Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned (7 page)

“Of course you do.”

“I know what I’ve done, I won’t deny it. I’ve sold my birthright and eaten with swine. But like the prodigal son, I return humble and ashamed.”

“You’re not my son.”

“But I’m your cousin. That counts for something. And I’m a fellow brother in Christ. A sinner who is begging forgiveness.”

“Taylor Kimball, your sins are beyond my ability to pardon.”

“It wasn’t me, or at least not
just
me, I mean,” he added. “There was an evil spirit. It deceived me. I had to cast it away before my eyes could be opened to the truth.”

“A what?”

“One of Lucifer’s angels. It lied to me. It said God wanted me to do things—terrible things. I’m ashamed, Brother Abraham. I listened to the Spirit, and that’s how I got caught up in the secret combinations of your enemies. No more, it’s gone, it doesn’t bother me anymore.”

“So you were under the influence of an evil spirit, but now you’re not. Is that right?”

“You don’t believe me,” Kimball said as he studied Abraham’s face. “You don’t think there was an angel. You think I’m lying.”

“Oh, I believe you. If you say one of Lucifer’s angels was your companion, I absolutely accept that. It explains so many things. The part I don’t believe is that you are no longer communicating with the evil spirit.”

“Please, I’m begging you.” He climbed the steps and fell to his knees, then grabbed Abraham’s hands. “I’m submitting to your will. I honor and sustain you as my prophet, seer, and revelator. Look at me, I’m nobody. Take me back. I’ll do everything you want.”

Kimball didn’t look at Abraham’s wives, but he could feel disapproval radiating from the porch. After today, they’d never again look at him without seeing the pathetic, groveling sinner. Kimball told himself he didn’t care.

“I’ve never liked you,” Abraham said at last, his voice low and angry. He pulled free from Kimball’s grasp, then hoisted the smaller man to his feet and pulled him down the stairs, away from the women. Halfway to the car, he added, “I didn’t like you when we were boys and they gave you Charity. I knew you weren’t worthy of her. I used to dream that you’d be thrown by a horse, or bit by a rattlesnake somewhere in the backcountry. You should have been expelled from the community, would have been if Uncle Heber hadn’t been maneuvering against me. He was too weak to fight me alone, so he used you. But then he was gone and you were still there, like a rat in the pantry that you can’t trap. You corrupted Blister Creek, spent the last thirty years undermining Zion. You and those Sons of Perdition you have raised. Your son murdered my son. He disemboweled Enoch and defiled the temple. Three of your sons—three!—have tried to rape my daughter. And since your plan collapsed, hundreds of saints have fallen away from the church.”

“I didn’t know, I wasn’t—”

“Quiet!” Abraham roared.

Kimball staggered backward. The muscles on Abraham’s jaw worked up and down, and he clenched his fists. And then, to Kimball’s horror, he raised his right arm to the square. “Taylor Kimball, I cast thee from Zion. Thou art a Son of Perdition, doomed to walk the earth in sorrow. Thy seed shall wither and die, thou shalt wander in the wilderness, blind and dumb, until the coming of the Son of Man. And then thou shalt join thy master in Outer Darkness for time and all eternity. Amen.”

The rebuke was a knife in the gut. Kimball stumbled away, nearly falling, as he fled for the car.
No! He couldn’t, he wouldn’t.

Kimball turned back, shaking. “You’re no prophet, Abraham Christianson! You’re nobody. You’re going to die, I swear it. I’ll kill you myself!”

Kimball waited for Abraham to interrupt him, admit he’d made a mistake. No, that was too much to hope for, but let Abraham argue, make some prophetic claim, some additional threat or condemnation. Let the man bray, a donkey who thinks he’s a prophet.

But Abraham denied him even that satisfaction. Instead, he returned to the house without another word. He didn’t even let the screen door bang shut. The women said nothing, just watched.

Kimball spoke to the door, the one
he’d
painted, to the women in their chairs, on a porch built by
his
hands, where
his
wives and daughters had once sat. “He won’t keep me away. I know what I’ve been promised. I know what is mine.”

* * *

Back in the car, Elder Kimball retreated into the Ghost Cliffs, drove past the reservoir, and then followed Highway 12 east toward Escalante, driving for more than an hour until he had to stop and check his directions. It was getting dark and he had to turn on the light to read the printout from the prison computer. He had to be close.

Boulders littered the ground on the left side of the road, like a giant’s marbles, spilled over the edge of the cliffs above. One of these boulders, maybe the size of a small house, hid Charity’s Winnebago. He drove past the same stretch of road three times before he saw the pair of Joshua trees that stood like sentinels in front of her hiding place, just as she’d said in her letter.

Kimball pulled around the boulder and parked his car. The wind had driven sand halfway up the front two tires of the motor home. A dozen five-gallon water jugs lay stacked against the boulder, half-covered with a blue tarp that filled and deflated in the breeze.

Charity sat on a plastic chair in front of a small campfire. She rose to greet him, but they didn’t hug, just shook hands like two old acquaintances.

“I was expecting you earlier.” She sounded as rough as she looked, her voice dry and rattling. She’d cut her hair short, and instead of brown with gray streaks, it was now gray with white streaks.

“This is terrible,” he said, looking around at the makeshift camp. “I can’t believe nobody will take you in.”

“They’ll take me. Fernie tracked me down last winter to see if I’d join them in Zarahemla. Jacob and Eliza have been here twice.
My sisters in Harmony would take me, and our daughters would take me, the ones who aren’t in Blister Creek.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Blister Creek is my home. I can’t go back if I’m waiting for you. But it hasn’t been so bad. Jessie Lynn drives me into Kanab once a month for supplies.”

“And the rest of the time you sit out here in the desert? Alone?”

“I’m never alone. The Spirit is with me, and I have plenty of time to read the scriptures. Are you hungry?”

He shook his head.

Charity went into the motor home and brought out a second plastic chair. He sat, moving in close to the fire to take some of its warmth. For a moment, he caught a pair of eyes glinting at him from the darkness. He started, and the eyes disappeared.

“A fox,” she said. “The skunks and raccoons don’t come until later.”

“How about other vermin?” he asked. “No, never mind. It doesn’t matter—you won’t be here much longer.”

“You went to Blister Creek? You met with the prophet? What happened?” She leaned forward and an anxious note tinged her voice. Kimball caught a glimpse of the Charity Orrock he remembered, the girl with the mischievous smile and the beautiful eyes, before age and disappointment had ground her down.

“I talked to him,” he said. “I took your advice and I asked his forgiveness.”

“And? What did he say?”

“He rebuked me,” Kimball said. “He said, ‘You and your family are cursed. Your seed will wither and die, and your wives and
children will wander the desert until the coming of the Son of Man.’ And then something about being blinded.”

Were those the exact words? Something close, anyway.

“Oh no,” Charity said, her voice twisted with anguish. “Why would he do that?”

She was still thinking about Abraham, damn her. Forty, fifty years on and she couldn’t stop thinking about their foolish childhood romance.

Once, years ago, after their toddler had drowned in a canal, he’d come upon Charity reading old letters. An icy distance had developed between them after Joel died, and they had simply stared at each other across the bedroom. Charity quietly tucked the letters back in the drawer and he said nothing, but turned around and went downstairs to split wood. Later, when he knew she was at a women-only Relief Society meeting, he returned to the bedroom to search her drawers.

There were eight letters, well worn from being opened and refolded over the years. Silly, chaste declarations of admiration, written in Abraham Christianson’s blocky script. From the dates, he saw they’d all been written during the months between the forced dissolution of the engagement and when Heber Christianson gave Charity to Taylor Kimball instead. Nothing improper in the substance or timing of the letters. Except that she’d kept them, of course.

A phrase in one letter haunted him especially. “I don’t care who else they marry me to now or in the future, Charity Orrock. You and you alone are my eternal companion.”

Had Abraham once deluded himself into believing he was a monogamist? If so, that feeling had passed. He’d certainly married plenty of other wives over the years.

Kimball had taken the letters and tossed them in the fire. He felt no guilt about it.

Charity never asked about the missing letters. She’d probably been relieved, had held on to them out of nostalgia and known she should get rid of them sooner or later. If either Abraham or Charity had still nurtured feelings for each other, surely Abraham Christianson would have claimed her as his own as soon as Elder Kimball went to prison. After all, Jacob Christianson hadn’t waited five minutes before stealing Fernie.

“So what am I supposed to do?” Charity asked. “Live out my days in this motor home? It doesn’t even run anymore, hasn’t moved an inch in three years. I said I’d wait, I’d honor my covenants. But you promised when you got out we could move back to Zion. I could be with my friends, my family, see my sister wives again. What about that, Taylor?”

“I said you weren’t going to stay here, and I meant it. Get your things, put them in my car. We can be out of here in twenty minutes and never come back.”

“And where will we go then? Zarahemla?”

“What is that, a joke?”

“Jacob said he’d take me in. Eliza was kind, too. Fernie lives there, she would welcome me.”

“And live under Jacob Christianson’s thumb? I don’t think so.”

“The True and Living Church might take us in,” she said. “And Jessie Lynn said two of my nephews started a community north of Beaver. Do you know anything about them? Maybe Colorado City?”

“None of those places are safe,” Kimball said.

“What do you mean, safe? Is someone trying to hurt us?”

“It’s time for us to make our choice.”

He stood and walked ten or fifteen feet away from the fire to where he could better see the stars. It was a clear night, and they glittered overhead, thick as snowflakes in a wide band across the sky. A chill gust blew in from the higher desert, and Charity’s tarp flapped where it had come loose. Then the wind died and he could hear the fire crackling and popping once more.

Charity made her way to his side and took his arm. “What kind of choice?”

“I’d forgotten how bright the stars are. Sometimes they’d let us into the yard at night, but there were spotlights everywhere. The first two nights out I spent in towns where you can barely see Venus. But here they’re so close, it’s like we’re clinging to the skin of the earth and hurtling through the heavens.”

“Taylor?”

He turned, looked at her face, reflected in the glow of firelight. “Abraham is a fallen prophet, Charity. The Holy Ghost confirmed it in my heart. He’s like all the others and will be swept away at the coming of the Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord.”

“I don’t know about that, and I don’t care. I just want to go home.”

“He rebuked us. Cast us down. We have no choice but to take the side of his enemies.”

“What enemies? Will you be clear? I can’t understand any of this.”

“We’ll retreat into the wilderness to find the true path—that’s the only solution.”

“I already live in the wilderness, and I don’t want to find anything—I want to go home!”

He took her by the shoulders. “There is no home for us. Not yet, not until we claim it. And we can’t claim it until we’re pure and righteous. Taylor Junior told me that. He was right.”

Her shoulders slumped and she looked to the ground. He pulled her closer and she didn’t resist. She smelled sour, unpleasantly so, but he didn’t push her away. “You’ll see,” he continued. “It will be okay. Just trust in me and I’ll trust in the Lord, and we’ll go home to Blister Creek soon enough.”

“But not now.” It wasn’t a question, it was a resigned statement.

“No, not now. Now we’ll follow our new prophet into the wilderness.”

Jacob walked around the pickup truck, confused. It was a powder-blue Toyota 4x4, one of the older trucks from the ranch. Last time he’d seen it, the truck had been in Harmony, Alberta, but now it had Utah plates and dust had scoured the paint down to metal in places.

“You’re sure?” Miriam asked.

“Positive.”

David wiped his face and the back of his neck with a handkerchief. He wore a canvas hat and mirrored sunglasses. “Come on, Jacob, there have got to be a zillion trucks like that on the road. How do you know it’s his?”

Jacob squatted in front of the bumper. “I made this dent myself. I was coming back to the ranch one night and didn’t see that someone had shut the gates in front of the cattle guard. The truck was
new then. I was only nineteen. Father called me a blundering idiot and threatened to tear up my driver’s license.”

“Still doesn’t mean it belongs to Abraham,” Miriam said. “Old truck like this, he probably sold it.”

He cupped his hands to the side window and looked into the cab. “That looks like a pair of my father’s work gloves, shoved behind the cup holder. And a John Deere hat between the seat and the door—I think that’s his, too.”

Jacob tried the door, thinking to check the registration, but it was locked. He glanced at David and Miriam, who both wore frowns.

They’d spent the morning wandering the southern perimeter of the ranges, shunning any approach that looked like it saw regular traffic. They tried a series of meandering ranch roads until they found one that led directly toward the canyons that opened like dark gashes in the high stretches of the Colorado Plateau. It took almost an hour for the Land Rover to inch the four or five miles to the end of the road.