In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [47]
No, Greg could not go for a ride. My mother seemed as concerned about my brothers lust for the machine as she did about the possibility of mine for Ned. When Ned said it was time he got back, we watched him speed up the road, popping the clutch just enough to raise the front tire. Greg was mesmerized. “Geez!” he said, and then looked sheepishly at my mother, who scowled. “Geez” was just another way of saying “Jesus,” and it was a sin to take the Lord’s name in vain.
“Don’t you have chores?” my mother asked, directing her gaze at me. I nodded and headed for the house, nearly ecstatic. I wondered if my father would find out. Surely he had heard the noise. Still, he would be gone for days, maybe weeks. Already, it almost seemed as though he had never existed.
When I woke the next morning and walked into the kitchen, I was stunned to see him there, eating breakfast at his usual place. My mother cushioned her steps and warned me with her eyes to stay quiet. Had God spoken already? If so, why was everyone so silent, so glum? I sat at the table and ate my cereal, taking in the subtle signs: my father’s studied attention to his food, my mother’s tentative movements. Something had happened. Maybe God had told him something horrible, that he was going to die or that someone else was. Maybe some evil had been revealed. I thought of Lola, but she was already gone. Who else could it be?
I didn’t ask these questions out loud, and no one in my family ever again mentioned my father’s quest. Only recently did I learn why he abandoned his vigil and rejoined us at the table: his brother had threatened to have him committed.
I imagine the struggle he faced: continue with what he believed a good and sacred task, or risk losing everything—his job, his home, perhaps even his family. I do not think he cared that people might label him crazy, but his responsibilities as a husband and father were also sacred. I’m sure he prayed before leaving the shelter, at first asking God why this obstacle had been placed in his path, and then understanding that he must not question, that his brother’s interference must in and of itself be part of the trial. God must have other plans, another way for my father to prove his spiritual commitment.
Perhaps for him there could be another form of sacrifice. What was it my father loved the most? He could survive without food, could live for long periods divorced from those in the world he cherished. As much as he loved my mother, he knew that his love for God was greater and that if called upon to do so, he would not hesitate to leave her. My brother and I belonged not to him but to God, and if asked he would certainly do as Abraham had to his own child: place us upon the rock and raise a dagger above our breasts.
What was left? What was he most jealous of? What I know is that the wilderness has always seemed my father’s greatest love. The woods had saved him, had provided a home for his family, had brought him to the church and to God. To separate the land from the Spirit might prove the ultimate sacrifice.
He heard it in the voice that came to him one night, woke him into a light so bright he had to shield his eyes. This time, there was no demon, no chill air, only the light and the voice that might have been a dream except for the light and the way the words rang in his inner ear for hours afterward, saying, Go. Go now.
My fathers decision was made: we would leave the woods. I don’t remember being told or how I took the news, but it was spring and everything seemed new and reasonable. Besides, Luke and his family were leaving too, first for the cherry orchards of Washington and Oregon to work the harvests, just as they did each year. They would not come back. They’d find another church in another town where they could start over and leave Cardiff Spur and its memories behind.
Before then, there would be a baptism. By May, the month I turned twelve, the age when children were believed to be mentally and spiritually mature enough to determine