Free Daredevils by Shawn Vestal Page B

mother’s four children. They crowd on the chairs and on the benches of the long table and on the floor. Ruth sits in a chair, an arm around Alma and an arm around Sarah, and Alma hugs her stuffed doll with the hand-drawn face, and then their mother comes upon them from behind and enfolds them all in an embrace. The room is warm with still bodies, and silent.
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    Her father is praying, and Ruth peeks at him, watching his beard tremble. “And if today is the day of your son’s return, O Lord, if this is the day the righteous have awaited, our Father in Heaven, then we ask you to find us worthy, though we know we are not worthy, though we know we are sinners, we ask that you forgive us our sins and take us up, lift us up.”
    Is that what today is? Ruth presses her eyes closed. Somewhere outside of her, somewhere outside of this room, somewhere outside of the darkness that still covers this room, somewhere outside the visible world, she knows there is a force that opposes them. That opposes the righteous. But she does not understand what that force is. For days now, the grown-ups have been talking about the Federal Men. The Federal Men are being sent by the apostates, the false Mormons in Salt Lake, who are persecuting the true Saintshere in Short Creek. But now her father is talking about something else: The last days. The reckoning. The Second Coming. She holds her eyes closed as tightly as possible. Fear tingles and squirms around her heart. She should never have been peeking during the prayer. Inside of her father’s prayer she begins her own silent prayer, begging the Lord’s forgiveness for opening her eyes during her father’s prayer. She is disobedient. She is headstrong. The grown-ups always say so
. Forgive me, O Lord.
She wants to close her eyes so tightly that it makes up for their opening.
Forgive me, O Lord, and I will
be your righteous servant eternally.
She feels it now throughout her body, a zing in the blood, a knowledge in the bones: it is the Second Coming. What if her family is raised up without her? What if she watches from below as they are saved, as she is swallowed up in the fire that will last a thousand years?
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    They walk to the schoolhouse, where other families wait, and where other families are still arriving. The grown-ups are dressed as if for church. The prophet stands in a circle of men, where her father also stands. Elden Johnson. Uncle Elden. He is shorter than the other men, but also taller, Ruth thinks. One eye is cloudy and one is clear. He wears his three-piece suit, his short white hair is neat, his mustache trim, and he smiles placidly. He speaks to God. God speaks to him.
    Ruth’s mother gives every older child someone to watch over. She is responsible for Sarah and Alma. “You watch them, little sister,” her mother says. “You don’t let them out of your sight.” Every few minutes her stomach makes a noise that is audible to anyone nearby. She asks her mother, “What’s going to happen?” and her mother says, “We don’t know.”
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    Outside the darkness lifts, slow and gray. Inside the schoolhouse, they are singing hymns. “Arise, O Glorious Zion.” “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel.” They pray silently. The grown-ups talk somberly, greet one another as if at church, and though there is a somber cloak around the day, there is something strangely joyous as well, and this puzzles Ruth, or it makes her fearful, because she believes it means they are anticipating the Second Coming with joy, feeling sure of their own righteousness in a way she is not. An eternity without her family, she thinks. An eternity of her own reward.
    A shout comes from outside, and then Brother Miller is scuffling into the schoolhouse. “They’re coming down Partham Road,” she hears him tell the prophet and the