Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

miles to my journey, and before I’d even cleared the compound, mud caked my Reeboks, weighing me down. For a while, the road paralleled the canyon, so I listened to the music of water as it burbled along what was now little more than a tiny stream. How long before it turned into a torrent?
    After a half hour, the road hooked east along the dogleg and began a slow, gentle climb over a ridge dotted with desert rue. Here the road became rocky. Once the road topped the ridge, I paused to look back to see Purity in all its squalid splendor. From here the houses and trailers resembled a wagon train tightly circled to ward off foes. But this appearance deceived. Purity had no foes. The established Mormon Church, after expelling the polygamists, had washed its hands of the entire problem. Beehive County’s district attorney wouldn’t prosecute men like Prophet Solomon or Earl Graff, and even the county sheriff returned Purity’s runaways. There was nothing I could do except save one little girl: Rebecca.
    I turned my back on Purity and crossed the ridge to find the Paiute already waiting for me.
    Tony Lomahguahu, hunkered under a huge black umbrella, looked thoroughly miserable. “I sure hope this is important, Miss Jones. I left a warm fire back at the house.”
    “It’s important.” The weather was too foul for pleasantries, so I started right in. “Mr. Lomahguahu, I know something’s very wrong in Purity, but I simply don’t know enough about these people and their history to figure it out. Will you help me?”
    Lomahguahu stared at me for a moment, silent. The wind, stronger here, lifted wisps of his thick gray hair. I waited.
    Finally, he said, “Have you lived in the noise of the city for so long that you have forgotten how to listen?”
    I bit my lip to keep back the churlish answer that sprang to my lips: listen to what? Rain slapping against mud?
    But I didn’t want to alienate him. “I’m not sure I ever knew how to listen. That’s why I’ve come to you. Something doesn’t add up here, and it’s probably connected to the Prophet’s death.” I pointed toward the graves of Martha Royal’s children. “You said ‘Listen to the children.’ Well, one of the women has lost too many, I think, for it to be a coincidence. Is that what you were hinting at?”
    The Paiute glanced at the sky, where a thin blue line appeared on the western horizon. It broadened as we watched. The rain would end soon, but the canyon would remain dangerous for days. Good. That would keep Davis away from it, and maybe he’d live long enough to put those reforms into action.
    “Mr. Lomahguahu? Did you hear my question?”
    His face hinted at impatience when he finally answered. “You believe this woman may have something to do with her children’s deaths, but how would the Paiute know anything about that? We lead our lives, the people of Purity lead theirs. Little passes between us. But I can say this. If you cannot listen, then you must
look.
All the information you need is there. But like so many white people, you are blind. In your
busyness,
you have forgotten how to use your eyes.”
    With that, he got up and without another word, walked back toward the Paiute reservation.
    I would have chased after him but I knew better. He’d discharged his debt to Jimmy’s people, and now he was through with me. He’d not wanted to become involved with the polygamy mess in the first place, and after everything I’d seen during the past couple of weeks, I couldn’t blame him.
    The rain stopped. In no hurry to repeat my long hike over the ridge and back down the soggy road, I spent the next hour wandering through the cemetery. The oldest graves, high on the ridge and silhouetted against the sky, were those of the area’s pioneers, polygamists even then. Below them, marching toward the present, I found graves with the same names recurring. Royal. Corbett. Leonard. Waldman. Graff. Heaton. As I studied the markers, I began to see a pattern. In the 1800s and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, young women didn’t live long. Many were buried with infants, signaling they’d died in childbirth. These sad deaths diminished in the 1930s, probably because of better prenatal care. Young women’s deaths dropped sharply again in the 1970s, which, if I remembered correctly, heralded the advent of Purity’s clinic, proof that it did some good.
    Then in the 1980s, though, the incidence of infant and child deaths began to rise