Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned (6 page)

“My wife comes from pioneer stock,” Jacob said. “One of her something-great-grandmas gave birth in a covered wagon while the caravan was under fire from a hostile tribe of Sioux. Twenty minutes after childbirth, the woman was up and firing a gun. Fernie will be fine.”

“There is a midwife on hand,” Miriam said slowly. “And she’s smart enough to get herself to the hospital if things go wrong. As long as she’s good with it.”

They crested the last hill, and Zarahemla came into view. The compound looked more fortress-like than ever. He’d ordered the
doors reinforced with iron, and they’d completed the new wing, which had a bell tower. Jacob had meant it as a decorative touch, but it looked more like the inner keep of a castle. One night, after two bearded men showed up and started proclaiming the end of the world, he’d asked someone to keep a night watch. After a while, he couldn’t stand it anymore, and simply ordered the front doors locked and the night watch ended.

Someone had put planters just outside the gates, built of mortared fieldstone, each one eight feet long and three feet high. Honeybees visited the rows of marigolds and bunched pansies. At least that looked welcoming, but people talked about the planters blocking a hypothetical government attack with tanks. It was ridiculous. What was next, a drawbridge? Snipers on the roof?

They parked outside the gates, next to a four-ton Chevy truck and a field tractor. They entered the compound on foot, scattering chickens as they passed through the gates. It had rained the previous night, and a man swept puddles of water from the flagstones toward a drain in the corner of the courtyard. Two women tied tomato plants to a trellis, while a boy on the other side of the raised bed thinned carrots. The cheery sounds of hammering came from deeper in the compound.

We can do this. We can build a real community here.

But only if they were left in peace. And that meant confronting Taylor Junior before the man did something stupid.

And then he thought about Fernie, Daniel, Leah, Nephi, and the thought of leaving his family again made his heart ache.

Jacob stopped his brother and Sister Miriam beneath the arcade. “David and I know the desert stuff—Grandpa Griggs taught us maps, compasses, how to build a fire, anything we’ll
need to survive up there. But I don’t have a clue about surveillance. Can you get some high-powered binoculars, whatever else you might need to spy on this place from a distance?”

“Already got that stuff,” Miriam said. She caught his look and shrugged. “I like to take a look from the compound walls.”

“That’s how people get paranoid,” he said. “You start looking for enemies, and pretty soon you find them.”

“There’s a reason we live in a walled compound.”

“What if I tear down the gates and tell everyone to put locks on their doors instead? What would that hurt?”

“You’re the leader of the church,” she said. “If the Lord tells you to tear down the gates, I’ll support it.”

“If the Lord has an opinion, He hasn’t shared it yet.”

David grinned and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not in the least tempted to take advantage of this power? The Lord could tell you all sorts of useful things, you know. Isn’t that the way it usually goes? The Lord tells the prophet he should have the nicest house, marry the hottest girls in town.”

“Nope. Not tempted,” Jacob said. “Except maybe to tell everyone that the Lord made it clear that I’m
not
the prophet, if I thought I could get away with it.”

“That’s why the Lord chose him to be prophet,” Miriam said.

Jacob sighed. “Come on, let’s find my wife and tell her I’m going back to the desert.”

“The more I think about it,” Miriam said, “the more I think she’ll be okay with it.”

“Yes, I know. That’s the problem.”

“I had a dream,” Fernie announced as they dressed for breakfast the following day.

Jacob looked up from tying his shoes and had to fight to keep the frown from his face. “A dream, or a
dream
?”

She grabbed a brush and worked at Leah’s hair. “A
dream.
”

“I had a dream last night, too. Something about a flying tortoise and a monkey eating a chimichanga.”

Fernie gave him a look.

“I guess you’d better tell me about it.”

“In just a second,” she said. “Could you change Nephi’s diaper?” Then, to Daniel and Leah, “Go find Uncle David. If Sister Miriam hasn’t already, tell him it’s time to get up.” She closed the shutters and the door as soon as the older kids had gone.

“That serious?” he asked.

“I don’t want people gossiping that I’m trying to steady the ark.”

Jacob shrugged. “If I can’t take advice from my wife, who can I listen to?”

“You could ordain counselors, for one. It has been months—people are getting anxious.”

“What about the dream?” he asked, impatient. “Did you see anything about Dark Canyon?”

“I wish it were that obvious. We were at the big house in Blister Creek, and you were arm-wrestling your father at the dinner table.”

“I don’t have to be Joseph in the court of Pharaoh to interpret that one.”

“That’s not the weird thing,” Fernie said. “Somehow, I saw—you know how you just know things in dreams?—that your father was cheating. There was someone standing behind his shoulder, helping him. I was sitting in a chair by the window and I couldn’t see who it was, but I know it was a being from the other side of the veil. I don’t know if it was an angel or an evil spirit.”

Jacob finished changing Nephi’s diaper, then snapped up his onesie and pulled on the boy’s pants. “Then what happened?”

Instead of answering, she took the pitcher by the desk and dampened a washcloth, which she handed to Jacob. He used it to scrub Nephi’s face. The toddler sputtered and tried to pull away, then gave his father a cranky look before reaching for his mama.

Jacob handed over the boy. “And?” he asked. “Are you going to tell me what happened? Or is that when you woke up?”

“I couldn’t see who was helping him beat you, because I couldn’t get out of my chair. It was like my legs had fallen asleep,
or someone had tied my feet to the chair legs.” She frowned. “One other thing. Your father looked sad.”

“And what do you think it means?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Usually, when I have a dream, I wake up knowing what I need to do. It’s like a message. I can ignore it for a while, but there’s no doubt what it means. This time, I’m not sure, I just know that it means
something.
”

“But you don’t think it means I should stay here?”

“That would be convenient, but no. You need to go to Dark Canyon—you can’t take any chances with this guy.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” He sat down next to her with a sigh and put his hand on her belly.

She said, “I’m going to Blister Creek when you leave. I’ll have the baby there.”

“Why?”

“I want my mother helping with the delivery, and your father doesn’t like his wives coming to Zarahemla. He thinks they’ll pick up bad habits, like talking back to their husband. Which means I have to go there.”

“I’d rather not have my baby born in Blister Creek,” he said.

She gave him a raised eyebrow. “That sounds superstitious.”

He moved his hand to a different spot, waiting for a kick that didn’t come. All quiet at the moment. The baby was probably as exhausted with people groping Fernie’s belly as she was. Fernie couldn’t walk twenty feet without running into a cousin, aunt, or random old lady who wanted to both touch and offer commentary on how large, how
huge
, she was looking.

“I’m probably too big, right?” she said.

“What? You’re no bigger than you should be, a week out from your due date.” But then he caught the glint in her eye and smiled.

“I mean, it’s getting awkward, right?” she said. “If you’re even inspired at all, considering.” She thumped her belly with one thumb, and both of them laughed at the ripe melon sound it made.

“I’m inspired,” he assured her. “But aren’t you forgetting someone?” He flicked his eyes to Nephi and back.

“This little guy? If David and Miriam are really thinking of getting married and starting a family, don’t you think they could use a little child-tending practice? I’ll be right back.”

She left, barefoot, then returned a minute later and latched the door behind her. “I told them my feet were killing me, and you were going to give me a foot rub before we join the breakfast mob.”

“Did they buy it?”

She grabbed his shirt and dragged him back to the bedroom. “I don’t really care. Get your clothes off, mister. We’re on the clock.”

It wasn’t easy making love to a woman with what felt like an overinflated beach ball between them. The situation called for a little creativity. Thankfully, human imagination proved greater than the obstacle in question.

Later, walking out to breakfast, Jacob felt a larger number of eyes than usual watching them.

“How are your feet?” David asked when the couple sat at the table where David and Miriam were feeding Jacob and Fernie’s children.

“Hmm?” Fernie said. “Oh, they’re better, thanks. Water retention, it’s one of the worst things about pregnancy.”

“A massage would help the swelling go down, I imagine,” Miriam said.

Jacob had busied himself cleaning up the mess Nephi had made of his hash browns and scrambled eggs. He looked up to see David and Miriam giving perfectly innocent smiles and Fernie blushing as she picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her dress.

* * *

Elder Kimball broke down and cried when he entered Blister Creek. He stopped the car, got out, and hunched over for several minutes, letting the pent-up emotions of the past five years spill out. When it ended, he leaned against the car, wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and then stopped to listen to the breeze and the quiet tick of the engine.

He’d driven in from the east, felt a burning, almost painful sensation the first time he’d looked over the Ghost Cliffs and into the valley. Irrigated fields gleamed in a patchwork of sage and emerald. Red rock stood like castle walls to protect east and south. The temple, its white spire gleaming in the sunlight. And now, down in the valley, he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“This is my home.” He leaned against the car for support. “This is where I belong. Nowhere else.” There was nobody else with him, and his words hung in the air, then died.

But it took most of the afternoon before he dared enter the town itself. He drove around the edges, sticking to ranch roads, and twice turning the car around and driving for the hills when he saw a woman standing on a porch, watching him. There were several abandoned houses on this side of the valley, and he pulled
up to one, thought about hiding the car in the barn and waiting in the house while he built his courage. But no, it wouldn’t be any easier to face Abraham Christianson tomorrow.

Kimball took a deep breath, turned the car around, and made for the house. A surreal feeling washed over him as he drove up to his old home, with its many wings and outbuildings. The front room dated to the nineteenth century, when a group of polygamist wives fled into the wilderness with their children, just ahead of the federal authorities. The house had expanded again in the 1920s, then in the ’50s, the ’70s, and again in the last twenty years as Kimball’s own family and wealth had grown.

But the building and land had always belonged to the church, not to the family. Kimball was barely in handcuffs in the back of an FBI car before Abraham Christianson had organized the boys of the Aaronic Priesthood to haul the Kimball possessions to the curb.

The farmhouse showed a fresh coat of paint on the white clapboards and some new plantings in the flowerbeds around the house, but otherwise looked the same. Even the front door was still a burnt orange, like a sunset after a dust storm. Why wouldn’t Abraham make the house his own, add his own wings, put in a new stone path, or build a new shed or greenhouse? At least repaint the damn door.

Or maybe that was the point.

All of this is mine,
Abraham was telling him.
Your home, your ranch, even your wives and offspring, all for me to dispose of as I see fit.

Kimball fought down those rebellious feelings. Abraham Christianson would require complete surrender, that he uproot
every bit of pride until his soul was a freshly plowed field, ready to receive whatever its master decided to plant in its soil.

“Plow my heart, Lord,” he prayed.

And then he walked toward the door. He’d been so focused on the house and his own turbulent thoughts, that he’d barely noticed the row of women and teenage girls sitting beneath the veranda, sewing, peeling apples, or writing in journals. His own wives and daughters had once sat in the same place. In fact, he’d built the enormous porch at Charity’s urging.

The women stopped what they were doing and stared as he approached. One of Abraham Christianson’s wives—was that Fernie’s mother?—had been sitting in a rocking chair, shelling peas. Even in her midfifties she was still a handsome woman with a pleasant demeanor, and when her first husband abandoned her for a gentile woman, Kimball had angled to have the woman added to his own wives. She and her children ended up with Abraham instead. It hadn’t been a complete loss, as he eventually gained Fernie for himself, the woman’s oldest daughter from her first marriage.

Somewhere along the way, Fernie’s mother had picked up the Christianson arrogance, and she displayed it now as she rose at Kimball’s approach and went into the house without a word or a glance in his direction.

He stood for a long moment at the base of the steps, staring up at the others. “Is, uhm, is Brother Abraham here?”

But before they could answer, the door opened and there he was. He seemed taller, stronger, sterner than Kimball remembered. His face looked carved from the cliffs. Kimball bowed his head as the other man stepped out onto the porch.

“I heard you were out of prison,” Abraham said. “I wondered when you’d come slithering back. What do you want?”

“Forgiveness and mercy.”