Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned (3 page)

“No, please! I’m sorry, please, no.”

“That was the wrong scripture,” Abraham said. “I think you were looking for something about hanging a millstone about the neck of a child abuser and tossing him into the sea.” He jerked up the man’s wrist. “My son is a doctor, you know, not some rancher who knows how to splint a lame calf. He X-rayed that boy’s arm. Then, when he got suspicious, X-rayed every bone in his body. Four different fractures. That’s a lot for a five-year-old boy, don’t you think?”

Stanley’s eyes bugged. “I didn’t, I really just—”

Abraham stretched out the man’s arm and swung the tire iron. It connected with a crunch, just above the wrist. Stanley screamed. His eyes bulged out and his breathing came in shallow gasps.

“And I started thinking,” Abraham continued. “Your kids have always had a lot of falls and accidents, haven’t they? I asked a couple of my wives. Women have a sense for these things, and they agreed it was suspicious. So I drove out here last week, figured out you were back home. You were gone, but I talked to your wives. They tried to protect you, pathetic as that is. Why would they do that? Why would they let you abuse them and their children and then try to hide it?”

Stanley’s face had turned white and he was blabbering, begging for forgiveness, making promises, but Abraham didn’t hear him.

“If I deliver a blow for every bruise or broken bone your wives and children have suffered, would it kill you?”

“No, please!”

“Yes, I think it would, but that might be a kindness. A blood atonement, your own wounds atoning for your own sins. It might earn you mercy on the other side. But even if it made no difference, it would serve as a warning to the community. I won’t tolerate a man abusing his family.” Abraham turned to Stephen Paul. “Grab his arm again.”

But when Stephen Paul tried to reposition his grip, Stanley broke free and ran for the door. He stumbled and cried, begging for someone to help him. He reached the door and staggered onto the porch. Abraham and Stephen Paul caught him at the foot of the porch steps.

They threw him to the sidewalk and started in on him. Stephen Paul lifted his crowbar.

“No!” Abraham said. He grabbed Stephen Paul’s wrist. “It’s too much.”

Stephen Paul tossed the crowbar aside, and the two men laid into Stanley with their fists and boots instead. They hit him on the legs and arms, battered his ribs, shoulders, knees. Twice, Abraham had to tell Stephen Paul to ease up when he set into Stanley with too much enthusiasm.

Women and children came onto the porch, but Abraham shouted for them to go back inside. They continued the beating. At last Abraham told Stephen Paul to stop. They stood panting, sweating. Stanley sobbed, curled into a ball.

Abraham’s disgust turned to pity, and he wondered if the man’s children ever looked so pathetic after enduring one of their father’s beatings. His voice came out flat, the authority of God eroded until Abraham was just a man who needed to complete an unpleasant task. “You are no longer one of us, Stanley Clawson. Drag your body out of Blister Creek and never return.”

Stanley spat blood onto the porch. One of his eyes was swelling shut. Abraham couldn’t remember either of them hitting the man on the face, but in the frenzy, mistakes would happen. “You can’t do this to me. This is my house, my family.”

“You’re an animal,” Stephen Paul said, voice rigid and angry. “You made your choice already.”

“No, he’s right,” Abraham said. “He can come back if he chooses. God has given each of us our free agency. But the day he chooses to return to Blister Creek is the day he dies. Do you understand me, Stanley?”

The man groaned, but didn’t otherwise answer.

Abraham and Stephen Paul rounded up the women and children of the Clawson family and loaded all twelve of them into the van. Abraham stood in front of the open door, massaging his right wrist, which he’d twisted in the attack, and looked at the frightened faces inside.

“Consider this an opportunity,” he told the wives, “to get your own lives in order. I don’t care what Stanley Clawson did to you or told you. There was no excuse for letting that happen to your children.” He stopped, distracted by the crying children, the sobbing women, and the audible cries for help from the wounded beast, who had dragged himself back to the porch.

“What are you going to do with us?” Sister Laura asked. She was calmer than the other two women, and comforted a child against her bosom. “Give us to other men?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “The Lord hasn’t told me yet. Maybe send you to Zarahemla for medical examinations. The only thing I know is you’re not staying another night at this house. I’m going to burn it down.”

“Do we get any say in the matter?” she asked.

“About the house? No. The other things, yes, of course. Meanwhile, get yourselves cleaned up—you’re all filthy—and ask the Lord for forgiveness for your own weaknesses. Forget about Stanley’s sins. Remember you’re daughters of God.”

He slid the door shut, then said to Stephen Paul, “Drive them up to your house. Tell your wives to be kind. They’ve gone through all kinds of hell today. I’ll ask the Lord tonight what we should do with them.”

Stanley let out a long, moaning curse from the front porch, and Abraham gritted his teeth and leaned against the side of the van.

Stephen Paul put a hand on his shoulder. “You did what had to be done.”

He met his counselor’s gaze. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? If one of those wives had said something, I could have stopped it. A blessing would have cured Stanley at one time, before it got too late.”

But all things served the Lord’s purpose. The Lord could have told Abraham Himself if He’d wished. He’d remained silent, and Abraham could only assume that there was a reason.

Stephen Paul went back inside for his crowbar. When he returned, he stopped midway to the van and waited for Abraham to come to him.

“I’m glad we didn’t have to kill him,” Stephen Paul said.

“Me too.”

“The other time, was it hard?”

“What, when I killed a man? Worse than hard, it was a mistake. And I was doing someone else’s dirty work. I won’t ask you to do anything I won’t do myself.”

“I appreciate that.”

Abraham fixed him with a hard look. “But this was a test for both of us. Brother Stanley targets women and children. His
own
women and children. Is there any greater coward than that? He didn’t fight back, he couldn’t. I’m afraid there’s harder business ahead of us than breaking the bones of a coward.”

“Meaning we have to kill a man?”

“Probably several men. Maybe women, too. Once evil has taken root, only drastic measures can tear it up.”

Stephen Paul turned the crowbar over in his hands as he looked back at the porch where Stanley had finally climbed to his feet and
now staggered inside, hopefully to collect keys and cash before he drove out of Blister Creek forever.

“I will obey the Lord.” He turned back to Abraham and met his gaze. “And thou art His prophet.”

Abraham felt something tug his attention east, into the heart of the desert. The edge of the wilderness. A few hours by car, no more. It was time to call Rebecca, to get about destroying the enemies of the Lord.

Jacob Christianson approached the old woman warily. He couldn’t see yet if she had a gun. Last time she had. He kept Eliza behind him. He’d weighed the risk of abandoning the pretense of his sister’s death—which, to be honest, wasn’t bearing fruit anyway—against using her as added leverage against Charity Kimball.

Don’t resist, Charity,
he thought.
Make this easy, please.

She sat in a cheap plastic chair by the back door of the Winnebago. The tires of the motor home had gone flat, and sand rose halfway up the wheel well. She’d constructed a makeshift sunscreen from a blue plastic tarp and two aluminum tent poles. A vast sandstone bluff rose behind the motor home, and a boulder shielded it from the road. There were a few scrubby trees, sagebrush, cactus, and clumps of desert grass that bent in the breeze to etch lines and circles in the sand.

She held a book—make that a personal journal—and a pen, which she tucked beneath her chair as they approached. Jacob’s eyes dropped to the book. Was it a diary of a woman who had found peace in the solitude of the desert, or was it a list of the world’s injustices, of the faults, real and imagined, inflicted on her over the years? He studied her face, the grim set to her mouth, the gray, stringy hair held back with a rubber band.

“Sister Charity,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Brother Jacob.” Charity’s expression looked like she’d eaten something chalky. “And Eliza. Alive.” She didn’t sound surprised. “My daughter said they held a funeral. Put up a gravestone and everything. Seemed fishy to me. Well, I can guess why you did it.”

“And are you going to tell Taylor Junior?” Jacob asked.

“Of course not. For one, I haven’t seen him in years. Glad of it, too. But I don’t care if you brought Eliza. You’re still wasting your time, I’m not going back.”

He kept his tone light. “No gun this time. That’s a good sign. Maybe you’re softening.”

“I’m not softening. And you’re not going to convince me.”

“We’re not here to convince you. You made it clear last time.”

“Not clear enough, apparently, because here you are.”

Jacob shook his head. “Don’t worry, Sister Charity. I’ve given up trying to dislodge you from this place. But we need your help.”

“My help? What kind of trick is this?”

Eliza stepped out from behind Jacob. “It’s no trick. We do need your help. And you won’t just be helping us, you’ll be helping innocent women and children.”

Charity glared. Eliza didn’t look away. After a moment Charity returned her gaze to Jacob. “Fine, what kind of help?”

“I’m looking for someone. I think you know who, and I think you know where.”

The woman didn’t answer. The engine of his car ticked behind them. The sun was climbing in the sky, and as soon as the wind died it would be a hot day.

“Sister Charity,” Eliza said gently. “You’ve seen it. Maybe those boys weren’t your kids, but you lived in the same house. You know what they were like, and you know how they turned out. Is it fair to those women and children to abandon them to him?”

“Very well,” Charity said. “Let’s talk about those women and children. What happens when you get your way? You’re going to leave them to fend for themselves, is that it?”

“I’m going to offer them what I offered you,” Jacob said. “What I’m
still
offering you. Nobody will expect you to grovel. Nobody will demand that you swear eternal allegiance. All we’re offering is a family and a home. Is that so bad that you’d rather suffer in the desert, alone?”

For a moment he thought she’d break. It couldn’t be easy living out here in a broken-down motor home, isolated from her friends and family. Even her own children, grown though they were. The loneliness must be crippling, so why was she so stubborn?

“It doesn’t matter,” she said at last. “Those boys belong to my husband. So do I. Don’t ask me to betray my covenants.”

“I’m not asking you to do that, Sister. I’m asking you to
honor
your covenants. You also covenanted to obey the prophet.”

“The prophet doesn’t speak to me. And he doesn’t want me to come back.”

There was some history between Charity and his father. Jacob’s mother claimed that Charity had been engaged to his father when
they were both teenagers. To be his first wife. Father’s choice. She must have been different then. Age and years of crushing responsibility had turned her into a disappointed shell of a woman, had hardened a sour expression onto her face.

Jacob was running out of options, except for the hard one.

“This is the will of the prophet,” he said.

“Is that right?” she demanded. “Then where is Brother Abraham? He can tell me himself.”

“He sent me instead.”

“Don’t lie to me, Jacob Christianson. I’m a pathetic old lady, but I’m not an idiot. He didn’t send you—he’d never do that. But I’ll tell you what, if your father wants my help, I’ll do it. How about that? I’ll tell you how to find Taylor Junior and his camp. I’ll even come back to Blister Creek if Abraham speaks as a prophet and tells me that’s the Lord’s will. But until then, my responsibility is to obey my husband.”

Jacob hardened his voice. “Tell me how to find Taylor Junior.”

“No.” She thrust out her chin. “You can beat me if you like, threaten to kill me. I don’t care, I’m not telling you anything.”

“Then you leave me no choice.” Slowly, reluctantly, he turned and gave Eliza a nod. His sister’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

“What are you talking about?”

“She doesn’t understand,” Eliza said.

Charity turned with a frown and cocked her head. “Understand what, Eliza?”

“Or maybe she does,” Jacob said, “but she’s hardened her heart.”

“No, I can’t believe that,” Eliza said. “She may be stubborn, but if she knew you’d been called by the Lord, she’d help. Sister Charity has always listened to the Spirit.”

Charity snorted. “Oh, that’s what we need, another self-proclaimed prophet.” But a hint of doubt scratched through in her voice.

“You see,” Jacob said. “She has hardened her heart. I have no choice.”

He turned without warning and grabbed Charity by the shoulders. He dragged her to her feet and kicked away the chair. She felt light, frail. Her wrist bones creaked beneath his grip. A twist and they would snap like dead branches. She cried out and struggled, but he gave her a savage shake. She moaned in terror.

“Charity Kimball! In the name of Jesus Christ, thou art rebuked before God, angels, and these witnesses.”

“No, please! Don’t do it, please, no!”

Is this what Father does?

Did he bully people? Threaten them with damnation, lord his priesthood over his followers when they didn’t obey their prophet? Did his blood pulse with righteous anger as his enemies cowered before him?

Charity’s feet collapsed and he gripped the fabric of her dress with his left hand to hold her upright. He raised the other hand to the square and she let out a whimper, eyes widening in dread.