like to see if black checks raise your luck?”
I did not share his ease. I said, “I dare not take the hill full darkness, Bishop. I will also say good night. And thank you.”
“Wait,” he said, pushing up from the table.
A match struck in my throat—the eyes of the Bishop, green flecked with gold, dark golden-brown, and his lashes short and thick—it startled me, then fell and lit my thighs: his eyes, his chest, the length of his arms. Burning for him there in his own front room, I wanted to run my wretched self—
But Daniel had come back. He carried folds of hand-woven wool over his arm, a beautiful blue plaid Tartan cloth. “This is from Evelyn and Vere, a gift. Now, if you’d like, I’ll walk you home.”
I felt that I might suffocate. I felt my indrawn breath might never let go.
We walked the dry-packed road together, side by side, my heart starting up at every lighted house we passed. We did not talk, not once, which made the night seem closer, blacker. The shock of the Bishop’s hands almost drowned me, his hands on my face at my cabin door. And the question—only he never framed it into such, but only said, “Think on it. My wives would welcome you.”
“Your wives!” Seed cones. Burst milkweed spreading on celestial winds. It was a woman’s final glory in Heaven, to spread the seed of God. Daniel kissed my forehead. I leaned into him, dangerously.
“You said to wait, another call—”
He shuddered, kissing my hair. “None is as high as this,” and it seemed terrible and true until his hands released me.
“What if I’ll not marry?” I said, thrusting the cloth toward him.
“Then you have the makings of a new dress, Sister,” he said, turning to go. “You of all women deserve it.”
The Prophet Joseph Smith claimed that our Father in Heaven was human, once, a human male who’d learned his lessons. And every male who joined the Mormon Church could be a God and people his own world. But the peopling required a woman. These God-men needed their wives. Their faceless, nameless wives who did no deeds, acted no acts: the brood mares of eternity! I would not stay in a church which spoke for the exaltation of its men, but did not speak for women. I couldn’t lend myself to such oblivion.
I told all this to Ada when she tried to blow any spark of chance that I might stay into a fire. I said I had no place in Zion.
She begged me to keep on at her cabin, rent-free.
“I won’t attend their meetings, won’t sew their silly garments. How long you think I would be let to stay?”
“I could set you up in Corinne, selling flower cards and playing organ at the Methodist church.”
I frowned and said I’d consider it.
Ada smoothed her hands up her sleeves. She looked away. “And though he’s asked for your hand, you will not have the Bishop? Do you love him? Do you love Dan Dees?”
“I endure a pain in my nether parts whenever I think on him. Is that love?”
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