by Dean Hughes
“More than half of them did.”
“Richard, you can’t blame yourself for something like that.”
“I don’t blame myself.”
“Then what?”
Richard lowered his head and rested his forehead on his arms. “I don’t know. I just keep remembering it. And I feel . . . empty . . . most of the time. I feel like someone pulled the solid ground out from under me.”
“Do you think people are evil, or something like that?”
Richard sat for a long time, his head still down. “I don’t know, Bobbi,” he finally said. “I just see those guys in my mind, reaching toward us, wanting our help. I see their faces, how scared they were. I thought I would forget it after a while, but it keeps getting worse, not better.”
“You feel guilty that you lived and they died, don’t you?”
Richard raised his head and looked at her. Tears began to drip onto his cheeks and run down his face. “Sure I do,” he said. “If I hadn’t gotten hurt I would have been one of the guys in the water. I probably would have died. But one more guy could have gotten on that boat.”
“Richard, it wasn’t your fault. None of this was your fault.”
“Tell my spirit that, Bobbi. It doesn’t believe me.”
Now Bobbi was crying. She hadn’t realized what he had been living with all this time.
“I keep telling myself that I have to buckle down and live a good life—you know, be worthy of the blessing I got. I always think that if I do my best on the job, provide for my family, work in the Church, sooner or later this will go away.”
“But you have to be true to your own heart. I don’t think those washing-machine parts are important enough to you. You need something that feels significant to you, Richard.”
“No. I need something that is significant. I want to give something to this world, since I got to stay. But I have no idea what that is.”
“Well . . . it’s not washing-machine parts.”
“How would we make it, Bobbi? If I went back to school, or something like that, we’d have to sell this house and maybe—”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re trying to sacrifice yourself, Richard. And it’s a noble thing to do. But you just can’t do it. It won’t make either one of us happy.”
“Are you sure we could—”
“Yes. We’ll figure something out. But we can’t go on the way we’ve been lately.”
He was looking at her curiously, and he seemed frightened, but Bobbi also thought she saw some relief in his eyes.
Chapter 26
Cecil Broadbent had come home for the holidays. He’d been attending MIT that fall, and this was his first trip back to Salt Lake City. East High was back in school now, after the New Year, but Cecil’s holiday extended longer into January. He had called a couple of times, only to be put off by LaRue, but today he showed up at the Thomas home just after LaRue arrived home from school. “Do you feel like going for a walk?” he asked.
“Are you kidding?” LaRue said. “I just walked home. It’s freezing out there.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him inside so she could close the door.
“That’s what I thought you’d say. So let’s go get a cup of coffee or something. I’ve got Dad’s car.”
“Coffee?”
“Well, whatever you want. I didn’t mean you had to drink coffee.”
She let that go, but she said, “Cecil, I don’t have a lot of time. I have a test in chemistry tomorrow.”
“Ooooh. Those high-school chemistry tests—they’re real killers.” He grasped his chest, on top of his big overcoat, pretending that he was having a heart attack.
“Hey, go back to Cambridge. Okay?”
“No, no. I’m just kidding. Come on. We’ll go down to Fred and Kelly’s and get you a nice glass of milk, and we’ll catch up a little. You only wrote me one crummy letter since I left.”
“You only wrote two. So I’m just one behind.” LaRue had taken off her coat and hung it on the coat rack by the door, but she put it back on now, and the two headed out to Cecil’s car. No one was home yet, but Beverly was walking down the street with some friends. LaRue yelled to her, “I’m going with Cecil for half an hour or so. Don’t worry about supper. I know it’s my turn.”
“What’s this?” Cecil said. “Have you become domesticated?”
There was something going on with Cecil. He had taken on a new style. His hair was combed straight back, slick, and his voice was stronger, more confident. He actually looked better, a little more grown up, his skin finally clear, and he was wearing expensive shoes—wingtips—and gray flannel dress slacks under his black overcoat. But LaRue was already annoyed with his condescension. “Bev and I take turns cooking,” LaRue said. “My mom is running one of our family businesses, and she puts in long hours some days.”
“She’s still at the plant?”
“No. She and Dad are buying land and developing it. They have a big housing project going. They’re going to start selling lots in the spring.”
“Your family keeps climbing a little higher up the bourgeois ladder all the time. Your father might get himself appointed to the Quorum of the Twelve if he continues on the rise.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Cecil opened the door for LaRue, and then he walked around the car and got in. “Nothing at all,” he said. “I just know how things operate around here.”
“Well, then, you mean something. But I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“Never mind. But if you get away from here next year, and then take a good look back, you’ll see a lot of things you never noticed when you were growing up.”
“Okay. So enlighten me, great traveler from the east.” She turned in her seat, leaned against the door, and waited for him to respond.
“Look, I’m not being critical of your father. All I’m saying is, one of the best ways to get into leadership in the Church is to make a lot of money.” He started his father’s old car, an ancient Chevy. The engine muttered and strained and then fell silent. On the second try, it caught, then continued to gurgle, so Cecil fed it a little more gas and waited, without shifting into gear.
“Let’s see,” LaRue said. “President Smith. Now there’s a wealthy man. He’s spent his whole life in Church positions. And there’s President McKay. A teacher. He’s a rich guy. President Clark worked in the government all his life. That’s a good way to get rich.”
“He’s got a big cattle ranch.”
“Now there’s royalty for you. A rancher.”
“I’m not saying they’re all rich. I’m just saying that you have to become prominent in Salt Lake circles before they call you in.”
“Oh, that’s certainly true. Like Elder Brown. He came down from Canada. And Elder Kimball. They brought him up from Arizona.”
Cecil laughed and shook his head. “Wow. I’d better keep my mouth shut. You know all these guys.”
“Ah—finally, some wisdom.”
“Since when did you become the defender of the faith?” The engine was finally smoothing out a little, running
steady, and so he shifted into first gear and pulled away from the curb.
“I didn’t know I was. But if you’re going to make accusations, you ought to know what you’re talking about.”
“The truth is, I’m not that interested in any of that stuff.”
Cecil didn’t say what “that stuff” was, and LaRue decided to let it go. She did want to hear about college. “So tell me about MIT. What’s it like out there?”
“It’s beautiful. I live right by the Charles River. All during the fall I would look out my window onto a row of chestnut trees, all in color, and just beyond that, the river. There’s almost always a crew or two out on the water in the afternoon, training.”
“What do you mean, a crew?”
“Rowing. It’s the big sport out there.”
“Oh.”
“We go into Boston all the time, see all the his
torical sites, take in a concert.”
“Have you ever gone to the Commons, where they have those swan boats?”
“Of course. It’s right in the middle of the city. That’s our subway stop when we ride in from Cambridge.”
Cecil slowed, rolled down his window, and signaled, then made a left-hand turn. LaRue felt the rush of cold air just when the heater was starting to take the chill off the air. “What are the people like in Boston?”
“That depends on what you mean. Boston’s very ethnic, very divided. There’s a big Italian section, and Irish and Jewish and Negro parts of town. But I don’t see much of that in Cambridge. The students are mostly from the east, the largest share of them from excellent prep schools and well-off families. They’re nothing at all like people here.”
“They sound like snobs.”
“Well . . . they know who they are. They’re not trying to prove anything. Not everyone is quite as brilliant as I thought they might be, but no one looks down on me for my intelligence either. I’m very well accepted there.”
Cecil had tried to speak this last with an easy nonchalance, but it didn’t work. LaRue could sense how delighted he was with himself. And when they arrived at Fred and Kelly’s and LaRue ordered a root beer, Cecil said, “I’ll just have a cup of coffee. I don’t suppose you could slip a little shot of whiskey in it?”
“No, sir,” the waitress said, and she laughed. LaRue had the feeling she was laughing at Cecil more than she was at the idea. She waited and tapped her pencil on the little notepad she was carrying. Johnny Mercer was singing his new hit song, “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,” on the jukebox, and some girls in the next booth were singing along. The place was packed, mostly with high-school kids.
“Oh, well. Just the coffee then,” Cecil said, and then, as soon as the waitress was gone, he told LaRue, “I’ll have to admit that I’ve gotten so I do like my coffee with a little shot of whiskey. Almost anywhere in Boston you can ask a waitress, and she’ll fix you up.”
“So you’re a big whiskey drinker now, are you?”
“Not really. But we do have some feverish parties around the dorms on weekends. I guess I have indulged a little too much at times—and I’ve learned to enjoy a good cigar once in a while.”
“Why don’t you just lay off, okay?”
“What?”
“I don’t want to go away to school and come back a big phony. That’s what you’re acting like.”
Cecil turned in the booth and leaned against the wall at the end of the seat. He smiled. He looked strange with his hair out of his eyes. “I guess I have changed in some ways. I hardly realize it.”
“You realize it, all right. You’ve been gone three months, and now you’re trying to act like you’re some ‘man of the world.’ Can’t you be in a place like that and still be a Mormon?”
LaRue watched Cecil. She could see his confusion, his attempt to keep up this new manner of his, and yet to handle the challenge. “I don’t know about that, LaRue. I don’t suppose that was the main goal I was trying to achieve.”
“What you mean is, you didn’t try. Did you even go to church?”
“I heard there’s a branch in Boston, but no, I didn’t ever go over to it.”
“You knew you wouldn’t before you ever got there. That’s one of the reasons you left.”
“LaRue, you really won’t have any idea what it’s like until you go away yourself. All the things that people make such a big thing of here just aren’t that important to me now. I haven’t turned into a drunk, if that’s what you think, but for a man to take a drink once in a while is hardly a matter of any great importance. Around here we’ve almost made a religion of a few silly little health rules.”
“And you’re above that now?”
“LaRue, please. You sound like your dad. What does a cup of coffee have to do with theology? I can’t imagine that God, if there is such a fellow, cares one way or the other about it.”
“So you’ve made up your mind about that? You don’t believe in God now?”
He let his hand swing, as if to dismiss the matter, but LaRue could hear a certain tightness in his voice now. “I haven’t known what to believe about that for a long time. If there is a God, I certainly don’t think he’s some man in the sky.”
“At least you weren’t making fun of such things last year.”
“I’m not making fun of God. I’m making fun of the way people think around here. Mormons act like they have the corner on truth, and yet, when you get to the east coast, no one has even heard of them. Or when people have, the only thing they know is that it’s some weird little cult that used to practice polygamy, and probably still does.”
“So what do you say about that? Do you tell them that’s not how it is, or do you let them go on thinking it?”
“I really don’t talk about it. I’m not out there to do missionary work.”
“I don’t like you anymore, Cecil.”
“Oh, come on, LaRue. Don’t be so adolescent.” The waitress brought the coffee and the root beer, set them down, and left a little check next to Cecil’s coffee at the same time. As soon as she walked away, Cecil shifted in his seat to face his coffee. “Talk to me in a year, when you’ve been away for a while,” he said. “See how you feel about things then.”
“If I’m going to come back acting like you, I don’t want to leave.”
“LaRue, listen to me. This place is a strange little aberration. No one thinks like people here. No one is so close-minded and so cocksure that they have all the truth. Once you get away from here, Utah seems mostly just comic: all these people out here in the middle of nowhere, talking about the world as though Salt Lake is the center of the universe and everyone else is in outer darkness. This is just an ugly little sagebrush valley, and Mormons pretend it’s God’s green earth. In Boston or New York or London no one even knows that Salt Lake exists, and they wouldn’t care if they did.”
“So that means the Church isn’t true? Is that what you’re saying?”
Cecil had poured a couple of spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and now was stirring it in, the spoon making little scraping noises against the cup. “True? Oh come on, LaRue. If some little sect claims itself to be God’s true religion, what does that matter to Catholicism or Buddhism or Judaism—or any of the other great religions of the world? It’s like an anthill proclaiming itself a mountain and then never going to see what a real mountain looks like.”
“So the bigger a religion is, the more likely it is to be true?”
“No. The truth is there is no one truth. There are all sorts of truths to all sorts of people. Or better put, all sorts of superstitions, each designed for its own culture. And that’s fine. I just think it becomes laughable when some little tribe proclaims itself the pipeline from God for the entire universe.”
Cecil was back on top now. His voice had taken back its full, deep authority. LaRue was angry, but even more, frustrated by his assumption that he had all the answers. But she said, softly, “Cecil, Christ only taught a few people. That’s how it all started—just a little flock of followers who had to take the truth to the rest of the world. Don’t you believe in Christ?”
She watched the air go out of him, and then he said, much more meekly, “LaRue, I don’t know right now. He taught good things. But I don’t know whether he was the Son of God. I suppose I don’t believe that right now. But I’m not saying I’ve made up my mind forever.”
“I like you when you sound like yourself, Cecil. So don’t try to act like a big shot. It’s ugly.”
He took a long breath, and as he exhaled, his shoulders slumped a little. “I don’t mean to do that. It’s just . . . I don’t know, LaRue. All those years, growing up here, I felt like an outsider. Out there, I have friends; I’m accepted. I just wanted you to know that I’m not a nobody anymore.”
“Just remember, Cecil, no matter what happens, or what you do, you’ll always be a nobody to me.”
He laughed, bu
t the old sadness had returned to his eyes. “Actually, I know that, LaRue. I know it better than anything.” Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters were singing their big hit, “Don’t Fence Me In,” only just audible over all the noise, the laughing and talking.
LaRue thought of saying she was sorry, but she didn’t know what the words would imply. She couldn’t help it that she didn’t love him. But she did like the Cecil she remembered, and all the things he had said today were filling her head, scaring her much more than he could have realized. She was afraid to leave this valley. Maybe she couldn’t leave and come back as LaRue. And yet, what frightened her just as much was the idea of not leaving. What if she spent her whole life wondering what the world might have done to her if only she had let herself experience it?
When LaRue got home, she wanted to be alone. She wanted to go up to her room and do some thinking. The last thing she wanted was to find Beverly standing at the front window, looking upset, and then running out to the front porch. “LaRue,” she shouted, “Bobbi’s in the hospital. Something’s wrong. She’s losing her baby. She might have to have an operation.”
“How do you know?”
“Mom called. She’s gone to the hospital. I want to go too.”
“Which hospital?”
“LDS.”
“How would we get there, Beverly? The bus would take forever. Does Dad know?”
But LaRue saw a car approaching, and she realized it was Wally’s. She and Beverly ran down the steps and out toward the curb. Wally stepped from his car quickly and said, “Did Mom call you?”
“Yes,” Beverly said. “Are you going to the hospital?”
“Yes, I am.” He hurried around the car, his overcoat open and spreading like a cape. “Richard called at the dealership. He wanted Dad to go over and help him give Bobbi a blessing. But Dad wasn’t there, so I’m going. I just stopped by to get some consecrated oil.”
“Can we go with you?” Beverly asked.
“I don’t think you can see Bobbi, Bev, but if you want to ride over, that’s fine with me.”
“Yes, I want to go.”
“How bad is this?” LaRue asked. “Is this dangerous to Bobbi?”
