The Remnant (24 page)

Like Ashley’s own, the room was stark, with
one hook rug on the floor, a bedside table with a lamp providing
the only illumination, and a framed picture of Jesus on the far
wall. A small closet and a dresser drawer held Ruth’s only
possessions. A teddy bear lay tossed beside her crushed, damp
pillow. She wore a long cotton nightgown that matched Ashley’s, and
Ashley knew that beneath she would have on her
garment.

"Why are you crying?" whispered Ashley,
wiping tears from Ruth’s cheeks on her own sleeve.

"You shouldn’t be here," said the girl,
again.

Ashley shrugged. She had only been moved into
the women’s wing a couple of months prior, upon her twelfth
birthday. And asking about the almost nightly sobbing from one area
or another, she had been informed by one of the older wives to mind
her own business. It would go away.

"Aren’t you happy to be married to my
father?" she asked.

Ruth made a face that Ashley couldn’t read.
Was it a grimace, or fear, or disgust?

"He’s a fine man," said Ruth, at last, but
Ashley didn’t hear sincerity in Ruth’s voice.

Ashley squeezed the girl’s shoulder. "But not
the man for you?"

Ruth stared at her. "We prayed-"

Ashley nodded. Everyone prayed. Where else
did one get answers if not from God?

"I told your father..." said Ruth. "When the
Prophet said I must marry him, I said that I was in love with Timmy
Crocker."

Ashley frowned. She knew Timmy. He was three
years older than her, but she’d seen him around school. The boys’
classes, of course. He wasn’t an athlete, or even a great student,
and he wore large horn-rimmed glasses. His only special attribute
seemed to be his ability to sing Amazing Grace louder than anyone
else before an assembly.

"What did the Prophet say?" she asked.

Ruth swallowed a lump in her throat. "He told
me that I was no longer a child. That I must put aside childish
thoughts. That the Holy Spirit had spoken to him, and that your
father was to be my Celestial husband and that I must bend myself
to the will of God."

Ashley nodded. Everyone had to do that, but
it did seem sometimes that God put a heavier burden on girls than
he did on men.

"I told him that I had been praying," said
Ruth, "and God hadn’t told me to marry your father. That made the
Prophet very angry. He asked who I thought I was to expect a sign
directly from God, and I told him that according to scripture God
could talk to all of us."

That was heresy. God
spoke
to men, not
women. They were all children of God, and equal before the Lord in
their own way
.
It was just that men were more equal than
women. All Mormons knew that, even the apostates in Salt Lake City.
What had Ruth been thinking?

"He slapped me," said Ruth, quietly.

Ashley felt as though
she
 had
been slapped.

"The Prophet?" she gasped.

Ruth nodded, sadly, and Ashley sensed that in
that instant the two of them were sharing a loss greater than any
in her life. The image of the Prophet, a man twice her size and
many times her age slapping this young girl who might well have
been her, was stunning. It was like suddenly discovering that the
floor beneath your feet could no longer be counted on to hold you
up or prevent you from falling right down to the hard ground far
below.

"They locked me in my room for a while so I
could pray about my disobedience to God
.
Then-when I still
refused to go through with the wedding-the Prophet said that he
would spend the night in communion with the Holy Spirit right in
our house. He’d never stayed with us before. Not that I remembered,
anyway. Everyone in my family was treating me like some kind of
leper. I snuck down the stairs in the middle of the night and knelt
beside the door to my father’s study. I heard voices, and at first
I thought my father was in there with the Prophet."

"What was it?"

Ruth nibbled her lip. "It wasn’t my father. I
recognized the Prophet’s voice, but the other sounded low and deep,
almost too powerful to be a man. It scared me."

"What was it saying?"

"For the Prophet to put the wickedness behind
him. If the left hand would not mesh with the right then cut it
off. Pluck out the eye that offendeth-"

"Oh!" gasped Ashley.

Ruth nodded. "I was scared. Then, when the
light came, I was about ready to pee my pants."

"The light?"

"All of a sudden there was the brightest
light shining right under the study door. It was blinding. I
thought that it burned my fingers where I was crouching, and I
jerked my hand away."

"Did it really?"

Ruth shook her head. "I was just scared."

"Was it the light of God?"

Ruth frowned. "I thought so. I ran back up to
my room, and I prayed and prayed, and I thought maybe I felt
something. I thought I was supposed to marry your father just like
the Prophet said."

Ashley nodded. "So, what’s the matter?"

"It’s not like I thought," whispered Ruth,
staring at the floor.

Ashley was afraid to ask.

She knew on a cerebral level about what
happened after a man and a woman were sealed in holy matrimony. She
understood where babies came from, although it seemed a very gross
way of making them. And she had pictured herself often enough in
the arms of Richard Taylor, the boy’s gym coach. She loved Mister
Taylor with an ardor that could sometimes burn right through her
chest. She imagined herself in his powerful arms, swooning way back
to accept a deep wet kiss. Then the image of her father inserted
itself into the vision, and she caught her breath, understanding at
last what bothered Ruth.

"Oh," she said again.

"It’s not like I thought," Ruth repeated. "I
don’t know if I should even be telling you this."

"Why not?"

"Because you’re just a kid...."

"I’m almost as old as you are."

It was true that their ages might be close,
but their experiences had been vastly different. Ruth had passed on
into the universe of adult women, while Ashley had only just moved
onto the same floor. Her door might be down the hall, but she still
inhabited another, more innocent world.

"I think now it was just a flashlight,"
muttered Ruth.

Ashley was stunned. "A flashlight? I don’t
understand-"

"It was the Prophet making both voices, and
he knew I was out in the hall. So he scared me with the light."

Ashley didn’t know what to say. The very idea
of the Prophet perpetrating a fraud was as beyond belief as him
striking one of his flock, but Ruth made the statement as though
she believed it. Believed it right down into her heart.

"He wanted me to obey," continued Ruth. "So
he and Pa set the whole thing up between them. Jack told me."

"Your brother, Jack?" gasped Ashley.

Ruth nodded. "After the Sealing he pulled me
aside, and he told me what he heard Pa and the Prophet getting up
that night. Jack didn’t think it was right for a Prophet to
lie."

Neither did Ashley. Every word from the
Prophet’s mouth was the word of God Almighty. That was what she had
been taught from the time she was old enough to attend Sunday
School. Her father believed it. Her mother believed it. She knew
they did.

"They don’t," said Ruth, reading her
mind.

"Who doesn’t what?" whispered Ashley.

"The grownups," said Ruth. "You’re thinking
that they all believe the Prophet, but a lot of the other women
don’t anymore. I hear them talking. I see the way they look at me.
They feel sorry for me because they’ve been through the same thing,
but there’s nothing that they can do. When a man wants you, he just
talks to the Prophet and the Prophet decides. The older men with
the money get the first choice of the girls."

Ashley shook her head. The very idea was just
too frightening to contemplate. God spoke to the Prophet. She had
prayed that she’d get her choice of a husband, but she had been
taught that if she didn’t God would bring her to a full
understanding of his will, and she would come to love whoever he
chose for her. She didn’t want to hear this revelation from Ruth.
She didn’t want to hear it at all. She started to rise, but Ruth
caught her arm.

"A lot of the younger men have been run out
of town."

"What do you mean, run out of town?" gasped
Ashley.

But she knew. The rumors she’d been hearing
for years were true. Boys just disappeared. They
ran away.
Or they
were living with relatives.
But there were never any
phone numbers given out, and no one ever heard from them again.

"Ben Simmons and Andrew Topps, to name
two."

"Mister Topps got a job in Salt Lake."

"He sure did. After the Prophet took away his
house."

"The Prophet can do that?"

Ruth looked at her like she had two heads.
"The Prophet owns all the land in California City. Your grandpa may
have built this house, but the Prophet owns the land underneath it.
If he wants to take it back, the house isn’t worth much. Anyway,
Ben and Andrew were both in love with Loretta Wilkes, and Mister
Topps told the Prophet that it wasn’t right all the young men
getting run out of town."

"Loretta Wilkes married the Prophet."

Loretta was only a couple of years older than
Ruth, and she had been known around town as the most beautiful girl
of all. Ashley had seen her and the Prophet the day of the wedding.
Ashley thought the girl looked radiant, perhaps a little stunned by
all the ceremony, the pomp, all the people. Now, thinking back upon
that day, she wondered if Loretta hadn’t really looked crestfallen,
shaken. Maybe afraid.

"My brother Jack, too, I think," muttered
Ruth.

"Jack what?"

"They’re going to run him out soon. He’s
getting old enough to look at girls, to want a girl of his own.
They won’t allow that."

Ashley’s shock was visible.

Ruth nodded sagely. "Now you see?"

Ashley shook her head, sniffling. It couldn’t
be true. It couldn’t.

"It isn’t like I thought," said Ruth
again.

Ashley twitched when the door suddenly
opened, and her father stood there in the frame swaying like a
lazy, old bull.

"What are you doing in here?" he rumbled.

Ashley cringed. "Just visiting."

"Get back to your room."

Ruth’s trembling hand slid away as Ashley
rose to her feet, feeling tiny and insignificant beneath her
father’s withering glare. He stepped aside, waving his hand
imperiously back toward the hall.

"Go to bed."

She glanced at Ruth, but the girl was staring
at the floor again. As soon as Ashley passed into the corridor the
door slammed behind her, and she was cloaked in darkness. Almost
immediately there was the sound of a slap and a tiny moan.

"What have you been putting into her head?"
shouted her father.

"Nothing!"

Another slap. Ashley felt the blow as though
the hand had contacted her own flesh. She pressed her fingertips
against her cheek, certain it was blushed.

"No matter," muttered her father, just loud
enough to be heard through the door. "She’ll be married, herself,
soon."

Ashley trotted away down the hall to the
guttural sounds of an old animal in rut, but that very night she
determined to run away.

Trace stirred again, then squinted one eye
open.

"I couldn’t sleep," she said.

He stretched, glancing at Maxie. "No
trouble?"

She shook her head, nodding toward the
scanner on the bedside table. "Everything seems quiet."

"What’s keeping you up, then?"

She snuggled in beside him, resting her head
on his shoulder. "Just old memories."

He stroked her back, and she brushed her
cheek again, willing away the burning sensation of her father’s
hand. She’d been caught the first time, by police outside of
Phoenix. When they returned her to her family’s
care
her
father’s wrath had been brutal, only further insuring Ashley’s
rebellion and ultimate escape a few months later.

"We’ll have to concentrate on making some new
ones," he said.

"Something’s happening," she whispered, "and
it’s not just the Angels. I can feel it. Don’t
you 
feel
it?"

She felt him shifting into a whole body
frown, and she rolled over to face him on the pillow. She could see
that the question had struck even deeper than she expected.

"Feel what?"

She frowned. "Maybe some of Marie’s mysticism
has begun to rub off on me or something, but now and then I get
these crazy feelings. Like I can almost see through a veil I never
realized was all around me before. Does that sound nuts?"

"I don’t know if it does or not, anymore.
Some weird things happened to me in New York. and I’ve started to
reevaluate things that happened when I was a kid... You know about
the rats in the attic."

"Yes."

He told her about his night beneath the city
of New York, of the strange way the rats and bats acted.

"Some animals in the valley have been acting
strange, too," she said, biting her lip.

"How strange?"

She shrugged against him. "I saw some bees
the other night that were flying in what I thought was some kind of
pattern. I guess it could be chemicals in the water, something in
the food chain. Who knows? Maybe even weird radio signals."

He laughed. "So, are you a skeptic or a
mystic?"

"I’m not a skeptic. I still believe in...
something. I just don’t know what it is or what the rules are
anymore."

His frown returned, but not as harsh or hard.
"I’m not sure there are any."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"I get the funny feeling that maybe it’s all
been one big boondoggle from day one. Way back before the first
caveman heard a voice in the night or some desert dweller climbed
up onto a mountain top and thought he saw a bush burning."