Called Home

by R. R. Irvine

  19

  TRAVELER CHECKED back at the motel shortly before noon. Mrs. Beasley was stitching a second black-thread cemetery marker in the upper right-hand corner of her quilt. Baby Joe, his red curls a bright contrast to his mother’s dull black hair, was chewing on an empty wooden spool.

  “Your father came back half an hour ago,” she said.

  “I don’t see his car.”

  “He left again. I sent him over to the Co-op.” She knotted her thread and snipped off the ends with a pair of embroidery scissors. “I was tempted to put a skull and crossbones for the cemetery but settled for simple crosses in the end. More tasteful, don’t you think?”

  Traveler nodded. “Why the Co-op?”

  “That’s where the ladies from the Relief Society are fixing lunch for the men on the fire lines. I thought your father might want to help shuttle the food.”

  “Your husband said you were helping with the sandwiches.”

  “I do what the bishop tells me.”

  “He sent you here?”

  She didn’t have to answer the question. Her eyes did it for her. She was following orders. Probably the town fathers wanted Martin where they could keep an eye on him. Traveler, too, for that matter.

  Mrs. Beasley bent over her quilt rather than look Traveler in the face. “I’d be at the Co-op yet if it weren’t for the fact that Baby Joe is coming down with a cold.”

  She gave up on her handiwork to point at the telephone switchboard. Cables had been plugged into every slot. “We have firemen from Manti and Mount Pleasant sleeping in our cabins right now. That’s why the bishop asked us to keep the phones plugged in twenty- four hours a day, in case someone has to get through in a hurry.”

  “Your quilt looks as accurate as a road map,” he said.

  “Wasatch is laid out according to the words of the prophet Joseph Smith. Each plat of land is a square mile. Each block is forty rods square. The streets are eight perches wide. I walked every street myself, but all I really had to do was follow the prophet’s plan.”

  “You’re the one to ask, then. Where would I find Dr. Joe Sutton’s house?”

  Mrs. Beasley shook her head. “That poor woman’s had enough trouble. I won’t go adding to it by sending you over.”

  “I can look it up in the phone book.”

  “Maybe so, but it won’t be on my conscience.”

  ******

  The Wasatch Co-op, on Main just down from the library, was two stories of grim oolite limestone, overlaid with Victorian trim made of dogtooth brick. Each story had two windows, with sharp dogtooth sills to discourage burglars. The single, deep-set door reminded Traveler of a tunnel entrance. When he approached it, Sheriff Mahonri Hickman emerged from its shadowed interior.

  “It’s just as I predicted,” he said. “You’re making people angry wherever you go. You and your father. He’s inside, by the way, making out like a judge sampling wares at the state fair.”

  “Who’s mad at me?”

  “The Nibley boys for one.”

  “I never threw a punch.”

  Hickman tugged hard enough on the tips of his mustache to create a smile. “If you ask me, I think they got to brooding about you making fools out of them. Not thirty minutes ago, I caught them cruising around town looking for you. They’d been drinking, so I had to take their guns away. Around here, that’s serious. Drinking, not the guns.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They weren’t so drunk I couldn’t order them back on the fire line. They wouldn’t have gone except that I threatened them with a bishop’s court.”

  “I didn’t realize ecclesiastical matters were within your jurisdiction.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about this town and how it runs.”

  “I know one thing. You could have saved me a lot of trouble if you’d told me about Doctor Joe killing himself.”

  “That has nothing to do with Melba Nibley. Besides, you didn’t ask.”

  “I’ve been told nobody ever killed themselves in Wasatch before.”

  “You find someone dead and who’s to say it wasn’t natural causes or an accident? As long as there’s nothing illegal, that’s God’s problem, not mine. Take Doctor Joe, for instance. I don’t count him as a suicide. He had cancer. Who can blame him for hurrying things along? For all we know, Melba was sick and did the same thing?”

  “What about autopsies?”

  “Doc Gourley over in Ephraim took care of all that.”

  “Natural causes in both instances, I assume?”

  “Like I said, son, around here we leave judgments to God.”

  20

  INSIDE, THE Co-op was alive with women, thirty or forty of them at least, swarming around a line of picnic tables laden with food. They spoke in murmurs like women in church, creating a kind of hum that rose and fell almost rhythmically. When half a dozen of them manhandled another table into place, the others formed a kind of bucket brigade to hand along casserole dishes until that table, too, was filled.

  The Co-op itself was one large room with whitewashed oolite walls and a worn wooden floor. It reminded Traveler of the basement meeting hall where he’d first attended Sunday school.

  Several women glanced his way but kept on working once they saw he wasn’t a fireman, wasn’t one of their own. He moved along the back wall, out of the bustle, and joined his father, who was sitting alone with a paper plate of food balanced on his lap.

  “You’ve got to hand it to them,” Martin said. “The Relief Society is better than the National Guard when it comes to mobilizing for an emergency.”

  He offered his plate to Traveler, who took half a turkey sandwich.

  “Listen to them, Mo. Humming like bees. No wonder the beehive’s our state symbol.” He gestured toward the line of tables. “Here comes your lunch, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Traveler looked up to see Shirley Colton and another woman threading their way through the crowd, heading his way. Mrs. Colton was carrying a paper plate, the other a Styrofoam cup.

  Martin spoke into his son’s ear. “Before she gets here, you ought to know that Claire called Dora Neff while I was in Moroni. She said she was staying over here in Wasatch for the time being. That’s why I came back.”

  The women arrived before Traveler had time to respond. They handed him the plate and cup.

  “I’d feel better if I paid,” he said.

  “I tried that too,” Martin said. “They wouldn’t let me.”

  “This is Alice McConkie,” Shirley Colton said. “I’ve asked her to talk to you for me.”

  The woman was plump, gray haired, red cheeked, and enough like Eliza McConkie, who ran the Uinta Hotel, to be a sister. Only sisters didn’t share married names.

  “I can see it on your face, Mr. Traveler,” Mrs. McConkie said. “I’m the bishop’s second wife. And no, he’s not divorced. My husband believes in the sanctity of revelation. Joseph Smith’s word on marriage cannot be revoked merely to satisfy man’s laws.”

  Or his polygamous lust, Traveler thought. That, too, must have shown on his face, because she glared at him and tried to back away. But Shirley Colton held her in place.

  “All right, Shirley. You don’t have to push. I’ll talk to him like I promised. Come with us, Mr. Traveler. We don’t have a lot of time to waste and it’s best to speak somewhere else.”

  Traveler glanced at his father.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Martin said.

  Traveler followed the pair to the far corner where a quilt frame had been set up. The woman sitting in front of it, with her back to the room and the emergency preparations going on within it, went on with her needlework, ignoring their arrival. Light from an open window behind the frame illuminated the quilt, a replica of the one Norma Beasley was working on at the motel. A smoky breeze rippled the fabric.

  “This is Jessie,” Mrs. McConkie said. The woman nodded but kept her back to them. “We can speak in front of her.”

  Jessie, her head
bent close to the quilt, was stitching a red devil in the sky above a black-outlined church. The devil was fighting with an angel sewn in gold thread. The angel carried a hangman’s noose.

  “I didn’t expect to see the devil included in a map of Wasatch,” Traveler said.

  “The devil is a Gentile,” Mrs. McConkie replied. “Like yourself. I thank God the bishop isn’t here right now. He’d feel obliged to fight you, despite your size, for lying to Shirley here. For telling her that you were from the medical board.”

  Traveler gazed at Mrs. Colton, who blushed and turned away to keep from looking at him. “I’m sure Mrs. Colton will tell you that I said no such thing. She made that assumption on her own.”

  “You could have told her the truth,” Mrs. McConkie said.

  “You’re right, of course, and I apologize. My only excuse is that I did it because I thought I might learn something about Melba Nibley by keeping quiet.”

  “And did you?”

  “That’s the problem. Nobody’s being honest with me either.”

  “We owe you nothing,” the bishop’s wife said. “Nothing at all.”

  “What about Ellis Nibley? Or his wife, for that matter?”

  “I represent the Relief Society in this, Mr. Traveler.” She half turned and nodded toward the women who were adding the finishing touches to their meal preparation. “All of us think it best that you leave town immediately.”

  “The sooner you tell me what’s going on around here, the sooner I can do just that.”

  The women exchanged glances. Jessie’s needle stopped in midair, hovering over the devil.

  “What specifically do you have in mind?” the bishop’s wife said.

  “To start with, why do you think Melba Nibley killed herself?”

  The woman shook her head, whether out of ignorance or refusal he didn’t know.

  “All right, then,” he said, “tell me about Dr. Joe Sutton.”

  She shook her head again, this time in unison with Shirley Colton. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jessie’s needle plunge into the devil.

  “Well, maybe you can tell me about the letters to the medical board then.”

  “You’re an outsider,” Mrs. McConkie said, her voice rising to compete with the hum inside the Co-op. “You don’t understand what our husbands expect of us. What the church expects.”

  Traveler glanced around. The humming had stopped. As one, the ladies of the Relief Society were staring at him.

  “If we make a formal complaint against you with Sheriff Hickman, he knows better than to oppose the Society.”

  Mrs. McConkie had been looking past him as she spoke. When Traveler turned to follow her gaze, a woman in a gingham apron left the crowd and came toward him.

  “I’m Hope Leary,” she said when she got within range.

  “Our town librarian,” Mrs. McConkie clarified.

  “I’m the only other Gentile in town beside yourself,” Hope Leary added. “The only single woman too, for that matter, and Catholic to boot. The ladies think that makes me uniquely qualified to give you some advice.”

  She was in her fifties, he guessed, and reminded him of his third-grade teacher. Except for the gleam in her eye. That was something she had in common with Claire.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “Whatever fees you’re expecting will be paid. You have the Relief Society’s word on it. Since you’re a professional, that should be the end of it. Your reason for staying is removed.”

  “A professional can only be fired by his client.”

  “Do you think Ellis Nibley will stand up against the Relief Society?”

  Traveler looked around the room and saw grim determination on every face.

  “I think you know the answer already,” the librarian said. “My advice is to leave Wasatch as quickly as possible.”

  “When people try to get rid of me, I know they’re hiding something.”

  “Our secrets are our own, Mr. Traveler.”

  Now was not the time to argue, he knew. And certainly not the place. But he wasn’t about to let himself be run out of town. He was about to say so when Martin dragged him from the Co-op.

  21

  TRAVELER AND his father hurried up Main Street. When certain they weren’t being followed, they settled on the city hall’s ash-covered limestone steps. They were facing east toward the burning mountains.

  Traveler replayed the women’s conversation for his father, including the news of Doctor Joe’s death.

  “Two suicides in a town this size,” Martin said, shaking his head. “I don’t like the sound of it.”

  “Doctor Joe did know he was dying, so he had plenty of incentive. As for Melba Nibley, I don’t know any more about her motives than I did to start with. Then again, I’m hardly a father-confessor to the people around here.”

  “At least we’ve got one person on our side. Dora Neff is phoning around for me right now, talking to people who wouldn’t open up to Gentiles like you and me. If Claire’s anywhere in the neighborhood, Dora will find out.”

  “It had better be soon,” Traveler said, “because I have a feeling Ellis Nibley will be terminating my services any time now.”

  “Dora would put us up. We could always stay over with her and do research on Claire from there. Come to think of it, what kind of stepmother do you think Dora Neff would make for a son your age?”

  Traveler stared at his father. “That’s not funny. Not considering our luck with women.”

  “Maybe that’s your problem. This town is nothing but women.”

  Before Traveler could reply, a phalanx of volunteer firemen turned the corner and came striding toward them. There were about a dozen of them, as black faced and soot-covered as coal miners. Most likely they were coming off the fire line to eat at the Co-op. But instead of looking exhausted, they marched with heads high, shoulders back, singing a Mormon song Traveler remembered from Sunday school, a hymn the pioneers sang while pulling their handcarts the thousand miles from Missouri to Salt Lake.

  “Obedient to the Gospel call

  We serve our God, the All in All,

  We hie away to Zion.

  We do not wait to ride all day

  But pull our handcarts all the way

  And Israel’s God rely on.

  To Zion pull the handcart

  While singing every day

  The glorious songs of Zion

  That haste the time away.”

  Martin hummed along until the volunteers were out of sight and earshot.

  When he grew quiet, Traveler asked, “Do you remember when I quit Sunday school?”

  Martin nodded. “I thought your mother’d have a conniption fit. How old were you anyway?”

  “Six.”

  Martin raised his hand as if he were making a toast. “Are you listening, Kary?”

  “I told you I couldn’t believe what they were teaching me. Do you remember what you told me then?”

  “That maybe it was because you were too smart.”

  Traveler nodded. “Maybe it’s the reverse.”

  “That’s also possible,” Martin said.

  22

  THE RINGING phone brought Traveler awake in the middle of the night. He switched on the light to check his father’s bed. Martin hadn’t returned from Moroni.

  “Damn,” Traveler muttered, wide awake with the adrenaline triggered by a two A.M. call.

  “Yes,” he said warily.

  “Mo, it’s me, Claire.”

  He expelled the breath he’d been holding. “Where are you?”

  “Listen to me, Moroni. My life’s in danger.”

  “Give me some credit, for God’s sake. I’m not falling for your craziness again.”

  She’d disappeared several times since he’d known her, twice when they were still living together. Each time she’d phoned, demanding rescue from nonexistent enemies.

  “Claire, I’m going to hang up.”

  “For the love of Jesus, don’t.
I beg you. I made a mistake this time, with these people. They’re dangerous. They’re—” A sharp cry of pain cut off whatever she’d been about to say.

  Traveler shook his head. He’d been through that ploy before, a cry for help that had damn near gotten him killed.

  “Goodbye, Claire.”

  “Just do what they tell you, Moroni. That’s all I ask.”

  “Tell me about the boy. The boy you named after me. That’s all I want from you.”

  “Goddammit!” she shouted. “It’s me they’ve got.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Goodbye.”

  He was about to hang up when another voice broke in. “We read about you in the paper, Mr. Traveler.” The voice, though distorted, sounded distinctly feminine. The cadence was slow and precise, like someone reading an unfamiliar script. “About how you took on three men to help your girlfriend here. We appreciate that kind of loyalty.”

  “Stupidity is more like it,” he said.

  “Make no mistake, Mr. Traveler. We expect the same kind of consideration from you now.”

  He sighed. “I hope she’s paid you in advance.”

  “Money isn’t important to us.”

  “Of course not. You want me to come riding to her rescue, like the cavalry.”

  “No indeed, Mr. Traveler. Exactly the opposite. We want you to go home.”

  In the background Claire screamed. It was real enough to raise gooseflesh.

  “I’m not buying it,” he said and hung up.

  He was thinking about walking over to the office to unplug the switchboard when the phone rang again.

  He grabbed the receiver. “Give it a rest, Claire. You’re not going to sucker me again.”

  “Leave Wasatch by morning,” the voice said. “Otherwise we’ll cut her throat.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, refusing to play her sick games for once, paying her back with a dose of her own medicine, as all the while a part of him wanted to rush after her one more time.

  23

  TRAVELER WAS still trying to get back to sleep when someone knocked on the cabin door. He squinted against the dawn light.