The Sound of Gravel

by Ruth Wariner

  “But if he was good, then why—”

  “It wasn’t an easy decision for your dad to make. He let things go on for a lot longer than he would have if Ervil hadn’t been his brother. People in the church started noticin’ that Ervil was spendin’ lots of money on himself, wearin’ nice clothes and drivin’ nice cars even though he had thirteen wives and all his kids to support. There was no way he could afford those things on the money he was makin’. Everyone knew that.”

  “He was takin’ money from the church?”

  “That’s right, Ruthie, and the church didn’t have much of it to begin with. Heck, my sister wives and I were survivin’ on a gunnysack of pinto beans and some eggs—that was it. I was livin’ in a one-bedroom trailer with three little kids. And I was pregnant with you.”

  I thought of Mom living off gunnysacks of beans and remembered how Grandma had once said that Luke’s and Audrey’s disabilities were likely the result of poor nutrition. I heard her voice in my mind again: Makes me sick to think about all those old men bringin’ so many little babies into the world and not takin’ care of ’em. My grandma seemed smarter than my mom.

  I poured some more water into Mom’s yogurt cup, and she chugged it down before continuing.

  “Once he was removed from office, Ervil started preachin’ that he was the real prophet and that your dad was a false one. Your dad was never a fanatic and encouraged his followers to make choices for themselves. Ervil was the opposite. Your uncle started claimin’ that he had the authority to shed the blood of anyone who didn’t do what he told them to do. Your dad told him that there was no way they had the right to start killin’ people. By the time you were born, Ervil and your dad just couldn’t get along anymore. Ervil went and started his own church with those people, and he took a few Firstborners with him.”

  “Why did the people believe Ervil if he was a bad man?”

  “Well, Sis, people didn’t know that at the time. Ervil was real smart and he was a big talker. He was tall, had these huge hands, and he towered over everyone he talked to. He knew all the scriptures and knew how to twist them to make your dad look bad. Plus, members of the church were gettin’ discouraged because there was never any money, the farms we were plantin’ were young and not producin’ much of anything, and most of the men had to take construction jobs in the States to support their families in Mexico.” Mom opened her mouth wide in a yawn, sucked in the dry air, and covered her mouth with a flat palm. She shifted in her seat and rubbed the side of her forehead with her fingertips as if she had a headache.

  “We heard rumors that Ervil had been threatenin’ your dad during his church sermons, tellin’ his followers that your dad needed to be removed so that the church could fulfill its purpose.” Mom took in a deep breath and shook her head. “Your dad knew somethin’ could happen, but of course he had no idea when or where it would take place.”

  Mom yawned again and her eyes glistened in the darkness. She inhaled deeply, her belly expanding until it reached the steering wheel. “We were on our way to LeBaron for church conferences. Your dad had been preparin’ for them for weeks. He was drivin’ a big truck with a camper on the back with me and my four kids and my sister wife Lisa and her five kids. The older kids were all piled in the back. Lisa and I both sat up in the front with your dad, and I had a nursin’ baby.”

  I did a tally on my fingers—twelve people in one truck. “I was there?”

  “You were the one I was nursin’.” Mom laughed. “I was holdin’ you on my lap, sweatin’ like a pig, it was so hot. Your dad told us he’d promised to stop by and help a friend fix his car. But when we got there, it was clear that nobody was livin’ there. The place was completely empty. That was our first clue that somethin’ wasn’t right.”

  I sat mesmerized by Mom’s voice while I studied jagged cracks in the black dashboard that looked like lightning bolts.

  “An old, broken-down car was in the front yard with two men sittin’ in it, young Mexican boys who belonged to your dad’s church. They nodded their heads hello, smilin’, and tipped their cowboy hats at us. Your dad asked if there was a car here that needed fixin’, and they said, yes, this one here, but they’d accidentally left the keys for it at a house down the road. They asked my sister wife and me to go with one of the young men in his truck and fetch the keys. Your dad told all of us to go with the boy and we did.” She exhaled a long time. “That was the last time I saw your dad alive.”

  “What happened?”

  “Everybody hopped into the guy’s truck—Lisa, me, and all the older kids, except for Lisa’s son, Ivan. He stayed behind to help your dad. Poor kid. He was only about ten or twelve, I think. We drove around with the Mexican guy for what felt like an hour. Lisa and I looked at each other. We didn’t know what was goin’ on. Finally, the guy said he couldn’t find the house he’d been lookin’ for and asked if we wanted to stop at a little taco stand for lunch. Lisa and I didn’t have the money to buy everyone tacos, so we left the guy there.

  “We walked all the way back to the empty house, and all along the way these cars passed us on the road going real quick. When we got back, the place was surrounded with flashin’ lights and police cars, police takin’ pictures and holdin’ back this huge crowd.”

  Mom yawned again. Lane was just ahead of us now, and she flashed her headlights off and on to get his attention. She was too tired to drive any farther.

  “Ivan ran through the crowd of people cryin’ and said that your daddy was dead, that they shot him and that he was dead.” Mom shook her head and flashed the lights again. Lane hadn’t gotten the message. “I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it. Lisa talked to the police. She was a lot older than me and she knew how to speak Spanish pretty well. I had to see what happened for myself. I had you in my arms and pushed my way through the crowd. I walked into the front door but he was gone. They’d already taken his body away.

  “The house had green walls and all of them were bare. There was nothin’ in the place but a broken chair in the middle of the floor next to a pool of blood. Ivan had been waitin’ in the broken-down car for your dad. He said he heard the two shots that killed him, said that your daddy put up a fight to the very end. And Ivan said he saw three of Ervil’s followers leave through a side window. We later heard that Ervil was sittin’ in an air-conditioned movie theater, watchin’ a movie while his murder plan was carried out.”

  I couldn’t believe that my life had begun with that kind of story. I felt so sad for Mom, thinking of her with all of us and a dead husband. And I felt so sad for myself because I never got to know my dad.

  “Ervil was arrested in Ensenada,” Mom said. “He was found guilty at first, but then they let him go. The judge said that they didn’t have enough evidence against him. Our people believe that Ervil bribed the judge, but no one knows what really happened.”

  A blue sign announced a rest area. Mom turned on her blinker and sped up to pass Lane. “It wasn’t long after that when Ervil and the Ervilites started threatenin’ us. He started havin’ his people murder polygamist leaders all over Mexico and the US. He even wrote letters to the president of the United States, threatenin’ him if he didn’t recognize Ervil as God’s prophet. It was just unbelievable.”

  As Mom passed Lane’s trailer and truck, she gripped the steering wheel with both hands and leaned her body forward, squinting her eyes at the yellow headlights that cut through the darkness.

  “Ervil is finally in jail now in Utah. They caught him after seven years of killin’ people and finally found him guilty for murder and attempted murder. The reporters on TV called him the ‘Mormon Manson.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that Ervil never pulled the trigger himself but ordered his followers, even his wives and kids, to kill people, over twenty-five of them. Your dad was the first victim. But Ervil’s followers are still out there, so we still have to be careful.”

  She took the off-ramp toward the rest area that was
quiet as we wound our way toward the parking area.

  “I loved your dad,” Mom said suddenly, as if interrupting herself. “I never wanted anything more in my life than to marry him. I got to spend the night with him on my twenty-fourth birthday, the day before he died. I was so tickled.” She looked at me and smiled. “I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with him. He had so many kids and wives and was workin’ in the church almost all the time. And even when he wasn’t, people were always stoppin’ by one of his homes lookin’ for him. I never saw him turn anyone away.” The Microbus came to a stop and she turned off the ignition. “Believe it or not,” she said as if to end the story, “being married to your dad was a lot harder than being married to Lane.”

  “Really?” That seemed impossible.

  Mom parked the van and Meri started to squirm under the blankets behind us. “Oh, yeah. Seems like I was always cravin’ your dad’s love and attention. I couldn’t get enough of it.”

  Lane appeared at Mom’s window and she rolled it down. “You want to stop for the night here?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I’m too tired to keep drivin’.”

  “That’s fine with me. I could use a break too.”

  He stepped away, and Mom opened her door. “I’ll get the beds made up.”

  Everyone had blankets and a spot to sleep when she was finished arranging the van and moving sleeping bodies around. Matt and I lay in sleeping bags on top of cots in the open air as the traffic whizzed by. I stared up at the stars and wondered what it meant to crave attention. What was so important about it that Mom actually looked for it in Lane?

  18

  We arrived in El Paso in late afternoon. The May air was hot and thick with the smell of asphalt, but it was much better than the air in the Microbus, which was like a furnace. By the time we drove off the highway, into a neighborhood, and then into a driveway alongside the camper that would serve as our temporary home, my hair was drenched in sweat.

  The camper we pulled up next to would have fit snugly onto the bed of a pickup truck. The lightweight tin was painted white, and its edges had rusted into reddish brown dust. It wasn’t designed to sleep seven people. Lane’s brother Gary lived in El Paso, and Lane had unloaded the camper onto a slab of concrete behind Gary’s convenience store. Lane explained that this was his “little home” when his work brought him to El Paso. All I could think about was how happy I was that people couldn’t see the dilapidated heap of metal from the street.

  A short, narrow hallway was just inside the door with a two-burner electric stovetop on one side and a compact fridge on the other. Thanks to electrical hookups, they both worked. But the toilet didn’t, so it was back to primitive living and a five-gallon paint bucket for us. I thought that with Audrey’s departure my days of living in a urine-scented room had passed, but the stench from the little bathroom permeated the entire space.

  The sun had set, and Mom told us we only had time for a quick bowl of cornflakes before bed, which was fine with me. I couldn’t imagine there was much else we could do in that cramped tin can. Matt and Lane unscrewed the white tabletop and laid it between the foam plastic seats, creating a full-size bed that Mom covered with a quilt. This was where Matt, Luke, Aaron, and I would sleep.

  Meri slept with Lane and Mom on the top bed, a mattress inside a narrow compartment that ordinarily hovered over the cab of the truck. Lane waited to turn out the light until everyone else was in bed and undressed to a pair of tight, white briefs. He stepped over us to pull the thin string connected to the bare lightbulb overhead. Seeing him in that moment, the deep farmer’s tan on his arms, the pasty whiteness everywhere else, made me fell that familiar nausea in my gut.

  Still, nothing prepared me for the next morning, when we got our first glimpse of what would become our new home. Mom said Lane had found a single-wide trailer that he was hoping to purchase with money borrowed from Mom’s parents. He drove us across town in the Microbus to see it. We arrived at a large, fenced-in lot that looked like a trailer-park graveyard. All around us were single- and double-wides with doors wide open and hinges falling off. On some, the roofs had been partially torn away, as if giant can openers had abandoned their work midstream. Others had broken windows and drooping, white tin walls with pink and yellow insulation that sprang from every crack.

  For a moment, I thought that this might be the last straw between Mom and Lane, especially when I noticed the look of horror on her face. She sat in the driver’s seat with Meri in her arms, her mouth open and her eyes wide under her glasses. I thought she had stopped breathing for a few seconds. “Lane,” Mom said with a gasp, “what kind of place … are we movin’ into? This looks like a junkyard.”

  “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” he said, chuckling, not missing a beat.

  Mom didn’t smile and neither did the rest of us.

  The Microbus stopped in front of a single-wide with solid-white outer walls and light brown trim framing the windows and roof. The front door was several feet off the ground, and even though no steps led up to it, it looked nice compared to the other trailers. But when Lane opened the front door, a strong smell of burned plastic and wood greeted us. The entire interior had been scorched almost beyond recognition. The plywood walls and linoleum floors were the color of charcoal, and fire had burned through the living-room carpet into whatever was underneath it. The ceiling was black too, and the only surviving overhead light fixture was covered in soot.

  Somehow, Lane seemed excited. I didn’t feel the need to see more, but he hoisted me up through the doorway anyway, and my white sandals landed in a pile of ankle-deep ash. “Don’t get your clothes and hands all dirty,” he cautioned as if it were avoidable.

  Mom stayed silent, entering the trailer with one high step, Meri still limp on her shoulder. Black dust from the burned carpet rose from Mom’s feet as she perused the living space, biting the corner of her lower lip. She was in shock.

  “This … looks like it’ll take … a lot of work and … money to fix up.”

  “Well,” Lane said, still genial, “I can replace all the walls and floors and roll the linoleum down myself. I might need some help with the carpet, but it doesn’t need that big of a piece. And I can fix any electrical problems this place has just like I did at my homes on the farm.” My mind was flooded with memories of live wires sticking out of the ground and cords snaking up and down walls.

  Lane motioned for Mom to come see the two bedrooms and bathroom, but she stayed planted in the living room. I studied her face as my hand brushed over pink insulation, which made my skin itch.

  Still, Lane’s confidence never wavered. In fact, he was beaming. “Nice thing about this place is that the structure is still in good shape. I just have to build around it.”

  Mom’s jaw dropped.

  Lane tossed a sympathetic arm around her shoulder, caressing her back with his palm. “Think your parents will let ya borrow the money?”

  “I don’t know, Lane.” She looked up at the filthy ceiling. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

  He chuckled again. “Oh, come on now. Don’t be silly. I can fix this place up real nice. Nothin’ to worry about.”

  “Where will we move it to? We can’t live here.” She pointed out the door at the surrounding mess of homes.

  “We can find a rental lot at a trailer park and get it towed.” Now Lane sounded agitated. “People move trailers all the time. It’s no big deal.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she said, deflated. That afternoon, she called my grandparents from a phone in Gary’s store, and they wired her the money the next day. Lane located a trailer park with an empty spot to rent and commenced work on the project. Meanwhile, we would live in a cramped, boiling camper for two weeks.

  The school year was almost over, but Mom signed us up anyway. It felt as if no one wanted us there. I couldn’t blame them: it was weird to be joining the second grade in a new school with only a few weeks left before summer vacation. The teach
er barely said hello the first day I entered her putty-colored classroom. “You can sit there,” she said, pointing at a vacant chair, her voice raspy and monotone. The air smelled like Vicks VapoRub. She cleared her throat, spit into a tissue that she then hurled into a wastebasket already full of soggy tissues, and went back to her work.

  I looked over at the three other girls at my four-desk pod. They took their cues from the teacher, neither smiling nor acknowledging me in any way. I sat uncomfortably in my hard plastic chair. This is going to be a long few weeks, I thought.

  At last our trailer was done, and Mom took us to see it after school on a muggy Friday afternoon. The mobile-home park, just off Alameda Avenue, a busy four-lane road, was a small neighborhood of clean, well-kept mobile homes. Each space had a swept and tidy concrete parking spot and, next to that, a small patch of lawn. As we pulled up to our trailer, I noticed that our lawn was the only dry and yellow one. A hammering sound came from inside, and as we climbed the new plywood steps, I dreaded what we would find.

  Mom held the door open for me, and now it was my turn to gasp. It was astonishing. The inside looked brand-new, with only a faint hint of the old burnt smell. Lane had installed shiny glass fixtures on dark brown plywood walls, and the ceiling had been painted a blinding white. The new carpet was dark with brown, tan, and white speckles, and the new windows were open to the sunlight and a light summer breeze.

  Luke and Aaron ran up and down the hall, opening and closing doors in all the rooms. Lane came out from the bedroom with a hammer, and his torn jeans and polo shirt were covered in white spots of paint. He smiled at us through bloodshot eyes and informed us that he’d been up all night working, saying that although there was still a lot to do, we could move in over the weekend. Mom’s face lit up.