Ethan Chatagnier - Warnings from the Future

ELI

How many months does it take to fall in love?

The question is phrased wrong.

It doesn’t happen like the flipping of a switch, like the addition of a current to a dormant wire. Falling in love is like being flooded with water so that you feel it running down your head and body even as it rises around your ankles and immerses you.

Hugo named the damn dog Mavis and taught her to live in the southwest corner of the barn near the door, next to Columbia. The cattle didn’t have stalls like the horses did; they could wander into any place they liked, but after Hugo had guided Columbia enough times to her place near the door, through which the snowcapped mountains could be seen sleeping on top of the orchard, she had adopted it as her own.

The students did not like the idea of adopting a pet and grumbled indistinctly about it, but really making that kind of call was something about which they knew to defer to me. I fended them off by arguing she was a herding breed, though she did not herd and seemed only to care for food and petting. In truth, the dog would have gone to a shelter, kill- or non-, on the day she showed up if anyone but Hugo had taken her in. That was one of the things that drew me to him—his renunciation of the utilitarian view of the land we all took, and the way he looked at a dog or a cow or a horse and wanted it to be nothing more than what it was. When we weren’t sneaking off, he spent most of his free time in the barn, rubbing Mavis’s belly, talking to Columbia, and currying and otherwise tending to Galahad. The way he acted not just with these animals but with an onion, a lizard, made me believe that I myself should love them all better too.

WESLEY

As I have said, the gravity of their sins somehow prevented me from acting. A much smaller sin, a simpler one, is what freed me. Early one morning I walked by the barn and saw Eli inside, offering a carrot to Columbia all by himself. That was it. Let it not be said that I took rash or hasty action. I sought first the counsel of Pastor Dale. I waited for him to ride out on Lancelot one Tuesday after our theology class, and I rode out after him on Gawain, neglecting my work duties to do so, though for the purpose of speaking to the pastor, allowances were made.

“You’re in a great trial,” he said before I could even begin. I looked away. “It’s all over your face, kid. Lay it on me.”

“I fear for Eli’s soul.”

“You’ve got a real atavistic diction, you know that?”

“I’d call it nostalgic.”

“Potato, po-tah-to.”

He kept his boots clean, kept his jeans clean, despite not being shy with the dirt. It was a simple trick, but quite comforting, as was his cowboy-gospel mien, which, casual though it was, was rooted in a deep and abiding faith. I tried not to sound nostalgic and instead sounded only like a child.

“He’s up to something bad.”

Pastor Dale held up his palm to try to stop me.

“Something very bad. And I’ve known for weeks, and I’ve tried to stop it.”

He raised his hand two inches, and I stopped.

“Who is his spiritual leader?” he said. “Has Eli been named one of your sheep? Who hears his confession weekly? Your concern is good hearted, but look first to the beam in your own eye.”

“But he’s failed to confess this, or you wouldn’t take it so lightly.”

“If his confessions are partial that’s a matter for me. Mostly for him, really. A little for me. Trust in me. Trust in the Lord. He expects his sheep to return to him. He does not expect them never to stray, for who knows their nature better than Him?”

He waited to see if I had further objections. He clearly did not welcome them.

“Cheer up, kid,” he said, spurring Lancelot, and I had no choice but to either chase after him or let him go.

With effort I could mind his counsels during the day. But for a week I had trouble sleeping. With my eyes closed, the theater of my mind flashed only to the scene of Hugo’s buttocks saddled on his heels, of his head doing that thing to Eli, of Eli’s long body arching backwards and his face the face of his possession. And then in the darkness of the bunkroom I would lose track of whether my eyes were closed at all. After a week of this torment, which I suspected was the prompting of God to do what must be done, I took my knife from my footlocker, unfolded it silently, and padded silently across the room to Hugo’s bed. I scraped the knife twice against the skin of his neck as if shaving him, just enough to leave an abrasion and see if he would wake. When his eyelids fluttered open, I pressed the flat of the blade into his lips, and I whispered to him, perhaps I hissed, “Agents of the Devil cannot abide in holy places. You must cast yourself out or be cast out. Your Master is nothing compared to ours. Your faith is small compared to ours, and ours will not flinch. You must leave tomorrow. You are exiled from the lands of the Lord.”

His eyes were wide with awe and terror. They seemed to glow in the dark. Knowing that I would be unable to sleep after this encounter, I walked out into the frigid night air, but my body felt no cold.

ELI

I’ve never been a light sleeper, so I chalk it up to providence that I woke that night. A rustling sound repeated across the bunkroom that was not quite the wind, not quite a squirrel on the roof. My eyes adjusted, and I thought I saw Hugo standing up next to his bed, but as I strained to see in his posture hints of what was troubling him, it became clear that the height and the build and the carriage were not his. I crept closer and saw that the exposed flat buttocks, matte gray in the scant light, were certainly not his. The pauper’s haircut, the military stance—Wesley Denniston.

As soon as I got an angle enough to see Wesley stroking his erection and prodding Hugo’s sleeping lips with it, my concern for stealth disappeared, and I wrapped my fists in his shirt and lifted him off the floor, hearing the fabric at his armpits rip. He went rigid, locking his wide white eyes on mine as I shouldered open the door and carried him out into the yard and threw him in a horse trough. His limbs came unlocked when he landed in the frigid water, churning a storm out of it. I thought of helping him get out, but decided against it.

Back inside, once my eyes had adjusted back out of the starlight, I saw that a few of the students were sitting up and looking at me quizzically, sleepily. “Coyote,” I said. They nodded and lay back down. After crawling back into my bed I couldn’t sleep, keeping sentinel watch over Hugo, prepared for Wesley to return with more drastic intentions. He didn’t return at all, though, and I was kept up the rest of the night by the worry that I’d killed him. It was October now. The lows were in the 40s.

I went out in the morning to look for him, while the other students were just rising. He was fast asleep in the barn. He’d hung out his wet clothes, curled up with Columbia, and covered himself with hay. He showed up at breakfast as if nothing had happened.

WESLEY

Hugo did not heed my warning. He and Eli shifted their trysts to some other nook I was unable to discover, but their sly public glances and sensitive friendship went on undeterred. This time I did not hesitate. After allowing two days for him to leave our midst, I snuck away from my planting detail and packed his bags in the bunkroom. I grabbed the pickup keys from the office, threw his bags in the cab, and watched him all day until he ambled back alone through the already bare stone fruit trees. Just as he was turning to head out of the treeline, I roped him by the ankle, and he fell flat on his face. By the time he rolled over I had a sock stuffed in his mouth and a handkerchief between his teeth to tie it in place. Kneeling on his shoulders, I socked him twice to stop him struggling, and when he went gentle I tied his wrists together between his legs and back out around his waist. Then I tied his ankles together and looped it to the other rope. Hoisting him onto the tailgate, I looped his tethers with bungee cords to the hooks in the bed of the truck.