The Lonely Polygamist (13 page)

It was true: he’d had about all he could stand of important things. He was tired of the big decisions required of him every day, the momentous, life-altering occasions that happened, in this family, at least once a week: the baptisms and birthdays and anniversaries and graduations and band recitals and church plays and 4-H shows. He didn’t want to hear about whose junior league basketball game he’d forgotten, or what parent-teacher conference had been missed. He didn’t want to see another overdue utility bill or tax notice, didn’t want to take any more phone calls regarding feuding wives or love-sick teenage daughters or biblical plagues of chicken pox or pinkeye or flu that were always lurking just out of sight, waiting to bring the family to its knees. More than anything, he was at his limit with the strain of keeping the entire enterprise a secret. For eight months he’d told his wives and everyone at church that he was building a senior citizens’ center out in Nevada—a senior citizens’ center!—and every time he went back home, he was sure the word had gotten out, the jig was up, he’d been discovered; for the last six months he’d come home every week, stepping delicately, head bowed, waiting for the hammer to come down.

And it wasn’t as if his job—building a brothel on the edge of nowhere for a man prone to ugly temper tantrums and bouts of hysterical grandstanding—was doing anything to reduce his anxiety. Ted Leo had hired him, Golden found out after his bid was accepted, because Ted knew his father back when Ted was an army corporal stationed at the Nevada Test Site and Royal Richards was a minor Las Vegas celebrity, the humble uranium miner from Louisiana who’d struck it big. Though Ted had characterized the relationship as a friendship, it became clear to Golden, as time went on, that Ted resented Royal for his unearned fortune and renown, and was now, almost thirty years later—with Royal dead of a brain tumor and Ted still very much on this side of the grave and living what he called his “great God-given American dream”—taking it out on Royal’s son, who wanted nothing to do with any of it. At first Ted was friendly in his loud, despotic way, but it wasn’t long before he’d show up at Golden’s work trailer in a screaming, hair-tearing rage over why the septic tank was being put where the swimming pool was supposed be (Ted had not mentioned a swimming pool until that moment) or berate Golden over the phone for twenty minutes about the price of copper pipe. He was fond of calling Golden a “big old pussy” or a “horse’s ass” and had once taken his most prized possession—a German Luger he claimed to have been owned by Al Capone—from its special drawer in his office desk and brandished it all over the work site, apparently because he wasn’t happy with the way one of the framing crew had taken the Lord’s name in vain. He would yell and carry on, demean Golden in every conceivable way, and then return ten minutes later and, as if none of it had ever happened, regale Golden with tales of spiritually fulfilling days as a Christian missionary in Guatemala, or invite him out for an afternoon of male bonding in the form of carp fishing.

Though Golden outweighed him by seventy pounds and was fifteen years his junior, Ted was not at all averse to giving Golden the occasional shove, ripping blueprints or building specs out of his hands, or jabbing his finger into the big man’s chest as if trying to draw blood. It didn’t matter if incidents like these happened in private or in front of an entire framing crew, Golden did what he always did when someone pushed or elbowed or attempted to punch him (all of which seemed to happen with disturbing regularity, ever since he was a boy): he smiled politely and removed himself from harm’s way, as if in apology for the offense of being at once large and sweet-natured.

All of it—Ted Leo and the job itself and the stress of keeping it a secret and the pressure of supporting a family, the very size and complexity of which he could no longer fully encompass in his head—all of it was bearing on him with such an inexorable weight that the notion occurred to him, once or twice each day, that he might be losing his mind.

Which was why, back in Virgin, he had stopped Uncle Chick after sacrament meeting on a Sunday afternoon, asked him if he had a moment.

“I got moments, but fewer every day,” Uncle Chick said. “Let me help the girls get Dad loaded up and on his way and then I’ll be with you.”

They decided to go for a drive, and Uncle Chick eased up to the hearse, touching the hood with both hands. He gave the roof of the car a smart slap. “You want me to take the wheel?”

Golden chuckled, as he had the last dozen times Uncle Chick had made the same joke. Over the past couple of years Uncle Chick’s eyesight had been going steadily downhill due to a degenerative eye condition that made him legally blind. He wore spectacles with smoked lenses that helped a little, and got by the rest of the way on touch, memory, and sheer cussedness.

They took the old state highway that followed the Virgin River, the sun so high in the sky it seemed to be invisible, a wall of dust kicked up by rising low-pressure winds, purple and solid, toward the west. Cooter, who had been penned up in the back of the hearse during the three-hour service, sat between them, vibrating with nervous energy and occasionally attempting a trial lick at one of Uncle Chick’s nicked and battered hands.

“Don’t know why you’d keep a dog in your vehicle,” Uncle Chick said. “Smells like a pig’s lunch in here.”

He rolled down the window and stuck his nose out, the moving air lifting his stiff, Brylcreemed hair like a lid. “There, now I can think a little. Aside from the gassy dog, I’m glad we can talk. You haven’t been around much.”

“Work,” Golden said. “It’s bad.”

Uncle Chick nodded approvingly. “Course it’s bad. It always is.” Uncle Chick preached a single philosophy that guided his own life and the congregation he was responsible for:
Whenever you have to choose between the easy way and the hard, choose the hard, and things will end up all right
. It was a simple but surprisingly effective way to live, Golden had discovered, but it didn’t allow for a whole lot of sympathy or brotherly compassion. Things are going terribly for you? Well, great, congratulations: you must be on the right track.

“I got something I been meaning to talk to you about,” Uncle Chick said. “Maybe you seen it coming, but it’s time I brought it up. Maureen Sinkfoyle.”

Golden couldn’t help it: he groaned and let go of the steering wheel to grind his knuckles into his eyes. He
had
seen it coming, had taken the time and initiative to worry about it, but then six dozen other worries had crowded his mind and he’d promptly forgotten about it. Maureen, a buxom and not-unattractive woman with a voice that sounded like tearing sheet metal, was one of the ex-wives of the now-notorious Richard Sinkfoyle, who eight months ago had abandoned his three wives and twelve children to take up with some sort of new age fortune-teller he’d met on one of his sales trips to California. The other two wives, both younger and still of childbearing age, had married into other families, but Maureen, who had two teenage boys, both of whom were certified vandals and hell-raisers, lived in a trailer out by Cut Creek, surviving on welfare and the good graces of the Church. As one of a handful of faithful, middle-aged priesthood holders with anything close to financial security in these difficult economic times, Golden knew he was a leading candidate to take in Maureen and her boys. Maureen herself had been making her case in her own subtle ways over the last few months. She had dropped off gifts of sheet cake and canned peaches at Old House, was known to be spending a lot of time with Nola and Rose at the hair academy—surely in an effort to secure tactical allies for her cause—and had occasionally engaged in what was, by Church standards, blatant flirting: significant looks in sacrament meetings, occasional phone calls to his office, asking for help with her hinky furnace or a priesthood blessing for one of her accident-prone boys. In short, he should have been anticipating this; he should have had a defense ready.

“Has Beverly talked to you about it?” Golden said. He did have a single line of defense, and it was a good one. Beverly did not like Maureen, did not like the way she displayed her large bust with snug-fitting dresses, did not think highly of the way she, the matriarch of the family, hadn’t so much as put up a fight to keep her husband from running off with a ditzy blond twenty-five-year-old slut. Beverly had arranged Golden’s marriage to Nola—and by extension to Rose—and more or less forced him to marry Trish. So her vote was the one that truly counted, in marriage and just about everything else.

Uncle Chick snorted. “No, she hasn’t said a word about it to me. It’s not up to her. It’s up to you and nobody else.”

“It’s never been up to me,” Golden said, unable to hide the resentment in his voice. “Not since the day I got here.”

Uncle Chick seemed to accept this mild rebuke. He nodded, his milky gaze fixed on some point out the passenger window where a cloud of blackbirds lifted off a stand of Russian olives. “All right. You’re correct. And it shouldn’t be up to you. It’s up to God, when it comes down to it, every time. God ain’t going to wait forever on this, and neither is Maureen. She’s a good woman who knows a good man when she sees one.”

“Don’t forget she married Richard,” Golden said.

“Yes, she did, poor thing. We all thought pretty highly of that damned fool, too, until he gave us all sorts a reasons to think otherwise.”

Brother Sinkfoyle would be forever reviled in the Church because he’d done the unthinkable: he’d taken the easy way out. And what did he have to show for it? A cute blonde at his side, a life of peace and quiet in the carefree California sunshine. It was hard for Golden not to feel jealous.

“Anyway, forget about that jackass and take this one to the Lord. Difficult times we’re in, I know. But somebody’s got to step up, and I’m getting too old.”

Golden looked over at Uncle Chick, who was busy working a handkerchief out of his vest pocket. The old man gave off an aroma of leather and horse liniment, mingled with a minty old-fashioned cologne that he referred to as “dog water.” It was a smell that had never changed in the twenty-plus years Golden had known him, and now that Uncle Chick’s eyes were failing and arthritis was twisting his fingers into swollen hooks, Golden had to face the idea that Chick might not be around forever. Ever since his own father had died, had up and run out on him one final time, Uncle Chick had been there to offer advice and encouragement, to take an interest in Golden in a way his father never had. He watched the old man honk lustily into his handkerchief and felt his throat tighten with anticipatory grief.

Uncle Chick put his hand on Golden’s shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. His voice was soft and rough. “I know what you’ve suffered these past few years, how hard your losses have been on you. But there comes a time when you have to move forward, to take care of what you got.”

His losses. These he didn’t talk about, not with his wives, not with Uncle Chick. He knew there was something in him that needed to talk them out, but he didn’t have the necessary vocabulary, much less the courage. So he set his jaw and stared out the windshield until the building silence required Uncle Chick to speak.

“We’re all waiting on you, that’s all. I’d do anything for you, any of us would.”

Not yet ready to speak, Golden acknowledged this with a nod. His eyes had gotten a little moist, which was not helping matters.

He knew he was a disappointment to Uncle Chick, and to just about everyone else who knew him, for that matter. It had not always been this way. There had been a time when he was widely considered a success: a prosperous businessman, a good husband and provider, a pillar of the church. Now it was clear to Golden—as it was, no doubt, to a good many others—that this had all been a mirage, an illusion fabricated, in part, by Beverly, who managed the family and its everyday affairs with the exactitude and logistical expertise of a field marshal, and by his own father, who had left Golden a profitable business as well as a small inheritance to get him through the lean times, and by Uncle Chick himself, who, after Royal’s death, took Golden under his wing, installed him, at the green age of thirty-four, into the Council of the Twelve as one of the apostles of the church.

For a time, there were even whispers among some of the members that Golden Richards was the One Mighty and Strong, the man who, according to scriptural prophecy, was to be delivered from on high to set in order the house of God. The polygamists of the Virgin Valley, along with Mormon fundamentalists of all stripes, had been waiting a long time for the One Mighty and Strong. At the turn of the century the official Mormon church had bowed to political pressure and renounced the sacred and fundamental practice of plural marriage, and yet had inexplicably prospered, spreading to all the nations of the world and producing famous politicians and athletes—not to mention the charming and toothy Donny and Marie—while the hardscrabble little fundamentalist groups were reviled by their neighbors, scorned by the larger public, and so harassed by law enforcement that many had taken refuge in Canada and Mexico. Still, they waited in the shadows, building their compounds so far out in the desert no one could find them, meeting in garages and barns and basements, safeguarding the only thing of worth they owned: their pearl of great price, the Principle, which would one day transform the world and bring about the Second Coming of Christ.

These were a people who had every reason to hope for a champion, someone who could redeem their suffering and deliver them from bondage. And for the polygamists of the Virgin Valley, it seemed that Golden Richards just might be the one.

It did not hurt at all that he was a craggy six-foot-six, blond and blue-eyed, and named
Golden
. Nobody was expecting the One Mighty and Strong to be a short and pudgy fellow by the name of Irv.

Golden had an especially good recollection of the day, nearly ten years ago, that established him as an official candidate for the office of divine emancipator. It was a snowy Sunday just before Christmas, and in the middle of the afternoon sacrament service a green Buick Skylark pulled up outside the church, revving its engine. A man wearing a well-oiled pompadour and white undershirt got out of the passenger side and began to stalk the periphery of the small church house, barking out biblical nonsense and clapping his chest with great force, like an irate gorilla.