two, marching down the Rideau Canal with their knuckles in the air. Liversedge was a man unafraid of proclamation but demonstrated little patience for any dictated program, and Zina never saw him attend Impressions.

The conversation among the men grew hushed; listening in, Zina sensed efforts being made to restrain the tone, to not allow matters to escalate. The trooper with the notebook read from its pages, struggling to pronounce a name: Haché, or Hatch maybe? Liversedge shook his head and repeated his objections, citing more statutory provisions, licensing in progress for commercial enterprise in tandem with the interstate development, asserting their rights. Looking unimpressed with these rebuttals, the trooper tucked away his notebook and pulled on a pair of leather gloves, then he and his companion returned to their vehicle. Before climbing in, he shot the men a last look.

Boys, he said, we all know a signature isn’t always a signature.

The sedan reversed and rolled back down the road. Liversedge spat over his shoulder and wiped his face on his sleeve. There’ll be more of those flunkies around here this time next spring, he said.

If the Thruway Authority actually makes good, Bowne said. But no one knows what’s really coming.

They seemed to be looking for something in particular, Zina said.

Only now did the men notice Zina there.

Nothing for you to worry about, Bowne said to her. Don’t be so nosy.

Once the interstate opens, all of this will be a turnpike.

At this, Bowne looked annoyed, but said nothing. Zina left him and Liversedge stewing and started back toward the mess. The day was getting on, and already a line for breakfast was forming.

The farmhouse’s dank, unventilated basement was a mortuary of generations’ residue, discards of the past left as phases of storage and desertion. Only Zina ever ventured down the rickety staircase to rummage through those musty crates and trunks, the stores of gowns and stockings, mildewed linens and junked furniture. Of sole interest to her were the books, transplanted from the ceiling-high library shelves of the Alstyne house in Albany: leatherbound Harvard Classics, collected editions of Edmund Burke and Charles Sanders Peirce and Ebenezer Emmons, countless volumes of legal tomes, nautical maps, almanacs, illustrated wildlife taxonomies. Eliza’s grandfather, a self-styled smallholder-philosopher, had revered an Emersonian tradition, a way toward dual citizenship: to be both a fearless traverser of higher thought and a great American.

Maybe he’d thought that with knowledge of this land, he’d also come to know that churn of forces which drove Emerson glad to the brink of fear, exhilarated in the knowledge nothing can befall me in life, no disgrace, no calamity, which nature cannot repair. So his archives included numerous volumes on his claimed territory, titles like Woods and Waters: or, the Saranacs and Racket and The Adirondack: or, Life in the Woods; the collected works of William Henry Harrison Murray; the surveys of Verplanck Colvin and Carl Schenck—tales of profound observation, rallying hearty woodsmen to the resplendency of earth and flora to be found in these mountains.

These men, as John Campbell did, drew endless fascination from this claimed land’s first inhabitants, seeing something in Algonquin tradition as more honourable and spiritually pure than that of the early European traders. These interests, however, never seemed to extend beyond the anthropological, and despite the elder Alstyne’s studied and stated advocacy of universal liberty, he seemed perfectly comfortable with how this empire had flourished in his own considerable favour.

One night Zina had pored for hours over a century-old edition of Roger Williams’s Key into the Language of America: or, An Help to the Language of the Natives in That Part of America Called New England, a strange catalogue of histories and legends, an exegesis by a man expelled by his Puritan community for sedition and heresy. The place and its people, all one source of great bounty. These worn pages gave its author’s impressions of those who’d first sprung and growne up in that very place, like the very trees of the wildernesse. Flipping through, she came upon a photo print slipped in among its pages, at a passage describing the spirit-entity Cautantowwit, the one great and Good god, who exhaled life into the stone of man and woman, introducing human contagion to this sublime kingdom. The rumpled print was of a woodcarving depicting a birdlike creature, smooth contours of deep black and red, its wings spread wide and its beak lowered. Someone had jotted in pen on the margin: ART NAïF VALUATION?

It was easy to see how men like the judge, wowed by this land, would look to stamp it as territory for their own publishable exploits—the savagery they catalogued naturally reflected their own potential. There was less here to stand in their way. The ghosts were still young.

Occasionally, in the quiescence of dawn, Zina wandered alone past the camp’s boundary, southward away from the lake. The farther she ventured into the briars and thickets, the more distant she felt from any knowable world. Forest unworked, soil untracked, air unbreathed—a place humanless, barren. The morning sky blank like Gladys’s milk; the terrain of sphagnum and echinate scrubs below as immaterial as smoke. The cryptal silence was broken only by her own footfall and erratic chirrs of beech branches in pre-winter shudders.

On one of these early mornings, still sleep-fogged, she followed a course around the lake’s southern bend to an unfamiliar marshy zone. Here, amid dying reeds and sedges, the hardened mud veiny and chunky like the hide of some slain monster, she was surprised to find a bright-red cord tied to a pine trunk, looking fresh. A few paces along, she found another cord, then another, in a path leading roughly along the lake’s contour.

Arriving at the fifth such cord, she stopped. A sixth was strung among a base of spindly bushes about twenty paces ahead. Two men were there, both in heavy jackets and wool caps, with rifles under their arms. One had something greyish and furry dangling over his shoulder. Zina kept still; she’d seen men like these before, like the surly, noncommunicative types who ran the lumberyard where Orson begrudgingly procured supplies. These men were together studying a hand-held compass and hadn’t yet detected her presence. She backed away, into the foliage.

From some point above came a mechanical whine, rising. The men looked; Zina looked. Through the proximate dome of trees came a single-engine airplane, flying low, tracing an arc from the east in advance of the still-materializing sun. The men peeled back their caps and shaded their eyes, dumbstruck by this object. Zina felt something too, as if they’d been caught doing something illicit, out here. Here was a sign of a world beyond these hills, the encroachment of forces that should have no truck here. As the plane flew almost overhead, one of the men hoisted his rifle onto his shoulder and took aim with its scope. His companion laughed and spat, then smacked the barrel down.

The plane swerved north, its drone warping and waning. Zina slid away under the cover of this noise. She didn’t look back to check if she’d been spotted.

Most days she made her way to Peter’s shack in early evening to meet duties dictated by her sector fulfillment: the book, the undertaking, the testimony. The room was both sanctuary and cell. The single window provided little ventilation; on colder nights, the powerful fumes of mash distillation could be woozying.

Tonight he was in good spirits. That day he and Bowne had made a supplies jaunt down to Utica, returning with what he termed sundries and doodads, pilfered when he’d sent a clerk to the stockroom searching for a specific make of nitrate pellets. From a cloth sack he dumped his spoils onto the mattress. A jackknife with ebony wood handle and shiny nickel bolsters. A tin of Handsome Dan granule cut tobacco—much finer, he alleged, than the ordure most people smoked here. Boxes of Nickel Naks and Charleston Chews and Coconut Long Boys. A stack of magazines with vibrant covers: Photoplay, Popular Mechanics, Hot Rod. Sifting through these, Zina came upon an issue of something titled Mesmerizing Tales. The illustrations of rockets zipping through blobbish nebulae and square-jawed, jumpsuited heroes were undoubtedly juvenile, but she was always short on any reading material here. Zina flipped through, reading a heading: “Tremble Before the Mysterious Invaders…from the Quantum Dimension!!” The accompanying pencil drawing showed a well-groomed man’s disembodied head assailed with lightning-esque bolts forming some type of collapsing polytope, with an alien figure lurking ominously in the background, its blurry profile contoured like a pancreas. Zina tucked the magazine aside for later.

I got you something else, he said. Here.

Peter reached to rummage among the cartons at the foot of the bunk, producing a small plastic box. He handed it to her. A name was inscribed in curving script text on its lid: cool-ray. Inside she found a pair of sunglasses, tortoiseshell frames and lenses tinted amber.

That morning sun can be blinding some days, he said. Try them on.

The smooth plastic slipped around her ears, slightly tight but a decent fit. Peter moved the mirror from beside the bed to set it before her. It had been some time since she’d really seen her own reflection, and she was caught off-guard. With her hair unruly and unshampooed, pimples smattering her chin, in these showy sunglasses, she felt absurd, a caricature of imprudent adolescence. She removed the glasses and returned them to the case.

Thank you, she said. These are nice.

Any real product of their work together thus far was negligible. By candlelight they squared off, him reclined on the bunk, his associative diatribes spurred on by tobacco and the yield of the still, her positioned in the deck chair opposite, trying to follow along. He chattered, seeking finality with every word, often growing restless, especially several jars in. He was chasing something elusive with this book, this jeremiad intended to ignite mankind. Peter’s provender to insurrectionists—the actualization of which was Zina’s consigned sector. What the satisfaction of this duty ultimately entailed remained unclear, but on these nights, he’d thrust upon her a pad of loose-leaf and some ballpoint pens, even though whenever she made notes of any length he’d accuse her of not paying attention. Listen now, he scolded, and do your scrawling later.

So she listened.

The matter of our forefathers was the pulp of the earth, he said, steel and ore and hydrogen. But I’ve seen the future, and the material of its making will be beams of pure light. Light, issuing arrays of arcane codes, an infinity of it. All maintained by armies of tinkering clerks, those poor proles who regulate the ferment of the world. No borders, no canals, no trucks. No pneumatic tubes. Only energy and these delicately tuned receptors. The question is, when the storms of destruction sweep all of civilization, will these incorporeal systems prove more resilient than physical constructs? Or will it all be erased, like an amnesiac’s mind. There’s something in that deranged twerp Freud about, what is it, veils…the veils of forgetting, shielding us from first encounters with the extent of our own evil, something along those lines. Remind me to get back to that. What we need to concentrate on is spelling out the conditions presaging the storms of upheaval et cetera. Read that last part back to me.

Read what. You told me to just listen.

He grunted and drank. If you say so. Then let’s begin afresh. From the genesis of my grand adventure, two things, inextricably linked, have been very clear. This you might want to take down.

She readied her pen.

One, the fabric of this reality will soon be torn asunder. This has been prophesized and documented in scripture of every stripe, in all kinds of disparate sources. The Homeric hymns and the branches of the Yggdrasil, that bodhisattva gobbledygook, the Africans and their jungle deities or suchlike. And now, the multifarious discoveries of atomic age physics. Cycles into cycles. This is fundamental to everything. Accordingly, we prepare ourselves for a renovation of the laws of space and time. Two, the current condition of man is so impoverished, so broken, no progress is possible without first wiping the slate clean. That means the stockpilers of power must be deposed. Better to be a bringer of holy fire than be consumed in the smoke. On this you have to agree.

Zina thought to respond, but held back. Peter noticed.

You have suspicions.

About.

The fallibility of this endeavour.

Oh. I don’t know.

Speak your mind.

My father would say the error of man lies in his smallness.

Interesting. Your father sought something greater than his allotment.

I think…I think he was unable to see the world as anything but a tragedy.

Sounds like a man of clear sight. This is the GI hero we’re talking about, yes?

She nodded.

So he knows just as much as anyone about what’s at stake. Myself, I refused to enlist. Not that I begrudge those who served. I just wasn’t about to imperil the future of my calling and all that lay ahead, just to march around Bayeux like a hamster on a wheel.

Am I still supposed to be writing this down?

I’ll tell you when. I’ve seen many men in need. Wounded men, who’d gone through hell and come back with parts missing. I’m talking about in their souls. And the vagrants, and the drunkards, and the starving. Young widows clutching infants. All those flummoxed by this viperous existence. People hungry for direction. These are my people. They rise up from the sidewalks and gutters to heed my call. That’s what we’re writing about.

Maybe you could be more specific with some of the details.

Like.

Such as when you arrived at this camp.

Camp. This place is much more than a camp.

But you didn’t build it. The buildings, the firepits, the road. Someone was here before.

Raccoon trappers. Boy Scouts. Pagans. Centaurs and shoggoths. Who cares.

When was the…

Inconsequential. What use is this, compiling dates like some brainless clerk? Apply yourself, Morley.

You constantly tell personal stories, about your early days.

I relay visions. I parabolize. I don’t wallow in nostalgia.

I’m just trying to imagine a greater narrative, rather than just…extemporizing. One imagines you’ve contended with some adversarial forces.

This notion seemed to please him. Anyone who speaks truth loudly in America is bound to attract attention, he said. And I was never one to keep my trap shut, even in my most dissolute times. You bet I’ve had my share of run-ins with the law. Still a few out there who’d love to get a pinch on me.

Who, exactly?

You name it. Sheriffs, Mounties.

You grew up in Canada.

He shrugged.

But something sent you across the border.

He stood again, jar in hand, shaking his head as if shooing a fly.

Why am I entertaining these questions from a goddamned girl? You need to be writing about the disbursement of God’s will in these rotten times. The deviousness of the National Security Act. Not just my life in cute chapters, like some inane Charles Dickens story. That’s not your sector. Why talk about the past? What’s the good of it?

Hannah Wadderton says a scientist carries the burden of history. I’d say that holds just as true for a preacher.

Miss Hannah could use a little unburdening in another department, with that limp-dick husband of hers.

Please, Zina said. And you’re dodging the issue.

I dodge? Maybe you want to tell me where you and your little sister came from. What you were running from. Some farm boy got up your skirt, maybe.

Zina kept quiet. He gritted his teeth.

And again she pleads the fifth. So we both have secrets.

He poured himself a fresh drink, then proceeded to pace, as much as the close quarters allowed. He moved as if working against the shack’s constraints, the confinement pressing upon them: the distillation vapours, the cobwebs draping all corners, the mouse shit.

You want to excavate the past, let’s excavate the past, he said. I’ll tell you a personal story. Years back I was stuck in Trois-Rivières for a time. I had a girl there, this serpentine little thing playing coy with her non-existent virtue, and one day we have plans to go around and such but she says no, instead we have to go see George and Elizabeth. So this is ’39, and the whole country’s off their heads with this royal visit. The entire damned town’s there at the rail station on Champflour to catch a peek. These people, by their heritage, they should be lobbing grenades. But they’re there, wetting their pants over these disgusting colonizers waving feathers to the rabble. You’ll never meet a sadder crop of conquered people revelling in their own defeat than the Québécois. And the girl is swooning along with them, just absolutely smitten by that craggy-faced bore of a king. This is my plight, I tell you, to be the only sane man in a sea of toadies.

Once the procession’s gone rattling off to Ottawa or some godforsaken place, I drag the girl to a counter a few blocks away for a slice of pie. We get a booth and the girl still won’t stop blathering about His Majesty and the splendour of it all. I’m guessing this must be the highlight of her year. I tear into a slice of cherry pie loaded with whipped cream and try to ignore her, but she won’t quit. The ennoblement of the crown, all this idiocy. As if history means nothing, as if there is no future. As if these sceptre-waving goons weren’t already negotiating with the krauts to save their own hides. The entire scenario was wilting what was left of my hard-on. So I did the only thing I could do. I dumped the residual pie on her head. Whipped cream and cherry goo came raining down her face, in her hair, all over her cardigan. I’ll tell you, that shut her trap.

Peter smiled. Zina did not.

But then this dipstick at the next booth sidles over, the gentleman hero. Vous devez présenter des excuses à la dame or some line like that. Real John Wayne type, this toton. And all his slack-jawed friends looking on. So I get up and slap him across his fat face. Once, and then again. The runt is so poleaxed he can’t even retaliate. The whole diner’s watching and no one utters a peep. I stick my fingers right up his nostrils and pull him down, face-first into my belt buckle. He didn’t like that, and neither did his friends. The girl wasn’t happy about how the afternoon was going either, so I cut my losses on the whole enterprise and ran for the door.

But out on the sidewalk, who do I bump into but this big bronco in an overcoat. In my amplified state I do what comes naturally, which is to sock him right in the chops. Only then do I see the insignia, the gloves, the hat tucked under his arm. He’s a goddamned police, on the lookout for troublemakers after the parade. He blows his whistle and a whole squad descends upon me, and that was the second time I ended up in a cell. The first…that’s another story. And there were many more after. I’ll sleep in a jail. I’ll sleep in a latrine. Wherever they throw me, I flourish.

Peter stood over her, sipping at his cup, waiting to see how she’d take this.

And this was some sort of a statement against authority, she said.

He paused. No, it wasn’t. It was a statement against myself.

How so, she wanted to ask, but didn’t. He went on, describing how later, lying in that piss-splattered cell, he’d had a dream. Few things pleased Peter more than describing his dreams. On that particular evening his slumbering mind had conceived of a dense jungle at night, heaving and verdant, and out of its soil rose a city, massive towers of iridescent metal and glass like pincers prying apart the earth, broad avenues and reaching archways. High up in one of these towers, his dreaming mind saw, was the girl from that day, but she was much older, her hair now silvered, her youthful beauty faded. Peter’s father was also there, bone-thin and cheerless—as he’d known him as a boy. And Peter knew that up in this tower he himself would live out his days, high above the city and jungle, above the world in its entirety, close enough to God that he might touch his face.

Even in that awful concrete cell, he said, with demented drunks yelling down the hall all night, I slept more restfully than I had in as long as I could recall. The next day, after I got my court date, I left Trois-Rivières and never returned.

Punctuating the end of this account, he scraped a match on the wall’s wooden frame and touched it to his cigarette.

That’s quite something, Zina said. Do we put this in the book?

Peter blew a thin stream of smoke through his pursed lips, a move clearly practised with time.

No.

The central concourse was cleared of debris to demarcate a field of play, an oblong about fifty feet long and roughly half as wide, with vertices marked by cinder blocks. Teamed six to a side, the men readied themselves in this arena’s centre, stripped to undershirts and spiky with preparative energy. One man sprinted furiously in place. Another did handstands.

Onlookers gathered on the sidelines, huddled in coats and hats in the day’s chill. Zina sat on an overturned bathtub next to two men observing the initial action over tankards of beer.

Bunch of mutts out there.

Bird dogs.

At one end of the makeshift field, a player hiked a leather ball back over his shoulder, drawing it back like an arrow then firing it off. The thing spiralled skyward as if hoisted by intangible lines, its arc spanning the field’s length until plunging to land gently in its receiver’s expectant arms. This marked the beginning of their game. The players swarmed, blocking and grabbing, collapsing together in a heaving pile, then reassembled in fresh configurations, to similar outcomes. Frank Gannon stood out as the most adept: when hiked the ball, he buried it in his armpit and swerved downfield, ducking lithely past oncoming challengers like spray off waves. When he reached the field’s far end, his spectators hollered approval. The men on the tub raised their beers in salute.

Shit. Them’s the moves.

Memory serves, Gannon did a season or two with the Wolverines, at Michigan.

Makes sense. It’s not just the hands and the speed. The eye. You have to have the sight.

That’s what we mean by the vital animation. The body and the mental.

The cauldron and the fire. Where the spirit abides.

Truth spoken.

Zina rolled a cigarette, unsure what to make of this. Of sports, she knew little. Orson had dreamily reminisced of riding the Brighton Beach Line to Ebbets Field with his own father, a vehement Dodgers booster, describing the cheering crowds, the billboards and scoreboards, the spectacle of it. Old stories, held over from some long-expired era. All this chasing and slopping in front of her seemed to her senseless activity, horseplay for children and oafs. And these men were like toddlers, shoving and clawing, disputing possession, crying out in indignation at perceived violations of rules no one seemed to know. She slid her sunglasses up her nose and smoked.

Roman Gwozdz came running over to the sideline and stole one of the men’s beers, took a thirsty drink. Seeing Zina, he poked her in the shoulder.

Little miss mystery, he said. You look a little blue.

I’m just watching.

Huh. You got that look that says I seen better than what I’m seeing.

There’s no look. I’m just…watching.

Gwozdz handed back the beer and cocked his head at something transpiring on the field. What’s this now.

The game appeared to have stalled. Henry Liversedge was now in the centre of the temporary field, hugging the football. The other men surrounded him, peeved at the interruption.

You’re all playing games, Liversedge cried, to them and to anyone listening. This is a farce.

Hand it over, one of the players said.

And haul ass, said another.

But Liversedge stood fast. You choose this, to indulge in this nostalgia. The next world beckons and you roll around like hogs.

One of the men lunged for the ball. Liversedge dodged and held it tight, shaking away the advance.

Winter’s almost on us. And none of you are even remotely ready.

Goddammit, man. Give it.

Gwozdz sighed a troubled sigh. He tapped his bootsoles on the grass to kick away some impacted dirt, then marched onto the field. Easily the largest man there, he slid through the others unimpeded. Liversedge saw him coming.

You all know I’m right, Liversedge said. We face a reckoning and no one’s ready.

Gwozdz seized Liversedge by his collar and gave him a forcible shake, as if recalibrating him, then swung his forehead down onto the bridge of Liversedge’s nose. Liversedge crumpled; the ball bounced away; the men cheered. Game on, someone declared. Gwozdz continued on without a word, passing through the men’s formation like a minesweeper, leaving the field. The game began anew with the players scrimmaging as they’d left off, paying no mind to Liversedge as he found his way to his feet, hands pressed to his face. Zina watched him shuffle off to the opposite sideline and out of sight, defeated.

The future was everything; everything was the future. Yet the camp persisted in a state of general stasis. Liversedge: We face a reckoning and no one’s ready. But to one man the future might be there in the ripple of the clover, another in the odour of decay, a yowl in the mistless autumn night. It could be there in the glances of the women, of which there were increasingly many, and in the certainty of the men, who prowled day and night like barn cats. All biding time, waiting in expectation.

Following Irradiations one afternoon Zina had left Presendia playing behind the supplies shed with Anson and Betty Faye Dimmit, the brother and sister from Wisconsin. They were sifting through a pile of gravel with utmost seriousness, following some sort of method, as if undertaking an archaeological dig. Zina watched with amusement, only to then sight Giuseppe Giaretto past the shed, also watching. Hands in pockets, a straw of grass in his incisors, he circled the children, concentrating on Presendia, as if marking her. When Zina called to the children, Giaretto slinked away, but she doubted he’d stay far.

Nothing here truly disappeared; all that was disgorged only eddied in the mountains’ basin, swirling in the morass until resurfacing.

Through these days, a terrible thought began to creep upon her: What if they’d never fled the fire at all, never made it here, and all this was all some elaborate hallucination, an epilogue, purgatorial, fabricated of her own gnawing guilt? This prospect, however unlikely, was unbearable, and she banished such thoughts before they could fully crystallize. There was no use expending the energy. All that mattered was the future, whatever it held.

Peter seemed tired tonight, even more distractible than usual. He’d begun by expounding in detail a euphoric episode he’d experienced years ago upon viewing El Greco’s Christ Cleansing the Temple in the National Gallery in Washington, but abandoned this thread before it had amounted to anything. His capricious attention was always meandering in and out; often he seemed unaware of Zina’s presence, mumbling strained incomprehensibilities to himself, as if working through some set of evasive formulae. Preoccupied, or entirely unoccupied, he lay on the bunk with his head propped on a mound of folded burlap, twisting his hands into shadows by the lantern’s muted light, playing with scale as his outstretched fingers expanded and shrank up and down the wall. Uncharacteristically, he hadn’t yet poured from the still. But Zina had, and was drinking quickly, the mash liquor’s caustic sear cut with cool well water. Tonight it was going down easily, emboldening her to break the silence.

Giuseppe Giaretto, she said.

What’s that. What about him.

I don’t like him.

Nobody likes him. But here he’s one of us.

He looks at Presendia in a certain way.

And what way is that.

Lubriciously.

This seemed to light his interest. He rose from the bed, rolling up his sleeves. He lifted the lantern from the floor and positioned it atop an upturned apple box beside her. Zina turned from the light’s exposure as he faced her.

This disturbs you.

She’s my sister. She’s a child.

And you’re the world-weary dowager. How old are you again?

I’ll be sixteen in April.

He stepped back and lit a cigarette. Fifteen, he said, as if the very idea in itself was preposterous. Have you begun menstruating?

I don’t see how that’s any of your business.

I’ll take that as affirmative. I’m sure this rough awakening can be very confusing. One moment you’re but a girl, struggling to comprehend your very creation, like some sniffly little lamb. The next you’re wrestling with all sorts of urges. Peculiar and contradictory sensations.

Zina forced herself to meet his inspecting eyes, to not yield to his challenge.

There’s no shame in it, he said. Denying our inclinations only encrusts the mind and soul. You see these pink-faced moralizing shit-slingers in Washington, that Dean Acheson wound tighter than a badger’s pocket. But I bet the deputies of the Partido Socialista play with their puds all day long. Getting good with your own skin first, that’s how you cultivate upheaval. Potency. It’s everything.

His eyes searched her face, her neck, her uncombed hair. Smoke came from his nostrils, his mouth—even, it seemed, from the sockets of his eyes.

I see you there, late at night, tiptoeing outside your parents’ bedroom. Listening to the bedsprings squeak. Your sweet little ma, gurgling like a parlour lady in Storyville. I bet your father screwed the hell out of her. But wishing he was really screwing those Huns in the trenches.

Don’t.

I’m sure that’s what your mother said. Don’t. But trust me, she wanted everything she got.

Peter backed off, stretching out his arms.

Now is a time of imminent triumph. For you, Zina Morley. You can dispel the artifice. We’re all made to think of our parents as holy creatures, just to somehow stave off the terror of our abandonment. But that sanctimony…it’s just another form of conditioning. Understand the depravities, and you begin to apprehend the substance behind the illusion. The sooner you recognize these things, the sooner you get off the teat and forge boldly into the wilderness. And then you’ll see the face of the Almighty.

Zina lifted herself from the chair. She looked to the door, but didn’t move. The alcohol held a clamp on her head, benumbing her. Her arms hung heavy; her feet felt weighted, fettered. Peter watched with amusement as she wobbled.

Simmer down. Have another drink.

Zina considered this, then sat. A fresh jar appeared. Peter sat at the bunk’s foot with his elbows on his knees.

When I was your age, or younger, I was racked with guilt. It was absolutely overpowering. Guilt about what, who can even say now. Everything and nothing. But I’d been bestowed the power of prophetic sight. And given such power, one has no recourse but to make…

My mother is dead, Zina said.

Peter narrowed his eyes. And her death, this is what brought you here.

Zina wasn’t sure what this meant. She shook her head.

You’ll see soon enough, he said. The feeling that plagues you, that awareness. Revelations beyond revelations.

He reached and placed a hand on her knee. The large palm encompassed her, ballasting her; she felt its heat through her dress’s pleats. Zina felt herself about to speak, but the wish to do so went lost in transmission between mind and tongue.

Peter removed his hand and again hoisted himself to his feet.

Hold fast. Have a drink. This will be resumed.

With this, he hurried out the door. The battered wood knocked in its frame. The candles glowed, their nimble light caught in the still’s tubing and glass. Peter’s boots sat at the bunk’s foot; he’d gone out in only his socks.

Zina sipped at her jar, feeling drowsy.

The bear must hibernate, Eliza would whisper, more to herself than anyone, as she closed the bedroom door and slinked to bed. This was her lament to day’s end, to autumn’s wane, or possibly a lament for wakefulness itself—the serenity found in loss’s vacuum. Each day it seemed her midday naps extended further, past sundown and dissolving into night’s slumbers. Like Ariadne becalmed by Hypnos’s Lethean waters, she told her daughters as she made her retreat. To turn inward, into silence, away from Orson’s rages, the ardour and sourness, the wringing of overworked hands.

The bear must disappear for a while. The bear must hibernate.

On those occasions when Zina dared entry to rouse her mother, it was like tiptoeing to the edge of a volcano. No matter how gently nudged, Eliza might erupt, stirring with thrashing arms. The bear, irascible, enraged at being dragged back to wakefulness. Her eyes would locate Zina, and in those half-there moments, she saw her eldest daughter only as a stranger.

Peter: This is what brought you here.

But he knew nothing about them. The truth was neither a trick of persuasion nor some urge of prophecy. The truth was, and had to be, true.

She opened her eyes. Nothing had changed; she was still alone in the shack. In dozing she’d tipped over the remainder of her jar with her foot. Liquid seeped from its mouth onto the floorboards, dowsing the room in its acrid smell.

Outside she found a night starless and frigid, autumn air mercifully free of flies, ragged grass crackling with frost. The liquor’s residual effects left her head clanging and her stomach quaking; motion was necessary, even if to walk was excruciating. With difficulty she felt her way through the dark, flailing against branches back down the rough path, finally arriving at the concourse’s edge. A fire was going near the mess tent, surrounded by shadowed figures. Voices rang. She went in the opposite direction.

Veils, illusions. Cycles into cycles. Peter claimed clear sight, the power to penetrate the mendacity that motorized so much of this world—just as Orson bemoaned its illegitimacy and imposture, the gratuitousness of it all. What, if any, of these revelations and protestations could be trusted, who could say? She herself surely languished in misbelief. Until now she’d relied on her own instincts. But since their arrival at Tenskwatawa, she’d felt her senses dulling, her perception failing.

The blood, the fire. Everything in harmony. Eliza, her crushed skull seeping onto the floorboards. An absence as fulfillment of a promise.

Had any of this actually happened? Was she escaping these memories, or chasing them?

She meandered along the periphery, passing the shacks and tents where settlers now supped and slept. From one of the shacks, she heard Peter’s voice. Zina paused there and listened. His voice came in less hurried rhythms, at a lower thrust, the words muffled. A woman’s voice came in reply, what sounded like Linda’s, though she couldn’t be certain. That’s just what they used to tell me back in Rochester. Soft laughter. Zina moved closer, to the shack’s corner. Light bled through the cracks of its walls. Something inside thumped, like boots cast to the floor. Peter spoke, the words again inaudible. The woman gave a long, dramatic sigh. Then, silence.

Zina moved on. But two steps along, she felt the rise of revolt within, climbing to her throat. She fell to her knees and spewed forth a hot, yellowish fizz: it came easily, but not without pain. Once the surge had abated, she spat and rolled over onto the cold soil, facing upward. Her eyes teared and her temples pounded.

A sky of thick darkness enclosed the span above, like a cerement drawn over the camp. She looked into its reaches for signs, for anything. That airplane, maybe. But there was nothing.

Now is a time of imminent triumph. For you.

The story began with a man in an office, seated behind a desk. This man was described as of an executive ilk, and by indications successful as such: the story made explicit mention of his office’s immaculate decor, the man’s manicured fingernails, his ornate cufflinks crafted of Tanzanian silver. Following an alert via a computerized intercom built into his desk, his assistant entered, escorting in a woman described as in her thirties, neat of appearance though plain of dress. A housewife, in a familiar style. The man welcomed her, inviting her to take a seat. The woman, named as Nancy, did so.

This story, titled “Daemons of Epimetheus,” authored by one F. Visser-Lokos, sat buried in the middle pages of Mesmerizing Tales #28, cover dated March 1949. Its austere blocks of text stood out amid the magazine’s illustrations of dashing heroes in fantastic interplanetary escapades, waving ray guns while thwarting monstrous aliens and other aberrations, distraught damsels looking on. As implied by its descriptions of automated window shades and casual usage of electronic devices, this story was set within some near-future society, though the scene was recognizable and the dialogue in everyday inflections.

The man began by thanking Nancy for her participation in a recent study. His field of work, what he called market research, was dependent on the forthrightness of its subjects. Without generous individuals like her, he told Nancy, allowing researchers to peek into their private lives, any innovations in this work were confined to the theoretical; only through testing vis-à-vis real-world scenarios could any of this achieve resonance beyond the laboratory and into the actual lives of people. Real people, he said, like you. Nancy, reserved of manner, bowed her head in polite assent. However, the man said, we came up against a few, shall we say, snags in processing your case. Nothing to fret about, he assured, but enough to give us pause. So what we’ll do now is just a follow-up, to review some aspects of the testing phase, provided you’re comfortable with that. Again, Nancy politely confirmed her assent.

The assistant re-entered the room, this time wheeling a contraption on wheels, a metallic vat bedecked with banks of switches and gauges. As the assistant prepared this strange apparatus for operation, its internal processes whirring, the man produced a clipboard and began flipping through its pages.

If you recall, he said, we initiated our session with the asking of a somewhat fanciful question: If a magical entity appeared, like a genie, with the power of granting any wish, what would you wish for? This question had been posed to Nancy in their earlier interviews, and at the risk of needless repetition, he now posed it to her again. Security and health for my husband and children, came her reply. Very good, the man said, and consistent with the data points already posted. Now let’s place our thinking in more concrete terms. If there was a shop, let’s say, where one could purchase any item imaginable, and you were given unlimited credit in this shop, what would you purchase? Nancy smiled. As I said before, I’ve always wanted a sailboat. The man smiled. Terrific, he said, and why, may I ask, a sailboat? Is there some personal significance there, some attached yearning? I don’t know about yearning, Nancy said, I’ve always just felt the call of the open seas. The idea of adventure, just the water and the wind. Leaving it all behind. It’s a sentimental notion, I know. But it tickles my fancy.

The story described how the man chuckled pointedly at this answer. Lovely, he said, and again consistent with your previous responses. Now take your notion of this sailboat, and let’s think about how your mind operates regarding such a thing. What is known is known almost exclusively, we could say, through your senses’ apprehension. How the boat appears, how it feels, and so on. The boat is, from one perspective, nothing more nor less than the product of your senses. So one can say that if the exact same sensory information about this boat was provided to you by something other than the boat, that thing in question would, by your experience, theoretically be indistinguishable in your eyes from the boat. The input, in its barest form, would generate the same output, yes? Nancy concurred, and seemed amused by this philosophical foray.

The man took this reasoning further, suggesting that the way in which one’s senses created the boat was not static or absolute, but rather highly subjective, reflecting not just one’s own expectations of what a boat might be, but should be, an expectation influenced by all the biases and bedevilments of human experience. The boat reflects not only your intellectual condition, he told Nancy, but also your emotional condition. In the same way one person gazes upon a storm cloud and is inspired to write poetry, while another, witnessing the same sky, races in mortal panic to batten down the hatches. Everything we know, cognitively, is an expression of our innermost selves. This is something understood among those of us with the expertise.

Visser-Lokos’s mostly economical prose was speckled with occasional indulgences of lavish description, detailing the assistant’s buxom figure and the tap of her kitten-heeled shoes on the floor, the protracted squeak as the man swivelled in his seat, the Delphian purr of activity within the odd contraption. It was off-putting, but kept up the story’s momentum.

I suppose, the man continued, we’ll now reveal just what it is we’re testing here. Draw back the curtain a bit, so to speak. Our engineers have been hard at work on this project, and as I’m sure you’ve garnered by all that non-disclosure legal such-and-such, it’s all very hush-hush. Oh yes, Nancy said, I certainly got that impression.

The man looked at the apparatus with something like affection. What we’ve created, he said, is a state-of-the-art device involving sophisticated transistor-operated circuits, emitting a specialized radioactive wave within an enclosed radius. This wave stimulates the brain’s neural circuits, which regulate sensory modalities as well as the striate nucleus and subcortical basal ganglia, the chambers of the mind linked to motivations and desire. The purpose is to draw out existing information while simultaneously enhancing it. The outcome is an explosion of electrical activity in the mind as it weaves a postsynaptic cross-sensory image, inverse to the latent material stored in the hippocampus’s reserves of declarative memory. In essence, the machine prompts the mind to involuntarily create what it most wants. To the operator, this creation is as vivid as anything else in perceived experience. It is, for all intents and purposes, a new reality. And so I make no exaggeration in attesting that the applications of this technology are practically limitless. As I’m sure you can see.

Certainly, Nancy said, though I’m a little in the dark on all this brain stuff. The science may be complicated, the man allowed, but fundamentally it’s quite simple. Elegant, even. Even so, all this innovation was purely theoretical until it was put into use with actual subjects. To our delight, most of our test subjects had very positive and enlightening experiences, and in most cases what transpired was close to what we’d predicted. In your case, what occurred was a little…unexpected. Thus the need for this review.

He flipped through more pages on the clipboard. Visser-Lokos narrated this onomatopoeically: ftt ftt ftt.

The man described the process of the test’s initial stages, and how Nancy, like the other subjects, had the apparatus installed in her home early on a weekday morning, and once tuned to her unique frequency its effects were initially similar to those of others in her testing category. The device created basic material things of comfort: gourmet foods, elaborate clothing, simple domestic items to burnish and augment the home. Items providing ease and respite from the daily humdrum. All as predicted, he said, and in line with predictive analysis. But what occurred next wasn’t quite as we’d expected.

The device had locked into Nancy’s neural pathways with exceptional intensity. This was, her observers surmised, partly attributable to its finely tuned sensors, but likely more the result of her own unique patterns of mental synthesis—her imagination, as it were. Once her cortexual activity and the device’s generative capacities reached an optimal state, new effects emerged. Beyond simple items of comfort or pleasure, Nancy began to conceive of things without precedent. First, a new home, displacing her modest duplex, one with constantly adjusting and growing and evolving hallways and passages, unrecognizable as any known architecture. And to situate this new home, acres of land, rolling and ever-changing, evolving from gentle grasses to a turbid patchwork of blacktop and lava and a strange, unidentifiable multicoloured gel—things not of this earth, spun out from her consciousness. This terrain grew and changed in perpetual renovation, becoming more and more. In fact, Nancy, via the device, had spawned an entire world. But even this wasn’t the culmination of her session, for this restless world she’d created continued to evolve into increasingly involute mechanisms, defying known physics. Any materiality of it began to secede to a state, or states, beyond the physical, with reality warping and any stability of time cast aside. Schisms emerged in space-time. The colossal quantities of energy generated threatened to collapse all existence.

All this was quite fascinating, the man said, but far beyond the scope of our research. And, I have to say, somewhat frightening. So we were forced to pull the plug. Nancy, ever demure, said, So my test was a failure. The man shook his head, smiling a smile described as gleaming with the exquisiteness of Indonesian ivory. Not a failure, he said. Far from it.

Here “Daemons of Epimetheus” came to a break: CONTINUED ON P. 44. Zina flipped ahead, past pages of whizzing comets and exclamatory advertisements for mail-order muscle-building courses, eager to read on. The story resumed in the magazine’s back pages, broken into columns alongside solicitations for something called the National Radio Institute—$50 TO $250 A WEEK IN WORK THAT IS ALMOST ROMANCE! RADIO NEEDS TRAINED MEN!—picking up where it left off.

Nancy’s test was actually deemed a tremendous success, the man told her. It not only resolved some of the engineers’ most bothersome outstanding queries, but opened up whole new avenues for future research. For, he explained, there was more, or less, going on than she was led to believe. The output of her session was largely irrelevant. The actual test was not to discover the potential of the device, which was already well understood, but in Nancy herself. In the majority of households, it was wives and mothers making the decisions regarding expenditures; as a result, this demographic was the most cherished among retailers and advertisers, all of whom strived to appeal not only to the homemaker’s sense of responsibility and frugality, but also her sense of personal potential. What a modern lady actually wants most, he said, is to be treated with respect, and have her opinions taken seriously. The ordinary housewife holds very little tangible power, in a societal sense. And so what she longs for most is mastery over her own life. Exploring this, as we’ve done with your assistance, provides invaluable data instrumental in large-scale, targeted market research.

I’m sorry if this is in any way a letdown, the man said. I hope you’re not disappointed.

Nancy smiled. Hardly, she said, and everything you say is of no consequence. Because while you and your minions had your noses buried in numbers, the world I created was still expanding. You say what a lady wants is mastery over her own life. But that mastery takes many forms. Yes, your device has astounding powers. And it has indeed made many of my wildest imaginings come true. But what I truly want most is the complete annihilation of all you pandering marketeers and salesmen. All of you must end. Even you, she told the man, with your big oak desk and imported aftershave, are but one manifestation of my aims, just a channel through which I announce my intentions. And it is my intention that all this, you and all you represent, must perish. As I said in the interview, it’s about leaving it all behind. A sentimental notion. But it tickles my fancy.

With November came Presendia’s birthday, though in the slippage of these weeks precise dates were easily lost. Zina hoped to concoct for her sister a gift of some meaning—a reminder, possibly, of easier times. But she had nothing here to give. She kept a stove burning late to bake a pan of simple oatcakes, sprinkling them sparingly with Sunbonnet sugar skimmed from a tin in the mess tent. The results were atrocious, and even though she knew Presendia would be appreciative regardless, she couldn’t help but feel guilty—and she had much already to feel guilty for. Then she recalled Peter’s stash of candy, from Utica. At the next opportunity she went to his cabin, ahead of their appointed meeting. She knocked, with no response. The door was locked, but this was expected. She’d previously observed Peter fidgeting with the cabin’s only window, its finicky seal; with only a bit of pressure, she pried it open. She hoisted herself up and onto its ledge, easing herself feet-first inside.

Absent its occupant, the cabin felt different, its atmosphere less choked. The bunk was piled with mud-smeared long johns, wadded socks, filthy bandanas. Rusted sections of some sort of machine were spread on the floor. Cigarette ash dusted all surfaces. Zina found the chromatic assortment of candy in a pile next to the bunk. She took it all. If Peter noticed it missing, which was unlikely, she’d say he’d given it to her during their sessions: he’d been too swept up in his own pontification to remember, or too drunk.

Among the books and refuse beside the bed was a paper folder, stamped PRIVATE. Its seal of cellulose tape was broken, the papers inside peeking out. With care not to crimp the pages, she opened the folder to read the top page’s heading: DEED OF LAND. Pages of typewritten text followed, what she ascertained to be a statement of land transfer. The property in question, the subject of the stated conveyance by land contract, was cited as fourteen and a half acres of land as designated by survey herein formerly under ownership by the R. S. Stempel Lumber & Sawmill Co. Beneath these pages were sheets of translucent tracing paper bearing more blocks of text, what seemed to be sections of the same deed document copied over, along with a map designating an area somewhere in eastern Vermont. And: on a narrow slip of gridded paper, multiple versions of a signature in ink, each a slight variation on a name beginning in a W, followed by an illegible scrawl. Zina slid the papers back in the folder and made her way back out the window.

Later, in the Waddertons’ shack, Zina presented Presendia with the oatcakes, wrapped in cheesecloth and a length of blue twine, then the candy. Presendia was delighted at these unexpected gifts, but confused. When Zina reminded her this day was her birthday, she seemed stunned, then broke into tears. Zina asked why she was so upset.

I don’t want any more years, she said. I want the years to stop.

We use our eyes to see and our ears to hear. We sense the coolness of the air on our flesh and the morning mist on our tongues. But ask yourselves, with what sense do we feel time?

Midday Impressions had begun, with Nadia again seated at the primary position. The hut was half-full, its interior chilly, a drowsy air among those present. Nadia looked somewhat careworn, with her curly hair wild and her cheeks bright with rosacea. Yet her voice, as ever, was strong.

What bodily organ measures the passage of each minute, each day? Each distinct chapter in our life’s story? Not so clear-cut, is it. Time is an extrasensory experience, but what does that experience even mean? Our capacity to muse over its winding, and overcome it, is just one of the Almighty’s many gifts, one sliver of his wisdom chiselled off for us. Praise be.

Zina entered the tent just as the refrain was returned, all as one: Praise be. She kept to the tent’s rear, scanning this gathering. Rapt yet wearied, lips parted in expectation—in each face, a look of loss, a pain to be remedied. Ahead of her, stooped forward on a bench, was Henry Liversedge. Eyes lowered, his nose now a swollen purplish bulb. She slid next to him.

That looks bad, she said, seeing his ravaged face. You could use a cold compress.

Sure could. Have one?

She did not.

I heard you before, she said. You’re concerned about the future.

What I’m concerned about is having anything to eat in three weeks’ time. We sit here jawing about what, energy transference, somatic impulses, all this malarkey. They’re out there tossing around a football like fraternity chums on holiday. Meanwhile the structures are falling apart around us. Hell, the structures haven’t even been built.

Are you a Bolshevik?

To this, Liversedge gave only a quiet grunt.

I may sit here before you looking oh so light and free, Nadia continued in her address, but believe me, in my younger days I wasn’t quite so gay. She recollected the terrible amphetamine-fuelled mania she’d once fallen into. In that state, hours and days would pass, she told them, and you are just nowhere. Complete temporal dislocation. From 1946 to about autumn of ’49, she said, she couldn’t tell them the first thing about what she was up to, other than she was there in Lowell, working part-time at a florists’ shop, having a ruinous affair with the owner. I was showing up at his house at four in the morning, throwing garbage can lids at the windows, waking up his children. It was misalignment on a profound level. In losing myself, I was truly lost in time. Now, in the embrace of a greater purpose, I exist beyond time, and beyond all that decay.

Whew, she exhaled, mock-wiping her brow. Well, then. Enough of that. Let’s work on an intermutual frequency. I’ll need a pair of volunteers.

She selected two settlers from those seated closest to her, directing them to a central position. One was a man Zina didn’t recognize, hefty with an overgrown blonde buzzcut, gnawing on a tobacco twist and enthusiastic to take part. The other was a gaunt woman, one of the recent arrivals from Wisconsin. Nadia begged her forward. She did so, but with her trepidation evident. The two sat facing one another on wooden stools. A preparative moment passed.

Zina leaned over to Liversedge. Peter says the hope of a worker-led revolution is short-sighted, she said, and overlooking a deeper spiritual malaise.

Yes he does, Liversedge said. And he thinks a freedom fighter’s just a serf under a romantic name. What you have to consider are the material conditions. Question how we value the man as a commodity. And who’s the one really determining the value.

Who determines that? Zina asked.

Well, there you go, he nodded. It has to be up to us to make that determination. Otherwise, it gets thrust upon you. Back in the good days of the Workers Unity League, we understood it wasn’t about these big swooping prophecies. You have to recognize the situation, do the work, and get going.

To where?

You get a mass of people marching with fires in their bellies, smiling and singing the word of unity and justice. What happens isn’t just a mob, it’s a collective will to imagine a better way. Marx called it praxis. Shoot, scoot, and scuttle. You can already see things happening, everywhere. Look at that mess in Cicero last summer. America isn’t invulnerable to change. These mountains will be running rampant with refugees in no time. If we don’t know ourselves, and what’s really real, everything’s bound to fall apart.

Nadia urged the man and woman closer together, instructing them to raise their hands with palms spread, facing one another but without touching. The woman’s eyes darted nervously about, as if seeking an escape route.

Look into one another’s eyes, Nadia persisted. See nothing but what you really see. Only the image that constitutes the person before you. Recognize what you see. This representation. Trace the structure of it in your consciousness. Hold firm. Dig deeper. Understand the process as it weaves. Let it turn within itself, and then into you.

It was difficult to determine what, if anything, was occurring. The blonde man kept a determined expression while the woman looked to be suppressing a need to vomit. Despite this, she and the man kept their eyes locked.

Do you see, Nadia said.

The blonde man blinked. I see it.

The woman kept quiet.

You see, Nadia repeated.

And still the woman said nothing. It was unclear whether something prevented her from responding or if she was simply missing the cue.

Our job is to learn the true shape of the universe, Zina said to Liversedge. What we understand is only an illusion.

He raised his palm. Look. I’m a Christian, I am. I read Ecclesiastes. God’s gift, everyone eats and drinks, takes pleasure in their toil. But someone who spends all his time on his knees, crying in a church pew while the city outside burns down…I just can’t be that.

His attention was taken by a commotion at the front of the tent. The gaunt woman had begun to hyperventilate. She gasped for air, then squeaked out a sharp cry and collapsed to the ground. Concerned settlers rushed to cradle her, offering water. The blonde man wrung his hands in distress. Nadia kept her composure, saying there was no need for undue alarm. To be overwhelmed so was part of the process, and all would be resolved.

This is no place for young girls, Liversedge said to Zina. Most of these grime-buckets around here are just hiding out from the real world. You should be thinking about boyfriends and funning around. Don’t bother with all this. Stick with your family.

I don’t have a family anymore, Zina said.

He looked at her. Me neither. So I guess we just watch out for ourselves.

Liversedge stood and rolled his shoulders back in a prolonged stretch. The session was returning to order, with Nadia quieting any concerns about the interruption. Impressions would resume. The collapsed woman seemed to have disappeared.

His days were numbered there anyway, Liversedge told Zina. An old army buddy of his was making moves on a sugarcane ranch down outside Querétaro. Just some logistics to figure out with transportation, then he’d be a memory.

I’m done with this country. And I’m done with these damn woods.

He took a final look across the tent, then slipped outside. Zina went to do the same, but when she rose from her seat, Nadia took notice.

Hello. You. Young miss.

Before Zina knew what was happening, she was being drawn to the front of the tent, carried by the current of others’ compulsion. Nadia directed her into position on the stool opposite the blonde man. He smiled at her. Zina turned her eyes away.

You have to look into his eyes, Nadia instructed. You mustn’t be timid.

Zina looked to Nadia, then to the man. Keeping contact like this was gruelling, like fighting a tide. But she did.

Look past this shell, this facade, Nadia said. See the face before you not as an image sealed in any fixed point, but as unsettled, flowing through phases.

The blonde man met her with bright, expectant eyes. His skin, she noticed, was rosy and supple, uncreased but for a thick scar tracking his chin’s left quadrant. Zina fixed her attention on that scar.

See the face of the child, and of the ancient. Years behind, years still unreached. Feel the energy coursing, energy that carries on long after the shell expires. You feel it happening.

The man gave a deep exhale and nodded: he felt it. Zina did not.

You feel the points of division converging. You see unity in fractures. Potential out of restriction. You see yourself reflected back in another. You see the truth of yourself.

All Zina saw was the man’s expectant face, that scar. The tent sat in unyielding quiet. Outside, thrushes trilled at the setting sun.

Nadia: Describe what you see.

The man closed his hands. I see hope, he said. Hope and happiness for everyone.

Yes. But what do you actually see.

I see…a sun. A great big sun. A perfect blue sky. The wind is singing these melodies. Like a wonderful dream.

Mm. Yes.

Nadia extended her hands and placed them together on Zina’s arm, as if testing its surface, like appraising a sheep’s wool.

And you, my girl. When you peer into the flow, and into this unity, is this what you see?

Zina bristled at this uninvited touch. No, this wasn’t what she saw. When, or if, she permitted her mind’s perception to drift unhindered, to go where it led itself, all she found were flames and blood on a wood floor. There was no conquering of time, no men restored as children, no beatific reprieve. In her past she was wedged between her parents in the back seat of a taxicab, charging through springtime rain down the Interboro Parkway; in her future she saw nothing. Any skies or sun were only staging to the processes of earthbound fiends.

She stood and pushed away the stool. No. I see nothing at all.

As she moved back through her seated onlookers, she felt their eyes on her, passing judgment. This both ached and gratified; she kept her attention on the exit. On her way out, she heard Nadia making closing remarks. As always, she said, we acknowledge the gift of all that we’ve been provided, and from this we bloom and grow. This truly has been a wonderful thing.

Early morning, the day bright and cool, and all were gathered on the shore. Peter stood before them, behind him the slate-grey lake and fog-laden banks. Though his listeners were still sluggish in waking, Peter was riled up.

Who are we, out here? Hunkered like this, in these forests. Why strive in such difficulty. Why this isolation. Why why why. So many questions. But first, let me tell you. This morning I woke precisely at dawn and came straight down here. I stripped down to the altogether and bathed myself in those frigid Tenskwatawa waters. Performed my Exaltations. That water’s fiercely cold, friends. And as the blood pounded in my veins, I was reminded just how much transformative potential there really is within our reach. That essence, extracted out of elemental matter. The power in everything. And everything as power. Everything.

Years ago, he told them, he’d had a dream of a garden. A place of verdure, abundant with glistening soil and searching vines. Earth and air and water fused in flux and harmony alike. Where a man like him, a man who’d heard the future calling and seen beyond the diaphanous charade of this corrupted society, could get by unhindered.

And I chased that dream, Peter said. Despite all that diarrhea blocking my way, even if what I looked for was impossible in this age of polyethylene and Keynesian wage units. I ventured forth into the world. In the gutters and alehouses, I found spirits who’d also caught sight of something more befitting of this inconstant human soul. As I shared my dream with them, it became clear to me how this idea would become material. That garden was no metaphor. I smelled the pungency of the stream trout and the sap spewing from earth-driven roots. I saw the lightning flashing up there on Poke-O-Moonshine Mountain. The dream I dreamed was of this place, here, where you all now reside. The dream became real. You can’t understand it through logic, or science. Don’t even try. It defies logical sense. So all this talk of deference to nature…no sir. We are nature, not its slaves.

He shimmied in place, restless. His audience sat still.

We see the shape of things, don’t we. We see the contraptions and whims of those decrepit administrators, those congressmen in their neckties and hairpieces, gorging on their wives’ meatloaf and condensed soup. We see their legions of mindless lackeys, kowtowing to the clowns in charge…we see all this and we demand more. Us, here, we’re a legion of champions, not petunias trembling in the goddamned wind. We’re truth-seekers. We effloresce in energy and fortitude. All of it. All.

He slapped his biceps for emphasis: All.

The question to ask isn’t how we might obey this universe. The question is what demands do we make of it. And more pertinent to right here, right now, what demands do I make of it, and of you all. The answer is simple. As the one who brought you here, I demand your faith in me. That’s it. Defer to me and let go of your burden. Only then will you vouchsafe your passage into the valley of truth. Until you do so, your shortcomings will only bring you disappointment. Not only to me and to our flock, but in the fulfillment of your own futurity. It’s all yours to have. The powers of heavenly beneficence. The grand architecture. The calamity. The settling of scores. And, soon enough, the next dawn. But make no mistake, it begins with your faith in me. What I bring first, and all else that follows. Believe in the shepherd, not the manure squishing in the sheep’s hooves.

He wiped his lips and looked past his listeners, across the lake, as a team of sawbills touched down, their flaps and squawks ringing across the water.

All right. I know many of you are eager for news about the telephone lines. Last week I was in Rochester having a conversation with a gentleman I know in strategic engineering with the AT&T offices down there. It seems the interior expansion is right on schedule. But, friends, here’s the thing. I cancelled the service request. The lines will not be connected. Many of you will recall Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, four twenty-nine. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

Someone in the crowd, a man, echoed: grace unto the hearers.

So, as of today, all electromechanical communications are severed. Like I’ve said, we have to tighten up around here. Supply runs will continue, but their necessity is subject to my discretion. Now, if this displeases any of you, so be it. That gate down the road swings both ways.

He waited before the ranks of his listeners, as if daring an objection. None came.

So. Then. Let’s again be thankful for our place here in nature’s womb. Approach every undertaking with clarity and vitality. Let these arduous times solidify our resolve. Your perseverance is the truest expression of your faith in the coming changes, and in me. Praise be, my friends in exile.

They all said it in return: Praise be. Peter pivoted on his heels and marched up the path. Some stragglers remained to complete various Exaltations, but most began making their way back to the camp. The day was new, and duties awaited.

On the farm they’d strived together toward sustenance, as part of their shared lot. Orson had pledged: We will never be lords of these woods, but we can earn a seat in the kingdom. But where was this kingdom, exactly? Where were the signposts, the towers? When she went calling at its gates, would its keepers see her for the wayward fool she was? And, if denied entry, where else could she go?

But here sectors were intermutual, and had to be fulfilled: washing and mending, pruning and watering, the fortification of homes, menial chores of upkeep. She never objected out loud.

As she scrubbed charred stewpots and folded heaps of blankets, she found her wariness burgeoning—of this place and its people, the absence of any real future here for her and Presendia. The prospect of their exodus again began to loom in her mind.

Still in her dishwater-splashed clothing, she came up the path at the usual hour to find Peter leaning in his cabin’s doorway, peeling apart a chunk of cornbread.

You’ve got blood on your tits, he said.

It’s blackberry juice.

She went to slide past him for the door. He angled to give room, but not enough.

You’re giving off an air, he said. Internal friction. Animosity. Disorientation.

Should we get to work?

He tossed the remainder of the cornbread into a bush and went inside, taking his now-customary position on the bunk. Zina closed the door but remained standing.

What, he said. Speak. What racks you?

Racks me.

Yes. Express. The only way out is through. Sit down, goddammit.

She did, but remained stiff in the chair. The pen and paper and ashtray sat at the ready, but Zina made no move to begin.

Dammit Morley, he sighed. You must tell me.

For one thing, I’m concerned about my sister.

Why.

Because we’re here. She’s young and vulnerable.

Vulnerable, he echoed with distaste. What a meaningless word. We’re all vulnerable.

So you won’t do anything to ensure her safety? Isn’t that the primary obligation of a leader?

He leaned forward. Zina tried to return his stare, but found herself unable to focus. Thomas: When he sees you, something happens.

You talk and you talk, she said, but it all just leads in circles. You go on about the shape of the universe. What does that even mean?

Therein lies your error. The shape is only a shell. I ask you, what’s the sound. Listen.

Why must I always be told what to…

A sound, I tell you.

And you won’t even…

You’re the one who can’t quit carping on, he said. If you want to know anything, you have to just listen.

Zina held her breath and listened. There was nothing there, no birds calling, a hint of rustling wind. They were held there, suspended. They were there and they were nowhere, excised from any known place. Inside and without. Afloat in space, in a globe of stars. Peter persisted: Listen. And from this vacuum came hints, reminders.

His boots on the steps, she said, kicking mud off the toes. To not track it into the house.

And.

We ran out into the meadow and lay down in the rye. Presendia didn’t have her bonnet.

And.

We heard our mother in the house. Then we heard our father.

You both heard.

I don’t think Presendia knew. She was picking the hulls off the stalks.

But you heard.

No.

She cried for help.

No. It was just…her voice. We waited. I didn’t know what to do.

You loved your mother. You love her now.

I love her. Now.

Your father loved her too.

He must have. But he was weak.

Why had she done what she’d done? Because it was meant to be, preordained even as dawn ushered in that day of heavy summer heat, as certain as the earth gyrating harmless and stainless on its axis. All of it happened concurrently, inseparably. Yes, it was the bootsoles tromping up the steps that announced his return from mending a snapped bridle in the shed, but he’d been exacting his vengeance for months. Zina and Presendia had been at the kitchen table over their oatmeal bowls, but even before the door groaned open they were already avoiding his sight. Eliza was at the sink, scrubbing out a coffeepot, but already she was raising her defences. Orson filled the doorway; he was a slight man, but then he was a mountain, his panting breath a windstorm, and in his shadow they were all reduced to motes. As Eliza looked over, her expression spoke of acceptance, like a sheep poised for shearing. Zina took Presendia’s hand and led her from the table with their breakfast unfinished and went out into the morning, sidestepping their father unnoticed as he crossed the threshold. The front door closed behind them. Again the meadow would be her refuge, a place where nothing happened, only the intermingling of subtle forces: currents of clouds above, the buzz of blackflies, the upward reach of the wheat. Presendia took a snatch of stalks in her fist, picking at the fibres. Zina waited for the meadow’s comforting teleportation, that erasure of compass and clock—but this time her waiting was in vain. The voices inside the farmhouse rose. There was nothing to be done. Something greater than her was happening.

So when she and Presendia returned to the farmhouse, it could only be as an auxiliary component of what betided them. The scene facing them lay as if painstakingly composed: a stray shard of light bisecting the room, slicing from the window across the floor to where Eliza lay; her arm hid her destroyed face, a wet dishtowel still in one hand; next to her was the axe, staked at an angle with its blade now driven into the floor, its helve ever so slowly drooping floorward; and Orson, at the hallway’s end with his back to the door, arms pressed against both walls as if gathering the strength to push them apart. He looked over his shoulder and saw them there, his daughters, then disappeared into the bedroom.

Back outside, Zina led Presendia to the shed. There she dug out a length of rope and gave it to Presendia, asking her to tie a strong hitch knot; Presendia accepted the task with a nod. From the shelves Zina located an iron crowbar and a large Delphos kerosene can, almost full. The unwieldy can sloshed as she carried it and the crowbar back to the house, leaving both on the stoop. She rounded the south side of the house to the bedroom window and climbed an old sawbuck to peer inside. Orson was on the bed, lying on his side, facing away from the window.

She went back to the shed and retrieved the knotted rope from Presendia, then returned to the window with it and the crowbar. Her father hadn’t moved. Quietly, she unfastened the storm shutters and brought them closed, then slipped the crowbar through the latches and secured it tight with the rope. She went back to the stoop and carried the kerosene inside, placing it on the floor near the stove; the galvanized metal thumped on the wood, but drew no response. She went to where Eliza lay. She looked at the blood. She looked at the towel. She looked at the axe, then took its handle and with great effort pulled it free from the floorboards. She moved down the hall and listened at the bedroom door. From inside came Orson’s breath, slow and uneasy. She angled the axe under the door’s knob and wedged it tight into the frame.

All occurred as if by established ordinance, and the encumbrance of seeing this inevitability through to completion was hers. The plan was already set; she was merely the muscle.

The kerosene came quicker and in a finer stream from the spout than she’d expected, and spreading it evenly proved difficult. She soaked the rugs, the curtain hems, the ragged chesterfield, the baseboards—most generously around the sealed bedroom door. Suffused in the queasying vapours, the room contracted and hazed, and she faltered, her legs going weak. But she steadied herself and went to the cupboard below the sink, finding a box of Diamond matches there.

Orson had described a frozen January morning in Alsace, in the later days of the advance with many sleepless days behind, as he and his platoon watched a crew of GIs stacking horse carcasses for burning. He’d described the brown-black mass of bodies piled higher than the Shermans, the viscera and flung blood, the stench of the pyre, the tarry smoke making night of day—in this he might have witnessed his own future. His time since those battles had been only borrowed, and if Zina was to be the one to resolve that debt, then so be it. Even as she struck the match against the fireplace’s brick and touched it to the fuel, she possessed no control, no powers of resistance.

Why had she done what she’d done? If there was an answer to this question, it was unavailable to her. If Peter possessed any answers, he offered none. He leaned in, reaching for her hand, and she didn’t shy away. He looked at her through the lantern’s faint light, and she didn’t avert her eyes. She was seeing him in his true form, in full.

Welcome to the next world, he said.

She woke in the night to the sound of suppressed coughing. Zina waited, listening. No one else stirred: Presendia on the mattress next to her, Thomas and Hannah in their bed behind the curtain. The stove’s last embers pulsed. A wind-up clock on the sill ticked. Then: another cough from outside.

Ignatius was waiting a few yards from the shack, kicking at the dirt. Zina slid across the grass to him, a woollen afghan wrapped around her, Thomas’s unlaced boots on her feet.

Take a walk with me, he said.

She shushed him and led him away from the door. They headed down the slope, veering at the bridge to follow the stream. They moved quickly, Ignatius leading, Zina unquestioning.

Saw those fancy glasses you had on today.

They’re for the sun.

I know what they’re for. That’s a gift, huh. From Peter.

All of creation is a gift.

Is that a joke or something?

They arrived at the lake’s bank. Ignatius gave indication for them to sit there, removing his coat and spreading it out for her. This was unnecessary, but she let him proceed. They sat and lit cigarettes. The night sky was clear; a whitish moon beamed across the lake. Toads chirruped and skipped in the shallows. There seemed to be something Ignatius intended to say, but wouldn’t. And so it fell upon Zina to speak. She asked him when he first arrived here.

Just last year, he said. After I got out of the service, I was lost. My people, my family, they didn’t want me. No one did. Never got any of my GI Bill stuff straight. So I hopped around, wherever I could get a meal. After not too long, all that, thumbing rides and hosing out oil drums…I was done with it. That’s a wretch’s life. You go too far in that direction, you start casing houses and boosting cars, soon enough you’re getting put away, like some guys I knew.

You killed men in the war?

Some.

How many?

You can’t really say. You’re on a bomber, then you’re in a swamp, shrapnel’s whipping every which way, Japs screaming. All you think is cover ground, keep your helmet on, keep shooting. You can’t think. Just rely on your division and your orders.

Do you feel remorse?

Maybe. It’s just a part of it all. The worst part, probably.

He seemed about to add more, but didn’t. Instead, he leaned forward and ashed his cigarette in the mud, then turned to face her, a plea in his eyes. His hands went to her knees. As he tilted her back onto the ground, she allowed her arms to go loose and her head to loll. The earth beneath was cool, almost without temperature. His hands moved under the afghan, to her legs, tugging at her undergarments, then unfastening his own trousers. His breath quickened as he moved over her. Her face pressed into his collar; he smelled of boiled meat and shag tobacco. She looked away, past him, to the moonlit lake. It was easy to imagine some unseen attendant watching over them, some invigilating presence possessed of acute sight, homing in. Whitman came to her again, crooning of beaches at night, pledging Something there is more immortal even than the stars. But no voice sang this, only that feeling of a presence watchful from some point above, or placeless. To this unseen presence, she surrendered custody.

In the starkest days of autumn, with the forests ossified and the skies peppered with fleeing geese, an aura of despair sweeping over the Adirondack Peaks, there would often occur an abrupt turn: the balm of soothing winds from the southwest, the barometer’s climb, rejuvenated light against shortening days. These were comforts willed to man by Cautantowwit, great manitou of the Lenape, who, according to those worn pages of Williams’s A Key into the Language of America, changeably provided harvests’ bounty and taxed his creation with desolations of drought and sickness, in equal measures both giving and denying.

With those atmospheric vaults it was as if time’s flow had been trumped, the punishments of winter withheld, and summer might never end. It was as if all worry had been forestalled, and this peace might endure everlasting.

The hills along Route 30 flowed in mottled reds and yellows, miles upon miles, brightness smearing the horizon non-existent. Looking down on this panorama, one could almost be convinced it truly was all a gift, bequeathed to its trustees from kindly spirits in the skies.

The truck’s engine rattled and clanged as they rolled along. Peter worked the wheel with his thighs as he lit cigarettes and drank from a can of Ballantine beer, enthusiastic in his chatter: how the Helsinki Olympics were in fact the war’s true finale, how Nina Romashkova’s fifty-metre discus throw presaged a new era.

These Cossacks can’t be stymied, he said. You see the power in their hairy chests and unkempt beards. And that’s just the ladies.

Zina kept a close eye on the road, trying to track the route they were taking. But she was spent from nights of bad sleep, and fought to keep her eyes open.

They might not see us as fodder for conquest, Peter continued, but those Huns would raze the earth in hellfire to protect their wheatfields. The Arctic may be huge, but the world is damn small. The Bering Strait’s not much more than a discus toss across.

That morning he’d come to her in the mess tent, announcing they were to embark on an extended Focus Frequency, just the two of them. She’d protested, saying she had sectors to fulfill, and Presendia needed looking after. He was firm in his demands, telling her to make arrangements however she must, to pack a day’s provisions and meet him at the Plymouth within the hour. And she might want to take a visit to the privy.

He hadn’t said then, and still hadn’t said now, where they were headed. But she knew better than to resist. She was ready to be led.

The truck’s slowing jarred her awake. The road ahead swung north, and in the elbow of the opposite lane a Chevy half-ton sat in a twisted flexure, its hood buried in the ditch. Two men in hunters’ garb were working at levering the truck free; at the Plymouth’s approach, they climbed up out of the ditch and rushed to the road. One removed his cap to flag them. Peter kept their speed low but the brake untouched. As they arrived at the wreck, he rolled down his window and flicked his cigarette out. The hunters approached with grateful smiles. But Peter pounded the gas and the Plymouth roared ahead. Zina looked in the rear-view mirror to see the men still in the road, watching them go.

Why? she said. They needed help.

Peter gave a sniff of contempt. Nothing we can do to help those sad bastards.

He lit another cigarette and pressed on. A road sign goaded: WAWBEEK 8.

About another twenty miles along they pulled off onto an unmarked dirt road, its entrance almost invisible among the closeting thickness of birches. The terrain in these hills was boggy, with tranches of moss and pickerel weed, the road rutted with dried mud. The truck struggled. For his part, Peter, a few beers in, grew only more exuberant.

They ask me what brought me here. They ask why this land, this foreboding massif. To all their questions, I give no answer. When you know, you simply know.

Who asks you this?

Everybody. You’ll see.

What shall I see?

Patience. We’re almost there.

They arrived at a clearing, signless and unremarkable. Here Peter parked. Their destination, he told Zina, was about a mile uphill. They loaded themselves with the supplies they’d collected, Zina with a bag of food scraps and rudimentary materials for making camp, Peter with his own canvas haversack, and headed out. The path was barely a path, but Peter seemed to know the way. Leading swiftly, unwinded, he spoke non-stop, though much of what he said was lost on Zina. She cursed herself for being lured into this endeavour. It was colder at this elevation and she was underdressed. The ruined boots she’d taken from the camp’s common stock were at least two sizes small, with the stitching about to split with every step.

Here we are.

The path spat them out at a ridge overlooking a crevice about fifty feet wide and twice as deep. The floor was obscured in brambles and jagged rock.

Don’t jump, Peter said. Just a recommendation.

Here, he told her, they were to make camp. A ring of stones lay toward the ridge’s crest, remnants of prior fires. Peter instructed her to build one now. She made no objection, but kept an eye on him as he paced and rummaged in his sack. Dry twigs and branches lay strewn throughout the ridge for kindling, and in little time she’d coaxed forth the makings of coals. Peter studied the flickering fire approvingly.

Here, let’s.

From the sack he produced two mugs and a small pewter kettle. At his prompting, she filled it with water from her canteen and set it atop the fire. He sat on the ground before the fire, and she did the same opposite him. Precisely what was happening remained unsaid, but she’d grown accustomed to waiting on him. When the kettle began to steam, Peter rubbed his hands together.

Now, our humble sacrament.

He lifted the kettle from the fire, then went back to the sack and dug out a burlap pocket fastened with a safety pin. He dumped its contents into his palm: a lump of a rootlike plant, dry and flaking. He picked through these odd stalks, loosening them, then held them to his nose for a whiff. With a satisfied nod, he whisked it all into the kettle.

Now, a few minutes. To let it steep.

Zina gave him a questioning look.

The Focus Frequency, he said. One of my finest designs for transcending the mind’s limitations. In it we turn away from those despotic anchors, Abrahamic moral law and what have you, and instead seek the hypostasis, the articulation, the demonstration. It all begins, and it all terminates, with the mind. Everything, everything, is the mind.

I see.

Sin is the mind. Dukkha is the mind. Shaytān is the mind. The mind is the core. But unlike the stony core of the earth, or maybe just like it, the mind has capacious capabilities of transformation. It’s putty, it’s soil. Magma. But the same power that motors the mind is also what enchains it. That’s the thing those psychoanalysis sheenies don’t see. The scientific method gets you nowhere, it just sends you in circles.

Science looks for explanations, Zina said.

Hardly. All these scientists do is jitterbug around with one another, organizing their pencils, justifying their sad careers. Look at that pantywaist Wadderton and his life of failures. Those of us acquainted with matters of the spirit, we contend with a great cosmology. It requires the kind of sharp ears and sharp mind acquired only by crawling around in the mud, not bumbling around laboratories. That’s why I respect the Blacks so much. The whip made them sharp. All right, this should be just about ready.

He lifted the kettle, gave it a shake, and poured out two mugs. The brew emitted a pungent odour, like charred rubber.

I need to know what I’m drinking, she said.

A gift to us, conjured out of holy slime. Magical fungi harvested by our knowledgeable friend Roman Gwozdz, straight from these hills. Trust me.

He downed his own mug in one go. She sipped hers tentatively; the liquid was grainy and the taste was off-putting, but not unbearable. Peter urged her to drain her mug. She gave him a look, then did so. Now what, she asked, picking granules from her lips. He tugged at the bandana around his neck. Now they would remain. They would tend to the fire. They would eat from the tins of anchovies she’d brought along. Any action to be taken would present itself. And it seemed he had things to say.

I first came down around here in August ’46, he said. Rode a Trailways bus from Buffalo, riding on an invalid ticket I passed off on this rummy stationmaster, wound up outside of Harrietstown on the hottest day that summer. A penniless gutterpup, excised from any society, material or spiritual.

But hadn’t you established your ministry by then? In Pittsburgh.

What. No. This was ’46.

But you told me…

I was a man shunned, Morley. I was a scourge. Ideological persecution, that’s the RCMP’s specialty. See, in this day and age, the church is just another castrated gelding on the leash of these capitalists, plutocrats…whatever powers of excommunication they once had are now strictly financial. So if they can’t imprison you, they’ll drain you at every step, by any means. Bilk you for the very earth you walk on. Poll taxes, transit fees, access tolls.

Like the interstate.

Like that fucking interstate. Slapped down right where the lifeblood courses. In this country, any man looking to wander the wilderness better do so with a chequebook in hand. Every toll booth is a throttle on liberty. And you can’t twig the road to Damascus when you’re digging in your pockets for dimes.

Zina nodded. A deep uneasiness had crept upon her, rising from her digestion’s pit. She set aside her anchovy tin.

So there I am. Destitute, sweating through my clothes, traipsing along as some befuddled pilgrim, my mind afire but not a soul to depend on. I abandon the roads and make for the hills. These are bad times. I’m sleeping in barns and under trucks, I’m pinching bags of potato chips off a transport rig. Regaling drunks in taverns with tall tales about imaginary sluts in hopes of complimentary dollar draught beer. I end up tagging along with some deliverymen servicing the so-called great camps in these hills, these guys who haul ice cream and light bulbs and tennis balls up to the Guggenheims and all those summertime assholes. These lads certainly knew how to handle a jug. And a firearm. On their days off they’d get liquored and go shooting up the forests. The official line was they were hunting black bear, but the biggest game I ever saw them land was weasel. One day I’m out in the woods with them and somehow I get separated from the gang. I end up roaming around by myself in these peaks for a good three days, give or take. Why I am doing this, I couldn’t tell you. The twisted impulses of a man in crisis. On the third morning I arrived at this very peak. Or one just like it, the exact spot isn’t integral to our purposes. But as I looked down into that crevice, I was soothed by the knowledge of true self-possession. I breathed of this air and saw the makings of a future. Things that had only begun to brew in my imagination became wondrously clear. And within the year we were settled at Tenskwatawa and the seeds of providence had been planted.

He looked at her through the fire’s wispy smoke.

This, he said, I pass on to you in the spirit of understanding.

Zina looked back across the fire. There were many questions to be raised here, and the story didn’t entirely square with what snatches she’d gathered of Peter’s history. But that uneasiness was rapidly increasing, her midsection spasming with emergent panic and her flesh breaking into cold sweat. Her right eyelid twitched in a way that was more than slightly distressing.

And in these shudders, she found a latent memory stirred: a humid summer night, Gladys lying on her side in the stable, tremoring in her death throes. This final night came as the conclusion of a gruelling decline, a dismal end for a creature who’d provided them so much. For days Gladys had flinched at any touch, her mastitic udder swollen and hard as stone; the inevitable could be delayed no longer. In those last hours’ vigil, Presendia and Zina stroked her snout, feeding shreds of alfalfa hay into her shaking, barely parted lips, offering their gentlest reassurances. Presendia: Good cow good old cow. Eventually Eliza came to lead them to bed, and the girls made no argument, for they knew what was coming; as they exited the stable, Zina sighted Orson rounding the farmhouse corner, feeding shells into the Winchester. When the rifle’s report resounded across the meadow, the sisters were already buried under blankets. Presendia slept unroused. But Zina had lain awake, listening to her father pacing the grass outside, marching in circles for what seemed like hours.

I feel unwell, Zina said, her mouth pasted and dry.

Peter leaned in, his eyes searching hers.

It’s happening, he said. The effects will be swift.

You’ve poisoned me.

Hardly. The real poison, you swallowed that a long time ago. What I’ve provided you with is an antidote.

Peter stood and straightened.

Right now, we need to burn off excess energy. Let’s walk.

They wound an erratic track down the steep grade of the ridge’s other side. Peter led, drinking from a moonshine jar, repeatedly turning to check on her.

Tell me how you’re feeling.

About.

Your sensory feelings. What’s occurring. Describe.

Something was definitely happening. Things had gone gauzy, distanced: the soil below, the wet air cooling her cheeks, the crevice’s plummet. There was such artificiality in it all. She became gruellingly aware of the duration between Peter’s steps, his boot-heels crunching like hailstones pounding arid earth, their impact in waves measured in minutes or hours, an incomprehensible sluice of time. From her pocket she found the sunglasses he’d given her and slid them on. The boundaries of her visual periphery had become fluid; the vertices of ridge and sky were deflated, a fresco flattened. She darted her head from side to side, fighting to catch something just out of view. Yet even while this was happening, that sense of inner unease was subsiding. It felt good to walk.

Time, she said. Something having to do with time.

Ah, yes. The mind’s ordering of time is our barrier against madness. As it dissolves, you apprehend more. The clandestine matter. Realizations and so on.

I’m thinking about my grandfather.

What was he like.

I never knew him.

Peter stopped. The cessation of his steps almost made her gasp. He looked upward, into the trees.

You’re feeling it too, she said.

He handed her the jar to drink.

I feel it all.

At the base of the crevice was a winding stream, its bed mostly dry, layered in pebbles and sediment. They kept to its edge. Down from here, Peter projected, would be Kiwassa Lake, if his bearings were correct. Zina found something about this destination distressing: a lake, a thing of hugeness, to be exposed to its magnitude. But to turn back up the ridge was unthinkable. The mountains, their camp, the truck—any armaments they’d possessed now lay discarded. They’d submerged into these depths and the only way forward was through.

Peter took her by the arm. That owl is following us, he said.

Zina looked. There was no owl.

Ahead the stream twisted, revealing a structure on the opposite bank. Zina couldn’t make out what exactly it was, but they proceeded in its direction, across the sludgy bed and over the adjacent abutment of rocks. Coming closer, she discerned it as an archway, a wooden trellis in white with a swinging latticed door and rounded peak. A gravel path beyond led uphill and back into the forest. This archway, its cedar unweathered and its paint fresh, made no sense here. There was no wall, no barrier necessitating an opening, no purpose. It was simply there.

Zina ran a hand along the painted wood. This is meant for us, she said.

Peter looked nervous.

Could be a trap, he whispered. Made of electricity.

Zina eased the gate open. It moved without resistance; she took this as confirmation of its welcome. Passing through, she felt herself bathed in invisible radiation, a tickling sensation, like stepping into noonday sun after a frigid morning. Yes: electricity.

She headed up the hill. Peter wavered, still fretting about owls, but shortly followed after her. The forest was less dense on this side, showing signs of landscaping, though neglected in upkeep: the shrubs unbarbered, and the birches, flowing in cemetery-like rows, skeletal in autumn’s onset. Ahead, a clearing opened into a lawn of unkempt ryegrass and dandelion, adjoined by an unpaved driveway. Zina and Peter continued on. There was no choice but to obey what beckoned.

Peter, breathless, said: There.

Across the lawn was the rear of an austere brick building, four storeys gridded with windows and bolstered by turrets, a flag waving on a pole. To Zina the building was a thing impossible, bobbing above the earth, untethered by gravity.

Peter in his enthusiasm started forward.

No, she hissed. I mustn’t be seen.

He turned to her, his eyes’ sclera glossy in red and black.

Nothing will see you. But you, you’ll see. Come.

They crossed the lawn in silence. Other structures became apparent, carriage houses and utility sheds, arranged radially around the central building. As they drew closer, Zina saw many of the building’s windows were shuttered, and those that were open exhibited no lights burning within. No human presence was visible, and the dual chimneys atop its gabled roof emitted no fumes. All lay still—if not for the flag’s flapping, they could have stumbled into a photograph.

Rounding the building, they found a truck parked in the driveway, its bed heaped with scrap wood and insulation and glass. Stone steps led to a front entrance of wide oak doors, with a sign adjacent: KIWASSA COTTAGE SANITARIUM, EST. 1887. Before Zina could react, Peter was at the door and pounding the brass knocker.

Why? Zina pleaded.

Every locked door hides a secret. We’re smashing through the barrier.

Overstrung and disoriented, Zina considered making a run for it. But there was nowhere else to go, no way to rid herself of whatever beclouding alchemy was happening inside her.

The man who answered the door was short, five feet tall at most. He wore a dusty janitor’s coverall and leaned on a metal cane, gawking at them with unbridled suspicion. But when he spoke, it was crisply, officiously.

May I help you.

Afternoon, friend, Peter said. Surprised to find you all locked up here.

The man squinted. Might you be Bucky?

Peter threw up his hands with a delighted gasp, as if expecting this. For a second, Zina considered the possibility Peter might in fact be Bucky.

Don’t you swish around, he said. You know perfectly well who I am.

Bucky?

No, sir.

Peter extended his hand. Herman E. Hilleboe, MD. Presently serving the fine people of the State of New York as Commissioner of Health, humbly answering to Governor Thomas E. Dewey. You know. The Gangbuster.

The short man looked confused, but shook his hand. Peter stepped to one side and gripped Zina by her shoulders, giving her a shake.

My youthful associate, Brunnhilde. We’re just here for the walkaround. You must be our man…

Strickland. Warren Strickland.

Ah, Strickland. Thank goodness. I was worried we’d end up with one of the other buffoons.

A moment’s pause. Strickland looked past them, to the driveway.

I wasn’t advised…I didn’t hear anything about a walkaround. Where’s your automobile?

I granted our driver a few minutes to grab lunch. Figured this wouldn’t take too long. Unless you foresee any significant complications. And please, do say there won’t be. It’s been a long month.

I…I’m just here closing shop. Sanitarium’s shut down as of next month, you know.

That’s why we’re here, said Peter. Don’t you worry, we’re not here to get in your way. Just to provide signoff on behalf of the department. Once that’s all clear, we’ll get you your bonus.

My bonus.

Naturally. Closing compensation. Did nobody at the comptroller’s office fill you in?

Strickland again looked them over, their shabby attire, their tousled aspects. His skepticism was evident. Seeing this, Peter chuckled, waving away his concerns.

It’s policy to dress down when out in the field. Trust me, I’d rather be cozy behind my desk in a clean necktie with a hot coffee and a Waldorf salad. But what can I say. So then, Warren, my friend. The day’s getting away from us. Shall we hop to it?

The sanitarium’s public address system rang with piped-in Mahler, the linoleum and concrete reverberating with the spiralling flutes and languid French horns of the third symphony’s third movement. The music only amplified the facility’s elegiac atmosphere: its hallways cleared, offices emptied, walls stripped of adornments. A potent scent of some citric cleaner permeated the air. In the foyer, a precarious wall of cardboard boxes, stuffed to overflowing with files and folders, stood stacked almost to the ceiling.

Seventy years of patient records, Strickland mused, gazing at this tower. No one knows what to do with it all.

Clacking his cane, he led them down a hall past rooms of examination tables, storage cabinets, cleared desks. Entire sections of walls had been gutted—stripped for scrap copper, he explained. As they entered the east wing, he elaborated: with advances in antibiotic treatments killing demand for the rest cure, admissions at the sanitarium had ground to a halt. The place had recently been sold for pennies to the Northeastern Managerial Association, who were reportedly reimagining it as some type of corporate training centre, a powwow retreat for Manhattan financial firms and ad agencies. The Kiwassa board had first hired work crews to salvage anything left of value: light fixtures, medical apparatus, wiring, even the toilets. But this effort was cancelled after three days without notice, leaving Strickland to execute last rites on his own.

He’d been employed at the sanitarium since the late thirties, he told them with a sigh. It was his first real job, and despite the morose air, he considered the place like home.

More casualties to progress, Peter said.

Zina’s sensory perception was again awhirl. The dimensions of this bereft place, these picked-over ruins, had gone gelatinous. And the question, yet again: What was she doing, what mechanism had brought her here? She looked to Peter. Bug-eyed and plastered, he was absolutely elated by this situation he’d led them into.

How’d you get that limp, Warren, if I may be so imprudent?

Eh?

You served.

Goodness no. Standard-issue poliomyelitis. My teenage years were spent soaking in spikenard oil and having my tendons yanked. Such things do not a hale and hardy soldier make. But it does usefully acclimatize one to the propriety of hospitals.

I can imagine.

My younger brother’s over in Korea. Now, you want to talk about futility. The letters he sends me. Terrible. My brother, he was blindsided by a discharge of mud from bazooka fire. Now he might never see out of his right eye again. And this is a fellow known for his prodigious talent with jigsaw puzzles.

Peter chortled.

It’s not a joke, Strickland said.

Of course it’s not, Peter said. War is hell.

They arrived at the main office, finding the Philips record player’s stylus scratching at the end of the LP’s side. Strickland lifted the arm and set it at rest, then leaned against one of three desks here, stacked with more file folders.

Anything to drink around here, Warren? Peter asked.

The kitchen was the first thing they tore up, but I do have this propane stove. I could brew us some orange pekoe.

Peter dug the moonshine jar out from his jacket. No matter. I come prepared.

Zina moved throughout the room, her attention lured by a window overlooking the expansive front lawn. The overcast sky was a beaconless gulf.

Now, Strickland said, this bonus.

Yes, yes, Peter said. As I may have stated, we’re dealing with formalities here. But also informalities, if you follow. Just need to take a gander at the books and clean the coffers. A quick signature, then we’re out of your hair.

Pardon me. The coffers?

The books, the safe. The petty cash. Standard procedure whenever closing accounts at any state-operated facility. Don’t be concerned. Brunnhilde will write you up a receipt in full.

Strickland balked. Both men looked to Zina. But she was staring out the window, only vaguely aware of the men in her periphery. She removed her sunglasses, then put them back on, then removed them once again. Outside all was flux, the landscape of grey sky and grey grass bleeding together, congealing into a jagged, bony carapace. Like the blanched dunes of the Sahara, like a lunar sea. Places beyond place.

Strickland rifled through drawers to produce a bulky leather accounts ledger and chequebook, along with a metal lockbox. He placed these items on the desk, leaning over them protectively, as if shielding them from Peter’s radiation.

Prudence was the office manager, Strickland said. She ran a tight ship for some seventeen years. And she never let anyone goof around with the office records. These were sacred to her.

Good to hear, Peter said. Let’s make sure Prudie’s efforts don’t go unrecognized.

I must say, it’s unusual for anyone at the state to be taking such an interest in us, after all this time. And to show up unannounced like this. We’ve always operated with a fair degree of autonomy. I don’t even know if there’s been a licensing discussion in, oh, ten years.

But Peter was elsewhere, criss-crossing the office with increasing agitation. On the wall a number of clipboards still hung, with sheets of checklists, names and dates etched in ballpoint pen. He flipped through a few.

This place…you must have seen many a man’s conviction tested here.

Certainly. No shortage of suffering. But also, rugged optimism. There was one case, this gentleman from Plattsburgh who arrived in a particularly ghastly state, yet in a matter of weeks made the most miraculous recovery. One of our resident physicians claimed it was the pinnacle of his career.

Peter, lost to his own train of thought, wasn’t listening.

Men, awestruck at their brink, he said. Deathbed conversions, afterlife intimations, all while they counted the cracks in this very ceiling.

Strickland cleared his throat. When you spend a great deal of time among the afflicted, he said, you come to recognize how thin the membrane between life and death truly is. You gain a particular conception of the human soul, as it were, something many work strenuously to avoid. In our rush to manage every aspect of the human condition, we snuff out any acquaintance with that fundamental actuality.

Yes, yes, Peter agreed, getting riled up.

Don’t get me wrong, Strickland said. I’m a proud patriot. But I must say, the Germans…they have a Romantic tradition, a certain afflatus that, while ghoulish in many respects, doesn’t shy away from understanding that which is inarguable. Mahler saw it. Dietrich Eckart saw it. The mistake of the Nazis was to try and make officeholders of mystics. It drove them all insane.

Whereas in America there’s a deficit of that disposition, Peter said. We have tycoons and generals, but no true seers.

It could be argued.

It’s the Central Intelligence Agency, Peter urged. The consolidation of power. The locking of the gates. What does it signify, tell me. These fiends, plotting to rob us of our souls.

There’s certainly something in that, Warren replied earnestly. But, in my mind, if you ask me, our greatest danger these days is the factionalization…

Devils, mazzikim.

Mm?

Scions of Moloch. Demanding sacrifice. Bleeding our children.

Well, now.

Peter rushed across the room, leaning over the desk, aimed at Strickland. It’s happening now. This fight we’re in is just the latest in the eternal war. The blood of the lamb, the curses of the ancients. Our weapons aren’t mechanical, but spiritual. And it falls upon us, you and me, to march forth.

I suppose, in a sense, it does…

To brandish our weapons. To vanquish the agents of evil. You and me, Warren Strickland.

Oh.

To slay the beast. To kill Walter Bedell Smith.

I don’t know about…

No, you know.

Peter seized Strickland by the collar.

Moloch. His pestilential breath is all throughout this place, like an insult to those noble souls who suffered here. You smell it too. I know you do.

Still at the window, Zina watched as the view changed before her. The division between terrain and horizon simultaneously collapsed and broadened, a mile-wide crease parting into shards of white light. The surface of the lawn corrugated into something like a city skyline, like the photographs of Chicago’s skyline she’d absorbed from Life magazine, the Mather and Tribune Towers, the Board of Trade Building. And above this array of ashen concrete, out of the sky’s fissure, something was coming. On first view, its shape was indefinite, its form unstable, stretching in layered bands across the firmament. But as it glided forth, its proportions bulged and contracted, lunglike, and the issuing light faded, revealing this thing as some form of sailing vessel, or an ark. Its hull shone of metallic silver and broad masts and derricks rose from its core, flying billowing sails. Fiery garlands of orangish-pink matter streamed in its wake. It grew, its shadow consuming the sanitarium grounds, nullifying the pathways and cottages. Its supremacy here was irrefutable.

Yet this ship, or the image of it shown to her, dissipated even before it was fully formed. The keel and decks, rudder and sails, all evanesced. And with this departure, so too went any sense of materiality, of anything made or manufactured. The shadow cast over the land, however, remained. And from this shadow the image assumed its true form: the thunderbird Cautantowwit, enwreathed in lightning, cleaving the cosmos. Its head pivoted and its feathered wingspan broadened as it looked down upon the fundament of clay and concrete below, roaring a tremendous silent roar. In this, its judgment was delivered.

None of this was actually there. But it was there, as much as any illumination could be. The deliverance, that was actual and true. And though wordless, the spirit’s message was clear.

Brunnhilde?

At the desk, Peter and Strickland remained in a faceoff. Both men now turned to her, eyeing her with expectation. She stepped back from the window and set her sunglasses on the sill to wipe her eyes.

The phone lines here are disconnected, Strickland said, so let’s head over to the medic’s cottage and use the emergency line. I’ll ring the department superintendent in Albany. See if we can get a hold of Bucky.

Don’t bother, Zina said. This is Planning and Development, under the division of Building Standards and Codes. Not Department of Health.

Strickland looked confused. Sorry?

Dear Mr. Hilleboe, in his attempt at tact, downplays the import of our affairs here. He doesn’t get out of the office enough, really. He enjoys the repartee, making acquaintances. But we have a long drive ahead of us, back to the city. So I propose we get this done.

She crossed the room, nudging aside boxes of office detritus.

First, the chequebook, of course. And we’ll be confiscating that box.

Peter leaned across the desk and made a move for the lockbox. Strickland held it tight, aghast. No, he bleated.

Peter bore down and took the box in both hands. Strickland did the same. The men stood locked like rival elk, tugging at the box. From somewhere, a clock ticked.

Gentlemen, Zina said, this is unbecoming.

She went to the record player and turned the disc to its other side. The label spun: DECCA LONG-PLAYING UNBREAKABLE MICROGROOVE FULL FREQUENCY RANGE RECORDING. As the needle made contact with the disc, wall-mounted speakers crackled, then the opening strains of the fourth movement began with a sequence of droning tones, then a woman’s rising alto: O Mensch! O Mensch! The men continued vying for possession of the lockbox, huffing in escalating furor. Peter finally tugged it away, unbalancing Strickland and sending him backward and to the floor.

Freed from the pyres of Tophet, Peter cried, and ran for the door.

Strickland lay groaning on the linoleum, reaching for his cane. Zina could only watch the record spin, drinking up the florid bassoons and sparkling glockenspiels. The music sprung from the machine as vivid as if the orchestra was in the room. But it wasn’t. The music was an echo of the past, no more here than the ark she’d seen gliding from the skies. The players were ghosts, the conductor a faded spectre.

Her mind was a stylus. And this place was a mausoleum.

Racing outside, she found afternoon already ceding to nightfall. Such variability, in her current state, was almost too much; she had to force herself to keep moving. She caught up to Peter across the lawn at the grounds’ periphery. He paced and smoked, the lockbox pinned under his arm.

What was all that? she demanded.

He gave no answer. They looked back to the sanitarium, where Strickland now emerged at the front door. As they watched, he hobbled unsteadily down the steps on his cane and started for the chain of cottages farther down the driveway.

We need to get out of here, she said. He’ll call the police.

Affirmative, Peter said. But not the road. They’ll be on us.

A wooden fence lined the lawn’s flank. Past it was a quick drop, then the woods. Peter led, nimbly scaling its posts then hopping down the opposite side. Abandoning any decorum, Zina hiked up her dress and followed suit, pausing at the top to let him grip her thighs and ease her over. Together they slid down the grass and into the sheltering trees. Only then did she stop to inventory her own status.

Damn it, Zina said. I left my sunglasses back there.

Alas, he said. Cast your vanity away.

They were a gift. From you.

He smiled. Yes, that was a gift. But there will be plenty more.

They hurried into the woods.

Cautantowwit had descended from the mountains of myth, spitting bilious fire, to show her the truth. Behind the mesmeric veils of worldly chaos, unity would be found. All things borne aloft or sinking as the light wind lives or dies, like Keats’s melancholy-wrung autumns of redbreasts whistling from garden-crofts. No endings, no beginnings. All that was conceivable was possible, like a machine engineered from fantasy, creating new planes of reality out of brainwaves.

Everything she knew she’d learned from books, as if imagination on its own might map her way through the wilderness—this was the shield Eliza had raised against her own terrors. But hers was a delusion as profound as any spiritualist’s or Millerite’s. Burrowing through the farmhouse basement in hopes of secreted treasures produced only dust and lassitude, the reek of decomposing paper and aspergillus mould, and the voices croaking from those pages were just self-aggrandizers and saps. Walt Whitman was an insane man from Brooklyn who saw miracles in garbage, believing his endless exhortations would bring him closer to something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, longer than sun or any revolving satellite, or the radiant sisters the Pleiades. Foolishness, foolhardiness, persuasions to lead one in circles until dizziness was indistinguishable from ecstasy.

Led by this belief, she’d sung tender lullabies and wreaked destruction. She’d broken laws of men and God. She’d found her way out of the wilderness to be rinsed in the lake. She’d told herself time was irreversible, and the way ahead was the only way. Excelsior.

In this, she’d been just another dupe. The thunderbird’s great and terrible form had shown her: what motored the universe was not acuity, not inspiration. Not poetry. It was power. And true power came with mastery over time, to bend past and future to one’s will. Time reduced everything to fodder. It was greater than borders, than industry, than men—greater, even, than life. The old cow Gladys had known this. As she lay in her bed of straw, huffing her final breaths, her pus-matted eyes told of understanding. She would die, over and over, in eternal autumn.

If Zina could harness an iota of power over her spirit, she might be emancipated from her past, a past that lay as distant now as the disremembered violinists etching their bows through Mahler’s forlorn strains.

Yes, Zina said to herself. Yes.

But as she and Peter raced through the forest, the meaning of these bleary revelations was already fading. The venom in her bloodstream had scuttled the order of things. Her senses were happening all at once, interchangeably, and with night’s advance this stretch of forest was indistinguishable from any other: cloisters of trees, a jagging path, unforgiving darkness. They finally stopped in a clearing, the ground deep with decomposing leaves. As Peter leaned against a tree, Zina knelt to examine her boots; one sole had come detached, flapping loose and exposing her stockinged toes. She slumped to the wet ground in defeat.

We’ll swing east around the lake and end up back at our camp, Peter said.

Zina pressed fingers to her aching temples. Her right eyelid had ceased its twitching, but her left eyelid had now picked up that stochastic rhythm. The camp, the morning—it seemed so long ago now. Peter took her by the arm and helped her to her feet.

I know you have doubts, he said. I’ve sensed it since I first saw you. You’re struggling to piece things together. You want to rationalize. You want reassurances.

I had a thought, said Zina. But…it’s escaping me now. I saw something.

Peter’s eyes widened. Tell me what you saw.

In the sky. The thunderbird.

Of course. You had a vision. And it spoke to you.

I don’t know. Did it?

Just as I’m speaking to you now. Right here. Just you and me and the owls.

I…yes.

So you must see. All is lack. To lack is to live. We’re low-born, yes, but soon we’ll be lifted.

Yes.

You knew this when you splashed the kerosene. When you struck that match.

Yes. I did.

You want to know what the future holds, Zina Morley? I know what it holds. More than you can imagine. More than your father ever knew, more than your mother. More than your mind can fathom. Your future will be glorious. You are that thunderbird. You must see this.

There was an alteration in the light, rising wind tousling branches overhead, and his face was brought clearer. Unshaven, dishevelled—here was their shepherd, in all his devotion and madness. Why couldn’t the world begin anew under his aegis? Why not him, why not here, with Lake Tenskwatawa as provenance for the spawning of all possible futures? Why not his vision of the impending cataclysm?

To him, to all of it, she said: Yes.

The office lockbox was still tucked under his arm. He held it to her, as if presenting some offertory. Zina was reluctant even to touch it. Its metal seemed to throb in his hands, as if it could barely contain the wild energies within. She looked to Peter, grinding his jaw in anticipation. With great care she slid aside the box’s latch and opened it. Inside were a slender velvet pouch and a single folded slip of paper. Peter took the pouch while Zina unfolded the paper. It was a half page torn from a magazine, a photograph of a woman, unclothed and reclined on a four-poster bed stripped of any bedding. Floral print wallpaper bedizened the walls. The woman was red-headed, fair and freckled, and her enormous white thighs were spread, revealing a dense thatch of hair and genitalia. She looked down her body to the camera with a giddy smile, as if caught mid-laugh. On the wall above the bed was a mirror, and in it a glimpse was caught of the cameraman, in a plaid tie and short-sleeved shirt, his face obscured by the camera and shearing flashbulbs.

Zina refolded the paper and returned it to the lockbox without showing it to Peter. His attention was occupied with the pouch and its contents: a cylindrical object fashioned of dark-brown plastic, its column about seven inches long and its tip a rounded helmet, almost like a bishop chess-piece. A tag dangled by a string; Peter held it up for inspection: RELAXA-ROTOR PERSONAL DILATOR, D. S. DEYOUNG & CO., DETROIT, MICHIGAN.

Well, he said, bet old Bucky’s going to have some questions when he shows up.

They made their fire in a furrow below a steep bouldered bank. With few words they gathered kindling, then sat, trying to warm themselves. With night came stabbing cold. Zina cracked the other of the two anchovy tins and they ate from it quickly, slurping at their fingers like primates. When Peter urinated on the rock wall directly next to their camp, Zina was too depleted to chastise him. She curled into her coat as best she could. After sucking down a cigarette, Peter did the same. They shivered, neither sleeping. Rapacious wails came from unlocatable sources: coyotes, loggers, banshees. Zina opened her eyes to find Peter looking back at her, her own affliction reflected in his eyes. She edged over, sliding across the unforgiving ground, and pushed up next to him. He unbuttoned his large wool coat and enveloped her in it, folding her into his arms. She felt his breath steady on her head’s crown.

Eventually they slept, huddled like this, until early sun broke through the screen of branches above.

By mid-morning they’d stumbled onto a logging route that wound down through the hills. After following it south for almost an hour, they flagged down the first truck they saw, a transport rig returning from the titanium mines in Tahawus. The driver was a young man who introduced himself as Hap. Hap said little, but offered to take them down the 28 as far as Long Lake. They drove listening to a Red Sox game on the radio, arriving by noon at a Mobil station near the turn to Route 30. There Peter bought a six-pack of Michelob and a package of salami, and they sat by the roadside with these provisions while looking out for a ride. The previous night’s tough cold had continued. Zina worried they might encounter those stranded hunters they’d shunned not far from there, and might receive some comeuppance for their denial. But that degree of coincidence was not in order, and she kept her concerns to herself.

Eventually they found a ride with a husband and wife headed to Tupper Lake to fish bass, arriving within a mile of the turnoff to Tenskwatawa by early afternoon. As they trudged into the compound, Thomas Wadderton came rushing to meet them, looking flustered.

Peter, he huffed, where have you been.

Peter spat on the ground.

You took my truck again, Thomas said.

Peter kept on. Zina followed.

Goddammit, Thomas shouted after them. What did you do with my truck?

At the wooded path up to his shack, Peter stopped. He rubbed his nose with his palm, not quite facing her. Think I’ll lie down for a week or two, he said. We’ll catch up later.

She nodded. Thank you.

Yes.

Peter went up the path, Strickland’s metal lockbox still tucked under his arm. Zina started back toward the concourse. The sound of vigorous sawing rang across the camp; in front of his shack, Frank Gannon was bent over a wooden horse, working his way through a stack of pine logs taller than he was. A woman passed, towing a wooden cart laden with flour sacks. She and Gannon greeted one another cheerily, then continued with their respective tasks.

Zina felt a brush of moisture on her cheeks. She looked up into the sky’s whiteness and waited. Soon enough, the snow began to fall.

THE WINTER

The Olympia’s keys had frozen overnight. It was her own fault; she’d left the carriage exposed without its acrylic dust cover, allowing moisture to accumulate on the metal into a fine layer of frost. Now each keystroke met with resistance, every second clack a misfire, the typebars’ heads tacky on the ribbon and on the page. January’s cold infiltrated everything, ice collecting in every niche. The shack was a refrigerator, even with the stove fired to its limits. The only comforts were liquor and Presendia’s singsong mutterings as she sat on the bunk knitting.

Slowly, with effort, Zina typed. Letter by letter.

There will be hardship. There will be hunger.

I like the sound, Presendia said. It’s a woodpecker.

Zina smiled back at her sister. The metronomic tick of the typewriter did provide some satisfaction, even when little else did. The characters imprinted on the paper were a wonder unto themselves, so precisely defined, infused with legitimacy. But their fine typographical order could only be a mask, a veneer; if there was nothing of substance within, her work was just an extended clerical exercise. So she pressed on.

Progress on the book continued in earnest, even with Peter’s periodic absences. Her days were spent here, at this scratched-up end table for a desk, working the keys and winding ribbons, her hands stiff in the fingerless gloves Presendia had knitted for her. The book was her intermutual sector, delimiting her days. When complete, it would stand these draughty walls firm against the winds’ ferocity, against the bracing mornings and sub-zero nights—against the desire for escape. It had to be written.

There will be hardship. There will be hunger.

The envelope of tobacco she kept next to the Olympia was almost spent, despite her scrupulously pacing her consumption. She rolled a sprig into a paper, sealing it with a swipe of her lip. But when she looked for a light, all she found was an empty matchbook. She rose from the desk and retrieved her coat from a hook by the door.

Where are you going? Presendia said.

It’s just for a moment.

Why.

Presendia too had sharpened her days’ efforts to solemn work, aiding the women in their sundry chores at the stoves, at the washhouse. There was no other way; she knew as well as Zina what they faced.

Just hold tight, Zina said. Nothing’s happening.

I wonder if there are more of those tins of peaches.

There weren’t, Zina knew, and there hadn’t been for some time. Outside the day came as a blast, the cold as a caustic wave. She ventured forth in a protective crouch, pulling her coat tight. Bulwarked by pines and snow, quietness reigned here, every rasp or rustle puncturing the stillness like an alarm. Crisp snow mantled all: treetops bowing under its weight, the terrain’s slope deleted. The path was shin-deep in it, and making her way was hard, but eventually she came out into the compound and to level ground.

Winter had come quickly and hadn’t let off, leaving her fellow settlers to hide away in their cabins and tents. Some had headed down the road and not returned. Zina knew well the desolation of these winters. Every autumn on the farm they’d buttressed themselves against the coming weather, battening shutters and stockpiling wood and securing feedstocks, with Orson marshalling these efforts in a state of frenetic propulsion. Here at Tenskwatawa, preparations were less methodical. Most of these outcasts and malcontents were city dwellers, folk of towns and suburbs, accustomed to idle comforts at day’s end.

Two nights ago, wolves had clawed through the chain-link barricade around the storage hut and infiltrated the supplies cache, ravaging weeks of provisions.

Henry Liversedge had been right: The next world beckons and you roll around like hogs. None of you are even remotely ready. But Liversedge was gone. He’d made good on his promise, skipping out one night without notice just after Christmas, filching with him a potato sack of canned beans, black bread, and cigarettes. He was likely halfway to Mexico by now. Zina recalled her first day here, watching the skirmish between Liversedge and other men over the well dig and its insufficiency; even then he’d warned of slackening standards. On this, his foresight had been correct: the summer’s slipshod construction hadn’t held, and the dig had collapsed under the pressure of ice. Whatever water was pumped now had to be boiled and sifted. Perhaps Liversedge, harvesting sugarcane alongside campesinos or however he now occupied his days, would feel vindicated by this result. But for all his collectivist proselytizing, he’d lacked the stomach to see anything through. He’d left, and so relinquished any claim on what was to come.

Near the failed well, the Zwicker brothers now energetically stacked bricks. Identical twins from Somerville, Richie and Randall were given to eruptive wrestling matches, often stripped to their underclothes, often leaving dining tables upended and furniture in splinters. They were doltish but dedicated, on hand and unquestioning whenever hard work was required. Their devotion to the flock was tireless and pure.

Zina started in their direction, but halted upon seeing a third man climbing from the well itself, clawing his way up and out like a corpse rising from its tomb: Ignatius, snow-covered from cuffs to collar, some sort of metal valve in hand. She still eschewed most contact with him; her days were largely spent sequestered in Peter’s cabin or her own shack, while in sessions and at mealtimes she trained her attention away and kept a distance, even with Ignatius’s eyes blazing in her direction.

But at night, when he came for her, she gave no resistance. The back closet of the supplies shed was the hideaway he’d repurposed, and there, among the rakes and pipe fittings and expended gasoline cans, he took his command of her—command, they both knew, which could only ever be temporary. Afterward, as they lay on the piled blankets sharing a cigarette, he’d grow chatty, sometimes confiding his plans for the future: a landscaping equipment rental business an acquaintance of his in Bangor needed help in getting off the ground, a venture he deemed impossible to fail once the initial capital was secured. But the banks were so unfair, he’d explained. A question of creditworthiness. His GI Bill process had hit a dead end, and meetings at the savings and loans were exercises in humiliation: one manager gave him one look and handed him a mop, assuming he was there to clean the restroom.

What does it take for a guy to catch a break? he’d wondered aloud.

The Zwickers helped Ignatius out from the well and to his feet. Wiping his trousers, he pitched the valve into the snow in frustration. Zina hastened away before she was seen.

She headed to the hut where she knew Irradiations would be in progress. Inside, Hannah Wadderton was leading the session, her attendees numbering only about a half-dozen. Sitting on the floor, their faces sunken, most wore the ragged army surplus parkas that had become their standard winter outfit. Famishment and cold slowed all motion, turning muscle to carbonate. The atmosphere hung with their collective gamy stink.

Like an acid or an alkaline buffer, Hannah was saying, the climate imposes a presence on the ecosystem, to which the system in turn reacts. Or counter-reacts. As my own research underscores, the climatic complex has more of an effect on the organisms within particular trophic levels than they themselves might on the climate in return. But reciprocal effects are not wholly absent. We must allow, both conceptually and diagnostically, for the interconnectedness of all elements.

No one seemed to be paying much attention. Zina found a seat behind Sam McCollum and another man she didn’t know. The two spoke quietly between themselves, uninterested in Hannah’s meandering lecture. Zina caught the gist of their exchange, a situation arising in recent days: Anson, the young son of Gail Dimmit, one of the Wisconsin women, and the debilitating fever that had seized the boy and refused to break its grip. His condition was beyond what they could treat with the limited supplies on hand, and no one here was anything like a physician. Agonized with worry, Gail had been advised to remain patient; if the child’s fever worsened, measures would be taken. But so far nothing had been done.

Cart that kid into emergency in North Creek, next thing we’ve got troopers up here with guns blazing, McCollum said.

Hate to say it, the other man said, but right now we got to look at costs versus benefits. I mean, my heart goes out.

You bet. That’s the dilemma.

I’d give the boy my plate, you know. Protect and defend the young, always. But doesn’t mean that’s the only way we have. What are we really dealing with here? The intermutual sector takes priority. Hate to say it.

Really hate to say it.

We only have so much.

And not a lot of it.

Much talk of late was like this. Dissent burbled; questions went unanswered. Many raised prospects of forsaking the camp for work on the highway, in the cities—what was the difference between fruitless labour here or in town? Working a job, one at least slept under a proper roof. Is this truly what Peter envisioned for them?

Why stay here, snowbound and starving? Why stake one’s claim in faith, some far-off destiny, when all sense screams no?

Zina had no answer for these questions. At times she sensed her own faith wavering—faith in any certainty, that what had happened to her had really happened at all.

But such doubts had to be banished. There was so much more at stake now. This present stage was difficult, but it would advance as it had to. Peter would provide. Yes, he made wild claims, on occasion recklessly so—yet many of his visions proved true, at least in part. Finding the way forward, laying stones in the path winding toward the future, required clear sight. And patience, always. There will be hardship. There will be hunger.

In her unslept state, dulled by Hannah’s blathering about Arthur Tansley and ecological communities, Zina began to nod off. Her attention was perked by someone rising to leave: Gwendolyn, also from Wisconsin, the burgundy-haired woman Zina had first noticed weeks back. In the time since, they’d had only passing interactions during mealtimes or in Exaltations. Gwendolyn made her way to the back of the hut and slipped out the exit. Zina followed after her.

Equality among the sexes was a central tenet of Peter’s teachings. Any division between man and woman was, he held, the construct of an elite inhuman class whose only motive was to divide them, and thus maintain their own interests. Just as no proud man should bow to another in service of enforced hierarchy, so should no woman appease any man’s pride with a curtsy. This was to be carried in the book, and made law. What was said and what was practised, however—these were not always in harmony. And so one remained cautious. The women worked side by side, extolling one another’s vigour and devotion to the greater good—even if, behind these pledges, umbrage burbled.

Zina found Gwendolyn outside, smoking, grimacing against the brightness of sun off snow. Zina asked if she might spare a light. Gwendolyn gave her an evaluating look, then handed her a matchbook, telling her to keep it.

I can’t follow any of that systems stuff at all, she said. I simply don’t have the brain for it.

Yes, Zina said.

They smoked and shivered.

Winter, Gwendolyn said. I can’t stand it.

We’ll have springtime soon enough, Zina said.

Praise be.

Praise be.

There was a question Zina felt inclined to ask, but wasn’t sure what it might be. Something of the past. Again: everyone dragged a history behind them. She was grateful when Gwendolyn spoke instead.

Wonder what the situation in Syracuse looks like.

Syracuse?

Or Watertown. Somewhere over there. Guess we’ll have to wait and see when we actually get there.

You’re going there?

We all are, a few of the ladies and me. It’s our…Extended Focus Frequency. We’ll be working over there, starting next week or so. You’re not in that?

I didn’t hear.

Anything’s better than back home, Gwendolyn said. I’m putting that all behind me, thank you very much. Lay it to rest.

You had some trouble, or…

I had trouble. And trouble. But that’s old dirt. However things go from here, putting it in reverse is not an option. Maybe we can’t tell the future. Maybe it’s all wishes and prayers and prayers and wishes. But you can make decisions and stick to them. You can decide to not go backward.

And you’ve decided.

Gwendolyn smiled. Have you ever been to a nightclub?

A nightclub, Zina said.

When I think about nightclubs, I think of people who’ve managed to pull something together. To really get something going, you know. At one point I thought I’d be one of those people, who you might find in a nightclub. A person who dressed really nicely, or at least could get it together for a night out. You know, someone who looks good in photographs, with fancy expensive lights and the whole show. Turning up to places looking impressive, and making an impression. Maybe have a suntan.

There’s sun here. At least on the good days.

But it’s not the kind of sun that sticks, said Gwendolyn. It’s not like the sun in Acapulco, or Saint-Tropez. That’s on the French Riviera. Have you ever been to Saint-Tropez?

I’ve never really been anywhere.

Mm. Farthest I’ve been is Raleigh. My cousin works for a television station there. Not a lot of nightclubs in Raleigh. Maybe there’s something in Syracuse.

Gwendolyn tapped an ash onto the snow.

What do you mean when you say the good days?

I mean…as in, when the weather’s fine.

Ah. I guess I knew what you meant. It’s just a funny way of putting it.

Zina didn’t think what she’d said was particularly funny, or at all peculiar. But she let it go. This mention of an Extended Focus Frequency in Watertown, or Syracuse, had irked her. Peter hadn’t mentioned anything of this to her. Since their arrival at Tenskwatawa, the women from Wisconsin seemed to have been bestowed some exclusive, distinct status—but what, specifically, such status might entail remained undefined. This was another question it seemed everyone would prefer be left unasked. Zina and Gwendolyn finished their cigarettes, then went their separate ways, hurrying to get out of the cold.

There was little to do but keep typing. The book was to be birthed in reams of flimsy onion-skin paper, imprinted with bluish-black type in single-spaced rows, blocks of fixed-width characters laid like bricks in a fortification’s walls. And Zina’s duties as scribe were as an engineer’s: converting the raw matter of their shepherd’s maunders into something of structure, sculpting form out of formlessness.

The righteous man is he who knocks at the temple door demanding entry. Through all of history, this has been the pattern and the model. The man who speaks back to the bellowing fiends whose tempers can’t be flattered by gewgaws and luxuries, that’s the man who points the way.

Peter fancied himself a latter-day Amos, an unlikely prophet and magnanimous teller of ineluctable truths, trekking his way across an American Judah, pleading to the exiled and insubordinate, dispensing wisdom gleaned from late-night truck stops and early morning barrooms. This empire, bathed in postwar effulgence, was one of artifice. It was plastics and pageantry, watery beer and V-2 rockets. But all of it could be remade.

Like the flabby sleepwalkers of the ancien régime, like the impotent tsars, like General Custer flattened by the proud Cheyenne, these tyrants will be undone by their gluttony. Though they believe their bloodlust vindicated by victory against the Axis, their satisfaction is unearned and false. An unprecedented uprising is at hand, born in the hearts of the unheard, the unsung, the unacknowledged.

Peter had thought the task he’d assigned her to be one of sheer function: he just needed a steady hand to put the commas wherever they were supposed to go. But in practice, it required much more. And as she shaped his voluble output, the more she drifted from his imaginings toward something else entirely. With every swing and rotation of the Olympia’s carriage, every paragraph revised and retyped and every errant page cast to the floor, she saw how light could be brought to darkness—how a book, a sacred text, could be crafted out of nothing, could become something. Sometimes, late at night, her work led by candlelight and mash liquor, it felt like the pages might ignite in flames.

Once she’d determined the day’s work done, as per Peter’s directive she’d pack the pages away in the lockbox formerly belonging to the hapless Warren Strickland, adding the fresh pages to the growing manuscript. These were to be kept secure, away from any possible stain or pawing—or, of most concern to Peter, thievery. The first time he’d opened the box she was taken aback to see it now contained not the Relaxa-Rotor Personal Dilator, but an envelope stuffed with bills, along with a pistol and a small box of cartridges. Peter had given her a key of her own, offhandedly, without misgivings. Only the two of them had access—such was his trust in her.

Leaning back in the chair to relight a half-smoked cigarette, she tried to imagine what receiver waited at the other end of this transmission. Not these ragged dwellers of Tenskwatawa, surely, but a reader, a listener, elsewhere. Faceless, nameless, but there. As they read Peter’s reflections on the papacy of Pius XII—like a dung-splattered pig dolled up as a gentleman farmer—or the Soviet Union—a planet unto themselves, two hundred million dirty-faced Slavs stuffed on vodka and cabbage with wills of pure iron—or took in his wildly inconsistent views on the female element—lauded for their resilience and savvy but disregarded for any defined role in the impending tribulation—would they hear a voice worth hearing? Would they see what was meant to be seen?

Would they hear her, Zina’s voice echoing behind Peter’s screeching?

This world slumbered, encased in ice, waiting to be woken. The past might be unalterable, but the future could be hers to sculpt.

Yes—little to do but keep typing.

Another night of merciless cold, and all assembled in the mess for a difficult dinner of potatoes in thin broth, standard fare of late. As they bent over their bowls, Peter entered wearing a shin-length blue snorkel parka, its fur-lined hood high on his head. Orville Bowne tailed closely behind. Peter took his customary perch on the bench to announce they’d returned from the outside bearing good news. And gifts, doled out now: cartons of Chesterfield cigarettes, handkerchiefs, bound packages of cotton socks. A sack of cocoa flour, which the women churned with condensed milk and served blazing hot to all.

Peter looked on as the dismal gathering turned almost festive. From his fist he nonchalantly spooled out a yo-yo and snatched it back, again and again. All were eager to learn of his recent doings: where he’d been, what had so urgently taken him away while back here they froze. The answer, he assured, was he’d been working, hatching plans for their survival.

Yes, our plight is severe. Doubtless, this torment has been another test of our resolve. But we do what we always do. We endure.

The yo-yo rolled on its pull-string, almost to the floor, then leapt back into his capture.

As some of you have been made aware, we’ve undertaken an economic arrangement with some outside parties. Scotty Stokes and I are off to Albany tomorrow to confirm the particulars. But things will soon be sealed, and we can expect some relief.

Great things afoot, Bowne chimed in.

Still, Peter said, shooting Bowne a look. Let us pray this will be only a temporary foray, just a twirl across the temple floor with the moneychangers, just to sustain us through the next few weeks and refortify ourselves for the road ahead.

Someone brought Peter a cup of the steaming cocoa and placed it at his side. He glanced at it with curiosity, but didn’t lift it.

There will be hardship, he said. There will be hunger. Our souls’ constancy will be tested. Peirasmos, as is said. This is how we know the path we take is one of virtue. Believe in this way, friends. All of us, even that poor boy thrashing in his fevers, will soon receive all we deserve. So we must…maintain.

He turned his palm upward and let the yo-yo roll toward the floor. Before he could reel it back, a shrill, almost bestial noise broke from the back of the room, near the line for the cocoa pots. All turned. Linda, schoolteacher in another life, came forward, raising a copper ladle as a weapon. Her hair was wild, her chin wet with drool. Before she’d exuded a dreaminess, a detached languor; now she was as a thing of pure wrath, targeted at Peter.

Damnation, she cried. Damned in damnation.

She advanced on Peter. For an instant no one moved—as if this action was expected, preconceived, scripted. Peter himself didn’t flinch. Linda swung wildly, aiming the ladle at nothing, or everything, almost striking her bystanders.

Someone get her out of here, Orville Bowne shouted.

Near the front, Frank Gannon and another man leapt to their feet and moved upon her, restraining her, stealing away the ladle as she fought and bellowed.

He’s going to damn us all to hell. He sees and he knows.

The men hauled Linda back toward the exit. She wilted in submission, her cries tapering into panted breath as she was taken away. Onlookers murmured their opprobrium. Zina remained seated, holding the hand of Presendia beside her. The outburst had been suppressed before it was clear to her what was even occurring.

Peter swung the yo-yo and made for an exit. This Irradiation was over.

Outside, Zina sighted Scotty Stokes among those leaving, wearing an enormous furry hat. She slid through the gathering and tapped him on the shoulder.

What.

You’re going to Albany tomorrow.

Then elsewhere. What’s it to you?

I’m coming along.

He gave her a skeptical look. The hat slipped partway over his eyes; stained and matted, it looked like an opossum that had died on his head.

Didn’t hear anything in regards to that.

Peter knows. I won’t get in your way. Actually, you two could probably use my help.

Scotty retained a doubtful air, but before responding he was cut off by a sound from close by, somewhere past the supplies shed: Linda, gurgling and sobbing, her indictment ringing out a final time before falling out of earshot.

He sees and he knows.

As they passed the road sign hailing WELCOME TO ALBANY, Zina braced with anticipation. The territory into which they now passed, these outskirts of scattered lumberyards, foundries along the Hudson River, the stretches of houses hemmed with tree-lined yards, the parking lots and shopping compounds—it all came as a barrage, so much to take in. Outside of yellowed issues of McClure’s and Time unearthed from among the judge’s boxes, she knew little of cities. The Brooklyn of her childhood, before their uprooting, was now so remote, it seemed unreal. Images, barely retrievable: snow heaped on the fire escape, echoing stairwells. Shards, suggestions of something that had never really been. Her life had truly begun on the farm.

Deeper into the city, it only quickened, distended. All became commerce and hubbub. Automobiles shuttled at all sides, pushing between groaning buses ejecting and collecting a steady spew of commuters in ducked hats and drab coats. Blocks upon blocks of solemn buildings, storefronts of Kresge and Woolworth’s, jewellers’ showrooms of trinketed headless throats. Banks of television screens filled a W. T. Grant window like a dozen rheumy eyes. An entire street corner was occupied by a spasmodic facade of lights, announcing this as FABIAN PALACE THEATER: HEALTHFULLY HEATED & AIR CONDITIONED!, with the marquee touting LANA TURNER KIRK DOUGLAS THE BAD & THE BEAUTIFUL.

It was vertiginous, overwhelming—she recalled Blake, singing of Londoners held captive by mind-forg’d manacles and harlots’ curses as blights.

A child of Newark, Orson had spoken of cities as soulless beings, titanic entities of grids and arteries, driven by callousness and spite, rife with menace and ready to crush any susceptible soul. But despite her wonderment, Zina found nothing here of real horror. There was a sense of inevitability—like she’d visited this place before, either in bodily or ethereal passage. She was an outsider here, but not entirely a stranger, and she saw past Orson’s fearful portrayals. She was going to see it for herself.

I wasted a week in this town once, Scotty said from the Buick’s front seat as they pulled to a stoplight. Cousin of mine got married at a church over on the west side. At the banquet they had this buffet table that must’ve been thirty feet long. Polish sausages, at a Presbyterian wedding. You ever heard of such a thing?

Peter, in the shotgun seat, said nothing. He’d been silent for the last stretch, compulsively knotting and unknotting a royal-blue necktie: blue and bright, a shade he claimed was known to impart trustworthiness. Along with donning an ill-fitting suit, he’d shaved and combed in anticipation of today’s meeting, the details of which he’d so far kept to himself.

Zina concentrated on her window and the passing city, the garishness of it. She reminded herself: for all its grandiosity, such industry was simply the result of raw imagination made material. The yield of men, just men. A city block was only a plan put into action, fuelled by capital. In essence, nothing more nor less than digging a well—simply at a greater scale. There was more awe to be found in the mountains than in the streets of Albany.

WRC American Products, Inc.’s corporate headquarters was in an office tower on North Pearl Street near Madison. Scotty let Peter and Zina out at the entrance while he parked the Buick down the block. They waited on the sidewalk, smoking, Peter shuffling his feet while Zina craned her neck to view the entirety of this building—an austere Gothic column of ash-grey, its grid of windows frameworked in steel. The structure’s terracotta facade of cartoonish figures in profile, Indians in headdress and bearded conquistadors, masts and bison, a nod to some rendition of history. Again, this disorientation of things known to her only in images, now made real. Peter too seemed barely real here, a non sequitur. Transplanted from his woodland domain to this sidewalk, his fervours seemed somehow diminished. The entranceway bustled with midday’s stir, men in overcoats toting briefcases filing through its glass doors, deliverymen pushing dollies, squads of secretaries clutching handbags. Peter averted his eyes from these passing hordes and retreated back against the building’s concrete, hunching against the chill, quieted; whether this was him cowed or fuming with suppressed loathing, Zina couldn’t tell.

Scotty returned, hands in his pockets, saying he’d found a parking spot but couldn’t tell if he was supposed to pay. Peter disregarded this, directing him and Zina to a luncheonette kitty-corner to the building, ordering them to wait there while he conducted his business inside. He still hadn’t shared the particulars of this meeting, but Zina and Scotty complied with his instruction.

Before they parted ways, Peter, fiddling with his shirt’s collar, turned to Zina.

Does my tie stick out in the back?

It did, and she adjusted it for him, wiping flecks of lint from his shoulders. Like razoring the hair from Orson’s neck, like picking burrs from his jacket’s wool. Once she’d adjusted the tie, Peter nodded to her, then headed inside the tower.

The luncheonette was narrow and cramped, a few booths and a counter staffed by women in coordinated baby-blue cardigans, the air thick with a fryer’s steam. The sound of a radio wafted over the patrons’ chatter. Scotty barged ahead and threw himself into a free booth. Unacquainted with the customs of such a place, Zina followed and took the seat across from him. He dumped a palmful of change on the table.

How much you got.

Got? she said. I don’t have anything.

Not even a buck?

She shook her head. Scotty coughed. A waitress arrived and placed plastic menus before them: LUCKY TOUCH LUNCHTIME SPECIALS. Scotty stared at the menu as if he’d just been issued a subpoena.

Coffee, he said. Cream and sugar.

He looked at Zina.

Make it two.

Seated low in the booth, Zina felt her cheeks burn with the pressure of silent judgment. She watched the men lining the counter on stools, face-first over plates of scrambled eggs and devilled ham sandwiches, ties flipped over shoulders and napkins tucked into collars. These men embodied what Peter had so vehemently condemned: those decrepit administrators and their mindless lackeys kowtowing to the clowns in charge. But she was in their dominion now. Here, in his unlaundered army jacket and mended dungarees, Scotty was no more than a tramp, a clod of human refuse. And in her rumpled dress and scruffy coat, unshampooed and unperfumed, she was herself no better.

Scotty also seemed to feel this pressure. He kept his eyes down, fiddling with the cutlery on the table.

Guy gets after me for trying to park the car next to a fire hydrant. I told the guy, if the block’s burning down, I’ll come move the car. Until then, mind your own business. That’s what you get in these places. Everyone’s a busybody.

The waitress returned with two mugs of coffee and a porcelain creamer, saying she’d be back to see about lunch. Zina only nodded back as politely as she could manage. Then Scotty sat up in his seat, looking to the door. Peter had entered, and now swept the place with a scornful view. Spotting them, he barrelled across the room and slid in next to Scotty.

That was quick, Scotty said.

This butch secretary said come back in forty-five minutes, Peter said, and then he might be around. Might. Goddammit. How do we get some waitperson over here?

I’m still somewhat confused as to our present agenda, Zina said.

Peter reached into his jacket pocket and produced a wad of newspaper, pushing it across the table to her. Pages from the Chicago Tribune business section, dated July of last year. A headline was underlined in blue ballpoint: BLENDER KING SOARS ON LEAP OF FAITH. The accompanying photo showed a middle-aged man, filling out a double-breasted suit with a rhinestoned bolo tie, his hair generously Brylcreemed, presenting a toothy, satisfied smile as he reclined behind a vast desk. On the wall behind him, between paired banks of dark oak cabinets, a large crucifix was mounted, hovering just above his shellacked head. This, she read, was Wally Ray Crittenden, founder and CEO of WRC American Products, Inc., co-inventor and developer of the tremendously successful “Soda-Mix,” an all-in-one electric chopper-blender highlighted by a distinctive modern design and feel. It Does It All…and More! Originally from Greenville, South Carolina, Crittenden had gone national with the Soda-Mix line just seven years ago, but had since secured a significant market share in the cutthroat household appliances retail market. The Soda-Mix and its accompanying compact model, the Soda-Mix Junior, were now ubiquitous fixtures in the kitchens of America’s homemakers. Riding on these successes, Crittenden had recently sold a 49 percent share of WRC to Sunbeam for a handsome sum.

The article situated Crittenden among a number of American industrialists and business leaders whose successes had been achieved in tandem with, or even despite, their exuberantly voiced Christian beliefs. Carrying the tradition of J. D. Rockefeller, James Cash Penney, Henry Heinz—successes ordained by divine favour. The move of WRC’s corporate headquarters from Charleston to Albany gave the impression of an embrace, symbolic or otherwise, of secular business culture. According to the article, though, nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus doesn’t back down at the Mason-Dixon Line, Wally Ray was quoted as saying, and there’s more true believers on Wall Street than you might think. Crittenden attributed his successes to his Pentecostal upbringing, his devoutness, his fundamentalism. The Lord provides to those who accept his grace, and believe you me, he giveth in abundance. Led by this conviction, he was looking to move beyond household products toward diversification into other industries, most significantly investment in recently established oil pipelines out of Manitoba. God didn’t put all that oil up there for a bunch of Chippewas to sit on it. That there is his plan for us.

Zina refolded the paper as Peter flagged down the waitress, ordering three bottles of Budweiser, two for him and one for Scotty. Zina was not asked.

I need to step out briefly, she said.

What’s that now?

There’s just something I need to look into while we’re here. I won’t be long.

No, no. You’ll stay right here.

I won’t get lost. It’s just for a minute.

Do I stutter. I told you no.

Zina felt her face again go warm.

We’re not here on some fucking holiday, Peter said. We’re here in service of the higher good. Summum bonum. If you can’t understand that, there’s a bus stop just across the street. I imagine that’ll take you wherever the hell it is you’d rather be. Otherwise, you stay put.

The beers arrived. Peter asked the waitress if she might take a personal cheque. She pointed to a sign above the counter, its bubbly lettering: NO CA$H, NO CAN DO. Peter huffed and dug out a wallet, a bulky thing of tan leather embroidered with a crude rendering of a cactus wearing a cowboy hat, and handed over a few bills. Zina caught Scotty staring at the wallet, the thin stash—money of any real quantity was something they rarely saw.

This Wally Ray is our man, Peter said. Just look at that tower over there. Look at that suit he’s wearing. That’s clout. And he’ll see, just as we’ve seen. All I need is ten minutes in a room with him. I speak his language. That’s how we move forward.

He downed half of one beer in a single throw. What time is it now?

Scotty gestured to a clock on the adjacent wall, branded with a Mobil Oil logo, a red Pegasus with wings outstretched. It was almost twelve thirty.

Right, Peter said. Then let’s just wait.

Again, wonders staggering and mundane: the elevator car rose as if lifted by enchanted hoists, captained by a young Black man in a bright-blue epauletted uniform. The faint tug of gravity as they rose, an ascent without visual reference, was unlike anything Zina had felt. But she maintained composure, unwilling to let the men see her panic. Only when the doors parted and they emerged into the eighteenth-floor lobby, faced with a wall of glass looking out over downtown’s grid, did she unclutch her sweaty palms.

The wall leading to the reception desk was covered by a painted mural blazing with a palette of primary colours, a panorama flowing in an implied sequence: at the left, an aerial view of a neighbourhood, a pastoral of gently sloping lanes marked by split-level houses and shrub-dotted lawns, populated by cheery children at play under a sky peppered with chunky clouds; this segued into a domestic setting, a kitchen, replete with cupboards and table and refrigerator, an aproned mother with neatly pinned hair working at the counter over a Soda-Mix, positioned prominently here, its distinctive bright-red plastic contours busy with antic squiggles, though the actual blend being synthesized in its basin was left unshown. Imposed over this tableau, an interruption in the sequence between exterior and interior scenes, was a life-size cutout photograph of a man in clownish cowboy-esque gear, striking American colours: white Stetson, red kerchief, royal-blue jumpsuit. He had a pair of Colts tucked into his belt holsters and, strangely, a black domino mask obscuring half his face.

Hi ho Silver, Scotty laughed.

Seeing Peter approaching, the receptionist visibly winced. To his attestation that he’d returned after the agreed duration and was ready for his appointment with Mr. Crittenden, she stiffened, then reluctantly picked up her telephone. For a while she remained posed like that, receiver to ear, as if hoping that if she only delayed long enough, Peter, fidgeting impatiently over her, might somehow cease to exist. Zina and Scotty lingered by a set of couches in the corner, neither venturing to take a seat. Scotty thumbed through a fan of Motor Trend magazines.

This standstill was broken by the elevator’s arrival. A gaggle of men, executives, entered, busy with chatter and trailing a dense bouquet of cologne and liquor. They marched past the reception desk, acknowledging neither Peter nor the receptionist, to a set of walnut doors and through to whatever sanctums lay beyond. Two men straggled behind, one white-haired and squat, jangling a pocket watch on a chain, the other recognizable as Wally Ray Crittenden himself, identical in the flesh to his Tribune profile: bolo tie, broad lapels, hair like marble. Mid-laugh, Crittenden paused upon sighting Zina.

Hello, princess.

This is the gentleman I rang you about, the receptionist said, indicating Peter as she returned the phone to its cradle.

Peter bounded forward, hand extended. Mr. Crittenden, he said, pleased as punch to make your acquaintance. Pleased as punch. I’ll even forgive your girl here for giving me the runaround.

Crittenden accepted his hand.

Promise to not occupy too much of your valuable time, Peter said, but the bells of holy obligation must be rung.

Still in Peter’s grip, Crittenden looked to the white-haired man, then to the receptionist, then to Zina. She offered the semblance of a smile in return.

Let’s move this jamboree to the alcazar, Crittenden said. Bev, a few glasses.

Crittenden’s expansive office looked out over downtown, the Hudson an aqueous haze in the distance. Here was that photograph made real: the desk, the cabinets, the crucifix. But an addition to the decor had been made, hanging a few feet to the cross’s left: an enormous shoulder-mount muskox head, easily four feet wide and three tall, its horns forming arcs around its woolly dome, glassy eyes targeted straight ahead, as if ready to break out of the wall.

Holy moly, Scott blurted.

You like? Crittenden said. A gift from my fine friends at the Foursquare Gospel. It’s symbolic.

What the intended symbolism might be, no one queried. Crittenden directed his visitors to a couch, identical to the one in the reception area. Crittenden sat behind his desk and ran his palms around his head, flattening his already flat hair. Other than a few stray papers and a telephone, the only object on the desk was a Soda-Mix, but one with its proportions slightly skewed from the familiar model, a thicker blade, a bulkier motor. It was partly disassembled, with wires exposed. Noticing them eyeballing it, Crittenden grinned.

The new prototype. You all can go ahead and ask me what it’s all about.

A pause.

So, Peter said, what’s it all about?

Turkish steel. From the coast of the Black Sea. Just as tough as American, or just about. So far we’ve been getting US steel through a regional domestic vendor. But that union strike last summer…that was a real wakey-wakey. You know what I’m talking about.

Scotty and Zina both looked to Peter. Naturally, he nodded.

But that’s the direction this country’s headed, Crittenden continued. One day you’ve got the steelworkers’ union head talking big, Truman trying to seize the mills, next we’re singing the Internationale before little league games.

Bev the receptionist entered, bringing a tray of glass tumblers and a decanter of whisky. She poured glasses for the men, then asked Zina if she might like a glass of grape juice. Zina met this offer with a silence that sent Bev away.

Truman, Peter said. Now there’s a real lily-livered son of a bitch.

Please, watch your language in here. But you’re right on the nose there. And even with Eisenhower coming in, you get all this talk of compromise. Now, I don’t know about you, but when it comes to this nation’s spiritual future, when I think of the world Wally Junior and his sisters will be coming into…that’s not something I’m keen on compromising. And that’s when my mind turns to the Ranger’s Creed.

Peter stroked his chin. Oh.

You saw him out there in the lobby, the Lone Ranger and his revolver. WRC’s been a proud sponsor of the show on ABC for a couple of years now. It’s a big deal.

I’ll bet, Scotty said, excited.

The television is where it’s all headed, Crittenden said. Unprecedented opportunities for sharing the holy word. Picture Oral Roberts delivering morning service right there in your own living room, up close and personal, each and every day of the week. But it’s important that even the stuff of entertainment, the horses and puppets and such, retains a strong moral foundation. That’s what drew me to the Lone Ranger. The Ranger follows a steadfast personal creed. Like me, he’s a man of principles and a strict personal code. Allow me to share it.

Peter raised his glass, an encouraging nod.

The Lone Ranger believes that to have a friend, a man must be one. That each man holds within himself the power to make this a better world. He believes in being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for what’s right, and above all what’s best for the greater good. That sooner or later, we’ll all have to settle our debts and make payment for what we’ve taken. That God gave us the firewood, but every man must gather and light it himself.

Crittenden was choking up, tears in his eyes.

Above all else, the Ranger believes in three things. His creator, his country, and his fellow man.

What else is there? Peter said.

That’s why no more steel from those back-seat Bolsheviks in my Soda-Mix, at least until some things change in this country. I won’t implicate myself with godlessness. The problem is, as a result, our per-unit production costs just tripled.

The principled man is one willing to make sacrifices, Peter said, and the cleanest sacrifice is, sadly, most often pecuniary. Along those lines, I have a proposition for you. For us. As two men of principle.

Bev relayed me a few tidbits of information about your thing, Wally Ray said, and I’m up for hearing more of what you’re hawking. But first…

Crittenden waved his empty glass at Zina.

Top me up here, would you, sweetness.

Zina hesitated. Peter frowned, goading her to play along. She rose from the couch and brought the decanter to Crittenden. As she poured, she looked him in the eyes.

My pleasure, sir.

With his glass full, she returned to her seat but kept the decanter in her lap.

Your daughter’s a real beaut, he told Peter.

Not my daughter. But we are family.

Crittenden smiled. Of course. So why don’t you tell me about this church of yours?

Yes. Well. I hesitate at using the word church. More of a ministry. But we are on the ascent, I assure you.

You’re not based in the city.

No, sir. We operate out of our own compound in the High Peaks. Among nature.

And as far as your affiliations…have you looked into reaching out to the NAE? Or the Gideons? Strength in numbers, you know.

Currently, we operate independently. No allegiances but to the Almighty. When I read in the paper there, when you say…

He pulled out the battered page from the Tribune, unfolding it to a specific passage, reading aloud: The old traditions have brought us here, but new thinking will take us forward. All the prosperity we enjoy means squat if it doesn’t speak to the man in the street.

Crittenden sipped his drink.

That’s me, Peter said. The man in the street. And my people, we’re that raw human essence. We’re storming forward, but we’re also reaching back, back back back. To the Iron Age and the time of the prophets. The deepest yearning. An authenticity sorely lacking in these debased times.

I know exactly what you mean. That curdling Hollywood perversity. I always return to Proverbs eleven two.

Pride and disgrace.

There you go, Crittenden said, impressed.

And a man like Wally Ray Crittenden, working down in the dragon’s pit with these soulless profiteers, he sees it first-hand.

I sure do.

Maybe you even grow a bit disconnected.

Oh?

Due to the extent and nature of your commercial successes. It’s an inevitable by-product of private enterprise. Our decidedly individualist perspective detaches us from the average so-and-so riding the bus. But that’s also a source of strength. You say…or you say the Ranger says, the greatest good stands above all. But that’s hardly the credo of a captain of industry, is it.

Well, now.

I can tell, Wally Ray. We’re alike. Born of the same spirit.

You see me and you as…the same?

We’re both driven by a greater mission. We only deviate in the details. So what I have for you is…let’s call it a conduit for efficacious action. Maybe you can’t necessarily reach that common man in the most direct fashion, given the demands of your obligations. But I certainly can. My people can. Given the adequate affordances.

And we’re back to talking finances.

Again, this is the reality we face. The currents of this purulent age rarely square with the ways of the just and pure. We can only strive in the margins, where the demands are many and resources are scarce.

How many…what’re your numbers up there?

Our congregation is as fluid as the seasons. Though our core is sturdy as the earth’s.

Are there women, children?

Of course. The family blooms fertile. The fruitfulness of future generations is my truest inspiration.

Crittenden pondered this, then lit up. He shoved his chair aside and went to the shelf behind him.

I have the perfect thing for you all.

As Crittenden searched the shelves, Peter looked to Zina and Scotty. Whatever commiseration he expected from them went unrealized. Scotty sat benumbed by the situation, the grandeur of these offices, the top-shelf liquor, this brush with such lustre. Zina stole Scotty’s glass and drank what was left, then refilled it from the decanter.

Crittenden rounded the desk with a glossy brochure in hand, handing it to Peter.

What’s this now? Peter said.

The Flossie Crittenden Young Leaders Endowment Fund, Crittenden said, named for my dear departed mama. Higher education for good Christian kids demonstrating financial encumbrance all through the southeast. Tuition and books and so on, one hundred percent gratis. I’d be happy to consider a select number of your kids over there for this opportunity. Maybe even this pretty little lass here.

Meaning Zina. She took another taste of the whisky. Compared with the gut-razing draff from Peter’s still, it was heavenly.

Not just charity, Crittenden said. I’d consider it an investment. That’s what we mean about the firewood and the tinder. God gave us this great old world, but it falls upon men to turn it into a kingdom. Fruitful generations, as you say.

Peter looked at the brochure in his hands as if he’d just been handed a mound of manure. Its colourful cover illustration depicted a pair of freckled children, a girl in pigtails and a boy in a flat-top, poring over a Bible, effervescent in gleeful study. Crittenden returned to his side of the desk and leaned back in his seat. The leather creaked like a belch.

And of course, I’ll send you folks off with a complimentary Soda-Mix. Perfect addition to any home.

Back outside, they loitered on the sidewalk. The temperature had plummeted even as the sun’s scathe had intensified. The men lit cigarettes, but Zina, feeling light-headed, breathed deeply of the cold air.

We should grab the car and take a zip around, Scotty said. See the city a bit.

Peter was brooding, still playing out the meeting that had just wrapped.

Fucking swine, he growled. Shitmouth Pentecostal swine.

Come on, Scotty said. Let’s go do something. Cut loose.

No, Peter said. I’m done with this shitpile city. We have somewhere to be and more to do. We’re already gone.

The weather turned just as they left Albany’s city limits for Watertown, a three-hour drive west across six counties. Freezing rain pummelled the Buick, erasing the road ahead. Scotty drove, leaning forward with both hands wrenching the wheel, his nose almost touching the windshield. The radio was on, WPTR 1240, a man’s broken, melancholic strains: sometimes the thunder and lightning make all little clouds hide. A voice divorced from any reality, Zina thought, slumped in the back seat. Syrupy, silly consolations, fluffier even than Wordsworth at his most gushing. Distractions and phenomena, like Albany with its shop windows and clamour—it all added up to nothing.

Peter, necktie now shucked, flicked a cigarette out the parted window. Let’s step it up maybe, he said to Scotty. We’re supposed to show by five o’clock.

You want to spin out into a ditch? I can barely see which way we’re pointed.

Then turn on the blower. The glass is all fogged.

Scotty made no move. Peter sighed and hit a toggle on the dashboard. A fan gushed, and in seconds the windshield was clearing.

Judas Priest, Scotty said. Now you tell me. How am I supposed to know? I never drove in the winter before.

Near Utica, traffic slowed to a crawl. Red police lights flashed through the rain, some sort of checkpoint ahead. Zina sat up, concerned; to be probed and identified by authorities would spell her doom. She’d be taken in, questioned, processed. Incarcerated. Separated from Presendia forever. Condemned.

But Peter seemed to have anticipated such a hurdle. As they neared the checkpoint, he dug out a manila envelope and removed a laminated card stamped with blue lettering deeming it a NEW YORK STATE OPERATOR’S LICENSE. He handed this to Scotty, then tucked a similar card into his own breast pocket. As the line of cars nudged forward, the cordon ahead became clearer. Three cruisers formed a blockade, with officers in long coats inspecting each vehicle. When their turn came and they were waved forward, Peter instructed Scotty to roll down his window.

I’ll do the talking, he said. You keep your box locked.

One officer rounded the car to the right while another came to Scotty’s side, leaning in to inspect the Buick’s interior. His face was a pinkish slump of pouches and folds, dripping rain. Peter leaned over across Scotty, flashing a smile.

Afternoon, sarge.

Let’s see that licence.

Scotty handed over the laminated card. The officer took it in his gloved hand, but kept his eyes on the men. You’re headed where?

Just into town, Peter said.

For what business.

Oh, we’re robbing the Bank of New York on Court Street.

The officer looked from Peter to Scotty, then back to Peter. Some specific process seemed codified in this exchange, one to which everyone but Zina was privy. As the officer’s inspection turned to the back seat, she fought the reflex to bury her face in her arm.

This someone’s daughter?

She’s my attorney, Peter said. Just in case the stickup goes awry.

The officer paused. That’s a joke. Good one.

The officer at the right rapped a fist on the hood. The first officer backed off.

Looks like Abbott and Costello are off on another caper. We’ve got your number, you degenerates. Get going.

Scotty eased the car into gear and they drove on.

What did he mean by that, Zina said, that he’s got our number.

It doesn’t mean anything, Peter said, easing back in his seat, smiling triumphantly. Goddamn cops.

The rift between the old world and the one approaching would be so stark, so decisive, its opening would surely transpire without its even being felt. Nothing in memory would be enshrined as sacred; all would be reimagined, rebuilt, remade, beholden to no foregoing dictates. I’ve seen the future, Peter had said, and the material of its making will be beams of pure light.

These months had charged forward headlong, like a Buick shredding miles of highway. The pace of it, sudden cleavages interspersed with spells of dull routine, had left her in a state of such uncertainty that all she could do, all she’d done, was to hang on and hope. But the past hadn’t vanished, not yet. And as Peter stepped up to the teller window at the Bank of New York in Watertown, slapping that embroidered wallet on the counter and producing from it a folded and signed cheque, making a show of this, apparently having regained a modicum of his customary bravado, Zina, at his side in her role of legitimizing this scruffy man, caught an inadvertent look at the cheque itself, made out for payment to the order of one M. Haché. She recognized its design and insignia from another she’d seen months ago, riffling through the pockets of the dead man by the fire, the man Ignatius had named as Clint Auld. Even as she observed this—unmistakably the evidence of a crime—the precise connections linking these recurrences were still unclear. She nonetheless understood: even as they hurtled toward the future, nothing would be forgotten.

The bank’s teller, a cheery woman in tortoiseshell eyeglasses, requested Peter’s identification. To this, he provided not the falsified driver’s licence from before but another card at which Zina didn’t get a look. The teller took it, executed a terse comparison with the cheque, stamped a receipt, then slid open a drawer to count out ten twenty-dollar bills and two fifties, laying them in neat piles. She asked Peter if there would be anything else today. He tucked the money into his inside pocket, saying: Oh, this’ll do for today, sweetheart. But who knows what tomorrow may bring.

At the hotel on Mechanic Street, the clerk behind the front desk gave them only a quick look-over—these two men and teenage girl dragged down from the hills, luggageless, cagey—then slid over a key. A double room was ten dollars a night, he told them, twelve with fresh towels. How much with not-so-fresh towels, Peter asked. The clerk paused, then said, Twelve.

The room contained two single beds and a dresser with only one drawer that opened. A radio sat on the only shelf, its cord frayed into non-functionality. Peter went to the window and tested the curtains, knuckled the radiator. Scotty rolled onto one of the beds, saying he was ready to sack down, take a hot bath, unload on a proper john. But Peter told him all that would have to wait. They were late for their meeting with someone referred to only as Alf, at the tavern down the block.

Can’t this guy wait? Scotty griped.

Peter snapped the curtains closed. Can’t you shut your goddamned blowhole and execute your fucking sector?

The tavern was not an inviting place. High-wattage light bulbs seared from sooty fixtures; a suffusing stench of bleach and stale beer came hard. As they took a corner table, Zina kept her eyes low. She looked out the window beside her, its glass diagonalled with masking tape, the day-long rain now turning to steady currents of snow.

Patrons, all men, lined the bar on stools, staring into their glasses or at the television above the bar, tuned to a boxing match. At one end of the bar a man dozed in a wheelchair, a half-empty plastic jug of beer balanced on his considerable belly.

Meeting Alf in this joint? Scotty asked. Whose numbskull idea was that?

Who is this individual anyway? Zina asked.

Peter ignored these questions, his eyes scouring the room. Look at these men, he said. Tinder ready for ignition. Lives of struggle, day in day out, serfs bound to lords they’ll never even fathom. What lies have they been told? What myths have they been force-fed? How did this become the honest man’s plight?

You could go speak to them, Zina said.

I’m not here to evangelize. I’m here to transact. Plus, you never know how these types will take the word. Termites shrinking from the light.

Peter slid Scotty a few bills for beer, telling him to bring back the change. Scotty, looking skittish, did as commanded.

Thomas and Hannah Wadderton say ordinary Americans have a strong appetite for the truth, Zina said to Peter. All they need is encouragement and direction.

Bah. Those two are always spouting their idiotic dung. Suppose Thomas told you all about how he invented the atomic bomb.

He was a physicist. With the Manhattan Project, at Los Alamos.

Peter rolled his eyes. In his dreams he was.

He said he was let go for raising too many questions. Challenging the higher-ups.

Don’t believe a word that birdbrain says. Thinks of himself as some high-principled renegade, a victim of the system. Nah. Wadderton got tossed out of his department for being a bungling spastic. And his woman’s no better. She’s a real cornflake. You ask me, she should be in Bellevue. Lucky for them both we’re so damn welcoming. Los Alamos. Unbelievable.

They’ve been very kind to me and my sister.

Sure, sure. Everyone’s simpatico. Apply your intellect, Morley. Don’t be so wishy-washy.

Scotty came back with a jug of mustard-hued draught beer and two mugs. He dumped the change on the table.

They say there’s rules. If she’s staying, she’s got to order food.

Meaning Zina. Peter sighed and slid Scotty back the change. Get her some potato chips or something.

She can do it herself, Scotty said. I’m parched.

Peter gave Scotty a look.

Fine, Scotty relented. Fine.

The door swung open, introducing more men, stomping snow from their workboots; the floors quickly became a mess of slushy tread-marks. With handshakes exchanged and salutations given to the barmaid, the mood among the men was solemn, purposeful. Mostly workers from the Knowlton Brothers paper mill in Black River, Peter said, though how he might have known this was left unexplained.

What was the measure of such men? Zina wondered. Were they figures of contempt or sympathy? Dupes or rogues, victims or agents of the infernal system? She could see them: tromping down driveways and bidding farewell to young families, hopping buses to factories and shop floors, crowding and dispersing, their days metered in obligation, in work. How was one meant to understand such lives? Eliza would turn again to Blake and his abhorrent collieries, the Satanic mills, dense mists contaminated with abattoir fumes—how a sickness had befallen this mechanized world, one inseparable from the polluting avarice of progress. To Orson, the question was posed and answered by shells exploding over Malmedy: all of man’s endeavours ended in death’s debasement.

Scotty again returned, tossing a bag of Fluffs pork skins on the table, along with the remaining change. Eat up, he said.

Peter turned the plastic bag in his hands. Look at this. If they did it right, we could feed every starving soul on this planet and we’d all live to be two hundred years old. Instead, what do we have. Truckloads of pig snouts, dehydrated into oblivion.

He tore open the bag and plucked out a curly rind, jammed it into his mouth.

Oof.

Gimme one, Scotty said.

Peter slid him the bag. As they dug in, Zina discreetly palmed the coins from the table and slid them into her lap; neither man noticed.

We’ll find some proper chow once we complete our business here, Peter said.

Business, whatever purpose, still such uncertain aims. Their arrival had gone without inquiry, but some men at the bar had begun casting scrutinizing eyes their way. Snickers, heads shaking, a turn from beery torpor to something more hostile—Zina felt it, and clearly Peter and Scotty, quickly working through their own jug, did too. One of the men came over: pinholes for eyes, suspenders dangling off his hips, a glass in hand, evidently far from his first tonight. Standing over their table, he reminded Zina of the men at the country store in Newcomb, the locals who unsubtly mocked Orson on his biweekly visits, deriding his over-explanations, his ineptitude with hand tools, his unfamiliarity with varieties of cement.

Pretty wild weather out there, the man said.

Peter gritted his teeth. You said it, bucko.

You three look like you just crawled out of a manhole or something.

And right into this septic tank.

The man leaned in, beer sloshing from his draught glass. What’d you say?

Scotty blew his nose into a napkin. I’m gonna go get a haircut.

Zina looked at him. A haircut.

Or something. I have to get out of here. I’ll get back with you in a bit.

Scotty edged past the suspendered man and outside. The man clunked his glass on the table and shouted over to his cronies back at the bar: Got some Friday night specials here. Men hooted back. On the television, one of the boxers raised gloved fists, camera flashes igniting the sweat burnishing his face and torso. Zina felt faint-headed, badly wanting to be rid of this place, with its smoke and stuttering lights. In her dozy disequilibrium she was barely aware of Peter’s voice, rising as he stood, entreating the room for its attention. The TV’s volume was lowered, the men turned in their seats, and he began, indicting the pulp and paper industry’s record of transgressions: pollution and radiation, deforestation, the deployment of strikebreakers and scabs. The men looking on, to Zina’s surprise, seemed hooked, or amused, by this stranger, as Peter launched into a diatribe comparing mill processing with the chemical warfare used during the Battle of Loos. When Zina excised herself from the table and made for the door, no one, Peter included, took notice.

Outside she was hit by sweeping winds of thick snow. On their arrival she’d spotted a pair of telephone booths down the block, and she headed there now, leaning in against the current, burying her face in her collar. This, more than everything else, was why she’d tagged along on this excursion. Too many things had been left unattended. Information was needed.

A man in a hat and trench coat presently occupied one of the booths, though he didn’t appear to be making a call. Zina slipped into the other. The booth’s interior was splattered with an indeterminate dried substance; she did her best to ignore this and fed several of the coins she’d stolen from the table into what seemed the correct opening. She was barely familiar with telephones, but gained enough from the instructions on the phone’s panel to dial 0 for the operator. A woman’s voice came on the line, asking how she might help. Zina, speaking with as much authority as she could muster, said she wished to contact the police department. The woman asked her to hold on while she patched her through to the switchboard.

As Zina waited, she turned her attention to the snowy street, avoiding facing the man in the next booth. A storefront sat dormant on the opposite corner. Behind its ranging glass facade, a simulated living room lay in subdued light: settees and recliners and floor lamps, a television planted inside a gargantuan marquetry commode—a scene at once ordinary and antiseptic, with the precision of a Vermeer.

What people might inhabit such a room, she wondered, thinking again of the men in the tavern, the mill workers. What were their ways, how did they live. Was this a life they’d created for themselves, or was it gifted to them.

Peter, in his ire, would see this image as a symbol of, what—materialism, indulgence, luxury’s mouldering allure. In group Irradiations he and his adjuncts railed against immensities and treacheries, iniquitous legislators, the error of self-idolatry and malice at the expense of the whole. The mangling of mankind’s soul. Impurity, in its many forms. Despite his crazed predications, despite his lapses into hypocrisy, the accusations Peter trumpeted were, if not entirely true, not entirely wrong. Something had been lost in pursuit of flimsier, cheaper ways—in this hope of civilization. It was all there, if one only looked. But as she waited with phone to ear, what Zina really wanted most was to step through that glass and lounge on those sofas, to bathe in that electric warmth, to rest her legs.

Here, she thought, was what their book should really be about: the lies told to sustain a shared dream.

In the next booth, the man struck his briefcase against the dirty glass, grumbling to himself. He was portly, middle-aged, though the trilby cocked back on his head revealed a boyish hairline of bright-red curls. Rifling through his case’s contents, he looked up and caught Zina looking. He gave her a smile. Zina didn’t return it.

The operator came back on the line, reciting a long sequence of numbers of which Zina immediately lost track. Worry not, my dear, the operator said, I’ll connect you and save you a dime. You have a wonderful evening.

It happened, almost too smoothly. A ring, then a man answering: WPD, how may I direct you? Zina clumsily attempted to explain how she was seeking information on an incident upstate, in Herkimer County. A fire, a death. Is this a homicide case, the man asked flatly. Zina paused, then said yes. And who am I speaking with, the man said. I’m a journalist, Zina said, with the New York Times. There was a quick rustle, then the man said, If you’re with the Times, you already have the number you need. Otherwise, quit tying up this line, kid. With this, he disconnected.

She returned the phone to its lever. From the other booth, over the wind, came an odd chugging sound. Stepping back out onto the sidewalk, she realized the portly man was crying. His hat crumpled as he pressed his forehead against the booth’s dingy glass, his sobs a faltering motor: guh guh guh.

Can I help you? she tried.

The man seemed to not hear her. She made another attempt, asking if he needed assistance. He looked up, his expression anguished, his nose gushing.

Can you help me. Can you help me. No one can help me.

The crazed despondency in his eyes, that utter need—she’d seen this before. A man staring down a dark tunnel, one that led only back into himself. Powerless, pitiful, like a baby soiling its diaper. She backed off and started away. The man broke into renewed blubbers, but remained in the booth.

Help me, he screeched. Why can’t anybody help me.

Back inside the tavern, things had changed. The place was wilder, the atmosphere amplified, with some sort of performance under way: men now surrounded the table they’d occupied, looking up at Peter, standing on a chair. He had his yo-yo out, executing manoeuvres of firing it outward then upward, arcing over the men’s heads and almost colliding with the ceiling lights, then curling back on its axis to land in his palm. Each time he caught it, he cried out Centrifugal force! Divine phenomena! The men bellowed, raising their glasses. Seeing Zina watching, he saluted her, spilling beer on his shirt.

Centrifugal force, Morley. Thrusting at the heavens.

He sent the yo-yo flying again, prompting another round of yells. It was unclear exactly what was being cheered. Nothing, anything. Zina found a vacant seat in the corner, away from Peter’s performance. The wooing of these downcast men had lifted his spirits considerably—he was again a shepherd, given a flock. When he stepped back down to the floor and joined Zina, he seemed replenished.

Turns out we’re operating under faulty information, he said.

How do you mean?

Barkeep filled me in. I had my bearings all wrong. Our rendezvous’s actually at a steakhouse three blocks west of here. That’s where Alf’s going to be.

Then let’s go there and get this done.

So we shall. This night’s just getting started.

They went, through the cold. Even in his drunken gait Peter moved quickly, taking up the sidewalk’s breadth and openly contemning the few passersby they crossed. Zina wondered how Scotty would find them, but Peter dismissed her concern, spitting on the curb. They’d crossed two or three streets when he halted, teetering; he clearly had no idea where they were going. Nearby a man was exiting an office doorway, locking up. Zina approached him, asking if he knew the whereabouts of this steakhouse. The man looked Peter and her over warily, then pointed in the direction they were headed. Peter kept staring at the man as he proceeded to a parked automobile, started the ignition, and pulled away.

That boob was a federal operative, he said as they resumed walking.

The sign on the door said BARRISTERS AND SOLICITORS.

Bah. Bureaucracy. The cudgel they use to soften our skulls, just before they bash them in.

They soon arrived at a wide boulevard with a public square centred by a columned monument and an ornate cement fountain, presently dry. The steakhouse was on an opposite corner, marked by an unlit sign. Passing through its glass doors, they were hit with a wave of warmth and the aroma of grilling meat; Zina felt her digestion instantly somersault. A small man with a napkin folded over one shoulder, a maître d’hôtel, greeted them.

Here to meet someone, Peter told him. Mr. LoBianco.

Without a word, the man led them through a pair of swinging saloon doors, past banks of booths and a bar glittering with bottles, to the back of the restaurant and a large corner table. There, among wineglasses and sauce-stained plates and picked-over breadbaskets, was Alfonso LoBianco, enormous in a cream-coloured turtleneck sweater, his vast face loosely lineated by a Van Dyke beard, drooping deep in his seat. Flanking him were two women, both in evening dresses: one Slavic-pale and dour-faced, the other a shapely brunette in a loose-hanging dress, flopped back with her bare feet in LoBianco’s lap.

At Peter and Zina’s arrival, Alf crinkled his nose, sniffing out these unlikely arrivals.

Evening, Peter said. I’m your man from over east.

Ah, Alf said as he napkinned his fingers one by one. About time. Sit, sit.

Wine was poured; quick introductions were made. It was explained how the women, Jo-Beth and Millie, were counter ladies at a perfumery near here. Alf had wandered into the shop earlier that week—shopping for my ma, he confessed playfully—and charmed them enough to cajole them both to dinner.

He’s a real connected guy, Millie said, finishing her glass.

That’s why we’re here, Peter said.

Hearing this seemed to please Alf. We’ve already dined, he said. You were so late. But there’s some coquilles St. Jacques here we didn’t get to. Help yourself. This is the only place I’ll eat Atlantic shellfish. The owner’s a dear friend.

He shoved a plate forward. Peter made no move to partake, but Zina abandoned any pretense of restraint and seized a fork. The scallops slimed in gummous sauce brought unfamiliar, almost revolting, sensations, but the buttery creamy richness hit her like an intoxicant. Her understanding of restaurants was there was specific decorum, refined codes of behaviour to which one was meant to adhere. Yet Alf lolled in his seat like a satisfied emperor, his yawns unstifled, while the women steadily quaffed the wine. Multiple attendants arrived and departed in expeditious circuits, servicing their table and others, where diners sat with their noses in their roasts. Nowhere was the pageantry she’d expected of such a place. It was all very earthly.

Thought you’d be a little more buttoned-up, pastor, Alf said to Peter. Instead we have, what, a couple of Okies on a spree.

We live modestly by design, Peter said.

I hear you have some sort of fortress over there.

Fortress? That would be a mischaracterization. But we’ve made a nice home for ourselves, secluded from prying eyes. And I’m no pastor. My only countenance is the word by which I live.

You’re not going to try and convert me or nothing.

Hardly. Just here to discuss what we’re discussing. No more, no less.

Sure. Me, I’m a Catholic, but only when my father’s asking. I don’t give two hoots about all that Eucharist bamboozlement. I believe in living the good life and seeing where it takes you.

And you seem to have done well by it.

Millie leaned across Alf to pluck a scallop. Alf’s a big shot, she said. He was telling us how he made thirty thousand dollars on a parking lot. A darn parking lot.

It’s true, Alf said. There are things I can boast of. I’ve made this city my place. I operate, I make my way. I have interests. I’ve sat on the business council. I’m that type of man.

So I’m told, Peter said. An admirable man who’s made his mark.

Now, Alf said, talking to you in terms of morality, well. Have there been instances along the way where I was a little unsparing? Have there been individuals caught in various crossfires? Have there been occasions where I stepped over my fellow man? There have. This I admit. But as I see it, this is simply how a man finds his way of being free.

No one knows that more than me and my people. That’s why we make our home in the mountains, free like beasts.

Alf dabbed his mouth’s corners with a napkin. But a beast doesn’t know the difference between a nickel and its nuts. It only thinks in terms of stuffing its face. What I mean is the freedom to live in fullness and pleasure. And trust me, I live a pleasurable life. The spoils of victory and whatnot. But that on its own…that’s subhuman. Me, I seek an elevated life.

And you accomplish this through…

Mostly I do it by simply being better. I stand over all the ordinary mutts and I just laugh. Haw haw haw.

Jo-Beth edged closer to Zina. Ain’t you a little bunny, she said.

Zina, not knowing what to say to this, sopped up a puddle of butter with a wad of bread.

But I can see you’re vexed, Jo-Beth went on. So very vexed. It’s written all over you. But I’ll tell you, keep digging deeper into that tunnel, all you’ll get is a lot of dirt and a backache.

I’m perfectly fine, Zina said. Truly.

Across the table, Alf was swept up in his own momentum.

The man on the street, your average everyday mister so-and-so, he sees this world as all walls closing in. He’s just fighting for air. What he doesn’t realize is he built those walls himself. He’s a chump, chumping himself.

Yes, Peter said, and when he understands what he’s truly up against…

A chump. He’s a prisoner inside himself. But me, I’m one hundred percent out there, making all those others look silly. You have to be the smarter man. The tougher man. The sturdier man. I’m the man and they’re the mutts.

Alf leaned forward, over the table. Zina watched as his sleeve slid through the scallop cream.

Listen, he said. I’ve made love to many women. All sizes and all pigments. Many women.

Beside him, Millie snickered.

And I’ll tell you, Alf said, most men…women pity them. It’s true. The female looks down on the male. Piteously. It’s just in their nature. But no woman ever looked at me with pity. And none ever will.

Maybe we should get to matters of business, Peter said.

Alf slouched back in his seat again, sipping his wine. You’re right. Why this rigmarole. Let’s get on to our thing.

He cast an eye at the women, landing on Zina.

How about a little privacy. I’ll order a couple bowls of chocolate mousse for the girls at another table.

Hey, Millie objected. What are we, second-class citizens?

Jo-Beth turned to Zina, now skimming the plate’s last driblets of sauce with a fork. You know what? Why don’t you come with me. We’ll go see the spaewife.

Zina licked her fork clean. Pardon me.

Jo-Beth was growing excited. Oh, this’ll be nifty. She’s just a quick scamper from here. Trust me, you’ll find it very interesting. Last time I visited her, I learned so much. All sorts of terrible things. It’s all in the wax, the thing she does. I get chills just thinking about it. We’ll skip over there now while the men do their business. She’ll get you unvexed.

Lovely, Alf said. You go do that.

Zina looked to Peter. I’ve come with you all this way, just to be discarded?

Peter rolled his eyes, smiling at Alf.

Oh, calm down, Morley. Go with little miss honey bird there and we’ll meet up back at the hotel in a spell. Don’t be such a brat. Think outside yourself for once.

She was as lost here, in Watertown by night, as in the roughest wilderness. Jo-Beth dragged her by the arm, plowing their way through the whipping snow as her detailed chatter—a day’s grind as a junior saleslady on Factory Street, the men who came in to flirt but never took anything serious—went mostly lost in the wind. Zina knew she’d be better off detaching herself from this person, this entire situation. But she had nowhere else to go, and so allowed herself to be led. They passed rows of darkened offices, consignment shops, a shopping arcade’s entrance, arriving at an unmarked glassless door next to a laundromat. The door was unlocked, and Jo-Beth entered without hesitation. A steep flight of carpeted stairs led to a second storey and another door, marked by a handwritten sign: MISS VANESSA IS HERE.

Don’t say anything too cute, Jo-Beth told Zina. Take it serious.

She knocked, then the door opened to a tiny woman dressed in a knee-length suede tunic, with black hair flowing past her shoulders. This was the spaewife. Jo-Beth executed a swift curtsy and asked, her voice now hushed, if she might have time for a reading or two.

Miss Vanessa looked them both over.

Always.

The room Miss Vanessa ushered them into was dimly lit, sparingly furnished, aromatic with woody perfumes. A woven tapestry almost entirely covered one wall, depicting a train of camels crossing golden dunes, a black blotch as the setting sun. Centring this space was a metal card table placed with four matching folding chairs. On the table lay a wooden box, scuffed and scratched, its hinges rusty. Miss Vanessa directed them to sit as she circled the room, pumping tufts of mist from a glass bottle, issuing more of that arboreal scent into the air. Zina flinched as moisture fell on her neck’s nape, but she didn’t wipe it away.

The energies can be enhanced by a monetary offering, Miss Vanessa said. Great or small. All of course optional.

Zina saw this as a dead end, but Jo-Beth reached in her purse and fished out a five-dollar bill. Just got paid, she said, placing it on the table.

Lovely, Miss Vanessa said, tucking the money into her sleeve. You’ve been to see me before, correct me.

Jo-Beth fidgeted in her seat, her hands twined in her lap. Yes I have. You told me I’d meet a man who’d sweep me off my feet. And you were right. Or close, I suppose. Things never turn out how you think. Oh, the affairs I’ve had. I was a lucky girl. Then, not so lucky. It all seems like a dream now.

Zina began to suspect Jo-Beth might be somewhat deranged. Miss Vanessa took a seat in the chair between them, resting the spray bottle on the table. A preparative breath, then she opened the box’s lid. From inside she produced a wide-mouthed brass bowl and a box of matches, set these on the table, then three paraffin candles of an ivory hue. She looked to Jo-Beth, then to Zina.

Which of you will we be…

Do her first, Jo-Beth said. Best for last.

Miss Vanessa turned to Zina. Her probing eyes found a point somewhere below her chin, toward the pit of her throat. You’re familiar with the ceromantic arts?

Zina shook her head.

The process is simple, Miss Vanessa said. But what it can reveal…is not.

She unscrewed the pump from the spray bottle and poured its remaining liquid into the bowl, then set the bottle on the floor. She stationed the three candles around the bowl at nine, twelve, and three o’clock, then struck a match and lit each wick, pausing between with measured breaths. Once all were lit, she blew out the match, let the smoke curl, then dropped it on the floor.

Now we wait, she said. And watch.

They watched. The candles burned. A dull mechanical chug from the laundromat below resonated through the floorboards.

The three flames began to tremble with the slightest of flickers, the wax glistening as it softened. A new scent arose, a trace of eucalyptus, burned plastic. Zina felt the weight of the women’s expectation, her own expectation, for something to happen. And, after an uncertain duration, came a change: the centre candle’s melt seemed to accelerate, its wax’s peak curling and deliquescing into three distinct folds, these formations congealing and shrivelling like soggy leaves.

At this, Miss Vanessa seemed pleased. She took the candle between her thumb and index and held it above the bowl, turning it sideways, dangling it above the water.

Wax and soot tell the story, she said, but the water is the voice. Elements conspire.

A large daub of wax collected at the tip of one of the leaflike curls, bulbing there, then dropped into the bowl with a distinct bloop. Miss Vanessa lifted the bowl and gave it a swirl, allowing more drops to fall. Finally she set the candle back at its twelve o’clock position and slid the bowl over for Zina to see. The yolks of paraffin pulsated then dispersed, turning the waxy water opaque.

There’s the appearance of randomness, Miss Vanessa said, but the formation serves the fates.

In the twisting light, Zina saw just how young Vanessa was, not much older than herself.

Now the shapes speak to us, Miss Vanessa said.

The first blobs had separated into fleshy annular tendrils, restless in the water, vortices within vortices. The spaewife read their message.

I see signs of chaos, she said. Days of strife ahead. Danger out of uncertainty.

Peter: Sin is confusion.

There is a passageway, Miss Vanessa said. A long, impossibly long passageway. And at its end, a door. There are hints of light beyond, but what’s really there is unknown. Only the door, and it’s waiting for you.

Zina stared into the wax. All she saw was rounded blobs undulating. But she didn’t want the spaewife to think her dim, so she remained quiet.

You push forward, trying to reach the door, yearning to find what waits on the other side. And yet it remains out of your reach. Still, you keep trying. Eventually, eventually, you arrive at that door. But when you get there you realize that once you enter, you’ll leave behind any connection to what was before. The passageway is your life before, and once you go through, all that is over. But you don’t care. You push it open and you pass through.

Wow, Jo-Beth said.

The door closes behind you. You’re left to face the other side alone. And then you realize that light on the other side, it isn’t a light at all.

My sister, Zina said. Do you see her?

I don’t see anything of a sister. The point is, it’s only you. Solitary, isolated.

But how…is there something I’m intended to do?

The wax works its own way. We only observe its direction. The details are never clear, but they bear truth. In your heart, you know.

How does one become this way, Zina thought. How do you learn to trust your own sight.

I don’t think I do.

Search deeply.

We can change the future, Jo-Beth said. That’s what you told me last time. Everything can be changed. And when we really understand that, in terms of foresight, we’ll know how to be what we really are.

Miss Vanessa leaned back in her seat. The strands of pallid wax continued turning in the water, generating contingencies, divining fragmented tomorrows. She frowned and wiped her nose with her palm.

That doesn’t sound like something I would say.

Lying in the supplies shed’s back closet, in the lingering moments afterward, half-clothed and heaving, Ignatius had sworn he’d protect her against anything. He made these avowals, driven by some need of his own—to restore command, perhaps, after the dropping of his shield. During the act, and in the anticipatory moments before, she found within herself a pleasing absence: eyes closed, she existed only as a conglomeration of nerves, extending and receiving. The insolent child inside her was silenced, if only temporarily, ceding to another self still forming. Jo-Beth: I was a lucky girl. Then, not so lucky. As Ignatius’s weight pressed upon her, a transformation occurred that had nothing to do with him. He was muscular and quick, topfull with energy. But he was ruled by sentiment, with no understanding of what power was and what it could do. And so she couldn’t take seriously his attestations of protection, and she quickly grew irritated by him. Protection wasn’t what she needed. Her transformations exposed a want for more than any man’s embrace.

And in Albany, in Watertown, in the cities’ shabby corners, she was seeing what odds lay against her.

She sat in the hotel doorway, watching snow steadily build on the street. She shook herself; she’d been drowsing again. The hour was late. The hotel’s entrance was still locked, no light inside, no sign of the desk clerk. Jo-Beth was gone, having hopped a late bus back to her mother’s house in Le Ray, annoyed by Miss Vanessa’s unenthused reading and an offhand prescription for patience and propriety. Zina had declined the half-hearted offer of her mother’s pullout for the night. But returning to the steakhouse, she’d found it empty, the wait staff wiping tables. So she’d come here, hoping Peter or Scotty might be waiting for her. They weren’t.

Zina once again rattled the glass door, again to no avail. In frustration, she scooped wet snow from the gutter and pitched it at the door. Nothing stirred within.

Alf LoBianco would say: she was a chump, chumping herself.

Back at the tavern, she found the same dismal scene as before. Most of the men had cleared out, leaving only the most determined drinkers to their cups. Her entry attracted no notice. The barkeep was slouched over a book, nodding off; when she requested use of the facilities he stroked his moustache, assessing this, then pointed her to a corner door. The bathroom was a single stall, equipped with a porcelain toilet and rusty washbasin. After using the toilet, she ran water and splashed her face. The grimy mirror was imprinted with the image of a rosy-cheeked woman in a floppy hat, alighted in the curve of a crescent moon, ornate text beaming MILLER HIGH LIFE THE CHAMPAGNE OF BEERS. Zina looked past this to her own dripping visage, still pink from the cold. On her chin’s peak the insurgency of a fresh pimple throbbed beneath the skin. She pressed it with a finger: the pain was dull and satisfying.

Returning to the bar, she asked the barkeep if he’d mind if she stayed there for a spell, just in case. He closed his book, a hardcover titled Pal Joey, then went to an icebox under the counter and slid her a bottle of 7-Up.

Not the first time I had a kid sit there waiting on a deadbeat dad.

She sipped from the bottle in silence. With sleepiness again came bothersome thoughts, doubts. Old images, and the improbability of squaring the present with the past. Memories turned to memories. With each return, distrust slithered in.

There had been times at the farm when comfort and security seemed in reach. A midday outing, at spring’s advent following a tough winter, with the fields glistening in melt and the meadows alive with blackbirds and woodcocks, parading as a family to the brook that wound past their property’s eastern periphery. There they picnicked on salt-risen bread and barely ripe peaches from their small orchard, exultant with seasons’ renewal. As Presendia dipped her feet in the frigid water, bristling at its bite, Zina looked to Orson and Eliza together on the bank, he with one arm around her shoulders, her face raised, welcoming the coruscations of sunlight breaking through branches above. In this they were together, unbound, on land handed down to them. And, if only for a moment, glad for it all. That moment was real; it had happened. Unless the mountains had driven her insane too.

I become a transparent eyeball. The voice grumbled in her ear. A hand fell upon her shoulder. The stink of liquor on him was even stronger than usual. His face burned burgundy bright. Zina shook away his hand.

Emerson, he said. Eminently quotable. Eternally true. The currents of the infinite circulate through me.

I knew you’d come back here.

Where else would I go?

What if I’d been…

Christ, Morley. I’d never leave you high and dry. You’re my chargé d’affaires. You’re the steady hand in the storm.

Peter waved the bartender over and requested a glass of rye. The bartender looked dubious as Peter thanked him with a salute.

The fine people of this city, Peter said. Upright people, hard workers, like our barkeep here. They know what’s going on. Solid American virtue. Right, Chuckles?

The barkeep set a glass before him.

Have one with Morley and me, Peter said to him. One for her and one for you.

I can’t serve her. Not even sure I should be serving you.

Oh, loosen up. We’re not here to drag you down to our depths. You’ll be fine. You can go back home and eat your liver loaf like an archduke. Like you’re Roy fucking Campanella.

All right, mister.

Peter grinned and drank half his drink. Pardon me, Chuckles. I’m in a state tonight. Been bargaining with devils.

Your old man has a way with words, the bartender said to Zina.

Or words have their way with him.

Yes: Peter was in a bother, hoisting himself up and against the bar, expanding his reach to the rest of the bar and its patrons.

The blessed people of Watertown. You lucifugous goblins. The wonderful pulp. The Almighty extols you and your assembly lines. You motherfuckers.

Peter, Zina pleaded.

From across the room, someone barked: Shut your mouth.

If only I could. If only. But I’m at war. We’re all at war. Not just against the Chinese. At war against our fathers. You all hear me. We’re here to slay our fathers.

The bartender squared himself in front of Peter and slid away his glass. All right, fella. The time has come.

It has. It has. And I am the host of our reckoning. The archangel Samael. I am a transparent eyeball.

Zina took Peter by the hand, pulling him away from his seat and toward the door. To the gaping drunks looking on, he jutted his chin and snarled. Once outside, he started down the block in the wrong direction, inattentive to Zina’s presence. She’d never seen him like this before, so twisted, so afflicted beyond just the drink: zigzagging and angered, slipping in the snow, his shirt untucked and his coat open. In a ditch, he muttered, looking to the skies as if expecting something to descend. In a ditch.

At the hotel they found the entrance still dark. Peter shook the locked door by its handle, peering into the empty foyer. Zina pleaded for him to just use the key and let them in. He looked at her as if she’d just torn the sleeves off his shirt.

Key, he cried. What the goddamn. Scotty has the key.

And who knew where he was now.

A delivery truck charged past and around the corner, a mammoth roaming uninhabitable tundra. Zina envied those powers, just to move, to go. Like Henry Liversedge, hitching southbound to the border, disdainful and determined. Or even Jo-Beth, scurrying onto a city bus back home. She recalled the maps she’d studied, the New Haven Railroad etching its course across the state, infinite coordinates to follow. Any would have been better than this. If only she could just go, now, be rid of her sector’s demands and leave this drunkard to stumble in the snow.

But always, there was Presendia, asking When will we go back?

There was also something else: something calling out, faint through the icebound forest. That call of ambition and defiance, and with it, the suspicion that, despite all the gibberish and mania, something greater was astir, drawing her into its current. A way into the future.

Shattering glass disrupted the street’s quiet. She wheeled around to see Peter hammering the door with a hunk of metal, a sewer grate he’d extracted from the gutter. Thrashing and cursing, he’d already dislodged the handle from its socket and severed the glass lengthwise. The sharp clangs reverberated down the street. No one appeared to be in earshot, but the city’s intricacies hid many things—anyone might be watching.

Zina went for Peter’s arm, in hopes of defusing his rage. But he shoved her aside, consumed only with the door. It was unclear whether his goal was to transcend this barrier or to eradicate it.

Then he lurched backward, braying in outrage. Blackish fluid coated his head, flattening his hair, flowing down his chest. Zina smelled a mephitic reek.

From above, a voice: Scram, you vermin.

The hotel clerk leaned out a second-storey window, brandishing a large coffee can dripping water thick with ashes. As Peter spat and cursed, wiping the noxious matter from his face, Zina pleaded for their entrance, apologetic, trying to explain, but there was nothing explainable in this. The clerk, uninterested in her pleas, reiterated his threats. The cops know me around here, he said, they know I’m serious.

Peter renewed his attacks, walloping the door with his boot. The glass flexed but didn’t give way, and he rebounded back and down to the slushy sidewalk.

You’ve got four seconds to beat it, the clerk shouted down. I’m not fooling. And I’ve got a full fireplace.

Please, Zina said.

Three.

There was nothing to do. Peter could raise a fist, catapult holy curses and swear retribution, but his powers were nothing against these thwarting odds, against respectability, against the fetid water dribbling from his face. Their only move was to retreat into the night.

Two city parking tickets were stuffed under the windshield wipers’ blades, poking out from an accreting band of snow. Zina, huddled in the front passenger’s seat, stared at these vindictive slips, wondering who would pay the charges, and how; it seemed like something someone should take care of. This was the world of Orson’s nightmares, a world of regulations and penalties, jurisdictional subjugation. The smallness of it. You can’t just be where you are—you must be where, and as, you are expected to be.

Peter reclined in the back seat, smoking. He’d removed his sopping, ruined shirt and wrapped himself in a fusty wool blanket that had been lining the car’s trunk. Again, Zina asked the questions that needed to be asked. Why were they there. Who was Alf. What was he.

Alfonso LoBianco is…he’s a man of means, Peter said. He exists fully in this world. He takes the thing in his hand and squeezes. Truth can come tough for the keen-witted of us, you know. We struggle and we fight like bitches to try and reach the core. But sometimes only the dull can discern the fine edges.

Why must you transact with him?

Peter sighed and crushed his cigarette on his heel. I don’t exactly enjoy participating in this foulness. But concessions have to be made. Otherwise our people won’t survive. It’s business. It’s commerce.

But what are we selling? Or buying.

We’ve been forced to make something of what we have. And all we have is our people. And those blenders in the trunk.

She pulled her coat around her, drawing her arms in from the sleeves. The car was parked where they’d left it, on the street a block down from the tavern, under a street lamp’s jaundiced light. Thankfully, Peter had accidentally left the passenger’s side door unlocked. So they were in, but had no radio, no heater, no movement.

I’ll tell you something, Peter said. He sat forward and leaned over the driver’s seat, looking ahead to the snow, the street. You have to be hard, Morley. You have to, because this world comes at you hard. You have to be prepared to defy, and to act defiantly. You have to be unafraid to take measures that would make most folks piss themselves. Even if that means stomping on those who stand in your way.

And that’s what you did to Clint Auld.

A pause.

Never heard tell of him.

You know what I mean. Those cheques.

What are you doing, coming at me like this?

If you feel your conscience is clear, I won’t dispute it. But the question has to be asked.

What the hell does that mean. Who the hell do you think you are?

Who do you think I am? You seem to know so much about me.

I know you’re better than this.

Better than what, precisely? You keep telling me, dispel artifice, overcome indoctrination. You say forge ahead boldly. But when I ask for the truth, you dismiss me like a pest.

You want to know why I say those things? Because you possess strength. Look at all these men. Wally Ray. Alfonso LoBianco. All those richlings playing tennis at their resorts up on Raquette Lake. These aren’t men who trade in truth and wonder. They’ve got scads of cash, but their authority is cardboard. It’s all luck. But you and me, we exist beyond that. We possess incredible powers. And we’ll alter the course of history, if we can just keep our goddamned heads above water. You know it. You knew it when you burned that bastard father of yours down. That’s when you became you.

He inhaled, suppressing a belch. They sat there, cocooned in an increasing encasement of snow. Zina pressed a thumb against the pimple on her chin, feeling its ache. She was very tired.

I need allies, Peter said. True allies. And you…

His voice breaking now.

…I trust you. Not any of these other cretins. They whisper behind my back.

And what do they say?

A long pause. She thought he might have passed out.

I know I’m set to fail, he finally said. I know that. I know. But this is all I can do. The earth turns, and most of them out there are barely hanging on. But some of us are cranking the motor. That’s why I need you.

Hm.

Her eyes fell shut. She felt sleep’s pull, like Ariadne becalmed by Hypnos’s Lethean waters.

One prophet looks out at a sandstorm and calls it the end of all things, Peter said. Another calls it the beginning.

The shape of the universe, she said. I’ve seen it.

I know, Morley.

Something banged on the car’s hood. Zina sat up. Scotty appeared at the driver’s side window, looking a wet mess. He climbed in, shaking snow from his coat, asking what was going on. Zina offered a cursory explanation: the steakhouse, the tavern, the hotel, the ashes.

Let’s get the bejeezus out of here, Scotty said. I’m froze. Should’ve worn my coonskin.

Keys, Zina said. You have them.

No, you guys do.

He and Zina both turned and looked to the back seat. Peter lay with legs curled, a forearm drawn across his face. His breath was heavy, trickling with snores.

Zina again closed her eyes. She wished for her straw mat bed, the stove’s warmth, the oscillation of Presendia’s breath. Those lullabies of bygone seasons swam through her memory—lines as familiar as her own name, but sung in a voice, soft and steady, she recognized but no longer knew. Murmurs, murmurs on the seashore; sleep child, there’s nothing here.

In morning’s exacting light all was an icy crust. The Buick’s doors had frozen shut; it took the full force of Scotty’s weight, pushing with his legs as Zina worked the handle, to unseal the driver’s side. The ice’s crack woke Peter. He crawled out from the back seat to launch himself onto the sidewalk, gauged his snowy surroundings, then vomited onto a fire hydrant. Scotty and Zina stood back as he spat and dug in his pockets. Along with his rumpled cigarette pack and lighter, he produced the ring bearing the Buick’s keys. He held it up to the sunlight, squinting, as if utterly mystified by this jangling metal artifact, then tossed it at Scotty’s feet and started down the block. Scotty picked up the keys and followed. Zina did the same. Nothing of it was said.

They found a diner off the public square and took a table at the rear. Around them humans performed human rituals: office girls knifing grapefruit wedges and bacon, men in neckties wolfing down waffles, cabbies swigging black coffee. A line cook pounded a bell, announcing plates for pickup. No one paid the three of them, shivering and grubby, particular notice. When a waitress came with tumblers of tap water and asked to take their orders, it was with dismissive brusqueness. Scotty ordered the breakfast special. Zina echoed his order. Peter requested only coffee.

Scotty for his part was forlorn. When Zina asked what happened with his haircut, he sighed. No haircut. He’d stopped in a pool hall, where he’d met a girl. A nice, fair-haired little thing, he said. She and her friends had taken him in their car to another place, somewhere east across town—a party, she’d told him, with some interesting friends. But there was no party, just a dumpy-looking rowhouse and her two brothers, fidgety polacks with fancy hair as Scotty described them, playing cribbage and smoking marijuana. The girl then wanted seven dollars for something. An ugly situation transpired, a standoff and some heated negotiations. He didn’t really want to talk about it. He’d spent his last few dimes on a city bus back across town. Now he was tapped out.

Then how do you expect to pay for your chow? Peter grumbled.

Zina drank her water. Looking around the bustling diner, she realized just how careless she’d been, interacting with too many people, opening herself to potential inquisitions. It would only take one meddlesome secretary or bartender to place a phone call and she and Presendia would be in the clutches of the state judicial system. And then everything, what little they had, would be scrapped.

A young man entered the diner, alone. Rosy-cheeked and tidy in a duffle coat and tie, he sauntered past the counter and tables, smiling broadly, touching surfaces, taking it all in. Seeing him, the waitress behind the counter cringed, but said, Morning, Hap. Hope you’re playing nice today.

He seemed to not hear her, that smile unfaltering and his head cocked, as if tuned to some interior bandwidth. Continuing to the counter, he slid closely past each diner there in turn, eliciting glares of irritation and confusion, arriving on a man at the end, bent over a newspaper with a plate of toast. The man sat unaware as the younger, this Hap, leaned on the counter, facing him. A few seconds passed, then Hap leaned in.

Milk and honey.

The man looked up from his paper.

Louder: milk and honey.

Hap reached across the man and took his glass of milk. The man shouted in objection; heads turned. Hap held the glass aloft, flashing it like a sceptre, intoning: milk and honey milk and honey. The man demanded the glass’s return, but Hap nimbly darted away, weaving through adjacent tables. He swung the glass in an arc, slopping milk on a table and the heads of the diners seated there. The waitress clapped her hands, shouting at him to cut it out. This only riled him more: milk and honey.

Zina and the men watched all this. Scotty shook his head. Jeez, he said, you get some real characters.

Zina looked to Peter. Motionless, coffee cup at his lips, greyish pouches weighing his eyelids. His hair needed a comb. But he was taking in what was occurring with sharp intent. Hap had now swiped another diner’s glass, tomato juice, and was clacking the two together, slopping fluid. The entire restaurant watched, but no one moved—all were background players to this performance, coordinated in sleepy inaction. Even the waitress refrained from intervening as Hap whirled freely up and down the aisle. Milk and honey, milk and honey.

When Hap passed their table, Peter leapt up and blocked his way. He placed a hand on Hap’s shoulder, squaring him in place, looking him in the eyes. Hap immediately ceased his gesticulations. Peter leaned close and said something to him, too quietly to be overheard. Hap nodded. His arms dropped; that manic smile downshifted. His entire disposition was altered, ceding to Peter’s onset. When the waitress stepped in and removed the glasses from Hap’s hands, he didn’t notice. His surrender was total.

With this ado quashed, the restaurant and its patrons resettled into their patterns. Zina watched as Peter guided Hap away, back into a corner alcove, his hand fixed on one shoulder, still speaking in that lowered tone. The two men faced one another, locked together in something like intimacy. Zina slid out from her seat to observe more closely. Peter’s voice, as always, cut through the surrounding din.

Look past all of this, he was saying to Hap. Look and see. You see across distance, past dimensions. Across oceans, to the other side of the world. You see a settlement along the eastern shore of Lake Khanka, in China, Heilongjiang province. You see the swamps, the shallow waters thick with sagittaria, toads leaping through the mud. You see the workers in the rice paddies. Do you see them.

Yes, Hap said.

You see a man standing in the centre of a field. He’s leaning against his harrow, staring into the sky. He’s trying to remember his only son, cut down in combat years before, when the Soviets invaded Manchuria. He knows his son’s name, and recounts the mournful days following his death. But he no longer feels his son’s presence. He feels not even the absence. Days have stretched to years, and as the peace of their province has again and again been unsettled, any sense of order to it all is lost. The ghosts have fled. Do you see this.

Yes.

At day’s end, the workers return to their homes to eat and drink with their families, to rest their backs. The melancholy man returns to his wife. As the moon rises, they make love in silence. After, they lie together and dream a shared dream. They dream of things beyond shape or form. They dream of lightning pulverizing the hills. They dream of vengeful spirits unhindered by nature’s chains. They dream of monstrous shadows, crawling up from the lake to despoil the earth. Do you see these things.

Hap, barely: Yes.

The lake is absence. The fields are the spoils of desire. The shadows are the future. You see.

Uh.

This…this is everything of man. The blasphemy. The imminent collapse. The penance. You see.

I see.

Peter turned from Hap to the room, the people at their tables, the grease-gleaming lunches, the Formica and plastic, the bleak winter day outside. He raised an arm in a sweeping gesture, waving to it all, as if ushering Hap into a luxury suite.

This is the dream, he said. We are their shared dream. And now you see.

Hap nodded, slowly and certainly: he saw. Gone was his frothing; forgotten was the milk and honey. He looked down at his hands, withdrawing into something—re-evaluation, ventilation. Peter whispered into his ear, and Hap again nodded, then marched to the door and went back out into the cold.

Zina returned to the table. Their breakfast specials had arrived. Scotty was hunched over his plate, wolfing down eggs doused in ketchup. She found a fork and warily prodded her own food. The bacon was gristly and undercooked, the eggs an ichorous paste. But her hunger couldn’t be resisted; raw need overpowered any disinclination. In minutes she’d cleaned her plate.

Zina drove while Peter and Scotty dozed in the back seat. The city now hours behind them, the landscape rolling by once again became raw and essential. Here was the kingdom in all its splendour: acres of untouched snow, mile-long tracts of brush like sinews of cartilage, a mid-afternoon sky emptier than empty. Not a person in sight, no tractor or billboard as marker of human intrusion. Territory ready for the descent of the great and good Cautantowwit and the beginning of a grand upheaval.

Other than a few occasions steering Orson’s truck along back roads under his close watch, this was the first time she’d driven. The road taunted, the Buick lurched and bucked, and her forearms hurt as she clenched the wheel. She underworked the brake through a few dicey turns, but otherwise maintained control. The kinetic energy, the might of great speed, was at her command.

They were about an hour from Tenskwatawa when Peter sat up. He snorted and yawned, squinting out through the windshield.

Swing left next chance you get. North.

We’re almost back.

Do as I say.

About half a mile farther along, signs announced a turnoff onto Route 30 northbound. From the back seat, Peter directed: Take this, keep going, just a couple of miles. This one-lane road led uphill alongside rolling moraines and cirques, high peaks on the horizon. Here too they met no traffic, until a truck came flying around a bend, its bed stacked high with steel pipes, bullying them to the road’s shoulder. Zina hit the brake hard and they skidded to a stop. Peter swore as the truck passed, clattering and sputtering. Collecting herself, Zina started again. Scotty slumbered on.

The road’s delineation soon gave way to a parcel of unlevel earth overlooking a steep drop-off. Peter told Zina to pull over, then leapt from the car. She turned down the engine and followed. The acre-wide ravine below was a patchwork of snow and gravel and blacktop, cordoned by trucks like the one they’d just passed. Machinery and materials littered the excavated land: a dump truck with its hinged bed at a tilt, a tiller-like contraption with long arms raking the black gunk. A dozen or so men in bulky coveralls and gloves patrolled the plot, wiping faces with towels and drinking from Thermoses. Several lined up at a table, taking turns signing a ledger under the watch of a foreman, seated and puffing a pipe. The air was heavy with a tarry reek.

This, Zina knew, was another extension of the highway project. Soon the entire northeast would be connected, or connectable. One could never get lost out here again.

Beholding the site from the cliff’s vantage, Peter raised his arms, reaching.

Here it is, he said. This is how they commodify the earth. They find this precious gift, bestowed from the Almighty to his children, and they sodomize it with their tractors. Now that’s arrogance.

Scotty exited the car and came to join them, rubbing his eyes. He and Zina watched as Peter stepped forward, closer to the cliff ’s edge.

We’ve been sitting still too long, Peter said to them.

He turned back to the site below, the men. Say, he shouted, you there.

His voice reverberated across the ravine. Heads turned, the foreman’s included. Peter began unbuckling his belt, that same ornate brass buckle: BLESS THE USA.

This doesn’t belong to you, he shouted out at them, you thieving bitches. None of this belongs to you.

He swept aside his shirttails and let his pants drop to his ankles. The workers below watched as he placed his hands on his hips, letting his large uncircumcised penis dangle before him. He cackled loudly, this his pronouncement, as the piss came streaming, running down the crest and trickling into the snowy ravine.

It belongs to me.

The book will be a whispered oath before the trumpets blare. A great war looms, a clash between civilization’s opposing factions, and the territorial skirmishes of this century are only prologue to what awaits. On one side are agents of the machine, the generals and tacticians, the beaked bureaucrats of the United Nations Security Council, the caballers sipping martinis among the clouds in their DC-4s, whose most potent weapons, deadlier even than the atom bomb, are the beguilements of the modern age. They dazzle us with speed, with the enormity of their enterprise. They mollify us with Pepsi-Cola jingles and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer fantasies. They neuter us with confusion, convincing us the sheer force of their spectacle justifies the slaughter. They know nothing of righteousness, yet assure us their aims are celestially authorized. And so they transfer the weight of their sins onto our shoulders.

On the countering side are the overlooked, the emaciated, the unwelcome. The miner, the wrangler, the infantryman. The thousands promised great marvels, yet who lie awake in their beds in terror of what lies ahead. They see the true matter of this world disappearing, the ruggedness of nature, fundamental processes of cause and effect, the solidity of labour into output, and it makes them fearful. This fear only lends the enemy power, for in a land of tyrants, chaos holds clout. Man is pitted against man in mistrust, subterfuge, esotericism. Reality goes warped, perverted by vast laboratories of bespectacled operatives, cadres of wheedling technologists. All becomes mist, evaporating off the oceans—but even these cycles will end. The troposphere will be gone. The sun, gone. The only light remaining will be a neon sign selling Schlitz beer. This is how they defeat us.

But there is hope. If we are bold, and true in our boldness, we can reclaim this world by shearing away these veils. Honour, clarity of purpose. Sin is confusion. Truth will be ours.

Read on, line by line. Take the shepherd’s hand and be led.

Presendia was losing weight. In the continuance of their shared days, Zina hadn’t noticed the gradual change. But returning after just a couple of days away, she saw afresh her sister’s emaciation, her twig-frail arms, chapped lips, unfocusing eyes. They sat together in the warmth of the Waddertons’ stove as Presendia showed Zina her latest drawings. Using wedges of chalk from Thomas’s supplies, she’d filled a slim ledger of graph paper with scenes of the compound: the hills, the forest, this shack she’d begun to consider a home. Presendia was not a gifted artist; the depictions were crude, barely recognizable as anything. But as Zina flipped through the pages, she was struck by the simple outlines, the bands of grey and green, the mountains’ range a jagged slash of black across a sky of blue, the lake woven with furrows like lines composed in some arcane script. And populating these zones, humanoid splotches of impossible proportions, nonsensical angles, all faceless. The world, seen through Presendia’s eyes, was desolate and severe and unreal. Zina asked if there were any more drawings.

No, Presendia said. This is all I will do.

Presendia turned over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Her tiny torso rose and fell with quick breath.

Are you sick? Zina asked.

No.

But something’s bothering you.

Presendia shivered.

Tell me, puppy.

You’ll scold.

I won’t. If there’s trouble, I need to know.

Not trouble.

Just tell me.

Presendia sat back up, keeping her eyes on the wood-slat ceiling. This morning, she said, she’d been here, waiting for Hannah so they could begin the day’s tasks. But Hannah hadn’t arrived. I looked all over, Presendia said, but didn’t see her anywhere, so I went over to the shed. The supplies shed? Zina said. Yes, Presendia said, and that lady Gwendolyn was there. She was worried and looked like she needed someone.

She’s worried, Zina said, because she’s heading to the city tomorrow to work, that’s why. But that’s not a concern of yours.

No, Presendia said, not that. She was worried because she saw men in the woods.

Men, Zina repeated. She saw men?

Yes, Presendia said, and then we went up there to see.

Where, Zina asked.

Down around the other side of the lake, Presendia said, over past where the logs are, we followed a trail.

I know that trail, Zina said, with the markers. Any men Gwendolyn saw are just hunters. Sometimes they stray beyond where they’re permitted. Just give them a wide berth and you’ll be fine.

No, Presendia said, they weren’t hunters. We went down the path where Gwendolyn saw them. She was afraid, but we went. Then we came to a space with rocks and the hill.

The gully, Zina said, there’s a dry gully up there.

Gully, Presendia repeated, trying out this word. We stopped there on the side of the gully and looked across. Over there were two men and a dog. You know the kind of dog that looks like a wave in the ocean, it was that kind of dog.

What were the men doing? Zina asked. They were just standing there, Presendia said, and we were just standing there. Gwendolyn was still afraid. But we waved to them, and they waved back. Then I saw who it was. It was father.

What do you mean, Zina said, whose father?

My father, Presendia said, our father.

No, Zina said, it wasn’t.

But it was, Presendia said. It really was. He waved to me across the gully. Then he and the other man turned around and left. The dog too.

It wasn’t him, Zina said. It could have been someone who looked like him, but it wasn’t him. He’s gone. You understand that, don’t you?

Presendia rose and went to the washbasin, where a pot and ladle sat soaking. Then it was a ghost, she said. Father’s ghost.

Stop this. I know you wish it was him. Maybe so badly, your imagination got the better of you. But you know what’s real, and you know what’s true. You understand.

Presendia prodded the ladle, tapping its handle against the basin’s tin.

You understand, Zina said again. A demand, not a question. Presendia’s fingers closed around the copper, pinching it tight.

I understand, she said. I do.

That evening an easterly squall swept the compound, cycling down from the mountains, rolling like a klaxon’s bleat. All had been called to a Communion, though the occasion came without any sense of celebration. Winds jostled the tent, amplifying the portentous air as the settlers convened over carafes of weak tea and dry sugared bread. They moved slowly, de-animated in the collective daze.

As she led Presendia inside, Zina noticed the presence of settlers she rarely encountered these days. Gwozdz, Gannon, Raknes. The McCollums, others. It was clear how their numbers had thinned. The winter had taken a great toll, fracturing what former unity they had and sapping their vigour, with each day a fight for the next. But there was something else, hinting at even deeper desperation. It was there in the settlers’ wilted carriages, in their hollowed cheeks, in the way they evaded one another’s eyes in passing. Something of suspicion, Zina thought, or blame.

They found seats on a bench beside Nadia, the principal primary. Nadia held a scarf of what looked like rabbit fur in her lap, stroking it repeatedly, mechanically.

That’s pretty, Presendia said. May I have a feel?

No, Nadia said, and please don’t ask again.

No one seemed to know who’d called this assembly, or for what purpose. Near the tent’s front, Thomas stood with arms folded, Hannah at his side. Both appeared disquieted—not uncharacteristic, but tonight that unease was even more pronounced. Close by, Orville Bowne leaned on his cane, surveying the gathering. Bowne: he was everywhere, always, a furtive presence shadowing all goings-on. What his particular role in this Communion might be, though, was unclear.

Myxomatosis, Presendia said to Nadia, still admiring the scarf. That’s how rabbits die.

Nadia gave her a look, then slid away.

Then Peter was there, striding among his flock with arms outstretched, laying his touch upon their heads, their shoulders, meeting their own raised hands. His arrival brought a new radiance. The prevailing tone modulated; postures lifted in exhilaration. Here was their returning champion, a congressman-elect, a knight post-crusade. One of the Zwicker brothers went to hug him, and Peter reciprocated, squeezing the young man in his arms, then quickly sundering this embrace and moving on. He made his way to the front, sliding past Thomas to assume his customary central position.

Hello, my friends. Praise to the spirit and wisdom of the all-after. Praise be.

Praise be.

The tent went quiet, but for the storm’s din outside. Peter shook his head, as if in disbelief.

Listen to that bluster out there. The terrible, terrible wind. Again we thank the Almighty for our shelters and for the comfort we provide to one another. Cling to your neighbours tonight, dear ones. And hold fast, for soon this season will pass. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, my how time moves.

A pause, turning into the light of the lantern hanging overhead.

We have suffered. Undoubtedly. The cold and the barrenness, the connivances of unkind nature. Deprived of the basic resources of survival. And what has carried us through? Our will. Our faith. Our spirit. Recall, just days ago, I stood before you all, right here, and pledged to honour the faith you’ve wisely placed in me. I do this by ensuring our survival. And that’s what I’m doing now. I’m here to tell you, our trial is over. We will survive.

A susurration of approval. Thomas stepped forward. Peter, he said, that’s not enough.

Peter didn’t notice, or chose to ignore, this interruption.

The days have tested me. I’ve dug straight into the belly of the beast. Jabbing knives at the scoundrels and robber barons, the falsely pious, right where they live. I’ve done this for the security of us all. All in the name of our great cause.

And what cause is this, Thomas said. Whose cause?

Now Peter looked at him. What’s in your craw, Thomas?

I’m asking what cause is it. What cause that sacrifices young women’s…virtue, for money.

Easy there, Bowne warned.

But Thomas continued. How does that advance our intermutual sector? How does that help anyone here? What does it do for the Dimmit boy?

Stop talking, Peter said, pointing at him. Stop. Right now, stop.

Thomas stopped.

You know nothing, Peter said. You, what do you do? Sit there staring at the rotten turnips, whining. The laboratory flunky, done wrong by this mean old world. Boo hoo.

Now Hannah came forward, to her husband’s side, her hands balled in fists.

But you won’t even tell us what you mean, she said. What have you been up to? Who are these scoundrels you talk about?

Yes, tell us, Thomas said. All we ask is to understand.

And this line about virtue, Peter continued, disregarding their demands. Don’t insult my intelligence. You two, whose entire fucking premise is fraudulent. You and your wife, or your whore, or whatever you call your perverted goings-on up there.

Peter, please, said Dot McCollum, seated in the front row.

Thomas edged closer. Fraudulent? You say these things, but how many…who here even knows your real name? Who you even really are?

Peter glared at him, then turned to the gathering with a rueful smile.

Mr. Wadderton has his gripes. But then again, he always does. This is how the apostate reveals himself.

Apostate, Thomas spat. How dare you.

Oh, I dare. If you two have ideas of staging some imbecilic, what, coup d’état, then let’s have at it. Let’s all see. Who else here rejects my pledge?

This, aimed at all, was met with silence. Zina began to sense a certain weightlessness taking her, extricating her. Looking over and across the settlers’ heads, these forms draped in shadow and cigarette smoke, she saw only Peter, and found herself unable to look away. An orb of light began to form around his head’s crown, slowly, certainly—a rift, chiselling him from his surroundings like a die. This was that same multihued radiance she’d seen anointing Linda, dancing by the fire, on her first night at Tenskwatawa. An iris opening, like a balefire on some unknown shore, hailing her. Zina stared, stupefied, and still the light expanded. Only when Nadia next to her spoke out did she chance a breath.

If I may, Nadia interjected, some of us are simply wondering: if we must become temporarily misattuned in the service of a greater future, might we review our intermutual sector and…

You may not, Peter said. This isn’t a committee. This isn’t a sewing bee. This is a tactical dispatch. We’re preparing for revolution.

But how can we wage revolution or anything at all, Hannah said, when we’re so wrung out half of us can barely walk?

At this, Peter took a step in Hannah’s direction, and for a second it seemed he might lunge at her. That nimbus of light clung to his pivoting head, quaking—as if it too might erupt. Then he reverted his address to his audience.

Barely walk, he said. Miss Wadderton here says you can barely walk. Like you’re some crew of impotent cream puffs. Like you lack the mettle to see this mission through.

That’s hardly— Hannah tried.

Me, I look upon you people and I see something else. I see deep reservoirs of strength yet untapped. Strength beyond compare, tectonic. Meanwhile, these namby-pambies question whether you can even stand on your own two feet.

Peter, Thomas said.

The lighted orb dilated and contracted, as if surging with powers withheld. It was a whorl of fire. A signal.

Zina stood.

I can stand, she announced.

Heads turned, all eyes now on her. Everything was at once close and remote.

I can stand. I can walk. I’m ready. And I know others are too. We’re ready.

A swell of agreement. From across the tent Hannah and Thomas looked on in astonishment. Peter smiled.

Show them, Zina beseeched. Can you walk? Can you stand? Can you rise? If you can, show them now. Everyone, together. Show us.

And they did: those in the front rows first, then proceeding to the back, taking to their feet in a gradient wave. Presendia jumped up along with them. How many were their numbers now: twenty or fifty, less, more. The dimensions of their mass expanded and contracted, and in the tent’s dimness all were anonymized, negated. Like blobs of molten wax, chalked squiggles on ledger paper, voices riven from throats. That lighted orb broadened its reach, encompassing them all in its warmth. Peter raised his hands and bid them to rise higher, to seek boldly, to ascend. Zina matched his gesture, reaching upward. They all did, together, synchronized and complete. Against such unity, there would be no sedition. Any apostates in their midst would surely, soon enough, vanish.

This is all I will do. When Presendia said these words, she was channelling another’s voice. Nagged by the familiarity, Zina lay awake that night, fighting to puzzle it out. She recognized this utterance, but its context was lost. When it finally came to her, she sat up in a sudden sweat.

Eliza: leaning over a dolly tub brimming with hot water and dirty linens, the window suffusing the kitchen in morning’s brightness. When her daughters rushed to her with their usual barrage of questions and babblings, she’d turned her face to the window, to the uncut meadow brimming with nimble will and cudweed, to the omnipresence of the hills’ cascade, and said: This is all I will do. The mystery of this utterance struck Zina only now. What did she mean, what had she done, what would she not do? What were her limits? What was her complaint? And was she telling this to her daughters, or to the hills? There would be no answer, not now. The bear must hibernate. This was her own primary sector, as wife and attendant. Against lunacy she was mindful; against ferocity she was soft. This was all she would do.

But there would be no place for softness in the world to come—even in the province of dreams. In the grand renovation that lay ahead, only the mighty of spirit would prevail.

By morning the winds had subsided. A boundless white sun lorded over the compound, an omen assuring their survival. Soon this pitiless February would be behind them.

In this cold, morning trips to the latrine were a gruelling undertaking. Here, inside, the camp’s rampant neglect was made most plain: the wooden slab worn and cracked, spillage staining the floor, the pits underneath something unthinkable. Perched on the seat’s edge, Zina recalled the toilet she’d used at the tavern in Watertown, with its automatic flush, clean water on command.

Someday, she thought. Not today, but someday.

The snow-covered concourse was a blinding wash. To the north Frank Gannon and another man were working at reviving an uncooperative chainsaw, yanking its rip cord to little result. In the opposite direction she sighted a sole figure tramping across the concourse, headed toward the entry road: Ignatius. She hadn’t spoken with him in days, and had found herself desiring his presence. His dutifulness, just to be encircled in that attention. A feeling of assurance, however meagre. She followed after him, tracking his steps through the snow.

Where are you going?

Seeing her, Ignatius gave a slight smile, slowing but not halting. He had a satchel slung over one shoulder, the standard military field pack many of the settlers wore. His looked full, weighing him down.

Got a line on replacement parts for the water pump, up in Childwold.

You’re going right now?

Just fulfilling my sector. Like we all do.

I’m sure it can wait. Why don’t you stay with me?

At this, he stopped. Stay here. With you. That’s what you want me to do. And you’re sure it’s me you want.

Ignatius transferred his satchel to the other shoulder and looked away. Down the road, near the compound’s entrance, the Buick now idled. Leaning against the hood was Orville Bowne, his breath condensing in the cold.

I’ll talk to you later, Ignatius said.

He continued on. Zina trailed a few steps behind. As Bowne came forward to help Ignatius load his satchel into the trunk, she noticed two figures already inside the car. In the passenger’s seat Peter was ashing a cigarette out the parted window. Thomas sat in the back, staring blankly ahead. Ignatius closed the trunk, giving Zina a passing look as he rounded to the driver’s side. As she approached the car, Peter got out to meet her.

Tell me what you’re doing, she said.

The boys and I are just taking a drive.

No, she said. Don’t.

He placed a hand on her back, turning her away from the car, from the waiting men. She slid out of his reach.

Not sure what you’re all flustered about, Morley. Today is but another day, just like the last. This endeavour of ours never ceases. Maintain your focus.

Thomas isn’t your enemy.

I said maintain focus. While I’m off today, I need you to execute a task. This community of ours is a complicated machine, and its engine requires lubrication. And you’re the mechanic on duty.

Might you be a bit less cryptic, just for once?

Folks are disquieted. We can’t have discord festering right when we’re on the cusp. So it falls to you to provide the appropriate balm of succour.

As in.

Do as I would do. Exercise those powers. Address our people. Ratify my faith in your perspicuity.

You want me to speak to everyone.

I do. But so do they. They want you to, and I know you want to. Admit it and loosen that damned harness you put on yourself.

Behind him, Bowne slid into the Buick’s back seat beside Thomas and closed the door. Ignatius sat drumming his hands on the dashboard. All three men watched her.

Tell me my trust is not misplaced, Peter said.

It’s not, Zina said.

You’ll do this. For me. For all of us.

I will.

Peter nodded his approval, then turned and got in the car. Ignatius set the car into motion. Watching them bumping down the road’s track, Zina shivered. This, she knew, would be the last she’d see of Thomas. Already he’d become part of the past, an expendable quantity cast aside in the march forward.

From across the compound came the chainsaw’s sputter.

They congregated by the frozen lake. Milling about, they drank tin cups of hot coffee—this but one of the first gifts of their fortune’s recent upturn, and a sign to many of the ascendancy now within their grasp.

Joining the other settlers on the frost-cragged beach, Zina felt the heat of their attention, their expectation, and dismissed it. She wouldn’t allow her course to be diverted. She briefly locked eyes first with Hannah Wadderton, then Maud Karp, but glided past both women without speaking to either. She was with them, yet above them. Even when she saw Presendia, huddled with Betty Faye Dimmit by the waterline and waving to her, she offered nothing.

Zina brushed snow from a boulder and climbed on top. There she stood, facing the lake, to look upon these people, this seamless mergence of dirty parkas and cold-razed faces. When she raised a hand for attention, they fell silent. Praise be, she said. Praise be.

And with this, she began to speak. First, with passages recalled from the book’s typed pages, those convoluted descriptions of Peter’s elysian visions she’d spent hours heeding then refining so meticulously. Working in her assigned sector as his proxy, his scribe, she’d often been puzzled by his references, the breadth of his many targets, the lengthy roster of antagonists. She had no sense of who Pat McCarran was, or what Texas Instruments might be, or what the Skull and Bones society represented. Whatever conspiracy he saw brewing among the gilded ranks of the Social Register’s elite, she didn’t follow. His scope swung wildly, inconsistently. Man was meant to be free; man was born enslaved. One must obey loyally to achieve independence. History was their trusted guide, and nothing mattered but tomorrow.

But when he called out the foulness residing in the hearts of men—this she’d come to understand. The depths of which men, in their malignity and spite, were capable. Battles raged within minds, or souls, and would be lost or won on the willingness of their combatants to venture without fear.

Decreed the spaewife: The door closes behind you. You’re left to face the other side alone.

Channelling Peter’s utterances, she felt every word as her own. And as she went on, she began to diverge from what had been written, discarding Peter like a shed skin, to speak in a new voice, her own.

The time had come, she told them, for the reckoning they’d long awaited.

Yes, they were justified in being wary. She was young, ingenuous by appearances, as yet untoughened by this world. But despite her youth, or even because of it, she’d seen the true shape of the universe. The godhead had appeared to her as a dreadful phoenix swooping over this land, judging everything in this American Gomorrah. She described to them its magnitude, its supremacy, the judicium divinum to be meted. In this, the future beckoned. The gates were opening. They too could again be young, born anew.

She implored them: Come with me over the threshold.

With each utterance fresh energies came coursing, flooding from her larynx and lips onto the beach in a rising tide, upraising the scruffy souls facing her and filling their varied emptinesses. Like a song carried via radio waves, reaching out across time. Like a futuristic apparatus, humming with toil, generating a new reality.

The flock, the future: always, the flock and the future.

The men, the women, even her sister—they now saw her as the herald she’d become. The word delivered would slake their thirst, mollify their shame, allay any fears of what was to come. She would light their way forward, and in return they would give her their love. It was reflected in their eyes, their understanding of the power she wielded. Now, here on this beach, she found what she most needed: to be beheld with awe.

THE SPRING

His voice came over the radio, smooth and measured. He spoke of 1919, of riding with the convoy from Washington to Oakland via the Lincoln Highway, steadied by the enthusiasm of the national Good Roads Movement and the high hopes of the Ordnance Corps, of the frustrating delays in Ogallala and the Great Salt Lake Desert, and the disappointing numbers posted by the recruitment officers upon reaching their terminus in San Francisco. And he recalled decades later seeing the Kübelwagens whizzing along the Reichsautobahn toward Berlin, and of being stirred by the efficiency of it, the pace, the clarity of such strategic value. Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across the land. He’d been Supreme Allied Commander then, but now he was the president of this nation, imbued with powers of transforming projections into reality, of riling a nation to transcend imagination’s frontiers, and so what was previously only a thing of fancy could now be made real. The triumphant national mood that united them on a spiritual level could do so in reality, in turnpikes and interchanges, in new opportunities, in community. But he warned: even as this great plan coalesced, with groundwork already commenced in many segments, elsewhere other, equally superhuman, opposing forces were rallying. The roads, good roads, would be integral to their survival. He spoke of speedy cross-continental coordination in troops deployments, and the utility of this grand network in evacuating cities when the A-bombs fell. Only highways, sturdy engineering, would forestall calamity. These roads would be their salvation.

Seated in the truck’s passenger seat, listening to the radio, Zina had little thought for her country’s deliverance. She cradled her flask and stared ahead. They were parked facing north across the marshy divide, staked out here as they’d been for the last week. Her assigned sector was the collection of pertinent information on the highway work crews, their numbers, their routines, their progress. There was little to it, but it was important.

It was now late afternoon, and the men would soon be wrapping their workday. Over the last week she’d become familiar with these men and their patterns. They executed their tasks steadily, spreading gravel and laying asphalt, arriving and departing in strict adherence to the clock. And hour by hour, the road’s westward reach extended.

Next to her in the driver’s seat, Ignatius stubbed out his cigarette.

I worked on a crew like that once, laying concrete blocks on a penitentiary extension over in Jefferson City. Long days, lots of dust. I didn’t last too long. I said something not very nice to my crew boss and he socked me in the jaw, and that was it for the summer. The funny thing is, right now half the guys I worked with in that crew are probably doing time in that very prison. Like the slaves who built the pyramids. You work for years putting up a wall, then you get buried alive in it.

I don’t think that’s historically accurate.

Ignatius sighed and scratched his wrist. Why are you always so tough?

It might be better to ask why you’re so soft.

I just try to do what’s best for you, that’s all.

For me.

For all of us. You know.

The news broadcast had moved on to the deadlock in the Korean armistice, China’s proposed repatriation of war prisoners. What this meant in any greater context, within the tides of these conflicts and their continuance, Zina couldn’t identify. That world existed in a state of perpetual insecurity, self-annihilation’s brink. It was something beyond imagining, the capability, the scale of it. It was as unfathomable in the abstract as in the real.

Across at the site, the transport trucks rolled in. The workers tossed their pickaxes and other implements into the tool trailer and began queuing for space in the back of a dust-caked REO cube truck.

We’re done, Zina said.

Ignatius started the car and they reversed, back across the clearing and toward the service road. Zina rolled down the window to let air flow in. She took a drink, then closed her eyes and tried to sleep. It was a two-hour drive back.

Life abounded. Warmth spread over the mountains. Trillium burgeoned and geese peppered the sky. Stewpots burbled. With spring came new beginnings, with a confirmation: in the Almighty’s vital animation, this world would be remade, and out of peril’s brush a better future would be found.

Behind the supplies shed was the small lean-to, fashioned of army canvas and birch poles, that served as the sty where the old sow was now birthing her litter. The pigs, two sows and a boar, were among many recent acquisitions. The women attending the farrowing stayed chatty throughout the processes occurring, the folds unfolding, the fluids flowing. When the final thrust happened and the piglets slid out, the women gasped, but Presendia did not; she knew this spectacle and what it meant, how life began in such gruesomeness. Crouched on the ground, she watched closely as each piglet reflexively crawled across the wet hay for their exhausted mother’s teats. Turning to Zina, her face beamed with fascination.

It’s just so marvellous.

Yes, it was a season of marvels. Out of winter’s adversity, Peter’s vows were now fulfilled. The compound’s population had grown with fresh arrivals, new followers, and sectors of duty were fulfilled with quiet deliberation: roofs reshingled, seeds laid. A dock crafted of birch planks extended out into the lake’s deeps. There was much to do, and it was done with solemnity. The settlers crossed the camp with lowered heads and muted voices. Work continued from morning to night.

And each Monday the truck rolled back into the camp, returning the women, Gwendolyn and Gail and others, from their weekend sector obligations in Watertown, working in Alf LoBianco’s parlours. For their contributions to the greater well-being, they were afforded respectful distance.

One day Zina came to greet the truck upon its return. As the women filed one by one out from the bed, she welcomed each with a nod. A turn had occurred, she saw, in these women—their duties had made them phantoms, silent and spectral. Gwendolyn was the last to exit. When Zina went to her, Gwendolyn didn’t react, looking past to someone else now arriving: Peter, chomping a bright-green pear. He beckoned with an outstretched hand, and Gwendolyn gave him hers. Without a word, he led Gwendolyn across the muddy lawn and away.

A season of marvels, of fulfillment. And by nighttime the festivities of Communion were renewed, propelled by new songs, new liquor, new desires. The men who’d recently arrived from the cities were wilder than earlier settlers, fiercer in their eagerness to stake their claims. They revelled in the freedom of the camp. They took liberties.

Late at night, women’s cries rang across the compound.

The shack Zina now called hers had previously housed a cache of discarded landscaping tools, empty turpentine cans, Springfield cartridge boxes, miscut planks—sundry relics of the camp’s previous occupants. She’d cleared the junk and swept out the heaps of rust and mouse shit, but was still discovering traces of its antecedent dwellers: handprints smeared in paint on a window’s glass, three mismatched laceless workboots, a half-empty pack of playing cards featuring photographs of Japanese women in translucent negligees, backgrounded by twinkling star clusters. Entire histories had played out here before them, forged in this same dampness and dinge.

However neglected and dilapidated, this place was hers. Entrustment of her own quarters, even such a minuscule, comfortless space, was a signal of the status she’d attained. And with a dwelling of her own, little interfered with her work. She typed and retyped, tearing through the boxes of looseleaf procured from the general store in Utica, the crumpled discards and rejections on the floor at her feet.

Now it seemed she’d come to some kind of end. The manuscript itself was lean—not much more than a hundred pages, still blotted with smudges and bestrewn with corrections yet unmade. But it existed. The book itself was essentially as Peter had projected: a call to arms, as much a slap in the face as a salve. The tenets of his teachings, elucidated: human potential as a catalyst for revolution, revolution as a pathway to liberation. Evocation, always with personal critique, of Abrahamic scripture and others claimed as precursors: Henri Zisly and his conception of man’s natural primordial state, Jonathan Edwards condemning the wicked to hellfire, Adin Ballou and the ambitions of the Hopedale Community in Massachusetts. It was doubtful whether Peter had actually conducted any of the research he claimed, but such questions were irrelevant. These progenitors were just signposts on the way to new, untouched pastures.

In these pages the story was recounted of the flock’s arrival at its northeastern settlement, though any locating specifics were left ambiguous—to protect them, Peter said, against any interference before the next stage truly began. His own biography was similarly treated only in broad strokes, generously embellished. The point was not to describe, he said, but to evoke, to inspire, to inflame. Over the winter he’d pressed her at length over the tone of the book’s narration. It had to sound like Ecclesiastes, he’d said, with a voice booming from the stars. The true word of the Almighty, unmediated. To hell with grammar. And so she transcribed, revised, streamlined, with the result a mishmash of bombast, braggadocio, and prophecy.

Soon enough this world will blaze with divine revolution. And when this war is waged I will be there, tearing the enemy to leavings on the front lines.

If there was any satisfaction to be had in this accomplishment, she’d yet to find it. Something was missing from these pages, something essential still absent at the core. Lamentations, invectives, parables—a coastline-erasing blast of rhetoric. This was Peter, extracted. And yet, as she sat sipping moonshine from a jar, staring at these pages piled on the table before her next to the Oxo Cubes tin she’d repurposed as an ashtray, the feeling persisted that it was a failure. Just as she felt, when thinking back to Eliza’s exacted readings of Wordsworth’s maudlin strains, that that too represented a failure. Language, verse, the delicate plaiting of sentiment—it was all something, yes. One could be swept under a spell. One could be overcome with rapturous inspiration. But if there was nothing at the heart of it, it could never be enough.

She coughed, her eyes watering with the strain, then stood. She wiped ashes from the table’s surface and looked around the room, at the bed of blankets in the corner, at the cast-iron stove, at the single trunk containing her few clothes, and immediately forgot what she’d meant to do next. Her stance wavered; she was, she realized, quite drunk. What time was it, she wondered. Late afternoon, about time for a nap.

This notion, however, was thwarted by an urgent sound outside. Her first thought was a hermit thrush in early sunset’s hysterics. When it came again, she recognized it as a voice, calling her name. Outside she found Dot McCollum, her face flushed and the skirt of her dress drenched, telling her to come quickly.

What is it?

Your sister.

As they hurried across the camp, Dot tried to explain. Jay Bussey, a recent arrival, had been down by the bridge fishing when he’d spotted something bobbing out on the lake, signs of trouble. Not being a swimmer, Bussey had no choice but to hoof it back around to the main beach and the dock where the rowboat was usually tied up. But the boat wasn’t there. He found a few men close by and enlisted them to help. By the time they made it back to the bridge Presendia was already coming ashore, looking half-dead. Then they saw the boat, far out on the lake, and another girl in it. That was the extent of what Dot knew; she’d then gone to fetch Zina. Zina’s mind churned with questions, but she became quickly out of breath, weighted by her drunkenness, and as they neared the water all she could ask Dot was: Why?

They crossed the bridge to the narrow berm where the brook joined the lake. Others were already there. Without direction, all parted to let Zina through to where Presendia sat leaning against a tree, her unclothed body draped in a wool blanket. Zina knelt and pulled the blanket tighter, asking what happened.

I went out in the boat with Gwendolyn, Presendia said, looking off down the shore.

Zina followed Presendia’s sightline. Gwendolyn was lying face-up on the bank, motionless. Bystanders circled, attending to her.

What happened? Zina asked Presendia again.

Gwendolyn said she felt like going for a row. I asked if I could come, but she didn’t want me to. She was kind of upset. But I did anyway. We went down around the bend, farther than I’d ever gone. I said it was too far, but Gwendolyn said keep going. The sun was making me tired, so she did the rowing. I think I fell asleep, or just lost track of time. Next thing I looked the oars were gone. Gwendolyn was just sitting, like I wasn’t even there. Then she got up and put her foot on the edge, which made the boat rock. I said, Gwendolyn, please sit down. But she didn’t sit down. And then she just went over into the water. She didn’t swim, she just floated on her back, and I shouted at her but she didn’t hear me. She just floated away and then she was gone.

And what did you do?

I sat in the boat for a while. But then I saw I was getting farther and farther from the shore. The tide was pulling. So I got out and swam. I had to take off my dress because it was making it too hard. I’m sorry.

With this she fell into Zina’s arms. Her flesh felt cold and oily, like a trout’s.

I didn’t even know you could swim.

Neither did I.

Down the shore, Gwendolyn’s attendants were helping her to her feet while several onlookers—Dot, Bussey, others—voiced assurances. Steadied by supporting hands, Gwendolyn took careful steps over the silt, her long hair cloaking her face.

I guess she swam too, Presendia said.

Zina released Presendia from her embrace. Gwendolyn came closer, trembling and dripping, with confusion set in her face, like that of a sleepwalker roused. But when she saw Zina, a flash of recognition shot through her fog. In this, something was admitted.

Zina placed a hand on Gwendolyn’s shoulder. Then she slapped her across the face, sending her tumbling backward on the wet ground. Gwendolyn sat there, unmoving, then her face dropped and she began to sob. Zina stood over her, sneering in disgust.

You, she said, are a disgrace.

That night Zina sat on the front step of her shack, sipping a mug of Gwozdz’s beer while Presendia rested inside. Working over something nagging her mind, something about history, she thought again of the artifacts left by the camp’s last occupants, those vulgar playing cards. People who came and people who went, led by fevers and wants, by necessity. This, or something like it, was what the book was missing. It was by design a story of the future, of grand visions, of catastrophic transformations. What was absent was any presence of the past—not symbolic linkages to prophets and seers of yore, but something like a real history of humanity.

There was something in this, something of use. But right now she wasn’t thinking clearly, too weary to nail it down. Always, there was too much, in everything. Too much.

From down the path came men’s voices, raised in argument. Zina took this as a cue to head inside, latching the door behind her. The candle in the bedside lamp still burned. She sat at the foot of the bed and placed a hand on the hump lying there.

Are you awake?

From under the blankets, a grunt.

Look at me.

Presendia threw back her covers, but didn’t look.

Answer me something. Why were you even with Gwendolyn in the first place? What were you two doing?

Talking.

About what.

Presendia turned over onto her side, facing the wall. Peter says everyone has a sector. He says this all the time. You say this.

Of course. But what does that have to do with what I’m asking?

We all have to contribute. That’s a core potentiality frequency.

Yes. But, puppy.

Stop calling me that. Puppy. It’s infantile.

Outside, those men’s voices came again, closer now. Someone said Article 14 of the state constitution clearly dictates. Another said article my ass.

What did Gwendolyn tell you? What were you talking about?

We were talking about working.

Working.

With her. In Watertown. My reassigned sector.

For a long time they remained like that, on the bed, in silence. The shack’s cramped atmosphere felt close, its air inadequate; the stink of unwashedness was like that of an animal’s pen. This was a place barely fit for humans.

When the knock came, Zina knew before answering it would be Ignatius. She answered to find him backing away from the door, hands raised, with a guilty expression, as if he’d been caught in some act of theft. Orville Bowne was with him, also keeping a distance.

You need to come out here, Ignatius said.

What’s the matter?

Whatever happens, remember.

Remember what? Are the police back?

Not the police. Just remember what I said before.

What you said when? Tell me what’s going on.

Two more men came up behind Ignatius and Bowne, out of the trees’ cover and into the weak panel of light cast from the doorway. The first, a lanky man in a bright-blue hunter’s cap grinning a tobacco-toothed grin, she didn’t recognize. The second, she did. Thinner now, rawer, he had his hands stuffed in the pockets of jeans several sizes too big for his frame. His hair had been pared into a butch cut. But it was unmistakably him.

Zina closed the door behind her, then opened it again. As always, too much in everything. Yes, there was something about history. It persisted.

The farmhouse had burned around him, delivering him to a hell of his own making. The walls splintered and sparked, the bedroom filled with smoke, hungry flames consumed the rugs and curtains. But the fires couldn’t consume him. He’d made it out, though he retained no memory of how—the house was collapsing around him, then he was in the meadow, gasping, with his trousers charred and smouldering. Another uncertain vault of time passed, then he was pulling up in his truck outside the emergency ward in Lake Placid, pounding the horn and clinging to consciousness. Two days later he was transferred to Albany, where he recovered in the trauma ward. Second-degree burns on his back and forearms, acute pulmonary damage.

Zina saw him, bedridden among rows of identical bandaged husks, staring at a listless ceiling fan, aimlessly excavating his mind’s chambers. Just as he’d stared for hours at the stove, at cobwebs, at his wife.

I worried so much about you girls, he said. The entire time.

He sat at the end of a table in the mess tent, leaning forward, his hands knit together. Zina sat three seats away. Opposite her was the man who’d come with Orson, introduced as Bill. Zina didn’t like the looks of Bill or that simpering grin he kept aimed at her.

A single kerosene lantern hung on a hook. The tent was quiet; it was late.

Ignatius returned, delivering the cigarettes Zina had requested. Seeing her light up, Orson gave a questioning look but made no comment.

Have you seen Peter? she asked Ignatius.

Ignatius shook his head, eyes on Orson. How’d you two get in?

Through the front gate, Orson said.

That little Italian gave us a bit of a hard time, Bill said. But he was open to reason.

Ignatius again shook his head. Giaretto, he cursed.

I’m not here with any intention of causing trouble, Orson said. All I want is to undo some things that were done.

He leaned into the lantern’s light. Wetness in his eyes, a tremor there, his neck flaring with a razor’s burn. The weight he’d shed had furrowed his face’s contours. His closely shorn hair betrayed new silverish seams. He looked unwell.

I still don’t understand, Zina said.

I know, Orson said. It’s been a very confusing time. You’re confused. I’m confused myself. I imagine your sister has been confused.

So you were in the hospital. For seven weeks, you say. But then…

I held on, but I couldn’t remain there. It was unspeakable.

There must have been police. They must have had their questions.

No, well…they came. With their entire agenda, as they do. Every few days they barged in and hovered around my bed, irritating the physicians and hindering any hope of healing. Not just for me, but the other patients. As if a man who undergoes medical treatment surrenders his civil rights…

And what did they say? Did they charge you?

Charge me? Zina.

He inhaled, holding air in his lungs, then dropped his chest.

I was in agony. Lying on my stomach, with pulleys yanking me, tubes in every orifice. What they give you for the pain…it turns your mind to porridge. As soon as I was physically able, I slipped out the fire exit and found a payphone to ring Bill in Poughkeepsie. Bill here, he’s a friend from the war, maybe my only friend from the war. He came to my rescue.

Bill said nothing, just picked at his teeth with a thumbnail.

Only once I’d freed myself of that…situation could I even begin any attempts at finding answers. I was down in Hudson Valley all winter, making telephone calls to the hospitals, the schools, the Children’s Aid Society. It was Kirk Scobey at the Daily Times in Watertown who came through. Folks from the city told me, he’s someone who knows things. And when I wrote him, he said he’d heard of this place up here.

And what did he say about us? Ignatius said.

He said if I was looking for girls in trouble, this is where they’d be.

Ignatius slid his chair away from the table. Orson leaned in, eyes on his hands.

The house is gone, Zina.

I know it’s gone.

That place, the farm…it was never really ours. To have the life we had before is simply not possible. You understand that.

I do.

But I have a way forward. I just have to head back downstate and settle some affairs. Bill has a friend who’s selling me a truck. I’ll be back here in two days. Then the three of us are going to drive to Florida.

Florida.

I have an opportunity for work in Fort Lauderdale. It’s beautiful, Zina. The ocean is warm. There’s palm trees and beaches. Oranges, like Whitman. Now here their sweetness through my room unfolding. You remember that.

She did, but gave no acknowledgement.

It’ll be an adventure, he said. Enough of these miserable winters. Enough of all this badness. There’s happiness for us there.

We’re not going to Florida, she said.

Zina’s part of our family now, Ignatius said. A significant part.

Orson turned in Ignatius’s direction, but still wouldn’t look directly at him. I appreciate what you fine people have done, he said, taking my children in. I’m grateful. I truly am. But the time’s come for us to begin again.

We’ll see what Peter has to say about that, Ignatius said.

Who? Listen…

Orson looked back to his hands.

I’m sure the FBI would be interested in seeing what’s happening out here. Now, that’s hardly something I want to do. I’m only saying the thought crossed my mind. That option is mine to exercise. I’d be acting within my rights. As a father.

Ignatius twisted in his chair, his agitation rising. Listen sir, he said, I don’t know all that much about you. But from what I do know, seems you have a lot of explaining to do on your own side.

Easy, Orson said. Like I say, trouble’s the last thing anyone wants. This is a family matter.

Ignatius launched himself backward from the table, stood, and looked again to Zina, seeking direction. She had none to give. She was lost again, wandering, any path ahead cloaked in unknowability. Still, she gestured to Ignatius, directing him to back off. He shifted his feet and made his displeasure clear, but did as commanded. Yes, it was a family matter, she said.

Two days, Orson said to her, his voice again low. Then I’ll be back. Everything will work out fine.

I have a question.

By all means.

Why did you drive?

I’m sorry, why did I…

You say you got away from the house and the first thing you did was drive to Lake Placid. By yourself. You left. Yet you say you’ve been so worried about Presendia and me. So very worried. But at that moment, when the house was burning, everything burning. Where could you have thought we’d gone?

Orson met her eyes, and for a second, a tick, they were there again, side by side, facing the fire on a winter night, listening to the patter of field mice scurrying along the farmhouse eaves. They were together again in that shared undertaking: to know one’s self, to realize one’s alignment with the universe. To ascend. And in that fleeting tick, none of it had happened: the fire, their run through the woods, their arrival at Tenskwatawa, her ascent among the flock. The farmhouse hadn’t crumpled to ash, because the axe hadn’t fallen; the axe hadn’t fallen because her father was a man unravaged by nightmares of shellfire-saturated skies and wouldn’t succumb, whimpering, into an unending craze of fear; and he faced no such ravages because there had been no war, no punishing advance across the Belgian countryside, no battlefield visions.

But this tick was only that, a tick. And these things had happened, and he wasn’t that man. He was the man who sat across from her now: her father.

I know I’ve managed things poorly, Orson said. I’ve been careless. I lost control. I lost my way. We all did. But I’m here now, asking for your prayers.

Prayers.

Isn’t that what they do out here? They teach you to pray.

Zina lit another cigarette.

No, she said, that’s not what we do here.

Anson Dimmit, son of Gail, passed away in the night. For weeks his fevers had ebbed and spiked, and though brief respites offered hope of an upturn, each spell found his young body weaker, faded, until even those tortured coughs subsided. As his condition worsened, debate was fierce over what was to be done: to bring in outside medical aid, to transport the boy to facilities upstate, to rely on the healing power of their collective faith. The arguments were strenuous and divisive. But those questions were now closed.

Morning Exaltations were held by the lake, facing the water, where ghostly rivulets of morning mist coursed eastward. They linked their hands and bid the child farewell. Zina and Presendia stood with them. Presendia scratched incessantly at fresh insect bites spotting her arms, her untrimmed fingernails drawing bloody tracks across her pale skin. Zina touched her forearm to stop her, but Presendia batted her hand away.

Questions now concerned the body. Some had proposed interment in the north neck, the first laid for a cemetery grounds. Nadia suggested deliverance of this child into the lake itself, though this prompted concerns over water table contamination. The logistics of a cremation were considered, then deemed unfeasible. In the meantime the child’s body lay with Gail in her shack, and something would have to be done: by all signs, days ahead would be warm and humid.

Many times in the preceding days Zina had passed the shack where the Dimmits, along with others of the Wisconsin contingent, were housed. Each time she’d considered knocking there, offering some consolation, some gesture of solace. And there was another version of this reality, another course of events, where she’d done this—just as there were alternate worlds where the boy hadn’t died, worlds without such sorrow, where the rewards for dedication to intermutual love might truly be corporeal salvation. But she hadn’t stopped. She’d continued on. And so the boy died, again and again, in eternal torments.

There among her fellow settlers, Zina tried to remain attentive to the moment at hand, this act of memorial. When Linda Coors cleared her throat and sang in heavenly love abiding, no change my heart shall fear, she bowed her head with them, reproached by death’s touch. But all she could think of was Millie, perfume shop saleslady of Watertown, leaning back with her breasts spilling out of her dress: I make my own way. And when, as Exaltations concluded and they all marched back up from the shore, she thought nothing of Anson Dimmit, only of the choices she now faced, the allegiances to be tested.

The dead were a nuisance. If only they’d simply dematerialize, evaporating acceptingly like dew under mid-morning sun. If only these corporeal shells were, as Blake dreamed, but vessels of energy, and in their expiry could be felt but unseen, denuded of flimsy flesh to be carried forth as a song, as prophecy. In the book of the flock, the dead were rightly honoured as cherished allies, praised for their sacrifices in the name of a great and crucial common cause—then dismissed and not mentioned again. The march to the future continued on without them.

The compound again thrived in the busyness of early day, another day in the service of a shared dream. Wind stroked the camp; the air smelled of fresh fires and spring’s renewal.

Zina went about her morning sector duties automatically, unable to devote any real attention to anything but basic choices before her. She mopped the washhouse floor and scrubbed clean all surfaces, then filled a metal bowl with clean water from a basin. A stout, bearded man whose name she couldn’t recall, stripped to the waist in his own ablutions, greeted her: Morning there. To this she said only, as always: Praise be. She set the bowl on a ledge affixed to the washhouse and doused her forearms, her neck and throat, then dunked her face. The cold water came as a corrosive, and with it the longing to be clean, actually clean, scrubbed and flushed from inside out. She remained bent like that, staring into the water, at her own warped image mirrored in the grey metal. Like a spaewife, searching waxy waters for oracular insights. But there was nothing to be found.

Lifting her head, she stepped backward and let her face and hair drip freely on the ground. The bearded man next to her sniffed.

Watch where you’re splashing your splash.

After the washhouse, she returned the mop and pail to the supplies shed. The shed was kept orderly these days, and presently was stocked with supplies for painting the dock and steps, a task she’d assigned herself. But she only stared at these piles of waiting brushes and cans, then closed the shed door and sealed its deadbolt. As she trudged back up the path, a voice shot out from ahead.

Ho there, miss. I’ll ask you to halt.

The apparition came down the path in a neat grey suit, tinted glasses hiding his eyes, towering over her. Before she could react, his hands were on her.

Please now, he said.

She thrashed against him, attempting to wrench her arm away, but his hold was firm.

Please.

The man dragged her back into the concourse, his hold unrelenting. His refined aspect was alien here, whiffing of hair oiled with lanolin, cologne of something like cedar and brake fluid.

To get started, he said, I’ll need you to give me the names of your ma and pa. Full names.

He was, she understood, with the law. This was confirmed by a cluster of NYSP sedans stationed at the entry road, more men in uniforms circulating about.

I exercise my right to due process, Zina said.

Oh, terrific. Another case of chronic smartypants-itis. Seems like it’s really catching around here. Thanks so much for brightening my day.

He shoved her along, corralling her toward the sedans. Settlers watched from across the concourse, from the doorways of their shacks. Orville Bowne stood between a pair of troopers, looking furious.

We need precise numbers of minors up here, one said to him.

Bowne scoffed. What do you take us for? This is a community of faith.

This child here is filthy.

I’m not a child, Zina said. Speak to me directly.

The man in the suit removed his sunglasses, revealing pinched blue-grey eyes strangely matching the hue of his suit. Thought you were exercising your rights.

The troopers grilled Bowne, demanding information, explanations, though it was unclear what exact information they were after. They seemed to not really know themselves. Bowne stood firm against their pressure, repeating a line about a commercial licence pending, though his agitation was rising.

You can call the situation here whatever you like, Bowne told them, and you’ll see whatever it is you choose to see. That’s your prerogative as envoys of the state. But what’s not open to your interpretation is the letter of the law.

Fine and fine, one of the troopers said, but we still need to talk with this Mister…Haché.

We could invoke the principle of adverse possession, Bowne said.

Now why would you need to do that, another said, if you have a legitimate deed on the land, like you say?

What I’m telling you is we have rights beyond rights. And trust me, if I had that particular piece of paper on me right this very second, I’d present it no questions asked. But I don’t have it on my person. I doubt you carry your mortgage papers in your holster when you’re out manhandling hobos, or whatever you gentlemen do all day.

All right, smooth talker. So tell us where it is.

In a safe deposit box at Wells Fargo Union Trust in New Rochelle. One of our men here can hop down there later this week and put a copy of it in the post to you. Perhaps you could front us a stamp.

The man in the suit released Zina’s arm and stepped in. We’ll need to take a look at your weapons.

Weapons, Bowne repeated, his voice reaching a strangulated register. We keep a shotgun or two to keep the weasels out of the pantries. That’s it. What possible need could we have for weapons?

Because, the man in the suit said, you, or individuals associated with you, are known to have a radical socialist agenda that threatens the security of this country. We have sources of information. So what say let’s drop all this business and talk serious.

These men—who were they? Agents in service to a nefarious state, their blind fidelity immune to the call of truth. The oleaginous clodplates and lickspittles turning this land into a cesspool. Yet their suspicions, Zina could see, were hardly unfounded. Any legitimacy to the settlers’ stake on this land remained withheld as a thing of great secrecy.

Zina felt a tug on her sleeve. Hannah Wadderton, looking frantic, beckoned for Zina to step away. Zina looked away, uninterested in her pleas, but Hannah persisted. As the men continued to argue in circles, with other settlers now coming to join the fracas, none noticed as she let Hannah take her aside.

We have to find an opportunity to speak to them openly, Hannah said, her voice quaking.

To whom?

These policemen. We need to talk to them, away from the others. Conceive a ruse to divert the others’ attention. Or we could lay plans for some sort of arrangement, later. A message.

If this is about what was said the other night, at the Communion…you mustn’t be this way. It doesn’t serve you.

Hannah’s expression spoke of conviction, and of fear. These men could help, she said. We need to make the truth known.

These men are here to persecute us, Zina said. They’ll tear everything down and drag us all into custody. They’re not our allies.

And you think Peter’s your ally. You really think that.

What we think is irrelevant. It’s what we know. Surely you understand that. It’s a fundamental frequency point.

But you feel the pressure mounting. Tell me you do.

It’s just the mountain air. I’d imagine you’d be used to it by now.

Hannah looked past Zina, at the police. I used to think the rigour of systems science inquiry might one day foster a higher sense of our shared humanity. Altruism, cooperation, kindness. I saw these mountains as the perfect place to conduct research, a place where I could begin again. How wrong I was.

She frowned, momentarily lost, then turned back to Zina.

Do you know the name Clint Auld?

I do.

And do you know what happened to him?

I know enough. But conflict is implicit in our progress. It’s taken into account.

Taken into account.

Yes.

And will you feel the same when they take you for a drive like that? Or when it’s Presendia, will that be taken into account?

The troopers began to leave. The suited man gave the concourse a sweeping appraisal, as if stamping it all with some official notice of his own, then slid his glasses back on and climbed into his car.

As she and Zina watched the convoy of sedans roll away, Hannah inhaled deeply, fighting to calm herself. Her fingers trembled as she wrung them through her hair’s tangles.

It’s not the air, she said.

She found him outside his shack, seated on a log, smoking, a book in his lap. He was looking rough, or even rougher than usual: unshaven, sweaty, his forehead riven with creases, the bandana around his neck fringed with stains.

Oh, he said, raising his eyes as she neared. Beautiful day today. Our blessings are many.

My sister told me. You can’t and you won’t.

No idea what you’re on about, Morley.

Don’t be obtuse. You can’t take her to the city like that. You won’t.

Steadfast work is our privilege. The conditions of our covenant. This you know. As does your sister.

Not her. You don’t touch her.

You give orders to me now?

Take me instead. If we need more women in the city, more earnings, I can do it. Alfonso knows me, he’s seen me. I’ll do it. I’ll go.

Peter set aside his book, something titled The Law of Success, Vol. V by Napoleon Hill.

If this is you attempting some grand sacrifice, he said, quit the grandstanding. You have better things to do. You’ve been watching those bastards out on the highway all week, so you must have some awareness of what’s at stake. You have to know what lies ahead for us, once the plan’s in action. This land’s in jeopardy, and we’re all that will save it.

That’s not what we’re talking about.

Oh, but it is. You’re elevating your own interests above those of your kinsperson. That’s petty, capitalistic thinking. I’m amazed you can’t recognize that error, after all we’ve discussed. And all I’ve done.

Better to be a bringer of holy fire than be consumed in the smoke.

Precisely. Remember who you are and where you are. What you are. And, just as critically, what you are not.

She went to speak. But, as always, he kept on.

The defining moments, they always occur in youth. Think of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, or the stories of young Ramakrishna. I think back to a moment from my own childhood, those days back in Saint-Fabien. There was a patisserie in town, run by this obese hog named Coiteaux. The man was an incompetent and surly turd, an absolute low-life in every way. On top of that, everything he baked, the cakes and croquignoles and even the baguettes, was utter shit. Even as a boy, I knew it was shit. Yet every morning, there it was on our table, that loaf of Coiteaux bread, this lifeless hunk of mush in impenetrable crust. My cowhearted father felt some asinine sense of loyalty to this man, even though whenever we’d set foot in the shop he’d call my father a fif, or worse. Typical Québécois inferiority, this mediocrity in the name of tradition. So, my tenth birthday arrives and my parents decide to throw a party, inviting all the neighbours and my schoolmates, though truth be told I didn’t have one real friend in that town. My mother plans to bake a giant ham. And there’ll be a cake. Of course I begged her, Mother please, all I ask is you don’t let Father bring me a Coiteaux cake. This, my only wish. And she assured me, all will be taken care of, I shouldn’t let myself get so carried away.

As he gained force and volume, Zina felt herself losing the thread of this monologue, once again falling under his spell. Even when he was quiet, he was loud.

So the day arrives, he continued, and all the people show up. Most obviously out of neighbourly obligation. It’s a small town, you know. There’s the big fat glazed ham sweating in the roaster and some token gestures for gifts, the men guzzling beer and kids swilling Pepsi, me sitting there at the kitchen table in silence. Then my father arrives, his face burning with liquor and embarrassment, and this hulking cake box in his arms. Even before he set it down I recognize the box, the crest emblazoned on its lid that went on everything out of that bastard’s kitchen. And inside, this multilayered monstrosity coated in layers upon layers of Coiteaux’s shitty watery icing, mostly shortening. And the vultures descend, the cake is cut. Maybe candles for me to blow out, I don’t recall. All I remember now is the feeling that overcame me as I sat there. A feeling of being hollowed out from within. Of illusions dissolving and the transparency of everything exposed. And at the heart of it, the insult. The generational insult. That I was to bear the weight of my father’s cowardice. There was no longer any firm ground for me to stand on. If there ever had been.

I don’t see…

But Peter continued. At some point I swiped the remaining cake from the table, he said. It was already about half-eaten by all those drooling goblins, but I grabbed that cursed box and made a run for it. I ran out of the house, down the road, all the way to the centre of town and marched right up to Coiteaux’s bakery, which was closed, fermé. I put the box on the doorstep, opened the lid, dropped my pants and squatted. But nothing happened. Couldn’t even squeeze out a trickle of piss. So I hurried to this vacant lot across the street, this spot overgrown with weeds and full of trash. And a common stop for dogs. I plucked out an old paper bag from the refuse and went around filling it with crusty dog shit. Loads of it, a real mélange. I gagged from the smell, but I was on a mission. Went back to the doorstep and made a real work of art with all that shit, displayed in Coiteaux’s signature box, with the remnants of the cake still there. I knew the man would see exactly which cake it was, he’d know just who had defiled it so. I was showing that slime what he and his detestable output were really worth.

You smeared feces on your own birthday cake, Zina said, and you call me petty.

The point is, I knew who I was. Looking back now, this was one of my first insurrectionary acts, guided only by my vision. Even as a child, I knew. My path was foreordained and nothing would divert me from it. Let those peddlers of drivel squabble among themselves. I had a voice, and I could shout back at the podium, at the radio, at the doctors’ diagnoses. By the time I was your age, I was well on my way to altering the course of history. That pursuit has led me here, to the lake, to the mud. Now ask yourself, where has it led you?

But you claim you follow commands. The Almighty tells you.

As he does you. You’re just too busy listening to yourself jawing to hear what he says. But that’s not all it is. Like our friend Marx says, it’s the changing of self that goes with the changing of circumstances. I didn’t just sit there resenting the cake. I extracted it, and I desecrated it. Publicly. And I bore the consequences. And boy oh boy, were there consequences in the days after.

And it was worth it.

Of course. I’d do the very same thing again today. But what matters right now, today, is that soon enough, every sad soul across this country, all those eager multitudes, they’ll see what we’re capable of. And then they’ll hear the word that follows the deed. They’ll read the book. And then they’ll know what we really are, and what they can be. Sic semper tyrannis.

With this, he sat back on the log stool and looked away.

I’ve never really heard you talk about your father, Zina said.

Eh. He was a bastardly fucker. Like all fathers.

My father came back. He came here.

I heard something about that. Another dramatic turn of events. What’s that old scamp up to?

He says he’s going to the FBI. To tell them about this, us.

Peter nodded, taking this in. Zina couldn’t tell if his impassivity was concealing outrage or dismay.

I’m not afraid of those mutts. I’ve tangled with them before. They bark and bark and waggle their cocks, but nothing much comes of it. All the more reason for us to make haste in our plans, though.

The Dimmit boy.

That’s being handled. This is why we have defined sectors. And you have yours, Morley. You’d better get your head clear. If the feds swoop in, they’ll be after you first.

Me?

Oh, Morley. You’re still such a girl. Don’t forget, you’re the real felon here, more than any of us. Wonder what the state would make of a pair of murdering, arsonist runaways on the rampage. One trembles at the thought.

He patted his chest, his pocket.

Say, do you have any tobacco? I’m clean out.

Zina fought to regain herself and her purposes, why she’d come after him. She’s barely twelve years old, she said. You and your men, you can’t do that to her. You won’t.

No tobacco, eh?

Have me. All of me. Take me yourself, if that’s what you need. I’m willing. And I’m not a virgin.

Oh, really.

I place myself at your feet. But Presendia, she’s not yours to have.

But she is yours?

She’s my sister.

And you are my scribe. You pledged yourself to me. So, no. That little cookie of yours will do exactly as she’s told. As will you. You’ll stay right here and fulfill your sector. You may be willing, but you’ll damn well do as I say. Now fetch me a fucking smoke.

Each of her repeated readings of “Daemons of Epimetheus” in the increasingly worn issue of Mesmerizing Tales revealed new details, deeper suggestions within its peculiar narrative. So much of the story was mystifying. Where and when was this scenario meant to take place? What exactly was this corporate entity that conducted such testing? Was the bizarre and wondrous technology described something actually existent, or imminent? There was no way of knowing, beyond what was on the page. But on her latest read, Zina took pause at a paragraph in the story’s latter half, and a sentence she’d previously glossed over. Within the dialogue between Nancy and the executive conducting the review, came a descriptive aside, a moment in which Nancy mulled over her present situation and, as the author Visser-Lokos wrote, scratched at the residual facepaint in her fingernails. A simple detail, to which the story never returned. But it caught Zina’s attention, and once it had, she couldn’t let it go. Facepaint: as if this was something completely ordinary to have in one’s fingernails. Had Nancy been painting faces, her own or another’s? If so, for what conceivable purpose? A child’s party, a pagan rite. Camouflage for some plot of sedition. Or was facepaint a euphemism, a sort of code? If so, for what? All explanations seemed improbable, yet Zina was certain this detail couldn’t have been injected into the tale for no reason. The story’s components were designed to fit together in a specific, one could say strategic, manner. Each thing suggested another; every minor detail prompted greater meaning. This was how language carried mysteries, or betrayed muffled yearnings, clues to past and future. The challenge, then, was to understand the latent message embedded in any utterance.

When one spoke in enraptured tones of worlds to come, were these actual worlds, actual territories renovating known reality? Or just lofty conceptions, yearnings, faint hopes? Could a thing be made real, simply by saying it? And was this happening now? How much had she already missed?

What was meant beyond the word? What face was obscured behind that paint?

That afternoon, Zina set out alone into the hills, following a winding path up along the lower banks of Lake Tenskwatawa and into the heights to the south. The dense ranges of spruce forest here were steep and veined with wet trenches, making for frustrating passage. Less than an hour into this trek, with her forehead dripping and her rucksack’s buckles grinding her shoulders, she began to regret the entire endeavour. But she continued her climb, sipping steadily from her flask, until she broke through into a grassy plateau facing a panorama of high peaks. This she guessed to be a northern section of the Dix Range, though she’d brought no map. Several large boulders, dulled edgeless by erosion, lined the crest. There she sat.

Before setting out, she’d gone to find Roman Gwozdz. As usual, he was stationed outside his trailer, brewing coffee over a fire. Recent months had been hard on them all, and Gwozdz, even with his brawn, was no exception: a droop in his deportment, an imprecision in his eyes. When she asked, he’d scratched his stubbled face and cast her a doubting eye, but obliged her request. Only a pouch remained of his forage, but he was glad to share—intermutuality dictated the sharing of resources, and he knew her to be a person of seriousness. If she needed her mind shaken, there was probably a good reason.

If the light comes too bright, just look right through it, Gwozdz said. You gotta stay humbled but unafraid.

From there she’d returned to her shack, where Presendia was napping. After amassing a few supplies, she sat on the floor next to her sister. Presendia always slept deeply, her mouth parted and her eyebrows arched, as if in expectation—of what, only her dreams could divulge. Zina nudged her, saying she’d be gone for the day, instructing her to exercise caution, to stay low. Presendia, sleepy, had agreed, but asked where she was going. Just some affairs to mind, Zina said, I’ll be back soon. Just be careful today. Lock the door.

There is no lock, Presendia said.

Zina blinked. You’ll come up with something.

The mountains before her now were a smear of cerulean blue and greyish snowcap, all unreal—J. M. W. Turner-esque watercolours, not lifeless metamorphic rock. She drank more of the bitter mushroom brew; the flavour was even worse than she remembered. Were the potency of its effects proportionate to the vileness of its taste? she wondered. If that were true, she could endure this, and worse. She needed its fullest concentration.

With the next swallow, yet another memory struck her: springtime, their first day of their relocation to Alstyne Farm. Eight years ago now. Driving north they’d cut through the Adirondacks’ southeast segment, passing road signs for places with evocative names: Diamond Point, Pilot Knob, Paradox. From the back seat Zina had wondered aloud how these mountains were formed. Her father stayed quiet at the wheel, but her mother answered: by God’s hand, of course. Does it happen fast or is it slow? Zina asked. Oh, Eliza said, it happens very quickly. The earth is a place of miraculous transformations, not just the landscape around us, but inside our souls. Practically anything is possible.

To Zina, this only stirred more questions. But Eliza, rolling down her window to breathe of the crisp air, seemed satisfied with her answer.

These shreds of the past came readily: the farm, old wonderings, those cycles and confusions. The choices facing her in the present, the forces now pressing upon her, were also painfully clear. And from past and present, a future: the great catastrophe, the wiping clean of it all, a new Arcadia to rise from the cinders. All as prophesied.

What was unclear was how any of it fit together. How to place past and present and future in sequence. How to move between elemental states. What lay between. What was the connective tissue. Where to find the path to the path. So far, any attempts she’d made to find a way ahead, anything at all, had failed.

The clouds above moved in fresh configurations, draping the forested plummet ahead in shadow. Zina tried to look past those peaks, waiting to be granted a vision, an opening, anything to unbind her from this mire. She forced herself to down the remainder of the flask while conducting an internal inventory. Her joints and temples ached with sleeplessness. Her hair was greasy, smelling of meat and smoke. Her crotch crawled with a strange new itch, hot and unshakable. She concentrated on banishing these concerns, to clear her mind in anticipation of the illumination she hoped to receive. Gwozdz: If the light comes too bright, just look right through it.

But when she listened to the forest’s whispers, the voice she heard wasn’t Gwozdz’s, or the Almighty’s, but her father’s. What was shown to me was the smallness of it all.

Soon, just as the last time, an uneasiness began to stir within her, beginning in her bowel and rolling upward, outward. Her body seemed to skew to one side, then the other. The landscape ahead billowed; the openness of it was too much. She had to move.

Heading down the opposite slope, deeper into the embanking forest, she felt the poison’s effects taking full hold. Her digestion roiled and her palms sweated. The terrain heaved, the grade swerving. This, she knew, was the poison’s trickery. Coleridge knew it, conjuring stanzas out of an opiate stupor, journeying into a deep romantic chasm, that savage place as holy and enchanted as e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted by woman wailing for her demon-lover. But these were just verses, lines, the gossamer reveries of a compromised mind. Dribblings from crusted pages, consumed by the fire. A poet could rhapsodize on savagery, dreaming up alluring unknowns as he poked at his inkwell, and still know nothing of true wildness. True savagery was blunt and uncaring. Human desires were just gristle. The wolves always found a way in.

The descending path brought her to a grassless cleft and a ravine leading farther down into choppy forest. She submitted to its gravitational lure. At the same time, another distinct force hauled her upward, tugging on her neck, her cranium. Light, yet heavy.

Next thing I know I’m rising up out of the trench, above the field and the perimeter. I’m looking down on the whole thing.

The ravine widened and flattened, its muddy track chiselling into the brush. Birdsong rang above, signals of alarm. Leaves fluttered in traces of breeze. Then, from ahead: the light gush of moving water. Like static on a radio, an orchestra tuning up, a sleeper’s ailing lungs. The sound itself carried a presence greater than mere noise; as she continued on, it swelled with light and mass, reaching across time’s sprawl. Coleridge: And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far, ancestral voices prophesying war.

She let the ravine coax her forward. The slick mud rose into a stream, a downward course, culminating not in a raging river but a shallow, marshy pond. Tatters of light flitted on its depthless surface, its floor a muculent chasm of greenish-brown. The invitation was undeniable: here was where she was meant to be.

And in that moment his grace was conferred to me. It was shown. The futility. The folly of man.

Her feet disappeared with the first step. Water flooded her leather shoes; she tore them off and flung them into the bushes. She peeled her cotton sweater over her head and cast it aside, then unfastened her skirt and discarded it too. Her dingy undergarments, the ribbon braiding her hair—these also went. Stripped naked, she dropped to her knees and let the grainy mud ooze through her fingers’ splay, writhing like flesh against her own.

The birds’ calls faded to silence. The wind ceased. She eased backward and sank face up into the pond’s gelatinous balm. Cool yet warm, it soothed her aching calves, her typewriter-beleaguered wrists, that itch between her legs. Her father had said the truth of a man can only be known in its entirety when viewed from a great height. But she was low now, descending into the pond, rolling from side to side, an otter sunning its belly.

She looked up through the surrounding trees. Encircled by spruces, the overcast sky was a beacon, a portal. And as she stared into this blankness, it began to change, some unseen convection or processes of transformation working. A fissure opened, the layers pried apart, a rift in the fabric—here was that same iris she’d seen before, first marking Linda in the firelight, then Peter in the Communion tent. But where before it was only suggested, now it came in brutal clarity. It concentrated, densified: a circle, a globe. Or a closing together of indivisible spirits. The girls in Guadalajara knew, bound in sisterhood as they awaited the signal that ushered in the new world. Spirals within spirals. The heart of a cyclone. In its emptiness, it became something to be held in one’s grip, and kept.

Men saw history like this: solid, exploitable, cycles and archetypes, repeating, enforced by divine law. These men saw centuries of empires crumbling and fortunes collapsing, patterns of famine and woe, the billboards of Albany like the vexilla of Rome—and still they slept peacefully, assured it would all rise again, and men like them could reign triumphant evermore. As Wally Ray Crittenden proclaimed: God gave us this great old world, but it falls upon men of righteousness to make it into a kingdom. Or young men on a spree: Let’s go for ride. We’ll have ourselves a party. Nothing of this world would stand in their way. Even many of the bug-eyed misfits that roved the compound, beaten down and spat out by war and industry, revelled in the breadth of their entitlement.

The cataclysm Peter promised would bring an end to all that. No more would this gluttony be appeased. Yet he too cast himself as the rightful inheritor of a great endowment, recounting his epiphanic visions, the disclosures granted by eidola, astral dwellers, deific forces. Moments indescribable, unrepeatable—but also confirming an obligation to be borne. Peter had similarly heard his own shamanic calling, or so he said. The future was a vault to be plundered, and he the sole possessor of its lock’s combination. This was his lot, to rise tall among swine, to stand firm amid the earth’s temblors and heaves. To oversee the apocalypse and stride dauntlessly into the rubble. To apprehend the substance behind the illusion and forge boldly into the wilderness. To be blessed. To know.

If a man like that could be so chosen, why not her? She was seventeen years old. Years, many possible years, yawned ahead. Could she be the one to lead the push to the future? Why not Zina Morley?

She knew why not. Because to really be a shepherd of men, one had to be insane, or a fool, or an insane fool. And to lose one’s mind was to forfeit one’s power. This, she would never do.

Those men stared up in the sky’s great nihility, their eyes crusted with drunken tears, and believed themselves witnessing the visage of the Almighty. But all they really saw were their own fat faces, the gorges of their own appetites, reflected back. Here, finally, Zina could look to the heavens with her vision unclouded.

And what was there to see? Presendia, chancing steps along a spit-glazed city sidewalk, immobilized by street lights, her smallness made smaller amid such enormity and the ravening oglings of puny men eager to claim ready spoils.

Or: the farmhouse burning once again, its frame collapsing inward, but falling with it now rows upon rows of identical farmhouses, hundreds in conflagration, incinerated from eavestrough to cellar, arrayed across countless miles, cross counties and states, each one destroyed under its own weight, each its own failure.

Or: a future civilization fashioned purely of light’s beams, a kingdom immaterial—an infinity of it, just as Peter envisaged—where humankind would be spared the hardship of subsistence in the face of cruel nature and the torments of struggle, and all would be free to dream gratuitously, romantically, madly.

No, she saw none of these things. There was nothing behind that rift: no vision, no beauty, no finale. No winged gods aflame in wrath. Only a void. Like her fellow settlers, she’d been enticed by salvation in the clouds, as if some gospel would be imparted in a cosmic blaze. Their Irradiations gave them this hope, these sugary asseverations of a radiant sun, a perfect blue sky, like a wonderful dream. She’d fallen for it too. Now the consequences of such vanity were upon her.

That the power she’d watched others wield, and had wanted so badly for herself, might mean anything at all—that, despite Peter’s blather, was the true illusion. All that mattered was continuing, finding a way. The forest was only a map. The mountains were just rocks. The muck was just muck.

Why had she done what she’d done? Rage, delirium, to bring an end to it all. But most of all: to survive. There was nothing glorious in it. She’d discerned the shape of the universe, and found it an empty vessel, a beer can clanking on the roadside. She’d been a murderer, then she wasn’t. Now she was here, soaking in tepid scum, unclothed, deranged. Free, in all her lowliness. And so she’d remain, tethered to the earth.

Zina realized she’d been laughing. Her dry lips pried wide, her eyes running with tears. She let it come—there was no reason to hold back. After a while she slid to her knees and lifted herself upright. She crawled over to the pond’s edge, out of the slime and back onto firm ground. She knew what she had to do next.

Night was falling by the time she made her way back down the other side of the hills. The poison’s residual effects foiled any track of time or location, leaving the way by which she’d come irretrievable. She pushed through the dark, led only by instinct, until arriving at the lake’s north shore and the path leading up to the camp.

Back at her shack, she found the kerosene lamp burning low, casting the shack in staid flickers. Presendia lay on the bunk, just as Zina had left her. She’d shucked her dress to lie in her undergarments, her hands folded on her chest, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Zina sat on the floor beside the bed and turned up the lamp. She considered this place, this temporary refuge of theirs. A Land O’Lakes cheese box of their few clothes, a small stack of books, a single cardboard box of trinkets, sewing paraphernalia, hodgepodge—all they possessed between them. Everything else belonged to those who came before.

Father had to go to Poughkeepsie, Presendia said.

So he says.

He’s coming back.

So he says.

Presendia rolled over to face the wall and drew her knees to her chest. You lied to me.

How so.

I told you I saw him. You said he couldn’t come back. You said it was impossible. But he did. I was right. I told you.

Puppy. Presendia. Listen, now. As far as Father…

He did. And if he can come back, so can Mother.

There was an accusation here, though the crime alleged was unclear, and Zina, left nauseated and febrile by the poison’s effects, was unable to raise any defence, or align any thoughts at all. There was much to do, but right now she was too tired to do anything. The bear must hibernate. She turned the lamp back down and closed her eyes. Minutes or hours passed like this, though she didn’t sleep.

Then came the howls.

Ringing across the compound: a woman’s voice, strangled into incoherence. Presendia bolted upright in the bunk. Zina was on her feet and outside before registering what might actually be happening. Iterant flashes cut through the night, signs of a fire at the pit on the concourse’s edge, figures gathering. Zina tore across the concourse, cutting past others hauled out of sleep by this uproar and drawn from their own quarters.

Peter stood before the fire in his undershirt and wrinkled trousers, shoeless. At his feet lay Gwendolyn, naked, sobbing, spitting blood. Peter clutched her hair in his fist, as if intent on wringing every ounce of anguish out of her. Across the pit, along the drainage ditch marking the concourse’s perimeter, Scotty Stokes was pounding a stake into the ground with a sledgehammer. A bulky iron chain was hooked to the stake, clanking with the hammer’s every fall.

The onlookers numbered about a dozen now, among them Frank Gannon.

What’s happening here, Peter, he said.

Only now did Peter acknowledge his observers’ presence. He turned to face them, maintaining his hold on Gwendolyn’s hair. Firelight illumined his sweat-sheened face, his throat, his forearms. His eyes were wild, his face puffed with drink.

This whore begs for lenience, he said. A putrid soul cries for clemency. The hour of our ascent is upon us, and this thing whines for her own preservation.

I didn’t, Gwendolyn moaned.

What have we been doing out here. What have I been doing. Seasons of striving, bringing the light to you all. Hours upon hours in these godforsaken mountains, working and working and working. All for you. Feeding you, housing you. All this pain and humiliation. Maybe this has all been a goddamned joke to you all.

No one spoke. The fire crackled and hissed. Gwendolyn buried her face in her forearm. Scotty kept hammering. Zina kept back, not wanting Peter to see her there. Then Gannon stepped forward. What’s happening here, he said again.

You tell me, Frank. This bitch comes to me seeking refuge, saying she wants to understand. But all she does is connive. Even my unstinting mercy has limits.

Scotty Stokes took a final swing of the sledgehammer, driving the stake into place. He unfurled the chain and brought it to Peter. A large shackle was affixed to one end.

No, Gwendolyn tried.

We’re at the precipice, Peter said to them all. We’re about to wage holy war on our enemies and deliver carnage into their nests. Once we start down that road, there’s no room for the gutless. And no time for anyone, man or woman or dog, who imagines themselves above the fray. The sides have been drawn. Faith must be demonstrated. And faith will be tested.

Scotty pried the shackle open. Peter kept Gwendolyn’s hair locked in one hand while bracing her by the throat and jaw with the other. She shrieked again as Scotty forced the cuff around her neck. Gannon again appealed to Peter, asking why, yet made no move to intervene. The shackle sealed shut and its locks slid into place. Peter shoved Gwendolyn away from the fire and toward the drainage ditch. Bound and off balance, she fell back and slid over the ditch’s edge, into its depths.

Peter tore off his undershirt and tossed it onto the fire. Anyone who so much as touches that woman proves themselves an apostate, he said. And any apostate in our midst will be excommunicated.

With this, he headed in the direction of his cabin. The others remained still, facing the fire in their stupor. Scotty hoisted the sledgehammer over his head and wound it twice in a broad circle, as if waving a baton, and gave a kind of laugh, a single report: ha. Then he too made his exit. Soon the others also dispersed, Gannon too, slouching back to their shacks, their tents, their own sanctuaries. The fire’s furor abated into lambent coals.

Only Zina remained. She went and crouched at the ditch’s lip. From below came slow, doleful whimpers.

This ditch had been dug out pre-winter, a project only partially realized, and its contours had since eroded nearly into collapse. Still, the stake held secure. Zina eased herself down the ridge, led by the chain winding over the cool soil into the basin, where Gwendolyn lay with her legs spread, her head back—a birthing posture, almost. Coming to her side, Zina saw Gwendolyn’s bloodied nose swelling purple.

I can fetch you some water, Zina said.

No.

What happened. What did you do.

I misbehaved, she said, her voice breaking. I said things that were disrespectful. I shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. I’m sorry.

Zina wiped blood from Gwendolyn’s upper lip with her fingers. Mistakes can be rectified, she said. We all have our failings.

I need to go home. I want to go to my sister’s in Appleton. I need to see her and talk to her and not be here. Can you take me there?

No.

Gwendolyn edged closer. Her thighs were scratched and bruised, her arms lined with what looked like bite marks.

I think of all the stupid things I’ve done. For most of my life I just did stupid things and stupid things happened to me and I never thought twice about anything. And it keeps happening. I never learn my lesson. So stupid. Why am I like this. Why.

Because we’re weak. Our weakness makes us blind.

You see so many girls getting shoved around. Guess I’m just one of those girls. If not me, someone else. Boy, am I tired.

She rested her head on Zina’s shoulder. The shackle’s iron pressed cold against Zina’s arm; she flinched, but didn’t shy away. After a moment, she began to sing. Do not fear, it is nothing but a leaf, beating, beating on the door. Do not fear, only a small wave.

That’s nice, Gwendolyn said, closing her eyes.

Murmurs, murmurs on the seashore. Sleep child, there’s nothing here. Nothing to give you fright.

Gwendolyn already seemed to be falling asleep. Zina continued singing: Smile quietly in my bosom, on the blessed angels yonder. The song, while pleasing enough in melody, was sentimental, puerile, something of another age. A time before truth. Singing it, she was embarrassed for them both. This, all of this, should not have been happening.

With morning came light rain. The forest sounded with flycatchers’ trills and grouses’ thumps. Zina rolled over and spread her hands in the wet dirt. Even before she’d entirely regained where she was and under what circumstances, she knew trouble lay ahead. Gwendolyn was gone, as were the chain and shackle—mysteries she would have to leave uninvestigated. Coughing and shivering, Zina climbed out from the ditch, working against the numbness in her legs. Her stomach crawled with hunger and she desperately needed the privy. There was much to do.

Back at the shack, she found the bunk empty and the lamp unlit, Presendia nowhere to be found. Zina clamped down any concerns at this, concentrating on tasks ahead. She changed out of her soiled clothes into a clean dress and boots, then went to the mess tent, where daily preparations were under way. Sectors here had been neatly refined of late, with Dot McCollum orchestrating cooking and cleaning and conveyance, ever vigilant in tracking any operational lapses. Today, Zina recalled, Presendia was supposed to be on morning duties. Behind the tent, Zina found Dot rinsing out washtubs. Zina asked her if she’d seen Presendia. Dot frowned.

Your sister wanders. No one knows where she goes.

But have you seen her?

Look at me. I’m up to my elbows. No time for chasing persnickety little princesses.

Or Gwendolyn. Have you seen Gwendolyn?

That one. The truck went early, back to the city. Maybe you should be chipping in here. We have hungry men waiting.

Zina started away, feeling her forearms tightening and her hands trembling. Inside the mess tent, some man hooted in laughter.

You really need to keep a shorter leash on that child, Dot said. Discipline has to be exercised. At times I wonder if you two might have serious psychological problems.

Zina turned back to her.

Go to hell, Dot.

The Plymouth pickup rolled up the road. It slowed near the supplies shed, then stopped and reversed to slide beside the Buick already parked there. Ignatius hopped out and checked the bed; packed to the brim, its payload was protected in a thick padding of blankets and tarpaulins. He then went to a cargo trailer, about six feet by ten feet, that sat next to the Buick, unhitched. He knelt, looking back and forth from the Buick’s rear bumper to the trailer, then to the truck, puzzling out some problem there, some question of how things fit together.

Zina watched him from behind the shed, concealed among the trees. Ignatius was a thing defined by simple duty, a barnyard hound: on his own he loafed, but given a task he moved swiftly, energized at chasing approval. Such dutifulness, she suspected, was likely what had led to his shunning back in Ohio: I slid into wilfulness and diverged from the path. He’d never divulged the exact nature of that slide, but she could imagine. From the first she’d seen of him, coming at her through the dark woods, to their times together in the supplies closet, a desirous desperation shaded his every move. Maybe more than any other settler, Ignatius was driven by want. And this want sought purpose. Sin is confusion.

While Ignatius fiddled with the unmounted trailer’s hitch, Zina snuck to the Plymouth, finding the driver’s side door ajar. The keys were still in the ignition. Checking the rear-view mirror, she saw Orville Bowne had joined Ignatius at the trailer. Bowne was showing him a sawed-off length of pipe with a fan of wires loose at one end, along with a small latched case, like something in which to display a medal. Their plan, she saw, was proceeding. They’d withheld most details from her, but she’d listened and watched, and deduced enough. The truck’s cargo would be transferred to the trailer, which would be mounted to the Buick. The car and loaded trailer would then be driven to a spot adjacent to the highway crew’s present location off Route 30, near Indian Lake. The timer, once set, would afford enough time for its deliverers’ escape but with a narrow enough window that if anyone on site happened to detect it and identify its purpose, too little time would remain for either its disposal or the crew’s evacuation. The timer would activate a set of connected blasting caps, igniting the twenty fifty-pound sacks of fertilizer packed inside the trailer with three drums of liquid nitromethane, and all within a considerable radius would be discharged from this world. The material effects would be considerable; the symbolic impact, however, would be of more profound significance. It would announce the advent of the great catastrophe. And Peter: catastrophe incarnate.

Zina removed the keys from the ignition. The fob, a stylized rendering of the Mayflower sailing across quivering waves, held several keys, mismatched and unlabelled. She did quick calculations, projections: it was a three-hour drive to Watertown, requiring who knew how much gasoline. Of costs beyond that, she was unsure. All she had was the six dollars she’d taken off Clint Auld, so long ago now, and those were back in the shack.

Once again she faced a range of possible paths, each equally foreboding. Any second now the men would notice her there. Yet she did nothing, only stared ahead, down the car’s bulging hood at its severed chrome fitting, snapped where the bombsight ornament had been.

The rain was tapering off. A mosquito swirled about the stifling cab.

Zina. A woman’s voice jarred her back to attention. She slid back out of the truck to find Annabelle Karp, one of the sisters from Vermont, coming, waving. Zina tucked the ring of keys inside her boot and waved back.

You were looking for Presendia, Annabelle huffed.

I know. She’s gone off. I’m handling it.

No, no. I just saw her down by the lake. With a gentleman I didn’t recognize. I thought to intervene, then I recalled your concern. Thought it best to seek you out.

Ignatius and Orville, alerted by Annabelle’s approach, now came over. Orville handed Annabelle his handkerchief to mop her brow.

You said a gentleman?

Not one of ours.

Zina looked to Ignatius, communicating both question and answer. He cocked his head, a question of his own, then nodded back. Here was a man, she thought, whose need was indeed pure, who stood ready for the cataclysm and whatever it might bring. The settling of all scores and the fulfillment of his own futurity. And soon enough, the next dawn. She knew he would do whatever she asked.

Still the light glinted immaculate across Lake Tenskwatawa’s surface, and still the wind moved as if guided by divine resolve, and still the reeds and rushes shuddered in the flow—and still it was easy to imagine harmony among such elemental forms, the realm of a greater nurturing spirit. This was how Eliza had hoped to limn her world: in refractions and shadows, in imagination’s pleasures, in exalted forms. And here, Zina thought as she hastened down the slope to the north beach, sighting Presendia there, tiptoeing along the shore in a freshly laundered dress, is how Eliza had hoped to see her daughters: as creatures of nature and gentleness, grace embodied. This was her mother’s faith, insulated by denial, shirking reality. But circumstance had proven them creatures of the mud, not the stars. Sublime transcendence was no match for the coldness this world demanded.

At the lakeshore, Zina felt her pulse accelerate. Orson was there, as promised, seated on the rocky bank with his hands on his knees. He and Presendia were speaking to one another, but from this distance Zina couldn’t hear what they were saying. She was afraid—not only of what was about to happen, but whether she’d misread all that had come so far. She had no choice other than to continue. My path was foreordained and nothing would divert me from it.

What’s everyone talking about? she said.

Presendia raised her hands, gleeful at seeing her. We’re talking about the old days.

Orson stood, a brightened version of the man from two nights ago. But there was still that vacancy, that distractedness.

You came back, Zina said to him.

Of course I did. As promised.

Presendia twirled a bundle of wet reeds in her fingers, her hair falling to her shoulders. Where had her sunbonnet gone? Zina wondered; it was a good piece of headwear.

The truck’s parked just back across the ravine, Orson said. Best not to try that front gate again, in my consideration. So why don’t you two go back and fetch whatever things you might need, then we’ll start out. We’ll find somewhere for lunch on the way. It’ll be a nice ride. Weather’s looking to stay fine.

There was a question Zina had meant to ask, some piece of information she’d thought to extract from her father, but it presently escaped her. Too much had happened; too much was still happening. She looked past him and extended a hand to Presendia.

Come with me.

Presendia drew nearer, but with reluctance.

I said come, Zina said.

I thought we were going in the truck, Presendia said. Father was saying.

But now I am saying. Come with me.

Zina seized Presendia by the forearm and tugged her into her reach. When was the last time she’d handled her so? Years ago, generations. Somehow, improbably, this tiny child had amassed such strength, such powers of defiance.

What? Presendia said. Why?

Stop this, Orson said to them both. You’re being needlessly difficult. Do as I say.

You have no warrant here, Zina told him. You’re dead.

He’s not dead, Presendia cried.

Zina looked at Orson, as directly as she could.

You might have forgotten, but I haven’t.

With this, Orson’s expression turned. Your mother…did she tell you of her plans for the winter? I know full well she did not. A railway ticket to her sister’s in New Jersey, folded in her pocketbook. That woman made her choice. And she was against us all.

Here, now, was that man she remembered, the one who’d returned from Europe with his nerves pummelled and his mind undone. She’d thought him a replica of her real father, an imposter who’d seized upon the man’s brittled state to usurp control. But no—this was him, the true man. The heat of war had simply burned away that delicate topmost layer, exposing the core.

Zina tugged Presendia away and started back uphill. The path was slick from the morning rain, and Presendia lost her footing. Zina righted her by the shoulders, pressuring her up the slope, and they kept on.

Wait now, Orson said, following after them.

From the path and out into the concourse, they rounded the half-built well, through the surrounding clutter of pails and sheets and bricks. Presendia whined, abandoning her resistance. Orson caught up and blocked their way.

Girls. Quit these hysterics. I’m telling you.

As planned, Ignatius came bounding from behind the washhouse. Richie and Randall Zwicker followed close behind, whooping like Indians, both wearing what appeared to be long johns under stained wrestling singlets of royal blue. The brothers rushed Orson, Richie diving headfirst at his feet, Randall going for his torso. Blindsided, Orson was too startled to summon any defence. Randall grappled him by the neck and arms while Richie secured his ankles. Ignatius swung a length of rope in his hands.

Don’t fret now, he said to Zina. All’s taken care of.

Zina knelt before Presendia. Get back up to our place and gather your things, she said. Quickly.

Presendia’s eyes were on the men, her face speaking her horror. In a whisper, she said: Father.

The Zwickers together hoisted Orson upward and flipped him over, pounding him chest-first onto the ground. Orson grunted as Richie stomped on his back, driving his weight upon him.

Please do as I say, Zina said to Presendia.

I don’t understand.

You will. Please. Have I ever led you astray? Have I?

I don’t know.

So much could become of someone, thought Zina, even against all possible cunning. One could do one’s best to stay sharp, keen of wits and clear of mind when all around havoc reigns, and still get no closer to any answers. Perhaps Orson had found a ticket tucked away in Eliza’s pocketbook, as he’d said. Perhaps Eliza had harboured a cache of secret yearnings, tracing an escape across her own map. Perhaps she’d intended to forsake the farm, even if it meant betraying them all. Perhaps, perhaps. But if so, she’d hesitated before taking flight—that was her mistake. And so the full crush of her husband’s weight had come falling upon her.

None of that mattered now. Zina placed her hands around Presendia’s face, cupping her cheeks, zeroing in. That extrasensory link they’d once shared, generated and deepened through sleepless nights and seasons of uncertainty, had faded. And it would only fade more with time; no longer could they be as they once were. But now, now: Zina drew upon what remained of that connection to forge as clear a transmission as she could.

Just get to our place and wait for me there, she said.

Again.

Again, yes. Please.

Presendia’s scorn was evident, her trust reaching its limits. But she cast a look back at the tangle of men, then hurried off. Oh to be so young, Zina thought, and so unfree.

Then: an anguished squeal. Richie sprang back from the skirmish, hands to his cheek. Blood leaked through his fingers.

He cut me.

In his free hand, Orson wielded a small folding penknife; by his expression, he was as shocked as anyone by the weapon’s introduction. Richie doubled over, gasping as he tried to staunch the flow. Randall kept a tight grip on Orson’s other arm even as he touched his own face, mirroring his twin’s anguish.

Ignatius moved on Orson, batting the knife from his hand with a fist. This man’s a defiler, he said.

Defiler? Orson said, squirming against his captors. No.

He murdered our mother, Zina said.

Orson looked at her in fearful astonishment. Zina, no. I was just…overwhelmed.

Randall kept his arms tight as Ignatius hitched the rope around his wrists. Orson tilted his face upward, to the clouds, to somewhere else—acceptance, maybe, of what had befallen him.

Again: I was overwhelmed.

For a moment, they remained like this. Any hesitation was then disrupted as Richie, his cheek and jaw blood-smeared, flew forward. He struck with his elbow at Orson, connecting with his mouth. Orson’s lips split and gushed.

Dammit, Randall yelled.

The Zwickers moved in tandem, again slamming Orson to the ground. They dragged him back toward the well, Richie leading by the rope and Randall hooking his feet under his arms. Orson kicked against his binds, then abandoned this struggle and went quiet. Ignatius looked on; the twins had assumed this battle as their own. Zina felt elsewhere, far from such savagery, uncertain whether what she was witnessing was even occurring.

Randall stood Orson upright against the well and propped him there, delivering another blow, this time to his abdomen. Orson’s bony frame wilted against the force. Richie grumbled something to Randall, and Randall returned: True words, true words. With this, Richie threw open the well’s lid, and without fanfare, the twins together tipped Orson backward over the well’s edge.

The Zwickers peered down into the well. Guess we’re gonna have to dig another one, Randall said.

Ignatius moved behind Zina and placed his hands on her shoulders. Now you’re free.

Zina shook away his hands. In his every word, in every gesture: always, that want for affirmation. She was done with it, done with fulfilling sectors and demands.

Go find Peter, she said. Tell him I’ll be waiting for him.

The cabin’s former disarray was now austerity and order. The still was gone, as were the layers of papers and rubbish. The bunk bore only its mattress, no pillow. A large wooden drafting table now occupied much of the room, with tools and fragments of electrical components covering its surface. Some familiar elements remained: the tin cup as a bedside ashtray, the mirror against the wall, the Remington 721 beside it. The stove, swept of its ashes, sat glowing. Zina went to her knees to search the recesses beneath the bunk, and there it was: the lockbox filched from Kiwassa Sanitarium, wrapped in a length of army canvas.

She slid the box out and set it on the mattress, then unlocked it with the key she’d been entrusted with. Inside, as expected, was the money, several hundred dollars in small denominations, bound in a metal hasp; Zina stuffed it in her underwear. Also inside were a cardboard box of Eley shotgun shells, a small silver cross pendant, stray papers. Here was the title deed for the camp she’d seen before, both the original and the forgery. A bankbook, some sort of insurance policy form. A laminated slip titled CERTIFICAT DE NAISSANCE, certifying one Marcel Jacques-Antoine Haché, born March 23, 1921, at the Hôpital régional de Rimouski, Québec. None of these things were of any use to her.

At the bottom of the box she found the fat envelope containing the latest complete manuscript. Other fragments existed, marked-up edits and retyped pages, chunks and discards, but most had been tossed. As far as she knew, this was the sole copy, certainly the only that could be considered anything like complete. Peter had once mentioned something about a carbon copy, but she had never gotten around to learning what that actually meant.

She slid the pages out of the envelope. Months of work, all of it as futile as building and rebuilding a well, inspirited with high hopes, only to see it collapse, or contaminated. She fed the first twenty or so pages into the stove, fanning them across the steaming coals; the pages immediately caught and curled with flame. She slid the rest inside and closed the cover. Seconds later the fire flashed with a gentle poof, illumining the room afresh.

Like a nightclub, with the fancy expensive lights and the whole show.

She sat back on the bunk and loaded two cartridges into the Remington. She craved a cigarette, a sip of whisky, but sought out neither of these things. Sharpness was required now, to dispel all daydreams and see clearly. For what she’d done, consequences would surely follow. Authorities would descend, and all would be brought to light. The project of insurrection would be abrogated, the compound shuttered. She and Presendia would be carted off, and all she’d tried to do—to keep them safe against the forces that preyed upon them, to steal back the power they’d been denied—would be proven a waste, a foolish fantasy. Eluding that fate lay in her hands: the Plymouth’s keys, the money. They could simply dash away, right now, and soon the flock would rise again in a new form, dazed but undaunted by these minor detours on their exalted path. The young would perish and the merciless would prosper. Their shepherd would continue, untrammelled and steadfast in herding them to the full satisfaction of destruction. All this was possible, if she just left, right now.

She didn’t move. She hugged the shotgun to her chest, one hand tight on the barrel, the other on the stock. The fire had dwindled, the book’s pages now ash. A low sun streamed in via the window’s slats. It was already late in the afternoon.

Eliza, reading Schleiermacher: Having made a universe for yourselves, you are above the need of thinking of the universe that made you.

She remembered now what she’d meant to ask Orson: if he’d buried their mother. Had there been a service, a memorial placed? Did the Alstyne siblings assemble one last time, as if answering their father the judge’s summoning claps, to mourn their sister? Was anything done to deliver her?

Any second now Peter would come through the door, raving as he did, making demands. All were expected to capitulate to his charges, to accept reality as the raw matter of his making, and his alone. But Zina had seen past Peter, and past Haché. Yes, he could vow his path to be foreordained, but he was no prophet, no Amos. Even if some of his judgments had come true.

You want to know what the future holds, Zina Morley? I know what it holds. More than you can imagine. Your future will be glorious. You are that thunderbird. You must see this.

She saw it. She’d discerned the true shape of the universe. The globe of stars. And now she’d become something greater than all this, than Tenskwatawa, than the bungling squabbles of depraved men. She herself was the mighty Cautantowwit, generating life from soil, animating the world, populating it with ghosts. No longer did she require a shepherd, or a flock. The valley she’d traverse was hers alone.

From outside came the metered press of boots on sodden earth, then clonking one by one on the front step. She coiled her finger around the Remington’s trigger. The question before her was the same question that was always posed to them all: whether she possessed the vision, the power, to alter the course of time’s flow, toward the future. This question—Do you see it for what it is?—she would now answer, as the door opened. And the answer she would give was yes.

Come with me over the threshold. In these dreams her mother spoke in the forest’s voice, calling out of the unknown. A trembling hand, black as bark, eyes as storm-soaked valleys. Here death lured, offering peace. But in her dreamer’s bafflement Zina wavered, and the hand was left untaken. Her mother once again sank back into the murk. But in time, she would come again.

They crossed the concourse together, satchels on shoulders, Zina with the shotgun under her arm. The shot had raised alarms, drawing attention. Settlers on their stoops, at their tents, watched as they passed. Zina kept her attention squarely ahead, saying nothing, despite Presendia’s asking: What did you do?

Orville Bowne and Scotty Stokes were back at the trailer, along with Truls Raknes, loading sacks of fertilizer from the truck. They’d heard the shot, and seeing her coming, moved upon her. Zina pointed the shotgun; one more slug remained in its chamber. The men halted.

Now now, Bowne said.

Keeping the shotgun raised, Zina went to the Buick and tossed her satchel into the back seat, then directed Presendia to get in the front.

This isn’t playtime, Bowne said. Try and understand the severity of your actions.

She pointed the gun at his face.

I’ll try.

She moved into the driver’s seat, then reached into her boot for the key ring, keeping the shotgun pointed out the side window. It was an ungainly manoeuvre, requiring her to momentarily drop her guard. But she successfully retrieved the keys and slipped them into the ignition.

Bowne came with his cane raised, Scotty a pace behind. Behind them, others now. Zina thought she saw Ignatius among them, but she disallowed her eyes from wandering beyond the immediate. Sharpness, clarity. She turned the engine over and the Buick roared to life.

Goddamn it, Bowne shouted, you stupid, stupid girl.

He chanced another step toward the car. Zina followed his move with the shotgun; he flinched, then she swivelled her aim and fired at the truck’s grille. The shot thundered; metal flew; the men ducked for cover. The recoil threw her back in the seat, but she recollected herself and tossed the expended shotgun out the window, then hit the gas pedal.

The entry road had mostly been cleared of winter’s debris, but its subgrade had eroded into sharp craters and the rain had left much deeply puddled. The Buick’s tires skidded in these troughs, but pulled through. Zina kept up their speed, taking the turns too quickly, losing control; when they came to the metal gate she braked hard, narrowly avoiding collision. Only then did she check the rear-view mirror for any signs of pursuers. There were none.

Zina got out and went to the gate. As she tested the ring’s keys, trying to locate one that fit the lock, she listened to the surrounding forest. The familiar creaks and echoes. Rain dripping from branches, birds above. Sounds of hollowness, of time paused. Finally, the lock clicked. The chain fell away and the gate eased open. She again looked back the way they’d come, then at the road awaiting them ahead. Still there was nothing, no one.

Back in the car, she found Presendia staring ahead, her lips pressed tight, her eyes tearing.

Don’t cry, Zina said.

With this, Presendia succumbed into sobs, cries of true despair.

Stop crying.

I’m trying.

Try harder.

I feel like I’m going to be sick, Presendia whimpered.

Zina leaned forward and pressed her head against the steering wheel, feeling the engine’s vibrations course through her skull.

You mustn’t, she said. Just don’t.

I can’t help it.

Yes you can. You can help it. Believe me, you can. You really, really can. So just…don’t.

ca. 1974

The House Judiciary committee today began public review of the impeachment inquiry results. Judiciary chairman Peter Rodino set forth the tone of the hearings: For some time we have known that the real security of this nation lies in the integrity of its institutions and the trust and informed confidence of its people. We conduct our deliberations in that spirit.

Watching these men on television as they grimace through these proceedings, leaning into their microphones and reading from their prepared notes, one is taken by their efforts to radiate airs of solemn duty in their avowed roles as public officials. But we at home, glued to the CBS Evening News, know full well what’s really going on. They are, through the grind of process, meaning to obscure facts that should be plain. The messes they’ve made, however, can’t be unmade, no matter how they scrub and scrub. Any trust we might have placed in these men has been revealed to be in error.

Even though these things are occurring far from our homes, and in many ways detached from our known reality, we still feel their weight dragging us down. We see it in the faces of shoppers at the A&P, in the drivers clenching their wheels alongside us in morning traffic. I see it in myself. Even though such dishonour perpetrated by our elected officials shouldn’t, and doesn’t, surprise anyone, seeing their pettiness brought into such stark light is something else. Most of us already suspected those in charge to be capable of grave misdeeds and terrible deceit—years of pointless war have shown us the reaches of their bloodthirst. Our suspicions have now only deepened, densified. The worst assumptions about human nature have been revealed as true. We’ve been given full licence to despise our fellow man.

What are the facts? What is the information we’re missing? And even if we gained access to the truth, would we even recognize it? Would it be of any help to us? Is there anything we can do?

John telephoned this morning, saying the papers will be couriered today to my attorney’s office to await my signature. The prospect fills me with dread, not just for the implications of the divorce’s finalization, but also because I harbour deep loathing for my attorney, Laddie, a brash, chastising jerk who always takes obvious delight in making his clients feel at his mercy. The only reason I continue to retain him is, I suppose, out of a certain inertia. Laziness, really. When I called his office to arrange a meeting time and confirm the documents were indeed there, his receptionist placed me on hold, then came back saying Laddie would be willing to meet me at two o’clock, though she wasn’t sure if anything had arrived for me. When I explained that the very earliest I could get there would be after four, and even then I’d have to make the commute from the campus in Durham to Laddie’s office in Manchester, she gave a sigh, saying I’d just have to stop by and try my luck. When I half joked that the hours wouldn’t be billable if the papers weren’t even there, the receptionist only said she’d look into it.

John, my soon-to-be ex-husband, is a registered Republican. Dyed in the wool, as is said. The precarious current state of the presidency has him troubled, though that’s hardly a unique position these days. A booster of George Romney, John had never thought Nixon up to the job. The commander-in-chief should lead by example, went his belief, establishing a foundational tone for the national mood in terms of, to use one of John’s pet words, character. Nixon, to his detriment, has always been led only by his own pursuits. Vendettas, grudges, insecurities—none of the broader perspective required of a true statesman. To these critiques I bite my tongue, for while I agree with John’s assessment of the president, the same could easily be said of John himself. I’ve never met a man whose outwardly stated motives so transparently differ from the actual, obvious reasons driving his behaviour. This is a man who bickers endlessly with shopkeepers, has waged deranged feuds with our neighbours, regularly instigates parking-lot scuffles, yet loudly states himself to be a man of reason, a man who boasts pride in taking the high road in his life’s many, many conflicts, when most well-functioning people would never even find themselves in such squabbles in the first place. Like Nixon, John is jowly, stern-faced, a little oddly formed, and pathologically resentful of handsomer, smoother men. And also like Nixon, he’s worked hard to capitalize on the advantages afforded by his background and parlay them into practical gains—in John’s case, not in politics but in his concrete supplies and distribution business. He’s done well for himself, with consistent growth in market share year over year and four offices throughout Illinois and Wisconsin. But he’s never been what you might call happy. The real fuel of ambition, after all, is usually bitterness.

Our marriage was another achievement in which John took a type of vicious satisfaction, at least for a while. Now, after only six years, it’s over, leaving a rare blemish on his tally of accomplishments. For this, he blames me. And for once, he’s right.

In the Midwest, the transition from spring into summer is the least drastic in the seasons’ cycle, without the melancholy of autumn’s descent or the aching snap of winter. But I feel it, the humidity rising and days lengthening, and every year this change kindles memories of that strange summer when Zina and I first arrived at Lake Tenskwatawa.

What memories I have of that time and place are fragmented and unverifiable. My recall of the names and faces of those who took us in, and what we did while there, is hazy at best. I was only eleven years old then, an age of discovery, when your experience is sieved through a nascent sense of selfhood more acute than a child’s but not as tortured as an adolescent’s. A phase of heightened sensitivity, of awareness that time is passing and things are happening in sequences of cause and effect, with results you can’t control—the first inklings, I suppose, of what you might call doom.

I remember the lake and the forest. I remember the mountains. And I remember times of tremendous fear. But while I can look back now and, equipped with whatever paltry wisdom I may have since gained, retroactively assign possible reasons for that fear, I can’t be sure any of my explanations are in any way faithful to what happened. Those feelings, the real feelings, are gone.

Also mostly lost to me now is what happened immediately after we left. We left on our own, this I know. There was at least a short time when we were unbound. Just the two of us, tearing down the highway. A few years ago, in a rare reflective turn several drinks in, Zina described with pride to me how she’d successfully talked a state trooper out of issuing a ticket, despite her having no driver’s licence and driving a stolen car sixty miles an hour in a forty-five zone. I can neither corroborate nor refute her story, but I believe it.

Two unaccompanied minors, little girls in homemade dresses, weren’t going to get far unnoticed. Eventually we found ourselves in the custody of state child protection services. From there I recall courthouses, nights in petrifying youth residences, days or months, eternities upon eternities, impossible to really say now. I was sent to Buffalo to live with the Gitecks, and thenceforth they would be my family. Clyde and Joanne Giteck, well into their fifties, led a quiet, unstormy existence. Under their guardianship, I did too. When I was issued a new birth certificate, I took their name as my own. I saw, and see, no particular significance in this, no curse lifted. It was simply a mechanism of fate. It was just what happened.

That autumn I entered public school, a world of equal measures horror and elation. Coming from a childhood of such turmoil, I guess there was something of such institutional structure I found nourishing. That might be why I made my career in academic administration: dull and unrewarding as it is, its hierarchies of command quietly engulf you in process and policy, freeing you from any anxiety of purpose. You disappear inside it. Much like, I imagine, the experience of a soldier in wartime.

Nearing legal adulthood when we were taken in, Zina became caught in another sort of purgatory, ricocheting between temporary homes, advancing swiftly through the school system until moving to Iowa to attend Grinnell on partial scholarship. There she found a camaraderie among her peers like she’d never known, and according to the lengthy letters she sent me, this was a joyful time. Those letters were incisive and self-deprecating, yet still enthusiastic, her acerbic nature then still buoyed by something like genuine optimism. While still in her undergraduate years she published a novel with a small publisher out of Cleveland. Titled Reveries of Gros Ventre, it was a kind of alternate American history, in which the discovery of a strange metallic element in central Wyoming launches an era of advanced quasi-mystical technology, replete with levitating vehicles and photonic communication conduits and all sorts of phenomenal innovations; this proliferation of hyper-industry grotesquely widens societal inequality, however, as far as social class and race and sex and those considerations, to an extent beyond even that of our contemporary situation. Admittedly, I didn’t understand much of it—lengthy sections found indistinguishable characters merging and splitting, with a lot of unattributed dialogue and a lack of clarity as to what was going on. But no one could deny the ambition behind it. Her publisher had high hopes, but the book arrived to few reviews and zero fanfare, and sales were negligible. Despite her strong academic standing and the encouragement of her thesis supervisor, Zina abandoned her graduate studies late in the second semester. She never divulged her reasons for doing so, at least not to me. She moved to Chicago, taking a one-bedroom apartment near Kosciuszko Park and making ends meet as an in-house proofreader for Standard & Poor’s.

Around that time, the frequency of her letters tapered off. The ones that did come were difficult to parse, often troublingly so. Careening line to line, she wrote at length of what she saw as an intrinsic ethical dimension within society, one that might evolve at a rate and scale in consonant development with all other forms of progress, following an incremental drive that could activate our collective wisdom and desire toward the betterment of all experience and thereby lead seriatim to an outcome greater than even the reaches of our imagination. Whatever this meant, it seemed mostly a notion of hers, not indicative of any fully fledged belief. If she’d ever actually held any such convictions, they’d since lapsed, and nothing had replaced these abandoned ideals.

In other letters she described frozen mornings riding the L train downtown then back again at day’s end, seeing the city piled upon itself as if broken in a joint of time with past and present fucked together. She saw only grief and desperation in the faces of her fellow commuters, the young Puerto Rican mothers, the lily-white brokers and Art Institute students, the downcast stragglers and blitzed street bums, everyone. Because we can only comprehend how the mass of it manifests as effect without cause, or a hill to climb, a story rising to climax, when really our only defence against this undefinable enormity is just patience and rest, patience and rest, which we are never to truly find.

Yes, Zina increasingly buried herself in drink and, beginning around ’71, heavy abuse of the valium and lisdexamfetamine prescribed by a succession of highly suspect psychiatrists. Rarely leaving her apartment and subsisting mostly on packaged smoked salmon and potato chips washed down with cheap gin, she became gravely overweight. In her letters she alluded to high blood pressure and sleeplessness, a sprained ankle that wouldn’t get better, difficulty paying bills. When I visited, she greeted me with good cheer and made efforts to tidy up. After the first day or so, however, she’d grow testy at my presence and hid away in her bedroom with a bottle and a book. I learned to keep my visits brief; in later years, I instead stayed at the Hyatt downtown.

Like most people, I detest my job. My workdays are spent in ceaseless pressure to meet meaningless deadlines. But a perpetual fear of dereliction, of having the floor fall out beneath me, has become so deeply instilled in me that I unquestioningly swallow almost any conditions or demands, only to stay employed and thus maintain a biweekly semblance of security. Again, like most people. The benefits management office is but one enclave within the vast UNH system, maintained by me and my colleagues Suneva and Allister. The three of us do not socialize and rarely speak to one another unless necessary. We file claims and issue memoranda, striving for timeliness and accuracy. We field queries and stagger our lunches to maintain coverage. Occasionally our departmental supervisor, Mr. Sgorlon, drops by to berate us, even when everything’s in order. I want to say I’m too secure to take his needling criticism to heart. And yet I do. It’s that fear of failure, always there. It’s not real, but it is.

To shake off the frustration, on my breaks I take walks around the campus. Wandering the tree-lined paths along crisply pruned hedges, surrounded by gangly fresh-faced students, I’m often led to consideration of my past. Sometimes I think about Clyde and Joanne Giteck, living their modest life back in Buffalo. Sometimes I think about the farm, and about my parents, of whom I know so little. And sometimes I think about the compound at the lake and those who made their retreat there: what purposes they strived for, what foes they fought against. Whatever they wanted or did, any doctrinal or theological component to it, left no imprint on me. Or at least none I can feel.

Last year, in an unexpected spurt of energy I spent a few mornings at the Dimond Library, seeking answers to questions I had trouble even articulating. My haphazard search led me to the fifth-floor stacks, where I perused histories of this country’s weird utopians and insurrectionists. The Rappites of Harmony, Pennsylvania. Robert Owen and his fantasy of a workers’ paradise staked in the textile mills of New Lanark. John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneidas. The Bellamyites and their Nationalist Clubs, more than a hundred bicoastally. So many Americans, revved up on Aldous Huxley and Henri Zisly, Charles Fourier and Étienne Cabet and Wilhelm Weitling. Dogged men and their adherents, rabid with augury and rancour, now stowed away to antiquity. But nowhere among all this history did I find mention of Lake Tenskwatawa or its people.

I enlisted a student named Edith to help me with a periodicals search, concentrating on upstate New York in the early fifties, seeking any record or account that might confirm the existence of any such outpost in the Adirondacks. Staring into those imposing microfiche readers, I scrolled through months of newspapers, finding nothing. What did I expect? Despite Edith’s enthusiasm for the subject—a bit of a hippie, she’d herself spent a summer picking blueberries on a communal farm in Bucks County—I began to question the very premise of my search. Where no evidence exists beyond memory, doubt inevitably arises. How much of what I thought I knew about that time was real and how much was only my invention, I had no way of gauging.

Then, deep into one of these archival dives, I came upon a headline below the fold on the front page of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 14, 1954: HIGHWAY EXPLOSION INJURES 5, SUSPECTS IN CUSTODY. The few details provided were disquieting: a pickup truck’s detonation near a construction site; workers harmed in the resulting blast; evidence found of a homemade bomb derived from ammonium nitrate fertilizer and propane tanks; two men apprehended. What caught my attention was the pair of mug shots. The men in question were named as Orville Bowne, thirty-nine, and Jay Bussey, twenty-eight, both described as without fixed abode, taken in for questioning. The younger man, Bussey, I didn’t recognize, but the older man I immediately knew. He was there with us in the darkened mess tent, Zina and me side by side, amid a throng of bodies pungent with tobacco and charcoal, bound in reverent expectation.

The injured men were rushed to hospital in Lake Placid for treatment of extensive burns and injuries related to debris scattered in the explosion.

Such violence, such wildness: had this been their calling?

I scrolled through the following days’ editions, seeking any subsequent coverage. Updates followed on the wounded workers, with mention of the suspects’ detainment awaiting investigation. Beyond that, nothing. I had Edith run off printouts of the relevant pages and planned to probe further as time allowed. The thought even crossed my mind to take a drive north some long weekend, take the I-87 up into the mountains, locate the lake, try to scope out those places and see what stood there now. It would be a nice drive. The scenery up there can be astounding.

I never went, of course. The microfiche prints sat atop my refrigerator, among bills and junk mail, gathering dust. They’re still there now, awaiting my reopening of this purposeless investigation. Bless you, Edith, for your patience.

Again: What are the facts? Are there any reassurances to be found in the past?

There were bodies buried up there.

What help is history?

At Laddie’s office on Middle Street I’m greeted by a different receptionist than the one who was here two weeks ago. Turnover must be high. The place is disarmingly quiet, and as I wait I grow anxious, flipping through an issue of People without absorbing anything. When Laddie finally appears in the hallway, he waves me in as if irritated at having to do so—as always, as if doing me a favour.

We get right to it, no niceties or small talk. He begins by telling me, once again, how wise I was in coming to him to handle this, and how the expense of a divorce settlement, even a no-fault settlement like mine, is offset by the peace of mind provided by a competent and knowledgeable attorney. I want to remind him that none of that matters to me, as John will be footing the bill; instead, I ask if the papers are here for signing like I’d been told. Rather than answering, Laddie leans back in his chair and folds his hands in front of him. It’s his professional obligation, he says, to provide full and open counsel. That means offering the entire wealth of his knowledge, not just in matters of the law but in its practical application. To put it bluntly, he says, it’s his impression that I haven’t fully thought through the consequences of this undertaking. At my silence, he goes on: A divorced woman faces many challenges in this world. Deep-seated social stigma is attached to such status, and the process of detachment can present significant liabilities, for you and for your children. I don’t have any children, I remind him, and this is something he definitely should know, particularly since my aversion to having children, above all else, provided John his grounds for filing. Sure, Laddie says, but someday you’ll want to. All women do. When that time comes, you’ll see exactly what I mean. You think you’re achieving independence in all this, he says, but really, with an alimony settlement and everything, in many respects you’ll be more dependent on this man than you were before, and with none of the residual benefits. Benefits, I echo back. Marriage, Laddie says, isn’t about giving your life a story to tell yourself, as in, Here I am, here’s how I flourished into this fully fledged adult version of myself. Or, not just that. Marriage proves that you are a credible person in the eyes of your community. It’s a public declaration that you are fully and legally capable of participating in the familial nature of society. Without it, you’re just some woman on her own, dithering around in a funk. Now is this, he asks me, something you really want?

Driving back to Durham along the 101, I’m reluctant to return home. The apartment I’ve taken since the split is a fine enough place for someone who needs little and expects even less. But as I endure the grind of rush hour traffic, the prospect of returning there, sitting alone with my thoughts, makes me queasy.

I pull off near Epping and stop at the first thing I see resembling a bar. An unassuming tavern, squashed between a roofers’ shop and a heating-ventilating supplies dealer—a cardboard sign propped in the window offers COCKTAILS BEER HOT LUNCH. Inside, it’s as expected: overlit, beat-up linoleum and smoke-ruined carpet, men in coveralls working through pitchers of draught, windows dingy with remnants of unidentifiable scuzz. I take a seat at a table and the woman running the place takes my order for a Coors.

A group of three or four men occupies the next table. Listening over my shoulder, I gather they, like everyone, are discussing the news, the hearings, the tapes, the president. It’s in everything now, these confusions, this weight we carry.

It comes from the top down, one of the men says.

Or from the side, another says, like that guy Dean, now there’s a real piece of piss for you. Dipping his dick in both puddles. Whatever serves himself.

Lawyers, a third pipes in. Man.

These voices ring familiar: I know how men are in this mode, the licence of immoderation they enjoy. By reflex I start to turn to get a clearer look at them, but then the server arrives with my beer. I’m not much of an imbiber, and can count on one hand how many times I’ve been anything like what you’d call blotto. Maybe seeing what it did to my sister made me cautious. Zina said she’d learned to drink while at Tenskwatawa, sipping corn mash liquor and homebrew—sometimes I still have the rank suffusing odour of distillation lodged in my nostrils. From an early age Zina sought to remain in that mist, and in her later years did so, morning to night. Drink was reliable in its comforts, its insulation easily sustained. Keeping an even keel, she’d write, as if deviating these patterns even in the slightest might leave her marooned in some unnavigable immensity. Better to remain adrift, lest any dropped anchor catch a treacherous seabed.

I picture her, burrowing through her days: at her desk in a crowded ninth-floor office, gazing at reams of proofs, then riding the train and waddling on her bum leg from the station back to her stuffy apartment, falling into her recliner with a glass and an ashtray and the TV clicker. I see her face: her scarlet cheeks puffy, her spectacles scratched and smeared with thumbprints, that tic she’d developed in her lower lip.

During my visit last winter she’d let me drag her out to a restaurant, a Chinese buffet on Cermak. There, amid the chintzy decor and banks of steaming woks, we’d both eaten ravenously, atypical for both of us, making multiple trips to refill our plates with egg rolls and spare ribs. When we’d cleared our third or fourth helpings, Zina ordered a second carafe of white wine and sat back in her seat, wringing her napkin in her fist. The food seemed to have vivified her. Spurred by nothing in particular, she wondered aloud what our mother would have made of such a place. None of this, she supposed, would have made sense to her. When I asked what she meant by that, Zina brushed off the question, as if any answer should have been self-evident. The manifold anxieties we face, the perplexities and disorientations of these times, the restaurant’s tacky decor—the implication seemed to be all of it would have been too much for one as frangible as our mother.

Maybe it’s for the best they died in that fire, Zina said.

I begged her pardon. Zina gave a self-censuring wave. Terrible, was all she said, then returned to her glass. I was dumbfounded. In a simple statement, casually tossed, so much was undone. Our parents’ deaths were murked in questions, increasingly so with years. Who fell to what hand, and how, and to whose satisfaction—I knew things, but I would never really, actually know. Time reels back, casting everything in a fog of doubt. And that fog clings, no matter the distance we cover.

What are the facts? Would the truth, even if we had it, be of any help?

We crave power—over ourselves, over one another, over our given place. The anger, the bluster, anything, just to achieve even a tinge of control. We’re all just fools, stumbling around, banging into one another. Like those men plotting and failing to blow up the highway, decades ago. What exhilaration they must have felt in the days leading up to it, driven by such purpose, feeling such fires. Even if they knew just how paltry their gesture was, the hope of destruction must have been magnificent.

That dinner would be the last time Zina and I saw one another. Later that month, back in New Hampshire, I was woken early by the telephone, a man asking in a Polish accent if I was me. This, I deduced, was Zina’s landlord. The night before she’d been discovered unconscious on the floor of the building’s basement laundry room, then ambulanced to St. Elizabeth’s, where she was placed in intensive care. I’d been listed as an emergency contact on her lease, thus Mikolaj’s calling. Someone at the ER switchboard gave me the number for a direct line, advising me to ring back for an update in an hour. Forty-seven unbearable minutes later, I dialled that extension and was informed she’d died during the night. Sudden cardiac arrest, a total loss of function.

Her urn was placed in a cemetery on the city’s north side, in a long row of similar plots halfway up a westward-facing slope. It’s a nice spot; when the weather’s fair, from there you can watch the sun setting over the Chicago skyline. This doesn’t mean anything, or perhaps it does.

No matter how my sister worked to erase herself, I still have her with me. Her protection, her power. And yet there’s so much of her I’ll never know.

The conversation among the men at the next table is escalating into an argument. There are competing understandings of the legalities surrounding the tapings, what’s admissible, what’s defensible.

You know they can fool around with those tapes and make it like anyone’s saying anything these days, one man says. They can make Barry Goldwater sound like Redd Foxx.

This is met with laughter, but the man continues.

Yeah, haw haw. But I’m not kidding. You got to question what you hear from these guys. Otherwise you’re just another patsy.

Down the hall by the bathrooms I spot a sign bearing the Bell logo, indicating a payphone. Somehow I’ve finished my beer, so I nod to the server for another then head for the phone. I consider calling John collect, just to make a statement, but I’m uncertain exactly what statement would be made, so I just plunk my quarter and dial his number, by memory. He answers on the third ring, his voice sounding flat, chagrined. I tell him the papers are signed.

Well, he says, I hope you’re happy now. You’re free.

I understand what’s insinuated in this: free. For the argument over whether or not we would have children was never really about either of our desires for a family, or the lack thereof, or whether John was entitled to impose his will upon mine, or if I could impose mine on him, or whether our childless love-empty marriage was at all worth preserving. The argument, the unbreachable rift that finally drove us apart, more than any of the countless other gruelling aspects of this hopeless relationship that could have brought about its end, was about me, my character, and any title I held on my own lot. Was I, as someone who never fought for anything, who’d never reckoned with any true enemy, willing to admit I might not know what was best for myself? Was I able to cede, even to the slightest extent, what small degree of control I possessed over my own fate? Could I relinquish the reins to another: a husband, a daughter, a shepherd? Could I surrender the power.

The truth was: I could not.

I’m not sure what’s left to say, so I politely wish John a good weekend and sever the call.

Returning to my table, I sense a change occurring. More patrons have arrived, swarming the bar and crowding tables, clinking glasses and lighting cigarettes. The light in the bar has shifted, day lengthening into dusk. The late sun, reddish and oblique, comes glaring through the dirty windows to re-create this room. It’s a sanctuary, an antechamber. These men, these shadowy and bodeful figures, omens or forewarnings, tragedies to come—I want them to see how I’m with them, how we’re all together in this shared passage. We’re all running away from where we came from, flailing into the dark forest’s unknown. Huddled together here, wiping our lips, shaking our heads in disbelief, there’s nothing we can do but brace ourselves for the future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Heartfelt appreciation to Rick Meier at Knopf Canada for his insights and the razor-sharp editorial acumen he’s brought to this novel. Additional thanks to the extended team at Penguin Random House Canada: Emma Lockhart, Melanie Little, John Sweet, Christie Hanson, Emma Dolan, Stephen Myers, and Martha Kanya-Forstner. Profound gratitude to Cody Caetano at CookeMcDermid for making it happen.

And, especially: eternal love to Stephanie Stonehewer Southmayd for everything.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rob Benvie is the author of the novels Maintenance, Safety of War, and Bleeding Light. His screenwriting includes the film Stanleyville. Born and raised in Nova Scotia, he currently lives in Toronto.

robbenvie.com