I think at this juncture it would be best if I jumped to November 1873. (I can hear Rosemary now, reminding me to get to the point!) My memories of the flight are clear and sure. I doubt I have given you any insight thus far, but concerning that long night I might be able to pull up a few fresh scraps. But first let me tell you how my mother’s career as a public lecturer formed. During our confinement at the Walker House, while Judge Hagan and the others worked up my mother’s legal strategy, Major Pond began to plot a different sort of path for her. At the time she was in a precarious financial position. Although future income seemed likely, at the present moment her purse was empty. Gilbert supplemented, but my mother had legitimate concern over how she would house and feed my brother and me. She never expressed this in my presence, but any child of an impoverished household can tell you when the coins are few. I offered her my two gold coins, but she told me to keep them, folding them up in my palm.
My mother’s national notoriety was such that a number of promoters telegraphed with offers of representation. These men believed there was such interest in my mother’s account that she would be a viable member on the lecture circuit. For the most part my mother ignored the appeals. She was truly interested in her legal situation and restoring her family, not in expanding her fortune. When Barnum wrote offering a substantial sum, her attention sat up for the first time. “Is it for real?” she asked Major Pond. “All this money?” (I never learned the sum, but I understand that a few years before he offered to send Brigham on the road for a fee of $100,000. One can assume Barnum’s number for the 19th wife was in this range.)
In rapid response Major Pond, former Union soldier, irritable reporter, conferred upon himself a new profession: lecture agent. “I can get you more,” he said. He realized my mother’s story was gold. He instructed her to prepare some lectures concerning her experiences. In her writings and commentary she has shrilly denied she began to speak publicly of her ordeals for profit. She claims she solely took to the lecture podium as part of her crusade to demolish polygamy from the United States. On the subject of mammon, she said repeatedly she simply was trying to ensure a roof and food for her boys. As they say: True, but. I loved my mother, but God bless her—she loved her jewels.
I remember the days in early November when she worked at the writing table near the stove. Typically my mother was restless with energy, unable to sit for long. She was always moving about a room, rearranging her skirts and cuffs, turning her rings, patting down her hair. She spoke quickly, sometimes, I fear, without thinking over her words. She was not a born writer. For nearly a week she agonized at the writing table, drafting a sentence or two, standing up, moving to the window, pulling back the shade, sighing with exasperation, and returning to her chair. It was a melodramatic reenactment of what the writer endures to produce a page. (I should know: two days have passed since I began this letter, Professor Green!)
Eventually she wrote three lectures concerning her experiences married to the Prophet and an insider’s view of Brigham’s harem; the general conditions of polygamy; and the politics of the Mormon Church. Do I need to tell you which became her most popular?
In a trial run, the Major arranged a lecture in the parlors of the Walker House, inviting nearly every Gentile in the Territory. Hundreds, perhaps even 1,000, showed up. I was not allowed to attend the event, but from the suite’s window I watched the river of people flow into the hotel. I waited alone in our rooms while my mother spoke downstairs. For more than an hour there wasn’t a sound in the hotel other than my mother’s clear soprano. I will confess I felt abandoned that night. I do not share this with you to wallow in an old hurt but simply to relay the feelings of a child. Eventually a great roar overtook the hotel. They were applauding my mother, cheering her name, pleading for more. Thereafter Major Pond began to plan my mother’s triumph on America’s stage.
He arranged her debut in Denver. But there was still the risk of traveling out of Utah. Judge Hagan worried Brigham might not let her depart the Territory; or worse, might send a pack of Danites after her carriage. I do not know on what basis this opinion was formed, but everyone believed it, and suddenly the mood in the suite had changed. (I’m sure you will recall that the investigation of the Mountain Meadows massacre had resumed at this time, and there was much speculation in Brigham’s role in those terrible murders. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know when I say many people believed he ordered the killings, or at least condoned them. This speculation no doubt colored her perception of the dangers she faced.)
An air of busy planning overtook the suite. Allies came and went, secret methods of escape were proposed and dismissed. After a few days, a plan was settled on. My mother, Major Pond, Judge Hagan, and the Strattons swore themselves to secrecy. At the time I had no idea what the secret was, but soon it went into implementation. Whenever a guest came to visit, my mother sent him off with one or two items concealed in his coat: a pair of shoes, a hat, a notebook, her hair oil. Item by item, my mother decamped.
Once I realized my mother was planning to depart, I burst into tears. “I don’t want you to leave me,” I told her. I expected her to say, “I’m taking you with me.” She did not. She rubbed my back while saying, “I have to go.”
Again I expected her to add, “I’ll return for you.” But she did not offer any assurances over our future. I cannot tell you why she behaved as she did at this moment. I like to think she was not so indifferent to my feelings. Yet I doubt there has been a moment in my life when I felt so uncertain of my place in the world as then. I lay awake at night with a sickened heart.
In the morning she said, “If I tell you a secret you have to promise to keep it. Tonight I will leave here for dinner with the Strattons. Later, your uncle Gilbert will come for you. You must do whatever he says. If he tells you to be quiet, you mustn’t make a noise. If he tells you to hide in a box, you must fold yourself up like a cat.”
In the evening she dressed for dinner as she might on any evening. Gilbert arrived, but he acted as if something were wrong. He gave me a peppermint stick, but became annoyed with my questions. “Lorenzo,” said my mother, “remember what we discussed?”
When the Strattons called I began to cry. My mother had become preoccupied with her escape, and thus no longer had the capacity to comfort me. It was Gilbert who held me as she departed the suite. In The 19th Wife she writes there was no time for kisses and good-byes. “I was already a fugitive, there wasn’t a minute to spare!” No time for love? My goodness, I hope there’s never such a time on my clock.
For about an hour my uncle and I looked at each other. He was never comfortable around children. He asked about my toy horse, but when I told him its name I sensed his interest was not real. Children can tell. I do not fault Gilbert for this. His life in plural marriage—two wives and eighteen children—had eaten away at the love in his soul. Gilbert was a good man; he tried to love his family. Whoever said love is a pie was correct, at least in the polygamous family; there is a finite number of slices to pass out. Eventually I lay down on a blanket and fell asleep.
I do not know what time he woke me, perhaps ten o’clock. The room was dark and I was very tired. Gilbert helped me into my coat and shoes and led me down the servants’ stairs into the Walker House kitchen. A large woman in a wide apron was plunging her arms into a sink of hot soapy water. She barely looked up as we passed. At the door there was a tall round basket of the kind I once saw an Indian woman use to haul maize from a field. Gilbert told me to climb in. “I’m going to carry you out to the carriage. Once we’re inside you can get out. It will be only a minute. But you can’t be seen leaving.”
I climbed into the basket, crouching with my knees to my chest. Gilbert set the lid on top. Light came through the basket and my vision was like that of a medieval knight peeping out through his mail. I could see the woman at the sink. She never once stopped washing the dishes. Gilbert heaved me up, and I felt a sway in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to cry out
and beg to be released, but I told myself to stay still for the sake of my mother. The driver helped Gilbert set the basket on the carriage floor. When the door was closed, he lifted the lid.
We drove for several blocks, stopping in front of a large shrub that had turned skeletal with autumn. “You must be very still,” Gilbert warned. We sat in the carriage for over an hour; the only sound was my heart in my ears. Then I heard footsteps. Gilbert pulled back the curtain. “It’s them.” He opened the door. My mother climbed in and the Strattons closed the door behind her. She took me into her arms. “I know, my child,” she said. “I know. But we’re not there yet.”
The driver pulled away. With the curtains drawn it was difficult to know our destination. I dared not ask, for both my mother and uncle had looks of grave concern. When the road roughened I could tell we had left the city’s limits. The carriage rocked and creaked and the night was filled with the sound of the crying springs and the horse leather. Eventually my mother released my hand from her grasp, and I assumed we were safe.
I climbed over to the window and pulled back the curtain. From the mountains I could tell we were driving up the Valley, headed north. We drove through bare orchards silvered by the moon. The patches of alkali shone in the night. In the fens geese were calling to one another. Across a meadow a herd of cattle was standing in the dark.
We turned off the road into a canyon. I saw the canyon walls narrow around us. Because I had no idea where we were going, I did not think to alert my mother. Eventually we were driving alongside a frozen creek. Everywhere neat mounds of early snow sat upon the ice. The moonlight, reflecting off the ice, illuminated the canyon. I pulled back the curtain farther to show my mother the ghostly effect.
She began to panic. “Where are we? What’s happening?”
Gilbert banged on the carriage roof and leapt out to talk to the man. I heard the driver say he must have made the wrong turn. “I was certain this was the way to Uintah,” he said.
“What if he’s working for Brigham?” my mother said when Gilbert was back in the carriage. “What if we’ve been had by our own plan?”
As we drove out of the canyon, the walls retreated. Eventually the Valley opened before us and the cattle were standing where we left them across the meadow.
It was forty miles to Uintah. We arrived just before daybreak, pulling up to the tiny station. We were waiting for the eastward Union Pacific. As you probably know, Brigham owned the line between Salt Lake and Ogden. That’s where you used to catch the U.P.—probably still do, I don’t know. Anyhow, I’m sure you understand my mother’s plan: anyone tracking my mother would have expected her in Ogden. By driving across the desert in the night, she bypassed their trap.
As the cold day took hold, and the sun revealed the tiny town encased in ice, we heard the air brakes from down the track. I could see the smoke puffing out of the engine. Shortly thereafter the train pulled into the depot, blowing snow all about.
Gilbert embraced my mother. To me he said, “Look after her.”
My mother took my hand and we ran to the platform. A porter in white coat and gloves led us to our compartment in the Pullman, where our belongings waited. When the train lurched forward, leaving the station behind, my mother collapsed onto the bench.
“May I speak?” I asked.
She was looking out the window and did not respond. Her profile was very beautiful and still. The morning light had turned yellow and it poured forth upon her, giving her a golden quality. She looked like a woman in a painting in a foreign museum. She studied the landscape as it passed—the high meadows white and yellow in late fall, the sparkling wool of the frost-covered sheep, the mountaintops padded with ancient snow that will never melt. I climbed into her lap and together we watched the world go by.
Three hours later the air brakes screamed and the conductor called, “Wyoming! Evanston, Wyoming!”
Having crossed the Utah border, she said, “Now you can speak.”
And there, Professor Green, in that little border town, my mother achieved her freedom. I could not understand the importance of the moment, of course. But I recall while we idled in the station how a cloud drifted before the sun, darkening my mother’s face, and how seconds later it passed and her face seemed to burst open with the clearest of light.
Oh look! The dolphins have returned. Explain it! The coincidence, I mean. We can’t. We simply have to take note of it and love it for its mystery. As you go about your research about my mother, I ask you to forgive her errors and vainglory. Is she any more guilty than you or I? When you publish your research, will you send a copy? I should like to know what you have learned, most especially how she spent her last days. Sometimes I can hardly believe I don’t know my own mother’s fate. It seems like a dismal twist at the end of an epic tale. But so it is, and oh how the unknowable keeps me up. With Rosemary gone, the nights are lonely. I lie awake burdened by my mother’s disappearance. I trust you’ll share with me whatever you discover, even if the news is grim. It’s the uncertainty I cannot bear. The not knowing. The endless speculation of where she was on her last day. A chill dashes up my spine when I think of it—there, just now, as if my mother’s loving hand were stroking my nape. She’s with me. She will always be with me. Remember this as you analyze her life and deeds.
I am, Most Sincerely Yours,
LORENZO DEE
XVII
WIFE #19:
THE GIRL IN SLC
A LITTLE SOMETHING SOMETHING
I drove into Mesadale and parked across the street from the Prophet’s house. Officer Alton was sitting in his cruiser by the gate, one arm thrown across the seat back, looking down the road, waiting for me. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
“I want to get this over with.”
“Go talk to Brother Luke.” Alton pointed to a guard standing at the gatepost. “He’ll let you in.”
“I heard about the FBI. What’s happening out here?”
“We don’t know.”
“How’s Queenie?”
“Anxious, like everyone. But OK.”
I looked over to the guard. He had his eye on me. I could tell he didn’t like that I was here. “Am I going to be all right?”
“Jordan, you have to trust me. Now go inside.”
I introduced myself to the guard. “I know,” he said. He brought a two-way radio to his mouth: “He’s here.” The guard led me through a door in the gate and locked it behind us.
Few people get to see inside the Prophet’s compound. My dad used to come here for meetings but he never talked about it. The house was by far the biggest in town, which makes sense because he had the most wives. Exactly how many was anyone’s guess but definitely more than a hundred. Maybe 150. I don’t know. I bet he doesn’t either.
“We’ll go through the kitchen,” the guard said. He was in dark pants and a white dress shirt and a short red tie. If you ignored the Glock 17 in his belt holster, you’d think he was on his way to a sales job at a car dealer.
Three wives were baking in the kitchen. One was looking up a recipe when she saw me. She froze with her finger on the page. The other two pressed themselves against the counter to step out of my way. “Evening, Sisters,” the guard said. The women nodded and looked at their feet. We walked down a hall, past a large reception room with a white marble tile floor. Across the hall, a dining room with a U-shaped table for fifty. I saw a steel-plate door leading to, what—a vault? a safe room? an armory?
“Is he here?” I said.
The guard led me up three flights of stairs. Along the way we passed four more wives. They were young, younger than me. Here they were—the reason the boys get kicked out. The Prophet wanted the prettiest, youngest girls for himself. The pervy thing was, they all looked the same.
On the top floor, at the end of a hall, the guard knocked on a door. “Sister?” He knocked again. “Sister, he’s here.”
The door cracked, then opened wider, then wider still. It was the Prophet’s fir
st wife, Sister Drusilla. She waved us in with an old, blue hand. Her room was bare to the point of heartbreaking—a narrow bed shrouded by a dingy summer spread. A writing table with a goose-neck lamp. Two wood chairs. She poured a glass of water from a spiderwebbed pitcher and told me to sit on her bed.
“Is the Prophet here?” I said.
“What? You haven’t heard?” she asked. “They came for him.” Drusilla’s soft mouth sank in on itself.
“I heard the Feds couldn’t find him.”
“That’s because he’s gone,” she said.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.” She looked up with watery eyes. “He could be dead.”
“He isn’t dead. I spoke to him a little while ago.”
“I wish I could be sure.”
The best way to describe Drusilla is something like a cross between the First Lady and the Virgin Mary. In the springtime there was a pageant in her honor. The girls in town would dress in yellow and dance to Pioneer hymns like “In Our House” while Sister Drusilla viewed the festivities from a platform. Other than that and Sunday services, we never saw her. Everyone loved her, but no one really knew a thing about her.
“I suppose you know I’m trying to find out what really happened to my dad.”
“The Prophet told me.”
“My mom’s just not the murderer type.”
The 19th Wife Page 38