Destroying Angel

by Michael Wallace

  His smile turned to a frown as he looked down and met her gaze. “Why are you crying? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, you big goof, I’m happy. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my life.”

  She kissed him again, this time longer, more passionately.

  Jacob cleared his throat dramatically from where he stood with the water lapping over his bare feet. “I’m enjoying the fresh air,” he called to them, “but this water isn’t getting any warmer. I’d like to get it over with, if that’s all right with you.” Nevertheless, he wore a grin.

  Eliza and Steve returned to the reservoir. Steve waded into the water in his white clothes, gasping at the shock of the cold. Jacob led Steve farther in until the two men stood waist-deep. Jacob stood next to the other man’s left shoulder and took hold of his wrist. He lifted his right arm to the square.

  “Steven Emmett Krantz,” Jacob said, “having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, amen.”

  He dunked Steve into the water, submerged him completely, and then struggled to lift him back out. Steve looked wet and cold, but pleased, when he came up. As soon as he came out, Eliza threw her arms around his neck and kissed him again. She was soaked and freezing cold by the time they finished, but she didn’t care. “You’ll see. It will be worth it, I promise.”

  “It already is.”

  Eliza waited by the cars while the men changed out of their wet clothes down by the reservoir. When they came back, Jacob insisted that Eliza ride home with him instead of with Steve. She teased him that she had control of her hormones and didn’t need a chaperone, but he looked so serious that she fell silent. He slowed after they pulled out and let Steve’s patrol car disappear into the switchbacks that cut down from the Ghost Cliffs. Then he pulled onto the dirt road that led to the overflow gates that sent extra water from the dam to flow into the creek.

  “Can it wait?” she said. “I’m cold and wet.”

  “We’re not checking the gates, Liz.”

  To her surprise, there were half a dozen other cars and pickup trucks parked at the end of the road. Jacob pulled behind one of the vehicles, and they got out.

  “What’s this about?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The approach to the edge of the cliffs was hardpan. Footprints scuffed the dirt, together with a pair of tracks, like those of bicycles riding side by side. No, not bikes—Fernie’s wheelchair. They passed between a pair of gnarled bristlecone pines, their branches bent against centuries of the same wind that now gusted her hair and dress as they approached the edge.

  Voices carried as they got closer, and then they came upon a number of women in prairie dresses milling near the drop, including Fernie in her chair. Miriam was there too, and Charity Kimball, Lillian Young with a bandage on her face, and Sister Rebecca, the woman who lived alone in Grandma Cowley’s cabin on Yellow Flats, together with several others, including two of her father’s widows, one of whom was Fernie’s mother.

  The women clustered eight or ten feet from the edge of the cliff. Hundreds of feet below, Blister Creek stretched in a patchwork of fields and houses and trees, with the temple gleaming like a white star in the middle, visible even from fifteen, twenty miles’ distance.

  The women watched with grave expressions as she approached. Eliza drew up short, suddenly alarmed, but Jacob took her elbow. “It’s okay—keep going.”

  Eliza did a quick count as she came into the circle. “Twelve women,” she said. “A full jury. Am I facing trial? And standing on the edge of the cliff? That’s comforting.” She kept her tone light, but her unease spread. Their faces were so grave, and she couldn’t guess what this was about.

  “It’s not a jury,” Rebecca said, “it’s a quorum.”

  “A quorum?” she asked, wondering if she looked as dull and confused as she felt.

  “There are twelve men in the Quorum of the Twelve,” Jacob said. He put his hand on her shoulder. “And one prophet.”

  She gasped as she finally understood. “No, I don’t want this. Please don’t make me, Jacob.”

  “I didn’t want it either. But you know what they told me? Only a true prophet is humble enough to turn down the calling.”

  “This isn’t the time for jokes.”

  “No joke. It’s time to give women their voice.”

  “We already have a voice,” Eliza said. “You listen to us—you take our advice into consideration.”

  “The women don’t need to advise, they need a full say in how this community is run, like the men do. No, a bigger voice than the men, because there are far more of you than of us.”

  “And when did you decide this?” she asked.

  “I didn’t decide so much as acquiesce. As soon as I can bring myself to finish reading it, I’ll let you see Grandma Cowley’s diary. It explains a lot. The rest is her idea.” He nodded at Rebecca, who wore a slight frown. “Except she thinks maybe she should be the prophetess.”

  “Let her, then. For heaven’s sake, give it to her, not me.”

  “No. Maybe someday, if you find you can’t do it and we know Rebecca enough to trust her.”

  “It isn’t your decision, Jacob,” Rebecca said. “It’s ours.”

  “That’s true. I made only one condition, that the women choose their own leader by secret ballot. It wasn’t unanimous, and I won’t pretend I didn’t advocate on your behalf, but you were the clear consensus.”

  “You never gave me a vote,” Eliza said. “That isn’t fair.”

  “You have your vote now. You can walk away or you can accept the calling.”

  “Do it, Eliza,” Miriam said. “You’re the best choice. Rebecca and I would be at each other’s throats. Charity trusts you, and so does Lillian.”

  “What about Fernie?” Eliza asked.

  “No,” Fernie said. “My children are too young, and with Jacob so busy with the church already and no sister wives to help, I simply couldn’t. I’m not a leader like you, anyway. People listen to you and trust you.”

  She turned to her brother, not ready to surrender. “I’m only twenty-three. I can’t do this.”

  “Joseph Smith was twenty-two when he translated the Book of Mormon.”

  “That isn’t fair.”

  “Eliza, listen,” Fernie said. She wheeled her chair over and took Eliza’s hand. “Have faith. Please. Trust in the Lord. You’ll see. It will be worth it, I promise.”

  Eliza started. It was the exact same thing she’d said to Steve Krantz after his baptism.

  You’ll see. It will be worth it, I promise.

  Could she do this? Could she pretend to be a leader? Could she show the same confidence as Jacob? And would the women follow her? Would the men turn against her when they heard the news?

  She looked at Jacob, and he gave her a deep, sympathetic look, as if he understood exactly what was going through her mind. He took her hand and squeezed it. She took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay. I’ll accept. Are you going to ordain and bless me here?”

  “No, not me.” Jacob nodded at Rebecca. “Rebecca Cowley holds the keys to the women’s priesthood. She will do the honors.” He backed away. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you women to it.”

  And with that, Jacob turned and walked back toward the car. Rebecca took Eliza by the arm. “Come on, sister.” Her voice was warm. “Let us ordain thee to thy calling.”

  “Thou sayest.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Four days after the attack, and two days after the Department of Agriculture set up camp at the chapel, Jacob and Fernie sat on the front porch in rocking chairs to read the last chapter of Henrietta Rebecca Cowley’s diary.

  “May 11, 1948,” Fernie read. She looked up from the diary with a frown. “That can’t be right.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s…what, fifty-five years later?”

  “That’s right.”

  She studied the writing
. “The handwriting hasn’t changed much. She had to be over seventy by then.”

  “She lived into her late nineties. She was still strong and healthy in 1948.”

  “But why did she wait so long?”

  He turned from watching Diego and Daniel kick a soccer ball just below the porch to see her studying him, her brow furrowed in concentration, as if trying to read his thoughts.

  “I feel safer keeping them in sight.”

  “He seems okay. No nightmares since the night of the attack.”

  “Give it a few days before we declare him cured.”

  “You must have driven it off.”

  “That makes it sound like an exorcism,” Jacob said.

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Mental illness.”

  “It isn’t necessarily one thing or the other,” she said.

  True, he had to grant her that. Goodness knows he’d chewed over his own vision the night of the attack a hundred times already. He might be skeptical about the angel, but the medical answers didn’t begin to satisfy him either.

  A saw whirred at the new house as David trimmed a piece of siding. Miriam and David had been banging away all morning. Even from where Jacob and Fernie sat, they looked exhausted, drenched with sweat. It was almost a hundred outside this afternoon, the first time all summer that the temps had approached triple digits. It felt like the return of normal weather, if only it would last.

  Fernie tapped her finger on the open page of the diary. “Back to this. Why wait so many years?”

  “I’m pretty sure there are more journals,” Jacob said. “Or were. Rebecca hasn’t mentioned them. But for some reason Grandma Cowley waited before filling the last few pages of this one. I have a hunch, but let’s find out if I’m right.”

  “So, you haven’t read it?” Fernie asked.

  “The date and the first paragraph, and then I stopped. I was waiting for you to catch up. And to be honest, I’m…” He hesitated. “I’m worried.”

  “About what?”

  “That it will make too much sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s all coming together. The final gathering of the saints. The end of the world.” He put an ironic tone in his voice. “The gates of hell have opened, and Satan will send forth his legions. Wormwood, the four horsemen, and all that Book of Revelations stuff.”

  “You believe that?”

  He tried to smile away her frown. “No, of course not.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s a volcano and some weird weather.”

  “And an earthquake, don’t forget that.”

  “Right, plus a few tremors. Probably related to the volcano somehow. Natural disasters happen. But look on the bright side. The Kimballs are gone for good. We’ll hunker down and wait out the food crisis, and then everything will be back the way it was. Well, almost.”

  Fernie looked thoughtful, and he almost asked her for the dirt on the newly formed women’s quorum. But no, not yet.

  She opened the diary and started over. “May 11, 1948. The hour has arrived to give a final accounting of the events of years past, now that I finally understand. Now that the Lord has shown me the end of the world.”

  The day after Jedediah Kimball murdered his wife, Hyrum ordered me to ride with him toward the Ghost Cliffs. He’d found a fresh pool and good grazing land, and he said it would be a good place to build a cabin, away from the center of town, where there would be privacy.

  I didn’t have the strength to resist. The Lord had abandoned me. I’d spent half the night on my knees, and then collapsed into bed when He refused to answer my prayers. The next morning I lay in bed, staring at the chisel marks on the ceiling beams. When Hyrum came for me, I got out of bed and dressed while he waited outside with the horses.

  We rode across the desert in single file, with my horse bringing up the rear. I kept seeing Maude’s face staring at the sky, the blossom of red across her chest. I could have stopped it. If I hadn’t tried to overthrow the men, Jedediah might have beaten her, he might have divorced her and had her excommunicated, even driven her from the community. But he wouldn’t have killed her. That was my fault. And now they were burying her in a shallow grave without ceremony, not even dressing her in her temple robes.

  We rode for about an hour, following Blister Creek as it carved its meandering path across the valley floor, snaking in and out of the sandstone labyrinth before bending gently west where it descended from the cliffs.

  Hyrum stopped where the ground flattened into a pleasant grassy meadow and the creek collected into a series of pools. “Here we are,” he said at last. He dropped out of the saddle. “Close to the cliffs for timber. Good water, grazing.” He helped me down and put his arm around my shoulder. “Should we lie down on the grass for a minute and talk about the possibilities?”

  “You’re trying to romance me?” I jerked free and stared at him. “Is that what this is? You think a little touch for the lonely woman, a kind word, and I’ll forget you allowed that beast to murder my friend?”

  He sighed. “Do you truly fix me with such base motives? I’m mending fences with you, or trying to. We’ve been apart for so long, and I know I spent the first night with your sister wife, and then there was the unfortunate incident and…well, we have to get past this somehow.” His pitch rose defensively at this last part. “We’ll make a home out here, build it together.”

  “You want a cottage—a romantic hideaway where we can live away from the others, and who the devil cares about the rest of your family?”

  “Not exactly together. Of course I’ll visit, but this will be your little place. You can do with it whatever you want. Nobody will be here to tell you what to do, not even me.”

  “No, thank you.”

  He gestured with his hands. “It’s a good place. Look!”

  “I’m not interested in living by myself, miles away. What about when I have children and they get sick? Or the Paiutes might come through. Or, worse, some drunk federal marshal. I won’t be alone—it’s too dangerous.”

  “Please be reasonable.”

  “What’s this about, really?”

  “It’s the other men. They think you’re the cause of the trouble.”

  “Naturally,” I said. “The trouble being that we built this place without your help and you don’t want anyone in the way while you steal it. It would be awkward to have me around, reminding the women how they once ran their own lives, made the decisions for their own families.”

  “That’s not the whole of it, and you know it.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be the priesthood leader? Didn’t the prophet lay his hands on your head before you left Salt Lake? So why are you letting Jedediah Kimball trample your authority?”

  “Yes, I was the leader.” His face tightened. “And then I appointed you to be in charge, and we arrived to find you in open rebellion. I’ll pay a price for that.”

  “And the price you’ll pay is for me to suffer in exile.”

  “It’s not exile.” To his credit, he at least looked ashamed. “You can come into town whenever you like. Your children, when you have them, will be fully accepted into the community. You won’t be disfellowshipped or shunned.”

  “And I have no say in the matter.” It was not a question.

  He drew me into his arms. “Come now, Rebecca. A woman’s place is with her family, her children. Not embroiled in the nasty back-and-forth of struggle for dominance, like rams locking horns. It’s time for you to have a baby, to turn your thoughts to maternal matters. It is by raising a righteous seed that you will be sanctified and exalted.”

  He pressed my head against his chest and stroked my hair. I remembered the gentle man who had courted me in Salt Lake, had sweet-talked my mother to get to me, who had promised that while I wouldn’t be his senior wife, I would be the first wife he chose for himself.

  “Well?” he said.

  I considered my options. None of them involved open defiance. Maude’s glossy,
dead eyes reminded me of that.

  “Bring me lumber and tools. I’ll build the house with my own hands.”

  He let out his breath, and relief passed over his face. “You’ll have everything you need, I swear it.”

  And so it happened. I built the house. I planted an orchard, cut rails for a corral. And I settled in to wait. It would only be a matter of time, I thought, before Annabelle and Laura came to me to renew their covenant. They’d tasted freedom too. It would be no easy thing to submit once more to tyrannical rule.

  And I reminded myself that men are impatient. Hurry up, they say. Get dressed, get to work. Marry young, have babies right away. You must hurry, hurry, hurry to multiply and replenish the earth. My seed will be as numerous as the stars of the heaven, and I’d prefer if we could start that process by the end of the year.

  But a woman is patient. We understand the pace of the seasons because we know the seasons of our own body. Look at our lives. We marry, raise our children, and wait. A man burns hot and fierce, then withers and dies, and still we go on. Even a bad husband dies. Even a dictator like Jedediah Kimball grows old and tired.

  I didn’t realize then that I would be forced to wait a lifetime and more.

  Like Mormons compiling the record of the Nephites, I feel the need to summarize the hard years that followed. We lived in secret in our desert redoubt for several years, cut off from the church, except when they sent leaders to hide for a few months from federal marshals. As the century came to an end, we saw the leaders more rarely. A plague of locusts came in 1896, and we nearly starved when nobody sent supplies.

  Another batch of scarlet fever hit in 1897. I had two children by then—the first born nine months after Hyrum showed me the place on Yellow Flats. They both survived, but three of Laura’s died, one per week over the course of one miserable November. Annabelle Kimball lost two children and blamed me for it. In 1899, my husband died in an accident at the Ghost Cliffs, where he apparently tumbled over the edge to his death. I returned to live in town. Jedediah Kimball ruled Blister Creek until his death in 1928, when he was struck down by a heart attack while working on the temple.