Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

be. After all, you killed your father because he was going to marry Cora the same girl you wanted to marry.”
    “Don’t be stupid. Cora’s my sister.”
    I shrugged. “She was Solomon’s daughter, too, but that didn’t stop him. The men of Purity have been marrying their sisters and daughters for a long time, haven’t they, Meade?”
    Meade’s voice broke then and he sounded like the boy he still was. He nodded. “Yeah, but so what? The Bible tells us it’s all right. That ain’t why Father Prophet and I…I said hard things to him, things a son shouldn’t have to say to his father. But I was right! I called him selfish, I told him he didn’t care nothing about Purity, he only cared about himself.” He eyes, which had been stoked with the fires of self-righteousness, became sad. “Nothing I said made any difference, though. When I was through, he told me he’d decided Davis should be the next prophet, not me, and then he ordered me to leave Purity. He said I could go anywhere I wanted in the Outside, even to one of the other compounds, but I couldn’t come back here as long as he lived.”
    The morning sun was at his back and I couldn’t see his face, but I heard the tears in his voice. Like Cynthia and so many other of Purity’s children, he feared life on the Outside. I almost felt sorry for him.
    “You couldn’t leave, could you, Meade? You knew you weren’t equipped to make it in the outside world.”
    He sniffled. “Purity’s my home! Living here is the only way I can ever ascend to Highest Heaven. You understand that, don’t you? By telling me to me leave, my daddy was sending me to the lowest pit of Hell. I couldn’t let that happen. I
had
to kill him!”
    “So you followed him that afternoon when he went hunting. And you shot him.”
    He nodded miserably. “Yeah, I acted like I was trying to make it all up with him, like I was taking back everything I’d said. And then I grabbed the shotgun and I did what I had to do. I did it for the good of Purity!”
    I was certain he believed it, too. But I found one item in his recital troubling. Meade hadn’t killed his father in the heat of the moment, like I’d originally thought; he’d planned the whole thing. The crime hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment act, after all. It had been Murder One.
    Still, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. “By killing your father before he banished you, you figured you’d still be able to get into Highest Heaven, right? And murder or not, everything would be all right if you turned away from your one sin and walked a righteous path for the rest of your life.”
    Meade shook his head. “No, no. When I shot Father Prophet, it wasn’t murder. It was blood atonement.”
    “Blood atonement? What do you mean?”
    He drew himself up and his voice became deeper, more Biblical. “Brother Earl says I’m the true prophet of Purity, not Davis. So when I do anything, I’m doing it for the good of everybody. My father was a false prophet, and he didn’t have any right to keep my bride from me, not after God gave me a revelation that Cora should be my first wife.”
    Another convenient revelation that Purity’s men—and boys—of Purity used to excuse their crimes. “Oh, I get it. The Devil didn’t make you murder your father, God did.”
    Meade kicked at a rock. It bounced off an infant’s grave. The movement had turned him into the sun, which now illuminated his face. He didn’t look so angelic anymore.
    “You’re an unbeliever, Sister Lena, and a wicked woman. But I guess you can’t be blamed. Women are weak vessels, always open to the wiles of Satan. But Satan can be cast out! Let’s pray together. I’ll lead you from the road to perdition and put you straight on the road to salvation.”
    “Thanks anyway, Meade, but I happen to like the road to perdition. The scenery’s better.”
    His scowl make him look like a typical teen. “That’s sacrilegious!”
    “And blood atonement isn’t?”
    He looked shocked. “Blood atonement is one of the tools God gives men to right wrongs, Sister Lena.”
    I motioned to the tiny graves. “What wrongs had those babies committed when your mother killed them?”
    His eyes flickered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Yes you do. Your mother couldn’t stand raising any more babies, could she? So how’d she do it? Suffocate them? Or did she drown them like kittens nobody wants?”
    For a moment I didn’t think he was going