The Gates of Babylon (19 page)

Smoot had washed up and changed his clothing, and after blessing the food, he let one of his daughters serve him, then ate in silence. He responded to his wives with grunts and snapped a
response in the affirmative when one of his daughters came in from the kitchen to ask if the children could eat yet. When the girl left, he glared down at his mashed potatoes.

Donna Lyn started bragging about Lillian’s piano playing again. As the woman talked around her daughter’s protests, Fernie leaned over to Eliza and whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

No explanation necessary. If Smoot was going to pull off the sale before Jacob returned, he had to move tonight. He must have already set things in motion, in fact. It was growing dark outside the windows, and the longer they kicked around here, chatting and eating, the shorter time grew.

So they would leave. Then what? How to stop Smoot’s plans? Say they took rifles to each of the three main granaries in town to guard them, gathering other women from the council. If the men showed up, would they start a shootout with their own husbands and fathers? No.

Maybe Eliza should warn Chip Malloy instead. With his armed men, the USDA agent had the strength to guard the food. But then he would know, wouldn’t he? Know that men in Blister Creek were scheming to steal back their food, and that would spin off all sorts of unpleasant side effects, many of which mirrored the exact problem they were trying to avoid in the first place.

There was one other possibility.

“Elder Smoot,” Eliza said in a loud voice that cut over the top of Sister Donna Lyn’s chatter.

Conversation died. Forks paused mid-bite. Smoot’s frown deepened, but he looked at her for the first time since the confrontation in the dining room.

“Since you are hell bent on defying my brother,” Eliza said, “perhaps you could share why you’re giving our supplies to the enemy.”

Donna Lyn looked horrified. “Eliza, you’re a guest in this house.”

“Let her talk, Mom,” Lillian said.

The older woman pursed her lips. “And perhaps
you
should go eat with the children if you don’t know better than to talk back.”

Anger flashed over Lillian’s face and something seemed to snap. “This is none of your business, so I suggest you keep your mouth shut.”

“Lillian!”

“Be quiet, Sister,” Eliza said to Donna Lyn. “I mean it. Not another word.” She glared at the other sister wives. “From any of you.”

“Answer Eliza’s question,” Fernie said in a calm voice, addressing Elder Smoot. “My husband will want an explanation.”

He took his napkin off his lap, wiped his beard, then set the napkin next to his plate. He rose to his feet and pulled on Elder Johnson’s arm until the older man stood, somewhat reluctantly it seemed. Smoot snapped his fingers at his sons, who rose at once.

“You are not leaving,” Eliza said. “Not until you swear to give up your evil, stupid plan.”

Smoot picked up his plate, as if he meant to eat somewhere in peace, maybe his workshop in the garage or locked in his bedroom. Instead he flung it toward the wall. It spun like a Frisbee, flinging off potatoes and gravy, and smashed into the wall below a framed print of Joseph Smith. It fell in pieces to the floor.

Wives sat with looks of horror, mortification, or fear. Children stared from the other room, but none entered or spoke.

Eliza rose and tugged at Lillian’s sleeve until she rose, too.

“Someone bring my sister’s wheelchair, please,” Eliza said.

Elder Smoot looked at his wives. “Do we have a guest room prepared? These women will be staying the night.”

Eliza kept her voice calm. “We are not staying the night. We are leaving this minute.”

“No, I am afraid I can’t allow that. Murial, Donna Lyn, the guest rooms.”

The two women hurried from the room.

Eliza rose to her feet with her pulse pounding in her head. She nodded to her companions. “Sisters, it’s time to go.”

Where was Fernie’s wheelchair? One of the Smoot kids had hauled it off. But where?

Elder Smoot blocked the doorway. “You’re guests. Only for tonight. You can leave first thing in the morning.” He sounded more certain with every passing sentence. “And if you think about forcing your way out, I’ve got four teenage boys, and my wives will do what I tell them.” He gave Lillian a hard look. “They know where their loyalties lie.”

“Elder Smoot,” Eliza said. “Think about this carefully.”

“I have, believe me.”

The pounding of her pulse had reached a roar. It was like the violence that had swept through her when she’d crushed a man’s skull and suddenly everything in the room looked like a weapon—the steak knives, the candlesticks, even the plates. Her eyes swept to the carving knife on the serving platter, with bits of dripping
meat still clinging to the serrated edge where they had been violently torn from a hunk of flesh.

Fernie grabbed her wrist, and Eliza blinked and looked down to see her sister staring up at her, wide-eyed and alarmed.

“I’ll stay,” Fernie said. “I don’t want to, but I don’t have much choice without my wheelchair.”

“Fernie, no,” Eliza said.

“See?” Smoot said quickly. “That’s reasonable. Sit down and eat, ladies. I’m leaving—I won’t be bothering you again unless you try something stupid.”

“But I’ve got four children at home,” Fernie said.

“So? Abraham’s wives still live there. His teenage daughters. They can look after your kids for one night.”

“Jake is still breastfeeding at night,” Fernie insisted. “He can’t fall asleep without nursing, and he nurses first thing in the morning, too. I don’t want my milk to dry up.”

Smoot looked uncomfortable. “I already told you, I can’t let you leave.”

“Then send someone to my home,” Fernie said. “You have to anyway, or people will come looking for us. Tell my son Daniel to bring the baby here. And a diaper bag.”

“Not Daniel. Your daughter, yes. Son, no.”

Fernie shook her head. “Daniel has medicine he takes every evening.”

“What kind of medicine?”

“Elder Smoot,” she said firmly, but without anger. “That is his mother’s business and his father’s, not yours.”

Even though Fernie was taking a stand, Eliza was suspicious that she was giving in too easily. She was planning something
and using her reputation for being a peacemaker as cover. But what?

When Smoot still looked uncertain, Fernie added, “I’m going to stay, but I have to ask you this. When this is all over, do you want to look reasonable, or do you want to look like a tyrant?”

Elder Johnson cleared his throat from the other end of the table. “It’s not an unreasonable request.”

Elder Smoot nodded, apparently ready to prove himself flexible now that he’d bullied the women into compliance. He turned and gave instructions to one of his daughters.

“Reasonable,” he said when he’d sent her off. “Now keep quiet, all of you, and don’t cause trouble. If you do, I swear before God I will make you suffer, and the consequences be damned.”

Jacob walked down the road at rifle point. Alfred Christianson kept his distance, first ten feet, then twenty, and lengthening to fifty feet over the next hour as the two men continued to walk down the flat, open road that led west from Colorado City. A line of electrical towers stood at intervals next to the road, their silhouettes like sentinels against the darkening sky.

At first Jacob thought his cousin was taunting him by stretching the distance.
Go ahead, make a run for it. I can’t catch you.

It was tempting, but Jacob imagined breaking into a sprint across the open, sagebrush-strewn desert for fifty or a hundred yards, and then a rifle shot would echo across the desert while he went down like a deer with a bullet through the lungs.

The sun sank in front of them, and the light dimmed, and still Alfred kept his distance, even as nightfall and the thick, black clouds left them walking in near darkness.

Keep walking. Your death is down this road.

Chilling words, but with nightfall, Jacob’s chances for escape increased. If only he hadn’t left the others behind, surrounded by armed men, he might have made a run for it.

Finally, when it had grown almost too dark to see, he stopped in the middle of the road and refused to continue.

Alfred drew short about ten feet away. He spoke in a low voice. “Keep going.”

“No.”

“But we’re almost there.”

“Almost to my death? No, thank you. Let me go, Alfred.”

“I can’t.”

“If you’re going to murder me, this is the place,” Jacob said. He chose his next words carefully. “But if you do, my blood will cry up from the earth until I have justice.”

“Please. Keep walking.”

There was something in his voice very different from the manic confidence two miles back. Alfred no longer sounded like a deranged prophet. He sounded scared.

Jacob hesitated, afraid to confront his unhinged cousin, then turned and walked back.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to walk together,” Jacob said. “Whatever you want to show me, we can look at together.”

He drew up next to Alfred’s side and the two stood in silence. The wind moaned across the plain like a child crying out in its sleep.

Alfred was a tall man—at least two inches taller than Jacob, who was over six feet—and strongly built, with broad shoulders, a firm mouth, and a full beard. But his face, obscured by shadows, looked terrified.

“Why are you doing this?” Jacob asked.

“I’m falling, Jacob. I’m in a nightmare, and I’ve stumbled off the cliff and I keep tumbling end over end, knowing I’m asleep and knowing I’ll wake up any moment—I have to. But I never do.”

“What happened back in town? Where is everybody?”

“The army evacuated the people to the refugee camps. Some of us hid until they were gone.”

“But why the fires, the dead horse? The armed men?”

“That’s what I need to show you.”

“On the road.”

“That’s right,” Alfred said. “We’re almost there, and then you’ll see.”

“Almost where?”

“The Valley of the Shadow of Death.”

Jacob reached out a hand. Alfred looked back with a frown, but didn’t resist when Jacob closed his hand on the man’s rifle and took it gently away. Jacob flipped the safety and slung the rifle strap over his shoulder, then walked at Alfred’s side down the road.

They continued for another five minutes or so and then Alfred stopped. A bridge carried the highway over a narrow ravine. Jacob couldn’t see the bottom, but he imagined it was one of these desert gulches, carrying seasonal floodwaters, reduced now to a trickle, maybe twenty or thirty feet below.

“Now you see,” Alfred said.

“I don’t understand. Is the bridge damaged?”

Alfred pointed across the ravine. “Look at the tower on the other side.”

The electrical towers that had been following the road out of town broke their chain at the washed-out bridge, but the one on the far side still stood, now leaning precariously over the gulch. The electrical wires themselves had snapped off, but two objects swung from ropes that dangled from each arm. In the dying light, they looked like swaying mattresses. But Jacob knew, with a sick feeling in his gut, that he was looking at something far more sinister.

“Who are they, Alfred?” he asked quietly.

“My wives.” Alfred’s voice choked. “It’s my fault. I sent them out. I promised they would be safe if they crossed the gulch. And I told them that when they found you—”

“Me?”

“Don’t you see? It didn’t matter if they were women. They hung them anyway. Those heartless… they—” Alfred stopped as his voice broke. He swallowed hard. “The mothers of my children. Who would do such a thing? As God is my witness, those women were innocent. I’m the guilty one. It was me, I—” He stopped again, tried to speak, but was unable to continue.

Jacob stared at his cousin, convinced the man was out of his mind with grief. But what about the motorcyclist in the dunes, and the man in the camper? And why did Alfred lead him out here on foot? None of this made sense.

Whatever it was, Jacob didn’t feel safe. He grabbed his cousin’s arm and pulled him away from the grisly scene. The man backed away, his eyes fixed on those dark shapes swinging and twisting in the wind.

“Alfred,” Jacob said in a sharp voice. “Turn around. Now.”

The man turned with a visible shudder. As he lurched away, he hunched his shoulders and swayed. He let out a single sob.

Jacob kept going for several minutes before he stopped Alfred. His cousin seemed a little stronger.

“Listen to me,” Jacob said. “We have got to get across that bridge. Are you telling me someone will kill us if we try?”

“Nobody can cross. If you had kept going, they would have killed you.”

“Who would try to kill us? Alfred?”

“I saved your life. You see?”

“But I still have to get over.”

“And now you have to save me in return. And the others. And our families.”

“I don’t have time for this. Will you speak clearly?”

Alfred gave him a bewildered look. “How am I not being clear? We’re trapped. We don’t know how to get out. I prayed to the Lord for deliverance and he sent you.”