eaves to a stake in the ground. Gray snow ringed the sagebrush. Nothing white on the line or in the scrub.
I looked up at a sky so piercing blue it made me wince. Then it rushed in on me: someone has gleaned a token of me. Lord bless it and vinegar pies. The Bannock had returned.
That Sunday after Sacrament Meeting, Bishop Dees asked to speak with me in private. His were the eyes of a well-fed creature, open wide to things. Green flecked with gold. I kept my gaze below them. The points of his moustache moved like spears when he spoke. “Sister Martin, word of your industry has preceded you here. Brother Gradon tells me he has trained you personally at the keyboard. I am calling you to be Ward organist while Sister Burt is in her confinement.”
A guttering snort hit the back of my throat. I had played the organ in Florrie’s front room half a dozen times. “But Bishop—” Deep humiliation would carve its way into this call. My stain would fascinate and repulse the congregation. The boys would howl at me up on the stand.
Bishop Dees employed no force, used no persuasive words. He only smiled. His smile did battle with my fear. I wanted to be left to myself. I also wanted to be good. I said, “But Bishop, must I sit on the stand all during service?”
“Well, yes. Staying awake, that is the greater challenge, Sister. But you’ll sit at the organ, so you’ve only to keep the one eye open.”
I looked up at the stand. I would sit right side to the congregation. Only the right side of my face would show. Gratitude flooded in. I must have smiled, and that smile been taken as a yes, because Bishop Dees bowed and then I curtsied—curtsied!—and he took his leave.
The organ is not a celestial instrument. Not in my hands. Not with my feet. I played it, poundingly, to march thoughts heavenward:
Oh ye mountains high, where the clear blue sky
Arches over the vales of the free,
Where the pure breezes blow and the clear streamlets flow . . .
I hadn’t realized how poundingly until, at hymn’s end, the chorister grabbed the handrail, composed his face, and turned to me. “Sister Martin, you’re sure to help the musically infirm to keep the beat.”
And then, an odd sensation. The congregation laughed, lovingly, as if I were one of them. As if we all were worthy of God’s grace. It softened me greatly for the blow that followed. In the opening announcements, Bishop Dees said that three Bannocks had been killed in a herder’s camp near Malad. No lives or cattle lost, as the Brethren were armed and ready. “But the lesson is a grave one. Stand ready. Vengeance raids are likely. Our prayers go out to the people of Malad.”
A piteous wheeze rose from my throat. Bannocks? I covered my mouth, but the keening rose in pitch and force. My body shook. Hot tears ran down my hands as a memory emerged, one I had lost for years, of the raid I’d heard of near Bear Lake: a Bannock raid that left a five-year-old girl with her eyes gouged out, scalp taken, and ears and legs cut off. The pieces of the child’s body had been scattered among the bodies of the other Saints.
Bishop Dees placed his hand on my shoulder. The crying slowed. My throat relaxed, just enough for my breathing to settle.
“We should all of us feel as deeply for the welfare of our Brothers and Sisters up north as Sister Martin does. Let your concern make you ready.
“Now, the second announcement seems to have taken care of itself. Two sheepherders up to Mantua have a dog can’t herd anymore, lost the sight in one eye and too old to run the edges. They asked if any of our members needed protecting. Seems to me Sister Martin could use shoring up in her sense of safety there on the Bench, so if none of you Elders sustains any objection, I’d like to give that dog to Sister Martin, a ‘thank you’ for the weeks she’ll be Ward organist here.”
The Bishop gazed out over the congregation and turned to his Counselors on the stand. No objection came. “Well, then. I hereby set apart Cotton Thomas’ dog as guardian for Sister Martin. The Brothers will bring him to town soon. May our Heavenly Father further and bless him in his calling.”
I awoke that evening to the crackle of fire outside my cabin. I threw a quilt around my shoulders and found a broom to swat the flames. In the doorway, I paused to watch the grass and sage send ash spiraling off into the darkness. Then I ran outside, barefoot. Hands caught my breasts. They wrenched me back. Snow blurred with flame as fingers raked my nipples.
I swung hard, hit bone.
“Sow!” He tore the broom away. “You goddamned breeder—” He pinned me to his body with the broom, tightening the handle till I could not breathe. Then he hit my left leg hard with his groin, arching into it, smoothing up and up, concussive blasts of “Ah!” in my hair, smelling of hate and licorice.
“Made for the—made for the man!” He ground against my body again and again until—cursing God—his body stiffened, shuddering upward. He arched in a savage swoon till I thought we’d both fall back. Then the arch reversed, and I fell to my knees. He bit the small of my back through the nightdress, cutting in, working his jaw on it, gorging and gouging with his hands on my hips until I sobbed into my hair for mercy.
Then he slung me to the ground. Salt and dirt in my mouth. Snow under my hips. I watched him jump the flames he’d set and run down home. Little hips, spindly arms, his whole figure back-lit by fire. Inger Olsen, the Bishop’s oldest son.
I knew a chill darker than fever, then. Body cold, crotch hot, I slapped my hips and buttocks, beat at them until I could feel nothing, scratching and slapping, spilling snow in a shower around my feet.
When I stood, I said, “I have survived it,” but the whisper seemed a lie. Snow fell, and I was little as those words.
Inger had delivered the cast iron tub. He, not the Bannock, had stolen my clothes from the line. He’d robbed me even of that.
I doused the fire, weeping. A page of newspaper trembled in the scrub. The broom lay where he’d hurled it. I would not touch them, his kindling or his weapon.
It snowed six inches that night. I barred the doors, wedged firewood across the windows, stoked the fire—nothing gave comfort. A hundred times I suffered his attack. A hundred times I asked myself, Am I still virgin? All the talk of it they passed at church, all the importance the Elders laid on it—a woman’s purity. At any and all costs she must preserve her virtue, even to the taking of her life.
But what exactly had a woman to protect? Copulation was sacred, not secret, the Elders said, but they never told the particulars, those particulars which tormented me so now to hear. I didn’t know if I was ruined by him, or damned because I hadn’t killed myself. Had Inger had his way? He’d never kissed me. We had not lain down. He’d never touched my body under the nightdress. But he’d bitten me, he had profaned, I had not struggled to the death . . . nothing I knew answered the question, was I still virgin?
And struck to silence as I was, nothing would.
I could tell no one. It would have ended my days of freedom on the Bench. And whom would they have believed—Bishop Olsen’s son or a girl living alone in a cabin, her so high and mighty, putting on airs, making her way without husband or hope? I did not even go to Ada. She might have told the Brethren, demanding justice. Or taken my cabin. Or lost her fondness for me, in disgust.
That Sunday, when the Sacrament was blessed and passed, I watched Bishop Dees take the bread with his clean hands, and knew that I could not. The Deacon
