Mighty and Strong
by Michael Wallace
© Michael Wallace, 2011. All rights reserved
Cover Art by Jenna Lundeen at www.lundeenliterary.com
with Original Cover Photo bySteelCityHobbiesvia Flickr/CreativeCommons
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 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 19th century 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 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.
Phipps didn’t seem to notice. He looked around the room, at a discarded condom, at what Haley was, or rather, wasn’t wearing. “Jesus Christ, Kite, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
They’d caught Ramirez unaware, but even with Haley’s face on his crotch, he’d managed to grab a handgun. He’d shoved Haley to one side—probably saving her life, though he hadn’t given a shit about that—and managed to fire two shots while hitting the floor on the opposite side of the bed. A brave effort, but no chance against three guys in flak jackets with shotguns.
“What was I supposed to do?” she asked. “You took your goddamned time getting here.”
“And you had to…you know?”
“Yeah, I did. Got a problem with that?” She stood up, made no effort to cover herself, fixed her eyes on each of the three men in turn. The fourth, Kane, came from the other room, blinked, and she glared him down, too. When they had each looked away, she reached for the miniskirt and her bra. “Next time, one of you assholes can do it, I’ll carry the gun. How does that sound?”
Ramirez had a four-year-old daughter. Haley didn’t know she was in the house until she heard whimpering in a closet. Phipps and his men were out there in an instant, screaming orders, guns up, ready for more violence.
“It’s just a kid!” Haley shouted. She ran into the front room, still pulling on her top. “Get out of my way. Put down the guns.”
She forced the men from the door and called into the closet, trying to calm the girl. Took twenty minutes to coax the poor kid out of the closet. Kind of friends and enemies her father had, the way his life had ended, it was probably a good thing she’d known enough to hide.
It was thinking of Ramirez’s daughter that fortified Haley and made her decide to get into the truck. There were kids in the cult; she could help them. “Thou sayest,” she said.
Brother Timothy gave her a half smile. He helped her into her seat, then shut the door. Haley looked out the window at another family passing by on the sidewalk. A girl, maybe twelve, thirteen, looked her direction and said something to her mother, who glanced Haley’s direction and then turned away just as quickly.
Timothy got into the driver’s side and produced a set of keys. His truck grumbled to life and he pulled away from the curb.
“Say goodbye to the lone and dreary world,” Brother Timothy said. “You will never see it again.”
Chapter Two:
A girl sat in the waiting room for two hours, refused queries from the triage nurse and the medical students. She asked for Dr. Christianson the first time, then shook her head and looked at her hands clasped in her lap whenever anyone approached.
Jacob Christianson was at the lockers, changing into his scrubs, worrying about money, when they told him about the girl. He couldn’t make the math work. His salary as a resident was thirty-six thousand, together with a fifteen-thousand stipend in exchange for a commitment to the Sanpete County Rural District Hospital. At the end of the year, they’d give him a housing bonus of five thousand.
Against this, he started with ninety-two thousand in student loans. The church had paid for most of his schooling at the University of Utah, before the government seized its assets. The rest he’d borrowed. The other residents were always talking about their student debt, some of which amounted to multiples of his own. On that score, it could be worse. A lot worse.
But so far as he knew, none of the other residents had a wife and three children to support, and a younger sister in Salt Lake to whom he sent another four hundred a month.
“You know this girl?” Janet asked. The nurse wore that end-of-shift look and Mountain Dew cans overflowed her trash.
He looked through the window at the girl sitting by herself in the corner. “Never saw her before in my life.”
No, but he knew the type. And she knew him somehow or she wouldn’t have asked for him.
“Looks like a polyg,” Janet said. “How old do you think she is? Twelve?”
“Hard to say, but definitely a minor. Any idea what’s wrong?”
“No, but I put in a call to the social worker, gave her a heads up. Kathy will be here until eight, just in case.”
“You’re thinking abuse?”
“Sure. Otherwise, why didn’t she come with her mother?”
He nodded, although he wasn’t so sure. Gentiles and mainstream Mormons considered polygamy abusive by definition. For his part, no judgments until he’d performed an examination.
Question was, would she blurt out how she knew Jacob? He’d just finished his internship and was starting his residency. Not sure he wanted the other residents knowing too much. He was a hard worker and conscientious. Too conscientious, maybe. He’d typed and retyped one single, unimportant line on his resume ten times. From lie to truth, back to lie, and finally settling on the truth. Anyone who knew what to look for would read that line and know things about Jacob he’d just as soon keep private.
“Give me a second,” he told the nurse. “I’ll see if I can get her to an examination room.”
Jacob made his way into the waiting room and crossed slowly until he reached the girl. She sat in the farthest place from the TV, and she was looking away from the magazine rack as well. Those two gestures told him a lot about her church.
Jacob pulled up a chair to bring him down to eye-level and said, “Hi, I’m Dr. Christianson. They said you were waiting for me.”
The girl kept her hands tight in her lap. A barely perceptible nod.
“What is your name?”
“Emma.”
“How old are you, Emma?”
“Fifteen.”
Didn’t surprise him. Of course she didn’t look fifteen. Girls raised under the Principle had a tendency to look younger until they were into their late twenties, maybe even thirties. Lack of makeup
, maybe, and dressing as if ashamed of their bodies. That, and the way young girls in so many of these churches were urged to “keep sweet,” which encompassed everything from chastity to a naivety about basic biological functions.
When Texas raided the FLDS compound, rounded up the women and children, they’d been forced to backtrack from some of their allegations when it turned out that some underage mothers were really twenty, twenty-two years old.
“Before we go back, can you tell me what’s the matter?”
Emma shook her head. She blinked and Jacob realized she was on the verge of tears.
“Are you sick? In trouble in some way?”
No answer.
He tried a different angle. “Have we met before? Are you a relative of some kind?”
Still nothing. Maybe he should tell her he was off-shift and she’d have to meet with someone else. Let Maddox do it. She was good with children and Catholic, so no Mormon background or preconceptions. Maybe Maddox could draw her out. But Emma had asked for him specifically.
Jacob was in some danger. He couldn’t afford to have anyone at the hospital find out who or what he was. A word of dismissal and the girl would leave. He could go back, shrug his shoulders to the nurse, and assist on that orthopedic surgery he was due to scrub in for.
“Why don’t you come back to an examination room? Maybe you’ll feel more comfortable.”
At last, a nod. He led her to the back. Janet looked up from the computer, then handed him a chart with her eyebrows raised. Get her paperwork.
No insurance, obviously, but there were other reasons to get the paperwork done in advance. He doubted Emma would cooperate.
Another nurse came with him into the examination room, a younger RN named Crystal. He almost sent her away, pulled the older, steadier Janet from her station.
Crystal was unfailingly cheerful, friendly, and hard-working, and had put herself through school working for Sanpete County as a nurse’s aide. And pretty. Jacob, thanks to his messy family situation, wore no wedding band. She’d tried to flirt for months, but when he refused to showed interest had set her sights on a guy in radiology.
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