The promoter understood it and we understood it, and so we gathered in New York City, and he got a big cardboard check with a big fake number on it: $6 million. And he handed it to me, and from that moment on, it became truer than true, $6 million, in all the headlines and stories, and of course America would watch this, of course the country would turn its adoring gaze to us, obviously there was no way this could fail, because now this feat drank from the wells of death and money, and the wells of death and money are magic.
THE FEDERAL MEN
July 26, 1953 SHORT CREEK, ARIZONA
Something booms in the night. Three times. Explosions, far away. The echoes drift. Is it the Lord? Is it the enemy? Ruth is too warm, and kicks off the blanket. The booms are like dream noise. Like heaven noise, hell noise.
• • •
“Good morning, little birds,” Ruth’s mother whispers. It is as dark as the closet with the door closed. “Come, come, little birds.” Her mother is a shape of darkness inside other darkness, leaning over Ruth’s younger sisters in their bed. And now she is moving toward Ruth, leaning over, a light hand on her shoulder. “Come quickly, Ruth. I need you to get Alma and Sarah dressed and come downstairs. Quickly.”
• • •
Her father’s beard is like a tree. Or a forest. Dense and thick at the roots, it spreads and lightens at the tips, where the light slips in. When his jaw moves and he talks to the Lord, his face is a dense grove of slender autumn trees, rolling along as the earth heaves.
• • •
The entire family is here. Her father and her mother and her father’s other wives — Aunt Olive and Aunt Desdemona and Aunt Eliza. All thirteen of her brothers and sisters. Her heavenly family. Ruth is eleven, the oldest among her mother’s four children. They crowd on the chairs and on the benches of the long table and on the floor. Ruth sits in a chair, an arm around Alma and an arm around Sarah, and Alma hugs her stuffed doll with the hand-drawn face, and then their mother comes upon them from behind and enfolds them all in an embrace. The room is warm with still bodies, and silent.
• • •
Her father is praying, and Ruth peeks at him, watching his beard tremble. “And if today is the day of your son’s return, O Lord, if this is the day the righteous have awaited, our Father in Heaven, then we ask you to find us worthy, though we know we are not worthy, though we know we are sinners, we ask that you forgive us our sins and take us up, lift us up.”
Is that what today is? Ruth presses her eyes closed. Somewhere outside of her, somewhere outside of this room, somewhere outside of the darkness that still covers this room, somewhere outside the visible world, she knows there is a force that opposes them. That opposes the righteous. But she does not understand what that force is. For days now, the grown-ups have been talking about the Federal Men. The Federal Men are being sent by the apostates, the false Mormons in Salt Lake, who are persecuting the true Saints here in Short Creek. But now her father is talking about something else: The last days. The reckoning. The Second Coming. She holds her eyes closed as tightly as possible. Fear tingles and squirms around her heart. She should never have been peeking during the prayer. Inside of her father’s prayer she begins her own silent prayer, begging the Lord’s forgiveness for opening her eyes during her father’s prayer. She is disobedient. She is headstrong. The grown-ups always say so. Forgive me, O Lord. She wants to close her eyes so tightly that it makes up for their opening. Forgive me, O Lord, and I will be your righteous servant eternally. She feels it now throughout her body, a zing in the blood, a knowledge in the bones: it is the Second Coming. What if her family is raised up without her? What if she watches from below as they are saved, as she is swallowed up in the fire that will last a thousand years?
• • •
They walk to the schoolhouse, where other families wait, and where other families are still arriving. The grown-ups are dressed as if for church. The prophet stands in a circle of men, where her father also stands. Elden Johnson. Uncle Elden. He is shorter than the other men, but also taller, Ruth thinks. One eye is cloudy and one is clear. He wears his three-piece suit, his short white hair is neat, his mustache trim, and he smiles placidly. He speaks to God. God speaks to him.
Ruth’s mother gives every older child someone to watch over. She is responsible for Sarah and Alma. “You watch them, little sister,” her mother says. “You don’t let them out of your sight.” Every few minutes her stomach makes a noise that is audible to anyone nearby. She asks her mother, “What’s going to happen?” and her mother says, “We don’t know.”
• • •
Outside the darkness lifts, slow and gray. Inside the schoolhouse, they are singing hymns. “Arise, O Glorious Zion.” “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel.” They pray silently. The grown-ups talk somberly, greet one another as if at church, and though there is a somber cloak around the day, there is something strangely joyous as well, and this puzzles Ruth, or it makes her fearful, because she believes it means they are anticipating the Second Coming with joy, feeling sure of their own righteousness in a way she is not. An eternity without her family, she thinks. An eternity of her own reward.
A shout comes from outside, and then Brother Miller is scuffling into the schoolhouse. “They’re coming down Partham Road,” she hears him tell the prophet and the brethren who surround him. “Eight or nine cars.” The Federal Men, she thinks. The Federal Men. She does not know what that means exactly. She knows what federal means, and she knows they are from the government, and she knows they are coming because the apostates are sending them or controlling them — but she has no idea what they might do, what she should fear. Outside, the sun is low and stretched, and Ruth wonders if it is already beginning, the Second Coming, if the sun is coming apart or moving away or approaching. Her stomach makes the noise and she feels as if her body were outside of her now. As if she were hiding inside of it, separate from it. One hot squirt of urine dampens her underwear, and she rubs her legs together to soak it into her clothing.
• • •
The families walk out into the street. They cluster and sing. The cars of the Federal Men creep slowly toward them, and Uncle Elden stands in front of the group, watches them come. Alma and Sarah stand at Ruth’s sides, her hands on their shoulders. When the cars get close, Ruth sees that one of them has a sign on the door: ARIZONA STATE POLICE. She knows the difference between state and federal. She learned it just last month, in her civics class at the Hurricane school. She wonders why the state police are here if these are the Federal Men, and she wonders why everyone says “the Federal Men” if it’s actually the state police. A man in a brown uniform with a star over his heart climbs from the car, hitches his belt upward against his belly, and begins to squawk through a bullhorn. Alma begins to cry. Ruth holds her closer, shushes her, but her eyes sting with tears, too.
• • •
The men line up, hands behind their backs, ready to be handcuffed. The prophet is speaking to the Saints, telling them to put their trust in the Lord. “See what the world calls brave men,” he says to the Federal Men. “You are cowards to come down so upon us.” He stands there in his three-piece suit, neat, trim, hands locked behind his back, the man who speaks to God. Ruth’s father is near him, Ruth’s father is looking at Ruth’s mother, communicating something urgent by eyesight, and then one of the Federal Men comes behind him and begins to move Ruth’s father away, directing him by his locked hands as if guiding a boat with a tiller. His face clenches furiously. Ruth sees him close his eyes, close his whole face against it all, weaker than the thing that is crushing him, weaker than she has ever seen him.