Righteous03 - The Wicked

by Michael Wallace

  Her heart sank. “You’d better tell me everything.”

  The sick feeling only spread as Fernie told her about David. Jacob’s contact hadn’t softened David’s heart, it had turned him mean and dangerous, both to himself and to others.

  Maybe he’d listen to me, she thought. Or is he so far gone that he wouldn’t even care?

  After she hung up, Eliza thought about the two men. She opened the paper the taller man had dropped. If there was any doubt that it was a message for her, it disappeared. Cursive lettering spidered across the page:

  Give honor unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

  She frowned. What was that supposed to be, his way of courting her? An invitation to marriage?

  Eliza thought about Fernie’s invitation. Maybe the timing was right for a road trip.

  #

  Two days later, Eliza walked into a bar for the first time in her life. She was three hours by car southeast of the polygamist enclave of Blister Creek, across the border into Nevada. The atmosphere assaulted her: throbbing music, lights, the nauseating smell of sweat and smoke and perfume and beer, all mixed together.

  She showed her ID and pushed past the bouncers at the door. She couldn’t shake the feeling of shame, that someone would see her, report back to her father, or to the bishop. Maybe she should have brought Fernie, although that might have been worse. They’d have clung together and clenched their eyes shut like two girls being scared by a campfire ghost story.

  It got worse. As she made her way in, she realized it wasn’t just a bar, it was a certain kind of bar. Three almost-nude women gyrated on a stage. The closest was an attractive but hard-faced blonde woman with breasts jiggling like over-filled water balloons, rigid and at a right angle from her body. The woman caught Eliza’s eye, gave her a leering smile and wrapped her legs around the metal pole that thrust obscenely from the stage. Eliza looked away. She almost turned around and walked out.

  No, you’re not giving up now. You’re strong and you can do this. Eliza pretended it was Jacob’s voice urging her forward, and this gave her just enough courage to go on.

  And then she spotted her brother, David, sitting alone near the stage, with a drink in front of him and a stack of five-dollar bills. Eliza slid in next to him, but he didn’t look up, and instead kept his eyes fixed on the dancer.

  “Can I sit down?” She had to shout to be heard over the pulsing music.

  “Sorry, no lap dance,” David said, without bothering to look at her. “I’m practically tapped out.”

  David took one of the five-dollar bills and shoved it in the stripper’s g-string, already feathered with bills. For this, she gave him a private show that lasted ten, fifteen seconds, before she moved away in an overpowering cloud of perfume, with a strut and a sneering look at the men around the stage that said, You can look, but you can never touch.

  Eliza found herself repelled by the woman, but then the stripper turned toward the back of the stage to give way to another dancer and the mask slipped. For an instant, Eliza saw behind the catty expression to a tired woman near the end of a long shift. It was a look Eliza saw every night at the restaurant. A student who’d been racing back and forth to the kitchen all night who now needed to go home and cram for his biology final. A woman anxious to get home to her husband, just back from deployment. This stripper, Eliza realized with a pang of shame at her initial judgment, might have a sick child at home, or a rent check due. When the woman reached the back of the stage, she wrapped her legs around the pole and thrust in time to the music.

  “Man, those were some ugly tits,” David said.

  “Then why did you pay her to shake them at you?”

  “Boobs are boobs. Even the bad ones aren’t half bad.” David shrugged, finished his drink with a clink of ice cubes, then waved for the bartender to get him another. He still didn’t look in Eliza’s direction. “Yeah, they’re probably all fake in this joint.”

  She found herself studying the blonde woman again. All she had to compare them to were her own and no, her breasts didn’t look anything like that. “But how can you tell they’re fake?”

  “Come on, boobs don’t stand up like that. Those suckers float like helium balloons, except they’re harder than the bunions on my grannie’s feet. I can still feel where she whacked me in the head, probably leave a goose egg. Do you girls all have to get boob jobs? I think the average guy prefers them natural, even if they’re on the small side.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that, and anyway, I’m not exactly comfortable discussing my breasts with my own brother.”

  David turned with a sharp expression which widened into surprise. “Eliza? Goddamn it!”

  “That’s not really necessary. You seem to be damning yourself well enough on your own.”

  “Who sent you, Jacob? He can kiss my ass. And pass my well-wishes to the old man. He can kiss my ass, too. Oh, and all his wives too, and all my brothers and sisters and half brothers and half sisters. All the whole inbred clan can kiss my apostate ass.”

  “Is the vulgarity really necessary?”

  David scoffed. “Liz, you’re in a strip club. In case you didn’t notice, you left Utah about twenty miles back. And you left the nineteenth century as soon as you drove out of Blister Creek.” He looked her up and down. “At least you got rid of the prairie dress and pony tails, that’s something, I guess. Oh, right, you’ve taken up with the Salt Lake Mormons. What does Jacob want?”

  “Jacob didn’t send me.”

  “The hell he didn’t. He’s the only one who knows where I am. He called and started hassling me about Word of Wisdom stuff.”

  “Okay, so he told me how to find you, but it’s true. I told him I was coming to find you and he just shrugged. He’s got bigger things to worry about than one loser of a brother.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  “Like tracking down other losers, of course. The family is full of them.”

  A smile cracked his face and for the first time she saw the playful young boy she used to watch catching frogs down by the reservoir, who used to bury himself in the hay loft and hide, then jump out, screaming, when Jacob or Enoch came to feed the horses.

  She put a hand on David’s wrist. “Let me take you to Zarahemla. Jacob will be glad to see you. He loves you and it hurts him to see you like this.”

  “No, thanks.” He waved for another drink. “Getting kicked out of the church was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m not about to get sucked back in.”

  “Nobody is trying to suck you back in. Come on, let’s get out of here. We can talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About getting you out of this lifestyle and back where you belong.”

  “Are you kidding me? I like this lifestyle. I’ve got a job driving delivery and nobody gives me crap. After work I come here and spend my money on beer and strippers and then I go home and sleep like a baby. I don’t think about God, or Jesus, or Joseph Smith, or any of that. And maybe I’m going to hell when I finally croak, but you know what? I’m good with that.”

  “And what about the drugs?” she asked. When David said nothing, she pressed, “David, I know. It’s not just pot is it? That’s poison. It will destroy you.”

  “What’s it to you? Why are you so damn preachy? You’re worse than Father, at least he doesn’t give me the puppy eyes.”

  “And that thing at the bus station in Vegas? You’re still bruised around the eyes.”

  David’s stare hardened. The stripper had come around the stage again, but this time he waved her away without a glance. “What, is he spying on me now? He wants to bring me back into his little cult, so he hires a couple of thugs to mug me and beat the shit out of me, then sends my sister out to give me a sad face once I’m softened up, is that it?”

  “David, please. I’m not here to talk about religion or the church or any of that. And Jacob doesn’t care abo
ut it either.”

  “Not what I heard. He’s Father’s numero uno now, isn’t he? And what about this other thing, the Zarahemla compound?”

  “Now who is spying on who?”

  “People talk.” He downed his drink, waved for another. A slur had begun to work its way into his speech. If what Fernie said was accurate, he’d go home and fill himself with worse things.

  “Exactly,” she said. “And that’s how we heard about what you’re going through. Look, we’re not building any sort of cult. I’m not even in the church anymore, remember? All I’m doing is trying to help one of my brothers, so he won’t be a Lost Boy anymore. Is that so bad?” She put her hand over his.

  “I’m not a Lost Boy.”

  “Well, someone who left, whatever. I know you’re not happy here, how could you be? Jacob could help, and he needs people like you.”

  “What do you mean, people like me? Where do I fit into his church?”

  “If everyone who cares jumps ship, anyone who thinks about it long and hard, rather than swallowing every bit of mumbo jumbo, what does that leave him with? Fanatics. People who think the world is coming to an end, the nuts and crazies. More self-proclaimed prophets.”

  “You left, didn’t you? Tell me, if it’s so wonderful, what’s up with that?”

  She nodded. It was a good point, and how could she explain it? There was too much pressure to marry some old guy with a dozen wives, and until Jacob could change the entire culture—and that would take time—she couldn’t stay. So she’d taken up with the Salt Lake Mormons. They were different, but they hadn’t been what she’d been taught or what she’d expected. Bishop Larsen—her whole ward in Salt Lake—accepted her eccentricities, and when people discovered her polygamist background, they embraced her all the more. The belief? Well, she didn’t know where she stood, but for now she was comfortable.

  “That’s different. I have a place to go. What are you still doing in Nevada? And living in Las Vegas? Is there a more godless place on the face of the earth?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You’re wrong about Vegas. It’s a spiritual vacuum, Liz, and anything and everything is flowing in to fill it. New Age quacks, UFO cults, evangelical offshoots, snake handlers, you name it. Oh, and plenty of former polygs. They seem to find their way into every weird sect imaginable.”

  “Just tell me you’re not hanging out with other Lost Boys.”

  “No, I’m not that dumb. I heard what happened when they tried to come back. Half those guys are in jail or dead. I’m damn lucky I stayed out of their schemes. Whatever else I am, I’m a Christianson boy, not a Kimball.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.” Eliza didn’t want to think too hard about Kimballs or the hell they’d put her through. “David, you have two choices. You can follow Jacob’s path, or you can follow Enoch’s. And Enoch is dead.”

  The bartender brought another drink and David took a long sip before fixing Eliza with a hard look. “Liz, we all die sooner or later. Jacob is going to be dead soon, too. If you don’t get away from all these religious crazies so will you.”

  Chapter Three:

  The woman couldn’t have stood out more if she’d ridden into the compound on the back of an elephant. She wore a short skirt and a sleeveless shirt. Hair in a fashionable mid-neck length, brown with highlights. And makeup, plus jewelry, the most noticeable of which were gold hoops that glittered in the sun. Maybe mid-forties, beautiful. Slender and athletic, like someone who watched her calories and went to the gym every morning.

  Eliza joined the other women in looking up from the raised vegetable beds as the woman clicked across flagstones on high heels. She had a proud, confident air and strode toward them with a look of purpose. “Excuse me, I’m looking for Eliza Christianson.”

  Eliza grew wary. Just what she needed, another reporter.

  Women wiped sweat from foreheads with the backs of gloves, or brushed dirt from their dresses. Nobody answered. It was an unseasonably warm week in central Utah for late April, and they were taking advantage of the sun to mix compost into the new beds.

  The woman fixed Eliza, dressed differently as she was, in jeans and a long-sleeved blouse, and said, “How about you?” She shielded her hand against her eyes to block the sun. “Do you know how to find Eliza Christianson? That’s not you, is it?”

  Not again. Why couldn’t Jacob have spotted the woman driving up and shooed her away? But Jacob was giving booster shots to children in his clinic at the back side of the compound. Most of the other men were brush hogging the irrigation ditches up in the hills.

  “Nope, never heard of her. You sure you have the right place?”

  “It is you, I recognize you from TV.”

  “What do you want?”

  The woman moved around where the sun wasn’t in her eyes. “I want to talk to you about your Dateline show.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “It was you, I’m sure now.” She glanced at the other women. “Can we talk privately?”

  “What I mean is that I had nothing to do with that. They wanted to interview me, I told them no. I know they found a couple of people who kind of sort of knew me, paid them a bunch of money to act like they really did know me, and then made up a bunch of stuff. But whoever you are, I don’t want to be in the news. So no, that’s not me. Find someone else to interview, please.”

  “Interview, what do you mean?” She looked down, seemed to notice how she must appear to the women from the compound. “Oh, I understand. No, I’m not with the news at all. I didn’t come to interview you, I’m in terrible trouble and I think you can help.”

  “Oh, you didn’t?” Eliza felt herself softening. “Sorry, I thought—well, what do you mean, help?”

  “It’s my daughter. She’s dying, and I think you can save her.”

  #

  “I don’t like it,” the woman said. “Can’t we meet alone?”

  She’d introduced herself as Allison Caliari, said she was from Portland, Oregon. Jacob and Eliza had followed her down from the compound to a diner in the small town of Manti, Utah. It wasn’t one of those retro places like you found in Salt Lake, with an art deco look and waitresses in pinstriped dresses, but the real kind, with vinyl seats split and worn by ten thousand backsides. A short order cook juggling a dozen breakfasts and a splattered apron. Waitresses in polyester.

  Eliza sat next to her brother Jacob on the other side of the diner booth. Out the window, a group of elderly LDS in suits and dresses crossed the street carrying little suitcases, on their way to the temple, which loomed like a fortress on the hill overlooking the town. It filled the frame of the diner window.

  “Why alone?” Eliza asked.

  “I didn’t think we’d be meeting with the leader of your cult. I wanted to talk one woman to another.”

  “No worries, my brother’s not going to tell me what to do or say. He knows how to stay quiet and listen.”

  “That’s not much better. I know how these things work. I saw the Dateline show, I remember the FLDS coverage, and I’ve read Krakauer and other stuff about the polygamists. I’ve been reading up on the patriarchal system out here, I know what’s going on.”

  “Come on, give me a little credit.” Eliza turned to her brother, who watched with a half-smile. “You could help me out here, you know.”

  “What? Nah, you’re doing just fine on your own.” Jacob leaned back with a smile. “And I like hearing people talk about me like I’m not even here.”

  The waitress appeared with Sprites for Eliza and Jacob and coffee for Allison. Eliza waited until she’d left before speaking again. “Don’t believe everything you see on TV. That Dateline story was a bunch of baloney. Those guys latched onto a couple of lurid details, and made up the rest of it. Or worse, they were listening to the Attorney General’s office, who were trying to cover their foul-up.”

  “But he was on the inside during the whole thing,” she said.

  “So? My brother’s a doctor who started
working with the FBI because they wanted to get their agent out and needed someone on the inside.”

  “And somehow became the leader of the whole cult,” Allison said. “Convenient.”

  “Interim cult leader,” Jacob corrected. “Nobody else wanted the job. In fact, I’m on the lookout for a replacement, as soon as my wife agrees to get back to civilization. You want it? The job is yours.”

  “Be serious,” Allison said.

  “I am serious. Well, not about giving it to you, but I don’t want it. I’m not a leader, I’m just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their leader died and they have nowhere else to turn, except my father. He’d divide up their belongings and assign the single women to new husbands.”

  Eliza allowed herself a smile. “He’s an enlightened cult leader. A kinder and gentler prophet.”

  “What does that even mean?” Allison asked. “Never mind, I didn’t drive nine hundred miles because I’m curious about your church. And with all due respect to your brother, the so-called enlightened cult leader, it’s one of these self-proclaimed prophets who is killing my daughter.”

  “Killing in what way?” Eliza asked. “You think he’s brainwashed her?”

  “No, I mean he’s literally killing her. Well, that other thing, too. Madeline is like a zombie. Last time I saw her, she wouldn’t even look me in the eye. She mumbled something and handed me a letter. It’s like a letter from a POW camp, written under torture. How else could you explain all the awful things she said?”

  Allison stopped, cleared her throat, took a sip of coffee, and Eliza could see she was fighting to keep from losing control. She waited until the woman seemed to recover, then said gently, “In what way is her life at risk, Allison?”

  “They’re starving her to death.”

  “What?”

  Allison told them that her daughter had been a student at Oregon State University when she started emailing home about a Bible study group she was attending.

  “I was happy at first. We didn’t go to church much after my husband was killed, and I always felt bad I didn’t give her more of a religious education. Madeline had been going through a tough time, struggling with depression and…other things. A supportive church community could be just what she needed. But then the letters started to get weird and she would quote scriptures and talk about Jesus all the time.”