Prophet's Pass

by Chapman Brown

  “What’s your problem?”

  Lucy exhaled wearily but didn’t say anything. The ideal witness.

  Aiden reached for his laptop, opening it to a host of new emails. Two caught his attention, both from Marsha. Subject: Pls Update on Jensen. Aiden frowned. His five-day stay at the Jensen ranch had already stretched to six with no indication that the Jensens would be back anytime soon. Stephanie was still in the neonatal unit in Provo, along with Aiden’s car and the remainder of Aiden’s story. He’d explained the situation to Marsha already, but she was getting impatient. Aiden knew Hunter could drive him to Salt Lake, or even to Provo to finish up interviewing the governor, but he also knew that would mark the end of this. Whatever this was, something altogether more complicated came afterward.

  Hunter re-entered in a towel, steam rising off his sculpted frame.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  Aiden closed the lid on his computer. “Just sending Kayleigh some more edits.” Three days into an assignation with a good Mormon boy, and he was already habitually lying. He’d have to work on his sins.

  “That’s really sweet of you.”

  Aiden clutched at his towel, drawing him closer. “You know what else is sweet?”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  “Stop.”

  “Come back to bed.”

  Hunter tried to wrestle him off. “Get outta here.” In a real fight, of course, Hunter could kick his ass, but his resistance was halfhearted.

  “I have some more things to show you.”

  He succeeded in pulling him back onto the bed, and got his hand into his towel, seizing his hardening cock. “Wait? What’s this?” Aiden asked.

  Hunter fell on top of him laughing.

  Lucy had enough of the flailing legs. She jumped to the floor with a distinct harrumph and walked out the door.

  Hunter succeeded in extracting himself from Aiden. He propped himself up on his elbow. “Now you’ve upset the dog.”

  “Sorry.” Aiden studied his face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve just been thinking. About Mom and Dad. Everyone. How to do this.”

  “You don’t have to do anything, Hunter. At least not until you want to.”

  “I’ve made a choice.”

  “Then just tell them.”

  “It’s not that simple. I’m walking away. The priesthood, the community, the Church. There might be a disciplinary council. I could be excommunicated.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “I’ve been a member of the priesthood since I did my mission. I know it doesn’t make sense, and I know it’s stupid, but I like it. Serving people. Protecting people. When I get in my cockpit, it’s just the same. It’s who I am. And they’re gonna tell me to be celibate and dedicate myself to God. That He’ll fix it in the next life. But this is who I am too.” He pulled him tighter. “And I like it.”

  Aiden linked his hand through his. “I don’t pretend to understand what that all means, but it’s never wrong to tell the truth. If the Church is telling you to lie, then what kind of church is it?”

  “It’s their lives, Aiden. It’s my family. Mormons believe you all end up together when you die. Eternal family. If I’m not part of the Church, I can’t be part of that.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “But they do. They’re going to live the rest of their lives thinking they’ll die and never see me again.”

  “Well, that sucks. But that’s their choice, not yours.”

  He looked at him. “You—”

  “I don’t understand. I know. But you’re not the only person who’s been through this. They’re not the only parents. You’re not the only gay Mormon.”

  “And it gets better?”

  “No,” Aiden said, with a smile. “It’s gonna suck. But you’re not alone.” He squeezed his hand.

  “I deploy next week for a training exercise, then I’m back after Christmas. It has to be the right time. The right way.”

  Aiden rested his head on Hunter’s shoulder. Truth was, you could wait all your life for the right time. They rarely came along. How many candidates had he interviewed who’d missed their moment? Who’d waited too long or didn’t fight hard enough at the right moment? And then there was the other question. They’d known each other less than a week. The connection was undeniable, but so were the obstacles. He was returning to New York. Hunter was going back to Hill Air Force Base, and then who knew where. Never date a guy who’s just coming out. It was right up there in the gay rules with tipping your drag queen and no white after Labor Day.

  For now, though, he could put it out of his mind. “I need to call my boss,” he said. “She’s probably going to call me back to New York. How about we just make pancakes and forget about it for an hour or two?”

  Hunter kissed the crown of his head. “Okay.” He slid off the bed, pulled on his underwear, and padded into the kitchen. Aiden picked up his laptop and took it back to “his” room, and the bed he hadn’t slept in the past two nights. There’d been no more snow, and what there was had started to thin. The canyon walls were losing their white dusting, replaced by damp runnels. After the melts, Hunter told him, the sleepy little Virgin River became a torrent. Boxed in by the tight, tall canyon walls, the little stream could rise so suddenly that people and vehicles were swept away, barreled down to the mighty Colorado, never to be seen again. Was that what would happen to them? The melt would come, and Aiden too would disappear.

  He heard the griddle sizzling and Hunter singing tunelessly. He smiled. Hunter, it turned out, couldn’t keep a tune. Aiden walked back up to the kitchen, passing Lucy sitting on the couch.

  He’d always heard of those moments before a disaster, when people said everything seemed to hang in the balance. That liminal, lingering second between the past and the awful future, when everything was still intact, but fated to fly apart. He’d never really understood it until he saw Lucy prick up her ears and run to the door, seconds before his human ears picked up the scrape of the lock, and the turn of the key. Aiden could only stand there, silhouetted against the picture window and the red canyon cliffs as the door swung open, and Sariah and Orson Jensen walked through.

  They stared at him in his underwear. Only Lucy moved, bouncing around her returning family, oblivious to the catastrophe.

  Hunter leaned out of the kitchen. “Hey, mister, can you grab some….”

  His parents stared at him too. He had Bisquick on his bare chest. Later, of course, Aiden would think of a million excuses, a million things they could’ve said to give even a veneer of doubt. But there was nothing.

  Sariah broke the frozen silence. “Oh my God!” she cried.

  Hunter’s voice cracked. “Mom….”

  “Oh my God!”

  She turned and ran, vanishing into the yard. Hunter tried to go after her, but Orson stopped him with a sweep of his hand. “Don’t! What have you done!”

  “I—”

  “You’re naked! Where are your garments? Your covenant symbols. What have you done, Hunter?”

  Aiden tried to close the distance between them, but Hunter leaped back from him like he was electrified. Aiden stopped. Looked at him. Pleading. In his eyes, he saw that look from the mountain. The tremulous, pleading blue. If they find out, I’ll lose everything.

  “Hunter….”

  Orson thundered at him, “Get out of my house.”

  Aiden hesitated.

  “Get out!”

  He turned and went to his room, because he didn’t know what else to do. It was like every muscle in his body worked on automatic to pack his bag. He heard Orson shouting and Hunter pleading, but they were sounds without meaning. He put on his pants, his socks, his shirt. He folded the clothes they’d loaned him and left them on the bed. He walked out.

  Hunter was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands when Aiden returned, his father looming over him. Hunter was twice as big, but somehow Orson had made him twice as sm
all. Aiden stopped.

  “You have my keys.”

  “What?”

  “You have my car keys, governor!”

  Orson thrust his hand into his pocket, threw the rattling chain at him. “Don’t you think for one second I’m authorizing anything you write about this!”

  Aiden ignored him. “Hunter. Hunter!”

  Finally Hunter looked at him.

  “Come with me.”

  Orson tried to block him “He’s not going anywhere with you!”

  Aiden moved round him, forcing himself into Hunter’s sight line. “Hunter, you can’t stay here. This is insanity. You need to go away, and everyone needs to calm down. I’ll skip the story. I don’t care. Just come with me.”

  He held out his hand, like Hunter had in the bedroom that night. He held it out and willed him to take it, but Hunter looked at it with dull incomprehension, like an artifact from another life.

  “Haven’t you done enough damage?” Orson demanded. “You were a guest in our house. We invited you here. Prayed for you. Trusted you! And you did this.”

  “I didn’t do this,” Aiden said. “This is the way he is!”

  Orson jabbed him in the chest. “Don’t you dare. That’s the problem with you people,” he spat. “You always want more. Always want what you can’t have, because you can’t ever be happy in your sad, disgusting, lonely lives.”

  Aiden’s laugh was bitter. “So much for God’s image.”

  “You don’t know anything about God. You don’t know anything about anything of value. You came in here with an agenda, and you’ve made your point. You’ve claimed your prize.” His face was flushed red, trembling, his eyes wet with tears. “You have ruined my son.”

  Hunter sobbed. “Dad….”

  “The only thing wrong with him is what you put in his head with your religion! You’re all out here ruining each other’s lives because some fraudster said he found some magic beans under some hill two hundred years ago! And maybe you’re just stupid, or maybe it’s the power you like, but you can’t just admit that the whole thing is a crock of bullshit!”

  Aiden trembled, his nails cutting into his balled fists. He saw Hunter looking at him, hurt and confused. “Hunter. I didn’t mean—”

  “That’s what he thinks of you,” Orson told Hunter. “That’s what he thinks of the Lord. Thinks of us! He thinks you’re just stupid, and the sad thing is, my boy, you are. He used you, and he defiled you, and you just gave yourself up.”

  Aiden tried to look in his eyes. “Hunter. You know that’s not true. Don’t let him do this to you.”

  Hunter was silent. “I think you should go, Aiden.”

  “Hunter. Please.”

  Orson stepped between them. “I’ll ask you one more time. Get out of my house, or the Lord help me, I’ll throw you out.”

  Aiden picked up his bags and left. He didn’t know what else to do. His car was there at the front, and he threw his luggage in the back, fully intending to drive away from this place and these people and never see either again. Sariah was standing against the wall of her studio, watching him. She’d wrapped her arms around herself against the chill, and her eyes were bloodshot from tears. Aiden closed the trunk and walked over to her.

  “I’m going,” he said.

  She forced a tight smile. “I think that would be for the best.” Always the hostess, the consummate first lady. “We just wanted to get some things for Stephanie. We thought we’d surprise you,” she said, looking anywhere but his face.

  “Well, you did.”

  She flashed a furious glare. “It isn’t funny! Why couldn’t you just leave him alone?”

  “Don’t blame me. You knew,” Aiden said. “You knew all this time. Maybe not for sure, and you certainly didn’t want to. But you knew. I saw it in your eyes.”

  “I thought he’d change. I thought he’d meet the right person. Find the right place. I thought God would help.”

  “Maybe you should,” Aiden told her. He’d brought his pad from his bag, and a pen. Tearing off a corner of paper, he wrote his address and cell number, and placed it in her cold hand.

  “I guess you won’t give this to him. But you’ll know I gave it to you.” She looked at it like an alien object. “Congratulations on the granddaughter.”

  That was how he left her, standing in the snow. He got in his car, turned around and drove out down the hill, watching the flat, long house recede in his mirror, the snow turned sterile, the forest cold and hard as stones.

  Chapter Thirteen

  NEW YORK was dead between Christmas and New Year’s. There was nothing to do and no one to see. The Christmas travelers hadn’t yet returned, and the New Year’s revelers hadn’t yet arrived. Every street corner wore a hump of icy black snow, hardened into rock by the freezing winds blowing up the avenues. The days ticked down on the year that had passed. No one would miss it much.

  Aiden poured himself a cup of coffee from his pot and sat down at his kitchen table, which doubled as his desk. Documents discussing an Indonesian oil scandal were fanned out all over it: corporate records, interview transcripts, press releases. On his laptop screen glowed 1,500 words ready for submission to his editor. It was his first story since his transfer from the domestic politics beat. He wanted to make it count.

  After Utah, the meeting with Marsha hadn’t been easy. He’d sat in silence as she read through his draft, the number of green ink notations growing larger and larger until the last page was a sea of them. She finished and sighed.

  “Aiden, I have to say… this isn’t what I wanted.”

  “When Jensen was called away—”

  “No, I appreciate that was a difficult situation. But I assigned you this because I thought you’d be able to get under his skin. Build a portrait of him. This is all superficial. All about the house, the landscape, the family history. It’d make a nice magazine piece, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not news. It seems like a missed opportunity.”

  “I’m sorry,” Aiden said. “I don’t know what happened. It just didn’t click.”

  “It happens,” she conceded, but not convincingly. She watched him for a moment. “Is that all that happened?”

  “I think so.” It’d been weeks without any word from Hunter, and Aiden was resigned to not getting any. The drive back to Salt Lake and the flight back to New York had offered plenty of opportunity to study his mistakes and nurture his guilt. The first day they’d met, Hunter had told him he’d ruin his life, and he had. Not for a story, or anything so explicable, but for the far less forgivable offense of wanting to be wanted. Needing to be desired. Perhaps Orson Jensen was right. Maybe he had used Hunter. Maybe he had taken advantage of him. Maybe he had made him his trophy. Only when he’d slowly made it all the way down the icy mountain and reached the highway had Aiden finally pulled over and cried.

  “We’ve had a complaint from Jensen’s press team. I’m sure they’re just rattling the cage, but they’re accusing you of being—” She consulted her email. “—‘hostile, unprofessional, and religiously biased.’ I assume that’s about the Mormonism.”

  “We got into it a few times. Gay rights. African-Americans. They’d rather sweep it all under the rug.”

  “Uh-huh,” Marsha said. “Just send over the recordings when you can. Just so I can tick the box.”

  After that, things had got worse. His tapes weren’t as exonerating as Marsha expected. His bias on Rachel Cassidy and everything else practically leaked out of them. Combative questioning. Aspersion. Calling the LDS Church a racist group. It was unprofessional. He could only apologize.

  “It can happen to anyone,” Marsha told him when they met again, this time with an air of wounded frustration. “Especially on issues we care about. Just lay low for a while. Take some personal time.” He had a feeling she knew he wasn’t telling her the whole truth, but she didn’t press him. With Marsha, exile was always the punishment. By the time he came back, he was writing on oil rig embezzlement, sunk on page 10. He had
to hope he redeemed himself.

  Someone rang his bell. He wasn’t expecting anyone, and the apartment was a mess. His spindly bodega Christmas tree had already dropped half its needles all over the place and he’d started to hate it. Aiden went to answer. It was Javi and Patrick.

  “Surprise!” they exclaimed, waving a bottle of vodka in his face.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s Friday!” Javi said, which was true, technically, but didn’t really answer the question.

  “You’ve been all depressed since you got back from Utah,” Patrick said.

  “No, I haven’t,” Aiden said. He hadn’t told them about it. Many times he’d thought about it and wanted to, but he figured he’d got himself into this mess being too eager to interfere in someone else’s business. Besides, the story wasn’t his to tell. It was a strange feeling for a journalist, but one he was coming to like.

  Patrick made himself at home. “Cute tree!”

  Javi was pouring drinks into Aiden’s three clean glasses, talking about whatever bar he was planning to drag them to. Aiden saved his work and tidied the table. He didn’t feel like a Friday night out with them. He didn’t feel like anything. That was how you got over things. One step and then another.

  “Your guy Orson Jensen is on Politico right now.”

  “Yeah?” Aiden asked, opening the page. Sure enough, there he was, under a banner picture and headline. This was the affable public servant version of Orson Jensen, not the furious patriarch casting Aiden out for corrupting his son. He still hadn’t decided which version was the real one. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was none.

  JENSEN PASSES ON SENATE BID, the headline read. Aiden scanned the article. SALT LAKE CITY, FRIDAY—Speaking at the University of Utah today, former Utah governor Orson C. Jensen (R) stepped away from a widely rumored bid for the US Senate. Jensen’s withdrawal defies the predictions of political prognosticators, who had expected him to enter the race to succeed retiring six-term Utah Sen. Theodore P. Dolson (R) in coming days. Jensen, who recently celebrated the birth of his sixth grandchild, indicated family considerations drove the decision to withdraw. “I am greatly honored to be discussed as a potential candidate to succeed the great Ted Dolson,” Jensen said, addressing U of U postgraduate students, “but at this time I am fully focused on my responsibilities as a father and grandfather. I am not a candidate for Senate, but I will continue to seek ways to support and serve the great State of Utah.” Jensen, a popular two-term governor, was widely regarded as the prohibitive frontrunner. His withdrawal from the race now….