The pastor nodded. “I believe so. It makes me feel better to hear you say that. It makes me feel better.”
“Why?” said Connelly. “Do you know someone who has stolen to survive?”
Leo blinked, startled. “Me? No. No, not at all. We are blessed here. Whatever sickness that has taken this nation has passed us by. We live in peace. I would do whatever was necessary to… to keep it that way, yes, but… but that time is not now.” His eye twitched and he glanced out the window up into the mountains. “I hope Christ and God almighty will forgive all of us in the future for what we do in the present.”
“I am sure He will,” Pike said. “I once taught the Word myself. I have seen the most desperate places of this blessed nation and there the Word still lives.”
“Yes,” said the pastor. “Lives.”
He and Pike continued conversing. Connelly and the others soon tired of it and asked for a washroom. There was one in the church and they cleaned themselves, the first soap and combs they had seen in months. A wife of one of the men offered them fresh clothes but they could not accept, already unnerved by the hospitality. Then they went back out to the town square to enjoy the rest of the day, accompanied by two of the other churchmen.
They looked up at the gray peaks rising up into the sky before them.
“I have never seen the mountains,” Hammond said. “Not really. Just plains and plains and plains. I never knew the earth could be so tall.”
“Tall and dangerous,” said one of the churchmen. “I don’t know where you boys are going next, but it shouldn’t be up there.”
“Why?” asked Connelly.
“Wolves. We’ve had lots of trouble with them. They rove in packs up there. Makes hell for the livestock.”
“Wolves?” said Peachy. “There are wolves around here?”
“Yes.”
Connelly peered up at the slopes. He stood and shaded his eyes. “There’s something up there,” he said.
“What?” said one of the men. He sounded startled.
“I see a little roof up there. Just a little higher than here. See?” he pointed.
“Oh. That’s the old farm. It’s abandoned. It was abandoned because of the wolves.”
“Oh,” said Connelly.
The two other men scratched their arms awkwardly, then bid Connelly good day and walked off to the other celebrations. He watched them go. Two little boys ran by carrying the toy axes or scythes, twirling them about and singing about the harvest. The two men shushed them. The little boys halted, abashed, then glanced at Connelly and the others and scampered off.
As evening came the pastor and the other churchmen took them to a small barn at the edge of town where they sat on stools and drank cool ale in the shade. Connelly and the others smiled and were happy but the churchmen stayed somber. They sipped from their dusty glasses and stared at their feet and spoke little. Soon Hammond and Peachy were talking of women yet again and Pike was pounding his fist into his palm and speaking of God and righteousness, all of them red-faced and laughing. Only Roosevelt did not drink. He sat in the corner and stared at his fingers and traced lines on his face. Connelly approached, stumbling.
“What you doing, Rosie?” he asked.
Roosevelt looked up at him. “A green day. A water day.”
“What?”
“What would you give for a water day?”
“A water day?”
“Yes. For home?”
“Home. Shit. I don’t know. A lot. Everything.”
“Everything you have?”
“Yeah.”
“What about everything someone else has?”
Connelly could not think to answer.
Roosevelt nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
When night fell they were roaring drunk and wild-eyed. The churchmen laughed but it sounded flat and anxious. They led Connelly and the others into the hay to sleep and they tossed themselves down and were soon snoring.
Connelly awoke deep in the night. His head still throbbed with drink but his stomach would not quiet. It was not nausea, but some anxiety he could not name. Again, the animal thing. That strange, wheedling sense that something was not right.
He stood up and walked outside. The moon was just cresting the peaks, like a pearl mounted on an immense black stand. He looked back at the cottages of the town. They were dead and quiet, almost abandoned. The odd window glowed among their ranks, a drop of honey among jet. He rubbed his belly and walked away toward an old tree to piss. While there he looked and saw the tallest copse of trees he had ever seen in his life rising at the foot of the hills, less than a quarter mile away. He studied them and looked back at the town. He could not say why but certain things seemed to line up between the two. Rocks and stones and some shrubberies, the gentle rise and swirl of the landscape—they all aligned themselves like some path leading from one to the other.
He buttoned up and walked to the copse. The trees were enormous, all firs at least a hundred feet tall, each of them a green so dark they were nearly purple. There had to be at least a dozen of them. He walked into their center. Stones and lumps of earth lay scattered in the little clearing. He stood in the center and looked about and noticed there was a gap in the trees that opened on the side of the mountain, and through it he could just make out the roof of the abandoned farm.
He was about to leave when he noticed a marking on one of the trees. A circle with two parallel arrows, gouged in the bark. Connelly ran his fingers over it and looked at the stones and the small mounds and then up at the farmhouse above. Then he turned back and studied the town for a long, long while.
“What are you doing, Connelly?” said a voice.
He spun around. Roosevelt was sitting beside one of the trees.
“Rosie?”
“You should be asleep,” Roosevelt said.
“So should you.”
“I am asleep.”
“You should go back and sleep in the barn, though.”
“No. I wanted to be where everyone else was sleeping.”
“What?” said Connelly.
“Everyone’s sleeping,” said Roosevelt, and gestured into the trees. “Everyone sleeps.” He smiled and looked back at Connelly. “You should sleep, too, Connelly. It would be better.”
“I will,” he said. “Just once I get something figured out, I will. Stay here, will you, Rosie? Just stay right there.”
Connelly walked quickly to the barn to rouse Pike. He prodded him with his foot until the old man’s eyes snapped open.
“What?” Pike muttered.
“Something you should see.”
“Why? What is it?”
“Don’t know yet.”
Pike stood to his feet. “Should we wake Hammond?”
There was a quiet moan. “I’m already awake,” said Hammond’s voice. He sat up in the hay and smacked his lips. “What are you doing stomping around in the middle of the night, Con?”
“Found something,” he said. “Follow me if you want.” He thought and added, “Bring your guns.”
Pike and Hammond shared a glance but did as he asked.
“Christ, I got a headache,” Hammond said as they stumbled out the door. “My head pounds like no tomorrow. There’s no waking Peachy, he’s snoring away.”
