The Hosanna Shout

by R. R. Irvine

“I won’t be intimidated,” Martin said, but allowed himself to be led back to the Ford. “Let’s stop by the house on the way. I suddenly feel the need to be armed.”

  10

  THE HOUSE on First Avenue, with adobe walls two feet thick, was a relic from pioneer times, the 1860s, when First Avenue had been known as Fruit Street and the neighborhood as Butcherville because of the nearby slaughter yards. The white picket fence out front hadn’t been painted since Traveler’s high school days.

  The car parked in the driveway didn’t have flashing lights on its roof or policemen inside but looked official just the same. Two men young enough to be missionaries got out. Both wore gray suits, white shirts, and narrow, solid brown ties; both had short, military-style haircuts. One was carrying a cellular phone. The other looked from Traveler to the photograph in his hand and nodded to his companion.

  “It looks like another call from Willis,” Martin said.

  “Yes, sir,” the one holding the photo said. “We’re ready to put you in touch with Mr. Tanner.”

  “You deal with it, Mo.” Martin picked up the day’s edition of the Deseret News from the doorstep, then went inside and closed the door behind him.

  “We’ve already tested reception. It’s fine right here where we are. Our instructions are to connect you and then wait in the car.”

  The young man with the phone punched in numbers that had been written on the back of the photograph.

  “Mr. Tanner, we have Moroni Traveler for you,” he said a moment later. “Yes, sir, we’re on the front porch at the First Avenue address. No, sir, he’s alone. His father’s inside. Yes, sir.”

  They handed the photograph and phone to Traveler and fled to their car.

  “If you don’t stop causing trouble,” Tanner said without preamble, “you’re going to ruin my honeymoon. Lael and I have just come now from the temple here in St. George. As the prophet’s grandniece, she is disturbed that I have secular duties at a time like this.”

  “Get to the point, Willis.”

  “All apostles, numbered and unnumbered, are off limits, Moroni.”

  “Is that you or the prophet speaking?”

  “For once. Mo, take my advice. Stay away from Sam Howe and Josiah Ellsworth. If you persist, I won’t be able to help you.”

  “Bill and Charlie have disappeared,” Traveler said.

  “I heard that.”

  “What else have you heard?”

  “That Bill committed sacrilege.”

  “You know better than that. He admires the church more than you think.”

  “You’re the secret admirer, Mo.”

  “I can’t let Bill go to jail for touching someone on the shoulder.”

  “Be thankful that blood atonement is out of fashion among the Danites.”

  “Do you know where Bill is?”

  “Do you believe in the Danites?” Tanner asked back.

  “Are you saying they have Bill and Charlie?”

  “Lael sends her love, Mo. She says to tell you she still intends to name our child after you.”

  “There are too many Moronis as it is.”

  “She’s as stubborn as you are, Mo. I’ve done my duty by both of you.” He hung up.

  Traveler left the phone on the porch glider and went inside. Martin was sitting cross-legged in front of the fireplace with half a dozen framed photographs spread on the carpet around him. At Traveler’s arrival, he leaned back against the Victorian sofa that had once been Kary’s pride and joy and whose velvet upholstery was now covered with sections of the Deseret News.

  “What do you remember about Gussie Gustavson?” Martin said.

  “He owned the Chester Building before Barney, when it was called the Gustavson Building.”

  Martin nodded before selecting a photograph that showed two young men, Gustavson and Barney Chester, standing in front of the building with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

  “That was before their falling out,” Martin said. “You wouldn’t know it to look at Barney now but he was a high-roller in his youth, he and Gustavson both. One night in a high-stakes poker game the building changed hands. It was Gussie’s inheritance from his father, along with a salted silver mine and ten thousand shares of worthless penny stock. Witnesses who were there say it was mostly drink combined with natural recklessness that prompted him to offer the building as collateral for his mounting gambling debts. He never thought Barney would actually take possession. Barney might not have, either, if Beau Palmer, his lawyer at the time, hadn’t insisted that the bet was legal.”

  Martin took back the framed photo and handed Traveler another one, a posed group that included Martin and what looked like a very young Nephi Bates.

  “Gussie knew the building’s history firsthand from his father, who apparently made some kind of deal to get the WPA painters in to do the ceiling. The trouble is, both Gussie and his father are long dead. They did have a collection of photos, though, including shots of the Chester Building through the years. They all went to the State Historical Society.”

  “Is that where you got these?”

  Martin shook his head. “While you were in Park City I scrounged these from Critchlow’s office. It’s lucky he left them hanging on the walls after he bought the practice from Old Man Palmer.”

  “I can’t see how they help us any.”

  “Maybe not these, but I put a call in to the Historical Society. Their photographic curator, a man named Wayne Pinock, is out of town for the moment. He’s supposed to get back to me in a couple of days. It could be a waste of time, but what the hell. I love looking at the past.”

  Martin twisted around to grab a section of the Deseret News from the sofa behind him. He pointed to a story below the fold where a headline read, KENNECOTT PREDICTS VICTORY IN BINGHAM VOTE.

  “The election’s only four days away,” Martin said. “If Kennecott wins they’re going run everybody out of town and start digging up the Oquirrh Mountains. We’d better find young Moroni before that happens.”

  “The Danites are after Bill and Charlie.”

  “Is that why Willis called?”

  Traveler shrugged. “You know him. It’s hard to say for sure.”

  11

  THE LDS Hospital—once small, church-run, and dedicated to the Saints—had shed its early Prairie style of architecture to become a concrete leviathan. The adjacent square block, once a neighborhood of tall Victorians and Hoover bungalows, had given way to a multilevel concrete parking garage. Traveler left his Fairlane on the main level, partially hidden behind the rusting metal siding meant to screen parked cars from what residents remained in the area. Ten minutes later, he and Martin had tracked down Jubal Hale, the doctor who’d treated Bill. Despite an immaculate white staff coat, fresh dress shirt, and carefully knotted tie, the doctor looked exhausted.

  “Your man was one of the easy ones,” he said. “He had a clean break. The leg practically set itself. After it was done, though, we had a hard time holding him down until the plaster dried.” He shook his head wearily. “We get all kinds in here, of course, but he was the first to have his own Indian medicine man with him, or so the two of them claimed.”

  Hale rubbed his eyes. “They said they’d come to me seeking enlightenment, not treatment. When I told them I didn’t have time to discuss philosophy, they said they’d seek enlightenment elsewhere.”

  “Where exactly?” Martin asked.

  The doctor sighed. “I was about to ask them the same question, figuring I might need some enlightenment myself one day, but they got distracted by Bishop Olsen, one of our regulars who comes here visiting members of his ward whenever anyone’s taken ill. The Indian kept tapping the bishop on the shoulder. Every time he did, your friend Bill said, ‘Sorry. Only one point per bishop.’ You wouldn’t happen to know what that’s all about, would you?”

  Traveler explained the technique of counting coup.

  “I envy them their freedom,” Hale said. “Anyway, that’s the last I s
aw of them, hustling off down the hall after the bishop, with that friend of yours moving like he’d been born on crutches. I lost sight of them near the nurses’ station. You might try there.”

  At the nurses’ station, Traveler got in line behind an elderly man wearing hospital slippers, a flimsy robe, and pushing his own portable stand. A saline drip hung from it feeding into a vein in his left arm.

  “Don’t mind me,” he said, “I’m just getting my exercise and killing time.”

  With a nod, Traveler stepped around him to talk with the duty nurse. “Dr. Hale sent me. I’m looking for a friend of mine who was treated here for a broken leg.”

  The woman started shaking her head before Traveler was through speaking. “I have no broken legs in my ward at the moment. You’d better talk to Admitting.”

  “He’s talking about Mr. Williams,” the old man said.

  “There’s no Williams here.” The nurse stood up, shook her head again, and walked away.

  “Don’t mind her,” the old man said. “She’s overworked like everybody else around here.”

  “Do you know what happened to Mr. Williams?” Traveler said.

  “I was lying down in my room when he and Mr. Redwine came visiting, along with the bishop.” The old man held out a gnarled hand for shaking. “The name’s Ezra Gunnison.”

  “I’m Moroni Traveler. This is my father Martin.”

  Gunnison clicked his dentures. “He stuck you with a good one, didn’t he? Moroni’s even worse than Ezra. Ezra Brigham Gunnison. That’s what they stuck me with. Come on. They like me to keep moving.”

  He began shuffling down the hall with Traveler at his side and Martin bringing up the rear.

  “They were good company, your Mr. Williams and the Indian. Leastways, they were after they drove off Bishop Olsen. That man gets on my nerves, what with all his reading from the good book. He could put a saint to sleep. You should have seen him clear out; you would have thought Catholics were after him.”

  “Bill and Charlie, Mr. Williams and Mr. Redwine, have disappeared,” Traveler said.

  “Frankly, I got the feeling they were hiding in my room, but I didn’t care. Time goes slow in this place, so any company is welcome.”

  “How long did they stay with you?”

  “Maybe half an hour. The Indian kept looking out the door. That’s why I figured they were hiding out.”

  Gunnison stopped outside an open door. “This is home. My last one I figure, unless they get tired of me and throw me out.” He sighed deeply. “I’m running out of juice and have got to lie down for a while, but you’re welcome to come in and sit.”

  He pushed his drip over to the bed and, with Traveler’s help, kept his needle arm safely outside the thin hospital blanket.

  “Mr. Redwine told me he was a medicine man and wanted to lay hands on me,” Gunnison said. “ ‘Why not,’ I told him, ‘everybody else has.’ When he let go of me, he said, There’s no treatment for old age except to make the trip as pleasant as possible.’ That’s when he offered me a dose of medicine from the bag around his neck. They keep me doped to the gills as it is,’ I told him, but took a snort just the same. He was right. It made me feel like I could walk right out of here with them. Mr. Williams wouldn’t let me go with him, though. He said he and Charlie had a pilgrimage to do. ‘I’m due for one myself,’ I told them back, ‘when God calls me home.’ ”

  “Did they give a destination?” Martin asked.

  “ ‘Where God lives,’ they said, but I figured they were just humoring an old man.”

  “I’d like to know where he lives myself.”

  “I’ve heard said he lives in the temple,” Gunnison said, “but I never believed it.”

  “That’s one place I don’t think they’ll be looking,” Martin said.

  Gunnison snapped his teeth. “No Gentiles allowed.”

  “Did you see them leave?” Traveler asked.

  “I walked them down the hall, feeling no pain at all, thanks to Mr. Redwine, and saw them out the door. All the time they kept looking around like they couldn’t believe their eyes. I guess maybe the cops were after them, because I saw a couple at the admitting desk, but they had their backs turned. I got the impression they didn’t give a damn what Mr. Williams or Mr. Redwine did. Hell, maybe I’m imagining things and the police weren’t after them at all.”

  “That’s a relief,” Martin said. “I was beginning to think they hadn’t left under their own steam.”

  Gunnison sat up in bed. “There were people waiting for them outside, parked right at the curb with the door open.”

  “Did you see the driver?” Traveler said.

  “He got out to meet them, a big guy, not as big as you, though, with one of those short haircuts like we all got in the army.”

  “Earl Belnap,” Martin said.

  “It sounds like him,” Traveler agreed.

  “I never got outside to be introduced,” Gunnison said. “I did hear Mr. Williams shout at him, though. ‘We’re on a pilgrimage,’ he hollered. ‘You’re damn right,’ the big guy answered back. He must have been upset because he grabbed Mr. Williams and tried to shove him in the backseat. He hit his head a good one on the roof. I remember saying ouch for him.”

  Traveler didn’t speak again until he and Martin were back in the Fairlane and heading down E Street toward South Temple. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  “Time was,” Martin said, “cops used to drive undesirables out of town and dump them in the desert at the Nevada border, smack in the middle of the salt flats. Of course, they used to beat the shit out of them first. Some say there are a lot of bleached bones still to be found out around Wendover.”

  “They haven’t done that kind of thing for years.”

  “Gentling the Gentiles, they called it. The tough survived, but they never came back, I can tell you that. But a pair like Bill and Charlie, they could be in real trouble.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Belnap outside the hospital,” Traveler said. “Maybe it was the church.”

  “Either way, I say we’d better drive out to Wendover and take a look. If nothing else, we can cross over into Nevada and drop a couple of dollars in the slot machines.”

  12

  BEFORE MAKING the hundred-and-twenty-mile drive across the Great Salt Lake Desert to the Nevada border, Traveler stopped by the office to tell Barney Chester their plans. They found him standing at the cigar counter working on his eternal flame. Freshly oiled pieces of the mechanism were spread on the glass countertop.

  “It started to flicker this morning.” Chester spoke around the unlit cigar clamped between his teeth. “It must sense the old building’s about to die.”

  He ran a pipe cleaner though a piece of tubing, added it to the other disassembled parts on the counter, then wiped his hands on a rag before setting out three plastic cups and filling them with coffee.

  “I’ve taken it apart twice already,” he said. “It still flickers.”

  “Let me give it a try.” Martin began reassembling it while Traveler looked on, sipping coffee.

  When Martin had enough pieces together for a test, he struck a match to the spout. The escaping gas made a popping noise before catching fire. The flame burned brightly for a moment, then began sputtering.

  “We might as well light up before it dies forever,” Chester said. He held out a box of Muriels from his well-stocked counter, which included La Palinas, Robert Burnses, and Upmanns.

  Traveler took a cigar to be hospitable, but wouldn’t light up while there was work to do, not in Mormon country, where tobacco had been a sin since God gave Joseph Smith the Word of Wisdom. Chester, having no such qualms, began blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling mural.

  Martin snuffed out the eternal flame and started disassembling it again. Without looking up from his work, he asked Chester, “What do you know about Gussie Gustavson’s photo collection?”

  Chester stepped to the end of the counter and spun the rotating postcard rack f
illed with long-gone sights: the Doll House restaurant, the Black Rock Beach resort, the Coconut Grove, and photographic scenes of Park City when it was still a mining town. The cards, part of Chester’s collection, changed occasionally, but were never for sale. Each was protected inside its own clear plastic sleeve.

  “Gussie took some of these himself,” Chester said. “He was good with a camera. I’ll give him that.”

  “I’m told his son donated the originals to the historical society,” Martin said.

  “There was a time when Gussie’d stopped drinking and turned to photography. He’d go on snapshot benders and turn up with stacks of photos and drive everyone crazy. You’d see him coming and run. Given half a chance, Gussie would bore you to death with them. I said a prayer of thanksgiving when he went back to the booze.”

  “Did he take any shots of this building?”

  “Like I say, he was snapping all the time when he was sober. Inside, outside, wherever he was. God knows what happened to them all, though I can’t see what good they’d do us. If people can’t see how beautiful the Chester Building is in person, old snapshots aren’t going to change their minds.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Martin said, “but I want to take a look at them anyway.”

  Chester blew on the tip of his cigar until it glowed. “If you’re going over to the museum, maybe I’ll come along with you for a look-see.”

  “Probably tomorrow,” Martin said. “Right now we’re driving to Wendover to look for Bill and Charlie.”

  “What the hell are they doing out there?”

  “We don’t know where they are for sure,” Traveler said, “but my father has a theory.”

  Martin gave up on the eternal flame and returned the last piece to the countertop. “Most places use rubber hoses. Around here, they gentle the Gentiles.”

  “Jesus,” Barney said. “Are they still doing that?”

  “It’s a long drive if they aren’t,” Traveler said.

  Martin shrugged. “We can always call Willis and see what he has to say.”

  “I thought he was on his honeymoon,” Chester said.