The 19th Wife Page 10

  H.G.—Can you tell us, are you a Christian?

  J.S.—Yes. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ fully. He is our Savior. We pray to him. We know he suffered on our behalf. He is at the center of all we believe.

  H.G.—Then who are you?

  J.S.—I am Joseph Smith Junior, son of Joseph Smith Senior and Lucy Mack Smith, and husband to Emma Hale Smith.

  H.G.—Theologically speaking, who are you to this religion?

  J.S.—I am the Prophet. The Lord has revealed many truths for man through me.

  H.G.—What truths?

  J.S.—He has restored the Gospel.

  H.G.—The Book of Mormon?

  J.S.—That’s correct.

  H.G.—Many people say it’s a feeble imitation of the Bible.

  J.S.—Have you read it?

  H.G.—I must confess, I’ve given it a go a few times and couldn’t make heads or tails.

  J.S.—You didn’t finish it, then?

  H.G.—I did not.

  J.S.—You strike me as a just man, so may I ask that you refrain from dismissing it before you’ve read it all the way through?

  H.G.—Fair enough. What do you say to people who don’t believe we live in a time of Prophets and revelations? That the days of mystical events belonged to the ancients?

  J.S.—I say, Look around. Tell me why the Lord should stop communicating with man now? Aren’t we in need of His word more so than ever? Why would He reserve His right to speak to man solely in ancient times?

  H.G.—For some it’s difficult, even impossible, to believe the stories of an angel in the woods, and the golden plates buried in the hills, and the other myths of your creed’s origins.

  J.S.—If they can believe Christ rose from His grave, I do not understand why they can’t believe the fact of plates of gold.

  H.G.—Very well. You are also the political leader of Nauvoo. Is this perhaps an instance of Church and State being one?

  J.S.—It is.

  H.G.—And yet we have a tradition of separating the two. Christ himself called upon separating that which was Caesar’s from all things spiritual. Why should Americans accept your arrangement here?

  J.S.—If the people of Nauvoo can accept it, the American people should do so as well. Show me the harm it is to them.

  H.G.—What is your position on slavery?

  J.S.—We believe slavery even more morally corrosive to the owner than to the enslaved.

  H.G.—There is a group called the Danites, also called Destroying Angels, which is known as a militia, violent in its mission, and commanded by you, similar to Rome’s Praetorian Guard. Can you tell the American people who they are and what they do?

  J.S.—You astound me with your vivid tales. I have never heard of this group, nor do I lead any private bands. Tell me, where do these stories come from?

  H.G.—Your enemies have depicted the Danites as a secret police authorized to destroy those who speak out against you.

  J.S.—Think of your source: My enemies can be expected to depict such things.

  H.G.—Not only your enemies, independent observers, too.

  J.S.—Show me an independent observer. I would like to meet such a rare creature.

  H.G.—You’re denying such a group exists?

  J.S.—I ask you this: Nearly five years ago, a group of Saints was massacred at Haun’s Mill by government sanction. A ten-year-old boy lost the top of his head to the Governor’s militia. What was our response? Fury? Destruction? Revenge? No, we responded with grief and mercy, as Christ has taught us. If I employed a secret militia, shouldn’t I have called them out to avenge that boy’s death?

  [At this point, the interview was interrupted by Chauncey Webb, a leading wainwright in Nauvoo. His business pulled Smith away for some ten minutes. Upon his return, Smith apologized and explained the interruption.]

  J.S.—Brother Chauncey, my good friend who was just here, has brought news of the arrival of a caravan of Saints. Their wagons have pulled in from the coast of Maine.

  H.G.—Fresh converts?

  J.S.—Yes, and new friends.

  H.G.—Your Church is expanding rather rapidly.

  J.S.—If it does so, it is thanks to the power of God and the Truth of His word.

  H.G.—Yet isn’t there another reason? For nearly as long as your Church has existed, rumors of polygamy have surrounded it. Can you tell us once and for all, do you practice polygamy?

  J.S.—We do not.

  H.G.—Are there exceptions?

  J.S.—Our enemies create the exceptions in the mind of the public. That does not make them true.

  H.G.—Do you have any idea why these rumors persist?

  J.S.—We seek to practice our religion freely. In the history of man, those who have sought religious freedom have been persecuted, maligned, and, if they are not careful, destroyed. We are no different than the early Christians in the Emperors’ Rome. And yet, this country was founded on religious tolerance. And so it should be.

  H.G.—I have been told you have at least twenty wives.

  J.S.—Sir, my house is just up the street. You are free to search it. Let’s go there now! If you find these twenty wives, please inform me.

  H.G.—Sir, can you assure the general public that the Latter-day Saints do not practice plural marriage, never have practiced it, and never will practice it?

  J.S.—I can assure you.

  B.Y.—If I may interrupt.

  J.S.—Of course.

  B.Y.—Sir, why not ask our wives? Mrs. Smith, or my Mrs. Young, will gladly tell you about their households.

  H.G.—Thank you, I wouldn’t want to disturb them.

  J.S.—I would think my Emma would have something to say if I came home with twenty women.

  H.G.—Yes, I should say. So let’s leave it at that, shall we? One last question: What is in your future?

  J.S.—Peace, I should hope, to pursue our beliefs. In my heart I believe our countrymen deem this our right—for all Americans must be free.

  AN EYE IN THE DARK

  When I got back to St. George I bought a ticket for whatever was playing in the cineplex’s Theater 8. I walked down the aisle to the front of the theater, folding a piece of paper into a little wedge. I opened the fire door and propped the lock with the wedge of paper. After fetching Elektra from the van, we slipped back into the theater. She seemed to know something was up because she came along silently, staying close to my side. I sat in the second row against the wall, and Elektra curled up at my feet. The movie was about a pair of detectives, one black and one white. They’re not supposed to get along, but they actually like each other and they go on to catch a jewelry thief who has some connection to international terrorism, and then it turns out the black guy’s Muslim and the white guy’s a Jew. I know: what? Then I fell asleep.

  I woke up, slowly remembering where I was. Elektra was asleep on my feet. The movie was ending, the credits rolling up the screen. But the theater looked emptier than before.

  “Wow,” a voice said from behind. “You must’ve been wiped.”

  When I turned around I couldn’t see anything but an eye gleaming in the dark.

  “You slept through the movie twice.”

  “What time is it?” And then, “Who are you?”

  “Johnny Drury.” He said it like we knew each other.

  “How long’ve you been here?”

  “A lot longer than you.” The house lights were coming up, and now I could see the guy. He looked like every kid in Utah: blondish, blue, a splash of freckles. “This place is closing,” he said.

  “Closing?”

  “Dude, it’s almost one in the morning.”

  I turned on my phone. The kid was right.

  “Do you have a dog with you?”

  “Look, I have to go.”

  “Me too!”

  The kid followed me up the aisle. Now that we were standing, I could see he really was a kid, twelve or thirteen, a late bloomer, just this side of puberty. His turquoise musc
le T showed wiry but strong kid-arms. The lobby was empty except for a heavy girl in a black-and-buff cineplex uniform vacuuming popcorn from the carpet. “Can’t have a dog in here,” she said, but you could tell she didn’t care.

  Outside it was still hot in the parking lot, the asphalt throwing back the heat. “Look, I’m leaving,” I said.

  “Yeah, same here.” He had one of those kid voices that goes high and low and back again in one sentence. “How about a lift?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Well, you see, right now I’m sort of in between places.” He said it so smoothly, I figured he’d picked up that line from someone else. He followed me to the van, staying real close. He came up to about my chest, and I bet he didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. “Nice van,” he said, touching the pom-pom on the side. The truth is, it’s a piece of shit and no one ever says anything about it except, that thing really run?

  “I can drop you on St. George Avenue, but that’s it.”

  “Awesome.” He didn’t wait for me: he crawled across the driver’s seat to the passenger side and started bouncing in the seat. “This is the phattest van I’ve ever seen.”

  “Put your seat belt on.”

  “Where’d you say you were going?”

  “Just tell me where on St. George you want me to drop you.”

  “Here’s the thing.” He forced his voice down an octave. “I wouldn’t mind staying with you for the night. Just one night. That’s all.” He was talking in a voice he must’ve picked up from the movie. “But no funny business, you know what I’m saying?” He thought this was especially funny, slapping his thigh and throwing his head back in laughter, like a little kid watching a cartoon.

  But this was my van and I wasn’t going to be insulted by a kid. “No, I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “You know. I’m no fag.” More of the cartoon laugh.

  “I am.”

  The kid stopped. He looked at me with big, no-shit eyes. Then he smiled. “I get it. Very funny. You had me for a second. Ha-ha.” He stopped. “Wait a minute, you telling me you’re a homo?”

  “Only because you brought it up.”

  He whipped a three-inch kitchen knife out of his pants and pointed it at my chest. “You touch me and I kill you.”

  I knew he wasn’t serious. In one slow gesture I took the knife from the kid. “What’re you doing with this?”

  “Protecting myself from pervos like you.”

  “Get out of my van.”

  “Fucking faggot.” He unclicked his seat belt and pushed open the door and slid a leg out. He was so small his foot dangled several feet above the asphalt. But he didn’t jump.

  “Get out.”

  “Fuck you.” The thing is, he said this almost tenderly. He stayed in the seat, his face all broken up. “I thought you were cool.”

  “You’re the one who’s not being cool.”

  He moved a little closer to the edge of the seat but still didn’t jump. “Look, I’ll stay with you tonight, but you got to promise you won’t touch me.”

  “Kid, get out of my van.”

  “But why?”

  “Because you asked for a ride and now you’re calling me all sorts of names. I don’t put up with stuff like that anymore. That’s why I blew off this place a long time ago.”

  The kid slid his leg back into the van. “Wait a minute, you don’t live around here?”

  “Nope.”

  “What’re you doing here, then?”

  “Long story.”

  “You run away or something like that?” He closed the door and the overhead light went out.

  Then I figured it out. “Are you from where I think you’re from?” I said.

  “Yup.” He pulled his knees into his chest. “Was it hard making it on your own? I mean, look at you. You got a phone and a van. You’re rich.”

  “I’m not rich.”

  “To me you are.”

  “You said your name’s Johnny.”

  He nodded eagerly.

  “Want to get something to eat?”

  “Totally. But first, can I have my knife back?”

  Twenty minutes later we were outside the Chevron, eating a sack of microwaved burritos. “Now I know who you are,” said Johnny. “But remind me: why’d you get kicked out?”

  “I was caught alone with one of my stepsisters. What about you?”

  “I was listening to the Killers. It wasn’t even my disc, it was my brother’s. But they caught me. I don’t even like the Killers.”

  That wasn’t the real reason. They get rid of the boys to take away the competition. With no boys around, the old men have the girls to themselves. I handed Johnny the last burrito. “How’d you end up here?”

  “Two of the Apostles drove me in. Worst night of my life. I was crying my eyes out and they just sat up front and pretended like I wasn’t there. I kept asking why’re you doing this? I’m just a kid. How’m I going to live? But they wouldn’t even talk to me. I had to stare at their necks the whole way. I wanted to cut off their heads. If I had a better knife, I would’ve. You saw my blade, it’s pretty lame. Then they left me in the parking lot of the Pioneer Lodge.”

  “When was that?”

  “Six months ago.”

  “What’ve you been up to since?”

  “Hanging out. I stayed in one of the Butt Huts for a while, and then I went down to Vegas, but I didn’t really like it so I came back here.”

  “And the knife?”

  “It’s my mom’s. I took it from the kitchen. It’s the only thing of hers I got. See, she wrote her name on a piece of paper and taped it to the handle.” He showed it to me proudly. Tina, in a bad blue cursive. His mom probably wasn’t yet thirty.

  “Do me a favor and be careful with that.”

  After that we watched the cars pull in for gas and the people running inside for cigarettes and visine. “Isn’t your mom like in jail?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Everyone knows about that.”

  “She didn’t do it. Everyone thinks she did, but she didn’t.”

  Johnny was eating a bag of potato chips, tipping the remnants down his throat. “When I heard about what happened,” he said, “I wasn’t all that surprised. Things are weird out there right now. Something’s happening. There were all these rumors going around before I left.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “Like we were all moving to Texas or Mexico or something. And there was this stuff about your dad.”

  “What stuff?”

  “I don’t know. Just stuff like he was trying to take over from the Prophet. I don’t really know everything, but I just heard stuff like that. Other stuff too. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I heard he was killed.”

  I said nothing. Was the kid full of shit or did he know something? We hung around the Chevron for about a half hour until the manager told us we couldn’t loiter. He was nice about it, just said the cops watch the parking lot and we had to leave.

  I turned to Johnny. “Where to?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Let’s go out to Snow Canyon. I know this place we can park overnight. It should be cool there.”

  “OK, but no funny business.”

  “Get out.”

  “Kidding! I thought you gay guys were supposed to have a sense of humor.”

  We drove out on Highway 18. The road was dark, the only light from the moon and the stars. Johnny fell asleep, his head against the window and his mouth open. When I parked the van he rolled his head around, murmured, then went back to sleep. Like this, he really looked like a kid. It was hard to imagine anyone with a thump in his heart abandoning Johnny. I picked him up and laid him on the futon. I pulled a sheet over him and rolled up my sweatshirt for a pillow. I lay down behind him on my back with my arm behind my head. Elektra was curled up between us. I wasn’t tired, and for a long time I looked at the ceiling of the van. Johnny was snoring. Nothing loud, just a s
oft little chug. Kids don’t really make a racket when they sleep. I thought about what I would do in the morning. What did he know? I pondered it for a long time, then fell off into a shallow sleep.

  VI

  CELESTIAL MARRIAGE

  THE 19TH WIFE

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Doctrine of Celestial Marriage and the Death of Joseph Smith

  Now, having described the religious conversions of my mother, Elizabeth, and my father, Chauncey, and their unyielding allegiance to Joseph Smith; having depicted the horror of the massacre at Haun’s Mill and the long migration out of Missouri; having spilled perhaps too much ink describing the rise of Nauvoo, Illinois, and the peace the Saints found therein; having established all this for you, my Patient Reader, I shall move forward to the subject that no doubt first drew you to these pages: the doctrine of celestial marriage, otherwise known as polygamy.

  On the evening of June 6, 1844, Joseph visited my parents’ home in Nauvoo. He came bearing news. The Prophet stood before them in the keeping room, clearing his throat several times, making the Ah-hem sound familiar to anyone who knew him. (The skeptical Reader will ask, How does Mrs. Young know all this? To him I say, My mother has spoken of the Prophet’s visit to her home at least once a month for the past thirty years.)

  “I have received a new Revelation,” Joseph began.

  Elizabeth could not contain the excitement in her heart. For her, hearing a Revelation was all but the same as hearing the words of God.

  “The Lord has commanded us to expand the Kingdom,” Joseph explained.

  Chauncey asked, “Do you mean we’re leaving Nauvoo?” Ever practical, he did not want to abandon his wagonry yet again. He had done so twice before, in Ohio and Missouri; often he said he would not move a third time.

  “We’re here to stay,” said Joseph. “Nauvoo is our Zion. The Kingdom is to grow here.”

  It occurred to Elizabeth that Joseph had not heard her news. Hence she told him in September there would be a child. “If it’s a girl I’ll name her Ann Eliza,” she announced.

  “It’s a blessing,” said Joseph. “And now I must tell you the words of our Heavenly Father. He has commanded us to fill the Earth with Saints, to replenish the lands with the devout.” As Joseph spoke, a high whistling sound mingled with his words. The source was a missing tooth, an injury from a mob attack in Ohio many years before. The whistling rang out like a tiny, tiny bell.