The Gates of Babylon (21 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“There are advantages to being a cripple,” Fernie told Eliza, who studied her with undisguised skepticism as the two women waited on the Smoot porch, beneath the glow of a porch light and floodlights that cast the house and surrounding yard in a harsh, bright light in defiance of electrical rationing. “Nobody takes you seriously.”

Fernie had turned over the plan several times in her mind and was sure she could evade the Smoots. Her real opponent was her own sister, stubborn as Jacob and likely to set off on her own if Fernie couldn’t convince her. And if they were right, if Smoot meant to sell the grain tonight, they didn’t have time to sit here arguing.

“I take you seriously,” Eliza said. “But let’s be serious. What are you going to do, tear off down the street in your chair with a baby on your lap?”

“I’m not going to tear off anywhere.” Fernie forced a calm into her voice that she didn’t feel. This was an intellectual argument, not spiritual, which put her on unequal footing with Eliza. “They’re not watching me, they’re watching you.”

The two women were ostensibly waiting for Fernie’s son Daniel to come over from the Christianson house, carrying his meds, the baby, and a diaper bag. One of Elder Smoot’s teenage sons watched them from the house, staring through the window. Sister Lillian had followed her mother upstairs to prepare a room for the women to spend the night.

“This is ridiculous,” Eliza said. “I’m outside, I’ll walk away. What can they do?”

“Chase you down.”

“So I’ll run instead of walk,” Eliza said. “It’s dark, I’ll hide in the shadows.”

“And go where? They’ll cut you off in the truck before you get home, and send someone else to the chapel to make sure you don’t go looking for Mr. Malloy.”

“You’re in a wheelchair.”

Fernie looked up at her and smiled. “Thank you for the reminder.”

“I don’t mean it like that, you know that. But I can cut through lots. You’ll have to stick to the sidewalks and streets. Remember all the cows? The roads are filthy.”

“I’ll manage.”

“But I could go faster.”

“Until you’re caught.” Fernie put a hand on Eliza’s wrist. “Elder Smoot isn’t going to move thirty-five hundred tons of
grain just like that,” Fernie said. “A grain truck carries what? Thirty, forty tons? That’s a hundred truckloads. Where is he even getting the fuel?”

Fernie wished she felt as confident as she sounded. But she knew there would be eyes on Eliza at all times, while Fernie was an afterthought in Smoot’s prisoner-taking.

A slender figure made his way out of the darkness into the light and Fernie caught her breath as she turned the chair to watch. Her son Daniel was eleven but seemed much younger and smaller in the shadows that encroached on every side. With the medication prescribed by his father, the boy’s night terrors had eased—he was no longer sleepwalking under command of an evil spirit. But when Fernie saw him outside at night, she couldn’t stop thinking about the dark figure stalking him in his sleep.

Not an angel. Daniel is bipolar. Jacob knows how to treat it.

Daniel carried a diaper bag slung over one shoulder and was pushing his baby brother in the stroller. Jake was squirming against the straps and fussing, and when they reached the stairs, he caught sight of his mother and reached out his arms.

“Mama!”

“Come here, you,” she said.

Daniel unstrapped the boy’s stroller and Jake squirmed down and scrambled up the stairs, using hands and feet. He climbed onto Fernie’s lap and she planted a kiss on his chubby cheek, which was cold from the night air. He was fourteen months old and must have eaten dinner back at the house, but he reached for her blouse as if he wanted to comfort nurse. Fernie turned him around on her lap away from her breast.

Eliza carried up the stroller and diaper bag and fished out Daniel’s pill bottle. The handful of pills at the bottom rattled against the side as Fernie opened it and tapped one into her hand.

“Need any water?”

Daniel shook his head and popped it into his mouth.

Fernie glanced inside before closing the cap. Three left. Three small white pills and then… she put it out of her mind for the moment and tucked the bottle back in the diaper bag. She set the bag down and Eliza discreetly pushed it against the house with her foot to get it out of the way.

Eliza glanced at the window, and the boy studying them. “You’re sure about this?”

“Go inside and talk to that kid. Tell him about, I don’t know, your sister Clara, see if he thinks she’s pretty.”

“Fernie, I—”

“No time to argue. Go.”

Eliza opened her mouth as if to mount one last argument, then shut it and entered the house without another word. When she was gone, Fernie counted slowly in her head without looking in the window. When she reached ten, she handed the reluctant toddler back to his older brother and told Daniel to follow her as she wheeled along the wraparound deck. It bent around the side of the house, where it fell into darkness.

“Where we going?” Jake asked in a loud voice from his brother’s arms.

“Shh. Quiet now, boys.”

They reached the back steps, which led from the porch to a path into the Smoot vegetable gardens, hidden now by night.

Fernie lifted her feet off the footplates, grabbed the railing at the top of the stairs, and hoisted herself to a standing position. She pushed the wheelchair out of the way. Her good leg bore some of her weight, but only for a split second, and then she fell painfully on her backside. She swung her legs over the edge, and her feet thudded onto the second step.

“Put Jake down,” she told Daniel as she squeezed to one side of the stairs. “Get the wheelchair past me and down to the ground.”

The chair banged alarmingly as Daniel took it down. Jake followed his brother.

“Mom, it’s not good,” Daniel whispered from the darkness below her.

“What do you mean?”

“The first two stairs are okay, but they took out the bottom step. It’s stone blocks, and there’s a pile of boards. I think they’re working on the deck.”

Her heart sank. Stairs was one thing, but a couple of wobbly stone blocks? How could she manage that?

“Mama?” Jake said.

Fernie kept her voice calm. “Be patient boys. I’m coming down.”

“But how are you—?” Daniel asked.

“Shh.”

For most of her life, she had come up and down stairs without a thought. But these few seemed as forbidding as the Ghost Cliffs. And stone blocks at the bottom? It was as if some adversary had eyed her weakness and smiled in cruel delight as he put these obstacles in her way.

They’re just stairs. Wood, stone, it doesn’t matter.

Her arms strained as she scooted to the edge and lowered herself on her backside to the next step. She slipped the last couple of inches, grabbing at the railing as she fell. The second one went better, and then she bent and her fingers traced the rough surface of two cinderblocks standing next to each other. She bent and gave the makeshift stair a tentative shake. It was wobbly, but she thought it would hold her weight if she could move directly from there to the ground before it collapsed beneath her.

One more. You can do this.

Fernie wrapped her fingers around the top cinderblock. She leaned a bit of weight into it, stabilized the stones, and eased off the last wooden stair. The moment her full weight passed from the stair to the cinderblocks, they began to rock like a building in an earthquake.

Daniel grabbed her as she fell, but she sprawled into the dirt, the cinderblocks slamming into her ribs. A groan escaped.

Jake started to cry.

Still lying on her side, Fernie groped with her free hand until she found her younger son and clutched his arm. “No, shh. Mama’s okay.”

Fernie got herself off the cinderblock and refused to give in to the tears of pain that sprang to her eyes. She found the chair, flipped the brake, and tried to lift herself up. She got halfway up, and then her arms, tired from the effort of lowering herself down the stairs, wobbled and collapsed beneath her. She tried again, this time with Daniel grabbing her by the armpits and grunting to get her up. It wasn’t enough. After a full minute of struggle, she sat
back in the dirt and took in deep breaths. Her triceps and forearms trembled with exhaustion.

“Are you okay?” Daniel whispered. Jake made worried-sounding whimpers from her other side.

She would never do this alone.

Her eyes closed.

Heavenly Father,
she prayed silently.
My burden is heavy, but I don’t complain, because I know when the time comes, thou shalt lift me up. I need thee now. Lend me thy strength.

A feeling of calm flooded through her and the pain in her ribs eased.

Fernie opened her eyes, fixed on the shadow of the wheelchair, and found her solution at once. She scooted on her backside until she sat next to the tumbled-over cinderblocks. She flipped them wide-side down and heaved one on top of the other and then straightened them. Carefully, she lifted herself until she got into a sitting position on top of the two blocks.

“Push the wheelchair over here,” she whispered. “Now fix the brake and put your foot behind the wheel. Don’t let it slide.”

She grabbed the armrests. Starting from a position over a foot off the ground, and with several seconds of rest, she got herself up, twisted, and slumped into the chair. Jake squirmed up and onto her lap and she unbuttoned her blouse to let him nurse to keep him quiet until they got away from the house.

“This way,” she told Daniel. “Keep to the darkness.”

She knew what Jacob would have said. That moment of meditation when she closed her eyes had calmed her mind. Panic gone, the solution was easy to find. But Fernie knew the truth.

And so she did not forget to say another prayer as her oldest son wheeled her through the darkness toward the sidewalk beyond the Smoot house. It was a prayer of gratitude.

Two blocks from the Smoot household, near the Davidson compound, Fernie grabbed the wheels to stop Daniel pushing when she heard the sound of hooves on pavement.

A horse and rider trotted by on the opposite side of the street. When he passed into the illuminated patch in front of the Davidson’s porch light, she caught a glimpse of a man leaning forward purposefully in the saddle, gloved hands clutching the reins. A rifle jutted from a holster on his saddle.

Jake had detached from his nursing at the sound of clomping hooves and craned to watch. Fernie prepared to slap a hand over his mouth if he made a sound.

Fortunately, the toddler stayed quiet, and neither did the rider look their way.

When he was gone, Fernie told Daniel, “We’ll have to cross the street again. Don’t worry about cowpies.”

“Okay.”

“Turn left at the end of the block. Keep going until you see the chapel and then come around the back of the parking lot. If you see anyone else, stop moving and stay quiet until I say so.”

But they didn’t see or hear anyone else as they passed one darkened house and yard after another. Heavy, cold raindrops plopped against her skin. The air smelled of wet manure and that thick dampness that hinted at heavier rain to come. Maybe even
snow if the temperature kept dropping. Now that Jake’s cold cheeks had warmed up, she was grateful to share his body heat.

They stopped after crossing the worst of the mess left by the cattle drive and cleaned shoes and wheels on the grass in front of one of the darkened houses. They rounded the block and approached the chapel.

Fernie was surprised to see all the lights on and people moving through the chapel parking lot. Armed men in uniform were climbing into the back of a pair of green army-style trucks with the USDA logo on the side, while others watched the street. A pair of thirty-ton grain trucks lined up in the street, guarded by two more soldiers. Chip Malloy himself stood in front of the chapel with a satellite phone to his ear.

For a moment she thought the trucks belonged to Elder Smoot, and Malloy had arrived at the last moment to prevent the movement and sale of the grain. Then a third truck rolled onto the street and came to a stop with the hiss of brakes. The driver jumped down and greeted Malloy, who lowered his phone briefly to give instructions. The man climbed back in and pulled to the front of the queue of trucks.

What was going on?

“Turn around,” she said to Daniel in a low voice. “Get us out of here.”

She had not yet decided whether to go back for Eliza, or whether to go home and try to raise the Women’s Council.

“Hey!” a man shouted.

Powerful flashlights sliced through the air to illuminate her position. Still pushing Fernie’s wheelchair, Daniel broke into a run, and Jake detached from her nipple again to twist and see what
was causing the excitement. Fernie looked over her shoulder to see armed men running after them, and closing quickly. Her heart pounded with fear, not for her own safety, but afraid for her boys. Darkness, men with guns—a chance for a horrible accident.

“Stop!” she cried. She pulled up her dress to cover her exposed breast.

She grabbed at the wheels, which burned to a stop beneath her hands. Daniel stopped pushing. Moments later, the soldiers caught up to them.