Saints (20 page)

Anna wept then, for she had never confessed her secret crime to anyone before, and had never thought she would. In a few moments she told the whole story of it, and told how she knew right away that she would be punished all her life, would never be clean. “Why else would four of my seven children die within a year? Why else would I lose the husband I had wanted too much? Why else would my dream of real education for my children be destroyed, my daughter be brutally used by a man, my sons be enemies to each other?”

In vain Dinah tried to assure her that it would hardly be fair of God to punish her children for some sin of hers. Anna only quoted the scripture that said, “I will punish the children of them that hate me unto the third and fourth generation.” Then Anna gripped Dinah fiercely with her free hand so abruptly that Honor awoke and began to squawl, and defiantly said, “I believe this man, Dinah. I believe him when he says he has the power to make me clean and pure before the Lord, white as new snow, as if I had never committed a sin in my life. He isn’t a venal vicar like the ones I’ve known, he isn’t after his salary from the government, he’s simple and pure and he received his power from a man who was touched by the hands of the ancient apostles. I know you think I’m a fool, but I want so badly, Dinah, I want so badly to be
clean
.”

Dinah thought of the face of God, the face of the imagined Prophet. Not like Matthew, forever sweeping with the wind; not like Robert, full of plans and machinations without ever knowing how they would end. He had the power to act, and the wisdom to do good, and God would not despise Anna Kirkham.

“Yes,” Dinah said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I think he has that power,” Dinah said. The words were utterly inadequate for what she
wanted
to say. It was enough for her that her mother also believed, for whatever reason. Enough for her that though they both desired something different from this American preacher, they both believed that he could give it.

Anna looked at her in wonder. “You believed him?”

“Yes,” she said, “I believe him.”

“When you sat, when you looked into the fire, I thought you were angry—”

“I was thinking—if only I were with them, and could see this prophet, and live my life for the sake of something important.”

She opened the door, bent down and picked up Val. They brought the children in and put them to bed, then talked for only a few minutes more. They decided to wait for several days, to make sure they weren’t caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment, to make sure that they weren’t doing something foolish. Besides, as Anna pointed out, Matthew might resent it if his wife changed religions.

That was a whole realm of problems that Dinah refused to think about. She hurried her mother on her way and shut the matter of Matthew out of her mind. It was
her
soul, not his, she said to herself as she closed the door. I won’t conceal it from him, but I won’t ask his permission, either. Why should I? Does he ask my permission about his ridiculous political meetings, when any one of them could have him arrested if the authorities started suppressing them again? Did he ask me if I
wanted
a new house? Does he even ask for my consent when he wants to use my body as a dumping ground for his reservoir of passion? Why, then, should
I
ask
him
when it’s a matter of my relationship with God, a matter of what I choose to believe in my own soul?

The words of her argument came to her formally, not in a rush of thought but in ordered sentences, logical patterns like a sermon or a speech. And she began to let the words come to her lips as she walked up the stairs to the room she shared with Matthew. She uttered no sound, merely let her lips form the oration, which she presented as carefully as if a thousand ears were listening.

She was not aware that she was doing it, of course. She only listened to her thoughts and did not realize how close they were to being audible. Certainly she did not realize whom she was speaking
to
. And yet it was no coincidence that this sermon came to her lips for the first time in her life the very night that Heber Kimball had shown her a vision of the face of God, the perfect Man. It was to this person that she spoke, he was the one who heard her. She was not teaching him, she was justifying herself to him, and she knew that with
him
, if her arguments were clear and ordered, if she spoke pure truth without dissembling, he would nod and say, Yes, Dinah, that’s correct, that’s true, I accept you, your choice is right.

Her lips moved with the silent monologue as she took off her shoes and unlaced her bodice. It occurred to her that she ought to pray, but she rejected the thought, in part because her sermon
was
a prayer, in part because she had so often in her childhood knelt in futile pleading, talking to bedpost or a wall of brick.

Instead, she walked to the window and drew open the curtains. From this room she could see the moonlight streaming into the court, the well-kept garden below with small trees reaching up to the bedroom story of the cottages. The garden was painfully empty. There was nothing living it it; if ever a bird or squirrel were tempted to set up house there, the children who played daily in the garden would have killed it within a week. And now, grey in moonlight, even the trees looked unalive, as if they were only the empty image of life, waiting for dawn to make them pregnant with light and upward-thrusting power. Dinah stood on the brink of creation; below her God was first putting form to the world, and she was watching. She was part of it. She herself could reach down and touch the tree and it would spring green under her hand, and from her fingers would come sunlight. It was a giddy feeling, that in all this darkness the sun still shone within her, held in place only by her flesh. Her body was a curtain that concealed her glory, and if she could once open it completely, all the world could look to her for warmth and vision and be satisfied.

She felt herself being watched. She stepped back from the window, but not in alarm. She wanted to be seen, but not by some neighbor going to the privy. She wanted to be seen by the very Man who listened to the words that still came eloquently to her lips. The room was already so full of him that it would burst, and as she spoke silently she reached out her hands to touch him, not knowing who it was she wanted to find under her hand. Her fingers closed on emptiness; the light within her could find no release; she would surely burst if he did not come and see her shine like a star, hear her speak like scripture. She must break the enclosure around her and let him in; unable to pierce her opaque flesh, she opened the only thing she could open: the door to the bedroom.

Matthew was standing there, his hand outstretched to the latch.

“Good God,” he said. “You startled me.”

Dinah was quite used to the idle use of God’s name. But tonight, feeling holy, she resented it as a mockery of the Man she spoke to. Her silent monologue instantly ceased; the room at once became empty; and she knew as Matthew glanced down at her open bodice that there was no hope of avoiding his intimacy tonight.

So be it. If it must be, let it be quick. He hardly stepped within the door when she began pulling his shirt from his trousers. He laughed softly and unbuttoned his waistcoat and his shirt; she stood behind him unfastening his trousers, clumsily pulling them down. “Let me,” he said. “I can do it quicker.”

“Hurry,” she said, and undressed as he did, resenting his eyes on her but forcing herself to smile until she was naked and lay on the bed, waiting for him impatiently. He looked at her in awe, not smiling now. She did not care if he thought she was acting the whore; it was not his thought she cared for tonight. Like a whore, she wanted it to happen and be done with so she could get on. He crawled up the bed to her and she wrapped her legs around him to draw him close.

To her surprise she was as aroused as he was, as if her body were translating spiritual excitement into carnal. She found herself responding to him as she never had before; or, rather, interpreting the strong passion of her body as pleasure instead of shameful loss of control. She cried out softly, panted as he did, and she did not mind after all that tonight of all nights he did not simply turn over and go right to sleep, but instead lay facing her, kissing her, letting his hands play over her. She did not mind that the blankets were not pulled up modestly to hide them, that Matthew was warmly covering a part of her when he finally fell asleep. She felt an affection for him that she had never thought would be possible; her body’s release was, for once, satisfying to her, and she felt a marvelous contentment.

But the ideas began to flow back into her mind as the emptiness of Matthew’s love retreated. Her lips began to move again in silent speech; she felt the evening begin to grow chilly, and she slid out from under Matthew, put on her nightgown, and pulled a blanket over them. Matthew murmured and reached for her in his sleep, but his hand, finding only cloth, retreated again. He rolled away from her and the lovemaking was past; she had got through Matthew’s return without losing the fervor of this new religion. She had increased it, in fact, and she began to hear music as she silently spoke, a drone of harmony softly in her ears, a hum that retreated when she became aware of it and returned as soon as she no longer tried to hear it.

Father, she said softly. Father, Father, Father. She was a young farmboy lying on a bed in his father’s house in America, longing for something, knowing it would not come, expecting it to arrive any moment.

The feeling grew and grew until she could not bear it. The light also grew within her, until at last she could see it, a whiteness spreading from her to fill the room. She heard her words become audible, and she finally realized that the angel would not come and stand outside her in the air, that the angel would be within her, and her own lips would speak the message she was meant to hear. “I love you,” said her lips, and only her own ears heard. “I love you, I hear you.” And then the whiteness grew too bright and she closed her eyes and almost immediately felt herself drift toward sleep, felt the whiteness drowse over her like endless sheets and blankets to warm her, and she heard her own voice fall silent and the other voice at last speak in answer, speak from those perfect lips only one thing: “I am,” said the voice so slowly, and Dinah lay in wonder all night, sleeping but feeling herself awake forever, the sun and moon and stars all within her body, the leaves of the trees so large that she could stand between them and watch them grow to infinity so that she could touch the stars that dwelt within them, too. “I am,” said the voice. So slowly. And Dinah answered, silently, “I know.”

Somehow Charlie ended up volunteering to sleep on the divan so Heber could have a bed. He tried to see how he had been maneuvered into it, but Heber hadn’t done anything obvious enough to catch. Oh well, hospitality was hospitality. The only thing that really annoyed Charlie was how affected Dinah seemed. It was as if the two of them had been listening to different men. Charlie heard only an American with outlandish speech. Dinah apparently heard something else.

“I don’t want to belabor it,” said Heber from the doorway, “but would you do me one last favor?”

Charlie shrugged and smiled. “Gladly, of course.”

“Two favors, really. The first one is, would you mind if I read you just a short, short passage from the Book of Mormon?”

“Please,” Charlie said.

“I mean, the Book of Mormon is kind of the linchpin, don’t you think? If it’s true scripture, then everything Brother Joseph said about how he got it must be true too. And if it isn’t true scripture, why, it’s all as false as a goose egg in a chicken coop.”

Heber began reading in his halting, half-literate way. It drove Charlie crazy to listen to the mispronunciation, the halting pace, the stammers. Then in midsentence Heber paused and said, “I don’t read worth a bucket of horse manure. Why don’t
you
read it to
me?
”

Charlie had the book in his hands before he could get the words out of his mouth. Heber pointed to the paragraph, and Charlie read it aloud, hardly thinking about what he was saying, only wanting to show this American how things
ought
to be read. It was in a high-flown language that sounded like scripture, a promise that anyone who read the book with a sincere heart would have the Spirit of God come and tell him it was true, if he prayed about it. The whole thing, Heber and the book and the story of the suffering people in America, it all came together then for Charlie, for a moment, and he saw them as at once a pitiful people duped by a charlatan into meaningless sacrifice, and a chosen people ennobled by their faith, laboring to prepare the world for the Savior to come again. The first was what Charlie knew they really were; the second was what they believed themselves to be. But for a moment Charlie wasn’t sure whether the fairer measure of a people was the way others saw them, or the way they saw themselves.

“Well, you’re a
reader
,” said Heber.

Charlie couldn’t help but smile. No matter how ignorant Heber was, he could at least tell good reading when he heard it.

“I reckon you could read that whole book in a month,” said Heber.

Charlie laughed. “I could read the whole book in a day.”

Heber handed it to him. “Then if I lend you this, you should be able to get a few pages read before you go to bed.”

Trapped. “I’ll read some of it tonight,” Charlie said. “I like reading.”

“Good. Now, that second favor I needed.”

“Yes?”

Heber grinned and bounced up and down a little on the balls of his feet, like a little boy taken short. “Would you tell me where the privy is?”

Charlie laughed. “In the courtyard. Through that door.”

While Heber thumped out of the house, Charlie opened the book.

He had thought to read just enough to satisfy himself that the doctrines were childish or the writing immature. To his own surprise, however, it was no parallel Bible. Instead it began with the story of the youngest son of a prophet, living in Jerusalem just before the Babylonians would come to destroy it. The youngest son, Nephi, believed in his father and tried to serve God, but he had oppressive and unbelieving older brothers, Laman and Lemuel, who tried to tie him up and abandon him for wild animals one time, then tried to kill him outright another. Always Nephi had the power of God with him, and once an angel came to stand between him and his brothers. Charlie knew all about cruel and heartless older brothers.

When their father, the old prophet, had a vision that even he didn’t understand, the youngest brother prayed and not only saw the same vision but got an angel to interpret it for him as well, which made his brothers hate him all the more, even as it became clear that Nephi was obviously the only true son of his godly father. When their hunting bows were broken or sprung, it was Nephi who got help from the Lord in learning how to make a bow. When they reached a seashore and could go no farther, it was this youngest son who built a ship, even though his brothers mocked him and said he couldn’t do it. And then as they sailed across the ocean toward the promised land of America, his older brothers tied him to a mast and starved him while they got drunk with some of the women they had brought along. Then the Lord sent a great storm that nearly sank the ship, until the brothers got frightened and untied him. And what did Nephi do? Did he rage? Did he strike them down? Did he curse them? No. He forgave them freely, even though they obviously weren’t really sorry they hurt him, and then he calmed the storm. Yes, Charlie thought as he read it. Yes, that’s the truth. That’s the way the world is, or ought to be, by heaven.

Then he turned a page and several sheets of paper fell out. For a moment Charlie was afraid he had spoiled the book. Then he picked up the papers and discovered it was a letter. “My dear Vilate,” it began. But then it collapsed into the most absurd combinations of letters Charlie had ever seen. He could make no sense of the words until he realized that he should simply pronounce them as they were spelled.
Jest for just
, and he had Heber’s pronunciation preserved in ink.
Opertunity. Enuph. Hous. Ware
instead of
were. Inhabitance
instead of
inhabitants. Piana
for
piano, presents
for
presence
. The man was a gold mine of information, about the incompetence of an American education. He couldn’t help but smile at the most ridiculous words.

He didn’t know how long Heber had been watching him before he cleared his throat and said, “Beg your pardon.”

Charlie looked up in surprise. Immediately he folded the papers closed and stuffed them back in the book and closed it quickly. “Sorry,” he said. “It was just here, it fell out of the book and I was afraid it was pages. I didn’t mean to read so much, just glance at it is all.”

“No doubt you were admiring my interesting spelling.”

Charlie felt himself blush with embarrassment, something he almost never did. “I didn’t mean to give offense, I—”

Heber grinned. “That’s all right. Parley says I spell worse than Brigham, and Brigham spells worse than anybody. But I figure”—and here Charlie mentally spelled the word
figger—
“that if the Lord wanted a good speller he would have called one. Instead he’s got me, and I’ve got better things to do than learn which words get extra
Es
and which ones don’t. Vilate reads my letters out loud anyway. If I started spelling it right she’d never make head nor tails of it. And it really isn’t my fault. It’s you folks here in England made up the way to spell these words, not me.”

Charlie handed him the closed book with the letter inside. Heber opened the book, removed the letter, and handed the book back to Charlie.

“I loaned you the book so you’d read it,” Heber said. “But you were turning the pages so fast, I wondered if you were really reading. You kind of slowed down when you got to my letter.”

It was forgiveness, of course—Heber was telling Charlie that he knew he was really reading the Book of Mormon, not trying to pry. It was praise, too, of Charlie’s speed as a reader, and Charlie didn’t mind taking it as such. “I read quickly,” he said, “but I read every word.” And to prove it he recounted the tale he had just read.

“Sounds like you’ve been paying close attention, all right.” Heber measured him with a look. “You’ve read that much of it—what do you think?”

Charlie was at a loss for words. He was afraid to tell this man how much the first few chapters of the book had meant to him, for fear he’d think Charlie was becoming a Mormon. So he tried to think of some sort of comment. It was late at night and he was tired: the best compliment he could come up with was “It’s very inventive.” The word sounded limp even to him, when applied to a book that was capturing him the way this one did. But to Heber it obviously sounded worse than limp. He stepped forward and took the book out of Charlie’s hands.

“Thank you kindly, and I’ll be going now. I’ll have to hurry if I’m to find a place to sleep tonight.”

Charlie was horrified. “What do you mean? You’re sleeping here!” What if Mother came home and asked where he’d gone? Oh, I just read his letter to his wife and then insulted his Book of Mormon and he left—that would sit less than well with Anna.

“I don’t mind sleeping in a house with those who hate me, but I don’t stay with those who take me light.”

“I don’t take you lightly, you or your book!”

“Inventive! Mr. Kirkham, there ain’t one invented word in that whole book. What do you think this whole business of religion is, a game I play? Do you think I’d come over here to this stinking damn city to talk my jaws off to people who mostly think I’m a curiosity, if I didn’t know—not
think
, Mr. Kirkham,
know
—that the word of God is in that book? By God, and I say that not for blasphemy but because by God I’m speaking in the name of Jesus Christ, that book ain’t
inventive
. It ain’t no little toy for no pretty-faced little English bookkeeper to look down his nose at because it was brought here by an American who can’t spell his own name without asking. You’re damn lucky to have had a chance to look at that book, there’s been prophets who would have given their lives for a look at it, but to you it’s just a bunch of funny names and a lot of preaching.”

Charlie tried to interrupt, to explain, but Heber wasn’t one to let anyone cut him off before he was through.

“My wife’s been sick, and my children, too, and when I left them I didn’t know if they’d have a roof over their heads but I trusted in God to look after them because I know that the most important thing in the world is that book you’re reading and the prophet who got it and the gospel he’s teaching and the kingdom of God we’re building and if you think I’m going to let you call it
inventive
then you don’t know me, because I sure as hell ain’t going to cast no pearls before
swine!
”

At last, out of breath from the force of his speech, Heber fell silent. Charlie looked at him in awe. “Mr. Kimball,” Charlie said, “I’ll tell you the truth. I like that book, I like it a lot.”

“Liking is nothing.”

“The whole truth. I
want
that book.”

Suddenly, as if he had torn off a mask, Heber’s face went from wrath to pure delight, and he handed the book back to Charlie and clasped the hand Charlie reached out to take it with. “I wish I had another copy, so I could give you one. But since that’s my only one, I’m afraid I’ll have to have it to take with me in the morning.”

Charlie didn’t know what to say. He had never been forgiven so fast in his life.

“Charlie,” said Heber, “I spoke to you sharply a minute ago, but that’s part of my work, too. If you really
want
that book, don’t you go lying to me or to yourself with words like
inventive
. OK?”

Charlie smiled sheepishly. “I’ll leave the book here on the table before I go to sleep. You can take it in the morning.”

Heber shrugged. “As I said, it’s there to be read. But let me give you two warnings.”

“Warnings?”

“That part you just read is easy, it’s all as exciting as a romance. But pretty quick they get into some heavy sermonizing. Some long passages that are bound to be above the head of a young fellow like you.”

“Do you think so?” Charlie asked. He resented the idea that Heber considered him to have only the capacity of a “young fellow.”

“Well, most young folks generally skip right over the book of Second Nephi and pretty well take up with the little books that come after. Lots of quotes from Isaiah in there, and Isaiah’s as tough as going up the Mississippi without a paddle.”

“I’ve read the Old Testament twice, and I particularly liked Isaiah.”

Heber grinned at him. “Beg pardon, then. You’re going to like Second Nephi just fine.”

Heber turned to go.

“Wait a minute. You said there were two warnings.”

Heber turned and leaned against the door frame. “The second one you’ll like even less than the first.”

“Well?”

“Well, reading the Book of Mormon is dangerous.”

“How is it dangerous?”

“What if you find out that you think it’s true? What’ll you do about
that
?”

“Why should I do
anything
about it?”

“Well, Charlie, if the book’s true, so’s the prophet who translated it, and so’s the angel who gave it to him, and so’s the apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ who lent you the book to read, and so is the baptism that I offer you, and so is the church the Lord expects you to join. You can’t have just part of it. If any of it’s true, it’s all true, lock, stock, and barrel, and once the Spirit tells you that it’s true, why, kick against it all you like, you’ll either become a Mormon or go to hell.”

Then Heber stamped into Charlie’s bedroom. Charlie heard the clump clump of the American’s boots as they hit the floor; then he heard nothing more until his mother came home. By then he was well past the Isaiah sections, and if truth be known he had skimmed those, seeing how he had already read them before. He was caught up in the story of how once they got in the promised land the wicked older brothers rebelled and the Lord cursed them by turning them into Red Indians, only they were called Lamanites, and there was war constantly. It wasn’t so much that it was exciting reading—there were a lot of sermons, and the language was stiffly scriptural. What kept Charlie fascinated was that it all felt important, it all felt true. Not true the way arithmetic was true, or the way things he saw with his own eyes were true. It just felt right, it felt like all this happened in a world where God knew his children and cared for them.