The 19th Wife Read online

  In the garage I asked Queenie what had happened after I left. “It was no big deal,” she said. “Your punishment was excommunication. Mine was marriage. The Prophet chose Hiram for me. Or I guess I should say he chose me for Hiram. Hiram was twenty at the time, so not really that old. We were sealed the next day. You know how it goes, you’ve heard the story a million times. But you know what—and this is the insane part—we fell in love. He’s a good man. He loves me. He loves our little girl. Jordan—stop making that face.”

  “What face?”

  “You think I’m out of my mind.”

  “No, no, it’s great,” I lied. “He sounds great.”

  Was she kidding? Love? In Mesadale? “I’m just surprised,” I said. “Monogamy is sort of a no-no out here.”

  “I know. Lately the Prophet’s been putting pressure on Hiram. But so far we’ve resisted.”

  I asked how her mom was. She looked down to Elektra, then back up. A gray storm had moved across her eyes. “She’s dead.”

  “What? How?”

  “She got sick a few years ago. Her kidneys.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But that wasn’t it,” she said. “About six months ago she started having doubts about everything. She wanted to leave your dad. She wanted out of here. So they murdered her.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They put salt in her dialysis machine. It crystallized her heart. She went into the clinic for a treatment and never came home.”

  OK, let me stop for a second. I know what you’re thinking. And I’d be thinking it too. But in Mesadale it’s not as unlikely as it sounds.

  “Who do you think it was?”

  “The Prophet. Well, not him himself, but a couple of his men. He wanted to show everyone what happens if you try to leave.”

  “You know this for a fact?”

  “No, but I know it’s true.”

  I think one of the reasons Mesadale’s been ignored for so long are the stories like these. When they seep out, when people hear them, they think, Oh please. Salt in the dialysis machine? A crystallized heart? It sounds like a bad movie. And so the stories are dismissed, and the Prophet and his disciples have been left alone. Mr. Heber was totally wrong to think anything out here had changed.

  “Anyway,” said Queenie. “So you’re like, what, snooping around?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “You don’t think your mom did it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. There isn’t anyone more devout than your mom.”

  “I know, that’s why I want to find out a little more.”

  “Did you talk to his latest wives? If I were you, I’d start with them.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just a feeling I have. Everything started to change with the last couple of wives.”

  “What are their names?”

  “Let’s see, Sister Kimberly is the newest. She lives behind the big house in a log cabin your dad built. Maybe start with her.”

  Then a little girl started crying on the other side of the house. “That’s Angela, I need to go. You really have to get out of here before anyone sees you.”

  “Queenie, can I come back?”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Then she softened up. “If you have to, yes, of course. Jordan, I don’t want to turn all mushy on you, but after you were gone I never stopped thinking about you. I prayed a lot that you were OK.”

  “Me too. But I guess we’re both doing fine, given the circumstances.”

  “I guess,” she said. “You should go. And be careful.” She pressed a button and the garage door opened to a wall of blinding light.

  “I almost forgot. Sister Karen has a package for you.”

  “Oh really? I wonder what.”

  But the sunlight made it impossible to read her eyes.

  From there I drove out to Kanab, a high-desert town that’s one part granola-hiker-ecotourist, two parts LDS. It’s about forty miles beyond Mesadale, and arriving there is like time travel, whooshing in from the nineteenth century and landing in the twenty-first. I stopped at a sandwich shop called the Mega Bite and ordered a tuna fish from a girl whose name tag said 5.

  “This is so weird,” she said when she brought me my order. “I know you.”

  “You do?”

  “You’re only like my brother.”

  I was less astonished by this statement than you might think. The only remarkable part of this encounter was that she was a pretty teenage girl who had managed to escape Mesadale. The pretty ones never got out.

  “My mom married your dad after you left. He used to talk about you. He said you fucked your sister. That chick, what’s her name.”

  “I didn’t fuck her.”

  “I figured that much, but that’s what he said. He was just trying to scare us into never messing around with the boys. By the way, my name’s 5.”

  “5?”

  “Well it’s Sarah 5, but fuck the Sarah part.”

  “Got it. And for the record, I was holding Queenie’s hand. That’s all.”

  “Oh, was that it? I used to wonder.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I recognize you from your picture.”

  “What picture?”

  “The one your mom kept in her room beside her bed. You were probably eleven or twelve in it, I don’t know. It was at one of those birthday parties and you’re standing in line with a paper plate, waiting for a piece of cake. Your mom showed it to me once.”

  “I don’t even remember that picture being taken.”

  “You know what she said when she showed it to me? She said she was going to see you again in heaven. I don’t mean to pick on your mom, but give me a fucking break.”

  “So who’s your mom?”

  “Kimberly.”

  “His last wife?”

  “Yeah. I think she had something on your dad, because he’d do whatever she wanted. Like she said she wasn’t going to live in that house with all those wives. The next day he started building her a log cabin. He made all the boys work on it, which pissed them off because they knew their moms were getting it worse. Anyway, that’s where we lived, my mom and me. But they booby-trapped the place. It was always falling apart on us, a floor plank caving in, stuff like that. Once a window popped out on my mom. Nearly shredded her alive.”

  “So, 5. When’d you leave?”

  “About eight months ago. My mom has no clue I’m living so nearby. I told her I was leaving Utah and never coming back. Guess that didn’t happen. So anyway, what’s going on with your mom?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”

  “She’s like in jail, right? It was all over the papers. Man, when I heard she shot him I was like, Lady, you beat me to it.”

  “That’s what I thought until I got here.”

  “What was she, number fifteen or something?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “The numbers are so screwed up. I doubt he really knew how many he had. It was all about pussy anyway. He was just counting cunts.”

  “Isn’t it a little dangerous for you to be hanging out here?”

  “I know,” she said. “I probably shoulda gone to Vegas or Phoenix or something.”

  “They come into town pretty often, don’t they?”

  “Some of them, yeah. But you know what, those old guys have no idea who’s who. No one but my mom remembers me. Here’s the thing, I want to get my mom outta there.”

  “How you going to do that?”

  “Same way I got out. There’s this agency in Salt Lake that helps women like her.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s how I escaped. No one knows this, but there’s a system to get messages in and out, you know, to people who want to leave. For a while they used the dairy fridge at the co-op to pass notes. Bet you didn’t know that. Anyway, I heard about it and started communicating with them, and then they sent me a message telling me to meet them on t
he highway. So one night around three I sneak out of the house and run like crazy down to the highway. I had no idea if they’d actually be there, or even who they were. It all could’ve been a setup. It could’ve been the Prophet himself looking to screw me over. Literally. But I get there and this van pulls up with a man and a woman inside. I climb in and pray they’re on my side. I know, can you believe it, me praying?

  “Anyway, they drove me here to Kanab that first night and the next morning they were going to take me to Salt Lake, to this house for kids like me, but I was like, Thanks, I’ll stop right here. They tried to talk me out of it, but when I make up my mind, forget it. I’ve been hanging around here trying to figure out how to get my mom out. When I heard your dad was dead, I went back to see her. I was like, Mom, let’s get the fuck out of here. You know what she said? She tells me she doesn’t want to go. She wants to hang around and play widow. She said she loved the old bastard. Is that fucked up or what?”

  “It’s pretty fucked up.”

  Elektra was growing impatient in the sun. 5 poured some water into her palm and Elektra licked it out. “You know what happens next, don’t you? The Prophet’s going to get some guy to marry all of them in one fell swoop. You know, keep the family together. And they’ll all end up belonging to another man. Probably some young asshole who’ll live another sixty years. No one would believe this goes on today. They’re still looking for the Taliban, right? Well, hello? They’re right here.”

  “Want to hear something crazy?” I said. “My mom says she didn’t kill him.”

  “No shit.”

  “That’s why I’m looking around.”

  “For what?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t really know.”

  “Well, let me know if you find anything out.”

  A customer came in with a large order of veggie wraps. 5 took her place behind the counter. She pulled on a pair of plastic gloves and began laying out a row of tortillas. By the time she was done another large order came in, then another. But she kept her eye on me the whole time. When I stood to leave she waved from behind the counter, a plastic baggie on her hand.

  I called Roland. “Kanab? Sounds Kanasty. Oh honey, where on earth?” Then I called the contractor who gives me most of my work. He wasn’t pissed about my skipping out on the bathroom vanity job. I was still on for next Monday, a job in San Marino redoing a nursery. “This lady’s about to have triplets,” he said. “Expect madness.” Then I called my mom. Excluding calls from Mr. Heber, she’s allowed only two calls a week. It took a while to get her on the phone. When I heard her voice, I told her I was going to see Kimberly.

  “Is there anything I should know?” I said. The line crackled the way it does in a creepy old movie.

  “I don’t think she knew who I was before all this happened,” she said. “The new wives pretty much ignore the old ones.”

  “Mom, I want to go up and look around your old room. Do you think I’ll find anything there?”

  “I doubt it. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the wives has already dumped my things and moved in.”

  After that I drove to a park and lay down on the futon in the back of the van. Elektra curled up next to me. I started reading that book about God. I was at the part about religion and war. I’ve been trying to get through it for a while now, but after a few pages I always fall asleep.

  When I woke the sun was balling up and getting ready to set. It was time to go back to Mesadale. The closer I got, the redder the desert burned. Not red and orange and pink and yellow. Just red. Everything. Red and red and red. By the time I reached the turnoff, it was dark. I drove up the road with my headlights out.

  Kimberly’s cottage looked like one of those houses that comes as a kit in the mail. The windows were full of soft pinkish light. I heard water running in a sink. The front door was open and I could look through the screen door into the living room. A shotgun hung on two brackets above the mantel. I know my guns: it was a Big Boy .44 Magnum. But around here they weren’t all that rare.

  I called hello.

  The water stopped. “Who’s that?”

  “Sister Kimberly?”

  A youngish woman appeared on the other side of the screen, her hair up in an airy roll. She looked like one of those actors, if that’s the right word, who works in a frontier-town theme park. “Can I come in?”

  She knew who I was. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “It won’t take long.” I put my hand on the door.

  “Please, stay out there.” She locked the latch from inside. A shove would’ve yanked the door off its frame, but it seemed far-fetched. Me? Breaking down a (screen) door?

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I don’t know any more than you do. Besides, I can’t talk to you. You know that.”

  “You can if you want to.”

  “Jordan, please.”

  “Five minutes. Give me five minutes.”

  I asked where she was when my dad was killed, and she said, “I was right here, of course.”

  I asked what she heard. “Nothing. Not until all the sister wives started screaming.”

  “Who was here that night?”

  “I don’t know, everyone, I suppose, but I never go in the main house.”

  “Did anyone leave right before he was killed? Anything suspicious like that?”

  Through the screen, with the pinkish light behind her, she looked like a saint in an old painting, everything glowing around her beautiful oval face. “No, nothing like that. Jordan, what are you up to? You really shouldn’t be here.”

  “Are you all alone?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Don’t you have a daughter?”

  “Had.”

  “Had?”

  “They took her.”

  “Who took her?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you.”

  “Because your husband was my dad. Where do you think your daughter is?”

  “They’ve been coming for our young girls lately. Telling them all sorts of lies.”

  “Who?”

  “The casinos.”

  “The casinos?” If it weren’t so sad, I would’ve laughed.

  “From Mesquite, and some from Las Vegas. They come over and take our girls.”

  “You’re saying a casino kidnapped your daughter?”

  “Yes, it just happened, right after he was killed. And I know what they do: they brainwash them, the pretty ones at least. The Prophet warned us to be on the lookout for people claiming to help our girls. They’re the casinos.” Tears came to her golden eyes.

  “Here,” I said. “Take this.”

  She hesitated, then unlatched the screen, opening it enough to take my bandanna. Quickly she set the hook back in its eye and dabbed her eyes. “The Prophet says I’ve got to forget all about her. She’s gone into the world of sin and I can no longer love her, that’s what he says.” She let out a small cry. “But it’s hard.”

  Those tears were real, that much I knew. We were standing close together, separated only by the screen. She said, “You should probably leave.”

  “Can I come another time?”

  “What for?”

  “To talk. To tell you if I find anything.”

  “I don’t know.” She shivered, and I left her, a silhouette in the screen.

  I walked quickly around the side of the big house. I could hear the chatter of girls getting ready for bed. How many were still inside? No one knew: that was the thing. I felt sorry for them, everyone in my dad’s house, even if one of them had put the rap on my mom.

  A PROPHET ON THE MISSISSIPPI

  AN INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH SMITH

  Special to the New York Herald

  July 28, 1843

  NAUVOO, ILLINOIS—Yesterday, in this beautiful city situated on a horseshoe bend in the Mississippi River, Howard Greenly of the Herald interviewed Joseph Smith, Jr., Prophet to the Latter-day Saints
. Our correspondent met with Smith in the second-story offices above his Red Brick Store, sitting at the wood table where Smith regularly confers with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, his council of religious and political advisors. In the interview Smith would speak to the thus-called Gentile press more openly than he ever had before.

  Smith is thirty-nine, equipped with a tall, lithely powerful frame, vivid in everything he does. Up and down the Mississippi he is famous for the flash in his blue gemstone eyes. His tenor voice carries far, with a natural clarity to it that attracts the ear. Since establishing his Church in 1830, this son of Vermont farmers has led his followers through a number of arduous relocations in search of a home where they could worship undisturbed, including colonies in Kirtland, Ohio, and Far West, Missouri, before settling in Nauvoo. Over the years Smith has been denounced as a charlatan, a plagiarist, and a speculator in fraud. He has been tarred-and-feathered, arrested for treason, chased across state lines, thrown in a Missouri jail cell, and faced orders of execution. He has seen his most faithful adherents slaughtered in pitiless battles such as the one at Haun’s Mill. Yet each blow of adversity has only increased his position in the eyes of his devout. The Mormons, or Saints as they call themselves, revere him in a fervid manner unfamiliar to modern times. Nearly everyone in this bustling city of 12,000 speaks of him with the same reverence others reserve elsewhere for Jesus Christ, Son of God.

  Smith’s counselor and friend, Brigham Young, attended the interview. He is a quiet, thoughtful carpenter and glazier, with a stolid presence and fast, flinty eyes. This silent giant spoke but once, as the reader shall see.