I was on a mission again, feeling useful and needed. Getting through the gates was no problem, as Levon had predicted. He talked me though a bunch of traffic circles where long Stepford homes like projects stood shiny and perfect. I’d been to enclaves like this off and on, but none as bizarre as this. Women walked around in 1800s garb like some reenactment of “Little House on the Prairie.” The neck-to-toe drab garments prevented other women from being jealous, and men who weren’t your husband from giving you lustful stares. I expected to see horses and buggies, but there were a few cars. Mostly, though, it seemed people walked. And mostly women.
That would make sense if you did the math. Each man needed at least three wives to enter the kingdom of heaven, but usually they “wed” many more. After running out all the boys, I wondered who was left to keep the city looking so spic and span. As Deloy had said, most men went into some kind of construction biz.
Levon and his Nana were waiting by the curb. It was odd, looking at him in this different light. Normally, you don’t think of people you loathe as having families, much less a Nana. You don’t want to think of it, because if you did, you’d be forced to realize they’re human. A knot of maybe ten or fifteen women surrounded them, glaring, frowning, hands on hips. When I got out of the car, all glares were turned on me. Some women pointed at me, yelling.
“Apostate!”
“Gentile!”
“You’ve turned traitor to the Prophet!”
I started to protest. “I never lived here. I’ve never followed any prop—”
Levon cut me off. “Don’t engage with them. Let’s just get her into your cage and over to Urgent Care.”
The lady couldn’t have been more than seventy, but was bent with arthritis or maybe spinal stenosis, and had to get into the car very gingerly. It was like being surrounded by a coven of witches, the things they were shrieking at me with their gravelly voices and claw-like hands.
“You backouts! We’re glad you’re leaving!”
“If you take Cloydean then don’t expect to ever come back!”
“You’re dead to us.”
“You are the true tools of the devil.”
We had her settled, and I went around to my side of the car. Levon put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. For some reason it was vastly reassuring. He bent at the knees to look me in the eyes.
“I can’t thank you enough, Oaklyn. I’ll be at Urgent Care as soon as I ditch this truck. You’re a lamb for doing this. I won’t let you down.”
That was funny, him calling me a lamb. I remembered Mahalia explaining to me once that men in the MC called women lambs because they were easier to mold than sheep. But even sheep moved in a herd as one!
I didn’t have time to argue, though. Levon had thrown some of Cloydean’s bags in the back of my Mini Cooper station wagon. The witches’ cawing and crowing was reaching a fever pitch, and now some men in severe black pants with shiny 1950s haircuts were heading our way, so Levon practically shoved me into the car.
“I’ll take care of you,” I assured the poor woman as I wound back around the traffic circle. “Have no fear. I’m a registered nurse.”
“I haven’t left the compound in thirty years,” she said.
“Really? You haven’t been to the doctor?”
“No. There’s a brother who’s a doctor, and he fixed my tubes.”
Tubes? A fake doctor was running around Cornucopia tying womens’ tubes? As we headed back toward the gates, I passed a few men in their twenties waving a giant cross around. They stood on the side of the road as though hitch-hiking, but they weren’t. They were just standing on the shoulder, waving a cross as tall as them. Like one of those sign spinning guys who stand on the corner dressed like Spiderman twirling a giant arrow.
“His way is holy! His purposes are eternal!” they shouted.
“Whose purposes?” I asked Cloydean.
“Oh, Verlan Turley,” she said wearily. “Everyone’s fighting for a piece of the pie, and Verlan Turley says he’s the cat’s pajamas and all that.”
I also drove past a couple groups of women walking toward the gate. Strangely, they seemed to be older women with grey hair. One of them used a cane. I asked Cloydean who they were.
“Widows. There’s Vella Zabriskie. She was sealed to Immanuel, who ran the Altar of Sacrifice Mine.”
“Why are they leaving?”
“They’re cleaning house. Too many old women like me cluttering up the place.”
The whole thing was unsettling. I wouldn’t miss a thing if I never had to return to that place again.
CHAPTER SIX
LEVON
“There’s a leadership vacuum in Cornucopia,” I told Oaklyn in a low voice. “There are two camps. Those who want to keep things status quo as Allred Chiles created it, and those who want to usher in new ways.”
She snorted. “Like what? Letting people see your ankles? Did you know they have to wear long underwear even in the broiling heat of summer?”
“I know,” I said bitterly.
Oaklyn gasped. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you grew up there. I guess it’s just too hard to comprehend, someone like you living there.”