The Gates of Babylon (16 page)

“We understand now,” Jim said. He turned to his brother. “Don’t we?”

“Very clear,” Parley said. “North is ours. South, yours.”

“And I-70 is our neutral zone,” Alacrán said with a nod. “Where we trade. As allies, because there’s no point in making more enemies.”

For now,
Jim thought.
For now.

“There’s the business with the grain,” Jim said. “I’m warning you—if you try to screw me on that…”

“It’s yours,” Alacrán said. “Already too many people down there—I’m not planning to feed them. A few more hungry refugees fleeing north would suit me just fine.”

Jim wasn’t sure he believed it. Food, fuel, and guns—the basis of power in the new Southwest.

“Good,” Parley said. “But we still have resources in the south, in Cedar City and Beaver. County sheriffs and ranchers and highway patrol headquarters. I’d hate for this little arrangement to get off on the wrong foot before we can relocate them north.”

“Understood,” Alacrán said.

Jim looked around, at the stacked boxes, the weapons, the ammunition. “And all this is cleared out tonight, you say?”

“Every last gun and bullet.”

The men shook hands, and then they returned to the panel truck, now unloaded. Jim took back his keys, and moments later the McKay brothers were pulling out of the amusement park and crossing the empty parking lot toward the main road.

“What do you think?” Parley said. “You were his missionary companion—is he telling the truth?”

“Alacrán means what he says. At least at the moment he says it.” Jim considered the next few months. It would get ugly this
winter. “We have to hold on until spring, and then the worst will be behind us.”

“You mean the war? Or the weather?”

“The war for sure,” Jim said. “We’ve got more oil than they have food, so who is going to give up first? And when we win, the army will come back and clean this country up. And then summer will come, and normal weather. And normal crops. Five years from now—well, let’s say ten—it will be like none of this ever happened.”

“That’s some serious optimism there.”

“That’s my job. Keep our people fed and off the streets. Make sure the center holds until the crisis passes.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Parley asked.

“You tell me.”

“You already know what I think. If it doesn’t, then our job is to make sure that when the Dark Ages come, we’re the lords in the castle, and not the serfs in the fields.”

“Sometimes I think you’re
hoping
for a collapse.”

“Sometimes I am,” Parley agreed. “It will be interesting. Not too many people live through a massive historical upheaval.”

“If it’s the end of the world,” Jim said, “most of them won’t.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“I am going to confront Elder Smoot,” Eliza told Fernie as she pulled the lever and sent hot water pouring into the bathtub.

Fernie gasped at the heat of the water spilling around her ankles and bare legs. With propane in short supply, Jacob and David had rigged an ingenious plumbing system to pipe hot water from the wood boiler to the two houses, but there was a small flaw in the system that made it hard to adjust the temperature here on the lowest floor of the main house.

Eliza lifted Fernie’s feet out of the water. Her legs were straight and smooth from the physical therapy, but the muscles had atrophied since the car accident fifteen months ago, especially on the weaker right leg. If Fernie was dismayed over the loss of her once beautiful figure—attractive even after giving birth to four children—she never voiced a complaint.

“No, put them down,” Fernie said. “I like a little burning. Reminds me I’m not completely numb down there.”

When Eliza obeyed, Fernie bent in the bath chair and scooped hot water, which she let run down her breasts and belly.

“Confront?” Fernie said. “That’s a serious word.”

Eliza looked for a better word, but couldn’t think of one. “Elder Smoot isn’t the sort who listens to women. And I’ll have to go to his house to get an audience. It will be a confrontation.”

“That place is a den of lions. You must have a good reason.”

“Not going to talk me out of it?” Eliza said. “Or tell me to wait until Jacob gets back?”

“That crossed my mind. But I guessed you weren’t sharing this to get a rise out of me.”

“I wish I were.” Eliza hesitated. “I think Smoot is in contact with smugglers and he’s going to make some deal while Jacob is gone.”

Fernie turned with concern in her eyes. Steam billowed around her face and her cheeks were flushed and beaded with perspiration and condensed steam. “And you think that… why?”

“To start, I was suspicious that he’d accept me as leader until Jacob came back. Seemed a little too easy.”

“Jacob told him to, that’s why. Elder Smoot has covenanted before God and angels to sustain the prophet—he wouldn’t go against that.”

“You’re sure?” Eliza said. “I’m not. Oh, I bet he meant it when he said it, but with a million caveats. Pretty sure one of them was not to bend a knee to an unmarried girl.”

“Have a little more faith. Even if he grumbles, it doesn’t mean he’ll fight you. He still has to deal with Jacob and David when
they get back. And Stephen Paul and the other elders when they return from the cattle drive. And your fiancé,” she added with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “His forearms are bigger than Smoot’s thighs. Imagine worrying if Steve Krantz was going to lay a hand on you.”

“I wouldn’t mind having Steve’s hands on me right about now,” Eliza said.

“Eliza!” Fernie gave her a mock look of shock and horror. “Try to keep your thoughts pure, for heaven’s sake. It’s only three more weeks.”

“Eighteen days, not that I’m counting.”

Seemed like forever with Steve out of town, possibly facing danger, a thought that twisted Eliza’s insides into a pretzel.

Earlier that summer, after Steve’s reluctant baptism at the reservoir, they’d gone around the temple that night, ostensibly to check the security cameras, but really to be alone. Once he got her into the darkness around back, he pushed her against the wall of the temple and kissed her, truly kissed her for the first time.

He was so strong that she should have felt pinned, constrained, and perhaps a bit terrified. It was the exact thing that mothers, older sisters, and purse-lipped widows warned you about. A man would get you alone, kiss you, and then, when you tried to pull away, he would throw you down, overcome by lust, and ravish your virtue.

But she found his strength and passion so arousing that she would have been helpless to resist. Her breasts ached for his touch; her skin felt like electricity coursed through it every time his mouth or hands shifted a fraction of an inch.

After a few minutes, he pulled away, panting. She let out a little groan.

“You do want to wait,” he managed. “Right?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” She couldn’t catch her breath. “I mean no, but… yes, we have to.”

He reached down and took her hand with what seemed a great force of will. “Then let’s walk back into town.”

“Do we have to?”

“I don’t know about you, but
I
have to, or I’m going to do something I regret.”

Remembering that first kiss behind the temple took her to another make-out session in the barn, then back to the hottest one of all, in that freezing cold hotel room with the sniper rifles. She could relive that memory a million times.

“You’re so flushed,” Fernie said, studying Eliza. “It’s almost like you’re the one in the hot bath, not me.”

“A lot of steam in here.”

“Yeah, I’d say,” Fernie said. “And half of it is boiling off you, I swear.”

“Sorry. I’ll be better after the wedding.”

“Do you need any sort of advice?”

“What kind of advice?” Eliza asked.

Fernie looked pained. “You know, wedding night stuff.”

“I did some digging around online before we lost the Internet,” Eliza said with a smile at her sister’s discomfort. “And I’ve got a good imagination.”

“I’m not a prude. I know I seem that way sometimes, but… well, if you have any questions.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Eliza turned off the water, which diminished to a trickle, and then a slowing series of fat droplets that plopped into the water. The hot water came to Fernie’s navel, rising and falling with the gentle slosh across the tub. Eliza handed Fernie a bar of soap and a sponge.

“You think they’ll be okay, right?” Eliza asked.

“I hope so—I believe so. But I’m not so confident I’m not praying for all I’m worth.” Fernie soaped up her arms. “And I’ve got enough to worry about without Elder Smoot pulling something while my husband is out of town.”

“I was waiting for you to get back to that.”

“I needed to let it sink in. Defiance is a pretty serious charge.”

“I’m not talking about
open
defiance,” Eliza said. “I’m talking about taking advantage of Jacob’s absence to do something that would put the community in jeopardy. That’s why I need to confront him.”

“Is the spirit prompting this? Or did someone give you a warning?”

“More the second than the first.”

Eliza explained about her conversation with Sister Lillian, and Smoot’s contact with the smugglers fed the growing suspicion that Smoot was planning to steal back their food supplies and sell them while Jacob was away.

“He doesn’t know what happened when we tried to sell the diesel,” she added. “And how quickly things can go wrong. How do we know Smoot hasn’t contacted the same jerks who robbed us last time?”

“You could warn him.”

“Jacob doesn’t want it getting out. That’s why I haven’t told the council what happened and why he hasn’t told his quorum.”

“About the fuel? Or that it failed?”

“Either, I think.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Fernie said. “Even if Smoot knows what he’s doing, we’ve got other reasons to stop this. Picking a fight with Chip Malloy and the USDA, for one. That would be dumb. For another, it’s not Smoot’s food to sell.”

“Exactly. We might need it to stay alive.”

Fernie finished lathering her hair and tilted her head back while Eliza took the scooper from the hook on the wall and poured water from it over her head, like rinsing shampoo from the hair of a small child, except there was so much more of it, and the bather in this case did not whine and carry on about water and shampoo in her eyes.

When Eliza finished, Fernie wiped water from her face and wrung out her hair. “And you don’t think you should wait until Jacob gets to Las Vegas where you can reach him on the cell?”

“He won’t get there until tomorrow night, at best. The next day, Jacob comes home. If Smoot is going to pull something, it has to be soon.”

“So you’re going to confront Elder Smoot tonight.”

“That’s my plan.”

“That’s not a plan,” Fernie said, “that’s a goal. A plan is knock on his door and refuse to leave, or trick your way inside before he comes in for supper and then pull a gun.”

“Pull a gun?” she said with a smile. “Who do you think I am, Miriam?”

“How about a metaphorical gun?”

“Go on.”

“Have you read Grandma Cowley’s diaries?” Fernie asked.

“I have. Can’t make sense of them yet.”

“There’s a lesson for you there.”

Was there?

The diaries chronicled Henrietta Rebecca Cowley’s memories of the blood-soaked founding of Blister Creek. The women sent into the wilderness, and the men who came after them to take control of everything they’d built. The conflict between the men and women had culminated in the murder of one of Grandma Cowley’s closest friends and a century and a quarter of patriarchal domination of the town. Loosening, finally, but not yet ended.

Eliza said, “She wasn’t ruthless enough. Is that what you’re saying? I’m not ruthless either.”

“Aren’t you? You killed Gideon and Caleb Kimball. With your bare hands.”

“Hardly my bare hands. Anyway, I was fighting for my life. I’m not going to grab a hunk of sandstone and brain Elder Smoot because he’s a stubborn old jackass.”

“You won’t have to. You only have to show you’re willing.”

Eliza stared at Fernie, surprised. Her half sister was tough in a frontier way, and strong enough to be married to Jacob without getting dominated by his strong personality. But she was also the type to nurse a sick dog back to health and look away when the time came to chop the head off a chicken. This talk of violence was out of character.

“I’m not saying it will come to that,” Fernie added. “Elder Smoot is no Kimball. He won’t come after us, not like that. But
he’s a man. And even the best man will dominate a woman if given a chance.”

“Even Jacob?”

“He’s fighting against his birthright. He knows it’s wrong, and he tries to do the right thing but… yes, even Jacob.”

“You’re selling men short. Some men aren’t like that. David isn’t.”

“The ones who aren’t get driven out by the rest of the pack. Like David. We had to drag him back, remember?” Fernie cocked her head. “Sounds like kids are lining up for their baths. Now tell me, what are you going to do to confront Elder Smoot that Grandma Cowley couldn’t manage with Jedediah Kimball?”

Eliza thought about her great-great grandmother, in Witch’s Warts, standing over the murdered body of her friend. The other women abandoned her. They didn’t stand together.

“Okay,” Eliza said. “
Now
I have a plan.”

“Good.”

Eliza grabbed a clean towel and tossed it over her shoulder, but didn’t pull the plug on the bath. Half a dozen kids would bathe in this water before it turned tepid. They were on a slow crawl back to the nineteenth century, and one of the first things to go was fresh bathwater for everyone.

Fernie grabbed the bar on the wall and strained to lift herself from the chair into a standing position. When she was up, she threw her arms around Eliza’s neck and the two women struggled to get Fernie over the edge of the tub and into another semi-standing position, while Eliza toweled her off and then helped her into the wheelchair to get dressed.

“Let’s hear it,” Fernie said as Eliza pulled undergarments over stiff feet and legs.

“We accompany Sister Lillian to her family compound for supper tonight. We’ll confront Elder Smoot there. Together. All I have to do is wangle an invitation to dinner.”