Out of the Cold Dark Sea

by Jeffrey D Briggs

  She raised her eyes and stared out the window. Another pewter dawn was breaking in the eastern sky. Her mind took her down along the Ship Canal, where SPU’s small campus was a combination of green lawns and brick buildings and stately old trees. It was a Christian university and apparently not a place where a gay Christian would want to discuss his other volunteer activities, like being Santa’s special helper at the Pride Foundation Christmas party.

  Google identified five Mitch Adairs in greater Seattle. Martha ruled out the ones under fifty years old, which left her with two phone numbers and addresses. It was almost seven o’clock. Too early to call? Fuck social niceties. The first address was someplace near Capitol Hill, the heart of the Seattle gay and lesbian community. Martha dialed. A loud beep answered, followed by a recorded message saying this number had been disconnected or was no longer in service. Maybe it was the house he had sold last year. The second number belonged to a Mitch Adair in Bothell, a suburb on the shore of Lake Washington, north of Seattle. After four rings, she was asked to leave a message for Mitch, Helen, Jamie, or Suzie, or she could shout out a hearty woof woof for Simon.

  She hung up and closed the laptop.

  Typical of the way the world works, Martha was lathered up in the shower when her phone rang. It was Trammell, back from his run to the marina. He waited at the top of the trail for her to come down and open the back door to the garage. Wrapped in a towel, suds in her hair, she scurried down to the garage, leaving wet footprints across the cold concrete floor. When she opened the door, his eyes grew wide as she let the towel fall like a petal from a rose.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Martha snapped the phone shut, cutting off an irate Callison in mid-sentence. She glanced up and saw Trammell standing on the far side of the luggage carousel, watching the suitcases go round and round. A large bag filled with snowshoes and winter gear lay at his feet. His small carry-on with extra black turtlenecks and jeans rested on top. His eye caught hers as she approached.

  “That went about as well as expected,” Martha said, crowding in beside him.

  “Didn’t like our leaving town without telling him first?”

  “Among other things.”

  Martha saw her bag coming around the carrousel, the handle marked with a pink breast cancer bracelet. She reached out and grabbed it. The airport was a cacophony of flashing lights and blaring sounds—it was Las Vegas, after all—and at least three security guards stood within fifty yards of them. Would Callison try to stop them? Was he already on the phone to airport police?

  “I still think it was a bad idea,” Trammell said.

  “I promised,” she said. “But it’d probably be best to get out of here as soon as possible.”

  They made their first stop minutes after leaving the airport—to purchase sunglasses, something neither of them had thought to pack—but otherwise they drove straight on, Trammell at the wheel. Interstate 15 stretched like an endless concrete ribbon to the northeast, rolling through brown hills and around red mesas and barren ravines. Remnants of dirty snow could be seen in the crevices of the north-facing bluffs. The sun set in a dazzling display of reds and oranges as they passed from Nevada into Arizona. When they pulled off the Interstate at St. George, Utah, stars had started to peek out through the black fabric of the eastern sky.

  Trammell fueled the Ford Explorer and cleaned the mud-splattered windows. They decided to fuel themselves, as well, and agreed on a diner next to the gas station.

  Between bites of meatloaf sandwich, Trammell said, “St. George was one of Brigham Young’s winter homes. It’s named after one of the early apostles, George Smith. He was a brother or cousin or some relative of Joseph Smith’s.”

  Martha nibbled at her fries as he talked, enjoying the sound of his voice. “So how do you know that? I mean, to me, St. George is just the name of a city on the map.”

  “When Hewitt first came to me with his story of having some pretty strong evidence of the Mormon Death Angels,” Trammell responded, “I started researching the history of the LDS—background for the story. Plus, it would help me determine if there really was a story or if it was just something in Hewitt’s imagination.”

  “So what do you think now?”

  “There’s definitely a story here. We just don’t know what it is yet. Do we finally have conclusive evidence of the Mormon Death Angels? Or is someone just afraid we have the evidence, someone who’s spinning fantasies out of an innocent series of letters and events?”

  Martha raised an eyebrow. “I don’t understand.”

  “On the drive up, I was thinking of my brother John,” Trammell started. “You were sleeping. Gave me time to think. John would love it here. Desolate, no people, no civilization. He’s a schizophrenic and lives like a hermit in a little trailer deep in the woods on the Olympic Peninsula. He won’t stay on his meds because he’s convinced they’re a form of mind control—you know, Big Brother kind of stuff. My dad and I take turns checking on him. But, each time I go, I don’t know who I’m going to find—the happy John or the paranoid John, the depressed John or my brother John. One time I showed up in a white shirt, and he thought I was the guy from the fun house coming to take him back to the hospital. He took a couple of shots at me with a rifle. Good thing he’s a bad shot.”

  Trammell offered a wan smile. “I don’t wear white shirts anymore when I go to see him. Anyway, they’re all real. They’re all a part of John—the delusional and the coherent, the brother who loves me and the maniac with the rifle.”

  Martha touched his hand. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” It seemed completely inadequate.

  “You had no reason to know,” Trammell said. “It’s not something I talk about a lot. It just is. I stopped trying to make sense of it a long time ago and just tried to accept it. It wasn’t easy. I was so angry. Angry at a God I didn't believe in, angry at John for not taking his meds, angry at my parents. But I had to let it go or I’d drive myself crazy. John is John, it’s not right or wrong or good or bad. It’s who he is. A paranoid schizophrenic who can’t always distinguish reality from delusions.

  “So, I was wondering if we might have the same thing going on here. John thinks I’m going to cart him off in a straitjacket, so he tries to shoot me. Maybe someone thinks the documents implicating the Elders of the LDS are real, so they’re taking their shots at everyone who might expose them. It doesn’t matter what the truth is, or that the solution is more extreme than the damage that could come from the documents themselves. They believe we’re trying to put the church in a straitjacket. It doesn’t matter if it’s true, only that they believe it’s true.”

  “Killing in the name of the one true God,” Martha said. “Sounds like the history of the world.”

  The clear night brought out the Milky Way, sweeping like a celestial cloud of diamonds across the black sky. As her father had taught her, Martha found Orion’s belt and saw Canis Major chasing the hunter through the night. She wondered if Trammell’s father ever took his two sons stargazing. She glanced over, but Trammell continued to doze, his head propped at an awkward angle against the window. There was so much about him she didn’t know. The thought of finding out both frightened and excited her.

  Snow banks began to appear alongside the road. They were climbing in elevation. By the time she pulled off I-15 at Cedar City, the snow was a couple of feet deep, the headlights catching drifts of powder blowing across the road. The lights of Cedar City disappeared in her rearview mirror as she drove east along Highway 14. In the first twenty minutes, only one other car passed, giving the headlights a flick when Martha forgot to dim hers. The landscape was lost in the dark; all she saw were snow banks and the stars overhead.

  “Where are we?” Trammell asked, suddenly sitting upright. He flexed his neck and rolled his shoulders.

  “In the middle of nowhere,” she replied. “Have a nice nap?”

  “I feel like a boa constrictor’s wrapped around my neck. How you doing? You must be exhausted.”
>
  “Nah, I’ve a sky full of stars to keep me awake and the snow reminds me of home.”

  Trammell gazed out the window. “The stars remind me of Neah Bay.”

  “What’s in Neah Bay?” Martha turned off the radio.

  “My dad. We had a cabin there when I was a kid, and we’d spend weekends fishing and beachcombing and hanging out with kids from the reservation. He said the only way he could go back to Boeing every Monday morning was his weekends at the beach.” Trammell squinted out the window. “The snow looks deep.”

  “Probably a couple of feet.” A comfortable silence settled over them. The road was straight, the pavement dry, and she reached out and found his hand in the dark. Finally, she said, “What’s your dad do now?”

  “He took an early retirement and moved out to Neah Bay permanently. It puts him closer to John.”

  “He must worry about him a lot.” She hesitated before adding, “I’d like you to take me to Neah Bay. Meet your father. Maybe your brother.”

  “I’d like that, too.” Trammell said quietly.

  “What about your mother?”

  “She died a couple of years ago. Breast cancer. She beat it once when she was in her early forties. She wasn’t as lucky the second time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. I miss her a lot. I saw you had a pink bracelet on your luggage.”

  “My grandmother. In a lot of ways, she raised me.” Martha offered something akin to an ironic laugh. “She was a heavy smoker her whole life. We expected lung cancer to kill her, but instead it was breast cancer.”

  “What about your mother?”

  The car was warm and dark, his voice, gentle. It felt like she was in a confessional talking to a priest. She said, “I don’t remember much about her. She left when I was little. I went to my first day of kindergarten, and when I came home, she was gone. We never heard from her again. My dad was a lifer in the military—Marines—so he packed up seven kids and sent us to live in the Upper Peninsula with his mother.”

  It was his turn to say, “I’m sorry.” He took her hand in both of his. “At the hotel, you mentioned your sister. What happened?”

  For a long time, she didn’t say anything. Finally, she started. “My dad’s best friend was a Marine buddy from Arkansas named Walt Boudreau. We called him Uncle Walt.”

  Over the next hour, in the dark, warm confessional of the car, she told the story she had never told anyone but Gran and Hewitt. Beginning to end. All of it. Hiding nothing about what she had done. When they crested a hill and the few night lights of Tropic, Utah, came into view, she finished with, “I’m only sorry I didn’t do it earlier, when there was still time to save Rachel. But I wasn’t old enough or ready enough.”

  Trammell held her hand. Neither spoke for a long time. She took comfort in the fact he didn’t immediately pull away. “I can’t imagine—” he started, but the rest of the words lingered unsaid. “How could—” She could see him struggling, looking off into the dark. His hand on top of hers felt like an anchor in a storm. He brushed her face with his fingers. “God, how awful. I’m so sorry. Raped, watching your sister slowly die, killing the person responsible for it. Jesus, nothing can ever be completely good or innocent again. Nobody deserves that.”

  They sat in the warm car in silence. In time, he added, “Thank you for being honest with me. It helps me understand.”

  He continued holding her hand. Still, she knew, the deepest level of honesty could often exact a price.

  Snow lay thick over the neighborhood yards of Tropic, Utah, a blanket under which they would hibernate until spring. Few lights were on. They passed a hotel and a bed-and-breakfast, both dark, driveways buried in unplowed snow. The storefronts of Main Street were all dark for the night except one: the Bryce Valley Inn.

  Trammell checked them in under the names Kirk and Mary Gibson. Only Callison knew where they were, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  In the morning, Martha saw Trammell watching her as she dressed. He sat up in the hotel bed, his chest bare, his eyes following her every movement in the hotel mirror. She paused and stared back at him. Their eyes met and she smiled.

  “You’re beautiful when you smile,” Trammell said.

  “When I smile?”

  “Well, I mean, you’re beautiful all the time, but there are times when you’d make angels blush.”

  “I like that.” She laughed. “I’d like to hear more, but it must be over the breakfast table. I’m starving.”

  By eight o’clock, Martha had the Ford Explorer in four-wheel drive heading through town. The stores on Main Street were still closed, with few signs that the town would be open that morning. They drove past a city park with an old log hut in it. Sunrise broke pink and red against the mountains and mesas to the west. Dawn moved down the slopes of the mountains as the sun inched its way higher in the east. The valley was soon bathed in a bright sunshine that carried no warmth.

  Martha donned her sunglasses. Trammell navigated from the passenger’s seat, a road map and a topographical map spread out across his lap. He had powered up Martha’s GPS and compared it to the built-in unit on the rental vehicle. Their coordinates matched.

  The road out of town was bare and dry. They passed white clapboard houses and a couple of singlewide mobile homes, one with a wooden deck slanted at an odd angle. On the edge of town, the windows of the Bryce Valley High School were lit, teachers busy preparing for the school day.

  For the first mile or two, Martha studied the rearview mirror as much as the road ahead. No one followed them out of town. They passed a farmhouse and outbuildings set back from the road. In the corral, shaggy horses and donkeys huddled together, heads down, as if in a rugby scrum. The last field gave way to rolling hills of Ponderosa pines and tall scrub brush poking out of the deep snow. Ahead, Martha could see the rugged ravines and coulees like ribs of white corduroy leading to the mountain slopes that would eventually ascend to the rim of Bryce Canyon National Park. Someplace between here and there, she would find Ebenezer Lane. It appeared on none of their maps, but the GPS coordinates put it someplace in front of them.

  The pavement ended and they continued along a gravel road. A snowplow had cleared a one-lane swath, pushing the snow up high along the banks. Headlights appeared around a corner, and Martha pulled over as an old truck rumbled past without slowing down. From under a baseball cap, the driver nodded and raised a hand. Martha waved back as he disappeared into the rearview mirror.

  They drove another mile or so and stopped at a sudden clearing in the Ponderosa pines. A pair of tire tracks led off the road. In the distance was what might have been a house, maybe a shack. The wood siding hadn’t seen any paint in recent decades; the metal roof was mottled green and rust. An old John Deere tractor with a snowblade sat parked in the front yard. Smoke came out of a stack in the roof. A dog beside the tractor barked as Martha slowed.

  Trammell checked the coordinates off the GPS and studied the topo map. “This isn’t it.”

  In another mile, they came to the end of the road, having seen no other lanes, paths, or goat trails running off the gravel road. The snowplow had created a turning basin at the end, and Martha swung the Explorer around and parked as far off the road as she dared. She let the car run as Trammell again compared the GPS coordinates with the map. “It’s still west of here and a little south,” he said.

  His finger traced a line along the map. “This may be a path. It looks like it winds in the right direction, but it doesn’t seem to intersect with the road.”

  “Or it could just be the creek bed,” Martha said.

  “Or the creek bed may be the path. Let’s find out.”

  They scrambled up the snow bank at the end of the road, slipping back a step for every two they gained. Atop the bank, they saw the valley floor ceased with the road. From here, the sides narrowed sharply into a canyon. Martha searched the rugged terrain for anything that might be a path. On one side, hill
s cut by deep ravines lay buried in snow; on the other, red bluffs soared straight up, too steep for snow to gather. Wispy clouds showed over the top of the distant canyon rim, several thousand feet over their heads.

  “We might as well hike in a little ways,” Trammell said. “There’s nothing here.”

  “God, why would anyone live here?”

  “This isn’t where they lived. They settled back in the valley where they had water, farmland, grass for pastures. This is where folks like John Lee and Eli Pace hid when government officials came asking about the deaths of too many infidels. This is where they hid the second and third and nineteenth wife and a whole passel of kids while the first wife offered coffee and cookies to the feds investigating rumors of polygamy.”

  They scrambled back to the Explorer and pulled out snowshoes, heavy winter boots, down jackets, wool hats and mittens and scarves. Slinging on small backpacks, they headed out.

  Within a hundred yards of ascending the first hill, Trammell fell twice into the deep snow. Martha pulled him up the second time, brushing snow off him. “Lift your feet higher than normal. Walk with your legs a little farther apart to keep from tripping on the edges of the snowshoes. You’ll get the hang of it.”

  And he did, soon taking his turn breaking the path. He crested a ravine and paused, looking down. When she came up beside him, he said, pointing, “I bet that’s our trail.”

  Undisturbed snow, about the width of a country lane, snaked between the pines and up the canyon. Martha pulled off her mittens and plotted their location on the GPS. “If it’s not Ebenezer Lane, it’s at least heading in the right direction.”

  They hiked for an hour up the canyon and paused. Leaning on an exposed rock, they ate power bars, shared some nuts, and sipped water. Martha plotted their course again. “We’re still on track. We’ve gone about a mile, maybe a mile and a half.”