Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

same for everything else around here,” I observed. “But where do they hold Sunday services now?”
    “Prophet’s Park on nice days, the new prophet’s house on bad days. In shifts, though. Davis’s house is big, but not that big. Once family matters are settled, he’ll probably move into his daddy’s old house.” Here he pointed to the only brick home in the compound, a structure so large I’d assumed it was an apartment building.
    To the north of the compound lay gardens and orchards, offering the only swatches of green to relieve Purity’s browns and blacks. Although almost dusk, a few granny-garbed women still toiled in the gardens gathering last-minute dinner vegetables.
    Beyond the gardens, Paiute Canyon, my old hiding place, zigzagged along the base of the gaudy Vermillion Cliffs. I flinched as a shot rang from its depths, then reminded myself of the canyon’s omnipresent hunters.
    Ragged, unsupervised children ran everywhere. They climbed on the rusting cars, poked sticks through the fence at the chickens and goats, and skipped along the unpaved paths between the huge houses. Some scuffled in the dirt like wild things. One little boy of about four threw rocks at a skinny dog. No one came to its aid.
    “Where are their mothers?” I asked Saul. “These kids look like they’re on their own.”
    “If you had ten children do you think you’d be able to keep an eye on all of them?” He swerved to avoid a child’s Big Wheel hunkered down in the middle of the road, its owner nowhere in sight.
    “Probably not.” Frankly I doubted I could mother even one child.
    As we rolled by the gigantic but decrepit houses, we stirred up a dust cloud that made children scatter in all directions. Watching them, I was struck once more by their ragtag appearance.
    “Saul, this place looks pretty slummy for a financial organization that’s supposed to control millions of dollars. Are you sure that’s not an urban myth?”
    “It’s no myth. I know at least twenty men here who work for some of the businesses managed by the Purity Fellowship Foundation. But you’re right, very little money goes toward upkeep around here, other than for the church. At best, the Foundation dribbles out a few bucks here and there to add a room when some family starts outgrowing its house or trailers or whatever.”
    He waved toward a building on the Utah side of the compound which resembled a warehouse that had seen better days. “That house belongs to Jacob Waldman, Esther’s father. He started building it fifty years ago. I think it had three, maybe four bedrooms then, one for each wife. They say it has twenty-two bedrooms now.”
    “For twenty-two wives?” I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice.
    “Old Jacob’s only got about ten wives at this point and considering the state of his health, isn’t likely to get more. The rest of the rooms are dormitories for his kids. I think there’s around seventy or eighty, I’m not sure, cause the older ones are all married off. That’s kind of an average family size for most of the guys around here.”
    As I craned my neck to stare at the house where Esther grew up, something else began to bother me.
    “Saul, the house doesn’t have any windows! Almost
none
of these houses do.”
    Saul braked for a child chasing a ball. “Windows cost money. Prophet Solomon didn’t believe in mortgages, except for the ones he held on other folks’ property in Salt Lake, so everything built here is paid for in cash. The money gets deducted from each family’s monthly allowance, which has always been doled out by Solomon. When folks are that strapped, windows are a luxury. Besides, most of the men work at their piddly little jobs all day, and at night, well, it’s too dark to see anything anyway.”
    “Don’t the women feel cooped up?” The thought of a windowless house horrified me. Since a murderer left me for dead in a car trunk, I suffered from bouts of claustrophobia.
    Saul laughed at my question. “You think Purity’s women have time to enjoy the view? According to ‘The Gospel of Solomon,’ and it’s an actual book he printed himself a few years back, anything that gives pleasure is considered mere vanity. That includes looking out windows.”
    My feeling of horror intensified. “Saul, please tell me your house has windows. If I can’t look outside…”
    “Don’t worry, before I handed over my money to Solomon, I made sure I kept enough for windows. I was a