Volume 11, Numbers 1 & 2 (2009)

Irreantum Staff
Editor Angela Hallstrom
Managing Editor Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury
Fiction Editor Lisa Torcasso Downing
Poetry Editor Jim Richards
Creative Nonfiction Editor Brittney Carman
Critical Essay Editor Karen Marguerite Moloney
Book Review Editor David G. Pace
Lead Copyeditor Elizabeth Petty Bentley
Copyediting Staff Lotte Willian
Design Eric Lyman
Layout Marny K. Parkin

Association for Mormon Letters Board

President Boyd Petersen
President-Elect Margaret Blair Young
Past President Eric Samuelsen
Board Members Linda Hunter Adams, Scott Bronson, Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury,
James Goldberg, Valerie Holladay, Neal Kramer
Secretary Darlene Young
Treasurer Annette Samuelsen
Annual Proceedings Editor Linda Hunter Adams
Webmaster Jacob Proffitt
AML-List Moderator Stephen Carter

Front cover: Boston LDS Temple Window, Val Brinkerhoff

Irreantum (ISSN 1518-0594) is published twice a year by the Association for Mormon Letters (AML), PO Box 970874, Orem, UT 84097-0874; www.irreantum.org.
Irreantum vol. 11, nos. 1 & 2 (2009) 2009 by the Association for Mormon Letters.
All rights reserved. Membership and subscription information can be found at the
end of this issue; single issues cost $10 (postpaid); double issues $12. Advertising rates
begin at $50 for a full page. The AML is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, so contributions of any amount are tax deductible and gratefully accepted.
Views expressed in Irreantum do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or
of AML board members. This publication has no official connection with or endorsement by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Irreantum is supported
by a grant from the Utah Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts,
Washington DC. Irreantum is indexed in the Modern Language Association International bibliography.

 5 From the Editor

Fiction

Critical Essays

Poetry

Creative Nonfiction

Reviews

9
51
67
99
131

Orson Scott Card The Elephants of Poznan

Darin Cozzens The Treading of Lesser Cattle
Larry Menlove The Path of Antelope, Pelican, and Moon
Charmayne Gubler Warnock Nightshade
Joshua Foster Cheddar

37 Terryl Givens Paradox and Discipleship

85 Jack Harrell Human Conflict and the Mormon Writer
157 Eric Samuelsen The Association for Mormon Letters:
Toward a Mission, Minus the Statement
32 Doug Talley Overcoming the World; Caelestia;
Finding Place
126 Paul Swenson Behind the Mask; Traces of Laraine
155 Holly Welker Barren; Creation
183 Michael R. Collings Contrition; Damon Again
145 Jaren Watson Of the Drowned
171 Ryan McIlvain Confessions of a Secular Mormon
187 Patrick Madden The Path of Redemption
193 Patricia Karamesines No Better Off
Amy Irvines Trespass: Living at the Edge of
the Promised Land
199 Phyllis Barber Big Love Before Big Love
Dorothy Allred Solomons In My Fathers House:
A Memoir of Polygamy
204 Laura Hilton Craner A Mother Must Leave Behind
Her Illusions
Kathryn Lynard Sopers The Year My Son and I Were Born
208 Heidi Hart Fierce Voices
Laurel Thatcher Ulrichs Well Behaved Women Seldom
Make History
213 Contributors
Volume 11, Numbers 1 & 2 (2009)

-r-ntum
And we beheld the sea, which we called Irreantum,
which, being interpreted, is many waters.
1 Nephi 17:5

Irreantum is a refereed journal published twice annually (Fall/

Winter, Spring/Summer) by the Association for Mormon Letters.
We seek to define the parameters of Mormon literature broadly,
acknowledging a growing body of diverse work that reflects the
increasing diversity of Mormon experience. We wish to publish the
highest quality of writing, both creative and critical.
We welcome unsolicited submissions of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and plays that address the Mormon experience either directly
or by implication. We also welcome submissions of critical essays that
address such works, in addition to popular and nonprint media (such
as film, folklore, theater, juvenile fiction, science fiction, letters, diaries,
sermons). Critical essays may also address Mormon literature in more
general terms, especially in its regional, ethnic, religious, thematic, and
genre-related configurations. We also seek submissions of photos that
can be printed in black and white. We welcome letters and comments.
Please visit www.Irreantum.MormonLetters.org for submission instructions. Only electronic submissions will be considered.

From the Editor

In 1999, Christopher Bigelow and Benson Parkinson took what

had been the Association for Mormon Letters newsletter and created
a bone fide literary magazine called Irreantum. In the ten years that
have passed, this journal has weathered both trial and change. But
Irreantum has emerged from its first decade creatively energized and
firmly committed to its missionto publish the very best in Mormon
literature and literary criticismand this ten-year milestone calls for
celebration. After spending the last six months with the essays and stories and poetry and art youre about to encounter, Im convinced this
anniversary double issue is the shout of joy such a milestone deserves.
In Doug Talleys poem Overcoming the World he writes, The
world is ours to make of what we will.... In these pages you will
find the fruit of that eternal impulse to create, from Holly Welkers
nineteen-line contemplation of a lemon on a countertop, to Orson
Scott Cards vivid imaginings of a future where human evolution
takes an unexpected turn, to photographer Val Brinkerhoff s vision of
the myriad ways the worlds inhabitants use art as a means of worship.
This issue of Irreantum celebrates creation. It answers the challenge
given by a gleeful Academy Award-winning song writer, Glen Hansard, which was later echoed by Eric Samuelsen in his 2008 AML
presidential address: Make art! Make art! Make art!
The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human
soul, says President Dieter F. Uchtdorf in his 2008 address Happiness, Your Heritage. The more you trust and rely upon the Spirit,
the greater your capacity to create. That is your opportunity in this
life and your destiny in the life to come. The people who write for and
work on Irreantum dont do it for fortune (since most do it for free),
and they dont do it for fame (but please tell your friends to subscribe).
5

Irreantum

Instead, each piece in this magazine is the product of an individuals

yearning to make something, and to share that something with other
human beings.
In the preceding paragraphs, Ive used terms like joy and celebration as a way to prepare you for the works of art contained within
this issues pages. Some might wonder if this optimistic terminology is appropriate for a journal containing stories that grapple with
adultery and suicide, doubt and sinespecially a journal that serves
an organization dedicated to literature by, for, and about Mormons.
Can a story depicting LDS characters in conflict rightly claim to fulfill the deepest yearnings of the human soul described by President
Uchtdorf? Shouldnt Mormon writing be morewellupbeat?
My new co-editor, Jack Harrell, tackles this question brilliantly in his
essay Human Conflict and the Mormon Writer. As members of the
LDS church, we believe that the gospel is literally good news. So how
do we approach the reality of suffering in our literature? And how can
depictions of and ruminations on human affliction engender enlightenment for our readers? Its a difficult question, certainly, especially
when so much of what passes for entertainment in our culture revels in
conflict for conflicts sake. But I found one of Harrells many answers to
this complicated question particularly illuminating. He writes:
Like all writers, Mormon writers must remember that real human
beings are more complex, self-contradictory, and ultimately more
interesting, loveable, and even admirable than the political or religious
systems that seek to contain them. Good literature may use religious,
social, and political categories as setting, or it may use them to introduce conflict, but good literature ultimately transcends those systems.

Although Irreantum is a magazine by, for, and about Mormons, its

important to remember that, first and foremost, all good art is created
by, for, and about humans. Its the willingness to plumb the depths of
what it means to be human and struggling, coupled with the desire
to tell the truth with charity, that gives art its potency. Such art does
make me want to shout for joy.
Irreantum serves as one avenue for Mormon artists to share their
creations, but it wouldnt exist without the contributors and staff and
6

From the Editor

subscribers who have made the continued publication of this journal

possible. Id like to offer a special thank you to my former co-editor,
Scott Hatch, whose dedication to the magazine and singular vision
helped Irreantum grow and thrive; to David Pace, our excellent book
review editor, who has served the journal enthusiastically for over five
years; and to Michael R. Collings, our talented and incisive poetry
editor. All of you will be greatly missed. But, as our history indicates,
Irreantum will continue to move forward. Im excited by the addition
of our new poetry editor, Jim Richards, and Im particularly pleased
to announce Irreantums new co-editor, Jack Harrell, a man whose talent as a writer and editor is matched by his patience and good humor.
Irreantums future is by no means assured. We continue to need
volunteers to work on the journal, the LDS communitys best writers
and artists to submit to the journal, andmost of allwe need readers to subscribe to the journal. But if the past ten years are any indication, Irreantum will continue to rise to all these challenges, providing
a place where answers to the spiritual call to create are given voice.
Icant wait to see what happens next.
Angela Hallstrom

Heads of Zeus & Antiochus I, Nemrut Dagi, Turkey, approx. ad 100

The Elephants of Poznan

Orson Scott Card

In the heart of old Poznan, the capital of Great Poland since

ancient times, there is a public square called Rynek Glowny. The
houses around it arent as lovely as those of Krakow, but they have
been charmingly painted and there is a faded graciousness that
wins the heart. The plaza came through World War II more or less
intact, but the Communist government apparently could not bear
the thought of so much wasted space. What use did it have? Public
squares were for public demonstrations, and once the Communists
had seized control on behalf of the people, public demonstrations
would never be needed again. So out in the middle of the square they
built a squat, ugly building in a brutally modern style. It sucked the
life out of the place. You had to stand with your back to it in order to
truly enjoy the square.
But wed all seen the ugly building for so many years that we hardly
noticed it anymore, except to apologize to visitors, ruefully remember
the bad old days of Communism, and appreciate the irony that the
occupants of such a tasteless building should include a restaurant, a
bookshop, and an art gallery. And when the plague came and the city
was so cruelly and suddenly emptied, those of us who could not let go
of Poznan, who could not bear to eke out the last of our lives in the
countryside, drifted to the old heart of the city and took up residence
in the houses surrounding the square. As time passed, even the ugly
building became part of the beauty of the place, for it had been part
of the old crowded city now lost forever. Just as the toilets with little

This story first appeared in GalaxyOnline ( January 2000) and was later printed in
Orson Scott Cards short fiction collection, Keeper of Dreams (Tor, 2008).

Irreantum

altars for the perusal of ones excrement reminded us of the many

decades of German overlordship, so this building was also a part of
our past, and now, by its sheer persistence among us, a part of ourselves. If we could venerate the bones and other bodily parts of dead
saints, couldnt we also find holiness of a kind even in this vile thing?
It was a relic of a time when we thought we were suffering, but to
which we now would gladly return, just to hear schoolchildren again
in the streets, just to see the flower shop once more selling the bright
excesses of overcopious nature, spots of vivid color to show us that
Poland was not, by nature, grey.
Into this square came the elephants, a group of males, making their
way in what seemed a relentless silence, except that a trembling of
the windows told us that they were speaking to each other in infrasound, low notes that the human ear could not hear, but the human
hand could feel on glass. Of course we had all seen elephants for
years on our forays out into the gardens of suburban Poznanclans
of females and their children following a matriarch, gangs of mature
males hanging out to kill time until one of them went into musth and
set off in search of the nearest estrous female. We speculated at first
about where they came from, whether their forebears had escaped
from a zoo or a circus during the plague. But soon we realized that
their numbers were far too great to be accounted for that way. Too
many different clans had been seen. On Radio Day we learned, from
those few stations that still bothered, that the elephants had come
down the Nile, swum the Suez, swarmed through Palestine and Syria
and Armenia, crossed the Caucasus, and now fed in the lush wheat
pastures of Ukraine, bathed in the streams of Belarus, and stood
trumpeting on the shores of Estonia and Pomerania, calling out to
some god of the sea, demanding passage to lands as yet unpossessed
by the great stumpy feet, the probing noses, the piercing ivory, and the
deep thrumming music of the new rulers of the world.
Why should they not rule it? We were only relics ourselves, we who
had had the misfortune of surviving the plague. Out of every hundred
thousand, only fifty or a hundred had survived. And as we scavenged
in the ruins, as we bulldozed earth over the corpses we dragged from
10

Card: Elephants of Poznan

the areas where we meant to live, as we struggled to learn how to

keep a generator or two running, a truck here and there, the radios
we used only once a week, then once a month, then once a year, we
gradually came to realize that there would be no more children. No
one conceived. No one bore. The disease had sterilized us, almost all.
There would be no recovery from this plague. Our extinction had not
required a celestial missile to shatter the earth and darken the sky for
a year; no other species shared our doom with us. We had been taken
out surgically, precisely, thoroughly, a tumor removed with a delicate
viral hand.
So we did not begrudge the elephants their possession of the fields
and the forests. The males could knock down trees to show their
strength; there was no owner to demand that animal control officers
come and dispose of the rampaging beasts. The females could gather
their children into barns and stables against the winter blast, and no
owner would evict them; only the crumbling bones and strands of
hairy flesh showed where horses and cattle had starved to death when
their masters died too quickly to think of setting them free from their
stalls and pens.
Why, though, had these males come into the city? There was nothing for them to eat. There was nothing for us to eat; when our bicycles
gave out and we could cobble together no more makeshift carts, we
would have to leave the city ourselves and live closer to the food that
we gathered from untended fields. Why would the elephants bother
with such a ruin? Curiosity, perhaps. Soon they would see that there
was nothing here for them, and move on.
We found ourselves growing impatient as the hours passed, and
the days, and still we kept encountering them on the city streets.
Didnt they understand that we lived in the heart of Poznan specifically because we wanted a human place? Didnt they feel our resentment of their trespass? All the rest of Earth is yours; can you not
leave undesecrated these crypts we built for ourselves in the days of
our glory?
Gradually it dawned on usdawned on me, actually, but the others realized I was rightthat the elephants had come, not to explore
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Irreantum

Poznan, but to observe us. I would pedal my bicycle and glance down
a cross street to see an elephant lumbering along on a parallel path;
I would turn, and see him behind me, and feel that shuddering in
my breastbone, in my forehead, that told me they were speaking to
each other, and soon another elephant would be shadowing me, seeing where I went, watching what I did, following me home.
Why were they interested in us? Humans were no longer killing
them for their ivory. The world was theirs. We were going to die
I,who was only seven years old when the plague came, am now past
thirty, and many of the older survivors are already, if not at deaths
door, then studying the travel brochures and making reservations,
their Bibles open and their rosaries in hand. Were these males here
as scientists, to watch the last of the humans, to study our deathways,
to record the moment of our extinction so that the elephants would
remember how we died with only a whimper, or less than that, a whisper, a sigh, a sidelong glance at God?
I had to know. For myself, for my own satisfaction. If I found the
truth, whom else would I tell it to, and for what purpose? They would
only die as I would die, taking memory with them into the fire, into
the ash, into the dust. I couldnt get any of the others to care about the
questions that preyed upon me. What do the elephants want from us?
Why do they follow us?
Leave it alone, Lukasz, they said to me. Isnt it enough that they
dont bother us?
And I answered with the most perplexing question of all, to me at
least. Why elephants? The other wild animals that roamed the open
country were the ones one might expect to see: The packs of dogs
gone wild, interbreeding back to mongrel wolfhood; the herds of cattle,
breeding back to hardiness, and of horses, quick and free and uninterested in being tamed. The companions of man, the servants and
slaves of man, now masterless, now free. Unshorn sheep. Unmilked
goats. Sudden-leaping housecats. Scrawny wild chickens hiding from
ever-vigilant hawks. Ill-tempered pigs rooting in the woods, the boars
making short work of dogs that grew too bold. That was the wildlife
of Europe. No other animals from Africa had made the journey north.
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Card: Elephants of Poznan

Only the elephants, and not just from Africathe elephants of India
were roaming the orient, and on the most recent Radio Day we learned,
through messages relayed many times, that they had somehow crossed
the Bering Strait and were now, in ever greater numbers, grazing the
prairies of America, small-eared cousins to the great-canopied beasts
that now shadowed us on the streets of Poznan. I pictured them
swimming, or piling onto boats that some last human pilot guided for
them onto the stygian shore.
They had inherited the Earth, and were bent on surveying their
new domain.
So I took to spending my days in the library, reading all I could
about elephants, and then about all the processes of life, all the passages of history, trying to understand not only them but ourselves, and
what had happened to us, and what our cities might mean to them,
our houses, our streets, our rusting cars, our collapsing bridges, our
sorry cemetery mounds where winter brought fresh crops of human
bone to the surface, white stubble on a fallow field. I write this now
because I think I know the answers, or at least have found guesses
that ring true to me, though I also know they might be nothing more
than a man hungry for meanings inventing them where they dont
exist. Arguably, all meanings are invented anyway; and since I have no
one to please but myself, and no one to read this who will care, except
perhaps one, then I may write as I please, and think as I please, and
reread this whenever I can bear it.
They made no effort to follow me inside the library. What good
would it do them? Clever as they were with their inquisitive trunks,
I could imagine them being deft enough to turn pages without tearing them. But what would the markings on the pages mean to them?
Elephants sang their literature to each other in octaves we humans
could not hear. Their science was the science of the temporal gland,
the probing nose. They observed, butor so I thoughtdid not
experiment.
I did learn enough to warn the others before the first of the males
went into musth. When you see one of them acting agitated, when
his temporal glands pour out a steady black streak down his cheeks,
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Irreantum

when the other males are shy of him and give him room, then we must
do the same, staying out of his way, not meeting his gaze. Let him pass.
The city is his, wherever he wants to go. He wont stay here long, in
musth. He must go and find a female then, and they were all outside
in the open fields. He would give his deep rumbling call and pour out
his lusty scent into the air and dribble musky fluid onto the ground
where every other elephant could smell it and know: This way passed
a male bent on making babies. This way passed God, looking for the
Holy Virgin.
So we studied each other, and avoided offending each other, and
grew used to each others ways, the elephants and the fifty remaining
residents of Poznan.
And then one day they began to push.
The males all gathered in the public square. We, too, gossiping to
each other that something important was going to happen, gathered
in our houses and leaned at our windows to watch.
They wandered aimlessly through the square, eleven of themthe
twelve apostles, I thought, sans Iscariotuntil noon made the smallest shadows. Then, as if of one mind, they surrounded the ugly old
Communist building, facing it. When all were in place, they moved
forward, slowly, each bull resting his massive brow against the miserable faade. Then, slowly, each began to tense his muscles, to shift his
weight, to make little adjustments, to plant his feet, and then to push
with greater and greater strength against the wall.
Theyre trying to push it down, I realized. And so did the others,
all of us calling out to each other in our high-pitched human voices.
Theyre critics of architecture!
Theyve come to beautify Poznan!
We began to address the elephants with our calls, as if they were
our football team, as if the plaza were a playing field. We cheered
them, laughed in approval, shouted encouragement, placed meaningless bets about whether they could actually break through the walls.
Then, abruptly, I was no longer part of the playfulness. For without meaning to, I changed perspective suddenly, and saw us as the
elephants must have seen us. This was Africa after all, and we were
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Card: Elephants of Poznan

the primates perched in the trees, hooting and screeching at the giants,
unaware of our own insignificance, or at least unbothered by it.
When I pulled my head back inside my window, I was filled with
grief, though at that moment I could not have told you why. I thought
at first it was because we humans were so diminished, reduced to
chattering from safe perches. But then I realized that the human race
had always been the same, had never risen, really, from our primate
ways. No, what I was grieving for was that ugly old building, that
relic of noble dreams gone sour. I had never lived under Communism,
had only heard the stories of the Russian overlords and the Polish
Communists who claimed to be fulfilling the will of the masses and
perhaps, sometimes, believed their own propagandaso my father
told me, and I had no reason to doubt him. When the Communists
decided what was good and what was bad, they acted as rigidly as any
Puritan. Aesthetic concerns in architecture led to wasteful overspending of the labor of the working class; therefore, the ugliness of all new
buildings was a badge of virtue. We human beings had reinvented
ourselves, Homo sovieticus, Homo coprofabricus, or whatever the scientific name would be. A new species that never guessed how quickly it
would be extinct.
The elephants would keep pushing until the walls came down
I knew that. Intransigence was built into the elephants shoulders
the way screeching and chattering were built into the primate mouth.
And even though the other humans were cheering them, egging them
on, I was sad. No, wistful. If we had really wanted that ugly building
taken down, we knew where the dynamite was kept, we could have
blown it out of existence. Elephants are mighty and strong, as beasts
go, but when it comes to destruction, their foreheads are no match for
the explosives in the locked sheds at the construction sites of buildings that will never be finished.
We dont need you to take it down, you meddlers, I wanted to say.
We built it, we humans. Its ours. What right have you to decide which
artifacts should stand, and which should fall?
The fascination of it was irresistible, though. I couldnt stay away
from the window for long. I had to check, again, again, to see if they
15

Irreantum

were making any progress, to see if some crack had appeared. The
beasts had enormous patience, pushing and pushing until their shadows were swallowed up in the shade of the buildings as the sun headed
out past Germany, past France, out to the Atlantic to be plunged
steaming into the sea of night. That was the clock they lived by, these
elephants; they had put in their days work, and now they wandered
off, heading out of the city as they did most nights, to eat and drink
and sleep in some more hospitable place.
The next morning they were back, earlier this time, and formed
their circle much more quickly, and pushed again. The betting among
us began in earnest, then. Would they succeed? Would they give up?
How long till the first crack? How long till a wall fell? We had nothing of value to bet; or rather, we had everything, we had inherited the
city from the dead, so that we could bet enormous sums of money
and pay in cash or diamonds if we wanted to, but when we wagered
we never bothered to carry such useless objects from one house to
another. Enough to say who won and who lost. The only reason we
had such wealth was because the dead had left it all behind. If they
didnt value it any more than that, what was it worth to us, except as
counters in games of chance?
There was unguessed-at meaning in their pushing after all. For on
the third day of the elephants pushingstill to no visible effect
Arek came home to Poznan. Arek, whom I had named for my father.
Arek, who dashed my last hope. Arek, who killed my wife.
For years after the plague, no children were conceived. From
Berlin, where one of the survivors was a doctor, we learned that when
the plague was new and they were still trying to study it, the medical
researchers determined that the virus rooted in the reproductive systems of men and women, specifically attacking their bodies where the
human seed was made. This was not how the plague did its slaughtering, but it guaranteed that the few survivors would be sterile. The
message left us in despair.
But I was young, and though I had seen more death before I turned
ten than I would ordinarily have seen even if I devoted my whole life
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Card: Elephants of Poznan

to watching American movies, my hope was still undashable. Or rather,

my bodys hope, which in my teens was much stronger than my reason.
As the people from the hinterlands and smaller towns came seeking
human company, Poznan became a gathering place. In those days we
lived on the outskirts of the city, in a place where we could actively
farm, before we realized that farming was redundant with miles and
miles of fields and gardens reseeding themselves faster than we could
harvest them. So I was hoeing the turnipsthe kind of task the adults
gratefully left to my strong and flexible young arms and legswhen
Hilde and her family came to town in a horse-drawn wagon.
It wasnt Hilde herself that I saw at first, it was the miracle of seeing a family. At first, of course, we assumed they were a nonce family,
clinging to each other because no one else in their area survived. But
no, no, they looked like each other, that miracle of resemblance that
told us all that they were genetically connected. And soon we learned
that yes, they were a mother, a father, a daughter, all of whom had
survived the plague. They knew it was wrong of them to grieve for the
two sons and three daughters who died, for they had not lost everyone they loved, as all the rest of us had done. There was something in
them that was stronger than the disease. And Hilde, a plump nordic
blonde, soon became beautiful to all of us, because we knew that if
any woman had a viable ovum left, it would be her.
She and her parents understood that her womb, if it was not barren, could not belong to her alone, and that her only hope of continuing our poor, weak species was to find a mate whose body still could
spew forth living sperm. She had been sexually immature when the
plague came, but now was womanly, ready to bear if bear she could.
One man at a time would husband her, for three months; then a
month of solitude, and then the next mans turn to try. That way there
would be no doubt of fatherhood if she conceived; he would be her
husband, to father more children on her. She agreed to this because
there was no other hope.
I was third to try, at fifteen a frightened child myself, approaching
her like the temple priestess that she was, begging the god to choose
me, to let life come into her from me. She was sweet and patient, and
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told no one how clumsy I was. I liked her, but did not yet love her, for
she was still a stranger to me. I could mate with her, but not speak
to heror at least not be understood, for she came from a Germanspeaking area in the westernmost mountains, and had but little Polishthough more of Polish than I had of German.
The second month she had no period, and the third, and the fourth.
She was kept away from me, from all men, until in the fifth month she
asked for me. You are half of this miracle, she said in halting Polish,
and from then on I was her companion. No more fieldwork for me
what if I was injured? What if I caught cold? Instead I stayed with her,
taught her to speak Polish and learned to read German, more or less.
In the eighth month the doctor finally came from Berlin. He had
never worked in obstetrics, but he was the best hope we had, and since
no one in Berlin was pregnant, they understood what was at stake;
even a half-Polish baby in Poznan was better than no more babies anywhere at all. We made him welcome; he taught us how to make beer.
The ninth month. Nothing happened. He spoke of inducing labor.
We worked to get a room in the hospital powered up, the old equipment working, and he gave Hilde an ultrasound examination. He could
not face us after that. You counted wrong? he offered, as a possibility.
No, we did not count wrong. We knew the last time she had sex
with anyonewith meand it was nine months and two weeks ago.
The baby is not ready yet, he said.Weeks to go. Maybe many weeks.
The limb-length tells me this. The development of the face and hands.
And then the worst news. But the headit is very large. And
strangely shaped. Not a known condition, though. I looked in the
books. Not seen before, not exactly this. If it is still growingand
how can I tell, since it is already as big as an adult human head
this does not look happy for her. She cannot bear this child normally.
Iwill have to cut the baby out.
Cut it out now, her parents said. It has been nine months.
No, the doctor said. If I cut now, I think that it will die. I think it
has the lungs of a fetus of five months. I did not come here to abort a
fetus. I came to deliver a baby.
But our daughter ...
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Card: Elephants of Poznan

Hilde agreed with the doctor. If he has to cut me open anyway,

there is no hurry. Wait until the baby himself thinks that he is ready.
We knew now it would be a boy, and were not glad of it. A daughter
would have been better, everyone knew that. Everyone but meI was
not ready to play Lot with a daughter of mine, and I was the only man
proven to have viable sperm, so I thought it was better that I would
have a son and then could wander with Hilde and the boy, through all
the world if need be, searching for a place where another mating had
happened, where there might be a girl for him. I could imagine that
future happily.
Ten months. Eleven. No woman had carried a child for so long. She
could not sit up in bed now, for still it grew, and the ultrasound looked
stranger and stranger. Wide hips, and eyes far apart on a face appallingly broad. The ultrasound, with its grainy, black-and-white image,
made it look like a monster. This was no baby. It would never live.
Worse, it was draining the life out of Hilde. Most of what she ate
went across the placenta to feed this cancerous growth inside her. She
grew wan of face, weak of muscle even as her belly grew more and
more mountainous. I would sit beside her and when she was tired of
the book I read, I would hold her hand and talk to her of walks along
the streets of the city, of my visit to Krakow when I was six, before the
plague; how my father took me along as he escorted a foreign author
through the city; how we ate at a country restaurant and the foreigner
could not eat the floury bread and the chewy noodles and the thick
lard spread. She laughed. Or, as she grew weaker, smiled. And finally,
near the end, just clung to my hand and let me babble. I wanted nothing more than to have Hilde. Forget the baby. Its already dead to me,
this monster. Just let me have Hilde, the time with her that a man
should have with his wife, the life together in a little house, the coming home at night to her embrace, the going forth in the morning with
her kiss on my lips and her blessing in my ears.
I will take it now, said the doctor. Perhaps the next child will be
normal. But she grows too weak to delay any longer.
Her parents agreed. Hilde, also, gave consent at last. The doctor
had taught me to be his nurse, and trained me by making me watch
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Irreantum

the bloody surgeries he did on hares and once on a sheep, so I would

not faint at the blood when the time came to cut into my wife. For
wife she was, at her insistence, married to me in a little ceremony just
before she went under the anaesthetic. She knew, as did I, that the
marriage was not permanent. Perhaps the community would give me
one more try to make a normal child with her, but if that one, too,
should fail, the rotation would begin again, three months of mating, a
month fallow, until a father with truer seed was found.
What we did not understand was how very weak she had become.
The human body was not designed to give itself so completely to
the care of such a baby as this one. Somehow the baby was sending
hormonal messages to her, the doctor said, telling her body not to
bear, not to present; the cervix not to efface and open. Somehow it
caused her body to drain itself, to make the muscles atrophy, the fat
to disappear.
The doctors incision was not large enough at first. Nor with the
second cut. Finally, with the third, her womb lay open like the belly of
a dissected frog, and at last he lifted the little monster out. He handed
it to me. Almost I tossed it aside. But it opened its eyes. Babies arent
supposed to be able to do that, I know now. But it opened its eyes and
looked at me. And I felt a powerful trembling, a vibration in my chest
and arms. It was alive, whatever it was, and it was not in me, its father,
to kill it. So I set it aside, where a couple of women washed it, and did
the rituals that the doctor had prescribedthe drops into the eyes,
the blood samples. I did not watch. I returned to Hilde.
I thought she was unconscious. But then the baby made a sound,
and even though it was lower than a babys mewling ought to be, she
knew it was his voice, and her eyes fluttered open. Let me see, she
whispered. So I ran and took the baby from the women and brought
it to her.
It was as large as a toddler, and I was loath to lay such a heavy
burden on her chest. But Hilde insisted, reaching with her fingers
because she could not raise her arms. I leaned over her, bearing as
much of the babys weight as I could. He sought her breast and, when
she found the strength to raise a hand and guide a nipple into his
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Card: Elephants of Poznan

mouth, he sucked mightily. It hurt her, but her face spoke of ecstasy as
well as pain. Mama loves the baby, her lips said silently.
She died as the doctor was still stitching her. He left the wound
and tried to revive her, shoving the baby and me out of the way and
pumping at her heart. Later, after the autopsy, he told me that her
heart had been used up like all her other muscles. The child had ruled
the mother, had demanded her life from her, and she had given it.
My Hilde. Till death parted us.
There was some debate on whether to feed the child, and then on
whether to baptize it. In both cases, mercy and hope triumphed over
fear and loathing. I wanted to oppose them, but Hilde had tried to
feed the baby, and even after she was dead I did not wish to contradict
her. They made me choose a name. I gave it my fathers name because
I could not bear to give it mine. Arkadiusz. Arek.
He weighed nearly ten kilograms at birth.
At two months he walked.
At five months his babbling noises became speech. They taught him
to call me papa. And I came to him because he was, after all, my own.
Hildes parents were gone by then. They blamed memy bad
seedfor their daughters death. In vain did the doctor tell them that
what the plague had done to me it no doubt also did to her; they
knew, in their hearts, that Hilde was normal, and I was the one with
the seed of monstrosity. They could not bear to look at me or at Arek,
either, the killers of their last child, their beautiful little girl.
Arek walked early because his wideset legs gave him such a sturdy
platform, while crawling was near impossible for him. His massive
neck was strong enough to hold his wide-faced, deep-skulled head. His
hands were clever, his arms long and probing. He was a font of questions. He made me teach him how to read when he was not yettwo.
The two strange apertures in his head, behind the eyes, before the
ears, seeped with fluid now and then. He stank sometimes, and the
stench came from there. At the time we did not know what to call
these things, or what they meant, for the elephants had not yet come.
The whole community liked Arek, as they must always like children;
they played with him, answered his questions, watched over him. But
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Irreantum

beneath the love there was a constant gnawing pain. He was our hope,
but he was no hope at all. Whatever his strange condition was, it might
have made him quicker than a normal child, but we knew that it could
not be healthy, that like most strange children he would no doubt die
before his time. And definitely, mutant that he was, he must surely be
as sterile as a mule.
And then the elephants came, great shadowy shapes out in the distant fields. We marveled. We wondered. They came nearer, day by day.
And Arek became quite agitated. I hear them, he said.
Hear what? We heard nothing. They were too far off for us to hear.
I hear them, he said again. He touched his forehead. I hear them
here. He touched his chest. And here.
The flow from the apertures in his head increased.
He took to wandering off. We had to watch him closely. In the
middle of a reading lesson, he would stand up and face the distant
elephantsor face the empty horizon where they might beand listen, rapt. I think I understand them, Arek said. Heres a place with
good water.
All of Poland has good water now, I pointed out.
No, he said impatiently. Its what they said. And now they talk
of one who died. They have the scent of him. The one who died. He
listened more; I still heard nothing. And me, he said. They have the
scent of me.
Elephants care nothing for you, I said.
He turned to me, his eyes awash with tears. Take that back, he
said.
Sit and do your lessons, Arek.
What do I care what dead people say? I have no need of what they
said!
Youre five years old, Arek. I know better than you what you need
to know.
Your father had to know all this, he said. But what is it to me?
What good has reading done for you?
I tried to hold him, but at five years old he was too strong. He ran
from the room. He ran out into the field. He ran toward the elephants.
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Card: Elephants of Poznan

I followed him as best I could. Others joined me, calling out Areks
name. He was not swift, and we could have caught him if we were
willing to tackle him like rugby players. But our goal was only to keep
him safe, and so we jogged alongside him, his short and heavy legs
lumbering forward, ever closer to the elephants. A matriarch and her
clan, with several babies of varying sizes. We tried to stop him then, to
hold him back, but by then the matriarch had noticed us, and as she
approached, Arek screamed and tried more violently to get away, to
run to her. She trumpeted at us, and finally, tentatively, in fear of her
we set him down.
She let him embrace her trunk; he clambered upward, over her great
impassive brow, and sprawled his body across the top of her head. Her
trunk reached up to him; I feared that she would sweep him from her
head like lint. Instead she touched the leaking aperture on his right
cheek, then brought the tip of her trunk down to her mouth. To smell
and taste it.
That was when I realized: The matriarch, too, had an aperture between
eye and ear, a leaking stinkhole. When I did my reading, I learned that it
was the temporal gland. The elephants had it, and so did my son.
Neither Hilde nor I was elephantine. Nor was there any logical
way, given the little science that I knew, for me to explain how a gland
that only elephants had should suddenly show up on a human child.
It wasnt just the temporal glands, either. As he sat perched atop the
matriarch, I could see how closely his brow resembled hers. No great
flapping ears, no abnormality of nose, and his eyes were still binocular,
not side-aimed like the elephants. Yet there was no mistaking how his
forehead was a smaller echo of her own.
He has been waiting for them, I murmured.
And then I thought, but did not say: They came in search of him.
He would not go home with me. One by one the others drifted
back to our village, some returning to bring me food and offer food
to Arek. But he was busy riding on the matriarch, and playing with
the babies, always under the watchful gaze of the mothers, so that no
harm would come to him. He made a game of running up the trunks
and turning somersaults onto an elephants back. He swung on tusks.
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Irreantum

He rode them like horses, he climbed them like trees, and he listened
to them like gods.
After two days they moved on. I tried to follow. The matriarch
picked me up and put me back. Three times she did it before I finally
acquiesced. Arek was their child now. They had adopted him, he
had adopted them. Whatever music they were making, he heard it
and loved it. The pied piper had come to lead away our only son, our
strange inhuman child, the only hope we had.
From that day I did not see him, until the twelfth bull elephant
arrived with Arek astride his neck.
Full-grown Arekjust a little taller, I estimated, than his father,
but built like a tractor, with massive legs and arms, and a neck that
made his enormous head look almost natural. Father! he cried.
Father! He had not seen me at the window. I wanted to hide from
him. He must be fifteen now. The age I was when I met Hilde. I had
put him from my mind and heart, as I had already done with my
parents, my baby sister, whom I had left behind unburied when I was
too hungry to wait any longer for them to wake again, for God to raise
them up from their sickbeds. Of all those I had lost, why was he the
one that could return? For a moment I hated him, though I knew that
it was not his fault.
He was their child anyway, not mine. I could see that now. Anyone
could see it. His skin was even filthy grey like theirs.
He didnt see me. He slid down the brow and trunk of the bull
he was riding and watched as his steedhis companion? His master?took its place in the circle that pushed against the walls of the
ugly building. He walked around them, a wide circle, looking up at
the windows on the opposite side of the square. But it was not by
sight that he found me. It was when he was directly under my window,
looking the other way, that he stopped, and turned, and looked up at
me, and smiled. Father, he said. I have seen the world!
I did not want him to call me father. Those were his fathers, those
bull elephants. Not me. I was the bearer of the seed, its depositor, but
the seed itself had been planted in both Hilde and me by the plague.
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Card: Elephants of Poznan

Born in Africa and carried to the world on airplanes, virulent and devastating, the plague was no accident of nature. Paranoid as it sounded
even to myself, I had the evidence of Areks elephantinism to bolster
what I knew but could not prove. Somehow in the kettle of the temporal gland, the elephants created this new version of man, and sent
the seed out into the world, carried by a virus. They had judged us,
these beasts, and found us wanting. Perhaps the decision was born as
grieving elephants gathered around the corpses of their kinfolk, slain
and shorn of their tusks. Perhaps the decision came from the shrinking land and the drying earth. Perhaps it was their plan all along, from
the time they made us until they finally were done with us.
For in the darkness of the library, as I moved along the table, keeping my yellowing books always in the slant of light from the window,
I had conjured up a picture of the world. The elephants, the true gods
of antiquity. They had reached the limit of what they could do with
their prehensile noses. What was needed now was hands, so virus by
virus, seed by seed, they swept away one species and replaced it with
another, building and improving and correcting their mistakes. There
was plenty of the primate left in us, the baboon, the chimpanzee. But
more and more of the elephant as well, the kindness, the utter lack
of warfare, the benevolent society of women, the lonely wandering
harmless helpful men, and the absolute sanctity of the children of the
tribe. Primate and elephant, always at war within us. We could see
the kinship between us and the apes, but failed to see how the highbreasted elephant could possibly also be our kind.
Only now, with Arek, could the convergence at last be seen. They
had made at last an elephant with hands, a clever toolmaker who
could hear the voices of the gods.
I thought of the bulldancers of Crete, and then of Arek running up
the trunks of elephants and somersaulting on their heads. The mastodons and mammoths were all gone, and the elephants were south
of the Mediterranean; but they were not forgotten. In human memory, we were supposed to dance with joy upon the horns and head of
a great loving beast, our father, our maker. Our prophets were the
ones who heard the voice of God, not in the tempest, but in the silent
25

Irreantum

thrumming, the still small voice of infrasound, carried through stone

and earth as easily as through the air. On the mountain they heard the
voice of God, teaching us how to subdue the primate and become the
sons of God, the giants in the earth. For the sons of God did marry
the daughters of men. We remembered that God was above us, but
thought that meant he was above the sky. And so my speculation and
imagining led me to this mad twisting of the scripture of my childhood; and no less of the science and history in the library. What were
the Neanderthals? Why did they disappear? Was there a plague one
day, carried wherever the new-made Cro-Magnon wandered? And
did the Neanderthals understand what their woolly mammoth deities had done to them? Here was their ironic vengeance: It was the
new, godmade men, the chosen people, who hunted the mammoths
and the mastodons to extinction, who bowed the elephants of India
to slavery and turned the elephants of Africa into a vast wandering
ivory orchard. We men of Cro-Magnon descent, we thought we were
the pinnacle. But when God told us to be perfect, as he was perfect,
we failed him, and he had to try again. This time it was no flood that
swept our souls away. And any rainbow we might see would be a lie.
I spoke of this to no oneI needed human company too much
to give them reason to think me mad. Elephants as gods? As God
himself? Sacrilege. Heresy. Madness. Evil. Nor was I sure of it myself;
indeed, most days, most hours of the day, I mocked my own ideas.
But I write them here, because they might be true, and if someday
these words are read, and I was right, then youll hear my warning:
You who read this, you are not the last and best, any more than we
were. There is always another step higher up the ladder, and a helpful
trunk to lift you upward on your way, or dash you to the ground if
you should fail.
Arek called me father, and I was not his father. But he came from
Hildes body; she gave her life to give him breath, and loved him, ugly
and misshapen as he was, as she held him to her empty breasts while
her heart pushed the last few liters of blood through her worn-out
body. Not a drop of pap came from her into his mouth. He had
already sucked her dry. But for that moment she loved him. And for
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Card: Elephants of Poznan

her sakeand for his, at first, I will be honest hereI tried to treat
him well, to teach him and provide for him and protect him as best
I could. But at five years of age they took him and he was raised by
elephants. In what sense now was he my son?
Father, he said to me again. Dont be afraid. Its only me, your boy
Arek.
Im not afraid, I almost said.
But he would know it was a lie. He could smell a lie on me. Silence
was my refuge.
I left my room and went down the stairs to the level of the street.
I came blinking into the sunlight. He held out a hand to me. His
legs were even stockier now; whenever he stood still, he looked as
planted as a pair of old trees. He was taller than I am, and I am tall.
Father, he said. I want them to meet you. I told them all the things
you taught me.
They already know me, I wanted to say. Theyve been following me
for years. They know when and where I eat and sleep and pee. They
know all they want to know of me, and I want nothing at all from
them, so ...
So I followed him anyway, feeling my hand in his, the firm kind
grasp, the springy rolling rhythm of his walk. I knew that he could
keep walking forever on those legs. He led me to the new elephant,
the one he had arrived with. He bade me stand there as the trunk
took samples of my scent for tasting, as one great eye looked down on
me, the all-seeing eye. Not a word did I say. Not a question did I ask.
Until I felt the thrumming, strong now, so powerful that it took my
breath away, it shook my chest so strongly.Did you hear him, Father?
asked my son.
I nodded.
But did you understand?
I shook my head.
He says you understand, said Arek, puzzled. But you say that
you dont.
At last I spoke: I understand nothing.
The elephant thrummed out again.
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Irreantum

You understand but do not know you understand, said Arek.Youre

not a prophet.
The elephant had made me tremble, but it was Areks word that
made me stumble. Not a prophet. And you are, my son?
I am, said Arek, because I hear what he says and can turn it into
language for the rest of you. I thought you could understand him, too,
because he said you could.
The elephant was right. I did understand. My mad guesses were
right, or somewhat right, or at least not utterly wrong. But I said nothing of this to Arek.
But now I see you do understand, said Arek, nodding, content.
His temporal glands were dripping, the fluid falling onto his naked
chest. He wore trousers, though. Old polyester ones, the kind that cannot rot or fade, the kind that will outlast the end of the universe. He
saw me looking, and again supposed that I had understood something.
Youre right, he said. Ive had it before. Only lightly, though. And
it did me no good. He smiled ruefully. Ive seen the world, but none
like me.
Had what before?
The dripping time. The madness.
Musth, I said.
Yes, he answered. He touched the stream of fluid on his cheek, then
streaked it on my cheek. It takes a special woman to bear my child.
What if there isnt one?
There is, he said. Thats why I came here.
Theres no one here like you.
Not yet, he said. And besides, I had this gift to give you.
What gift?
He gestured, as if I should have understood all along. The building
that the elephants were pushing at. You always told me how much
you hated this building. How ugly it was. I wanted to give you something when I came again, but I couldnt think of anything I could do
for you. Except for this.
At his words, the elephants grunted and bellowed, and now it was
clear that all their pushing before had been preliminary to this, as they
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Card: Elephants of Poznan

braced themselves and rammed, all at once, again and again. Now the
building shuddered. Now the faade cracked. Now the walls buckled.
Quickly Arek drew me back, out of danger. The elephants, too,
retreated, as the walls caved in, the roof collapsed. Dust blew out of
the place like smoke, blinding me for a moment, till tears could clear
my vision.
No silence now, no infrasound. The bulls gave voice, a great triumphant fanfare.
And now the families came: the matriarch, the other females, their
babies, their children. Into the square, now unobstructed except for
the rubble pile, they came by the dozens. There must be three clans
here, I thought. Four. Five. Trumpeting. Triumphant.
All this, because they knocked down a building?
No. The fall of the building was the gift to the father. It was the
signal for the real festivities to begin.
I made them bring her here, said Arek. Youre my family, and
these are my friends. He indicated the people leaning out of the windows over the square. Isnt that what weddings are for?
The elephants made way for one last arrival. An Indian elephant
lumbered into the square, trunk upraised, trumpeting. It progressed
in stately fashion to the place where Arek and I were standing. On its
back sat Areks bride-to-be. At first glance she was human, boldly and
charmingly nude. But under the shock of thick, straight hair her head
was, if anything, larger than Areks, and her legs were set so wide that
she seemed to straddle the elephants neck the way a woman of my
species might bestride a horse. Down the forehead and the trunk of
the beast she slid, pausing only to stand playfully upon the tusks, then
jump lightly to the ground. Those legs, those hipsshe clearly had the
strength to carry a baby as large as Arek had been for the entire year. But
wide as her body was, could such a head pass through the birth canal?
Because she was naked, the answer was before my eyes. The entrance
to her birth canal was not between her thighs, but in a pouch of skin
that drooped from the base of her abdomen; the opening was in front
of the pubis. No longer would the pelvic circle limit the size of a babys
head. She would not have to be cut open to give birth.
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Irreantum

Arek held out his hand. She smiled at him. And in that smile, she
became almost human to me. It was the shy smile of the bride, the
smile that Hilde had given me when she was pregnant, before we knew
it was no human child she carried.
Shes in heat, said Arek. And Im ... in musth. You have no idea
how crazy it makes me.
He didnt sound crazy, or act it, either. Instead he had the poise of
a king, the easy confidence of an elephant. At the touch of her hand,
his temporal glands gave forth such a flow that I could hear the fluid
dripping onto the stones of the plaza. But otherwise he betrayed no
eagerness.
I dont know how its done, said Arek. Marriage, I mean. They
said I should marry as humans do. With words.
I remembered the words that had been said for me and Hilde. As
best I could, I said them now. The girl did not understand. Her eyes,
I saw now, had the epicanthic foldhow far had they brought her?
Was she the only one? Were there only these two in all the world? Is
that how close they came to the edge of killing us all, of ending the
whole experiment?
I said the words, and she shaped the answers. But I could tell that
it didnt matter to her, or to him either, that she understood not a
bit of the Polish words she had to say. Below the level of audible
speech, they had another kind of language. For I could see how her
forehead thrummed with a tone too low for my ears to hear. But he
could hear. Not words, I assumed. But communication nonetheless.
The thing with speech, theyd work that out. It would still be useful to
them, when communication needed to be precise. But for matters of
the heart, they had the language of the elephants. The language of the
gods. The adamic tongue. The idiom God had used one time to say,
Multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it. We did the first; we
did the last. Now, perhaps, this new couple in their new garden, would
learn the replenishing part as well. Only a few of us lingering beasts,
of us the dust of the earth, would remain, and not for long. Then the
whole world would be their garden.
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Card: Elephants of Poznan

Today theyre gone. Out of Poznan, the elephants and their new
creatures, the son and daughter of the gods. My Arek and his wife,
whose name he never spoke aloud to us. No doubt he has some deep
and rumbling name for her that I could never hear. They will have
many children. They must watch them carefully. Or perhaps this time
it will be different. No stone crashed against a brothers head this time.
No murder in the world. Only the peace of the elephants.
Theyre gone, and the rejoicing is overfor we did rejoice, because
even though we know, we all know, that Arek and his bride are not of
our kind, they still carry the only portion of our seed that will remain
alive in the earth; better to live on in them than to die utterly, without
casting seed at all.
Theyre gone, and now each day I go out into the square and work
amid the wreckage of the building. Propping up the old faade, leaning it against a makeshift wall. Before I die, Ill have it standing again,
or at least enough of it so that the square looks right. Already I have
much of one wall restored, and sometimes the others come and help
me, when they see Im struggling with a section of wall too heavy or
awkward for a man to raise alone.
It may have been an ugly thing, that Communist monstrosity, but
it was built by humans, in a human place, and they had no right to
knock it down.

31

Overcoming the World

Doug Talley
Late July the wild carrot and teasel of the south pasture flare,
though to say so oversimplifies the pastures abundance and complexity.
Among the many grasses, flowering weeds, and thorned underbrush,
these twowhite and soft lavenderclaim attention.
The wild carrot has blossomed at eye level, and while its flowers
hover in thin clusters among the grasses,
the souls eye makes them small, flat clouds in a green and tawny sky.
Imagination cannot help but wish it so, to dress them in a different garment
and make believecloud blossoms swinging in a grass-green sky
no longer flowers but their better shadows,
the way a shadow cast long and thin on a dirt road by the morning sun
is not ones body, much less ones soul, but cloud and flower nonetheless.
Giacometti shaped the same vision into long, emaciated statues
the artist who sculptured the morning and evening shades of humanity,
molding wild flowers of the flesh into clouds of his own design.
Here, then, is wisdom, as when the Nazarene at the end of his life declared,
Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
The world is ours to make of what we will, cloud or flower,

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Talley: Poems

and whatever influence it exerts one may resist or accept,

as desired, knowing surrender to other than the souls own best
and private and independent compass ranks as utter betrayal,
though to say so oversimplifies the pull of a flower on ones soul.

33

Caelestia
Doug Talley
Walking the civilized world, with the sun a single, flaming crocus adrift
in the blue field, of the most delectable warmth and tenderness,
I thought of Johns gospel in the Vulgate and how the Nazarene
spoke of such things heavenly, caelestia in the Latin,
and I recalled a goose perched out of element on a rooftop,
barely holding its webbed footing to shingle,
a gray and white Canadian, ridiculous in its collared suit,
neck extended like a radio tube, wings spread wide
in the shape of a satellite dish, poised to receive signals
from the ether and announce to all who might listen,
Look, if you cannot believe this earth flapping its wing of peace at you,
what will you ever know of heaven?
Three more rushed by in formation, wings pumping
like pistons in a rifling thrust of air
unheard in the flight of a goldfinch or even an owl, the birds lunging
headlong, perhaps to their own housetops, with others
soon to join until the whole neighborhood, I imagined, might fill
with the prospect of geese gathered like the host of heaven
and shouting from the rooftops in a loud blare of celestial horns
what was only whispered softly in bedchambers,
in a few at least, in tenderest moments of repose
In the highest, glory, nothing but glory, and on earth peace, peace, goodwill...
34

Finding Place
Doug Talley

A fire in the pasture undulates

of blue and white and yellow flower,
a fire like a snake, it would seem, iridescent
by sunlight and undulant in the wind.
Here one will understand the Nazarenes joy,
awash in the lilies of his own field, a spicery
of uncommon radiance in a common hour
rising from the dark, speluncular sod.
Consider, he said. Simply consider. Flowers
catching light like the scales of a serpents skin,
a yellow apple sun delicious to the taste,
and temptations to joy irrepressible!
The kingdom of heaven found on earth
is like a pasture, a strange, little kingdom
full of spicery, the undulant and speluncular,
and all other words by which we frame it.
In this life we find the peaceable kingdom
within, then above, beneath, and all around.
What can a person, driven by grandiosity,
know of the quiet, hidden God found here?

35

Gargoyle, Rooftop, Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, France, approx. ad 11601345

Paradox and Discipleship

Terryl L. Givens

G. K. Chesterton wrote, famously, that the circle is perfect and

infinite in its nature; but it is fixed forever in size; it can never be
larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision
and a contradiction, can extend its four arms forever without altering
its shape. Because it has a paradox in its center, it can grow without
changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens
its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers (50). I am
not as much a mystic as Chesterton. I do not believe, as he wrote in
the same passage, that as long as you have mystery you have health;
when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. Nevertheless, I think
his remarks on Christianity provide a useful starting point for some
reflections about the paradox at the heart of Joseph Smiths thought.
So my intention today is to suggest some new ways we might want to
think about Mormon faith, doctrine, and culture.
The honeybee has an important place in Mormon culture. Part of
Utahs state seal, the beehive has become so identified with Mormonism to be, in Daniel Ludlows words, a communal coat of arms. Ironically, perhaps, the honeybee serves as the most powerful emblem of
the scope and ramifications of the most radical paradigm shift of the
nineteenth century: the Darwinian revolution. The honeybee, Darwin points out in his Origin of Species, has a glaring defect as a creature.
Its poison is effective in killing prey, enabling it to defend itself and its
nest. But as you know, the bees sting comes at the cost of its own life.
Darwin speculates that this is because the bees stinger was originally
a boring and serrated instrument, probably used for extracting food

This essay was delivered as the keynote address at the 2009 AML Annual Meeting.

37

Irreantum

from fibrous sources. It was therefore, in his words, not perfected for
its present purpose of defense. The question, of course, is why not,
by this time? Why did the evolutionary process cease, why did natural selection not accomplish its end, of making the bee as perfect as
possible? Certainly a bee that can kill without sacrificing its life is an
improvement over one that cannot. A simple smoothing of the bees
serrated edge would do the trick quite nicely and efficiently. Why was
the bees progress toward species perfection aborted so precipitously
andin the case of myriad individuals and even hivescalamitously?
This is Darwins explanation: Natural selection tends only to make
each organic being as perfect as, or slightly more perfect than, the other
inhabitants of the same country with which it comes into competition. And we see that this is the standard of perfection attained under
nature. And then he adds this declaration: Natural selection will not
produce absolute perfection. What he means is this: the law of natural
selection, what Spencer will call the principle of survival of the fittest,
ensures that any competition for limited resources will favor those who
are in any way advantaged over their competitors. It will weed out those
who are inferior or even mediocre, and allow to prevail those who have
greater strength, agility, speed, or survival skills. The long-term effect
of this principle is to breed beings that are, in Darwins terms, more
perfect than their peers. But the law of natural selection also has a
striking limitation, and this is what he means, by saying it can never
produce absolute perfection. And this limitation is perfectly illustrated
by the common honeybee. In the struggle for survival, the bees development, even with a flawed stinger, was sufficient to securely establish
its position in the natural world. Once it achieved species equilibrium,
and lacking conflict and opposition to further stimulate, challenge, and
refine its development, its progress was essentially halted.
To some extent, any religious belief that raises its head unabashedly
in a secular society is bound to encounter resistance and hostility. The
conflicts between naturalistic paradigms and supernaturalism, between
the intellectual heritage of Enlightenment and liberal humanism, on
the one hand, and Tertullian reveling in absurdity and improbability
and modern fundamentalist anti-intellectualism on the other; between
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Givens: Paradox and Discipleship

the brute authoritarianism of institutionalized religion, and the heady

freedoms of radical individualismthese and kindred collisions have
driven a reasonable, old-fashioned life of faith underground and many
a Latter-day Saint student and scholar into exile. But there are reasons
to think the conflicts in Mormonism may be particularly acute. First
is the simple anecdotal evidence that graduate programs take a heavy
toll on Mormon intellectuals; delving into Mormon history, professionally or otherwise, takes a further toll. Then there is the problem
of Mormon antipathy to theologizing. Unlike Catholic and Protestant
traditions that have spent centuries systematizing their belief systems,
sorting out wrinkles, resolving contradictions, and moving toward a
harmonious whole, Mormon leaders long considered theology a dirty
word, resisted dogma, and even debated whether publishing Josephs
revelations was a bad precedent. The Pratts made tentative steps in the
direction of a grand synthesis, but Roberts further work was stymied,
and subsequent leaders have not shown particular interest in synthesis
or reconciliation or clarification of historical and theological discontinuities. Finally, I want to argue, many of these cultural and personal
consequences might be construed as a tragedy of misapprehension.
What if we have mistaken tension and discordance for richness and
dynamism, insolubility for complexity, and intractable contradiction
for mere paradox? Because paradox, as I believe, is a contradiction that
is only apparent. Paradox is the sign of a healthy universe, voracious
enough to insist on having its cake and eating it too. Paradox is a sign
of richness and plenitude. It is Adam and Eve, reaching for both godly
aspiration and childlike submission. It is priesthood that is power with
no compulsion. It is an infinitely powerful God who is sovereign of the
universe and as vulnerable to pain as the widow with a wayward son. It
is a triumphant Christ whose victory was in his meekness.
Those not intellectually adventuresome enough to embrace the paradox,
find easy refuge falling to one side or the other of the tightrope. Capitulating to blind faith is no faith. And posturing as the enlightened apostate
who grew out of his innocence is neither enlightened nor innocent. Eliminating alternatives is certainly easier than finding a way, as Joseph urged, to
stretch as high as the utmost Heavens, and search into and contemplate
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the lowest considerations of the darkest abyss. I am reminded of a country church I passed on the road to Boston a few months back. On the
marquee outside the church the pastor had put these words: Soft pews;
No hell. How comforting to body and mind alike!
A recent biographer of the great philosopher Spinoza wrote, He
rejected the orthodoxy of his day not because he believed less, but
because he believed more (Stewart 38). That, in a nutshell, is my challenge to you today. Be as voracious as Mercys father, in the monumental work of Virginia Sorenson, A Little Lower than the Angels.
Incredulous at her fathers capacity for belief, Mercy had asked enviously as a child, But you believe it, Father, you really do? I believe all
I can, Mercy girl, all I can. Everywhere I go Im looking for more good
things to believe. Even if its the be-all and the end-all here, then wed
better keep busy believing good things. Hadnt we? (55).
So let me take the next minutes to celebrate paradox. Then I will
conclude with some remarks about that paradox of most relevance
and urgency to ourselves. Frederick Barnard points to Herders observation that a people may have the most sublime virtues in some
respect and blemishes in others ... and reveal the most astonishing
contradictions and incongruities (1:618). Therefore, Barnard writes, a
cultural whole is not necessarily a way of referring to a state of blissful
harmony; it may just as conceivably refer to a field of tension.
A field of tension seems a particularly apt way to characterize Mormon thought. It may be that all systems of belief rooted in the notion
of a God who dies have, as Chesterton suggests, a collision and a contradiction at their heart. Yet Mormonism, a system in which Joseph
Smith collapsed sacred distance to bring a whole series of opposites
into radical juxtaposition, seems especially rife with paradoxor tensions that only appear to be logical contradictions.

1. Freedom and Authority

In People of Paradox, I review four paradoxes that I believe have
been powerful catalysts to Mormon identity and Mormon cultural
production. The first paradox is the polarity of authoritarianism and
individualism. It is in the context of those two competing values that
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Givens: Paradox and Discipleship

Mormon artists and intellectuals have had to negotiate their place

in our culture. The consequence of these two traditions of emphasis on freedom and on authority is an ever-present tension in Mormon culture between submission to an ecclesiastical authoritarianism
without parallel in modern Christianity and an emphasis on and veneration for the principle of individual moral agency so pronounced
that it leads even careful observers into major misperceptions. (We
are frequently accused of Pelagianism, for example.) Without moral
independence, says the LDS scripture, there is no existence. Why
are you offering sacrifice? asks the angel. I know not, save the Lord
commanded me, answers the righteous Adam. For intellectuals and
artists, the tension is especially stark. Intellectual inquiry and artistic exploration should thrive in a culture like the Mormon one that
opposes as evil any attempt to deprive us of the slightest respect for
free agency (Moyle 46). At the same time, LDS artists and intellectuals find themselves constrained by the Churchs insistence that all
inspiration is not equal, and discover that the same prophetic prerogatives that impeded Cowderys exercise of autonomy may cramp
the style of maverick intellectuals and artists today.
The resulting collision of views and valuations is inevitable. No
consensus is ever likely to emerge in the Mormon community about
the proper reconciliation of authority and independence, faithfulness
and freedom. This cultural divide between so-called Iron Rodders and
Liahona Mormons is not always so neat and precise, but more importantly, the divide Richard Poll has described is one that, at some level,
operates within thoughtful Mormons as much as among them. That is
why both institutional conflict and personal anguish will continue to
characterize artists and intellectuals who struggle to find their comfortable place in a culture where proponents of opposing views each
cite scripture and prophetic precedent for support.

2. Exile and Election

The Mormon emphasis on election is traceable to the first recorded
spiritual experience of the young Joseph Smith. Long before he ever
heard the word Mormon, or had an inkling of what his life or ministry
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would stand for, he learned what he was to be set against. Having knelt
in a wooded grove on his familys farm and inquired of God what
church he should join to find salvation, he found he was not to be a
fellow traveler with any Christian then alive: I was answered that I
must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage
who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his
sight; that those professors were all corrupt ( JSHistory 1:19). Like
many religious revolutionaries, Joseph early saw his relationship to
the world in thoroughly adversarial terms. I was destined to prove a
disturber and an annoyer of his kingdom; else why should the powers
of darkness combine against me? Why the opposition and persecution that arose against me, almost in my infancy? ( JSHistory 1:22).
Less than two years before his death, he would boast that deep water
is what I am wont to swim in. It all has become a second nature to me;
and I feel, like Paul, to glory in tribulation (D&C 127:2). Jonathan
Edwards similarly gloried, I am born to be a man of strife, (Marsden
349) and Luthers self-conception was famously an embattled one.
What was different about Josephs posture was how effectively he
imbued an entire people with this same sense of hostile separation
from the world. Individually and institutionally, Mormons continue
to work through the paradox of an existence that is both Eden and
Exile, that embraces difference even as it yearns for integration. The
cost of chosen status appears recurrently in the Mormon psyche as
both nostalgia and alienation; their art and literature reveal a recurrent unease with such difference. Isolation is often felt as a burden of
exclusion and is frequently transformed into a quest for connections
and universals. Mormons insist on the need for a gospel restoration,
but then feel the sting of being excluded from the fold of Christendom they have just dismissed as irredeemably apostate.
The ancient Israelites, millennia earlier, were faced with a similar
challenge. They too were imbued with a belief that they were an holy
people unto the Lord thy God ... chosen ... to be a special people unto
himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth (Deut.
7:6). Yet exclusivity and self-sufficiency are hard to maintain through
a history of bondage, occupation, and the Realpolitik of international
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Givens: Paradox and Discipleship

affairs. Israel found a powerful solution and potent type for resolving
the tension as they prepared to depart Egypt. At Gods urging, the fleeing Hebrews availed themselves of their captors jewels of silver, and
jewels of gold, and raiment, and thus accrued the heathen materials
that they would mold and fashion into the accoutrements, wealth, and
resources of their civilization-in-exile (Ex. 3:22). Centuries later, artists and intellectuals of Europe would justify their emulation of pagan
models by reference to this archetypal spoiling of the Egyptians.
In the dispensation heralded by Joseph Smith, the Saints were,
like the Hebrews before them, commanded to stand independent
above all other creatures beneath the celestial world (D&C 78:14).
At the same time, as Brigham declared, We believe in all good. If
you can find a truth in heaven, earth or hell, it belongs to our doctrine. We believe it; it is ours; we claim it (Watt 13:335). So like their
exiled predecessors, without the benefits of social stability, abundant
resources, or a prosperous prehistory, Mormons were surrounded by
the cultural riches of a host culture that offered both temptation and
promise. Once again, the challenge would be to exploit the accoutrements of that host culture without suffering contamination or loss
of mission and identity in the process. The difficulty in spoiling the
Egyptians has ever been the same: to turn the plundered riches into
temple adornments rather than golden calves.

3. The Sacred and the Banal

The third paradox refers to one of the most culturallyand
theologicallypotent innovations of the Mormon worldview, and
one that appears more as a collapse of polarities than as a tension
between them: the disintegration of sacred distance. With God an
exalted man, man a God in embryo, the family a prototype for heavenly sociality, and Zion a city with dimensions and blueprints, Joseph
rewrote conventional dualisms as thoroughgoing monism. The resulting paradox is manifest in the recurrent invasion of the banal into the
realm of the holy, and the infusion of the sacred into the realm of
the quotidian. Brigham Young saw this paradox in highly favorable
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terms. When I saw Joseph Smith, he wrote, he took heaven, figuratively speaking, and brought it down to earth; and he took the earth,
brought it up, and opened up, in plainness and simplicity, the things
of God; and that is the beauty of his mission. The New York Heralds James Gordon Bennett expressed the situation a little differently:
[The Mormons] are busy all the time establishing factories to make
saints and crockery ware, also prophets and white paint.
The principal danger here is that the sacred as a category threatens
to disappear altogether (and with it, perhaps, worshipful reverence).
That is because in this metaphysical monism, transcendence is virtually
annihilated as a possibility. As the poet Samuel Coleridge put the case,
The very ground of all Miracle is the heterogeneity of Spirit and Matter (Coleridge 555). But even this ontological distinction is vanquished
by Josephs unrelenting metaphysical monism: There is no such thing
as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure,
and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when
our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter (D&C 131:78).
If God is shorn of ineffability and transcendence or is construed
in human terms, how does one find the reverential awe that moves to
true worshipfulness? If Jesus is our big brother, how can he be our
Lord and God? Reverence before the Almighty demands new ways
of conceiving in such a reconfigured heaven and earth. But the dilemmas for the artist are especially vexing: in a universe devoid of transcendence and sacred distance (at least as conventionally constructed),
how can wonder flourish?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning made this poetic observation:
Earths crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.

Our own experience in cultural Mormonism would seem to attest

that only burning bushes can tolerate such proximity to unmasked
glory without becoming consumed on the one hand or too familiar
on the other.
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Givens: Paradox and Discipleship

4. Certainty and Searching

The prophet Joseph emphasized in his religious thinking the possibility of epistemological certainty even as he elaborated a theology
of audacious scope and a program of eternal learning. Smith made
intellectual pursuit a quest of holiness, founding a School of Prophets,
establishing a fledgling university, and devoting himself to the study
of ancient languages and lore even as he claimed to bypass the learned
systems of men with his powers of seership and translation. So it is that
Mormons today inherit a tradition rooted relatively recently in concrete artifacts like Gold Plates verified by eleven witnesses, in accounts
of resurrected beings laying physical hands on founding prophets, and
in Josephs testimony of the audible words and visible appearing of
Deity itself. And Mormons inhabit a rhetorical world where members
give not assertions of fervent belief, but public testimony that they
have spiritual knowledge of those events as historical realities. At the
same time, such credentials do not attest to personal salvation or blessedness, but only betoken the commencement of an eternal quest for
saving knowledge and the burden of an endlessly sought perfection.
The mix of intellectual certitude and intellectual insatiability Joseph
exuded has left a mixed heritage for aspiring LDS artists and intellectuals to reckon with. While his relentless eclecticism, syncretism, and
system building could provoke and inspire, great works of the mind
and heart have seldom emerged in the context of the spiritual complacency and sense of plenitude that his system building could provoke.
That which Mormons know, they are sure they know, and personally
and institutionally it is beyond compromise or negotiation. But that
which they dont know will occupy them in the schoolrooms of the life
beyond, says Joseph, for a great while after passing through the veil.
One problem is, in a church almost entirely lacking creeds or formal
theology, the two realmsthe settled and the orthodox, or the unfixed
and unfathomedare not clearly demarcated.
This tension is to my mind the most urgent one facing Mormon
religion. Because it is the one with the highest spiritual stakes and
productive of some of the most profound spiritual and emotional and
social and cultural angst. Of all the paradoxes, this is the one I find
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to be most lopsided, most weighted in favor of certainty and least

appreciative of its counterpart: seeking, searching faith. I fear we often
make too little room for those who say in the anguish of their hearts,
not I know, but I believe, help thou mine unbelief. We read that to
some is given by the power of the spirit to know Jesus is the Christ,
and stop reading just before we come to the counterweight, and to
some is given to believe on their words.
Art is born of humiliation, said the poet Auden, and it may be in
that very space between security born of possessing precious certainties,
and abject smallness before the magnitude of an almost unquenchable
ignorance, and groping in the darkness, that Mormonism finds a tension productive of a genuinely religious art and intellectual expression.

5. Originality and Assimilation

But I want to add to these four paradoxes I have surveyed a fifth
that it might be salutary to examine. And this I would refer to as a hallmark of the modus operandi of Joseph Smiththe twin imperatives
of originality and assimilation, or revelation of what is new and syncretism based on what is already present. I see this duality beautifully
enacted in the way Joseph commences his exposition of church belief,
the Articles of Faith. He begins by affirming an entirely conventional
Christian deity: We believe in God the Eternal Father, in his Son,
Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. How reassuring. How consoling.
How bridge building. How utterly orthodox. Nothing original there.
Its transparently familiar doctrine. Then he immediately follows this
up with Article of Faith 2, an utter repudiation of the doctrine of original sin. Unlike virtually every Christian denomination extant at the
time of his writing, Joseph propounds a theory of man as inherently
innocent, at odds with centuries of orthodoxy, and predicated only
upon revelations vouchsafed to him as an ordained prophet, authorized oracle of God. Joseph the syncretist; Joseph the Prophet.
In seeing our very day, the prophet Moroni seemed to fear that we
would be too quick to condemn, or criticize, or ignore, those inspired
words and teachings that come from outside the Ensign or church
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Givens: Paradox and Discipleship

manuals. If Joseph had had that attitude, children would be right now
memorizing the five and one half Articles of Faith in Primary.
Moronis admonishment is an injunction to discretion in what
voices disciples of Christ listen to. But notice that Moroni is as concerned that we refuse the good and beautiful, as that we imbibe the
corrupt. Every thing, [every thing], which inviteth and enticeth to do
good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God, he wrote.
Wherefore, take heed, that ye do not judge that which ... is good and
of God to be of the devil. And then he adds that if ye will lay hold
upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child
of Christ (Moro. 7:1314, 19).
Let me illustrate this point from my own experience. I recently
completed a major study of the idea of preexistence in Western
thought. You are familiar with this idea as one of the doctrines of the
Restoration. In May 1833, Joseph Smith pronounced a revelation that
covered a smattering of subjects: the promise of the Second Comforter, the testimony of John, the definition of truth, Christs presence
from the beginning with the Father. And then, with no warning or
elaboration, this bombshell: Ye were also in the beginning with the
Father (D&C 93:23). Only a few additional words of clarification:
Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither
indeed can be (D&C 93:29). Then, before Joseph or the reader of the
revelation can digest the impact of one of Josephs most momentous
revealed truths, on to a reprimand of Sidney Rigdon and FrederickG.
Williams, directions about translating the Bible, and so forth. No
elaboration of the doctrine of preexistence, no exploration or discussion of its relevance to a host of perplexing theological dilemmas. Just
a casual observation, left to float in intellectual isolation.
The LDS faith may be the only Christian denomination teaching
this doctrine today. But it turns out that literally dozens, perhaps
hundreds, of poets, mystics, philosophers, theologians, and pastors
have taught this same principle across the centuries. And together,
this symphony of inspired men and women have provided a diverse
and profoundly inspiredseries of insights and lessons that can
enrich and expand our understanding of and appreciation for this
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sublime teaching. The business of the Elders of this Church, said

Brigham Young, is to gather up all the truths in the world pertaining
to life and salvation ... wherever [they] may be found in every nation,
kindred, tongue, and people, and bring it to Zion (Nibley 316317).
We want to think that Joseph started with a clean slate, repudiating the entire Christian past and starting out afresh, only teaching
that which came to him direct from the heavens. But he emphatically
resisted any such conception. His was a generous mind, unafraid to
embrace truth wherever he found it, and bring it home to Zion. It
takes real humility of spirit to be taught. But notice the example of
Joseph in this regard. He showed the world he could translate gold
plates written in Reformed Egyptian, then hired a Jewish schoolmaster to teach him Hebrew. He took practices of the Masons and openly
adapted them to the temple ceremony, putting them back into what
he considered their proper and inspired context. He planned a library
and museum for Nauvoo that he wanted to fill with all the choicest
fruits of Western culture. A Nauvoo newspaper described his plans:
The Seventies Library ... has been commenced on a footing and scale,
broad enough to embrace the arts and sciences, every where: so that
the Seventies while traveling over the face of the globe, as the Lords
Regular Soldiers, can gather all the curious things, both natural and
artificial, with all the knowledge, inventions, and wonderful specimens
of genius that have been gracing the world for almost six thousand
years. (Seventies Library 763)

I have encountered several specimens of genius in my studies,

inspired fragments from a church in the wilderness. Generations of
theologians, philosophers, mystics, and inspired seekers have found in
preexistence the key to explain the better angels of our nature, including the human yearning for transcendence and the sublime. Preexistence has made sense of why we know what we should not know,
whether in the form of a Greek slaves grasp of mathematics, the moral
sense common to humanity, or the human ability to recognize universals. Well beyond the borders of the Restored Church, preexistence
has been invoked to explain human bonds that seem to have their own
mysterious prehistory, has salved the wounded sensibility of a host of
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Givens: Paradox and Discipleship

thinkers who could not otherwise account for the unevenly distributed
pain and suffering that are humanitys common lot, and has been posited by philosophers and theologians alike to salvage the principle of
human freedom and accountability.
It seems to me that Mormons are under an injunction to appreciate
what is powerful and authoritative and unique about Joseph Smiths
revelations and at the same time to work to have capacious minds and
generous hearts, following in the admonition of Moroni, to love and
celebrate truth and goodness and beauty wherever it is to be found.
And bring them home to Zion.
So we add one more tension to the mix. The tension and disequilibrium between exceptionalism and generous universalism, the
paradox that Joseph was called upon to bring lost ordinances and
authority back to earth from heaven, even as he was inspired to find
and assemble scattered gems of truth from a thousand earthly gardens. This sometimes confusing burden that Saints feel called upon
to bear, to teach with conviction, even as they are enjoined to learn
with humility, like the tensions between searching and certainty, or
independence and discipleship, is to be celebrated, not lamented. It is
a sign that we are, as we should be, unwilling to relinquish either worthy ideal. The agonizing struggle to pursue both bears testimony to
our love of both. Gods heart is infinitely capacious. Our minds must
stretch accordingly. That will, of necessity, be a little painful.

Works Cited
Barnard, Frederick. Culture and Civilization in Modern Times. Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Ed. Philip P. Wiener. New York:
Scribners, 1973. Print.
Chesterton, Gilbert K. Orthodoxy. New York: John Lane, 1908. Print.
Coleridge, Samuel T. Notebooks, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Liverpool:
F.D. and S.W. Richards, et al., 18511886. Print.
Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2003. Print.
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Moyle, Henry D. Conference Report of the Church of Jesus Christ

of Latter-day Saints.
Nibley, Hugh. Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints. Salt Lake City and
Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and
Mormon Studies, 1994. Print.
Seventies Library. Times and Seasons. 5.24 (1 January 1844). Print.
Sorensen, Virginia. A Little Lower Than the Angels. 1942. Salt Lake
City: Signature, 1997. Print.
Stewart, Matthew. The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and
the Fate of God in the Modern World. New York: Norton, 2006. Print.
Watt, J. D. et al., reported by. Journal of Discourses 26 (18511886). Print.

Menantol, Cornwall, England, approx. 3500 bc

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The Treading of Lesser Cattle

Darin Cozzens

In Vidas dream, magpies still pecked mushy tomatoes and squash,

deaf to the barking and restless bawling. Plenty of acreage beyond
nose range of barn and corrals, and Rowe had to have the garden plot
right there. But its upwind, Vida. And you got to admit it puts the
fertilizer close. In the deep darkness settling over the cutting pens
and loading chute, over hay bunks filled one last time, she found the
children in a cluster between the two snubbing posts. They were waiting for the trucks.
No, children, its late April, and your dad says its time to brand. All
night, on opposite sides of a divider fence, cows and calves wore trails,
kept thrusting snouts between planks to sniff out the one familiar
scent among five dozen others. Your mother married a farmer, and
thats how we raised the six of you. Yes, branding hurts a little now,
but theyll find their mothers afterward, and by the time they make
their way down to riverbottom grass, the pain will be nothing more
than a memory.
So where were the boys now? How on earth would Rowe bring
the herd off summer pasture this last time without them? The question was a box she couldnt close, and time seemed to fold in on itself.
Yet the cattle were already gathered in their pens south of the house,
their lowing carried by the wind. The many acres of swamp grass
stretching down and away to the river were left to deer and pheasants, and the boys were grown and gone. In their absence, there was
a neighbor, a rodeo cowboy with a horse and dogs. And the home
teachersa mortician and an accountantneither of whom had ever

First place co-winner, 2008 Irreantum Fiction Contest

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stepped foot in a corral. I dont know how you got along all these
years without horses, Brother Rowe. Will you need us to help you
load tomorrow? No thanks. Everythings cut and penned; its just a
matter of running them up the chute. Hows it going to feel, Sister
Sloan, when those trucks drive off?
Then the children waiting between the friction-shined snubbing
posts were raised and not raised, at the same time, and the confusion
was profound. Work hard, cowboys, and maybe your mom will bring
us a Fudgesicle before lunch. Daddy! Three of us, counting Mom,
are not boys. So youre not, Norene. I stand corrected. It was good
to teach children to work, but did he have to expect so much? For
branding, it works out just right, Vidaeverybody has a chore. Even
Gabe and Marta can be a big help. Even Bern. Despite efforts to imitate his fathers deftness, Mitchell strained at the handles of the ear
punch. Down lower, son. Lower! The thin part! Then their oldest
floated into her mind, knelt with the whetted knife, patted the flank
of the trussed bull calf with great sympathy. Ea-sy, Lucas! Youre not
gutting him.
In the fall we sell all the boy calves and keep back some of the girl
calves, and, with the crops, thats how we make our living.
For forty-nine yearsever since she married Rowe in the Salt
Lake temple. You got to admit, that pasture is perfect for a cow-calf
operationgrass brisket-deep everywhere you look. I already have
my brand registered. In five years, well have the place paid off, and
then well build you a new house.
You see, children, your mother dated a musician, but she married
a farmer and ex-Marine. There was such relief on his face when she
said yes to his proposal. You being from the city, I wasnt sure how
youd feel about tying up with me. My name is Brother Giggons,
and I have the privilege of performing your marriage sealing today.
Thanks to a divine plan, husbands and wives sealed at this altar can
be together forever. Can anyone in this room tell me how long that is?
In the night-hours before the coming of the trucks, Vida considered opening her eyes. But it seemed vital to first decide whether
a consideration of that kind could be made in sleep. If they were
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Cozzens: Treading of Lesser Cattle

branding tomorrow, it couldnt be October. All the children would still

be young and responsible for a branding chore, and there would be no
trucks. At noon they would roast hot dogs and eat chips and pork and
beans from the tailgate of the pickup. With the branding fire down
to coals for a little while, they could even toast marshmallows. Gabe
loved toasted marshmallows. She needed to get up and bake cookies and find a jar of relish in the cellar and make potato salad. They
would be hungry.
It couldnt be that late. At age eighteen, your mother met Payton
Glassworth and fell in love with a musician. Or she met a musician
and fell in love with Payton. Her mind went round and round, and
she listened hard for the lowing and treading of cattle. It was so quiet
after the herd went down on pasture. And for five months, the corral floor was unbroken by cloven hooves. Crusted under the summer
sun, it hardly smelled at all. Its funny what makes you happy, Vida.
Before the corrals emptied completely, Gabe raised his arms high,
waving a stick in one hand. Whoa! Whoa! That a boy, Gabe. Dont
let em past you!
Everybody has a chore. To stoke the fire, Gabe kept crouching
down a nine-year-old with a full head of hair, kept standing up all but
bald. Wrapping the shafts in wet gunny sack, he fetched the glowing
irons one at a timethe R, the S, the crown for the latter. Ive already
registered my brand. With one foot planted on the ribcage for stability, Rowe bore down, high on the left hip. Then Lucas took his turn.
Then Mitchell. Again and again, through layers of seasons, Vida saw
the flame, heard the searing hiss and mournful bawling. Calf after
calf, layer after layer, the cherry-red iron burned down through hair
and hide. Put some muscle into it, Bern. Bern winced, held his nose
every which way to dodge the smoke and smell. Its called branding
for a reason.
To comfort or excuse only called attention to inabilities that didnt
matter anywhere except a corral. So Vida let herself be distracted by
Gabe, by the finger tracing the crisp, heat-glazed R, by his nine-yearolds voice. Feels sort of like burnt toast. Yuck. Gabe, dont tease
your sister.Or maybe the crunchy skin on a turkey drumstick.Gabe!
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There were so many things to consider before the trucks came.

Wasnt R-Crown-S just a bit aggrandizing? A bit much? I know what
the word means, Vida. Momma, why is it bleeding? Can you dream
with your eyes open, Momma? Can you cry in your sleep? Vida tried
to address all the hard questions, but the chore was tedious and
fatiguing. Do I have the names right? Rowe Sloan and Vida Deanne
Hobart? No middle name for the groom? Not even an initial? No,
sir, thats all there is to me. As opposed to Payton Rutherford Glassworth, III. It doesnt mean a real crown, Vida. Thats just what they
call it in the branding register. Even if it did, Im always good and
sure exactly where I stand with you. My name is Brother Giggons.
If from this moment at this altar you will live faithfully and endure
lifes trials with patience, the Lord has promised both of you a crown
of eternal glory. Can anyone in this room imagine anything sweeter?
Even before Paytons proposal on a muggy night in August, a year
to the day after they met, just before he left for Germany, she had
begun practicing the signature.
Vida Deanne Hobart Glassworth. Vida D. Glassworth. Vida H. Glassworth.
Ill never have another opportunity like this to study abroad, Vida.
And in the northern part of the countryexactly the same place I
served my mission. And the year will fly by. Before you know it, well
be man and wife.
Its April, children. How did Marta, her youngest, come to be sitting on a bag of barley seed in the back of the pickup? No matter.
Everybody has a chore. With her back to the cab, first-grader Marta
held a stub pencil and kept count in the stained ledger. Nine, ten,
eleven black-white faces and Herefords and Charolais crosses. When
Bern tried to help Lucas drag a brindled heifer from the corral at the
end of a lariat, at least this one, the last of Vidas six children, was safe
from the hooves plowing tracks in the dirt and from other risks in
the world. The relief was exquisite. Watch itthose hind legs pack a
wallop. For five weeks Rowe kept a lemon-lime bruise just to the left
of his groin from this very thing. Boys, you cant leave one like that
any slack at all. She about had me singing soprano the rest of my days.
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Cozzens: Treading of Lesser Cattle

Just stay there, Marta, and keep count, and youll be okay; just stay
where you are, and youll all be safe.
But despite her cautions and pleadings, they had scattered to the
four cornersDenver, Atlanta, Spokane, Boise. Except Bern. You
are destined for great things, son. Over and over, his piano teacher,
Sister Enid Cottrell, mentioned his gifted hands. Youll go far. He
went as far as Cody, was assistant manager in a grocery store. Which
was all right. Which was fine. And now he used his gifted hands to
make change and stack fruits and vegetablesand to play the piano
in priesthood meetings.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
At least back then, during branding, Marta stayed put, did exactly
as Rowe directed. Heifers in one column, steers in anothermatch
their ear tags with their mothers so we know old brood cows from
young. He was good at giving directions. When the trucks come,
they want everything cut and countedby sex, age, weight.
But then her youngest grew up, had two, three, four babies of her
own, in just six years. Im not telling you what to do, Martathat sort
of thing is between you and your husband and the Lord. But if I had it
to do over again, if I did, if it were me, if life could be lived that way...
She should have gone back to the Y for winter quarter. Honey,
the wedding isnt until June, and youre so close to finishing. Straight
through, summers and all, since she started at seventeen. Surely
Payton understands that. Ill work while youre in Germany, save
money for us to start on. In the mornings she tended the counter
at A.C. Drug; in the evenings she gave piano lessons. And there was
so much to do to get ready. On Sundays she led the singing in sacrament meeting and repeated her news week after week. A musician?
Really? With him playing and you leading, theres no reason you two
shouldnt get along perfectly. Had she gone back to school, she could
have finished the degree and taught at Starview High School in Murray. She could have traveled somewhere far away or served a mission
herself. She could have done so many things. And certainly she would
have met others. There were so many nice boys at the Y, boys from
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Irreantum

neighborhoods right there in Salt Lake, returned missionaries studying to be businessmen and professors and lawyers.
But. Her thoughts kept looping back on themselves. But. How
could she have known? She and Payton would have lived in a brick
house on a wide city street with croquet wickets stuck in thick lawn
grass. Her kitchen floor would have gleamed perpetually. But. She
never would have met Roweon the last day of February, only a
week after Paytons letter. I know weve only just met and Im asking
you to take an awful chance on me. But half my platoon didnt come
home from Chosin Reservoir, and I feel like maybe I was spared so I
could meet somebody like you.
May? Honey, its already mid-March. Arent you rushing things a
little bit? Do you know this guys family at all or what he plans to do
for a living? My names Rowe Sloan, from Ralston, Wyoming. Been
a member all my life, but, believe it or not, this is my first time to
Temple Square. Are you a tour guide? No. In her coat pocket she
clutched the letter with the postmark from Germany. Well always
share a love of music and for that reason, I hope, can remain good friends.
No. We had something very precious. No.
If you dont mind, Id like to call you while Im in town.
Yes.
Im not telling you what to do, Honey, but marriage is a big step. At
least you knew Payton a while. And look where it got me. How can
you be sure this guys the right one? I thought I was sure, last August.
But does this guy give you butterflies? This guy has a name, Mother.
And youve told me a thousand times: love is a choice. But does he
make you tingle?
At every turn, there were hard questions. Had she really been so
enamored and silly? So, Mr. Musician, how many kids do you want?
Glassworth offspring are referred to as children. My name is Brother
Giggons. The key in most areas of marriage is to distinguish between
wants and needs. She wanted six? She needed six? To show the world
that Rowe was the right one after all? To show herself? Either way,
they were sealed forever. Can anyone here tell me how long that is?
Its a long, long time. Youre smiling; you must be the brides mother.
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Cozzens: Treading of Lesser Cattle

In Vidas dream, time was strange. Marta suddenly went from ledger keeper at branding to young bride herself. Then her four babies
kept getting mixed up with Vidas six, all of them nursing and teething and learning to walk at the same time. And Marta the wife and
mother with her own desires. Hes a good provider, Momma, but I
just wish he could be home more. Her own problems. Its so hard
to raise them these daysall the back-and-forth to keep them busy
with practices and lessons.
That was one blessing of the farm: always plenty for kids to do right
out your back door. One compensation for a muddy lane and hardpan front yard and an old Plymouth with a bird-spattered hood and
windshield. Yes, Brother Giggons, marriage requires compromise and
sacrifice. Oh, Rowe, you say that every fall. Weve got the boys stacked
three high in homemade bunks and Norene on a camp cot in the living
room. Where are we going to put this baby when it comes? Another
bedroom is hardly an extravagance. Ill use my egg and milk money.
Midway through the fiftieth year of Vida Sloans marriage, morning was a long time coming. The longer, the better. If it didnt come,
neither would the trucks. Forty-nine years to be hauled away in rigs
coming off a night run from Great Falls to Billings. Did you know,
Vida, that theyve had snow up there already? Mushy tomatoes and
squash, maybe, but not snow. Not yet. It was too early. To tell you
the truth, Vida, Ill be glad to see them gone. You got to admit these
are the worst fence jumpers and hardest calvers weve ever hadmore
slinks in this bunch than in the last twenty years put together. Eight
of them? Wasnt it eight?
How does a person put a number to longing? Our children are
going to know something besides field work and cows. Bern has a real
talent, Rowe. Even so, Ill not coddle him. But he could do so much
with it. Go ahead and say it, Vidaso much better.
He wasnt the only child who didnt like branding. From the trucks
tailgate to the calves trussed between snubbing posts, Norene supplied ear-tags, a shaker of flea powder, boluses, vials of vaccine, the
big syringe. Back and forth she carried a watering can full of milky
disinfectant and the tin of blood-stop thick as tar. What did you do
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with my dauber, Sweetie? I cant find it. Vida, we need something

here; Lucas got a little wild with the horn saw.
How, in that moment of panic, was she supposed to come up with
anything to match the milled precision of a stir-stick? There was no
time to do it properly, to take a flashlight into the windowless end of
the tool shed and search a long shelf of rusted, mostly empty paint
cans and old brushes with stiff bristles. She was left with no time.
I need something, or this calf s going to have to have a transfusion.
Norene, hand me that Fudgesicle stick. Look where Im pointing.
Yuck. Just clean it off.
Rowe didnt want to wait until fall. He would have married her
after a week. Too bad you couldnt use those other announcements
just change the grooms name. Thats not very funny, Dad. Then she
was squatting by the fireplace in her parents home, crying, feeding
announcements into the bleary flames, one by one, until all three hundred were consumed. When they landed just right, they looked like
little temples burning up.
Vida!
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, whos the bitterest of them all? Or vainest? Three hundred guests at a wedding reception? Wasnt that just a
bit aggrandizing? I know what the word means.
So whats his hurry? No, Dad, theres no hidden, sinful reason.
Hes got his rough edges, but not that. Even Payton was more of a
hand-holder and kisser. Has he even courted you?
Dear Vida, Im not much good with lettersor lots of other niceties, as
youll see shortly.
What a jobto throw a big winter-born bull calf, to get a loop and
half-hitch around the hind legs, to bind and snub both ends before the
surprise wore off and those hind hooves became bludgeons and maces.
When the boys couldnt stretch another half-inch out of the toughest
kickers, Rowe stepped in. In one smooth motion, he straddled and
grasped the head rope, then leaned hard toward the snubbing post. He
pulled until lariat coils squeaked against wood fibers, until the calf s
eyes bulged and the stippled tongue hung out of the mouth, until
the bowel squirted brown-green at whoever was working that end.
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Bulls-eye! Everything in branding stinks. Wont a hot bath feel good

tonight? The big square hand patted snout and forehead victoriously.
How do you like them apples, fella? Try kicking loose now. Once in a
while you run into one just doesnt want to change his status very bad.
Corral or concert hall. How is that decided? Hello, there. My name
is Payton R. Glassworth, III, and piano is my life. He used a special
lotion for his fingers, since early adolescence had had only three splinterseven counting things like burs and thistle stickers. He had kept
track. My hands are as vital to me as a surgeons are to him.
Dad, look! Hes not breathing. Slack off, Mitchell! Slack off!
With one quick, hard tug, he loosened the neck loop, slapped the
chops, massaged the windpipe, frantic to revive the calf he had just
subdued. It was awful to lose one, especially in front of the children.
Such relief showed in his face when the eyes rolled back down and
began blinking, when the lungs resumed their work.
Ive seen them die, Bern. You got to get the other leg in the loop
to keep the big ones from choking. Dont blame him. If you wouldnt
stretch them so tight. Whos blaming anybody for anything? I cant
have them thrashing around, and theres no risk with that second leg
in the loop.
No risk? Every choice in life was a risk and a trade-off and a lot
of heavy work. But at age twenty she was amenable to so much she
couldnt foresee. And forty-nine years later, all of it was to be hauled
away in trucks.
Thats all you know about this guyhes twenty-seven years old
and farms somewhere in Wyoming? Has he got any education?Your
mothers right, Vida. Its awfully soon after Payton to be committing
to this. Are you sure youre prepared for that lifestyle?
Coarse fingernails and toil everlasting.
What I know is this: hes a good man, and he wants kids, and hell
take me to the temple.
Its noon, cowhands. What do you say we eat? Were going to
need some willow sticks. No, dont use that knife. Be sure and wash
your hands, everybody. I put a bar of soap on that straw bale by the
hose. That waters too cold. Even so, it will all come off with some
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scrubbing. Your Bern is a natural. In thirty years of giving lessons,

Sister Enid Cottrell had never seen fingers better suited to the piano.
You might make hymn plunkers out of those other boys, but that
ones got real talent; hell go far.
For a shimmering moment, one hope sustained another: the children were still children, Bern and Gabe hurrying back from the willow
tree clutching the roasting sticks while the others cleared the tailgate.
Happily, she spread a big towel, laid out the hotdogs and buns, mustard and ketchup, the cooler of lemonade. Hey. I didnt know you had
a bag of potato chips. She hides all the good stuff. And cookies. You
can make a picnic out of anything, Vida.
The potato salad could have used more paprika, and she wished
again for chives. Norene liked the smell. Of all the odors of branding,
the burn salve stunk the worst. Mingled camphor and garlic and sulfur.
When to use salve and when to use blood-stop. Vida had forgotten.
There was no bleeding when the red-hot edge went through hair and
hide both and exposed the quivering white muscle sheath. Look
wedding satin. Gabe! Such imagination amid a litter of nub horns,
scrotum caps, dung, snot, blood. Rowes hand was red to thewrist.
Such talk while, fifty feet away, the two bulls in their heavy pen
went berserk at the scent of the surgery, snorting, groaning, bucking
high, dewclaws and fetlocks flashing above the top plank. When the
bigger bull dropped to his knees, the ground-shudder ran all the way
to the loading chute. Momma, whats a steer? Why dont you just
keep count, Marta; youll have to ask your father about that later.
Whats so funny, Gabe? Where the manure thinned in the far corners of their pen, the bulls rooted and pawed, moaned and gasped.
Again and again, they butted the earth with bosses thick as armor and
gouged long furrows with down-curved horns. Dont worry, children.
No, sir, thats bridge plank; it could hold an elephant.
Yes, stay where you are. Nothing can get you.
Yet now she couldnt be sure. They had babies of their own and
were scattered to the four corners. What was there to hold to?
By December, when she turned twenty, she had saved a thick
packet of his letters. They had come so regularly until then.
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Cozzens: Treading of Lesser Cattle

Hallo, hallo, Dear Vida, from HamburgIt would be wonderful to

see my beautiful Freundin over the holidays, but, alas, a very spartan
student budget will keep me here all aloneexcept for a few other equally
pitiful classmates.
My Dearest PaytonWith all my love forever.
He called on Christmas Eve. It means girlfriend.
She was still his fiance, wasnt she?
With the world resting on his answer, she bought ten yards of dress
fabric and ordered three hundred announcements. Isnt it just a little
early for that, Honey?
They dont look like oysters to me. For heavens sake, Gabe! Well,
she asked. Daddy, what are they called?
And tomorrow the corrals would be empty. Everything goes. Yes.
Beginning tomorrow, what a sweet eternal relief from the smell and the
filthy boots. That will be crown enough. Tromp across my clean kitchen
floor, trailing gobs and bits the whole way. I just mopped, Rowe! He
lifted one foot, checked the sole, did the same with the other. Then the
sheepish scowl and the penitent undoing of laces, right then and there,
and the tip-toeing back toward the door. A little late for that, isnt it? For
a full five minutes he made a show of searching for a rag. What do you
use for cleanser, Vida? Oh for crying out loud! Its easier to do it myself.
But some things you cant do by yourself.
Is May too soon for you? No, no. She was amenable. Of her own
free will, she agreed. In one short ceremony, she agreed to all of it.
They did not have the place paid off in five years. And the closest she
came to a new house was a small bedroom built over a basement he
poured one mixer batch of concrete at a time. Im sorry about your
floor, Vida. Im a long way from perfect. I dont know what else you
want me to say.
Unbidden, Payton Glassworth came up the basement stairs in black
concert shoes, buffed to a brilliant luster, and stood above the barn
muck. Mein Freundin forever. When she and I got over here last fall,
Iassure you we were just friends. But, as we studied together and really got
to know each other over the Christmas holiday ... Im truly sorry, Vida.
Ionly wish to make this as painless as possible.
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Then he waved good-bye, good-bye, and it was all a long time ago,
and everything about him, every possibility associated with him, was
hazy and vaporous, untouchable and forever unknowable.
Rowe was so sure the quiet tomorrow wouldnt be any different
than it was in April. From now on, if we want a steak, well get it
plastic-wrapped at the store like everybody else in the modern world.
No more headaches trying to keep the water trough full against so
much thirst. No constant depletion of the well. For the first time
in our married life, we wont be handcuffed to a bunch of cows. No
more wondering if the washing machine was ever going to fill. No grit
in the bathtub. Youve been after me to do this for ten yearsmaybe
more. Its funny what makes you sad.
Riverbottom grass left now to deer and pheasants. In a cloudy topography, a strange image emerged: Rowes face and mouth and body but
Brother Giggonss voice: Multiply and replenish the earth. Kids or children? Shoot, seems like all the same process to me. How many do you
want? A truckful. Oh, she had no idea what she was asking. Down a
long hallway in her mind, deep in a back chamber, there was no separating lovemaking in the early years of marriage from morning sickness
and labor pains and a kettle of water heating on the coal stove and diapers hung out in an endless winter, the cotton freezing so fast it crackled
between the jaws of clothespins.
In her parents bedroom, just two hours before the ceremony, her
mother had tried to tell her something. Honey, tonight youll be man
and wife, and youve both saved yourself for something that, the first
time... What is it, Mother? The truly consuming worries were dress
and pictures and cake and gifts.
Spare me your pity, Mr. Glassworth. It so happens that Ive found
someone else, too. In a hotel not ten blocks from the Sugarhouse
Fifth Ward church building where the reception was held, not twenty
blocks from the home she grew up in, in a room well beyond the budget she was to live with for the next forty-nine years ... What is it?
Honey, men and women feel differently about certain ... things.
He was so eager. So eager and clumsy. But, Honey Just tell
me, Mother. Youve got to admit: its really quite lovely and flattering
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that hes so eager for you. And, despite hands foreordained to daily
contact with raw textures, to the many fluids of cattle husbandry, he
was always clean and tenderand teachable. And yes, yes, you must
admit, after all, the desire was mutual. It was that. Just tell me. You
dont get six kids from cold hormones. Just tell me. Men are so very
eagerand stay that way for a long, long time.
Can anyone in this room tell me how long forever is? Ten years
for a start on a basement and bedroom, three more to see the job
finished. Thirteen years of childbearing, more than twice that many
of childrearing. Forty years of mortgage. Forty-nine of manure. Whos
blaming anybody for anything?
On freezing nights, when their mothers were too weak or negligent
to suckle them, Rowe brought newborns in by the stove, cared for
them with sweet devotion. Using rags that she proffered, he rubbed
off the slime of afterbirth and coaxed them to take a nippled pop bottle full of foamy warm milk. Im sorry about your floor, Vida. Yet she
never minded so much. Amid the bright chandelier light and the pure
white of the wedding dress and veil, she looked across the altar and
saw decency and commitment. I need to know how you feel about me,
Vida. Never mind the aversion, during a certain period of pregnancy,
to his touch and smell and even his voice. By the time she was carrying
Mitchell, he understood and dutifully kept his distanceuntil one
afternoon, with Lucas down for a nap, she approached and, facing
him where he stood by the kitchen sink, took the water glass from
him and set it on the counter. Then she undid the two cuff buttons,
slid her hands deep, deep inside his shirt sleeves, and, without a word,
persuaded him that his next chore of farming could wait.
Is that it, Mother?
Every fianc is a gamble. The closest he came to musical ability was
bellowing hymns while milking or feeding. Come to Zion, come to Zion!
Zions walls shall ring with praise. But everything he did, he did with vigor.
I dont smell so sweet, Vida. So wouldnt a hot bath feel good about
now? He was forever braiding, whittling, fashioning. Jump ropes. Dollhouses. Sailboats. Toy swords and rifles. Hugging, tousling, dandling,
wrestling, patting cheeks, kissing foreheads. It wasnt all work and want.
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Beside the row of barn boots in the washer room was a fruit crate
full of balls of all kinds, a bat, several mitts. In the middle of one of
forty-nine harvests, he took a full morning to mount a basketball rim
and plywood backboard on a length of salvaged telephone pole. He
spent several hours digging a posthole. Why so deep, Dad? I want
it to last a lifetime. On an afternoon bright as butter and honey, with
no trucks coming, the children suddenly swarmed him and clung to
his legs and arms as he lurched toward the rim, trying to bounce the
scarred basketball. Across many autumns their laughter rang.
Up and at em, cowboys. Its branding day. Lucas, you and Bern take
the truck to the woodpile and fill it up. Mitchell can get the branding
irons; theyre hanging in the tool shed. I hate branding, Daddy. But
I need you, Sweetie, just the same.
I need you, Rowe; its time. The contractions are coming close together
now. No, they didnt have so many just for the help or because they didnt
know how not to have them. It wasnt that. It wasnt. After a miscarriage
between Norene and Gabe, he mourned for a month. Iknow Im not
the Prince Charming you had in mind, Vida; Payton would have given
you a very different life.
A little late for that, isnt it?
It was Rowe she knelt across from in the Salt Lake Temple, Rowe
she shared a bed with, Rowe she cleaved to innumerable times in passion and refreshment and hope and healing and love, Rowe she had
accompanied on the long walk toward brisket-deep grass.
In shallow sleep, Vida smelled dirt freshly tamped around other
pieces of telephone pole set for snubbing posts. On another far-away
evening, with the tang of October in the air, he chugged into the yard
in his old pickup, its springs sagging beneath the weight of a burden
draped with a tarp. Im trying to get supper on the table, Rowe. Just
come and look. Where on earth did you get this? I have a few connections of my own in the musical world. Its beat up and out of tune,
been sitting in the basement of the Elks Lodge for who knows how
long. But its solid oak; itll outlast us both.
Sixteen calves, and it wasnt even noon. Were making headway,
cowboys.
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Cozzens: Treading of Lesser Cattle

With their new-morning chatter, magpies at roost in the big cottonwood mark the end of all sleeping and dreaming in the world. Long
before the sun edges above the Bighorns, Vida Sloan, lying in her marriage bed, imagines the engine throb of trucks afar off and cattle ascending the mountain. Come to Zion, come to Zion. Can anyone in this
room tell me how long forever is? Floating toward a wakefulness that
shimmers like tears in candlelight, she reaches under warm bed covers, comes up against Rowes thigh, ranges higher to locate the shoulder,
elbow, forearm, all of it solid and familiar flesh. Then her hand finds his,
and she holds on.

65

Hovenweep Castle and Star Trails, Hovenweep National Monument, Utah, approx.
ad 1200

The Path of Antelope, Pelican, and Moon

Larry Menlove

The summer Gretchen Yazzie Kimball committed adultery with

the bishops son, her house, which sat on the shelf of the ancient Lake
Bonneville shoreline on Dry Mountain, burned to the ground.
The house was a typical brick rambler built like all the other typical brick ramblers popping up in the subdivisions in the valley below
that year, 1972. The location up on the old shoreline overlooking the
quiet outlying town of Spring Lake set her brick rambler apart from
all the rest. It was family land, Kimball land. Phils father, Thomas
Kimball, gifted ten acres to his son when Phil and Gretchen were
married and sealed for time and all eternity in the Salt Lake Mormon
Temple, located some sixty miles to the north of Spring Lake, on a hot
early-September morning in 1970.
Gretchen and Phil lived all that fall in a small studio apartment in
Provo until most of the rooms were finished in the new house on the
hill, the carpet laid, and the appliances hooked up. When they moved
in, Phil carried Gretchen over the threshold, and they made love on
the front-room floor.
Two years later, Gretchen and the bishops son, Gary, made love on
that same floor. It was one of their free afternoons, free to be careless
because Phils truck route took him four hundred miles away, and
Garys wife, Lena, was in her summer class at the trade tech. It gave
Gretchen and Gary a two- sometimes three-hour window of opportunity. The only concern was whether or not Gretchen and Phils
one-year-old, Lester, would cooperate and take a nap. Most afternoons Lester didnt sleep, but being a very good-natured child, he was

First place co-winner, 2008 Irreantum Fiction Contest

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content to sit in his crib on the second floor playing with toys and
sucking on his milk bottle while his mom and Gary did what they did
downstairs.
I wish we could show the world how much were in love, said Gary.
They sprawled on their backs on the floor amidst throw pillows and
couch cushions in the afterglow minutes they both loved and hated.
Gary painted Gretchens brown belly with his fingertips, tracing the
faint pale stretch marks that made a map of her journey toward delivery with Lester.
Lena would kill you though, wouldnt she? She took his hand in
hers and held it against her side.
I know. I just wish Id met you two years ago. He sighed. Dont you
wish we could just disappear? Go someplace or be someone different?
Gretchen smiled and ruffled Garys short hair. She closed her eyes
and remembered the night she sneaked away from her house in Chinle
to creep up on the sweat lodge where the men held their ceremony.
At twelve Gretchen had not reached puberty like most all of the
other reservation girls her age. The boys taunted her at school, and
one boy in particular teased worse than the other boys: Rodney Hastiin. Gretchen loved Rodney Hastiin, even though he teased her. She
knew he did it because of his love for her and that he didnt know any
better. Rodney Hastiin would be at the sweat ceremony that night,
and Gretchen wanted to see him there.
She had no idea what went on at the mens ceremony. She had
asked her mom many times and her mom always said, Its for the
men, isnt it? Its not for girls.
Gretchen always dreamed of being a skin-walker, even though the
elders said only men could change and also warned of its evil. She
knew that it flowed in her family blood and that shape changing could
be used for good. Her great-grandfather was a bear. He could change.
She thought, when the time came, with her long, fast legs she would
become an antelope. So she tried to be an antelope the night she went
to the sweat lodge and heard the men and boys chanting and pounding the drums while the firelight outside cast animal shadows on the
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pinion trees. She sat down on the ground and listened and closed her
eyes and shed all the voices but one. Rodney Hastiins song was the
loudest, and in the dark he sang to her. He sang in antelope tongue.
What if I could change? she said to Gary on the front-room floor.
Change?
Yeah, yeah. She untangled her legs from under Garys. These are
antelope legs. She lifted them straight up and stretched her long toes
toward the textured ceiling. Ive done it before.
Gary reached up and cupped the underside of her thigh. Gretchen
flexed her muscles under his hand. She said, Im fast, you know.
Two days later the house burned down.
How the fire started that late afternoon was never officially
determined. There were theories: faulty wiring, a pan left on the stove,
an overturned candle. For Gretchen there didnt need to be a reason.
She had seen a crow.
After they made love that afternoon, Gretchen stood in the driveway watching Gary back his pickup out, and a crow flew low toward
her, weaving through the trees and banking over the roof of the house,
its wings making a rustling, canvas-on-canvas whisper as the bird
dove left and disappeared into the maples.
There had been another crow, one shed seen when she was ten. That
crow had flown low over her house in Chinle. Two days later her father
drove his truck into the gulch and finished his bottle of cheap whiskey,
and then fell asleep to the thunder crack and wind song of the oncoming
storm. The flashflood washed his body three miles downstream from his
truck to a shallow gentle bend and into the cradling roots of a pinion pine.
The house on Dry Mountain burned. The fire truck came from
Payson and had trouble getting up the steep incline of the dirt road to
the house. The red truck spun its wheels. Backed up, spit rocks and
dust. Finally the firemen had to empty water from the truck to lighten
the load. The water flowed downhill along the road through the dust
and turned black.
Before the fire truck finally reached the house, Gretchen stood well
back in the gambol oak brush, holding Lester and watching Phil with
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his garden hose trained on the flames. A weak stream split around his
thumb and evaporated in the heat. Like the other flames that summer,
it was too hot for one man to put out.
Gretchen first came to Utah at fifteen. She rode on a school
bus with twenty-five other Navajo children, their hair clean and their
faces scrubbed. LDS Indian Student Placement Services had found
them good, worthy foster families to spend the school year with. It
was an opportunity she couldnt pass up, her mom told her. You
want to make something of your life, dont ya? shed said to her when
Gretchen told her no, she did not want to go to Utah and live with the
Mormons. Youre Mormon aint ya? her mom had said.
As one of the oldest kids on the northbound bus, Gretchen sat in
the back row and looked out the window. She looked at the glittering
world passing by and became an antelope running alongside the white
bus, leaping over the rabbit brush and kicking up small explosions of
dust under her hooves. Gretchen saw many places to run, thickets
of cedar, endless open meadows yellow in the morning, arroyos that
dropped into straight-down cracks where runoff streams had cut the
land deep and clean like a scalpel.
Rodney Hastiin rode on the bus too. He sat in the front of the bus
telling stories to the other kids. He retold the old story about one hundred bottles of beer on the hogan wall and the other children picked up
the narrative and made it their own story. Even the old Mormon first
counselor who had volunteered to drive the bus joined in the telling.
His eyes in the rearview mirror glowed wondrous, reflective, and thirsty.
Rodney Hastiin and three other kids had gotten off the bus at the
ward house in Moab and were greeted by their Mormon foster families. As the bus moved north again, Gretchen searched the passing red
sandstone walls for petroglyphs. The elders had said the pictures could
be seen on the sheer cliffs near Moab. They told of the ancient ones
coming into the land and abiding for many years and then just vanishing, leaving their history on the rocks. The rocks and cliffs near Chinle
held petroglyphs as well, and her Mormon Sunday School teachers
said the people who made them were Lamanites, that they saw Jesus
when he came to the Americas to preach his word. The teachers said
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that Gretchen was a Lamanite too, that she would see Jesus if she
believed, that the Din, her people, their skin color would lighten as
their faith deepened. Gretchen looked at her hands and arms and then
let her eyes dance on the rocks, looking for the ancients, looking for
Jesus, looking for testimony.
Her foster family, the Greenhalghs, waited at the Payson first ward
church. Brother and Sister Greenhalgh and their four kids sat in a
circle on the lawn under the late shade of a big oak tree. They all
stood up when the bus pulled into the parking lot. They grinned and
stepped in unison to the sidewalk. Gretchen got off the bus with her
friend Tina Begay. Tinas family stood next to Gretchens family. Coveralls and smiles and ties and dresses on a Saturday evening in the fall
a week before the school year commenced in Utah.
Tina and Gretchen looked in each others dark eyes. They held on
to what they held together: the desert blue sky, the long-haired sheep
on the red sand, the small square homes, the halting and clipped
cadence of their native tongue. And Tina said it in Navajo, said it only
loud enough for Gretchen alone in this foreign land, Hold on.
No bishop. I cant tell you who I slept with.
Garys father, the bishop, shifted in his tall leather chair behind
his wide office desk. A large painting of a praying Jesus kneeling in
Gethsemane hung on the wall over the bishops right shoulder. The
bishops tie hung slack, and his graying hair sat greasy and limp on his
head. He needed a shave but hadnt had time after work at the feed
store and dinner with his family and dressing for this interview with
Sister Gretchen Kimball.
I know you should know who I sinned with, Bishop, but I cant
tell you.
The bishop, like the bishops son, saw the window in Gretchens
eyes. He saw the mystery through that window, could sense something beyond his knowledge. Gretchen was Lamanite. She deserved
some unnamed amnesty for her confession.
The bishop told Gretchen to pray to the Lord for forgiveness, to
pray for the spirit of the Holy Ghost to guide her as the Holy Ghost
guided him now, telling him to let her sins be washed. There would be
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no Church court, no excommunication, no further inquiry about the

adultery or about the house fire on Dry Mountain.
Gretchen stepped down the stairs of the ward house and looked at the
sun setting in the west. She felt her skin tighten and her arms lengthen,
felt her feet narrow and her vision and hearing and sense of smell expand
and thrum in timbre with the blades of grass and the breeze carrying the
sweet decay of Russian olive blossoms up over the fields. She jumped off
the sidewalk and ran, leaping the barbed-wire fence. In the alfalfa field
she ran and ran and chased the sun trying to catch its orange glow. She
pummeled the earth with her long legs and leapt into the red sky.
Phil and Gretchen rebuilt the house using a more modern design.
Lots of glass and straight angles. It had a second-floor great room with
high, angled windows that came together like the prow of a ship and
made the whole house look like a vessel which jutted from the hillside,
parting the tall cottonwoods and scrub oak, driven forth north, northwest into the valley below.
The bishops son did not step foot in the new house. He quit his job and
made his wife drop out of her trade-tech class. They moved to Phoenix.

After finishing her second year in the placement program

her junior year at Payson High SchoolGretchen arrived back on
the reservation and stepped off the white bus in the summer heat. It
didnt really feel like home.
Here was the little building that served as the Chinle ward house,
and here was her mom and her aunt Nora. Here was the desert and
the hot sun and the endless sky and the mesa on the far horizon. And
here was the pain in her heart for the new boy who had just graduated
from Payson High. The boy who asked her out to the senior prom
and held her hand in the car on the drive back to the Greenhalghs.
The boy who kissed her in the car. The boy she felt tremble when he
kissed her. The boy, really a man in age, waiting for the draft to sift
through the numbers and by the grace of God drop his to the wayside.
Phil could not shape shift, though. And when his number came up, he
did not become a dog and run from his country.
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Here she stood between the four sacred mountains of the East,
South, North, and West: Tsisnaasjini, Dawn Mountain; Tsoodzil, Turquoise Mountain; Dokooosliid, Abalone Shell Mountain; and Dib Nitsaa, Big Mountain Sheep. Gretchen had never been to the mountains.
They were too far away. She had only heard the stories, listened to the
Coyote house songs at her Womanhood initiation. As a little girl she
had once pinpointed the mountains on the big map in the Texaco station. She had circled her fingertips over the flat Anglo names and felt
the colors rise from them. Blue, red, yellow, and white.
Rodney Hastiin came to her house that summer and took her
to the pizza restaurant where they sat in a booth and ate pepperoni
slices and drank two pitchers of orange soda.
Do you have a boyfriend up there? Rodney wouldnt look in her
eyes when he asked.
Yeah, yeah. Ive got loads of boyfriends, she said.
Thats what I thought, said Rodney.
You got a girlfriend down here?
Sure. You see all those sheep out there, donchya?
Yeah, I see. She glanced out the window and then back at Rodney.
Youre just dating though? Do you have one youre serious with?
They both laughed and then stopped, a long gaze held between
them, and then Gretchen looked down at her pizza.
Dont you miss it here?
Gretchen shrugged her shoulders. I guess so.
My grandfather told me last winter the land misses you. But you
know my grandfather. He swears it, though. He said the land talked
to him when he rolled in the snow after the sweat. Said the sand went
under his skin and told him about an antelope lost in the other world.
An antelope?
Yeah, an antelope, said Rodney. Said the antelope looked like the
Yazzie girl.
Im not in the other world. She leaned toward him and rested her
cheek against her palm. Im just in Utah. And I should have never
told you about the antelope.
They ate and sipped in silence for a moment, and then Gretchen
asked, Do you ever talk to the Christensens?
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No.
Gretchen tried to get him to talk about his year in Moab with the
Christensen family, why he chose not to continue on and get a diploma
from Grand County High School, but Rodney just said he didnt like
it, said a rez diploma suited him just fine.
It was boring, he said.
But its a good opportunity, isnt it? said Gretchen. Its better than
taking a nice sheep to the prom, isnt it?
Hey, said Rodney Hastiin, dont make fun of my future wife.
In 1989, Gretchen was thirty-nine years old. She had six children.
Five boys belonged to Phil. One girl was Garys. The girl looked far
more like her mother than the bishops son, so no one knew but
Gretchen. They named her Sherry.
Phil and his oldest son, Lester, grown taller than his father now,
worked down in the corral with the lambs. It was early March, evening.
Phil caught the lambs one at a time and carried them to Lester who had
the band gun and the knife and the antiseptic spray sitting on the crate.
Phil held one of the lambs while Lester slipped the band up over the tail
of the subdued animal, its nose tucked in Phils armpit. Lester positioned
the taut rubber band up as far as it would fit on the tail and then released
it snugly around the base. In a few weeks the banded tail would fall off.
Phil set the lamb down on the moist, earthy soil, and the lamb
bounded off. Shaking its tail, the animal joined its siblings at the far
end of the corral.
One more, said Lester. That big one.
Phil walked across the corral toward the huddled lambs. He cut
the biggest one from the rest, a male, and caught it by the wool on its
back. He lifted it and tucked its muzzle into his armpit and bunched
its legs together with his forearm immobilizing the little ram. It struggled against the man, but could do nothing to free itself. Phil walked
to his son.
Lester pinched the bottom of the lambs scrotum sack and pulled
the skin out. He ran the knife blade through the taut skin and dropped
the quarter-sized flap of flesh to the dirt. The lamb shuddered.
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Hold him.
I got him.
Lester held the scrotum and then leaned in spreading the opening
with his lips and teeth. He felt for one of the two vasa deferentia with
his tongue and looped it out and bit down softly and pulled his head
back in a steady sure motion. The testis came out easy on the end of
the vas deferens. The testicle hung from Lesters teeth like a white jelly
bean on a string. He spat it out and leaned in to pull the other one out.
The little ram kicked him in the forehead just over his right eye, and
he fell back against the crate. The lamb bounced down to the ground
and hopped away, a thin trickle of blood against the white of its wool.
Lester looked at his father. Phil slumped there on his knees, his head
fallen forward over his heart and his arms slack to his side His hands
rested softly on the dirt.
Dad?
The Payson City ambulance spun its wheels on the steep incline of
the graveled road that led up to the house.
At the cemetery Gretchen and the children sat on the front row,
huddled close under the blue canopy, out of the storm. A low spot in
the canopy collected the rain until the weight of the puddle shifted
and poured a stream of water onto the artificial grass which circled the
plot. Friends and loved ones, shrouded under umbrellas, stood back,
forming a semicircle of mourners. The rain splattered, and the intermittent stream poured steadily furnishing a rhythm to the eulogy and
the blessing of the grave.
They gave Phil a veterans funeral service. Five uniformed men stood
in mushy grass fifty feet from the gravesite amidst the headstones and
lifted their rifles. They fired three volleys, each cracking into the tall
pines. A bugler blew taps from the other side of the cemetery, and his
sad call rose and fell and died in the rain.
Gretchen sat in the middle of her children, holding hands on both
sides, and remembered her dads funeral at the reservation cemetery.
Her father, a Code Talker, had served on Okinawa. Gretchen hadnt
known what that meant until she reached thirty years of age. Her
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father hadnt bragged about his role in the war like some of the other
men on the reservation. He served, came back, married a woman who
bore Gretchen five years later, worked the odd job, drank whiskey, and,
at forty, came to rest in the roots of a pinion tree. Gretchen wondered
if four decades were all that were allotted to the important men in her
life. And her childrens lives. She looked over at Sherry and thought
about how her daughter had been fatherless, really, all along. And like
her mother before her, she accepted the smoothed and folded flag
from the soldier and then folded her hands over it on her lap.
Gretchen looked at the casket and wondered why this time she
hadnt seen the crow fly over their home on the mountainside.
In May she and her three youngest boys drove down past the lake and
saw the pelicans on the water. They seemed to her out of place, eleven
big white bodies pushing themselves imperceptibly over the water like
little islands unto themselves. Gretchen pulled over and they got out
of the van and walked to the shore and watched the pelicans parade
on the surface. She couldnt remember ever seeing pelicans on Spring
Lake before. Sparse feathers stuck up off the top of the pelicans heads
and curved down onto their long necks. They reminded Gretchen of
old men with unruly white hair, their eyes watching wisely, sighting
down their long straight noses.
Are they geese, mom? asked Cole, her youngest.
Theyre pelicans, she said. They must be migrating north.
Migrating?
That means theyre going where its better for them, where they can
get things they need, like food and a mate.
The pelicans drifted back and forth in a scattered group across the
algae green water. Sometimes one or two broke off and swam in the
opposite direction alone, but they always turned and came back to
the flock.
Whats that bump on their beaks, Mom? asked her son Peter.
I dont know what it is. Its funny looking, aint it?
That one doesnt have the bump, Peter said.
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Her twelve-year-old, David, threw a rock at the pelicans. It splashed

safely five feet from them, but the giant birds veered off and glided in
the opposite direction across the water.
Hey. Dont do that, said Gretchen. Its bad luck. And anyway we
want them to come back, dont we? Gretchen tried to remember if
the elders ever told stories about pelicans. She didnt think so.
One of the pelicans dropped its head into the water. It came back
up with its beak pouch full and distended, overflowing with muddy
water, but with nothing to eat.
We want them to come back.
The night after she had eaten pizza with Rodney Hastiin on
the reservation, Gretchen had stepped through the front door of her
moms house into the darkness. The screenless screen door slapped
against the threshold. She walked across the dirt front yard and out
into the asphalt road. The center line had just been painted, and
the bright yellow dashes glowed in the light of the gibbous moon.
Gretchen stood in the middle of the road over the center line, straddling coming and going. Here and there. She had looked up into the
stars that night and waited. She had willed herself to change so she
could run. Run in some direction dictated not by her or anyone else,
but by some ancestral pull to the feeding grounds, to shelter, to a
lovers nest.

The bishops son knocked on her front door when the fire crested
the top of the mountain. It was 2001, August, and hot. Wildfire hot.
She stood there in the doorway, her hair pulled back and tied in
a dark knot on the back of her head. David and Cole scurried in the
basement packing things to take with them.
Mom! one of the boys shouted, and his call reverberated up the
stairway, off the kitchen wall, and through the entryway to where she
stood with a white man. A white man who looked thirty years older
in his hairline and in the lines on his face, but was still the man who
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had said, I wish we could show the world how much were in love.
The glow from the fire upon him startled Gretchen. It seemed so close.
One night and most of a Sunday didnt give her enough time to prepare for the coming firestorm.
Should we get these old photo boxes? The shout was so insistent, so now and close that Gretchen thought it had been Gary who
said it. She thought: There are no photos. No record of that. There is
only the little girl. The little flesh and blood girl who didnt have the
Womanhood ceremony. The little girl, the woman who now had three
children of her own. Three grandchildren for this silhouette in the
glow of a burning pestilence. A wildfire dance begun in heat, circling
and windswept, a drumbeat pulled tight on the skin, climbing up and
over the mountain, its own song. Its own ruining cleansing window
to the other world.
Gary?
Hi, Gretchen.
Youre here, now?
Yeah, said Gary.
What ya been doing?
Ive been writing code.
Code?
A company in Arizona. You know. For computers.
Oh. What kind of code?
Would you believe firewalls?
Mom!
Yeah, yes! Get the photo boxes! she shouted down into the belly
of the house on the hill, the house on the shoreline of ancient Lake
Bonneville.
Gretchen looked up at Gary. Whats that? Firewalls?
They keep people out who arent supposed to have access. To keep
things secret.
Keep things secret, Gretchen said.
They didnt talk for a moment, and in their silence they could hear
the muffled fuss of the boys gathering their belongings downstairs.
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Its good to see you, Gretchen. You look great.

Why are you here? I mean, why right now, with the fire?
Gary looked up the mountainside. His eyes traced along the cut
of Crooked Canyon to the ridge line and the tall black pines that
stood like condemned men awaiting their execution by fire. The thick
smoke billowed and boiled over the treetops.
My kids are all gone. Grown up. Lena left me. I left the Church.
He looked back down at Gretchen. Im sorry about Phil.
It was his time, I suppose.
He looked up at the mountain again. Do you ever think about us?
Gretchen wanted to say, Of course. She wanted to tell him when
she sees the photos of their daughter Sherry and the grandchildren
on the front room wall, she sees his eyes. She wanted to say she thinks
about him all the time. How she thinks maybe her heart would be
mostly whole now if they had only been wiser all those years ago. She
wanted to tell him she thinks about him every day and how those few
months of pleasure she stole from Phil had ignited the house on fire.
She wanted to blame him for the burning brush and the exploding
pines above her house now. She wanted to tell him that he had left
something inside her she can never touch. Something that would burn
her up if she dwelt on it or tried to expel it. It was just there. Smoldering. But instead she just said, Yeah. I think about what we did.
And then she simply closed the door behind her and went downstairs to help her sons put the most important things into cardboard
boxes.
The wildfire burned for two weeks above the house. For the first
three days, Saturday night and all day Sunday and into Monday, it
threatened to burn houses all along the bench above Santaquin and
Spring Lake. Tanker planes, led in by small spotter planes, flew over
the mountain at half hour intervals. The planes would disappear
behind the mountain and then appear out of the smoke, and the tankers would drop their loads of red fire retardant in a bursting curtain of
thick mist. The brush, grass and rocks above Gretchens house were
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streaked crimson. Smoke settled everywhere, dull white, hanging in

the air.
Monday morning, Gretchen sat in a folding camp chair in the backyard looking up at the fire, holding an uncertain vigil over the ready
loads of boxes stacked in and near the garage. Five head of mule deer
crashed through the brush high above the house. She felt her animal
heart quicken, her legs tighten.
Five men dressed in yellow with yellow hardhats came around the
corner of the house, laden down with large backpacks. Each man leaned
on a shovel, and they asked Gretchen the whereabouts of any good trail
that could take them to the lower reaches of the fire. Gretchen told
them to circle up around the right base of Sugarloaf and then cut across
to Tie Canyon where they should come across a trail they could follow
on up the ridge. They thanked her, and she offered them all something
to drink: lemonade, Coke, orange juice? But they all just drank from her
hose, filled their jugs and started off up the old access road. They disappeared behind a stand of oak brush.
And then Rodney Hastiin walked around the corner of her house
and stood there with his eyes upon her.
The day of her high school graduation Gretchen got a letter from
Phil. Hed been injured in the invasion of Cambodia. He wrote that
hed been crushed between two troop carriers before the invasion
started. His femur split in two. He was coming home. He wrote that
he loved her and wanted to get married. Gretchen read the words, puzzling over what they meant: Cambodia, broken leg, liberation, Communists, troops, coming home, love, marriage, eternity.
She took out the letter she had gotten the week before from Rodney Hastiin. Many of the words were the same: Cambodia, invasion,
troops, coming home, love. Some were different: Peace, congratulations, graduation, soul mate, reservation, hope.
She folded both letters up and put them away. She tried on her
cap and gown and stood in front of the mirror. She saw her eyes turn
black and the gown fall loosely on her narrowed shoulders. She could
hear somewhere far off the sound of war. She fought the urge to run
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into the deep canyons. She held her ground. That night, she wore her
graduation outfit, walked on two legs across the stage and took her
diploma.
Pink, smoke-filtered sunlight shone on Rodney as he walked
across the yellowing grass toward Gretchen. He stopped in front of
her. She blinked.
Is it you?
Its me, yeah.
She stood up and they gazed at each other. A tanker plane flew
overhead, fanning its red cargo out in the brush above the house.
Lots of excitement here, he said.
Its scary.
You still turn into an antelope?
Not for a long time now.
After high school graduation in Utah, Gretchen went back
to her moms house on the reservation. She told her mom that she
intended to marry Phil and live in Utah. Her mom said that it was a
good thing, but she should never forget her ways. She should remember her Navajo tongue and come to the land between the four mountains often so she would not lose her way. Her mom made fry bread,
and they ate it sitting on the front porch, watching the sunrise. Sheep
wandered over the red earth through the still air. A lamb beyond the
bluff called for milk.

The rains held off all that next summer after the wildfire. Bonedry brittle, blackened hillsides held up only by repose and hope. Then
September came. Clouds rolled over from the south and opened and
rain fell, pounding ash and rootless earth, sluicing into the cuts, barreling into canyons with mud and rocks and water, a dark slurry fanning out, covering the foothills, finding low paths, filling basements.
Into this storm Rodney Hastiin drove to Gretchens for her chicken
potpie. He had been teaching a semester of history at the community
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college and renting a small apartment in Provo. He hadnt yet committed to making a permanent move to Utah because of his responsibilities on the reservation.
When Rodney started down the slight hill near the lake, he could
see the flashing lights and all the commotion at the ward house. The
rain fell and the pickups windshield wipers slapped back and forth,
churning the rainwater and the lights. He saw the Road Closed sign
and turned his truck around. He drove around the lake and up past
the fish farm onto the muddy Strawberry Canal Road. He splashed
the truck through deep puddles and spun the tires, more swimming
than driving as he knuckled and wrestled with the wheel to the main
road that led up to Gretchens. A river of water six inches deep crossed
over the blacktop, and Rodney pointed the prow of his truck through
it. He drove into Gretchens driveway and got out. He carried a bottle
of sparkling grape juice and knocked on her door.
They let you through?
I took the back way.
Inside, the house shut out the wrath of the storm, save the pattering of rain on the roof.
Are you safe here? asked Rodney, taking off his wet coat and putting the bottle on the bar in the kitchen.
I think so.
Drawn to watch, they stepped to the big window of Gretchens home
and looked out over the flows of water gushing steadily on around
either side of the house, north and south, obeying the laws of the earth.

In 1970, Phil and Gretchen had made their temple vows, were sealed
for time and eternity. Gretchen had looked at Phil then and wondered
if that were possible. She thought of time and, for her, how fleetingly
it passed. Her mother, only fifty-two, had died two months before
Gretchens wedding. Her father before that.
Eternity.
They died, passed on. Her husband even. Their sealing. Their family. She remembers the petroglyphs she had seen as a girl in Canyon
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Menlove: Path of Antelope, Pelican, and Moon

De Chelly, just outside of Chinle. The ones that looked like a human
family holding hands. Eons ago, someone made them to last. On sandstone. Maybe more could be joined, more lives etched on the wall, more
drawn to claim the name of family, in spite of blood, belief, or shape, in
this time of eternity.
In May, the house remained empty of children. Cole had been off at
Snow College in Ephraim since January; his academic scholarship gave
him board as well as tuition. Gretchen had adjusted to being alone, to
the empty nest, to young ones moving on. Rodney Hastiin had started
to come over more and more often in the evenings. Hed bring little
gifts to Gretchen and linger in the driveway after saying good-bye.
Gretchen wished he would take her up in his arms and make her feel
whole. She thought he would someday. He was in Chinle now, had
been for a month, working out the changes on the Navajo Board, making arrangements for his replacement on the council. He would be
back in Utah in July he said.
A lunar eclipse came one night halfway through the month and
Gretchen drove down off the hill so she could see it as the moon
cleared the mountain. She drove to the lake and took the road around
the backside and then pulled over by the shore. She got out of the
van and stood there waiting in the dark for the eclipsed moon to rise.
Bullfrogs in the marsh trumpeted their call. She could smell the lake
water, an earthy scent of season upon season. The sky blinked with a
billion stars piercing the veil of darkness.
The moon came up in the saddle at the top of Crooked Canyon
above her house, and floated up the ridge line quiet as a ghost. The
moons upper edge crept out of the earths shadow and shone bright
white while the lower edge smoldered in smoky red, brushing through
the burned out pines. To the night Gretchen said, How different.
How beautiful.
She heard them coming in from the south over the lake. Their
great wings back-churning the cool air, and then the wet plop as they
settled into the water. They kept coming, one at a time, two at time,
sweeping in low, some skirting across the surface before coming to a
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Irreantum

stop, making the odd gurgling sounds deep in their long throats. It
had been thirteen years since she had seen them.
And the pelicans kept coming, dotting the lakes surface with great
gray shadows in the dark. Gretchen realized that it had been weeks,
maybe years, since she had laughed, really laughed, and she leaned her
head back and let it out, let it all out in big laughter, bigger than the
house, than the mountain, bigger than the night. Her laughter filled
a world beyond the one whose dark crimson shadow up there now
crawled from off the face of the moon.

Stone Heads of Bodhisattva Avilokiteshvara, Khmer Temple of Bayon, Angkor Wat,

Cambodia, approx. ad 11001200

84

Human Conflict and the Mormon Writer

Jack Harrell

Six days a week, I begin my day with an hour of writing, usually

fiction writing; and I find the experience cathartic. Writing allows
me to purge my emotions, express my frustrations and joys. Through
writing, I can give order to the general chaos of my experience. Whatever Im happy or bothered about, whatever issues Im brooding
overwriting becomes an avenue toward understanding. Its great
fun to see a vague notion develop into a story that works, that seems
to have a life of its own. But writing also puts me, as a Mormon, in a
peculiar dilemma. As a believing, participating Mormon, I know the
gospel is literally the good news. I believe in the words of Jesus when
he taught, Blessed are the peacemakers (Matt. 5:9). I recognize the
focus the Brethren have placed on Gods plan of happiness (Alma
42:16). As a fiction writer, however, I know that conflict is essential to
the nature of storytelling. A story with no antagonist is no story at all.
A canon of stories with assured and familiar happy endings soon loses
an audiences interest.
The dilemma deepens when we consider the sources of conflict for
the Mormon writer. When I ask myself, What are my current life
experiences regarding human conflict? the answers are all close to
home. I teach at a church-owned school where my students, colleagues,
and friends are all Mormon. Most of the people in my town are Mormon. Theyre good people, as people go. They arent perfect, but neither am I. Since writers, and especially fiction writers, draw from their
own experiences, and my current experiences are thoroughly Mormon,

This essay, delivered at the 2009 AML Conference, has also appeared in Perspective,
9.1 (Spring 2009).

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Irreantum

I regularly face conflicts, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies I see in myself

and those around me. The conflicts I find in my little microcosm of
Mormonism seriously frustrate meevery day, in fact. And these are
the tensions that move me to seek catharsis through writing. But when
theres conflict among my brothers and sisters in the church, do I want
to bring it to light, pour salt on the wounds, expose the church and its
members to criticism? Not really. In fact, while my fellow Mormons
sometimes frustrate me, I also find in them remarkable examples of
goodness, humility, reason, and humor. Shouldnt I, then, practice
mercy, forgiveness, rather than highlight conflict among the Saints?
If we look deeper, another layer of concern emerges. Faithful Latter-
day Saints want to be good representatives of the Church. This isnt
just a matter of shallow public relations. Latter-day Saints regularly
affirm through the sacrament that they are willing to take upon them
the name of [Christ] (D&C 20:77), becoming representatives of the
Savior and his church in all they do. Quite a responsibility! In my
own case, as a convert and one of a few active members in my family, I
want to put a good face on the church. Yes, I see mistakes in my fellow
Mormons; I see faults in myself. I know of those whove been hurt and
even abused by church memberseven priesthood leadersbut I
dont want to spitefully shout these things from the housetops. Idont
want to be a Book of Mormon Korihor, to whom the deceiving angel
said, Go and reclaim this people, for they have all gone astray (Alma
30:53). Thus Im torn between an honest individual desire to address
wrongs, and a communal desire for the good of the church, a church in
which I find sanctuary every day. Whats a writer to do?
Theres a very good reason why much of the fiction written by faithful Latter-day Saints is essentially positive in its outlook. Theologically,
Philip Barlow points out, Mormonism is an optimistic and proselyting faith, which desiresappropriatelyto convey its optimism to
others (237). Many have argued that Christian tragedy is impossible, because in Christian belief ultimate justice is guaranteed by a
benevolent God; and some have further argued that Mormon tragedy
is unthinkable (England, Joseph 2). After all, in Mormon theology,
even murderers will be resurrected and live forever in a kingdom of
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Harrell: Human Conflict

glory, entitled to the ministry of the Holy Ghost (D&C 76.86). Perhaps Mormons could look at any conflict and glibly say, God is merciful. Everything will work out fine. Its a positive worldview all right,
but such a position can render any conflict impotent. And impotent
conflicts make impotent stories. Bad news for Mormon writers.
Mormon optimism is further grounded inand actually springs
from, according to Terryl Givens (6)an American context. In a 1931
essay, Russian writer Valentin Tomberg commented on the American
penchant for all things happy. Tomberg said, Suffering is for the American something which has no right to exist. It should be eliminated
from life (44). Tomberg calls the willful pursuit of absolute positivity
the key to the secrets of America, adding that, for the American, one
should be ashamed of pain as one is ashamed of the necessary lower
life processes of the body (44). What is true for Americans is true for
American Mormons. We Mormons embrace technological advances,
exude positivity, and celebrate the progressive vision of our forebears.
Were a forward-looking people. (Perhaps we have to be, since our history is so relatively short.) In true American style, we celebrate our
strengths, rarely reflecting on our mistakes. In a 1992 Dialogue article,
I wrote that art is often born of sorrow resulting from sin or misconduct. Many, perhaps most, Latter-day Saints dont want to admit that
sin or misconduct are a part of our lives (123). Its not the American
way, nor is it the American Mormon way.
As a Mormon writer, then, Im guilty on all charges. Culturally, Im
an American who wants a cessation of sufferinga sucker for a happy
ending. Theologically, Im a Mormon optimist who believes in the
ultimate justice of the universe. My daily life is thoroughly Mormon,
and so are most of my friends. I naturally want to protect them and
the church from undue criticism. How can such a person write fiction
about Mormons, acknowledge their conflicts, weave their problems
even their sinsinto an engrossing storyline, bringing characters to a
dramatic point of no return? Isnt there a terrible risk that the writer
might simply exploit the weaknesses of the Saints for personal gain?
The short answer is, Yes! The risk is real. All the more reason to
tread carefully, even charitably.
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Perhaps the most significant issue here is the ultimate optimism

of Latter-day Saint theology. If Mormons believe the universe under
Gods direction will all work out fine, that Christ will win and Satan
will lose, does that belief undercut the existence of genuine conflict?
No, not if we remember that Gods success is only part of the story.
The success of Gods plan of happiness doesnt guarantee the complete
success of each individual agent involved. (That was Satans plan.) In a
profound paper entitled Joseph Smith and the Tragic Quest, Eugene
England asserted, Mormon theology, revealed through Joseph Smith,
claims that the universe is essentially, as well as existentially, paradoxicaland therefore is irreducibly tragic (16). The paradox England
refers to is the gospels simultaneous allegiance to individual agency and
to the covenants and commitments made among individual agents. An
essential ontological element of the Mormon cosmos can be summed
up in the biblical phrase there was war in heaven (Rev. 12:7). In that war,
one army won, but many individuals were lost. Modern-day prophets
proclaim that the same war continues on this earth (Hinckley 85) and
rages today ever more fiercely (Faust 54). Thus, Mormonism posits an
existence fraught with potential conflict for each individual, a conflict
rooted in our eternal and undeniable moral agency. Perhaps this is why
England concluded that Mormon tragedy will not be tragic ... because
of the failure of religion, but rather because of the success of religion
(Joseph 16). Ironically, the triumph of agency ensures that some will
choose their own tragic self-destruction.
All of us, in fact, have used our agency in ways that severed us from
Gods favor, even if only for a short time. Even Joseph Smith was told
that he had lost [his] privileges for a season in consequence of the
lost 116 manuscript pages of the Book of Lehi (D&C 3:14). The Lord
told Joseph that if he did not repent, he would be delivered up and
become as other men, and have no more gift (D&C 3:11). What a
tragedy this would have beenour world without Joseph Smith as
we know him. According to scripture, this was possible, through the
triumph of agency. And according to Benjamin Cummings, author of
The Eternal Individual Self, agency is possible due to the very nature
of the self.
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Writing in 1968, Cummings defined the self in Mormon existential

terms: Each being is a distinct identity, an eternally existing individual. He does not trace his origin back to some undifferentiated mass
of being, nor is he destined for ultimate absorption into any sort of
undifferentiated state (61). Cummings asserted that the eternal Self
cannot escape from existence nor can it escape from the awareness
of its existence (69). Most pertinent to our discussion here is what
Cummings called an inevitable sense of solitude that holds each person in its grip. Cummings said this solitude is inevitably recurrent
because it is born of the very fact of individuality, which by definition
means separateness, singleness, aloneness, being an eternally identical one or unit. The sense of this separateness has been called cosmic
loneliness (70).
Notwithstanding our eternal individuality, we come together in communities to seek what Cummings calls affiliation. Through the covenants of the Church we seek the building of Zion and eternal union in
marriage and families. Cummings says, One of the conditions of [the
individuals] progress is affiliation with others whose goal is the same as
his own. [...] Through all eternity he remains an individual, but through
eternity he will remain a social individual (121). Arguing from this context, Eugene England concludes that eternal individuality allows the
individual to develop his fullest powers but in the process confronts him
eternally with what seems a central tragic paradox in mortal experience:
group values versus individual values (Joseph 6).
We are, as Cummings asserts, as England echoes, essentially and
existentially alone in the universe. And from our aloneness arises our
desire for communion. Perhaps this same tension drives the writer who
spends hours and hours in the solitary practice of writing, working
toward the goal of greater communion with others. When two individuals with moral agency come together, we have the possibility for
synergistic growth as well as conflict, misunderstanding, unrighteous
dominion, tragedy, and violence. In a Latter-day Saint paradigm, community can take a form on a continuum anywhere between Babylon
and Zion. Zion is that society in which individuality and agency are
never abused, a community in which each individual always retains the
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utmost agency to choose freely, while never choosing to harm or dominate another. I believe the oneness spoken of in a Zion society is not
sameness, as some imagine, as has been established in fledgling utopias
that turn dystopic, realizing physical and spiritual captivity rather than
freedom. No, sameness is not a defining quality of Zion, but of Babylon.
In Babylon, the initial quest appears to be toward freedom, diversity,
transcendence; but the outcome is always the opposite. Intoxication,
gambling, sexual excess, pornography, and finally addiction and bankruptcythese states are not creative; theyre mind-numbing courses
toward sameness. As Margaret Atwoods poem Siren Song puts it,
Alas / it is a boring song / but it works every time (9.2527). This
is why Flannery OConnor says that in the context of fiction writing,
Sin is interesting but evil is not. Sin is the result of an individuals free
choice, but evil is something else (199). In other words, sin involves
conflict, tension within a character; evil is a battle already lost. So the
eternal individual, in need of communion, seeks a community that
is truly and eternally pleasing for all individuals involved. Its a pragmatic ethic, this choice between Zion and Babylon. It should be easy
to choose Zion. But it isnt, because making Zion isnt easy.
In Mormon culture we find an ironic and peculiar kind of expurgated Babylonian sameness in our writing, a will toward conformity
and conventionality. Why? Because sameness and repetition are easier
than genuine creativity. This occurs when we fail to test our readers
comfortable and familiar beliefs, resorting instead to secure absolutes,
even at the cost of worshiping idols [that meet] complacent needs,
grant special privileges, and maintain untroubled relationships (England, Joseph 6). This isnt just a Mormon problem. Any writer can
be tempted by stereotypes, cardboard conflicts, cheap resolutions, and
propagandathe promotion of specific doctrines or causes. A feminist writing about men, a gay writer writing about homophobia, a
Marxist writing about American materialism, a former Mormon writing about church hypocrisy, a faithful Latter-day Saint writing about
the nobility of the priesthoodthey all run the risk of writing in order
to prove the validity of their cause, rather than writing to explore the
conflicts that move real people with real, individual struggles. As John
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Gardner cautions, The artist who begins with a doctrine to promulgate, instead of a rabble multitude of ideas and emotions, is beaten
before he starts (14). Like all writers, Mormon writers must remember that real human beings are more complex, self-contradictory, and
ultimately more interesting, loveable, and even admirable than the
political or religious systems that seek to contain them. Good literature may use religious, social, and political categories as setting, or
it may use them to introduce conflict, but good literature ultimately
transcends those systems.
One might ask, then, if Zion is a place of perfect harmony, and, if
meaningful literature relies on conflict, will there be no literature in
Zion? In heaven, will we read great stories only to remember the way
things used to be ... back when we had problems? If we understand
our own religion, I think we have to answer, No! In a Mormon cosmology, the potential for evil is as eternal as the potential for good.
Remember, there was war in heaven (Rev. 12:7). And what about
all those eternal offspring yet to come, some of whom will go astray?
Mormon writersand readersneed to be capable of grasping the
complexity of their own teachings. But were not there yet. Speaking
of contemporary Mormon culture, Terryl Givens has said, Mormonisms obsession with certainty, with plenitude and prophets and gospel fullness, can be intensely sterile ground for the artistic endeavor.
Despite the depth and complexity of our theology, Givens says Mormons do not wrestle much with metaphysical anguish. In spite of the
possibilities suggested by both the unfathomable darkness of Gethsemane and the weeping God of Enoch, Mormonism has no patience
with a tragic vision (34). If so, I argue, they have little patience with
their own theology.
William Faulkner, in his Noble Prize acceptance speech, said that
great fiction is about the human heart in conflict with itself. But
what if my heart is not in conflict? What if Im a happy Mormon
blissfully married, the parent of good children, financially successful,
humble, faithful in church service and commandment-keeping? What
if I have been pacif[ied], and lull[ed ...] away into carnal security, that
[I] will say: All is well in Zion (2 Ne. 28:21)? Will I be able to write
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fiction that evolves from meaningful conflict? Why would I want to?
But wait! If I acknowledge the conflict in my heartand worse, if I
write about itwont some of my fellow Mormons think me sinful,
even faithless? Yes. Especially if their faith is of the all is well brand.
But if I understand my own religion, Ill remember that I belong to
a church that began with a questiona deeply significant question,
asked in faith. Therefore, I propose three paradoxes that might be
embraced in the human heart of the Mormon writer, paradoxes that
grow naturally from Mormon theology and align with principles writers have long known.
First is the paradox Ive already discussed, the conflict of individual versus group valuesthe ever-present desire in the individual to
honor his or her singularity while at the same time seeking what Cummings calls affiliation (121). At the center of all stories of human conflict is an individual agent in the context of other agents. Mormonisms
understanding of the nature of the war in heaven should imbue every
Mormon writer with a profound respect for agency as it plays out in
each of his or her characters, even when those characters go wrong.
Eugene England said it best in his essay, Danger on the Right! Danger on the Left! The Ethics of Recent Mormon Fiction. According to
England, writers have to love their characters enough to let them fail
as well as succeed. He explains, When this happens, characters are
created who are allowedeven encouragedby their authors to take
on a kind of independent existence. The result is characters that
make surprising, unprogrammed, ethical moves and discoveries. In
turn, we as readers are open to consider and adopt new ethical perspectives for ourselves, because we too feel our agency is being respected,
that we are not being manipulated. The characters thus take on such
an appearance of reality that we love them and learn from themlike
we do our friends, or even people we know well whom we think are
wrong. (18)

Mormon writers who embrace the eternal paradox of the individual

and the group in their theology will find genuine conflict a meaningful, ever-present element in their writing. Recognizing this paradox
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will be a remarkable prophylactic against agenda-driven stories, cardboard conflicts, predictable plots and characters.
Second, as Mormon writers, I believe we need to be more honest
about the sins and shortcomings among us. Im not proposing that
we give up our ideals or teachings. Its essential to have the invitation of the Savior to be ye therefore perfect (Matt. 5:48). We deeply
need the frequent teachings of the Brethren as we regularly teach each
other to do what is right. But we could do more to admit humbly how
far we have to go. Ive long told my BYUIdaho students that our
neighbors watch us every day, and they already know were not perfect.
Were not fooling anyone but ourselves. Every day Mormons lie, hurt
people, break the law, commit infidelities. We shouldnt, and we know
we shouldnt, but we do. Yet we are called a peculiar people (1Pet. 2:9)
because we come together in the Church and try to improve. When
we do wrong, we try to repent instead of justifying ourselves, rationalizing, making excuses. Perhaps the significant difference between
sinners and saints is that saints realize their need for a Savior and
sinners dont. Honest portrayals of our shortcomings wont scandalize our neighborssince they already know. In fact, the results may
be just the opposite. When were honest about ourselves, we gain our
neighbors trust. We might even inspire them with our faith as we
turn to God, in our weakness, seeking forgiveness and grace.
Acknowledging our shortcomings is only half the picture, though. A
more meaningful understanding of the faults among usand within
usmust be balanced with a commensurate comprehension of our
goodness. This brings us to a third paradox for the writer: the possibility
that virtue may be more difficult to portray than vice. The word villain,
from the Middle Latin villanus, meaning farmhand, originally meant
a peasant, someone not chivalrous, someone of low status, education,
and morals. A villain is a base character, an antagonist capable of cruel
and criminal actions (Abrams 225), while a hero is a defender, protector. Traditionally, the relationship of hero and villain is one of greater
to lesser. The hero seeks the good of others and himself, by reasonable
means the audience can understand. But the villain is selfish, corrupt, a
destroyer whos inexplicably driven, often to the point of self-destruction.
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Traditional definitions may be less applicable in contemporary stories, since todays antagonist isnt necessarily a bad guy, but might be
merely an opponent and may be in the right (Frye et al. 38). Notwithstanding, the contemporary protagonist-antagonist relationship posits the antagonist as secondary. In Greek drama, the protagonist is the
first actor to engage the chorus in dialogue. The antagonist is one who
struggles against. Earlier, I argued for Zion as a place of creativity, and
Babylon as a will toward sameness. Similarly, I argue that goodness
in fictional characters is deep, rich, and complex, while evil is shallow, paltry, and simple. Is this reflected in Mormon fiction? In nature,
weeds grow without cultivation while beautiful flowers require skilled
and caring gardeners. Are the good characters in Mormon fiction rich,
deep, and complex? Or do Mormon writers rely on superficial markers to illustrate goodnessconventional habits, clean-shaven faces,
modest dress, the absence of Word of Wisdom violations? If goodness
is complex and rich, if evil is superficial and deficient, it should be easy
to present evil with a few shallow tags. But a good man is harder to
findor should be. When we use superficial tags to portray goodness,
we insult our readers, and we insult goodness itself.
Rather than relying on stereotypes of goodness, we must do justice
to the real adventure were engaged in, an adventure William James
described by saying, If this life be not a real fight, in which something
is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a
game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will.
But it feels like a real fight,as if there were something really wild in
the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are
needed to redeem (Is Life Worth Living? 240).
The individual and the group, the righteous acknowledgment of
sin, and the complexity of good charactersthe tensions inherent in
these paradoxes have all the power necessary to generate meaningful
cathartic experiences for writers and readers. Add to those paradoxes
two more: Mormon optimism, which strikes a healthy balance against
the potential tragedy of our existence, and the eternal singleness of
the individual balanced against his or her desire for affiliation. The
possibility of conflict abounds. Good news for the Mormon writer.
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Yet the scripture says, Blessed are the peacemakers (Matt. 5.9). In
order to make peace, one must begin with waror the potential
for war. To the fiction writer we might say, Blessed are the resolution makers, remembering that chaos is the elemental material from
which order is made. In a Mormon paradigm, conflict will always be
potential among us, and so will resolution. If we honestly reveal our
human conflicts, our neighborswho know our faults alreadywill
see our capacity for cooperating with Christs atonement, his healing
of the human family. Thus we may represent him indeed.
It may be convenient to put people into categoriesLDS, inactive,
conservative, smoker, clean-shaven, multiple piercings, modest, tattooedbut easy categories make bad fiction. (They may make bad
religion, too.) As Mormon writers, we should be suspicious of our
own stereotypes, our own snap judgments. All good writers seek to
move their fiction beyond stereotypes, political and social agendas,
and institutional constraints. Mormon theology is remarkably amenable to this complex view of art. Traditional Christianity posits a
heaven that is finished, absolute, without conflict. But the gospel as
restored through Joseph Smith is a gospel of eternal progression, one
in which none of us is ever finished growing or reaching, one in which
agency and the conflict between good and evil exist forever. Thus we
might imagine a Zion/Babylon dichotomy in these terms:
Zion
Diversity Tension/Conflict
Babylon Sameness Stasis/Stagnation

Growth/Progress
Damnation

With this perspective, Mormon writers have the capacity to imagine

an art that is never finished. What an exciting universe for the artist!
In this context, life and art becomes what William James calls a real
adventure:
Suppose that the worlds author put the case to you before creation,
saying: I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world
the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition
being that each several agent does its own level best. I offer you the
chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through.
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It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will
you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other
agents enough to face the risk? (Pragmatism 614)

The task is the same for the Mormon writer, to create worlds not
certain to be saved, fictional worlds that honor characters individual
agency, worlds in which good and evil are equally potential. Will good
always prevail? One might ask, is good really sufficient? Is evil, by its
very nature, deficient? In order to go forward in such a context, the
writer must have faith. As James says, It is a real adventure.

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Barlow, Philip L. The Uniquely True Church. A Thoughtful Faith:
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Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of
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Doctrine and Covenants. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ
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. Joseph Smith and the Tragic Quest. Dialogues with Myself.
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Faulkner, William. Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 21 Nov. 2002.

<http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-accep
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.etymonline.com>.

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Buddha & Tree, Ayutthaya Thailand, approx. ad 1400

Nightshade

(a novel excerpt)
Charmayne Gubler Warnock

When Carly saw the nightshade growing in the backyard, she

knew it was a sign from God or Nature, or whoever ran the show, that
she should poison her husband.
She didnt know how long the plant had been there, or from where
it had come. It just appeared one morning, suddenly, when she walked
down the path from the garden to the pond. There it wasdelicate
yellow and purple flowers bursting from the greenery like small shooting stars. It was exquisite, and she was delighted to have it growing in
her yard so unexpectedly. Like a small gift.
Admittedly, she hadnt known its history or reputation when she
first saw the plant. It wasnt until later in the day when she opened up
a wildflower book and saw a photo of the same flower with its name
underneath: Woody Nightshade.
It gave her a queer feeling when she saw that it was poisonous
a silvery, liquid-trickling-down-the-spine kind of feeling that spread
along her arms and into her loins. It meant something, a message of
some sort. She was sure of that.
Hank came home from work late that night, as usual. He removed
his already loosened tie, kicked off his shoes and settled back in his
chair with a sloshing goblet of tonic. Thats what his mother had
called it.
Its Gods tonic for what ails you, she would say, that suspicious,
built-like-a-fencepost woman who hadnt liked Carly very well. But
her dislike hadnt affected Carly too much because the woman died
soon after she married Hank, leaving him a complete orphan. His
father had died thirty years earlier in a collision with a train.
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Hank had been seven years old when a policeman came to the
door and informed his mother that there had been an accident. She
had retreated to her room and seemingly stayed there for weeks. It
was then that the elderly next-door neighbor, Helen Brown, took
care of both Hank and his mother. Other than that Hank hadnt told
Carly much about his youth except to say that hed spent a lot of time
taking apart small kitchen appliances like toasters and blenders to
see what made them work. When he grew up, he became an electrical
engineer.
Carly looked at Hank and saw that he was already drifting into
sleep. Perhaps he warranted poisoning. Perhaps not. It was hard to
know for sure about things like that. But the plant was obviously
meant for someone.
Walking over she nudged him with her foot. I fixed dinner for you.
Arent you going to eat it?
He opened his eyes and gazed at her, benign and disoriented, then
rose to his feet and followed her into the kitchen. He sat at the table in
the breakfast nook and waited while she warmed up a La Fiesta enchilada dinner in the microwave. Carly avoided actual cooking because
being in the kitchen too long caused her to have panic attacks. At first
Hank had chided her about her cooking skills, but that all changed
the day he came home from work to find the kitchen table heaved
onto its side and cans of mushroom soup flung across the kitchen.
The microwave beeped and Carly put the steaming enchiladas on
the table in front of him. Then she sat down and watched him peel
back the plastic covering.
Arent you going to eat, too? he asked.
I already ate.
After dinner Hank retreated to his chair and The Tonight Show.
Carly threw the plastic container in the trash and went upstairs to
study her wildflower book.
It seemed there was more than one type of nightshade. Woody
nightshade, the lovely plant growing in Carlys backyard, was not
quite as poisonous as its cousindeadly nightshade. She was a little
disappointed.
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She read further, The berries of woody nightshade may be deadly

if children eat too many of them. Carly leaned back against the pillows, thinking. Hank was not a child. Flipping through the pages, she
stopped at the section on deadly nightshade. Deadly nightshade, also
called belladonna, is one of the most toxic plants in the western hemisphere. Ingestion of a leaf can be fatal for an adult, but the root is the
most deadly part.... Folklore suggests that the devil has an exclusive
right to plant and harvest deadly nightshade. Hence anyone eating it
is visited and killed by the devil.
Carly laid the book down. That was sobering. Although it didnt
say that someone harvesting deadly nightshade would be visited by
the devil, only those who ate it. She picked up the book and read
further, causes hallucinations, irregular heartbeat, sweating. And of
course, death.
Later when Carly went downstairs, Hank was slumped in his chair,
mostly comatose. Turning off the TV, she went back upstairs and
went to bed.
Hank heard the TVs comforting murmur abruptly stop, and
opened his eyes in time to see Carly ascending the stairs in her pink
pajamas with butterflies across the behind. He had given those to her
for Valentines Day last year. It had been one of her good days. Too
often she had bad days. The therapist had looked at him sympathetically and said that was to be expected. People with borderline personality disorder had so much chaos in their own heads that it carried
over into their relationships. The therapist hadnt offered a lot of hope
for a successful marriage, so Hank suggested Carly quit going to the
therapist. What in the hell did that mean anyway? Borderline personality disorder. Bordering on what?
Carly wasnt psychotic. She was emotional, high-strung, charismatic. Erratic some of the time, but that was partly what drew him
to her. And of course she was beautiful. Hed first seen her standing
on the stairway at his cousins home showing the house to a potential
buyer. She was a realtor, petite and energetic, storming along under
an abundance of wild, dark hair. But beneath all the motion and noise,
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Hank could see that she was vulnerable, and he couldnt get her off
his mind. He wanted to take care of her. The sale had failed, the buyer
claiming she had misrepresented the house, but Hank was sold.
Hank stood up and looked around the large comfortable room. He
had taken care of her. Their home was far different from the hovel
where shed grown up. Trailer trash, she would sometimes call herself
with a coy smile, then laugh because no one looking at her would
ever believe it. Except when she reverted back to trailer talk, saying
things like, We dont got no soap. She rarely did that. She was a
quick learner.
Hank put the unlabeled bottle of homemade tonic back in the
fridge and sat down at the desk to sort through a weeks worth of
mail. When he finally went upstairs, Carly was asleep, her book flung
open on the bed. He replaced the book in the bookcase, glancing at
the titlenot her usual romancethen climbed in beside her, waiting to see if she would awaken and wrap her legs around him. Carly
rained hot and cold. Some days she wore him out and some days he
didnt seem to exist for her. There was no comfortably warm middle
ground with her, but he had resigned himself to this fact, knowing the
weather would change at some point.
Early morning light was sifting through the cracks in the blinds
when Carly awoke. Hank was lying flat on his back with his mouth
open, his face pale in the slatted light, the balding spot on the back of
his head invisible. If it werent for those whiffling noises he was making, Carly might have thought he was already dead. For a moment she
studied his unmoving form, then crept cat-like across the bed toward
him. Now that she was considering poisoning him, he was incredibly
sexy and irresistibly vulnerable. Resting her lips just beneath his earlobe, she blew little puffs of air on him until he stirred, then she slid
her hand across his belly, pausing just below his navel, slowly moving
down to the inside of his thigh. He was fully awake now, and she
could feel the tension in his body as he waited to see what would happen next. She loved that moment. It was like dangling him from the
edge of a cliffthen rescuing him.
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Carly took a leisurely shower then came downstairs to see Hank

standing at the stove in his underwear, scrambling eggs and frying bacon.
Youre going to be late for work, she told him.
He gave her a dewy smile. I thought you might be hungry. He
filled their plates and sat down. What are you going to do today?
I thought Id go hiking. I should get out in nature more. She
stretched and yawned. Get in touch with my primal being.
Hank raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
Im going to collect wildflowers and things.
Its against the law to pick wildflowers in the national forest.
Its public land. It belongs to us all.
Exactly.
But Im not picking all the flowers. She stood and walked to the window, looking out at the sloping lawn and the path that led to the pond
where the woody nightshade grew. She wondered how difficult it was
going to be to find its more lethal cousin, deadly nightshade.
Who are you going with?
She hadnt planned to go with anyone.
He laid his fork down and looked at her. It wouldnt be safe to go
by yourself. Youd better take Margo with you. She goes hiking a lot.
Carly didnt like Margo. She was so earthy she smelled like dirt.
Plus she didnt like the way she acted around Hank. I think Margo
is in love with you.
Hank looked up. Shes what?
Carly studied him for suspicious behaviorthat nervous tick he
got at the corner of his mouth. Instead he leaned back in his chair and
grinned at her. You think Margos in love with me?
Shes always asking you questions about electricity, and looking
awestruck when you talk ... like youre the harbinger of nirvana or
something. No honest woman finds electricity interesting.
He nodded and went back to his breakfast. You may have a point.
It doesnt matter anyway because ...
Because what?
Nothing. Carly felt cheerful again. Maybe Ill call her. She crossed
to the fridge and opened it, releasing a waft of Hanks tonic. It stunk.
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Why do you always have this stuff sitting around? It has alcohol in it,
you know.
A little bit.
Does the bishop know you drink it?
We havent discussed it. He picked up a forkful of eggs and smiled
at it. Besides, its medicinallike Nyquil.
More like some kind of witchs brew. I think your mother was
witch.
My mother didnt brew it. Helen Brown taught me.
Carly had never met Hanks elderly neighbor, Helen Brown. Shed
disappeared from the scene long before Carly entered it, but when
Hank spoke of her, hed get all mellow and weepy with appreciation.
It was annoying.
Carly turned off the asphalt road onto something that looked
more like a goat path, and drove another mile or two before coming
to a stop. Dense pines crowded the sides of the road, blocking the sun
and making it seem like early evening rather than mid-morning. Carly
hesitated in the comfortable seat of her Toyota Camry and looked
out into the shadowed forest, thinking that perhaps she should have
brought Margo along with her after all. Or maybe some tall, handsome forest ranger with a gun.
Collecting the items on the seat beside hergloves, scissors, a
plastic shopping bag, and her wildflower bookCarly stepped out of
the car. The air was heavy with a damp, pine-bark scent, and flowed
down the mountain like a long slow breath. She closed the car door
and listened, feeling the cool air swirl and eddy around her, then
began making her way through a tangle of vines and bushes toward
the sound of running water.
Ten minutes later Carly sat on a rock beside the stream, poking at
the green leaves with her gloved finger. Maybe, maybe not. She looked
at the book. The pictures were so damn small. How was anyone supposed to know for sure? Maybe those little purplish leaves could be
called flowers. She wouldnt consider them flowers, at least not the
sort shed display in the center of the table in a nice vase. She turned
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the page. All the plants were green, and there were no black, shiny
berries, but it was early in the summer.
She picked up her scissors and opened the plastic bag to catch the
leaves. Snip, snip, the leaves fell into the bag. She stopped and looked
around, remembering the sentence in the book about the devil having exclusive rights to plant and harvest nightshade. But it had also
said that he only visited those who actually consumed nightshade, and
she was not going to eat it. She continued snipping the leaves, wishing
shed brought a trowel to dig up some roots. Perhaps a sharp stick or a
stone would work. Reaching for a particularly jagged stone, she paused,
hand midair, her breath catching somewhere between in and out.
A mans boot was planted on the ground six inches away.
Looking up she saw jean-clad legs, then a tee shirt and finally a
mans face. Dropping the bag and scissors, she stood up.
He was very tall, and her first impression was that he was quite goodlooking, his sand-colored hair pulled back in a pony tail, accentuating
a square, unshaven jaw. In church they said the devil was actually very
handsome. She moved slightly to see him better. On his cheekbone
was the beginning of a pimple. She didnt expect the devil would have
pimples, but to be sure she asked, Are you the devil? Then, should he
be offended, she quickly added, You dont look like the devil.
The man smiled and looked down at her bag and scissors.
Youre not supposed to take plants from public lands.
Oh. I didnt know that. She looked in the bag then back at him
and smiled her best smile. But its too late. Ive already cut it.
Thats probably not something you want anyway.
Why?
Its poisonous. Deadly nightshade.
So shed been right. She felt pleased about that.
Well. She bent down and picked up the bag and her scissors. You
know what they say, waste not, want not. I guess I should be going.
She turned and began climbing up the bank.
He followed her. I saw your car out on the road. Youre going to
have to back out to the main road. Theres no place wide enough to
turn around for miles.
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She knew how to back up a car.

What are you going to do with that? He nodded toward her bag.
She hastened her steps. Throw it in the dumpster, I guess.
He caught up and walked along beside her, his long legs easily outpacing her. Hopefully you wont have a flat tire or anything like that.
Why would I have a flat? She looked up at him, a sudden, unpleasant tightness in her chest.
Rocks in the road. Sharp rocks. He looked down at her. You
never know.
When at last they stepped out of the trees, Carly saw her car sitting
lopsided, the tire rim resting flat on the ground. The man walked over
and kicked the misshapen tire. Yep, its flat. I can fix it for you. Gotta
spare and a jack?
With her mind skittering over the worst possibilities, Carly opened
the trunk of her car, then stood back, watching as he pulled out the
tire and a flimsy looking jack. He may try to rape her. Or kill her. But
shed let him change her tire first because she didnt have a clue how
to do it. Then when he was almost through, shed smash him over the
head with a rock while he was crouched down with his back turned.
The man had begun to jack up the car when she heard a rustle in the
bushes. Spinning around, Carly saw a hairy form moving through the
shadows. Taking a step backwards, she watched an old woman wearing a moth-eaten, ankle-length fur coat emerge from the trees. Her
long, gray hair hung in matted tangles, and she looked and smelled as
if shed been sleeping with dogs.
The old woman glared at the car. Jack! Whachu doin?
Changin a tire.
She squinted and inched closer to Carly, sniffing at her as if she
were the one that smelled like dogs, then skulked back into the trees.
Carly waited until she thought the old woman was out of earshot
then asked, Who was that?
Crazy old woman that lives here on the mountain.
She lives by herself?
Mostly she lives with animals.
Carly nodded. I thought so.
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She used to be a school teacher.

Carly felt confused.
Hates people, he went on. Teaching school does that to you. He
loosened the lug nuts and removed the tire. She probably flatted your
tire. Its good I came along.
What would have happened if you hadnt?
He glanced over his shoulder and grinned at her. It wasnt a pleasant grin.
When he turned his back, Carly stooped to pick up a rock.
Hank peeled a layer of pancake-like fungus off the mother fungus,
and gently laid it on the solution in the glass bowl where it floated just
beneath the surface. Mrs. Brown had stressed that it was important
to be calm when preparing the tonic. The fungus is a living thing,
she had told him. It works best when its nice and quiet and everyones happy. No fussing or commotion. So Hank brewed up his tonic
when Carly was away.
Covering the bowl with cheesecloth, he carried it to a dark cabinet in his downstairs office to ferment, an odd nostalgia trailing him.
When his mother had started feeling better and had gone back to
work, Helen Brown continued to take care of him in the evenings.
The elderly woman had worn a cheap, rust-colored wig that sprouted
bouncy, lint-specked curls which were an odd contrast to her sagging
face. And it fit her differently every time she wore it. Hank suspected
she kept it under the bed at night, then pulled it out in the morning
and plopped it on her head any which way.
Hank had been very fond of Mrs. Brown, who told him stories
about goblins and fairies, and made tonic for him and his mother. The
murky liquid had a strange, sour-sweet taste that Hank didnt find too
objectionable. Mrs. Brown claimed it would prolong life and cure any
number of ills, including cancer. But she had died. Hank had been
quite puzzled and saddened by that.
Shortly after Mrs. Browns death, he had come home from school
to find his mother stirring through a box of buttons. She told Hank
that Mrs. Brown had left him several not-very-valuable things: the
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box of buttons, a stone gargoyle, the bowl in which she made her tonic,
and an old recipe book that was so fragile the pages were loose in
the binding. A frayed ribbon had been tied around the book to keep
the pages from falling out. Hank had untied the ribbon and opened
the book, glancing at the fading, handwritten recipes recorded in an
elaborate script, then with sober reverence, he had retied the ribbon
and put the book in the bottom drawer of his fathers oak desk. He
had not looked at it again.
Sometime after, an old woman claiming to be Helen Browns sister
showed up at their front door demanding her sisters recipe book. She
was shrill and insistent and had made his mother so nervous, she hadnt
even invited her in. Hank could hear his mother telling the woman that
Helen never mentioned having a sister and if she had, she was sure she
would have left her few belongings to her own sister rather than to Hank.
Hank could see a bony, veined hand holding onto the door casing,
then being snatched back just before the door closed on it. He ran to
the side of the house and peeked out a narrow window, watching the
old woman stomp toward a faded car parked at the curb. Almost as
if she felt him watching, she turned and glared at the house, her eyes
fortunately not finding his small face at the window. Nothing about
her reminded him of Helen Brown.
They never saw nor heard from the woman again, and later that
summer Helen Browns small home was demolished and replaced
with a duplex, her wild garden turned into covered parking.
Hank closed the door of the cabinet so the tonic could brew undisturbed, then looked at the clock, wondering where Carly was. Hed
expected her to be home by now. Hed left work early thinking hed
make his tea while she was gone, but now he was done and he was
ready for her to come storming through the door.
Sitting at his desk, he drummed his fingers on the polished top, then
leaned over and unlocked the bottom drawer. The recipe book lay buried under papers that had accumulated over the yearshis best artwork from grade school, a research paper on frogs from the ninth grade,
some embarrassingly bad attempts at poetry. He pushed the papers
aside and lifted out Helen Browns recipe book, carefully turning the
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thin pagesapple butter, ankelizer, aphrodisiac. He skimmed the recipe

for the aphrodisiac. The spidery handwriting was blurred in places,
as if water droplets had dissolved the ink. Turning the lamp on, he
brought the book directly beneath it to better see the words. What he
really needed, he thought, was a recipe for something that restored hair.
Lightly touching the back of his head, he calculated the amount of hair
lefta lot, a little? Maybe there was something further on. He turned
the pages and glanced at recipes for tomato soup, head cheese, hog calmer,
until he could no longer ignore a worried nagging. Carly should have
been home by now. What if something was wrong? She wasnt someone
who should go traipsing through the mountains by herself. Picking up
the phone, he called Margos house.
Margo answered in a bright, Im-so-glad-you-called-me voice, then
said no, Carly had not invited her to go hiking. In a subdued tone, she
asked, Any idea what trail she might have taken?
Hank said he didnt have a clue. He wished he had quizzed Carly a
little more closely, but he hadnt really expected her to go. Or if she did,
he thought she would drive a short way up the canyon, walk around
some picnic area, and call that hiking. Not embark on the sort of
adventure that got a woman lost.
Let me know if you need help looking, said Margo.
Thanks, but no, said Hank. The last thing he needed was for Carly
to encounter him walking up the trail with Margo.
Leaving a note on the fridge for Carly to call him in case she came
home while he was out looking, Hank headed for the mountains.
Carly had her rock in hand when the old woman suddenly reappeared beside her, her face contorted in what Carly interpreted as a
smile. The old woman held a dirty paper plate that looked as if it
had been scavenged from someones picnic site, and on the plate was
something gooey that resembled chocolate cake.
Here you go, dear. She crept closer. Something to snack on while
you wait.
Carly looked at the heavy coating of chocolate frosting. I dont eat
sugar.
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The old woman snorted. Pretty little thing like you on a diet? She
shoved the plate toward her.
Carly glanced at Jack who had finished changing the tire and was lowering the car, but stopped midway to watch her. He didnt look pleased.
Well, maybe a bit and Ill save the rest for later.
The womans eye slits glittered.
Carly took the plate, telling herself shed eaten worse on the days
her stepmother had cooked, and selected a pinch that didnt have
frosting on it. It tasted like ash. Thanks. Wonderful, she said, jerking
open the car door and sliding in just as the front tires settled onto the
ground. Tossing the sack of nightshade in the backseat, she placed the
cake on the passenger seat and closed the door with the old woman
and Jack on the other side.
She heard the trunk of her car open, the tire and jack thrown in,
then heard it slam shut. Jack appeared at the side of the car. She lowered her window partway and forced a tight smile. Thanks.
He looked at her: a flicker of something in his eyes made her glad
he was on the other side of a locked door. Drive safe now.
Starting the engine, Carly began backing down the road, watching the edge of the gravel road and the sentinel trees in her side mirrors, occasionally glancing out the front windshield. Jack and the old
woman stood in the middle of the road, watching her. She ignored
them and turned her focus to her side mirrors as the car crept backwards along the dirt road.
When she glanced out the front windshield again, Jack and the old
woman still stood in the road. They hadnt gotten any smaller. Puzzled, Carly continued to back up, following a slight curve in the road.
When she glanced out the front window again, they were gone. She
exhaled, rubbed a cramp in the back of her neck, and continued to
back up, checking her side mirrors. So far so good. Almost there. She
glanced again in her rearview mirror, then stared.
Jack and the old woman were sitting in the backseat of her car.
Slamming on her brakes, she skidded to a stop in the loose gravel.
Heart racing, she turned around and looked. The seat was empty. She
checked her rearview mirror. Nothing.
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For a moment she simply sat and took deep breaths, then looked in
the backseat again. Nothing.
She looked at the smushed cake which had tipped over in her
sudden braking, smearing the frosting on the leather seat. Shaking
her head, she checked the back seat again. Still empty. And the road
before her and behind her. Empty. Picking up the cake, she tossed it
out the window, then began backing down the road again.
When finally her rear wheels jolted onto the paved road, she switched
gears and hit the accelerator, gravel spinning from under her tires.
Carly met Hank driving up the canyon in his stubby white car
just as she was coming down, and for an unexpected, fleeting moment
she felt as swept away as she would have had he ridden to her rescue
on a white stallion. But as she tail-gated him back home, the feeling
dissipated, the balding spot on the back of his head reminding her
that he was, after all, just Hank.
I had a flat tire, she explained when he opened her car door. But
some gallant woodsman changed it for me.
He paused, a speculative look in his eyes, then pointed at the sack
lying on her backseat. Are those your wildflowers?
She reached in, keeping the contents of the sack hidden with a
tight fist. No, she said, and threw it in the trash can.
Sex that night was better than usualintoxicating and electric.
Hank fell asleep promptly. Carly was restless. And when she did fall
asleep, she dreamed.
She saw the nightshade in the trashcan wilting, severed from its
roots and the earth. Suddenly the leaves twitched and stretched and
began taking root in a half-empty can of refried beans. It grew and
grew, flourishing in the rank darkness of the garbage can. A flower
sprang forth, a furry, dark flower. Not pretty. The flower grew larger
and larger, and Carly realized it wasnt a flower at all. It was some kind
of animalbut not an animal. It was the old woman in her fur coat.
She climbed from the garbage can and scuttled across the ground,
prying here and there with dark fingers and pointed nails, then she
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headed for the garden, stopping by the gate where the nightshade grew,
poking in the dirt, doing something unseen except for the intermittent
sparks that flew from the her fingers. Then the old woman turned and
moved toward the house, opening the side door and creeping inside.
First she slunk down the stairs to the basement, poking around Hanks
office, opening drawers and doors and cubby holes. Finally she crawled
upstairs and crouched in the corner of their bedroom, watching them
sleep. Carly tried to move, tried to scream. But her limbs were heavy,
too heavy to lift, and her eyelids felt as if they were weighed down
by dollops of dark, cool mud, and her throat was clogged with thick,
sticky frosting. She gasped and woke up, then lay staring at the darkened corner of the room until she finally fell back to sleep.
In the morning Hank was cheerful. He sat on the edge of the
bed, humming as he pulled on his socks, rocking the bed in the most
annoying way.
Carly opened her eyes and watched him, irritated. I didnt sleep
very well.
Im sorry. Hank turned and smooched her unresponsive lips.
She pouted. When does the garbage man come?
Not until Friday, day after tomorrow.
Thats what I thought. Carly flounced in the bed. He should be
coming this morning.
The cans only half full. Why does he need to come today?
Carly didnt answer, but rose from the bed and headed for the
bathroom, glancing at the corner where the old woman had crouched.
Hanks shoes were there where he always tossed them, one leaning
against the other.
When she came out of the bathroom, Hank was sitting on the
bed, putting on his shoes. He stood, a frown creasing his forehead.
Bending down, he removed his left shoe. A pebble and a crushed leaf
fellout.
Dont leave that on the floor, said Carly. I just vacuumed.
He leaned over and picked up the leaf, held it up in the light.
It was a nightshade leaf. Carlys throat constricted. Where did that
come from?
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He looked at her. Probably when I was walking around outside.

Gingerly she took the leaf from him, leaving the pebble forgotten
on the floor. Ill get rid of it.
When Hank left for work, Carly walked out to the garden. The
ground around the woody nightshade was undisturbed, and the plant
was flourishing with hundreds of lovely, shooting-star flowers. Carly
grabbed a handful of the woody vines and tried to pull it from the
ground, but only succeeded in pulling off a few leaves, staining her
hand a poisonous-looking green. The plant would need to be dug out.
She was trying to wash the green stains off her hands when the
doorbell rang. Looking out the window she saw her visiting teachers, Sister Rawlings and Brenda Locke standing at the door. Damn.
Even when she was in a good mood, she barely tolerated their visits.
It would be okay if they actually liked her and wanted to talk about
interesting things, such as herself, but they only wanted to preach to
her and read scriptures. She hated that.
She opened the door. Id forgotten you were coming.
Looks like youve been working in the garden.
Hmm. Yeah. Carly followed them into living room and sat on a
hard chair. She folded her hands in her lap to hide the green stains
lest by revealing them, one would suspect shed had congress with
thedevil.
The visiting teachers made their usual pleasantries then Sister
Rawlings opened her battered scriptures. Every month she would tell
Carly that the scriptures had belonged to her dear husband, Ned, now
long-dead from a heart attack, and they were especially holy to her.
The thin pages were creased and marked and highlighted to such an
extent that Carly wondered how anyone could even read the words.
The old woman slowly turned the pages then stopped, pointing
with a long broken nail, stained. Carly had never noticed how stained
her fingertips were, almost as if she was a smoker. The broken nail
followed the words while Sister Rawlings monotonous voice intoned
a severe indictment. You will bring death and evil into your home.
Satan desires your soul.
Carly fidgeted. It says that? Ive never read that.
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Its written in the margin. Sister Rawlings looked up at her through

cataract-clouded eyes. Ned must have written it.
Sister Rawlings went on, but Carly didnt listen, impatient for them
to leave. She doubted that Sister Rawlings could read anything, much
less some scribble that Ned had written. She could hardly see. Besides,
Carly hadnt brought death and evil into her home. And she was certain Satan didnt want her blighted soul anymore than he wanted anyone elses.
Hank replaced the phone and gazed at the diagrams on the wall,
not seeing them. Carly had been frantic, going on about some deadly
nightshade growing in the backyard, insisting that they get rid of it.
Now. She had railed on about the man at the nursery, who was an
idiot because hed told her the plant was very invasive and almost
impossible to eradicate completely. She wanted Hank to call someone.
He knew smart people, she said. They would know what to do.
Hank hoped she would calm down by evening so he could get
some sleep. When she got going like this, it could last for weeks. Hed
call the extension service and find out what they suggested. That
would, perhaps, mollify her until he got a chance to go out and dig it
up himself.
His secretary beeped him and said Chris Collins was there to
seehim.
Chris was an old friend who taught at the university and occasionally had some student that he wanted to intern with Hank. Usually
Hank was more than happy to have someone to mentor, another pair
of hands to take part of the load by doing some of the busy work, but
at the moment he wasnt in the mood to be congenial.
Chris was overweight, good-natured, slightly pedantic, a natural
teacher. The man he had with him looked a little old to be a student,
and as it turned out, he wasnt. Chris introduced him as Jack Crawler,
a friend of his cousin.
Jacks just moving here from Washington. Hes a psychotherapist
with an emphasis on psycho.
Jack grinned, unperturbed by the lame joke.
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Warnock: Nightshade

Hank leaned back and assessed the man. It was hard to know about
therapists. Some of them were even crazier than their clients. But Jack
Crawler looked normal enough, relaxed and down-to-earth. He had thick,
blond hair and a square jaw, an outdoorsy sort of guynormally the kind
of person Hank liked. But for some reason that he couldnt define, he
didnt like him. He did, however, envy the man his hair, feeling a sort of
itch on the back of his own head where his hair was thinning the most.
Jack is moving his practice here, said Chris. I thought youor
Carlymight be interested in meeting him. He nodded his head in
innuendo.
Hank stiffened. Hed hoped Chris had forgotten that slobbery, weepy
confession from the previous summer. Theyd been standing on the river
bank, casting lines across the rippled water, when Hank mentioned that
Carly was seeing a therapist and it wasnt going well. The therapist had
said Carly was a psychological mess and it was likely either she or their
marriage wouldnt survive. In the midst of trying to explain to Chris
why the therapist was wrong, Hank had gotten all snuffly and choked
up. Chris had patted him on the shoulder then gazed across the river in
manly silence.
Hank frowned, clicking the pen he was holding, in and out, in and
out, then glanced toward Jack Crawler who sat watching him with
an expression that made Hank feel as if he knew everything that was
going on inside his head. Maybe, he said, and laid the pen in the desk
drawer.
But Carly met Jack Crawler at church the following Sunday. He
wore an expensive tailored suit, smiled at everyone, and bore his testimony in fast meeting. Carly seemed mesmerized, surreptitiously
watching as he was introduced to other members of the ward. On the
way home she couldnt stop talking about his depth of understanding
and the compassion he revealed when he bore his testimony, and how
oddly familiar he was. The next morning Hank found her appointment date and time scrawled across the calendar.
Carly sat in the foyer outside Jack Crawlers office, thumbing
through the stack of magazines sitting beside the leather sofa. She
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skimmed part of an article about children of alcoholic parents, laid

the magazine down, picked it up again, scanned the pages for jokes
or cartoons or pictures of nice looking men, laid it down again and
picked up another magazine. At last she was summoned. Thats what
it felt like. A summoning.
She entered his office and seated herself nervously on a long couch,
brushed back her hair, and smiled up at him. He was gorgeous. Not to
mention smart and understanding and wise beyond belief. If anyone
could heal her, it would be him.
When she had first seen him at church, she wasnt sure he was the
same curt man who had changed he tire. But when he bore his testimony she knew that, in spite of the new haircut and nice suit, he was
the same man.
Leaning back on the couch, Carly waited for him to recognize her,
wondering if he would clap his hands in awed surprise, or if he would
he simply gaze at her, slowly and deliciously coming to the realization
that she was the one hed met on the mountain. She crossed her knees,
making sure her shapely ankle with it silver chain was prominent,
then tilted her head, waiting.
But he didnt seem to recognize her. Instead he pulled out a notepad and smiled at her.
Carly repositioned herself on the couch and frowned. Arent you
the one that changed my tire?
There was a flicker of surprise in his eyes, and then he slowly nodded, seemingly thoughtful. Extraordinary that we meet again, isnt it?
She offered him her most seductive smile. I dont think I really
thanked you properly for changing my tire.
Its quite all right. He laid down the notepad and studied her. My
Aunt Natalia can be a little disturbing. I hope she didnt frighten you.
He leaned forward. I was concerned when she offered you the cake.
Theres no telling what she might have put in it.
The cake. Is that why ...?
Why what?
Carly decided she didnt want to tell him about seeing him and his
Aunt Natalia in her backseat.
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She shrugged. Nothing.

Jack Crawler went on. Natalia is very knowledgeable about plants
and their peculiar properties. In the past she was able to put her gift
to good use, but a few years ago she began doing strange things, and
after an episode at school, well, he paused. She became quite reclusive. Shes never actually hurt anyone, but ... He smiled. Thats the
main reason I came down here. My cousin called, very concerned
about her, and thought I could help.
Carly gazed at him, wondering why she hadnt noticed his eyes that
day on the mountain. They were the color of dark chocolate. And he
was so pleasant, much more so than when she had met him in the
woods.
He picked up his notepad again and looked at her. What can I
help you with today?
Well. She put on her pensive expression. She hadnt exactly thought
of what she was going to tell him.
You seem sad.
I do? She looked up at him, hopeful.
He nodded slowly, wisely.
Yes. She nodded sadly. I am sad.
How are things between you and your husband? Perhaps I shouldnt
say it, but it seems to me that ...
Yes?
He wrinkled his forehead as if he were struggling with the exact
words. It seems to me that perhaps you are mismatched. He let that
sink in, then hastened to a disclaimer. Hank is a great guy. I met him
... I was introduced to him by Chris Collins and was very impressed
with him. I had no way of knowing of course that he was married to
you until I saw you together at church. He paused. Hes a good man.
But conventional. You seem to be more ... He looked into space, once
more seeking the right words. Exoticextraordinary. And beautiful,
I might add.
Carly felt her heart, or something in that vicinity, generating a
pleasant warmth. He was exactly right about her. And so wise to
perceive it. Hank was kind but he was very staid and conventional.
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Brown and boring to be exact. Whereas she was like a wild, vibrant
bird who had yet to spread her wings. She looked at Jack Crawler and
thought how wonderful it was going to be to talk to someone who
understood her so well. And appreciated her unique, and as he had
said, extraordinary gifts.
He leaned back, clasped his hands together, and contemplated her
until she felt giddy. At last he stood and walked to a mostly gray picture on the wall.
Did you notice this?
Carly hadnt. It seemed to be a pen and ink drawing or an etching of a lot of partially clad women dancing around a maypole. The
women were Romanesque with burly thighs, muscular arms and
small, pointy breasts, which kept it from being pornographic. It just
looked old-fashioned.
Jack Crawler looked at the picture for a moment then returned to
his chair. That picture expresses the myth that our patriarchal society
has perpetuated over the years.
Carly had no idea what he was talking about but she smiled
cooperatively.
You know what the maypole represents?
Im not sure what you mean.
Its a phallic symbol.
She blushed. You mean a ...?
He nodded, then settled himself more comfortably in his chair,
charming her with a very engaging smile.
Carly felt like a filly that had just broken out of the barn on a beautiful spring day and wasnt sure which way to run. She wasnt sure if
she should jump into his lap, dash out the door, or just sit there and
look fetching. She chose the latter.
For centuries, and in many cultures, weve been taught that women
should be adoring, even worshipful of manhood, and of course, that
men are deserving of more than one woman.
Carly shifted uncomfortably. She didnt exactly agree with that thought.
Let me show you another paradigm. He stood again and went to
his bookcase, selecting a tall, thin book. He seated himself beside her
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on the couch, his thigh grazing hers, heat radiating through his crisply
ironed shirt. He opened the book to a picture. It was an engraving of
a group of people standing in horrified awe around a woman being
burned at the stake. Most people will look at this and say it is a
woman being burned at the stake because she is witch.
Carly nodded.
He turned the pages and pointed to another picture. This is the
real story.
Carly looked at picture of a woman standing in the midst of flames,
the people around her standing or kneeling in awe.I dont understand.
The woman herself is emitting the fire. These people havent burned
her at the stake as weve been led to believe over the years. They are, in
fact, worshipping her. Witches are very powerful, and that is why no
witch was ever truly burned at the stake. He looked at her soberly,
even tenderly. Those who were burned were mere women, used to
make a point and bury a truth.
Carlys pulse jumped as he laid his hand briefly on her knee. Then
he stood up and returned to his chair. She smiled at him and preened,
but he suddenly seemed oblivious to her, gazing just over her shoulder.
In a voice cloyed with longing and nostalgia he said, Theres nothing
quite so exquisite as surrendering yourself to a witch.
Carly crossed her knees, hoping to remind him that she was still
there, but he continued to look beyond her, his face folding into a
gelatinous smile that was both disturbing and unbecoming.
Hank stood by the kitchen window washing an accumulation of
dishes when he saw Carly pull into the driveway. Moments later she
wafted into the house, carrying with her a windblown sort of feeling
although the day outside was calm.
How was your appointment? he asked.
Hmm. She opened the fridge and looked in, then closed it. Arent
you supposed to be at work?
They canceled our meeting. He picked up the last cup and put it in
the dishwasher. So, what did you think of Jack Crawler
Hes all right.
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Hank dried his hands and sat down at the table, waiting for the
blow-by-blow description Carly usually offered.
Instead she stood at the window, looking out at the garden. Finally
she said, He talked about witches.
Witches? He hadnt expected that.
He said they werent really burned at the stake. He said they were
too powerful to be burned, and that they were creating the fire. The
people were actually worshipping them, not burning them.
He smiled. Thats hmmm, very interesting. But what does it have
to do with you?
She turned and looked at him. I dont know.
That night Carly dreamed about the old woman in the fur coat
again. She stood in the corner of the room, watching them sleep. Carly
struggled to sit up or cry out, but she couldnt move. The old woman
took a step toward the bed then opened her fur coat, letting it fall to
the floor. And as she did, everything about her changed. Her matted
hair blossomed into curling tendrils of silver flames, her body lithe
and smooth. The glowing slits of her eyes widened to a greenish fire.
Carly felt a hard chill on her back and legs and realized that she
herself was naked and no longer in her bed. Instead she was lying
exposed and pale on a stone-covered hillside. Faraway, lights moved.
The woman stood over Carly, murmuring strange words, then bent
low and raked her fingernails along the length of Carlys body, sending an electric current through her that made her scalp tingle and her
fingernails and toenails glow with a luminous blue light.
Carly gasped and woke to see Hank leaning on one elbow, looking
at her.
Are you okay?
She shivered and shook her head then pulled the covers up to her
chin. I had a bad dream.
I thought so. He pulled her close.
Carly lay very still, but instead of feeling reassured, she felt stifled,
smothered by the smell of bed linens and bodies, and she remembered something else about her dream, a bitter, pungent odor that
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rose from the ground, like a crushed herb or some plant growing on
the stony hillside.
Hank opened the lower desk drawer, looking for the pen hed lost
the other day. It was a very expensive pen and the last time he remembered having it was when he was looking through Helen Browns
recipe book. He lifted out his old school papers and a handful of his
badly written poetry, and finally the book, but there was no pen, only
the papers and the book and a dried leaf. It was a medium-size leaf,
unfamiliar to him, with a faint, pleasantly bitter smell to it. He considered it for a moment, wondering how it came to be in his drawer,
then swept it into the trash can.
Carly sat on the edge Jack Crawlers couch, feeling as if quicksilver
were sliding through her veins, tense with the anticipation of telling him
about her dream in the most provocative terms possible. But before she
had a chance, he picked up his notepad and said, Tell me about Hank.
Hank? Her anticipation collapsed around her like a deflated balloon. Why do you want to know about Hank?
Hes the most important thing in your life, right?
Hmmm. Sure. Most of the time. She waved her hand. He has
other interests. She leaned forward. Margo Cunningham is in love
with him. When he failed to respond, she went on. And hes a closet
alcoholic.
A drunk?
His surprise and horror gratified her. She went on. He makes this
stuff, calls it his tonic. Its mostly alcohol and he drinks it all the time.
She laid her head back on the couch and sighed like a woman with a
great burden.
That will put quite a strain on a marriage.
She nodded sadly.
He laid down his notebook and looked at her with great compassion. Tell me about this tonic.
Oh, its some recipe he got from a neighbor when he was a little
boy. Some Helen Brown who was more like a ... She was going to say
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witch, but recalling the mans seeming admiration for witches decided
to classify her as something else. She was a drunk. Probably gave him
the stuff when he was a little boy so now hes hopeless. She straightened up and looked at him with her best imploring gaze. I dont know
what to do.
He studied her for a long, soul-shuddering moment that made her
wish hed come over and sit next to her, hold her hand and comfort her.
Then he spoke. You have to get the recipe and destroy it. Or better
yet, bring it to me.
Well, its in a book.
A book? At that point he did get up and sit beside her on the
couch. Briefly, he touched her arm, his fingers lingering on her pulse.
An old book that he keeps in his desk.
He laid his hand on her knee and looked at her, his dark eyes lit
with an urgency that made her want to climb onto his lap and slide
her hand under his shirt. But she refrained.
Perhaps you can bring me the book.
When Hank opened the door to the kitchen, his lost pen was the
first thing he saw. It was sitting in the middle of the clean table. Carly
was at the counter, chopping vegetables. You found my pen, he said.
It was under the desk.
He picked it up and put it in his pocket. Ive been looking for it.
I, uh, was cleaning, and found it. She hacked at the cutting board,
splinters of carrots flying from the knife blade. Im making a salad.
Thats great. Hank sat down at the table to watch the unusual
sight of his wife preparing food, feeling a curious mix of gratitude and
apprehension. Anything I can do to help?
She shook her head, her dark hair jerking across her shoulders.
You just relax, darling. Im fixing a nice dinner.
Hank sat back. She never called him darling. And she never cooked.
Carly could feel Hank watching her as she slid the mutilated carrots into the bowl. Then she began ripping the lettuce into shreds. At
the back of the counter, near the sink, lay the handful of dark, rough
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leaves shed collected on a whim from someone elses side yard as shed
walked by. She had no idea what they were, and she wasnt sure why
shed picked them, except that, at the moment, it had seemed like the
thing to do. She glanced at them again and again until it seemed to
her that something dank and dark rose from them, emanating malignant waves across the kitchen. Suddenly scooping them into the sink,
she turned on the garbage disposal and listened to the grinding, sucking sounds carry them away.
Carly and Jack Crawler sat next to each other on the couch,
perusing Hanks strange book with its aging leather cover, the frayed
ribbon that bound the loose pages discarded on the floor. She didnt
think Hank would mind that she took it. But just the same, shed
rather he didnt know.
She leaned into Jack Crawler, feeling his warmth and smelling
a kind of woodsy scent. She wasnt sure if it came from him or the
book, which contained recipes for everything from pickled peppers to
Christmas biscuits to a cure for something as obscure as brain fever. He
had made raspberry lemonade for both of them, and they sipped and
giggled and nudged each other like teenagers as they slowly turned
the pages, reading the recipes and speculating at their origins. Suddenly, halfway through the book and at the top of the page, Carly saw
the words sleeping poison.
She gulped, the lemonade uncommonly sour in her throat. She
hadnt expected the book to actually have a recipe for poison. Casually she covered the words with her hand and turned the page, but not
before she saw listed among the ingredientsnightshade. She turned
several more pages, her heart skipping lopsidedly in her chest, until
Jack arrested her hand and turned back the flimsy sheets of paper,
pausing at the guilty page. Sleeping poison. What do you suppose
that would be?
She stared at the words, sleep from which one does not wake, and felt
her neck heat up. What if he knew the thoughts that had been circulating in her head for the past few days? He had, after all, caught her
cutting nightshade in the mountains. Looking up at him, she noticed
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that his eyes seemed to be swimming toward her in the most disturbing fashion.
When Carly awoke, she was lying on the couch. Jack was seated
on the floor beside her, rubbing her feet. She frowned at him and for
a moment he seemed very unfamiliar. Which was odd because she
knew who he was, and yet, he seemed like someone shed never met.
And someone she wasnt entirely sure she liked.
Are you okay? he asked.
Yes. She swung her feet around and sat up. I guess I fainted or
something. I should go. She reached for her purse.
He helped her stand and walked her to the door, handing her the
book. You cant leave this here.
No. She looked at the fragile book, noticing that it had been
rebound with the ribbon. Ill take it home.
The house was empty when she got there, and she was grateful
for that. She had driven all the way home trying to figure out how to
transfer the book from her car to Hanks desk without him noticing.
But his car was not in the garage. She pulled in and tucked the book
under her arm, heading straight for the basement.
The lamp on Hanks desk with its greenish shade was lit, which
disturbed her a little because she was certain shed turned it off when
she got the book out earlier. Seating herself in his chair, she opened
the bottom drawer, revealing the jumble of papers that had lain on
top ofthe book. She lifted them out and piled them on the desk, then
placed the book in bottom of the drawer. Then she picked up the
papers and started to drop them into the drawer, pausing only when
she saw an envelope with her name on it. She hadnt remembered
seeing it earlier.
In the envelope were pages of handwritten poetry. She flipped
through them, stopping at one that said, For Carly, Light of My Life,
Companion of My Heart. It was quite lengthy with numerous attempts
at a rhyming poem, lots of crossed-out and erased words. An ode to
her that was sentimental and elaborate. Maybe even a little overdone.
But she kind of liked it. She read it again, then picked up another.
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Ive been swimming in this glass of root beer for too long now, and the
bubbles are killing me. That was complete nonsense. Hank was so silly
sometimes. She picked up another poem written on less yellowed
paper in Hanks mature script. Traveling in this body of joy, vehicle of
death, through acres and rows of neatly packeted poison to a land of almost
winter. She raised her eyebrows. That was apt. She continued reading
the poem. You will bring death and evil into your home. Satan desires
yoursoul.
Carly dropped the paper. Hank wouldnt write that. He didnt think
like that. But shed heard it before. That dead husband of Sister Rawlings had written it in the margin of his scriptures.
Inexplicably angry, she stuffed the poems back into the envelope
and threw it in the drawer, then stood to leave. Reaching to turn off
the lamp, she saw something she hadnt noticed before. A small green
leaf. Fresh. And it smelled like that stony hillside in her dream.

125

Behind the Mask

Paul Swenson

My father was a secret

smoker. Used a bellows
to smoke honeybees.
Hypnotized them,
so that only groggily
could they take wing,
and then forget they
had the urge to sting
the man behind the mask.
Made me want to ask,
was that really him in there?
Strangely exoticmuscular
male, shrouded by a veil
of mystery. Wore gauntlet
gloves to shield his hands,
mesh curtain on his face,
in case a random, angry bee
might solve its lethargy.
It was him all right. Light
on his feet, honey of a man,
passionate and funny.
Sedated bees: made them
relax, so he could thieve
sweet stash from sheets
of wax, accrued on wire
frames he made himself
and hung inside the hive.

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Swenson: Poems

As the bees got sleepy,

my dads anticipation
came alivecould taste
the honey bread my mother
made. So sweet himself,
could charm the birds out
of the trees, but chose instead
to fell them with an air gun
when they chewed his cherries.
My father was a joker. When
a nosy neighbor confronted
him in riled alarm to protest
that his swarm was loose,
and occupied her peach tree,
he took a look and seriously
inspected just one bee. Not my
brand, he said. Later, brought
the grumbler honey bread.

127

Traces of Laraine
Paul Swenson

On the causeway
on the way to
Antelope Island,
strange new view
dark ribbon of road
slices through doublesided, endless blue.
Memory stained
by traces of Laraine
enigmatic pastel faces,
celestial tiers,
from a poem called
all tight right here.
Slung low over
the water, chunks
of cloud reflect
as glaciers.
From his place
in the rear seat
of Marvs Toyota,
Prayer Dog
rests his head
on my shoulder,
gulps pale scene
of dead sea,
close sky,
featureless infinity
through dog eyes.
Just ahead,
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Swenson: Poems

on the island,
what is it
Shizumi senses
when he moans?
Ageless beasts with
shaggy, handsome heads,
their tawny hides
redolent of sage.
And yes, there are antelopes
on Antelope Island.
Lope along gnarled
slopes of desert floor,
as bright hen pheasant
suddenly presents itself
to soar past our windshield.
At the Bison Point Bistro,
Marvs cooler yields
strawberry lemonade
in a can. Huge, plastic
bison glows in the sun.
We stand on a bluff,
overlooking rough
country and placid surf.
Prayer Dog, nosing northeast,
assumes prayer pose.
Just a year ago today,
Marv says, from beneath
his Red Sox cap,
he and Laraine
were together at Fenway.
After the semi jackknifed
in Idaho, where Guy,
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Laraine and Lena

couldnt avoid the crash,
Laraine held on
for a week in ICU.
Then, despite what she
was forced to leave,
did the road to celestial blue
float as straight and true
as this causeway
we take back?
All tight right here,
she wrote.

Pyramids, Giza Plateau, Egypt, approx. 2600 bc

130

Cheddar
Joshua Foster

After hearing about Toms death, I made a rule about not getting in. Instead, Id sift from the side. But that December night was
an exception: I found a miracle dumpster. In the very first grocery
sack was a book-sized brick of cheddar cheese still wrapped in store
cellophane. I stashed it in my coats big pocket and then climbed in,
reasoning that if someone tossed out a perfectly good chunk of cheese,
God only knew what else theyd dump.
The dumpster sat in the parking lot of a small apartment complex
in Rexburg. Ten duplexes, tops. I figured a few minutes in the trash,
then all the doors, then back to the tracks. Rooting through bags and
boxes, I didnt hear the man approach. I looked up at him too late
he was already peeking over the lip of the dumpster.
Help you? he asked, and sort of stumbled back. Young and pudgy,
he stood in the shallow light of the streetlamp and shuffled in the snow.
The bags of garbage crowded in around my knees, holding me
there, and that fermented smell reeked against frozen night. It wasnt
an unpleasant or new thing for me. What was different was that Id
been caught.
Cant believe what people throw away, I said, extending my hand
out of the dumpster. Im Chuck.
The man came closer and peeked over the dumpsters lip, scanning
through banana peels and diapers and empty cans. Wouldnt have
found some cheese? he asked and looked up.
Havent found much of anything.
Forget it. He took my hand. Davey.

Honorable mention, 2008 Irreantum Fiction Contest

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Irreantum

I helped myself out of the dumpster. On the ground, I brushed

off and fished out my laminated magazine-subscription card from my
front pocket. You look like a smart guy. You a reader?
Davey nodded.
I got a deal for you. Two magazines, ten bucks the first month, a
dollar every month after that.
Really? Davey asked, rocking toe to heel on the icy pavement. He
slapped his hands together and blew into them.Got Sports Illustrated?
Buddy, I said, handing him the magazine card, I got everything
from Hustler to Great Housesweeping.
Davey laughed at that. Most everyone did. If Im anything, Im
amiable. Davey took the card and looked at its face, then turned it
over, and examined the blank side. He handed it back.
So what dya say? Interested?
Got to tell you, Davey said. Things are tight.
They always are, I said.
Had much luck selling magazines? he asked.
Here and there, I said, sliding the card in my pocket alongside the
pilfered cheese. Id sold zero subscriptions on the night. Not that it
mattered since they never got the magazines anyways. I was just too
proud to beg, preferring to earn my cash. Id found the magazine card
in a Sacramento recycling bin.
Davey looked back at the apartments. Its eleven. People turn in
early here.
So Ive seen, I said. The whole town had been dead since I got out
of the Western Goods semi a few hours back. Bummed down from
Bozeman with a frozen-food driver who said he was going out to Mud
Lake to scare up an old girlfriend and then make his school deliveries.
He let me out on the shoulder of US-20 with a cigarette, a worn out
pair of work gloves, and instructions on how to get to Rexburg.
On the way in, I knocked the doors of the houses, framed in blinking strands of red and green lights, but no one was interested. One
man got all wrinkled when I mentioned Playboy, telling me it was
wrong for a youth to be spreading such filth through the world.
Itold him a youths got to spread something, making for an awkward
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Foster: Cheddar

moment. Certain hed call the cops, I ducked down back roads and
followed the railroad tracks into town.
A youth? Hell, Im twenty-six. Havent been young since Jordan
quit the Bulls.
I lurched along in search of something stout to drink, but all of
the stores were closed for the night. Club Strata, a vacant dance hall,
was attached to a Jiffy Lube mechanic shop. In the town center, a lone
tinsel-wrapped Christmas tree crackled in the clear cold. An inch of
snow coated the stationary cars, the power lines, and the edges of the
few two-story buildings. On the hill rose a glowing building both
alien and angelic. Not a liquor store to be found. When I inhaled, my
nostril hairs stuck together. It had been a strange and lonely night
until finding the dumpster.
You sell any magazines in there? Davey joked, nodding toward
the garbage.
Got a few bites, I said. What can I mark you down for?
Chuck, listen. Id really like to, but I cant.
Its only ten bucksthats two meals at McDonalds.
I know, I know. Davey looked me up and down, rubbing his hairless chin. He blinked. Man, youre skinny, he said. Come in. Well
have a bite to eat. Then well talk it over. Hows that?
In my eight years of wandering, Id learned to be picky and protective. Id learned truckers arent strangerstheyre normal workaday
folk, playing the game to make a living. The same with other hitchers.
But Daveys kind, the kind who invited you in, they showed up in the
papers in stories about lampshades made of stray cats and pickle jars
full of human digits.
Whatve you got? I said.
I was going to make sandwiches, but I lost the cheese, Davey said.
The yellow light glinted off his wire-framed glasses and illuminated
his wispy widows peak, making him look as dangerous as your average eighth grader. So now Im going to make some pancakes.
I cant stay long, I said.
Thats okay, Davey said. I need some shut-eye.
Aint gonna call the cops? I asked.
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Do I need to?
I thought about that for a bit. As far as I figured, I hadnt done
anything illegal yet. No, I said. Im a stand-up guy. And I followed
him to his apartment. I could take him if things got hairy.
Daveys apartment was small and nine shades of brown: Carpet,
couch, TV stand, foot table, picture frames, and closet doors were all
varying hues from dark chocolate to lightweight cardboard. A plank
inscribed with Welcome To Our Home advertised from the door. A
few candles, as thick and tall as coffee cans and colored nutmeg and
cashew, stood next to the telephone on the round, Formica kitchen
table. The only things that werent brown were a foot-tall plastic
Christmas tree near the hallway and a painting of a red-robed Jesus
that judged down from above the television.
Not that I had a problem with brownId grown up with the color.
In Guthrie, Oklahoma, it was the staple hue, from the hills to Cottonwood Creek to my best friend Tom. Tom would get pissed if you called
him black, arguing he was cocoa. He and I shared some good times as
salt-and-pepper Okies until he ran away to Dallas at fifteen. I heard
later from a group of bums at Cement City that Tom liked sleeping in
dumpsters. They attributed that to his disappearance, reasoning the
garbage truck must have snuck up in the middle of the night.
Just inside the front door, Davey demanded that we remove our
shoes, warning his wife Meg would kill us if we tracked in parking-lot
sludge.
Youre married? I asked, and thought to run. Women have a harder
time with me than men, it seemed. But I quickly changed my mind.
Too hungry to run. Instead, I said, I got some pretty ugly socks.
Davey opened a closet and took down a department-store hanger.
Dont worry. Megs not here. Shes a nurse at RMC. She works graveyard, except they dont call it that. Too depressing, you know? Then
he said, Hold on, dont take your shoes off just yet.
He disappeared around the corner. I heard wood drawers screech
against wood rails, open and shut, and Davey returned with a pair of
gray wool socks and tossed them to me. Keep them, I havent been
skiing in years, Davey said. Give me your coat. Relax.
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I got it, I said, taking the hanger and hanging my coat lopsided
in the closet between crisp sweatshirts and windbreakers. I moved to
the couch, so soft and pillowy, and sank down until my chin rested on
my chest. I pulled off my old wet socks and balled them up and tossed
them at the door. They landed in the crook near the closet. Id throw
them away after dinner. I pulled on the woolies and waggled my toes
until I felt them heating against each other.
Man, I said to Davey, who was in the kitchenwhich was really
just an extension of the living room, no wall blocking our conversationIm as warm as Southern Comfort.
Davey took down an automatic mixer from above the refrigerator.
Is that some saying where youre from?
No, I said, grinning, I just made that up right now. Pretty
good,eh?
Yeah, Davey said. Its all right.
You wouldnt have some? I probed, knowing how fine a drink
would do me. I watched Davey for a response, but he just squinted.
I mean, it doesnt have to be Southern Comfort. Id take a lick of any
firewater, barring the rubbing sort.
Oh, Davey said, comprehension spreading across his face. You
want a drink. He opened and shut cupboards, taking down bowls and
measuring cups and flour and, to my disappointment, not one bottle.
He found a large cup and filled it with water from the tap and walked
it across the room to me. I took it for lack of something better, stronger.
Davey did the whole shebang: measured the flour, spooned in
chocolate chips, broke the eggs and cut the butter. He moved about
the kitchen with purpose and wiped his hands on a dry dishrag.
Whered you learn that? I asked.
Ive been on my own awhile.
Tell me about it, I grumbled, but I cant make pancakes.
Its a God-given talent.
Your wife is some lucky lady. Got any pictures?
Davey pointed to some framed photos hanging behind the couch.
In one, Davey and Meg leaned back to back, hands pointed as if they
were spies holding guns, goofing in their wedding getups. In the
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background stood a fairy-tale church, paper white with spires and

towers and stained-glass windows.
Pretty, I lied. Meg wasnt much in the looks department. I left the
couch and went to sit at the kitchen table, a wobbly Formica number,
so I could better hear Davey.
We met in theatre club, he said. At high school.
Where? I said.
Rigby. Just down the road. You ever been?
Not yet, I said. How do you think magazines would go over
there?
I hate to tell you this, Chuck, but there arent a lot of readers
around here.
Tragic, I said. Our kind is a dying breed. I picked a fork from a
cupful of silverware sitting as the tables centerpiece and pricked the
prongs against my thumb. You guys get hitched right out of high
school?
No, I went on a church mission for two years. She got her nursing
degree. We were married in the Idaho Falls Temple eleven monthsago.
A mission, I said. Like to Africa?
Try Cincinnati. Spanish speaking.
I sniffled hard, then swallowed. Did you pick that?
No. The Churchwell, technically Goddid.
Youd think hed have sent you someplace a little more exotic.
I liked it, Davey said. If only the whole world was filled with good
Buckeyes. Scents of cinnamon and maple and frying meat wafted
about and made my stomach noisy and anxious.
Now go wash up, Davey said. Its almost ready. He folded the
dishrag and threw it over his shoulder as easily as if putting on a baseball cap.
In the bathroom, I washed my hands and face. On the mirror in
erasable marker was a red-stenciled heart and the phrase, Youre a
Cutey Marootey! scrawled underneath in what I imagined was the
curly handwriting of Meg. I pulled on the mirror and the medicine
cabinet opened. Nothing interesting but store-brand headache medicine. I pocketed a palmful.
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When I came out, Davey had set the table with paper plates and a
stack of steaming flapjacks, ten high, and a tangle of bacon.
Look all right? Davey said.
I sat down and loaded up. The butter slid off my knife and disappeared, and the dough sponged up all the syrup I dumped on. Davey
took a few cakes and did the same, but seemed more interested in
watching me eat.
You look like a kid that lived next door to me growing up, Davey
said.
In Rigby?
Yeah, but I cant remember his name.
Wasnt me, I said, then took seconds.
Whats your story, Chuck?
Its complicated, I said. And boring. People asking for my details
made me nervous. I turned the tables and asked Davey why everything in Rexburg closed at ten.
Who knows? he said. I just came here for college.
You going to be one of those forever students? I asked.
Predental. I apply in two years. Then hopefully, one day, Ill go
back to Rigby and open my own practice.
Cant imagine sticking my hands in other peoples mouths, I said.
He shrugged. You do what you got to do.
Aint that the truth, I said, and looked down at my hands. In the
crease between my thumb and forefinger was an open sore, a cut from
vaulting into a dumpster in Helena. My fingernails were black with
illegally disposed of motor oil and roofing tar from some bins near
Dillion. I doubt anyoned want these meat paws in their mouth.
Right now I sweep the library early morning. Anythingd be better
than that.
How old are you, anyways? I asked.
Twenty-two, he answered.
You shitting me? Married, soon-to-be dentist. You got life pinned
down.
Its just what we do around here, he said.
Whats that supposed to mean? Is that some sort of saying?
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Well, were all pretty much Mormon.

No kidding, I said. So wheres your other wife? I licked my fork.
Davey shook his head. We dont do that anymore.
Too bad, I said. You know, thats a lot of, well, and not to sound
crude, I thumped the heels of my palms together to show him what I
meant. Davey smiled and ate a few bites.
Ones plenty, he answered. Sometimes even too much.
My mouth was dry and sticky. I asked for a glass of milk and he
obliged.
And get this. Davey poured half a glass. Megs expecting.
Damn, I said. A childa child of my ownwas something Id
never considered. Why did people have them? Hard enough, trying to keep myself from gnawing off an arm in hunger. Wish I had
something to give in celebration. Bringing a kid into this crazy world
seemed like a one-way ticket to starvation. I took the two last pancakes and scarfed them down.
We moved to the couch and watched TV for an hour. The food,
that soft sofa, the pleasure that came from being confided in; I could
have stayed there a long time. At least until morning.
During a commercial in some late late show, the keys jangled
behind the door. Davey flinched in the couch, and my heart thumped
harder than usual. Hed made it halfway to the door when Meg stumbled in. She started to speak, but then stopped and stared at me, measuring me from my new socks to my mussed hair. Then she stared
hard at Davey.
Whos this? Meg asked her husband.
Chuck, Davey answered. I found him in the garbage.
Huh? Meg shook her head. She looked angry and confused. Meg
opened the closet, and my pulse raced again. She struggled to get out
of her coat, and Davey helped her.
Whats wrong? he asked. Why are you home? You dont look
sogood.
Now that he said that, she did look like shed fallen off the wagon.
I threw up at work. They told me to take the night off. Meg looked
from him to me and back again. Hon, can I talk to you for a minute,
alone?
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Foster: Cheddar

It was time to go. I got my coat, the cheese side heavier, and slipped
it on before Davey came back.
Hate to do this, but we need to hit the hay, Davey said.
Understood. And though I didnt want to say what came next,
Idid. Davey, I can get you a year of Mother & Child for ten bucks.
Davey looked back at Meg. She shot him a glance that meant
murder.
No thank you, Meg said. Then she puckered her mouth in nauseous panic and scampered for the bathroom.
I felt ashamed that I couldnt let things be and move on.
Davey, in a hustle, flipped open his wallet and extracted some cash.
Good luck.
I crumpled the bills into my front pocket. Youre better than most.
Outside, in the winter cold, my boots squeaked. I scanned for new
garbage while waiting for the last of the apartment lights to click off.
Once they did, I tried the cars. Every one was unlocked. I grabbed
handfuls of loose change, a screwdriver, some prescription pills. Then
I got into a dented Ford pickup and rummaged through the jockey
box. The Ford had an after-market CD player. I tugged it a bit, and
then wedged the screwdriver under its lip. I busted an air vent, got
the deck hanging halfway out, and reached into the cars innards and
pulled apart the plugs. Id sell it to a trucker, hot or not.
The pancakes were a warm, doughy loaf in my belly. The bucket
seat was pokey but comfortable enough. I realized that Id left my
ratty socks in Daveys place. I needed to get them, hated the thought
hed have to touch them. With the deck in my lap, I shut my eyes for
a minute, reasoning that it was better to sleep here than along the
tracks. Id go back up for the socks once Davey and Meg were asleep.
Who knows how long I was out, but I woke up when the door
opened. I panicked and leapt into the dark. I didnt get far, jerked back
by the collar of my coat.
Chuck? came Daveys voice.
I wrenched my coat free and faced him.
You scared the crap out of me.
Get back, I said, and cocked the deck above my head, ready to hurl
it at him.
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What the heck? Davey stepped back. He wore coveralls, an unzipped

coat.
Ill do it, I said, raising the CD player higher.
Davey looked to his open door and then back to me, figuring it out.
We stalled there in the early morning. A wet mist hung around us, and
the air smelled of snow.
Davey took a step forward. Chuck, what do you need?
I inched my arm back. Dont come closer.
He took another step.
Dont. Im not kidding.
When Daveys foot was midair, I pumped the deck at him. He
flinched and lost his footing on the ice. He flat-assed right there in
the parking lot. He sat like a kid, heavy and beat, legs spread, and
didnt say a word.
I ran, and things came to me through the fog. Naked maples. A
deserted playground. Sirens. The loading docks of a warehouse store.
I stumbled upon a riverbank, followed it to a bridge, and went underneath. I backed myself to the concrete abutment, out of sight.
The sirens disappeared and were replaced by the sounds of the
awakening city. Traffic shook overhead. The cars sloshed through,
sheeting wet gunk down both sides of the bridge. Uneven pieces of
black rock jutted up through the frozen river like some broken vertebrae. Water trickled through the center. A gust of wind came, like thin,
wet fingers, chilling me every now and again.
I sat under the bridge watching snowflakes fall, big as leaves, as the
morning light, thick and gray, crawled in from the east.
Man, did I feel shitty about Daveys smashup. People helped me
out all the time, but the aftertaste of pancakes and my warm toes
reminded me that Davey didnt just help me outit was something
bigger. And I had ruined it, just like I had with Tom.
In the Okie August dog days, Tom and I would swim in the red silt
floodwaters of the Cottonwood then wed dry on the blacktop, each
of us facing a different direction to watch for cars. After we dried, our
bodies would be plastered red from the river grit. One day, Tom and
I traced out messages in the soot, giving each other temporary tattoos
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Foster: Cheddar

on our backs. I thought it funny to pen out Nig.

Tom wore the advertisement into town, and, first thing, that damn
drunk, yellow-eyed Charley,told Tom what it said. Tom punched me
in the mouth and ran home, leaving for Dallas that fall without ever
speaking to me again.
When I showed Charley my back, he said Tom had drawn a pair of
great big eyes. But I knew they were a pair of grade-A tits, which were
Toms adolescent obsession.
Under the bridge in Rexburg that day, I convinced myself I was
low. Dog shit. Worse than thatthe old dog shit rotting beneath the
new dog shit. I questioned the magazine scam. The CD player, with its
knobs and screen, seemed to stare accusingly. The block of cheese
which Id removed from my pocketglowed like an orange wart
among the river rock.
It snowed for hours straight. I couldnt see the sun, but felt the
hours tick away, slowly.
At near dark, I unwrapped the cheddar. It had frozen hard, so I put
it under my armpit to thaw, a trick Id learned from some underpass
bum. I took a crooked chomp and I chewed until I could swallow
the gummy mess. It was slow going down my throat, and stopped
near my Adams Apple. I coughed, but didnt have the air to push it
out. I gulped, but the cheese was too thick to slide down. I knocked
my chest into the easement, then punched myself in the chest. White
flashes blasted behind my eyes. Dizzy. I thought this would be my
deathalone and cold, freezing and hungry.
I stumbled toward the creek, hoping a gulp of water would undam
the blockage. My boot caught a crag and I went down hard, taking a
rock to the gut. The cheese exploded from my mouth. I wheezed and
coughed. Served me right for not returning it in the first place.
I waited until midnight, or close to it, before leaving the bridge,
figuring to track through town and to the highway. In one coat pocket,
rewrapped cheese; the other, the CD player. This place was not for me.
In the hours after Id nearly died from the cheese, I daydreamed of
a southern flight to someplace warm. Tucson, El Paso, maybe even
Guthrie.
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But I ended up behind the dumpster at Daveys. I waited for the

lights to go out in the apartments. Once they did, I walked straight
for Daveys pickup. A few inches of snow blanketed the truck, and the
doors were lockeda good thing. I brushed off a spot on the hood,
put down the cheese, and stacked the deck on top, careful not to get it
wet. I wanted to leave a message for Davey and thought to write it on
the windshield. A fat-lettered, Thanks? A sincere but skinny, Sorry?
The thought of drawing a crooked penis crossed my mind, and I
laughed aloud, remembering Tom. I ungloved my hand and stretched
out my index finger. A door slammed from the apartments.
I fell alongside the truck and scooted underneath. Footsteps shuffled
toward the parking lot. Staring up at the bent metalaxles and ujoints
and oil pan coated with ice and red road sand. Just millimeters from it,
I wanted to stick out my tongue and lick it, bind my body here until
either I was caught, or dead. Instead, I sucked in my breath and froze.
The steps went out to the dumpster, and the trash crashed in. Hard
plodding came back through the lot. In that open space between
ground and truck, Daveys boots appeared, close enough to spit shine.
I heard him lift the cheese and stereo deck from the hood. It seemed
like hours, with him standing there, looking, Im sure, all confused.
Davey sighed and mumbled my name.
What would it mean to reach out and untie Daveys bootlace, tackle
him in the snow, roll and roar like fifth-graders? To say out loud,
Davey, Im down here.
But before I acted, my friend trudged back to his apartment. Iheard
a door slam shut.
A cold moment passed before I dared to crawl out, dust off, and
show myself.

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Fiction Contest 2010

The Association for Mormon Letters and Irreantum magazine will begin
accepting manuscripts for the ninth annual Irreantum fiction contest on
January 1, 2010.
Because Irreantum is a literary journal dedicated to exploring Mormon
culture, all contest entries must relate to the Mormon experience in some
way. Authors need not be LDS. Any unpublished fictional form up to
8,500words will be considered, including short stories and novel excerpts.
Authors may submit one or two entries. Irreantum staff and members of the
AML Board are ineligible.
The first-place author will be awarded $250, second-place $175, and thirdplace $100 (unless judges determine that no entries are of sufficient quality to
merit awards). Publication in Irreantum is not guaranteed, but winners agree
to give Irreantum first-publication rights.

Submission Instructions
Deadline: Saturday, May 30, 2010
Only electronic submissions will be accepted. Email your entry as an MS
Word, WordPerfect, or RTF file attachment to contest@mormonletters.org.
In the subject line, please write 2010 Irreantum Fiction Contest. Include
your name, the title of your submission, and your contact information,
including address and phone number, in the body of the email.
To facilitate blind judging, no identifying information should appear in
the story itself other than the title of the manuscript, which should appear
as a header on each page.
Winners names will be posted on Irreantums website, www.mormon
letters.org/irreantum, on Monday, August 31, 2010.
For more information about Irreantum and the Association for Mormon Letters,
see www.MormonLetters.org/Irreantum.
With no official connection to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
Irreantum and the Irreantum Fiction Contest
are funded through a grant from the Utah Arts Council.

5 Moai Heads, Easter Island, Near the Quarry, approx. ad 700

Of the Drowned
Jaren Watson

On October 30, 1944, my father was born Johnny Ray Watson in

Pocatello, Idaho, to an alcoholic truck driver who played bluegrass
guitar in local saloons on the side and a docile, diminutive woman,
who, in the whole of my life, I never heard string together two coherent sentences. At eight, Dad got a job hand-setting pins in a bowling
alley. He walked home alone in the dark after the alley closed, one
night skirting around the cold body of a dead drunk. For a time, his
was the only income for his family of ten. When he was thirteen, my
father ran away from home with a friend. They made it eight hundred
miles, to Denver, before running out of cash and options. The Denver
police picked them up, and the kids spent the night in jail, given time
to think about life on their own. Dads friends parents drove to Denver the next day and picked up their son. My father spent a few days
in jail because Grandma and Grandpa couldnt or wouldnt come get
him. He made it home after the sheriff bought him a ticket, sticking
him on a bus bound for Idaho.
After dropping out of high school his junior year, Dad worked a
year on the railroad section. In telling the story later, he said that he
only stayed on because on the first day of work, his father said to the
foreman, He wont last three days. Convinced to come back to school
by Irene Gerber, a girl he was dating, Dad quit the railroad and graduated, marrying Irene two years later. He went on to study architecture
at Idaho State University and finished at the top of his class.
In 1972 my father, fresh from college, hired on with construction
giant Morrison Knudsen. MK had recently contracted with the Bureau
of Reclamation to build a large earthen dam on the Teton River, twelve
miles north of Rexburg, Idaho. Specifically, Dad was employed to mix
concrete in the batch plant, with the task of pouring the large concrete
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Irreantum

spillway, a huge chute that would be opened to release water into the
canyon below in the event of the reservoirs overfilling. It was hard
work, requiring long hours. Once, Dad poured concrete for thirty-six
hours straight.
Spring in 1976 saw the completion of the earthwork portion of the
dam. After four years of labor, the spillway was also complete. The
filling of the reservoir had just begun. On June 3, workers noticed two
small springs flowing clear water on the downstream side of the dam.
The springs were not deemed harmful. Two days later the dam failed.
The Teton Canyon slits through the middle of miles of farmland.
At a spot where the canyon narrows, the earthen dam towered three
hundred feet above the canyon floor, the top of the dam level with the
farms to either side of the canyon. The dam looked like a great stone
finger laid across the rift. To descend into the canyon, road crews constructed a dugway, a meandering dirt road that switched back and
forth from the top of the canyon to the bottom of the gorge.
Facing the dam from the downstream side, a power plant and concrete batch plant were built on an elevated spot on the right side of the
canyon. Below the plants and in the middle, the released water would
begin its orderly flow upon successful filling of the reservoir.
On the morning of June fifth, workers noticed a wet spot in the
left face of the dam, opposite the power and concrete plants. Two
bulldozer operators were dispatched to push material into the holes
from above. Despite their efforts, the wet spot grew, and within an
hour, muddy water was flowing down the dams face. The earth gave
way beneath the machines, and the bulldozers were lost in the growing torrent. The workers had ropes tied around their waists and were
pulled free of the swamped machines just before they were taken.
That morning, I was within the protective waters of my mothers
womb. My family consisted of my parents and four older siblings,
Johnny, Lisa, Joe, and Jennica. It was Saturday, and the family planned
to spend the day together. Plans were interrupted when the concrete
superintendent at Morrison Knudsen called Dad and told him to get
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Watson: Of the Drowned

to work as fast as he could make it. Dont worry about speeding, he

said, well pay the ticket if you get one.
So Dad jumped in the familys yellow station wagon and cruised
the twelve miles to the dam. The bulldozers were long under water.
Any work for which he had been called was no longer possible. He
parked his car next to the batch plant and, leaving the engine running,
got out and was instructed to run into the tunnels beneath the dam.
There were still men working in there.
In the tunnels Dad found the men. He yelled for them to get out,
which they did. All of the men had vehicles parked near Dads station wagon and each man jumped in his car and cruised up the dugway. Dad was the last man to come out of the canyon. As he swerved
around the final curve of the dugway, he looked behind him and saw
the downrushing of a mountain of water. He drove up and out of the
canyon, and below him, the dugway disappeared downstream.
The water took the dam. It took the power plant and the batch plant.
With the handful of other men who were working that day, Dad stood
on the edge of the canyon and watched as eighty billion gallons of water
destroyed in minutes what took four years to build. Downstream, families in a dozen small communities awaited energy, irrigation, and security. They received a ruinous wall of water instead.
The names of the official dead:
Daw, Clarence, 79, died June 5 when unable to escape floodwaters
as they hit his home.
Daw, Florence, 76, wife of Clarence Daw.
Bedford, Glen, 30, was trying to help remove items from wifes parents home.
Bedford, James, 33, with Glen Bedford June 5.
Benson, David J., 21, drowned while fishing on the Teton River
below the dam.
Gillette, Mary Jones, 94, died June 6 at a nearby hospital after
being evacuated from the flood area.
Heyrend, John W., 72, died of a heart attack while loading supplies
into his car ahead of the floodwaters.
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Irreantum

McRae, Charles, 55, drowned with Glen and James Bedford.

Pendrey, Natalee, 62, died of a heart attack June 6.
Peterson, Stanley E., 51, died of an accidental gunshot wound sustained when removing a gun from his vehicle.
Virgin, Karen Ann Ottesen, 29, died June 10 near her home of a
self-inflicted gunshot wound. Authorities attributed her death to psychological problems concerning the flood.
My parents had always tried to maintain at least partial self-sufficiency. Throughout my childhood the two-acre pasture behind our
house was home to a menagerie of animals. We had Bossy, a cow my
mother remembers as docile and friendly but I remember as thundering after me if I ever ventured into the pasture. There was Black Amos
the Black Angus, a surly bull who dragged Dad four full laps around
the pasture. A nameless succession of pigs, one of which bit the mitten off one of my hands and swallowed it whole.
There were chickens. There were ducks. And there were turkeys.
My favorite were the bees. For years Dad tended several hives, and
to date, Ive tasted nothing that approaches Moms loaves of oven-hot
bread smothered with honey just off the comb.
When the animals matured, Dad loaded them into the truck bed
and hauled them to the butcher, and the family laid up meat against
the winter.
Complementing the livestock was produce from the extensive vegetable gardens we planted. Each year, we gorged ourselves on peas, green
beans, corn, carrots, radishes, onions, tomatoes, strawberries, and raspberries. We even had a gooseberry bush, the only one Ive ever seen.
Attendant to the rear wall of the house, the bush called a congregation
of children every summer. Long before the fruit ripened wine-red, the
kids liked to eat them green. Wed mill about the bush, poking among
the branches and thorns, stripping clear the sawfly worms, popping the
tight, tart berries into our mouths.
Of the gardens yield, Mom canned the excess, and our basement
appeared to me as a grocery store with its numerous shelves stocked
with countless bottles of berries and vegetables.
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Watson: Of the Drowned

At the time of the flood the familys animals consisted of a cow, a

Shetland pony, and four turkeys. Row after row of pea plants were
upshooting and the peas would be ready for picking in a few weeks.
With the looming threat of the flood, Dad moved the cow and the
pony to the shelter of a neighbors elevated field. Having no place suitable to go, the turkeys were left to fend for themselves. They took
refuge on the top step of the front porch, where they massed foodless,
feckless, waiting for the water to subside.
The floodwaters rose high enough that Dad and Johnny were able
to row a small boat over the neighbors fence into our yard to inspect
the house. The Rexburg Standard Journal featured a photo of the two
rowing up the driveway.
Reaching the house they found the turkeys still alive. A mangy
bunch, the birds were denuded and filthy, streaked with their own
excrement. They had huddled together through the flood until hunger and the cramped step had driven them berserk. Beneath them, the
concrete step was lacquered inch-deep in droppings.
On the afternoon after the dam broke, as Mom and the kids waited
from the safety of the hill that overlooks Rexburg, four-year-old Joe
sobbed for hours. What about the peas? he cried.
The water filled the basement, coming within an inch of the rafters. The main floor of the house remained dry, but it took weeks
of draining and hand-hauling the rancid water from the basement.
Having crossed through a stockyard, a fertilizer factory, and a host of
other waste-rich lots, the water was thoroughly befouled by the time
the water got to my familys house. Once it had been cleared from the
basement, there remained a congealed, silty sludge that resisted all
but the most strenuous efforts to remove it. Ironically, the very qualities of the silt that were to solidify the dam made it almost impossible
to clean up.
As devastating as was the damage to my familys home and crops,
other families were less fortunate. Upstream, homes were sheared
from foundations and floated off to ruin. Trees and power poles were
toppled, cars overturned and mangled. At the north end of town, a
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lumber mill operated, and as floodwaters reached the mill, stripped

logs numbering in the thousands were unmoored and hurled downstream as battering rams.
Everywhere the silent stink of death. While only eleven people were
killed, eighteen thousand livestock died in the flood. Reports came of
finding drowned animals in the unlikeliest places. Horses folded over
fence lines, bloating in the sun. Cows unable to swim any longer floated
downstream, occasionally into the basements of houses momentarily
lifted off their foundations, only to resettle in place with the livestock
trapped underneath. Poultry of every variety feathered the water with
their bodies. On everything was caked the silt, slick and stinking.
Cleanup took the remainder of the summer. A long and difficult
processit was made possible by the efforts of thousands of volunteers who bussed in from neighboring towns and states. The Red Cross
distributed hygiene kits, and my parents and siblings were able to tend
to the thankfully ordinary tasks of brushing teeth, combing hair. The
mundanity of the cleanup was its saving grace, for in the face of all that
work, the victims of the flood were able to postpone, for some weeks,
at least, the awful reality of what the flood had cost them in property,
time, and security. Once the streets and homes were cleared of the dead
and the debris, those losses came into focus.
At what point does one thing cease to cause another?
Like many in the area, my father was out of a job. During the protracted cleanup, he worked for the county operating heavy machinery
and received wages for his time. With his pregnant wife and four children
at home, the luxury of a paycheck was short-lived. Soon, the town was
restored to order, the filth removed, and it was time for a return to normalcy. Shortly after the waters subsided, Dad started getting severe headaches. Likely caused by trauma, the headaches persisted, and he eventually
started self-medicating. He became addicted to pain killers, and he battled the habit for twenty-eight years. Toward the end, he closeted himself
in his room during the day, sleeping most of the time. He would slip out
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Watson: Of the Drowned

at night, spending a few hours at his office downtown, trying to focus on

work with a mind hazy from the effects of Vicodin and Oxycontin.
My mother and I visited Dad in a treatment center in July 2004 in
Gooding, Idaho. The day was sunny. Most of the residents and visitors wore T-shirts and shorts. Dad said he was cold. We brought him
home a week later, after he completed the program. He walked slowly
up the stairs to his bedroom and slept for a week. Then he came out
of his room and left.
On the morning of August 3rd, 2004, I was hunched in a cornfield
along the margin of my brother Johnnys property. He was paying my
eighteen-year-old nephew Derek and me to pull weeds. It had been a
couple of weeks since the last rainfall, and the pulling was tough. As
we worked, Johnnys wife came out of the house. She told us that Dad
was missing. I remember distinctly the first thing I said. I turned to
Derek and told him sadly, Im only saying this to prepare you, but
Grandpas gone off to kill himself.
Once the clouds have gathered, the weatherman isnt the only one
predicting rain.
We looked for him everywhere we could think. The night of
August 3rd, my mother and I didnt sleep. We drove around Rexburg looking in hotel parking lots. After searching every location, we
looked in other towns. We searched Rigby. We searched Sugar City.
We searched St. Anthony and Idaho Falls. We looked for his black
Grand Cherokee, and our breath caught in our throats every time we
saw one. We never found his.
When it was light we spent the morning in the hills and mountains above Rexburg. I looked for several hours with Rich, Dads best
friend. We drove along dirt road after dirt road. At one point we came
to a gated road. In the dust were tracks left by business shoes, shoes
not meant for dirt roads in the mountains. They could have been my
fathers. The tire tracks had a conservative tread. It could have been
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his Jeep. We opened the gate and drove through, but we never found
him on the other side.
All the pistols were accounted for. In that, we gave purchase to
our hope. We hadnt thought to check the hunting rifles. If we had, we
would have noticed in the gun cabinet, somewhere along the vertical
ranks of stocks and barrels, an empty space. From a white cardboard
box of shells, a missing cartridge.
Before I had gone to look with Rich, I drove alone to the site of
the old dam. A few of us thought Dad might have gone back there.
We knew the wreck of the dam had plagued him for years. He never
could talk about it without appearing disturbed. Hed say the power
that cleaved a whole mountain was both awful and godly. The rest of
the details of that day were filled in by my mother, also touched by the
destruction.
Usually at the dam there are a few people. Fishermen, even a geologist or two (the failed dam site has been studied by scientists from
across the globe). That day I was alone. I checked the few small parking
lots. They were empty. I checked the concrete ramp that offers access
to the river. It was empty. I shut off my car and got out to stretch my
legs. My body was sore from fatigue and worry. The canyon was quiet.
The ground there on the slope of the canyon is steep, the brush
sparse. Sagebrush grows, but not a lot of it. Mostly its a jumble of
rust-colored rocks, from the river below to the grain fields above. As I
stood there I remembered a story Dad had told me.
Years before construction on the dam had begun, he and Johnny
were fishing on the river. It was almost dark when they finished, and
they started climbing out of the canyon to where the car was parked
on top. They carefully picked their way through the rocks. It was slow
going. Johnny was only three or four.
At some point in their climb, they came upon rattlesnakes. Lots of
rattlesnakes. None of the snakes had rattled or hissed, but Dad saw
one just before he stepped on it. He motioned Johnny to hold still.
Around them, he saw about a dozen. In the rocks above them, there
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were snakes coiled to strike. Snakes lay curled about the brush to
either side. And below, where they had just walked, there were snakes
on the ground. They were in trouble.
Rattlers, like other species, often winter together to conserve heat,
congregating in huge numbers. But this was summer. Strange for there
to be so many in one place. Dad did the only thing there was to do. He
lifted his son and, holding him in his arms, Dad picked his way through
the snakes as carefully as he could. They made it out of the canyon.
Neither was bitten.
Three decades later as I stood on that same canyon slope looking
for my father, I took a moment and looked for snakes. I never found
any. Looking for any possible place one might be hiding, I couldnt
locate any. Returning to the spot several times in the years since, Ive
not seen a single one.
Conversation that never happened:
Im not angry with you anymore.
Im glad. Id understand if you were.
Why did you do it?
Thats hard to say. Remember how you felt when you almost drowned
kayaking that first year?
Yes.
Feel that thirty years.
It wasnt always that bad.
No, not always. Enough.
If you could, would you change it, do it different?
There are holes even imagination cant fill.
Sometime in the month before my father died, I stood with him in
his front yard. With us were my wife Charity and our daughter Claire.
It was late afternoon, in the stillness of a thunderstorm just ended.
The sky was pillowed full of harmless cumuli, each emptied of its rain.
The setting sun charged the clouds a vivid yellow that seemed electric
in its brilliance. It was something to see, so we stood on the wet grass
and watched the gold sink to nothing in the sky. And then, breaking
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through the clouds, two rainbows appeared suddenly and shone with
remarkable distinction. The double bow was complete from tip to tip,
arcing over our heads and touching down in the blurred potato fields
beyond my parents house. Rarely have I seen a fully complete single
rainbow. Never had I seen two.
Maybe the flaming yellow clouds preceding the rainbows made the
experience so poignant. Maybe it was the cessation of a raucous summer
thunderstorm. Maybe it was merely quiet in a month of worry about my
father. Whatever the cause, that moment was a moment of beauty, one
we discussed afterward as spiritual, something that moved us to tears.
What remains is the feeling of that day. Standing on heaven-cooled
grass with my wife and daughter, with my father. That day we held
each others hands in the yard and lifted our heads toward two rainbows, the visible spectrum of the universe twice-banded over us, a
double meeting of water, earth, and sky.

Callanish Stone Circle, Isle of Lewis, Scotland, approx. 2200 bc

154

Barren
Holly Welker

I draw the blade hard

through the lemon; it splits
on the cutting board,
juice and rind glistening.
Seeds Ive dislodged rock
atop the surface of each half;
I know more seeds lurk inside.
With the knifes tip I
probe the segments at
their center seams in a process
mysterious, sexy and sad,
this coaxing forth
the seeds, seeing them
slide slickly from their
hiding places deep in flesh,
bursting into the open
like being born,
these dense, closed kernels
that will never bear fruit.

155

Creation
Holly Welker

It is not a particularly good day

or a particularly bad day.
It is a particularly smart day
that has learned a trick from God:
Tuesday the second, Thursday the twelfth;
it calls itself different things
and says, Let there be an experiment
done in the name of science.
Why shouldnt the day be smart and bold and brazen?
God made it first, back then, named it first,
and it was good, back then.
And so what, if those who discover
the trick decide to play along?
People have stood in front of their houses,
screaming at the particularly smart day
until their throats clench up
more tightly than their fists, and still
the particularly smart day comes back,
showered and wearing fresh underwear, perhaps,
or drunk and smelling like a rained-on dog,
but still the same day,
still smart and bold and brazen,
standing in the street, shouting,
What you gonna do to me, huh?
Name a soup after me?
Have a good one?
Go ahead. Live your life in one day.
Make my day too while youre at it.
156

Toward a Mission, Minus the Statement

Eric Samuelsen

At a family reunion over Christmas, I was sitting in my parents

living room when my youngest brother asked, with an eager glint in
his eye, if Id seen a recent e-mail from our other brother. I feigned
ignorance, because I knew where this was heading. The brother in
question wanted us all to write personal mission statements; he had,
and he challenged all the rest of the familyhis children, my folks,
my brother and his family, me and my familyto write ours too. This
summer, he said, we could all gather together at Lake Powell and read
each others mission statements. We could critique them. We could
offer suggestions. (Since I was the family writer, I would be particularly helpful here.) We could turn our Lake Powell time into a sort
of family meeting. We could hone and craft mission statements. We
could make goals relating to them. It was just going to be loads of fun.
My eighteen-year-old stared at me in a kind of mute agony as his
uncle excitedly laid out this scheme for us. A summer, on Lake Powell, on a houseboat, not skiing or swimming, but sitting in the cabin
working on mission statements? We werent going to be doing this,
were we? his eyes pleaded. Or, more to the point, I wasnt going to
make him do this, was I?
I am, in most respects, the family oddballnot a businessman
like a sensible person, not outdoorsy, never in a bishopric, a blanketyblank intellectual for Petes sake; whats worse, a Democrat. And so,
not wanting to spill wind from the sails of the Samuelsen family
schooner, I tried to find the right words to politely decline. Everything

This essay was delivered as the presidential address at the 2008 AML Annual Meeting.

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I said sounded like the sorts of things Id say when the Jehovahs Witnesses come knocking, or, if we werent Mormons, Mormons. Were
not interested, Im afraid. Its just sort of not us. Thanks but no thanks.
But inside, behind my polite smile, I could hear myself screaming:
A mission statement! Adverb-laden, content-free, a literary belly
buttoneveryone has one, but to what purpose? The rhetorical equivalent of a Professional Smile: the mouth is open, but nothing touches
the eyes. Impenetrable verbal sludge, odious, obfuscatory language,
newspeak, and doubletalk: in short, bad writing. As Don Watson once
wrote about mission statements: Grammar is not the problem. To
work on the grammar is like treating a man for dandruff when he suffers from gangrene (45).
And yet, can my brothers really be blamed? Arent mission statements ubiquitous in our culture? Can we go anywhere without
encountering them? Isnt that what we do in America, proactively initiate, synergistically leverage, globally facilitate, seamlessly integrate
value-added, diverse, performance-based, market-driven, cutting-edge,
high-payoff, low-risk-high-yield, principle-centered, interdependent,
seven-habits-conforming, resource-leveling infrastructures, or deliverables, or methods of empowerment, or paradigms? Going forward?
I think of entire faculty meetings devoted to our departmental mission statement. Hours of my life, I think. Hours: the plays I could have
written, the symphonies I could have composed, the diseases I could
have found cures for. And for what? To what end? To reassure whoever
was fool enough to read the thing that we were committed to assist
individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life. Thats how the
BYU Theatre Department mission statement begins: apparently weve
abandoned theatre as an art form, were all about exaltation. But note
the past tensewe were committed, the implication being that at
some point in our past we sought human perfection, but had to give it
up as a bad job. Or maybe not; like everyone else at BYU, weve devised
curricula thatre spiritually strengthening, intellectually enlarging, and
character-building, leading to lifelong learning and service. We go on
to offer some platitudes about literacy and spirituality, and then we
apparently felt the need to define those terms: we helpfully suggest
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Samuelsen: Toward a Mission

that literacy means for us the ability to readthat is, to apply the
vocabulary and grammar of theatre and media arts to uncover multiple meanings in works of art, and appreciate, evaluate, and respond to
them. Spirituality consists, not of fasting, pondering, praying, no, but
discovering, exploring, and balancing the interrelationships among the
individual, others, and Deity. As for creativity, it means synthesizing
in new ways, and illuminating human understanding through performance and production. I can see it now: Johnny, your acting in that
scene didnt really synthesize in new ways. Try it again.
My department is chock fulla virtue. We stand for apple pie, motherhood, and generosity of soul. We have a service orientation, possibly involving kittens caught in trees, and apparentlysince this one
word gets its very own bullet pointwe have a major collective jones
for awareness.
From time to time in faculty meeting, someoneits actually almost
always the same colleaguewill ask if something someones proposed
is congruent with our mission statement. This always stops the meeting dead in its tracks, because of course none of us has any idea. No
ones read our mission statement for years, except perhaps for parents
desperate for some consolation since their child has chosen to major in
theatre at BYU. Thats what these statements are for, of course: public
relations, not actually defining who we are and what were about, but
reassuring outsiders that were nothing too awful, and that were not
about anything too scary. But why should we faculty ever refer to our
mission statement? Its mental creamed wheat, into which someone
has stirred a soupon of strained spirituality and some mashed up
banalities.
The clinic where our family doctor shares a practice with several
other doctors has a mission statement prominently displayed on the
wall by the reception desk. Its full of noble, stirring sentiments, but
does have this one minor deficiency, in that it nowhere suggests that
this group of doctors sees their profession as involving in any way
the accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of disease. Im all for
treating our clients with dignity and respect, but if Im there for professional purposes involving, say, chills and a fever of 103, Ill forgo
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the self-respect. Not hard, since I will be, after all, wearing a hospital
gown. I mostly just want to not die. Would it be so hard for them to
say that their mission is basically to help sick people get better?
But that ones just sort of comically irrelevant. Mission statements
generally are used to obfuscate, to befuddle, to becloud. One companys mission statement invoked the Golden Rule, declaring We treat
others as we would like to be treated ourselves.... We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and
arrogance dont belong here. The prose is clearer than in most mission
statements, but we may find ourselves regarding it with some skepticism, since that ones from Enron. Here are two mission statements
from the CIA: Establish and maintain a partnership with our clients for long-term relationships. And we hold ourselvesand each
otherto the highest standards. We embrace personal accountability.
We reflect on our performance and learn from that reflection. Lofty
sentiments, both, but which came from the US Central Intelligence
Agency and which from Custard Insurance Adjusters?
Sometimes mission statements conceal even grimmer realities. What
is Arbeit Macht Frei but a kind of mission statement dredged from
the depths of hell? George Orwells 1946 essay Politics and the English Language warned us of the potential for language to function as a
tool for totalitarian ideologies. But when Orwell got specific, providing
samples of debased and obscure political talk, his bad examples strike
us today as models of clarity and insight. Being bipartisan here, how are
we to respond in our current climate? Okay, the audacity of hope is a
neat phrase, but then that same speaker repeats the word change as a
mantra, urging us to chant along with him: Yes we can! Or, as President Bush once helpfully paraphrased his Lord and Savior,We must all
hear the universal call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked
yourself. And Orwells world hadnt yet reached the extreme satirized
so brilliantly by former Czech dissident-turned-president Vaclav Havel
in his play The Memorandum, in which one Josef Gross, the inventor of
a new bureaucratic language called Ptydepe, finds himself arrested by
the authorities. His language is simply too perfectnot just mostly, but
completely incomprehensible. He must be hiding something.
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Samuelsen: Toward a Mission

There is something not just vaguely but overtly authoritarian about

corporate mission statements. Scott Adams, creator of the comic
strip Dilbert, has on his website a random mission statement generator. I used it earlier in this paper, to create gibberish. I understand
the need for public relations, but really, if the corporate world wanted
to be honest about its intentions, wouldnt every big company essentially have the same mission statement: We intend to make as much
money as we possibly can, without us going to jail. And thats not an
illegitimate thing to want to do. If I buy stock in a company, I want to
know that that company is full of industriously greedy capitalists. Itd
be nice if they also treated people decently, but as an investor, thats
not my central concern.
Who came up with the idea of mission statements anyway? I darkly
suspect Covey, but I dont know, because I havent read any Covey and
would sooner face the gallows. But clearly mission statements are only
a smaller part of a larger task. Having written our mission statements,
we formulate goals. My brothers have over a hundred, culled from
their mission statements. But a goals just a wish without implementation. We then are to set smaller goals, implementing the larger goals;
we create instruments through which implementation can be assessed.
And after assessment comes alignment, further goal refinement, a
revision of the original mission statement, leading to more goals and
continued assessment. As the Primary hymn puts it, We are as the
army of Sisyphus, we have been taught in our youth.
Mission statements lead to goals, and goals lead toI shudder
to say it, the word itself conveys such blandly unending torment
assessment. Like Scotch thistle, spurge, or Dyers Woad, a stubborn,
noxious, pesticide-resistant weed called assessment has been infesting
the gardens of academia for the past seven years or so. On the surface, it appears harmless enoughwe want to know if students are
learning what were trying to teach them. Fair enough. But the impenetrable prose of assessment gives the game away; this is pedagogical
corporatization writ large. When knowledge is turned into learning
outcomes, a test becomes an assessment tool, a teacher becomes a
learning facilitator, we can be sure that Dorothy has strayed very far
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indeed from Kansas. I teach at a university, not a dynamic culture

of assessment committed to a process of data-informed continuous
improvement. I want to teach good students, and research, and write.
The real danger with this entire process, from mission statement
to outcome identification to the creation of assessment instruments
and rubrics and outcome realignment strategies, is not that its so
Orwellian and oppressive, though I doubt I could find ten colleagues
at the entire university who dont find it both those things. Its that
theyre funny. Again, the prose gives it away: assessment documents
are unreadable because what theyre trying to accomplish is impossible. Assessment is like Gertrude Steins description of Oakland
theres no there there. How can you quantify magic? How can you
assess outcomes for alchemy? How can something as wonderfully
mysterious and subversive and ineffable as good teaching, or good
literature, or good art, be contained, measured, described, objectives
defined and aligned with core competencies? So of course the prose
describing assessment is banal and lifeless and flat. Dracula always
leaves his victims bloodless, because Dracula isnt alive. Hes merely
undead. And as authors from Sesame Street to Christopher Moore
to Stephenie Meyer have shown, vampires arent just scary. Theyre
also absurdly funny.
So as I sat in my parents living room wondering how to get out of
Lake Powell Mission Statement Hell, I didnt so much rage silently as
chuckle inwardly. The whole thing seemed comicalself-improvement
through self-definition, inevitably turning to self-limitation; really, how
could it not? I felt like I felt when I first heard of that great work of
American unintentional comedy, the best-selling self-help book The
Secret, which says that if we just think about wealth really really hard,
our thoughts, which are electrical impulses after all, will magnetize, and
through a process of quantum physics, attract money to us.
And yet, under the comedy I still felt some indignation. Why
should I waste a family vacation writing, and helping everyone else
write, a mission statement? I go on vacation to avoid faculty meetings,
not to look for another one. Mission statements are useless, and some
are hypocritical, and many are just flat lies. If mission statements are
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such a great idea, I thought, then the Lord God himself would have
written one.
Oops.
For this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality
and eternal life of man.
And yes, darn it, yes, that would seem to be, can frankly only be
seen as, a mission statement.
But what a mission statement! Two minutes after Moses has ruefully admitted that mankind is as nothing, which thing he had never
supposed, the Lord reveals a wider perspective. We are as nothingwe
humans. God knows us intimately, our puny ambitions, our inflated
egos, our hypocrisies and petty cruelties and meanness of soul. But he
also knows what we can become. And, no, hes not committed to helping us get there. His work, his glory is our exaltation.
The theme of this conference is The Scriptures as Literature, and
so lets parse the Lords mission statement a little more closely. Note
that bringing about eternal life for us all is his work. And certainly a
great deal of labor must be involved, nine billion years worth, to get
orbs spinning and stars igniting and primordial soups a-stirring. But
work also implies a work of art, a work of literature. We are Gods art
form. And sometimes we think to create works of art back at him:
Bachs B-minor Mass and the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Salt Lake
Temple. My dear friend Marvin Payne says he thinks of the Timpanogos Temple from time to time as a kind of drawing pinned to Elohims refrigerator by a magnet. Of course, hes delighted with it, just
as we are with the masterworks on our fridges. What the Lord is too
polite to mention is that the mountain the temple stands in front of
is one of his minor pieces. Marvin says he imagines the Lord looking
at our offering of a temple and saying Why, thats just lovely! Arent
you clever? And hes even tactful enough to use exactly the same
delighted tone of voice when the temple were showing off so proudly
is the one in Provo.
My work, and my glory. Glory, in this sentence, we rather gloss
over, or conflate with work, or if we define it at all, we say something like, When we attain exaltation, Gods glory increases. This
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suggests heaven as a kind of celestial Amwaywhen we do good, the

guy above does good too. But glory suggests something else; possibly
even an inessential resplendence or beauty or magnificence, something
spectacular added to the merely functional. Gods work is salvific
melodyGods glory is harmony and orchestration and counterpoint
and ornamentation; not just the notes perfectly played, but notes felt
and interpreted. He could just sing our salvation. But hes also bringing the backup singers and the band.
When it falls to us to describe ourselves, were far too terrified to
reveal ourselves so nakedly, or so optimistically. And so, we resort
to false optimism, to loftiness, to self-deception and pretense. Most
earthly mission statements are good subjects for satire, because the
prose in which they were written is not just dead, but stinking and
bloated with gas. All prose reveals more than we intend for it, and
mission statements, as the perfect expression of human petty vanity,
tend to reveal precisely what we would rather they concealed. What
my departments mission statement reveals, for example, is not that
we genuinely strive to put the exaltation of our students first, though
we do care about our kids, but that we, as a community of LDS artists, are terrified. We fear that well be perceived as unfaithful. And so
our protestations of orthodoxy have a desperate edge. We feel threatened and see our position as tenuous: were vulnerable; we could lose
our jobs. So we foreground faith: we are, too, righteous! We do, so,
believe in the gospel!
Our fears do have a basis: we have learned from sad experience
that a single letter from an offended patron sent to certain senior
apostles can lead to unpleasant conversations with higher-ups; were
not all that trusted by the powers-that-be. So we define to read as
to apply the vocabulary and grammar of theatre and media arts to
uncover multiple meanings in works of art because we think it protects us. See! Works of art have multiple meanings! You saw our play,
and thought it questioned faith in God, or dismissed the Word of
Wisdom, or urged young people to fornicate, but thats not the only
possible meaning! It doesnt say those bad things! You focused on the
wrong meaning! And so, Enron, a company founded on the values of
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ruthlessness, callousness, and arrogance, declares that an opposition

to those vices is central to its corporate mission. And the CIAs leadership wants us to know that they reflect on their mistakes and make
changes based on those reflections. One certainly hopes so.
But the Lords mission statement is just nineteen words long, and
written in a prose not just clear, but deeply evocative. Moses 1:39 has
rhythm and cadence, the parallelisms neatly expressed: work and glory,
immorality and eternal life. And a human being wrote that; inspired,
to be sure, by the power of the Holy Spirit, but he was one of us. We
can put into words something like a revelation. But to do that, we
need a measure of grace.
Even mission statements can read well. Even a literary form as
fundamentally vapid and pedestrian as a mission statement can be
couched in language that soars and inspires. And if even mission
statements have not just spiritual but also literary potential, then language really can do anything.
In the past year or so, Ive found myself wondering what the mission of AML might be, what the mission statement for Mormon Letters would look like. Not, of course, that I intend to write one, Moses
1:39 notwithstanding. My objections to the form, and more significantly, my objections to the way the form functions in our culture still
incline me towards obstinacy. So what if were the only nonprofit on
Gods green earth without a mission statement. Let the mission statement of AML be like the British constitutionall the more flexible
and compelling for not having been written down.
No, what Moses 1:39 really teaches us literati is not that we actually do all need mission statements, but that all forms of literature,
even the most corporatized and commodified, have value and potential. Is it possible to write a profound and important limerick? A poet
named Joel Ash has written four books of genuinely poetic limericks.
Is it possible to write a literary comic book? Do you know the graphic
novels of Frank Miller or Alan Moore?
Our mission statement, if we had one, would invoke not Covey,
but Saul of Tarsus. The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need
of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you (1 Cor.
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12:21). What we believe in, what we honor, is good writing: literature,

and the effective criticism of literature. Because were the Association
for Mormon Letters, we honor good writing by and about Mormons.
But the poet cannot say to the playwright, we have no need of thee,
nor again the essayist to the romance novelist, I have no need of thee.
We can certainly discuss, with precision, kindness, and insight, how
a particular work functions in our culture or the effectiveness of the
prose or any other matter relating to what a particular work seems
to be trying to achieve and how well it achieves it. We value criticism.
What we cant do is excommunicate any genre or approach or style
or form. Mormon literature can be transcendent or transgressive, or
both, or neither. We embrace it all.
The eye cannot say to the hand.... If I could eradicate one element from all Mormon culture, it would be our habit of declaring
works of art morally suspect. The e-mail campaigns against movies
like The Golden Compass, the seminary lessons in which teachers urge
students to burn worldly CDs, the whispered suggestion that thus
and such LDS artist has gone inactive, so be sure to avoid his latest
movie or concert, and above all, the assumption that artists and writers arent quite trustworthy, and that art tends to corrupt anyway, so
approach with caution and suspicionhow can such actions and attitudes really reflect the open inclusiveness of the thirteenth Article of
Faith? If there is anything virtuous lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. So if we had a mission statement,
it would assert that literature is testimony. Its a writer telling us what
the world looks like from where he or she is standing, or even better,
imagining how it would look if he or she were standing somewhere
else. And its good. Morally, literature is always good.
Recently, while reading an essay by David Foster Wallace, I came
across some sobering statistics. Last year, the mainstream studios and
production companies that comprise what we refer to as Hollywood
released around three hundred films, grossing approximately two and
half billion dollars. The porn industry released around six thousand
titles, grossing around four and a half billion. Count every penny
Americans spent in concert halls, museums, live theaters, and all other
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performing arts, add to it money spent in art galleries and on purchasing classical music CDs, in other words count every dollar spent by
Americans on what we might call high art, and its dwarfed by the
amount Americans spent in strip clubs. H. L. Mencken is sometimes
misquoted as having said, No one ever went broke underestimating
the taste of the American people. I would paraphrase that like this:
no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of American men
for commodified misogyny.
That, friends, is the enemy. Pornography and related industries
devoted to the degradation of womenthats the enemy, not a Philip
Pullman movie with awesome CGI polar bears. And it may be nave
of me to say this, but I believe it in my heart: art and literature are the
antidote. Pornography is to art as crack is to penicillin, but art can
be the penicillin for an addiction to pornography. Porn fundamentally anesthetizes us from intimacy, it erodes and degrades the human
imagination, it distances us from life itself. Porn is basically cowardly.
Not so literature, which even at its worst marches into battle with a
kind of gallant foolishness. It takes courage to write even a bad book,
courage and determination and invention. Even writers who arent
very skilled do something astonishingly revelatory. We can even see
the face of God in bad novels.
And so, if we had a mission statement, it would celebrate genuine human creativity, celebrate even that celebration of life found in
books that are dark or edgy or uncomfortable. Or navely optimistic or sentimental. For the fan of Levi Petersons novels really cannot say to Anita Stansfield lovers, I have no need of thee. Nor Dave
Wolverton fans to Stephanie Meyerss readership, I have no need of
thee. We can surely say, That novel wasnt effective when.... Good
criticism is always essential. And surely literature has moral implications worth exploring critically. But lets be critics, not referees. On
our court, there is no out-of-bounds.
Im calling for more inclusiveness, in a paper that started out by
dismissing mission statements as meretricious rubbish. But my larger
point is that if even mission statements can be profound, so can any
other literary form. And if language and the skilled use of language
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by genuine craftspeople can accomplish that, then theres nothing

beyond our capabilities. As Glen Hansard, winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Song put it in his acceptance speech: Make art!
Make art! Thatll do for a mission statement, at least until something
better comes along.

Works Cited or Referenced

Havel, Vaclav. The Memorandum. New York: Grove, 1990.
Orwell, George. Politics and the English Language. In A Collection of
Essays. New York: A Harvest Book, Harcourt, 1981.
Perry, Janice Kapp. Well Bring the World His Truth (Armies of
Helaman). In Childrens Songbook. Salt Lake City: The Church
ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1989.
Wallace, David Foster. Big Red Son. In Consider the Lobster: And
Other Essays. New York: Little, Brown, 2005.
Watson, Don. Death Sentences: How Clichs, Weasel Words and Management-Speak are Strangling Public Language. New York: Gotham
Books, 2006.

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Charlotte and Eugene England

Personal Essay Contest

The Association for Mormon Letters and Irreantum magazine will begin
accepting manuscripts for the third annual Charlotte and Eugene England
essay contest on January 1, 2010.
Because Irreantum is a literary journal dedicated to exploring Mormon culture, essays must relate to the Mormon experience in some way. Unpublished
personal essays up to 5,000 words will be considered. Authors need not be
LDS. Individuals may enter a maximum of two essays. Irreantum staff and
members of the AML board are not eligible.
The first-place author will be awarded $200, second-place $150, and thirdplace $100 (unless judges determine that no entries are of sufficient quality to
merit awards). Publication is not guaranteed, but winners agree to give Irreantum first-publication rights.

Submission Instructions
Deadline: Saturday, May 30, 2010
Only electronic submissions will be accepted. Email your entry as an MS Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF file attachment to contest@mormonletters.org.
In the subject line, please write 2010 Personal Essay Contest. Include
your name, the title of your submission, and your contact information, including address and phone number, in the body of the email.
To facilitate blind judging, no identifying information should appear in
the essay itself other than the title of the manuscript, which should appear as a
header on each page.
Winners names will be posted Irreantums website, www.mormonletters.org/
irreantum, on Monday, August 31, 2010.

The Charlotte and Eugene England Personal Essay Contest is funded

through the estate of Eugene England
Visit www.mormonletters.org for more information about
Irreantum and the AML

Chac Mool & Serpent Columns, Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico, approx. ad 900

Confessions of a Secular Mormon

Ryan McIlvain

Revelation
About a year ago President Hinckley came to me in a dream. He
stood hovering several inches above my bedroom floor, expanding up
and down, taller and shorter, like an accordion. At one point the vision,
weaving in and out of static, shorted out altogether; it blinked back on
a minute later. The prophet wore black wing-tips, a long trench coat,
and a gray fedora. The fedora could have been mauve, actually, or pine
green, but I couldnt tell for all the static. The nonagenarian looked
well and I said as much, and he smiled his polite, Im-on-a-bit-of-aschedule-here smile. I pulled up onto my elbows in bed, careful not
to wake my wife. I asked the prophet, seer, and revelator if I should
leave the Church. He knew exactly why I asked, of course, but he kept
to procedure. Why do you ask? he asked, and I answered with the
relatively abbreviated version: Socrates, Darwin, Shelley, Nietzsche,
Ayn Rand, Fawn Brodie, Kurt Vonnegut, my father ...
The authors and finishers of my unbelief, I said. I chuckled a little.
President Hinckley didnt.
Well, he said, I guess you might as well.
Leave the Church? I said.
Leave the Church, he said.
So thats a yes? I said.
Thats a yes, he said.
The next day was Sunday and, as usual, I went to church with my
wife, ignoring, as usual, the prophets counsel.

Third place winner, 2008 Charlotte and Eugene England Essay Contest

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Irreantum

First Causes First

I dont believe in the idea of modern prophets, and I frankly dont
spend much time worrying the question. My doubting runs deeper: it
starts with first things, first causes, namely, Are there Ones? Is there
One? Probably not, Ive decided. I consider myself an agnostic, as I
have for the past several years of my activity in the Church.
To my relief and admiration, President Hinckley, hovering several
inches above my bedroom floor, did not denounce or even vocally
disdain my skepticism. He didnt characterize my litany of unbelieving Virgils with ready-made, elliptical, and too-often smug rejoinders
like O the philosophies of men... or When you lean unto your own
understanding... or Wo unto them who trust in the arm... or, my
personal (un)favorite, When they are learned they think they are
wise... This last verse annoys me for a number of reasons, not least
of which is the fact that it was authoredlets say translated, for the
sake of argumentby a man who once wrote in a letter to the Freemen of the State of Vermont (deep breath):
Were I a Chaldean I would exclaim: Keednauh ta-meroon lehoam
elauhayauh dey-ahemayaua veh aurkau lau gnaubadoo, yabadoo maargnau comeen tehoat sheamyauh allah. (Thus shall ye say unto them:
The gods that have not made the heaven and the earth, they shall perish from the earth, and from these heavens.) An Egyptian, Su-e-eh-ni.
(What other persons are those?) A Grecian, Diabolos bssileuei. (The
Devil reigns.) A Frenchman, Messieurs sans Dieu. (Gentlemen without God.) A Turk, Ain shems. (The fountain of light.) A German, Sie
sind unferstandig! (What consummate ignorance!) A Syrian, Zaubok!
(Sacrifice!) A Spaniard, Il sabio muda conscio, il nescio no. (A wise
man reflects, a fool does not.) A Samaritan: Saunau! (Ostranger!) An
Italian: Oh tempa! Oh diffidanza! (O the times! Othe diffidence!) A
Hebrew: Ahtau ail rauey. (Thou God seest me.) ADane: Hvad tidene!
(What tidings!) A Saxon, Hwaet riht! (What right!) ASwede: Hvad
skilia! (What skill!) A Polander: Nay-yen-shoo bah pon na Jesu Christus. (Blessed be the name of Jesus Christ.) A western Indian: She-mokah she-mo-keh teh ough-ne-gah. (The white man. O the white man,
he very uncertain.) A Roman: Procul, O procul este profane! (Be off, be
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McIlvain: Confessions of a Secular Mormon

off ye profane!) But as I am I will only add; when the wicked rule the
people mourn.1

Socio-historical comments aside, did he say yabadoo? Thats, what,

a derivative of Yabba-Dabba...? And zaubok? It sounds like an 80s
break dance movie. The Spanish doesnt look particularly bona fide
either, but then again Im unversed in most languages circa 1840. So
lets assumeagain, for the sake of argumentthat Joseph Smith
was a freakishly gifted polyglot, that he nailed each language in the
above passage (he quoted from seventeen) square on the head. If he
didnt fancy himself a mite wise, he could have fooled me, not to mention the Freemen of the State of Vermont.
And how much of Josephs learning, by the way, was essential to his
salvation? This phraseappearing nowhere in scripture, entrenching itself as the most anti-intellectual cop-out of my generationwas
another that President Hinckley could have fallen back on but didnt.
He didnt fall back on anything, in fact, didnt condescend to me at all,
and for a moment I loved him for it, felt full up with the warmth that
everybody talks about. The only thing President Hinckley told me
that night was that I might as well leave the Church, and of course he
didnt really say that either. I imagined the whole encounter.

Apologia Pro Vita Mia

But why havent I left the Church? If I dont believe its doctrines,
whats the point of sticking around? Whats to be gotten? Whats to be
given? Wasnt President Hinckley-cum-my-subconscious on to something? These questions are not as rhetorical as Id like. Im mindful of
the late Elder Maxwell who said, As always, my immediate audience
is myself.2
1. Quoted from Fawn Brodies No Man Knows My History, p. 292. Occasionally
in his letters and printed appeals for national support, Brodie writes, [ Joseph] made
proud displays which so embarrassed later historians of his church that they were
quietly deleted from the official histories. In a footnote Brodie references other
examples of redacted passages.
2. Neil A. Maxwell, Consecrate Thy Performance, Ensign, May 2002, p. 36.

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Irreantum

A year before I left on my mission to Brazil, I confided to my

father that I didnt believe in God. He didnt take the news the way
Id expected he would. Id expected he would nod a little gravely, a
little proudly. Youre a man now, his nod would say, and your eyes
have been opened. Have a seat and well search out meaning in a godless universe. My father doesnt believe in most things supernatural,
and by then hed frankly told me as much. I figured his doubting, like
mine, extended all the way back to first things, first causes. It didnt; it
doesnt. He believes in God.
So: late on the night I told my father I was an atheist, he came to
my room bearing a printout from our home computer. Take a look
at this, he said, his baritone softer than usual. He sat on my bed and
sat the printout between us. It was an essay by writer and educator Mortimer Adler. Dad told me how he used to watch Adler on a
roundtable TV show, how measured and bright Adler always seemed,
how sure his intellect and his faith. The essay was excerpted, I believe,
from Adlers How to Think about God. It was 1 am on a school night.
The main premises ran as follows:
1. The existence of an effect that requires the operation of a coexistent cause implies the coexistence of that cause.
2. Whatever exists either does or does not need a cause of its existence at every moment of its existence; that is, while it endures
from the moment of its coming to be to the moment of its passing away.
3. A contingent being is one that needs a cause of its continuing
existence at every moment of its endurance in existence.
4. No contingent being causes the continuing existence of any other
contingent being.
5. Contingent beings exist in this world and endure, or continue
in existence, from the moment of their coming to be to the
moment of their passing away.3
3. I cant be sure which text my father used, or where he got it from. All I know
is that these premises resonate strongly with my memory of the piece. (See John

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McIlvain: Confessions of a Secular Mormon

If these premises are true, Dad said, still bent over the essay, then
it follows that a noncontingent being, or a god, must exist to continue
the existence of contingent beings like us. At least thats what I think
it means. He looked up into my face, regarding it a little sadly. Oh, I
dont know, he said. Maybe you can make some sense of this.
This period of my life is what my mother sometimes calls my Ayn
Rand/impressionable/confused/bitter phase. I remember an older
friend of mine leaving for the MTC. He sent us a picture of himself at
the airport, arms wrapped around his parents at either side. He stood
tall and fit and showed a white, beaming smile. He looked genuinely
happy. I felt a pang in my viscera. Look at Nate, my mother said, her
voice filling with water. Doesnt he look peaceful?
About a year later I posed for a similar picture. I am looking at it
now. In the Providence, Rhode Island airport I stand alone, all but
washed out in the light of the flash. My red tie looks dull pink, my
freckles gone, my blemishes receded. I look younger, of course, and
thinner and handsomer. My smile is more effortful than Nates was,
and more expectant. I dont know exactly what my smile was waiting on, but I know that whatever it was came too subtly, if it came
at all. I left on a mission despite my fathers misgivings (A year ago
youre an atheist and now you want to serve a mission?) intending to
experiment on the word, as Alma says. Two other verses filled out
my (conscious) rationale: For how knoweth a man the master whom
he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from
the thoughts and intents of his heart? (Mosiah 5:13) and If any man
shall do [Gods] will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of
God, or whether I speak of myself ( John 7:17). I spent two years
doing what I hoped was Gods willteaching, testifying, suspending
my unbeliefand I ended up with love unfeigned in my heart and the
selfsame doubt in my head. I remember sitting through a sacrament
meeting in a rented building in Minas Gerais. I was T-minus a month
from going home. I thought, Okay, so you dont believe it, but dont you
like it? Wouldnt you miss it if you left? Why do you need more than that?
Cramer, Adlers Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God, at www.asa3.org/
ASA/PSCF/1995/PSCF3-95Cramer.html.)

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Two months off my mission I met a girl named Brooke. She was
two weeks off her own mission. We got married eight months later.
From the beginning of our courtship I was (relatively) open about
my skepticism. I tried to assuage Brookes unease with a pair of verses
from the Doctrine and Covenants. To some it is given by the Holy
Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God..., reads 46:13.
The next verse addssignificantly, I saidthat to others it is given
to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they
continue faithful. I was in this others category, I said, but even that
was a lie. Ive always suspected Brooke knew that and indulged it, and
I know I did. The same love-sodden thinking informed my answers
in subsequent temple recommend interviews. Did I have faith in God,
in Jesus Christ, in the living prophet? I said I did, defining faith as Gee,
wouldnt it be nice? In a few other ways I prevaricated, I equivocated.
Suffice it to say I was not the first young man, and I will not be the last,
to overstate his testimony for the love of a young woman.
Five years later Ive dropped the gee-wouldnt-it-be-nice shtick,
and Ive left off going to the temple and accepting certain callings. My
role in the Church is limited but satisfying. I feel comfortable, more
or less, in my unbelieving skin. On the more days I go to church and
sing the hymns and enjoy the slowness and the quiet. On the less
days President Hinckley comes to me in dreams. I ask him if I should
leave the Church. Am I an affront to it? Is it to me? He asks why I ask
and I tell him and he says, Well, I guess you might as well. Leave the
Church? Leave the Church. So thats a yes? Thats a yes.

Defining Terms
In order to confess my secular Mormonism, I should first define the
concept, then elaborate it, then halfheartedly defend it. I anticipate a
halfhearted defense for two reasons: (1) Im not a proselytizing doubter.
I might generalize in a minute here, but Ill probably be off topic. My
main object is to find in the Church a niche for me. (2) Im not a
finally settled doubter. The hallmark of my intellectual life is uncertainty, including uncertainty about my uncertainty. Its dissonance, its
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tentativeness, its contradiction, its bouillabaisse, and its never more

apparent than in an essay (from the French essai, an attempt, la Montaigne and his searchings). What I do know is that at present I am a
jack Mormon, and I dont care a whit for the nomenclature. Just listen:
you can hear the term creaking under the weight of its connotation. Its
like the galleys of a slave ship. Who wants to be down there? I much
prefer secular Mormon. Its more neutrally connotative. Its more accessible. Its more descriptive. It is a member of the Mormon Church or
community who identifies with the culture and its mores if not its doctrines. It is a behaving Mormon if not a believing one. It is a believing
Mormon if not a behaving one. It is anyone who wants the Mormon
sans the orthodoxy. It is, truly, yours truly. Or so Ive come to think.
Over the course of the past year Ive entertained a few other options:
cultural Mormon, conflicted Mormon, anthropological Mormon, vestigial
Mormon ... I come back to secular Mormon because unlike, say, vestigial Mormon, it denotes skepticism without implying defection from
or nonmembership in the Church. (For phraseology touching on
defection from the Church, see my essay, Ex-Mormons: Youve Never
Really Met One, which I havent actually gotten around to writing. In
any case, the idea cropped up in a recent short story of mine. Ex-Mormons? a character says. I dont believe in them. Its just not that easy to
shake. Ex-alcoholics, maybe, but not ex-Mormons.) I also come back
to the operative word secular in a nod to our brethren and sisters of the
(original) covenant. Ive got Jewish envy, I tell my friends, and Ive got
it bad. Its more than just my admiration for, among others, Einstein,
Mahler, Mailer, Miller, Bellow, Roth, Cohen, and Salinger (half Jewish).
I admire how secular Judaism allows its adherents to truly prove all
things and hold fast that which is good, as Paul (another admirable
Jew, it turns out) said in 1 Thessalonians 5:21. To be Jewish, in other
words, is not necessarily to be orthodox. A secular Jew can prove (read:
test) the sanctity of learning and hold onto it. A secular Jew can prove
the emphasis on family-centered living and hold onto it. A secular Jew
can prove the pride of heritage and hold onto it. And a secular Jew can
prove God and his millennial train of baggage and choose not to hold
onto Him, no hard feelings, thanks but no thanks.
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Of course, Jews are unique in that they can claim a common religious as well as ethnic heritage. (In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that
Jews, along with Arabs and other religioethnic minorities, could sue
under statutes banning religious and racial discrimination.) Jewishness, then, is not even necessarily tied to Judaism. This is especially
true of American Jewryand most especially true of the Jewish
Intellectual Hall of Fame I mentioned abovethe majority of whom
descend from the Ashkenazim of Central and Eastern Europe. Mormonism is much harder pressed to lay claim to a collective ethnic heritage, especially as it works so tirelessly to add more ingredients to the
mixed salad: Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Arabia, oh, if we could
just get the missionary visas.... Time was most Mormons looked
Anglo-Saxon and narrow-faced and, if old black-and-white photos are
any indication, desperately overworked. Times have changed, though,
even in the United States, and Ted Kennedys disparaging reference
to a white boys club4 (come again, Mr. Chappaquiddick?5) has never
been less descriptive.
In any case, I dont think Mormons need to be ethnically distinct
to borrow the secular from secular Jews. All we (read: I) really need
is a culture that allows for more plurality, more deviance. By which I
mean deviance from the norm or orthodoxy. I am aware that certain
prominent Church leaders have disallowed the very ideas of Mormon
orthodoxy and heterodoxy (There is only the doctrine, they say), but I
am also aware of my surroundings (consider this essay and this journal
as immediate examples). Ours is a covertly capacious sect. We contain
multitudes: liberal Mormons and conservative Mormons and reformist
4. Running against Romney in Massachusetts 1994 Senate race, Kennedy charged
that his opponents business (Bain Capital) and his church were both lily white. (See
Lauren Dorgan, Romney took 94 lessons to heart, Concord Monitor, December 23,
2007.)
5. I suspect one indicator (symptom?) of secular Mormonism is angry reaction
to potshots at the church you dont actually believe in. Mike Huckabees fauxinnocent question during the 2008 presidential primaries (Dont Mormons believe
that Jesus and the devil are brothers?) elicited an even stronger (and less printable)
reaction. (See Libby Quaid, Huckabee Questions Mormons Belief, Associated Press,
December 11, 2007.)

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Mormons and literalist Mormons and figuratist Mormons and spiritualist Mormons and every -ist and -ite in between.6 One of the wonderful upshots of a centrally organized church is that all these disparate
demeanors have to cramfitfully, idiosyncratically, interestinglyinto
one big bursting-at-the-seams box. Its a brag point we dont even think
to brag about. We keep quiet about our differences. We keep mostly
to our lines. We keep our unorthodox opinions too much to ourselves,
creating homogeneity in the name of unity. Whats more, unlike Jews
of the hold-fast-that-which-is-good variety, a lot of Mormons adopt a
love-it-or-leave-it attitudea love-it-all-or-leave-it-all attitude, really
setting up false binaries that force the heterodox to the sidelines.

Ultimatums or Else ...

The Church is not a Smorgasbord, said Sister Stanfill, a former
Sunday School teacher for whom I have only fond feelings and to
whom I now very belatedly respond, Oh but it is a Smorgasbord, Sister Stanfill. You said it is not (and the emphasis is mine), but see how
your is, masquerading as empirical, is really a normative pipedream!
We are pickers and choosers. We are beggars and choosers. We are
Smorgasbord Saints, and it will never be otherwise. I think apostles,
prophets, pastors, and teachers have known thisand bristled at
thisfor a very long time. One of the best-loved parlor games among
the pious, therefore, has been the crafting of what Ill call cosmological ultimatums. Heres how they work: take the desired effect; pit it
diametrically opposite the undesired effect; assert the incompatibility,
nay, the mutual exclusivity of the two effects; and maybe throw in an
either/or construction for good measure. Youre either with us or youre
against us, is a crude, common example. Its either God or Mammon
(Matthew 6:24) is a slightly better one. Choose ye this day ( Joshua
6. Ultimately, to elide or downplay these -ists is artificial, even dangerous.
Consider the fated struggles of many Mormon homosexuals, hoping against hope for
a change of libido. To its credit, the Church has recently taken steps to better engage
its members of alternative sexual orientation. It may be that intellectual orientation
is just as distinct and immutable.

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24:15) is better still, but it loses points on account of how sound-

biteable it is, how freezer-magnet-magnetic. My personal (un)favorite
(Revelation 3:1516) wins points for the originality and ferocity of its
central image, but loses points for the ultimate illogic of its message.
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou
wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold
nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

Note how the truly evil sinner (the cold) gets off easy (or at least
unspewn) while the fence-sitter gets one of the more sadistic threats
in scripture. I liken it to the scorn of a child for his single motherfor
her shortcomings, her failings, her inevitable breakdowns. And the
scorn for the father who abandoned him completely? Its distant, its
abstract, its comparatively toothless. All of which is to say: John the
Revelator should know better. I dont expect him to advocate fencesitting, of course, but I do think he owes us a straighter take on the
schema: hot, then lukewarm, then cold. Or are we really to believe that
cold beats lukewarm? That very bad is somehow better than sort of
bad? That orgies are better than Superbowl parties?
Im being rhetorical, and I hope John is too. The either/or, loveit-or-leave-it talk is at best coercive of orthodoxy and at worst completely repellent of it. Ive meant to ask President Hinckley about his
own contribution to the ultimatum literature, but I keep forgetting.
In truth, Ive only remembered it just now, and since the dreams are
a fiction, Im free to add to the fiction, arent I? President Hinckley,
I say, can I ask you one more question? Actually, he says, hovering
several inches above my bedroom floor, Im on a bit of a
me: a schedule, I know, but I wanted to quickly ask you something. Its about something you said. I dont remember it exactly.
president hinckley (ph): We declare without equivocation
that God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, appeared in
person to the boy Joseph Smith.... Our whole strength rests on the
validity of that vision. It either occurred or it did not occur. If it did
not, then this work is a fraud. If it did, then it is the most important

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and wonderful work under the heavens.7

me: Thats it! Howd you do that? Was that verbatim?
ph: Thats how this works. Go ahead and ask your question.
me: Well, I just wonder how this affects certain people in the
ph: Ask your question. I said ask your question.
me: Where does this leave me? I mean ... I guess I mean ... do you
really think I should leave? Isnt it better to stay? Dont you think I
should?
ph: For what reasons, Ryan? Because you like the hymns? Because
you find comfort in routine? Because youre sentimentally attached to
your pioneer heritage? Because you promised Brooke?
me: Is that not good enough?
ph:
me: President Hinckley? Is that not good enough?
ph: I guess I dont rightly know.
me: I dont either.

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

The conversation goes on like that forever. At one point I say,
Shouldnt I err on the side of staying? and President Hinckley says,
Well, I guess you should. At another bend in the eternal dialectic,
President Hinckley says, Well, no, I guess you really might as well. You
really should. Leave the Church? I say. Leave the Church, he says.
He stands hovering several inches above my bedroom floor, expanding
up and down, taller and shorter, and then he shorts out altogether.
So heres the take-home: the decision is mine alone, as it always
has been. I think Ive known this all along; I just needed some cosmic
reassurance. Ive decided to err on the side of staying. Ive decided to
hold fast that which is good, that which I do believe. I believe in family.
I believe in virtue. I believe in doing unto others. I believe in religion
as a verb and I believe in James definition of it: to religion is to visit
the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep [yourself ]
7. Gordon B. Hinckley, The Marvelous Foundation of Our Faith, Ensign,
November 2002, p. 80.

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Irreantum

unspotted from the world ( James 1:27). The late Kurt Vonnegut, a
proud atheist, gave an even better definition. It comes from his novel
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. Its hot in the summer and cold in
the winter. Its round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies,
youve got about a hundred years here. Theres only one rule that I
know of, babiesGod damn it, youve got to be kind.

Vonneguts blasphemy is as purposeful as it is ecumenical. (Unbelief makes ecumenism a cinch, by the way.) It suggests that morality is
tinkling cymbals without kindness, and that kindness is the exclusive
province of no one. Believers dont own it. Nor do unbelievers. Nor
do fence-sitters. The blasphemy serves, furthermore, to distinguish
goodness from piety. (The two qualities are compatible, I believe, but
not synonymous.) Finally, it suggests that kindness is more important
than belief. And I agree with that. I believe in that.
Above all, then, I try to be kind. I try to love. In this goaland in
a few others I find worthyMormons make excellent traveling companions. They keep the Word of Wisdom (level of difficulty: low), the
Law of Service (level of difficulty: medium), the Law of Chastity (level
of difficulty: high), and they do their damndest to keep the Law of
Love. Its about as good a take on the bona vita as Im likely to find. In
any case, its the vita Ive chosen. I am a self-described secular Mormon.
Im a behaving Mormon if not a believing one. Ive built my house
upon the sand, but thats the best I can do, and I have to believe its better than nothing. (me: Isnt something better than nothing? Isnt lukewarm better than cold? President Hinckley: Well, yes, I guess so.
Or maybe. Im frankly not sure.) I go to church and sing the hymns
and talk with friends and feel comforted somehow, feel compelled
somehow. On the ride home Brooke and I exchange soft words. We
rehearse the happenings of elders quorum and relief society, complete
with the wisecracks we didnt make. We put our hands to the warmth
of these still small joysall of them routine-bound, and all of them
earthbound, and all of them restful and hopeful and even holy.

182

An Act of Contrition
Michael R. Collings

A roiling tumbleweed, propelled by westBlown gales, seems a kamikaze jest

Hurled by God across gray, fading snow,
A winters-not-done-yet, intrusive pest.
It joins the other detritus below
My windowa tattered, cast-off Christmas bow;
A pizza box; remnants of a New
Years bashfossils from a week ago.
Windows roar like caged beasts in a zoo;
Tree limbs flail, hang drunkenly askew;
Ragged lawns lay barren, sere, and brown,
Parched for warmth, haggard in their rue.
And for the moment, winters rancors crown,
Their savage features clenched into a frown.
It seems as if no joy, no sweet delight
Endures. I shrink beneath colds leaden gown.
Then with a breath, all shifts: snowflakes alight,
First one, then ten, then multitudes in flight,
Welcome as a long-awaited guest,
As winter begs forgiveness, garbed in white.

183

Damon Again
Michael R. Collings

Milton felt no frost when Damon died,

No chill eclipsed the hot Italian sun
Or touched his neck and drew an icy line
Into his hearthe did not know the pulse
Had softly stilled, the breath, the voice, the mind.

If we dwelt in Arcadia,
His flocks would weep with mine

Nor I, working in my roses, cutting

Canker from thorny limbs, twisting back
An errant branch and twining it again
Where it belongedheat poured its June in May
And I worked silently, unaware.

If we dwelt in Arcadia,
His flocks would weep with mine

Five decades nowand we have drawn upon

Each other time and again for strength, for joy,
In sorrow, in painfive decades . . . and still,
As if standing alone, I did not feel
You pass. I should have.

If we dwelt in Arcadia,
His flocks would weep with mine

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Collings: Poems

I should have felt earth shake, air weep, fire chill

To ash, water freeze to solidall
Infinites at once time-bounded, spaceConstrained. And did not. It took a phone call
From your son for me to know.

If we dwelt in Arcadia,
His flocks would weep with mine

185

Intiwatana Stone Altar, Southwest View, Machu Picchu, Peru, approx. ad 1450

The Path of Redemption

Patrick Madden

One summer day when I was seventeen, I went with several friends
to Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey. The park is situated on a mountainside, and high on the hill, above all the other rides, is the Kamikaze,
a nearly vertical water slide that offers those patient enough to wait in
its line a few brief seconds of exhilaration followed by an embarrassing
yet shared few brief seconds of removing ones swim trunks from ones
rear. The general mood among me and my friends that day was silly,
that unrecoverable airy silliness unaided by chemicals or disease that
we achieve less and less the older we grow, and the more alone. We
had been singing the Mission: Impossible theme, an instrumental, using
the word Lemonade (try it; it fits perfectly) from the moment we
stepped out of the cars, and it never grew tiring. So, it might have been
expected that, caught in line for the Kamikaze among Europeans with
meat-hanger Speedo swim suits, shifting from one hip to another in
starry boredom, we might be caught up in uproarious laughter when
one of us noticed the rides warning sign, altered cosmetically by the
same people in charge of defacing restroom hand driers to say Rub
hands gently under arm. It said, simply:
yo must be
a
to r d

Fabulous! From that day forward it became a battle cry: Yo must

be a tord! And, in strict obedience to the oracle, we were thenceforth
tords. My friend Joe and I took the charge most seriously, naming our
Lazer Tag guns Tord 1 and Tord 2, and later calling our band, which
was the two of us jamming occasionally during visits home from
college, The Tords. Later, when we were further apart and getting
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Irreantum

married and having children, we sent intermittent letters and then

emails ending in the salutation Yo must be a tord.
Years later, after the silliness had largely faded and responsibility
had set in, I found myself bored and dislocated, languishing with too
much freedom or too little discipline, wondering what I should be
spending my time on, already two months into a Fulbright fellowship
in Uruguay with not much to show for it, looking for inspiration for
writing and thinking. I found it while perusing a map of Montevideo:
Camino Los Tordos, far from downtown, in the northern farmlands,
but not far from the home my wife and I were renting. I packed my
backpack, memorized the route there, and took off on my bike to
place myself in the path of something significant, anything.
I was not in bike-riding shape, and I had forgotten to bring water, and
the bicycle I was riding was old and rusted. I wound my way through
my own neighborhood, Victoriano Alvarez to Duran to Yegros across
Avenida Lezica, past the overgrown unkempt plaza, past hundreds of
cubical whitewashed or brick-faced homes. I turned west on Lanus
under high-arching sycamore trees that shaded me from the high sun,
and I was among the rotting mansions and subdivided pastures now
taken over by ragged people who stopped what they were doing and
eyed me curiously as I passed. Coln, where I lived, and Lezica, where I
was now, were formerly filled with summer homes. They were far from
the city when the city was smaller and transportation slower and less
ubiquitous, and doctors near the turn of the last century would prescribe vacations to the area for its uncontaminated air and low humidity. Near the bridge over the Arroyo Pantanoso (the swampy creek) a
dirty man on a dirty bicycle approached, then, just behind me, after he
had passed, turned around and seemed to want to catch up with me.
My mind raced with the warnings Id been given about the people near
the bridge, and I pedaled hard without looking back.
I bought water near Lezicas central plaza, then backtracked to
Nia and turned south. The neighborhood was friendlier: children
were playing in the street, cars were parked in driveways, the houses
were more regular, the tunnel of trees overhead lost its Wizard-of-Oz
menace.
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Madden: Path of Redemption

Then the street signs died away. I asked a woman standing on

the side of the road, and she told me Tacuaty was one block further.
Then, as if she read my mind, or perhaps knew my quest before I did,
she added, And that will take you straight onto the Camino de la
Redencin. That was what I needed to hear. I thanked my oracle and
continued on. From the top of the small hill I had to climb to reach
Tacuaty, I could see south to the factory zone and gigantic gray apartment buildings and thousands of houses and splashes of green and,
near the river I could not see, the jutting blade of the nearly completed
national telecommunications building, glinting in the sun. I turned
west. There were no longer any trees overhead to shade me.
There was more to see: rose bushes in bloom, green shutters and
red roofs, garden gnomes, a wooden windmill as tall as the gnomes,
iron fences, angrily barking dogs behind them, the wire frame of a
curvaceous kitchen chair without legs turned sideways and used for
a trash bag holder high up out of the reach of dogs, compost smoke,
pine and palm trees side by side, large open pastures, tethered horses,
mailboxes painted with birds, sparrows pecking in the dirt, chickens
pecking in the dirt, a hawk gliding overhead, a young woman with a
colorful handbag on a blue bicycle ahead of me, then beside me, then
behind me, a crazy man with wild black hair shaking his head angrily
and stomping on the side of the road.
I crossed Route 5 carefully but without taking my feet off the pedals, and I was in Melilla, on the Camino de la Redencin. It would
take me all the way to Camino los Tordos.
There were no more houses, only farms and orchards and large
estates. The road was straight and flat and long. The scenery blended
into a repeating pattern: telephone poles, tall trees, expansive fields,
soccer goalposts, faraway mansion. Many of the mansions had signs
near the road advertising their availability for parties and company
gatherings. The sun drew at my sweat. I rolled up my pants legs to
my knees and drank my water. A blue pickup rolled past me, and two
men in its bed waved. A fellow cyclist, decked out in red, green, and
white advertisements, left me in the dust. Two oven-birds squawked
at me from their mud dome nest atop a telephone pole. A red Cativelli
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Irreantum

meats truck approached from ahead, then passed me, whipping up

wind in its wake. I turned to see its cargo as it passed, but it was empty.
Camino los Tordos was, like many such objects of quests I suppose,
nothing special. One long block of rutted dirt road between open
overgrown fields. There were a few houses now, small cinder block
cubes with tall antennas on top and dogs and bicycles parked in front,
but no people. I rode from one end to the other in a few minutes, took
a picture of the street sign to send to Joe. On the way back I stopped,
eager for some meaning or understanding.
At Piriguaz, which means Big House in Guaran, and which is
another rent-for-the-day activity center, but with swings and a slide
and a pool and a sort of petting zoo with cows and goats and ducks,
a woman told me what tordo means. Its a bird, she said. Something
like a crow. Theyre not very well liked because they make a lot of
noise and steal food from other birds nests. She looked around us.
Too bad there arent any around. Sometimes you can see them here.
Seeing that I still wasnt sure, she said, Like Heckle and Jeckle.
Ah, I said. Magpies. It was anti-climactic. I had hoped tordos
would mean something more romantic, some band of resistance fighters or a persecuted ethnic group, something like that. (Later I used my
handy Internet browser to double-check my source and found several
birds of varying sizes and colors all called tordos. Some were black and
similar to magpies, but in general the birds were mottled brown and
gray with dark spots on their whitish undersides. I also found a small
black and green fish called a tordo, and an offended message board
poster who called another a vulgar tordo.)
She went on to tell me about the place, which used to be a peach
orchard, and which she bought five years ago, when it was run-down
and overgrown. Her talk was a businesswomans talk, half friendly,
half advertisement. We talked about the current Uruguayan economy,
which was bad, and about the economic imperialism of the United
States. I kept to the realm of small talk, even on these weighty subjects, because she prefaced her remarks with the regret that she
couldnt give me a proper tour of the grounds because she was expecting a grade school field trip any minute now. I looked around and was
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Madden: Path of Redemption

unimpressed by the facilities, though I could appreciate her efforts:

the swings were rusting and off kilter, the slide was made of splintering wood, the pool was nearly overgrown by the mound of earth in
which it was set. I caught myself theorizing in my head about what we
need for entertainment in relation to the prosperity of our daily lives:
how malls and country retreats and amusement parks in my own
country must keep pace with their patrons tastes and increasing tolerances; how everything must be better, bigger, faster, always new. But
I braked, recognizing that this was not the idea I was searching for.
The school bus full of rowdy children arrived, I thanked the woman,
and I began to ride again. After a while, again on the Camino de la
Redencin, I saw ahead what seemed to be the same Cativelli truck
I had passed a couple of hours before. Now the truck was filled with
pigs, and as it rumbled past I caught a glimpse of pink hides tight
together and was struck with the pungent odor of dirt and excrement. The pigs were on their way onto the kill floor and into sausages,
Iunderstood.
Not two minutes later, as I was still considering the pigs fate, I saw
again the young woman I had seen on my way out, only now she carried a full woven plastic bag of groceries. And past her, facing away
from me, was the crazy man.
As I looked upon the slowly approaching scenethe young woman
on her bicycle turning off the road onto a beaten footpath, the wildhaired man shaking his head and stomping with his right foot and
dragging his lefta thought began to form in my head: that here in a
very real way life was one eternal round; that people lived in circles of
routine and repetition under the rule of the circular sun and circular
moon in their circular paths and regular cycles; that our urgency, our
acquisitiveness and full-speed-ahead seizing of days and opportunities was somehow wrongheaded, or at least incomplete. I knew it was
not a new thought. What I didnt know was what I meant by here:
here in Uruguay or here in Montevideo or here in the farmlands and
orchards of Melilla or just here in the Camino de la Redencin.

191

The Nail, One Eternal Round, Anasazi Prayer Circle with 8-hour Startrail Above
with Polaris at Center, near Moab, Utah, approx. ad 11001300

No Better Off
Patricia Karamesines
A Review of Amy Irvines Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised
Land (New York: North Point Press, 2008)

When I read literary nature or science writing, I appraise a writers

language on two points: passion and sustainability.
Passion, or soulfulness, reflects the writers depth of feeling for her
subject. If a nature writer connects deeply with a landscape, senses alive,
consciousness aroused and heightened, her language filters through
that enthusiasm, offering the world to readers with transparency and,
at times, magnification. Passionate nature writing enables readers to
feel wonder, consider their position, or form their own attachments. It
reveals not only the writers feeling for her subject but also something
of her love affair with her audience. Even when a writer feels ambivalence toward her audience, ardor for her subject ought to throw off
enough sparks that they leap the gap, igniting interest in willing, perhaps forgiving readers.
My ideas about sustainable language arise from my belief that human
language is an energetic, originative part of Creation. Language is itself a
natural resource, a great wilderness in its own right, an environment for
experience. If we get out into it, we have adventures, not only witnessing
events but also causing them to happen, just as in the physical world.
So any effort we make to improve our behavior toward the planet ought
to include efforts to improve behavior in the natural environment we
call language.
Skillful use of reasoning is part of what makes a writers language
sustainable. Writers need logic for the same reason scientists need it:
to tell stories about human experience as accurately as possible. Taking
responsibility for what you say and how you say it is part of developing a sustainable presence on this planet, just as taking responsibility
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Irreantum

for how you use other resources is part of your stewardship accountability. Thus narrative artall narrative artought to be open to
judgment upon its coherence.
Given all that, I must say that Amy Irvines memoir, Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land, falls so low on any scale I might
set for these criteria as to barely register. This is because Trespass
rarely leaves the landscape of Irvines soul, an environment that suffered abuse, neglect, trauma and illness from which as of the writing of this book it hadnt recovered. Holding her to my standard for
nature writing thus seems uncharitable, because Trespass isnt actually literary nature writing. Trespass reflects Irvines desperate drive to
make sense of her life and leans heavily upon the arm of the confessional, rising frequently to the pitch of outrage.
A self-described Jack Mormon, Irvine vents spleen on Utah Mormon culture with constancy. The invective starts mildly and somewhat
stereotypically: In Utah, fitting innot standing outis paramount
to all other qualities. In both a social and professional sense it is how
one survives (20).
A temple tour she took, she says,
... solidified my image of the celestial kingdomthe Mormon version
of heavenas a place that would be a sterile-looking white room. I
had imagined entering it in a white robe, and now I imagined I would
be wearing those dreadful booties too. A very large man with a long
white beard would hand down judgment of my life. He would tell me
that I hadnt been good enough, that I would have to go to a lower level
of the kingdom ... As God spoke, Iwould look down at the spotless
ivory tile. There would be not one speck of dirt. I would hear no wind,
or birds, and through the robe, hanging heavy and opaque, I wouldnt
feel my own body. It was there on the temple tour that the idea of
heaven began to terrify menot enough to keep me from getting baptized, but enough so that I would quit attending church by the time I
was twelve (33).

She describes Salt Lake Mormons as relatively sophisticated and

worldly ... if only by necessity, because You dont become a major
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Karamesines: No Better Off

metropolis without ... learning the skills of tolerance and compromise, even if only for the sake of getting along (28).
But most of Trespass unfolds in San Juan County, Utah, where I
live. San Juan County Mormons get the worst of her language. They
are, she says, hours away from anything remotely urban, more insulated than nearly any other county in the lower forty-eight (19).
The result: a relic of the oldest kind, its people and culture ... not
only oppressive but nearly prehistoric in their ways (29). She lists a
series of you must understands about San Juan County Mormons,
describing them as unyielding, saying that theyll go to great lengths
to protect their way of life and all that they see as theirs. She asserts
that the term democracy doesnt really apply ... only Gods laws and
cattle rule the land ... Everything is described, measured, and comprehended in terms of divine will and forage (40).
In framing her portrait, Irvine displays the LDS culture to the world
in sepia tones of unflattering snapshots, some taken from its far history.
From the Mountain Meadow Massacre, to her Idaho-Mormon grandmothers hard-edged behavior, to the historical LDS practice of plural
marriage, she takes the most painful events and most starkly controversial matters and conflates them to typical modern Mormon beliefs and
practices. She waves quotes lifted from prophets one hundred and fifty
years ago as the contemporary standard, some of the least attractive
teachings of Brigham Young among them. She purports that what she
learned about temple rituals came from whispering, teenaged Mormon
girls, from whom she learned ... that at the [celestial kingdoms] highest level ... were roads, and they were paved and glittering with gold
(96). She professes some admiration for Joseph Smithwhat she calls
his shamans skills of seeing into other worldsto set the stage for her
repulsion at how uninspired LDS ward and stake houses appear and
how sterile the temples are. Such constant kvetching undermines the
potency of her language.
Perhaps her least transcendent moments occur during remarks
about the LDS missionary program, which she appears to find especially threatening. In a chapter interspersed with fugues about Mormon sexuality, she waxes juvenile about why men missionaries are
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Irreantum

called companions. Her confrontation of two elders at her door

reaches the heights of a melodrama wherein she casts herself in the
heroic female lead:
The missionaries stand before me, poised to pierce the most vulnerable
parts of my psyche ... I stand straighter still, look the tall missionary
squarely in the eye ... The elders want in. The power of the priesthood is most effective insidebetween the wallswhere domesticity
tames even the most wild of beasts.
...Come back and preach at me, I bellow, when youve made
loveto someone other than each other. When youve seen death.
When youve walkednot drivenacross the desert (103).

Despite appearances, Irvines complaints against Mormonism dont

fall back on the usual all organized religion is stupefying and antiprogressive refrain. Truly, she longs for a more spiritually compelling
way of life. Her charge against the church is actually a charge against
agrarian society, which she sees contemporary Mormonism as being
steeped in, especially in San Juan County.
To argue her point that agriculture causes decay, she charts the
movement of the Ancestral Puebloan culture (called Anasazi in Trespass) away from the greater fitness, heightened sensuality, and fullbodied spirituality of the hunter-gatherer way of life into the apostasy
of agriculture, drawing parallels between the Mormon churchs prospects in the American West and the collapse of the Ancestral Puebloan
culture in the Four Corners region. Agriculture, she asserts, makes
people aggressive, sick, sexually distraught, and incapable of vibrant
spirituality. Eventually, it collapses upon itself in fits of psychosis. She
asserts that the hunter-gatherer life was the more fully realized life,
the ecstatic life. As in other places in Trespass, following her reasoning
here proves a bit of an adventure, marked as it is by flights of imagination and spurning grounding in evidence.
Yet Trespass is exactly what the author says it is at the outset: an
excavation she undertook to uncover what she needs to know about
who she is. Occasionally, she admits that she suffers from the problems
archaeologists do when they draw hasty conclusions about a layer of
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Karamesines: No Better Off

stratigraphy without wondering what lies beneath or dont take proper

care of the details of provenance. She understands that archaeology
destroys in the process of unearthing the story. This leads me to believe
that on some level Irvine realizes that shes still troweling through the
surface stratum of her soul. Yet because her situation is desperate, she
feels compelled to make something whole of the jarring fragments
shes found even while their context slips through her fingers.
But I gotta say. If I wrote about another species with the degree
of misapprehension and unbridled imagination Irvine displays in her
treatises on Mormonism, no one would take me seriously. If I described
another religion through the same jaundiced eye that she does, Id be
labeled insensitive for the least of it and intolerant for the worst. If
I wielded as much defensive anger and fear against another culture,
ethnic group, etc. as she does against the LDS culture and faith, Id
be called hateful, a bigot, a racist. Id be branded, in her words, a real
Mormon who would never question anything at all (98).
So her language is hardly sustainable, and therein abides its deepest trespass. In Trespass, Irvine reports that San Juan County residents have been known to burn environmentalists in effigy. I havent
lived in the area long enough to be privy to that behavior, but Ive seen
the window stickers of the Calvinesque figure peeing on the Southern
Utah Wilderness Alliance acronym that she mentions. Ive witnessed
anti-SUWA signs on floats in Fourth of July parades. SPEAR (San
Juan Public Entry and Access Rights, an off-roading group) members have demanded to know whether Im an ATV rider or one of
them tree-huggers. Ive read half-page tirades against environmentalists published in local papers Letters to the Editor. Yet Irvine herself
builds rhetorical straw men, hangs SJC LDS signs on them, and
burns them with glee. The language of Trespass is so caught up in
throwing wild punches that it gives anybody in San Juan County who
might be aching to fight just the threat theyre hoping for, effectively
stoking fires of conflict.
While Irvines anti-Mormon spiels grate on the nerves, more troubling to me is her lack of passion when she speaks about the land she
professes to love. This single failure of feeling suggests the severity of
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Irreantum

the trauma she suffered and how deeply it shook and disconnected
her. When she describes her forays into the backrocks she moved to
San Juan County to be near, I hear no tones of ardor in her voice, no
music in her wordsonly a degree of relief such as a person who is
chronically depressed might feel after taking a sedative. Irvine is one
of the hiking wounded that take refuge in angry environmental activism. Shes aware of this, but as of Trespasss publication date, she lacks
the means and energy to overcome her obstacles. Toward the books
end, Jessica, Irvines shaman friend, sums up Irvines dilemma succinctly: In the wild world, you indeed found hallowed ground, but
kneeling on it has failed to infuse you with anything soulful. In this
sense, you are no better off than those you criticize (395).
Most Mormons wont like this book, even if they make it past
the burning effigies to reach the inner sanctum where Irvines actual
points about agriculture are ensconced. But if youre an aspiring Mormon nature writer or a Mormon interested in writing about stewardship and have the heart not to take Irvines effigies personally, set aside
some time when youre laid up with a hiking injury (like I did) to
make the mental trudge along Trespasss switchback trails, just to see
whats there. Then go thou and do better. Much, much better.

198

Big Love Before Big Love

Phyllis Barber
A Review of Dorothy Allred Solomons In My Fathers House: A Memoir
of Polygamy (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 2009
[reissue])

In his foreword to In My Fathers House: A Memoir of Polygamy,

Andy Wilkinson, the series editor, tells why Texas Tech University
Press is reissuing an old book: It is a fine piece of writing, it is a book
that remains relevant [as] Solomons personal narrative delivers an
authoritative insight that is neither judgmental nor sensational, and
this edition has a new preface and an epilogue that offer valuable
reflections on both her original story and the subsequent swirl of
events surrounding the practice of polygamy.
Polygamya subject which resides deep in the Mormon consciousness, Fundamentalist or nothas been a favorite target for sensationalist writers and has been a voyeuristic topic throughout the years, as
recent news stories of the FBI hunt for Warren Jeffs and the infamous
raid on the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado, Texas, suggest. Whether members of the LDS Church like it or not, this is a subject that wont go away.
Nor should it. Many contemporary Latter-day Saints are descendants
of polygamous unions, and there is often a debate among modern-day
Mormon women about whether or not they could live The Principle
if they were asked. The subject hovers as if it were a pesky fly at a picnic,
and now, for the first time, it has even become televisions darling in the
popular HBO series Big Love.
Before her death in 2008, Carol Houck Smith, then an editor for
W. W. Norton (and Solomons editor for Predators, Prey, and Other
Kinfolk), told me in casual conversation that her publishing company
was outraged because the writers for Big Love had co-opted much
of their material from Norton authors, Dorothy Solomon and Brady
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Irreantum

Udall, with no recognition or acknowledgment of their contribution.

There was talk of a lawsuit, which didnt take place, but writing about
polygamy is big business these days. For all of that, Solomon remains
one of the freshest, purest, and most honest writers about this complex society.
Dorothy Allred Solomon, the twenty-eighth of forty-eight children, tells a very poignant tale of her father, Rulon Allred, a modernday polygamist and respected head of a Fundamentalist sect, who was
murdered by accomplices to Ervil LeBaron in 1977 (242). Fundamentalists proclaim that the LDS Church forsook the higher principle of
celestial marriage and that they erred in bowing and scraping to the
U.S. Government, all for the sake of statehood. They believe they will
be the inhabitants of the celestial kingdom, while those who dont live
The Principle will be relegated to the Terrestrial Kingdom. (So much
for the Mormons who, as the joke goes, believe theyll be the only
ones in heaven.) When Allreds children were taunted by neighborhood bullies: Plygie, plygie, worse than a niggie, he would console
them: We havent the money or the public regard of our neighbors,
but we have each other. And we have something far more precious
than riches or fame. We have the knowledge that we are right in what
we believe (15).
In Allreds branch of Fundamentalism, there is the same dedication to gospel principles found in mainline Mormonism, except for
the cessation of The Principle (though Fundamentalists would argue
the term mainline). While LDS leaders have denounced them, calling them apostates and wolves that would ravish the flock (237), Fundamentalists believe they are taking the gospel one step higher.
As Solomon recalls her father moving his seven families around to
evade the law as if they were pieces on a chess board, she details her own
growing disenchantment and separation from the lifestyle of her parents.
She finds herself wanting to attend public school where her peers wont
associate her with the plygies. She doesnt like the secrets she has to tell
about belonging to such a family. She wants independence and her own
answers. But finding her own way and carving out a new niche is a huge
challenge, as it is for anyone belonging to a tribe, a family, or even a large,
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extended family. Ones first home, after all, is the place where roots are
nourished. It contains the emotional geography of childhood.
Solomon writes eloquently about this often misunderstood lifestyle. She demonstrates grace, not only with her poetic, well-crafted,
and often elegant prose, but in her largesse and charity for her original
family of seven mothers (more wives were added later) and forty-eight
children, who suffered through raids, imprisonment, and ostracism
because of their lifestyle. In addition to her knowledge of this insular,
tight-lipped culture, Solomon is exceptionally articulate about questions regarding the paradoxes with which she was made to liveThe
schism between my interior and exterior life became Procrustes bed
(155)and the broader question of free agency. Though her father
called this the cornerstone of the gospel, she wondered what kind of
agency it was. For instance, Allreds first wife, Susan, chose to divorce
him and take their two children with her when he decided to devote
his life to The Principle. To Solomon, this seemed a choice of either
submitting to his [Allreds] dedication to God and fellow man, which
far outstripped his capacity to serve and share with his existing family; or of leaving as Aunt Susan had done, to live a life sorrowing and
yearning for [her husband] (244). Solomon concludes in a very powerful passage: The solution to all these dilemmas ... must be contained within the individual. No leader could be trusted absolutely.
No mortal could hold a monopoly on what is right (245).
As Solomon goes through the trauma of choosing her spiritual
path and a monogamous lifestyle, she also feels a parallel need to
write the story of her family, even defending their right to worship
in the way they believe to be correct. In passage after passage about
polygamy and monogamy ... an unavoidable message dominated: that
it matters less what one believes than how one lives out that belief. To
live monogamy in dedication, to live polygamy in good faith, to live in
constancy and fidelity, whatever the way of life, is the challenge (225).
But in her new afterword, she worries that she has unwittingly
... promoted the way of life I had rejected for myself by telling her
story of love and family unity, even postponing the development of
a movie based on the book because of that worry (306). One of the
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more poignant aspects of this book regards the sacrifice of women,

evidenced by a moment when Solomon remembers her father holding her tightly as she sat on his lap and saying, Hold still. Dont move
... I wont let you go until you do what I say.... You have to do whatever I tell you to do. Because youre female, a girl (141).
Its all well and good to have men jockeying for position as religious,
upright men who are following Gods Higher Law, but what about the
women? At one point, when Solomon is nursing her second baby and
filled with extreme conflict about the path shes taken away from her
original family, she finds herself shaking, weeping, and unable to provide milk for her daughter. The world seemed mad. Mothers without the milk to nourish. People without the milk of human kindness
... The Church making a law of polygamy, breaking womens hearts.
The Church outlawing polygamy, breaking womens hearts. Later she
portrays her mother as suffering greatly and as having become too
dependent on Marion [her sister] and Rulon and ... [having] lost the
will to self (228).
While appreciating the love and cooperation between sister wives,
Solomon decides that the patriarchs insistence on loyalty eroded
individual self-worth (306). She observes the children of her mothers family going without sufficient clothing, moving in the middle of
the night under the cloak of darkness, the mothers sacrificing their
salaries to give to everyone elses children while sometimes their own
went without, some mothers receiving more abundance than others.
She also sees martyrdom in this band of people, yet still loves her family, her father, her mother, deeply. This is her tribe. Her paradox. As
much as she sometimes longs for the good old days, when life seemed
simple and her father could hold her on his lap and make everything
all right with the world, she also realizes he wasnt capable of doing
thisthere were so many to look after. The idealism of The Principle
as well as the United Order may be bigger challenges than humans
are capable of living to any degree of perfection.
Solomons husband Brian, an interesting character in his own right,
makes a telling observation: Everybody everywhere hurts over something.... You can try to escape sufferingIm always trying to escape
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Barber: Big Love Before Big Love

it. But its always there, waiting, when you come back to reality. Your
mother would probably suffer if she lived monogamy. Maybe in a different way, but the pain would still be there (215).
Maybe, just maybe, while it has beauty, intelligence, and integrity,
this lifestyle may also be a maze of corrupted power, manipulation of
womens and young peoples lives, and a sometimes self-serving entity
touting the rightness of its cause to the detriment of its followers. In
her afterword, Solomon says that she learned that coercion in the
Fundamentalist community [had taken] more insidious forms than
straightforward abuse. But she also wonders if she and other contemporary writers on the subject havent contributed to this prejudicial
weight, dwelling more on the problems and anomalies than on the
humanizing factors and commonalities. Nevertheless, as the pondering, wondering, and debate go on, Solomon remains one of the most
sensitive, insightful, and even-handed chroniclers of this shadowed,
half-hidden world. In My Fathers House is a book well worth the time
spent reading it.

203

A Mother Must Leave Behind Her Illusions

Laura Hilton Craner
A review of The Year My Son and I Were Born: A Story of Down
Syndrome, Motherhood, and Self-Discovery by Kathryn Lynard Soper
(Globe Pequot Press, 2009)

For Mormons, parenthood is the gauntlet of spirituality. In no

other arena of life are the children of God as thoroughly tested as
when they themselves have children. Children are gifts from Heavenly
Father, but caring for, raising, and teaching them also creates significant
burdens. Parenting can get especially complicated when LDS parents
have special needs children. Along with the burden of medical equipment, tests, therapy, and dealing with unexpected behaviors comes the
hopeful-but-heavy knowledge that their child is an automatic winner
of the kingdom of God ( James E. Faust, The Works of God, Ensign,
Nov 1984, 54). Why would God assign a parenting task so Herculean
that failure on some level is inevitable? How does one parent a flawed
yet perfect child? These are questions Kathryn Lynard Soper knows
well and details in her unflinching memoir, The Year My Son and I
Were Born: A Story of Down Syndrome, Motherhood, and Self-Discovery.
After a difficult pregnancy with complications requiring hospitalization, Soper delivers her seventh child, Thomas, more than two months
early, and is stunned to discover he has Down syndrome. More than
anything elseespecially the daunting and nebulous future of her
sonSoper worries about how she will mother this child. How can
she live up to the expectation inherent in parenting this child that some
see as preternaturally blessed? Her emotions come to a head the first
time she takes newborn Thomas to church.
Many Mormons believe its an honor to be given a child like Thomas,
whose spirit will remain unsullied by the world.... Id seen parents
of children with disabilities and considered them chosenbut at the
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Craner: Mother Must Leave Behind Her Illusions

same time, I was glad I hadnt been chosen.... Many people said God
had blessed me with a special child, but it seemed more like he was
sabotaging my quest to be a good mother. Id heard it dozens of times
from the pulpit: Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest
service to be assumed by mankind. It places her who honors its holy calling
and service next to the angels. Id been aiming for that ideal my whole
adult life, and I counted on God to help me bridge the gap between
who I was and who I needed to beespecially with Thomas. But
instead he was jabbing at my sore spots without mercy, as if he was
determined to expose me as a failure, a fraud. (5758)

Soper looks to her own mother, a stalwart LDS woman whose

faith in God made her a source of great strength throughout Sopers
life, for guidance. In Sopers memories, her mother never falters or
shows a negative emotion and Soper comes to believe that the only
way to be a good mother is to soldier on and keep smiling. I feigned
confidence.... I didnt think I could do it without my mother. I needed
her sheer presence, her wordless assurance that everything was under
control. Her magic mom power. I didnt seem to have enough of my
own (51). Even though Soper knows her boy with Down syndrome is
a challenge but not a tragedy, she is still afraid that she wont measure
up as a parent, that she will fail the ultimate test mortality provides
(21). Her baby might be a shoo-in for glory, but Soper is pretty sure
that she isnt.
In the ensuing weeks after the birth, Soper learns how to gracefully deflect well-meaning but insensitive comments, to thread an NG
tube down her infants nose, and how to juggle the diaper bag, car
seat, and oxygen tank. But she doesnt learn how to cut to herself any
slack. Eventually the pressure of trying to be the perfect mother to a
perfect-but-high-maintenance baby gets to her and she finds herself
skipping church in order to copewhich she knows is a sign that
Something is Wrong. She writes, And something was. I wasnt just
unexcited about church, I was repulsed by the very thought of going.
The scriptures, prayers, and hymns Id loved seemed useless. The
people Id loved felt like strangers (157). Soper believes she is failing
at the only thing that matters (182) and finally hits rock bottom when
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Irreantum

she finds herself yelling at her own mother, the woman she tried so
hard to emulate, and wishing that either her baby would die or she,
herself, would.
Sopers story touches many controversial issues in Mormon culture: whether or not accepting medical help for depression is a faithful choice; whether or not parents are good parents if their children
dont fit the overachieving Mormon mold; whether or not to play the
expected part of the grateful, strengthened member even when one
doesnt feel it; whether or not its okay for children of God to have
weaknesses. Through all the struggles Soper is constantly asking a
quintessentially Mormon question, When have I done all that I can
do? When are my efforts enough?
However, its not just the presence of the controversial issues that
makes her book powerful, nor is it the story of the emotional upheaval
of her babys birth and first year. What makes Sopers story relatable
and important is her willingness to write about the good (Thomass
baby blessing is electrifying) and the bad (the way Thomas flinches
every time he sees hands because hes had so many medical procedures)
and her unwillingness to rely on platitudes. While many Mormon
parenting stories are not as dramatic as Sopers, Mormon fathers and
mothers will identify with her fears and her conflicting feelings regarding her children. Reading her story is like getting a peek inside the
Mormon subconscious where, like the documentary Soper watches
about a grown man with Down syndrome, the picture is both frightening and beautiful (202).
Soper does emerge from her pain, and her relationship with
Thomasand the world at largeimproves with the passage of time
and experience. The real change for Soper, though, seems to come
when she confronts her own mother about her strong faade: she
admits to being pained and confused by her mothers stoicism and
frustrated by her own inability to replicate it. She questions, So you
were sad, too? And mad, and scared? Because you never seemed that
way, not even once ... it hurt so much (282). Sopers mothers subsequent explanation and apology open the way for Soper to forgive
herself. Accepting that her own mother failed and remained lovable
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Craner: Mother Must Leave Behind Her Illusions

let Soper accept her own failures and love herself anyway. I could forgive myself, she writes. I could step out of that suffocating room and
into anothera sane place, a wise place. A place where I had done my
best, and my best was enough (283).
Sopers choice to accept her weaknesses opens the door to true
spiritual growth. Sitting in Relief Society one day she realizes that her
desire to be the perfect mother did not create the perfect family. All it
created was pride and vanity (304). Soper says, Id clung so tightly
to those falsehoods, as if they could keep me safe. Yet I felt safer with
them stripped away, safe with the naked truth in full view. I only wish
it hadnt hurt so much.... Just as a baby must leave behind the womb,
[a] mother must leave behind her illusions (314).

207

Fierce Voices
Heidi Hart
A review of Laurel Thatcher Ulrichs Well-behaved Women Seldom Make
History (Knopf, 2007)

Not long ago a holiday catalog arrived that I couldnt bring myself
to toss in the recycling bin. Along with the Hillary Clinton nutcracker,
befeathered Cher Barbie, and rhinestone guitar purse, this catalog
advertised a sterling silver bracelet engraved with the words well-
behaved women rarely make history. A great gift for a fellow
wild woman, perfect for buoying your spirit in challenging times, the
copy announced. I had seen this same slogan recently, on a bumper
sticker down the street, in front of the house belonging to the teenage
girl who had set fire to the Mormon church in our neighborhood a
year before. Well-behaved women rarely commit arson? I dont think
this was what Laurel Thatcher Ulrich had in mind when she first
penned the slogan (with the original word seldom), as the opening
of a 1976 study of the well-behaved women celebrated in Puritan
funeral sermons (xiii). Ulrichs new book, dedicated to her students,
takes off from these now-ubiquitous five words on a journey through
the history of womens struggle to throw off old patriarchal projections as mirrors for men or as monsters in our less domesticated
forms, and finally to show ourselves as the history makers we have
always been, in fact if not always on record. As always, Ulrich displays
her careful scholarship, but in this book I was delighted to hear a
fierce, exuberant voice as well.
After tracing the history of the well-behaved women slogan in her
introduction, Ulrich introduces the reader to three writers in different
countries and time periods whose problems were surprisinglydisturbinglythe same (3). The depiction of Christine de Pizans vision
of three women (Lady Reason, Lady Justice, and Lady Rectitude)
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Hart: Fierce Voices

in Paris, circa 1400, reads with the immediacy of fiction. Christine

(Ulrich uses her own three guides first names, in an act of certain
sisterhood) goes on to create luminous chronicles of womens lives,
from Penelope to Joan of Arcan account written during the saints
lifetime. Next in Ulrichs own chronicle, the young Elizabeth Cady
appears in her fathers law office, discovering to her horror the inexorable statutes that rendered married women civilly dead (4). She will
go on to work for womens rights alongside Susan B. Anthony. The
third vision/visionary is Virginia Woolf, who sits in the reading room
of the British Museum, her head aswarm with questions of womens
poverty. Finally she gives up finding answers and goes to lunch. She
had failed in her quest, writes Ulrich, but she had stumbled on anger
(6). And of course Woolf would go on to write the groundbreaking A
Room of Ones Own and novels that drew on an androgynous mind to
comprehend womens culture (38) and the patriarchal strictures that
defined it.
Has Ulrich, this respected chronicler of womens lives, this historian haunted by the fiction of objectivity, stumbled on anger of her
own? While honoring the complexity of history and her three guides
ability to cross the equality/difference divide perceived in contemporary feminist politics, Ulrich does not shy from the bracing language
of Second Wave activism, the language I miss in todays culture of
Sex and the City and postfeminist prancing. Here are some examples:
Women needed psychic as well as physical space (38); The new feminism was . . . a tremor in the earth, a lift in the wind, a swelling tide
(208); and from a chapter on slave narratives, But what if the rebel
was a white woman, a wife and mother with a well-functioning cookstove and a pew in church? Could a white woman borrow the right
to rebel? (123). Ulrichs tone veers from calm reportage to ferocious
questioning, again and again.
There isnt room in this review to mention all the nervy women in
Ulrichs book, but from the early agitator Lady Godiva to Gerda Lerner,
who earned a PhD in womens history from Columbia in 1966, to the
amusement of her male mentors (211), they are a rich inspiration to
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Irreantum

women today. Most inspiring is the authors voice itself. Ulrich is not
ashamed to be brilliant and tough. Shes not afraid of what people will
think, that terrible, invisible weight women have borne for centuries.
Though it doesnt specifically cite gender theorists like Judith Butler,
Ulrichs new work suggests a joyful appreciation of the stretch[ing] of
gender boundaries (47) in histories of Joan of Arc, of a nineteenthcentury androgyne living in the Kutenai tribe in northern Idaho, and
of TVs own Wonder Woman. Ulrichs ferocity shows itself in her
treatment of the virgin wilderness myth of colonial America, her
accounts of rape victims humiliation in Elizabethan courts, and her
reports of the terrible compromises African-American slave women
were forced to make. Ulrich succeeds at the historians most important
job: to keep us from forgetting.
Its a brave book. And yet Ulrich writes in her introduction that it
ends where all this new work began, with the revival of feminism in
the 1970s (47). I wonder if this is the projects one act of behaving.
Ulrich does mention contemporary culture at timesthe Disney
treatment of the Mulan story, the competing media treatments of
Jessica Lynch and Lynddie England, and the Red Hat Societys haven
for energetic women of certain ageand so I wonder what keeps
her from addressing the women who still find themselves tangled in
patriarchy, who still worry about what people think. I know plenty.
At times, though I have joined the Quakers with their impressive
tradition of gender equality, I find myself too well-behaved to speak
mytruth.
Reading Well-behaved Women feels like entering a room with all
the windows open, not only a room of ones own but a room full
of conversation among women past and present. Ulrich the historian
makes room for them all; Ulrich the Mormon woman scholar claims
her place among them, with joy and without apology. Its refreshing
to hear her describe, in her introduction, her early work with ExponentII and her embrace of the early LDS women who studied medicine and walked proudly to the polls. The only voices missing from
this book are those of women who still yearn, if not to set a church on
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Hart: Fierce Voices

fire, to find a voice amid their cultures code of niceness. I am encouraged to hear many of those voices coming forth and making a new
history, as women continue to add their names to the What Women
Know website in response to Julie Becks reactionary talk in the October 2007 LDS General Conference. We are authors of our own lives,
the website reads, and this is the story we know to be true.

211

White Stupa, Bagan, Myanmar, approx. ad 1100

About the Artist

Val Brinkerhoff is an Associate Professor of Photography in BYUs

Visual Arts Department where he teaches courses ranging from portrait photography to advanced digital imaging. He has authored or coauthored seven books, three of the most recent centered on unlocking the
visual symbolism of sacred architecture, ancient and modern, including
that of Latter-day Saint temples (Sacred Walls, Covenant Communications [with Jerry Hansen], and The Day Star: Reading Sacred Architecture
[2-volume set], Digital Legend Press, writing and photography by Val
Brinkerhoff ). This research has taken him to over forty countries and
over forty LDS temples in the last six years as part of the Sacred Places
project. Vals fine art print work has been exhibited widely and his photography and writing have been featured in periodicals including Photo
Life, Photo Electronic Imaging, Photo Techniques, Darkroom Photography,
PhotoGraphic, Modern Photography, BYU Studies, and others.

The Artists Statement

Mans greatest creations are those dedicated to the worship of
God. In an effort to understand these sacred places and my own faith I
began an intensive study of the temple and what that meant to many
different cultures. I read hundreds of books, mostly those centered on
the ancient world, while at the same time traveling to forty countries
(many trips with students) to study and photograph the worlds greatest monuments in stone. These included everything from standing
stone circles in Scotland, England, and Portugal; grand Gothic cathedrals and small churches in Europe; to pyramids in Egypt and Central
and South America; and great temple complexes in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Thailand. In these travels I saw repeating visual patterns in
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Irreantum

the basic form of temples worldwide. This led to an intensive search

for these same patterns in Latter-day Saint Temples (forty of them so
far), where I found many of the same archetypes, motifs, and symbols.
More importantly, I began unraveling the doctrines lying behind the
motifs, the patterns and elemental forms. Soon scripture study and
temple worship came alive as I developed eyes to see. This learning
led to the desire to share my new insights, thus resulting in the Day
Star books.

On the Cover
Boston LDS Temple Window, Stylized Tree of Life Motif, October
2000
Tree of Life motifs are common around the world. On LDS temples
they typically point to Jesus Christ as Savior and Redeemer of the
World. Some cultures believe the sacred tree is a fiery pillar of light
that connects heaven and earth, opened via sacred prayer rituals, typically in circles and often accompanied by ritual singing and dancing,
mirroring the music of the spheres (vibrations similar to that creating by the ordered movements of the planets).

214

Contributors

Phyllis Barber is the author of a novel, two collections of short

stories, two juvenile books, and two memoirs, the latest being Raw
Edges, a coming-of-age-in-middle-age memoir to be published by
the University of Nevada Press in Spring 2010. How I Got Cultured:
ANevada Memoir (University of Georgia Press) won the AWP Prize
for Creative Nonfiction in 1991 as well as the Association for Mormon
Letters Award in Autobiography, 1993. She has taught at the Vermont
College of Fine Arts in the MFA in Writing Program since 1991, was
one of the co-founders of the Writers at Work Conference in Park
City, Utah, and is the proud mother of four sons/grandmother of
four grandchildren. Her website is www.PhyllisBarber.com.
Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Enders Game, Enders
Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and
younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools. Besides these
and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy,
biblical novels, poetry, and many plays and scripts. Card was born in
Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served
a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides
his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs
plays. He recently began a long-term position as a professor of writing
and literature at Southern Virginia University. Card currently lives in
Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, and
their youngest child, Zina Margaret.
Michael R. Collings has taught literature and writing at the University level for over thirty years, twenty-five of those as the Director
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of Creative Writing at Pepperdine University. He has published multiple collections of poetryincluding science fiction, fantasy, horror,
mainstream, and epic; book-length studies and articles on science fiction and fantasy and on several key writers, including Stephen King,
Orson Scott Card, and Dean R. Koontz; nearly four hundred reviews;
and scores of individual poems.
Darin Cozzens grew up on a farm in Wyoming. He has been a
finalist for both the Iowa Short Fiction Awards and Sarabandes Mary
McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. He is a previous winner of the
Irreantum short fiction contest. He lives in Dobson, North Carolina,
where he teaches at Surry Community College.
Laura Hilton Craner is a stay at home mom, writer, and blogger.
Her current projects include raising three children, writing a graphic
biography about deaf Holocaust survivors, and blogging about Mormon arts and culture at www.MotelyVision.org and www.ButNot
Unhappy.blogspot.com.
Joshua Foster grew up in southeastern Idaho where his family ran
a potato and grain farm along with a cattle operation. He attended
BYUIdaho as an undergraduate and earned master of fine art degrees
from the University of Arizona in fiction and nonfiction writing. Currently, he resides in Idaho and works on the farm, and also serves as
the nonfiction editor for Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural
Environments.
Terryl Givens did his graduate studies at Cornell and Chapel Hill
(PhD 1988) in Intellectual History and Comparative Literature. He
currently holds the James A. Bostwick Chair in English at the University of Richmond, where he is Professor of Literature and Religion.
His books include By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture
that Launched a New World Religion (Oxford, 2003), which the New
York Times called provocative reading; People of Paradox: A History
of Mormon Culture (Oxford, 2007), which was named Best Book
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Contributors

of 2007 by the Mormon History Association; and two recent titles,

The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction, and When Souls
Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought (Oxford, 2009;
2010). He is currently completing a biography of Parley P. Pratt with
MatthewGrow.
Jack Harrell teaches English and creative writing at Brigham Young
UniversityIdaho and recently became Irreantums new co-editor. His
novel Vernal Promises won the Marilyn Brown Novel Award in 2000
and his collection of short fiction is forthcoming from Signature
Books in 2010. Jack and his wife, Cindy, live in Rexburg, ID. His website is www.JackHarrell.net.
Heidi Hart holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and currently teaches creative writing at Westminster College in Salt Lake
City. She is a Pushcart Prize-winning poet whose work includes the
memoir Grace Notes: The Waking of a Womans Voice (University of
Utah Press, 2004) and the four-poet collection Edge by Edge (Toadlily
Press, 2007). Heidi has received a Utah Arts Council Established Artist Grant and a Jentel Artist Residency award. In addition to her work
as a writer, Heidi is a singer, Quaker, and mother of two teenagesons.
Patricia Karamesines roams and writes in southeastern Utah.
She has won several literary awards for her poetry, essays, and fiction,
including from Brigham Young University, the University of Arizona,
the Utah Arts Council, and the Utah Wilderness Association. Apoet,
essayist, and novelist, she has published in literary journals and popular magazines locally and nationally. Her novel The Pictograph Murders
(Signature Books, 2004) won the 2004 AML Award for the Novel.
She blogs on writing about nature at Wilderness Interface Zone, www.
Wilderness.MotleyVision.org.
Patrick Madden teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Quotidiana (Nebraska, 2010) and the editor of a website of the same name (+ .org), which includes hundreds
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Irreantum

of classical essays and other resources. He lives in Lehi, Utah, with his
wife and five children.
Ryan McIlvains stories and essays (and a poem or two) have
appeared or are forthcoming in The Paris Review, The Chattahoochee
Review, The Potomac Review, Dialogue, and other journals. Born in
Utah, raised in Massachusetts, he now lives in Palo Alto, where he is
a Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University.
Larry Menlove writes from Utah under the persistent encouragement and prodding of his beautiful wife. His recent work has appeared
or is forthcoming in Dialogue, Storyglossia, Twelve Stories, Weber Studies, and others.
Eric Samuelsen is a playwright, a theatre director, a college professor, and sometime essayist and fiction writer. After graduating in
playwriting from BYU, he earned a PhD in dramatic literature and
criticism from Indiana University, and subsequently joined the faculty at the BYU Department of Theatre and Media Arts in 1992. His
plays include Gadianton, The Way Were Wired, Family, and A Love
Affair with Electrons. He served from 2007 to 2009 as President of the
Association for Mormon Letters. Eric is married, with four children.
Paul Swenson is a journalist and a poet, whose first collection of
poetry, Iced at the Ward, Burned at the Stake and other poems, was published by Signature Books in 2003. His second collection, In Sleep and
other poems, is forthcoming from Dream Garden Press.
Doug Talley is a lawyer and business executive in a small consulting firm. He graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University and over thirty years later still retains a
modest meat-and-potato appetite forpoetry and the classical cannon.
His poems have appeared in various literary journals, including The
American Scholar and Christianity and Literature. He and his wife
April are the parents of seven children and reside in Copley, Ohio.
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Contributors

Charmayne Gubler Warnock lives in Alpine, Utah, with her husband Caleb (also a writer) and a revolving assortment of hungry adult
children. They also live with a dog, a cat, a horse, fish, and far too
many free-range chickens. Charmayne graduated from BYU in English and chemistry and currently works for Alpine City in planning
and zoning. She recently (relative to light years) published Brown, a
short story, in Dialogue, and several stories for children in the Friend.
Jaren Watson grew up in Rexburg, Idaho, and received his BS from
Brigham Young UniversityIdaho. He currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, with his wife and their children. Studying at the University of
Arizona, he is completing his MFA in fiction. He is a member of the
BHC writing community, to which he gives thanks.
Holly Welkers poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared or are
forthcoming in such publications as Best American Essays, Black Warrior Review, The Cream City Review, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon
Thought, Gulf Coast, Haydens Ferry Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Image,
The Iowa Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Other Voices, PMS, Poetry
International, The Spoon River Poetry Review, TriQuarterly and, in 2002,
Irreantum. Born and raised in southern Arizona, Holly recently moved
one state up, to northern Utah.

219

Thanks to Our Donors

The Association for Mormon Letters gratefully acknowledges
the following members who have made an extra contribution by paying AML dues at the Lifetime, Sustaining, or Contributing levels. In
addition, we have listed those who have received an honorary lifetime
membership in recognition of their influence and achievements in
Mormon literature.
Lifetime Members ( $500)

Honorary Lifetime Members

Anonymous
Marilyn Brown
LaVerna Bringhurst Johnson

Lavina Fielding Anderson

Elouise Bell
Wayne Booth*
Mary L. Bradford
Richard Cracroft
Terryl L. Givens
John S. Harris
Edward Hart
Bruce Jorgensen
Gerald Lund
William Mulder
Hugh Nibley*
Levi Peterson
Thomas F. Rogers
Steven P. Sondrup
Douglas Thayer
Emma Lou Thayne
Laurel T. Ulrich
Terry Tempest Williams
William A. Wilson

Sustaining Members ( $250)

Merilyn Alexander
Elouise Bell
Signature Books
Contributing Members ($100)
R. Don Oscarson
Cherry & Barnard Silver
Bruce Smith
Farrell M. Smith

*deceased

220

Association for Mormon Letters Order Form

aml membership

Includes Irreantum subscription, discounts to AML events, and support

of AML efforts.

Annual dues: $25 regular

$20 full-time students

$5 student (without Irreantum subscription)

$100 contributing

$250 sustaining

The aml is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, so donations are

tax deductible.

Total donation: ______

Total enclosed: ______

Make check payable to AML and mail to:
AML, PO Box 970874, Orem, UT 84097-0874
Name

___________________________________________

Address ___________________________________________

___________________________________________

Email

___________________________________________

This form may be photocopied

Pyramid of the Niches, El Tajin, Veracruz, Mexico, approx. ad 1000