Destroying Angel (12 page)

On the last page she’d written the quote later inscribed on her tombstone:
Lay Me Up One Thousand Bushels of Wheat.
And then nothing.

“Why did she do that?” he said.

“Who, Grandma Cowley?”

“No, Rebecca. She gave me the diary, told me it explained what she was doing at Grandma Cowley’s cabin. It doesn’t say anything of the sort. Doesn’t even finish telling what happened with the federal marshal.”

“There has to be more.” She took back the diary. “Look at it. It starts three months after they arrived, like she needed to get it all down.”

“Maybe their husbands showed up the next day. Maybe that’s why she never finished.”

“I don’t think so,” Fernie said. “She wrote all this stuff in the back and then started back at the beginning with the journal. Look at the dates. She ran out of room, that’s all. There’s got to be another diary. Maybe Rebecca doesn’t have it and she’s hoping you do.”

“Or maybe she does. And she wants me to ask.”

Daniel moaned in his sleep. Jacob and Fernie fell silent, waited to see if he’d cry out. But then he rolled over and the snores returned.

Jacob tucked the diary into the nightstand and retrieved the reader he’d found in Grandma Cowley’s cellar all those years ago. He opened it to page sixty-four, where Grandma had underlined a passage.

There’s a monster at first seems an angel of light

And he flies on beautiful wings

Jacob pulled back on the reins when he saw the woman holding a rifle. He maneuvered his horse to keep the boys behind him and approached slowly. The woman shaded her eyes with one hand, then appeared to relax when they got closer.

“Oh, it’s you.”

“Who were you expecting?” Jacob asked. He climbed down from the saddle and then helped Daniel and Diego off the second horse.

“Nobody. That was the problem.” Rebecca tucked the rifle discreetly inside the front door and pulled the door shut.

The highlights had faded from her hair as it had grown out. Its natural color was a shade of auburn. Even without makeup she was an attractive woman, still relatively young—perhaps a few years older than Jacob—and he supposed it was a good idea for her
to keep a gun at hand if she insisted on living so far out here by herself.

Something bulky and machinelike sat on the porch beneath a tarp and drew his attention. She followed his gaze but didn’t address his curiosity.

“Out for a ride with the boys?” she asked.

“Target shooting with the rifles. Besides, the house is a construction site and they were getting underfoot.” Jacob tousled Daniel’s hair. He was sweaty and dusty from the ride. “Lead the horses down to the creek and let them graze. You boys can take a swim. I’ll be a few minutes.” When they’d taken the horses away, he said, “A kid who is with Dad can’t get in trouble. Idle hands and all that.”

She smiled. “So you put rifles in their hands?”

“Better shooting aluminum cans than birds and stop signs. Anyway, Diego is fine. I’m keeping him around to help keep an eye on Daniel.”

“Is Daniel giving you grief?”

“He’s a good kid—it’s not that I don’t trust him.” He chose his words carefully. “My son has what you might call a Kimball problem. Do you know anything about that?”

“I might.”

“Like Annabelle Kimball. It seems to run in her line. Usually the boys, but not always.” He pulled out Grandma Cowley’s diary. “Time for answers. Don’t you think?”

“Maybe.” She took the book and tucked it into her apron. “Do you know anything about distilling?”

“I know the gist, but Blister Creek isn’t exactly a hotbed of expertise in alcohol.”

“Ethanol. Wood alcohol. Not for drinking.”

She pulled the canvas tarp from the bulky object on the porch, which turned out to be a surprisingly sophisticated apparatus of tanks, boilers, and copper piping.

“That’s quite a setup. Whatever for?”

“All sorts of things,” she said. “Medicinal purposes. Fuel. A little tinkering and you could run tractors on the stuff. Let’s call it a hedge against the disruption of gasoline.”

“I can’t tell if you’re playing with me,” Jacob said, “or if you’re the nuttiest of the nutcases around here.”

“Am I a—what did you call it?—Last Dazer, you mean?” She shrugged. “Right now I’m experimenting. I’ve got a stack of books about going off the grid, and I’m trying to teach myself all the old skills. When you and I were born they barely had electricity in Blister Creek. Now half the town has cable TV, Internet, cell phones. That’s fine, so long as it lasts. But when the new tech fails, it would be useful if we remembered the old ways too.”

“Plenty of people still know. Well, maybe not distilling. But we might be the most self-sufficient community this side of the Amish. Let’s keep the still quiet, though. Don’t want people to think you’re making moonshine.”

She pulled the canvas back into place. “Want to take a look around?”

“Sure, but we’ll talk about the diary before I leave.”

“If you wish.”

She led him from the porch and they circled the house, where she showed him the work of the past year. It was impressive: raised vegetable beds, chicken coops and pigsties, a millrace and
waterwheel downstream from where the boys were playing. “You did all this yourself?”

“I’m a hard worker. And there’s no electricity, no visitors. No distractions.”

When they reached the orchard, he expressed surprise that the blossoms on her young peach trees hadn’t been destroyed by frost. She told him about the microclimate near the Ghost Cliffs. Yellow Flats baked in the summer, which was why the most people settled on higher ground in the center of the valley, but in this particular case the frost had missed the orchard, even as it decimated fruit trees elsewhere in Blister Creek. Then she showed him the half-built dairy barn. No cows yet, but she’d be ready by fall.

“It’s good work, but I’m still wondering why.”

“You’re a hard man to please, Jacob Christianson. I’m out here every day, sunup to sundown. It was a worthless patch of scrub, long gone to seed, before I got here.”

“You’re proud of this, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. But you’re not impressed.”

“I
am
impressed. I’m also skeptical of your motives.”

Rebecca shrugged. “I can’t help that. That’s your nature.”

“You’ve been yanking me around since last summer. Don’t you think it’s time for answers?”

“I did give you answers. I gave you Grandma Cowley’s diary—everything’s in there. If you were anxious, it took long enough to read it. I’m assuming you just finished, or you’d have been here a long time ago.”

“I’ve been busy too, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Organizing your kingdom. It’s the Blister Creek way. The new king must consolidate his rule.”

“You think I want this? I’m expected to be a prophet, a mayor, a police chief, a judge, a patriarch, and a business leader.” He counted them off on his fingers. “But I’m not any of those things. I’m a doctor. Show me a broken bone, and I’ll set it. Bring in someone with congestive heart failure, and I know the right medication to prescribe. That other stuff? I’m making it up as I go.”

“So step down. Give Stephen Paul Young or Zeke Smoot the keys to the kingdom. Let them wear the mantle.” When he didn’t answer, she said, “So you do think you’re more fit to rule Blister Creek.”

“At this point, I’m less
unfit
. Let’s leave it there.”

“Great, so we’re agreed.”

“But let’s say I did step down and turned the church over to some other man. What would he say about this little setup? You’re a squatter—he might run you out of town and let it return to scrub. Or maybe he’d like it. Could be a valuable addition to some man’s property. And you’re not that old yet. About forty, right? You might still give someone a child or two.”

“You mean my womb hasn’t yet filled up with sand and tumbleweeds? You’re too kind.”

“Nobody asked you or invited you. You showed up. And if you don’t like the patriarchal attitude, you are free to go at any time.”

By now they had circled the entire property and stood overlooking the two boys, who had stripped to their underwear and took turns leaping from a rock overhanging the deepest part of the swimming hole.

“What about Eliza?” Rebecca asked. “Is she free to go too?”

“She’s more than free. I’ve encouraged her to leave. She feels she still has business in Blister Creek.”

“You know what I think? You’re enabling her. David and Miriam too. Maybe even me.”

“Enabling?”

“When Abraham was in charge, there was no fooling yourself. A woman knew her place. A man too, for that matter. Now anyone can convince herself that things are changing. You’ve softened the edges of Blister Creek.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

“You won’t be around forever, Jacob. What then?”

“I’m barely in my thirties.”

“And if you’re lucky, you’ll live to see your forties.”

“Oh, brother. Thank you for that.”

“Just stating the obvious,” she said.

It was time to push for answers, but he found himself strangely reluctant to abandon the verbal battlefield. Rebecca shared something with Eliza, Miriam, and Fernie. Those three women prodded, pushed, asked him difficult questions. They would go back and forth with him, each in her own way, questioning his motives and his faith.

Rebecca studied his face. “What is that? Why are you smiling?”

“I’m realizing something about myself,” he said. “I think I prefer the company of women.”

She laughed. “Apropos of nothing. And you’ve just discovered this?”

“But can’t you see the irony? I’m the first leader of Blister Creek with only one wife. All those other men collected women like they were one more herd to manage.”

“But were they like that naturally, or did the system shape them that way?” Rebecca asked.

“I don’t know. It’s a good question. I suppose I’d better answer it for myself, before it happens to me too.”

She looked pleased as they made their way back onto the porch. “You’re ready for the second diary.”

“I knew it didn’t end there. I knew there was more.”

“Come on in.”

She opened the front door and ushered him inside. He could hardly believe it was the same place. She’d sanded the pine floors, replaced the windows, rebuilt Grandma Cowley’s bookshelves. A pot of flowers and a framed photograph sat on the mantel of the rebuilt fireplace. He took a closer look at the picture and blinked with surprise.

It was a picture of his father as a young man, standing in front of the temple, holding the hands of two children. One child was Jacob, perhaps four or five years old. The other was a girl of about ten. He studied the picture and his confusion deepened.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Are you my sister?”

“No, I am not.”

He pointed to the picture. “But that’s you. Why would—?”

“I’m not,” Rebecca said again, her voice more firm this time. She turned and slipped Grandma Cowley’s diary onto a bookshelf. She came back with a similar diary, shorter and thicker. “This is where it gets hard, Jacob. This is where it gets personal.”

He tore his gaze from the picture of his father. “I know that already.” He held out his hand, but she didn’t give it to him.

“You do?”

“There’s a monster at first seems an angel of light. And he flies on beautiful wings.”

“You’ve seen the evil spirit?”

“I don’t believe in the dark angel,” Jacob said. “I know what you’re thinking, and I know what Grandma Cowley thought. She thought Annabelle Kimball called it down, or maybe it was already here in the valley when they arrived, hiding in Witch’s Warts. It raped Annabelle. Grandma cast it out. Let’s say it came back. Appeared again and again over the years. Always to the Kimballs though.”

“Your father saw it when he was a teenager.”

“He did?”

“Yes, right here at Yellow Flats, when he was visiting Grandma Cowley. Your brother Enoch saw it too. And many others.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Jacob said. “We’re all family here. We’re all Cowleys and Christiansons and Kimballs. Who isn’t related? Three people in the whole valley—Steve Krantz, Miriam, Diego. Everyone else is a cousin several times over.”

“You think it’s breeding?”

“It would explain a lot. Grandma Cowley was brilliant—that’s why they chose her to lead even though she was only eighteen. She could do the stuff you’re doing here, but she made it up out of her own head—she didn’t need books. A hundred years later, Eliza is born. Same genes, bred pure. Maybe the Christiansons got a double dose, but those genes are all over Blister Creek.” He took the diary from Rebecca’s hands but didn’t open it yet. “Only there was another strain introduced into the gene pool. The Kimballs. Mental illness. And now, three, four generations later, it’s everywhere, only the Kimballs have it the worst. And my son is a Kimball.”

Rebecca grabbed his arm with a grip so tight it was almost painful. “Jacob, this is serious.”

“You don’t think I know that? It’s happening to my son! Look at Daniel’s brothers. Joshua killed himself. Caleb and Gideon self-destructed. Taylor Junior murdered and maimed dozens of people. I’m terrified. I’ve got to knock this thing out. I have to do something.” He fixed her with a hard look. “And I don’t think you can pray it away.”

“Then what?”

“Drugs if I have to, heaven help me. I’ll dope up my ten-year-old son if it keeps him from throwing himself off a cliff.”

She gradually released her grip. “I heard you speak at church on Sunday.”

“I didn’t see you there.”

“I entered from the back after the sacrament. It was packed, few people noticed me. Not everyone looked pleased to see you put your own brother up as third counselor.”

“They’re not objecting because David is my brother. They’re objecting because he’s a recovering addict and a former Lost Boy.”

“You stick up for the powerless men—I like that. But how about women?”

“I let Charity Kimball back into town. And Eliza runs around town in pants, carrying a sidearm and a badge. And I told Brother Higgs he couldn’t force his daughter to marry my cousin.”