Urban Waite - Far Cry - Absolution

“We have given you salvation. But you too have given us your soul.”

“Yes,” Will said. “I know that. I never stopped knowing that.”

“Good,” John said. “The Father will be glad to hear it. He waits for you. He waits to give you his blessing once again. You will stay at Eden’s Gate tonight and you will be my guest and The Father’s.” John took his arm away, he turned to go.

Will stopped him. “What about Mary May?”

“You don’t need to worry about her,” John said. “You may well see her soon enough. She is with us now. She is with us just as she is with her brother. Both of them are now a part of us.”

SHE LOOKED AT DREW AND WAITED ON HIM TO SAY SOMETHINGto her, but he never did. He just kept driving. They were headed down the mountain. All she could see when she looked out at the blur of forest as they passed it by was her own reflection staring darkly back at her.

“Where have you been?” she said.

He turned for a moment to look at her. He was now more man than he was boy and she wondered briefly when and how that had come to be. “I’ve been here and there,” he said. “Working, I guess is what you might call it.”

She sat and stared at him, she was scared to ask. “Working?” she said.

“They’ve been good to me up here.”

“That right?”

“That’s right.” He glanced her way again then put his eyes back on the road. “You don’t trust them, do you?”

“We were raised not to. And some would say for good reason, too.”

“You’re talking about Daddy and Mamma, aren’t you?”

“Who else,” she said. “John and them have been scaring off our distributors. They’ve been trying to shut us down.”

“You still selling alcohol?”

“Not much of a bar without it.”

“There’s reasons for what they do. There’s good reasons.”

She shook her head. “You sound just like them.”

“There’s good reasons for that, too,” he said.

They had come down the mountain about five miles and he turned the wheel. The truck tires came off the pavement and she could hear the gravel beneath the tires and small rocks hitting in the wheel wells.

“What’s this?” she said. “You said you’d take us home.”

He looked over at her but did not say anything. She leaned forward now and peered ahead, trying to decipher their route from the darkness.

“I said I’d take you home,” he said. “I didn’t mean your home, or Mamma’s and Daddy’s home.”

Up ahead she could see cement blocks to either side of the road and the gate there. The gate now opening to take them in. Church members waited on either side and she could see the guns they carried and the eyes they laid upon her as they passed.

She sat there watching them as they went. And as Drew brought the truck forward, she turned and saw that same gate close behind her. “Drew?” she said.

“Don’t you worry.”

She reached behind her and brought up the .38, holding it at her side just out of sight.

She could see buildings now and lights and the spire of a church. Outside the night seemed to grow darker as they drove, the lake there only distinguished from the night by the reflection of their headlights. She could tell beyond the buildings and the church the land was a mix of trees and grass that came up from the lakeshore and rose toward the mountains.

Drew pulled the truck around and brought it to a stop. He leaned forward and brought the transmission into park, then he took the keys. The engine stopped working and for a moment she felt very alone there in the truck, as if her brother were not there, and she had been left now completely on her own.

“Is that Daddy’s .38?” Drew asked. He turned now and looked to where she held the gun, then he looked to see what she would say.

“It’s his.”

“I wondered if he still had it.”

“You wondered?”

“I just thought about it sometimes. I’ve thought about a lot of things while I’ve been up here.”

“I wish Daddy would have found you,” she said. “I wish he’d had a chance to talk to you.”

“You think it would have changed some things?”

“I think it would have. I wish you two could have worked it out.”

“He never really gave me much of any kind of chance,” Drew said. “You know that just as well as me.”

She studied his face in profile. “He was stubborn but it didn’t mean he didn’t care.”

“I get it,” Drew said. “Look, they put this place aside for you.” He nodded toward the little house that sat before them. “You’ll be able to shower. You’ll be able to rest. I’m sure you’re tired. I’m sure you could use a little time.”

“Time for what? I never asked to come here. I don’t want to be here. I want you to take me home. Not here but home. Our home.”

“There’s people who want to meet you, Mary May. You understand you are a guest. They only want to talk to you.”

“They can come into the bar if that’s what they want,” she said. “We’re open every day from noon to two.”

“You know what I mean,” he said. “I don’t want you being rude.”

She gave her brother a hard stare. “You know they shot at me? You know they shot at me just this afternoon?”

“I think that was just a misunderstanding,” Drew said. “They’re good folk up here. You’ll see.”

She didn’t take her eyes off him.

“Look,” he said. “Don’t shoot no one. They want to talk to you. That’s not going to hurt you none. And when it’s all done you’ll go back down to Fall’s End and your bar.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“You should come back to town with me, Drew. That’s what Daddy and Mamma would have wanted.”

“That’s kind of you to say, but you and I both know there’s not much truth in that.”

WILL RODE IN THE BACK OF THE PICKUP WITH THE FOUR OTHERmen. All of them were thirty to forty years younger than him and tattooed and pierced in ways that Will had never even thought of. None of them said anything to him, but he could see their eyes rest on him and on his rifle from time to time before they moved on again, back out to the forest beyond and the night that now came on toward them forty miles per hour at a time. No one talked. The wind was rushing with a fierceness as they came down the highway road then turned down the gravel lane and came to Eden’s Gate.

John rode shotgun and Will watched him lean and talk with one of the guards. The guard bent down to talk with John and then pointed out ahead of him to where the buildings sat.

It had been three weeks since he’d been here and he could see the metal fence posts were beginning to go in at the perimeter of the property. A new house was going up as well. One of many smaller houses that made up this community, some still unpainted, half salvaged and half built of roughly sawn wood and plank that had been erected down the gravel drives that composed this place. There were fires burning in many places and he watched the people who stood around them, men and women, some he knew by name but many he didn’t.

The driver took them down through the houses and small outbuildings and Will looked toward the pickup he thought he’d seen Drew driving. It sat in front of a small house with white clapboard siding and a single light on within. He could see nothing of the inside through the curtains save the light.

“Is she in there?” he asked, turning to the man who sat closest to him.

The man only nodded, the pickup coming to a stop now just before the church.

John was up out of the truck, and he came around thumping his hands along the top of the bed. He gave Will a pat on the back and told him to follow him.