The pilot slouched in his seat, one hand on the yoke, like a kid cruising a low-rider down a boulevard. He had sharp features dotted with acne scars and long, curly blond hair that needed washing. He was wearing a leather jacket over a Slayer T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. He seemed not to notice the cold.
The plane gave a series of sharp shudders. Kane cursed and gripped the sides of his seat with both hands.
“Easy, Pops,” the pilot called. “You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”
Here’s a guy who doesn’t stay down for long, Kane thought. I could strangle the little snot, but who’d fly the plane?
The bouncing continued for another ten minutes, then Kane began to see clumps of lights: a small patch on one side of the Jordan River, a small patch on the other, and farther along and higher up, a blaze of bright, industrial lighting.
That would be the Pitchfork mine, Kane thought.
Even though it was not quite noon, the winter day was dark enough to make the lights stand out sharply. Kane knew that the Glenn Highway ran through one of the groups of lights, but he couldn’t make it out in the dim light.
“Almost there,” the pilot said, sitting up and putting the small plane into a steep bank.
Three sharp gusts of wind tried to stand the airplane on its head, but the pilot got it around, around again, and lined up with an unlighted runway that had been carved out of the snow. He floated the little plane down and bounced it to a stop next to a Chevy Suburban that was idling at the side of the strip.
“Rejoice, you’re in Rejoice,” the pilot said, killing the engine.
Kane unclamped his hands from the seat, pushed open the door, and climbed unsteadily down onto the ice and snow. It seemed warmer at ground level, so he left the parka where it was.
A man got out of the Suburban. He was taller than Kane and bundled up.
“Mr. Kane?” he asked, putting out a gloved hand. “I’m Elder Thomas Wright.” His voice was soft and gentle after the engine’s racket.
“Pleased to meet you,” Kane said, shaking the gloved hand with one of his own. Their breath formed small clouds that hung in the air between them.
Wright’s eyes fastened on Kane’s scar, then slid away. Kane was used to that. Most people were afraid to say anything. But they all looked.
“We should all get in out of the cold,” Wright said. He climbed into the driver’s seat. Kane got in next to him. The heater whistled and blew hot, dry air over him. The pilot sat behind. Wright turned the Suburban around and headed for some lights about a mile away.
“You’re probably wondering why we asked you here, Mr. Kane,” Wright said.
“I am, Elder Wright,” Kane said. “But the fellow in the back is my charter pilot, not my partner. If you want to keep our business private, you might want to wait until we’re alone.”
“I will wait,” Wright said. He looked in the rearview mirror. “No offense meant to you, sir.”
“No problemo,” the pilot said. “But it’s lunchtime, so I was hoping to find something to eat. And I don’t want to let my bird sit there in the cold too long.”
“We’ll stop at our cafeteria,” Wright said. “I’ll arrange lunch for you. When you are finished, I’ll have some of our brethren take you back to the airstrip with a canvas cover and a propane heater to keep your aircraft from freezing up.”
“Sweet,” the pilot said. To Kane, he said, “We can’t take much more than an hour, or we won’t have enough light to get back to Anchorage.”
The road had been cut through a forest of scraggly black spruce and thin, ghostly white birch. Nothing grew tall or stout. It’s like God ran out of gas here, Kane thought.
Nature is not hospitable in interior Alaska. The climate is rigorous: sixty below zero in the winter and ninety above in the summer. Not many living things can adapt to that. But the real problem is not enough water. The coastal mountains block moisture. Much of the interior is little more than high desert. Damn cold at times, but desert nonetheless.
A hodgepodge of buildings stood in clearings cut along the road: new wooden structures, ATCO construction trailers, mobile homes, even a few log cabins. Overhead electrical wires ran to most of them.
The buildings stood on a bench of land that began at the river and swept away to the north, rising gently to meet the foothills of the Alaska Range.
“This is quite a layout,” Kane said.
“We’ve been here nearly forty years now,” Wright said. “Possessions accumulate.”
Wright pulled the Suburban nose-in to a big white wooden building. A long row of assorted vehicles was already parked there. The men got out of the Suburban, and Wright plugged in its engine heater. Then they walked to the building and through the staggered doors of an Arctic entryway.
They were in a well-lit hallway. In a big room to the right, about fifty people stood in a line with trays in their hands.
“Lunch is being served,” Wright said.
Conversation stilled as Wright, Kane, and the pilot walked along the line to where four young men dressed for the outdoors were standing. Wright explained what he wanted, and he and Kane left the pilot with them.
“Our business is in the office building,” Wright said. “We’ll just walk through here and out the other end. ”
The two men walked along the hallway. Opposite the cafeteria was another big room.
“That’s our community hall,” Wright said. “We hold gatherings and other community events there. We have some rooms off of it for smaller meetings.”
Every person they passed ran an eye over Kane.
“I take it you don’t get many visitors, Elder Wright,” he said.
“I’m Elder Thomas Wright,” the man said, putting a slight emphasis on his first name. “There is also an Elder Moses Wright. He is my father, and the founder of Rejoice.”
The two men went out another set of staggered doors into the cold. They crossed an open space and went into a smaller building that looked to be four ATCO trailers clipped together. Inside was a warren of offices. Wright led Kane to a big one at the far end. Eleven men sat at a large, round table that was set for a meal. All were in shirtsleeves and wore ties. Most had close-cropped hair.
“This is the Council of Elders,” Thomas Wright said, and made the introductions. “Elders” didn’t seem to be a term related to age. Theirs ranged from mid-thirties to what looked like early seventies. Each greeted Kane with the word “Welcome,” a handshake, and eyes that quickly left his face to stare over his shoulder.
Elder Moses Wright, a short, fiery-eyed old ruffian with white hair that spilled over his collar, was the only exception. No welcome from him, only a defiant stare and a handshake intended to crush knuckles. Kane held the handshake and squeezed back until the old man seemed ready to call it quits. When he got his hand back, the elder rubbed it and gave Kane a considering look, like a logger trying to figure out just where to drop a big tree.
“I’m sure you’d like a chance to wash your hands and get out of those coveralls,” Thomas Wright said. “I’ll show you to the restroom.”
When Kane got back, Thomas Wright was in shirtsleeves and a tie, too. Unwrapped, he was a tall, thick, slope-shouldered man in his mid-thirties with an oval face and sorrowful eyes.
The scene looked like pictures Kane had seen of men’s groups in the 1950s, Masons or Knights of Columbus. Only Kane, wearing wool pants and a polypropylene pullover, looked like someone from the twenty-first century.
“I guess I’m a little underdressed for the occasion,” he said as he took the empty place at the table, “but I chose warmth over formality.”
That got a chuckle from a couple of the elders.
Without a signal that Kane noticed, teenage girls brought food and withdrew. Lunch looked like stew of some sort. Kane picked up his spoon and dipped it into his bowl before he noticed that everyone else was waiting.
“It is customary for us to thank God for our food before eating,” Thomas Wright said.
Kane set his spoon down and found himself holding hands with the men on either side of him. Moses Wright said grace in a booming voice, not a short prayer but a five-minute discourse on how God’s bounty fell on even the most sinful. He seemed to be looking at Kane throughout the prayer. Kane stared back. With his wild white hair and beard, and piercing eyes, Moses Wright seemed to have stepped straight from the pages of the Old Testament.
The stew was wild game and delicious.
“Elder Pinchon’s boy got the moose last fall,” Thomas Wright explained. “He’s our best hunter and a fine shot. We grow the potatoes and carrots ourselves. The bread is homemade, and the butter was churned from the milk from our own herd.”
“Rejoice is very self-sufficient,” Moses Wright growled, “and very prideful, too, it seems. ‘Woe to the crown of pride,’ it is written in Isaiah, and we all would do well to remember that.”
Thomas Wright turned his attention to eating. Other elders hurried to fill the silence.
During the meal, they told Kane that Rejoice had about 230 residents, with another thirty or so away at the moment. The community—nobody used the word “commune”—had been founded in 1967 by Moses Wright, his wife, and a couple dozen others. Over the years, some people had died or drifted away, but more had joined. Children were born, and when they became adults, most stayed.
“You were born here?” Kane asked Thomas Wright.
“I was,” Wright said. There was a tone in his voice Kane couldn’t quite place. Not pride. More like resignation.
“Does everyone who comes here stay?” Kane asked.
The Wrights passed a look.
“This life is not for everyone,” Moses Wright said. “Those of us who live here must sacrifice in the service of God.”
The girls returned to clear away the bowls, then served dessert: blueberry pie à la mode.
“Let me guess,” Kane said. “Blueberries from your own bushes. Homemade ice cream.”
All the elders smiled. Except Moses Wright.
“Do you mock us, Mr. Kane?” he thundered.
“Why, no, Elder Moses Wright,” Kane said. “You have much to be proud of.”
“This is not our doing, but God’s,” the old man said, intoning:
“For the Lord thy God bringeth thee in to a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;
“A land of wheat and barley and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;
“A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it.”
“That’s not exactly the description I’d give of this place,” Kane said, “but the rest of it seems to fit: ‘A land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.’ ”
Silence greeted Kane’s words.
“Are you a religious man, then, Mr. Kane?” asked the elder called Pinchon. He was, like Thomas Wright, in his thirties, but the resemblance ended there. Pinchon was one of the few men Kane had ever met who could fairly be called beautiful. He had fine, even features, dark hair and eyes, and eyelashes a supermodel would kill for. He had been introduced as the community’s bookkeeper.
“I’ve had a lot of time to read in the past few years,” Kane said.
“ ‘The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,’ ” Moses Wright said.
“Shakespeare, too, I expect,” Kane said, straining to keep his voice light.
The old man scowled. The other elders fought with varying degrees of success not to smile. The girls came in and cleared away the rest of the plates.
“Now, I suppose we had better get to the business that brings you here,” Thomas Wright said briskly. His tone made it clear that a meeting had begun and he was in charge of it. “Perhaps, Mr. Kane, you wouldn’t mind telling us a little of your qualifications.”
Kane looked around the table.
“My name is Nik Kane,” he said. “Except for some time in college and the Army, I’ve lived in Alaska my whole life. I am fifty-five and have been married for twenty-four years. We have three children, the last of them still in college. I put in twenty-five years on the Anchorage police force, fifteen of them as a detective. I’m here with the recommendation of the chief there, Tom Jeffords.”
Moses Wright opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it with the something unsaid.
“Why did you leave the force?” a thin, gray-haired elder asked.
“Surely you know that,” Kane said, looking around the table, meeting the eyes of each man in turn. “The story was in all the newspapers.”
A silence descended, broken by Moses Wright.
“Is this really the sort of man we want to invite into our community?” he asked. “A drunkard and a murderer?”
His son opened his mouth to speak, but Kane raised a hand to stop him. “Actually, the charge was manslaughter,” Kane said, “and in the end I was exonerated. I haven’t had a drink in more than eight years.”
“Still . . .” the old man began.
“I’m not finished,” Kane said quietly. “I’m here as a favor to a friend, not to solicit either your employment or your approval. If my presence here offends you, just say the word and I’ll go back to Anchorage.”
“Your presence here offends not only me, but God,” the old man barked.
“Father!” Thomas Wright said.
Kane got to his feet.
“Thank you for a delicious lunch,” he said to Thomas Wright. “I guess I’ll be getting back now.”
“Please, Mr. Kane,” the younger man said, putting a hand on Kane’s arm, “don’t leave.”
Something in the man’s voice made Kane sink down into his chair again.
“As for you, father,” Thomas Kane said, “we have discussed this and discussed it. You know the majority of the council does not feel as you do. Stop being obstructionist.”
The old man bared his teeth at his son, then opened his mouth to speak.
“If all of your experience is in the city,” a balding, pop-eyed fellow said quickly, “do you think you can work out here?