by D. J. Butler
“Not…wrong,” Hiram said, eyes closed. “But.”
“So why didn’t you kiss her?”
“It wouldn’t have been appropriate.”
“Nuts with what’s appropriate. Come on, Pap, Mom’s been dead for six years now. It might be time to find someone who’s sweet on you. And you definitely were sweet on her. You squeezed her hand and everything. Wow.”
“Hmm.”
Michael didn’t take the hint and kept talking. “Okay, so can you give me a summary of the more supernatural problems at the Kimball Mine? I can’t believe I just used the word ‘supernatural.’”
“I have more guesses than knowledge, son.”
“Well, I have less than guesses. Share.”
Hiram took a deep breath. “The Beast…let’s call it that. I hope it’s been destroyed. I won’t know until I make another Mosaical Rod.”
“Okay.”
“I guess that over sixty years ago, Gus lived here, and went by the name Lohengrim Zoller. And he met the demon under the earth—maybe he came here because of the demon, I don’t know—and he struck a deal with it. For thirty years, the demon made Gus prosper. Maybe the demon also taught him magic, I don’t know that, either. But when Gus’s time was up, the demon made a deal with a new person.”
“Teancum Kimball,” Michael said.
“Teancum Kimball. And I guess that must have been right around 1903, when there were riots in the mines. So maybe the demon had something to do with the riots—it caused them, or it used them to run Gus off, or it stopped the riots when Teancum made his deal.”
“Teancum gave the monster his children. All of them. And Gus gave them his eyes.” Michael shuddered.
“Gus left,” Hiram continued, “but he didn’t stay gone. He came back around 1920, and somehow, Teancum didn’t recognize him.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb,” Michael said. “Gus used a charm.”
“Seems likely. And Gus was sensitive to the possibility that I might have a seer stone, so my guess is that the Beast gave the peep-stone to whoever made a deal with it. So Gus probably had the stone in his day, and then Teancum. And then Teancum gave it to his children.”
“I want a peep-stone,” Michael said. “Or at least, I want to look in one.”
“Someday.” Hiram considered. “My guess is, at the same time Teancum was trying and failing to talk the Beast into renewing their deal, the Beast manipulated him into sending the seer stone to his children. My guess is the Beast planned to strike a deal with Samuel or Ammon.”
Michael clutched the wheel, keeping his eyes on the muddy road, blanketed with snow from the storm the night before. “So, demons, huh? How can people not know about this?”
“Many do,” Hiram said.
Many others, though, were taught not to see the evidence. Or were taught to disbelieve at all costs. Or talked themselves out of belief to preserve their own worldview, or belief in their own innocence, or in the superiority of their way of life.
“Are you going to teach me the hocus-pocus?” Michael asked.
A very good question.
“Maybe if you let me be for the drive home, I might show you a thing or two. But most charms only work for a person with a chaste and sober mind. You sure you want to walk that path?”
“Chaste and sober? Jeez.” Michael laughed.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Hiram had put on his church clothes for the interview.
It was the chapel in Lehi, early on Sunday morning before meetings started. Hiram sat on a wooden chair in a classroom, trying not to put his hand into his pocket to hold his bloodstone.
Bishops Smith and Wells sat on similar chairs facing him. The radiator hissed like a dragon, and Hiram was sweating. Outside the building, a cold snap had hit, and it wasn’t going to get above freezing, but inside it was an oven.
The walls were white plaster. The only decoration they held were two framed pictures, one a painting of Jesus knocking at a garden door and the other a photograph of Heber J. Grant, the President of the Church. It shouldn’t have bothered Hiram that Grant’s picture was slightly larger and hung a bit higher, but it did.
The place smelled of furniture polish and prayer, and every sound started an echo that hid within it the hint of a hymn.
He had on his white shirt, which he had pressed, but which had nevertheless become very creased on the drive to the chapel. His slacks had a hole in the seam on the right leg, and his shoes, he realized, could have used more polish. At least his bolo tie was straight.
Bishop Smith sat with his fingers steepled, dressed impeccably in a brown suit and fashionably wide tie. John Wells wore a smaller tie and a waistcoat, with his jacket over the back of another chair.
“What on earth caused you to become embroiled in a murder?” Smith asked. “You were sent there simply to deliver groceries to the Kimball miners, yes?”
“Yes,” Hiram said. “And I delivered them.”
Both counsellors waited for more, Smith frowning, but Wells with a relaxed smile.
“Well?” Smith asked.
Hiram shrugged. “I guess I think I told you everything.”
“Except why the police considered you a suspect in a murder investigation,” Smith said.
“I let the man borrow my gun,” Hiram said, “so it was on the scene when he died. As far as I know, that’s all there is to it. I’m not a suspect anymore.”
“Did they find the killer, then?”
Hiram shrugged. “You could ask the Carbon County Sheriff.”
“And the witchcraft?” Smith asked.
Hiram shook his head. “I’m no witch.”
Smith pursed his lips in thought.
Two weeks had passed since Hiram and Michael had driven away from Helper. Planting hadn’t started yet, but Hiram was ready—the tractor was all tuned up and he’d checked his stock of fertilizer and seed.
Hiram had cut a Mosaical Rod with all the names he knew for the Beast and interrogated it about the Beast’s fate. Satisfied that the being was dead, or at least would not be found again by the Kimball Corporation’s miners, Hiram had telegraphed a discreet all-clear signal back to Ammon.
Ammon’s response telegram had told Hiram that Dollar’s was boarded up and the family gone. Where were they now? The daughter knew some craft; she’d sabotaged Hiram’s truck. And the grandchildren had seemed perfectly delightful…until Gus had hexed them.
Michael had written Mary. He had better penmanship than Hiram and was far better with words; also, he had a lot to say, and Hiram didn’t.
She hadn’t written back.
On the other hand, Hiram had received a package from the Carbon County Sheriff’s Department. In it was Hiram’s Colt, cleaned and smelling of gun oil. Hiram was glad to get it back.
He scratched his chin, comfortable in the silence.
President Smith, though, finally cleared his throat. “The times are changing, Brother Woolley.”
Hiram nodded. “Every day.”
“We’re getting organized. We’ve learned from our best stake leaders how to get storehouses together, and how to manage collective effort. Have you heard about the Welfare Program the Pioneer Stake runs? And the L.D.S. Business College has set up a Women’s Sewing Center. We’re going to lick this depression, and we’re going to do it as a people.”
“President Roosevelt would be proud,” Hiram said.
Smith snorted. “We’re going to do it like Henry Ford. We’re building a machine, and it will take care of our people the world over. We’re going to get a real organization in place. And there won’t be room for men like you in it.”
Hiram considered. “Farmers, you mean?”
President Smith’s face turned sour. “I mean men who buck the system. Men who can’t take orders. Men who so flout the public conscience that they’re accused of serious crimes. Men who dowse and consult familiar spirits.”
Nostrils flared, Smith stood and left.
“He’s a good man,�
�� John Wells said after a brief silence.
Somewhere in the building, a choir had begun rehearsal.
“He’s a good organization man,” Hiram agreed. “He does what he’s told and gets others to do the same.”
“I knew a beet farmer once,” Wells said. “He had a hundred sugar beets, and he had a shiny new John Deere that took care of the patch. It plowed and it planted, it weeded and it watered and it harvested, and it did very well by ninety-nine of those beets.”
“Hmm.”
“But there was the one beet that the combine couldn’t reach,” Wells continued. “And so my friend the farmer had to go out himself, to weed around that beet, water it, and keep the worms away. It look a lot of labor, but the one beet turned out just as well as the ninety-nine. Do you think my friend the farmer did right to give that beet special care?”
Hiram snorted. “I think you have no idea how to grow sugar beets.”
John Wells gave a Hiram a nod. “Let Bishop Smith build his machine. It will care very well for the ninety and nine. And you and I, my friend…”
“We’ll go after the one.”
“We’ll go after the one.”
“Ammon Kimball had a seer stone. Or, really, it was Teancum’s.” Hiram blurted the words out. He had to say something.
John Wells nodded slowly. “A seer stone?”
Hiram nodded. “But a seer stone that was connected to…a demon.”
“I suppose if I were to find such an item,” Wells said slowly, “I would think it was safer in the hands of someone who believed in its power, than being given to a bureaucracy that found it to be an embarrassing piece of history, best forgotten.”
That was the end of the conversation. Outside the door, Wells turned right and Hiram walked left, to where Michael waited beside the Double-A.
* * *
The next morning, Hiram rose early and cut a length of witch hazel from the bush at the end of his porch.
Michael would sleep the morning away if permitted, and on this morning, unusually, Hiram would let him do just that.
After fortifying himself with a glass of buttermilk and a couple of hardboiled eggs, Hiram opened his toolbox. From the lower compartment, he removed the peep-stone, still wrapped in paper. He didn’t know whether the stone had any value other than contacting the Beast, so he preferred not to touch it.
To prepare the Mosaical Rod, he carved into it the usual crosses and the Tetragrammaton. He recited a passage from Helaman out loud as he worked: “Whoso shall hide up treasures in the earth shall find them again no more, because of the great curse of the land, save he be a righteous man and shall hide it up unto the Lord.”
He pocketed his blessed knife from the tool chest as well.
Then he walked out to the south forty, the Mosaical Rod in his hand, the mud under his feet frozen in swirls. Later in the spring, once planting started, there would be hired men out and about at this hour. All Hiram saw was a lone hawk circling overhead.
He walked swinging the Mosaical Rod from side to side and waiting for it to guide him. Gradually, dipping to indicate direction, it led him to the spot.
He drew an X into the dirt with his dagger, then walked back to the farmhouse, only to return to his X with a pile of split wood on the back of the Double-A. Above him, the Wasatch Mountains were crystalline ramparts, still white with snow over their gray rock and the dull brown of the gambol oak in their winter clothes. The snow on the peaks would stay until July, or maybe August.
Hiram got a fire going. He was grateful for the warmth himself, but also he needed to thaw out the ground before he dug. On top of that, fire was the element of intelligence, it was ruled by Gabriel, it undid enchantments, and so forth.
The fire was essential.
Hiram wasn’t completely sure what spirit or angel moved the cache on his farm. Robin Goodfellow, whom Eva Sorenson had fed milk to? Grandma Hettie? A Ute medicine man who had once lived on the land? An angel who served the God of heaven?
Elmina?
Hiram’s mother?
He wasn’t sure who helped him, but he knew what worked. The helpful spirit, whoever or whatever it was, moved the box around, so no one could unearth it, either on purpose or by accident.
As the fire did its work, Hiram thought again of the hex he’d used to tumble down that wall in the mine. It was image magic, far beyond Hiram’s lore. Hiram hadn’t even been able to read the lamen without help.
Hiram’s skills were woefully inadequate.
How could he possibly teach Michael?
How could he fight the demons of the land, as John Wells wanted, and keep the people safe?
Hiram took a deep breath.
He let the fire burn to coals and then waited for those coals to become ash. Sinking a shovel into the dirt beneath, he dug until he unearthed a box made of flat stones cemented together. On those stones he’d scratched every warding symbol he knew.
He should definitely learn more symbols. He should get books.
Where would he even do that?
He pulled the stone box out of the warmed, muddy ground and then knelt in front of it.
The vault’s stone lid squeaked when he lifted it off. The things inside—a skull with horns, a glass bauble, a black candle, a hand of glory—were here for safekeeping. The chest kept them out of the grasp of those who might misuse them.
Which, in the case of some of the objects, was anyone who would touch them.
Hiram placed Teancum Kimball’s seer stone inside and then replaced the lid. Locking it felt good. Burying it again felt even better.
Would he ever show Michael the contents of the chest? It depended on the kind of life his son wanted. Part of him hoped Hiram could pass along to his son Grandma Hettie’s special skills. Yas Yazzie’s ways had not been so very different, after all. Another part of Hiram wanted his son to learn the sorcery of the chemistry lab and the occult language of academic publishing.
There were other evils than demons to fight in this world.
He said another prayer to the Lord Divine. He knew that even as he finished, the guardian spirit of the stone chest was whisking it away. No one could casually stumble across the items Hiram guarded, not now, and not ever.
A voice echoed across the bare, wintery landscape. Michael stood on the porch, waving.
Hiram waved back.
He drove back to the house.
What would he say to Michael, if the boy asked why he’d been out on the back forty with a shovel?
Hiram sighed.
