The Lonely Polygamist

by Brady Udall

  Golden turned to look at Ted Leo and what he saw made his skin prickle; instead of watching the chase, as Golden had been, Ted Leo was up on one knee, staring at Golden with a carefully controlled malevolence, a glint of cold mockery in his eyes.

  Golden pressed his face into the dirt and took a breath, smelled salt and dust and sage and the sour taint of the gun’s steel on his hands. “Mr. Leo, I want to explain—”

  “You be quiet. I’m doing the talking.”

  “Yessir.” Golden deposited his face back into the dirt, and began reciting names—EmNephiHelamanPauline NaomiJosepineParley NovellaGaleAlvin RustyClifton…

  “You praying?” said Ted Leo, who seemed amused by this idea. “Suddenly you want to involve God in this?”

  Head down, Golden kept reeling off the names.

  Ted Leo took up his rifle and nudged Golden with the barrel. “Come on. I want you to see what’s going to happen here. Look up. I want you to see this.”

  The dogs and the coyote were now only two or three hundred yards off in the draw just below them, circling and dodging, sometimes in a way that looked like play. Another coyote, this one smaller than the first with a reddish cast to its coat, had appeared on top of the rise. It paced nervously, sometimes coming down into the draw when it looked like there might be trouble, but always retreating to patrol the narrow ridgeline.

  “That’d be the female,” Ted Leo said. “A little more cautious than her mate, but I’m guessing not cautious enough.”

  The dogs, seeming to tire of the chase, began a loping zigzag up the rise toward the hunters, their tongues dangling. The male coyote charged after them, stopped suddenly, lifted its snout, and began a cautious, trotting retreat, checking back over its shoulder. Ted Leo made a barking call on his bugle and the coyote paused, looked around, sniffed again.

  “You want to take him?” Nelson whispered.

  “I’ll take him.” Ted Leo was already sighting through his scope. The taste of nausea Golden had woken up with began to fill the back of his mouth and thicken his tongue. His sinuses contracted, began to burn, and though he did everything to hold it back, he let loose one of his roaring, thunderclap sneezes. At the sound the coyote wheeled, flattening its body, and began a sprint up the draw toward its mate.

  “Ah, shit,” Ted Leo growled, and his gun went off in Golden’s right ear. The coyote flinched and lifted a foreleg, stumbling a little, slowing, and then Nelson’s gun went off in Golden’s left ear, and the coyote was spun around, as if somebody had grabbed it by the tail. It began a horrific squealing that penetrated even Golden’s stunned eardrums, biting at its hindquarters and turning in place like a puppy chasing its tail. Within a few seconds the dogs were on it, snarling and biting with a sudden bloodlust, and then the red female was there, leaping into the pile and slashing with her teeth, raising a great boil of dust.

  Nelson yelled something that Golden couldn’t make out. The dogs retreated, and when the female gave up following them to check on her mate, another gunshot concussed the side of Golden’s head and the little rust-red coyote rose off the ground in a flexing convulsion and landed softly in the dirt, one hind leg still twitching.

  Golden didn’t know if the deep silence that followed was something real or a product of the gunshots, which had filled his head with wet cotton batting. He heard a kind of underwater murmuring, which turned out to be Ted Leo yelling at him, telling him to go down and retrieve the carcasses. Golden tried to play deaf and dumb, but Ted wasn’t having any of it. He delivered a sharp jab to Golden’s neck with his rifle barrel. “Bring the carcasses up. Or I’m going to set the dogs on you.”

  Golden made his way down the draw, his body numb except for the hot, tingling spot in the center of his back where he imagined Ted Leo’s 30.06 was trained. He considered making a break for it, sprinting down the draw and out into the open desert just to see how far he could get. He clenched the muscles of his neck so he wouldn’t look back, walking with the careful, overly dignified air of a drunkard asked to leave a party.

  The two coyotes were laid out one next to the other in the sand, grinning and bloody. The dogs sniffed them, giving them little nips and dancing backward, as if coaxing them to continue the game a little longer. Golden risked a glance up the hill. Ted and Nelson were standing together, watching, and Golden felt a small swell of gratitude that neither had a gun pointed at him.

  The task of dragging two dead coyotes uphill in the hot sun through tangles of brush turned out to be even less rewarding than Golden had anticipated: the dogs kept tugging on the coyotes’ ears and digging in, playing tug-of-war with Golden all the way up the rise, while a caravan of refugee fleas began a full-scale evacuation of the coyotes’ coats for the fertile, hairy fields of Golden’s arms, back, and chest. Sweating and gulping for air, he said nothing to the dogs, made no move to slap away the fleas; he limped up the hill, a coyote leg in each hand, not stopping until he slumped with a sigh into Nelson’s vast, planetary shadow.

  “Bitch’s got swollen teats,” Nelson said. “Means she’s got pups back up in them rocks. Hold on. Listen. You can hear ’em crying.”

  All three of them listened. Lying on his side, the sun in his eyes, Golden heard nothing except the ocean roar of his own lungs. His bad knee was killing him and his stomach churned. He gasped, “You going to leave them there?”

  Ted Leo laughed. He laughed like this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “We going to leave them there? No, we’re going to fetch them up and bottle-feed ’em and raise ’em as our own and one day, if they work hard and mind their manners, they’ll go away to the Ivy Leagues and make us proud.”

  He shook his head, walked in a circle. Like the filament popping inside a lightbulb all the mirth drained out of him in an instant. His face went dark and he stiffened.

  “You piece of shit,” he said, and gave Golden a quick, hard kick in the ribs. “I should have known. You piece of fucking fuck.” Though Golden gasped at the violence of it, the kick turned out not to hurt at all; it was like being kicked by an old lady wearing house slippers. “Maybe we’ll leave you out here, too, with them poor little pups, what do you think? Maybe that’ll teach you to make time with another man’s wife. You piece of utter shit.”

  Ted Leo lifted his rifle and brought the butt of it down on the back of Golden’s head. A red comet flared across his vision and his brain seemed to wobble inside his skull like a gyroscope. Now that, Golden had to admit, hurt. While he was busy writhing on the ground, ringing like a bell of pain, Ted Leo squatted next to him and spoke into his ear. “Now get those animals in the back of the truck so I can decide what to do with you.”

  Ted Leo got in the cab to deliberate and Golden took his time working his way to his feet, spending a good minute on all fours, drooling into the dust. Finally Nelson helped him up and together they swung the carcasses into the back of the pickup. He could hear the pups now, a faint mewling carried in on a gust of wind. Overtaken by a wave of dizziness, Golden pivoted, slumped against the rear tire, heaving in a way that sounded a little like sobbing, dripping with sweat, head bowed, exhausted beyond reason, ready to accept his fate, whatever it might be.

  His immediate fate involved being forced to ride in back between the two dead coyotes like a trophy of the hunt. The dogs sat at the other end of the bed, wedged up against the tailgate, smiling at him shyly, their mouths rimmed with blood. Head lolling, he smiled back at them. Any of the fleas who had not jumped ship already did so now: they bounded in amazing little arcs off the dead coyotes onto Golden, crawling down his collar and up the cuffs of his pants, making themselves at home anywhere there was hair, which meant every part of him except his face and the no-man’s-land around his groin.

  They stopped behind the PussyCat Manor at the makeshift dock where the brothel accepted its bulk shipments of liquor, food, and dildos. Ted Leo went inside and came back holding an envelope and a sheet of paper. He said nothing to Golden, and they drove on, up the hill right through the co
nstruction site, where most of the men stopped to stare.

  At Golden’s trailer, Ted Leo did not get out of the cab. He rolled down the window and waited for Golden to climb down out of the bed and come to him.

  “I don’t make it a practice to trust anybody,” he said in a low voice, staring out the windshield, “but you I trusted. I trusted you because I was dumb enough to think that a man who claims the title of Christian, a man married to four women, with a crowd of children to protect and feed, a man with all that to lose—why would a man like that do this to me? Last night when I found my wife out at the hot springs, I knew something was wrong. I went back, and followed your tracks—barefoot tracks, wandering all over the damn place—right back to this trailer, right to your front door there, and still I had trouble believing it. I made a few calls, and come to find out what a fool Ted Leo is. People around have seen you two together, taking romantic walks and carrying on on that couch, seems like I was the only one not to know. And I realized my mistake. Somebody like you, you have everything and you’re not satisfied. You want more. You want what doesn’t belong to you, you believe you’re entitled to it all. You’re exactly like your piece-of-shit father.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Leo,” Golden said. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “I don’t want you to say anything. I don’t want to hear from you again. I considered putting you away forever, but you’re not worth the trouble it would take to put a bullet in your head. Turn the other cheek, the Good Book says. Well, consider my cheek turned.” He handed Golden an envelope with a check for three-quarters of the amount he owed him, and had him sign a cancellation of their contract, a document that permanently ended their business relationship henceforth and forever.

  Golden touched the tender knot at the back of his head, checked his fingers for blood. He whispered, “And Huila?”

  Something hardened in Ted Leo’s eyes. His arm banged against the door as if he had a mind to step out of the truck and give Golden another beating. He said, “Don’t you ever say that name again. Don’t you ever think it. Now go away and don’t come back.” Before he rolled up his window he turned his head to address Nelson. “And Nelson’ll have a little something to send you on your way.”

  Nelson got out of the truck and ambled around the front of the pickup. He gave Golden a small, apologetic smile and Golden opened his arms slightly as if to receive a farewell hug or a nice parting gift. With a short, brutal stroke, Nelson brought his fist up into Golden’s diaphragm. He made a sharp, wheezing gasp, and collapsed to the ground, opening and closing his mouth and arching his back like a fish on the deck of a boat.

  Nelson knelt on one knee and loosened Golden’s belt. “There you go, okay, breathe, that’s good, relax now.”

  Golden let his head fall back, looked up at the bleached-white sky, felt like he was suffocating.

  Nelson put his head down close to Golden’s. “Do what Ted Leo says, he means it, okay?”

  “Okay,” Golden wheezed.

  “He knows people. A few worse than me.”

  “Thank you,” Golden managed.

  “Okay then,” said Nelson. “You’re welcome.”

  And they drove away, kicking up a column of dust that followed them down the hill to PussyCat Manor. Golden lay in the dirt for a long while, trying to learn how to breathe again, trying not to think about what would come next.

  BELLY OF THE WHALE

  After Ted Leo and Nelson had left him lying in the dirt in front of his trailer, he took fifteen minutes to gather himself and did the only thing left: collected his belongings from the work trailer, packed his things into the Airstream and drove away. With a pang of regret he left the Barge sitting alone in the yellow sand, an artifact for the ages, and drove past the work site, thinking it best not to say anything to anybody, to disappear and let gossip take care of the rest. But Leonard, who had a knack for being in the middle of everything, called out from the entrance of the new brothel where he was helping to install the great oak doors. He ran to intercept Golden’s GMC.

  “Where you going all loaded up?”

  “I’m leaving, Leonard. Somebody else will take over for the last leg, maybe you. Tell the rest of the men goodbye for me. I’ll try to get you on the next one.”

  It cheered him just a little to see how stricken Leonard looked by this news. He grabbed Golden’s forearm. “What happened?”

  “Ted Leo and I had a falling out. That’s all. He gave me my walking papers.”

  Leonard nodded, closing his eyes with an air of profound intellectual comprehension. “Because you was fucking his wife, ain’t it.”

  Golden looked around at the men who had stopped their work to watch. He settled his gaze on his hands gripping the steering wheel. There was still coyote blood on one of his knuckles. He said, “I didn’t.”

  “Sure you did,” Leonard said. He gave his boss an awkward half hug through the pickup window and whispered gently into his ear. “Don’t worry, chief, happens to the best of us.”

  For a moment Golden stared blankly into Leonard’s bright little eyes. “Thank you so much, Leonard,” he said, and put the truck into gear.

  Golden drove away then, Leonard in his rearview waving with his whole arm as if from the rail of a departing steamer, and pulled out onto the highway. He passed the PussyCat Manor going slowly, staring straight ahead as he went by. Up the hill he pulled onto the gravel margins of the road for one last look. On the construction site they were pinning up chicken wire for the stucco, and then it would be mostly finish work, painting and carpet and trim. The whole thing would be done in a month and he would not be there to see it. He was proud of the work he’d put in—it was a well-constructed building, the biggest he’d ever done, but he would be glad, he thought, not to see it finished, not to have to think about it again.

  He couldn’t help it: he scanned the hills behind the site. He couldn’t see the pond from here, and he imagined Huila there, wading in the shallows, the water at her ankles. He tried not to think about what might have happened between her and Ted Leo. A hot breeze pushing his hair around, he scanned the landscape for any sign of her. And then, feeling like a coward, like somebody running from a fight, he drove away for good.

  During the drive home, the midday light crowding the shadows into the deepest fissures of the canyon walls, his thoughts began to stir and chase themselves through the foggy depths of his exhaustion. He experienced a series of impressions and images his jangled mind presented to him at random: Huila’s breasts suspended in the inky water of the hot springs, Trish’s hand on his as she lay next to him in the dark, the coyote biting at its own hindquarters and spinning itself into the ground, one of Ted Leo’s white loafers flashing in his peripheral vision before burying itself in his ribs, the black air of the cave pressing against his face, the sour smell of his own fear, on him even now. His first coherent thought was that he had just escaped certain doom. Five years ago he had been hauling a load of cinder block on Highway 89 west out of Kanab in a sudden thunderstorm and had hit a pool of water, sending his truck out of control and into a slow roll down an embankment. The centrifugal force had wrenched open the driver’s door and yanked him clear with such force he’d been separated from his hat and one of his shoes. He had no memory of hitting the ground, only of standing up covered with mud and finding himself—except for a sore shoulder and forearm embedded with bits of gravel—in perfect working order. He stood there weak-kneed and delirious in the rain, nothing to do but look around and palpate his bones, amazed.

  And that was how he felt now: weightless, hollowed out, like an apple skinned and cored, but more than anything else lucky to be going home, his body and soul compromised but still intact. He had escaped not only Ted Leo’s righteous anger, but the punishments, both earthly and eternal, if he’d made love to Huila. He shivered to think who he’d be if that had happened: not just a liar and a coward and a sneak, but an adulterer, someone unworthy of the sacred Principle, no longer fit to hold
the sacred offices of husband and father. He would have had no future in the church or with his family, and none with Huila, that was for sure. For so long he had been dreaming of a release such as that, and now all he felt was relief that it hadn’t happened. He would have lost everything and returned to where he had started: lonely, lost, with no one to love and nowhere to go.

  He would have liked to believe it was God who had rescued him. He wondered: Could God have been responsible, somehow, for arranging the gum to end up in his pubic hair, which had prompted him to shave himself, the embarrassment of which had kept him from having intercourse with Huila? God was supposed to move in mysterious ways, but this seemed a little much. Still, it was comforting to think that, after everything, God might be looking out for him.

  Something stung at the backs of his eyes and he began shaking his head and then he said it out loud, “No, no.” No, it wasn’t God—he was fooling himself even considering such a notion. It wasn’t God or some divinely placed gum that had saved him. It was Glory, and nothing else. Since the day of her death, he had wanted to give up or let loose, to get drunk or throw some kind of existential tantrum as a way of showing what he thought of a God who allowed innocent children to come into the world to suffer and then die early and horrible deaths, but the possibility that all things might be restored to him, that the tragedies of this existence might be made right somehow, that Glory might be waiting on the other side, had kept him, as they said so often in church, holding fast to the iron rod. His faith in God and heaven had always been weak, but he believed in them now, if for no other reason than belief in them offered the possibility to be with his daughter again; he believed because to do otherwise would be to consign her to oblivion.

  Last night, in the hot springs with Huila, when he was just about to throw away everything for a few minutes of bliss, something had stopped him, a chilly presence at the back of his mind, and he understood now that it was Glory who had come back to him for the briefest moment, it was Glory who had saved him.