My mind was dead, my body lost to feeling.
I ran one clawlike hand across my face, tried to force clarity into my mind. Ray was a man of motion, not of words. I caught that idea and held it, followed it down into a wordless place, followed the tracer of his heat—
With surprise, I felt him now, but where?
Listen, my mind told me. Feel.
The soft voice of a child cut through the darkness startingly close. “I can do it,” the voice said. “I can pull this trigger. Kill the Satan. I can do it.”
Stiff with fear, I cocked my head, tracking the voice toward its source. Up above me and to the right.
I eased backward under the blackness of the cliff, lay down on the bank of the river, and thought. If I slide into the river, he’ll hear me. Shoot me. And then yet one more life will be on my hands, a child’s future ruined by the ugly fact of having killed.
I could not let that happen. For that matter, I could not let these children face the war that could arrive any time now from the air, or from the roads. If cornered, I knew that Nephi would sacrifice every last one of them. I had heard it in his voice—“The least of my spawn.”
I eased up again, slowly rising until I could see the outline of the child. I heard a heavy thump in the darkness. The shifting of a cow, a sound I knew from a hundred nights searching for calves with my father. Sliding down again, I picked up a handful of gravel, took aim, and hurled it beyond the child at the cow. The cow bawled. The child gasped, swung suddenly around and shouted, “Brother?” Under the cover of this diversion, I slithered back into the water. Felt for the bottom with my hands. Floated gently, facedown, my hands walking me down the eddy, my spine stiff with anticipation of a bullet, the cold bleeding my hands into stumps, letting my body trail like a log, head raised up to keep my lips above the water. I sent a blessing to the rain god that had sent the cover of clouds to snuff the glistening stars out, and floated onward, around one more bend, two, three, thanked the river god for wider banks here, for shallow waters—
I rolled out on the north bank and stared up into the blackness of the clouds. Lightning bloomed high up in them, soundless, a cloud-to-cloud acrobatic of electric heat.
Heat. Where was Ray?
I heaved myself into a sitting position, dragged myself up under the brush, began the slow drudgery of ejecting my sodden clothes. Wrung them out. Struggled back into them, my legs as stiff as tree trunks.
Ray. I could feel him almost as a physical presence, as if the last heat of his body was guiding me. Over here—he pulled me like the needle on a compass. Over here—
I lurched back onto my feet and stumbled along the riverbank, following the pull I felt deep inside. Lost the sense, paused, closed my eyes, then felt it again, moved toward it. Stronger now. One hundred feet farther along the bank, I found Ray, lying on the gravel, facedown. I rolled him onto his back and pressed an ear against his neck, listening for a heartbeat, forcing back the sobs that surged up my throat. Thump.
He was alive, but cold as the waters. His breath came thinly. He opened his eyes and stared at me, tried to smile. His face twitched with the cold.
I grabbed him by the wrists and pulled, dragging him up the bank into the brush, where I settled him on a bed of dried leaves, and began to skin away his clothes. His jacket was thin, although lined with flannel. I wrung it dry, pulled off his shirt, found another layer beneath it, pulled.
“N-n-no,” he whispered.
“Got it,” I whispered back. I’d heard of Temple garments, but never seen them. I smiled ruefully. “Angel suits,” some called them, the Mormon armor against an unsheltering world. I said a silent prayer that they were not cotton but polyester, that they might warm him.
Working quickly against the freezing fingers of the coming storm, I replaced his jacket with my own. His wrists jutted from the sleeves, but the zipper met in front with some tugging. I emptied the water from his shoes, squeezed his socks as dry as possible—Wool; good, I noted, they’ll hold some heat—undid his pants and peeled. His legs were moving now, slowly, like an old man’s. He pushed feebly, trying to free himself of the embrace of wet denim. I wrung the pant legs, pressed the pockets free of each loose drop.
I whispered, “Ever been camping before, Eagle Scout?”
Ray’s teeth glowed faintly from below me. “Never was in scouting. Is there a merit badge for hypothermia?” he asked, taking my arm by the wrist and pulling me down. He was shaking now, shivering hard from toes to crown, and needed my added warmth. I extracted my emergency kit from the pocket of the jacket and unfolded it. Hurriedly, I spread it out and wrapped it around us both so the heat from my body would stay with him. If the fates were against us, the Mylar would reflect the lightning, the stars, and the headlights of Brother Nephi’s truck, but the chance had to be taken. I shucked off my clammy jeans and lay down on top of him, exhaled against his neck, sending my heat into his brain, shifted until our bodies met with greatest contact. I fed his arms up inside my—his—jacket, wrapped my arms around his sides and rubbed. Minutes passed. I breathed against his scalp, his cheeks. At length, his shivering subsided from racking tremors to a slight vibration, and his breath came more easily. His arms melted from rigid to relaxed, then tensed again as he hugged me tightly.
Then he kissed me, a long, searching kiss, a kiss of passion, thanksgiving, and friendship, but not of sex. We were both still too cold for that.
I ran a hand through his hair, savoring its stiff, springy texture. He was warming quickly now. If I lay with him much longer, I would be taking advantage of him in his weakest moment. He had made his vow of chastity, and it held meaning for him. It wasn’t my place to help him break it. I thought how much better it might be to be this man’s friend first, and see where friendship led. I smiled, feeling a warmth of affection for him, regardless of his stubbornness and complexities. Ava was correct: love was a verb, not a noun.
Ray had saved my life, and now I had saved his. But we had also lost lives, and it was time to save others. We had crossed to the far side of the river, away from the hunters, and dawn was coming. With the dawn would come greater vulnerability, but also search planes, and someone—either more pilots or one of these children out here—would get hurt. “Time to go,” I said.
23
THE FIRST VELVET ROSE OF DAWN SMUDGED THE EASTERN sky as we threaded our way carefully through the forest of junipers and piñon pines that graced the great rampart of canyon rim called The Wedge. The storm had blown past us, its waters spent, and it had been a long, slow job scaling the curving face of the Navajo Sandstone, once we’d finally found it where the river cut down into the Little Grand Canyon. Bats had wheeled curiously about us, and we had taken our time. Our clothes were almost dry, and we were warming quickly with the exertion, but the cold and fatigue had weakened us. And it wouldn’t do to hurry; the drops were too sheer, too dangerous, and besides, the night was magic now, a cloak within which we could savor this time together.
Wordlessly, we knew what waited at the summit of our climb: reality, a test too great for most.
I heard a thudding from the north. A helicopter. A big one. I hurried to break the waterproof matches out of my pocket and fumbled with the downy duff of inner bark I had collected a half hour earlier from a piñon pine. I huddled to the ground, struck a match. The first one splintered in my hand. Ray watched as I selected another and struck again. This time, the match caught, and the tiny flame leapt quickly to the kindling. I worked to tease more dry duff from the bark. “I could do this faster if you hadn’t confiscated my pocketknife,” I commented wryly.
Ray smiled and handed me the twigs that he had gathered. “Tough girl,” he said.
The fire spread and flared as I held it to the dry brown needles we had stacked on the lowest branch of a small dead piñon tree. Ray fanned the flames with his jacket as I pressed more dead branches against it. In two minutes, we had the tree ablaze, our own burning bush in the desert, and Ray pulled the Mylar sheet out of
his other pocket and let it catch puffs of smoke like an Indian signal blanket. “Like this?” he asked.
“Just like a real Eagle Scout,” I answered. “Another merit badge for you. So why didn’t you join scouting? I thought all Mormon males did that.”
“Dad was too sick. They needed me at home.”
“Oh.” I kept to the smaller issues, didn’t ask about the rest of it, such as how he’d known how to find me and help me find him; I didn’t have to. I’d had the experience now myself, but it was as yet fragile, and I didn’t want to touch it, for fear it might shatter.
Just as we had planned, the fire drew the attention of the approaching Huey, and it wheeled, dipped, and settled toward us. Ray waved and pointed, leading it toward the clearing we had selected. As it descended, bounced, and settled onto the stony soil, I kicked the piñon over and stacked rocks and soil on it, extinguishing the flames and making certain that the wind from the rotors didn’t scatter sparks. Then I hurried to the landing place.
The side door of the Huey opened and a man appeared: Not Tom Latimer, in a helicopter again, despite his deepest anxieties. He grinned, jumped down onto the ground, and, keeping his head down, hurried to where we were and led us far enough from the rotors that we could hear more easily. Another figure appeared by the open helicopter doorway, a slight person swathed in the army green of a fatigue jacket, wispy blond hair flying out from beneath her flight helmet. Nina. When she saw me, she smiled and waved, and at the direction of a National Guardsman, she hopped down, ducked her head, and hurried out to join us. “Thank the Lord you’re all right!” Nina said, clutching my hands to her breast.
“And you!” I replied. “But what are you doing here?”
Nina bowed her head like a little girl caught filching cookies. “I had to come. I was afraid you’d … get hurt. When I got home, no one was there, and I was really worried. Then Mr. Latimer came and knocked on the door with some friends of his.” She beamed at the FBI agent. “Mr. Latimer said your helicopter had gone missing and that I could help find it. Remember, I’m a good finder, and—” She waved a hand across the landscape with stately pride. “I know it like the back of my hand.”
I said, “I’m sure you do.”
The FBI agent interrupted these musings. “Where in hell have you been all night, and where are the rest?” he demanded.
Ray shook his head.
Not Tom’s eyes widened in alarm. “Crashed?”
“Shot down,” I said. “But listen, you got to do this some other way. You can’t go in like this; all you’d find is a bloody fight. They have kids down there armed with high-powered rifles, spread all over the place and scared of devils. The armament I saw close-up looked like an AR-seventeen. They move like guerillas over this land, and you can’t risk yourselves or them. They’re children. And they’re her family.”
Nina buried her face in my jacket and hugged me.
Not Tom nodded. He returned to the airship, plugged his headphones back in, and spoke to an unseen listener. When he was done talking, he returned to us, gave us each a blanket, and said, “Okay, you got it. Plan A was rescuing you. Let’s go to plan B.”
“What’s that?”
“Pull back, seal the roads, and wait. We don’t want another Waco.”
I took Nina’s face in both my hands and said, “You know all the good hiding places out there where Brother Nephi has one of your brothers or sisters waiting with a rifle. Can you point those places out from here?”
Nina searched my eyes wistfully, as if contemplating a lost love. In a few seconds, she aged from the child who had stepped excitedly off the helicopter to a woman, full of cares and responsibilities. But she said nothing.
I ran a hand over the crown of her head and willed her toward her wisdom. “Nina, Brother Manti has killed your beloved. And he killed the woman who was flying my helicopter. And Brother Nephi killed a policeman. They won’t be allowed to stay here after that. What does the Bible say about that kind of killing?”
“‘Thou shalt not.’ George showed me that. When he taught me to read.”
Thank God for George, I thought. “What would George do now, Nina?”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then turned to the agent, and she said, “You take this machine away and bring me back over the road in a truck. Drop me a ways north of the river. I’ll find my brothers and sisters, and our mothers, and I’ll bring them to you, one by one.” Her smile flickered with uncertainty for a moment, and she added, “But, um, you have to promise again that you’ll treat them nicely and give them hot meals, and, um, could you please be the one to go to the house and talk to Brother Nephi?”
The agent nodded soberly. “Okay. But are you sure? I’m not sending you in there if anyone is going to mistake you for the enemy.”
Nina released her grip on me and said, “The risk is mine to take. This is my family.” She smiled. “And I’m good at keeping away from Brother Nephi and Brother Manti.” Then she took my hand again briefly and gave it a squeeze, as if to comfort me, then turned to Ray and said, “Please thank Ava for me. It was rude of me to leave without saying thank you.”
Ray smiled. “I’m sure she understands. You come visit again as soon as you can.”
To the FBI agent, she said simply, “We should go now,” then turned and marched off toward the helicopter, a good soldier.
I wanted to run after her and stop her. I wanted to protect her, not just from the risk she was facing but from the pain of full adulthood that lay before her. She would be spared from the full lash of the law, but those older than her would not. As I watched her slender form climb up into the helicopter, I suspected that I was watching the new leader of her clan ascending. I sensed a sea of sadness for the struggles that would fill her future.
The FBI agent was speaking to Ray. “Okay, we’re out of here. You coming with us, or can you make it the rest of the way up the hill here? It’s not real warm in this crate.” He pointed up the hill. “There’s a dirt road near the edge of the canyon. You’ll find campsites. We have a man stationed there with a camper. Yellow truck, white shell, Colorado plates. About a half mile, no farther.”
I knew that our resources were nearly exhausted. We needed hot meals and hotter baths, and a good long sleep. I opened my mouth to say so, but Ray tipped his head toward the hill, grinned, and said, “We can make it.”
So much for his merit badge in hypothermia.
Not Tom puckered up his lips and smiled saucily. “Catch you later, then.” He gave a quick thumbs-up and turned to go, then turned back and said. “Oh, and one more thing.”
“What?” I asked.
“You two look like drowned rats. Ray, your jacket shrank and you need a shave. Where’s your pride?”
“I don’t have any,” I said.
Ray just continued to grin. I decided I’d at least give him a consolation badge for wilderness couture.
We backed into the trees. The helicopter lifted off and veered toward the north, ascended, and thudded into the distance.
Before we climbed higher, we checked to make sure the fire was completely extinguished from our piñon beacon, then turned our faces toward the red glow of the coming sunrise. The dance of fire across the horizon brought to mind the image of a house on fire in the desert, the millennial conflagration of a dying siege that had existed within the mind of a man who had lost his soul and beckoned others to follow him. I prayed that Heavenly Father, or whatever God’s name or visage was, might grant Nina the strength she needed to outwit her earthly sire. And I sent a special one, too, for Not Tom Latimer, who had agreed to face him for her.
Ray and I walked side by side, breathing in the morning. At length, we found a road, two tracks along the brink from which countless travelers had taken pictures of the stunning beauty that spread before us: the Grand Canyon in miniature, now touched by the first warm fingers of the rising sun.
We stayed in the trees, well away from the cliff edge, still watchful in case our en
emy had spread this far from the west.
Another turn, a bend in the trail, and there was the camper van. Parked next to it was a car, a big sedan with Utah plates. Ray blinked, surprised. He smiled and turned toward me. “Hot chocolate,” he whispered into my ear. “That’s Mother’s car.”
I felt a laugh wriggle free from my heart. Welcome home to Innocence, I told myself. We’ll be baptized in chocolate and reborn. I took a step toward the car, but Ray caught me and pulled me back out of sight behind the cover of the trees. There, he took me in his arms and gazed questioningly into my eyes. He swallowed hard. “Em,” he began.
As I looked up into his eyes, my mind sped ahead of us, in search of possibilities and truths. I needed a moment to draw myself inward. I snuggled my arms up around his firm, wonderful torso and pressed my face to his stubbly throat. “Ray.”
“Em, what about us?” He sighed, his breath caressing my ear.
“What about us?”
He pulled his head back. “Look at me.”
I did so.
“Come to Salt Lake,” he said. “You could get a job there, I’m sure of it, and—”
I let his invitation tickle through my consciousness, let my heart be open. “No,” I said. I’d never make a Mormon; I knew that. But I had found Ray in the darkness. This experience was true; irreproducible, untestable by the five senses, but true. Perhaps someday science would explain it, but for now, I felt the light of Divinity warming my soul. “No, I have a job and a life waiting for me in Denver. You need to visit me there, and see what you think.”
Ray’s eyes widened with fear. “But if you go back there, you’ll—”
“Shh.” I raised one hand and put my fingertips across his lips and felt their warmth. They were only inches from mine, close enough that I could see tiny flaws where the ravages of the night had chapped the splendid skin. Yet somehow, the deep, inner sense of what he had felt like as he had drawn me through the night was even more real. I was going back to Denver, and I was going to take this one small experience of the magic between souls with me, and I was going to find out for myself where it fit with the rest of my thoughts, feelings, and faith. I was tempted to tell him yes, and stay. But I needed also to say, Don’t make me your crisis of faith, or the victory of your beliefs. That crisis belonged to his heart alone, just as it visited each of us, in its own time. Softly, I said, “Ray, I’m going to be too busy for a while discarding some of my own beliefs to consider yours. You give me a few weeks or a month, and then come visit me, okay?”
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