He can’t get anywhere near the pedestrian mall. Traffic is backed up, people walking from all directions, singing, chanting, holding signs, smiling and serious, a flood of people. He parks David John’s van in front of a dry cleaner’s, the windows dark, two other cars pulling in after him.
In the spring there’s the Cortaca Festival, and in the fall there’s the Apple Harvest Festival. Food and art, carnival rides, bands playing in the pavilion at the center of the pedestrian mall, but he’s never seen anything like this. As he gets closer, the already-swollen river of people thickens. People spill into the streets. The cars that are trying to get through are reduced to a crawl. He didn’t go to the Women’s March the weekend of President Trump’s inauguration, but he saw photos—the photographer for the Cortaca Journal got a shot from the roof of the parking garage, the pedestrian mall unfolded below, people piled up like sand on a beach—and he has to imagine it was like this. He doesn’t know how many people are here tonight. Thousands. Five thousand, ten thousand, enough to choke the roads, enough to mean that he has to turn sideways, slipping, juking, apologizing as he pushes his way through the crowd, trying to get closer to the center, to the pavilion.
It seems like everywhere he looks people are holding unlit candles, and it dawns on him that this isn’t just a counterprotest, it’s not just a memorial: it’s a vigil. A college student, a girl, is standing on one of the concrete planters holding a cardboard box full of them, and she reaches down to hand one to Jessup. He takes the candle.
Even from a distance, he can hear the chanting, the drums. The protesters are making a joyous noise. He climbs up onto a bench, uses a tree to steady himself as he steps on the bench’s backrest so that he can see over the crowd. He can see a group of men on the grand pavilion at the center of the pedestrian mall. Jessup doesn’t know how to label them. Are Brandon and his ilk protesters? What, exactly, are they protesting?
He decides it doesn’t matter. What matters is that even though he’s still fifty yards back, from his vantage point he can see that there are hundreds of them. If he had to guess, he’d say three hundred men—all men as far as he can tell—with some of them wearing body armor over their jackets, a few Confederate flags, at least one Nazi flag that he can see, somebody else waving a giant white flag with the flaming cross and the words “Blessed Church of the White America,” all crowded onto the grand pavilion stage at the center of the pedestrian mall, elevated above the packed crowd of people here to drown them out. Even from where he is standing he can see their anger. The snarls as they yell.
And for the first time in his life, Jessup sees how comical they are. How pathetic they look. That fury directed out into the ether. There are hundreds of them, a force, more of these men than he has seen in one place in his entire life, and yet they are little more than a dollop of land surrounded by the sea, whatever rage they have contained by the teeming masses, Cortaca police and state police and what feels like all of the police in the world forming a circle around them, a moat of sorts, the only thing keeping this ocean of people away from these pitiful men, and from where he perches precariously on the top of this bench, it does seem like the people are an ocean, moving in waves, in and out, chanting now in unison, their voices a glorious chorus.
He gets down from the bench, and even though the crowd tightens, bodies pressed together, men and women and even some children holding hands, he works his way through, closer and closer, until he’s pressed up against a building, as close as he can get to the pavilion without breaking through the lines of police officers, as close as he can get without actually joining the men on the other side, and he sees Brandon Rogers at the center of it, elevated somehow on a box or a pedestal, his face bathed in floodlights, television cameras pointed in his direction, his right arm immobilized by a sling, a prop that seems both glorious and feeble, and around him, his acolytes pump their fists, screaming, spittle dripping, the men chanting something of their own now, faces turgid with blood, a grotesque lust, and then Jessup catches sight of Wyatt, his friend, the boy he’s known since time immemorial, the boy who he’s spent his entire life with, the boy who has been like a brother to him, who hasn’t just been like a brother but has been a brother, years and years of history, the weight of history split by a rushing river coming at him, that boy, Wyatt, his brother always, his brother no more, at Brandon’s feet, and whatever hesitation Wyatt has allowed in his life, whatever equivocation he seems to have felt about his place in the church, it is gone, because he looks at Brandon like he’s looking at a god, his face shining with a joy so pure that it makes Jessup shiver, so that just for a moment Jessup wishes he were up there, too, that he could worship at the feet of this man, this movement, that he could make himself feel so big by making others feel small.
And then it happens.
It’s just a spark, a few dozen lighters set to candles, barely enough for Jessup to notice, but as each candle is lit, the person holding it turns and lights the candle of whoever is next to them, hands cupping the flame, wick to wick, a tender gesture, the literal passing of the torch, and soon it is a hundred candles lit, and as these candles are lit, the fire flickering, jumping from hand to hand, people begin to kneel, falling to the ground, falling silent, and Jessup thinks that he was right to compare this to an ocean, because a wave washes over him, these lights, this quiet, the men on the podium still screaming, but instead of being overshadowed by chanting, they are drowned out by stillness, hundreds of candles lit, hundreds lighting hundreds more, thousands of protesters now, on their knees, holding candles in front of them, the guttering flames a bulwark against the darkness, like nothing Jessup has ever seen. But suddenly he realizes that he was wrong to think of the sea after all, to think of a wave, to think of these people like an ocean drowning out Brandon and Wyatt and all of these wretched men, because these lights, this peaceful reverie from the crowd of thousands is not at all like water, it is nothing like water, it is like nothing other than a constellation of stars, the snow slowly coming down now, a benediction, a blessing, snow drifting from the sky, falling among them, each candle a single star, and together thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of candles before him, and he can see this, he can see all of this, can see the way the light comes together, one flickering light barely a glow, but together it’s stunning, overpowering, together these candles make a universe, and for what reason Jessup does not know, cannot tell, the men in the pavilion begin to fall silent now, too, as if they know their voices will not rise above joy and love and community, as if they know that what they have created for themselves is built only on tearing down, so they are silent now, even Brandon Rogers stopping, all of them, staring out at the vast expanse before them, looking over the ring of police and taking in the blinking heavens, and Jessup feels a sort of peace, because right there, right at the very front, he sees Deanne, sees her kneeling between her father and her mother, this first girl that he has loved, this girl who he will always love, and he moves carefully, stepping past a man and a small child, gently touching his hand to a woman’s shoulder so he can get by her, feels people watching him, all of them, those kneeling and those up on the stage, Jessup caught between the two worlds, Wyatt watching him, offering his hand to help Jessup up to the pavilion stage, offering a hand to his brother, his friend, and in this moment, Jessup thinks about what it has meant to be caught up in the history of his life, to have been raised in this church, and Wyatt has made his choice, and here, now, Jessup is making his own choice, either to join or to depart, and no other choice will ever matter or hurt as much as this one. As he nears Deanne, he thinks, no, David John is right, you cannot turn your back on family. Since Wyatt is as a brother to him, that means that Jessup cannot turn his back on Wyatt. Since he cannot join him and he cannot turn his back on him, Jessup’s only choice is to face Wyatt. So he makes his choice, stops in front of Deanne, looks at her and holds out his candle, holds it and waits, waits for her to light it, waits for the flame to catch, not asking for a declaration of love, not asking for redemption or forgiveness, asking for nothing other than the chance to face these men, to add a star to the night sky, the snow falling, the snow twisting, the snow glinting and ferocious in the dancing light of these thousand lights, and after what might be forever, Deanne touches her wick to his.
He kneels in silence, his candle another light against the darkness.