Desert Wives (9781615952267)

by Webb, Betty

  The dispatcher remained unimpressed. When I kept insisting that Cynthia was only fifteen and could be in danger, he told me to have Ermaline call Dispatch when she returned. Then he hung up.

  Fuming, I went back to the truck.

  “Told you,” Saul said.

  Cynthia still hadn’t been found when, several hours later, I walked to Ermaline’s to help with dinner. The girl’s absence was a good sign, I hoped. Maybe she’d already found help and was on her way to a new life. But just in case, I decided to skip my breakfast-fixing activities the next morning so I could look for her again.

  In the kitchen, I was surprised to see Ermaline working away as usual. The other wives, especially Jean, looked much more upset than she did.

  “Runaway girls are the men’s problem,” Ermaline said, kneading bread for what appeared to be a baker’s dozen loaves. “As will be her punishment when they find her.”

  Looking up from the mess I’d made in the bowl by slopping lumpy mashed potatoes over the edge and onto the table, I asked, “Punishment?”

  “Of course they’re gonna punish her. But whatever pain steers a sinful woman away from Satan’s gate is merciful in the end.” Ermaline’s voice was calm, her face severe. “The stupid girl’s risked hellfire by not marryin’ her God-chosen husband.”

  Appalled, I spoke before I thought. “God didn’t choose Earl Graff for her, the Circle of Elders did!”

  “Same thing.”

  I wiped my hands on my apron. “But Sister Ermaline, surely there are other prospective, ah, husbands who might be more to Cynthia’s liking. And that Brother Earl, well excuse me, but he comes across to me as just plain mean!”

  Ermaline’s hands, as big-boned as a man’s, I now noticed, kept kneading the dough until I thought it would scream for mercy. “Marriage is a covenant, Sister Lena, and covenants don’t have nothing to do with liking or not liking. The only thing important for a woman is bringing more souls into the world, and she can’t do that without getting married, can she?”

  I opened my mouth to protest again, but noticed Jean’s warning expression. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

  Ermaline finally gave the bread dough a break and rested her hands on the work table. “Sister Lena, you’re new around here but that don’t excuse your ignorance of God’s laws. You worry too much about feelings, but feelings are for the weak, not the Godly.”

  A harsh philosophy not worth arguing about, so I said nothing more, just busied myself with the mashed potatoes. The tension in the kitchen made it a more unpleasant place to work than usual. The day’s heat, added to the full-bore ovens, had everyone sweating and snapping at each other like caged rats. No one dared to snap at Ermaline, though.

  Sister Ermaline’s casual attitude toward her daughter’s welfare troubled me, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Just to be sure, I decided to find out what she’d done, if anything, to see that her hellfire-bent daughter at least remained safe.

  “Sister Ermaline, did you call the sheriff’s office about Cynthia? It’s pretty hot out there today and maybe she didn’t take enough water.”

  Here Ermaline surprised me. “Of course I didn’t, but when the men couldn’t find her right away, Brother Earl came back and called the sheriff himself. There are patrol cars out looking for her right now.”

  I frowned. The deputy had pretty much told me that since I wasn’t Cynthia’s mother, I had no right to file a missing person’s report. What made Earl Graff so special?

  After that, we lapsed into silence, working quickly, if not cheerfully. Just when I thought I couldn’t take the tension any longer, the household’s older boys, led by Meade Royal, returned from the fields where they’d been working, and we carried the dinner to the table. After Meade led them all in prayer, I noticed with pride that no one refused my mashed potatoes.

  When I finally left Ermaline’s kitchen, loaded down with Salisbury steaks for Saul, I couldn’t help but think that something obvious had slid under my radar while I worried about Cynthia. But what?

  As I crossed the yard to Saul’s house, I saw the men’s pickup trucks were still gone, which meant they were still out looking for her.

  Go, girl! Whatever you do, don’t let them catch you.

  Back at Saul’s house, Ruby wolfed down her meal but refused to be drawn into a discussion about Cynthia. Saul said little, too, and I decided that his earlier anger at my suspicions of him had returned. When he finished dinner, he pushed himself away from the table, went into the living room and began recording another letter to his son. After finishing the dishes, Ruby stalked down the hallway and locked herself in her room, leaving me to listen to Saul tell his son about his current real estate problems. I felt totally alone, and for the first time that I could remember, didn’t like it.

  Then it struck me. I’d only been here a week, and yet I—a woman who’d always valued her privacy—now felt uneasy with solitude. How much more extreme would that unease be if I’d lived all my life in a house populated by at least fifty people? Did the simple fear of being alone factor into the women’s odd acceptance of their fate?

  Leaving Saul to his tape recorder, I stepped out onto the porch and collapsed into the swing. The sun set in its usual glory, tinting the Vermillion Cliffs with great splashes of red, orange and violet. But as pretty as it all looked, the compound remained eerily quiet. The men were still gone, and for once, few children played in Prophet’s Park. Even the doors and windows to the homes were closed, as if by battening down the hatches, the occupants could keep Cynthia’s rebellion from touching them. Not for the first time I suspected that the people of Purity were so locked into denial that they would probably never break free. It was as if they’d adopted the philosophy of “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Just the right environment for evil to flourish.

  Just then I heard a rumbling from down the road, then saw a flash of headlights as the first truck topped the ridge. The men were back. Across the compound, a door slammed and Ermaline came out on the porch, followed by several other sister wives. Like me, they stood watching in silence.

  I hoped Cynthia remained free and had made it to safety. In fact, I hoped so hard I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until the pickups finally pulled into the yard and one of the men called out to Ermaline, “We couldn’t find her!”

  Then I finally exhaled. Thank God, I whispered to the Being I still wasn’t sure I believed in. Thank God.

  My joy didn’t last long.

  Early the next morning, as Saul and I started out to the truck to continue our own search for the runaway, we saw a sheriff’s cruiser pull up in front of Ermaline’s house. To my disbelief, a uniformed officer hauled a struggling Cynthia from the back seat and handed her over to her mother. As soon as Ermaline clasped her daughter’s arm with one of those big hands, the girl stopped struggling and stood there, head drooping in defeat.

  But that wasn’t the only thing that shocked me.

  The officer who’d brought Cynthia back was Howard Benson, the very man who had come into Desert Investigations and accused my client of murder.

  Although I desperately wanted to go to Cynthia’s aid, I couldn’t let him see me, so I waited inside Saul’s house until he’d driven out of the compound. In the meantime, I fumed. What the hell did Benson think he was doing, bringing the girl back to face a forced marriage? He was a sheriff, for God’s sake, sworn to uphold the law, and the last time I checked, polygamy was illegal as hell. Since he’d brought Cynthia back, it could only mean he supported the polygamists. If so, I could never turn to him for help.

  After Benson’s car vanished down the dusty road, I ran across the yard to Ermaline’s house.

  Most of the household’s children were already dressed, but strangely quiet, as if they knew something was wrong but weren’t sure exactly what. Ignoring their baffled looks, I hurried past them into the kitchen, where the first load of biscuits was being taken
out of the oven. No Ermaline, no Cynthia. The other women looked more scared than usual.

  Sister Jean looked up from the sausage patties she was making. “You’re late.” No welcoming smile today.

  “I overslept.”

  She raised a greasy hand and motioned to the other end of the long preparation table. “Ermaline’s already measured out the ingredients. All you need to do is add them together, then cut the shortening into the mix.”

  I started work immediately, thrusting my hands into the huge bowl. But I was determined to find out what was going on. “On my way over here I saw Cynthia being brought back. Is she all right?”

  “I think so,” Jean answered, her voice so devoid of inflection that I couldn’t tell if she was upset or relieved. “Don’t concern yourself with her, Sister Lena. Just do your own job.”

  “But I was wondering…”

  Jean glared at me. “Sister Lena, could you please shut up and work?” I noticed for the first time that her eyes were almost as red as her hair. She’d been crying.

  “Yeah, yeah.” No point in upsetting her further. I’d talk to Cynthia later. Jean was not only upset, but unless I was mistaken, she was terrified.

  I’d just started patting the dough balls onto the cooking sheet when I heard the front door open and Earl Graff call out, “Sister Ermaline! We’ve come for Cynthia!”

  We? I didn’t like the sound of that so I wiped my floury hands on my apron and hurried into the living room, to see Graff standing there with a grim-faced posse of the compound’s men. Then, to my disbelief, I saw Ermaline emerge from one of the bedrooms, dragging along an obviously terrified Cynthia.

  “Mother, please, no!” the girl cried. “No!” She squirmed and struggled, but Ermaline remained implacable.

  “Quiet, you wicked girl!” Ermaline hissed. “You gotta do the right thing or you’ll burn in Hell forever!”

  “Mother, no!”

  I couldn’t stand it any longer. I stepped in front of Ermaline. “You can’t hand her over to these men!”

  Sister Ermaline’s big hand swatted me away as if I were no more than a fly trying to land on one of her precious biscuits. “Mind your own business, Sister Lena. Cynthia’s sinned and she’s gotta be punished. It’s God’s law.”

  I refused to let it go. “Sinned? Was she with someone else? Still, that’s no reason to…”

  Earl Graff slapped me. Slapped me so hard that little pinpoints of light danced around my head, like in the comic books. I staggered for a second, trying to keep my balance, and then, without even thinking about it, I spun around and smashed the karate-hardened edge of my hand against Graff’s nose. A ragged blossom of blood and snot spewed forth as Brother Earl squealed, then hit the floor.

  The other men stared in shock, and I heard running feet as the women emerged from the kitchen to find out what was going on.

  “He hit me first,” I pointed out, but it did little to erase everyone’s stunned expressions, especially the men’s. They looked like they’d just seen a rabbit transmogrify into a wolf.

  “Sister Lena!” Ermaline was the first person to find her voice. “Go home to your husband right now! We’ll take care of Brother Earl and Cynthia ourselves. You’re no longer welcome in this house.”

  As I started for the door, the men and women huddled around the moaning Earl. All except for Ermaline, who studied me with narrowed eyes.

  “Just who are you?”

  I left the house without answering.

  Chapter 14

  “So you smacked the sonofabitch?” Saul asked, as he applied an ice pack to my face.

  His expression made me suspect that given the right circumstances, he just might be capable of murder. I looked around and didn’t see Ruby, but that was no guarantee she wasn’t listening somewhere, so I kept my voice low.

  “I did it without even thinking. I’m not used to being hit.” At least not since I’d graduated from Arizona’s foster care system, I could have added. But there was no point in burdening Saul with horror stories of my past.

  “That eye’s going to turn black,” he said.

  It wouldn’t be my first black eye, so that didn’t bother me. What did bother me was knowing Ermaline would turn her daughter over to the man who’d hit me—and he was probably a lot angrier at Cynthia than he even was at me. She had not only rejected him, but done it in such a public way that the entire compound and the authorities knew. How would he make her pay for such humiliation?

  “As soon as I fix you up, I’m going to go over to Ermaline’s and finish what you started,” Saul muttered. “Damn creep’s not going to go beating on my wife.”

  “I’m not your wife. And I took care of the problem, at least the immediate problem. If you pop Earl one, the rest of them will probably drop-kick both our butts out of here tomorrow even without a court order. So please calm down. Cynthia’s the one who needs help, not me. Somehow we’ve got to stop that marriage.”

  He dabbed at my eye again, shaking his head. “How do you propose we do that, Miss Tough Nuts? You now see that our local sheriff won’t do anything about it. Hell, Howard Benson’s own family tree is filled with polygamists, so he’s not going to get all hot and bothered over this deal. All he saw today was a runaway minor who needed to be returned to her parents.”

  “But Saul, she doesn’t want to marry Earl Graff! It would be nothing more than rape.”

  “I know, I know. But there really isn’t anything we can do about it now, is there? Not without blowing your cover even further than it’s already blown. I’d grab the girl myself and drive her off to Zion City in my pickup if I thought I could get through the compound with her, but haven’t you noticed how carefully they watch me every time I leave? For months now they’ve been afraid I’ll do something like that, so they do everything but frisk me.”

  I tried again. “It’s not a real marriage. The man already has a pile of wives.”

  He eased up with the ice pack for a moment and stared me straight in the eyes. “As far as these people are concerned, including Sheriff Benson, it is a real marriage.”

  My heart ached in admission that Saul was right. No wonder the law never prosecuted the polygamists. Too many of the law officers in Utah sympathized with them and looked the other way while they did their thing. With no cooperation from the law or her mother, Cynthia was doomed.

  “Saul, there’s something else I don’t understand. Why did the Circle of Elders give Cynthia to Earl Graff? She’s the daughter of the last prophet, and if I’ve been able to figure out the pecking order here, she should have been destined for a better marriage. Besides, Prophet Davis said that he wasn’t going to allow them to force girls into marriage anymore.”

  His laugh was ironic. “Looks like a coup d’etat might be shaping up, doesn’t it? Davis might be popular with the ladies, but you’ve seen what the Circle of Elders thinks about him. If you want the truth, I think they did it just to spite him. Cynthia is just the opening shot in a full scale war.”

  That sounded probable to me, too. I decided to think about that later. For now, I closed my eyes and let him continue attending to me.

  I had almost fallen asleep under his tender ministrations when I heard him say, “Think you can remember how to make those biscuits?”

  I opened my eyes with a start. “What?”

  “I’m starved, Lena. And those biscuits you’ve been bringing home are all gone.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “My face looks like hamburger, an innocent girl is being forced to marry a creep, and you’re thinking of your stomach?”

  “Lena, let me tell you something. I was in Korea, at Inchion Reservoir. We were surrounded by thousands of Red Chinese and weren’t sure if we’d live to see morning, but we still ate our rations.”

  He had a point. Going hungry wasn’t going to help Cynthia, so I reluctantly got up and went into the kitchen.

  My biscuits turned out to be the size and density of h
ockey pucks. Saul and Ruby ate them, but with pained expressions. I contented myself with some Ramen and thought about Cynthia. There had to be a way to get her out of the compound and away from Earl Graff. I felt certain that if I worked on the problem long enough, I’d find a solution, but for now, my duty to my own client came first.

  I’d been in the compound more than a week, yet I was no closer to finding Prophet Solomon’s murderer than the day I arrived. Yes, Virginia had warned me that Purity’s inhabitants were secretive, but she’d neglected to mention the almost harem-type seclusion the polygamists’ women lived in, as well as their almost total separation from the men except for fertilization time. While I knew I needed to talk to the men, I didn’t see how I’d manage, given my violent behavior at Ermaline’s. They’d be even more on their guard. But perhaps not all was lost. Tomorrow I’d talk to Tony Lomahguahu and he might be able to give me more information.

  After we’d finished the biscuits, Ruby spoke for the first time. “You need to get the Circle of Elders to pray over your eye, Sister Lena.” She didn’t ask how I’d received my shiner. She’d probably been eavesdropping.

  The thought of Earl Graff and his henchmen in the Circle praying for my healing struck me as hilarious, but I refrained from laughing out loud. “I don’t think so, Sister Ruby.”

  “God is the most wondrous healer.”

  I grunted. “God, maybe, but not the guys around here. And if I remember correctly, didn’t your first husband die after being prayed over?”

  Her indrawn breath told me that in my irritation, I had once again gone too far. Forcing myself to sound contrite, I said, “I’m sorry, Sister Ruby. Please remember that I am unused to the ways of faith.”

  Too late. Without another word, Ruby shoved her chair back from the table and left the kitchen.

  “Nice going, Lena,” Saul said. “Keep that up and pretty soon no one in Purity will talk to you.”

  I was washing the dishes when I heard the front door open and the sounds of men, all talking at once, enter the house.