Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(12)
I took the kid by the arm. “All right, this is f*cking ridiculous. You’re coming with us. Catch you later, Carradine.”
“Please!” the salesman shouted, waving something. “Take my card! I’m staying in St. George at the Best Western. Let me know if you see any, ah, appliance openings inside Cornucopia.”
I took the stupid card, although I doubted that my gun—and now mining—business would involve many dishwashers. I started marching Dingo down the street. He sort of stumbled, like I was dragging him to the principal’s office. “Where have you been staying? Are there more of you in Avalanche?”
“I’ve been staying in the old schoolyard, in the principal’s office. That is, until they demo it. It’s scheduled for demolition next month. I’m the only one in town. I try to find boys who have been dumped off like me, and encourage them to go north to Salt Lake, to Bountiful. I’m a hypocrite, because I can’t get up the nerve to go myself.”
“How do you survive? Just by stealing?”
“Yes, because I need to hide whenever I see a Humvee or one of their pickup trucks. There are a few nice women who are allowed out who bring food to the school. But they could get in trouble if found out.”
I could relate. I’d been on the streets a few years before joining the Marines. I’d stooped to some pretty low-life behavior, some risky situations, because I’d felt I had no other option. The armed forces gave me the attitude, the encouragement that I was something better than a piece of shit. Although I’d seen lots of violence, to be sure, I’d walked away pumped up, with more ego than I’d ever had before. Before, I’d just been a hollow shell of a youth, like Dingo. I had no pride, no self-esteem. That had all been beaten out of me by my dad.
“Do you like motorcycles?” I asked him.
His eyes lit up. He was so unaware, so naive! It was almost refreshing to see, if I didn’t know why he was so innocent. He’d been thrown from one warped fantasy of reality—Cornucopia—into another without ever experiencing anything remotely like normalcy. “Motorcycles! Yes, there were a few on the compound, and I’ve seen a few here in town. They look dangerous!” We came within view of our motel parking lot, and he pointed. “Like those! Those are called ‘hogs,’ right?”
Breakiron said, “Only if you want to get rolled.”
The three of us grinned. I said, “I’ll let you ride one up later on.”
Breakiron said, “That means on his * pad.”
Dingo looked amazed. We stood by the scoots now, the youth admiring the not-so-shiny tailpipes, the chrome, the painting on the gas tank. He pointed to various parts of the bike, like a kid asking “what’s this?” and “what’s that?”
After about ten minutes of that, I brought Dingo into my room. Breakiron went back to his room to read more boob mags. Dingo was nearly bowled over at the sight of my laptop, open and turned on. I’d been googling shit about fundamentalists in an effort to understand how their minds worked. Apparently, Chiles was imposing tyrannical mind control over everyone, especially the women in close contact with him. There were a few magazine articles on him, but other than that, precious little had been allowed to be posted on the net.
“You worked a computer before?” I asked, stripping off my cut and wifebeater. I was going to shower, then take a trip out to the ominously named Altar of Sacrifice Mine. I think it was actually named for a rock formation inside of Zion National Park, but still. Sort of creepy.
“No,” said Dingo with wonder, hovering his hand over the keyboard. He fluttered his fingers as though they had little bells on them. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. We had a few computers inside Cornucopia. But school only goes through eighth grade there. After that, you’re on your own. Boys age twelve become ordained deacons. It’s the same on the outside, too. Age fourteen you’d be ordained a teacher, then at sixteen a priest, but I didn’t make it that far.”
“What? How old were you when you were…”
“Excommunicated? I don’t know. I stopped counting when I didn’t become a priest. I’ve seen three winters on the outside since then, so I must be eighteen? Nineteen?”
“You’ve been living on the outside for three f*cking years?”
He hung his head, as though it was his fault he’d been booted for being a surplus male. “I guess so. You know what is ironic? I only want one wife. I wouldn’t have taken up very many of them. One is fine with me.”
I chuckled. “You make sense, buddy.”
He turned to me, earnest. “Women are too expensive.”
I laughed all the way into the bathroom as I turned on the water.
Out of the mouths of babes. He’d said a mouthful.
Women are too expensive. Maybe I should be happy I hadn’t won Chelsea’s hand. I needed to forge my own way before I had anything to offer a woman. Right now, I was a fully patched member who was practically out bad, exiled to a remote Bumf*ck corner of Utah. I had a lot to learn. And a lot to prove.
CHAPTER FIVE
MAHALIA
Please let me see the mystery of my being.
I was awash in confusion as I sat at my desk in the Relief Society office. I knew we were not expected to feel a romantic sort of love for our husbands—especially having been dragged to the mountain to be sealed, kicking and screaming as I practically was—but was it wrong to feel a sexual longing for another man? Of course, intercourse was strictly for the purposes of childbearing. Since I hadn’t been pregnant the entire time I’d been with Allred, it was a wonder he still visited my bed. I tolerated it, of course, as any wife does. There were now forty-five of us, so it didn’t happen that often, given the rotation schedule. But some older ones being sick with “the cancer” meant his visits came much too soon for my liking.