Desert Wives (9781615952267) (10 page)

Remembering that I was an Outsider made me so uncomfortable that I actually swept the floors to keep from thinking about it.

Chapter 9

By the time I'd hurried through the housework, Saul was ready for the community meeting. The prospect of watching Purity's leadership in action intrigued me, as did meeting the men who might have benefited from Prophet Solomon's death—or even from that of the new prophet.

I freshened up in the bathroom, making certain the top buttons on my long granny dress remained fastened. As I studied myself in the mirror, I noticed that the brisk housework had left my face flushed, making the scar on my forehead appear vivid. The only thing I needed to worry about was keeping my mouth shut.

I joined Saul by the front door, only to discover that Ruby had finally left the kitchen and disappeared into one of the rooms.

“Ruby! Time to leave!” Saul called as we waited.

Silence for a few moments. Then footsteps. Ruby appeared from the hallway. “I can't go,” she announced, in a grim voice.

“What do you mean, you can't go? Prophet Davis wants as many people there as possible.”

She threw an accusatory glance my way. “Sister Lena didn't sweep in the corners or vacuum the rug.”

I protested. “The house is perfectly clean.”

“No it's not.”

“Yes, it…” A firm hand on my shoulder stopped me.

“Sister Lena, since she knows more about it, we'll have to defer to Sister Ruby in these matters. Perhaps when we come back, she can show you the proper way to clean.”

Ruby shook her head. “It needs to be done now, not later.”

What a tyrant. Even more irritating was the fact that Saul deferred to her. Did that happen in other polygamy households? I tried some fence-mending. “Sister Ruby, I really want to go to the community meeting so I can better understand the way of life here. I promise that when I get back I'll clean the way you want me to do.”

“No. You do it now.”

I finally understood. Ruby was First Wife, I was New Girl on the Block, and she was merely establishing the pecking order. If Saul let this behavior continue, though, it could damage my chances to find Prophet Solomon's killer. An article I'd once read had theorized that housework expanded to fill the time available, and unless I was mistaken, Ruby planned to try out that theory herself, only using me as the lab rat.

I had to nip her plans in the bud. Turning to Saul, I whined, “Oh, please, Brother Saul! I really do want to go to that meeting!”

“And you will.” My obvious concern alerted him to the problem. “Tell you what, Sister Ruby. You finish the floors, and once you're done, fix lunch. We won't need anything fancy. Just put some meat on two slices of bread. With a little mayonnaise.”

Ruby opened her mouth to protest then closed it again without saying a word, probably remembering that her husband spoke for the Lord, and if the Lord wanted mayonnaise, He'd get mayonnaise. After a second or two she tried again. “Can't she at least clean the toilets now?”

“The Lord wants
you
to scrub the toilets, Sister Ruby. He just revealed it to me.” With that, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out the door, but not before I saw a glimmer of fury in Sister Ruby's eyes.

Saul headed toward the Utah side of the compound, towing me behind him. “That didn't go well,” he said in a disgusted voice. “If you want to pull this off, you'll have to figure out a way to keep Ruby happy. Like the rest of the women around here, she may not have much formal schooling but she's a long way from dumb.”

Knowing he was right, I nodded. For the first time it occurred to me that Purity's women lived an even more difficult life than I'd originally believed. Not only did they have to obey their husbands' every whim, but they had to guard against their sister wives, too.

Saul continued talking as we walked, trying to keep out of earshot of the other people scurrying across the compound. To the west, a long line of battered cars and pickup trucks streamed toward us on the dirt road.

“Rumor has it that our new prophet is going to initiate some pretty heavy changes in Purity,” Saul said. “But I'll believe it when I see it. The Circle of Elders, which is made up of the most conservative of the conservative, will dig in its heels. Davis is going to have his hands full with them.”

He gave me a brief rundown on the Circle of Elders and their relationship to Purity's prophets. Originally, the compound's government had functioned similarly to England's political structure, with the reigning prophet fulfilling the role of prime minister and the Circle of Elders behaving as Parliament. During the last few years of Prophet Solomon's reign, however, the Circle's role had waned.

“The Circle still arranges all the marriages and decides whose home gets fixed up or added to, but the prophet now negotiates all of the Purity Fellowship Foundation's business contracts. I'm not sure the Circle even knows how much money is coming in.”

“Nice for the prophet,” I said.

He winked. “Wait'll you see Davis's house. It's the second nicest house in the compound.”

Davis Royal's house, surrounded by the grove of cottonwood and mesquite that had kept me from seeing it earlier, was almost a city block long and appeared to be built out of the same red rock as the Vermillion Cliffs. Its green steel, copper-trimmed roof should have presented a gaudy contrast, but it didn't. Neither did the green shutters that framed the house's dozens of windows. A long veranda, furnished with expensive-looking patio furniture, ran the entire width of the house, playing host to the dozens of people gathered on it. Prophet Davis's humble abode looked like one of the more upscale Scottsdale resorts.

The new prophet's cars matched his house, too. In the circular gravel driveway sat a gleaming silver Mercedes ML55, a Cadillac Escalade, and three Chrysler Town and Country vans, the better to haul his brood, I reckoned.

“It sure doesn't look like Prophet Davis has taken a vow of poverty.” Since we were approaching a large group of men also headed for the house, I kept my voice low.

“That'll be the day,” Saul replied. “In Purity, the prophets have always lived well and nobody thinks a thing of it, not even when the rest of the folks walk around in rags and drive rust heaps. Now hush up before you start calling attention to yourself.”

Following Saul's instructions, I kept my eyes on the ground, but every now and then I chanced a swift look up at the people around us. Most of the women, even girls who couldn't have been older than thirteen, were pregnant. Their bellies hiked up the front hems of their long granny dresses, exposing painfully swollen ankles. Some appeared ready to squat down in the dirt to give birth on the spot.

The men were all clad in an assortment of bib overalls, Levis, and long-sleeved woolen shirts buttoned up to their Adam's apples. Underneath, I knew, they wore their Temple undergarments. Given that the temperatures during the daytime topped the nineties, they had to be miserable—not that I cared how miserable any of them felt.

“Lena!” Saul's sharp command pulled me out of my thoughts. Then he lowered his voice. “Whatever you're thinking, stop it right now. You look like you're ready to pull a gun on someone!”

“Sorry,” I whispered. “It's just that…”

He whispered back. “I know. It's exactly what I felt once I figured out what was really going on here under all this sanctimonious bullshit. But remember what I said. You have to act like a meek sister wife while you're here, not some pissed-off avenging angel.”

The thought of me being anyone's avenging angel made me smile, and he smiled back. “That's more like it. A meek little sister wife is a happy little sister wife.”

Still smiling, I whispered, “Thee can shove it up thine ass, Brother Saul.”

He laughed, making several of the men waiting on Prophet Davis Royal's porch look at us curiously. A large group of women, probably their wives, stood in a huddle behind them. I couldn't help but notice the poor condition of the women's teeth. No dentists in Purity?

“We hear you have a new wife, Brother Saul,” called one of the men, a thin-faced, pimpled blond scarcely out of his teens. Like the others, he was modestly clad and his ill-fitting clothes did little to disguise his too-short legs and concave chest. His large head and stunted limbs hinted at dwarfism.

“Yes, Brother Noah,” Saul responded. “The Lord worked one of His miracles in my heart and swore He'd reward me for my righteousness with many children.” Saul turned to me with a leer of such cartoonish intensity I had to lower my head again to hide my smile.

“Brother Noah is our departed Prophet Solomon's grandson, Sister Lena,” Saul explained to me. “Treat him with the deference he deserves.”

“Of course, husband,” I murmured, allowing myself another quick peek at Brother Noah, only to find to my horror that Saul's leer had been matched by Noah's. The younger man's leer was the real deal, though, and as his watery eyes raked my body, he stopped just short of outright drooling. Apparently a man's lust wasn't considered a sin in Purity.

Noah finally turned away and began chatting with one of the other men. Saul took the opportunity to whisper into my ear, “Don't ever get caught alone with Noah. He once shot Solomon's dog just because it barked at him. The fact that it was his granddaddy's favorite dog didn't bother him one bit. ”

I made a mental note to find out where Noah had been the night of Prophet Solomon's murder. Maybe Solomon had given his trigger-happy grandson a talking to and the ugly little hothead had killed him on the spot.

Saul shared a few words with an elderly man who bore an uncanny resemblance to a department store Santa Claus. His round, cherry-red nose peeked out from between snowy brows, and a lush white beard framed a cherry, sunburnt face. Santa's eyes, though, appeared vacant.

“Brother Jacob, I hope you're feeling better?” Saul asked politely.

“The Lord judges us from Highest Heaven and sends down blessings as well as vengeance,” the old man responded, his voice holding no inflection. “We shrivel under His mighty gaze.”

The other men fell into an uncomfortable silence, but Saul nodded in perfect seriousness, as if such Biblical pronouncements were the normal response to enquiries about health. “Yes, Brother Jacob, the Lord is a mighty Judge.”

To me, Saul whispered, “Brother Jacob Waldman hasn't felt too good lately.”

Jacob Waldman. Esther's father, the other witness to the argument between Esther and Prophet Solomon. I studied the old man's face more closely, trying to remember where I had seen that ain't-nobody-home look before. Then it came back to me. I'd once investigated a Scottsdale nursing home which had shown an unusually high death rate among its patients. The home specialized in the care of Alzheimer's disease.

A large man thrust himself in front of Jacob. I recognized Earl Graff.

“Brother Saul, I told you the Circle of Elders hasn't yet voted to sanctify the marriage to your new woman,” he said, his face shaking in outrage. “Don't you think you should hold off bringing her into Prophet Davis's house until then? To bring an unhallowed woman into a prophet's house is a defilement.”

The other men looked at each other, cleared their throats, and more or less tried to pretend they hadn't heard the insult, but Saul refused to be intimidated. “Since when would following the Lord's wishes be a defilement? It seems to me, Brother Earl, that you're attempting to place the Circle's desires above the Lord's.”

Earl's face turned as red as his hair. “You're not a member of the Circle and you have no right to…”

Just then the door opened, and Purity's new prophet stepped out on the porch. “My, my, brothers,” he boomed, his voice resonant as a televangelist's. “If I didn't know better, I'd think that I heard voices raised in anger. And right outside a prophet's front door, no less!”

Although I'd seen him earlier, I couldn't help but stare at him. On Prophet Davis, even the orange, high-necked shirt he'd changed into looked terrific.

“And who do we have here?” Prophet Hunk said to me, his amazing eyes crinkling with humor. He'd obviously recovered from his earlier near escape.

I lowered my head again and stared fiercely at the porch's redwood floorboards.

“Prophet Davis, this is my new wife, Sister Lena.” A note of anxiety crept into Saul's voice. Davis certainly had an interesting effect on people, both female
and
male.

Davis's large, warm hand, free of calluses, engulfed my own. “Welcome, Sister Lena. The Church of the Prophet Fundamental is brightened by your glowing presence.”

So help me I almost tittered. But I contained myself and looked modestly up at him. “Thank you, Prophet Davis. I seek only to serve the Lord and my husband.”

Another large hand clasped mine as the Prophet delivered a caress thinly disguised as a handshake.

“Prophet Davis, their marriage has not yet been sanctified!” Earl said. “We in the Circle of Elders have grave doubts about its validity. No one knows this woman! Not who she is or where she came from!”

Davis tilted his head to the side and smiled down at me. His own showbiz teeth would have done a Scottsdale orthodontist proud. “I was taking care of some business in Salt Lake when you arrived, Sister Lena, or I would have been present to welcome you to Purity and help sort though this confusion with the Circle of Elders. Perhaps now that I am back…?”

He trailed off and looked questioningly at Saul. I couldn't help but notice, however, that Davis still held my hand. Not that I minded.

Saul noticed, too, and the anxiety in his voice increased. “Prophet Davis, I'd be happy to discuss the worthiness of my new wife with you. You just say where and when.”

Davis caressed my hand once more, then gently dropped it. His voice, as smooth as his touch, purred. “I don't think you need to worry, Brother Saul. Your wife is charming.”