The 19th Wife (51 page)

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

M
ARCH
16, 1875

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

Even we do not know what to say. On Friday last, the Lord’s Lion, fresh from a good night’s sleep in the United States Penitentiary, emerged with a changed heart. He marched into Judge McKean’s courtroom to declare, Sir, you are right! Brigham paid the fees, in doing so admitting Ann Eliza had been his wife and she was due a proper alimony.

Now, in any other part of the world, this would be an unremarkable event. Yet this is Deseret, and oh, how we enjoy its many ironies! In accepting Brigham’s gold, and releasing him from custody, Judge McKean acknowledged Ann Eliza, and all the rest, numbers one through nineteen, and beyond—all of them to be lawful wives. Thus, for our slower readers, a federal judge, appointed by the President himself, had given legal claim to polygamy.

Oh, what we would have paid to be present when the news reached old Grant wheezing in his bed. How his mustaches must have fluttered from his bellows! The General fumed, orders were given, and in swift time Judge McKean has been removed from the court, replaced by a jurist with a finer understanding of the case’s subtleties. Summarily, Judge McKean’s original decisions were reversed. Brigham Young was found to owe Ann Eliza nothing, for she never was, and never will be, his wife. The case was dismissed, the parties thrown out, and by God, the General screamed at poor Mrs. Grant, these Mormons are going to be the end of me!

This, as far as we can tell, is the end of the tale of the 19th Wife. To all, Godspeed!

WE MET ONLINE

It was past midnight when I pulled into the Malibu. Tom’s alarm clock washed the room in digital green. He was asleep, a dog on each side. The dogs were snoring lightly, their snout lips fluttering, their breath filling the room with the castoff of sleep. Watching Tom and the dogs, I felt something I didn’t quite recognize, something so tender I worried it would pop and disappear if I asked for its meaning. I unlaced my sneakers and dropped my jeans and pulled back the blanket.

Elektra stirred first, lifting her head. Then Joey, and at last Tom. Each looked momentarily confused. Elektra was the first to recognize me, her tail thumping. Tom said, “Oh, hi,” and Joey budged himself over for a lick.

“I think everything’s going to be OK,” I said.

“You mean you left him there?”

I kissed him—Tom, I mean.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Shhh,” I said. “Go back to sleep. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.” I reached for Tom. His sacred underwear was so thin and diaphanous it was like touching his chest through an ethereal gauze. On the undershirt’s belly there’s a short line of stitching called a navel marker; it’s there to remind you of God’s nourishment, or something like that. It’s just a little dash of thread, and as Tom and I fell toward sleep I rubbed it over and over, the way a finger returns impulsively to a scar.

In the morning I went to Heber’s office. “I was just about to call you,” Maureen said. “Mr. Heber wants to see you.”

“Actually, I came to see you. I want to apologize for that stuff I said.”

Her eyebrows locked in a line of contemplation. She was thinking about whether or not she believed me. Then she reached her conclusion. “I know you didn’t mean it. Now come on, let’s go see the old man.”

She led me down the hall. More than a week had passed since we’d first met, and she was fresh out of the beauty parlor again, her hair curled under at the nape. “It’s going to be a real scorcher out there,” she said. “I hope Elektra’s someplace cool.”

When we entered his office, Mr. Heber said, “Where’s the dog?” I told him, but I still couldn’t tell if he really cared. “The Malibu Inn? Sounds like a good place to be on a day like today. So listen, I’ve got news, that’s why I wanted you to come in. It’s hit the radar.”

“What has?”

“Everything. Mesadale, the Prophet, and most important your mom. A tv crew from New York is on its way. They land in Vegas in an hour, they should be in Mesadale by midafternoon.”

“What for?”

“To report. And just as I thought, this is going to change everything. I spoke to the producer. They’re real sympathetic to women like your mom, they want to tell the story from her side, they want to get this right. And so here’s the thing: they want to talk to you.”

“What for?”

“You’re the guy who can tell America what it’s really like out there.”

“I don’t think I can do that.”

“Of course you can. They’re setting up in the conference room tomorrow at two.”

I know how tv works. They make you explain things that can’t be explained. Some questions don’t have answers. There’s a mystery to all this—I mean, the reason why we do what we do. After a week it was the only Eureka! I’d had.

Mr. Heber gave me more details about the tv crew. The reporter was that cute guy with the silver hair you see all the time. “You might want to wear something other than a t-shirt,” Mr. Heber advised. “Dress it up a bit, all right? And we’ll need to work on what you’re going to say. I want to write out some talking points.”

Heber still didn’t get it, or I guess what I really mean was Heber still didn’t get me. I don’t dress it up a bit. I don’t have an interview outfit. I don’t do talking points.

“I went back to Mesadale Sunday night,” I said.

Heber looked up. “You need to be careful, Jordan.”

“I heard something pretty interesting. About Sister Rita.”

“What’s that?”

“She’s disappeared.” I told him what Sister Drusilla had said. Heber was interested; the flesh on his face didn’t move.

“Does this mean what I think it means?” I said.

He hesitated, as if he needed a moment to put it all together. “Yes, I think so.”

“We’re getting closer.”

“But there’s still that IM from your dad. He told us it was your mom.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s the problem with the internet. Nothing ever disappears.”

I decided not to tell Tom about the tv stuff. I still didn’t believe they’d fly in from New York, spend all that money to help my mom. They’d probably flash that picture of her ducking into the cruiser, then air a story about a holy roller who dumped her son and shot her husband. Not only would it be wrong, I was pretty sure it would mess things up even more. Heber said we could trust them, but he didn’t give me a good reason why.

Tom was busy anyway. There was a problem with Room 208; the guests had trashed the place with lighters, burning brown skid marks into the furniture. “I sensed something was wrong the moment they got here,” he kept telling the cop writing up the report. “I mean, I don’t like to judge people, but I just had a feeling.” What feeling was that? “Like they’d steal my dog.”

I took this lull in my day to go online. An email from
[email protected]
looked ominous. Something must’ve gone wrong with Johnny.

Hey Jordan—

Just wanted to let you know Johnny’s doing fine and I think everything’s going to be all right. Call me if you have any questions or anything. He’s lucky he found you.

—Kelly

When I closed her email I found a new message in my box. The subject line—“Might Be Important”—looked spammy, but I opened it anyway.

i’m not sure if you got my last email or what so i thought i’d try again. i remember chatting with your dad, that wasn’t the first time, we sort of had this on-line poker/flirting thing going on, it didn’t mean anything never in a million years would i have ever met him or anything, it was just one of those internet things and I don’t know if i know anything that might be useful but i might. maybe we should talk. by the way my name’s not really desertmissy (obvi), it’s albert but he didn’t know that.

I wrote DesertMissy, asking what he knew, and he replied right away.

first of all i’m sorry about your dad i read about him in the register and stuff i’ve been following the case and what’s been going on out in mesadale and somehow i knew he was manofthehouse2004. we’d been chatting for several months and we talked about a lot of things not just poker and sex but all sorts of things like life and he told me all about his wives and kids and was really honest about it all about how hard it was on a lot of them and he felt bad about that. he said sometimes it broke him up having to see so many of his kids wanting him to be a normal dad and he couldn’t be that kind of dad because there were too many of them. but he always said it was worth it because this is how god wanted it. i’m not too sure about that myself i’ve never been much of a god person but i admire a man who knows what he believes and sticks to it. all great men are like that and who am i to say what he believes is any crazier than the rest of the shit everyone else out there believes, including me. i was at that point of actually liking your dad a lot and i could tell he liked me but there was this problem you know of how do i tell him the truth, i mean about me, and i wasn’t sure how to bring it up then our chat session just stopped that night and he never responded and i read about a plural wife killing her husband out in mesadale and i knew it was him, i just knew, you know how sometimes you just know? that’s why i wasn’t surprised when i got your email last week.

I asked Albert where he lived, if we could meet. We needed to talk.

no that won’t be possible this is the internet i don’t meet people over the internet.

What about a phone call?

no i’ll talk to anyone online but i always want to remain anon but i’ll tell you this much i’m not like other people online i always tell people the truth for me it’s a place i can really tell people what i think and feel. it’s so hard to do that in real life for me it’s the only place i can truly be myself. except the desertmissy thing (obvi) but that’s just a name.

I begged Albert for his help.

i’ll tell you what i can but i can’t tell you who i am.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

I jumped. “Oh, Tom, shit. You scared me.”

“Who you writing?”

“Just some lead on my dad. I don’t know. How’d it go with the cops?”

“They’ll trace the license plate and stuff, but I’ve been through this kind of thing before. The paperwork’s crushing.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Maybe check on the dogs. I’ve still got a lot of checkouts.”

In Room 112, the dogs were sleeping butt to butt on the bed. I refilled their water bowl and went back to the lobby. I was thinking about Albert. Could he possibly know anything? And even if he did, would it count—info from an anonymous online source? Can they subpoena a man named DesertMissy?

I sent Albert another email, asking if my dad ever talked about any of his wives.

all the time he really seemed to love them. i know he thought of some of them more like aunts or grandmas than wives, like sister what’s her name the first wife i guess she’s real old he always said she’s a good woman. he loved the newer ones like sister kimberly to be perfectly honest we sometimes got a little graphic when we talked about them he was definitely still in love with kimberly she gave amazing head or at least that’s what he said, sorry that’s probably more than you want to know. he had just married a new girl Sarah and he was talking pretty macho about her and what he’d done to her after they were sealed. i know i should be outraged but you know what he was my friend she wasn’t so i always saw it from his point of view. but in general he loved all the wives in his own way, i know that much for sure

From this stranger, a binary voice flashing in from somewhere—was he nearby or around the globe?—I was learning more about my father than I had ever known.

damn it just occurred to me she might be your mom you never told me who your mom is. i hope i haven’t insulted you.

So I told him who my mom was.

holy crap that’s crazy. that was your mom? maybe i shouldn’t say anything more i mean i really don’t want to get involved.

Albert, I wrote. You are involved. If you know which wives my dad liked to fuck, you’re very much involved.

i guess you’re right. besides i have nothing to hide.

I asked him if he knew anything else about the wives, was there anything else going on? I told him about the fuck chart, but it still didn’t mean anything to me.

i don’t know about that but you know i guess there was shit going on in the wife department he was pretty excited about that. i don’t know if you know but that night he talked to your mom about their relationship i guess i’m not really sure but he said that it’d been a long time since they you know had been together and there was no point in trying to pretend they were really man and wife. i don’t know but that’s what he said which is why when i read that she had killed him i was shocked but not really surprised.

“Hey, Jordan?” said Tom. “Isn’t it time you got going?”

I looked at the clock on the computer. Shit. I was late for my visit to see my mom.

An Open Letter to President Woodruff

And Latter-day Saints Everywhere

October 23, 1890

I, the undersigned, stand in opposition to the recent manifesto of September 26, and approved October 6, regarding the doctrine of plural marriage. Section 132, as revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith by our Heavenly Father, states plainly that anyone who shall not believe in this doctrine, and pursue it to his fullest extent, shall never attain Eternal Glory. I accept the truth of the Doctrine & Covenants, including Section 132, and refuse to edit God on this, or any, matter. As Brigham Young preached for more than thirty years, “To ignore it is to ignore His will.” So said he until the last day of his life thirteen years ago.

I, the undersigned, challenge you to reverse this decision. Written in the spirit of political compromise and capitulation, rather than in the spirit of Truth and Glory, this manifesto shall send a fissure through the heart of our beloved Church, forcing Saints everywhere to choose between political expediency and Divine will.

I, the undersigned, demand a retraction of the manifesto, and all its meaning, or face a splintering of faith never before seen among Christians in the two thousand years since the days our Lord, Jesus Christ, walked the Earth, in the company of men.

I, the undersigned, declare openly that until the manifesto has been rescinded, and our natural rights restored, I, and all Saints everywhere, shall pursue our faith fully, as we have known it since the days of Joseph and Brigham, as we shall always know it, in these last days.

I, the undersigned, declare myself, and all those who share my convictions stated herein, the First and True Latter-day Saints, for that is what we are.

ELDER AARON WEBB
& Wives

Red Creek
Territory of Utah