Desert Wives (9781615952267) (18 page)

He pulled the truck onto the road. Neither of us said another word, just brooded on our respective paranoia until Purity raised its tar-papered head on the horizon. As we drove into the yard, the amount of activity in Prophet's Park amazed us. What seemed like almost the entire roster of Purity's male population was busily piling into cars and pickup trucks.

Saul stuck his head out the window. “What's going on?” he called to Earl Graff, whose swine-like face looked even redder than usual.

“It's Cynthia Royal! She ran away. Hellfire awaits her if she don't come back.” The anger in his voice gave a clear indication of the hellfire he'd personally visit upon her if he found her.

Alarmed, I tried to calm him. “Brother Earl, the girl is little more than a child, and her father recently died. She's probably off crying somewhere.”

Graff's mean little eyes narrowed and he let fly a most unreligious epithet. “Oh, yeah? Well, the little bitch was supposed to marry me two hours ago, and I notice that she wasn't crying too hard to run!”

Chapter 13

Where was Davis?

Purity's new prophet had promised that he'd allow no girl under sixteen to be married, especially not by force. Could it be he didn't know what was going on?

Or was he lying dead in Paiute Canyon?

“Drive to Davis's house!” I yelled at Saul. “If he's alive, he'll put a stop to this!”

“
If
he's alive?” Saul gave me a startled look, but he took a hard left and wheeled through the mesquite grove as fast as he could without clipping a few trees. As soon as he'd reached Davis's driveway, I saw that his Mercedes was gone.

I jumped out of the truck anyway, hiked my skirts, and ran up the stairs. Apparently hearing the commotion, Sissy met me at the door.

“Where's Davis? Cynthia ran off, and the Circle of Elders is after her! Earl Graff says she's supposed to marry him!”

Sissy blanched. “Oh, no! Not Brother Earl!” She shook her head. “Brother Davis left for Salt Lake City last night. He needed to do some banking.”

I left her standing on the porch and ran back to Saul.

“Davis isn't going to help us, so we'll have to find her ourselves before Earl does.”

For hours Saul and I drove around the perimeter of Purity in ever-widening circles, bumping dangerously over the desert itself. A couple of times we almost gullied out, but were able to rock the truck back and forth until we freed it. We searched the terrain for the slightest movement, but saw nothing other than a couple of antelope. It worried me. Although the high desert surrounding Purity was not as harsh as the desert surrounding Phoenix, it was harsh enough. A young girl could still easily die out here.

I trembled, remembering my own near death on the desert. Was anyone praying for Cynthia? Or just seeking to capture her?

We searched for hours but never found Cynthia. I comforted myself with the hope that perhaps she'd run to the Paiute and sought refuge with them. Or maybe, like so many other runaways before her, she'd headed toward West Wind Ranch. We drove halfway back to the ranch, scanning the sides of the blacktop for her, but we saw nothing to make us believe she'd passed that way. Eventually we realized she couldn't possibly have made it to the blacktop already, so we turned around and headed back toward Purity again.

“I should have realized something was wrong when I was at Ermaline's house this morning,” I mourned. “But she didn't tell me!”

“Why should she?” Saul asked. “Remember, she thinks you're just another sister wife. But she should have had enough sense to come to me. Surely she knew I'd help her.”

“We were gone all day,” I said. “She didn't have
anybody
to turn to!”

Now that I'd had time to think, I could guess what happened. With Davis away, the Circle of Elders voted to hurry the marriage, figuring he wouldn't bother to annul it once the dirty deed had been accomplished. Whatever their reasoning, it was time to contact the authorities. But when I asked Saul to pull into a gas station so I could call them, he balked.

“I'm not sure you should drag the authorities into this,” he said. “It might be best to…”

“To what? Just let her die in the desert?”

He shook his head, but stopped at the station anyway and gave me change for the phone. “Go ahead, then. But things might not work out the way you think they will.”

Saul proved to be right. The minute I told the sheriff's dispatcher Cynthia was only fifteen and that I wasn't her mother, he lost interest. “She's a minor. If her parents are concerned about her, they'll file a report themselves.”

“Her father's dead, and her mother, well…She, uh, she's out looking for her,” I lied. “I imagine she was so worried that she didn't stop to call you.”

The dispatcher remained unimpressed. When I kept insisting that Cynthia was only fifteen and could be in danger, he told me to have Ermaline call Dispatch when she returned. Then he hung up.

Fuming, I went back to the truck.

“Told you,” Saul said.

Cynthia still hadn't been found when, several hours later, I walked to Ermaline's to help with dinner. The girl's absence was a good sign, I hoped. Maybe she'd already found help and was on her way to a new life. But just in case, I decided to skip my breakfast-fixing activities the next morning so I could look for her again.

In the kitchen, I was surprised to see Ermaline working away as usual. The other wives, especially Jean, looked much more upset than she did.

“Runaway girls are the men's problem,” Ermaline said, kneading bread for what appeared to be a baker's dozen loaves. “As will be her punishment when they find her.”

Looking up from the mess I'd made in the bowl by slopping lumpy mashed potatoes over the edge and onto the table, I asked, “Punishment?”

“Of course they're gonna punish her. But whatever pain steers a sinful woman away from Satan's gate is merciful in the end.” Ermaline's voice was calm, her face severe. “The stupid girl's risked hellfire by not marryin' her God-chosen husband.”

Appalled, I spoke before I thought. “God didn't choose Earl Graff for her, the Circle of Elders did!”

“Same thing.”

I wiped my hands on my apron. “But Sister Ermaline, surely there are other prospective, ah, husbands who might be more to Cynthia's liking. And that Brother Earl, well excuse me, but he comes across to me as just plain mean!”

Ermaline's hands, as big-boned as a man's, I now noticed, kept kneading the dough until I thought it would scream for mercy. “Marriage is a covenant, Sister Lena, and covenants don't have nothing to do with liking or not liking. The only thing important for a woman is bringing more souls into the world, and she can't do that without getting married, can she?”

I opened my mouth to protest again, but noticed Jean's warning expression. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

Ermaline finally gave the bread dough a break and rested her hands on the work table. “Sister Lena, you're new around here but that don't excuse your ignorance of God's laws. You worry too much about feelings, but feelings are for the weak, not the Godly.”

A harsh philosophy not worth arguing about, so I said nothing more, just busied myself with the mashed potatoes. The tension in the kitchen made it a more unpleasant place to work than usual. The day's heat, added to the full-bore ovens, had everyone sweating and snapping at each other like caged rats. No one dared to snap at Ermaline, though.

Sister Ermaline's casual attitude toward her daughter's welfare troubled me, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Just to be sure, I decided to find out what she'd done, if anything, to see that her hellfire-bent daughter at least remained safe.

“Sister Ermaline, did you call the sheriff's office about Cynthia? It's pretty hot out there today and maybe she didn't take enough water.”

Here Ermaline surprised me. “Of course I didn't, but when the men couldn't find her right away, Brother Earl came back and called the sheriff himself. There are patrol cars out looking for her right now.”

I frowned. The deputy had pretty much told me that since I wasn't Cynthia's mother, I had no right to file a missing person's report. What made Earl Graff so special?

After that, we lapsed into silence, working quickly, if not cheerfully. Just when I thought I couldn't take the tension any longer, the household's older boys, led by Meade Royal, returned from the fields where they'd been working, and we carried the dinner to the table. After Meade led them all in prayer, I noticed with pride that no one refused my mashed potatoes.

When I finally left Ermaline's kitchen, loaded down with Salisbury steaks for Saul, I couldn't help but think that something obvious had slid under my radar while I worried about Cynthia. But what?

As I crossed the yard to Saul's house, I saw the men's pickup trucks were still gone, which meant they were still out looking for her.

Go, girl! Whatever you do, don't let them catch you.

Back at Saul's house, Ruby wolfed down her meal but refused to be drawn into a discussion about Cynthia. Saul said little, too, and I decided that his earlier anger at my suspicions of him had returned. When he finished dinner, he pushed himself away from the table, went into the living room and began recording another letter to his son. After finishing the dishes, Ruby stalked down the hallway and locked herself in her room, leaving me to listen to Saul tell his son about his current real estate problems. I felt totally alone, and for the first time that I could remember, didn't like it.

Then it struck me. I'd only been here a week, and yet I—a woman who'd always valued her privacy—now felt uneasy with solitude. How much more extreme would that unease be if I'd lived all my life in a house populated by at least fifty people? Did the simple fear of being alone factor into the women's odd acceptance of their fate?

Leaving Saul to his tape recorder, I stepped out onto the porch and collapsed into the swing. The sun set in its usual glory, tinting the Vermillion Cliffs with great splashes of red, orange and violet. But as pretty as it all looked, the compound remained eerily quiet. The men were still gone, and for once, few children played in Prophet's Park. Even the doors and windows to the homes were closed, as if by battening down the hatches, the occupants could keep Cynthia's rebellion from touching them. Not for the first time I suspected that the people of Purity were so locked into denial that they would probably never break free. It was as if they'd adopted the philosophy of “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Just the right environment for evil to flourish.

Just then I heard a rumbling from down the road, then saw a flash of headlights as the first truck topped the ridge. The men were back. Across the compound, a door slammed and Ermaline came out on the porch, followed by several other sister wives. Like me, they stood watching in silence.

I hoped Cynthia remained free and had made it to safety. In fact, I hoped so hard I didn't realize I was holding my breath until the pickups finally pulled into the yard and one of the men called out to Ermaline, “We couldn't find her!”

Then I finally exhaled.
Thank God,
I whispered to the Being I still wasn't sure I believed in.
Thank God.

My joy didn't last long.

Early the next morning, as Saul and I started out to the truck to continue our own search for the runaway, we saw a sheriff's cruiser pull up in front of Ermaline's house. To my disbelief, a uniformed officer hauled a struggling Cynthia from the back seat and handed her over to her mother. As soon as Ermaline clasped her daughter's arm with one of those big hands, the girl stopped struggling and stood there, head drooping in defeat.

But that wasn't the only thing that shocked me.

The officer who'd brought Cynthia back was Howard Benson, the very man who had come into Desert Investigations and accused my client of murder.

Although I desperately wanted to go to Cynthia's aid, I couldn't let him see me, so I waited inside Saul's house until he'd driven out of the compound. In the meantime, I fumed. What the hell did Benson think he was doing, bringing the girl back to face a forced marriage? He was a sheriff, for God's sake, sworn to uphold the law, and the last time I checked, polygamy was illegal as hell. Since he'd brought Cynthia back, it could only mean he supported the polygamists. If so, I could never turn to him for help.

After Benson's car vanished down the dusty road, I ran across the yard to Ermaline's house.

Most of the household's children were already dressed, but strangely quiet, as if they knew something was wrong but weren't sure exactly what. Ignoring their baffled looks, I hurried past them into the kitchen, where the first load of biscuits was being taken out of the oven. No Ermaline, no Cynthia. The other women looked more scared than usual.

Sister Jean looked up from the sausage patties she was making. “You're late.” No welcoming smile today.

“I overslept.”

She raised a greasy hand and motioned to the other end of the long preparation table. “Ermaline's already measured out the ingredients. All you need to do is add them together, then cut the shortening into the mix.”

I started work immediately, thrusting my hands into the huge bowl. But I was determined to find out what was going on. “On my way over here I saw Cynthia being brought back. Is she all right?”

“I think so,” Jean answered, her voice so devoid of inflection that I couldn't tell if she was upset or relieved. “Don't concern yourself with her, Sister Lena. Just do your own job.”

“But I was wondering…”

Jean glared at me. “Sister Lena, could you please shut up and work?” I noticed for the first time that her eyes were almost as red as her hair. She'd been crying.

“Yeah, yeah.” No point in upsetting her further. I'd talk to Cynthia later. Jean was not only upset, but unless I was mistaken, she was terrified.

I'd just started patting the dough balls onto the cooking sheet when I heard the front door open and Earl Graff call out, “Sister Ermaline! We've come for Cynthia!”

We?
I didn't like the sound of that so I wiped my floury hands on my apron and hurried into the living room, to see Graff standing there with a grim-faced posse of the compound's men. Then, to my disbelief, I saw Ermaline emerge from one of the bedrooms, dragging along an obviously terrified Cynthia.

“Mother, please, no!” the girl cried. “No!” She squirmed and struggled, but Ermaline remained implacable.

“Quiet, you wicked girl!” Ermaline hissed. “You gotta do the right thing or you'll burn in Hell forever!”

“Mother, no!”

I couldn't stand it any longer. I stepped in front of Ermaline. “You can't hand her over to these men!”

Sister Ermaline's big hand swatted me away as if I were no more than a fly trying to land on one of her precious biscuits. “Mind your own business, Sister Lena. Cynthia's sinned and she's gotta be punished. It's God's law.”