sleeves of her dress tensed at the seams, her shoulders too ample for the cut. “You are how old?”
“Seventeen. Or, eighteen this month. I can’t be sure exactly. But February, that’s my birth month. I’ll be eighteen.” All of the courage I’d shown in front of Bishop Olsen had deserted me. Here was a greater obstacle, housed in luxury, wearing taffeta and black lace. I smoothed my worn calico skirt into straighter lines and waited.
Ada squinted and crossed her legs. A bright beaded moccasin angled out from under her skirt. “Let’s crimp the formalities, what say? I never did take to the dignified.” She drank her tea down. “Now, in payment for the leasing of my cabin, one-half of your earnings in Corinne will be mine. In cash—”
“But—”
“But what? You think that’s a steep cut, Sister? You don’t like my terms?”
“No, I wouldn’t know, ma’am, I’m sure. But I have no earnings in Corinne, in cash or any other way.”
“You will have. Pack up those cards of yours in half dozens. We’ll get a quarter per pack.” Ada Nuttall didn’t blink. Her eyes were almond-shaped, a dull green like the underbelly of a fish. They stayed dead level, though she spoke of fantastical things.
I pressed my feet to the floor to keep from toppling.
“Unless you’d rather take Erastus Pratt to your bosom or some other good God-fearing Elder, in which case I won’t see a profit from your gain, and the good Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.”
I shook my head no.
“I empathize. Now, hold out your hand.”
She slipped a pistol into my palm. It was small and silver and warm from her pocket.
“Comes with the cabin. Renter’s insurance.”
Refusal was doomed. I doubted this woman had ever been refused anything, so I put the pistol in my pocket and thanked her, saying we would have to see what the Elders thought of our plan.
Ada snorted and said, “It’s done.”
I said, “But the Elders—”
“Mean well, Lord love ’em, though it comes to their advantage, you can bet on it.”
“‘Let the Priesthood handle it.’ That’s what Bishop Olsen said when I asked him about my future.”
“Let a horsefly drive the team?” Ada laughed. “Not while my arms can take a rein!” She stood up. “Now, there’s one last nosy bit. I’ve been in this town since the dawning, and I don’t recall the name Martin. Where are your own folks from, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I swallowed a knot of pure pain. “Martin is my father’s name. I did not know him ever. My mother worked a boardinghouse in Honeyville. I was four when she left, six when they brought me here. I can’t say if she abandoned me, or came to harm, or harmed herself. No one ever told.” I looked up from the floor. “If that’s all your terms, Sister Nuttall, I could make it home by dark.”
“There is another thing, just one,” she said. “No more ‘Sister’ing. You call me Ada.”
We shook hands on it, like men do, and Ada fetched the bullets for my gun.
CHAPTER 3
The Saints made such a fuss about their city: pride in the railroad, the telegraph line, the courthouse, and now the stone foundation for a Tabernacle laid right here in the northernmost outpost of the Prophet Brigham Young’s empire. He’d led his people West, from affliction and torment among Gentiles—we’d heard those terrifying tales—to a hard peace in salt desert so sere no one wanted it. No dispute over the Mormon claim to the Utah Territory at all but for the Shoshone, the Bannock, the Ute, the Paiute and the Goshute, Ada said, who’d all tried coexisting, then fighting for their homes. Brigham said, “feed them, don’t fight them,” which lasted a short while. In the end, sheer numbers settled their differences. The Mormons multiplied and replenished and subdued the desert, and the Saints had their promised land. The Great Salt Lake shimmered in its midst. The Wasatch Mountains flanked it to the east—a granite battlement which kept Gentiles out and Mormons in. Not that any of the faithful wished to escape. My mother had. By what means, I cannot say.
I hope her faith sustained her.
My own peculiar faith, which I dared not repeat, decreed that a cluster of houses, one knee-high church foundation, a set of shiny tracks and a telegraph wire did not mean much in the grander scheme. To me, these civilizing feats just hunched, small-shouldered, at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. The Wasatch gave us our life, man and animal, temporal and spiritual. They were the source. All the rest came late and after.
Ada and I were pounding a tiny indent in the shine of Brigham’s shield. Only Ada’s pink mansion and my one-room hut stood above the town of Brigham on a long, sage-covered ledge we called the Bench. It ran the length of the foothills, north to south, marking the sudden ascent of the mountains from the desert floor. All of the houses in Brigham lined the gridwork streets, facing nothing but each other and a cardinal direction. Ada’s house perched on the North Bench at a southwesterly angle, taking in the sunsets and the compass of the town. My cabin, to the south, looked out over the cemetery, the checkered gardens of the Big Field and, beyond, the Promontory Mountains rising from the waters of the Great Salt Lake. Box Elder Creek ran below the cabin, cutting a line between the bare incline of the Bench and the rooftops of Brigham City, separating the settled from the wild.
On the day I moved from Lars’ stable at the Barrens up into Ada’s cabin on the Bench, I gauged my happiness by this sight: dusted with snow, the Wasatch Mountains seemed to cup the valley like a bread-maker’s palms. I would live on the fleshy pad of their thumb.
I moved my few possessions in and stood a long while in silence. I set the books Ada had loaned me in the window sill. Then I scrubbed the river rock walls until they gleamed. I would press flowers at the window right of the door, place one crate there. Hang clothes on a cord strung in the back corner. Firewood to the left of the hearth, washtub and kitchen supplies to the right. I hoped to find a large table to place in the center of the room. I had no bed and the door needed mending. Leather strips would do for hinges.
That night, I watched the lamps on Main get lit, one and two. The copper-faced creek angled north, toward Ada’s windows, which were bright. And a hymn came, with words that filled my breast:
Oh, Zion! dear Zion! land of the free,
Now my own mountain home, unto thee I have come—
All my fond hopes are centered in thee.
My move across town released me from Bishop Olsen’s so-called care. I now resided within the confines of the Second Ward, and under the eye of a new Bishop. Daniel Dees was tall and strappy, and he presided over the Sunday meetings with mannish ease. I believed I might enjoy this change, until he took me aside that first Sunday and told me my new calling—to sew holy garments for a living, the sacred long johns worn by couples after they’d married in the Endowment House. I objected, panting inwardly Me in close quarters with the holy underwear? But he silenced my concerns with a generous smile, saying married Sisters would attach the holy symbols, marking breast and knee. As if that made it better. As if that made it right.
His smile lingered in my mind for days. What would it mean to move through
