First we are in the minivan buzzing down Route 7 and then we are rolling into downtown Rutland and then, suddenly, we can’t avoid the question any longer.

“Are we doing this?”

“Yeah, we’re doing this.”

“I’m scared.”

“Me too.”

“But it’s also pretty funny, if you think about it.”

“Isn’t it?”

We talk around the fact that we are in Rutland because we’ve decided to join a cult—join a cult for a class project, actually. But then we’re only going for a day, two days tops. That’s the plan.

“How many years do you think we’ll be staying?”

“I only packed enough socks for forty.”

We call it a cult but maybe that’s just the common parlance. Sure, yeah, it sounds like one. A bit. Supposedly, the people in it sleep and eat in a communal house and all have Hebrew names even though they’re Christian fundamentalists. I’ve heard the occasional story about child labor, talk of police raids and mentions of deprogramming. More commonly I’ve heard that the people are nice and make great sandwiches. But also someone mentioned something about child-swapping to me once.

So there is still a lot I don’t know by the time we’re parking the car on Center Street. It’s my fourth year living in Vermont and it was only over the summer that someone mentioned the cult in Rutland to me for the first time—it was Ellie, the one in the car with me now. Vermont isn’t tiny but it’s not a huge state either—and this doesn’t seem, even to the uninformed adventure seeker, like an average cult. I’m a little surprised it doesn’t make the news more often.

They’re known around Rutland as The Yellow Deli, which is the name of the sandwich shop the group runs in town—known for healthy, reasonably priced sandwiches and extreme hospitality to thru-hikers on the Long Trail and Appalachian Trail. The two trails overlap just outside Rutland, and it was on an extended hiking trip over the summer that Ellie first learned about them. In fact, thru-hikers are the only people I’ve talked to who know anything about The Yellow Deli.

Out on the street the sun is going down and the snow by the road is ash grey. The flowery, neon yellow sign for the deli is the only source of color anywhere in sight, and we can hear folksy music coming from inside. We go over our plan one more time before stepping in, opting not to tell anyone that we’re here for a class project, or that the project is journalistic in nature.

Definitely not. Instead, we agree that to present ourselves as wayward, to say that we’re both taking time off from school and traveling the country aimlessly. Seems like an arrangement that would draw interest from a cult looking for fresh recruits. Also, neither of us is a good liar, and we want to stay as far away from mentioning our writing projects as possible.

When we walk, wayward, through the big oak door and into The Deli we’re greeted by two men. One huge, one small, both smiling. Big man says his name is Shame, says “Shame,” at least, but he doesn’t spell it out for me and I don’t speak Hebrew, so I don’t really know what he means.

“Well, what can we do for ya?”

Ellie and I, backpacks slung over our shoulders and noses cold from debating out on the street for so long, steal a glance. Both men have long, wiry hair pulled tight against their heads into ponytails, and they’re both wearing beards, smiling. Before we can answer, the small man is beaming at us and formulating words behind a widening grin.

“I know you, don’t I?”

He’s talking to Ellie.

“Well I—yeah, I was here for a bit over the summer actually.”

“What was your name again?”

“Ellie!”

“No, your trail name.”

“Oh—Duckie.”

“Duckie.”

“You might remember, there were two other girls here around the same time whose names were also Duckie.”

From behind the counter, the smaller man leans back on his heels and suddenly, almost electrically, he stomps his foot and snaps his fingers together and as his smile grows the widest yet,

“Duckie! Yes, of course, I remember all of you. It’s great to see you. Name’s Aysh,” smiling, “but maybe you remember.”

“Not often you get three ducks in a row,” Shame chortles.

That kind of breaks a tension. Not sure how the tension got there, now I’m smiling, too, and so is Ellie.

“Do you—well, could we have a table for two?”

At the table a woman named Qichet serves us sandwiches on house-made bread and two peach mates. Her hair is tied back just like the mens’ and, in late middle age, she has a welcoming presence and a quiet, warm voice. We’re in a deep, lacquered booth across from the fireplace. Everything in here looks like something out of a Tolkien novel, beautifully finished and made from dark wood, with life crackling quietly all around. As we eat, we try to talk quietly about what our plan is. Do we just ask them to stay here? They have the hostel upstairs, where they host hikers in the summer, but right now it looks like the upstairs is closed for the season. We know about their communal living house on the other side of town, but aren’t sure how we can ask to see it. We want to know more, but we’re also doubting whether we should be doing what we’re doing, and so secretively, and whether we should be doing it at all. I’m a little distracted by how good the sandwich is. Before we can make any decisions Qichet comes back over, and something about her face tells me that she’s switched roles now, that she isn’t just our waitress.

She leans against a railing, her eyes wider now and smiling at us.

“Where y’all from”

Trying to stick to the truth where we can afford it, Ellie says California and I say Rhode Island. Qichet lights up.

“Rhode Island! You ever hear of Roger Williams?”

“I know a little bit about him,” I say, grinning.

“That was a great man.” Qichet says, pausing to dwell on a thought that doesn’t seem likely to fully reveal itself. “You know, he was banished from the colonies for believing in something? He was a hero, but because he was devoted to freedom and to his religion and believing in something, they let him out to die. Well I don’t know the history that well… but really a great man.”

Ellie and I steal another glance at each other, each simultaneously deciding it’s time to go out on a limb.

“And what do you believe in?”

Again Qichet seems to snap into a different role, like she’s been holding back something for a long time and can finally let it go. Again, her eyes get a little bit wider. Slowly, she starts to speak, and I get the impression that it’s a question she’s been asked many times over without ever able being to answer it the way she wants to.

“Well…we believe in a lot of things. You’ve probably heard some things, haven’t ya? What do you think we believe in?”

We both shake our heads and kind of shrug. Really, we don’t know.

“Okay, well let me ask you this then. What do you think religion is?

Again, we shake our heads. Qichet pauses, again like she’s found herself trying to explain the inexplicable, but then she speaks again.

“True religion,” she says, “is when you care about others more than you care about yourself. And also—true religion—it’s all about living a life unstained.”

I beat Ellie to the question.

“Unstained?”

“Unstained,” Qichet says, smirking, “exactly. We—you know—try to live in a way that we think is pure. Have you ever been to church? When I used to go to church I would hear these people all the time talking about what to do to live a good life and be good to God, but I’d never see people actually doing those things. So I guess you could think of it, like, we’re trying to live our beliefs instead of just talking about them.”

Before either Ellie or I can ask another question, Qichet jumps in.

“You know, we have a gathering starting right around now. Fifteen minutes from now, would you want to go? It’s really a fun time.”

Grinning, we both say we’d love to. Qichet leaves us happily for a moment to coordinate with the others, and Ellie and I are both full of anticipation, feeling like we’ve just infiltrated a secret organization.

“Aysh will take you all over, and he says you’re welcome to stay upstairs tonight if you need it.”

We both grin again, the way has opened itself for us.

 

 

Aysh brings us, in Ellie’s car, to a block of houses down the road. On Church Street. There are three of them, tall white farmhouses that are grouped around one driveway and one yard.

“You’ll never believe what we’ve been given here,” says Aysh, “Three houses right next to each other, and it just worked out that way! More than just luck, I think.”

I know he’s talking about God, or his version of God, but I can’t help but think that the real estate success is more a result of a lack of demand for houses neighboring a cult than it is divine intervention. Anyway, he brings us into the biggest house, where we walk through several unfinished rooms with insulation hanging out of the walls and floorboards ripped up, and into one large, finished living room with a fireplace, full of people wearing headbands and flowing clothes.

“Brothers and Sisters, we have two new guests joining us for The Gathering tonight. Welcome, Ellie from California and Robert from Rhode Island!”

Aysh’s introduction draws smiles and cheers from the crowd. We grin back at them. A family brings their kids over to say hello, and the guitar player nods at us as we take our spots in the circle of people around the living room.

The guy I end up standing next to is maybe the only person there my age. His name his Raphael and he has a neck tattoo that says “Champion” in thick, scrawled lettering. His hair is tamped down by a braided rope headband running across his forehead and back over the top of his ponytail. He has a thick wiry beard—all the men do. The women wear shawls over their hair, but the rope headband holding them down is the same. Everybody looks like everybody else here. Raphael introduces himself, and greets me with a half-hug and a grin that I perceive as genuine.

Everyone is just settling into the circle—there are about thirty of us all in all—and Aysh chuckles, through a mousy face worn deeply from smiling, “Well, shall we?”

A brief note of silence rings out before a boy steps out from his family into the middle of the circle and starts singing. He starts alone, but in seconds the band picks up with him and the rest of those—besides Ellie and myself—join in with him.

We are nothing

Nothing if not for Him

We are nothing

Nothing if not for Him

His voice is sonorous and slightly sad, but as the band picks up the words transform into a kind of pop song. Almost like Christian rock, but with hints of The Bee Gees. Men and women and children come out from around the circle, too, and they link arms with each other and the boy and the start to dance, dancing like they aren’t in a living room barely heated against the cold of the night in Rutland, but somewhere warmer and better.

A very special people

Chosen just for Him

Everyone is singing. Their dance seems choreographed, not through formal rehearsal but the kind of practice that’s taken place day after day. They gather like this every morning and evening, someone had told me earlier– 7 A.M. and 7 P.M. Could the dance be improvised? They move so familiarly that I can’t tell if they’re accustomed to the dance or to each other. Over the next day and a half I learn that everyone in the Rutland community lives in this house and the two next door—almost fifty in total when there aren’t people out working in the Deli—and they hardly ever leave. They may go to weddings and funerals of friends at other communities, but never into the outside world. Meals are cooked for everyone in the same kitchen, everyone eats together. All the children are raised by all the adults, there’s no privacy here—the lines blurred, roles merged.

Everything and always is shining in his eyes

He is the savior of our lives!

Oddly, the spectacle feels beautiful—I’ve only just come into this community (community, cooperative, co-housing—cult­), and I can feel myself being swept up in it too. To my left I can tell Ellie feels it too—she raises her eyebrows as if to say, wow, can you believe they’ve got us? What about what we talked about, with the socks and all that?

The first song is over and soon the next is launched and it begins all over again. This goes on and on, seemingly ages I spent trying to sear their lyrics into my memory. Many were happy, pop songs while a few were slower and sadder—the dances changed with the songs.

Near the end, Raphael’s turn. He steps into to the middle of the circle, his arms spread out for others to join hands with him, and slowly starts to sing.

Those who know love

Know Ya-shu-ah

The beginning has an upbeat tempo to it, the pace is decent and trombone is heavily featured. Raphael is holding hands with a woman who I later learn is named Nashima and a small blonde girl. For the first time, across the room, I notice two twin girls standing next to each other, and then the music shifts.

We are being tested

We are being tested

The rhythm slows, the music grows quieter in concession to the lyrics that have changed from singing to chanting.

Going through the fire

Going through the fire

A certain kind of metaphor is necessary. Paint chipping away? The sudden glimpse of a dent, a scratch on a newly bought car? No, it was like watching your father cry. But no, like realizing that you left the oven on, no, it feels like something forgotten. But it’s not that either. My heart dropping in my chest reminds me of questions I’ve forgotten to ask myself since stepping into the Gathering—skepticisms, suspicions that I’d planned to rely on. The love, the happiness of the people here—is it real? Does there exist somewhere that families, couples and single people can all live under the same roof, sharing everyone and everything with jealousy or pride? Is this really what Qichet calls “unstained?” I start to wonder where the charismatic leader is, where I could find the signs of people trapped in a place they don’t belong. I can’t see any.

But we won’t be burned

We’ll be brought closer

We’ll be brought closer to Him.

I see Raphael, though, as the song ends and the dance breaks up. It’s near the end of the Gathering now. He assumes position next to me at the edge of the room, his arms falling together to his front, his stance athletic. Slim, not particularly tall, he looks a lot like me. In the silence, the moments between the last song and the next, I glance over at him and find him staring at me. Eyes brown and small, he doesn’t blink—he just stares at me without moving, without even seeming to breath. I feel suspended in the moment, feeling like it will go on and on, me standing there uncomfortably under Raphael’s gaze for eternity. Maybe the lyrics of the song aren’t so crazy as they feel. Maybe I am being tested, and maybe this it what it feels like to be going through the fire. I don’t know if it’s just Raphael, or if the whole room of people has this capacity in them, to look upon someone else like this, uninhibited. It scares me, it feels like the way a predator would watch its prey and I start to question why I’m here, why I’ve allowed myself to participate in this along with the families and the parents of children who probably don’t know what’s happening here. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, I break his gaze and look down at my feet.

 

The next day Ellie and I are in the car on the road towards Cambridge, New York, and we’re driving slower than we have before. Maybe we’re stalling. The rest of that night, after the Gathering, we spent at dinner in the community house, trying to unravel further what that place is. After the singing, everyone in the circle sat down for a conversation. They talked about religion, quoted psalms and the old testament, and said what they were thankful for.

“I realized that sometimes you can love something, but that doesn’t really count if you don’t love it enough,” said one boy, about age nine.

“I’m thankful that we have a place here where we can protect ourselves and others against the Deceptions of the World,” said Raphael, standing and not blinking.

“I’m thankful for our new Yellow Deli that’s opening soon in Ithaca, New York!” One man said, with his beard white and fatherly.

After the singing and thanking some of the members invited us to dinner in the house next door. We spent the meal with the entire group, talking to Raphael and a woman who had recently emigrated from one of the group’s communities in Germany that had been shut down. The German woman was quiet, but kind. When I asked her where she was from she said, “East Germany.” Raphael talked about his life before The Twelve Tribes (the proper name of the cult). Raphael told me about how he got to the Yellow Deli in Rutland, about how he had entered the woods outside his old home in Lafayette, Louisiana, with only a wheelbarrow, a bow, and two arrows. He told me about how he walked, and wandered through the woods and across the country with his wheelbarrow until he came out in Bennington, Vermont. He was out there for months.

“That was when I ended up in a spot of trouble,” he said, “and found a place for myself here in Rutland.”

“I could have been an actor in Hollywood, you know,” he tells me.

“You used to like acting?”

“Nah,” he responded, staring at me again, but this time like I had just missed something, “I have a lot of gifts.” And with that, he put his jacket on and left the table.

After Raphael left we talked to a nervous man named Davide, who told us his story of trying to find faith, of joining a group of Mennonites, of going to bible college in the Midwest and dropping out to join The Twelve Tribes—he told us of how his parents offered to pay for his school and housing and everything if only he would just stay away from the cult. Two hours we talked to him, his eyes watery and his beard patchy for a thirty-something year old, until at the end of the night, we ended up going back to the Yellow Deli with Aysh. Aysh is in his fifties, went to Colby College when he was our age, and before going to bed he told us his views on academia and science and religion, and set us up in the hostel upstairs. The hostel was huge, with room for summer crowds of dozens and dozens of hikers, but was under construction in the winter and unheated, occupied only by two other mysterious people, one of whom I felt glide quietly past Aysh and myself in an unlit hallway at one point.

So in the car, sleepless, we’re trying to figure out what to make of it all. We’re on the way to another Twelve Tribes community, this one not a Yellow Deli but an organic farmstead named Common Sense Farm, and are having trouble making sense of things. On the one hand, there were things that we saw at the Gathering last night that seemed more pure than many aspects of ‘normal’ life. It really did seem like everyone enjoys the Gatherings, and we can’t think of any other arrangements where singing and dancing are daily parts of family life, where love really does take precedent over everything.

“But what about the Gathering this morning,” Ellie says. We had gone to the morning Gathering, early before breakfast, when everyone was still tired and there were fewer people who showed up. “There was something about it that was….worse.”

She was right, it was worse. Maybe it was because fewer people singing made the lyrics come out more clearly, or maybe it was the higher proportion of kids in the circle, because the adults were out working in the Deli. There was something in the air, maybe Freud would call it unheimlich. It certainly contributed to us leaving early. In the overtired morning of our second day with the group, we had already lost the excitement we had had the night before. Neither of us felt hungry to know more or go deeper into this group any longer, instead we had both acquired an unshakable feeling of nausea. But was it justified? I can’t tell if our feeling this way is a result of what we’ve seen in Rutland or a result of the lens with which we saw it, a lens set by lives spent as consumers and secularists, raised by families common to the phrase ‘American.’ Either way, we left without eating breakfast.

Cambridge, New York, is a small town that clearly was once more beautiful. Like so many other small towns, the industry that once made it prosper has gone and left the town stagnant. Common Sense Farm sits on a country road outside the hamlet, with no other buildings within eyeshot. The main structure is an enormous, yellow revivalist farmhouse built in the early 20^th century. It looks like somewhere Scarlett O’Hara might’ve lived. In a huge field next to the house, there are about two-dozen children skating on a pond. Yellow grass pokes through crusted snow, and black trees punctuate the hills that rise up behind the farm. We pull into a circle driveway, and nervously collect ourselves before getting out of the car. Nothing bad has happened to us, but everything feels different than it feels yesterday. Maybe it’s the isolation, or the quietness of the farm except for children’s cries echoing across the field. We’re scared now, but we walk up to the door through the doric columns on either side and enter the house without knocking. It’s so big, nobody would hear us anyway.

In the foyer, a woman walks out from behind the staircase and greets us with a German accent.

“Well, hello,” she says timidly, clearly not quite certain what we’re doing here. Shame said before we left Rutland that he’d told them we were coming, so maybe she just isn’t sure what to do with us. She brings us to the kitchen and offers us a drink of water, and takes a phone call while we sip nervously. The call is about us, but we’re not sure how the people in Rutland know we’ve just arrived.

“Yes, yes, they’re here. And what do you want me to do with them?”

Probably an innocent question, based on hospitality rather than anything sinister, but I can’t stop my self from starting to sweat. I’m not sure if Ellie is feeling the same at this point, but my mind is thinking more about an escape plan than about what I want to learn from the trip.

Soon a man comes in the door to the kitchen and offers to give us a tour of the land. He’s fairly young, and skinny, but with a long blonde beard and the customary ponytail. His name is Daesh and he’s married to the German woman, whose name I never am able to understand. Another nervous type, Daesh looks at us from behind small, rectangular glasses and also doesn’t seem like he knows what to say to us. It’s hard to tell from their interactions that he and the German woman are married.

We put on extra layers an walk outside into the cold with Daesh. He walks us around the property for almost two hours. He tells us about why he joined Twelve Tribes, reasons that basically align with everything that everyone else has told us. He felt alone, he was doubting his faith, was frustrated with his old life. Like others we talked to, he never thought he would join “some crazy cult,” but after staying for a day he decided he wanted to stay for life. Daesh points out all the different structures on the campus, and talks in depth about how they were built and what their plans are for renovation and improvement in the future. Here and in Rutland, it seems like there is always a project, some means of expansion that is always underway. Really, I’m impressed. Everything, besides the main farmhouse, they’ve built themselves and built well. At first I’m at a loss when I try to imagine how the community could pay for everything—and then Daesh shows us the soap factory.

As beautifully crafted and rustic as the Yellow Deli and the farmhouse, the soap factory has a full production line built inside of a barn. Now, it’s empty, but Daesh talks fondly of the days when it was busy, with so much business that they couldn’t even keep up with it all. He proudly lists the different high-end soap brands that they used to supply product for, and there’s something strangely nostalgic about the way he recalls his days working at the mixing station.

“Why aren’t you all making soap anymore?” Ellie asks.

Daesh is quiet for a moment, and I can tell that he’s been unwillingly brought out of fond memories and into something less comfortable.

“Well.”

Daesh inhales sharply through his beard.

“You probably know about that already, don’t you?”

A little shocked, Ellie and I try to explain that we don’t know what he means. It feels like a test, like some kind of suspicion is finally making itself obvious in Daesh. Maybe we’ve come off as a little too enthusiastic, or maybe we’ve just been asking too many questions.

Daesh goes onto explain how the soap factory was shut down by its sponsors, the business ruined because somebody, a former member of the community, came in with a hidden camera and saw children working on the production line. He speaks of it bitterly.

“It’s just…” I can see him holding back his anger, “it’s just unfair. Those kids weren’t here because we made them work. It was a Sunday! They were here because they were looking for something fun to do.”

The question of how working on a production line qualifies as a fun activity for children was a question I held back from asking. It was the first time I’d seen something provoke real emotion in Daesh all day.

After our tour, Daesh brought us back to the farmhouse and his wife brought us a kind of unrecognizable, but delicious tea. Daesh brought us to the living room and offered us seats by the fire. I could tell this was the equivalent of the Gathering room in Rutland, there were paper signs all along the eves of the ceiling with words like, “Love,” “Joy,” and “Peace.” Daesh’s wife sits down with us. I try to talk to her in German, but she seems reluctant, and I wonder if she’s allowed to speak her own language here. Probably, she is and my accent is just hard to understand.

“So, you’ll be staying for the gathering tonight?” she asks us, and seems disappointed when we explain we have to leave before it gets dark. It’s starting to snow outside, but there’s something exhausting about being here, and our desire to leave isn’t motivated by the weather.

For a few moment, Ellie and I exhausted and sick of putting on a façade of excitement without skepticism, allow ourselves to lapse into an awkward moment of silence. We sit around the fire for a few more minutes, Daesh and Ellie and I sitting in chairs by the fire, with Daesh’s wife kneeling on the ground, and we just sip our tea. Eventually I summon the courage to ask another question.

“So, what was your wedding like?”

Suddenly, Daesh’s wife lights up with excitement. She’d been somewhat reserved the whole day, awkward. I couldn’t tell if it’s a personality trait or a symptom of being German—East German, by her own description.

“I can show you photos! Do do you want to see our photo album?”

“I’d love to,” I respond, wondering if I’m actually too tired to carry on with it.

She runs off, fully running through the house, to get her photo album and we’re left for another few moments of silence with Daesh. I look over at Ellie, she looks conked. We need to go soon.

The East German is back soon and gives us a booklet that she lets us keep, a newsletter about her and Daesh’s wedding that was sent out to other communities that are part of Twelve Tribes. Apparently, they’re all over the world, stretching all across the United States, down to Argentina, across oceans to Europe, Australia, Japan. The booklet and the photo album paint a picture.

The first photos I see are of Daesh dressed as the Messiah, sitting on a throne during a bright day in September.

“What’s this?”

“That? That’s the Pre-Enactment,” he says.

“The Pre-Enactment.” I’m hesitant, but curious.

“We do it at every wedding. Ours was small, only about a hundred and fifty people, but we put on this little play,” Daesh explains, “and essentially it represents what’s going to happen during the Second Coming, when Yashuah returns from his throne in heaven.”

Daesh goes on to explain all the photos to me, there are more pictures of him in his throne, with a woman dressed like Mary Magdalene washing his feet, and a man dressed like John the Baptist whispering in his ear. His feet are on a stool, Daesh explains that the stool is made from his enemies, a prophetic sign indicating that it’s time for him to meet his bride on earth.

The next couple photos are of Daesh and his now wife, as she, dressed as a bride, runs across the lawn to meet him. There are photos of them uniting on the grass, of music and celebrations and people dancing in big, multicolored tents pitched on the lawn. I can see the way the farm looks in the summer and fall, and I can almost imagine the way the air smells then, and how fun it must be to be surrounded by people who love you, hundreds of people. Then I flip the page in the album, and I see a circle of people, the same people on the grass, joining hands around three, great black flags.

PRIDE

MURDER

JEALOUSY

“What’s this photo?” I ask Daesh as I feel my heart dropping.

“Oh, that’s the war dance.”

Again, like paint chipping. I feel the unheimlich, the uncanny sensation of not being able to distinguish the abnormal from the normal, good from bad, right from wrong. I feel guilty and suspicious, not just of the people around me but of myself, the one who for a second, more than a second, was willing to be a part of a world that I now realize I know nothing about. I can’t tell if what I’m feeling here, the exhaustion, the malaise, the fatigue is the result of being uncomfortable with my surroundings, or of being uncomfortable with the irrefutable signs that the way I view the world is biased, that I may not be as capable of differentiating trustworthy from untrustworthy, and the possibility that this feeling shouldn’t just be reserved for visits to cults of Christian fundamentalists, that maybe I should feel this way all the time, that the possibility exists that these people are right and my people are wrong.

Daesh explains the war dance as a representation of what will happen after the Year of Jubilee, the year that Yashuah returns—when the time comes for Yashuah and his followers to cleanse the earth of the nonbelievers and deceptions of the world.

“So when does the Year of Jubilee Start?”

“After The Race”

Again, my heart sinks a little in my chest.

“The Race?”

“A fifty year long cycle of Sabbath years. We’re going to farm for six years at a time, and each seventh year we’re going to rely only on what we farmed the previous year. Let the land go fallow, not farm anything at all, you know. After we do that cycle seven times, making forty-nine years, we have the Year of Jubilee. Year fifty.”

Trying to subdue my skepticisms, concerns that people will possibly be going without food every seven years, I ask, “When does the Race start?”

Daesh sits back in his seat for a second, and I realize that he’s not so much older than me. Thirty, tops. He doesn’t have any grey hairs, he even looks like he’s still in the prime of his life. His whole life he might spend here, on this farm with these people.

“According to the Book, the Race starts next year.”

 

I don’t have an intelligent response to the notion that Daesh believes the End of Days is going to start next year, so I decide to let the conversation land at that. Daesh’s wife is still back on the ground, flipping through her photo album, the only thing that seems to make her visibly excited. I’m fading, Ellie is fading, so we decide to make our way out, giving our thanks to Daesh and his wife, and saying hello and goodbye to the children coming in the door on our way out. Daesh heads out again while is wife brings us back to the foyer, and as she runs off to go check on the children, Ellie taps me on the shoulder and points out a sign on the wall of the music room.

The Wise Virgins Listened and Did Not Interrupt

There are drawings to go with it, and the whole thing looks like it was made by the kids. Awkwardly, we thank Daesh’s wife and make our way out the door. In the back of my mind I feel like I’m about to get sucked back in if I don’t get out quick enough.

On the drive back, I can’t stop weighing my memories against each other, and it’s impossible to separate them from emotion. It almost feels like the defining tone of the trip was the separation of feeling from thought, as though I had somehow entered a world where my normal bearings, my skills of perception and logic had been diluted. It was like being drunk. Even when I was scared, when my brain was telling me not to trust something, I would find myself getting swept up in the feeling of it all. By the singing and dancing, by the photos of weddings and the love that all the followers of Yashuah show for each other, I discovered a line that I didn’t know existed; a line, perhaps, that separates the human from the too human, or maybe the opposite. It’s impossible to make sense of, even removed from the place. In the broadest of strokes, the Twelve Tribes showed me that they really do live unstained lives, that they really can love other people more than they love themselves. That, I don’t doubt. Maybe I’m only hesitant because they do it on different terms than I’m familiar with. Or maybe that’s the little trick, maybe they’ve only made me think that, maybe they’ve somehow demagnetized my compass.

In the car, the sun is setting over fields and fields of snow and yellow, matted grass. The road looks pale and dusted with grey salt, the heat is on full blast, but I feel cold and tired.

“That was exhausting,” Ellie says.

“Yeah. It was.”

“But…does it all kind of make sense? Like you could live like that too, maybe, or at least go back there?

“Yeah. It I think it does.”