Pillar of Fire

by R. R. Irvine

  Ben Moffit’s house—more of a hammered-together shack built of mismatched pieces of lumber and scrounged metal signs advertising Hires Root Beer, Technocracy, and Sonora Phonographs—stood beyond the asphalt on the northwest corner of Brigham and Enterprise. Attached to one side was a narrow lean-to providing shade for a frail-looking man sitting in an aluminum deck chair.

  “You’d be the detectives everyone’s talking about,” he said. He looked to be eighty at least, fleshless and completely bald. Despite the heat, he was wearing a heavy blue flannel shirt, buttoned all the way to the collar. “They say the Angel Moroni himself comes to call us home when the time comes.”

  His laugh rattled with phlegm. “Judging from the direction you came, I’d say Hanna sent you down to check up on me.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “There’s some folding chairs against the back wall somewhere if you want to sit yourselves down.”

  Traveler fetched them, old card-table chairs rusting at the joints and wobbly when unfolded. He placed one on either side of Moffit.

  Martin sat down and came right to the point. “Hanna tells us you left her for Jason Thurgood.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Moffit said, nodding. “The church sent you down here to put a stop to him.”

  Rather than trust his full weight to the chair, Traveler braced a foot on the dented metal seat. “Do you think he needs to be stopped?”

  “It’s mostly the stories going around about him that rile folks. Miracles and the like. But that wasn’t the only reason I went to him. You see, I never did like being examined by a woman. It’s embarrassing, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I took myself out into the desert to talk to this man Thurgood. He didn’t charge me for the examination, I’ll say that for him. He was friendly too, not like some of those so-called Moroni’s Children who hang around him. He didn’t beat around the bush either, just told me flat out there wasn’t anything he could do for me. The cancer’s got me like damn near everybody else around here.”

  He reached down, grabbed a handful of dirt, and tossed it toward the front of the lean-to where the breeze caught it. “It’s blowing in from Nevada today like always. Downwind from hell, that’s Fire Creek. It’s a wonder we all don’t glow in the dark.”

  “Tell us more about Jason Thurgood,” Martin said.

  “All things considered, I’d have to say he’s a good man. He offered to make arrangements to have me sent to a hospital up in Salt Lake. He said they could give me a few more months with some kind of special treatments, but I told him to hell with that. So he said he’d do what he could to make me comfortable. You know what it means when doctors start using words like that. It’s all over but the shouting. So I took his pain pills and went back to Hanna. I told her what she wanted to hear, that he was nothing but a charlatan. But I really went back because she doesn’t have anybody else to talk to these days. ‘Hanna,’ I said, ‘I’m yours for the duration.’ Besides, my wife Erma, God bless her, has already gone on ahead. The sooner I catch up with her the better. My Erma was a saint, she was. One woman like that should be enough for any man, not like some around here who think they’re Joe Smith come back to life.”

  Moffit tilted his head to one side and shut one eye as if he were taking aim at something Traveler couldn’t see. Then he started to laugh, keeping it up until coughing got the better of him.

  After a while he said, “Joe Smith was a handsome man, but those Children are a scruffy-looking lot, especially the elders. I can’t see their appeal, that’s for sure, but every time you see them, women are hanging all over them. Some of those women are young and good-looking, too, for Christ’s sake. Go take a look for yourselves, if you don’t believe me.”

  He grinned. “My Erma would have cut off my balls if I’d tried taking another wife.”

  Laughter started him coughing again.

  “Is there anything I can get you?” Martin asked.

  Moffit waved Martin back into his chair. When the spasms subsided, he popped a pill in his mouth, chewed and swallowed, then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

  “If we wanted to talk to those elders, who would we ask for?” Martin said.

  “If I gave you a couple of names, I wouldn’t want you to use mine.” His voice rasped. “What the hell am I thinking about. Use my name all you want. They’d be doing me a favor if they hurried me along to my Emma. Horace Snelgrove and Orrin Porter, they’re the big shots. Earl Hillman sort of hangs on in third place.”

  Traveler and Martin exchanged glances. Vonda Hillman was the woman jailed in the county seat, charged with attempting to kill Jason Thurgood.

  “Tell us about Hillman’s wife,” Martin said.

  Moffit slapped his knee. “I love it. I can see you two are going to be a pain in the ass around here. And yes, she’s the one who shot Thurgood. I wasn’t there myself, you understand, but those who were, friends I’ve known most of my life, say it was one of God’s miracles. They say His hand reached out and caught that bullet in midair.”

  “Vonda Hillman,” Traveler prompted.

  “I thought she was a good, God-fearing Mormon until she took that shot. Earl was too, until he took up with Moroni’s Children.”

  “What do you hear about a woman named Liz Smoot?”

  Moffit slapped his knee again. “Come to think, I’m not going to die just yet. I’m going to stick around for a while and watch the fun. But take my advice. I don’t care who you are, watch out for the one calling himself Orrin Porter. Don’t be fooled by the looks of him either. He’s sneaky and mean, and he’s a bully.”

  He grinned at Traveler. “Just let me live long enough to see you beat the shit out of him. That’s all I ask. Then God can call me home.”

  He shooed them out of the lean-to. “Ruth will be waiting dinner for you by now.”

  14

  RUTH HOLCOMB’S house was two stories of bleak red brick, pure Utah Gothic as Martin called it, though technically it was a pioneer variant of Victorian Eclectic. Houses like it had sprung up throughout Utah during the 1890s, tall narrow structures, with arched churchlike windows and steeply pitched roofs. They had no front porch to speak of, only a concrete stoop. This one differed from its neighbors only because of the small patch of carefully tended grass in the front yard.

  The smell of freshly baked bread overwhelmed Traveler the moment Ruth opened her door. Martin, who was ahead of him on the stoop, went up on tiptoe to say, “I think I’m in love.”

  Shaking her head at him, she stepped back to let them inside. “You men didn’t have to knock. I don’t lock the doors until the sun goes down. Before the Children moved in, I never locked them at all. Now I might as well live in Provo or some other big city.”

  Traveler, who was carrying the cat’s paraphernalia, had to duck to get through the pioneer-size doorway.

  “Dinner’s just about to go on the table,” she told them. “I’ll show you to your rooms so you can wash up before we eat. Your cat’s on the service porch and needs that litter box you’re carrying.”

  “His name is Brigham,” Traveler said.

  She raised an eyebrow but said nothing as she led them through a small cramped living room filled with well-worn, comfortable furniture and into a steamy aroma-filled kitchen. On the service porch, reached through a connecting door, Brigham lay curled on top of the washing machine. Newspapers, soggy in spots, covered the linoleum floor around the machine.

  “I put down some of my newspaper articles for him,” she said. “It’s about all they’re good for. In case you didn’t know, I’m a stringer for the Salt Lake paper. These days, all they want are features, nothing about what’s killing everybody here in Downwind.”

  “We saw the town’s name change at city hall,” Traveler said.

  She looked pleased. “If the council won’t vote for an official alteration, I say spray paint is the next best thing.”

  As soon as Brigham’s litter box was in place, she showed Traveler and Martin to the stairway at the ba
ck of the kitchen. At the top of the stairs, two side-by-side bedrooms, large enough only for a double bed and a three-drawer pine bureau, were tucked under the eaves. The only place Traveler could stand without slouching was the center of the room, directly beneath the ceiling’s peak. The rooms shared what had been a single closet now remodeled into a compact bathroom.

  Rising heat mixing with the smell of bread and roast beef made the attic like an oven. Underlying the aroma of food was the furniture’s beeswax polish.

  “Don’t worry about the heat,” Ruth said as if reading Traveler’s mind. “We get a breeze as soon as the sun goes down.” She opened the window in one room and then the other.

  “We can bunk together,” Martin said when she’d finished.

  “We wouldn’t want to take your bedroom.”

  “I’ve got a sofa bed downstairs. That’s where I usually sleep anyway in summertime.”

  As soon as she’d left them alone, Traveler tested the bed, which squeaked under his weight but felt firm enough. At bed level he could feel cooler air coming from the open window, though sunset was still a good hour away. Nightstands flanked the bed, a gooseneck reading lamp on one, an extension phone on the other.

  “Tomorrow we go looking for the Smoot woman,” Martin said.

  “If we do that, they’ll know we’ve been hired by her father. Better we stick to Thurgood as ordered.”

  “Ellsworth may have told you one thing but meant another.”

  “What do you think he meant?” Traveler said.

  “Even church apostles know better than to concern themselves with messiahs, especially when they have something more important to worry about, like a daughter and grandson hanging out with polygamists.”

  “I think it’s time we called Willis Tanner for a little clarification.”

  “Talk to him about that damned clinic while you’re at it.”

  After asking for permission to use the phone, Traveler called Willis Tanner at home, collect.

  “No church business,” Tanner said immediately. “Not on the phone unless it’s a secure line at my office.”

  Martin, who had his head next to Traveler’s so he could listen in, grabbed the receiver. “Everybody in town already seems to know our business, so talking about it won’t hurt.”

  “Do they know who you’re working for?”

  “Use your head,” Martin said. “Damn near everybody in this state knows who Liz Smoot’s father is.”

  “I’m hanging up,” Tanner said.

  Traveler took back the phone. “Not before you get us some information.”

  “I told you before—”

  “The Echo Canyon Clinic, Willis. I want everything you can get”

  “That’s the federal government. I don’t have access.”

  “Sure, Willis. And church security and the Danites are a myth.”

  Tanner sighed. “How soon do you need it?”

  “Tomorrow will be fine.” Traveler recited Ruth Holcomb’s telephone number. “You can leave a message with our landlady if we’re not here.”

  “Why anybody named you after an angel, I’ll never know,” Tanner said and hung up.

  When Traveler and Martin went downstairs ten minutes later, a platter of roast beef stood at the head of the kitchen table waiting to be carved. Next to it bowls of mashed potatoes, parsnips, a lime Jell-O molded salad, and a loaf of unsliced bread had been set out on a white tablecloth, along with Sunday best china, gleaming silverware, and large wineglasses filled with lemonade.

  A breeze, accentuated by cross ventilation between the kitchen windows and a back screen door, made the atmosphere bearable. An apple pie was cooling on one of the windowsills.

  “Parsnips were a tradition with my wife’s family,” Martin said. “Kary’s people kept them in the root cellar so they could eat them year round.”

  “I recognize that look on your face,” Ruth said, smiling. “As a child, I wore it every Sunday when I sat down to dinner. But this isn’t a pioneer recipe, I promise you.” She placed a knife and a sharpener next to the platter.

  She’d exchanged the man’s shirt she’d been wearing earlier for a light blue sleeveless blouse with ruffles down the front that both camouflaged her breasts and emphasized them at the same time. “Now who’s going to do the carving?”

  Martin said, “It’s a father’s duty to pass traditions on to his son. So go ahead, Mo. We’ll see how much you’ve learned. Besides, his mother used to say he was a natural-born doctor with a surgeon’s touch.”

  Grimacing, Traveler stropped the knife, then sliced through the meat easily.

  “I’m impressed,” Ruth told him.

  “You have me to thank,” Martin said. “I’ve taught him everything he knows.”

  Traveler served meat onto the waiting plates and then passed them around. When everyone had added their own vegetables, Ruth lowered her head. “For this food, Lord, and for this company, we thank you. Amen.”

  Gingerly, Traveler tasted the parsnips. Kary’s recipe had called for frying in Crisco until blackened. Ruth’s hinted at brown sugar and reminded him of Thanksgiving yams, though more subtle in flavor. He looked up from his plate to find her watching him.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “My mother would have been jealous.”

  Ruth sampled the parsnips for herself.

  “We talked to Hanna Eccles and Ben Moffit this afternoon,” Martin said matter-of-factly.

  “I know. The word’s around town. I heard it from Norm Shipler, who runs the general store. I hope you don’t mind, but he said he wanted to drop by here later tonight and see you two. ‘After dark,’ he said, so it must be important. Norm gets up with the chickens and goes to bed with them too.”

  “Did he say why?” Traveler asked.

  “I don’t think it’s dry goods he has on his mind.”

  Traveler finished his parsnips before returning to the subject that Martin had begun. “Hanna and Ben don’t seem taken with your new arrivals here in town.”

  “Are you talking about the Children or Jason Thurgood?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  Abruptly she tilted her head to one side and eyed Traveler through half-closed eyes. “What is it you really want to know, Mr. Traveler?”

  “What do you know about Jason Thurgood?”

  Ruth busied herself ladling out second helpings of parsnips. That done, she fetched a pitcher of lemonade from the kitchen counter and refilled their glasses. Her flushed face glistened with sweat.

  “To answer your question, I’ve written an article about him for the paper. I could ask you to wait for publication and read it for yourself, but I don’t think you’re here to steal my story. There’s not much to it, really. I don’t know if he works miracles or not. But I think we’re lucky to have a real doctor here in town finally, not that he can do anything for us downwinders.”

  At that moment Traveler felt the draft intensify from the open window behind him. He turned in time to see the Furnace Mountains catch fire in the setting sun.

  “That’s the evening breeze I told you about,” Ruth said.

  She left the table and went outside. Traveler and Martin followed her through the screen door and out onto the newly mown grass.

  Only the mountain’s highest peaks burned now, fired by a last sliver of sun. When that sank beneath the horizon, all color faded. The wind turned cold immediately.

  Ruth, standing in a patch of light spilling from the kitchen window, shivered. “My husband didn’t like sunsets. He said it was like watching death. Sunrises were birth, he said.”

  A voice spoke from the darkness. “Ruth, it’s me, Norm Shipler. Would you turn out the light so I can come in.”

  “No one’s watching,” she said.

  “Please.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Traveler caught Martin’s movement. Though his father was well out of the light, the practiced gesture was recognizable enough, his .45 automatic being returned to its hiding place bene
ath a loose fitting shirt.

  “Stay out here until I cut the pie,” Ruth told Shipler, “then I’ll pull the shades and you can come in and have a piece with us.”

  “I’d like to speak to the men alone, if you don’t mind.”

  She sighed but didn’t object.

  Five minutes later, with only the glow of the propane burner under the coffee pot to light the kitchen, Shipler slipped into the chair Ruth had been using. He was a spindly man, nearly emaciated, whose bones showed, particularly in his face.

  “Do you know who I am?” Shipler said.

  “You own the general store,” Martin answered.

  “It’s not mine, not anymore. At least, not so you’d know it. Horace Snelgrove and Orrin Porter run it and everything in this town. But they’re afraid of you. I could see it in their faces today.”

  “We haven’t met them,” Martin said.

  “They saw you, I guess, because I heard them talking about you. They said you looked like trouble and that probably the church sent you to spy on them. Is that true?”

  “We’re not here to investigate Moroni’s Children,” Martin said.

  Shipler sucked a quick breath. “Then I’ll hire you to do it. I want them out of here and out of my life. I have two daughters, Eula and Vyrle. They’ve taken up with Porter and I want them back.”

  “How old are they?” Traveler said.

  “Old enough so I can’t have him arrested, if that’s what you mean. Even if they were underage, Marshal Peake wouldn’t go up against the likes of Porter. That’s why I came to you. I’ve got ten thousand dollars squirreled away in a Salt Lake bank. It’s yours if you get rid of the Children. I don’t care how you do it. Bury them in the desert as far as I’m concerned. No questions asked.”

  “I’m sorry,” Traveler said. “We have another job to do. Even if we didn’t, I don’t see what we could do for you legally.”

  “God help me, then.” Shipler knocked his chair over as he stood up. “God help you, too.”

  At the sound of the screen door slamming behind him, Ruth returned to the kitchen, switched on the light, and returned the chair to an upright position.