Avalanche. All I knew about the place was, it was right outside the gates of that whacked fundy stronghold where I’d grown up. It sounded like Mahalia’s boyfriend Gideon, a biker type, was rejuvenating the town, I guess painting it with his special biker flair. Well. Good for them. All I could remember from the few times I’d ever gone outside the gates was basically a ghost town. Houses had been built, but developers had backed out, probably when they heard whacked polygamists were moving in and buying up land.
So there was this weird scenario with these suburban skeleton houses in neighborhoods as empty as the Dust Bowl, backed with the gorgeous flaming spires of Zion National Park. It always struck me as a weird juxtaposition, because those houses would’ve been nice to live in, with those views. Maybe I always wished I could live there, instead of the colonial style project where I’d grown up. Room after room built one upon the other like a train to accommodate all the children. And of course none of us had a room of our own. God forbid.
When I took the money from the client, he handed me a business card. Guys did that all the time—as if pretending we’d just had a simple business transaction. But then he said something weird as I was exiting.
“I bid thee farewell.”
It struck me as weird, but I was halfway out the door. I took a second look at him, wondering briefly if maybe he knew me from somewhere, if he was a repeat client. Nope. Just your average middle-aged polygamist hypocrite who wanted a long fat cock down his throat on the side.
I was a couple exits down the highway on my custom Sportster, still thinking about the sultry nurse, when it struck me. Literally, an image from my way-distant past hit me like a lightning bolt. It was such a strong jolt, I was lucky I didn’t jerk the handlebars and park my scoot horizontally. I had the presence of mind to pull off at the next exit, stopping on the dark side of a fluorescent gas station.
I bid thee farewell. That’s what that whackamole goon, Allred Lee Chiles, had said to me before shoving me into the bed of a pickup and watching me drive off to my fate.
I’d been dating the daughter of an elder. I was always very careful with Zelpha Pratt, having been taught that girls were snakes, ready to strike at any moment. Real sex, of course, anything to do with penetration of any kind, was reserved for marriage, and even then, only for procreation. The most we’d done was make out, but man, I was a hot to trot teenager, with testosterone zooming through my system, making me crazy. I was sixteen, and on my way to a priesthood myself. Or so I thought.
I swear that’s all we did, kiss, but one night when I went to her house to pick her up, her father got all over me. He came storming down the front walkway like a giant fierce gale. He swarmed me before I had a chance to defend myself, punching me in the face and stomach, kicking me when I was down on the lawn.
Worse, his friends joined in. They must’ve been waiting in the bushes or something. It took two or three other men to break my rib and arm, kicking me with their fucking elder boots. Mr. Pratt shrieked that I was a liar who made a covenant to abide by God’s laws, and I had turned traitor to the priesthood and my own existence. I was led by my master, who was, of course, Lucifer.
Zelpha and some of her siblings came out and started yelling at Mr. Pratt, so they finally let up. I was gasping for breath, afraid to hold onto my ribs, afraid some inner organs had been ruptured. The men just stood around me looking down triumphantly like they’d just completed a satisfactory circle jerk.
Zelpha dared to hit her father with her little inoffensive fists. What is wrong with you, Father? Levon hasn’t done anything wrong.
But I knew I had. Irrevocably. By kissing a girl who was destined to marry a sixty-year-old elder two months later, I had committed the ultimate crime.
“Damn you all to hell,” uttered Mr. Pratt from between shaking lips like two pieces of liver. “I cast you into the outer darkness where traitors and apostates go. You will be ground into a native element in the darkest spot on earth.”
Now, straddling my saddle in the shadows of that gas station, it was rushing back to me. I normally succeeded in keeping the floodgates closed on that particular part of my life. But that night it all came pouring in, with all the floating trash and random pieces of shit that come with a flood.
My hand actually shook as I yanked on my wallet chain and grabbed the bulky leather. The hundred dollar bills were still wrapped around the guy’s business card.
Ladell Pratt
Mayor
Town of Avalanche, Utah
I got off my ride and walked into the brighter light, blinking my eyes. I looked again.
What. The. Fuck.
The brain wants to deny what the eyes plainly see. Eventually it was my stomach that wrested control from both, sending a plume of bile spewing up my throat. There was no choking it down—I had to retch it onto the ground or it would’ve come out my nose. The remnants of my lovely, homey dinner with my men came gushing from the pit of my stomach, splashing loudly against the asphalt.
Luckily no one saw me. I righted myself quickly and jumped back on my scoot, panting heavily, gulping clean air.
Motherfuck. Motherfuck.
Ladell Pratt was not Zelpha’s dad. He was her uncle.