Righteous - 01 - The Righteous

by Michael Wallace

  “What do you mean, the prophet?” Jacob asked. “Is Brother Joseph involved in this, somehow?” He said it casually, but Eliza found herself shaking her head. There was no way that the prophet would be involved in something so horrible.

  “Yes, of course. Well,” and here he paused, “okay, I’ve never spoken to Brother Joseph directly.”

  “Is the prophet in the habit of killing those who disobey him?”

  Jacob gave her a calming motion. He asked, “How about the Lost Boys? Is Gideon Kimball involved? Israel Young?”

  Enoch ignored the question, as he had ignored Eliza’s. “It’s not easy being an outcast. Hated by everyone. Even your own family.” He shook his head. “Who would choose such a life? Yet there are still ways to serve the Lord. Is there not a mansion in the Lord’s kingdom for all who obey His will?”

  Jacob said. “Enoch, what are you playing at? You have information. We need it.”

  “Why? This doesn’t concern you.”

  Jacob fixed Enoch with a hard stare. “Listen. Whatever you think you were doing was not serving the church and most certainly isn’t the will of the prophet or of the Lord.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “By their fruits, you shall know them,” Jacob said. “An evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. What’s the fruit of these friends of yours? A young mother murdered by a corruption of the temple endowment.”

  “The Lord’s ways are not our own, Jacob. What of God smiting Pharaoh with plagues, or in the Book of Mormon, of Nephi beheading Laban to obtain the Brass Plates? By God’s own command.”

  Jacob said, “Whatever moral turpitude has polluted your thoughts, Enoch, let me reiterate, the prophet doesn’t know anything about it. How do I know? I already told you. Brother Joseph and Father sent us to investigate Amanda’s murder. If both the prophet and the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve aren’t running this, then who is?”

  “Perhaps you’ve fallen under the influence of the Adversary,” Eliza suggested. In general, it bugged her when people blamed their bad behavior on Satan, but in this case it seemed appropriate.

  Jacob said, “You don’t feel good about what happened, Enoch. Look at your reaction when you heard the news. Whatever you thought would happen, it wasn’t murder. And I know that it’s not you. Do you remember that time when we were kids, when you found Israel Young taping firecrackers to toads? You gave him a beating he wouldn’t forget. And what about the time with the injured kitten? You always had a gentle soul, Enoch. Please, tell us what you know,” Jacob urged. “It’ll lift a weight off your conscience. Won’t that feel good?”

  Enoch said nothing and Eliza grew impatient. “Did I tell you? They buried Amanda in a shallow grave in Witch’s Warts. A dead dog gets more respect. Wonder what they’ll tell Sophie Marie. Will she know that they cut her throat like a pig?”

  “And you know the worst thing?” Jacob asked. “You could have prevented it.”

  Enoch looked pale again. Jacob went to the kitchen to get a pan. Eliza sat on the couch, fuming. Let him throw up. He was a coward and deserved to twitch with guilt. She, for one, wasn’t moved by stories of kittens and toads; what was that to the life of her cousin?

  As Enoch bent, she caught a glimpse of something at his chest. He wore temple garments beneath his clothing, but beneath that was a necklace with some sort of medallion on the end. Jacob returned. Enoch straightened and took the pan from Jacob, but he put it aside. The green look faded.

  Jacob tried again. “Enoch, it’s important that you tell us as much as you know so we can stop this from happening again. I’ll tell Brother Joseph how you helped us. If you truly believe in the gospel, then you’ll value the blessing of the prophet. Maybe…”

  “Okay, that’s thick enough,” Enoch said. “I know what you can and cannot promise. Very little, I’d think. But I’ll tell you what I know.” He paused, ran his tongue over his lower lip. “First, I don’t know who killed Amanda. It might be one of several people.”

  “Names?”

  “No, Jacob. That’s one thing I can’t do. I made covenants, and unless you want to see me with my own throat cut and my tongue ripped out, you won’t push me for names. And anyway, I couldn’t tell you who did it. Not for sure. You’ll have to find that out on your own.”

  “But suffice it to say that Gideon Kimball is one of those names,” Jacob said, to no response. “Would his father, Elder Kimball, be involved? How about Taylor Junior?”

  Again, no answer.

  He wanted to talk. The guilt was clear on his face, but he still needed prodding. Eliza was wondering how hard Jacob could push without making Enoch retreat fully when the cordless on the wall just outside the kitchen rang. Enoch started, then rose to his feet.

  “Let the machine get it,” Jacob urged.

  “I can’t. It might be work. I left so quickly, someone might be calling to make sure that I’m okay. This is Las Vegas. Things happen.”

  He picked up the phone. A grim look passed across his face, then he went into the bedroom and shut the door.

  “That’s not work,” Jacob said.

  “You think it’s Gideon Kimball?”

  “Maybe. I shouldn’t have let him take that call. You know, he wants to tell us, you can see that. But he wants to tell us without telling us, if that makes any sense. You notice he’s wearing garments? Someone has taken him through the temple.”

  “Yeah, and what’s that thing he’s wearing around his neck?” Eliza asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A medallion on a chain. Underneath his shirt. I saw it when he bent over.”

  Jacob frowned. “A medallion? I didn’t see it.”

  “Silver. About this big.” She made a ring with her fingers the size of an old-fashioned silver dollar. “Markings on it, symbols and such.”

  “Like the zodiac, maybe?”

  She thought about it. “Not exactly, no. More like Egyptian hieroglyphs. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “No, but it makes me think of Reformed Egyptian. As in the Gold Plates.”

  The Gold Plates, translated by Joseph Smith into the Book of Mormon, had been written on sheets of gold in a language they had called Reformed Egyptian.

  They looked toward the bedroom door and waited. Still no Enoch. It had been perhaps fifteen minutes. At last, they could stand it no more and made their way to the door. Jacob knocked. “Come on, Enoch. It’s not going to get any easier.” He waited a moment, then tried the door. It was locked. He knocked again.

  Eliza felt the first stirring of discomfort. “Open the door, Enoch,” she said. “You’ve got to help us. They killed Amanda, Enoch. They left her daughter without a mother. Enoch?”

  “Damn it, Enoch!” Jacob said. “Open this door or I’m going to break it down.”

  Still no answer. Jacob leaned his shoulder in and rammed the door. It held. He leaned in harder this time, but the door didn’t move.

  They both joined in now, more worried than anything. “Enoch, open up. Right now. We’re not fooling around.”

  Jacob rammed the door again, first with his shoulder again, harder, then with his shoe. It held. Anxious now, they swept the magazines from the coffee table and hoisted it toward the bedroom door like a battering ram. The first blow was tentative and uncoordinated. The second burst the door open. They shoved aside the coffee table and rushed into the bedroom.

  The room was empty.

  Jacob threw open the closet doors, thinking, perhaps, that he was hiding, or, following Eliza’s thoughts, that he’d hung himself with his belt. It, too, was empty.

  She looked around with mounting confusion. “I don’t understand. It’s like an angel took him.”

  Jacob snorted before she had a chance to finish this thought. He picked up the cordless phone where Enoch had dropped it on the bed before disappearing, then made his way to the window, where he threw open the curtains. “What’s more likely, an angel spirited him away, or he ran like a coward?” The
window was open.

  Eliza followed her brother to the window and looked down. They were on the second floor, but there were bushes below to break a fall. The exterior of the building was well lit, as was the street and parking lot beyond. No sign of Enoch.

  She gave Jacob an embarrassed smile. “Sorry. I just…well, it caught me off guard. What now?”

  “We’ll wait. Look at all this stuff. He’s got to come back.”

  They took stock of the bedroom. There was a bookshelf filled with all manner of secular and spiritual books. Enoch had a lava lamp on his nightstand, a curious touch, she thought, and a print of the angel Moroni appearing to a young Joseph Smith on one wall. On the opposite wall sat a framed photograph of the Blister Creek temple.

  “Maybe,” she said, “but nothing says he has to come back tonight or anytime soon. How long will we have to wait?”

  “He’s got a job and a life here, and probably bank accounts, bills, etc. He’ll get out there, wherever he ran, and start thinking about this stuff, and then he’ll come back. I’d give him an hour.”

  She wasn’t so sure. He’d been spooked. Or maybe the phone call had told him to run. Either way, who said he had to come back? She sat down on the bed. Jacob rifled through the nightstand drawers.

  The front door to the apartment opened. Jacob looked up with a smile on his lips. “Make that five minutes.”

  The smile died just as quickly. Two men entered the apartment. They wore black ski masks and carried baseball bats. The men saw the open door to the bedroom and came at them. Eliza stood and Jacob pushed her behind him.

  The taller of the two men stood in the threshold of the bedroom. The other stood at his back. “By thy deeds thou hast condemned thyself. Jacob Levi Christianson, in the name of the Lamb of Israel, thou shalt be utterly destroyed even this very day. May thy blood atone for thy sins.”

  The masked men raised their bats and rushed at Jacob.

  Chapter Eight:

  After fleeing his brother and sister, Enoch had made his way to Gideon’s apartment, located just minutes away by foot. Gideon was not there, but he found Elder Kimball waiting. The man wore a suit and tie, as if he’d just come from priesthood meeting. Enoch was acutely aware of the lingering smell of vomit that hung about his own clothes.

  Elder Kimball took him by the arm. “Come inside, Brother Christianson. You look like you need a blessing.”

  Enoch let Elder Kimball lead him into the front room and to a chair. “I shouldn’t have talked to him,” he said, repeating the apology from his earlier phone call. “I’m sorry. I knew it. I knew there was something wrong.”

  “Don’t worry, Enoch. You did the right thing in the end.”

  Enoch still wrestled with doubts. “Are you sure?”

  “The prophet has looked in Jacob’s soul, Enoch. There is a dark countenance resting there. He has been deceived by the Adversary. You did the right thing.”

  So what? How would they turn Jacob away? Amanda Kimball was dead. Is that what they intended? Kill him?

  Elder Kimball placed his hands on Enoch’s head. “Enoch Nephi Christianson,” the blessing began. “In the name of Jesus Christ and by the authority of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood, I lay my hands upon your head.”

  The power of the priesthood flowed into Enoch’s body through Elder Kimball’s hands. Enoch had been cursed, excommunicated, and driven from Zion. Now he was restored.

  On that night when Father had driven him from Harmony, Enoch had laid down on the train tracks south of Boise, Idaho. The train would come, churn his intestines into soup, pulverize his spine, and rend his spirit from his body. They had withdrawn his blessings and condemned his soul to Outer Darkness.

  The night had been cool. The rail ties pushed against his back. The cold metal of the rail pressed into his cheek. The rail hummed with a distant, nervous energy. The vibrations of a train, still too distant to hear.

  The depression was a black howling in his ears. A self-loathing so deep that he wanted to punish himself. He wanted to feel the pain, at least for a few seconds, as ten thousand tons of freight train ripped him to shreds. The remains would be unrecognizable, just tattered flesh and scraps of bone and clothing. He hoped the train conductor would not even see him on the tracks, or feel the slight bump as Enoch caught up in the wheels. A brutal, anonymous death.

  But then a single, solitary voice had whispered through the gale in his mind. It’s not your fault.

  “Yes,” he said aloud. “It is my fault. I’m a worm. Lower than a worm. Stomp me, God. Destroy me. Burn my soul with everlasting fire.”

  No, the voice said. Was it fear of death that spoke? Or some pinprick of sanity. You were chosen to fail.

  It was true, wasn’t it? He’d stood no chance next to Jacob. His brother was better than him in every way.

  Growing up, Jacob had been diplomatic enough not to mention his superiority, but it stared Enoch in the face every day. Jacob listened to his elders. Jacob never needed reminding to do his chores or his homework. He could beat an adult at chess and had a natural gift with the piano. He understood a new mathematical concept the first time, and had excellent spelling and handwriting. When Father wanted to show off one of his children, he always chose Jacob; the boy would never let him down. Even the younger children flocked to Jacob to hear his stories, or to follow him on adventures; he would include even the youngest and they loved him for it. Enoch, coming along just ten months later, could never reach the level of his brother. He had tried.

  Enoch had not given conscious voice to these thoughts until that day fishing with Grandpa Griggs. Grandpa Griggs was working on a logging project in northern Utah. He never went anywhere without taking two or three of his grandsons or younger sons. It was Jacob and Enoch’s turn.

  Jacob and Enoch had explored the forest during the day while Grandpa Griggs spent two hard weeks working at a logging camp. They’d eaten hot dogs and s’mores every night for dinner and slept in Grandpa’s Toyota Dolphin motorhome.

  When the work ended, Grandpa had driven them to Mirror Lake for two days of camping and fishing. It was there that Enoch had broken his thumb. All trying to impress Grandpa Griggs.

  Grandpa had brought out his prized collection of flies and taught the boys about each one: woolly buggers, zonkers, humpies, and black spinners. He taught about the different kinds of flies, and when to use each: nymphs, dry flies, wet, streamers, and so on. And then, he taught them how to cast. They started with the simple forward cast, how to false cast the fly until it was in the perfect position.

  Jacob was a natural. He picked up each technique effortlessly and caught his first fish in about ten minutes. Enoch couldn’t get the stroke right. He wet his fly, then snagged it on a rock. He lost two flies and almost a third, and didn’t catch a thing. Jacob and Grandpa caught their dinner. Grandpa Griggs told Enoch not to worry, that tomorrow was another day. His muscles would learn during the night.

  Yes, Enoch thought. But not while I sleep.

  Instead, he waited until the others were asleep, then crept out of bed. He took the fishing pole and the box of flies. He picked his way down to the lakeshore, some twenty yards distant, careful to choose a place with no rocks or trees on which to snag the fly. And he practiced. And practiced some more.

  He practiced through the night, casting and casting and casting by the light of the moon, and ever so gradually improving. Finally, he dropped the fly exactly where he wanted it. A few minutes later, another good cast. Before long, he was making good casts with regularity.

  And at last he had it. A perfect whip, whip, whip, drop. He could duplicate it nine times out of ten.

  Enoch was exhausted, his muscles quivering. If he had stopped then, he would have triumphed. The next morning, he would rise nonchalantly and take his place next to Grandpa Griggs and Jacob. He would show them what he’d learned, never mentioning the night’s labors. And he would catch fish. Lots and lots and lots of them. Monster trout from the depths of the lake that had nev
er before been tempted by an artificial fly. He would show them.

  Just a couple more casts to make sure he had it.

  But his legs, tired to the point of trembling, betrayed him. He took a step on a rock to shift his position and his foot slipped. He slid sideways into the water and in his attempt to hold onto the fishing pole, caught his hand on the rock. There was a twist. A sharp pain.

  Enoch did not cry. He did not drop the pole. But his thumb burned as he crawled from the water. Even in the moonlight he could see how it dangled helplessly. His thought, foolish even for a nine-year-old, was that he’d wrap it in a sock and they’d never notice. But he was wet from his fall, and his feet made squishy sounds as he walked back into camp. A light came on inside the motorhome. Grandpa Griggs came out a moment later with a flashlight, blinking groggily.

  “Hell’s bells, Enoch,” said Grandpa Griggs as he eyed the fishing tackle and Enoch’s bedraggled appearance. “What on earth are you doing at this time of the night? You know the fish won’t bite until first dawn. That’s two hours away.”

  Enoch choked back a sob. “I was trying to practice. I wanted to be better. Like Jacob.”

  Grandpa had not yet seen his broken thumb. That would be just as bad, in its way, because it would bring their fishing trip to an unceremonious end. Very shortly Grandpa would see the broken thumb and they would drive the rest of the night to the hospital in Provo. Enoch would never have a chance to show how he had learned to cast.

  But not yet. Now, Grandpa had one final remark, and it would cause the most serious wound Enoch would suffer on this trip. “It’s no big deal, Enoch. Jacob’s got a knack for it.” He chuckled and said, half to himself, “He’s got a knack for everything, that boy.”

  It was a stumbling, unintentional remark. Grandpa had not meant to be cruel. But at that moment, Enoch understood now what had been devouring him for so many months. Jacob had a knack for everything. Enoch would always be a failure in comparison. Always.

  It was this memory that had roused Enoch from his stupor that night on the train tracks near Boise. He had been chosen to fail. It wasn’t just that he hadn’t taken to fly-fishing—he had figured it out through his own dogged determination. No, it was that rock, that fatal step that had brought him low. A chance. Only there were no chances in the universe, were there? God, yes, God himself was making him fail.