by Webb, Betty
Tony Lomahguahu, hunkered under a huge black umbrella, looked thoroughly miserable. “I sure hope this is important, Miss Jones. I left a warm fire back at the house.”
“It’s important.” The weather was too foul for pleasantries, so I started right in. “Mr. Lomahguahu, I know something’s very wrong in Purity, but I simply don’t know enough about these people and their history to figure it out. Will you help me?”
Lomahguahu stared at me for a moment, silent. The wind, stronger here, lifted wisps of his thick gray hair. I waited.
Finally, he said, “Have you lived in the noise of the city for so long that you have forgotten how to listen?”
I bit my lip to keep back the churlish answer that sprang to my lips: listen to what? Rain slapping against mud?
But I didn’t want to alienate him. “I’m not sure I ever knew how to listen. That’s why I’ve come to you. Something doesn’t add up here, and it’s probably connected to the Prophet’s death.” I pointed toward the graves of Martha Royal’s children. “You said ‘Listen to the children.’ Well, one of the women has lost too many, I think, for it to be a coincidence. Is that what you were hinting at?”
The Paiute glanced at the sky, where a thin blue line appeared on the western horizon. It broadened as we watched. The rain would end soon, but the canyon would remain dangerous for days. Good. That would keep Davis away from it, and maybe he’d live long enough to put those reforms into action.
“Mr. Lomahguahu? Did you hear my question?”
His face hinted at impatience when he finally answered. “You believe this woman may have something to do with her children’s deaths, but how would the Paiute know anything about that? We lead our lives, the people of Purity lead theirs. Little passes between us. But I can say this. If you cannot listen, then you must look. All the information you need is there. But like so many white people, you are blind. In your busyness, you have forgotten how to use your eyes.”
With that, he got up and without another word, walked back toward the Paiute reservation.
I would have chased after him but I knew better. He’d discharged his debt to Jimmy’s people, and now he was through with me. He’d not wanted to become involved with the polygamy mess in the first place, and after everything I’d seen during the past couple of weeks, I couldn’t blame him.
The rain stopped. In no hurry to repeat my long hike over the ridge and back down the soggy road, I spent the next hour wandering through the cemetery. The oldest graves, high on the ridge and silhouetted against the sky, were those of the area’s pioneers, polygamists even then. Below them, marching toward the present, I found graves with the same names recurring. Royal. Corbett. Leonard. Waldman. Graff. Heaton. As I studied the markers, I began to see a pattern. In the 1800s and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, young women didn’t live long. Many were buried with infants, signaling they’d died in childbirth. These sad deaths diminished in the 1930s, probably because of better prenatal care. Young women’s deaths dropped sharply again in the 1970s, which, if I remembered correctly, heralded the advent of Purity’s clinic, proof that it did some good.
Then in the 1980s, though, the incidence of infant and child deaths began to rise again. Dramatically. For the past five years, the number of dead children had escalated alarmingly, illustrating that Martha was far from the only woman who’d lost several babies.
Or murdered them.
I remembered Andrea Yates, the overwhelmed Texas mother who’d drowned her five children in the family bathtub. Were these rows and rows of dead children the desperate acts of women like her, whose bodies and minds had been pushed beyond their resources? Were the women all covering up for each other? And had Prophet Solomon, like myself, finally figured out what the women were doing?
And had one of them killed him to keep him silent?
Then I remembered Hanna, the battered-looking woman who’d barely been able to limp her way across Ermaline’s kitchen. She’d recently given birth to a baby everyone described as frail. Were the women merely setting the scene for another infanticide?
I set out for Purity as quickly as my mud-encrusted feet would allow.
When I arrived back at the compound the streets were almost deserted. Cautious, I went around to the clinic’s back door, which was almost hidden from sight behind a collection of outbuildings. Good. If I was right, my discovery would put me in grave danger, not from the compound’s men, but from its women.
I opened the door only to be faced with a steep staircase. Ignoring that for now, I walked down a long hallway lined with narrow, unpainted doors, even though the rough wood provided a sticky playground for dozens of tiny fingerprints. In keeping with the compound’s cheapjack construction, none of the doors had locks. So much for privacy. No carpet, no tile, covered the clinic’s bare floorboards, either, and the odor of Lysol in the air did little to mask the sour smell of urine.
I was surprised to hear the voices of so many babies and children. They didn’t sound especially sick, but what did I know? Then I remembered the great size of the clinic. The building didn’t function simply as a maternity ward, but as a hospital for all manner of ills. Perhaps these children suffered from something communicable, such as chicken pox or measles. The dead prophet hadn’t believed in modern medicine, just the power of prayer, so the compound’s children had probably not been inoculated against the diseases that ravaged their ancestors. Perhaps these were children who were being kept isolated until they were no longer infectious.
Still, the fact that the Prophet and his followers would allow their children to risk the more serious side effects of measles—deafness, blindness, and the mental retardation that already existed in Purity—made me grind my teeth. Why couldn’t I hear God grinding His? However, uninoculated children weren’t my problem at the moment. My immediate task was to find Hanna and her baby. What if the baby appeared to be in danger?
I had no choice. Even though my job here was to find out who murdered Prophet Solomon and not to rescue babies, I couldn’t let the little creature meet the same fate as had the others in the cemetery. If I had to figure out another way to help Rebecca, then so be it.
As I crept along the hallway, my wet shoes making squishing noises on the bare boards, I wondered which of the many doors hid Hanna. Forcing myself to focus, I stopped and listened for an infant’s cries above the happy babble of older children. Nothing. Either I was too late, or the baby merely slept. I prayed it was only the latter.
Then I heard it, coming from toward the front of the building. There. A thin wail. Weak, but proof Hanna’s baby was still alive.
Vowing to keep it that way, I followed its cries.
I had almost made it to the door behind which I’d guessed Hanna lay when I heard another baby in the room next to it. Then another baby from the room on the opposite side. Oh, hell. The place was crawling with infants. It made sense that, with all the pregnant women I’d seen walking around the compound, several had given birth more or less at the same time. The chances of my homing in on the right room had begun to lessen, but if I walked in on someone, I’d just tell them I was dying to see Hanna’s sweet little baby.
My lie prepared, I opened the first door. The room contained little furniture except for a large chest and the row of high-sided bassinets lined up against one of the unpainted walls. The bassinets, some with pink ribbons attached to them, others with blue, appeared empty, and I had almost closed the door to continue on to the next room when I heard a small sound coming from one of the blue-draped bassinets. A baby, doing baby-type things. Alone. I remembered the different eating “shifts” at Ermaline’s. Some of the mothers hadn’t finished eating, which meant that their babies wouldn’t be brought to them until later. A stroke of luck for me. Still, I would have thought the babies would stay with their mothers all the time, but perhaps Solomon, the clinic’s designer, felt some separation gave the mothers more rest.
Come to think of it, though, such
a compassionate idea didn’t sound like the Solomon described by his wives. Still, perhaps this baby was Hanna’s. Perhaps she lay in a room down the hall, dreaming of ways to end its tiny life.
I tiptoed over to the bassinet and peered in.
It found it hard to believe something so tiny could live, but the little white-haired creature appeared brimming with health and energy, thrusting his fists out from his blue blanket as if boxing the air. Entranced, I cooed softly at him, but he ignored my presence and kept jabbing at empty space.
As I leaned over to make sure he was all right, I frowned. Something didn’t look right.
Then I saw.
The baby hadn’t been making a fist, as I’d first believed: he’d been born without fingers.
I bit my lip to suppress a moan and stepped away from the bassinet. This was probably Hanna’s baby, then, the baby described as “sickly” a frequently employed euphemism for birth defects.
Sad, but not tragic. I’d simply find Hanna and tell her that she didn’t have to kill him, that the government offered a bevy of no-cost programs to the families of such children. Prostheses would even help him lead a normal life. He could grow. He could be happy. Hanna would understand. Like all mothers, she’d want to help her child in any way possible.
Like all mothers? I remembered my own mother raising a gun, aiming it me, screaming “I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her!”
No. Not like all mothers.
Hanna could be a good mother, of that I was certain. She had what it took, the patience, the compassion. I’d seen her with other children in the compound, bending over them, cooing at them as foolishly as I had, holding them tenderly, speaking to them with love.
Please, God, let her not be a child killer.
I reached out and touched the baby’s cheek. He turned, latched onto my fingers with his mouth and began to suck.
“I’ll save you, little one,” I whispered. “I promise.”
I froze. Why did those words sound so familiar? After a few moments, they swam up from my deeply buried memories, the memories of an uncomprehending, four-year-old child.
I heard my mother’s voice.
I’ll save you, little one, I promise, she’d cried.
No! Impossible! My mother was a killer!
Brushing away the memory, if indeed the words were memory, I withdrew my fingers from the baby’s mouth.
He wailed crossly as I left the room. I’d find Hanna, talk to her, tell her about the help the baby could receive, tell her to reconsider. And then I’d watch her eyes. If I saw a shadow there, any warning sign, I’d come back for the baby and sneak him to Saul’s. Then we’d drive him to Zion City and…
And what? Turn the baby over to Sheriff Benson?
Better to worry about the details later. For now, I needed to find Hanna.
I looked down the long hallway, at all the doors. Heard women’s low, murmuring voices, the tiny cries of infants. The clinic bustled with brand-new motherhood.
Deciding to start directly across the hall, I opened the door upon a bed-lined room, only to see a solitary blond girl of around fifteen—not Hanna—nursing a pink-blanketed infant. The girl looked at me in surprise.
I forced my voice to sound casual. “Hi. I’m looking for Hanna.”
“Hanna. What’d I hear…?” As she looked down at her baby, the blanket slipped and I saw white hair. Another albino? Or just another blond? The baby had all her fingers, so I exhaled in relief.
After kissing the top of the infant’s head, the girl frowned at me. “Somebody said somethin’ about her at lunch but I wasn’t payin’ much attention. She had some kinda problem with her baby, I think.” The frown faded, replaced by a smile. Hanna’s woes forgotten already. “Ain’t my baby pretty?”
“Adorable.”
She frowned again, as if it hurt her to think. “Oh, yeah! Somebody said Hanna went upstairs, that’s where she is! I’m Sister Kathy. And this little sweetie is Sister Jennifer. I was goin’ to name her Susan, after my mother, but Brother Jim, that’s her father, he said no, that he wants all his kids named with a J. Ain’t that just the smartest thing?” She beamed, thrilled to be married to a genius.
“Brilliant.” I edged toward the door. “Upstairs, you say?”
“You can’t go up there without special permission.”
I stopped. “Does Hanna have permission?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s up there all the time.” She began cooing at her baby, already forgetting I was there.
After closing the door behind me, I took a deep breath. The behavior of the young mother troubled me, but I didn’t have time to examine it. The women’s voices at the end of the hall rose in laughter, and I heard the rattle of dishes being stacked, the clink of cheap flatware. Soon they’d leave the lunchroom, making my escape with the baby difficult, if not impossible.
I needed to hurry.
The stairs were steep, but I noted with surprise that unlike the hallway and rooms below, they were thickly carpeted in a deep, industrial gray tweed. To keep down the sound? The same dense carpeting stretched down the hall of the clinic’s second floor. I noted fewer doors here, probably denoting larger rooms, but in contrast to the doors downstairs, most of these appeared to have locks. Then I remembered. The Circle of Elders met up here, right next to the armory.
I squared my shoulders and opened the first door on the building’s west side, only to find a long, bare room running almost the entire length of the building. It didn’t contain one stick of furniture, not a diaper, nor scrap of paper. The walls and ceiling, however, had been covered with expensive soundproofing tiles. A chemical smell signaled that the room had been recently refurbished.
The next room, also soundproofed, proved smaller, but it contained several bunks, cribs, and chests. A bank of mattresses of varying sizes lay stacked against the far wall. The entire setup baffled me until I remembered the large number of pregnant women I’d seen since coming to Purity. The compound expected one heck of a population explosion, and soon.
It made sense. How many men lived in Purity? One hundred? Two hundred? If each man had three pregnant wives—a conservative figure—then within the next couple of months, at least three hundred to four hundred babies would be born at the clinic. Still, why did the room contain cribs, not bassinets? Surely the babies went home with their mothers within days. Although the cribs and chests looked like Salvation Army rejects, they still represented considerable expenditure.
Shaking my head in perplexity, I crossed the hall. Upon opening the first door, I knew I’d found the Circle of Elders’ lair. A long, broad table with ten mismatched chairs took up the center of the room, but I hardly gave it notice. What fascinated me were the locked gun cabinets filled with shotguns and rifles, as well as a sprinkling of single-action revolvers and several small automatics. But along with those run-of-the-mill weapons so many Arizonans tote openly, stood a lethal arsenal of Berettas, Ingrams, Fabriques, Galis, Heckler and Kochs, even a few Kalashnikovs, Steyrs, and M14 Clones.
Nobody used those babies on rabbits.
Not wanting to be caught here under any circumstances, I left the room and closed the door firmly behind me. Just what the hell were the polygamists planning, an armed insurrection? Or were they just the usual Western gun nuts? Then I remembered Jacob Waldman and his call for blood atonement. I remembered the murders committed by a famous polygamist clan now serving time in prison. And I remembered Waco.
But then a door opened from one of the soundproofed rooms down the hall, allowing the babbling voices of children to drift my way. I scurried back into the armory, leaving the door slightly ajar so that I could peek out.
Two granny-dressed women exited the room, one elderly, the other a teenager. The teen sobbed hysterically, and if it hadn’t been for the supporting arms around her waist, she would probably have fallen. As the older woman helped the teen down the stairs, snatches of their conversation floated back to me.
&nbs
p; “…God’s will.”
“…can’t stand it…”
“Pray with the Circle, they’ll…”
“…too weak.”
In her focus on the distraught teenager, the older woman didn’t pull the door completely shut, and my hopes began to rise. Could Hanna be in there? If so, she had plenty of company. I hadn’t heard such a racket since serving breakfast at Ermaline’s. No wonder the clinic’s top floor had been soundproofed. I hurried down the hall to the room, hoping to find Hanna before either of the women returned.
When I pulled the door back, I froze on the threshold, stunned at the sight before me. The room, every bit as large as the one across the hall, swarmed with children of all ages, from toddlers to teens. Something terrible was wrong with every one of them.
Many of the children had been born without eyes. They lay in their beds, their faces lifted, uncomprehending, to the white-tiled ceiling. Others, tethered by leather straps to iron rings set in the reinforced wall, jerked spastically. A few, born with heads too small for their bodies, drooped on the edge of their bunks, their faces as vacant as their microcephalic brains.
Hanna sat in one of the room’s many rocking chairs, holding a microcephalic boy tenderly in her arms. Like any good mother, she sang to her child.
Hushabye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleep you little baby,
When you wake you will see
All the pretty little horses.
This child was no baby, though. He had to be at least ten. No wonder Hanna cried all the time.
I backed out of the room before I, like the teenager, began sobbing, and as I fled down the stairs, I wondered which child had been hers.
Oh, stupid, stupid, stupid! Why hadn’t I figured all this out before? With the incest rampant in the compound, the generations of uncle marrying niece, grandfather marrying granddaughter, sister marrying brother, the chances of congenital defects had to be at least double the rate of the rest of the population.
The people of Purity were genetic train wrecks.