EIGHTEEN
On their way to Packer’s mansion for a Christmas brunch, Ezekiel and Gloria Curtice eyed the steep treeless slopes that swept up on both sides of the trail, listening for the first hint of the breaking snow that would precede a slide. Lying in bed in their fire-warmed cabin, they’d heard them going throughout the night, like the thunder of distant cannons. Stephen Cole sent up a prayer for protection as they moved into the treacherous gap between the mountains, their webs sinking through a foot and a half of powder with every step. When they emerged from the avalanche path, the party stopped to rest near a spring that erupted out of the rock.
Ezekiel and Stephen packed down an area of snow so they could sit without sinking. Then the preacher dipped an Indian earthenware vessel he’d brought into the spring, offered the first sip to Gloria.
“No thank you. I’m afraid it’ll chill me down even more.”
“Zeke?”
“Naw, Preach, you go ahead.”
They sat in the cold and awesome silence. Ezekiel pulled off his fleece-lined gloves, took out a hip-flask tin of Prince Albert tobacco, set to work loading his pipe.
Ahead, the terrain flattened into a high basin, with a lake in the middle that in the summer turned a luminescent green, as though the lakebed were made of solid emerald, with the sun underneath it. Even then, no one could stand the water for more than a minute, leading the residents of Abandon to bestow it with the most extreme temperature designation in their arsenal—“fucking cold.”
Gloria tucked in the blond curls that had escaped from her sealskin cap, shivering despite having bundled herself in two petticoats, two pairs of stockings, one of Ezekiel’s heavy woolen jackets, and an enormous pommel slicker.
“Mind if I ask you something, Stephen?”
“Gloria, you can ask me anything anytime.”
Ezekiel blew smoke rings, watched the snowflakes cut them down.
“If I tell you this, can it stay between us? ’Cause nobody else in Abandon knows what I’m about to say.”
“What do you think you’re doin, Glori?” Ezekiel said.
“Trying to ask the preacher something.”
“Don’t go botherin him with—”
“Zeke,” said Stephen, “let her say what’s on her mind. I’m here to help if I can.”
“Glori, wish you’d let it lie,” Ezekiel said, but she ignored him.
“There’s no easy way to say it, Stephen. I used to be a whore.”
“Aw hell,” Ezekiel said.
“And Zeke used to be a outlaw. Killed a few men in his time. We each did enough sinning for ten. We changed. Not perfect by any means, but we’re decent folk now, or try to be at least.”
“I believe that,” Stephen said as he brushed the snow off his visored felt hat.
“Reason I’m telling you this is ’cause I wanna know about God’s punishment.”
“What about it in particular?”
“Something happened a year ago—”
“Ain’t gonna listen to this,” Ezekiel said, and he struggled to his feet and webbed a ways up the trail, where he stood with his back to them, smoking his pipe, watching the basin fill with snow.
“Go on, Gloria,” Stephen said.
“Last January, we were living up in Silver Plume. Had a son, name a Gus. Him and Zeke went out together one morning. They were waiting to cross the street, and somehow, Gus’s little hand slipped out a Zeke’s. Our boy walked in front of a hansom. . . .” Stephen reached over, touched Gloria’s arm. She wiped her eyes. “The horse stepped on Gus and one a them big wheels . . . rolled over his neck. Weren’t nobody’s fault. Not the driver’s. Not Zeke’s.”
“Not yours.”
“Gus died right there in the street.”
“I’m so sorry, Gloria.”
“Now I want you to tell me something, Stephen.”
“I’ll certainly try.”
“I just told you how Zeke and I used to be a wicked pair a souls. There’s this little voice been whispering to me ever since he died, saying that God took Gus from us as punishment for all the bad things we done. That ain’t true, is it? He ain’t that kind a God?”
The preacher’s calm brown eyes seemed to darken. He looked away, and when he spoke again, his voice took on a harder, bitter aspect.
“You’re asking me if we worship a vengeful God?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I’m the person to answer that for you.”
“Why not?”
“What if I were to say that that voice in your head is right? That it’s entirely possible He took your son from you?”
“If that’s the truth, I hate myself and Zeke for what we were. And I hate God for what He is.”
“Then perhaps we shouldn’t continue this conversation, Gloria. I’ll not be responsible for turning someone from their faith.” Stephen used his walking stick to boost himself onto his feet. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more comfort to you.”
“But just last week you preached about God’s unconditional love.”
Stephen reached down, extended a gloved hand to Gloria, helped her stand. “It’s what people need to hear. They want a version of God as benevolent father, ready to protect, eager to provide, but to hold no accounting. I don’t believe in that God anymore.”
“But you did last Sunday, so something changed your mind?”
“Not something, Gloria. God Himself.” And there were sparks in the preacher’s gentle eyes—deep loss and rage at that loss—as he turned away and trudged up the trail.
NINETEEN
Emerald Lake lay ten feet under the snow beneath their webs. The storm eased as they hiked across, and through a hole in the clouds, a shaft of sunlight passed, firing into blinding white a piece of the serrated ridge that enclosed the basin.
A mansion materialized in the distance, ensconced on the edge of the lake. “Ever time I see it,” Ezekiel said, “I can’t get past what a load a burro’s milk that thing is.”
“It does look misplaced in these environs,” Stephen said.
Packer had named his estate Emerald House—four symmetrical wings of opulence that met in a central block, crowned by a cupola. The top floors had been cedar-shingled, the ground level constructed of stone. Numerous brick chimneys soared from the gabled roof.
“Well, that’s strange,” Ezekiel said. “Ya’ll see even a whisper a smoke rising from a one a them chimneys? Why you reckon he’d let his fires go out in a storm?”