A young couple waited for them on a bench next to the playground. The sister of Sophie Marie’s biological mother and the woman’s husband. The couple had a six-year-old son who had just started kindergarten, according to Jacob.
They stood up when the three of them approached with Sophie Marie. They looked wary even though Eliza knew that the FBI had called and briefed them on the exchange.
“Mr. and Mrs. Dennings?” Jacob asked. “I’m Jacob Christianson. The one Mr. Cardoza told you about.”
The woman looked down at Sophie Marie. “Oh my God, she looks just like Sarah,” she said to her husband. “It must be her.”
Eliza and Fernie let go of Sophie Marie’s hands.
The woman hesitated, then picked up Sophie Marie. The girl looked back at Fernie, trusting, not yet afraid. That would change, Eliza knew, when they got in the car and drove away. Poor child.
“You remember what I said, sweetheart?” Fernie said to Sophie Marie. “This woman is like one of your aunties.” She stroked the girl’s hair. “You’ll be with her for a little while.”
“Okay.”
“The girl’s name is Sophie Marie,” Fernie said. “At least that’s what her mother—I mean, the woman who was taking care of her—named her.”
Jacob looked back to the woman and her husband. He held out a parcel wrapped in brown paper that he’d carried from the car. “There are people who love Sophie Marie. We wanted to send her with something from her other family.”
The woman opened the package to uncover a stained glass window made by Brother Joseph. It was a wild rose bush climbing a wall, an intricate and beautiful design composed of several dozen pieces of cut glass.
Chapter Twenty-Seven:
Ron Chen waited uneasily in the parking lot. His contact had called himself Ezekiel. Always some weird-ass Biblical name with these guys. It had been several months since Chen had heard from them. So long, in fact, that he’d grown worried; he needed the money.
Chen had spent his money quietly, but spend it he had. A new stereo, a remodeled kitchen. More meals out. A trip to Italy with his brother. He’d sold his six year-old Accord and picked up a Nissan Z. Three hundred horses under the hood gave it a nice gallop. Great for picking up chicks, too. Oh, and he wanted to put in a home theater system, but he was still a few thousand short.
In fact, he was a few thousand short just about everywhere. Weird, how he’d taken eighty thousand tax free and now he had a higher balance on his cards and a new home equity loan to worry about. It was like they said, it doesn’t matter how much you make, at the end of the month you always eat beans.
But then the email had come. No explanation for the delay, just another shipment, this one smaller. Less money, too, but Chen had stretched his credit cards to the limit and couldn’t afford to argue.
The man kept Chen waiting for almost thirty minutes in the parking lot before he showed up. It was Wednesday afternoon, the half day at the clinic. Dr. Stephens had gone home, and Grace and Anna as well. But these rendezvous felt risky anyway. Someone might see.
And then the man who’d called himself Ezekiel arrived. Another van. White, unmarked, with Nevada plates. Chen thought he should memorize the plates. Write them down somewhere, with a note in case something happened to him.
A man stepped out of the van. He held a cooler in one hand and a manila envelope in the other. Ezekiel was pasty white, and there was something unpleasant about his eyes and the set of his mouth. He set the cooler at Chen’s feet and held out the envelope, but just beyond reach, as if he would snatch it back should Chen grab for it. Chen reached instead for the cooler.
Don’t be greedy. Don’t make a mistake.
Santa Cruz County Medical Institute, or Scummy, as it was known by its overworked and underpaid employees, was not the biggest fertility clinic in Northern California. And most IVF procedures used sperm from the husband or partner, not donor sperm. But the clinic had produced over four hundred sperm-donor babies—including multiple births—in almost two hundred-and-fifty different women in the previous dozen years.
These days, most of the sperm came from the coolers given him by men like Ezekiel. What’s more, the clinic resold Scummy sperm to a host of smaller facilities throughout the Bay Area and Northern California. Chen pictured billions of tiny swimmers, like salmon swimming upriver to spawn, migrating from the clinic and into the wombs of women.
Chen shook his head in disgust at his own role in this business. Billions and billions of sperm. Only one purpose. Find egg, fertilize. God only knew whose sperm came from those vials.
-end-
The Righteous series continues in Mighty and Strong, and book number three, The Wicked (June 2011). There is also a novella (about fifty book pages) set in Blister Creek in the 1950s, called Trial by Fury, available in the series. If you would like to be informed when Michael Wallace releases a new book, please email the author at [email protected] to be put on the mailing list. Please continue reading for the author bio, discussion questions, and an excerpt from Mighty and Strong, the sequel to The Righteous.
About the Author:
Michael Wallace has trekked across the Sahara on a camel, ridden an elephant through a tiger preserve in Southeast Asia, eaten fried guinea pig, and been licked on the head by a skunk. In a previous stage of life he programmed nuclear war simulations, smuggled refugees out of a war zone, and milked cobras for their venom. He speaks Spanish and French and grew up in a religious community in the desert. His suspense/thrillers include The Devil’s Deep, State of Siege, Implant, Mighty and Strong, and The Righteous, and he is also the author of collections of travel stories and fantasy books for children. His work has appeared in print more than a hundred times, including publication in markets such as The Atlantic and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Discussion Questions for Book Groups:
1. A recurring element of Michael Wallace’s novels is the intensity of family bonds. In The Red Rooster, a young woman sacrifices everything to find her father in Occupied France. In The Righteous series, the characters of the polygamist enclave are sometimes related to each other in multiple ways. In The Devil’s Deep, a successful family hides a terrible secret. What is it about the family bond that can lead to both intense love and intense hatred?
2. In Trial by Fury, a young Abraham Christianson is ordered by a church elder to commit a horrific crime in the name of the church. In what ways does his reaction reflect and contrast with the demand that Jacob sacrifice his sister in The Righteous?
3. Patriarchal sects can be deeply oppressive of women, and yet some women seem to thrive in spite of their environment. It is also a curious fact that some women will defend these systems and work to enforce the rules of the community, even at the cost of oppressing other women. What causes this behavior?
4. What is more important for a religious community, the belief of the members, or the desire to belong to a cohesive, close-knit group, all pulling in the same direction?
5. Is there a place for fundamentalist religious groups such as Mormon polygamists, Orthodox Jewish sects, and the Amish in American society, or are they always destined to be outsiders in the larger culture?
6. What is it about the desert or wilderness that has attracted small religious groups throughout the history? Is it nothing more than isolation, or is there something about the harshness of the landscape that is important?
7. Is it possible to change one’s religious faith without being cut off from an important part of one’s inner beliefs? Is loyalty to your family and heritage important to you, even if it means continuing on a path you might not have chosen for yourself?
Mighty and Strong
by Michael Wallace
“A chilling window into life in a polygamist Utah town, where prophets still walk and nobody sits and waits for the Second Coming. Wallace masterfully captures the desperation, hope, and triumph of the world of the Mighty and Strong.”
–Jeffrey Anderson, National best
selling, International Thriller Award nominated author of Sleeper Cell.
Chapter One:
Haley Kite became a Mormon fundamentalist the moment the car dropped her off on the corner. She was twenty, she needed a husband. In fact, she’d meet him in about five minutes.
And to think, less than a month since she worked as a high-priced call girl, with provocative ads on Craigslist and Eros. Hard to say who would be more shocked at the transformation, her former client in Malibu or her future husband.
Or Mom. Yeah, definitely. Question is, which would horrify Mom more, last month’s split-crotch panties, or the prairie dress she had made by hand, just to teach herself how? Hooker or fundy cult member?
Haley imagined Mom’s voice. Always worried and equally concerned about everything from Haley’s nail-biting habit to grandpa’s unexpected stroke last Christmas. That voice had only one setting and it would be comically understated for a time like this. Hmm, a polygamist cult? Are you sure this is what you want to do, dear? What about grad school? You know Daddy and I will help out with tuition.
She was in school of a sort. After Malibu, Haley had traveled to Salt Lake City to study Mormonism 101, followed by courses in the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Plural Marriage, and Mormon Temple Rituals. Now she was taking the final exam, here in Utah’s rural heart. No grades, just pass or fail.
Manti was a town with wide, gridded streets and a temple like a castle on the hill. She wore the pastel blue prairie dress that she’d made. It reached her neck, wrists, and ankles. No makeup, no bra, her hair pulled into a braid right out of the 19th Century. A woman stepped out of a drug store and gave her a quick, sideways glance. The woman thinned her lips.
Haley fought a wave of embarrassment. Get over it, she told herself. The Lord rejoices to see a woman with virtue. She didn’t need the approval of the worldly and fallen. She certainly didn’t need to be judged by these mainstream Mormons. By apostates.
A young couple pushing a double wide stroller passed her in the opposite direction, then two elderly ladies with hair so white and fluffed it looked like frosting. More foot traffic than she’d expected. She studied each person in turn, looking for her future husband.
The Manti Pageant had just opened for the summer and the town was full of Mormon tourists, come to see the spectacle on the temple hill every night. Lots of big families, young mothers and fathers pushing strollers. And elderly, too.
There was a Mormon tourism circuit. It hit the sites of LDS history: Nauvoo, Independence, Kirtland, Palmyra. The Book of Mormon Lands: Guatemala, the Yucatan. And there were the temple tours for retired couples: Salt Lake, St. George, Manti, anywhere there was a temple and something interesting to do when you weren’t doing work for the dead. Manti may have been located in the butt crack of nowhere, but it had a beautiful 19thCentury temple and the pageant and that brought thousands of Utahns and out-of-staters every summer.
With all the foot traffic and the people watching her without watching, it took a minute to realize she was being followed. A man crossed the street with a larger group, then quickened his pace and fell in behind her.
“Sister Miriam?”
“Yes, brother?” She stopped and turned to get a better look. He had a beard and a strong face.
“Turn around, keep walking.”
“Thou sayest.” She turned and ducked her head, wishing she could have studied him for a second longer.
You are obedient, sister. A woman who will obey her husband as he obeys the Lord.
“The park opposite the bank. Near the bandstand.”
Since she couldn’t turn, she instead watched the expressions of the other people on the sidewalk, as they glanced first at her and then at the man walking behind her shoulder. Did they judge her? Feel sorry for her? Wonder if she was the fifth wife of some dirty old man?
Haley hadn’t known the first thing about Mormons until a few weeks earlier. Her mother was a lapsed Episcopalian, her father listed his religion as ‘none of the above.’ Her religious education had consisted of the Bible lessons you picked up from a talking cucumber and tomato on Veggie Tales.
Okay, so she’d had a few unflattering stereotypes of Mormons in mind. She’d unlearned those once she’d come to Salt Lake and met a few Mormons. Decent people, like anyone else. She’d unlearned her prejudices and then been forced to relearn new ones in order to cultivate the proper attitude of one of the elect toward one of the fallen.
Mormonism itself had an interesting history, filled with angels, miracles, martyrs, rebellion against the government, strange beliefs and even stranger practices. The mainstream church had moderated over the years, and now cultivated a buffed and polished image of freshy-scrubbed missionaries, of wholesome entertainers like David Archuleta, Steve Young, the Osmonds. And incorruptible politicians: Mitt Romney, Jim McKay, Harry Reid.
Maybe that’s why the apostate Mormons hated the tens of thousands of polygamists living in their midst. Reminded them of their own messy past. An embarrassment. It didn’t fit the high fructose corn syrup message they fed visitors to Temple Square, in Salt Lake.
Haley waited at the crosswalk for the light to change, then made her way toward the park on the opposite side. The man’s hand touched her shoulder as she reached the far curb.
“Here,” he said. “Stop here.”
Haley turned again, tried to keep her face blank, innocent. Who would he be, her future husband? She blinked in surprise.
She’d seen his picture during her studies. Brother Timothy, the self-styled prophet of the Church of the Last Days, a splinter sect. A young man with a beard, intense eyes, dressed in a white shirt and black vest in the picture, almost like an Amish farmer on his way to church.
No Amish today, but simply jeans with a long-sleeved shirt that could have come out of a Land’s End catalog. And younger than she’d thought, better looking. No, not good looking so much as someone interesting to look at. His lips were red and full, almost obscenely sensuous. The kind that women hoped for when they pumped their lips full of collagen. His nose was on the large side, and slightly crooked, maybe broken at one time. He had a strong, determined jaw that the beard accentuated, rather than concealed. And the eyes. Even more intense than in his photo.
Haley was taken aback by that intensity now as he studied her, seemed to peel away her layers. Even wearing so many clothes, she felt under-dressed.
In Malibu, she’d barely worn anything at all. Ramirez and his friends groped her whenever and wherever they felt the urge. And if Ramirez wanted her, he felt free to bend her over, hike up her miniskirt and do her.
She was a dirty, filthy slut, who asked no better. Deserved no better.
So why did she feel more unclean now? More sexual?
Haley was used to men checking her out. It was what she expected now, but as penetrating as she found his gaze, there was none of that in Brother Timothy’s expression. He lay his hand possessively on her wrist and she didn’t pull away.
No, it wasn’t his lust that made her feel dirty. It was her lust. No wonder he had ten wives.
God, she needed to wake up. This was as dangerous in its own way as that business with Ramirez, and she’d better stay awake, or things would go wrong in a hurry.
“Brother Timothy,” she said. “I thought I was supposed to meet someone else.”
“You recognize me?” Something changed in his eyes. “How? Television?”
“I don’t watch TV, it’s full of rubbish” she said, perhaps a bit too quickly. She slowed down, forced a flat, rural Utah twang into her accent. She’d spent hours working on that accent and had almost forgotten to use it the first time she was flustered. “Saw your picture in a newspaper.”
“Which paper?”
“Deseret News. They had an article about your church a few weeks ago.”
“I don’t remember hearing about it. Why were you reading that paper?” He turned and approached a truck at the curb. She followed.
“I was curious,
and wanted to know more, so I read everything I could.” That much was true, at least. “I needed to be sure what I was committing to.”
“If you want to know more about the Lord’s Church,” Brother Timothy said as he opened the truck door, “you ask the Lord, not a newspaper. Come with me Sister Miriam.”
It was a beat-up farm truck, but the interior was clean. Not so much as an empty drink cup on the floor, an air freshener to hang from the rear view mirror, or even a pair of CDs on the dash. Get into the truck and she’d strip herself just as bare.
She looked back at Brother Timothy and noticed his eyes again. Could any sane man look at her with that intensity?
She had a sixth sense for these things and it was shouting not to climb into the truck. She hadn’t felt that kind of thrill, terror of danger since the day they killed Ramirez in his beach house. He went down in a roar of shotguns. Haley, nearly naked, smelling gunshot and blood, cowering in the bed. Just a few seconds and it was over.
Phipps had stood over Haley, breathing heavily, a shotgun in his hands. Haley didn’t look at him, just looked at Ramirez where he lay on the ground, eyes turning glassy. His leopard-print briefs bunched around his ankles. Benelli M3s had pulped his chest and face, but his erection had only just started to wilt.
Phipps looked down at the man’s penis. “His spirit is gone, but his boner lives on in our hearts.”
Haley might have laughed under other circumstances, but she could still taste Ramirez in her mouth and wanted to turn away and be sick. Either that, or hit someone. Ramirez was dead, the bastard. That left Phipps and his men. She should have been grateful to him, glad to have it over with, but instead, she was furious.
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