Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

lot.”
    “Hiking?”
    He looked baffled. “Hiking? No, they hunt, just like I was doing when I ran into you. Other times they come down here to practice those pagan rituals of theirs. They went to court once to get the canyon taken away from us, saying that it was part of their holy ground, or some such nonsense.”
    I forwent the comment that Indians’ holy ground always seemed nonsensical to certain Anglos. The proximity of the Paiute village to the compound sounded promising. Maybe one of them had seen something. For now, I pretended to be guided by a boy so innocent of the world that he didn’t realize how many Indians wore Nikes, carried cell phones, and went to Christian churches on Sundays.
    “Thank you for warning me about their pagan ways, Brother Meade. I certainly wouldn’t want to fall into the hands of the ungodly.”
    As we walked back to the compound, I peppered him with questions, and for a while he even answered them. Yes, his sister Cynthia was unhappy, but conforming to God’s wishes brought the only true happiness, not chasing after individual dreams. No, he wasn’t aware of any major falling out between Prophet Davis and the Circle of Elders. At least not until this morning’s announcement.
    “Prophet Davis is a godly man,” he assured me.
    Then I remembered that Meade and Davis shared the same father. I asked him about that.
    “Oh, yes,” he said. “I’m the youngest son and he’s the eldest, but we had different mothers.”
    “Was Prophet Davis’s mother at the meeting?”
    “Sister Lucy died many years ago. I never knew her.”
    “Did she get sick? Or was it an accident of some sort?”
    “From what I hear, she died a few days after he was born, so our sister mothers raised him.”
    “Sister mothers?”
    “Father prophet’s other wives.”
    That was one good point about polygamy, at least. Their children seldom wound up in foster homes; they were just sent on down the line to new mothers. But I wanted more details about what medical care, if any, Sister Lucy had received. As we climbed the path out of the canyon and started through the mesquite grove that led past Davis’s house, I asked a question I already knew the answer to. “Did she go to the hospital?”
    “Of course not,” Meade answered. “The Circle of Elders prayed over her, but God called her home…”
    “To the Highest Heaven,” I finished for him.
    He shook his head. “Oh, no, not to the Highest. Davis was only her first child so she didn’t have time to bear more children. Only Great Mothers achieve Highest Heaven.”
    Which the old crone in the classroom had made so clear. Before I could censor my words, I blurted, “That doesn’t sound right, Meade. It’s not fair that the poor woman didn’t get her proper heavenly reward just because she died before she could throw a whole litter.”
    Meade gasped. “That’s a wicked thing to say, Sister Lena! A good woman is an obedient woman. She doesn’t question God’s ways.”
    And a good woman should be slightly south of smart, I wanted to respond, but by then, I’d gained control over my mouth.
    As we crossed Prophet’s Park, a woman emerged from the clinic. In another environment, I’d have put her at thirty, but I’d learned the constant pregnancies the women endured made them appear older than they were. The woman’s dishwater-blond hair, pulled tightly into a bun, did little to flatter her blunt features, but her rounded belly was proof that her husband, at least, found her desirable. As she hurried away from the clinic, I noticed something else. One of her legs was noticeably shorter than the other, making her gait resemble a series of ungainly hops.
    My own hip, the one that had taken a drug-dealer’s bullet and ended my police career a year before, twinged in sympathy.
    When the woman neared us I saw tears. Concerned, I started toward her but found myself yanked back by Meade.
    “Leave her alone,” he said.
    “But she…”
    “That’s just Sister Hanna, Brother Noah’s sister. She’s always crying.”
    “Why?”
    He shrugged. “Who knows? Somebody told me she’s had a lot of sadness in her life, but I don’t know anything about it. People don’t talk much about her.”
    I wondered if it had anything to do with her limp. An accident of some sort which had gone untreated? I tried once more to go to her, but Meade, proving surprisingly strong, pulled me along with him toward Saul’s house as if I were little more than a