The 19th Wife Read online

  When I entered my room, Jenetta stood at the mirror regarding herself. She wore a sort of sleeping gown that looked neither comfortable nor practical to sleep in. I asked if she wasn’t cold. She wrapped her long, lovely arms around my neck and said, “I won’t be.” What ensued was of the usual sort for this kind of encounter, but I must note for these efforts that Jenetta led the way, initiating me to more pleasure than I had ever imagined possible on Earth. She stayed with me for the night, a cost that left my limited traveling funds worrisomely depleted, but I had decided everything in my earthly possession was worth making these joys last until the dawn. By sunrise I could not face saying good-bye, and proposed that she join me on my journey.

  “To Ohio?” she laughed. “Oh critters, no. I got my husband right here with me.”

  “But Mrs. Mack said you lived with your gramps?”

  “That’s what I call my husband, he’s so old. He’ll be wanting his breakfast about now.” She sprang from the bed, dressed, and departed as efficiently as she had arrived; and I buried my face into the pillow to inhale her sweet odor; and, I am afraid, to weep.

  “Mrs. Mack,” I wailed, “the most horrible and wonderful thing has happened. I have fallen in love. I must see Jenetta again.”

  “That’s real nice, but I’ve heard it a thousand times before. Afraid you’ll never find it again, but you will, I promise, you will. Now shouldn’t you be on your way, Mr. Webb? Didn’t you say your mother’s waiting in Ohio? Thank you very much, dear, but get on, there you go, right now, good-bye!”

  She swept me over her threshold into her garden and shut the door. I stood in the sunlight, desperate and confused.

  Because I am an engineer and possess a mostly logical mind, and I like to believe I solve problems mostly through analysis and rigor, eventually I talked myself into passing through Mrs. Mack’s garden gate without once looking over my shoulder. Yet the head does not need to turn and the eyes need not gaze back for the heart to remain behind.

  It was with such longing that I arrived in Kirtland. On that first night my mother served a feast of ham hocks followed by angel pie. “In the morning, I’ll take you down to meet the Prophet and he’ll get you work in one of the manufactories. Why didn’t you eat all your pie? Go on, finish up. I baked it for you.”

  There is comfort in knowing that people remain the same.

  As it turns out, my mother had overstated the case. Indeed there was opportunity for a wheelwright, but Joseph had invited dozens of men to meet the demand. I took a job in one of his wagon manufactories as a junior apprentice, earning less than I had in Hanover. “At least you’re near me,” my mother sighed in a great show of maternal care.

  On Sundays, with little else to do, I accompanied her to services led by the Prophet, although I was still not a member of the Latter-day Saints. I remained skeptical, but Joseph had a presence unlike most men, with eyes wide and blue, and the stature of a man who knows his place in history. I did not have to attend more than one Sunday meeting to know the command he possessed over his followers. If he were not a Christian, he might very well have been a sorcerer—so capable of casting a spell he was.

  “Look around!” he said one Sunday. “Look around and tell me what you see. Do you see gambling, drinking, swindling, the whoring that goes on throughout our country? Do you see the sin that walks down the street dressed as proud gentleman in top hat and dear sweet lady in her flimsy dress? Do you? Because that is not what I see. No, I see on those dirty streets those things that are missing—compassion, caring, love. When I look around I see neighbor ignoring neighbor, man snubbing wife, child abandoning parent. This is the Great Apostasy. For Christ taught us to love and so it has come to pass that He has returned in Revelation to restore love to our Earth. Such is the truth as I know it, as He has revealed it to me.”

  I had lived in Kirtland about four months when I came to accept that my future lay with Joseph and his Church. Despite my mother’s high standing among the ladies who organized Kirtland society and its circles, I was merely a Gentile laborer. They would employ me as long as there was work that would otherwise go undone, but I could see a time in the future when there would be enough Saints to meet their wagonry needs. Joseph ruled Kirtland like a theocracy, and there was a firm strata of citizenship based on faith. The very best of the Gentiles were owed less than the very worst of the Saints. Thus my resistance to Joseph Smith’s teachings began to erode. I respected his call to love; I responded more urgently to his call for able men.

  It was about this time, on a late summer afternoon in 1834, at a picnic on the bank of the Chagrin, that I met Elizabeth. She was running in a woman’s relay race with her leg tied to another girl’s. The prize was a plaque engraved with the winner’s name, the metalwork to be done by me. I stood at the end of the course, waiting for the winner to lean her breast triumphantly across the finishing ribbon, when I saw her for the first time. What struck me most was the difference between her and the women beside her. She appeared neither fair nor delicate, nor modest, nor full of wiles. The sun had tinged her complexion to the dark, delicious hue of an August peach. Her eyes were slow, cautious, and full of thought. I could see she was a young woman, yet she carried herself sturdily—her frame was forthright, solid, and full of honesty, and she seemed innocent of the many affectations and airs young women are known to produce and flaunt before a gathering of unmarried men. Elizabeth’s simple blue dress opened at the collar, giving me a memorable glimpse of warm, red-pink flesh. My first opinion of her was such that I recognized her as a woman who knows her own heart. Then, and now, nothing could appeal to me more in a friend.

  While I stared at her from across the field, Elizabeth was adjusting the rope that bound her leg to her partner—a plump, powdered girl sweating in the heat.

  At the crack of the pistol Elizabeth and Martha began to run like a strange, hobbled animal, their eyes shining through the summer haze. When Elizabeth looked ahead to the finish line our eyes met—and it was then that I knew. Everyone was jumping up and down in excitement, but not I. I stood very still, observing her. Just then, the two young women ran ahead of the others, breaking through the finishing ribbon with such propulsion they fell into my arms. After unmooring the girls, I found myself alone at Elizabeth’s side, unable to find any words. It was she who suggested we walk.

  We strolled into a field beyond the picnic. Along the way I found the courage to squeeze her arm. I led her to a felled tree carved with initials, brushing away the dirt. I wished I had a large house to welcome her into, a drawing-room with a winged chair and extra bedrooms waiting to be filled; in time I knew I would—perhaps with her help. I told her so. As afternoon gave way to dusk, and the mosquitoes rose from the grass, I held her. As the blue evening fluttered down upon the field, I kissed her. I did not intend to kiss her a second time, but I lost my way. I would like to say it was the force of Christ and Joseph Smith that brought us together, or some other mysterious, celestial reason, but, to follow my established rule of honesty, nothing more noble than desire, and the early, vibrant shoots of love, pushed us into the grass. Lying atop her, my heart pounding in motion with hers, I knew we would marry; I knew this one would not abandon me in the morn.

  We lay in the grass for some time. For a brief moment her expression became unknowable; it was as if she had left me, her mind off and away. “Tell me your thoughts,” I said.

  “You know nothing of me.”

  I said to her, “You know nothing of me.”

  Then we talked about the future, as if what had preceded us need not matter; as if, through the compounding force of our union, we could determine all that lay ahead. We shared our dreams—a loving marriage, children, lots of children, a large framed house, and a family name that only rose in the community of Saints.

  Elizabeth spoke of eternal salvation. She declared her love for Joseph Smith. As she spoke, the lantern of her face illuminated. “I’ve never loved anyone like Joseph. But there’s something you must kno
w.” She recounted her life before conversion, her voice clear of shame. When she finished her tale she asked if it troubled me. “Really,” I said, “your past is no different than mine.”

  “That’s not true. For you the past is past. For me, my past is with me, in my son, Gilbert.”

  “I want to meet him.” She set her cheek upon my breast, and I promised her I would love her child. “When can we marry?” I said.

  “I’m afraid we can’t.”

  I felt crushed, in the way Jenetta had crushed me. Desperately I asked why.

  “You’re not a Saint.” For Elizabeth, it was a simple matter. Yet I would do anything to possess her. I wanted her for myself, every night, for the rest of my days. Forgive my effusion—if a man is honest, he will understand.

  The next day Joseph baptized me at a bend in the Chagrin. As he held me beneath the current I cannot tell you that I felt something pass from him to me, as others have described it. They compare it to a bolt of lightning traveling through their frames—it is that sudden and powerful, a fury that can come only from God. For me, I felt nothing but the cold water and fingers of river grass upon my neck. That is all. The sensation was entirely of the Earth. In name, I was now a Saint. My motivations too were of the Earth—I wanted to marry; and I wanted to succeed. I believed in God and Christian goodness; of everything else I was less than sure. I am even less certain now, when I think back to all that has passed and the mistakes I have made. When I read again and again the outcome of my life, as my daughter has described it in The 19th Wife, I become unsure of almost everything—most especially of myself and my faith.

  Joseph and I returned to the river bank wet and shivering. Awaiting me were my mother, whose life, I could not know then, was about to end, and Elizabeth, golden in the sunlight. We would marry the next day, and she would be my sole wife for a dozen years. Had I been told that day I would take another wife in the future, and others still, I would have sworn it not true. I would have insisted it was an impossible fate. Like most men, I believed my heart lay beyond corrosion and decay.

  NOTA BENE

  The Autobiography of Chauncey G. Webb, Part II, has been archived under restricted access in the Special Collections. For further information, please see a Church Archivist.

  —Church Archives, January 16, 1940

  V

  WIFE #19:

  AN EYE IN THE DARK

  IT ALL SOUNDS SO CHEESY NOW

  “Officer Cunningham? It’s me, Jordan Scott. Listen, I know the rules.” I was driving back from Mesadale with Elektra in my lap. “But this is urgent. Any chance of seeing my mom? Like today?”

  The line went silent. Then, “You know the rules.”

  I tried again and she turned me down. I went a different way, going on about not having a place to leave Elektra tomorrow. Officer Cunningham sighed, “Please don’t do this to me.” I apologized. Then I begged. Soon we both knew she was about to cave. “This is a onetime event, you understand?”

  After leaving Elektra with the goth girl at the internet café, I passed through the jail’s metal detector. Officer Cunningham didn’t look pleased. “Let’s not talk about this, all right?”

  Ten minutes later Officer Kane was settling my mom onto the stool on the opposite side of the glass. We stared at each other for some time and it was like we were playing a game of who’s going to go first. She picked up the receiver and said, “I feel like we ended on a bad note last time. I didn’t know if you’d be back.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I was hoping we’d come to some sort of understanding.”

  “I went to see Mr. Heber.” She stopped and through the glass she had the faded, frozen look of an old portrait in a frame.

  I started to describe my meeting with Mr. Heber, but I hesitated when I got to the meat. “He said some pretty difficult things. About what might happen. You sure you want to hear this?” She nodded, and I asked again, just in case. “In a nutshell, it’s not looking good. How should I put this? He thinks … you might … well, there’s a chance—” But I chickened out. How do you tell your mom she will be executed?

  “Jordan, you can tell me.”

  “You know what, he really should tell you all this.” She urged me on. I resisted, but she kept asking, and no matter what, moms are pretty good at wearing down their kids. “It’s just that there’s a lot of evidence,” I said. “I mean, a lot of facts, that, well, kinda indicate you did it.”

  She was looking into my eyes as only a mom can. “I see. You don’t believe me.”

  “Mom, it’s hard to know what’s true. I mean, everything out there is so messed up.”

  “You have to believe me.” This wasn’t a plea, it was a statement.

  I told her about my trip to Mesadale. “I went to the house,” I said. “I saw Sister Rita.”

  “So you believe her over me?”

  “She wouldn’t really talk to me. I wanted to go up to your room, but she wouldn’t let me in.”

  My mom set the receiver on the counter to say something to Officer Kane. She seemed agitated, her finger moving through the air to make some point. She picked up the receiver again. “Jordan, I only get three visits a week. You can’t come back until Friday. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I came today: to say good-bye. I’m going to have another meeting with Mr. Heber, help him with some basic info about Mesadale, then I’m headed back to California.”

  She stared at me calmly, her nostrils flickering. “Please don’t go until I’m out of here.”

  “That could be a long time.” I balled up my courage. “That might not happen. Ever.”

  For a long time she didn’t say anything. Finally, “He thinks I’ll be put to death, doesn’t he?” The amazing thing was she seemed settled and certain, her eyes sharp and clear.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re giving up.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “I guess you’re right. You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Mom, I just don’t think I can help you.”

  “You should probably go.”

  “Mom, if there’s something I can do, tell me.”

  “Please go.”

  “Is there anything else I can—”

  She hung up. Officer Kane helped her from the stool. She looked at me once—Officer Kane, I mean. A face that said, She’s your mother. They left, and I was on my own.

  “Look who’s back.” Maureen was at her desk, typing. “We weren’t expecting you till tomorrow.”

  “I need to see Mr. Heber.”

  “I’m afraid he’s all booked this afternoon.”

  I wasn’t going to wait. Elektra and I walked down the hall, right into Mr. Heber’s office. He was on the phone, working on a legal document. “Uh, Jim, I’m going to have to call you back.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Heber,” said Maureen. “I tried to stop him.”

  “I need to see you.”

  “Apparently. But first, calm down.”

  “I am calm, but this can’t wait.”

  “All right, all right. Maureen, take some notes.”

  I unleashed Elektra and after a lot of coaxing got her to lie down. “I know this is going to sound crazy,” I said, “but she didn’t do it.” Saying it out loud made it seem even more true.

  “Tell me why you think that.”

  “It doesn’t add up.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “She still believes in all that stuff. The Prophet, the church, polygamy as salvation, the whole thing. She wants to go back.”

  Mr. Heber removed his glasses to rub his eyes. “Is it possible she says she still believes in all that even though she doesn’t?”

  “Nope, absolutely not. It would give her an excuse. She didn’t kill my dad.”

  “I’m still not with you.”

  “She had no reason to kill him. This is the crazy part: she actually liked her life.”

  “All right, let
’s go back to the basic evidence that led to her arrest. There’s a chat session in which your dad says your mom just entered the room, which happens to be right before he was shot. We’ve got an eyewitness saying your mom came up from the basement around the time of his death. And we’ve got your mom’s prints on the murder weapon. Right now I have no good explanations for any of those.”

  “Let’s find them.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.”

  “I need you to see this from my point of view. The way things stand it won’t take a prosecutor much imagination to come up with a dozen hypothetical reasons why your mom would want to kill your dad.”

  “Hypotheticals don’t matter. She didn’t do it.”

  “We’re a long way from proving that.”

  You know all that business about being on the same team? Suddenly it didn’t feel that way. I had to ask myself why was this Mormon lawyer working for someone like my mom? His religion and my ex-religion have been at a standoff for more than a hundred years. “Why are you helping her?” I said. “Why’d you take this case?”

  “I take lots of pro bono cases.”

  “But why hers?”

  “Jordan, you want to tell me what’s going on? You were here yesterday, and you and I were pretty much on the same page. Now you’re doubting everything. Did something happen?”

  “I went back to Mesadale—that’s what happened. When you’re there and see how screwed up it is, you realize nothing is what it seems.”

  “Jordan, settle down. I understand.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  Mr. Heber snapped open a bottle of water. “Look, I don’t blame you for being upset. I know you want something to happen right away, but that’s really not the best thing for your mom.”

  “Then what is?”

  “I don’t like what’s going on out there any more than you do. That guy, that phony Prophet, he’s ruined a lot of lives, and along the way he’s distorted my religion. And it’s been going on for way too long. Jordan, things are changing. Almost every week there’s another call to the FBI or the attorney general or the media about this. We need to let it play itself out. I don’t want your mom to go on trial. I want the Prophet and his church to go on trial. So let’s give it a little time, all right?”