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Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

Titel: Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Betty Webb
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his hands full with them.”
    He gave me a brief rundown on the Circle of Elders and their relationship to Purity’s prophets. Originally, the compound’s government had functioned similarly to England’s political structure, with the reigning prophet fulfilling the role of prime minister and the Circle of Elders behaving as Parliament. During the last few years of Prophet Solomon’s reign, however, the Circle’s role had waned.
    “The Circle still arranges all the marriages and decides whose home gets fixed up or added to, but the prophet now negotiates all of the Purity Fellowship Foundation’s business contracts. I’m not sure the Circle even knows how much money is coming in.”
    “Nice for the prophet,” I said.
    He winked. “Wait’ll you see Davis’s house. It’s the second nicest house in the compound.”
    Davis Royal’s house, surrounded by the grove of cottonwood and mesquite that had kept me from seeing it earlier, was almost a city block long and appeared to be built out of the same red rock as the Vermillion Cliffs. Its green steel, copper-trimmed roof should have presented a gaudy contrast, but it didn’t. Neither did the green shutters that framed the house’s dozens of windows. A long veranda, furnished with expensive-looking patio furniture, ran the entire width of the house, playing host to the dozens of people gathered on it. Prophet Davis’s humble abode looked like one of the more upscale Scottsdale resorts.
    The new prophet’s cars matched his house, too. In the circular gravel driveway sat a gleaming silver Mercedes ML55, a Cadillac Escalade, and three Chrysler Town and Country vans, the better to haul his brood, I reckoned.
    “It sure doesn’t look like Prophet Davis has taken a vow of poverty.” Since we were approaching a large group of men also headed for the house, I kept my voice low.
    “That’ll be the day,” Saul replied. “In Purity, the prophets have always lived well and nobody thinks a thing of it, not even when the rest of the folks walk around in rags and drive rust heaps. Now hush up before you start calling attention to yourself.”
    Following Saul’s instructions, I kept my eyes on the ground, but every now and then I chanced a swift look up at the people around us. Most of the women, even girls who couldn’t have been older than thirteen, were pregnant. Their bellies hiked up the front hems of their long granny dresses, exposing painfully swollen ankles. Some appeared ready to squat down in the dirt to give birth on the spot.
    The men were all clad in an assortment of bib overalls, Levis, and long-sleeved woolen shirts buttoned up to their Adam’s apples. Underneath, I knew, they wore their Temple undergarments. Given that the temperatures during the daytime topped the nineties, they had to be miserable—not that I cared how miserable any of them felt.
    “Lena!” Saul’s sharp command pulled me out of my thoughts. Then he lowered his voice. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop it right now. You look like you’re ready to pull a gun on someone!”
    “Sorry,” I whispered. “It’s just that…”
    He whispered back. “I know. It’s exactly what I felt once I figured out what was really going on here under all this sanctimonious bullshit. But remember what I said. You have to act like a meek sister wife while you’re here, not some pissed-off avenging angel.”
    The thought of me being anyone’s avenging angel made me smile, and he smiled back. “That’s more like it. A meek little sister wife is a happy little sister wife.”
    Still smiling, I whispered, “Thee can shove it up thine ass, Brother Saul.”
    He laughed, making several of the men waiting on Prophet Davis Royal’s porch look at us curiously. A large group of women, probably their wives, stood in a huddle behind them. I couldn’t help but notice the poor condition of the women’s teeth. No dentists in Purity?
    “We hear you have a new wife, Brother Saul,” called one of the men, a thin-faced, pimpled blond scarcely out of his teens. Like the others, he was modestly clad and his ill-fitting clothes did little to disguise his too-short legs and concave chest. His large head and stunted limbs hinted at dwarfism.
    “Yes, Brother Noah,” Saul responded. “The Lord worked one of His miracles in my heart and swore He’d reward me for my righteousness with many children.” Saul turned to me with a leer of such cartoonish intensity I had to lower my head again to hide my

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