Effigy (35 page)

Mother Hammer had put up enough sandwiches to feed a horde, and she made it clear she wasn’t carrying any home only to find they’d spoiled in the heat. Her pickled cucumbers snapped audibly between the teeth, shooting vinegar into the sinuses. The children were used to them, knew to hold their breath and start gnawing, wary and persistent as mice.

Last came a mound of oaten biscuits, buttery and sweet. Everyone but Hammer and Sister Thankful ate their share. While Mother Hammer was busy brushing crumbs from Baby Joe’s cheeks, her husband took the opportunity to rise from where he lay propped on one elbow and offer a hand up to his favourite. The pair of them set off together arm in arm to, as Hammer called back over his shoulder,
take the air
. Leaving the rest of them to take the waters.

Mother Hammer herded Dorrie, Ruth and the two girls into a thin cover of trees. Dorrie changed hurriedly, back hunched to the others, into a drooping costume that consisted of a linsey-woolsey dress and matching pantalets. A furtive glance showed Ruth undressing methodically, looking only to herself, while Mother Hammer fussed over Josepha and Josephine. Trudging down to the shore, Dorrie brought up the end of a uniformed female string. Lal and the three Josephs met them at the water’s edge, clad in overalls and nothing else. Dorrie averted her eyes.

Mother Hammer kept Baby Joe and the girls close, but allowed Joseph and Joe to wade out after Lal. The eldest reached waist depth and plunged, striking out clumsily, kicking spume into his brothers’ eyes. Joe let out a yelp.

“Lal!” Mother Hammer barked, and he stood up dripping, hands at his sides.

Ruth got no further than the shallows before she sat down, water creeping up the fibres of her bodice, darkening her breasts. Dorrie moved off on her own, not such a distance as to attract Mother Hammer’s attention but far enough to escape the family’s waves.

When no one called her back, she waded out a little more, turned to face the comforting curve of shore and dropped to her knees. Water to her neck. Until that moment, the creek that cut across the far acreage of the Burr farm had provided the only natural immersion she’d known. The water there only ever reached hip deep, but even so, you could feel the drag of it, its desire to suck a body down. There in the glassy lake, even the knit costume was weightless, unequal to the saline lift.

It required so little faith, such minimal movement, to let her knees slide out from beneath her. She tilted back in head-wetting surrender and found herself on the surface, trapped between planes. The sky yawned, so she drew down her eyelids against it. Her hands burned, but it was little enough to endure. Her ears knew only lapping. She could hear nothing of the others, and after a time she began to imagine they had forgotten her and returned to the ranch. And then to imagine that she too had forgotten, had abandoned her only body, setting it adrift.

That afternoon it was Sister Ruth’s light touch on her floating arm that brought her back. This morning it is the angry, clanging bell.

Packed full of porridge and molasses, fried eggs and fatty ham, Erastus feels even lower to the ground than usual as he makes his
way across the yard. It’s as though Ursula has weighted him down on purpose, and not just with breakfast—the grace she delivered wound on and on while the meal lost steam. He listened long enough to determine the matter was the usual one, then stopped his ears with thoughts of the day ahead. Not that there was much to think of. A ride, certainly, but where? On his own he’d have to stick to the property. He could always look in on the Tracker, maybe beat the bushes for a male grouse to match the hen they bagged last year.

Hammer kicks a small stone from his path, pausing to watch it roll further than expected, its progress becoming unclear. Beyond, sunlight glances off the water in a trough, a brilliance evocative of Ursula’s bowed head.

He was never a believer the way his first wife is. Ursula is steeped not only in feeling but in knowledge, well versed in Church history, Scripture and law. Weekly Meeting is more than enough learning for Erastus. Fiery sermons are best; when the topic is the need for continued vigilance, he’s less likely to nod off.

Faced with the stable, he finds himself reluctant to go indoors. Instead, he veers left, leans into the corral gate and takes in the wash of the wide-open valley, letting his thoughts run.

It’s always been the living religion for him, that great mass of cried-down people choking the road. Of course, one of those people—the tall, bonneted one he made sure not to lose sight of—mattered more than all the others combined.

He may have come to the new religion via things temporal, but as it turned out, he was fully prepared to believe. The Hammers were Baptists, his father in church when it suited him, his mother fond of face-down prayer, a gentle begging delivered nightly to the floorboards. From what Erastus could make out, the new religion offered all the benefits of the old—baptism to wash a soul
clean, the theatre of tongues and healing, the happy threat of end times—and more besides. A bible story whose violent and miraculous chapters unfolded right here, rather than in some distant, sand-swept land. A vast, unconquerable kingdom, not only later, in the great beyond, but now. Best of all, a living prophet in direct communication with God.

Brother Joseph was a shepherd no man could fail to love—and yet, much as Erastus mourned the Prophet’s passing, there was a part of him that leapt heavenward at the news. It wasn’t long before that portion knew its reward. Ursula was more beautiful than ever in her grief—eyes cloudy and crimson-rimmed, hair stark under a bonnet of iron black. Having refused him countless times, she stared out from beneath its overhang and said yes.

Along with their marriage came the reign of President Young—a leader less winning, to be sure, but in the end no less loved. He may not have drawn gazes in those early days the way Brother Joseph did, but he draws them now, by God. The Lion of the Lord earned his place at the head of things. Joseph talked to angels; Brigham built Deseret—not one of many settlements the Saints would be driven from, but their own Zion, a desert fortress ringed round with stone. Land where it was said no white man could prosper—and look, twenty years on and Erastus Hammer stands amid orchards, pasture and stock. He takes satisfaction in the idea, squinting out over the fog and dazzle of his fields, then turning to survey his yard.

By habit, his eyes seek Ursula first. He finds her on the move past the clamouring garden—blue dress beneath a snow-bright apron, a lesser drift marking the large knot of her hair. Stooping to take up what must be a basket, she puts him in mind of the bright breakers he endured when, still a bachelor, he crossed the wide Atlantic on a mission to Wales. He converted precious few. Those
he did manage to win came for the promise of acres as much as for the glory of God.

Movement shifts his gaze. A flush of reddish brown glimpsed among the mulberries—Ruth’s undeniable hue. It runs like paint through the veins of every child he put inside her; doubtless the one she carries now will emerge with the same chestnut hair and gleaming, wooden eyes. What of his own colouring? Not one of them sprouted a thatch of black bristle in tribute to him—least of all his eldest, so like Ursula it troubles Erastus to look at him. What would he call a little Hammer if he got one—Erastus Junior? Ezra? No sense wondering. Naming is Ursula’s privilege. Her own she called Lalovee after Erastus’s father—a flowery name for a flint-hard unbeliever she never met. Erastus shortened the hated name the first time he uttered it, but the missing syllables still sound in his head.

After Lal—almost a decade after—Ursula began dubbing Ruth’s issue, assigning each new arrival a variation on the only name she’d ever really loved. She did Erastus a favour in the end. On the rare occasion when he finds himself wanting to address one of the eerie brood, he possesses a fair notion of where to begin.

And soon there will be another. Ruth must be four months along now, the first of which Erastus spent waiting for Thankful to unlock her chamber door. It was scarcely fair. He wouldn’t have been compelled to bed his second wife if the third would bear him a child. Thankful has been barren these six years, though—what are the chances she’ll manage it now? Truth be told, Erastus is just as glad. He’d be expected to keep his hands off her until the thing was born, and anyhow, the notion of Thankful with a baby is all wrong. Like trusting a fox to carry a downy new chick in its mouth.

Lying with Ruth would’ve been crime enough in Thankful’s eyes, but Erastus had gone further, allowing himself to enjoy it. He sighed as he descended into his second wife’s warmth. Digging his chin into the depths of her hair, he couldn’t help but moan. On the far side of the wall, the glass Thankful had been listening through splintered musically against the floor.

Still, it was nothing to the dry spell he’d endured when he’d dared to bring Eudora home. Thankful had gone wild. What did he want with a fourth wife—wasn’t she a different woman for him every night? She knew he had two wives already when she accepted him, but she never signed on to be one in a long line. She must’ve been mad to marry him—a Mormon missionary! She’d pack her bags, go back to Chicago, back to the stage. He told her over and over, he’d married the girl for her hands alone, for what those hands could do.

“You think I’d look twice at a wreck like that when I’ve got a creature like you back home?”

“So why did you bed her?!”

“I had to, Thankful, a man has to stake his claim. It was no pleasure to me.” And then the line that punctured her defences, the tip of the blade with which he would carve his way back in. “It was all I could do to finish up in there—a man’d have more fun at a knothole.”

As luck would have it, he had no need of a lie. It really had taken him an age to finish. He’d felt the girl’s flesh cool beneath him. No part of her, not even her pulse, had answered him back.

Erastus shudders to think of it, shakes the memory off. How long has he been standing here, back to the rails? He pivots, the door to Eudora’s workshop sliding past with a leaden glint. Little chance of spotting her. She’ll either be fast asleep or working, breathing the close, chokehold air of her art. In her own twitchy
way, she may be the most contented of his wives. He holds to this idea a moment longer, then pushes back from the gate and makes for the stable door.

“Two more, please, Lal.” Ruth’s face in the crack of the silkhouse door, radiant, then gone. She always closes it quickly, afraid some small predator might be lurking in the weeds.

Lal hefts the two closest sacks, each giving a green sigh in response to leaving the ground. She opens the door to him and he sidles in fast, knowing this will please her. The racket is considerable, each worm-mouth growing wider, greedier, by the day.

“Are they from this end?” she asks, just loud enough to be heard. “Been shaded a good while?”

He matches her hush. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Just there is fine.” She points, and he sets the sacks down where she wants them, imagining the bulges of his bare forearms reflected in her eyes. When he glances up, her gaze is nowhere near him. A clean scent reaches him from the floor, the herb that is the smell of his mother’s linen. He remembers creeping into her room and sliding open the middle dresser drawer, laying his cheek to the crisp whiteness therein. Back when he was stupid and small.

He searches for something to say—anything to draw out his stay in the close little house—but his head is empty, washed bare by the caterpillars’ sound. Then, just as she looks round as though to ask
Are you still here?
, it comes to him.

“Why?”

She dips both hands into a sack, withdrawing them full. “Why what?”

He gestures to the sacks. “Why shade?”

“The leaves turn poison if they get too hot.” She spreads her load over a tray.

“Oh.” His mouth is empty, the brain above it blank. With the arrival of fresh food, the volume in the place rises. He feels himself take a step, then another—only two, but it’s a small room crowded with shelves. He’s beside her now, training his gaze on the bed of worms before them. The big green dress has gone dark beneath her arms. Her scent obliterates that of the flowers underfoot, painfully rich, like three Ruths distilled into one. He inhales hard. For one long, unreal second, he fears he will faint.