The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

by Stephanie Oakes

  Brutality was done to me. Why not spill a little into the world, too? Just to touch it. Just to know I could.

  Chapter 46

  After lights-out, Angel and I sit hip-to-hip on my bed near the weak desk lamp soldered to the frame of the bunk, me shouldering my way through a fantasy novel, Angel reading about neuroscience. Every other minute, I let the book fall closed and sigh, casting my eyes out to the darkened hull of the jail. Similar pockets of light shine where other girls are up late reading or writing letters home.

  Angel grunts when I sigh again. “You’re thinking about Jude.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I never had anyone who could do that to me.”

  “Do what?”

  “Interrupt my thoughts when he wasn’t even in the room,” she says. “Except Carl Sagan, but that doesn’t really count.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You’re stuck in jail. What can you do?”

  “When I get out, find him. Walk into the woods and never look back.”

  She’s silent beside me, running her fingers along the edge of the thick tome. “They don’t have books in the wilderness,” she says.

  I nod. Would it mean anything, losing the things that I’ve gained here, as long as I had Jude? I know a year ago, it wouldn’t have even been a question. But now?

  “You wanna hear something cool?” she asks.

  I shrug.

  “I just read that the brain is the fattiest organ. Contains up to sixty percent fat.”

  “Your brain must be really fat,” I say.

  “Yo brain’s so fat, the last time you got a brain fart, it caused a tsunami in China,” she says, guffawing loudly at her own joke.

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “Well your brain’s so fat, it . . . it probably eats extra servings of chicken nuggets.”

  She squints at me. “You didn’t do that right.”

  The buzz of an unlocking cell door rings out loudly in the sleeping jail. I look up just as Dr. Wilson walks through the opening door of our cell.

  “What the hell?” Angel asks.

  “Evening, Angel,” Dr. Wilson says.

  “How do you know my name?” she asks. “Never mind. I bet this one’s told you everything about me,” she nods her head toward me, “right down to my pissing schedule.”

  He smiles. “Angel, I’d appreciate it if you could go with this kind guard here. I need to speak with Minnow.”

  “I’m just sitting here, minding my own business, and a strange man comes in and kicks me out? Of my own home?” she shouts. “That’s violating my rights. I’m calling my lawyer.”

  “Get your ass up, Angel,” Benny says from outside the cell, “and I’ll give you a doughnut from the staff lounge.”

  Angel considers this. “Fine,” she says. “But I’m still consulting my lawyer.”

  When Angel and Benny depart, Dr. Wilson sets down his stool. I swing my legs off the side of my bunk, waiting for him to reveal what was so urgent.

  He presses his lips together. “What motivates someone to kill?” he asks.

  “You’ve asked me this already.”

  “Consider it review.”

  “This is why you came here in the middle of the night?”

  “We’ll get there. Answer the question.”

  “Insanity.”

  “And?”

  “Anger.”

  “And?”

  “Revenge.”

  He raises his chin. “Elaborate.”

  I pause. “Thinking it’s the right thing to do. Believing the person deserves it.”

  He nods. “Many would say the Prophet deserved what he got.”

  “I’d agree with them,” I say.

  “Who else would agree with you?”

  “No idea. They all seemed pretty in love with him.”

  “What about your father?”

  I hitch up my shoulders. “What about him?”

  “We have a new theory. That he may have been involved in the Prophet’s death. He may have had motive.”

  “What motive?” I ask, incredulous.

  “Read this for me, will you?”

  He passes over a piece of paper lying flat inside an evidence bag. I immediately recognize the slanted handwriting. It’s my father’s. The paper is stained and creased, each crease a dark line, as though it’s been rubbed repeatedly between dirty fingers.

  The True and Faithful Narrative of Samuel Ezekiel Hiram Bly

  I look up. “My father’s prophecy.”

  “You know of it?” he asks.

  “Of course.”

  He nods. “I need you to confirm its authenticity.”

  I read it.

  And lo, upon the factory floor came the strange and woeful noise of the slamming of machines. The quietest things in that place were the souls, clad in blue jumpsuits and yellowing plastic goggles. Suddenly the place, the noise, began to slow, and stopped completely. Everything froze. Never had I heard the factory in such a state of quietude. A sound like pure light filled the room. The archangel descended from the uncovered ceiling where the clotted mustard-colored insulation clung, the angel being righteous and holy and made of a million pinpricks of light, with a face beautiful like a baby’s. The archangel sung me his instructions in a language no human had ever spoken. “You are to follow the Prophet into the woods and never return.”

  “It’s his handwriting,” I say. “And it’s the same story he told us. This was sort of what ultimately made everyone decide to come to the Community.”

  “Very good. That’s all I needed.” He puts the paper back in his bag and rises from the stool.

  “Wait!” I say. “How is this motive?”

  He sits down again. “It’s evidence that your father thought himself a prophet, too.”

  “You think my father wanted to kill the Prophet to . . . to become the new Prophet?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But that’s ridiculous! My father was loyal. Look at everything he did.” I close my eyes, suddenly breathless, picturing the hatchet in my father’s loose hand, the Prophet screaming, “DO IT! DO IT NOW!”

  “It’s a possibility I have to entertain,” the doctor says.

  “No one would’ve followed my father. No one.”

  “Imagine for me that there were some in the Community who were starting to see through the Prophet. Let’s say his lies were starting to show. Let’s say people were becoming less and less satisfied with his answers.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The women who escaped are now raising their own children. Some of them still live as sisters beside their husbands’ wives, but they claim their birth children. That’s a direct violation of the Prophet’s orders, is it not?”

  “Yes,” I say. “We weren’t supposed to know who our real mothers were.”

  “Those who got out are defying the Prophet’s rules in all kinds of ways. Some have even left altogether. Remember Donna Jo, your father’s second wife? She took her children to Los Angeles to live with friends she knew in college. It seems you’re not the only lapsed Kevinian anymore, Minnow.”

  “But if the Prophet were alive,” I say, “I don’t believe for a second that they wouldn’t all go running back to him.”

  “Some might. But things have changed. For so long he was like a magnet, keeping it all together. But now that he’s gone, the cracks are a lot more obvious.” He shifts in his seat. “With every religion, there exist certain rules. Every God has to abide these rules, otherwise the entire thing stops working. What was the Kevinian God capable of?”

  I shrug. “Anything.”

  “Anything? He could punish? And reward?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Could he intervene in the lives of humans?”

 
“Yes.”

  “Did he create the universe?”

  “Yes,” I say, then pause. “Or, wait. No, he couldn’t have. He wasn’t born until the seventeen hundreds.”

  “So, who created the universe, if not God?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I never asked.”

  “You never asked? Nobody ever asked?”

  “It didn’t occur to me. Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Sorry. It’s just interesting.”

  “What is?”

  “He invented a religion. I’m just not sure he did a very good job.”

  Chapter 47

  A few days later, Dr. Wilson’s back in my cell, looking haggard, stubbled and hollow-eyed.

  “What happened to you?” I ask.

  “I went to Deer Lodge for a couple days.”

  “The prison?”

  He nods. “Your father tried to kill himself. I spoke to him two days ago and told him we had reason to believe he was responsible for the Prophet’s death. He tried hanging himself that night.”

  “He’s alive?

  He nods.

  “So, you’ve got him, then. This proves he’s guilty.”

  “He’s not guilty,” Dr. Wilson says. “We’re not charging him.”

  “Why?” I sputter.

  “We’ve interviewed all the wives again, some of the older children. They all say he was in the house the entire night.”

  “They must be lying.”

  “It’s improbable they’d all have the same exact story.”

  “You can’t give up,” I say. “I’ll testify that I saw him. Maybe I did. Maybe I’m remembering something.”

  “But you’ve always attested that you were long gone at that point, Minnow,” he says, eyes boring into mine. I look away. “Anyway, I don’t even know if your testimony will be usable anymore.” He rubs his eyes hard. “A few of them said they saw a figure watching from the trees. Someone who looked a lot like you. Your father was . . . very certain.”

  I press my eyelids closed. “You think I killed the Prophet?”

  “No,” he says. “But I think you know who did. And I think it’s time that we stop running around in circles.”

  I feel myself slowly unwind, like yarn from a skein, pooling on the floor. I’m so close to losing it, the control, the grip. Because I think I want to tell him. I think I want to spill it all right now and damn the consequences.

  The consequences. Angel said Dr. Wilson would put me away for life if I told him what really happened. But he’s different, he’s here to help me. He’s . . . he’s a cop, I hear Angel say, as if that’s all there is to know about him.

  “What motivates someone to kill?” I ask.

  He smiles a tired smile. “Haven’t we already discussed this?”

  “I want to know what you think.”

  “I think it’s control. I think that’s why anyone does anything.”

  “So, who was the most controlling person in the Community?” I ask.

  “You tell me.”

  “The Prophet. You know he was.”

  “I can’t exactly make a case that he’d be a suspect in his own murder.”

  “Why not? Why aren’t we considering suicide?”

  “He had no motivation to kill himself.”

  “He was mentally unbalanced. You’ve said so yourself.”

  “He didn’t have the kind of mental unbalance that would’ve resulted in suicide.”

  All I can think is that Dr. Wilson is going to feel really stupid when he learns the truth. Because he’s wrong. The Prophet did kill himself, in a way. He created the weapon of his own demise.

  “I almost forgot. I brought you a present.” He pulls something out of his bag and places it on my bed. It’s a used paperback copy of Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

  “What is it?”

  “I thought you’d’ve learned by now what books are.”

  “I know it’s a book,” I say, insulted. “Why did you get it for me?”

  “My son loves Thomas Hardy. I thought you’d like it.”

  “Son?” I ask.

  He nods. “Jonah.”

  “I’ll . . . I’ll check it out,” I say. “If I have time.”

  After he leaves, I turn the cover of the book. It still has the price sticker from a secondhand bookstore in Missoula, revealing he’d paid a whole two dollars, but I’m still grateful for it in a way I can’t quite articulate.

  There’s plenty in the book I don’t understand, and those parts stay behind, bolted to the pages, but there are things I can skim from the surface like fat from a milk pail, and I sort through all the information with something like fingers, fingers inside my mind.

  I read one paragraph over and over again.

  “I don’t know about ghosts,” Tess says, “but I do know that our souls can be made to go outside our bodies when we’re alive. A very easy way to feel ’em go is to lie on the grass at night and look straight up at some big bright star; and, by fixing your mind upon it, you will soon find that you are hundreds and hundreds o’ miles away from your body, which you don’t seem to want at all.”

  I lie on my bed and stare up at the bunk above me, but the effect isn’t at all the same. Even looking out the milky skylight doesn’t do it. And, I wonder for the first time, when will I see the stars again? Where can I find some on short notice? I want to know if it would work for me, like it did for Tess. I want to know if there’s even anything left inside me that could fly so effortlessly.

  Chapter 48

  “Hey,” Angel whispers after lights-out. “Check it out.”

  She’s crouched beside my bunk, holding a key card between two fingers.

  “Did you steal that?” I ask, squinting at her groggily.

  “Hardly,” she says. “You know I’m in good with the guards.”

  “What did you do?” I ask warily.

  “Christ, I’m not dealing drugs or something. So maybe I worked out a deal with Benny that I wouldn’t open up anybody’s head for a month, and maybe I made good on the bargain today, and she had to make good on hers or risk me telling Mrs. New she watches soap operas in the back office when she’s supposed to be supervising group therapy, but whatever, a good magician never reveals her secrets.” I can tell Angel is excited, but not the agitated kind of excitement like after she takes her medication.

  I push aside the covers of my bed. “Where are we going?”

  She looks over her shoulder at me. “A holy place.”

  • • •

  We tiptoe out of the cell—Angel must have spent some time planning this, because somehow it’s unlocked—and walk up a set of stairs that end at a heavy metal door. It’s been propped open by a brick.

  “We have to be quiet,” Angel whispers. “If we wake any of the girls, Benny’ll have my balls.”

  She shoves her bulk into the door, and a warm breeze touches my face.

  We stand on the jail roof, a flat surface covered in popcorn-looking concrete that crunches beneath my shoes. Before us, Missoula stretches in a flat grid of lights, bisected by the slick black of the river. Red taillights twine through streets in an infinite swirl.

  “It’s perfect conditions to see the Perseid meteor showers.” She walks across the roof to sit on the edge, her legs dangling over the side. She tilts her head skyward.

  I duck instinctively when I see the first light flinging itself across the sky. A dozen more streak past in the first minute and, even though they are less brilliant than out in the forest, the way they have to fight through a gauze of light from the city, they still could almost be missiles crashing toward us.

  “Those are meteors,” she says. “They’re balls of rock that fling across the galaxy. The Earth’s atmosphere, it’s like this invisible cocoon. Millions of meteors hit the atm
osphere every day, but we’re protected.”

  “Why’d you bring me up here?” I ask.

  “It’s part of your education about the universe.”

  I shake my head.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  “The Prophet said the Community was covered in a bubble that God made, and these lights were bombs the Gentiles sent toward us.”

  “So? The people in olden times thought meteors were the tears of God. They needed something to explain it.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess people can’t be content without answers, even if they’re wrong. We’d rather have a lie than a question that we can never know the answer to.”

  I nod. “You know one thing the Prophet never answered? That nobody ever wondered about but me? People. What made us. Where we came from.”

  “But you know that already,” Angel says. “From the stars.”

  “What?”

  “Remember the Big Bang? Everything in the universe comes from stars. Before anything else existed, there were just stars. Stars are like ovens,” she says. “Inside, they’re cooking planets and asteroids, and when they explode, out spews all this, like, space vomit that’s been cooking all these years. And solar systems formed, and Earth formed, and algae and eventually oxygen. And small organisms evolved into big animals and after about a billion years we came out, so that’s your answer. We come from the stars.”

  “That’s impossible,” I say.

  “You’re only saying that because the idea that you exploded out of a star is scary.”

  “The Prophet said stars are God’s eyes.”

  She rolls her eyes. “And what did he say the sun was? A really, really big eyeball?”

  “Just . . . the sun. He didn’t talk about the sun.”

  “The sun is a star,” she says. “And every star is a sun, so far away from us they seem tiny.”

  In that moment, I feel the Prophet’s canvas ceiling lift away from my head, walls flying off me, and a pressure I’ve never put into words hisses somewhere at the back of my mind as the size of the universe assembles itself in my mind. If I close my eyes, I can see it, the endlessness beyond my ears, and knowing I’m only in a corner of that vastness doesn’t make me feel tiny. It is amazing that, though I am small and ungifted and barely educated, even I can appreciate the scale of the universe.