The 19th Wife (9 page)

“I didn’t fuck her.”

“I figured that much, but that’s what he said. He was just trying to scare us into never messing around with the boys. By the way, my name’s 5.”

“5?”

“Well it’s Sarah 5, but fuck the Sarah part.”

“Got it. And for the record, I was holding Queenie’s hand. That’s all.”

“Oh, was that it? I used to wonder.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I recognize you from your picture.”

“What picture?”

“The one your mom kept in her room beside her bed. You were probably eleven or twelve in it, I don’t know. It was at one of those birthday parties and you’re standing in line with a paper plate, waiting for a piece of cake. Your mom showed it to me once.”

“I don’t even remember that picture being taken.”

“You know what she said when she showed it to me? She said she was going to see you again in heaven. I don’t mean to pick on your mom, but give me a fucking break.”

“So who’s your mom?”

“Kimberly.”

“His last wife?”

“Yeah. I think she had something on your dad, because he’d do whatever she wanted. Like she said she wasn’t going to live in that house with all those wives. The next day he started building her a log cabin. He made all the boys work on it, which pissed them off because they knew their moms were getting it worse. Anyway, that’s where we lived, my mom and me. But they booby-trapped the place. It was always falling apart on us, a floor plank caving in, stuff like that. Once a window popped out on my mom. Nearly shredded her alive.”

“So, 5. When’d you leave?”

“About eight months ago. My mom has no clue I’m living so nearby. I told her I was leaving Utah and never coming back. Guess that didn’t happen. So anyway, what’s going on with your mom?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”

“She’s like in jail, right? It was all over the papers. Man, when I heard she shot him I was like, Lady, you beat me to it.”

“That’s what I thought until I got here.”

“What was she, number fifteen or something?”

“Nineteen.”

“The numbers are so screwed up. I doubt he really knew how many he had. It was all about pussy anyway. He was just counting cunts.”

“Isn’t it a little dangerous for you to be hanging out here?”

“I know,” she said. “I probably shoulda gone to Vegas or Phoenix or something.”

“They come into town pretty often, don’t they?”

“Some of them, yeah. But you know what, those old guys have no idea who’s who. No one but my mom remembers me. Here’s the thing, I want to get my mom outta there.”

“How you going to do that?”

“Same way I got out. There’s this agency in Salt Lake that helps women like her.”

“Really?”

“It’s how I escaped. No one knows this, but there’s a system to get messages in and out, you know, to people who want to leave. For a while they used the dairy fridge at the co-op to pass notes. Bet you didn’t know that. Anyway, I heard about it and started communicating with them, and then they sent me a message telling me to meet them on the highway. So one night around three I sneak out of the house and run like crazy down to the highway. I had no idea if they’d actually be there, or even who they were. It all could’ve been a setup. It could’ve been the Prophet himself looking to screw me over. Literally. But I get there and this van pulls up with a man and a woman inside. I climb in and pray they’re on my side. I know, can you believe it, me praying?

“Anyway, they drove me here to Kanab that first night and the next morning they were going to take me to Salt Lake, to this house for kids like me, but I was like, Thanks, I’ll stop right here. They tried to talk me out of it, but when I make up my mind, forget it. I’ve been hanging around here trying to figure out how to get my mom out. When I heard your dad was dead, I went back to see her. I was like, Mom, let’s get the fuck out of here. You know what she said? She tells me she doesn’t want to go. She wants to hang around and play widow. She said she loved the old bastard. Is that fucked up or what?”

“It’s pretty fucked up.”

Elektra was growing impatient in the sun. 5 poured some water into her palm and Elektra licked it out. “You know what happens next, don’t you? The Prophet’s going to get some guy to marry all of them in one fell swoop. You know, keep the family together. And they’ll all end up belonging to another man. Probably some young asshole who’ll live another sixty years. No one would believe this goes on today. They’re still looking for the Taliban, right? Well, hello? They’re right here.”

“Want to hear something crazy?” I said. “My mom says she didn’t kill him.”

“No shit.”

“That’s why I’m looking around.”

“For what?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t really know.”

“Well, let me know if you find anything out.”

A customer came in with a large order of veggie wraps. 5 took her place behind the counter. She pulled on a pair of plastic gloves and began laying out a row of tortillas. By the time she was done another large order came in, then another. But she kept her eye on me the whole time. When I stood to leave she waved from behind the counter, a plastic baggie on her hand.

I called Roland. “Kanab? Sounds Kanasty. Oh honey, where on earth?” Then I called the contractor who gives me most of my work. He wasn’t pissed about my skipping out on the bathroom vanity job. I was still on for next Monday, a job in San Marino redoing a nursery. “This lady’s about to have triplets,” he said. “Expect madness.” Then I called my mom. Excluding calls from Mr. Heber, she’s allowed only two calls a week. It took a while to get her on the phone. When I heard her voice, I told her I was going to see Kimberly.

“Is there anything I should know?” I said. The line crackled the way it does in a creepy old movie.

“I don’t think she knew who I was before all this happened,” she said. “The new wives pretty much ignore the old ones.”

“Mom, I want to go up and look around your old room. Do you think I’ll find anything there?”

“I doubt it. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the wives has already dumped my things and moved in.”

After that I drove to a park and lay down on the futon in the back of the van. Elektra curled up next to me. I started reading that book about God. I was at the part about religion and war. I’ve been trying to get through it for a while now, but after a few pages I always fall asleep.

When I woke the sun was balling up and getting ready to set. It was time to go back to Mesadale. The closer I got, the redder the desert burned. Not red and orange and pink and yellow. Just red. Everything. Red and red and red. By the time I reached the turnoff, it was dark. I drove up the road with my headlights out.

Kimberly’s cottage looked like one of those houses that comes as a kit in the mail. The windows were full of soft pinkish light. I heard water running in a sink. The front door was open and I could look through the screen door into the living room. A shotgun hung on two brackets above the mantel. I know my guns: it was a Big Boy .44 Magnum. But around here they weren’t all that rare.

I called hello.

The water stopped. “Who’s that?”

“Sister Kimberly?”

A youngish woman appeared on the other side of the screen, her hair up in an airy roll. She looked like one of those actors, if that’s the right word, who works in a frontier-town theme park. “Can I come in?”

She knew who I was. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It won’t take long.” I put my hand on the door.

“Please, stay out there.” She locked the latch from inside. A shove would’ve yanked the door off its frame, but it seemed far-fetched. Me? Breaking down a (screen) door?

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know any more than you do. Besides, I can’t talk to you. You know that.”

“You can if you want to.”

“Jordan, please.”

“Five minutes. Give me five minutes.”

I asked where she was when my dad was killed, and she said, “I was right here, of course.”

I asked what she heard. “Nothing. Not until all the sister wives started screaming.”

“Who was here that night?”

“I don’t know, everyone, I suppose, but I never go in the main house.”

“Did anyone leave right before he was killed? Anything suspicious like that?”

Through the screen, with the pinkish light behind her, she looked like a saint in an old painting, everything glowing around her beautiful oval face. “No, nothing like that. Jordan, what are you up to? You really shouldn’t be here.”

“Are you all alone?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Don’t you have a daughter?”

“Had.”

“Had?”

“They took her.”

“Who took her?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you.”

“Because your husband was my dad. Where do you think your daughter is?”

“They’ve been coming for our young girls lately. Telling them all sorts of lies.”

“Who?”

“The casinos.”

“The casinos?” If it weren’t so sad, I would’ve laughed.

“From Mesquite, and some from Las Vegas. They come over and take our girls.”

“You’re saying a casino kidnapped your daughter?”

“Yes, it just happened, right after he was killed. And I know what they do: they brainwash them, the pretty ones at least. The Prophet warned us to be on the lookout for people claiming to help our girls. They’re the casinos.” Tears came to her golden eyes.

“Here,” I said. “Take this.”

She hesitated, then unlatched the screen, opening it enough to take my bandanna. Quickly she set the hook back in its eye and dabbed her eyes. “The Prophet says I’ve got to forget all about her. She’s gone into the world of sin and I can no longer love her, that’s what he says.” She let out a small cry. “But it’s hard.”

Those tears were real, that much I knew. We were standing close together, separated only by the screen. She said, “You should probably leave.”

“Can I come another time?”

“What for?”

“To talk. To tell you if I find anything.”

“I don’t know.” She shivered, and I left her, a silhouette in the screen.

I walked quickly around the side of the big house. I could hear the chatter of girls getting ready for bed. How many were still inside? No one knew: that was the thing. I felt sorry for them, everyone in my dad’s house, even if one of them had put the rap on my mom.

A PROPHET ON THE MISSISSIPPI

A
N
I
NTERVIEW WITH
J
OSEPH
S
MITH

Special to the
New York Herald

July 28, 1843

N
AUVOO
, I
LLINOIS
—Yesterday, in this beautiful city situated on a horseshoe bend in the Mississippi River, Howard Greenly of the
Herald
interviewed Joseph Smith, Jr., Prophet to the Latter-day Saints. Our correspondent met with Smith in the second-story offices above his Red Brick Store, sitting at the wood table where Smith regularly confers with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, his council of religious and political advisors. In the interview Smith would speak to the thus-called Gentile press more openly than he ever had before.

Smith is thirty-nine, equipped with a tall, lithely powerful frame, vivid in everything he does. Up and down the Mississippi he is famous for the flash in his blue gemstone eyes. His tenor voice carries far, with a natural clarity to it that attracts the ear. Since establishing his Church in 1830, this son of Vermont farmers has led his followers through a number of arduous relocations in search of a home where they could worship undisturbed, including colonies in Kirtland, Ohio, and Far West, Missouri, before settling in Nauvoo. Over the years Smith has been denounced as a charlatan, a plagiarist, and a speculator in fraud. He has been tarred-and-feathered, arrested for treason, chased across state lines, thrown in a Missouri jail cell, and faced orders of execution. He has seen his most faithful adherents slaughtered in pitiless battles such as the one at Haun’s Mill. Yet each blow of adversity has only increased his position in the eyes of his devout. The Mormons, or Saints as they call themselves, revere him in a fervid manner unfamiliar to modern times. Nearly everyone in this bustling city of 12,000 speaks of him with the same reverence others reserve elsewhere for Jesus Christ, Son of God.

Smith’s counselor and friend, Brigham Young, attended the interview. He is a quiet, thoughtful carpenter and glazier, with a stolid presence and fast, flinty eyes. This silent giant spoke but once, as the reader shall see.

H.G.
—Can you tell us, are you a Christian?

J.S.
—Yes. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ fully. He is our Savior. We pray to him. We know he suffered on our behalf. He is at the center of all we believe.

H.G.
—Then who are you?

J.S.
—I am Joseph Smith Junior, son of Joseph Smith Senior and Lucy Mack Smith, and husband to Emma Hale Smith.

H.G.
—Theologically speaking, who are you to this religion?

J.S.
—I am the Prophet. The Lord has revealed many truths for man through me.

H.G.
—What truths?

J.S.
—He has restored the Gospel.

H.G.
—The Book of Mormon?

J.S.
—That’s correct.

H.G.
—Many people say it’s a feeble imitation of the Bible.

J.S.
—Have you read it?

H.G.
—I must confess, I’ve given it a go a few times and couldn’t make heads or tails.

J.S.
—You didn’t finish it, then?

H.G.
—I did not.

J.S.
—You strike me as a just man, so may I ask that you refrain from dismissing it before you’ve read it all the way through?

H.G.
—Fair enough. What do you say to people who don’t believe we live in a time of Prophets and revelations? That the days of mystical events belonged to the ancients?

J.S.
—I say, Look around. Tell me why the Lord should stop communicating with man now? Aren’t we in need of His word more so than ever? Why would He reserve His right to speak to man solely in ancient times?

H.G.
—For some it’s difficult, even impossible, to believe the stories of an angel in the woods, and the golden plates buried in the hills, and the other myths of your creed’s origins.

J.S.
—If they can believe Christ rose from His grave, I do not understand why they can’t believe the fact of plates of gold.

H.G.
—Very well. You are also the political leader of Nauvoo. Is this perhaps an instance of Church and State being one?

J.S.
—It is.

H.G.
—And yet we have a tradition of separating the two. Christ himself called upon separating that which was Caesar’s from all things spiritual. Why should Americans accept your arrangement here?

J.S.
—If the people of Nauvoo can accept it, the American people should do so as well. Show me the harm it is to them.

H.G.
—What is your position on slavery?

J.S.
—We believe slavery even more morally corrosive to the owner than to the enslaved.

H.G.
—There is a group called the Danites, also called Destroying Angels, which is known as a militia, violent in its mission, and commanded by you, similar to Rome’s Praetorian Guard. Can you tell the American people who they are and what they do?

J.S.
—You astound me with your vivid tales. I have never heard of this group, nor do I lead any private bands. Tell me, where do these stories come from?

H.G.
—Your enemies have depicted the Danites as a secret police authorized to destroy those who speak out against you.

J.S.
—Think of your source: My enemies can be expected to depict such things.

H.G.
—Not only your enemies, independent observers, too.

J.S.
—Show me an independent observer. I would like to meet such a rare creature.

H.G.
—You’re denying such a group exists?

J.S.
—I ask you this: Nearly five years ago, a group of Saints was massacred at Haun’s Mill by government sanction. A ten-year-old boy lost the top of his head to the Governor’s militia. What was our response? Fury? Destruction? Revenge? No, we responded with grief and mercy, as Christ has taught us. If I employed a secret militia, shouldn’t I have called them out to avenge that boy’s death?[At this point, the interview was interrupted by Chauncey Webb, a leading wainwright in Nauvoo. His business pulled Smith away for some ten minutes. Upon his return, Smith apologized and explained the interruption.]

J.S.
—Brother Chauncey, my good friend who was just here, has brought news of the arrival of a caravan of Saints. Their wagons have pulled in from the coast of Maine.

H.G.
—Fresh converts?

J.S.
—Yes, and new friends.

H.G.
—Your Church is expanding rather rapidly.

J.S.
—If it does so, it is thanks to the power of God and the Truth of His word.

H.G.
—Yet isn’t there another reason? For nearly as long as your Church has existed, rumors of polygamy have surrounded it. Can you tell us once and for all, do you practice polygamy?

J.S.
—We do not.

H.G.
—Are there exceptions?

J.S.
—Our enemies create the exceptions in the mind of the public. That does not make them true.

H.G.
—Do you have any idea why these rumors persist?

J.S.
—We seek to practice our religion freely. In the history of man, those who have sought religious freedom have been persecuted, maligned, and, if they are not careful, destroyed. We are no different than the early Christians in the Emperors’ Rome. And yet, this country was founded on religious tolerance. And so it should be.

H.G.
—I have been told you have at least twenty wives.

J.S.
—Sir, my house is just up the street. You are free to search it. Let’s go there now! If you find these twenty wives, please inform me.

H.G.
—Sir, can you assure the general public that the Latter-day Saints do not practice plural marriage, never have practiced it, and never will practice it?

J.S.
—I can assure you.

B.Y.
—If I may interrupt.

J.S.
—Of course.

B.Y.
—Sir, why not ask our wives? Mrs. Smith, or my Mrs. Young, will gladly tell you about their households.

H.G.
—Thank you, I wouldn’t want to disturb them.

J.S.
—I would think my Emma would have something to say if I came home with twenty women.

H.G.
—Yes, I should say. So let’s leave it at that, shall we? One last question: What is in your future?

J.S.
—Peace, I should hope, to pursue our beliefs. In my heart I believe our countrymen deem this our right—for all Americans must be free.