THE MORNING MIST WAS IN THE FIELDS BEYOND WHEN WILL came to the top of the small rise and looked down upon the Kershaw house. The grassy fecal odor of the cattle lingered in the air. He ran his eyes out along the cattle wire until it dropped away over the edge of the rounded field. A slim line of wood smoke escaped the chimney top and this too he watched.
Moving now, following the gravel road that ran the top of the hill, he came down through stands of pine and could see the barn below. One of the broad doors stood open, its lowermost corner resting in the dirt. Dark shadows seen within. And though he could smell the cows in the air he had not seen one and he stepped closer, wondering now what had happened and whether the bear had come again and would now emerge from within that greater shadow, covered in the fresh blood of some new slaughter.
He found nothing of the sort, simply hay and the chipped paint of the stalls. The heady aroma of forgotten animals, long vacated from this place. When he came out again he saw the white church truck parked off the road, closer to the pine forest than to the house. A shovel and pick had been leaned against the side of the bed with two yellow cowhide gloves resting atop each pole, like the coxcomb beginnings of some makeshift pair of scarecrows.
Fifty yards away the opening of the screen door startled Will. He turned and looked toward the porch where Lonny now waited, dragging his fingers through his beard and looking across the grass and gravel to Will.
When Will walked up, Lonny had already taken his pouch from one of his pockets and had begun to roll a cigarette. He stood atop the porch. He wore a thin cotton tank that clung tight around his ribcage all the way to the waist of his pants. His hair was mussed and on the skin of his face were the visible imprints of sleep. He spat and then wet his lips and he watched Will where he stood with the beavers on a string over one shoulder and the rifle on the other.
“You sleeping here?” Will asked.
“Sometimes.”
Will watched him rummage through his pocket and then bring up the lighter. Lonny cupped the lighter and brought the flame to his lips, the cigarette flared and the first draught of smoke was taken down within his lungs. All of it seen in a kind of deliberate and slow catharsis, smoke and air, the shift of a breeze, the washing of the smoke across his skin. The smell of the smoke commingled with the smell of the cows now made their absence from this place more apparent. “What happened to the cattle?”
“Eaten,” Lonny said.
Will looked past him to where the door stood open, as if the cows might somehow be within. “And the Kershaws?”
“Gone.”
“Gone?”
Lonny was smiling a little, watching Will, and then he leaned and spat again, not even bothering to get the spittle off the porch.
WILL LEFT THE BEAVERS ON THE KITCHEN COUNTER AND WENT to use the bathroom. When he was done he came back into the small hallway that ran out from the living room. His hands were wet from washing them in the sink and he ran his palms down his shirtfront then flipped them over and ran the backs against the material, drying them one side at a time like the stropping of a razor across the leather of a belt.
Across the hallway was a partially closed bedroom door and he pushed it open and looked within. A queen-sized bed, the sheets pulled back on each side. Two pillows and the indents of two heads, as if whoever had been here had simply risen minutes before and now was out walking the field or waiting on the coffee to finish percolating.
He turned and went farther down the hallway, moving away from the kitchen and living room. He came to two more bedrooms, pushed each door open in turn and glanced inside. In one, blue walls and the hanging models of airplanes built from some kit. In the other, pink walls and a dresser lined along its top with stuffed animals and small plastic toy horses, many toppled over, but some still standing in various poses of action like a frozen moment captured by a child’s diorama.
“I heard you had a daughter.” Lonny stood at the head of the hallway, thirty paces away.
“You heard?”
“That’s what they told me. That’s what they said when they gave me the job of watching over you.”
Will took in the pink color of the walls, the diffuse curtains across the single window. He’d had a daughter. He’d had a wife. A family. Will had had a whole life before this one and it was his fault his wife and daughter were not with him anymore, that they were not part of this world anymore. And though he had come to The Father and to Eden’s Gate for some kind of forgiveness, he knew now that forgiveness was not what he’d found.
He closed his eyes a moment. He smelled dust and something beneath it all that was sweet and almost recognizable. When he opened his eyes again, he turned and looked toward Lonny. “What happened here?” Will asked.
“YOU’RE PART OF US, WILL. BUT WHEN YOU, OR JOHN, OR THE Father, or even I look at the same thing it does not mean we see the same thing.” They walked the field. The blood could still be seen in the grass where the cow had died, where the bear had come and eaten its fill and then moved on again. “Every one of us has our purpose. You have lived out there and you have served the purposes of the church and they are grateful for it.”
“And the Kershaws?” Will asked, still thinking of the empty rooms and what had been said to him. The answer Lonny had given that was not an answer.
“They served their purpose, too. Just as you do, or I do. Each of us a servant.”
“And your purpose?” Will asked. He knelt now, looking out across the field, retracing the steps of the bear, seeing it in his mind. The big loping slide and pull of its muscle as it ran, the sheen of its fur seen beneath the light of the sun and the way the dust of the pasture and earth beneath its great claws would have risen, kicked into the air.
“I make sure The Father and the church receive their due.”
“Is that what they are calling it now?”
“We are a community. As you know well enough, if the church helps you, you are expected to pay that kindness back.”
“And the Kershaws paid?”
“Until they could not anymore.”
“And now?”
“They have been repurposed.”
Will rose and walked toward where the fence had been bent. He could see in the packed dirt and the close-cropped grass, the indents and scuffle of the bear’s movements. “Were the Kershaws here when this happened?”
“They were. But they were already at their end. They had already slaughtered many of their cows to feed the church and their time here and their hold on this place was coming to an end.”
Will looked now to the surrounding wood. He thought of all he’d seen. He thought of the bear out there. He wondered if it was there still. If it watched them even now. “I saw The Father last night,” Will said. “I saw John. I saw the baptism in the river.”
“It is not just the Kershaws that owe a debt to the church. Many in this community have been helped. They have had their mortgages paid. They have had their debts forgiven. They have suckled at the teat of Eden’s Gate,” Lonny said, a wicked smile now breaking from his lips. “And the church and The Father only ask their due, whether that is the slaughter of a cow, or the growing of a crop, or the giving of their soul to Eden’s Gate.”
“Some did not give their soul as freely as the others.”