Pale Harvest. Braden Hepner

and huddled himself down to ward off the cold of the night. When any one of them shifted, the dead brown grass crackled and rasped beneath them. Heber let fall an unopened pack of cigarettes on his palm and the steady tap was a drumbeat as they sat under the trees at the park and looked out at the leveled field adjoining. Heber and Seth smoked and held bottles in their laps and were enjoying themselves and being redblooded and vulgar. They were comfortable.

      —Good beer, Seth? said Heber.

      —Good beer.

      —You wouldn’t know good beer if it bit you on the ass.

      —This is good beer.

      —What makes it good?

      —It’s just good beer, Rafuse. I know good beer.

      —You’re a few years shy of twenty-one and you know good beer.

      —Am I drinking a beer right now Heber? Do I got a beer in my goddamn hand?

      —Better than what you usually have in your hand, said Heber. And don’t forget where you got it. And don’t drink it so damn fast. Enjoy it.

      —I’ll drink it as damn fast as I feel like it, said Seth.

      —In this town a boy picks up his habits of vice and mayhem early, said Heber, like embracing new friends decreed by fate. But you, Seth, you’ve collected them late and desperately. You defy the relaxing manner these habits naturally inspire. If you’re not meant to be together you’ll couple by force, won’t you. These vices are supposed to bring a measure of peace, but you haven’t found it. You’ve done it wrong. You’ve gone from one frenzied consciousness to another. Traded each for each. Poor fella.

      —Piss up a rope, said Seth.

      —And now I hear you’re riding bulls. And your mother will feel new ulcers bloom in her stomach as she drops more often to her knees in what must be as fervent prayer as there ever was.

      —You want her prayers, you can have um, said Seth.

      —There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked, said Heber. What of the wicked then? Are they not at peace? Do they not peacefully enjoy their lives? We do. Compare us.

      —Just let me enjoy my smoke, said Seth.

      Heber looked at him for a moment, then at Jack.

      —Here’s to the late and dear Adelaide Selvedge, he said, holding up his bottle. Here’s to her, John.

      Jack raised his Pepsi and they all touched bottles.

      —She was a fine lady, said Heber. That we’d all be lucky enough to find someone like her.

      —You didn’t hardly know her, said Seth.

      —I knew her enough to say we’d all do well to find someone like her. A bit younger maybe.

      —You’d take it from her corpse on the right weekend.

      —Hey now, that’s off limits. Tell him that’s off limits, John.

      —Where’s Geneva? said Seth. I ain’t seen her in a while.

      —Welcome to the present hour, Seth. Where the hell have you been? I quit with her before summer.

      —Hm. I liked her.

      —So did I.

      —Did she leave yuh?

      —It was mutual.

      —So she left yuh.

      —I said it was mutual.

      —She left him, he said to Jack. No shit. She still in Salt Lake?

      —Finishing law school. She’ll be done in the spring.

      —Maybe I’ll go look her up. Marry me a lawyer.

      —You want my sloppy seconds?

      —That’s what you get with most girls, said Seth. Or fifths and sevenths and so on. Can’t be too choosy. If she’s a lawyer, that’ll do.

      —Will it?

      —She was all right. I thought she could be pretty sexy once in a while.

      —Once in a while, he says. Ignoramus.

      —Why’d she end it?

      —She wanted what I couldn’t provide, said Heber. She wanted to get married and get back to the church, after we were through sinning. Wanted me to move to the city too. Can’t practice law in Juniper Scrag, can you.

      —What’s wrong with moving to the city?

      —Nothing. I can’t go back to church.

      —You should of done it for her.

      —That ain’t it, said Heber. He leaned forward, close to Seth. Do you realize the damage that is done, the rending, the tumult, the casualty of soul in hoping for obedience or progress, knowing a thing is required of you and knowing at the same time that you cannot do it?

      These words were low and passionate and he leaned back against the tree.

      —The atonement is rhetorical labyrinth and riddlecraft. Why must we be ritually cleansed of the natures God gave us? Do you beat a dog for being a dog? It’s a fable designed to create guilt and the power that relies on it. Church government. Moral authority. Hierarchies of power. We are commanded to be good, yet destined to fail. We are told that we have sufficient within us to withstand evil, but we do not withstand evil. By some inexplicable justice we are held accountable for a fall we had no part in. And we seem to believe there is a line beyond which grace can come no farther. What is grace then? What of all the counsel and the guilt? Sermon and scripture alike bring it on like a shitstorm. We are made to feel interminably guilty when we can’t leave natural behavior behind, something God put in us like a vital organ and asked us to wrench free and discard. What man seeking the joy he is meant for can break the restraint of everlasting guilt? This man, he said, thrusting both thumbs into his chest. We are creatures subject to our natures, like all creatures. This is what God and the world show us. We possess reason and conscience, which should give us an adequate measure of restraint, but when we spend our control on petty fabrications that confuse and supplant the conscience, which fabrications are beyond the basics of conscience and reason, we build ourselves a cage of falsehood, within which we reside like dreaming halfwits. This false construct creates its own brand of fear, anxiety, behavior, work, and counterfeit guilt.

      —A lot of people seem happy in it though, said Seth. It ain’t for me, but why tell another man how to live?

      —If I tell you something that isn’t true, said Heber, and this false knowledge brings you joy, the joy you feel is true. And if you never discover the deceit, the true joy remains, and so does the deceit. Whatever joy is created is true whether the thing that created it is true or not. This is the system, and the system is flawed, unnecessary, and not of God. If a man can be as good a man without the belief system, of what necessity is the system, and of what necessity is belief? If you can answer that question satisfactorily, I’ll step down. There are two alternate scenarios, then. There is the man who has learned to be good without a church, and there is the man whom religion has shaped into being good, and believing in this goodness per se, he no longer needs his religion. This is common sense, though mostly we fail to see it. We somehow blind ourselves to sense in favor of its opposite, and when having faith in something ceases to be reasonable, which does a rational being abandon, faith or reason? What would a rational god expect his subjects to choose? The god we claim to know is a god who would be obeyed, with those who will not obey cast off. The problem is, no one can be certain of the rules. Where is he now? He’s distant from us. Any town that’s not on fire looks peaceful from a distance. But walk the streets, know the people, listen to the talk, read the local paper, and you’ll see the poverty of soul, the disorder, the horror. Our god will let things get worse as we move toward the end, withholding his intervention, although you can be sure the chaos and destruction are indeed his doing, his passive vengeance—guilty by way of indifference. Where are the miracles,