Exalted

Steve threw the dusty bale of hay into the open back of the faded red truck, wiping his brow as he trotted beside the slow rolling vehicle to the next bundle, which smoothly joined the rest. The sun was fitfully trying to burn off the clouds, and he was eager to finish the chore before it made its way through and sent heat shimmers climbing off the crumbled earth. They’d been working in the field the whole morning, starting when it was still dark and cool, but it would be summer weather by midday.

After several more repeats of the same grab-and-toss, the truck reached the end of the row and Steve swung himself over the back bumper to sit on a bale as they rumbled toward the crooked barn in the distance. The man who had been riding in the bed of the truck and stacking the hay silently handed him a bottle of water, which he took with a grateful nod. It was warm, had probably been sitting out all morning if not longer, but it soothed his parched throat in spite of the temperature, and he drained the bottle.

The truck drove into the shadowed barn, parking under the timber beams in the center of the vaulted space. Steve stood waiting as his companion from the ride and their driver climbed the rickety ladder into the hayloft. Once the other men were ready, he began heaving the sweet-smelling hay bales from the truck bed to the loft, grateful - not for the first time - for all the sports he had played growing up. It had mostly been to not be at his house, but it was proving surprisingly useful even now.

The truck was quickly emptied, and Steve jumped down, giving a wave over his shoulder to the other men and walking out of the stuffy air into what was now scattered sunshine. He made his way around the side of the barn, trailing through a belt of scraggly trees and coming to a fast-moving stream. He toed off his shoes and stripped off his loose, gray tunic and pants before he plunged into the cold water, sinking to the bottom and resting on the smooth rocks while looking up at the distorted sky above. The tree limbs seemed so far away, their image rippled by the current passing over him, though the stream was really only a few feet deep even at the deepest part.The overwhelming gurgle of water filled his ears, and he imagined it clearing his head of thoughts, washing them downstream and out of sight. Better to be thoughtless than to think too much, not that he’d ever been accused of that before.

Even swimmer’s lungs will eventually push one to the surface, and he exited the stream gracefully, pulling his cloths back on with distaste and rubbing at his arms as the scratchy fabric clung to his wet skin. There would be no time to change, so he hurried to the large building in the center of the farm, pushing through the door and making his way down the hall to join a group of men in a classroom. Steve had arrived just in time, as another man came in shortly after and positioned himself at the front of the room, opening the limp, leather-bound book in his hands and beginning to read in a sonorous voice. After finishing the passage, the man began to lecture on real-world examples that his students may have encountered or may still encounter, when they were in the nearby towns. The examples didn’t always seem very real-world to Steve, but he listened and took dutiful notes. He didn’t necessarily need to know why it was important to take it seriously, and at least he would be prepared should he encounter a whore of Babylon on the streets of a small midwestern town.

After the thin, ascetic-looking lecturer released his students, Steve followed part of the group to another room, taking his place on the floor, kneeling with his ankles carefully crossed beneath him and his head bowed. A small bell rang, and the room was filled with the voices of the men repeating the same passage with varying degrees of fervor. Steve kept his head bowed and his voice neutral - given that the subject was man’s inability to discover and pursue their true life’s purpose until they had declared the glory of God, it seemed a little redundant to him. They did almost nothing but declare the glory of God, after all, but again - if they said it was important, he’d have the courtesy to treat it accordingly.

After an impossible to measure length of time passed, the bell rang again and the men rose to their feet, some more gracefully than others. Steve took refuge in the bathroom for a moment, leaning his head against the cool tiled wall and snapping his fingers by his ears as if to break through the stuffed feeling the droning chants always filled him with. He quickly washed his hands and joined the now larger group as they walked to the nearby chapel, a metal-roofed building with its own small bell tower. There was even a bell, but it was only rung when someone died. Steve had heard it only twice since he’d gotten there, but given how shaky a couple of the older people in the group looked, he thought he might be hearing it again soon. He moved closer to an elderly man who was picking his way carefully with his cane, and discreetly helped him find his footing when he stumbled, walking away without a glance or nod when he was righted. 

He seated himself near the back of the chapel, staring at the back of the pew in front of him as the rest of the congregation settled themselves and the shuffling and footfalls gave way to silence. Dust motes drifted through the shafts of sun from the windows, and the chapel was warming from the sun and the bodies filling it - Steve clasped his hands tightly, digging in his nails to keep himself alert. From the corner of his eye he could see a man nearby starting to nod, and he was preparing to feign a sneeze when the door behind the stage opened and the congregation perked up.

The tall man who had entered walked forward to the pulpit, grasping the edges of the lectern and bowing his head. Strands of golden hair fell forward into his eyes, catching the light dramatically, and he held his pose for a moment before tilting his face to the crowd without raising his head. His gaze roamed over the crowd intently as he asked who among them had betrayed their family, had sought to bring the outside world upon them, had looked upon corruption and found it sweet? He straightened then and raised his arms, his white tunic glowing in the sun and seeming almost ethereal, and his pose as closely as possible matching that held by the crucifix on the wall behind him.

How could one of their own, one they trusted and held dear, risk bringing ruin upon them all, bringing sin into their home, into their hearts? The wages of sin are death, and it is death without the promise of eternal salvation that someone among them has chosen to risk for everyone. He asked again: who among you has betrayed us all?

The only answer was silence - the only answer would ever be silence. There was no response in chapel, the responses would come later, in whispers and secret meetings, in sly nods and crafty raises of brows. That there were only a very few of them with any opportunity to ‘look on corruption’ and find it to be anything was irrelevant - someone would be found to have transgressed, and someone would be punished to protect the group from the shadow of damnation that seemed to always hover over them all, sometimes close and urgent and sometimes receding to an unseen distance, but never really gone. 

Steve kept his eyes fixed on the speaker, repeating the words he heard inside his head as if someone could hear even his thoughts - maybe they could, nothing seemed that farfetched anymore. A dull ache was starting behind his temple, and he had to work to concentrate. He’d felt guilty not being able to follow these sermons at first, but over time had realized that they stuck to a formula, and sometimes almost a pattern: it had been awhile since someone had been caught sinning, people would be getting bored, so here it came. He didn’t think he was an overly cynical person, but he had wrestled with himself over that realization a lot.

Chapel ended with a exhortation to root out the seeds of evil within their hearts, and seek counsel from their mentors if they felt called to speak, their doors would always be open and their hearts filled with joy to help their flock stay on the true path. The speaker disappeared through the door he had used to enter, and the audience slowly shuffled out, already looking askance at their neighbors, wondering who it was that the leader had been talking about, and if he already knew and was just testing their loyalty to see if someone would step forward with something they knew. To see if there was a witness, an accomplice - or, better yet, a scapegoat. 

The group returned to the large hall, lining up for their evening meal - the sun was just starting to set, and an early bedtime was easy to enforce when everyone was up before daybreak to work on various parts of the farm. Steve took his tray and found a seat, bowing his head for a moment before starting to eat. He mechanically chewed the dry bread, noted that the vegetables hadn’t been cooked long enough (again) but that the chicken had been cooked long enough to have almost completely dried out (also again, unfortunately.) He swallowed the small glass of green juice that came with the meal in a gulp, washing it down with water. He didn’t know what they put in it - he really thought it might be just grass - but it was supposed to be nutritious, and it couldn’t be any worse than the actual food.

He carried his tray to the stack by the serving window and left the chapel, climbing part of the way up the hill to the small house he shared with his parents. When they had first moved to the farm he had been both surprised by the house and excited - in such a small space he was sure to see more of his parents, maybe even be a family in a way they hadn’t been since he was small. That hadn’t happened so far, and he didn’t expect it to start anytime soon. His father worked for the group outside of the farm, though he’d never been sure exactly what he did, and his mother was always busy working with the other women on cooking, sewing, or studying. She had worked in the school when one of the normal teachers had a baby, and had been so good with the children that Steve had to spend a long time thinking about himself after a pang of envy had hit him. 

Steve stood at the window, looking down the hill at other houses as their lights came on in the windows and people trailed from the hall to the dormitories, and he soon found what he had expected - little groups of two or three, one person breaking off to form a new group or furtively knock on the door of a house. Someone would disappear for a few days soon, he thought as he turned away from the view and considered his room. He crossed to the plain desk and straightened the books and papers, sifting through them quickly and tapping them into a stack. He reached far into the back of the drawer and pulled out a small journal. He tapped the cover idly with his thumb as he walked to his bed and slid the journal into a concealed slit at the head of the mattress, then carefully smoothed the sheet back into place. 

His headache was growing, and he sat in the straight chair at the desk to think. Was it better to go to bed and get at least some sleep, or to stay awake and meet whatever might be coming at least somewhat prepared? He couldn’t have explained why he thought something was coming, even if there was someone to explain it to, but the certainty laid in his stomach like a rock. He stood and slipped out of his room to the bathroom, showering quickly and changing into clean clothes - he decided against pajamas, just in case. At least there was some dignity in normal clothing - being called up in pajamas like a misbehaving child just added an extra demoralizing layer of humiliation.

In the end, sleep won - it would be good to rid himself of the headache, if nothing else. Exhaustion took over as soon as he stretched out on his bed, tugging the flat pillow into place behind his head but not bothering to get under the covers, and he dropped into a dreamless sleep with nothing but faint whispers curling around the edges of his mind.

His expectations were fulfilled at almost one in the morning, far longer than he had expected to sleep, and he was faintly pleased to note that his headache was gone when the sound of the door opening downstairs and his parents hushed voices woke him. He sat up, not sure if he had time for shoes - and decided in the negative when he heard feet on the stairs. 

He swung his feet over the side of the bed and snapped on the bedside light, calmly waiting for the door to his room to swing open without the courtesy of a knock. His father pushed into the room, snorting when he saw Steve already awake and muttering about a guilty conscience getting no rest before ordering him to go with the man waiting in the hall, and not make a fuss for all their sakes. Steve nodded and followed silently, looking once at his mother as they passed her, but she averted her eyes. The thought that this was all playing out exactly as it had been periodically for years now drifted across Steve’s mind and was gone, as he followed the other man - a deacon who’s name he didn’t know, for all that the man had been there since before Steve had arrived - to the chapel. 

They descended the creaky stairs to the basement, and into a stone-walled room. Steve knelt in the center of the room, head bowed and patiently staring at the rough floor. There was no point in asking how long he’d have to wait, even if he was allowed to speak to the man who waited with him, so he didn’t bother - he’d done it before, and it wasn’t worth the trouble. Nobody really knew what their leader would decide to do - Steve had once waited the whole night and been released to work in the morning with never a word spoken about it again, and once he had barely had time to settle himself before the door had been flung open and a ranting lecture had begun. Though truthfully that time he’d been caught talking to someone in town - they had asked for directions - so at least he knew what it was about.

He heard someone else moving down the stairs to join them in the room, and then the shuffling of feet and the closing of the door. White shoes and pant legs came into sight in front of his eyes, but he kept his gaze on the floor - he knew his assigned role in this scene that was rolling out, and he would play it in resigned silence and with every appearance of humility. 

The questioning began as it always did, with a voice that resounded with infinite patience but without pausing for any answers - a string of rhetorical questions that would eventually lead Steve to know why, exactly, he was here this time. He knew it would be something minor, some overblown negligence of duty or imagined transgression, and he knew, too, that the man in front of him would eventually work it out of his system. What excuse he hung it on didn’t really matter any more than what had actually happened - the real reason would always be a compound of Steve’s father’s disdain and their leader’s concern that Steve might turn others against him. The real goal was to put Steve in his place, to further ostracize him from the rest of the group, and that goal was certainly already accomplished. By morning not a soul in the place would be unaware that he had been called in for his sins.

The questioning tone bled out of the voice to be replaced by weary disappointment as it continued to harangue him - now about holding himself separate from the group and shirking his assigned duties, thinking he could hide from the righteous but sin would always be seen, like a fire in the night, and Steve let himself turn over the previous few days in his mind. Neither of the charges were anything new, and certainly didn’t need much in the way of actual evidence, but it gave him something to focus on other than the reality of the pebble digging into his right knee and the chafing itch on the back of his neck. His headache was coming back, too, so that would be fun. 

It took another tone shift, this time to sanctimonious anger - which could be either winding down or gearing up, he couldn’t tell yet - when a throwaway line about sowing the fields dropped the pieces into place for Steve: when he’d gone to the stream. He’d been alone - holding himself separate - and demonstrably not working - shirking his assigned duties. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t actually been assigned anything at that moment except getting himself to study on time, but truth never mattered more than Truth, and trying to argue or explain was something he’d learned quickly not to do.

The question about if they were nearing the end of the play or if the action was just getting started was answered by rough hands from behind pushing his head into the floor, and he went down unresisting. So it was going to be this, he thought, as blows began to fall in quick succession. One must have been looking for an excuse to take his anger out on someone.