Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

contractor, remember. None of this cheap-jack construction for me.”
    I relaxed as we drove up to a small wood-shingled house on the Arizona side of the compound which, unlike the other buildings, bore a semblance of style. Bright red flowers bloomed from window boxes painted the same blue as the trim on the large windows and front door. While not elegant, the little house and its tidy yard shamed its hulking neighbors.
    As Saul helped me unload the garbage bags meant to pass for a desperate woman’s luggage, I caught sight of a group of men leaning against a rusting Chevy Impala. The fading light didn’t hide their frank stares.
    “Show time,” Saul grunted, then turned to face them. “You guys in the Circle of Elders wouldn’t help me, so I went out and found me another wife in Salt Lake.”
    A portly red-headed man of about fifty, wearing a long-sleeved shirt, bib overalls and metal-rimmed glasses, approached, his face stern. He addressed Saul without greeting me.
    “Brother Saul, you didn’t get approval from the Circle to take another wife. Until you do, we can’t sanctify the marriage.” He narrowed his already too-small eyes at me, his expression a scarifying mixture of lust and loathing.
    “Well, then, Brother Earl, you can sanctify my ass!” Saul snapped. “What’s the matter with you people? Prophet Solomon said that no man can enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless he has more than one wife, so I’m merely following his instructions. You boys got a problem with that, you can take it up with me after I get my woman in the house.”
    My woman
. Almost choking from outrage, I lowered my eyes modestly and stared at the ground. But not before I wondered if Brother Earl was the same Earl Graff who’d witnessed the argument between Esther and Prophet Solomon.
    “Brother Saul, we’ll deal with you at the next Circle of Elders meeting,” Brother Earl said in a soft voice that almost, but not quite, masked his anger.
    As Earl rejoined the others, Saul put his hand on my back and gave me a push that almost made me stumble. “Get yourself in the house, Sister Lena, and head straight for the kitchen. I’m hungry.” His voice could have carried to the farthest building in the compound.
    Although his performance was obviously for the polygamists’ benefit, my gorge still rose and I almost slapped his hand away. But then I remembered Rebecca’s terrified face, and hurried up the steps, garbage bag luggage in my hands and my new “husband” hot on my heels. Keeping my own voice low, I warned, “Do that to me again, Brother Saul, and you’ll be whistling ‘Dixie’ out of a gap in your front teeth.”
    He snickered. “A Godly woman is an obedient woman, Sister Lena. She wouldn’t dream of decking her jackass of a husband.”
    My dread increasing, I entered the house. Once inside, though, I was pleasantly surprised.
    The house, as Saul had described earlier, had been furnished with bits and pieces left over from the big yard sale he’d held in Salt Lake before moving to the compound. Nothing matched, but the long, brown leather sofa coexisted comfortably with the green and blue armchairs. A multi-colored rag rug lent an air of gaiety to the room that, in my present glum state, filled me with gratitude.
    I walked around slowly, staring at the amateurish snapshots covering one of the pine-paneled walls. Children. Dozens of them. The girls wore Purity’s nineteenth-century-style dresses; the boys, plain slacks and high-necked, long-sleeved shirts.
    “Ruby’s kids and grandkids,” Saul explained. “Only a few still live here. The others married into other polygamy compounds, such as Colorado City and Hildale. Out here, one compound feeds the other.”
    Remembering the vast empty stretches we had traveled to get here, I asked, “Are those other compounds close by?”
    “Hildale’s the closest, and it’s almost forty miles east, so she doesn’t get to see her kids much. I think missing them is part of her problem. Hell, missing kids was sure part of my problem. If the stinkers had visited me more, I might not have wound up in this polygamist Sodom and Gomorrah in the first place.”
    The photographs on the opposite wall provided startling contrast to the bargain basement snapshots. Studio portraits of three attractive women with their spouses, surrounded by gaggles of kids, proclaimed that Saul spared no expense in documenting his family. A separate photograph portrayed a dignified man in a