The Hosanna Shout

by R. R. Irvine

  “I’m interested in genealogy,” Traveler said. Unspoken was the Mormon belief that all ancestors had to be researched and documented and then raised from the dead one at a time during a temple baptism.

  The doctor removed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his breast pocket, donned them carefully, and stared at Traveler as if attempting to assess his sincerity.

  “I have a son your age,” he said finally. “He played for West High School when you played for East. You beat us three years straight. That shouldn’t have happened. East was a rich kids’ school.”

  “We lived on the Avenues,” Traveler said. “Not Federal Heights.”

  “My wife, rest her soul, always wanted me to start up a regular practice and move to the Heights. But I told her, ‘There’s work here in the mines that has to be done.’ So she and my boy stayed on in my father’s house on the west side, the wrong side of the tracks, forcing me to commute. ‘You don’t have sense enough to see the mines are dying,’ she used to say to me. My only regret is she never did get the new home she dreamed about.”

  Wilmot squinted at Traveler for a while, then removed his glasses and tossed them on the table. “My son said you were the best he ever played against. He said you played like a crazy man. Even so, West would have kicked your ass if it hadn’t been for that last-minute fumble.”

  Traveler remembered the fumble, the game too, hard-fought and vicious, but no opposing player named Wilmot.

  “We followed your career in the pros. We kept waiting for you to get your ass kicked.”

  “I retired early,” Traveler said.

  “My son’s a bishop now.”

  “I’m sure that’s better than playing football.”

  “Maybe you can mention his name to Mr. Tanner. Bill Wilmot, bishop of the Cottonwood Ward.”

  “I’m sure Willis knows about him already, but I’ll put in a good word. Now, can we get back to that namesake of mine.”

  The doctor stood up. “Come over to the window with me, Mr. Traveler, and tell me what you see.”

  Traveler followed but said nothing.

  “It’s a California movie set with actors instead of real people,” Wilmot said. “My people are living in the alleys off Main Street, in the run-down cabins on the hillside that tourists think so quaint. My people are asphyxiating themselves in wintertime trying to stay warm with oil heaters, trying to hang on until God calls them home. When that happens, all that will be left is the actors, pretending to be pioneers.”

  The thought crossed Traveler’s mind that Wilmot might be an actor too, playing a part written and directed by Willis Tanner.

  “How did you know I was looking for Moroni Traveler?” Traveler asked.

  “The word went out to account for all Moronis. It was the last thing I expected to find here, a child named for an angel in a town full of Gentile money.”

  Wilmot began whistling a tune Traveler didn’t recognize. After a moment he switched to words.

  “Willie, oh Willie, go and dig my grave,

  Dig it wide and deep.

  Place the prayer book at my head,

  And the hymn book at my feet.”

  The doctor knocked on the side of his head with a knuckle. “You get to be my age, young man, you start losing your train of thought. So, before I forget altogether, it was Grandma Mabey’s husband, old Eli, who told me about the child.

  Strange now that I think about it. We never called him Grandpa, just old Eli or old Mabey. The man’s ninety now, maybe more.”

  “How does he know about the child?” Traveler asked.

  “What with Mr. Tanner being involved, it’s probably best you don’t get it secondhand.”

  5

  ELI MABEY lived in a one-room relic that looked more like a clapboard lean-to than a house. It couldn’t have been more than ten feet wide, with a single window and a narrow unpainted door facing Empire Avenue, two blocks off the main drag and well out of sight of the skiers’ condominiums. A metal stovepipe protruded from one weatherbeaten wall and rose precariously above a disintegrating shingle roof. A low picket fence, gray with age and missing most of its stakes, surrounded the tiny, weed-filled yard. The ramshackle gate came off in Dr. Wilmot’s hand.

  “Like I told you, Park City all but burned to the ground around the turn of the century.” Wilmot dropped the gate in the undergrowth and headed for the door. “Old Mabey says this place escaped because the flames refused to take it.”

  At his knock a voice rasped, “It’s open, ferchrissake, like always.”

  “I’m just giving you a chance to get decent,” Wilmot called back.

  “It’s okay to come in. I’ve hidden the women and doused my cigarettes.”

  Traveler had to stoop to follow the doctor inside. The room contained a narrow rumpled cot, a chest of drawers, a pioneer pie safe with perforated tin doors, a metal kitchen table, and an assortment of mismatched chairs, only one of which had enough upholstery to look comfortable. Eli Mabey stood beside that one, holding on to the chair’s back for support with one hand, his aluminum walker with the other. He was wearing a faded flannel shirt and baggy tan slacks. Cigarette smoke hung in the air above his head. Traveler saw no sign of an ashtray, though the door to an unlit iron stove stood open.

  “Here’s the visitor I promised you,” the doctor said.

  “I’m not blind yet,” Mabey replied.

  “Moroni Traveler,” the doctor clarified.

  “He’s too small to be an angel and too big to stand there bent over like that. Light somewhere so I don’t have to kink my neck looking up at you.”

  Traveler crossed the ragged linoleum that had once been patterned to resemble an Oriental rug and sat on a folding metal chair within spitting distance of the stove.

  “I can smell cigarette smoke,” Wilmot said.

  “The place must be on fire, then.”

  “You’re going to kill yourself one of these days, Eli.”

  “God, I hope so.”

  “I’ll leave you here, Traveler,” Wilmot said. “I have other, more appreciative patients to see.”

  “He’s like an old dog sniffing out sins.” Mabey clicked his false teeth before maneuvering himself back into the overstuffed chair.

  The doctor shook his head and left.

  Mabey said, “You being named for an angel, I guess you wouldn’t have a cigarette on you, would you?”

  “I don’t smoke,” Traveler said, “and I was named for my father.”

  Sighing, Mabey fished a can of Copenhagen tobacco from his shirt pocket and slipped a pinch into his mouth. “What did the doc tell you about me?”

  “Only that you could help me find a child named Moroni.”

  “He must be getting old, then. Usually, he makes everyone promise to sell me on the comfort of living in an old-folks’ home.” Mabey snorted. “You know what I tell them, don’t you? Maybe. Maybe I’m going to move, maybe I’m not. Eli Mabey’s famous for his maybes.”

  He winked before using a stained finger to probe his mouth for stray crumbs of tobacco. “Do you want to hear my life story?”

  “I’d rather hear about Moroni.”

  Mabey grinned. “I got my first job here in Park City when I was fifteen. I was a powder monkey in the old Annie Lode mine. That’s when I started smoking. It was against regulations, of course, that’s why I did it. ‘You’re going to get us killed,’ the boys used to say. ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ I’d tell them. Hell, I never worried a lick. I left that up to God. When I got married I left the praying to my wife, Naomi. You wouldn’t know it to look at this place, but we had a good life here. It didn’t look like this when she was alive, I can tell you. It was spit and polish and new curtains every other year.”

  At the moment, grime on the windowpanes provided the only privacy.

  “Now they want to tear this whole section down and put up what they call time-shares for the winter people who come in from California for the skiing.” Mabey shook his head. “Well, sir, I’ll tell yo
u the same thing I told the others. Naomi wouldn’t want me selling out. That’s why I’m not leaving this place till they carry me out.”

  His tongue probed his cheek for a moment. “You see that pie safe next to the sink? That’s where I keep Naomi’s things, right down to the last set of curtains she made. They’re going to be buried with me, by God. Are you sure you haven’t got any cigarettes?”

  “I’ll be glad to go out and buy you some if you’re out.”

  “I’m not fool enough to run out, but it’s hell when a man gets to be so old he can’t do his own shopping. The ladies from the church Relief Society come in every other day, but they refuse to bring me my cigarettes. ‘When you’ve lived as long as I have,’ I tell them, ‘the Word of Wisdom doesn’t count for much.’ I read somewhere that Joseph Smith used to chew tobacco till his wife gave him hell for causing a mess. After that, he had a revelation and came up with the Word of Wisdom. Tell that to the Relief ladies, though, and they start reading the scripture to you till you wish you was deaf. ‘Maybe I’ll quit,’ I say, just to get rid of them. ‘Maybe, maybe.’ There’s not much they can do to you when you’re my age. Hell, if Joe Smith himself walked in here right now, I’d offer him a chew. Come to think of it, what about you?”

  Mabey brought out his Copenhagen again. “Don’t worry about taking my last wad. I’ve got another can stashed in with Naomi’s things. That’s one place the Reliefers know better than to snoop.”

  Traveler shook his head.

  “I’ll use your share to reload, then. While you’re at it, hand me that can on the stove.”

  The coffee can smelled like a spittoon, which was exactly what Mabey used it for. When he spit into it, tobacco juice ran down his chin, reaching his neck before he wiped it on his sleeve.

  “You can’t spit in front of the Relief ladies, not and feel right about it. Besides, they report everything I do to Doc Wilmot. The old boy couldn’t make it these days, you know, what with the ski people wanting fancy doctors who’ve got nothing better to do but sit around and wait for some darn fool to break a leg, so they can slap on one of them walking casts and charge a mint. If you broke a leg in my day, the doc gave you a slug of whiskey and told Joe Smith to look the other way if he didn’t like it. After that, the doc yanked your bones back into place and sent you on your way.”

  He gestured toward the window. “Take a look outside. I’ll bet the doc’s out there right now, pacing back and forth and wondering if you’re helping me go to hell by smoking cigarettes.”

  Traveler obliged. “He’s out there, all right.” Only Wilmot wasn’t pacing, he was trying to repair the broken gate. “Tell me what brand you smoke and I’ll pick you up a carton.”

  “Moyle’s Market is the closest. Two blocks down and one over.” Mabey brought the can close to his mouth to avoid dribbling on himself. “To think it’s come to this after seventy years of smoking. Take my advice, son. A man should die before his legs give out. The trouble is, God keeps us waiting, doesn’t he? Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe. That’s life. One maybe after another.”

  He squinted at Traveler, who was leaning against the wall next to the window. “Speaking of God, you don’t look like you ought to be named for an angel.”

  “It’s a family name.”

  “Our relatives load us down, don’t they, with all their baggage passed on from one generation to another. That’s why I smoke Camels, just like my father. The short ones, too. Real coffin nails. That’s what Naomi used to call ‘em. She’s been gone a long time. I was an old man even then. The older you get, the more folks shy away from you, especially the young ones. They don’t want to be reminded of what’s to come.”

  He plucked a loose cigarette from his shirt pocket, struck a kitchen match with his thumbnail, and lit up. The cigarette, Traveler noticed, had a filter tip and smelled mentholated.

  “Where was I?” Mabey said.

  “A child named Moroni.”

  “Not so fast. It’s not every day I get a visitor. I get the Relief ladies all right, but they don’t say much. Mostly they pray. Doc Wilmot’s gabby at times, but only because he knows I’m due to be called home anytime now. That’s why he hangs around us old gazoonies, taking down our histories on that tape recorder of his. Questions about the old days, that’s all he asks. Hell, I make up stories just to have someone to talk to. Of course, Doc’s starting to catch on, looking bored most of the time. But he sure perked up when I mentioned my old friend Glen Bosworth, whose daughter had a late-life kid.”

  He paused to take a long drag on his cigarette. After exhaling, he leaned back and closed his eyes. “You guessed it, the kid was named Moroni.”

  Mabey went back to his cigarette, sucking on it until there was nothing left but filter. Then he dropped it into the spittoon, where it died with a hiss.

  “Yes, sir. It’s hard to imagine an angel’s name in the Bosworth family, what with them never setting foot inside a church as far as I know.”

  “How long ago was the child born?”

  Mabey’s fingers dipped into his shirt pocket again and came up with another cigarette. Instead of lighting up, he rolled it between his fingers. “My memory’s not what it used to be, except when it comes to the old days. But it must have been three years ago.”

  Until that moment Traveler had been expecting failure, another of Claire’s games played on him all the way from her grave. But three years made the timing right. Three years ago, she’d claimed to have given away Moroni Traveler the Third.

  “I’ll need the mother’s name,” he said. “Her married name.”

  Mabey tucked the cigarette, now leaking shreds of tobacco from its business end, behind his ear. “Come to think of it, maybe I never knew. Maybe I never paid much attention. Maybe I’m getting senile. Maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Traveler said, “the child was adopted?”

  Mabey shook his head. “Glen never said anything about that. Me and him go way back, too, to the days when they were still taking ore out of the Annie Lode. You should have seen us then. You should have seen this town. It was booming. Saloons everywhere, filled with redheaded women. We thought we were rich. Of course, the real money went to the mine owners. Doc was one of the last company doctors, you know. There was those who said he wasn’t much of a doctor, that it was the only job he could get, but he took good care of us just the same. If you were laid up, not working and not getting paid, the price of your medicine came out of the doc’s pocket often as not. Not that he’d admit it.”

  “You were talking about Moroni?” Traveler said.

  “Anyone named for an angel working the mine in my day would have got the shit beat out of him. Though come to think of it, you look big enough to take care of yourself. Old Glen would have taken you on, though. In his prime, that man loved a good fight.”

  “Maybe I could meet him.”

  “Didn’t I say? Glen’s been called home, he and his missis both. By then they were long gone from here, of course, living out in Bingham with his daughter and her husband, who wanted to try his hand working for Kennecott Copper. When it came to his family, Glen should have had more sense. Take me and my missis. We sent our two boys away from the mines the first chance we got. Right now, they’re both living the good life in California. They keep asking me to come stay with them, but I know better. Besides, you know what they say about old dogs.”

  He removed the cigarette from behind his ear and ran it under his nose before lighting up. “The last time I saw Glen, his daughter drove him up here to see me and show off the grandkid. His lungs were giving out even then. I suppose that’s what’s going to get me, too, all that mine dust.”

  Mabey paused to inhale deeply.

  “Is the daughter still in Bingham?”

  “Maybe.”

  “It would help to have her married name,” Traveler said.

  “Didn’t you ask me about that already?”

  “Maybe.”

  Eli Mabey grinned. “Her name has no
thing to do with an angel, that’s for sure.”

  He dropped his cigarette into the coffee can and sloshed it around. “That was my last coffin nail, young man.”

  “Do you think your memory will improve if I come back with a carton or two?”

  “Maybe.”

  6

  THE RISING tide of California money hadn’t yet reached Moyle’s Market. The building, not much bigger than Eli Mabey’s lean-to house, was made of rough rock-faced oolite that had weathered to the color of old asphalt. The windows, deep-set into the rock, reminded Traveler of a jail; the metal door looked like salvage from a gas station. A faded sign hanging from the flat roof said O. W. MOYLE PROP.

  Stepping inside was like reentering childhood, back in Affleck’s Grocery on T Street where Traveler and Willis Tanner had spent their allowances on Hostess Cupcakes and RC Colas—twelve ounces, double the size of Coke—and Baby Ruths and Bit-O’-Honeys. Even the wooden floor was the same, as was the sharp sawdust smell, and the cigarette display, high up on the wall behind the counter, well out of reach to minors, with a notice saying ID REQUIRED.

  “A carton of Camels,” Traveler told the young woman behind the counter wearing the kind of stiffly sprayed beehive hairdo he hadn’t seen in years.

  She arched an eyebrow that didn’t match her hair color.

  “One look at you tells me old Mabey’s roped in another one.”

  Traveler took two twenties from his wallet and laid them on the counter.

  “It never fails,” she said. “People go up to the old boy’s place, listen to those stories of his, which he makes up if you ask me, and then come down here doing their best to kill him off.” She dog-eared the paperback she was reading and laid it on the fly-littered window ledge behind her. “He wants short ones to boot, Camels, not even filter tips. Coffin nails, Doc Wilmot calls them.”

  Traveler felt as guilty as he had when he and Willis used to buy cigarettes when they were underage. The Union Pacific Depot was their favorite place, since passengers seldom got asked for their ID.

  “We send him up one pack a day,” the woman went on. “Those are Doc Wilmot’s orders. That’s Mabey’s limit, he says. ‘Anyone caught sneaking him in more than that will have to answer to me.’ The doc’s very words.”