Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned

by Michael Wallace

  “What if I tear down the gates and tell everyone to put locks on their doors instead? What would that hurt?”

  “You’re the leader of the church,” she said. “If the Lord tells you to tear down the gates, I’ll support it.”

  “If the Lord has an opinion, He hasn’t shared it yet.”

  David grinned and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not in the least tempted to take advantage of this power? The Lord could tell you all sorts of useful things, you know. Isn’t that the way it usually goes? The Lord tells the prophet he should have the nicest house, marry the hottest girls in town.”

  “Nope. Not tempted,” Jacob said. “Except maybe to tell everyone that the Lord made it clear that I’m not the prophet, if I thought I could get away with it.”

  “That’s why the Lord chose him to be prophet,” Miriam said.

  Jacob sighed. “Come on, let’s find my wife and tell her I’m going back to the desert.”

  “The more I think about it,” Miriam said, “the more I think she’ll be okay with it.”

  “Yes, I know. That’s the problem.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I had a dream,” Fernie announced as they dressed for breakfast the following day.

  Jacob looked up from tying his shoes and had to fight to keep the frown from his face. “A dream, or a dream?”

  She grabbed a brush and worked at Leah’s hair. “A dream.”

  “I had a dream last night, too. Something about a flying tortoise and a monkey eating a chimichanga.”

  Fernie gave him a look.

  “I guess you’d better tell me about it.”

  “In just a second,” she said. “Could you change Nephi’s diaper?” Then, to Daniel and Leah, “Go find Uncle David. If Sister Miriam hasn’t already, tell him it’s time to get up.” She closed the shutters and the door as soon as the older kids had gone.

  “That serious?” he asked.

  “I don’t want people gossiping that I’m trying to steady the ark.”

  Jacob shrugged. “If I can’t take advice from my wife, who can I listen to?”

  “You could ordain counselors, for one. It has been months—people are getting anxious.”

  “What about the dream?” he asked, impatient. “Did you see anything about Dark Canyon?”

  “I wish it were that obvious. We were at the big house in Blister Creek, and you were arm-wrestling your father at the dinner table.”

  “I don’t have to be Joseph in the court of Pharaoh to interpret that one.”

  “That’s not the weird thing,” Fernie said. “Somehow, I saw—you know how you just know things in dreams?—that your father was cheating. There was someone standing behind his shoulder, helping him. I was sitting in a chair by the window and I couldn’t see who it was, but I know it was a being from the other side of the veil. I don’t know if it was an angel or an evil spirit.”

  Jacob finished changing Nephi’s diaper, then snapped up his onesie and pulled on the boy’s pants. “Then what happened?”

  Instead of answering, she took the pitcher by the desk and dampened a washcloth, which she handed to Jacob. He used it to scrub Nephi’s face. The toddler sputtered and tried to pull away, then gave his father a cranky look before reaching for his mama.

  Jacob handed over the boy. “And?” he asked. “Are you going to tell me what happened? Or is that when you woke up?”

  “I couldn’t see who was helping him beat you, because I couldn’t get out of my chair. It was like my legs had fallen asleep, or someone had tied my feet to the chair legs.” She frowned. “One other thing. Your father looked sad.”

  “And what do you think it means?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Usually, when I have a dream, I wake up knowing what I need to do. It’s like a message. I can ignore it for a while, but there’s no doubt what it means. This time, I’m not sure, I just know that it means something.”

  “But you don’t think it means I should stay here?”

  “That would be convenient, but no. You need to go to Dark Canyon—you can’t take any chances with this guy.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” He sat down next to her with a sigh and put his hand on her belly.

  She said, “I’m going to Blister Creek when you leave. I’ll have the baby there.”

  “Why?”

  “I want my mother helping with the delivery, and your father doesn’t like his wives coming to Zarahemla. He thinks they’ll pick up bad habits, like talking back to their husband. Which means I have to go there.”

  “I’d rather not have my baby born in Blister Creek,” he said.

  She gave him a raised eyebrow. “That sounds superstitious.”

  He moved his hand to a different spot, waiting for a kick that didn’t come. All quiet at the moment. The baby was probably as exhausted with people groping Fernie’s belly as she was. Fernie couldn’t walk twenty feet without running into a cousin, aunt, or random old lady who wanted to both touch and offer commentary on how large, how huge, she was looking.

  “I’m probably too big, right?” she said.

  “What? You’re no bigger than you should be, a week out from your due date.” But then he caught the glint in her eye and smiled.

  “I mean, it’s getting awkward, right?” she said. “If you’re even inspired at all, considering.” She thumped her belly with one thumb, and both of them laughed at the ripe melon sound it made.

  “I’m inspired,” he assured her. “But aren’t you forgetting someone?” He flicked his eyes to Nephi and back.

  “This little guy? If David and Miriam are really thinking of getting married and starting a family, don’t you think they could use a little child-tending practice? I’ll be right back.”

  She left, barefoot, then returned a minute later and latched the door behind her. “I told them my feet were killing me, and you were going to give me a foot rub before we join the breakfast mob.”

  “Did they buy it?”

  She grabbed his shirt and dragged him back to the bedroom. “I don’t really care. Get your clothes off, mister. We’re on the clock.”

  It wasn’t easy making love to a woman with what felt like an overinflated beach ball between them. The situation called for a little creativity. Thankfully, human imagination proved greater than the obstacle in question.

  Later, walking out to breakfast, Jacob felt a larger number of eyes than usual watching them.

  “How are your feet?” David asked when the couple sat at the table where David and Miriam were feeding Jacob and Fernie’s children.

  “Hmm?” Fernie said. “Oh, they’re better, thanks. Water retention, it’s one of the worst things about pregnancy.”

  “A massage would help the swelling go down, I imagine,” Miriam said.

  Jacob had busied himself cleaning up the mess Nephi had made of his hash browns and scrambled eggs. He looked up to see David and Miriam giving perfectly innocent smiles and Fernie blushing as she picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her dress.

  * * *

  Elder Kimball broke down and cried when he entered Blister Creek. He stopped the car, got out, and hunched over for several minutes, letting the pent-up emotions of the past five years spill out. When it ended, he leaned against the car, wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and then stopped to listen to the breeze and the quiet tick of the engine.

  He’d driven in from the east, felt a burning, almost painful sensation the first time he’d looked over the Ghost Cliffs and into the valley. Irrigated fields gleamed in a patchwork of sage and emerald. Red rock stood like castle walls to protect east and south. The temple, its white spire gleaming in the sunlight. And now, down in the valley, he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  “This is my home.” He leaned against the car for support. “This is where I belong. Nowhere else.” There was nobody else with him, and his words hung in the air, then died.

  But it took most of the afternoon before he dared enter the town itself. He drove a
round the edges, sticking to ranch roads, and twice turning the car around and driving for the hills when he saw a woman standing on a porch, watching him. There were several abandoned houses on this side of the valley, and he pulled up to one, thought about hiding the car in the barn and waiting in the house while he built his courage. But no, it wouldn’t be any easier to face Abraham Christianson tomorrow.

  Kimball took a deep breath, turned the car around, and made for the house. A surreal feeling washed over him as he drove up to his old home, with its many wings and outbuildings. The front room dated to the nineteenth century, when a group of polygamist wives fled into the wilderness with their children, just ahead of the federal authorities. The house had expanded again in the 1920s, then in the ’50s, the ’70s, and again in the last twenty years as Kimball’s own family and wealth had grown.

  But the building and land had always belonged to the church, not to the family. Kimball was barely in handcuffs in the back of an FBI car before Abraham Christianson had organized the boys of the Aaronic Priesthood to haul the Kimball possessions to the curb.

  The farmhouse showed a fresh coat of paint on the white clapboards and some new plantings in the flowerbeds around the house, but otherwise looked the same. Even the front door was still a burnt orange, like a sunset after a dust storm. Why wouldn’t Abraham make the house his own, add his own wings, put in a new stone path, or build a new shed or greenhouse? At least repaint the damn door.

  Or maybe that was the point.

  All of this is mine, Abraham was telling him. Your home, your ranch, even your wives and offspring, all for me to dispose of as I see fit.

  Kimball fought down those rebellious feelings. Abraham Christianson would require complete surrender, that he uproot every bit of pride until his soul was a freshly plowed field, ready to receive whatever its master decided to plant in its soil.

  “Plow my heart, Lord,” he prayed.

  And then he walked toward the door. He’d been so focused on the house and his own turbulent thoughts, that he’d barely noticed the row of women and teenage girls sitting beneath the veranda, sewing, peeling apples, or writing in journals. His own wives and daughters had once sat in the same place. In fact, he’d built the enormous porch at Charity’s urging.

  The women stopped what they were doing and stared as he approached. One of Abraham Christianson’s wives—was that Fernie’s mother?—had been sitting in a rocking chair, shelling peas. Even in her midfifties she was still a handsome woman with a pleasant demeanor, and when her first husband abandoned her for a gentile woman, Kimball had angled to have the woman added to his own wives. She and her children ended up with Abraham instead. It hadn’t been a complete loss, as he eventually gained Fernie for himself, the woman’s oldest daughter from her first marriage.

  Somewhere along the way, Fernie’s mother had picked up the Christianson arrogance, and she displayed it now as she rose at Kimball’s approach and went into the house without a word or a glance in his direction.

  He stood for a long moment at the base of the steps, staring up at the others. “Is, uhm, is Brother Abraham here?”

  But before they could answer, the door opened and there he was. He seemed taller, stronger, sterner than Kimball remembered. His face looked carved from the cliffs. Kimball bowed his head as the other man stepped out onto the porch.

  “I heard you were out of prison,” Abraham said. “I wondered when you’d come slithering back. What do you want?”

  “Forgiveness and mercy.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I know what I’ve done, I won’t deny it. I’ve sold my birthright and eaten with swine. But like the prodigal son, I return humble and ashamed.”

  “You’re not my son.”

  “But I’m your cousin. That counts for something. And I’m a fellow brother in Christ. A sinner who is begging forgiveness.”

  “Taylor Kimball, your sins are beyond my ability to pardon.”

  “It wasn’t me, or at least not just me, I mean,” he added. “There was an evil spirit. It deceived me. I had to cast it away before my eyes could be opened to the truth.”

  “A what?”

  “One of Lucifer’s angels. It lied to me. It said God wanted me to do things—terrible things. I’m ashamed, Brother Abraham. I listened to the Spirit, and that’s how I got caught up in the secret combinations of your enemies. No more, it’s gone, it doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  “So you were under the influence of an evil spirit, but now you’re not. Is that right?”

  “You don’t believe me,” Kimball said as he studied Abraham’s face. “You don’t think there was an angel. You think I’m lying.”

  “Oh, I believe you. If you say one of Lucifer’s angels was your companion, I absolutely accept that. It explains so many things. The part I don’t believe is that you are no longer communicating with the evil spirit.”

  “Please, I’m begging you.” He climbed the steps and fell to his knees, then grabbed Abraham’s hands. “I’m submitting to your will. I honor and sustain you as my prophet, seer, and revelator. Look at me, I’m nobody. Take me back. I’ll do everything you want.”

  Kimball didn’t look at Abraham’s wives, but he could feel disapproval radiating from the porch. After today, they’d never again look at him without seeing the pathetic, groveling sinner. Kimball told himself he didn’t care.

  “I’ve never liked you,” Abraham said at last, his voice low and angry. He pulled free from Kimball’s grasp, then hoisted the smaller man to his feet and pulled him down the stairs, away from the women. Halfway to the car, he added, “I didn’t like you when we were boys and they gave you Charity. I knew you weren’t worthy of her. I used to dream that you’d be thrown by a horse, or bit by a rattlesnake somewhere in the backcountry. You should have been expelled from the community, would have been if Uncle Heber hadn’t been maneuvering against me. He was too weak to fight me alone, so he used you. But then he was gone and you were still there, like a rat in the pantry that you can’t trap. You corrupted Blister Creek, spent the last thirty years undermining Zion. You and those Sons of Perdition you have raised. Your son murdered my son. He disemboweled Enoch and defiled the temple. Three of your sons—three!—have tried to rape my daughter. And since your plan collapsed, hundreds of saints have fallen away from the church.”

  “I didn’t know, I wasn’t—”

  “Quiet!” Abraham roared.

  Kimball staggered backward. The muscles on Abraham’s jaw worked up and down, and he clenched his fists. And then, to Kimball’s horror, he raised his right arm to the square. “Taylor Kimball, I cast thee from Zion. Thou art a Son of Perdition, doomed to walk the earth in sorrow. Thy seed shall wither and die, thou shalt wander in the wilderness, blind and dumb, until the coming of the Son of Man. And then thou shalt join thy master in Outer Darkness for time and all eternity. Amen.”

  The rebuke was a knife in the gut. Kimball stumbled away, nearly falling, as he fled for the car. No! He couldn’t, he wouldn’t.

  Kimball turned back, shaking. “You’re no prophet, Abraham Christianson! You’re nobody. You’re going to die, I swear it. I’ll kill you myself!”

  Kimball waited for Abraham to interrupt him, admit he’d made a mistake. No, that was too much to hope for, but let Abraham argue, make some prophetic claim, some additional threat or condemnation. Let the man bray, a donkey who thinks he’s a prophet.

  But Abraham denied him even that satisfaction. Instead, he returned to the house without another word. He didn’t even let the screen door bang shut. The women said nothing, just watched.

  Kimball spoke to the door, the one he’d painted, to the women in their chairs, on a porch built by his hands, where his wives and daughters had once sat. “He won’t keep me away. I know what I’ve been promised. I know what is mine.”

  * * *

  Back in the car, Elder Kimball retreated into the Ghost Cliffs, drove past the reservoir, and then followed Highway 12 east toward Escal
ante, driving for more than an hour until he had to stop and check his directions. It was getting dark and he had to turn on the light to read the printout from the prison computer. He had to be close.

  Boulders littered the ground on the left side of the road, like a giant’s marbles, spilled over the edge of the cliffs above. One of these boulders, maybe the size of a small house, hid Charity’s Winnebago. He drove past the same stretch of road three times before he saw the pair of Joshua trees that stood like sentinels in front of her hiding place, just as she’d said in her letter.

  Kimball pulled around the boulder and parked his car. The wind had driven sand halfway up the front two tires of the motor home. A dozen five-gallon water jugs lay stacked against the boulder, half-covered with a blue tarp that filled and deflated in the breeze.

  Charity sat on a plastic chair in front of a small campfire. She rose to greet him, but they didn’t hug, just shook hands like two old acquaintances.

  “I was expecting you earlier.” She sounded as rough as she looked, her voice dry and rattling. She’d cut her hair short, and instead of brown with gray streaks, it was now gray with white streaks.

  “This is terrible,” he said, looking around at the makeshift camp. “I can’t believe nobody will take you in.”

  “They’ll take me. Fernie tracked me down last winter to see if I’d join them in Zarahemla. Jacob and Eliza have been here twice. My sisters in Harmony would take me, and our daughters would take me, the ones who aren’t in Blister Creek.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “Blister Creek is my home. I can’t go back if I’m waiting for you. But it hasn’t been so bad. Jessie Lynn drives me into Kanab once a month for supplies.”

  “And the rest of the time you sit out here in the desert? Alone?”

  “I’m never alone. The Spirit is with me, and I have plenty of time to read the scriptures. Are you hungry?”

  He shook his head.

  Charity went into the motor home and brought out a second plastic chair. He sat, moving in close to the fire to take some of its warmth. For a moment, he caught a pair of eyes glinting at him from the darkness. He started, and the eyes disappeared.