Malloy looked embarrassed. “Oh, I know. Silly, isn’t it? But there’s been trouble. Not in Utah—it’s a well-organized state, you’ve got to give that to the Mormons—but in a few small towns in the Midwest. Again, I don’t expect that sort of problem around here.”
Jacob wasn’t sure—in Utah there was plenty of suspicion about the government. Show up unannounced with quasi-military force, and that suspicion could turn to hostility.
“What kind of trouble are we talking about?” he asked.
“You know, the usual conspiracy stuff when people think you’re trampling their rights. They don’t appreciate the national emergency. Two of my colleagues were killed last week in Nebraska. There’s a town in Iowa that’s in open revolt. And then there’s this mess in California.”
Jacob hadn’t been following the California news, but he didn’t like the sound of that. Iowa and Nebraska were distant, on the other side of the Rockies, but you could head down to St. George, jump on I-15, and get to Los Angeles in nine hours. Or vice versa, as the case may be. A California mess could become a Utah mess in a hurry.
“And so you considered our reputation in Blister Creek and thought better safe than sorry?”
Another apologetic shrug. “It wasn’t my call.”
“A warning would have been wise. After what we’ve gone through, you’re lucky people didn’t take one look at your truck and start shooting.”
“That would have been a terrible idea.”
“Obviously.” Jacob felt the peevish tone in his voice and tried to tamp it down. “Look, all I’m saying is that a heads-up would have been neighborly.”
“I didn’t want to do that and then find out you’d barricaded the road.”
“Why on earth would we do that?” He looked back at the truck. “Mr. Malloy, just what are you doing here?”
Malloy opened his mouth to say something, but then a pickup truck pulled up to the curb. Stephen Paul climbed out and hoisted himself upright, his cast-bandaged left leg outstretched. He grabbed a pair of crutches from the truck bed and hobbled up the walk toward the porch. Anger contorted his face. One of the armed men moved to intercept him.
“Move out of my way,” Stephen Paul said.
“Back off!” the man barked.
“I’m warning you…”
Jacob came down from the porch. “Hold on, everyone settle down. Brother, calm down.”
Malloy came after him. “It’s okay, Finch, I know this one.”
Finch lowered his weapon and took a step back, but his posture remained rigid.
Stephen Paul turned on Malloy. “What in blue blazes are you thinking? That wheat belongs to us. That’s outright theft.”
“What wheat?” Jacob asked. He looked at Malloy, confused and growing angry. “You’re not confiscating our food supplies, are you?”
“It’s illegal hoarding.”
“There’s nothing illegal about it. And anyway, you had no problem last time you came.”
“How would you know that? You never declared it.”
“Yes, we did. What kind of game is this?”
“Thirty-five hundred tons of wheat. You need more than a ton of wheat for every person in Blister Creek, on top of all of your other hoarded food? That’s taking advantage of the food crisis. It’s outright profiteering.”
Jacob sputtered with anger. “Are you crazy? We don’t have any…” He caught the troubled look on his counselor’s face, and his voice trailed off. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“Your father set aside extra supplies,” Stephen Paul said. “Wheat, I mean.”
“We know about the dried beans and rice too,” Malloy said.
“And the dried beans and rice. Three or four hundred tons of each.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Jacob asked. “When my father died would have been nice.”
“I didn’t want you to sell it off until you’d had a chance to grow into the position,” Stephen Paul said. “To think about the future, I mean. And then, when the government came…well, I don’t like carrying a lie, and I figured you wouldn’t either. I thought it better if you didn’t know, at least until we knew how the crisis would play out.”
“Come on,” Malloy said after an uncomfortable pause. “I don’t want this to be an adversarial relationship. We don’t need to stand in the rain arguing—come on up to the porch.”
Jacob took Stephen Paul’s crutches and helped him climb the stairs.
“How did you find the extra stores?” Stephen Paul asked Malloy.
“A disaffected member of your church told us about the caves behind your house, said that you were using them to hoard food.”
“Caves?” Jacob said. “I never heard about that. Wait—what disaffected member? Who else knew?”
“Almost nobody,” Stephen Paul said. “A few older members of the quorum. Oh, of course—Elder Kimball, that bastard.”
“Yes, it was Taylor Kimball Senior,” Malloy said. “He initiated contact from prison. Now, look, we’re not stealing. We’ll pay for everything we take.”
“On paper that will soon be worthless,” Stephen Paul said.
“And for anything else we appropriate,” Malloy continued, speaking over the other man’s objection, “we’ll give you fair market price.”
“So you’re making off with the lot of it,” Jacob said. “Everything we’ve set aside, you’ll take, just like that. And I’ll bet you’ve got papers making it legal.”
“Not all of it. You’ve worked hard to prepare for an emergency, and I don’t plan to leave you destitute. That’s not my intention here. I want to work with you, not against you. I’m not your enemy, Mr. Christianson, I’m on your side. The sooner you see that, the sooner I can get to work.”
Somewhere along the line, he’d dropped the plural and it had become I will do this, and then I will do that.
“There’s something you’re not telling us,” Jacob said. “Why all the armed men? And why did you come to my house instead of loading our wheat into trucks and making off with it?”
“Mr. Christianson, I’m afraid I’ll be here a while. I need to supervise the harvest, for one.”
“We don’t need supervision.”
“Nevertheless, I need to make sure it is harvested and sold in the most efficient way possible. Let me stress again the extreme nature of our agricultural emergency. Few people have set aside food storage like you have. If they had, we wouldn’t be in this kind of trouble.”
“And the seven lean cattle did consume the seven fatted cattle,” Jacob said.
“What?” Malloy asked.
“Never mind. So, what, you’ll be setting up camp in the valley?”
“I’d like to use your chapel as headquarters. I know this is inconvenient, but you can keep the bigger building—the temple, right?—for your Sunday worship services.”
“We don’t have sacrament meeting in the temple,” Jacob said. “That’s not what it’s for, so yes, it’s rather inconvenient. Can’t you drag in trailers or something?”
“I can make my headquarters in the temple, if you’d prefer.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Stephen Paul muttered.
“The chapel would be better,” Jacob said. Time to pick his battles. “If you or any other nonmembers enter the temple, there will be trouble. People around here are touchy about that.”
“The chapel it is.”
Jacob fished out his key ring from his pocket, removed the key to the chapel, and handed it over.
“Thank you,” Malloy said. “That’s a good-faith effort on your part.”
There were a few details to haggle over—or, rather, for Chip Malloy to dictate—and then, apparently satisfied that Jacob had no intention of resisting, Malloy got back in his car and drove away. Some of the soldiers drove off in the truck, while others stayed to patrol the street, armed with their M16s.
Jacob watched them with an increasingly gloomy feeling. “And so we find ourselves living under martia
l law.”
Stephen Paul propped his crutches next to the front door and winced as he sat in one of the rockers. “That’s it?” he said. “You’re giving in, just like that? No resistance at all?”
“Oh, we’re going to resist, you can count on that. But it’s better if he thinks we’re complying, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Hmm. Maybe.”
“You should have told me,” Jacob said. “All that time, when I was talking about hiding the bishop’s storehouse, you let me carry on, and the whole time you had four thousand tons of food stored away.”
“I’m sorry. I thought it would be better if you didn’t know.”
“What else haven’t you told me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You admitted the wheat pretty quickly, then coughed up the beans and rice with barely any hesitation. Why would you do that, unless you were hiding something else?”
“You’re a smart man, Brother Jacob.”
“I know the ways of Blister Creek, that’s all.” He sat in the chair next to Stephen Paul. “Listen to me. The crisis will pass. People always predict the end of the world, and it never happens.”
“Until one day it does.” He met Jacob’s gaze. “I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. My job is to take care of our people. We’ll make our own path, and the hell with anyone who comes in and tells us otherwise. That food is ours. This valley is ours. We’ve sacrificed everything to build this place. We won’t let them steal it, not without a fight. But I need you one hundred percent on my side.”
“Thou sayest.”
“Now, what else are you hiding?” Jacob asked.
“Do you know the abandoned gas station on the south highway?”
“Of course.”
Everyone knew the place. Someone had driven into a gas pump years ago and started a fire that burned down the station and the service garage, and a brushfire that scorched three thousand acres on the south side of the valley. After the fire they’d built a new gas station near the center of town, with a mini-mart and a more modern system of pumps. The only thing left of the old station was broken, weedy pavement, a fiberglass brontosaurus, and a fading SINCLAIR sign, its green dinosaur pocked with bullet holes.
“Can you meet me out there?” Stephen Paul asked.
“They’ll be watching us. Does it have to be today?”
“No. Kimball didn’t know this secret—we have time.”
“Good, then let’s give it a couple of days for things to calm down. Better yet, a week. Take a roundabout drive through the valley. If nobody is following you, meet me at the old station at, let’s say, next Tuesday after supper, just before dark.”
“That works,” Stephen Paul said.
“Care to give me a hint?”
“You know your father always expected the end of the world.”
“So does everyone else in town.”
“Yeah, but unlike everyone, Abraham Christianson planned for the day. ‘Lay me up one thousand bushels of wheat,’ as he liked to say.”
“He did? I never heard him say that.”
“Well, someone said it. I thought it was Brother Abraham.” Stephen Paul shrugged. “Never mind where I heard it. Meet me at the old gas station. Your father left us something much better than wheat.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Eliza took Steve Krantz’s hand and gave it a squeeze. He squeezed back, but so distractedly that he almost crushed her hand like a rotten tomato. He glanced at her face and looked aghast when he saw her wincing.
“Oh, crap, I’m sorry.” He tried to pull away, but she kept hold and gave him what she hoped was a comforting smile.
“Of course you’re nervous,” she said. “It’s okay—anyone would be.”
“I feel like an idiot. I’m sure I look like an idiot too.”
He wore a white jumpsuit that was meant to be baggy but was skintight around the chest and could barely contain his legs, his arms, and even his muscular butt.
She suppressed a smile. Then, after a glance at her brother Jacob, who waded ankle-deep into the reservoir a few feet away, she stretched to whisper in Steve’s ear, “It’s so tight I can see what I’m getting on our wedding night.”
He blushed so furiously she couldn’t contain her laughter, and it spilled out, girlish and giddy. Jacob turned, and a broad smile broke across his face. “I have no idea why you look so happy, but it’s great to see. Are you ready?”
“Not yet,” Steve said.
“Where is everyone?” Eliza asked.
Jacob shrugged. “Busy, maybe.”
“No problem,” Steve said, a little too quickly. “I don’t mind if no one sees this.”
Eliza glanced back to the highway, expecting to see someone. It wasn’t every day that an adult joined the community—every baptism she could remember had been for an eight-year-old child. At the least, she had thought David, Miriam, and Fernie would be here. Maybe Steve had put out the word that he didn’t want witnesses.
“Give us a sec,” she said to Jacob.
She took Steve’s arm and drew him away from the edge of the water. He walked gingerly on his bare feet over the stones and prickly weeds. They stopped about thirty feet away from the water.
“You’re not freaking out, are you?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“You said you wanted to do this.”
“I do. I mean, well…” He took a deep breath. “I need to be clear about something. It’s not joining your church that’s bugging me, it’s all that other stuff. You know, Joseph Smith, the angel Moroni, Nephi’s family making boats and coming to America and then some of them turning into Indians, and all those other Book of Mormon stories. I keep thinking, Wait, they really believe that?”
“So it sounds incredible,” Eliza said. “You still need to be baptized if we’re going to get married. That’s the deal. But it’s also the whole deal. You’re not marrying the angel Moroni or Joseph Smith.”
“And I don’t want to be a polygamist.”
“Good heavens, neither do I.”
“And that other stuff doesn’t bother you?” he asked. “If I think it’s all a story?”
“Even Jacob doesn’t believe it all. And you know that I struggle off and on with doubts, and my brother David does too. What about the rest of them? You don’t think they kneel down to pray, half hoping, half doubting? Of course there are people who know it’s true, or so they claim. I think they’re mostly trying to convince themselves.”
“But isn’t it subversive for the community to join under false pretenses?”
“You know what’s even more subversive?” Eliza asked. “I’m not sure it matters if you believe or not. We’re forming Zion, and it’s a place where everybody is pulling together in the same direction. Things are getting ugly out there. If we’re lucky, it will be another Great Depression. If we’re not…” She reached and put her hand on his cheek. “Wouldn’t you rather be here with me, safe in our little valley?”
He took her hand and kissed it. “Not so safe with that guy from the Department of Agriculture and his henchmen waving guns around like they just liberated Baghdad.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. Either we kick them out or we absorb them. We absorbed Sister Miriam. We’re about to absorb you.”
“Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”
“What?”
“Star Trek, when the—never mind.”
“It’s not futile to resist,” Eliza said. “It’s self-defeating. And that goes for the agriculture guy too. If things get ugly, do you think Mr. Malloy will keep shipping our food out of the valley? Do you think he’ll want us as his enemy? Give it a few months and he might be the one dressed in white, ready to go for a dunk in the reservoir.”
“Maybe. Eliza, I don’t know.”
“Steve, I’m not asking you to believe. I’m asking you to belong.”
“Do they even want me? Som
etimes I feel like I’m back in some mud-hut village in Afghanistan where everyone hates me and I don’t know the rules.”
“I’ll handle them, trust me. That’s all you have to do. You can do that, can’t you? Trust me?”
He stared at her, and her heart pounded. She felt small and vulnerable and was suddenly afraid he was going to leave. It wasn’t worth it for him, giving up everything to live in Blister Creek, so far from civilization. But couldn’t he feel it? The community, the people coming together at last, ready to do great things. Couldn’t he see it, even smell it? The burnt-red cliffs, the quilted red and green of the valley floor, the blue sky, so clear you could see forever, the dry, crisp air that smelled of sagebrush and juniper—was there a more beautiful place in the world?
No, he was going to walk away. She could see it in his eyes. He was wrestling, but that would be his decision, to turn his back on Blister Creek. Turn his back on her.
“Oh, Steve.” Her lips trembled and she felt herself breaking apart, dying inside. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
It was time to make her own decision. She loved them all, she wanted to stay here. But she needed Steve more.
“I’ll go,” she said, “if you’ll take me with you and show me.”
“Show you?”
“Show me how to do it. I didn’t do so hot last time—Blister Creek reeled me back in. But if you’ll be patient and kind, I’ll leave Blister Creek and we’ll go out there together. Salt Lake, Los Angeles, wherever.”
He said nothing.
“Steve? Talk to me, please.”
“I know how hard that was to say,” he said, “but I can’t make you do it. The people around here are a little crazy, but it’s pretty damn scenic, you’ve got to admit. Sure, why not?” A teasing smile spread across his face. “I guess you’re stuck with me, kid.”
And then, before she could process it all, he swept her up in his arms and his mouth was on hers. She put her hands through his hair and kissed him hungrily. When they drew apart, she felt flushed and her knees trembled.
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