Shawn Vestal - Daredevils

Afterward, Dean pulls back the sheet and looks down at her, at himself.

Loretta knows what he is doing, and says, “Mine broke when I was riding a horse.”

Later, after Dean is snoring, she goes to the bathroom down the hall and takes the latest folded-up letter from Bradshaw and the bottle she had hidden, the bottle with the solution of vinegar and ammonia that Tonaya had told her about, back when they were sneaking out together, the thing that always works, Tonaya said. Nothing can survive that shit.

It burned her there, hurt her worse than Dean had done, and she tried to wash away the burning and could not. What if there was a baby she had washed away? How soon did it start? Sitting on the toilet, she unfolded the letter.

Lorry honey I cant wait for this part of things to be over, but I do want you to know it is working out good. Real good. Hang in there and we will be set. More than you can imagine. D trusts me more every day. My thoughts are about you. I love you lorry, and you need to just wait for me now, just give me time, and soon it will all be over and we can go wherever you want to.

She tears the letter into tiny pieces and drops them into the toilet between her legs. She wonders exactly what he is doing, but has enough of an idea: taking money from Dean. She hopes he’s being careful, because Dean keeps exact track. He talks to her, on his nights with her up until now, of the Council of Elders and their demands, and of how much they want, and of how much he will give them, and of how large this difference is growing, how he will turn over $2,291.66 for January; $1,891.34 for February; $1,996.12 for March— Not a cent more, little sister, I swear it —because that is half of his earnings, and because he has decided that the Law of Consecration is being abused by the Elders. That is half, little sister. How can you say that is not a generous tithe? And yet she knows the Council of Elders does not deem it so.

She has not said anything to Bradshaw about the gold. Dean talks about it, tells her about it, boasts about the precision of one-ounce golden eagles — the fifty-dollar coins — and their solid, righteous weight. He tells her everything about them, except where they are. She wants to take it from him. She wants him not to have it, and she wants to be the reason.

She flushes the toilet. It wasn’t so horrible. Nothing ever is.

EVEL KNIEVEL ADDRESSES AN ADORING NATION

What you need is a way in. In every circumstance, in every situation: a way in. The way in is like the ramp, like the lever, like the cocked hammer of a pistol. It is the way you turn an ordinary thing into an extraordinary thing.

The way in is always the same. You can spend years misunderstanding this, thinking that you have to find the way in for each new scenario, when it’s always the same: the way in is to act as if you’re already in.

To believe it before it’s true.

It’s like getting laid, America. The best way to do it is to act as if you already know — despite whatever the broad herself may think — that it’s inevitable, that’s it’s happening, that there’s no going back. You know she’s gonna do it before she does. You don’t seduce. You make it clear that it is completely unnecessary to seduce. That the fucking to come is not in question.

So the years roll along, and we perform our amazing feats, our miracles, and pretty soon the Grand Canyon dream is not so crazy. Is not such wild talk. And then there’s a New York promoter getting on board. A Jew bastard naturally. But he’s on board, and he thinks he can make it happen, and he starts looking into it, and he finds out that the government — your government, America — will not allow such a thing because it owns the land on the canyon rims or some shit, and so the New York promoter, the flesh peddler, keeps after it, won’t give up, and he finds another spot: the Snake River Canyon, right outside Twin Falls, Idaho. There’s a farmer there who’ll lease the land for the ramp and for the crowds. There’ll be some permits to get, some locals to persuade, some dicks to suck, but the promoter is good at that, and pretty soon we’re set to go.

The way in was money. He was gonna pay us $25,000 plus some of the gate. He had a plan to show the thing live in movie theaters, sell tickets all across the land. A man jumps a canyon! A mortal defies physics! And yet, that was not the way in. Money was the way in. Money — the notion of it, the idea of it, the magnetic force of it.

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.

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?