Page 8 of Our Last Resort

My heart raced. The massacred chicks were anathema to Émile. Anyone associated with such evil had no place in his world.

Émile switched off the television. We sat in silence for what must have been a full minute.

“What do you think I should do?” he said finally.

Another impossible question. Only Émile knew what anyone should do.

“I’m sorry.”

Émile sat back behind his desk and crossed his hands over his abdomen.

“You say you’re sorry. Do you know how you can show it?”

No more words. Only my hopeful gaze rising to almost meet his. Only my heart, open, should he want to help himself to it.

“Remember this. Remember the consequences of your actions. Remember that you have this force inside you, and you do not know how to wield it.”

I nodded.

Émile leaned over the desk.

“That’s why you must listen. Learn. Remember you do not know anything. You need to be guided. If you listen, you have a chance.”

I nodded some more, twisting my fingers, palms rising, prayerlike. But no. Émile did not want to be worshipped. He didn’t want anyone to call him a guru or a savant.

With a flick of his wrist, he dismissed me.

“You can go now.”

The door to his office shut behind me with barely a sound.

What I didn’t know, what I wouldn’t learn until much later: There was another tape for fish. That one was a mix of big-game and deep-water fishing—hundreds of creatures caught in nets, thrashing, eyes swelling and stomachs popping out of their mouths as they were brought to the surface too fast, the change of pressure too great to survive. Bigger animals with hooks puncturing their mouths. Majestic predators reduced to nothing by the folly of men.

The question wasChicken or fish?The only correct answer wasNeither.

Why had no one warned me?

Everyone took the test, according to Émile—yet no onetalked about it. I’d never heard a word of caution, not a whisper, not a rumor.

Of course.

Everyone took the test, and everyone failed it.

And so we stayed quiet. Every last one of us.

Émile didn’t have to ask us not to tell. He didn’t need to rely on our loyalty.

Shame kept us silent all on its own.

I certainly didn’t feel like telling anyone about my experience.

Later, after everything unraveled, people kept asking the same question.How did he look so legit to so many people for so long?

They didn’t understand. For the kids, it started when we were eight. The lesson of the test settled around our shoulders like chain mail: There were hurricanes within us, devastation in our bodies. Without Émile to teach us, to save us from ourselves, we would destroy it all. Our dark hearts would end the world.

4Escalante, Utah

The Fifth Day

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