But with Loretta, he had. She was that kind of Mormon. A whole new territory. He took no for an answer, knowing that yes was up ahead somewhere. What do you call that, if not love? Surely she knows that, Lori does. Surely she knows what he has done for her, what part of himself he has given up, and what she owes him because of it.
Footsteps on the top three stairs, and Ruth’s voice.
“Mr. Baker? Good morning.”
Steps retreating. Upstairs, the sounds of the house: chairs dragging, forks on plates. And then heavier steps and a deeper voice: Dean.
Bradshaw pulls on his jeans and chamois work shirt, and steps into his boots. Sitting on the cot, he ties the boots and considers one of the surprises of this journey: He likes Dean. Kind of admires him. Enjoys the fact that Dean seems to trust and admire him in turn, seems to feel that Bradshaw is becoming a loyal lieutenant in Zion’s Harvest, and maybe in his wider battles — his battles with the brethren down in Short Creek, his constant inner battle with the worldly world. It’s not that Bradshaw won’t do what he’s come here to do. But sometimes he imagines having a life like Dean’s, and the idea draws him in: all those people orbiting you, women and children and women, all yours, all turning toward your light as if you were the sun itself.
• • •
Breakfast is mush. That’s what Ruth calls it, the oatmeal cooked to spongy softness: mush. Raisins and honey for sweetness. Some whole wheat toast with her homemade jam and no butter. Eating these meals makes Bradshaw desperate for a diner, a cafeteria somewhere with coffee and greasy eggs and glistening hash browns, big bowls of sugar, a drift of cigarette smoke. The only consolation is Lori, every morning, ducking her head toward the food, hiding those eyes. Love, he thinks every morning, love, love. He was not one who accepted love — not like that, not the way they say, the giving over, the loss of control — it was not something he sought or even believed in, necessarily, until Lori seeped into his mind.
Only she is not at the table today. The kids are crowded around, slurping and banging. Dean looms above everyone else, knees wide and head bowed, and he spoons mush into his mouth steadily and purposefully, as though he were hammering a nail.
He looks up when Bradshaw enters and says, “Morning,” and turns back to the mush. Samuel — a zitty little shit who Bradshaw can tell will grow into meanness — looks to Bradshaw and nods, but no one else says a word or turns his way. Bradshaw wants more talk than this house provides. He says, “And a fine morning it is, with this lovely spread for breakfast. Thank you, Sister Ruth.”
She says, “You’re welcome,” as she puts a bowl before him. He considers asking where Loretta is, and decides against it.
After several minutes of silent eating, Dean says to Ruth, “Perhaps she needs a little nudging,” and Ruth wipes her hands on a towel and leaves. Bradshaw hears her going up, and then down the small hall, to where he knows Loretta’s room is — the one she moved into when he arrived, displacing the kids into sleeping bags in the living room — and he hears, faintly, a knock and a murmur, another knock and another murmur, and then Ruth’s returning steps, down the hall, down the stairs, into the kitchen. She leans over Dean’s shoulder, whispers in his ear, and they leave together, and Bradshaw knows something has gone rotten. When he learns that Loretta is not in that room and that no one knows where she has gone, he thinks back on how he knew it — how he felt it — when Dean and Ruth left the kitchen together, how the knowledge came to him like a wrenching of the guts, because that, too, was love.
• • •
No one is talking to him. No one is looking at him. Dean and Ruth whisper loudly, the anger audible but not the words. The kids are hustled away to the living room, and Ruth tells Samuel, “I need you all in there and I need you quiet,” and then she turns to Bradshaw, still sitting there before his mush. Ruth seems unsure what to say as she looks at him, face livid, and after forever she simply holds up a hand, as if to say, Stay right there.
Dean stomps upstairs and down, whispers with Ruth, and stomps back up. Soon come four loud pounding sounds, accompanied by some splintering. Bradshaw stands, and Ruth checks him with a glance.
“Can I help with anything?” he asks.
Ruth shakes her head tightly. “Thank you, no. Thank you.”
“I’ll go out, then.”
He pulls on his wool-lined denim jacket, and steps out the back door, letting the screen door slam. He just knows. Not everything. Not the how and why. But he knows, and there is a rot in his chest. His mind moves like a hummingbird, too fast, and he feels strangely exposed — fooled and foolish — and trudges through the fallow hayfield, through frozen clod and chaff.
When he goes back in, Ruth is speaking on the telephone while Dean is seated at the kitchen table, looking calm, meditative. A rush of affection floods Bradshaw; here is how a man holds himself. Here is a right man. Ruth cuts her eyes at Bradshaw, phone tucked against the side of her head, and then turns her back and lowers her voice.
She hangs up and says to Dean, “Jason, too,” and confusion ripples the stillness of Dean’s calm face, and he asks, “What?” and then everything in Dean’s visage — forehead, eyes, beard — contracts around the center of his face, and he says, “What?” again, louder, and Ruth doesn’t answer.
• • •
He’s going after her. It’s the only thing he knows. He walks out and stops in the yard. Considers Dean’s pickup, white with a scurf of dirt splattered upward from below. The tempest in his mind clears and he hears his own voice: What in the fuck is wrong with me? How had she done this to him, and what should he do about it?
He walks to his Nova. Gets in and sits, squeezing the steering wheel. Some of his things are still in the basement, but nothing important. They’ve gotten ahead of him, Lori and this little shit, and he needs to hurry.
A cloudy pressure in his head makes it hard for him to feel he is thinking correctly. This has never been his thing. Foresight, strategy. He had let her tell him no. He squeezes the steering wheel and locks his jaw and howls. Then he gets out. Slams the door. Says, jaw clamped, “Fuckity fuckity fuck.” If he leaves here now, he will have no idea where to go.
Loretta
The hot water stays hot. It flows over her head, through her hair, sliding over her body in streams and tendrils, and it stays hot, clogging the air with steam. This is how life will be now, she thinks. No one monitoring the minutes of her showers, and the water always hot. No more Ruth lecturing them on toilet paper usage, giving screeds on the Lucifer’s sugar. No more Dean at dinner, scolding about showers, instructing them all to wet themselves, turn off the water to soap up, and then rinse briefly — saying there was no reason a shower should take any longer than two minutes, and that it was wasteful and selfish to stand there and warm up.
Now the drowsy, narcotic comfort of the water gives her the next idea.
A knock on the door.
“Did you drown?”
Boyd. That interesting boy.
“I might’ve,” she shouts.