Hari Kunzru - Gods Without Men

The Three that arise out of the One. He had been young, unschooled in the Mysteries. Now he saw the true meaning of the place. All things had birth from one thing, and his own destiny had always been to return here, to the place of death and generation, the very cradle of the Secret.

They had ridden for weeks to reach those stones. Precious blood was crying out under the altar, begging for retribution, and Brother Rockwell had received testimony concerning the man Pierce, who was said to be at Santa Fe, preparing to lead a party of emigrants over the Spanish trail. Atonement had been Rockwell’s trade even while the Prophet was alive, and though the California goldfields had lured him away from Zion, he’d never broken fellowship with the Saints, and was known as far as San Francisco to be the Samson of their faith. Joseph Smith himself had laid a hand on his shoulder and prophesied that as long as he cut not his hair, neither bullet nor blade could harm him; and so it had proved. Port Rockwell was called the Destroying Angel by his enemies and Lion of God by his friends, for he had put aside many sinners in the name of Jesus Christ and pulled more than one young Mormon off a barroom floor and set him to the Lord’s work. So it had been with Nephi Parr, who had not prospered on the American River and found his way to the camp at Murderer’s Bar, where Rockwell supplied whiskey and whores to the Gentiles. The man had loomed over him, looking like a mountain and speaking consoling words in his strange high voice. So of course Parr had followed and learned the secret signs and sworn with the others that he would disembowel himself and slit his own throat if he ever broke silence about the work for which Rockwell had chosen him, which was to use up this hateful Pierce, who five years earlier had blacked his face and howled and cavorted outside Carthage jail, and was said by witnesses to have kicked and spat upon and in other nameless ways defiled the Prophet’s dear corpse after he was shot to death by the rioters.

So they had ridden eastward out of the mountains and entered the great desert, where their lips cracked and their eyes were dazzled by the whiteness of the land, which at midday seemed to breathe and palpitate, so that Nephi came to understand he was riding on the white breast of the living earth and felt his mind overcome with dread at the immensity of the Most High. And after many days they came to the Three-Finger Rocks, planted by the Father in that desolate place as a sign of his blessing on their enterprise. Under the rocks was camped a ragged band of Paiutes, and Rockwell, who spoke their language, seemed to expect the meeting, greeting their chief and sitting down with them to smoke and parlay. He told the savages that the Mormonee were at war with the Mericats and enlisted their aid. The chief accepted a present of rifles and the two parties set to waiting, during which time Hosea Doyle, younger even than Nephi, fell sick with fever and the brethren laid hands on him and rebuked his disease in the name of the Lord. After that he was well again, which all took as a further sign of favor.

Following many days of idleness the emigrant train was sighted and they clad themselves like savages, in paint and feathers, and fell upon it by night and the Lord God delivered his enemies into the hands of His servants. Lyman Pierce died hard and slow up on the Three-Finger Rocks, begging for mercy until they relented and turned him off and of his companions a third part fell by the sword and a third were scattered to the wind, women and children alike. When it was done, they laid the bodies out on the sand, scalping and stripping them to give further semblance of a savage raid, and though Nephi Parr went back to Deseret and tried to live a settled life on the Green River, sealing to himself two good wives who hearkened to his counsel and were in every way ornaments of his kingdom, he could not forget the Three-Finger Rocks or the heathen markings scratched upon them. He would sit and brood outside his cabin at the ferry, watching the passengers assemble, and it seemed to him that the world outside the Celestial City was a wicked place, full of sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters and those who loveth and telleth a lie. And soon enough all turned to dust and ashes in his mouth, for there was blood and war and rumors of war and politics or tricks as he preferred to word it, and instead of standing firm his brethren stole his wives and property and cut him loose to wander the earth, betrayed and disfellowshipped.

He left the shattered spyglass lying on the ground and trod the path back down toward the mine. The rising moon lit his way and as he neared the main shaft he saw the German brothers had lit the furnace in readiness for the last purification. Together they heated the amalgam in the fire and trapped the vapor with a copper hood, and the quicksilver renounced its subtile form and dripped back into a flask, and behind in the crucible was left pure silver. In the sky were signs and wonders and he lifted up his hands and saw the serpent with its tail in its mouth and for a moment he stood on the threshold between two worlds, bathed in an aura of violet and green and yellow. Through his art he had released the light of nature, and before his eyes this light suffused the whole world with knowledge of salvation, redeeming it and making it once again entire.

The next day he woke to find his limbs swollen and a great hammering behind his eyes and he could not understand the words the two brothers were speaking any more than he could the Chinaman, for the Lord had stopped his ears and made him deaf. By signs, the brothers gave him to understand that he had fallen into an ecstasy and they had been obliged to hold him down as a spirit rent his body, and at last it had come out of him and he had been as one dead. While he lay in his swoon, they had poured the silver into molds and they showed him the fruits of the labor, of which he took two bars by way of payment and packed them in his saddlebags and got up onto his horse.

He rode in the direction of the Three-Finger Rocks, leaning low over the horse’s neck, for he could not sit upright. Above him circled the airships and all about was change and transformation. As he rode he raised his hand to his face and saw the bones glowing inside it and a coyote howled and the sun shone through the palm of his hand like glass. And by this he knew his body was shrugging off its animal nature and it would soon come time to make the crossing. Oh God, he whispered, hear the words of my mouth; and the whole jumble of his life wheeled round him, bare running feet cut bloody by winter stubble, a cutlass and a fiery wheel and a camel and a steamboat bolted together on the floodplain of the Colorado. He saw men compelled to eat the flesh of their sons and daughters and Rockwell’s unshorn hair and at last the airship came down and the Angel Moroni and the gods of many worlds appeared, calling him up to exaltation.

Nicky’s leg was throbbing. He spent most of the night sitting on the bed in his underpants, picking little black splinters out of his calf and watching old movies on cable. Men lit women’s cigarettes. Soldiers sacrificed themselves for their buddies. Cowboys raced the stagecoach, watched by Indians on the ridge. It all circled round and round until he couldn’t follow anymore and drifted off to sleep. When he woke, the room was too hot. The sun backlit the curtains. Someone was running a vacuum cleaner on the other side of the wall. He supposed he had to make a decision. Should he go back to L.A.? He just didn’t have the heart for it. The explaining. Rehab. The self-righteous shit Jimmy would come out with at band meeting.

Someone knocked on his door and called out in Spanish. He shouted at them to wait. Breakfast. Never get into anything heavy before breakfast. He limped about looking for shades and car keys, then drove down the hill to the diner, the run-down one shaped like a spaceship. At the counter, he got in a weird row with the waitress about bacon. It’s not supposed to be burnt to a cinder, he told her. It’s bacon, she sneered. Bacon is crispy. If you didn’t want crispy you should have ordered ham.