The Gates of Babylon (38 page)

“Wow, that’s… that’s great.”

“Officer Trost and his daughter are on their way back now, loaded up with all of that, plus whatever they could fit from her
storage unit. They already reached Cedar City and are coming over by police escort first thing in the morning.”

A niggle of worry worked its way into Jacob’s gut. “Steve’s not with them?”

“No, he’s coming separately. Agent Fayer is in trouble in California—Steve didn’t say what—and he’s on his way to L.A. But it’s okay, because he’s in a government caravan, and Fayer promised he’d be protected and promised they’d get him back to Blister Creek. Steve should be home by Sunday at the latest. Three more days—I can handle that. We won’t even have to change our wedding date.”

Jacob dropped his hands from her shoulders and looked down at his feet.

You have twenty-four hours to round up any stragglers and then you’re done. After that, anyone tries to ride in or out and they’ll get a hellfire missile up their ass.

“Jacob?” Eliza stopped and studied him. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, Liz.” He took a deep breath and looked in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Miriam was sick of lying in bed, stifled beneath quilts and blankets. She was sick of having Lillian bring her food, David helping her inch to the bathroom like a shaky old woman, sick of hearing people move through the house and knowing they were doing useful, productive work, while she was here in a four-poster stupor. And mostly she was sick of Jacob inspecting her injuries and shoveling pills into her mouth.

And so, three days after she had returned to consciousness to find herself stitched up, perforated with tubes, and laid up in a forgotten corner of the Christianson home, she threw off the covers and put her feet on the floor. She grabbed the bedpost and maneuvered herself to her feet. Her other hand went to her back.

“Well look at you, ignoring medical advice,” a voice said from the doorway.

It was David, carrying a tray with a steaming bowl and a glass of water.

“No more soup,” she said. “I’m sick of that slop.”

“You want something else?”

“Yes. Bacon. Eggs. Toast with way too much butter. Assuming my bowels can handle it. They’ve been rather sluggish.” She sighed. “As you and everyone else in Blister Creek seems to know.”

He nodded with mock solemnity. “I have been dutifully reporting your bowel movements at sacrament meeting. Sister Charity prescribes eight ounces of prune juice three times daily. That’s how she keeps herself regular, and she insists it would work for you.”

“So
that’s
the secret of her cheery disposition. Gallons of prune juice.”

“All right, I’ll smuggle in some bacon.”

“Does this mean you’re not going to send me back to bed?”

“Would it do any good?”

She smiled and blew him a kiss, then pulled off her nightgown, waving him off when he tried to help. “Nope, I’ll do it myself.”

When Miriam reached down to peel back the bandage to look at the wound, she caught an unwelcome glimpse of her body. Already losing muscle tone in her legs, and her stomach had started to swell with the pregnancy. And where did those blue veins on her breasts come from?

“Stop scowling,” David said. “You look beautiful.”

“You’re a liar, of course. But thank you.”

She made her way to the closet on her own, pulled out her bathrobe, and returned to the bed to sit down and put it on. Her
husband kept watching as she did so and she found herself getting aroused by his gaze. A long time had passed since she’d felt even a twinge of desire. That could only be a good sign.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Tired. My head is all fuzzy. But that’s not going away until I get moving.”

“The pain?”

“Mostly gone. A bit of soreness around the ribs is all. And when I take a deep breath. Jacob knows what he’s doing.”

“Are you ready to talk yet?” he asked.

Miriam shook her head. “Not really.”

“I think it’s time.”

“Go ahead, then. Get it out.”

“You gave me a scare. Diego too. That kid needs his mom.”

She didn’t respond for a long moment. When she did, her voice was soft. “I’m sorry, David.”

“What was going on out there?”

“A gunfight. I was careless at the end.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He was so uncharacteristically calm and serious that it gave her pause.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Something got into me. I was feeling… crazy. I don’t know if it was the pregnancy or…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Why was this so hard? It’s not like she didn’t have feelings. Sharing them was another matter. “I don’t want to talk about it, but I have a feeling that I should. Eventually.”

He hesitated, and when he spoke, he sounded cautious. “I think that would be a good idea.”

She sat on the bed and gestured him over, then ran her fingers through his hair.

“I can’t change who I am. But maybe I could work on the rough edges,” Miriam said. “You’ve changed a lot for me, and you deserve the same thing.”

“I don’t want you to change. If I wanted a demure woman, I would have looked around Blister Creek until I found her. That’s not the kind of wife I want.”

“About Lillian,” she began.

“You still want to go through with it?”

“I do,” she said. “I’m a little jealous, I admit it. I like her—a lot, in fact—but that’s different from imagining her in my husband’s bed.”

“Then why don’t we forget about it for now. I’ll tell Lillian—”

“Shh,” she interrupted and put her fingers over his lips. “She’ll be good for us. Assuming I can go easy on her, stop riding her so hard.”

“Jacob doesn’t like it,” David said.

One last out. One last excuse for her to say no.

“Of course he doesn’t. But he can’t keep harping on personal choice for women without accepting that sometimes women will in fact choose polygamy.”

“And you do? Choose it, I mean?”

Miriam hesitated a long moment. “Yes, I do.” She pushed David to his feet. “Now, go get Eliza and Lillian and ask if they can help me into the bathroom. If I don’t get a real bath my skin is going to fall off.”

The government cut the last phone lines on October 18, the day Eliza and Lillian helped Miriam bathe for the first time since the accident, after which the pregnant woman insisted on being taken out back for target shooting. They lost connection to the electric grid on October 28, but Jacob and David had been working frantically to repair and install the turbine at the bottom of the penstocks, which carried the creek down from the Ghost Cliffs below the dam. The power stayed on. Most of the time.

The Women’s Council led an electric census of the valley, and by the end of the month there were no more electric ovens, heaters, microwaves, milking machines or other high-wattage devices that could be replaced with other means. Even so, when the sun went down or the breeze died, shutting down the valley’s limited solar and wind generation, the valley suffered sporadic blackouts as the hydro turbine failed to meet demand. A second pass removed superfluous lighting, and confiscated toasters and hair dryers.

When Eliza went outside, she frequently heard a buzzing sound. A plane that looked something like a giant glider with a fat snout buzzed over the valley, usually so high it was almost invisible, but sometimes coming in a few hundred feet overhead. One night, when a warm spell had melted the snow from the roads, a distant boom sounded in the Ghost Cliffs, and in the morning Gale Anderson discovered two of her teenage boys missing. Turns out they had taken their father’s 4x4 and made a run for Panguitch. A hellfire missile left a smoking hole in the pavement and bits of wreckage from the truck.

Eliza tried not to worry about drones, but it was terrifying to have them circling overhead and know that a young man at some distant air force base was watching her on his computer monitor, hand on a joystick and finger on a button with the ability to leave
her
a smoking hole in the pavement.

There was plenty to distract her, and she did her best to keep her mind as occupied as her body. But at the end of another sixteen-hour day, no matter how exhausted, her mind would race the instant she climbed into bed. She pictured Steve giving elephant rides to the children and remembered watching him help an old man repair his fence, with his huge shoulder muscles rippling beneath his shirt.

And Eliza imagined herself in Steve’s arms, pictured him undressing her on their wedding day. His fingers running through her hair, or his mouth on her breasts.

The heartache overwhelmed her and sometimes, when she was sure Lillian was asleep in the next bed, Eliza buried her face in her pillow and gave in to the sobs.

Two weeks had passed since the canceled wedding. No word from Steve. Then three weeks, four. Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas and a feast with caroling through the valley by candlelight. A foot of snow fell that night, and more the following day, until the only way through town was on an ancient sled hauled out of Delmar Young’s shed and hitched to a team of horses.

The temple reopened, repaired and rededicated, on January 12, when the mercury dropped below zero. A haze hung over the valley from hundreds of Franklin stoves and wood boilers, and Jacob implemented rationing to preserve firewood until spring. In the evenings of the coldest nights, he gathered the entire Christianson
household in the front room around the stove and read from a children’s Bible, Hans Christian Andersen, or the Chronicles of Narnia.

One night in early February, when the adults had finished bundling the children for the night, and most of the grown-ups had gone to bed, Eliza wrapped herself in a blanket and sat in the darkness next to the still-hot stove, its embers crackling. She closed her eyes and turned over different ways to escape the valley. Make her way to California and find Steve. She could do it. She
would
do it. If she could get past the drones.

The key was to avoid the roads. Make her profile look like a deer. Or better yet, an elk. What if she got a horse, put some fake antlers on its head, and laid herself flat against its neck, covered by a blanket. Left at night. Would that fool them, or were their cameras too sophisticated for such a trick?

Light came through her eyelids, and she opened them. Jacob sat in his chair, a lantern turned up slightly on the end table, his fingers turning the pages on one of Grandma Cowley’s journals. He said something under his breath and Eliza realized he hadn’t spotted her sitting motionless and wrapped in her blanket next to the stove.

For a long moment she watched her brother and thought how much he looked like Father had when the older Christianson was reading. When he was caught up in a book and forgot anybody was looking. The difference was that when Father put down the book, he had taken on a stern, arrogant air. Jacob was humble and kind.

But now he carried a burden that aged him beyond a man in his thirties, with troubles on his shoulders and in his mind. And
then, most surprisingly of all, Jacob closed his eyes and his lips moved.

Surely he wasn’t praying. She had a hard time imagining him doing that in privacy. Read the scriptures, meditate even, but pray?

It felt wrong to watch him when he thought he was alone, and Eliza cleared her throat. Jacob started and looked up. He turned up the light.

“Oh, Liz. Sorry, I didn’t see you there. I…” His voice trailed off. “Are you okay?”

“Why don’t they bring Steve back?” she asked. “He was in the FBI—if he helped Fayer, couldn’t they make a deal with the army? One FBI flight into Blister Creek in a helicopter—they could tell the drones not to shoot, right?”

Jacob looked like he was going to say something, then stopped.

“Don’t do this to me,” she said. “Tell me what you really think.”

He still hesitated. When he spoke, his voice was low and uncertain. “I think it’s worse out there than we imagine, that’s what. It’s falling apart. The government is fighting with itself—California is tearing itself to pieces. I don’t think the FBI could bring him back if they wanted to. And maybe he can’t get out of L.A.”

Eliza lifted her hand to her mouth and bit down on her thumb.

“Don’t lose hope, Liz. Please.”

“If I had Fernie’s faith could I bring him back?”

“He’ll be okay. He’s strong like Miriam, but less headstrong. And maybe he’s not quite as smart as you,” Jacob added, a smile at his lips, “but he’s no fool. I’ll bet that even now he’s on the other
side of those mountains, maneuvering to get over but taking his time so he doesn’t get shot.”

Eliza didn’t say anything in response to these words of false comfort. Jacob’s smile faded.

“Have a little faith,” he said.

“Listen to you.”

He gave a tired smile.

“Can I ask,” she began tentatively, “if it’s not too personal I mean. Can I ask what you were praying about?”

“Probably just babbling to myself. I don’t know if anyone is listening up there. Maybe not. Or maybe yes, but the decision is already made and there’s nothing I can do or say to change it.”

“You didn’t answer the question. Never mind,” she added when he opened his mouth to say something else. “None of my business—I shouldn’t have asked.”