A Leap in the Dark (Assassins of Youth MC Book 2) (8 page)

“Oaklyn, this is Levon. Listen, I need your help.”

I was always flattered to be needed. “Yes?”

“I’m with my Nana inside the gates of Cornucopia. She’s extremely ill with diabetes, and she says she can’t feel her feet. Also, she’s got heart palpitations.”

“Is her heart racing?”

“No, just skipped beats. Beats all over the place. Boom-boom. Boom. Boom de be boom.”

“No chest pain?”

“No. But listen. I managed to avoid my mother and all my siblings and went straight to Nana’s house after I finished some business here. Her husband died awhile back so I’m dealing with a bunch of her sister-wives who are all telling me not to take her out of here.”

“She needs to see a doctor.”

“I know. And all I’ve got is this giant panel truck I made the delivery with. Listen. Can you come with your cage and take her to the doctor you know?”

Again, I was hugely flattered to be so needed. It gave me a sense of purpose here. “But how’m I going to get through the gates?”

“Use the same password I did. Allred Lee Chiles.”

I giggled. “I hardly look like an old, twisted male prophet.”

“Trust me. It’ll work. Then call me, and I’ll talk you through how to get here. It’s not on any GPS.”

“I figured. All right, Levon. I’m going right now.” I knew where the main gates were. Everyone did. It was impossible to miss.

While I was talking, Deloy sat down next to Mahalia. It was always good to see his cheerful face, his long, spiky buzz cut that looked like a scrub brush. I was always dying to pet it. “Oaklyn. I’m going up to Bountiful to get some things for Levon. Do you want me to stop by your house and get anything?”

I smirked. “The only thing you’ll see there is a lazy dead ass lounging around in sweats making plans to go party.”

The smile vanished from Deloy’s mouth. “Guy troubles, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mahalia and I sighed in unison.

I said, “Speaking of guy troubles. That was Levon, and he wants me to meet him inside Cornucopia. He wants me to take his Nana to see Dr. Lee at Urgent Care.”

Now Mahalia and Deloy gasped in unison. Deloy said, “Going
inside
the walls? I haven’t been there since they kicked me out. I proved their premonitions right when I walked the street as a whore, selling my body to dirty Gentiles, damned until the end of time.”

I
really
didn’t want to go inside the walls, but I was bound and determined to help Levon, so I stood. Deloy stood too, coming around to my side of the table. He took me by the elbows, finally allowing me an excuse to touch that brushy head. It was as soft as a bunny rabbit.

“Listen, Oaklyn. Don’t let anyone get to you inside there. Just go in, do your job, and get the hell out. Maybe you never have to take his Nana back there.”

Mahalia said, “There’s a good retirement home on the way to St. George. Independent living as well as assisted living. I put another elderly woman from Cornucopia in there. They all get a bundle of welfare money, so that shouldn’t be an issue.”

Deloy’s eyes were wide with sincerity. He looked like one of those paintings of the kids with the big eyes. “I was told I was the least in my family, that I was but a lad and all the people loathed me. I was an idiot, slow of speech and tongue. The world hated me and I’d find no comfort anywhere. Well, I
have
found comfort, Oaklyn. Comfort first with Levon in Bountiful, and now with all of you. I feel like I’ve come home. I have no need to go back inside those gates and confront people anyway. My deal is done. That’s like a past life, dead and buried. Just get that poor woman out and get the hell out of there.”

I was almost brought to tears by Deloy’s heartfelt speech. We even hugged, and I felt a strange surge of what can only be called love rush through my chest. Deloy’s age made him more like a younger brother and no replacement for the child I dearly wanted. But he’d have to do for now.

I was on a mission again, feeling useful and needed. Getting through the gates was no problem, as Levon had predicted. He talked me though a bunch of traffic circles where long Stepford homes like projects stood shiny and perfect. I’d been to enclaves like this off and on, but none as bizarre as this. Women walked around in 1800s garb like some reenactment of “Little House on the Prairie.” The neck-to-toe drab garments prevented other women from being jealous, and men who weren’t your husband from giving you lustful stares. I expected to see horses and buggies, but there were a few cars. Mostly, though, it seemed people walked. And mostly women.

That would make sense if you did the math. Each man needed at least three wives to enter the kingdom of heaven, but usually they “wed” many more. After running out all the boys, I wondered who was left to keep the city looking so spic and span. As Deloy had said, most men went into some kind of construction biz.

Levon and his Nana were waiting by the curb. It was odd, looking at him in this different light. Normally, you don’t think of people you loathe as having families, much less a Nana. You don’t want to think of it, because if you did, you’d be forced to realize they’re human. A knot of maybe ten or fifteen women surrounded them, glaring, frowning, hands on hips. When I got out of the car, all glares were turned on me. Some women pointed at me, yelling.

“Apostate!”

“Gentile!”

“You’ve turned traitor to the Prophet!”

I started to protest. “I never lived here. I’ve never followed any prop—”

Levon cut me off. “Don’t engage with them. Let’s just get her into your cage and over to Urgent Care.”

The lady couldn’t have been more than seventy, but was bent with arthritis or maybe spinal stenosis, and had to get into the car very gingerly. It was like being surrounded by a coven of witches, the things they were shrieking at me with their gravelly voices and claw-like hands.

“You backouts! We’re glad you’re leaving!”

“If you take Cloydean then don’t expect to ever come back!”

“You’re dead to us.”

“You are the true tools of the devil.”

We had her settled, and I went around to my side of the car. Levon put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. For some reason it was vastly reassuring. He bent at the knees to look me in the eyes.

“I can’t thank you enough, Oaklyn. I’ll be at Urgent Care as soon as I ditch this truck. You’re a lamb for doing this. I won’t let you down.”

That was funny, him calling me a lamb. I remembered Mahalia explaining to me once that men in the MC called women lambs because they were easier to mold than sheep. But even sheep moved in a herd as one!

I didn’t have time to argue, though. Levon had thrown some of Cloydean’s bags in the back of my Mini Cooper station wagon. The witches’ cawing and crowing was reaching a fever pitch, and now some men in severe black pants with shiny 1950s haircuts were heading our way, so Levon practically shoved me into the car.

“I’ll take care of you,” I assured the poor woman as I wound back around the traffic circle. “Have no fear. I’m a registered nurse.”

“I haven’t left the compound in thirty years,” she said.

“Really? You haven’t been to the doctor?”

“No. There’s a brother who’s a doctor, and he fixed my tubes.”

Tubes? A fake doctor was running around Cornucopia tying womens’ tubes? As we headed back toward the gates, I passed a few men in their twenties waving a giant cross around. They stood on the side of the road as though hitch-hiking, but they weren’t. They were just standing on the shoulder, waving a cross as tall as them. Like one of those sign spinning guys who stand on the corner dressed like Spiderman twirling a giant arrow.

“His way is holy! His purposes are eternal!” they shouted.

“Whose purposes?” I asked Cloydean.

“Oh, Verlan Turley,” she said wearily. “Everyone’s fighting for a piece of the pie, and Verlan Turley says he’s the cat’s pajamas and all that.”

I also drove past a couple groups of women walking toward the gate. Strangely, they seemed to be older women with grey hair. One of them used a cane. I asked Cloydean who they were.

“Widows. There’s Vella Zabriskie. She was sealed to Immanuel, who ran the Altar of Sacrifice Mine.”

“Why are they leaving?”

“They’re cleaning house. Too many old women like me cluttering up the place.”

The whole thing was unsettling. I wouldn’t miss a thing if I never had to return to that place again.

LEVON

“T
here’s a leadership
vacuum in Cornucopia,” I told Oaklyn in a low voice. “There are two camps. Those who want to keep things status quo as Allred Chiles created it, and those who want to usher in new ways.”

She snorted. “Like what? Letting people see your ankles? Did you know they have to wear long underwear even in the broiling heat of summer?”

“I know,” I said bitterly.

Oaklyn gasped. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you grew up there. I guess it’s just too hard to comprehend, someone like you living there.”

“I changed,” I admitted. “For the better, I’d like to think. And I guess Gideon didn’t think of it when he asked me, but going back there today brought all sorts of shit rushing back to me. I don’t know if I can continue doing his business for him.”

We had to whisper because Nana was sleeping in one of our bedrooms. Deloy was off on a Bountiful run. I’d gotten up at one in the morning, unable to sleep. I’d put a bottle of Jim Beam in the kitchen, so I padded out shirtless to pour a few fingers. Oaklyn had wandered out too in a powder pink satin robe that made her look like an innocent angel. She wanted a few fingers, too, so we’d put on jackets to go onto the back deck, me a black leather one, and her a fake furry thing that rendered her absolutely luminous.

“Oh, jeez,” she said, “I didn’t think about that. Have you had any contact with your mom or dad? They obviously did nothing about your Nana’s condition.”

Oaklyn’s Dr. Lee had diagnosed multiple conditions for Nana in addition to her diabetes. It had caused advanced nerve damage to the point where she couldn’t feel her feet. Foot ulcers were so bad that another week without treatment would’ve meant amputation. He’d also tested her for pulmonary lung disease and a bunch of cardio stuff. He was already recommending she be put into assisted living, and some of the tests hadn’t even come back yet.

Nana had been suffering for who knew how long. I didn’t want to think what might’ve happened if I hadn’t decided to take a spin down to Avalanche and rent out a martial arts studio. And obviously not one of my eleven plus siblings had lifted a finger for her. They were all brainwashed Morbots, programmed to the core.

“Nothing. They were party to my excommunication, so I want nothing to do with them. Some still have a little contact with their parents. Deloy’s mom has been sending him some token amount of money every now and then. He doesn’t need it, but takes it to make her feel good.”

Oaklyn looked thoughtful. “I never thought before about what it’d be like to have such hateful parents. Our parents were all right. Not the most shining examples in the world, but nothing you could cry ‘abuse’ over. Just very upright religious folks. Your parents sound like the poster children for abuse.”

“My parents, along with almost every other Lost Boys’ parents. Every parent who threw their son to the wolves. This is why a lot of us learn to feel no emotion. I’m usually pretty emotionless, which is why I’m thinking maybe I
can
deal with Gideon’s work inside the compound. Yesterday I had to face this Parley Pipkin assbite who was one of the men in on the ass-kicking I received from Zelpha Pratt’s dad. Like it takes ten men to kick the ass of one teenager. I did all right, staring him in the fucking face.”

“You refrained from shooting him, anyway. That’s admirable.”

I hadn’t told anyone other than Gideon about Ladell Pratt yet. Deloy probably suspected that he was one of my tormentors, but was polite enough not to bring it up. “Fifteen years of controlling my emotions has taught me well. That’s why I like your scientific way of looking at things. We have more in common than you might suspect. Emotion is a defect in a perfectly logical machine.”

“No, no, not at all,” she cried, loud enough for Nana to hear. I moved closer to her, taking her by the upper arms to guide her into the shadows of the kitchen wall, farther from Nana’s bedroom. “Reason alone, without human emotion, has created more wretchedness than a zealot’s crusade.”

“You haven’t lived in Cornucopia.”

“Watching a Shakespeare performance informs us more about the nature of jealousy, how it can infiltrate a man’s life and ruin his marriage, than any textbook ever could. Harriet Beecher Stowe helped rouse society against slavery more powerfully than any spreadsheet. Dickens did more to prevent child abuse and institutional atrocity than any welfare society report.”

I had to agree with her, because literature had replaced emotion in my life. I could feel through works of art, music, and writing. I allowed myself to feel outrage and indignation on their behalf—maybe because they
were
“made up” works of art, and somewhat remotely removed from my own carefully guarded cage of feelings. “Well, yes. Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ is still played in about five hundred languages in ten billion elevators throughout the world. I’m sure it’s managed to soothe many a savage beast. The photo of the napalmed Vietnamese girl or Dorothea Lange’s Dust Bowl photos still resonate in people’s hearts. Oaklyn, you don’t need to convince me. I feel deeply through others’ creations. It’s just my real life where I have trouble knowing how to feel.”