A History of Wild Places(60)

But instead, we will drop two men inside.

From my pocket, I retrieve the folded notebook page I found behind the wallpaper, and hand it to my wife seated beside me. She arrived late to the gathering, appearing cautiously from the path, her arms folded, before she spotted me and came to sit on the bench to my left. I thought she might not come at all, but stay in Bee’s room, sisters comforted by the presence of the other. But now she sits with her shoulders tensed, come to see what will happened to Ash and Turk.

“What is it?” she asks, holding the folded paper, but I only give her a tight nod.

She senses its furtive nature, and her eyes glance around the group to be sure no one is close enough to see before she unfolds the creased edges. She reads the words quickly, keeping her head bent low, then refolds it again, clamping her palm around the little square. “Where did you find it?”

“Tucked in the wallpaper, above the bed in the sunroom.”

“Were there others?”

“No. The notebook is missing more pages, but they weren’t in the wall with this one.”

She hands the folded square back to me. “We need to find the rest,” she says, swift but quiet. “They must be somewhere in the house.”

A sudden and abrupt hush settles over the group, and those who had been standing, milling about, make their way to benches, crowding in around us. I turn to see Levi striding up the center row toward the stage, his eyes cast to his feet.

“Something has happened,” he begins once he reaches the stage, his gaze directed at the front row where Turk’s wife, Marisol, is seated, as if he is speaking only to her. But Marisol’s back is rigid, dark thick hair braided loosely over one shoulder, and I wonder if she knows Turk tried to leave, if he told her before he stole away into the dark? Or maybe he did it in secret so she wouldn’t worry.

Several members shift in their chairs, an uneasy unified motion. This is our second emergency gathering in only a few days, and they can feel that something is off—something’s wrong.

Levi clears his throat, eyes lifting to the whole of the community now—addressing us all. “Two of our members have slipped outside our borders into the place they shouldn’t cross.”

The stirring of the group stops.

“We need to be certain they haven’t brought the pox back with them.” Levi’s tone is grave, and his eyes sweep to his left where Ash and Turk stand just below the small stage, their hands bound in front of them with rope. Parker stands behind them, his own hands planted on his hips. It occurs to me that Parker isn’t at the gate for his shift. Perhaps Levi thought the gathering was important enough that we should all be in attendance—we all need to witness what’s about to happen.

“We will perform the ritual, just like the early settlers did. The old ways have often proved the most effective, and if these men do have the rot inside them, this is their best chance of being cured. Our best chance of knowing if the pox is already within our walls.”

Levi nods solemnly, and Parker leads the two men to the Mabon tree—the broad oak that was planted when the first settlers built this place, long before Cooper and the members of Pastoral arrived.

Turk is still limping, and I doubt anyone has tended to his ankle—it’s not worth the risk of treating his wound, spreading the pox, if he’s going to die anyway. I glance at Calla seated beside me, hands folded in her lap, and I know what she keeps cupped between her palms—the silver charm she found in the garden. She has it with her always now, even when she sleeps, just like I keep the photograph of Maggie St. James.

Parker is careful not to touch the two men, but he urges them forward to the Mabon tree, until they’re each standing over a hole. Someone in the group makes a strange, sputtering wheeze, like they’re holding back tears, then Parker prods the two men forward with the barrel of his gun. Obediently, without a word—as if they’ve resigned themselves to what will happen next—they climb down into their holes, their feet standing at the bottom, only their heads sticking up above the ground. “Lift your hands,” Parker instructs, and both men do as he says. I wonder what Levi has told them—this morning before the gathering—if he implored them that this is the only way they might be saved. And now they raise their bound arms above their heads without protest.

If the pox is inside them, this old way might actually rid it from their flesh—the mineral-rich soil said to leech the illness from the bones, draw it clean out, like a sponge to water.

Parker loops one end of a rope around their wrists and the other up around the lowest limb of the Mabon tree. This will ensure they can’t dig themselves free from the ground.

Now Parker and one of the other younger boys, Orion, begin filling in the holes around Ash and Turk, packing it in good so the men won’t be able to move or shift or wriggle loose.

“I know these next few days will be difficult for many of you, but I ask that you don’t try to free these two men,” Levi says over the sound of dirt being slumped into the holes. “The early settlers knew this was the only way to draw the pox from the skin. If Ash and Turk are infected, the ground will rid it from their bodies—this is our only hope of saving them.”

Turk’s eyes are pinched closed and from the front of the gathering circle, I can hear the whimpering of Turk’s wife. Someone helps her to stand, and she’s led away before the dirt has reached her husband’s chest. I think of Colette, Ash’s wife, and I wonder if she knows what he’s done. If she’s been told. These last few days, she has stayed inside the birthing hut where she and her child can be cared for, but does she know the unrest her recent delivery has caused? That her husband is being buried beneath the Mabon tree in the ritual of the old way?