“It was you, wasn’t it?” the Disciple asked a few minutes later. “You were the one violating the rite of purification.”
The boy said nothing, just kept trudging ahead. His limbs, thin and spindly as chair legs, shambled one after the other.
“I knew that Madeline was taking extra food. She’s weak, and I thought I could purify her and sanctify her until she was strong enough to resist. But she gave you extra food, and I couldn’t let that go. You took it, that makes you guilty as well. But you didn’t stop there, did you? You managed to convince Benita that you needed help. Don’t think I didn’t see her slipping you extra food when you didn’t need it.”
The boy looked up at him and spoke a second time. “Please.”
“Please, what?” He stopped, spun the boy around and brought his own face down until it was eye-to-eye with the boy’s. “There is no please. There is only obeying the will of God. The will of God was that you become His pure vessel.” He grabbed the boy’s shirt and pushed him along. “But what is worse is that you hid food and gave it to Benita, and then she violated the rites, didn’t she? One small, helpless boy—or so everyone kept saying—and you managed to pollute the other Chosen Ones.”
He wanted to keep talking, to explain to the boy that not everyone was meant to survive the purification. That was for God to decide. But if Benita dropped food into the hole, and the people below were weak enough to take it, then they would all feel God’s wrath.
But before he could, the voices in his head started clamoring for his attention. It was all he could do to focus on the path.
At last they broke through the other side of Witch’s Warts. The Disciple was more to the south than he’d expected, a few blocks from the temple, but his instincts—or the angels and demons—had carried him through without a compass. He stopped and sat the boy by his side, then waited while the light failed. When it was fully dark, they crossed the street and made their way toward his old home. His feet traced the steps almost independently and the smells and sights took him back, instantly, to the 80s and 90s, and the hell that had been his childhood.
He found the Kimball ranch, and to his surprise, there were lights in most of the rooms. He’d expected to find it abandoned and boarded up. Taylor Kimball was in prison, his wives and children scattered. Taylor Junior had disappeared. So who was living in the house?
Brother Joseph is dead. Another man is running the Church of the Anointing.
Of course. Elder Abraham Christianson had become the new leader of the sect. And since the Kimball house was the largest, and Christianson had many wives and children, it was only natural that he take over the house when he moved down from Alberta.
All the better. You can cleanse them at the same time you cleanse the house.
The Disciple reached into his pocket and rubbed the glossy cardboard under his fingers. The matchbook read, Welcome to the Glorious Excalibur, and showed a Merlin-like figure with a magic wand.
“I’ll cleanse them all,” he whispered.
Chapter Twenty:
Jacob Christianson knew when a man was going to die. He’d seen it a dozen times at the hospital. There was a glassy look in the eyes, a hollow expression, like the soul was already tugging free, ready to leave the body for the other side. Once the soul left, the body would collapse, be nothing more than a glove without a hand.
His brother David had that look.
He sat on the veranda, deeply sedated. A heavy dose of heroin, according to Sister Miriam. She confessed that it might have been too much and stood to one side, chewing on her lip. David stared into the distance, in the direction of the Ghost Cliffs, but his eyes didn’t seem to focus on anything in particular. A smile played across his face, but it was a deceptive look that didn’t mask the dead expression in the eyes. A soul pulling free of a dying body.
Jacob checked his pulse. It was sluggish. He felt his brother’s forehead, then rolled up his sleeve and attached the blood pressure cuff. He didn’t like the numbers: 90/50.
“He doesn’t need science,” Father said. “It’s too late for that.”
“And you want me to do what? Give him a blessing?”
Miriam touched his arm. “Yes. We want you to heal David with the power of the priesthood.”
He looked at her, wondering if this was some kind of trick. It was no secret that Miriam thought the Lord had chosen her for Jacob’s second wife, that she was ordained by her patriarchal blessing to be the wife of the prophet and that Jacob was the rightful prophet since the death of her first husband. Never mind that his wife, Fernie, was willing to consider the idea, or that Miriam was a smart, attractive woman, he didn’t want anything to do with polygamy.
So what was the trick? Get him down here, find David dangerously sedated with some opiate. Give him a blessing and…what? He wasn’t sure, exactly, but it couldn’t be coincidence that brought his father and Sister Miriam together.
But she wasn’t looking at Jacob now. Instead, she rolled down David’s sleeve and tucked the blanket back around his body against the evening breeze that swept in from the desert. She put her hand against his forehead and frowned. Miriam was more than a concerned bystander; there was something in that touch that was gentle, like a worried mother with a sick child.
Dry thunder sounded to the west. The storm would be over them in a few minutes, but it didn’t feel like it was going to rain. Still, he wanted to get David inside and lying down, do something about that sluggish respiration.
“Is anyone in Blister Creek on oxygen?” he asked.
“Forget the oxygen,” Father said. “I’ve got consecrated oil. The power of the holy priesthood will heal him.”
“Why don’t you give him a blessing yourself while I track down oxygen? Just tell me where.”
“It needs to be both of us. One to anoint, the other to bless. The Lord is calling on you to bless.”
“Father, please, this isn’t the time.”
“It is the time.”
Jacob considered. “Fine, if I give him a blessing, will you tell me how to get some oxygen? His pulse and blood pressure are too low. It’s worrying me.”
“Give a good blessing and I’ll get you the oxygen.”
“A good blessing, great.”
“I mean, be serious. Don’t mock.”
“I’d never give a mocking blessing,” Jacob said. “You know that.”
Abraham pulled out his keys. Attached to one loop was a small brass vial. He unscrewed the lid and dripped some of the oil onto David’s head.
Miriam squeezed Jacob’s arm. “This is the time,” she whispered. “I can feel it. The spirit will be with you and you will command the power of the Lord.”
“If you say so.”
Jacob had given hundreds of blessings. He gave them almost daily at the Zarahemla compound. Every sick child, every worried mother, every elderly person with an ache or injury came to him for a priesthood blessing. He healed most of them…with medical science. Of course they trusted him as a doctor, and thanked him for prescriptions, examinations, set bones, and the like, but they gave credit to the priesthood and to God. He nodded and agreed, while thinking, you want to thank someone for saving lives? Thank Jonas Salk, thank Louis Pasteur.
“Jacob,” Father said sternly. “Remember, I said a good blessing. Summon your faith. Your power is there, but you have to tap it.”
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
Of course it would be good. It was wrong, it was hypocritical, but he knew the right things to say, the right tone of voice. Miriam might know better, but he could certainly fool his father.
Abraham put his hands on first, with Jacob’s on top. The two men bowed their heads. Abraham said, “David Brigham Christianson, by the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood, we anoint thy head with oil which has been consecrated for the healing of the sick and do so in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”
They lifted their hands, then Jacob put his down first, with his father’s on top, to do the actual bles
sing. Jacob scrolled through the standard blessings in his head, thinking he’d ad-lib something about fighting the addiction, together with an exhortation to live righteously, and a few choice scriptural phrases. Give his voice a veneer of command and voila! A blessing good enough to get Father to cough up the location of the oxygen tanks.
Too bad you’re stoned out of your gourd, he thought as he adjusted his hands on his brother’s head, his palms slick from too much olive oil. It might actually do you some good to pay attention.
“David Brigham Christianson,” he said in a commanding voice, “by the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood, we lay our hands upon thy head to give thee a blessing.”
And then Jacob’s mind went blank. All the prepared, oft-repeated words simply fled his mind and all he could think were scattered thoughts. Why did lightning crack out of a dry sky, anyway? Who named the town Blister Creek? Systolic and diastolic blood pressure, measured at the brachial artery, were really a mean arterial pressure over a single arterial cycle.
His father cleared his throat. “Jacob?”
“I…uhm…the blessing is…”
In the first year in Blister Creek, three settlers suffered rattlesnake bites, but only one died. Oil in Spanish was aceite, which was derived from aceituna, olive. Or was it the other way around?
What was going on? Why couldn’t he speak?
Lord, are you out there? I’m mute. What’s wrong with me?
Something had gone wrong, was this a stroke? It was as if a thrombosis had formed in his brain, choking blood from his Broca’s area and crippling his ability to speak. He tried again. Nothing. Panic rose from his gut.
And then the words came. “David, thou art healed. Rise and cast the demon from thy soul. Thus sayeth the Lord.”
Jacob ended, lifted his hands, blinking, without bothering to close the prayer properly. Behind him, Miriam murmured, “Thou sayest.”
He stepped back from David to see that his father had drawn back and wore a deep frown.
Thus sayeth the Lord? Had those words ever come out of his mouth? What was wrong with him? He’d never blanked like that before.
David opened his eyes and rose to his feet, blinked, looked around at the three of them with a look on his face like he’d just awakened from sleepwalking.
Alarmed, Jacob grabbed his arm. “Sit down, your blood pressure is through the floor.”
David pulled free. “No, I feel okay. Let go, I’m all right.”
Miriam came to David’s side. “Listen to your brother. He’s a doctor, he knows what he’s talking about.”
“Okay, I’m sitting.” He returned to the Adirondack chair.
He still didn’t sound entirely there and Jacob immediately turned to logical explanations for what had happened. That was how people built testimonies of the truthfulness of supernatural events. Take two unrelated oddities and mix them together in a spiritual context and it suddenly became a miracle. Jacob had blanked out on the blessing. Big deal; even professional speakers sometimes coughed up a hairball on stage. And then, just when the blessing ended, David woke from a drug-induced stupor. Two random events that came together at once. So what? Give it an hour and David would be begging to shoot up, snort up, or smoke up whatever poison was most readily available.
Jacob could almost convince himself that it meant nothing, except for the weird prayer that came out of his mouth. Thus sayeth the Lord?
Hard to say what the others were thinking, but a glance at Miriam confirmed one suspicion. There were tears in her eyes, but she didn’t pay him any attention. Instead, she had a hand on David’s face and looked him in the eyes with a tender expression. And that’s when he knew. Jacob’s aspiring second wife had fallen in love with his brother.
David, for his part, wasn’t looking at Miriam, but stared into the darkness beyond the porch. “Yes, I was right. I thought I heard something, but I was too stoned to care.”
“Heard what?” Jacob asked.
“Shh, listen.”
There was a flash of light, then thunder, then nothing but the sound of the wind. And then Jacob heard it, too. Someone’s boots crunching across the gravel that lead down to the shed.
“We have an intruder,” David said.
#
Eliza set down the bent, worn-out spring and felt her work. A mound of dirt and rocks gouged from the walls lay packed against the side of the pit, maybe twenty inches high. It was wider than the thickness of the mattress, standing on its end, and stable. On top of this, they put the two lettuce crates, stacked lengthwise for stability, which added another ten inches.
“That’s all,” she said. “It will have to be enough.”
Madeline panted at her side. “Well, at least we’re warm now.”
“Give it a minute, gather your strength. Then we’ll go for it.” Eliza reached out until she found the other woman’s arm. It was trembling. “See, you’re stronger than you thought.”
“I just hope it’s enough.”
“It’ll be enough.”
“What do you think they’re doing up there?” Madeline asked.
“No idea, but we can’t worry about that until we’re out of here.”
A couple of hours earlier, Madeline had hissed a warning. Eliza had been so engrossed in her work, scraping with a coiled spring around the edge of a boulder that she was trying to dislodge from the walls of the pit, that she hadn’t heard it at first. And then, from above, the sound of metal clanking, like two drums knocking against each other. Someone sat on or put something on the overturned refrigerator. She heard voices, a shouted argument between a man and a woman. Hard to say for sure, but the man sounded like Christopher. They’d waited until the noise passed before resuming the blind scraping, digging, stacking.
Together, the two women wrestled the first mattress into a standing position atop the mound of dirt and rocks. They’d only torn out a couple of the springs, and it still held most of its shape. They lifted the thinner mattress into place.
“You got it?” Eliza asked. “Here I go, don’t let me fall.”
She scaled the mattresses. They wobbled, but she didn’t need to go as high this time, since the hill of dirt and rocks gave her a critical boost. She reached the top, stretched her arm to get some leverage against the fridge that blocked the entrance. And stopped. Her hand felt dirt.
“No,” she said, in a low voice. “Please, no.”
“What is it?” came Madeline’s voice from the darkness below her.
She almost didn’t have the heart to share the crushing news. “We built the mound on the wrong side. This isn’t the opening. The fridge isn’t up here, it’s just dirt. Somehow, we must have got turned around when we brought the mattresses down and moved everything into the wrong place.”
“Then it’s over.” Madeline’s voice was flat, dead. “We tried and failed.”
Eliza slid back down, groped until she found the other woman’s shoulders, grabbed her to make her listen. “It’s not over, only a setback. We’ll move the dirt to the other side, that’s all.”
“I can’t do it. I’m wiped out.”
“An hour, tops, and we’ll be done. Think about it, the dirt is already loose, the rocks are dug out. All the hard work is done, it’s just a few minutes to loosen up our mound and then we’ll carry it over in scoops.”
“I gave everything I had,” Madeline said. “It’s all I can do to stand up.”
“You’ve got a little more.” Eliza fought to keep her voice from giving away her disappointment and her growing fear that the other woman was right, that they didn’t have enough left to make another attempt.
“And how can we be sure, anyway? There are four sides to this blasted pit and the fridge is only over one corner. What if we do it again?”
But Eliza had already worked that out. She groped in the mound until she found several small pebbles, then tossed them up, one by one, until she heard a plink instead of a thud. “Come stand over here. I’ll roll the big rock to you and t
hen we can start.”
They worked in silence. Eliza was too tired and discouraged to offer much to her companion. The good news was that it seemed to take much less than an hour to move the pile to the other side, but unfortunately, the mound was shorter when they finished. It was either packed down more firmly or they’d lost some of the dirt transporting it across the pit. And so they spent another twenty minutes scraping more dirt from the walls of their prison, until Eliza felt satisfied with the height.
“Okay, let’s try again.”
But Madeline was too weak to be much help, and Eliza had to get the crates and the mattresses in place herself. When she finished, she said, “I know your tank is empty, but you’ve got to hold these in place while I climb.”
Madeline answered in a thin, quavering voice. “I don’t know if I can.”
“There’s got to be something left in there.” She kept her voice even, confident, and encouraging. “We’re almost out. You know that and you can do what it takes.”
“But Eliza, I—”
“No excuses. You’re not a child, Madeline, you’re a grown woman and you can find the strength.”
“As in, I am woman, hear me roar?” A scraping sound as Madeline regained her feet and groped her way over.
“Sorry, I have no idea what that means.”
“Jeez, you really did lead a sheltered life. I guess it means that I’ll do my best.”
“I’ll take whatever you can give. Lean into it, I’m going up.”
Eliza’s own arms were exhausted and shaking from hours of work. Hunger made her lightheaded. But no way was she staying down here to die. She was too close.
She reached the midway point of the thinner mattress, then lifted her hand and was relieved to find the fridge overhead. Maneuvering so her lower foot wedged in the gap between the two mattresses and the toes of her upper foot curled around one of the oversized mattress buttons, she leaned her shoulder against the wall and dug her fingers under the edge of the fridge.
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