The Spoken Word

by R. R. Irvine

  “I’m waiting,” Moseby said.

  Keeping his eyes on Lael, Traveler supplied the numbers for Roo’s camper.

  “Just a minute. I’ll have to find Tanner so he can run it through our computer. I’m not sure how this phone works, so I won’t put you on hold.”

  The receiver clanked down.

  “Am I being recorded?” Traveler said.

  Silence answered him.

  Traveler went back to watching Lael Woolley. He wheeled his chair to one side. Her eyes followed him, a trick of perspective.

  “Tanner was asleep,” Moseby said.

  “I know how he feels.”

  “He’s typing in the number now.”

  Traveler heard keyboard clicks. He moved his chair again and leaned back. Lael kept watching him.

  “Something’s coming on the screen,” Moseby said. “The vehicle belongs to someone named Opal Taylor.”

  He sat up. “Are you sure? The name I got was Roo. A man’s name.”

  “Run it again, Willis,” Moseby said.

  Traveler wrapped the photo in plastic while he waited.

  “That’s correct,” Moseby said after a moment. “The name is Opal Taylor.”

  “What’s her address?” Traveler said.

  “Fourteen-fifty Smoot Street, Magna.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Traveler slammed down the phone. That was the address of the Sisters Cumorah. Where his father was supposed to be right now.

  10

  THE TOWN of Magna stands at the north tip of the Oquirrh Mountains where they touch the Great Salt Lake. These mountains, part of the western barrier that originally protected Brigham Young’s band from outsiders, were gradually being eaten away by Kennecott Copper. What the company’s mining missed, its pollution finished off.

  It was dark by the time Traveler turned onto Smoot Street. The road, awash from curb to curb, was halfway between Magna Park and the tailings pond. His headlights caught the house at 1450. It was pure Utah Gothic, grim, gray, and diminutive, covered with asphalt siding and a tarpaper roof. It showed no signs of life.

  A derelict car, its rear end up on cinder blocks, stood in the driveway. Traveler nosed the pickup in behind it. There was no sign that his father had been there ahead of him.

  Traveler cut the engine and got out carrying his flashlight. The only other light in the neighborhood came from a yellow porch bulb next door.

  He left a muddy trail as he climbed the rickety wooden steps to the front porch. His flashlight lit up SISTERS CUMORAH, a hand-lettered sign on warped plywood that had been nailed into the siding alongside the door. The letters were already wearing away around the edges.

  He sensed that the place was abandoned even before he knocked. The sound echoed hollowly. He tried the knob. The door was solidly locked. Moving along the porch, he flashed his light through an uncurtained window. There was nothing inside but dust and crumpled newspapers.

  Traveler was thinking about forcing the door when a man called to him from next door. “You’re wasting your time. Those women are long gone.”

  The neighbor, in shirtsleeves, looked old and jaundiced standing under his yellow porch light.

  “Do you know where they went?” Traveler shouted.

  The man hugged himself. “I’m freezing my ass out here. If you want to talk, you’ll have to come over.” He backed into the house and closed the door.

  Traveler waded across the soggy yard. As he climbed the steps, he realized that the yellow light was all that kept this house from being as grim and colorless as the one he’d come from.

  The moment Traveler began stamping mud from his feet the door opened again and the man waved him inside. “Don’t worry about tracking in dirt. You can’t hurt this place.”

  Traveler unbuckled his galoshes and kicked them off before ducking through the doorway.

  The man whistled at his size. “The name’s Russ Sterlin.”

  “Moroni Traveler.”

  “Hell, yes. The football player. I recognize you now.” Sterlin, who looked at least seventy, ran a leathery hand through his yellow-gray hair. “This is a real treat for me. You’re the second visitor I’ve had today. Both of you looking for the Sisters.”

  The temperature inside was like a hothouse. The heat magnified the sour sweat old men live with when they have no women to look after them.

  Traveler unbuttoned his jacket. “Who was here ahead of me?”

  Sterlin snorted. “He said his name was Traveler, too.”

  “He’s my father.”

  Sterlin rubbed the stubble on his chin, several days’ worth by the look of it. “I don’t see how you could be related, him being so short.”

  “We work together,” Traveler said.

  “I suppose you want to know what was going on next door just like he did?”

  Traveler nodded.

  “Nothin’. That’s what’s so funny. When that sign went up, I figured there’d be women in and out all day. Something for me to do. You know, watching them and all. ‘What the hell,’ I says to myself. ‘You ain’t too old to look.’ So I pulled a chair up to my window here and sat down to enjoy myself.”

  He flapped an arm, adding to the room’s heady atmosphere. “A lot of good it did me. I damn near got piles. Hell, days would go by before I saw anybody. The weather’s been bad, of course, so they were always bundled up and I couldn’t get a good look at them. They had to be young women, though, because they were fast on their feet. But they never did move in any furniture.”

  “Did you tell my father this?”

  “Yep.”

  “When did he leave?”

  Sterlin shrugged. “I stopped paying attention to clocks a long time ago.”

  “Did my father say where he was going next?”

  Sterlin shook his head. “It was a treat talking to him, let me tell you. A man my age doesn’t have much else to do. Hell, I go to the store, answer the call of nature, things like that. I can hear okay, though, even over the rain and the TV. Just like I heard your truck pull up a while ago. That’s when I went to the window, like I used to do for the Sisters.” He clicked his tongue. “I even got out my old World War Two binoculars, though I never did get the eyeful I was hoping for.”

  “How long were they living next door?”

  Sterlin ran the back of his hand across the stubble on his chin. “A couple of months, maybe a little longer. Too long as far as I’m concerned. A house needs someone regular in it. A family. Someone to love the place. Those women, they weren’t really living. They were just camping out.”

  He gazed around the room where an ancient overstuffed sofa and a pair of mismatched chairs sat on worn linoleum patterned to look like an Oriental rug. “A place needs love and care. Otherwise, it goes to rack and ruin and lowers the tone of the entire neighborhood. Now that they’re gone, good riddance, I say.” He winked. “That’s not saying I wouldn’t like someone to move in who’d keep me entertained. Now take a pew.” He pointed to one of the chairs.

  As soon as Traveler settled in, Sterlin did the same.

  “They haven’t taken the Sisters’ sign down yet,” Traveler said. “Do you think they might be back?”

  Sterlin shook his head. “The real estate agent’s been around here once or twice. The way they let the place run down, he’ll have a hell of a time selling it.” He gestured at his own surroundings. “With me it’s different. I’m too old to give a damn. Besides, you get to be my age your faculties go. You can’t see, you can’t taste things like you used to or smell them either. Around here, that’s a blessing. When the wind’s right, your eyes water from that damned tailings pond. Anyway, that’s why they rented the house to the Sisters in the first place. No one wants to live around here unless they have to. Even so, when I saw that woman nail up her sign, I called a cab and went to city hall. ‘Smoot’s a family street,’ I told them. ‘We don’t want businesses and the like in our backyards.’ ”

  He made a gun out of the fingers of one hand and s
hot himself in the head. “You know what the city fathers told me? That the Sisters weren’t really a business because they weren’t selling anything but ideas.”

  “What kind of ideas?” Traveler said.

  “I tried to find out a couple of times. Every time I heard one of them drive up, I’d hightail over there and start asking questions. Only one of them talked to me, though she didn’t have much to say except that she’d be calling on all the neighbors sooner or later, hoping to get us all to join up and become what she called Honorary Sisters. The last time I talked to her she said she’d be getting to me any day. A week later she was gone for good.”

  “What did she look like?”

  The old man rubbed his eyes. “She was always wearing dark glasses and a big coat with the collar turned up, and one of those knitted caps pulled down over her ears. Of course, the weather’s been bad and you can’t blame her for that, but I never did get a look at her face.”

  “How many women did you see altogether?”

  “Come to think of it, I never saw more than two of them at one time.” His bony shoulders rose and fell in one quick motion. “Stingy, that’s what I call them. What’s the harm in an old man doing a little window shopping? Maybe getting an eyeful now and then. I mean, what did they have to fear from a fogey like me.”

  Traveler smiled sympathetically.

  “I remember my wife, God bless her, telling me once she was always a little afraid of strange men when I wasn’t with her.” He closed his eyes and nodded, a gesture meant for his memories. “I remember her saying once, ‘I don’t understand why God made women weaker than men. If He hadn’t, we wouldn’t have to be afraid all the time.’ ”

  “Do you have any idea where the Sisters might have gone?”

  Sterling’s eyes popped open. “Strange you should ask that. That last time I saw anyone, she was loading something in the trunk of her car. I was standing right there at my window. Naturally when I saw her wrestling with those boxes, I went out to ask if she needed a hand. She didn’t pay me any attention at first, just kept fussing with rearranging things in her trunk. I know when I’m not wanted, so I started to leave. ‘You won’t see me again,’ she called after me. ‘How so?’ I says. ‘I’m on my way to paradise,’ she answers.”

  “You mean the town of Paradise?” Traveler asked.

  “God knows.” Sterlin shook his head slowly and deliberately. “If you ask me, saying something like that is blasphemy. If my wife, Mary, had been alive, she’d have given her a good tongue-lashing. My Mary was a great churchgoer, you know. A good woman. Never missed a Sunday. Now look at me. I’m a regular backslider since she was called home. Come to think of it, I haven’t been to church since I don’t know when.”

  Traveler started to get up, but the old man waved him back into his chair.

  “She said it twice, you know, “ Sterlin said. “Like I was deaf. Like I didn’t hear her say it the first time. Raised her voice, too. ‘I’m going to paradise,’ she shouted.”

  He scratched his prickly chin. “Boy oh boy, do I need a shave. If my wife were here she’d kill me. She’d say I was letting myself go. She’d be right, too, come to that.”

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “The kids moved away years ago. Take my son, Russ Jr. He said he never wanted to smell Kennecott again and moved clear out of state to prove it. Him, I never see. My daughter’s only sixty miles away in Provo, but she has her own kids and can’t get up here as much as she’d like.”

  Traveler glanced at his watch. It was nearly six, dinnertime. Most Sundays he and Martin would be sitting down to roast beef with potatoes and gravy about now.

  “Look at this place,” Sterlin went on. “If my wife saw all this dirt, she’d march me down to the bishop for a church trial.”

  He winked to show he wasn’t serious. “That woman kept me on the straight and narrow. That’s the truth of it. We paid our tithe and never missed a day of church. She taught Sunday school right here in Magna, too. Made the scriptures come to life, she did.”

  He blew out a long, noisy breath. “It’s a good thing she wasn’t here when that woman blasphemed. We lost paradise, my Mary used to say. Lost it to the devil.” He nodded. “Her words exactly. ‘The devil stole it away from us, and the church has been working ever since to restore it.’ ”

  Sterlin stood up, rubbing his chin. “It’s about time I shaved.”

  “Could I use your phone first?”

  The old man shook his head. “Not on the Sabbath, young man.”

  11

  IT TOOK Traveler nearly half an hour of creeping along the overflowing streets before he found a phone, one of those open, seashell booths hanging on the outside wall of a closed Conoco station. By then the storm had turned into one flash-flooding squall after another.

  He shoved the receiver under his slicker and wiped it on his shirt before dropping his quarter and dialing home. He let it ring a long time before moving on to Willis Tanner.

  “We’re going to need a new address on the Sisters Cumorah,” Traveler told him.

  “Your father called in a couple of hours ago and said the same thing. Moseby double- checked the license number with Motor Vehicles. They say Smoot Street’s their latest location, but he’s still working on it.”

  “Did my father say where he was?”

  “He’s as bad as you are sometimes. When I asked him what he needed, he said he wanted inside the genealogy library to do some research. ‘Now?’ I asked him. ‘On Sunday?’ ‘There’s no time like the present,’ he answers. So what could I do? I had them open up for him.”

  Traveler shivered. “I don’t imagine he said why.”

  “You know your father. Always kidding around. He pretended he wanted to look up a few friends and relatives, but I figured he was onto something about our problem.”

  Traveler clenched his teeth. There was no point in burdening Willis with Martin’s sudden compulsion to visit dead relatives.

  “What about you, Mo? Any progress?”

  Traveler thought about the forwarding address he’d gotten from Russ Sterlin. He shook his head. Going to paradise had too many meanings to involve Tanner just yet.

  “Talk to me,” Tanner said.

  “Assuming I don’t get swept away in the Jordan River, it’s going to take me two hours to get home, maybe three. On top of which, I’m exhausted. You got me up in the middle of the night, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I had to call you out. If you’d seen the prophet’s face, you’d know that.”

  “I’m not complaining, Willis. I’m stating fact. I’ve got to go home and get some rest.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Magna.”

  “Hold on.”

  Traveler sagged against the Conoco’s stucco siding while Tanner hummed “Onward, Christian Soldiers” in time with the click of computer keys.

  “I can book you directly into a motel,” Tanner said. “How about the Smelter Inn, right there at lake point. Where the Oquirrh Mountains meet the water, their ad says. I’m sure I can work out a deal. Your room free of charge as credit against future tithing.”

  Traveler groaned. “I’m going home.”

  “I’m just trying to save you time.”

  “I want to be there when Martin arrives,” Traveler said.

  “Didn’t I tell you? He left the library a few minutes ago. He’ll be home before you are.”

  “I’d better get going, then.”

  “Dammit, Mo. We’ve lost another day on our deadline.”

  “Relax, Willis. I’ll do battle with the Army of Nauvoo first thing tomorrow. That’s a promise.”

  12

  “BLUE MONDAY,” Martin said.

  Traveler joined him at the living room window. Rain continued to fall from low, bleak clouds. Streams of water sluiced from the eaves of the roof. A couple of beleaguered sparrows were perched on the picket fence out front, their beady eyes watching the window as if they blamed Traveler for the weather.<
br />
  Martin tapped the glass. The sparrows flew away. “The radio says it won’t stop for days.”

  “I don’t want you driving in this kind of weather,” Traveler said. “I don’t want you messing with the Sisters Cumorah either. It scared the hell out of me when that license number matched the address you were checking in Magna yesterday.”

  “What about me? Don’t I get to worry?”

  “That truck I rented ought to be tough enough to get me through just about anything.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Martin said. “Are you still planning to tackle the Army of Nauvoo?”

  Traveler nodded. “If you have to go out, call Willis and have him send a car around.”

  “Thank you very much, but I have work to do at the genealogy library and intend to drive myself.”

  “Ancestors again?”

  “Like I told you before, the dead keep coming back to haunt me. When you get to be my age, they’ll haunt you too. Besides, we have to learn from the past. If we don’t, how can we keep from making the same mistakes over again?”

  Traveler sighed. “I seem to remember you saying something about temple baptisms.”

  “Our family’s unraised dead, you mean?”

  “Are you telling me you want to be raised one day?”

  Frowning, Martin turned away from the window. “The problem is, raising can take place without our knowledge. For all I know, distant cousins have been at work already on departed Travelers.”

  “You won’t find that kind of information in the library,” Traveler said. “It’s classified.”

  Martin shrugged. “I heard from Willis. He called while you were in the shower.”

  Traveler leaned against the window frame and blew on the glass until it misted. With a forefinger, he drew a heart with an arrow through it. “What did he have to say?”

  “He quoted a little scripture to start with, something about the Angel Moroni making all things known to mankind. As for the Sisters Cumorah, he says it’s only a matter of time. He says the First Apostle is lighting a fire under half the people in town to get you an address for them.”