The Blessed and the Damned (Righteous Series #4)

by Michael Wallace

  “If it’s a burden to get everything you want, heap some of that weight on my shoulders. Let me be good at stuff for a while.”

  “Someday Jacob will have his crisis of conscience. His emotions are going to knock heads with his beliefs.”

  “Nah, he’ll do fine. He’ll coast through that like everything else.” He shrugged as he took the binoculars and looked back down the canyon. “Maybe that’s why I complain about Jacob sometimes. Watching him reminds me of all the ways I’m falling short.”

  So what if he fell short? She was a work in progress too, riddled with her own weaknesses. Given the choice, wouldn’t she prefer the man who’d taken a ride through hell and survived? Isn’t that why she’d take David over Jacob?

  And that said more about her own needs than it did about either of the brothers.

  Another gunshot rolled across the mountains. They froze.

  “Look!” David said. “Down at the camp.”

  Miriam grabbed the binoculars. They were out in the open now, moving figures emerging from the trees. She twisted the focusing wheel to pull the camp into focus. And then she drew in her breath.

  Two men stood over a third, who tried to gain his feet, but couldn’t as the other two kept knocking him down. The man on the ground clutched his shoulder, which was bleeding. Two more men stood back a few paces. One of them waved his hands, agitated, as if trying to calm the situation. The final man stood to one side, a deer rifle in his hands.

  He lifted it again and pointed it at the wounded man on the ground.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Trauma Alpha was a six-year-old boy struck by a semi while crossing Main Street in Panguitch. The light turned green when he was halfway across, and the driver, too close to the crosswalk, apparently didn’t see the boy walking in front of his bumper. He didn’t feel the truck slam into the child. The driver had heard the boy’s mother scream and the other cars at the intersection frantically honking for him to stop.

  Even though Jacob’s attentions were elsewhere, he had no trouble piecing together the boy’s critical condition from the snippets of overheard conversation between nurses, from the frantic way they prepped the boy for surgery, from the boy’s parents embracing in the reception area, faces torn with anguish. Trauma Alpha was in critical condition.

  Trauma Beta was Fernie Christianson.

  Jacob helped wheel Fernie into the trauma bay for a chest and pelvis X-ray. She lay supine on the cart, strapped to a board with a neck collar. Eliza and Fernie complained—the latter weakly, but coherently—about X-rays passing through the unborn child.

  “It’s absolutely necessary,” Jacob said. “Liz, can you wait in the reception area? You’re a distraction. I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

  “That’s a good idea,” the resident said, a man named Dr. Napoli. “You too, Dr. Christianson.”

  Napoli was a tall, slender man with prematurely graying hair and the twenty-hour stubble of a doctor who has been on shift for too long, but he spoke confidently, with an air of authority, and Jacob instinctively trusted the man.

  “I understand what you’re doing,” Jacob said, “but I won’t get in your way. I can help.”

  “You’ve already helped,” Napoli said. “The methylprednisolone in the ambulance was a good call, but it’s better that you step down now.”

  “And the orthopedic surgeon?”

  “On his way. I’ll show you the X-rays and the CT scan results, and we’ll consult you before we do anything. With any luck, surgery won’t be necessary.”

  Fernie lifted the oxygen mask. “It’s okay, Jacob. See, I can move my arms.”

  Dr. Napoli took her wrist and lowered her arm. “Try not to move, please.” He turned to Jacob. “Excuse us, Dr. Christianson.”

  Eliza took Jacob’s arm and drew him outside the trauma bay as the nurse pulled the curtain and blocked his view. Eliza went to sit with Father, who sat in one corner, nervously tapping a boot, a dark expression on his face. Jacob rubbed his hands together and paced.

  Fernie looked different when she came out. The nurses had cut away her clothing and dressed her in a hospital gown, while keeping her body rigid, neck braced with the cervical collar. Two nurses wheeled her down the hall toward the CT scanner. Dr. Napoli put a hand on his arm. “Good news. No vaginal bleeding, fetal heart rate is normal. We’ll do an ultrasound later to be sure.”

  “And her spine?”

  “Take a look at the X-rays. We’ll talk later.”

  Jacob pushed aside the curtain to enter the now-empty trauma room, then stepped up to the digital X-rays against the wall. The buzz and chatter of the ER faded, and he scarcely heard the hospital intercom paging someone. He looked first at the baby.

  Fernie had been protected by a seat belt, an airbag, and the sophisticated design of the cab of a modern car, all of which were designed to protect the human body from the forces caused by rapid deceleration. Those same things, plus a fluid-filled uterus, had protected Jacob and Fernie’s unborn child as well. Evolution (or God, he supposed) had done its job. The child’s bones, displayed in beautiful white lines and curves, were unbroken. The baby was another boy. A sudden lump formed in his throat.

  As for Fernie, human engineering had done its best, but the best was not enough to dampen the violent forces of the car hurtling from the road, rolling, and slamming to a halt. A radiologist would be studying these same X-rays elsewhere in the ER, but Jacob didn’t need a second opinion to see what was obvious. The pelvis was fine, but when Jacob traced the upper body X-ray from the cervical vertebrae down the spine, he stopped at the thoracic curve. The T-8 vertebrae had a significant fracture and the T-9 a smaller, hairline crack.

  He struggled to breathe and had to step out of the trauma room. His head swam and he bent to clench his pants while he waited for it to pass.

  “Excuse me, are you LDS?”

  Jacob straightened his body. A man about his own age stood in front of him. He wore a white shirt and a tie loosened almost to falling off. His eyes were red. A pretty young woman stood behind him, clutching a boy of about three who squirmed to break free from his mother’s grasp. She too had been crying. It was the parents of the boy who’d been struck by the truck. He knew what they wanted.

  “I’m not…I don’t think I can.”

  The man gripped Jacob’s forearm. “Please, I know this is a hard time for you, too, and I don’t want to…please. We called our bishop and the home teachers, but they aren’t here yet.”

  Yesterday, he’d have fought the urge to take the man by the shoulders and shake him. Wake up! Your son doesn’t need a blessing, you idiot. He doesn’t need magical incantations, he needs medical science.

  But today he could only remember the failed blessing in the canal, the disappointment in his father’s voice. Oh, Jacob. It was there. You had it.

  A nurse hurried up. “Mr. Harris? We’re taking him in now.”

  “Please,” the man’s wife said to Jacob. “You’re the only other priesthood holder here.”

  Jacob glanced back at his father, thinking maybe the older man could step in, if he could keep his mouth shut and not tell this young LDS couple that he was a fundamentalist Mormon. But Abraham Christianson stood in the corner, his back turned, while he spoke in low, urgent tones on his cell phone. Jacob managed to nod. “I’ll help if I can.”

  “This way,” the nurse said. “Hurry.”

  The boy lay on a cart, eyes closed, a nurse holding a bloody towel against his head. A sheet draped over the boy’s waist, which bulged like a pillowcase filled with broken pieces of kindling. Jacob stared, his mind diagnosing the lumps—ilium, iliac crest, coxal bone. The doctors and nurses wore anxious looks that bordered on panic. The delay would be driving them crazy.

  They gave the blessing in the hall. Jacob took the brass vial from the boy’s father and had dripped the consecrated oil and placed his hands before he realized he didn’t know the boy’s name. He’d almost said “Trauma Patient Alpha.” He looked at
the mother with a questioning look.

  She said, “Jacob Henry Harris.”

  “Jacob is my name, too.” As he said this, he caught a glimpse of what looked like hope in her eyes. It couldn’t be a coincidence, she’d be thinking, that this stranger had the same name. And some day, she’d be thinking, some day this would make a wonderful story to tell her son, a critical piece of family lore that stitched together the divine narrative of an LDS family. You were near death and suddenly this stranger appeared. He was named Jacob, too. He anointed you, and then Daddy gave you the blessing. The doctors said it was a miracle.

  Jacob performed the anointing, and the instant he finished, the boy’s father started the blessing. His voice cleared and he spoke for nearly a minute, blessing his son with strength for the surgery, a rapid recovery, and eventually, the full use of his legs. If it be the will of the Lord, of course. The same clause that had destroyed Jacob’s own blessing for Fernie’s recovery.

  Yet somehow, when this last part came out of the man’s mouth, it sounded like an affirmation of faith, an acknowledgment that the Lord’s will would be the ultimate adjudicator of his son’s prognosis. It sounded like hope. In Jacob’s mouth, it had been pure doubt.

  They wheeled the boy away, and Jacob stumbled back to the waiting room. No vaginal bleeding. The baby unharmed. He’d come into the hospital expecting a crash C-section, but that wouldn’t be necessary. What Jacob had seen wouldn’t require surgery, and no doubt the orthopedic surgeon would breathe a sigh of relief if the CT scans confirmed. The orthopedist would rather bathe in scorpions and dry himself with a cactus than think about the fetus and mom under general anesthetic.

  She couldn’t feel her broken ankle.

  Swelling on the spine. An injury to the T-8 vertebrae. Fernie was paralyzed. She would never again squat on her hands and knees in the garden, planting seeds. She’d never swing Nephi around by the hands. She’d never again take Jacob’s hand and walk through the hills around Zarahemla.

  A hand rested on his shoulder, and Jacob started. He turned to see his father meeting his gaze, jaw hard, lips thin and angry. “This cannot stand.”

  “What?”

  “You know who did this. You know what must be done.”

  Another man stood behind his father. It was Brother Stephen Paul, who Jacob was beginning to think of as Father’s chief henchman.

  Others had begun to arrive at the hospital. The first was Sister Cherilyn, Fernie and Eliza’s mother, who took the three younger children while a nurse led Eliza away to treat the cut on her arm. She’d come with her youngest daughter, Amalia, who was almost fourteen and had the same wide, angelic eyes with a touch of cherubic baby fat still around the cheeks that Eliza had carried eight or ten years earlier. Amalia distracted Daniel and Leah, while Sister Cherilyn brought out a wooden bead toy to draw Nephi’s interest. Two of Stephen Paul’s wives entered the waiting room, and Jacob supposed they’d been in the car with their husband when the call came.

  Jacob took all this in through the haze that filled his head. He turned back to his father. “What are you talking about?”

  Abraham said, “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.”

  Stephen Paul nodded. “The Kimballs are a corrupt tree. The time has come to dig it up, root, stem, and branch, and burn it.”

  Something poisonous settled into Jacob’s chest, something he didn’t recognize at first. It took effort to shake his head. “People aren’t born that way. Every man or woman is capable of good or evil.”

  “Very well,” his father said. “You’re a doctor, so think about medical science. Twins separated at birth are prone to the same ailments. Mental illness runs in families.”

  “Tendency isn’t the same as destiny,” he said.

  “How many Kimballs does it take to make the trend clear? One son killed himself, a daughter and a son died in childhood in incidents that may or may not have been accidents. Gideon and Caleb died at Eliza’s hand. Taylor Junior tried to murder your wife. His father tried to overthrow the church.”

  “What are you saying? That we should kill every Kimball offspring? Or just the sons?” Jacob nodded at his own children, now sitting with their grandmother. “Daniel is Elder Kimball’s biological son. What about that? Should I smother him in his sleep? You make me sick.”

  Father took Jacob by the shoulders. “Nobody said anything about hurting your son. But it’s time for you to wake up and see what I see. I told you already, this isn’t like the others. They were preparatory for the main battle. Taylor Junior is the Antichrist.”

  “Keep your story straight,” Jacob said. “What is it, science or religion? Is Taylor Junior congenitally insane or is he a minion of Satan?”

  “Both.”

  Jacob snorted. “Oh, please. So we’re supposed to go in there with guns blazing and wipe them out?”

  “What is your other option? Wait until Taylor Junior comes back to finish the job? Fernie is helpless now. Are you going to guard her around the clock?”

  “Maybe I will. Yes, if that’s what it takes.”

  “And your children were in that car. Never going to let them out of your sight, either? Of course you will. You can’t keep them locked in a back room for the rest of their lives.”

  Jacob looked around, desperate for some ally, but Eliza hadn’t come out of the examination room yet and he didn’t see anyone else who could help, either. He turned back to his father. “Leave me alone. Can’t you see—”

  But the older man talked over his protest. “And every time they go out you’ll be worrying, you’ll jump every time the phone rings. You’ll close your eyes and imagine Daniel with his throat cut, or picture them dragging Leah into the wilderness, screaming for her mother.”

  “You bastard.” Jacob wanted to clench his hands and scream, wanted to punch someone in the face, wanted to throw a chair through the window.

  “I didn’t do this,” his father said. “I came with you, I helped you give Fernie a blessing. I did everything you told me so we could get her here as quickly and safely as possible. Don’t blame me for what happened.”

  “You’re angry,” Stephen Paul said in a quiet voice. “Of course you are. And that’s understandable, but don’t direct your rage at us. We’re not the enemy—we’re on your side. Take a moment. Step back, close your eyes. Pray or ponder in silence for a moment. Don’t resist, just see what happens, see how you feel.”

  He opened his mouth to protest. He was a coiled spring of energy—how could he possibly relax enough to meditate? But he saw from the firm set in their mouths that they weren’t going to leave him alone. What could it hurt? He nodded and closed his eyes, forced his breathing to slow.

  The action didn’t calm him. Instead, the poisonous feeling spread. He saw images, so vivid it was like watching a movie. He saw Taylor Junior lying on top of Eliza that day in Blister Creek, trying to rape her, felt a fresh surge of the fury that had overcome him. He saw his brother Enoch lying on the floor of the temple, fingers clutching at the ruined mess around his gut. Already dead, but he didn’t yet know it. Moments later, the pain and terror would vanish, replaced by the glassy expression of a man whose body has given its soul to the other side of the veil.

  The Kimballs had done these things. Taylor Junior was as responsible as any of them. And today the man had run Fernie off the road, and now she would never walk again. Jacob opened his eyes and saw that his father and Stephen Paul already knew what he would say.

  Jacob gave a curt nod.

  “Good,” Abraham Christianson said. “Now here’s the plan. The first thing—”

  “No,” Jacob interrupted. “I’ve got two people watching their camp already. The three of us will work with the two of you, but only on one condition.”

  “What condition is that?” Abraham asked, his tone suspicious.

  “I’m in charge. I will d
ecide how and when to attack, and I will say when we stop attacking. And you will defer to David and Miriam, too.”

  “David is a drug addict,” Abraham grumbled. “And Miriam isn’t even one of us, not really. Let’s take Rebecca and her man instead.”

  “She’s not one of us either. In fact, you haven’t even told me who she is. No, we’re in charge, not you. We’ll take five people, no more. Rebecca and her henchman, or employee, or whoever he is, stay behind. And if you try anything funny, we’ll walk away and leave you to tackle the Kimballs on your own.”

  Abraham looked thoughtful for a long moment, then gave a quick nod to Stephen Paul. “Okay, you’re in charge, Jacob. So long as you confirm one thing. We kill Taylor Junior. Is that agreed?”

  “He’s a dead man,” Jacob said.

  The words hung in the air for several seconds before Abraham said, “Then I’m yours to command. What’s the plan?”

  “Can your friend Rebecca tell us how she got to the camp?”

  “She told me already. If you’ve got a map of Dark Canyon, I can find it.”

  “Good. I have my own ideas, but I’d like confirmation.” Some of Jacob’s rage had started to uncoil itself, replaced by a cold fury. “Go back to the house and collect camping gear, guns, and ammo. With any luck, David and Miriam will be waiting for us when we get there. Spying on their camp, learning their weaknesses.”

  “And if not, we’ll go in anyway,” Abraham said. He and Stephen Paul turned to leave, their strides long and purposeful. They pushed through the doors and hurried across the parking lot.

  Jacob turned back toward the ER and met Eliza’s gaze. She stood near the reception desk, holding her bandaged arm. He looked away before he could read her expression.

  She came over. “I don’t know what that was about, but I don’t like it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “And what’s that look on your face?”

  His frown deepened. “The look? I’m worried about my wife, of course. She’s got two broken vertebrae and swelling on the spine. Oh, and she’s thirty-nine weeks pregnant. Why wouldn’t I be worried? I’m terrified.”