The 19th Wife

by David Ebershoff

  “No one is until they are.”

  “How well do you know Sister Rita?”

  “My whole life.”

  “I think she had something to do with this.”

  “Jordan, you don’t know?” Drusilla’s right, livered hand trembled in her lap. Was she frightened? Early Parkinson’s? Or was she putting on a show to freak me out? “Rita’s gone. Disappeared. I don’t know when exactly. Sometime in the last twenty-four hours. I think they kidnapped her.”

  “What?” And then, “Maybe she ran away?”

  Drusilla shook her head. “I know what’s coming next. We’ve lived through this before.”

  “Through what?”

  “The Siege.”

  The Siege. Every kid in Mesadale grows up learning about the Siege. We had to read about it, listen to the Prophet sermonize on it, in Sunday school reenact it, chirp songs exalting it, and the girls needlepointed scenes from it. Since breaking off from the Mormons in 1890, the Firsts managed to live in the desert for sixty years pretty much undisturbed. They started off as a cluster of renegades, led by Aaron Webb. Over time this minor outpost grew into a full-blown town, a polygamous theocracy tucked into the sands of the American Southwest. But by the early 1950s, the feds could no longer look the other way. Cut to July 26, 1953. Agents drove into town in unmarked cars, backed up by one hundred state troopers. Quickly they had Mesadale surrounded. You know this kind of scene: the troopers taking position behind car doors; the first-ins standing ready with rammer and shield; an agent in wingtips calling for surrender through a megaphone.

  The Siege was about one man. The Prophet. Not the Prophet I’ve been telling you about, but his father. If he surrendered peacefully, the feds promised to withdraw. That’s what the agent shouted through the megaphone: “If you come with us, this can all be over now.”

  At sunset the Siege began. The shoot-out lasted seven hours. By dawn seventeen Firsts were dead, including nine kids. Hoping to show the country the truth about American polygamy, the feds brought a news photographer. But one picture told the wrong story—that’s all it took for the plan to blow up in the feds’ clean, Barbasol faces. If you google it, you can find the picture: a little girl lying in a bean field, a neat bullet wound above her left eye. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you’d think it was a drop of jam. That picture ran in the evening papers. By the next morning the feds were caving. The Siege was over. The feds left town, trench coats between their legs.

  But the feds got what they wanted. In the last hour a sniper nailed the Prophet. A shot through the neck. That’s how the current Prophet came into power. He was seventeen at the time. The day after the Siege, the new Prophet did two things: he buried his father, and he married his dad’s youngest wife, a pretty soft-chinned girl named Drusilla. A year later, on the first anniversary, the new Prophet renamed the town Mesadale. It used to be called Red Creek. He wanted America to forget all about the Firsts. And America obliged. Until now.

  Sister Drusilla gathered up her skirts to sit beside me on the bed. “This time they want us all dead.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Your dad’s dead. How do we know Rita isn’t dead? And your mom—we all know what’s going to happen to her. Maybe they’ll say it’s her punishment, but it doesn’t matter, dead is dead. And now the Prophet. They want us all gone. But I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “This isn’t some story in the newspaper. This is my life. This is my family. This is what I believe.”

  “I know, but all I’m really trying to do is get my mom out of jail.”

  “They’re afraid of us, Jordan.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Afraid of the Prophet, because they know he’s right.” Her shaky hand balled up into a blue-white fist. “After the Siege, the Prophet always said they’d be back. He always said, Just you wait. And now here they are.”

  Seeing Drusilla sitting there, with her collar reaching high on her neck, I figured out one thing: some people don’t want your help. No point in throwing them a line, they’ll swim right by.

  “The Prophet thinks you’re looking in the wrong place.”

  “Wrong place? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We have so many enemies. In Washington, in Salt Lake City. Everyone wants us gone. Your father and the Prophet were very close. It makes sense they’d start with him. They want everyone to think we’re falling apart from within when in truth, someone’s standing outside and picking us off, one by one.”

  You know that feeling when you think you’re almost at the end of a road, and you turn the corner and see only more road ahead?

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “Find that girl. Sister Kimberly’s daughter, you know the one I’m talking about—Sarah 5? She’s been working with organizations trying to stop us.”

  “She didn’t kill him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “I do.”

  Sister Drusilla’s worn face hardened into a mask. “Interesting.” I asked her what she was talking about. When she told me, I couldn’t believe it.

  “Are you sure?”

  “A hundred percent.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “She’s hiding something.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it, it’s true.”

  Turns out 5 was hiding a little something something: about twelve hours before he was killed, my dad took her as his latest bride.

  SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

  DECEMBER 1, 1873

  ANOTHER REVELATION

  FROM GREAT SALT LAKE

  Yesterday, in the Territory of Utah’s Third District Court, the war between our friends, Brigham and Mrs. XIX, took a turn that even we could not have anticipated. At six o’clock in the evening, Brigham, via his imaginative lawyers, Mssrs. Hempstead and Kirkpatrick, filed a formal answer to his wife’s bill of complaint against the Great Almighty Prophet of the West.

  In a quick review of Brigham’s legal papers we have determined his novel strategy for victory. His adamant reply contends that he and Ann Eliza were never married on April 6, 1868, as her suit originally claims. According to Brigham (whose sense of veracity and candor make him well-suited for our distinguished publication), Ann Eliza is not and has never been his legal wife. He makes this claim from a heartfelt and honorable position. Brigham touchingly claims his undying devotion to his first and only wife, the aptly named Mary Angell, who has been his rib since the tenth day of January, 1834, when they were happily betrothed in old Kirtland. Thus already married, Brigham could not enter into a second, let alone nineteenth union of the heart. That would be polygamy! So you see, Your Honor, this woman’s suit is without merit. She is—and here we must adopt the Prophet’s unique words as our own—“merely a social harlot.” What of Brigham’s longpromoted custom of celestial marriage? Simply a hedonistic religious rite with no more legal standing than adultery, admitted the Prophet. Who are the women sleeping beneath the dormers of the infamous Lion House? Concubines, all of them, God bless them each—so sayeth the Prophet.

  Next, Brigham confessed to a disloyal liaison with Madame 19. Thus he respectfully asked the court, in its wisdom, to dismiss the matter so that he may return in peace to his only wife, the previously mentioned Angell, to make the kind of restitution we are all too familiar with.

  Meanwhile, Sister Ann Eliza, fresh from her escape from the penitentiary otherwise known as Utah, continues to blaze across America’s mountainous hinterland, retelling her tale of conjugal woe to anyone who will listen (and pay up fifty cents). The Sister—retiring creature that she is, delicate as a sego lily, bashful as a desert morn—bravely musters her strength to go forth and tell the truth—her word, not ours—about polygamy. As Americans, each of us must do our part by celebrating her courage, and her message of liberty, while
, of course, lining her pockets with gold. To anyone who doubts her sincerity, or her motives, we declare: Shame! Has a woman no right to translate her female subjugation into emeralds and pearls? Godspeed, Sister! Onward, Number 19! Take your pleas to Washington and the President! Thus, we shall predict the last stop on Ann Eliza Young’s historic journey to freedom: The Bank!

  THIS CAN’T GO ON

  Tom was on the phone freaking out. “It’s Johnny. He disappeared. I was doing some work at the front desk, I told him to stay with the dogs, and when I came back he was gone.”

  “When was this?”

  “Almost two hours ago. I went driving around looking for him, but I didn’t even know where to start. I just drove up and down St. George Ave. Jordan, where are you? I’ve been calling.”

  “There’s no reception in Mesadale. Right now I’m in Kanab.”

  “I need you to come home, now. It’s just that—” Tom stopped. “Johnny could be anywhere.”

  “Don’t worry. He’s like this.”

  “I’m going out of my mind here. What if something’s happened?”

  “Don’t start thinking like that.”

  “I called the cops. They thought I was nuts. They said, ‘Let me get this straight. You’re reporting a runaway runaway?’ They said they couldn’t do anything for at least twenty-four hours. Jordan, I didn’t even know his last name.”

  Part of me wanted to say: Tom, get a grip. The kid’s a flake. He’s gone and there’s nothing you can do. Another part of me wanted to say: I know, I know, and turn this into a conversation between the sob sisters. But neither seemed right and all I could come up with was, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  When I got to the sandwich shop, 5 was closing up, her hair under a plastic beret. “Why didn’t you tell me you married my dad?”

  She went behind the counter for a cup of coffee. She took her time, pouring the cream and the sugar, stirring it, rinsing the spoon. Her eyes had a cold gleam, like chips of soda-machine ice. “Why would I want to tell you about the worst day of my life?”

  “Because my mom’s in jail for something she didn’t do.”

  “That has nothing to do with me.”

  “You were his wife.”

  She sipped her coffee slowly, cautiously putting together her words. “If you think holding a knife to your stepdaughter’s throat while you rape her is a wedding ceremony, then I guess I am his wife. Or his widow or whatever. But if you don’t think like that—and for some reason I thought you of all people wouldn’t—then you’d realize I’m no more his wife than you are, asshole.” She started cleaning up the sandwich counter and throwing the prep trays into the sink, and they made a terrible clang, stainless steel on stainless steel. “You think your life sucks so much? Well, guess what? My life sucks worse.”

  “Jesus, I had no idea.”

  “Yeah, well, you have no idea about a lot of shit. Now go sit down.”

  I sat in a booth by the window, and she carried over two sodas and two wax-paper cups. “Don’t say anything. Just let me tell you what’s going on.”

  “OK, but first—”

  “No, stop. When I’m done, then you can speak, all right? First of all, let me start by saying this whole thing sucks. Like big-time. OK, so let’s begin. Like I said, I ran away a couple of months ago. I just split, caught a ride over here, and got this job. I knew it was crazy to stop here. I should’ve left Utah, but you know what, I love my mom. Or I used to, or I still do, I don’t know. Anyway, like I told you, I couldn’t leave her back there so I thought I’d go back and rescue her. Except, how the fuck was I going to do that? I didn’t have a car or any money or anything. But I kept thinking it was possible. You know Sister Karen?”

  “The postmistress?”

  “She’s been really helpful in all this. She got my letters to my mom without him seeing them. I kept writing her telling her I was OK and not far away and to hold tight, I was coming for her.”

  “And?”

  “Jordan, let me finish. So that went on for a few months and I was kinda at a standstill. Then my mom writes me this letter saying she’s sick, real sick, maybe even dying. Says she’s had a heart attack or something, she was real vague about it, but she said the Prophet told her she didn’t have much time. When I got the letter I totally flipped. I walked down to the end of town and caught a ride back to Mesadale. When I got to my mom’s cabin, she was really happy to see me and started crying, but I was like, Mom, I thought you were sick? So she goes, Oh that? I’m all better now. The important thing is you’re back. I know your stepfather will be real glad to see you. Then she walked over to the big house to get him. When they came back I was totally scared to see him, but he just said, I’m glad you’re back. Please stay as long as you like.

  “And that was it until the next day. I woke up and everything was really peaceful, you know how quiet the desert is in the morning before everyone gets up, and I was lying in bed just thinking about that when my mom came and sat down. Sarah, honey, there’s something I want to talk about. That’s when she sprang it on me. She wanted me to marry him, her own husband—I know, right? But she had it all planned out, or he did, or someone did. Obviously it was time for me to go, but when I opened the door there he was on the porch. He was in a bolo tie and his hair was greased back and he was wearing some sort of cologne, like old leather, and he wasn’t alone.”

  “The Prophet?”

  “You guessed it. He had this creepy smile, his lips curled up on his teeth, and it was so obvious what was coming next I started screaming my head off, yelling, There’s no fucking way! My mom, she took me into her room, told me to calm down, and when I didn’t she slapped me, not hard, but just hard enough to show the Prophet whose side she was on. Then you aren’t going to believe what she did, I mean no one’s ever going to believe this, but it’s true: she got out her wedding dress and said, real calm and everything, Now, honey, put this on.

  “I was fighting her, kicking her, telling her to go fuck herself. Then there was a knock on the door. It was the Prophet. Sister Kimberly, let me have a word. When we were alone he came real close and squeezed the back of my neck the way you grab a dog. If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m going to kill your mother and then you. I swear to God that’s exactly what he said, not that I believe in God, but you know what I mean. He goes, I’ll kill you, you little slut. Not now. Not tomorrow. But I’ll be coming for you and you’ll be scared the rest of your life because you’ll know one night I’ll be at your door and when you open it you’re going to find your mother’s head in a fucking bag.”

  5 stopped. Her eyes looked like they’d seen the worst the world could offer.

  Then she laughed.

  “And so I married him. That night—the night he was killed—I took off from Mesadale. I heard all the screams in the house, I didn’t know what was happening, but it was my chance to get out of there and so I ran down the road into the night.”

  “And here you are.”

  “Here I am. You know what the fucked-up part is? I still love my mom. Jordan, I’m only fifteen. I want her back. Am I insane or what?”

  “You’re not insane.”

  After that, 5 and I talked about the Prophet and Mesadale and all sorts of other shit too. If you drove by the sandwich shop that night, you would’ve seen the silver-green lights burning through the plate glass and two kids at a booth in the window, eating corn chips and drinking soda and shredding their wax-paper cups on the table and talking for hours, just like two kids anywhere who’d rather stay out than go home to bed.

  “Just one question,” I said. “Why would Sister Karen help you like that?”

  “You haven’t figured that out by now?”

  “Figured out what?”

  “You really don’t know, do you? Sister Karen’s the conductor.”

  “The conductor?”

  “Of our underground railroad. She’s the one who helps the girls get out.”

  REDPATH’S LYCEUM


  Under the Directorship of

  JAMES REDPATH

  PRESENTS

  Mrs. Ann Eliza Young

  The Notorious 19th Wife!

  Apostate & Crusader!

  LECTURING ON THE SUBJECTS OF:

  MORMON POLYGAMY!

  INSIDE BRIGHAM’S HAREM!

  THE LIFE OF THE PLURAL WIFE!

  &

  OTHER TRUTHS ABOUT

  MULTIPLE MARRIAGE!

  THE TREMONT TEMPLE

  BOSTON

  • ONE NIGHT ONLY •

  FEBRUARY 19, 1874

  Admission – Only Fifty Cents!

  THE GIRL IN SLC

  Inside Room 112, I found Tom holding a bag of ice to Johnny’s eye. “What happened here?”

  “Not much, dude. And you?”

  “He’s high,” said Tom. “And he has a black eye. And I found this on him.” He pointed to a cheap gold watch on the credenza.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “This guy. It was weird, he just gave it to me. Isn’t that weird?”

  “Plus he’s scaring the dogs.” They were watching the scene from the bed. Elektra was agitated and shaking, and Joey was panting hard.

  “Johnny, where were you?”

  “With the ladies.”

  “There’s no point in talking to him,” said Tom. “He’s totally looped. Thank goodness you’re home.”

  Technically it wasn’t my home, but it didn’t seem like a good time to point that out. “What can I do?”

  “Get him ready for bed. He should sleep in here tonight.”

  “Anyone got anything to eat?” said Johnny. “Krispy Kremes, maybe?”