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{eden} jared smith We drive for two days with the babies on ice. Outside Lincoln Mom takes a couple of metal containers from the trunk and fills them with gasoline. I watch the sun set red and bright into the dark summer earth. “Take a good long look, girl,” she says. “Soon this whole world is all gonna be fire.” On the morning of the third day we pass through Gallatin and come up the rise, and there it is spread out before us, Adam-ondi-Ahman, the valley of God, where Mom says Jesus is coming in a wheel of flame to redeem the dead. She parks the car and gets out and opens the trunk. She lifts out the containers and starts up the hill. “Israel,” she says. “Get the girls.” I grab the cooler and hurry to catch up. At the top of the hill I see a circle of trees and in the middle a huge slab of rock, flat like an altar, with Mom kneeling in front of it. She breaks up some branches and shapes a little nest atop the rock. “You know what this is?” she says. “This is the very spot where Adam cried out to God when he was removed from the Garden. Now get them babies up here before I have a chance to think about it.” I kneel down and pull the lid off the cooler and lift out my two tiny sisters, one in each palm, their bodies glazed purple-black as if touched by some inner flame. Mom takes them from me and sets them down gentle in the nest. She bows her head and closes her eyes. “Behold,” she says. “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.” She stands up and pours the gasoline over the bodies. She keeps going, spilling it out over the altar and the grass and the bushes until the earth is soaked with it. I hear the wind ghosting through the trees, the presence of the Lord. “Mom,” I tell her. “I want to go with them. I’m ready to live again.” She looks up at me, her eyes dark and wild. She kneels down and pours it out for me to wash in. My head fills with the smell. She hands me the container and I tilt back her head and wash her clean. Then we hold each other for a long time. At last she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a match and holds it up for us both to see. “Darling,” she says. “We’ll all go together.” Her nightgown billowing in the breeze, her hair flickering like flame. |
