The 19th Wife

by David Ebershoff

  The admissions of thievery and deceit continued for three hours, reaching such fervor that it became almost a contest of who could admit to the greater sin. When one Brother stood and confessed mere doubt in his heart, he was nearly booed from the Meeting House. “What else have you done!” someone called. “Tell the truth!”

  Then something unexpected occurred: Aaron stood up. “I’ve got something to say.”

  Elder Hovey stopped. “Tell me, Brother, what have you done?”

  “I’ve been wrong to a girl.”

  “Go on.” Clearly this was the type of confession Elder Hovey had been fishing for all night. Now that the topic had moved from larceny to true impropriety, the crowd of Saints was freshly enraptured.

  “I promised I would marry her and I haven’t.”

  “What will you do about it?”

  “I’ll marry her, if she’ll have me.”

  Aaron had been such an undistinguished boy his entire life that many who knew my family did not know of his existence. He was average in every way: a plain appearance, a plain mind, a plain and guileless sense of purpose in life. I do not write this with judgment but simply as a matter of recording the truth—and in effort for the Reader to understand how exceptional his confession was.

  “Is she here tonight?” asked Elder Hovey.

  “She is.”

  “Will you make amends to her now? In front of your gathered Brothers and Sisters and before God?”

  Every eye was on Aaron. He stepped forward, moving around the crowded pews. There was a great anticipation as he walked, everyone wondering at whose feet he would stop. When he had to step over a family seated on the floor, people stirred as if one of these girls—freckled like the leopard, all of them—had submitted to his will. But no, he was only passing. He paused before a black-laced widow whose husband had been lost in Missouri. Had she had her way with my brother? No, he was only hesitating before moving to, of all people, Connie, our dear, dull neighbor, who had celebrated her twentieth birthday unknowingly feasting on my mother’s hen.

  Imagine the stir when my brother took Connie’s plump hand and asked her to become Mrs. Aaron Webb! His voice was so soft and timid that two older Sisters squawked, “What’d he say?” People began stomping their feet and a small section broke into a spontaneous hymn about atonement and the path to Heaven.

  “And so this fine couple shall be sealed,” announced Elder Hovey. “With their confessions, we can now forgive.”

  If Mrs. Myton had let loose a flood of stories of theft, my brother released a tidal wave of perversion too graphic to print. Suffice it to say: at least half the population of Saintly Brothers had a confession of the heart or, I should say, loins. The revelations continued for more than an hour, men rising to admit relations with women who were not their wives. The only resolution was marriage, even if the men were already wed. Elder Hovey asked several women on the spot, “Will you forgive your husband and permit him to marry the woman he has wronged in order to prevent his eternal damnation and hers?” Tell me, does a woman put to such a question have any option in her reply?

  It will be noted that in this litany of intercoursal relations there were no confessions of liaisons between a man and a previously married woman. No man was stupid enough to admit to that. It is not for me to say whether such sins had been committed but not confessed, or if Payson was somehow spared from such unforgivable acts. In any event, after five hours of confession, we had heard enough. We left exhausted, my mother and Mrs. Myton forced to walk home amicably, newly united by crime.

  THE 19TH WIFE

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Utah Reformation

  The subsequent weeks brought great change and confusion to my depleted little family in Payson. The confessional meeting was followed by several more, some lasting all day, wherein every last sin imaginable and many never before deemed possible were confessed. There was never a more devout Saint than my mother, but she worried over the upheaval these meetings caused. “I don’t understand it. People are lying about lying,” she observed. “You can’t impress the Lord with extra sins.”

  She was under a new duress, for Aaron had kept his promise and was sealed to Connie Myton in the Endowment House. It was a joyless ceremony, attended by but a few, myself excluded for I was too young to enter. Afterward, my mother served a custard cake to her new daughter and Mrs. Myton, who ate more than her share and left my mother with but a spoonful. (Why this sticks in my memory, I cannot say, but there it is once again: the truth!) After supper Aaron set about hanging a blanket along a wire run across the hut. Connie was to replace me in his bed, and I would sleep next to my mother. It was only that first night, as I tossed uncomfortably and plugged my ears against the strange noises from the other side of the blanket, that I learned that my mother’s ticking was no more comfortable or soft than a dry river bed. She had given her children the finer mattress without once complaining of her sacrifice. This is the sort of woman my mother has always been, I shall note plainly here.

  Newly married, and awakened to the omnipresence of sin in our community, Aaron joined up with a gang of men who had taken it upon themselves to enforce atonement. These were frightening days in Payson. Although distracted by the vagaries of girlhood, I took full notice of the change of climate, and I am not referring to winter’s end and the arrival of spring. During the first months of 1855, the confessions continued. Those who refused to confess, or confessed they had nothing to confess, were dragged to meetings by young men, my brother included, and put before a hall of peers and shouted at to repent. “You’re no better than the rest of us!” It did not occur to these mobs that a man or woman could in fact live righteously and therefore have no sins to offer up. The Church had been guiding all of us for years, long before Elder Hovey’s arrival, to live sinlessly. I shall not bother to point out the broken logic herein.

  In the evenings Aaron took down my father’s rifle and went out to round up sinners. Connie, I am sorry to report, was a meek, twitching-nosed creature who squeaked from the corner of our hut. “When will you be back?” seemed to be her favorite phrase. When Aaron was out, I invited her to sit with my mother and me at the fire, but she preferred to stay on her side of the blanket, passing her time I do not know how, although every now and then a small sniffle would emerge from her and my mother and I would lift our eyes from our needlework.

  Once I asked Aaron, when he came through the door flushed and excited, where he had gone off to. He hung up his gun like a hunter home from the kill and said, “Making sure all are saved.” A noble endeavor, I am sure, but coming from a boy of seventeen who only a few months before feigned illness on Sunday mornings, it sounded, to my youthful and inexperienced ears, at least, insincere.

  It does not take long, I do not need to tell you, for such an environment of confession to turn on itself. Soon not only were souls being cleansed, but neighbors were realizing they lived next to adulterers and thieves. Nearly everyone in Payson was told at some point he had been a victim by he who was previously deemed friend. This was enough to cast a long cloud of suspicion over the village. While the sinners were being re-baptized in the creek their minds were preoccupied with their belongings left on the shore.

  “It isn’t right,” my mother concluded in her admirably succinct way.

  She wrote the Prophet, alerting Brigham to the hypocrisy Elder Hovey had unleashed in Payson. She was certain her old friend and counselor would not approve of such behavior, for where in the Book of Mormon were the tales of mass confession and repentance? (Well, maybe they are in there somewhere, because I might as well admit, as a child I read the book a dozen times but always its meaning escaped me. If you find hypocrisy in this confession, so be it, but I ask you, Dear Reader, pick up a copy yourself and tell me how long you last.)

  Brother Brigham replied to my mother in a brief letter. “If they are sinful,” he wrote, “then they should admit to their sins. If they are innocent, thus they are, and I pray, shall be.” It wo
uld be incorrect to state this reply did not confuse my mother. She could have dismissed its ambiguity from any other Saint but Brigham, the man who had personally saved her with baptism in that cold creek all those years before. At the time she of course did not reveal the Prophet’s response to me directly, yet in reconstructing these events for this publication more than one person has assured me he never clearly denounced Elder Hovey.

  Had the events in Payson remained in Payson, this would be but a quaint story of provincial religious fervor. Yet, as History now knows, the mood of inquisition that struck our village was but a precursor for what would become known as the Utah Reformation. By the following winter of 1856, Brother Brigham and the other Church leaders instituted a like-minded reform throughout the Utah Territory. “All are guilty! None is clean until he has been cleansed!” So the charge went against Saints everywhere, even those who had never transgressed. The Utah Reformation showed far better organization than the little version originated in Payson. Brigham ran it like a General leading a War, commanding his Bishops, Elders, and others as if they were foot soldiers in a fierce battle for the soul. Among its many tactics in the campaign, the Church created a secret police disguised as local proselytizers called the Home Missionaries. Their function was to spy on Brigham’s followers and carry out his will.

  One afternoon my brother returned to the hut in such a somber mood, I feared he was bearing fateful news about our father. “I’ve been named a Home Missionary,” he announced.

  “What’s that?” I asked in that way only an eleven-year-old can.

  “We visit people in their homes, ensuring everyone’s living righteously.” Next he told my mother and me, and his wife in her corner, that he must put us each through a catechism. “That’s how I’ll know if your souls are pure.”

  “Child, sit down,” my mother said. “You sound like a fool.”

  “Anyone who refuses the catechism must be reported to the Bishop.” My mother told Aaron to stop his nonsense.

  “I’ll do it,” squeaked Connie.

  “You see,” said Aaron. “My wife has nothing to hide.”

  He shooed my mother and me out the door into the garden. It was a fine spring day with a breeze rippling the grass. We waited upon a log beneath the cottonwood. Mrs. Myton spotted us from her window. “He promised he’d come over and do me when he’s through with you!” she called.

  “It didn’t used to be like this,” my mother said.

  “Why is Brigham doing this?” I asked.

  “It’s the men around him. They tell him lies. There is no finer man on Earth than Brigham Young.”

  Imagine, if you will, the effect such a declaration can have on a young girl’s heart. I was on the threshold of maturity, and acutely sensitive to how women responded to men. I loved no one more in this world than my mother. If she could love Brigham, even as his words and deeds created animosity in her own house, then my heart naturally followed course.

  After nearly an hour, Aaron and Connie appeared in the kitchen yard. She had a confused, far-off expression, as if recovering from a sharp but temporary pain. “Is she all right?”

  “She’ll wait at her mother’s while we continue. All right, Ann Eliza, you’re next.”

  My mother told Aaron he could not interview me unless she was present. Aaron whined, an impetuous noise that reminded us he was not far from boyhood. “The Elders insist that each catechism be performed alone. Those are the rules.”

  “I won’t let you talk to her without me.” My mother folded her arms across her breasts—the universal maternal gesture that tells all children everywhere, This matter is settled.

  Aaron relented with a huff and a stomp. We followed him into the hut. He had set two chairs opposite each other and he nervously indicated us to sit down while he perched on the bed. “Now I must ask you some very important questions. You must swear to the Lord you will answer honestly and truthfully.”

  I told him I would.

  “All right, let’s begin.” He flipped through a pamphlet provided to him by our Bishop. “The first question is, Have you ever killed a man, woman, or child?”

  “This is crazy,” my mother snapped. “I’ve never thought about killing anyone until this very moment.”

  “Ma, I need to ask the questions in the order they’re printed. Ann Eliza, yes or no?”

  I could not help myself from laughing. “Who would I kill?”

  “Answer the question straightforward and truthfully.”

  “No.”

  And so the inquisition continued. My brother, in earnest voice, asked the most ridiculous questions I have ever encountered, at least until my lawsuit against Brigham Young. He inquired if I had committed adultery. (This to an eleven-year-old!) He asked if I had drunk ale, whiskey, or wine.

  “Are you finished?” said my mother.

  “One more question. Do you accept plural marriage as true?”

  “Are you asking me or Ann Eliza?”

  “Both.”

  “My husband has a second wife. I think that clarifies my belief.”

  “Ann Eliza? What about you?”

  “I think so.” Oh, if I could take back that response!

  The interview ended, as Aaron had been taught to do so, with instruction to observe the wishes of my mother and father (though absent) and to rightfully enter a plural marriage when I was of the age. “There,” he said, reverting to his more accustomed role of son and brother. “How’d I do?”

  “You’ll be real good at this miserable task,” my mother said.

  Aaron, never exceedingly swift, took this as a compliment until he felt its underlying sting.

  From thence Aaron, and many others like him, visited the houses of neighbor and friend, subjecting good men and women to a humiliating volley of questions. Most were afraid to turn the Home Missionaries away, for doing so would set off suspicion of being guilty of some great and yet unknown sin. During this time every Saint in the Territory underwent a re-baptismal, shivering in the fonts while their sins, no matter how trivial, were supposedly washed away. Within a few months, the people of Utah believed themselves the cleanest body of souls ever to grace the Earth. Despite my mother’s denial, in truth all of this was done, we now know, at the behest of Brigham Young.

  THE 19TH WIFE

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Blood Atonement

  Every now and then my mother and I journeyed to Great Salt Lake City to shop in the well-stocked outlets of Main Street. These were not frivolous trips—not as you, my young ladies of the East, might think of a shopping journey—but, rather, necessary excursions for survival. The stores in Payson, if you were to call them such, carried such crude supplies that in some ways it might have been more convenient were they not in business at all.

  On one such trip we—my mother and I, accompanied by Aaron and Connie—stayed overnight to hear the Prophet preach in the Tabernacle in the morning. For those who have not visited the City of the Saints, the Tabernacle is an enormous hall with a low, rounded roof that will remind you of nothing so much as a giant tortoise. It is one of the Great Buildings of the World, and, God willing, shall survive centuries of man’s folly to show itself to future ages. Unfortunately, the world-famous turtle-roofed Tabernacle would not be built for another ten years. No, on this particular trip in 1856, as the Utah Reformation was boiling over into violence, the Tabernacle was a more modest affair (although it was a vast improvement over the first Tabernacle in the Territory, which was nothing more than a shady spot beneath a bowery). Yet, no matter the edifice, the Saints would always turn up by the thousands to hear their Prophet, Brigham Young.

  By now I was of the age to form a mature and reasoned opinion of the great man. He loomed over my childhood as a beloved grandfather might: omnipresent and seemingly limitless in his influence over our lives; loving but also somewhat frightening; and as constant as the sun and moon combined. Before we moved to Payson, I would see him on Sundays or on occasion in Temple Square, and he would
nod hello, for he was always friendly with children. Every child in the Territory knew where he lived, in the Beehive House behind a high stone wall. Many others have depicted him accurately, at least in visage, so there is little point in my expanding upon previous efforts. Except I shall note the appropriate metallic color of his eyes and the generally square and solid shape of his entire personage. In my youthful imagination I could not render a more apt representation of God.

  On this particular Sunday the Old Tabernacle was full of expectancy. The Reformation had been sweeping the Territory for several weeks, fomenting a fervor of introspection, admission, and re-baptism. Twenty-five hundred Saints had come to hear their Prophet on how they could further atone. Surely some, though how many we can never be certain, were also looking for counsel on how to help their neighbors atone more effectively. Brother Brigham provided ample advice, for when he took the speaker’s stand, his subject was atonement. I can assure you, nothing ignites an audience’s heart like the discussion of someone else’s penitence! Working himself into a magnificent outrage, Brigham Young announced, “There are sins that can be atoned for by an offering on an altar, as in ancient days; and there are sins that the blood of a lamb or calf, or of turtledoves, cannot remit, but they must be atoned for by the blood of the man.”

  As if his point were not clear, the Prophet continued, “The time is coming when justice will be laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet; when we shall take the old broadsword, and ask, ‘Are you for God?’ and if you are not heartily on the Lord’s side, you will be hewn down.”

  He continued, although I cannot be certain if it was on this particular day, “Will you love your brothers and sisters likewise, when they have a sin that cannot be atoned for without the shedding of their blood? Will you love that man or that woman well enough to shed their blood? That is what Jesus meant. This is loving our neighbor as our self; if he needs help, help him; if he wants salvation, and it is necessary to spill his blood upon the earth in order that he may be saved, spill it.” (To my doubting Reader, I assure you these words are correct quotations and not mere paraphrasings. Brigham’s words from the pulpit have always been dutifully recorded and distributed. You may search any archive in Deseret to learn that here I am transcribing his words verbatim without any enhancement or coloring.)