The Gates of Babylon

by Michael Wallace

  Fernie finished lathering her hair and tilted her head back while Eliza took the scooper from the hook on the wall and poured water from it over her head, like rinsing shampoo from the hair of a small child, except there was so much more of it, and the bather in this case did not whine and carry on about water and shampoo in her eyes.

  When Eliza finished, Fernie wiped water from her face and wrung out her hair. “And you don’t think you should wait until Jacob gets to Las Vegas where you can reach him on the cell?”

  “He won’t get there until tomorrow night, at best. The next day, Jacob comes home. If Smoot is going to pull something, it has to be soon.”

  “So you’re going to confront Elder Smoot tonight.”

  “That’s my plan.”

  “That’s not a plan,” Fernie said, “that’s a goal. A plan is knock on his door and refuse to leave, or trick your way inside before he comes in for supper and then pull a gun.”

  “Pull a gun?” she said with a smile. “Who do you think I am, Miriam?”

  “How about a metaphorical gun?”

  “Go on.”

  “Have you read Grandma Cowley’s diaries?” Fernie asked.

  “I have. Can’t make sense of them yet.”

  “There’s a lesson for you there.”

  Was there?

  The diaries chronicled Henrietta Rebecca Cowley’s memories of the blood-soaked founding of Blister Creek. The women sent into the wilderness, and the men who came after them to take control of everything they’d built. The conflict between the men and women had culminated in the murder of one of Grandma Cowley’s closest friends and a century and a quarter of patriarchal domination of the town. Loosening, finally, but not yet ended.

  Eliza said, “She wasn’t ruthless enough. Is that what you’re saying? I’m not ruthless either.”

  “Aren’t you? You killed Gideon and Caleb Kimball. With your bare hands.”

  “Hardly my bare hands. Anyway, I was fighting for my life. I’m not going to grab a hunk of sandstone and brain Elder Smoot because he’s a stubborn old jackass.”

  “You won’t have to. You only have to show you’re willing.”

  Eliza stared at Fernie, surprised. Her half sister was tough in a frontier way, and strong enough to be married to Jacob without getting dominated by his strong personality. But she was also the type to nurse a sick dog back to health and look away when the time came to chop the head off a chicken. This talk of violence was out of character.

  “I’m not saying it will come to that,” Fernie added. “Elder Smoot is no Kimball. He won’t come after us, not like that. But he’s a man. And even the best man will dominate a woman if given a chance.”

  “Even Jacob?”

  “He’s fighting against his birthright. He knows it’s wrong, and he tries to do the right thing but… yes, even Jacob.”

  “You’re selling men short. Some men aren’t like that. David isn’t.”

  “The ones who aren’t get driven out by the rest of the pack. Like David. We had to drag him back, remember?” Fernie cocked her head. “Sounds like kids are lining up for their baths. Now tell me, what are you going to do to confront Elder Smoot that Grandma Cowley couldn’t manage with Jedediah Kimball?”

  Eliza thought about her great-great grandmother, in Witch’s Warts, standing over the murdered body of her friend. The other women abandoned her. They didn’t stand together.

  “Okay,” Eliza said. “Now I have a plan.”

  “Good.”

  Eliza grabbed a clean towel and tossed it over her shoulder, but didn’t pull the plug on the bath. Half a dozen kids would bathe in this water before it turned tepid. They were on a slow crawl back to the nineteenth century, and one of the first things to go was fresh bathwater for everyone.

  Fernie grabbed the bar on the wall and strained to lift herself from the chair into a standing position. When she was up, she threw her arms around Eliza’s neck and the two women struggled to get Fernie over the edge of the tub and into another semi-standing position, while Eliza toweled her off and then helped her into the wheelchair to get dressed.

  “Let’s hear it,” Fernie said as Eliza pulled undergarments over stiff feet and legs.

  “We accompany Sister Lillian to her family compound for supper tonight. We’ll confront Elder Smoot there. Together. All I have to do is wangle an invitation to dinner.”

  “Oh, is that all? Can I ask how?”

  “We’re going to give that man what every good patriarch needs—a husband for his daughter and the promise of more grandchildren.”

  “Good,” Fernie said. “That’s perfect. And does this lucky gentleman exist, or did you make that up?”

  “He exists.”

  “And does he know he’s about to get another wife?”

  “Probably not,” Eliza said with a smile. “But the minute he gets back, I promise I’ll tell David of his sacrifice for the greater good.”

  “David?” Fernie snorted. “I’ll volunteer to talk to David. No problem. You can deal with Miriam.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  After miles of driving through southern Utah and seeing nobody but mule deer and jackrabbits, Jacob was surprised when they came upon a man next to a motorcycle at the shoulder of the road. They were passing through a stretch of coral pink sand dunes, rimmed by clumps of rabbit brush waving in the wind. The man wore a leather jacket with no helmet and stood to the side as if he’d pulled over to relieve himself.

  Jacob slowed, both cautious and curious. As they approached, the man jumped on the motorcycle and peeled out, his back tire spitting pebbles and kicking up a cloud of dust. He tore off south along the highway.

  “What was that about?” David asked.

  “You don’t usually think of FLDS riding street bikes,” Officer Trost said from the backseat.

  “I could be wrong,” Jacob said, “but I don’t think he was from Colorado City.”

  “That’s where he was headed,” Trost said.

  Krantz pulled up next to them in the flatbed truck and he and Miriam gave questioning looks. Jacob gestured forward at the open road, stretching across the desert through the dunes like the mark of a grease pen on a pink sheet of paper. Let’s go.

  Ten minutes later they spotted a camper truck by the side of the road. A man leaned out when they passed, staring hard. Jacob glanced in the rearview mirror after they went by. The man was speaking on a handheld radio.

  “How about that guy?” Trost said. “Polygamist or no?”

  “I can’t tell,” Jacob said. A gnawing worry settled into his gut. “I might be wrong about the motorcycle rider. Maybe they’re scouts.”

  “Just what we need,” David said. “A welcome party.”

  “I hope not,” Jacob said. “With any luck, people will come onto the sidewalk to stare. Maybe we’ll see a few hotheads with rifles, giving us menacing glares. But no trouble. Trost, you mind putting on your jacket until we’re through town?”

  “I guess,” he said, tone questioning.

  “The FLDS wear long garments, like we do. Rather have them think you’re one of us, and not a Salt Lake Mormon. Might save us some trouble.”

  The wind kicked up as they continued south. Pink sand sifted over the highway. Farther on, the dunes approached the road itself, slumping over dry washes and creeping onto the shoulder. One of the larger, hungrier dunes had already devoured the left lane, and behind its shoulder lay a dozen smaller companions, each ten feet high and curved on the leeward side like enormous sandy waves, poised as if waiting for the final call to attack. If someone didn’t clear the highway, it would soon disappear beneath a sandy sea.

  They saw no one else until they left the dunes and approached the ranches that surrounded Colorado City. A pickup truck drove parallel to the highway for a stretch, trailing a cloud of dust. Three men sat in the truck bed carrying assault rifles.

  Colorado City lay in a beautiful green valley, rimmed by pink desert cliffs, and ringed by a patchwork of fields
. The houses were larger than in Blister Creek, with multiple wings and often surrounded by trailers, campers on cinderblock, and other temporary structures to house the constantly growing number of wives and children.

  “Look to your left,” Trost said.

  Several men flanked the road, armed with rifles. No question this time—the beards, long-sleeved shirts, and even the way they carried themselves made it clear they were locals. They gave hostile stares at the vehicles. A man on a horse waited until they drove by and then galloped off down a side road at full speed. He lifted his rifle as he rode and fired a single shot into the air. Like a signal.

  David twisted to watch the rider. “I changed my mind. Is the freeway option still on the table?”

  “If we turn around now,” Jacob said, “we’ll be spending the night in those dunes. With men looking for us.”

  It had been years since Jacob had passed through Colorado City, and in that time, the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint church had been in turmoil, with the arrest of their leader for underage marriage, mass defections, and the building of a second community in Texas, with a new temple. All end-of-the-world stuff that Jacob had dismissed as paranoia.

  But the thing he remembered were all the women on the sidewalk, in their prairie dresses, their hair in sausage curls and double braids. And children everywhere, staring. Not this afternoon. The streets were deserted, not even clean, but with papers flapping in the wind. A doll in a gutter. A book with its spine up. A picket fence tilted in front of one house, with tumbleweeds so high they were spilling over the other side. A pile of garbage sacks sat on the side of one street, ten feet across at the base and five feet high. A skinny dog looked up from worrying at the bones of a chicken carcass that stuck out through one of the many holes in the bags. The sour stink of rotting food and maggots penetrated the truck as they passed.

  A huge compound sat gutted by fire on that side of the road. Two standing walls bookended either side, braced by brick chimneys, but the roof had collapsed, and one wing had burned to the foundation.

  The house on the next block had burned as well, together with a pair of trailers. Other houses, now that Jacob was paying attention, looked deserted. A dead horse lay in the middle of the road one street down.

  “I guess they evacuated more people than I thought,” Trost said.

  “But what about the riders?” Jacob said. “There are people around. So where are they?”

  “I don’t know about you,” David said, “but I’m comfortable with a little mystery. Let’s get out of here.”

  Only one problem with that. Someone had pulled down most of the street signs, especially the ones that would direct them through Colorado City and onto Colorado Route 30, which would take them west across the desert toward Mesquite, Nevada. Jacob hesitated at a stop sign and tried to dig up old memories.

  “Take a left, maybe?” David said. “That road is pretty wide—bet that gets out of town.” He spread out the road map on the dash.

  Jacob glanced at the map. It didn’t have enough detail to see individual roads in the town. “We don’t want to get on 389. We’ll end up back in Utah, except two hours farther east.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t sit here idling.”

  Jacob took a right, with Krantz and Miriam still following in the flatbed.

  But they hadn’t gone two blocks when they confronted a barricade of overturned sofas, dirty mattresses, even a burned-out car, stretched across and blocking the road. Jacob stopped, confused. Krantz jumped out of the truck behind them and jogged up to the driver’s side.

  “Take it one more block and we can get through,” Krantz said. “I’m pretty sure, anyway.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “Once, yeah. Scoped it out with Agent Fayer for the cult task force. Want me to lead?”

  “No, let me go first. In case we run into anyone, it’s better if I do the talking.”

  They set off again, making a U-turn, continuing to the next block, where they took another right. Krantz was right. The road opened up, straight and clear for several blocks, before a thin ribbon of blacktop stretched ahead of them into the desert. He accelerated.

  Half a dozen figures flanked the next block, armed with rifles. A horse with a rider trotted around the side of a house before Jacob and Krantz could close the distance in their trucks, and moved to block off the road. More men came running out of the house itself. They poured into the road and pointed weapons.

  “Throw it in reverse,” David said. “Get us out of here, quick.”

  But a glance in the rearview mirror showed more men jogging into the street after them. There were at least fifteen now, most on foot, and as many rifles aimed at the two trucks. Jacob came to a stop. Krantz did the same.

  The lone rider came up to Jacob’s window and slid from the saddle. He eased himself up to Jacob’s window with a wary look, like a man approaching a bear with his foot in a trap, caught, but still dangerous.

  “Easy,” Jacob told David and Trost. “Stay calm. No panic, no threatening moves.”

  He glanced at the other truck and silently cast the same thoughts toward Miriam. Don’t draw. For heaven’s sake, leave your gun alone.

  Jacob rolled down the window and had a start as he recognized the man. Alfred Christianson. His cousin, through Uncle Heber. A feud in the family had left them estranged for the past twenty years. The Heber Christianson family had eventually joined up with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

  Alfred leaned down and rested his arms on the open window and looked in at the three men. “You walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, my friends.”

  There was something strange in his tone and on his face. His eyes were wide and unfocused, with that peculiar slack-faced look of a man sedated with narcotics. But his tone was almost manic, like someone caught up in a manifestation of the spirit.

  “Alfred,” Jacob said cautiously. “It’s me, your cousin.”

  The other man stared, but gradually his eyes focused on Jacob’s face. He pulled back with a frown that slowly dissolved into a wolfish smile. “So it is. Jacob Christianson graces us with his glorious presence.”

  “We’re passing through, Alfred. That’s all. Pull your men back and we’ll be gone.”

  “Passing through. The prophet of the Last Days. The One Mighty and Strong. The Lord’s own anointed. ‘And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.’”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but—”

  Alfred cocked his head. “You have seen what we’ve built and you want to take the lot of it.”

  “I have no interest in the FLDS. The freeway isn’t safe, and I need to get to Las Vegas. I figured I’d be safe among my own people.” Jacob nodded toward the burned-out house to his right. “I didn’t know you were fighting your own problems, or I might have tried a different route.”

  “Difficult times, aren’t they? The coming of the Great and Dreadful Day is upon us. The name of the star is Wormwood.”

  “Please. We’re in a hurry.”

  “A hurry to get yourself killed?” Alfred’s voice hardened and he jabbed his finger through the open window at Jacob’s face. “Why don’t you listen for a minute, Brother Jacob? Unless you’re in a hurry to meet your maker.”

  Jacob fell silent.

  “You prepare all your life,” Alfred said. “Study the scriptures, pray for guidance. Set aside the surplus and covenant to build the kingdom, to defend the righteous and destroy the wicked. But then, when the end comes, you find yourself unprepared. And then the time comes when the ravening wolves come for your family. To tear out their throats and feast on their hearts.”

  What was he going on about? Jacob hadn’t given two thoughts to the FLDS—he had plenty of troubles in Blister Creek without throwing himself into someone else’s religious-induced hysteria.


  Alfred looked and sounded like Jacob’s father. He probably looked a lot like Jacob, too, if it were possible to take a step back and look critically in the mirror. Heber and Abraham Christianson had shared a mother, as well as a father, and Alfred’s mother and Jacob’s mother had been first cousins as well. That made this man practically a brother, genetically.

  “I’m listening,” Jacob said. “But you’re not making much sense.”

  “I prayed for this,” Alfred said. “And the Lord has delivered Jacob Christianson. Truly, He is wise and merciful.”

  David made a sound from the backseat that sounded like a worried groan, choked off when Alfred turned toward him with a scowl.

  Jacob said, “Clear the road, Alfred. I don’t want trouble.”

  Alfred looked back at Jacob and blinked. “You don’t? Then why are you here?” The man took a step back. “Get out of the car. Now.”

  Not much choice in the matter, from the looks of it. Alfred had the men, the guns, and a look in his eye that was reminiscent of the look carried by Jacob’s father last summer, when contemplating the Kimballs’ attack on Blister Creek. A man prepared for violent confrontation who has finally found it.

  He turned off the truck and started to get out. David and Officer Trost opened their doors, too.

  “No,” Alfred said, voice hard. “The rest of you stay behind. I’m only interested in this one.”

  Jacob kept his hands clear as he stepped out of the pickup. Men with rifles fell in behind him, separating him from the two trucks.

  The sun fell on the western horizon, and the decreased angle lent the barest warmth. To the north and east, clouds grew thicker and darker, and above the cliffs they cast streaks toward the ground, like shafts of sunlight, but black. The air rumbled with distant thunder.

  Alfred stepped up to Jacob, eyes fixed on Jacob’s face, but vacant somehow, as if he were looking at something in the distance. Dirt streaked his cheeks above his beard and his body odor was so strong it made Jacob’s eyes water.

  “Alfred, listen to me,” Jacob said.

  “Keep walking. Your death is down this road.”