Shawn Vestal - Daredevils

• • •

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.

• • •

They take all the fathers away. The mothers weep and plead, and the Federal Men hush them, and gently hold them back while they take all the fathers away. Someone is following the Federal Men as they take all the fathers away, shooting photographs with a large camera that hangs heavily around his neck. The man chews gum. Ruth watches him as he aims his camera at Sister Taft, her children huddled around her on the bench outside the school, the man with the camera moving, crouching, training his lens on Sister Taft and her children, flash popping, and as the last of the men is taken away, someone begins to wail sharply, a sound rising above a smaller sound, a lower sound, the sound of children crying all around her, crying quietly beneath the one piercing wail. Ruth’s stomach never stops making the noise now. Something is alive inside her, and her outside feels dead. Her mother comes to her, face tight, and Ruth wonders if she knows, too, that this is the Second Coming, and her mother kneels before Ruth and wraps little Sarah in a hug, and that’s when Ruth notices that the wailing has been coming from her little sister all along.

• • •

Then they take the mothers away. The children go into the school. The room is too small for all the children. They pack together. Ruth feels the heat of the children around her, but she does not look at them or talk to them or think about them. She stares at the shirt in front of her, at one fraying thread of a boy’s shirt, and she keeps one hand on the shoulder of Sarah and one on the shoulder of Alma. Someone is smoking, a foul odor. Three of the Federal Men and two women who look like worldly schoolteachers are looking at the children and conferring with a man who is sitting at the teacher’s desk. The man makes some marks, and the woman escorts a few children from the room, and they start again.

• • •

Did the fathers and mothers go up into heaven?

• • •

They take the children away in twos and threes. The brothers and sisters are crying. Ruth watches silently, and Sarah and Alma watch silently, and Ruth stares at the chalkboard, stares at the leftover sentence on the board, written in cursive: Why does the man run? Brothers argue and sisters argue, but they are taking the children away in twos and threes. Why does the man run? A remnant of a lesson. Ruth thinks there must be an answer. She thinks that if she stays very still, maybe this won’t be happening. When the women and the Federal Men finally get to Ruth’s family, they begin to take her brothers and sisters away.

• • •

“All right, then.” One of the women is smiling, smiling at Ruth, and then smiling at Sarah, and then smiling at Alma, and then smiling again at Ruth. Sarah and Alma are trying to hide inside of Ruth. “Why don’t you two come with me for a bit?” Ruth shakes her head, and wraps each arm more tightly around her sisters.

The Federal Man watches. The man with the camera is back, leaning against the wall. He chews gum. The Federal Man whispers something to him and he smiles.

Ruth can’t figure this out. Did the fathers and mothers rise up to heaven? Did all of the children stay behind? Why does the man run?

The woman wears pointy glasses and her hair seems sculpted into a wavy bun. She smells of fancy lotion. “Come on now,” she says, trying to carve the children away from Ruth’s side with her hands, gently, gently, viciously. “It’s okay. You two come with me.”

Ruth holds tight. She says, “No.” The word is like a lump of food she needs to spit out. The woman doesn’t stop. The Federal Man says, “You’ll be all right, girls,” and Ruth manages to spit out the lump more forcefully: “No!” She wonders if she can hold her sisters tightly enough.