The Righteous (23 page)

“And what’s the solution to that? Proselyte? Send missionaries door to door like the Salt Lake Mormons?”

“Some people explored adoption about twenty years ago. It was a hard sell. Let us adopt children—girls only, mind you—and raise them in our polygamist community. Then we’ll marry them to our sons at the age of sixteen.” Father smiled. “Then there’s the small matter that the genetic heritage of adoptees is not strong. Whatever we’d gain from hybrid vigor would be lost by mixing our genes with the daughters of drug addicts and prostitutes.”

“That’s a little harsh.”

“I’m just laying out the argument, Jacob.”

“Fine, so then what?”

“I say nothing. I say we keep a lookout for likeminded individuals who are open to joining Zion. And we guard against cousin marriage. Over time, as Zion grows and we add a small number of converts, the dysgenic effects will fade. I’m not expecting the Second Coming to arrive within my lifetime, you see. There are too many prophesies yet to come true, and we are too small to form the foundation of Christ’s kingdom on the earth.”

Father shook his head. “But here’s the heart of the matter. There’s a small, but influential and growing group within the church—let’s call them super-eugenicists—who don’t accept the slower pace.”

“And this group is led by Elder Kimball?” Jacob asked.

“That’s right. Some of them took their wives to fertility clinics to bring in outside genetic material. Have you noticed how many twins have been born in the last ten years?”

“I just thought that was normal fertility treatment stuff.”

“Some of it might be. Maybe even one of the twins would be their own, the other from a purchased embryo.”

“It’s all rather slimy.”

“I was outraged when I found out,” Father said. “And Brother Joseph put a stop to it. But Elder Kimball keeps pushing and pushing. What does it mean for Zion if we become nothing more than a program of scientific breeding? We can’t let those people win.”

Jacob felt a helpless despair. “But, Father…”

Father fixed him with a hard look. “This is bigger than you, bigger than Eliza. Bigger than me. It is nothing less than a struggle between God and Satan.”

Why does Satan have to be involved?
Jacob wondered.
Aren’t our enemies perfectly capable of motivating their own bad behavior?

Father drew a breath. “So you see why I need you on the Quorum. And you know what that means for Eliza.”

Jacob let out a groan that had been building in him. He balled his fists and put them to his temples in frustration. “Father, I can’t.”

“Think about the practical ramifications of your opposition. First, Taylor Junior will take your place in the Quorum of the Twelve. The super-eugenicists will move forward with their plan. Amanda’s murderer, you can rest assured, will never be punished. What’s more, you won’t even stop Eliza’s marriage into the Kimball family.”

His face hardened. “Jacob, there can be no argument. Either you will come along with me, or I will dismiss you now and make the same arrangement, but with your younger brother Joshua.”

“Joshua is only eighteen.”

“Yes, I know. A good boy, but not ready to move into a leadership position.”

“And I am?” Jacob asked. “I’m only twenty-six.”

“Is that your answer? No?”

He had made a promise to his sister, but this, this burden his father had placed upon him would force him to break that promise. Jacob bowed his head and didn’t lift it for a long moment. It felt as though a millstone hung about his neck. A millstone of guilt and shame and weighty expectations that he could not hope to fulfill.

At last he lifted his head and said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

They returned to the room where they had kept the prophet and the other elders waiting. Jacob took his seat. He would not look at Elder Kimball. If he did, he would lose his resolve. He’d rather climb over the table and rip out the man’s throat than betray Eliza.

He looked straight at the prophet. “Okay, Brother Joseph. I’m in agreement. Let there be harmony among the servants of the Lord.”

“Let us form a circle then, and ordain you to your office,” Brother Joseph said.

They pulled a chair aside and Jacob took his seat. The men gathered around him, apostles of the Lord with the keys to bind on heaven and earth. Each man placed his right hand on Jacob’s head and his left on the shoulder of the man to his left. Jacob didn’t belong here; he wanted to throw off their hands and break from the circle.

Brother Joseph spoke. “Jacob Levi Christianson. In the name of Jesus Christ and by the Power of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood we ordain you to the office of apostle…”

Jacob left the room as the junior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. They had blessed him with the spiritual keys to the kingdom. The ability to converse with angels. An elder of Israel.

He was engaged to marry one of Elder Kimball’s daughters, a girl named Jessie Lynn. There had been three to choose from. It made no difference to him, so he chose the oldest. Almost eighteen. They would marry Thursday evening. Tomorrow.

As he stepped outside, he found Eliza talking to Fernie and Jessie Lynn Kimball. The irony drew him up short. The sister he had betrayed, the woman he loved, and the girl he would marry. All three looked his way as he came. They were laughing.

He had entered the church building with two goals. Continue his investigation, and protect his sister from a marriage to the treacherous Taylor Kimball, Junior. He had failed on both accounts.

Elder Kimball was the second person to slip away from the meeting. Others saw him go, and perhaps thought that he was hurrying after Jacob to have a word with the boy. Perhaps he would play the part of peacemaker, now that his needs had been met. Maybe welcome Jacob to the family.

Instead, he walked to the other side of the chapel until his phone had service, then dialed his son. Gideon picked up on the second ring. “We’re ready, Father. Jacob just left the church house. We haven’t found Enoch yet, but that’s only a matter of time.”

Gideon must be somewhere within sight of the church, then, as Jacob couldn’t have left the building more than a minute earlier.

Kimball said, “Stop. Don’t move another inch forward.” A long silence on the other end. “Did you hear me? We’re not going through with the plan.”

“I heard you.” What was that in Gideon’s voice? Defiance?

A nervous tickle grew in Elder Kimball’s stomach. The growing feeling that he had misjudged Gideon now flowered into full-blown fear. “We’re not going through with it, Gideon. I’m serious. There’s no need. Jacob has capitulated completely.”

“Has he?” Gideon asked in a flat tone. There was not even skepticism in his voice. It was worse than that. He didn’t care what Jacob did or didn’t do.

“He’ll marry Jessie Lynn, and we get Eliza Christianson in return.”

“Taylor Junior gets Eliza, you mean.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t matter. Our status just climbed two notches. People owe us favors. You’ll be next. I promise. First, your refellowshipping into the church. Then, your own wife. And look, the Christiansons might still be persuaded. We have persuaded them to this point, why shouldn’t we keep trying? Surely they’ll see that ours is the wisest course to better God’s people. The Lord works through gentle persuasion, not by violence.”

A chuckle now. “Ah, Father. You don’t understand at all. The wheel has turned. The old order no longer applies. The time for gentle persuasion has passed. It’s time for the Lord’s wrath. We’ve seen an angel. He won’t have us hesitate or delay because of the machinations of twelve old men. Fools, all of them. And you, you are the biggest fool of all.”

Kimball could no longer contain his rage and frustration. “Don’t ever speak to me like that again, boy. You are nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing! Excommunicated. Apostate. A sinner.” His voice sounded shrill, even in his own ears, but he couldn’t stop. “You have been cast from the Lord’s presence. It was I who took you through the temple, gave you your endowment, you and all the other Lost Boys. And only I hold the key to your return, do you understand?”

“Are you finished?” Gideon’s voice remained even. “Good. Now
you
listen to
me.
It is
you
who are nothing. The winnowing has begun. Enoch has been sealed unto death. Jacob, too. Will you join their number? Will the Lord take your wives and your children and seal them unto another? Will you lose your kingdom? Will your soul be cast into Outer Darkness?”

Kimball screamed into the phone, “They’ll never follow you. Not the Lost Boys, not the people of the church. And the prophet will condemn you when he finds out. As will I. You are a murderer! You murdered my wife! You didn’t have to do that. Murderer! I’ll tell them. I’ll tell the prophet. And Elder Christianson. And Jacob. All of them.”

“No, Father.” Voice calm. “You won’t. Now go home and await my next command. It will come very soon. And remember, we do not treat gently those who break their covenants.”

The words chilled him. Throat cut from ear to ear. Disemboweled. Organs fed to wild animals. “You could do that to your own father?” he asked, his voice small when it came out his mouth. “But, but, I brought you back, son. I showed compassion. I brought you back.”

There was no reply. Kimball held the phone in his trembling hand as the line went dead. He could not believe what had happened. The enormity of it howled about his ears. He leaned against the wall to steady himself.

“Are you alright, Taylor?”

Elder Kimball turned to see the prophet approaching, watching him. Brother Joseph stopped a pace away and leaned against his cane. There was love in that face, and the gentleness of a father toward his child. And worry. That look made Kimball want to weep.

Elder Kimball swallowed hard. Now was the time. Now was when he would tell the prophet all that had happened. He’d made mistakes. He had never meant for it to come to this. He would fall to his knees at Brother Joseph’s feet and beg for forgiveness. There was still time to stop the horrible sequence of events set in motion by his son. Brother Joseph would know what to do.

Instead, he said, “Yes, yes, I’m fine. I just…conflict with one of my sons. You know how they get.”

“Ah, yes. It is difficult.” Brother Joseph put a hand on his shoulder. “I understand Abraham’s fear of doing wrong by his daughter, but it is the sons who break my heart. So much potential. So often thrown away. Come. There will be time enough to worry about that later. For now, lift your spirits. We’ve once again found harmony in the Quorum. Let your heart be glad.”

Brother Joseph carried something under his arm, wrapped in brown paper. He handed it to Elder Kimball. “This is for you.”

Kimball took the package and his fingers fumbled at the paper. A stained glass window. In the picture, a woman with a dark, curly-haired child in her arms. Even in cut glass, the resemblance was unmistakable. Amanda and Sophie Marie.

Brother Joseph was old; he must have worked his arthritic fingers to paralysis to finish the window so quickly. Kimball held the window with trembling hands. He’d have sooner opened his veins with those shards of glass than to see them assembled into a portrait of his daughter and his murdered wife.

“To remember your dear, departed wife and the poor child who is bereft of a mother.”

“Thank you,” Elder Kimball managed.

#

Eliza turned toward Jacob with a smile on her lips, but it died at once. She had been talking to Fernie and Jessie Lynn. Fernie had been telling a funny story about her four-year-old son’s sudden interest in the origin of babies.

Formerly oblivious to all such thing, Daniel had asked one day why one of his “aunts”—Fernie’s sister wife—had grown so big. She was pregnant, Fernie had explained. What’s that? How did she get that way? What is sperm? Yes, but
how
does the sperm get into the woman?

But the thing that had drawn the most curiosity was the physical transformation a woman underwent. He was especially delighted to discover that one especially large woman at church was pregnant with twins. The day after the twin discovery, Fernie had taken Daniel to Cedar City to sell vegetables at the farmers market. An obese woman had presented herself to buy cucumbers and Fernie had noted with horror that her son was watching the woman with slack-jawed wonderment. She could read his thoughts. If the woman at church had been pregnant with twins, then what on earth was this woman carrying? Fernie had silently begged her son to stay quiet. To her relief, he said nothing, but then the woman turned to go and presented a view of her rear end.

“Look, Mom,” Daniel had said in an exaggerated stage whisper, “she’s got a baby in her butt!”

Eliza laughed so hard that tears came to her eyes. She had spotted Jacob and motioned for him to come over so she could make Fernie retell the story, when she saw the gray look on his face.

Her laugh died on her lips. The sun seemed to dim overhead. His face darkened further when he saw her own reaction.

Jacob looked to Fernie and then to Jessie Lynn. His face grew progressively more stricken. “Eliza, I need to talk to you alone.”

She nodded and followed. They picked their way through the clumps of women and the playing children. Jacob shook the hands of two men he knew from Harmony, but quickly excused himself. At last they stood alone beneath the eaves of the church building.

“You will forever remember this conversation as the moment you came to hate me. Please remember that at least I told you in person.”

“Jacob, you’re scaring me.”

And then he told her. He spared no details, sharing how Father and the others had cornered him. But he did not gloss over his own role in the bargain, exposing himself as a coward. The upshot, of course, was that she would shortly marry her would-be rapist.

And she found, through her fear of Taylor Junior, that she didn’t hate Jacob. No, it was the whole, damnable situation that had pushed him down this path. Mostly, what she felt was a great loss, and the knowledge that her ally had fallen away during her time of great need. No matter the reason, he had left her and now she stood alone.