by R. R. Irvine
“Maybe I can get more out of Shipler if I talk to him alone.”
“And his fan club across the street?”
By now, Shipler had crossed Fillmore Avenue and was continuing down Main, half a block away. Traveler turned and went after him. At the corner, Traveler stopped abruptly and looked back at the women, who were now on their feet and following on the opposite side of the street. Smiling, he crossed the asphalt toward them. They immediately stopped and pretended to be window shopping, though all the stores along that stretch were boarded up.
“Excuse me,” he said to catch their attention. When he had it, he pointed a finger at them and then shook it until they fled back toward the dry goods store. Traveler caught up with Shipler at the corner of Main and Parowan.
“Are you trying to get me killed?” Shipler asked.
“Hiring me wouldn’t have done any good,” Traveler said. “I couldn’t protect you forever.”
“Then why are you here talking to me?”
“I need to know what I’m up against.” What Martin was up against, Traveler thought, but didn’t say so. “Did Orrin Porter break your leg?”
“I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no.” Hobbling on his crutches, Shipler moved east on Parowan just far enough to be out of sight of Main Street. “Help me sit down, for Christ’s sake, before my arms fall off.”
Traveler eased him onto the curb and then sat beside him.
“I used to be like Porter, full of juice, wanting damn near every woman I laid eyes on. But I had a conscience. I knew what was right. But Porter . . .” Shipler lowered his head until his chin rested against his breastbone. “I saw them doing it, you know, my own daughters, things I would never have asked my wife to do.”
He swallowed so hard Traveler could hear his Adam’s apple bob. “If you ask me, Porter set it up so I couldn’t help getting an eyeful. A man can’t let that pass, you know, not when it’s his own daughters. I spent all day working up my courage to confront him. Do you know what he said to me? ‘You’d be an unmarked grave out in the desert, old man, if they weren’t spreading their legs for me.’ His words, to me, their father. Thank God their mother didn’t live to hear such things.”
“Have you talked to your daughters?” Traveler asked.
Shipler’ s eyes closed hard enough to squeeze out tears. “The devil has come among us to steal away my baby girls.”
“ ‘For I say unto you that whatever is good cometh from God,’ ” Traveler said, remembering one of his mother’s favorites, “ ‘and whatsoever is evil cometh from the devil.’ ”
Shipler raised his head. “You’re as green as the rest of them. ‘And it came to pass that I beheld this great and abominable church; and I saw the devil that he was the founder of it.’ It’s clear to me, Mr. Traveler. The Children are the devil’s pawns. They follow Jason Thurgood, the devil himself.”
“I’m told he’s not a member of Moroni’s Children.”
“The Children stayed to themselves until he came. Before Thurgood, they claimed only the desert, not my store. Take it from me. Men like Orrin Porter draw their strength from the devil.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Shipler held out his hand until Traveler shook it.
“I took Thurgood by the hand too,” Shipler said, “but he wasn’t there.”
Kary had been a great one for handshaking, too, a test laid down by Joseph Smith himself. “If it be the devil,” Smith decreed, “when you ask him to shake hands you will feel nothing.”
“Help me up,” Shipler said. “I want to be home before dark.”
As soon as Traveler obliged, Shipler hobbled away on his crutches. Watching him, Traveler kept telling himself that the man was crazy. To think otherwise would be to believe that Martin was spending the night with the devil.
20
THE SUN had set by the time Traveler retraced his steps to Shipler’s General Store. The building reminded him of Depression photographs he’d seen in history books. Its uneven pine plank facade gave the impression that it had been meant as a temporary measure only, something thrown up by pioneers to last through the winter until more permanent materials became available.
Fluorescent light spilled from the open doorway, illuminating Marshal Peake’s face as he sat on the hood of a dusty pickup out front. His straw cowboy hat hung on the truck’s antenna.
“Well,” Peake demanded, “did you get a name?”
“The wrong one, I think.”
“Anybody I ought to know about?”
“I’d keep an eye on Shipler, if I were you,” Traveler said. “He claims to have seen the devil, or laid a hand on him at least.”
“That’s just Norm. He’s been saying things like that for years. Anybody who crosses him gets the honorary title of Satan.” Peake slid off the hood and rocked on the heels of his cowboy boots. “For all we know, maybe he’s right. Maybe the devil has moved here to Fire Creek.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“The Children claim to speak for God. God and the devil go together, since you can’t have one without the other.”
An evening breeze caught the brim of Peake’s hat, causing it and the car’s antenna to sway back and forth. The marshal’s eyes tracked the movement as he spoke. “You know what they’re saying around town, don’t you? That Orrin Porter ordered Norm Shipler’s punishment.”
“For what?”
“For talking to you.”
“You’re talking to me.”
“If they come at me, I’ll take some of them with me. That’s a promise. But there’s nothing much the Children can take from me unless they want to go into the gas station business, which doesn’t pay spit.”
“You’re all the law there is,” Traveler reminded him.
“Mostly my job is to handle the drunks, and since the Children don’t drink, I have very little to do with them, officially.”
“And if they break the law right in front of you?”
“There’s more than one way to see justice done, Mr. Traveler.”
“I have something to say to Mr. Porter inside. If you come in with me, I’ll have a witness to whatever happens.”
“He’s in there all right, behind the counter, along with Horace Snelgrove, who presides over the Children. You can’t miss Snelgrove. He dresses in black like Brigham Young.”
With a smile, Peake retrieved his hat, tipped it in Traveler’s direction, and then ambled up the street, checking doors as he went.
Inside Shipler’s, canned laughter boomed from a television set. The laughter turned real the moment Traveler crossed the threshold and banged his knee against the barrel that was propping open the door. Inside the barrel, ax handles rattled.
Refusing to limp, Traveler crossed the threshold. The store looked to be thirty feet deep and maybe half that wide. Floor-to-ceiling shelves, filled with everything from canned goods to work boots, lined the side walls. A waist-high counter ran along the back wall.
The man behind the counter—bone thin, no more than thirty, wearing a white T-shirt with sleeves rolled to the armpits exposing stringy biceps—beckoned Traveler forward. To reach him, Traveler had to thread his way through a crowd of women sitting on the floor facing a large-screen television set that sat on a shelf behind the counter. The women had positioned themselves in a circle around a high, cane-back chair in which Horace Snelgrove sat imperially, dressed in a black broadcloth suit, just as the marshal had said. He’d failed to mention Snelgrove’s resemblance to the romantic portraits of Joseph Smith, movie-star handsome, with dark hair and magnetic eyes.
Smiling, Snelgrove turned his head to watch Traveler’s approach, while the women continued to stare straight ahead at the screen.
When Traveler reached the counter, Porter raised a welcoming hand in which he held a videocassette. “We were expecting you, Brother Traveler.”
“Indeed,” Snelgrove added. “We were about to watch a miracle, Brother Traveler. Come, view it with us. Seeing it m
ay change your life.”
At Snelgrove’ s signal, Porter fed the cassette into a VCR and punched the Play button. Traveler saw Jason Thurgood again, the same videotape that the apostle, Josiah Ellsworth, had played for him. Only this time it was in slow motion. The same strange halo-like light surrounded Thurgood as he stood on the crude wooden platform, his shirttails flapping in the wind. This time, in slow-mo, the sound was gone. The women sitting on the floor supplied it, parroting the words exactly as Traveler remembered them.
They all screamed when Vonda Hillman, disheveled and wild-eyed, leapt onto the platform, thrust the revolver against Thurgood’s chest, and fired. When Thurgood stumbled backward, the women wailed in unison. When he caught his balance, they sighed with relief. When he touched what should have been a wound and smiled, they murmured, “God’s miracle has been shown to us.”
Porter stopped the tape. “Have you seen the light, Brother Traveler?”
Traveler glanced back at Snelgrove. The women seemed to have moved more tightly around him. By doing so, they’d cut off Traveler’s avenues of escape.
“I have a message,” he said.
“From old Norm Shipler, no doubt,” Porter mocked.
“From me. I’m holding you personally responsible for my father’s safety.”
Behind him, Traveler sensed Snelgrove rising to his feet. Shifting his weight, Traveler brought both men into his field of vision.
“Is that a threat, Brother Traveler?” Porter asked.
Traveler nodded. “If something happens to him, it happens to you too.”
Snelgrove chuckled. “He’s perfectly safe from us.”
“Is he safe from Jason Thurgood?”
Snelgrove pointed a finger at Traveler. “If I were you, it wouldn’t be my father I was worried about. Jason Thurgood is a man chosen by God. We’ve shown you proof of that, there on the screen. You have been given a chance, Brother Traveler. You have been shown the path to salvation. If you turn away from it, God will not forgive you.”
Porter said, “ ‘They that fight against Zion and the covenant people of the Lord shall lick up the dust of their feet. For all the people of the Lord are they who wait for the coming of the messiah.’ ”
“Jason Thurgood,” Snelgrove said, “is a man dedicated to helping others, just as we are. He heals their bodies, we tend to their souls. That why we’ve joined forces. ‘We are your army,’ we told him. And he welcomed us, as he did your father. A chosen man, your father, because Jason has befriended him. But you?”
Two teenage girls rose from the circle of women and approached Traveler, both smiling at him suggestively.
“Did you come here seeking our women?” Snelgrove asked.
“Like Vyrle here?” Porter added, pointing to one of them. “Or Eula?”
Eula hung on one of Traveler’s arms, Vyrle the other.
“We came into this desert,” Snelgrove went on, “a place that nonbelievers like yourself might see as a barren wasteland, because God directed us here. We await His pleasure and His messiah.”
“Jason Thurgood?” Traveler asked trying to disengage from the women, but they clung to him tenaciously.
“Brother Thurgood follows God in his own way. We don’t intervene. He will come to us, even lead us, if that is God’s will.”
“There are some who say he’s the messiah,” Traveler prompted.
“We listen to God, not gossip. We prayed to God for help and He sent Brother Thurgood into the wilderness to find himself. But he found us also.”
Two more women rose from the ranks around Snelgrove and came toward Traveler.
“Lay hands upon him,” Snelgrove told them.
Shyly, the women touched Traveler’s hands.
“Do you feel the devil?” Snelgrove asked the women.
They nodded.
Snelgrove shook his head. “You see, Brother Traveler, what we are up against. The power of disbelief. It fills your soul. You are the devil’s pawn without even knowing it.”
Despite being surrounded, Traveler felt he could still escape if need be, though he’d have to trample half a dozen women to do it. He said, “What does Thurgood say to all this?”
“Some things don’t have to be asked.” Snelgrove tapped his chest. “You feel it in here, the path to salvation.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to see Thurgood for myself,” Traveler said. “And my father, tonight if possible.”
Porter rapped the counter for attention. “ ‘And it came to pass that there arose a mist of darkness and they that wandered from the path were lost.’ ”
“You’re paraphrasing,” Traveler said. “ ‘Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you, and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you.’ ”
Snelgrove chuckled. “You know your Book of Mormon, Brother Traveler. But the sword is in God’s hand, not yours.” He extended a palm. “Not even mine, yet.”
Orrin Porter came around the counter to lay a small two-way radio in Snelgrove’s waiting palm.
“Two of Brother Porter’s wives are watching over your father and Jason Thurgood even as we speak. They’re devoted women, like my own dear ones you see here. Practical women, too, weavers, midwives, expert markswomen with a rifle even. And yes, they carry such weapons with them, to protect themselves from the predators of the night.”
Porter retreated behind the counter before saying, “They keep within range of Brother Thurgood at all times. Tonight that range includes your father. So all we have to do is transmit a warning. We see a wolf in sheep’s clothing maybe, or a predator dressed like a man.”
With a twist of his body, Traveler threw off the women, lunged across the countertop, and grabbed a fistful of Porter’s T-shirt. “You’re welcome to try me anytime you want, but my father is off limits.”
Porter showed his teeth. “We are gaining strength day by day, Brother Traveler. One of our novices, Sister Smoot, proved herself just hours ago. She called upon sources in Salt Lake. And you know what they told her, that you were working for her father. That an apostle of the devil has sent you among us. We won’t tolerate outside interference, his or yours, Mister Traveler.”
“Would you rather have me or the Danites in Fire Creek?” Traveler asked.
“All who oppose God’s plan will be destroyed.” Porter looked past Traveler and smiled.
Traveler tightened his grip on the T-shirt and turned his head at the same time. The ax handle, its blurred arc glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, caught him behind the knees. He collapsed totally, ripping away the front of Porter’s T-shirt on the way down.
Through a haze of pain he saw the woman standing over him, the ax handle raised over her head, her gaze fixed in the direction of Orrin Porter. Her shining eyes looked out of place in such a lackluster, aging face.
“Man on first,” Porter said. “Batter up, Liz.”
Traveler wrapped his arms around his head and started to get up. The whistle of wood through air came an instant before the crack. The sound and sensation, remembered from football, told him a rib had broken. His side exploded with pain. Instinctively, his arms repositioned themselves to fend off another rib-shattering blow.
“A single to center,” Porter shouted. “Two men on base. Hit us a home run.”
A blow to Traveler’s head stunned him. His vision faded. In the pain-lit darkness a woman said, “That’s for my son, not you.”
For a moment Traveler felt himself being dragged, then nothing at all.
The sun rose inside his head. When he tried to squint against the glare, one of his eyelids wouldn’t shut.
“You need a doctor,” someone said.
He reached for the eyelid but found someone else’s hand.
“Goddammit, don’t move. I’m checking your pupils.”
Traveler recognized the voice, Marshal Peake’s. The sun moved, became a flashlight beam revolving like a searchlight looking for a marquee.
“Stay here,” Peake said. “I
’m going to get help.” The flashlight stayed behind, casting its beam on Traveler’s shoe. The position of the shoe, of his legs, told him he was sitting up and leaning against something hard. He seemed to recognize the front of Shipler’s before everything began to spin. The sudden dizziness made him sick. Just like football, he thought, a concussion, and keeled over.
21
TRAVELER SMELLED perfume. Hair brushed his face. The sweet smell intensified.
“Drink this,” a man’s reassuring voice said.
Hands held him, propped him up. The movement set off pain, like a lightning flash, inside his head. A glass rim touched his lips. He opened his mouth to say he wasn’t Alice in Wonderland and swallowed a harsh liquid instead.
“You’ll be fine,” the man said, and Traveler never doubted him for a moment.
Traveler sighed. The pain eased, dizziness ebbed. Sleep took him before he could say thank you.
Sometime later he became conscious of a hand holding his. The scent of perfume was still with him. He opened his eyes expecting to see Ruth.
“Look at you,” Martin said. “I leave you on your own and see what happens.”
“You don’t fool me.” Traveler squeezed his father’s hand.
“The soup’s ready,” Ruth called from close by.
Until then Traveler hadn’t realized that he was downstairs in the sofa bed, Ruth’s bed, filled with her scent.
Martin pulled his hand away and stood up when Ruth joined them from the kitchen, carrying a steaming mug.
“Are you up to drinking it yourself?” she said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Doctor’s orders.” Ruth sat on the edge of the bed and nodded at Martin. “Sit him up. We’ll spoon-feed him if we have to.”
Dizziness returned with the change in position. When he reached out to steady himself, his hand landed on Ruth’s thigh.
“You have a concussion,” she said, rearranging his hand.
“Don’t feel sorry for him,” Martin said. “He used to play football with concussions all the time.”
“Homemade chicken soup.” She thrust the mug at Traveler.
“How long have I been asleep?” he asked.