The Gates of Babylon

by Michael Wallace

  But it never came.

  Jacob had no idea how many bandits had died or suffered injury from Miriam’s infiltration and Krantz’s sniping, but that battle in front of the bridge had ended the siege of Colorado City. Nobody waited to ambush them from a boarded-over shop window or came tearing out of a house with assault rifles blazing. And when they headed back into the mountains, they passed through the darkened dunes without seeing a single vehicle.

  The caravan continued north for mile after mile. The snow slowed but continued to fall. By the time they rolled into Blister Creek at four in the morning, the roads were barely passable. In another hour it might have been too late.

  He arrived to find the valley occupied by army troops. But it was quiet. There was no violence. The people were in their houses, hunkered down, but not fighting against the overwhelming force that had invaded their town. A fight that would have led to terrible bloodshed.

  He knew even before they told him that Eliza was responsible for this small miracle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Jacob gave a curt nod to each of the elders of the Quorum of the Twelve as they entered the clearing in the sandstone maze. The men were dressed in everything from Sunday suits to overalls with work gloves. The late season sun made the towering rocks glow in shades of red and pink and melted the snow from last week’s storm, which ran in gleaming rivulets down sheer stone faces. Jacob turned his face to welcome the warmth. It felt like the glow of a fire from the other side of a cold room—almost, but not quite comforting.

  Elder Smoot arrived last, together with Elder Johnson. The two men leaned on canes, and at first glance they looked more or less the same age, each bent and stooped by the years. Never mind the Raymond Smoot who had galloped across the desert whooping up a war party; now that it was time to meet as a quorum, he was the same aged graybeard as his father-in-law. Wise, yes, but no threat. Never that.

  What a performance. And what a duplicitous, backstabbing actor. As Jacob ran through the man’s crimes, he could barely contain his fury.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Jacob said. “We have some things to work through, and this is as good a place as any to do it.”

  He kept the anger from his tone. For now. Let Smoot sit there in his sly way, thinking he was going to get away with it. Let him think that because he’d been physically released from his arrest, he was off the hook in every other way.

  Smoot straightened with a grimace. He glanced at the stone fins and domes that formed the natural meeting hall and sighed. “Not exactly the Holy of Holies, but it will do.”

  “The Holy of Holies is wherever this quorum meets,” Stephen Paul said.

  Smoot gave a dismissive grunt. Anger flashed over Stephen Paul’s face, but Jacob put a hand on his counselor’s forearm.

  Stephen Paul—Jacob’s senior apostle—had only returned from the cattle drive two hours earlier. He’d earned a good price and brought back mules, donkeys, and draft horses to work the farms in case they had to abandon their tractors for lack of fuel and parts. Jacob didn’t waste any time calling the meeting, and together with David, pried away from Miriam’s bedside, these two men now flanked their leader.

  Jacob would take no pleasure in what came next. He was not his father, who would crush with considerable relish those who transgressed the law of the community. Under other circumstances, he might have even overlooked Smoot’s defiance, given him some token punishment and tried to move on. Jacob couldn’t take that risk now.

  Stephen Paul opened the meeting with a prayer—end-of-the-world stuff, full of high-octane scriptural language, which was unusual for the man. But these were unusual times. He closed with a plea for God to smite their enemies with fire and brimstone.

  Jacob suppressed a wince of discomfort. After the amens, he said nothing for a long moment. The air was quiet except for the drip of melting snow.

  “Elder Smoot,” he said at last. “Do you know why we are here?”

  “Of course. To figure out how to rid the valley of our occupiers. To cleanse the temple.”

  His voice held plenty of bravado, but also a hint of discomfort. He wasn’t so self-deluded as that; he had to know that Jacob was furious.

  “Not yet,” Jacob answered.

  “The grain?” Johnson asked.

  “Also wrong.”

  These two things were critical, of course. The army was here to stay, and in greater force than the US Department of Agriculture ever threatened. Seventy soldiers, plus an armored personnel carrier that had arrived yesterday afternoon, and two remaining Black Hawk helicopters. General Lacroix’s men were scouting houses to billet an entire battalion. Several hundred men would occupy the valley, a force big enough to control the restive southern half of the state. No doubt the first step in establishing full martial law statewide.

  At least Fernie was safe and in contact. Somehow she’d escaped the refugee camp into the town of Green River itself, where she and the boys were hiding with a polygamist family. They were going to deliver the three of them to Panguitch this afternoon, and Jacob had already sent men in trucks north to retrieve them. He couldn’t wait to embrace them all when they arrived.

  Elder Smoot twisted his hands around his cane, which made a creaking sound. “Well?”

  “If my father were alive,” Jacob said, his voice calm, “and he had given clear instructions about who was to lead in his absence, and if he had come home to find—”

  “He wouldn’t have left a girl in charge.”

  “Do not interrupt, Elder Smoot.” Jacob stared back until he was sure Smoot wouldn’t answer. “How would he have responded?”

  Nobody answered, but the looks grew troubled. Phipps and Griggs edged away from Smoot.

  “Badly,” Stephen Paul supplied. “Very badly indeed.”

  Jacob lifted his voice. “Elder Raymond Elias Smoot, you are disfellowshipped as of this moment for the sin of disobedience.”

  Stunned silence greeted this pronouncement. No hearing, only punishment. It was out of Jacob’s character. The actions of a patriarch like Abraham Christianson, yes—but not his son.

  Jacob suffered no room for error. Blister Creek was under occupation and struggling to absorb dozens of newcomers from Colorado City, with their own loyalties and prejudices. Other refugees trickling in, even the injured bandit, laid up in the next room from Miriam.

  As for Miriam herself, she might take weeks to get back on her feet, and Jacob had not heard from Krantz and Trost in three days. It was all he could do to keep Eliza from rushing off to Las Vegas to search for her fiancé. For now he had convinced her to trust that Krantz and Trost were law officers, and there was an FBI office in the city. They could take care of themselves.

  But the absences and injuries left Jacob weak. He couldn’t leave Elder Smoot to spread his poison from within.

  “Disfellowshipped for how long?” Smoot managed through a tight, angry voice.

  “I’m not finished.”

  “There’s more?”

  Elder Johnson cleared his throat. “He wasn’t alone. Many of us agreed that a quick attack was the best course of action.”

  “The best course for killing hundreds of our own people,” Jacob said. “But I don’t intend to argue that point. Smoot isn’t on trial for bad judgment. He’s on trial for treason.”

  “Treason?” Smoot sputtered. “By what—who? You think because I argued with your sister, I would… No!”

  “What a coincidence that all this happened now. It was quiet in the valley all fall, and the moment I leave the USDA materializes at our silos with a bunch of grain trucks. And then, that same night, the military swoops in. My wife says Malloy was arrested when he arrived at Green River. The governor of the state happened to be there, too. What a coincidence.

  “I don’t begin to understand what is going on within the government,” Jacob continued after a moment to let these details sink in. “But only a handful of people knew that the spiritual and physical leadership of the valle
y would be gone. Unless you’re blaming the Women’s Council, the government could have only gotten its information from one of the men in this circle.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Smoot said.

  “Our women aren’t idiots, you know. Not your wives and daughters, and certainly not my sister. The first Eliza heard about this was before Chip Malloy loaded those grain trucks. You were already moving. That means you had advance information. And the reason for that is you were the one who spread it in the first place.” Jacob looked around the group. “Does anyone dispute this?”

  Nobody did. The men who had traveled with Stephen Paul on the cattle drive stared at Smoot in open rage, while the man’s closer family and friends looked worried for their own safety. Elder Johnson shook his head, his lined face suddenly ten years older—not just old, but ancient, like that of a man with a failing heart, close to death.

  “Raymond Smoot,” Jacob said. “In the name of Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Melchizedek priesthood, I excommunicate you from the Church of the Anointing. You will depart from Blister Creek within three days. You may take whatever possessions you can carry, and you may take whatever wives wish to follow you into permanent exile, together with their children. Thus sayeth the Lord.”

  Smoot fell to his knees. Two men hurried to his side, but he cried them off. “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!”

  “Brother Jacob,” Elder Johnson said, his voice trembling.

  Jacob’s heart ached, and he wanted to throw this thing away, this leadership he’d never asked for nor desired. Put his own family in the car and drive away. Whatever fate awaited him in the outside world, it would be easier to face than this.

  “Brother Jacob,” Johnson said again.

  Jacob lifted his gaze from Smoot. “Elder?”

  “It wasn’t Smoot. It was me.”

  Men gasped. Confusion on their faces. Stephen Paul let out a shout of anger.

  “You?” Jacob said when it had quieted down. He was reeling.

  “Me. May the Lord have mercy, I was the one who caused this.” Now it was Elder Johnson who wobbled, and two men grabbed his elbows to keep him from falling.

  Jacob kept his voice calm. “Please explain, Elder.”

  “You know that the McKay brothers come from a family raised in the principal. Your father’s cousin, and mine, too. I thought they might have sympathy, and since the state government has contacts for selling grain…”

  Sympathy? The McKay brothers? Jacob clenched his eyes shut. Those men had driven him from his job at the hospital and had put Fernie and the children in the street. They despised their polygamist cousins as an embarrassment that they wished would disappear.

  “I didn’t know this would happen,” Johnson continued. “If I had, I never would have said anything to Parley McKay. This I swear on my temple covenants. But since you have proclaimed your judgment on my son-in-law and his family…” He swallowed hard. “… it is only fair that you excommunicate me instead. Or at least, lay the same punishment on my shoulders. I’ll go with them.”

  Could Jacob do it? Send the old man into the lone and dreary world as it balanced on the edge of the precipice? It was a terrible blow for Elder Smoot; for Johnson it was a death sentence. And for what, a lapse in judgment?

  “I accept my part in this matter,” Smoot said, rising at last to his feet and brushing the sand from his palms and his pants. “When Elder Johnson told me, when I realized what was happening, I pushed him into the rest of it. I thought it was the only way. They were going to steal our supplies. I was only trying to sell it first, before the government took it. So it wouldn’t be a complete loss.” He bowed his head.

  “So you told the McKays,” Jacob said. “Who have contact with the military. Possibly the smugglers, too.”

  “Yes, I understand that now.” Smoot looked up. His face was pale, but his voice grew stronger as he continued. “I’ll leave Blister Creek, but don’t make my family to suffer. And Elder Johnson acted without malice. Please forgive him. He made a mistake, nothing more.”

  “Maybe he’s not the only one,” Jacob said slowly, aware that some of his words would be taken for weakness by these men, not strength. He swallowed hard. “Maybe I should have waited until I had all the information before giving my verdict.”

  “Don’t fool yourself,” David said. “These two only confessed because you gave it. And how do you know they’re telling the truth anyway?”

  “I don’t, not entirely. If I had half the faith of my wife, I’d trust my judgment more. Obviously, I make mistakes, and I might be making another one now. There will be no excommunications.”

  Stephen Paul looked unhappy with the reversal, as did Griggs and Coombs. They didn’t need factions; they needed to pull in one direction. Now more than ever. And Smoot and Johnson couldn’t skip out of here thinking they’d gotten away with something.

  Jacob looked over the two guilty men, neither of whom met his gaze. “But you have still sinned, brothers. You resisted my wishes and the will of this quorum. Your disobedience to Eliza and the Women’s Council almost cost us our lives. You will not raise arms against the government until you hear the command from my own lips.

  “Elder Garrison Nathaniel Johnson,” he continued, “you will join Elder Smoot in disfellowship. For ninety days, neither of you shall partake of the sacrament, you shall not pray in public, and you shall have no vote in this quorum. You shall not give priesthood blessings. And,” Jacob added, putting his own spin on the disfellowshipping, even if this meant throwing the punishment in their faces, “your senior wives shall preside over your families. If these terms are not acceptable, you shall leave the valley in three days, never to return. If you accept your punishment, bow your heads and assent.”

  “Thou sayest,” Elder Johnson said at once.

  Smoot hesitated a moment longer. His voice came out thin, reluctant. “Thou sayest.”

  But as they looked up, relief showed on their faces. These men believed Jacob held the keys of the Kingdom of God on heaven and earth. He could have shaken off the dust of his feet and condemned them to spend the eternities in Outer Darkness.

  Jacob was studying the men, wondering if that would end their rebellion, when a woman’s voice called through the thin desert air.

  “Jacob! Where are you? Jacob!”

  “Over here!”

  “Where?”

  The nearest stone fin rose from the sand in a gradual slope, and Jacob climbed up with his hands and his feet until he could see across the maze of columns, mounds, and fins toward the temple, a few hundred yards away. Sunlight glinted off the gold-leafed angel, and the upper story gleamed white against the red and orange sandstone that stretched up to its back walls. From this vantage, it was easy to forget that the army was bunkering itself in and around the building, desecrating it from its sacred purposes.

  He spotted Eliza picking her way through the sandstone maze and waved until she saw him. She disappeared into the gap between two slender fins and emerged in the clearing moments later, panting as Jacob climbed down to greet her. Wet sand clung to her shoes and dirtied the hem of her dress.

  “You have to come,” she said. “Hurry.”

  “Is it Miriam?” David asked, voice afraid. “Is she okay?”

  “Not her. She’s fine.” Eliza paused to catch her breath, chest heaving. “It’s our cousin.”

  “Alfred?” Jacob said.

  “We were laying out his wives for the funeral and he flipped out.” She took in another deep breath. “He locked himself in the motor home and he’s screaming about his murderers, the desecration of the temple. The end of the world. I think he’s going to kill himself. And his kids are with him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Alfred’s Winnebago was no longer parked in front of the Christianson house when Jacob arrived on foot, but fortunately, one of his father’s widows had spotted it peeling away and then circling back in front of the house a few minutes later. She pointed him south and he
located the motor home on Third West, idling in a vacant lot a few blocks from the quarantined street in front of the temple. The vehicle sat still, its engine knocking.

  Jacob’s heart pounded from his run and the fear that he’d arrived too late. Then a curtain parted on the side window and a bearded face appeared momentarily.

  “Alfred!” Jacob tried the doors on that side. Locked. “Open up, we need to talk.”

  Eliza came running up, gasping for air. Already tired from racing out to Witch’s Warts to find him, she hadn’t been able to keep up.

  “Is he—?”

  “Still alive,” Jacob said. “You’re sure the kids are in there?”

  “Last I saw them. He came into the house looking for you and then loaded up the kids and locked the doors. That’s when I heard him screaming. You have to do something. He was talking about dying, about standing before the judgment bar.”

  Jacob tried again. “Alfred! Open this door.”

  Alfred’s voice sounded on the other end of the door in a thin, almost strangled tone. “Both of them, Jacob. Hung like thieves.”

  “Let your kids out, and we’ll talk,” Jacob said.

  “This world is too cruel for children. Imagine the pain in their young lives. The death. The hunger. Terror when the world goes up in flames.”

  “Alfred, you listen to me,” Eliza said. “Jacob is a doctor. He needs to see your children and make sure they’re okay. Open the door right now.”

  “I would never harm them. Is that what you think?” He sounded hurt at the suggestion.

  “Of course not,” Jacob said. “You love them. You’d never do that.”

  “And you trust in the Lord, right?” Eliza added. “If He brought them to the earth, He must have a reason.”

  “That’s right,” Jacob said. “It wasn’t to die now.”

  “No, I suppose not. Did you mean what you said before? If anything happened to me?”

  “Of course I did,” Jacob said. “But nothing is going to happen. You will bury your wives and you will grieve, but then you will continue to live. You will raise your children and you will join our community and help it survive. That is what saints do, Alfred.”