Daredevils

by Shawn Vestal

  They eat the cake. It tastes terrible, odd and eggy.

  “Sarah!” Ruth barks, for the youngest girl has laughed with a full mouth of cake, sending a small, wet hunk onto the front of her dress. The girl quickly and quietly tries to wipe it off before Ruth rises and comes and takes the napkin roughly from her hand, dips it in her water glass, and begins to dab at the stain.

  Dean wipes his mouth, pets his beard, and leans back with a satisfied aspect. “Thank you, Mother,” he says to Ruth, and scoots back his chair and rises. Suddenly it is there again in Loretta’s mind: tonight. What must happen. She has prepared herself. Talked to herself. How bad can it be? How long can it take? She imagines it might take an hour, and that an hour is not so much. How many other hours has she endured? Yet she is weak with dread.

  Ruth, Loretta, and the girls clean up. Dean and the boys work in the garage on tomorrow’s deliveries. Soon it’s bedtime, and she begins shepherding—it’s bath night for Janeen and Sarah, and the older girls need help putting up their hair. Ruth moves constantly through the enormous house, from the kitchen where she rinses a glass to the living room where she straightens the children’s scripture books on a shelf to the garage door where she asks Dean a question, up the long staircase and down the carpeted hall past the bedrooms to the bathroom at the end, where she scolds Sarah for taking too long in the bath.

  Loretta goes to the boys’ bedroom. Her favorite part of the day. Benjamin waits for her, his hair buzzed close to the scalp, his big, light-filled eyes, and his entire face—that ripe, chubby face—alert with anticipation. She sits on the lower bunk with her feet up and leans against the headrest and he settles into her lap in the plain white pajamas Ruth has sewn for him. He loves The Poky Little Puppy. It’s one of the few books Ruth tolerates, because the puppy is punished. Benjamin snuggles into the crook of Loretta’s arm, and she reads. About halfway into the story he lays his head against her chest. His chubby hand curls into a loose fist, resting on her belly. She can smell his hair and his skin, a familiar scent—grass, sweat, play, boy, and something more, something family. She finishes the book. The wayward puppy gets what he has coming—no dessert. She thinks Ben has fallen asleep, but he lifts his head and says, “Again,” and she starts over. The puppy digs and disobeys. Ben adjusts, shifts against her. Loretta presses her cheek against his head. What a warm, fragile being. Bone and flesh. Belly and brain. With only these people, this family, to care for him.

  • • •

  She lies under the covers in her garments, afghan to her chin, and watches Dean unloop a suspender from one shoulder, then the other, and step carefully out of his black wool pants, not letting them drop to the floor. He removes his shirt and drapes it over the foot of the bed. His blush runs from the side of his face, brightening the shiny half-moon scar on his earlobe, and streaks down his neck and onto his chest, burrowing into the V-neck of his gauzy garments, the blessed garments that protect him from evil. His breathing is shallow and rapid. He is already erect, a dark bulb pressing outward against the thin cloth of the garment. He drops his hands in front of it as he walks to the side of the bed, and says, “I apologize if this seems vulgar,” and slides under the covers, sits up on his elbow, and puts on his serious face, his church-speaking face. “And I am sorry, little sister, for the way I behaved with you on our first night. I feel as though a demon has overtaken me when it comes to you, beautiful Loretta, and it is in this battle, this torture of the flesh, that I have found some spiritual solace these past months, that I have found myself tested, and imagined that I had battled this flesh in earnest, and, like all such battle, had gained something in my soul from it. Except for that first night.”

  “It’s all right,” Loretta whispers. She had hoped he might be wordless and fast. That she might dream her way through it. But seeing him at the foot of her bed, his erection tenting, had surprised her: she was intrigued. Not aroused, not that—but curious about that pronging, and about the way it might be like or unlike Bradshaw’s pronging, which she has felt only through his jeans, though he has pressed her for more. When she imagines her future and wonders how she will get there, she realizes that it may involve Bradshaw and his penis, and she wonders if there will be others, and how she will feel about those others, if they might be pathways to other things or simply ends in themselves, and so she is curious now in the way she might be curious about the first time she saw anything. And part of her has always felt that all of this—romance, passion, love, sex, men, and women—was overwrought, overdone, oversold, whether in the worldly world or in the church world, both places treating it like some magic thing when it was just a body thing, an animal thing. She wants Dean to get started now and stop talking about God and temptation and the flesh, but he is doing it again, talking about the flesh, and Loretta wonders how he could think it makes any difference if they do it today or if they did it last week or if they do it tomorrow. How could it matter?

  Dean is up on one elbow, looking down at her. She is flat on her back, arms at her sides, and he smiles at her in a way that she has to admit is tender, loving, genuine seeming, and under these covers the heat rolls off him like a milk cow on a cold day, steaming. He puts his hand between her legs and presses lightly as he leans to kiss her on the mouth. The hairs in his beard prickle her face. He kisses her once, twice, three times, and his erection, the source of all that heat, presses against her leg, and his fingers move inside the slit in her garments, and then slide up and down, up and down, and then he withdraws his hand and reaches for the small tub of petroleum jelly that Ruth had brought her, saying only, “Sometimes this helps,” and now he’s talking about “heavenly comfort” and how this is one of God’s true blessings for the righteous. Loretta tries not to hear, to concentrate only on the body. She is making a task of this. A chore. Dean gently moves her legs apart, widening her, and he slips on top, still in his garment, his penis out of the slit now, she feels it bump and prod, and Dean reaches down, helping it seek, and she feels the bit of slick he has rubbed onto it, and it occurs to her how much larger Dean is than she is, how much taller and wider as a human animal, how much more of a monkey or a goat he is, how his feet hang nearly off the bed and how his chest, with the bony, flaring rib cage, is on her face now, how it is almost as if he were pressing her into silence with his chest, and he moves in, and it doesn’t feel too bad, not as painful as she thought it might, just a tightness, a fullness, and Dean begins to move and gasp and lurch and pant—heaving himself at her like an animal, teeth and hair, skin and bones and hunger, and she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t like it at all. But she is in it, and she knows that when you are in it, whatever it is, there is no point in wishing otherwise, and so she tries to let her mind go somewhere but she can’t make it go anywhere, this is all there is right now, and then it is done, Dean tenses and flexes all over, his face contorts grotesquely, as though it were being smeared around by an invisible hand. It didn’t take anywhere close to an hour.

  Afterward, Dean pulls back the sheet and looks down at her, at himself.

  Loretta knows what he is doing, and says, “Mine broke when I was riding a horse.”

  Later, after Dean is snoring, she goes to the bathroom down the hall and takes the latest folded-up letter from Bradshaw and the bottle she had hidden, the bottle with the solution of vinegar and ammonia that Tonaya had told her about, back when they were sneaking out together, the thing that always works, Tonaya said. Nothing can survive that shit.

  It burned her there, hurt her worse than Dean had done, and she tried to wash away the burning and could not. What if there was a baby she had washed away? How soon did it start? Sitting on the toilet, she unfolded the letter.

  Lorry honey I cant wait for this part of things to be over, but I do want you to know it is working out good. Real good. Hang in there and we will be set. More than you can imagine. D trusts me more every day. My thoughts are about you. I love you lorry, and you need to just wait for me now,
just give me time, and soon it will all be over and we can go wherever you want to.

  She tears the letter into tiny pieces and drops them into the toilet between her legs. She wonders exactly what he is doing, but has enough of an idea: taking money from Dean. She hopes he’s being careful, because Dean keeps exact track. He talks to her, on his nights with her up until now, of the Council of Elders and their demands, and of how much they want, and of how much he will give them, and of how large this difference is growing, how he will turn over $2,291.66 for January; $1,891.34 for February; $1,996.12 for March—Not a cent more, little sister, I swear it—because that is half of his earnings, and because he has decided that the Law of Consecration is being abused by the Elders. That is half, little sister. How can you say that is not a generous tithe? And yet she knows the Council of Elders does not deem it so.

  She has not said anything to Bradshaw about the gold. Dean talks about it, tells her about it, boasts about the precision of one-ounce golden eagles—the fifty-dollar coins—and their solid, righteous weight. He tells her everything about them, except where they are. She wants to take it from him. She wants him not to have it, and she wants to be the reason.

  She flushes the toilet. It wasn’t so horrible. Nothing ever is.

  EVEL KNIEVEL ADDRESSES AN ADORING NATION

  What you need is a way in. In every circumstance, in every situation: a way in. The way in is like the ramp, like the lever, like the cocked hammer of a pistol. It is the way you turn an ordinary thing into an extraordinary thing.

  The way in is always the same. You can spend years misunderstanding this, thinking that you have to find the way in for each new scenario, when it’s always the same: the way in is to act as if you’re already in.

  To believe it before it’s true.

  It’s like getting laid, America. The best way to do it is to act as if you already know—despite whatever the broad herself may think—that it’s inevitable, that’s it’s happening, that there’s no going back. You know she’s gonna do it before she does. You don’t seduce. You make it clear that it is completely unnecessary to seduce. That the fucking to come is not in question.

  So the years roll along, and we perform our amazing feats, our miracles, and pretty soon the Grand Canyon dream is not so crazy. Is not such wild talk. And then there’s a New York promoter getting on board. A Jew bastard naturally. But he’s on board, and he thinks he can make it happen, and he starts looking into it, and he finds out that the government—your government, America—will not allow such a thing because it owns the land on the canyon rims or some shit, and so the New York promoter, the flesh peddler, keeps after it, won’t give up, and he finds another spot: the Snake River Canyon, right outside Twin Falls, Idaho. There’s a farmer there who’ll lease the land for the ramp and for the crowds. There’ll be some permits to get, some locals to persuade, some dicks to suck, but the promoter is good at that, and pretty soon we’re set to go.

  The way in was money. He was gonna pay us $25,000 plus some of the gate. He had a plan to show the thing live in movie theaters, sell tickets all across the land. A man jumps a canyon! A mortal defies physics! And yet, that was not the way in. Money was the way in. Money—the notion of it, the idea of it, the magnetic force of it.

  The promoter understood it and we understood it, and so we gathered in New York City, and he got a big cardboard check with a big fake number on it: $6 million. And he handed it to me, and from that moment on, it became truer than true, $6 million, in all the headlines and stories, and of course America would watch this, of course the country would turn its adoring gaze to us, obviously there was no way this could fail, because now this feat drank from the wells of death and money, and the wells of death and money are magic.

  THE FEDERAL MEN

  July 26, 1953

  SHORT CREEK, ARIZONA

  Something booms in the night. Three times. Explosions, far away. The echoes drift. Is it the Lord? Is it the enemy? Ruth is too warm, and kicks off the blanket. The booms are like dream noise. Like heaven noise, hell noise.

  • • •

  “Good morning, little birds,” Ruth’s mother whispers. It is as dark as the closet with the door closed. “Come, come, little birds.” Her mother is a shape of darkness inside other darkness, leaning over Ruth’s younger sisters in their bed. And now she is moving toward Ruth, leaning over, a light hand on her shoulder. “Come quickly, Ruth. I need you to get Alma and Sarah dressed and come downstairs. Quickly.”

  • • •

  Her father’s beard is like a tree. Or a forest. Dense and thick at the roots, it spreads and lightens at the tips, where the light slips in. When his jaw moves and he talks to the Lord, his face is a dense grove of slender autumn trees, rolling along as the earth heaves.

  • • •

  The entire family is here. Her father and her mother and her father’s other wives—Aunt Olive and Aunt Desdemona and Aunt Eliza. All thirteen of her brothers and sisters. Her heavenly family. Ruth is eleven, the oldest among her mother’s four children. They crowd on the chairs and on the benches of the long table and on the floor. Ruth sits in a chair, an arm around Alma and an arm around Sarah, and Alma hugs her stuffed doll with the hand-drawn face, and then their mother comes upon them from behind and enfolds them all in an embrace. The room is warm with still bodies, and silent.

  • • •

  Her father is praying, and Ruth peeks at him, watching his beard tremble. “And if today is the day of your son’s return, O Lord, if this is the day the righteous have awaited, our Father in Heaven, then we ask you to find us worthy, though we know we are not worthy, though we know we are sinners, we ask that you forgive us our sins and take us up, lift us up.”

  Is that what today is? Ruth presses her eyes closed. Somewhere outside of her, somewhere outside of this room, somewhere outside of the darkness that still covers this room, somewhere outside the visible world, she knows there is a force that opposes them. That opposes the righteous. But she does not understand what that force is. For days now, the grown-ups have been talking about the Federal Men. The Federal Men are being sent by the apostates, the false Mormons in Salt Lake, who are persecuting the true Saints here in Short Creek. But now her father is talking about something else: The last days. The reckoning. The Second Coming. She holds her eyes closed as tightly as possible. Fear tingles and squirms around her heart. She should never have been peeking during the prayer. Inside of her father’s prayer she begins her own silent prayer, begging the Lord’s forgiveness for opening her eyes during her father’s prayer. She is disobedient. She is headstrong. The grown-ups always say so. Forgive me, O Lord. She wants to close her eyes so tightly that it makes up for their opening. Forgive me, O Lord, and I will be your righteous servant eternally. She feels it now throughout her body, a zing in the blood, a knowledge in the bones: it is the Second Coming. What if her family is raised up without her? What if she watches from below as they are saved, as she is swallowed up in the fire that will last a thousand years?

  • • •

  They walk to the schoolhouse, where other families wait, and where other families are still arriving. The grown-ups are dressed as if for church. The prophet stands in a circle of men, where her father also stands. Elden Johnson. Uncle Elden. He is shorter than the other men, but also taller, Ruth thinks. One eye is cloudy and one is clear. He wears his three-piece suit, his short white hair is neat, his mustache trim, and he smiles placidly. He speaks to God. God speaks to him.

  Ruth’s mother gives every older child someone to watch over. She is responsible for Sarah and Alma. “You watch them, little sister,” her mother says. “You don’t let them out of your sight.” Every few minutes her stomach makes a noise that is audible to anyone nearby. She asks her mother, “What’s going to happen?” and her mother says, “We don’t know.”

  • • •

  Outside the darkness lifts, slow and gray. Inside the schoolho
use, they are singing hymns. “Arise, O Glorious Zion.” “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel.” They pray silently. The grown-ups talk somberly, greet one another as if at church, and though there is a somber cloak around the day, there is something strangely joyous as well, and this puzzles Ruth, or it makes her fearful, because she believes it means they are anticipating the Second Coming with joy, feeling sure of their own righteousness in a way she is not. An eternity without her family, she thinks. An eternity of her own reward.

  A shout comes from outside, and then Brother Miller is scuffling into the schoolhouse. “They’re coming down Partham Road,” she hears him tell the prophet and the brethren who surround him. “Eight or nine cars.” The Federal Men, she thinks. The Federal Men. She does not know what that means exactly. She knows what federal means, and she knows they are from the government, and she knows they are coming because the apostates are sending them or controlling them—but she has no idea what they might do, what she should fear. Outside, the sun is low and stretched, and Ruth wonders if it is already beginning, the Second Coming, if the sun is coming apart or moving away or approaching. Her stomach makes the noise and she feels as if her body were outside of her now. As if she were hiding inside of it, separate from it. One hot squirt of urine dampens her underwear, and she rubs her legs together to soak it into her clothing.

  • • •

  The families walk out into the street. They cluster and sing. The cars of the Federal Men creep slowly toward them, and Uncle Elden stands in front of the group, watches them come. Alma and Sarah stand at Ruth’s sides, her hands on their shoulders. When the cars get close, Ruth sees that one of them has a sign on the door: ARIZONA STATE POLICE. She knows the difference between state and federal. She learned it just last month, in her civics class at the Hurricane school. She wonders why the state police are here if these are the Federal Men, and she wonders why everyone says “the Federal Men” if it’s actually the state police. A man in a brown uniform with a star over his heart climbs from the car, hitches his belt upward against his belly, and begins to squawk through a bullhorn. Alma begins to cry. Ruth holds her closer, shushes her, but her eyes sting with tears, too.