The Wright Way

Chapter 28 - The Wright Way

"It started with Lewis Harrison Wright, my great-grandfather," I say, making my way among the trees, picking safer, mossy areas to step on. "He preached in Bethlehem for ages. It was a small remote town back then. His father had preached there before him, and his grandfather, too. It was a tight knit community and Wrights had been its spiritual center for generations. Yet Lewis was different."

I pause and look back at Joshua who walks slowly, stepping into my footprints fading in the moss. Walking barefoot in a forest is never a good idea, but there's nothing we can replace his lost shoes with.

"So," I say, resuming my walking. "For Lewis, traditional religion wasn't enough. Sacred books were filled with murder, crimes, daughters seducing their fathers and such. He thought it wrong to let that 'filth' into the minds of his people. Religion, he thought, should give people a clear understanding of what's right. All that's outside of that is unacceptable and shouldn't even be mentioned." I push a low hanging branch away from my face. "Apparently, he was convincing and charismatic. The town having had been listening to Wright's preaching for generations, people started rallying about him. And in the next seventy something years, he transformed the town into a religious settlement."

"I can't believe everybody just went along with it," Joshua says.

"Well, people were more religious in those days. I believe some left, but most stayed. They were isolated—no television, and later no Internet. Even when they could technically have it, it wasn't allowed. "

"Oh? No entertainment whatsoever?"

"The entertainment was singing and storytelling. They just kept to themselves. Yet at some point, in late seventies, the news reports started to appear and a couple of documentaries brought attention to the settlement. Following Jonestown, the press was digging for such things, and, in a way, they created the Wrights as we know them. Some people were curious about Bethlehem, some outraged, some enchanted. Newcomers started to flock in."

"I heard some of it," says Joshua. "They use people labor on their farms and they're quite rich—the bosses, that is. Like, your uncle and the family."

I shrug. "It's a community. It's okay to work for your community."

"It's also okay to get paid."

"They have a place to live and food to eat and they have their needs met. They lead the pure life they came searching for. Bethlehem is not a place to earn money. It is a place to find meaning."

"By making a small bunch of weirdly-named people rich?"

His dwelling on the financial side of things is annoying. I knew he wouldn't grasp it. It's hard to explain this to someone who hasn't grown up at the Wrights' farms. I can tell him the facts, but I can't make him feel the goodness and the purity and the meaning behind it all. No matter what I say, he'll still see it as a place where a bunch of psychos live, not a refuge from the world that's wild and unpredictable.

"I didn't check their balance books," I say, "but, of course, the farms are growing, and the produce is selling –"

"And the labor is free," he chimes in.

"Yes, but the money is used to benefit the people of the community."

"Those of them who survive, that is."

I stop. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"We are running for our lives, aren't we?" He plods towards me and stops, too. "I heard that a bunch of families whose children had joined the Wrights sued your Uncle for brainwashing and stuff. Some people even went missing, didn't they? They'd been on the farms, and they left, as your uncle claimed, and then nobody heard from them again."