Called Home

by R. R. Irvine

  He braked in front of a wooden gate. The sign on it, Dority Turkey Ranch surrounding a red-wattled bird, was the same as he’d seen on the pickup truck that the Nibley brothers had been driving.

  When Traveler got out to open the gate, he heard the frantic gobbling of turkeys. He couldn’t blame them for being nervous.

  The thought crossed his mind that he should leave the gate open in case of a quick return. Then again, if it came to a matter of survival, he could always ram his way through the barrier.

  A hundred yards beyond the gate he saw the house, a brick box with end-wall chimneys and a porch across the front. The logoed pickup, complete with loaded gun rack, was parked in front. A German shepherd was in the open back.

  Traveler pulled in beside the truck and rolled down his window an inch or so. “Good dog.”

  The shepherd, standing rigidly at attention, stared at him silently. The hair on the back of its neck was standing too. Traveler opened the door but didn’t get out.

  The shepherd didn’t budge either.

  “Stay,” he said, extending one leg tentatively.

  The shepherd’s lips curled away from its teeth while its tail wagged. Probably in expectation of a meal, Traveler decided and honked the horn to announce his presence.

  The Nibley brothers came out onto the porch. In baggy overalls and rubber work boots, they bore little resemblance to last night’s attackers. Their expressions were different, too. Fear had replaced aggression. Whether fear of the fire or him he didn’t know.

  “I’m here to see your sister, Louise Dority,” Traveler said without opening the door all the way.

  “Come on in,” Ellis Jr., the one with the broken rib, said. “Woody there wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Ellis was holding himself stiffly, probably because of a bandaged rib cage.

  Woody barked at the mention of his name and hopped out of the truck to raise his leg against the Jeep’s front tire.

  As soon as Traveler got out of the air-conditioned car, his eyes stung and his nose started running. He didn’t know which was worse, the smoke or the astringent smell of turkey manure.

  “You get used to it,” Mel said.

  Traveler coughed and shook his head.

  “An hour from now you won’t even notice it,” Ellis Jr. added.

  Not trusting their sudden camaraderie, Traveler hesitated at the bottom of the porch steps. “You didn’t say if your sister was home or not?”

  “Tell him to come in,” a woman said from inside the house. “As for you two, go on out and see if you can help Clem with the firebreak.”

  “Ellis ought to stay here,” Mel called back.

  Ellis hugged his ribs to prove the point.

  The woman came to the screen door, which was home to a swarm of large and shiny black flies. She was a big, strong-looking woman, stout not fat, about thirty with gray already streaking her brown hair. She reminded Traveler of a teacher he’d had in grade school.

  “You have to be Mr. Traveler,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She opened the door carefully so as not to disturb the flies. “You’d better come on in before they do.”

  As he stepped past her, the smell of vanilla extract canceled out the turkeys and the smoke.

  She closed the screen door and latched it.

  “One of us ought to stay here with you,” Ellis said. A whine had crept into his voice.

  “I’m not asking you to kill yourself.” She planted her hands on sturdy hips. “Just be out there with Clem in case of trouble.”

  Like scolded children, they hung their heads and trudged away.

  She watched until they disappeared in the smoke before closing the inner, glass door. The temperature in the house felt ten degrees cooler than outside.

  “Don’t think I’m hard-hearted, sending Ellis out hurt the way he is. But my husband’s all alone up there in the hills.”

  “Just about every man in town has been called out to help.”

  “Clem’s a volunteer, too. But Dority Canyon is no place for a fire engine. He knows that and so does Chief McConkie. It could get trapped in here.”

  She pointed east where the mountains would be if they could be seen. “That’s why Clem’s out there on Axhandle Ridge trying to widen a natural break. Our neighbors have promised to join him when they can. But if the wind keeps blowing, I don’t think anybody can stop the fire.”

  “Could you move the birds?”

  “If it came to it, the best we could do is turn them loose, I guess. But turkeys are dumb, so God knows if they could save themselves.”

  She leaned toward him, her eyes narrowing as she peered into his face. The vanilla scent grew stronger, along with the smell of fresh baking. “What did you do to my brothers last night?”

  “I’m sure they’ve told you.”

  “They did that, all right. Though I’m not sure I believe them.” She shook her head. “Ellis’s broken bones before, but I’ve never seen him like this. You took all the fight out of him.”

  “It’s the fire.”

  “You’re a big man, Mr. Traveler. They said you attacked without warning, that they never had a chance.”

  “You have my word, Mrs. Dority. I didn’t start the fight, and I didn’t hit him either. Ellis was trying to kick me and got his brother instead.”

  She looked at him for a moment without saying anything. Then suddenly she smiled. “It’s about time. My brothers have been bullies all their lives. When I was growing up, there were times when they made my life miserable. I blame my father. He encouraged them. So does Clem, my husband, I’m afraid. What about you, Mr. Traveler? Are you a bully?”

  “A man in my business sometimes has a strange effect on people.”

  “My brothers are afraid of you. Anyone could see that. That’s a first for them. Even so, I’d be careful if I were you. This sudden turnabout on their part may be an act. In any case, you look like a mercenary to me.”

  “Your father hired me.”

  “I know that now.”

  “All I’m trying to do is help him live with what happened.”

  “What about the rest of us?” She moved to one of the east-facing windows, pulling aside the lace curtain to look out. “Is it my imagination, or can you smell roasting turkeys?”

  Traveler took a deep breath. All he could smell was her vanilla scent. It made him hungry.

  She swung around, hugging herself. “If the turkeys go, our lives go with them.”

  “What about insurance?”

  “It’s never enough, is it?” She wiped her eyes. “You’d think my father would have warned me that you were coming. But no. I had to hear it from the women at the Relief Society. Five or six have called here already. Of course, it would have to be Cynthia Odell who got to me first. If my friends find out I’ve talked to her . . .”

  “Is she a friend?”

  “She and her husband are being shunned.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you know what she said? That you weren’t as tough as you look. Is that true? Have you got my brothers spooked for nothing?”

  “I never argue with a lady.”

  “Isn’t that a man for you.” She beckoned him to follow her through a narrow doorway into the kitchen, where the smell of fresh baking was even stronger. They sat facing one another across a scarred wooden table that held a large platter of cookies made in the shape of turkeys. “We call them vanilla gobblers? They’re just out of the oven. Help yourself.”

  The cookie tasted as good as she smelled. Mrs. Dority smiled at his reaction and sat back, her arms folded across her breasts, to watch him eat.

  He went through half a dozen gobblers, hoping she’d say something unsolicited, something that might ease the way onto the dangerous ground of suicide.

  When that didn’t happen, he gave up on the cookies and plunged ahead. “Your father has asked me to find out why your mother took her own life.”

  “Do you think you can?”

  “My
initial advice to your father was to forget the whole thing.”

  “Then why did you come around here pretending to be an investigator from the State Medical Board?”

  “That wasn’t my mistake.”

  “It was cruel,” she said. “Getting the women’s hopes up like that.”

  “Does this have anything to do with your mother’s death?”

  The woman opened her mouth as if to speak but her teeth snapped together first.

  “Maybe I should talk to your mother’s doctor. I understand he’s in Ephraim.”

  “Thank God for that, anyway.”

  Traveler pretended to concentrate on another cookie while watching her closely. Unless he was mistaken, her face had changed; she looked relieved.

  He said, “Shirley Colton told me that she was the one who wrote to the state board. Was it about your mother?”

  “That would be for Shirley to say.”

  Traveler dropped the gobbler back onto its platter. “Let me be blunt, Mrs. Dority. Do you have any idea why your mother might have killed herself?”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  Too flatly, he thought.

  “For your father’s sake, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  “If I had anything to say, I’d say it to Dad’s face, not to you, a Gentile.”

  “Sooner or later, I’ll find out what it is that you’re hiding,” he said, although he knew damn well the odds were against an outsider like himself.

  “I was born into the church, Mr. Traveler. I’ve been a member in good standing ever since I was old enough to make that decision for myself. I abide by our covenants. When the Bishop’s Court said it was over, that was good enough for me.”

  14

  OUTSIDE, THE smoke glowed, giving Traveler the impression that hellfire was about to break through. For a moment he thought about going back for Mrs. Dority, but she’d already disappeared in the direction of the firebreak, carrying cookies and cold milk to her family.

  The Dority turkeys, judging from their frenzied gobbling, needed rescuing too. But all he could do was start up the Jeep, switch on its headlights, and go back the way he came.

  He met the fire truck at the intersection of Taylor Road, where Dority Canyon Road changed back into Grant Avenue. The truck, dating from the forties by the look of it, was parked facing downhill away from the mountains.

  Harold McConkie, fire chief and bishop, was standing on its hood peering through binoculars toward the Wasatch Plateau. The druggist, Enos Odell, was perched on the running board in his white smock. Two other men wearing helmets and knee-length flame-retardant coats and yellow hard hats waited nearby.

  Traveler pulled well off the road and stopped. By the time he got out, McConkie was back on the ground and waving at the pair with helmets to spread out. One went south, the other north along Taylor Road. Both stopped about fifty yards beyond the intersection, looked back at McConkie, and waved.

  Only then did the bishop acknowledge Traveler’s presence. “I’ve declared this to be a fire zone. Civilians must clear the area.”

  “If you need an extra hand, say so.”

  McConkie shook his head. It wasn’t a negative gesture, but one of resignation. “I’ve got men posted all along here. Close enough so they can hand-signal one another when they see flames. Right now we don’t know where we’re going to make our stand.” He held up a portable two-way radio. “I wouldn’t need to spread my men out if we had enough of these to go around. Now what is it you want from me?”

  Traveler glanced at Odell, then shrugged.

  “Don’t play coy. You could have driven on by but you didn’t.” McConkie adjusted his hard hat. CHIEF was stenciled on the front in bold black letters. Wrinkles puckered his normally placid face.

  “The Dority family needs help,” Traveler said. “They’re trying to cut their own firebreak back up the canyon.”

  “Clem knows I can’t risk our only engine on that road. Not when we might need it in town.”

  He gestured toward the houses and barns scattered along Taylor Road. “A block from here homes are cheek to cheek. It hasn’t rained in a month. Their roofs are dry as tinder. I’ve got every man in town on standby. As soon as I know where we’re going to fight, we’ll stake out our command post and Enos here will organize a first aid station.”

  “I hate to ask at a time like this,” Traveler said, “but I need a couple of minutes with Mr. Odell.”

  McConkie nodded as if he’d suspected Traveler’s intention all along. “Two minutes, no more.” He walked far enough away to be out of earshot.

  Traveler turned his back to McConkie before speaking to the druggist. “Your wife tells me you’re being shunned.”

  “That’s my business. What’s yours?”

  “It’s Melba Nibley. I’m sure you know that already. Now why don’t you begin by telling me how she got enough tranquilizers to kill herself?”

  “I fill prescriptions. I don’t make decisions.”

  “And her prescription?”

  “That’s confidential information. You’d have to speak with her doctor.”

  Before Traveler could reply, the bishop shouted, “Hallelujah! The wind’s shifted.”

  It was blowing uphill, away from the center of Wasatch. It carried Odell’s astringent drugstore smell, much like that of the dentist from Traveler’s childhood.

  McConkie came running, breathing noisily through his mouth. When he reached Traveler and Odell, he took off his hard hat. Sweat had plastered his gray hair against his scalp. “Thank God. That usually happens this time of afternoon, but I’ve been praying just the same.” His facial wrinkles dissolved away, leaving the worry-free bishop behind.

  “Are you the only bishop in town?” Traveler asked.

  “That’s right, son. Wasatch isn’t big enough for more than one ward.”

  “Then it would be up to you to convene a bishop’s court?”

  “That’s church business.”

  “My question was theoretical.”

  “I suspect you know the answer already.”

  What Traveler knew was that a bishop’s court, the kind mentioned by Louise Dority, was called only as a last resort. Those found guilty could be put on probation or, in the case of more serious religious transgressions, denied temple access. Without such access there could be no celestial marriage, no binding together for eternity, and no baptisms to raise dead ancestors from hell. A bishop’s court could even lead to excommunication, though not without higher approval from the Council of Seventy or the Apostles, perhaps even Elton Woolley himself depending on the religious crime involved.

  “I understand a bishop’s court was convened here in Wasatch quite recently.”

  McConkie glanced at the druggist. “Who told you that?”

  “It’s something I heard.”

  “Telling you was a breach of faith. I’ll have whoever did it up before another court.”

  “You admit it, then.”

  “Come with me.”

  McConkie led the way back to the fire engine, where he invited Traveler to climb up on top with him. From there, they had a view, though somewhat murky, of most of Wasatch.

  “When our forefathers built this town,” the bishop said, “they followed Joseph Smith’s guidelines explicitly.” He blinked at Traveler with eyes as murky as the atmosphere. “The cities of Zion, our first prophet called them, were set out precisely so that everything revolved around the church.”

  He pointed due west. “I quote the prophet. ‘Fill up the world in these last days, and let every man live in the city, for this is the city of Zion.’ When Brigham Young visited Wasatch in 1872, he took my grandfather by the hand—I have an old photograph to prove it—and congratulated him on a job well done.”

  “That’s something to be proud of,” Traveler said, “but it doesn’t answer my question.” He brushed the hair out of his eyes, but the wind blew it right back.

  “My ancestors were original settlers h
ere, Mr. Traveler. I’m a third-generation bishop. That makes me and my family responsible for what’s happened.”

  “And what’s that?” Traveler asked, pretending to study the town while watching McConkie out of the corner of his eye.

  “Some call it progress. I call it deviation from Joseph Smith’s master plan.”

  “About the court?” Traveler persisted.

  “I cannot break faith. If you want information, you’ll have to petition the church offices in Salt Lake.”

  “That’s impossible. I’m a Gentile.”

  “I knew that the moment I laid eyes on you.”

  McConkie was staring at Traveler’s hair, which was long by Utah’s rural standards.

  “You look like a Catholic to me, Mr. Traveler.”

  Traveler smiled. “I always thought one Gentile was much like another.”

  “I remember something my father once told me. ‘Harold,’ he said, ‘do you know why you never see a bald-headed Catholic?’ ‘No, Dad,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’ ‘Because, son, they’re the spawn of the devil and need hair to hide their horns.’ ”

  15

  WHEN TRAVELER got back to the Sleep-Well Motel, Nat Beasley was on duty. His soot-streaked face and dusty clothes said he’d just come off the fire line. The office smelled of smoke and used diapers. There was no sign of either his wife or Baby Joe.

  “Your father called,” Beasley said. “He said he’d call back about six. Six is when we close down the switchboard for dinner.”

  “Can’t you keep the line to my room open?”

  Beasley pointed to a small folded sign on the countertop. “ ‘Switchboard hours,’ ” he read, “ ‘are nine to noon and two to six, except by special arrangement.’ ”

  “All right. I’m asking for special arrangements.”

  “We had someone hurt on the fire line. I had to drive him over to Ephraim to be treated. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been here to answer the phone at all and you wouldn’t have gotten the message.”

  “Every town needs its own doctor.”

  Beasley snorted. “If you want to call your father, you’d better do it now, before I go back to the fire.”