Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned

by Michael Wallace

  It was a good point, but what’s more Aaron seemed to possess an instinctive dislike of strong women in general. He complained that his brother Stephen Paul let his wives run his household. And yet, one of Aaron’s own wives, Sister Lillian, blatantly disregarded her husband’s commands when she thought she should get away with it, but Aaron seemed oblivious to her disobedience.

  “So what do we do?” Eric Froud asked. “Creep through Witch’s Warts and pretend we’re going to attack, then slink home with our tails between our legs?”

  “We need to take out Abraham Christianson,” Stanley said. “He’s the one, right there. He’s gone, none of the others matter.”

  “I agree,” Elder Kimball said. “But not here, where he’s strong.”

  “Then where?” Stanley asked.

  Aaron said, “Abraham has a temper, and he’s easily distracted. We could do something with that.”

  “It’s not just Abraham Christianson,” Taylor Junior said. “Even if we got rid of him tomorrow, moved into Blister Creek, we’d still be facing Zarahemla across the desert. It’s a walled fortress. And the surviving apostates would come after us.” It was time to lay out his plan. “Our other problem is Jacob Christianson,” he continued. “If he acted more like his father, lashed out at enemies, we’d have him. We could kill him and it wouldn’t be in cold blood, surrounded by his friends and family. What do you think, Father?”

  This time, when his father gave the questioning look, Taylor Junior responded with a slight nod. Kimball said, “There’s someone close to Jacob who is more vulnerable than Eliza or Abraham.”

  “His wife,” Taylor Junior said. “She’s on her way to Blister Creek to deliver her baby. It’s due any day. She’ll be huge, barely mobile.”

  “There are only two ways into Blister Creek by car,” Elder Kimball said. “Both of them pass right by Witch’s Warts.”

  “So that’s why we’re here,” Aaron said.

  “We can take care of one pregnant woman,” Kimball said. “What are you thinking, that we’ll kidnap her? We can take Fernie back to the camp, let her meet the others. She was my wife, I—”

  Taylor Junior shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”

  And here was the part where he led his father to the end of the box canyon and the man realized there was no way out.

  “That’s not enough,” Taylor Junior continued. “Our only way to defeat Jacob Christianson is to break his discipline, send him careening out of control. It won’t be easy, not for any of us. Nobody wants to injure a pregnant woman.”

  Elder Kimball looked horrified. “Injure a pregnant woman? What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m sorry, Father, but we have to kill Fernie.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Fernie was quiet as Eliza drove her out of Zarahemla late the next morning. They spent the first hour listening to Winnie the Pooh on the CD player for the benefit of the three children in the backseat.

  Eliza grew worried. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Just tired. Ready for this baby to come.”

  Fernie glanced over her shoulder at the children, and Eliza cast a glance in the rearview mirror. The littlest, Nephi, sat between Leah and Daniel, holding the read-along book. He was too young to read it himself, but knew enough to flip the pages when the CD chimed.

  The weather was gorgeous, blue skies interspersed with huge mounds of white clouds. As she drove, Eliza studied the mountains on the horizon, still capped with snow, and then watched an eagle soaring above the desert floor. Her mind kept returning to the previous night’s attack. She wished Fernie would say something to distract her, but her sister stayed quiet. The CD ended and started again. Nephi flipped back to the beginning of his book.

  They stopped at a diner in Richfield for hamburgers and creemies, then hit the road again. Stomachs full, the children slumped against each other in the backseat and fell asleep. Eliza turned off the CD. The Winnie the Pooh songs kept playing in her head, so she turned on the radio but got nothing except crackling country stations and AM talk radio.

  “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

  “I had a bad dream last night,” Fernie said.

  “Yeah? What happened?”

  “Can you drive a little faster?”

  “You’re not feeling contractions, are you?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Fernie said.

  Fernie wouldn’t respond to nudges about the dream, so Eliza made a couple of inferences and tried a different way. “I’m sure Jacob will be fine. He’ll be careful, and he’s got David and Miriam.”

  “The Lord will watch over him.” She reclined her seat, and when Eliza glanced over she saw her sister with her eyes closed, a frown on her face. “It’s hard to imagine the Lord choosing Jacob to lead His people, and then letting the Kimballs kill him.”

  “You really believe God has chosen Jacob?”

  “I do. I don’t know why Jacob and not someone else. He’s a good man, but he’s not perfect—I’m married to the guy, trust me.”

  “He’s my brother. You don’t have to tell me.”

  “But I think Jacob is God’s chosen prophet, flaws and all.”

  “For the sake of argument, let’s assume you’re right,” Eliza said. “What if God is telling him what to do, but Jacob is ignoring it?”

  “He can try, but it’s hard to hide from the Lord. If He wants you to preach to Nineveh, you’ll preach to Nineveh.”

  “Or you’ll get swallowed by a whale?”

  “Exactly. Maybe something a little more subtle, but yes.” Fernie brought her seat up again. “What are you doing here, Liz?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You went back to Salt Lake. Didn’t stay long. Now you’re on your way to Blister Creek again. I know how you love staying at the big house with your father. What does that mean?”

  Eliza was reluctant to mention Aaron Young or his threats. Fernie had enough to worry about. Why add another?

  “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything,” Eliza said. “Maybe I want to be with you when you have the baby and that’s the only reason I came.”

  “No, I think the Spirit told you to come and you listened. That’s a good thing.”

  Eliza said, “You’re the opposite of Jacob, you know. With him everything has a natural explanation. With you, everything has a spiritual component.”

  “That’s true. I am, and it does.”

  “So what about this dream? It’s put you in a terrible mood.”

  Fernie looked like she was going to answer, but then glanced out the window and frowned. “How long has that truck been following us?”

  Eliza checked the rearview mirror. A black truck trailed the car a quarter mile or so back. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. But the truck isn’t following us. There hasn’t been an exit on this road for miles.”

  “No, but you were going fifty when I told you to speed up. For a couple of minutes you sped up to seventy, and now you’re under sixty again. Why is the truck the same distance back? Why didn’t it either fall behind or pass us?”

  Eliza frowned. She had no conscious memory of having sped up on Fernie’s command or slowed back down, for that matter. “Well, let’s see.”

  Over the next couple of minutes she gradually accelerated until they were going almost seventy-five. And then, just as gradually, let her speed drop back to fifty. The truck kept the same distance, even with a dotted center line and no other cars on the road.

  “You’re right,” Eliza said. An unsettled feeling had spread until she was just short of alarmed. “Looks like a junker. We could probably outrun it.”

  “We’ve got kids in the car. Don’t do anything crazy. Look, there are the Ghost Cliffs. We’ll be down in the valley in twenty minutes. Maybe it’s your Father or one of your younger brothers giving us an escort.”

  Except for the incident in Salt Lake City. Maybe Eliza hadn’t left her problems behind after all. Maybe the stalkers had followed her all the way t
o Zarahemla and waited for her to leave.

  “There’s something I didn’t tell you,” she said. “You’ve got enough on your mind—I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Eliza?” Fernie asked, a frown in her voice.

  “Two men attacked me in Salt Lake yesterday. I thought I was prepared. My boss was walking me to the bus stop and I was carrying this.” She reached across Fernie to retrieve the retractable steel baton from the glove compartment.

  “What on earth is that?”

  “It opens up and you swing it like a billy club.” She caught Fernie’s look. “I know, it’s violent, and no, I don’t think you can go around smashing people’s faces in.”

  “That’s not why I’m frowning. Go on.”

  She returned the steel baton. “They came after me and I hit one of them. He won’t be using that arm again for a while. But they punched my boss in the face.”

  “Who were they?”

  “The guy I recognized was Stephen Paul Young’s brother Aaron.”

  “The guy who was in the temple the day they killed Enoch?” Fernie asked. “The FBI didn’t arrest him?”

  “I think they did. He wasn’t a ringleader and did some kind of plea bargain. He’s obviously out already. Anyway, my boss drove me home.”

  “So that’s when you decided to come to Blister Creek?”

  “Not yet, no. But it gets worse.” Eliza explained about the apartment, how she’d found it vandalized.

  “That’s awful. So where did you sleep last night, a hotel?”

  “No, I stayed home. I wouldn’t say there was much sleeping involved, though. Look, I’m fine. But about that truck back there…”

  “Dear heaven,” Fernie said, voice strained. “You should have told me. Before we left Zarahemla with three kids in the backseat.”

  “I’m sorry, Fernie. I figured the safest place to be was under my father’s roof. Besides, they didn’t hurt me when they could have. I don’t think that’s what they wanted.” She apologized again. Behind, the truck kept its distance.

  Fernie got out her cell phone, then put it down with a frustrated grunt. “Are they ever going to have reliable coverage down here?” Eliza handed Fernie her own phone, but with the same result.

  “Just keep driving,” Fernie said. “If the truck comes up, make a run for it.”

  Eliza hoped the other vehicle would keep to the highway as it turned north of the reservoir in the Ghost Cliffs, but the truck turned with them, following them onto the road that curved around the south side before descending into the Blister Creek Valley. She chewed on her lip and glanced at Fernie every few minutes to see her sister looking out the side mirror with a worried expression.

  Movement from the backseat. It was Daniel, stirring. As they followed the switchbacks down into the valley, Leah woke next, then Nephi. Fernie turned on the Winnie the Pooh read-along.

  Eliza glanced in the rearview mirror when the road emerged from the cliffs. Behind them, the truck gained the valley floor. It accelerated to close the gap.

  * * *

  Jacob was hoping to see one of the cars from Zarahemla at his father’s house, but apparently Fernie hadn’t arrived yet. What he saw was Abraham Christianson’s powder-blue pickup truck parked in front of the house in plain view.

  He parked behind the truck and walked to the front porch. His legs ached from hiking in the mountains, and his eyeballs felt like they’d been scoured with sand. He’d spent the night a few miles from the car. A couple of granola bars and some peanuts for dinner, then a cold, uncomfortable night in a canyon on the high plateau. Instead of protecting him from the elements, the canyon angled in such a way that it funneled the wind, which continued all night long in alternating moans and whistles. A hunk of bedrock thrust through the sand into his lower back, and animals snuffled around in the darkness. At one point, he smelled a skunk.

  Finally, dawn. He dragged himself the last couple of miles to the car. His father’s pickup truck was already gone. Jacob felt a little better once he’d poured water from one of the gallons in the trunk, splashed his stubbled face, and wet back his hair. He drove back to Blister Creek.

  The Christianson family was out in full force this morning. Several of Jacob’s younger brothers played soccer by the side of the house, two girls sat in the shade of the veranda doing schoolwork, another brother—this one a teenager—trimmed the bushes below the veranda, and Fernie’s mother hung laundry to flap in the warm, dry air.

  Abraham Christianson sat on the front porch with an open Book of Mormon on his lap. A woman sat in the rocking chair next to him. Jacob assumed at first it was one of the wives, but as he approached, he was surprised to see that it was the woman he’d confronted on the mountain. She’d changed into a prairie dress and wore a scarf over her head that concealed her short hair. She met his gaze.

  Rebecca.

  Jacob stepped onto the porch and looked back and forth between his father and the strange woman. Abraham Christianson put the tips of his little fingers to the corners of his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. A second whistle, then a third. The kids playing on the side of the house picked up the soccer ball and moved around back. Jacob’s brother, trimming the hedge, gave a glance at the porch, tucked the shears under his arm, and disappeared. Fernie’s mother, finishing hanging a shirt, then left the laundry basket with the rest of the wet clothes and went in the side entrance. The girls followed her inside. Moments later, the three of them were alone on the porch.

  “Well trained,” Rebecca said. “Like whistling at sheepdogs. Wonder what your grannie would say about that. She didn’t care much for treating people like animals.”

  Abraham smiled. “Or, I could have fetched one of the kids, sent him around to tell all the others that we needed privacy. Someone would have been confused and needed clarification, and someone else would have asked how long until they could come back. It would have taken fifteen minutes to get the message through.”

  “Or we could have moved,” Jacob said, “instead of making a dozen other people stop whatever they were doing.”

  “You never argued with the whistle system when you were a boy,” his father said.

  “I also ate spinach and split-pea soup. These days, I dish up my own plate.”

  Abraham said, “My father had a whistle for everyone in the house. Mine was this.” He whistled high, low, high. “Ab-ra-ham. My mother’s was this.” Another whistle. “Su-san, come here. It felt demeaning, I’ll admit, but the principle is solid. Effective.”

  “What’s going on here?” Jacob asked. He leaned against the railing and eyed the two. “Rebecca, is it? Dad, who is this person?”

  “He’s as blunt as you are,” Rebecca said. “Like father, like son—in that way, at least.”

  “What was she doing at Dark Canyon?” Jacob asked. “And who was the guy in the tank top?”

  Abraham said, “If you think about it, a whistle is language distilled to its essence. You don’t have to worry about tone of voice or having your words misinterpreted.” He repeated the whistle from earlier, but in a lower volume. “It means leave…me…now. Three sharp blasts, all the same tone. It implies a certain seriousness about my desires, and I don’t have to yell or lose my temper.”

  “Is this how your own father talked to you?” Jacob asked. “Instead of telling you what you wanted to know, he’d tell you what he thought you needed to know? And when you were an adult, with your own family, did he still talk to you like you were six years old?”

  “Don’t be so impatient,” Abraham said.

  “I can be plenty patient, but David is still up there, and so is Sister Miriam. I need to know what they’re dealing with.”

  “I assume you believe they can take care of themselves,” his father said, “or you wouldn’t have left them alone.”

  Jacob turned to Rebecca. “Fine, maybe you can tell me what’s going on.”

  She looked amused. “I’d rather not get in the way of this little family argument. I’m cu
rious to see who will come out on top.”

  He looked back to his father. “You found Taylor Junior, and you knew I was looking for him, didn’t you? Yes, I can tell you did. So you probably know what I’m planning to do.”

  “You think you can bring them back.” An edge of irritation came into Abraham’s voice. “This isn’t like David. These are servants of Satan, and they want nothing more than to destroy a prophet of the Lord.”

  “A prophet of the Lord?” Jacob asked. “Who are we talking about here, you or me?”

  “Both of us. It’s my calling now, but you have been foreordained.”

  Jacob pulled up another chair and turned it so he’d be facing the other two. “That answers one of my concerns—were you working with Taylor Junior or against him?”

  “What an insulting question,” Abraham said.

  “Yes it is, isn’t it? Maybe if you’d come right out and tell me what’s going on, I wouldn’t have to flail about with a bunch of blind questions. And then you wouldn’t be insulted.”

  “Why do you care, Jacob? What’s it to you?”

  Jacob blinked. “What’s it to me? I’m trying to save these people, don’t you get it yet? What I did to David, that’s what I’m trying to do to all of them.”

  “It’s not your mess, and it’s not mine, either. We have nothing to do with those people and their poor choices.”

  “You don’t take any responsibility for this?”

  “Why should I?” Abraham asked.

  “They’re up there because of you, because of all the fathers and all the church leaders. A boy acts up and you drive him out. A man doesn’t salute your priesthood and he’s gone.”

  “Are you going to defend Brother Stanley? He was abusing his children. Elder Kimball defrauded the church. His sons murdered your brother and kidnapped Eliza. Eric Froud sodomized his younger sister. He’s lucky we drove him from town. If there was any justice, I would have tossed him from the Ghost Cliffs. Those are the captains of Taylor Junior’s army.”

  “I’m not talking about the captains, I’m talking about the rest of them. Their wives and children, the others who are scared and have nowhere to go. You think they want to be up there? They don’t, Dad, they want to be here. You’re their shepherd. Go after the lost sheep.”