Volume 14, Number 1 (2012)

Irreantum Staff
Editor Jack Harrell
Fiction Editor Lisa Torcasso Downing
Poetry Editor Jim Richards
Creative Nonfiction Editor Brittney Carman
Layout Marny K. Parkin

Association for Mormon Letters Board

President Margaret Blair Young
Past President Boyd Petersen
Board Members Mark Brown, Dennis Clark, Eric Samuelsen, Philip Snyder,
Charles Swift
Secretary Darlene Young
Membership Secretary Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury
Treasurer D. Matthew Jarman
Awards Coordinator Dennis Clark
Webmaster Jacob Proffitt
Blog Moderator Jonathan Langford
AML-List Moderator Stephen Carter

Front cover: Chester Dam by Darren Clark

Irreantum (ISSN 1518-0594) is published twice a year by the Association for Mormon Letters (AML), PO Box 581422, Salt Lake City, UT 84158; www.irreantum.org.
Irreantum vol. 14, no. 1 (2012) 2012 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 $14 (postpaid); double issues, $16. 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 indexed in the
MLA International Bibliography.

 5 From the Editor

Fiction

9 William Morris Conference

35 Courtney Miller Santo The End of Happy Endings
65 Larry Menlove The Sinkhole

Poetry

30 Javen Tanner Sweetwater; Genesis; In the River

62 Elizabeth Cranford Garcia Honeymoon at ThirtySomething; Fling; Eve in the Garden
75 Lisa Madsen Rubilar Coals; Just Telling it Like it Is;
A Day in the Life of Jesus

Interview

109 A New Harvest: Interview with Tyler Chadwick

Creative Nonfiction
Critical Essay

Reviews

21 Shelah Mastny Miner The Marriage Bed

49 Melissa Dalton-Bradford Bridge to Elysium
79 Scott Hales A Broader Geography of Mormonness
91 Megan Sessions The Divine Individual
101 Bradford Tuckfield Borges in the Wilderness
115 Jonathan Langford Destiny, Demons, and Freewill in
Dan Wellss John Wayne Cleaver Books
DanWellss I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr.Monster, and
IDont Want to Kill You
121 Theric Jepson Connecting the Generations through Disco
David Clarks The Death of a Disco Dancer
124 Lisa Torcasso Downing A Dominant Collection
Eric Freezes Dominant Traits
129 About the Artist
131 Contributors
Volume 14, Number 1 (2012)

-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

The cover for this issue of Irreantum is a photograph of

the Chester Dam, in Chester, Idaho, taken by Darren Clark. At the
time the photo was taken, the Chester Dam was a diversion dam,
used to raise the rivers level to divert water into irrigation canals. Of
course, the dam wasnt built for aesthetics; its purpose is utilitarian.
Nor was it built to benefit the natural environment. Instead, it was
built as part of a massive irrigation network designed to transform
the southeastern Idaho desert into fertile cropland. In the American
West, altering the natural landscape for commercial purposes creates
significant political tension, a fact which adds a profound undercurrent to Darren Clarks art.
Darrens photograph of the Chester Dam raises a number of questions about artquestions that specifically concern the Mormon
writer. Should the subject of a work of art itself be noble or beautiful? Does the work of the artist reside in capturing the subject ... or
transforming it? Should the work of art celebrate nature, or celebrate
human achievement? Is every work of art a political statement? And
what is it that motivates the artist to create in the first place?
Like the Chester Dam, language is first utilitarian. It doesnt take
long, though, for someone to turn utility into art. Art gives us beauty
and expands our experience. It causes us to ask questions about ourselves and others and the world around us. Art introduces us to the
layers of complexity in the subjects it chooses.
Should the subject matter of art be noble or beautiful? Since the
twentieth-century Modernists, and perhaps before that, a consensus in Western aesthetics has dictated that the common as well as
the noble can rightfully be the subject of good art. What then for
the Mormon artist? Should the Mormon writer limited his or her
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Irreantum

characters to faithful Mormons, beautiful and clean Mormons? Or

should the Mormon writer work in opposition to the stereotypical
depiction of good Mormons and, at times, focus his or her work on
the ugly and ignoble? This is a question every serious Mormon writer
must face.
Does the writer work to capture a subject, or transform it? Is the
purpose of literature simply to relate episodes about the human condition, or to bring characters to personal epiphanies? For the Mormon writer, it seems that the epiphanic story may have the edgeto
see characters improve, to see them transcend. Ah, but Mormonism
teaches that not all will chose to be saved. One of the greatest mysteries in Mormon cosmology is the reality that some will chose their own
destruction, even when all reason and passion cry for their salvation.
What about the celebration of nature and human achievement?
Certainly, Mormonism teaches that Adam was given stewardship
over all things on the face of the earth. But good stewardship prohibits outright abuse. A balance must be struck between nature and
humanity, between that which acts and that which is acted upon. The
Mormon writer must strike that balance to achieve an aesthetic which
resonates with his or her Mormon reality.
Some feel that every work of art is a political statement. For the
Mormon writer, this matter has a particularly pointed implication.
Mormon writers cannot avoid the question of whether or not their
art advances, challenges, or denounces the causes and doctrines of
Mormonism and the Church. In fact, this is one the most difficult
challenges the Mormon writer faces. He or she must ask, Does my
work build Zion, or not? Of course, within the framework of building Zion there is a great deal of latitude and room for interpretation.
And paradoxically, building Zion may have little to do with didactic expressions of Church teachings. However, each Mormon writer
must have the courage to ask and answer this question for him- or
herself. I believe there is no way around it.
And what, exactly, motivates the Mormon artist to create? I think
the answer to this question is fairly straightforward. As Gods children, we desire to create because He creates, because we want to
6

From the Editor

be like Him. Still, the writer has to ask the question, Do I create
because I am living in Gods image, or do I create to seek the praise of
the world, to satisfy my vain ambition?
Like Darren Clarks photographs, the writings in this issue of Irreantum will entertain, comfort, and challenge; but I hope they do more.
I hope they move you to ask, What does it mean to be a Mormon
in the complexity and grit of the life I live?
Jack Harrell

Conference
William Morris

Saras presentation, Servants and Wives: The Diaries and

Letters of Natives and Transplants in the LDS Mexican Colonies,
concluded the very first session of the MLA Conference. When she
finished, she was surprised to see several women streaming towards
her. She brushed back her hair with her right hand and did her best
to present the bland smile that was suitable for the moment. A smile
that suggested, Yes I know Im wonderful. Yes, I would love nothing
more than to accept your praise and talk to you for a minute or two,
or maybe even go out for drinks later, but dont gush, and dont push
things too far, or, in other words, this is the MLA; be cool cause we
all have places to go and people to see, and, oh and by the way, I have
four interviews lined up for tomorrow.
Fascinating, the first woman said, the flames of her red-dyed hair
dowsed by the neat bun she wore. It is so good to see, and here she
paused, someone with ties to this community negotiate it so deftly
contextualize these womens lives from an academic perspective and
lay bare the tensions inherent in the practice of polygamy as manifest
in the written form, even as the women try to write solely in a devotional vein.
Sara smiled, nodded, said, Im glad you enjoyed it, and moved on
to the next woman, inwardly pleased that there were five or six, but not
overly so, considering each appeared to be nothing more than an assistant professor or grad student. Not one had the swagger of a department chair or full professor who could influence hiring decisions. She
spoke briefly to another and another and then got bogged down in a
conversation with a nice woman from the Midwest who wanted to
explain her research on the semiotics of the casseroles of Lutheran
housewives in outstate Minnesota. It took some deft non-committals,
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Irreantum

but Sarah managed to extricate herself. She turned to leave, only to

find Jason standing there with his hand stuck out.
Great job, he said, giving her an enthusiastic and possibly condescending handshake, his smile no less white and capacious than when
he, a second year student in BYUs graduate English lit program, had
barely avoided becoming a danger to Mormonism by courting both
Sara and Megan, her roommate and former mission companion. The
Jason who ended up choosing Megan and taking her off to Penn and
then, five years later, back to BYUa triumphal, tenure-track return.
Thank you, she murmured, the post-session rush bleeding out of
her much too soon. I thought Megan said you werent going to make
it this year, she said. Well, not actually saidtexted. Which is what
their relationship mainly was these days. Quick texts back and forth.
Only the basic updating of milestones: Saras almost strictly about her
academic path; Megans all about the twins, who were now four.
He shrugged. My department rustled up a last minute travel grant.
It didnt cover everything, but it got me here.
Thats great, she said. It should be a good conference.
Yeah, and way to kick things off, by the way, Jason said. Im so
proud of you.
She gave him what she knew to be an effective expression of quizzical skepticism, one eyebrow raised, head askance.
For going the Mormon Studies route. Thats very brave.
Oh, Im so glad you approve, she said, more sarcastically and
louder than she had intended.
You know what I mean. Youve always been interested in this kind
of stuff, and Im sincerely happy that you found a high profile venue
like this for it.
Well, thank you, she said. How are Megan and the twins?
Theyre fine. Doing well. That reminds me, I need to call and let
her know Ive arrived safely.
Jason pulled out his phone. An alert was flashing. Oops. I forgot.
I have an interview I need to sit in on. Listen, Sara, a bunch of us are
going to get together this evening. Do you have dinner plans? Why
dont you come along?
10

Morris: Conference

Uh... Sara stumbled to decide which of the two questions she

could answer truthfully. I think Im doing something with the other
grad students from my program, but Im not sure.
Oh, well, if youre not sure, you should come with us. Itll be fun
this is San Francisco. I gotta run, but if you want to hang out were
meeting at six oclock in the southeast corner of the lobby. Again, nice
presentation. See you later.
Sara attempted a wan smile as Jason turned and strode out of the
room. He had never lost that missionary pace and focus, had simply
transferred it to his career and to Megan and the twins.
She wandered the exhibition hall for an hour instead of going to
the next track, but found no solace in the specialized volumes fresh
out from the university presses. Nor could she muster any disdain for
the insipid anthologies offered by the big publishers. She half-heartedly listened to a pitch from some online learning company so she
could register to win an iPod she wouldnt use.
This should have been a time to bask in triumph, but Jasons
appearance had thrown her off. She missed Megan. They had clashed
constantlyboth as mission companions and then later as roommates, but they had also refined each other. Megan, rubbing a sense
of fashion and confidence on to Sara. Sara, blunting some of Megans
bluntness. Megan, focusing Saras academic pursuits. Sara, needling
Megan to think and dig deeper. And that was it, really: Megan had
helped Sara open her spigot of ambition just as Jason had arrived
on the scene, and then her best friend was gone and damning up her
own ambitions for Jasons. Sara didnt begrudge them their relationship. She just wasnt sure that Megan was getting out of it as much
as she was putting in. Her phone buzzed a text from Gloria, a fellow
UCI grad student with whom she was sharing a room: great job! see
you soon!
Up in her room, Sara tried to figure out what to wear, hoping that
the choice would then dictate what she should do for dinner. Gloria
was singing loudly in the shower. It would be easy to blow off Jason
with the excuse that she had plans with Gloriaplans she didnt
know yet, but was sure would be revealed soon. She just wasnt sure
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Irreantum

she wanted to do that. Gloria, a Cuban-American expert on female

indigenismo voices, ran with a crowd of cultural studies grad students,
all with trendy, in-demand specialties and colorful bios. Among them
she would be the exception that proves the rule, or the vanilla exotic,
or probably just the weird exotic. The one who didnt drink. The one
who grew up rural. Who was actively religious. Who offered no prospect of a hookup. The Mormon chick.
Sara inspected her wardrobe again. Due to the continued effect of
Megans influence, the options arrayed before here were exquisitely
tailored and stylish, yet functional. She had been taught well. Still, it
was all blacks, blues, grays and whitesmeant to impress, not allure.
The shower went off and a few minutes later Gloria emerged in a towel
and began pulling out gauzy dresses and very short skirts, including
a pleather one in crimson, which she put on. A clingy, orange top followed. More towel drying of the hair, and then she asked, What are
your plans for tonight, Sara?
I havent decided yet.
You should come out with us. Pierre knows this great, cheap bistro
and then were all going salsa dancing.
I dont know.
Oh, come on. I know you know how to dance.
It was true. She and Megan had taken social dance classes at theY.
That does sound fun, but Jason also invited me to go out with him
and his friends.
Gloria looked at her. Jason? The Jason that married your best
friend? Oh, honey, you dont want to do that.
Well, I thought it might be nice to catch up.
Gloria snorted. You do what you got to do, honey. But if you get
bored, text me. There are some fine Latin men in this city who are
fabulous dancers.
Sara grinned. I just might do that. Have fun.
When Gloria left, Sara realized she had made her choice. She
dressed slowly, automatically, wondering about her motives. Was it
that she was too uncomfortable being the good girl with Gloria and
her friends? Or did she just want the company of a fellow Mormon?
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Morris: Conference

Its true that in such situations it was often handy to have a nondrinking buddy. Or was it all because of Jason? A lingering attraction
perhaps? That had never complicated things at BYU: (a)because she
had squelched it, and (b)because Megan and Jason were quite good at
being oblivious once it became clear whom he preferred. Or was she
(c)intending to play chaperone for Megan? Her natural inclination
was to throw her hands up and say it was all of the above, but that was
no longer good enough. She had to know.
Sara pinned up her hair and then went into the bathroom to
refresh her makeup. She looked at herself in the mirror and realized
she was wearing an outfit she had bought on her mission while under
Megans tutelageblack pencil skirt, white cotton camp shirt, and
pearl gray cardigan.
As she emerged from the elevator doors into the vast lobby of the
hotel, the warm, gold light from the glass chandeliers, the rich furnishings, the low buzz of conversation enveloped her and, for a moment,
she had the sudden feeling that she was standing in the celestial room
of some massive San Francisco temple. The feeling amused and saddened her and as she stood there in her pearl gray cardigan and full
length black skirt, she felt tempted to ask the very cute, very young,
curly-haired, leather-jacket-clad, clearly first-year, first-time MLAattending grad student nervously playing with a pack of American
Spirits and pacing near the bank of elevators what he knew about the
Mormon church and if he would like to hear more. That technique
had been a favorite of Megans, whose Tagalog had never been very
good, but whose bright eyes and clipped diction had drawn people
in so that Sara could then launch into the more current, standard
techniques of building common ground by talking about families and
belief in Jesus Christ.
Sara walked further in to the lobby and spied Jason on the far side
of the room and decided she didnt want him to see her. She moved
behind a crowd of people. Jason was standing with his crew of medievalists: the men in leather jackets; the women in wool pea coats. And
she realized she had absolutely no desire to hang out in a bar, nurse
a Diet Coke for hours, and watch him watch his friends get drunk
13

Irreantum

while their conversation invariably disintegrated into ribald 15th century chansons and the strange practices of certain Umbrian or Ligurian monasteries. Jason wriggled his phone from his jeansshould
they really be that tight?and checked the time. When he moved
his thumb slightly, stopped, and then slipped the phone back into his
pocket, she knew he hadnt yet called Megan. One of the others said
something to him, and he shrugged, and they left.
Sara sank into a chair and mulled over what had just happened.
On the one hand, she had just chickened out of both of her dinner
options; on the other, she had perhaps made some kind of stand. Or
had she? In fact, she thought, as she sat enveloped in the functional
opulence of the lobby of the San Francisco Marriot Union Square, as
she squeezed her eyes shut again for a moment and tried to shift back
to that feeling of being in some alternate history or future celestial
room, its possible that she had never made any kind of real stand.
Maudlin thinkingbut that didnt make it wrong.
She had no regrets over the course her life had taken. It had
brought her moments of peace and clarity and testimony and secular
triumph. Small moments and minor triumphs to be sure, but they
were hers. And yet she still realized the sum total of her student loans,
the size of which she already felt the nagging weight of, wouldnt even
buy the furniture in the lobby. And what really were her prospects for
finding a tenure-track position that would allow her to pay back those
loans? And why was it that every time she thought about her place in
modern American late capitalism it led her to the same thought: what
was the best route for a single, LDS woman to take?
Was academia simply her cloister? Had she made it her nunnery?
Get thee, get thee, and, no, it was definitely not time to go off on some
tired Ophelia complex and the single Mormon girl train of thought.
But had she made it her nunnery? It was, after all, the most viable way
for a celibate, single, female Mormon to find refuge from the demands
of capitalism and the marriage market, and yet still end up in a position in which to exercise a certain measure of power. It wouldnt quite
bring the understanding nods from her co-religionists that becoming
a K12 teacher would, but there would be a grudging respect. She had
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Morris: Conference

seen it afforded some of her single, female professors at BYU. Would

she be willing to go back and teach at BYU? That was a morass that
Sara had no desire to indulge in. What she needed was to focus on the
now. What she needed was a cheeseburger and a Diet Coke.
Sara was ashamed to ask the front desk people, but the door man
seemed approachable and non-judgy and directed her to the nearest
fast food outlet. She ordered a salad with grilled chicken, but added
a side of French fries. Megan had always said, Order the salad, order
the diet coke, but dont skip the fries. They keep my daddy in business.
Sara had met Megans father once. He was exactly what she had imagined him to be: a stolid Mormon potato farmer. He was nothing like
Jason. Jason, of the upper-middle-class Mormons who thickly populate the California suburbs and churn out lawyers, dentists, MBAs
and, sometimes, academics. Although, according to Megan, the two
of them got along famously.
While Sara was eating, two young men in dark suits walked in. One
of them caught her looking for a name tag and smiled. She smiled
back, wondering if they knew that she knew who they were, or if they
thought she was being friendlyor flirtatious. She watched them
stare intently in the direction of the dollar menu and then quickly
confer. The taller Elder made the order. Soon he had a tray laden with
double cheeseburgers. They sat at a booth near her table and quickly
demolished the pile.
She slowed her pace, forking a bite of salad every fifteen seconds or
so. As the shorter one rose to bus the tray, she watched him expertly
slide the empty wrappers into the garbage and place the tray on top
of can. Then the other one rose from his seat and walked over to her
table. As the shorter one moved to flank her, Elder the Taller stuck
out his hand and said, Hello. Im Elder Mickelson. How are you this
evening?
Hello, Elder Mickelson, she said, shaking his hand. Im Sara, and
Im fine. How are you?
Very well, very well, Mickelson said. This is my colleague, Elder
Brown.
She shook his hand too.
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Irreantum

Listen, she said, Im actually a member. Their faces showed the

slightest glimmer of disappointment, and then relief, and then recalibrated into bland pleasantness. Im in town for a conference.
After further introductionsElder Mickelson was from Payson;
Elder Brown, from Tucsonshe stood with her tray. Elder Brown
snatched it from her hands without a word and bussed it. And just as
Mickelson looked like he was about to say farewells and best wishes,
she blurted, Hey, so do you have any appointments for this evening?
Would you like to go back to my hotel ... And ... Uh, okay, I know how
that just sounded, but listen, Id enjoy some company this evening, and
we could get some lemonade and swap war stories. I served a mission
in a big city, too, and I know how difficult it can be. We would totally
be sitting in a public place. Thered be plenty of other people around.
The Elders held a conversation in glances that ended with a nod
from Elder Mickelson. Sure, he said. We wont be able to stay long,
but its always good to be able to fellowship with members.
Sara smiled and said, Great!
The air was cold and wet as they exited. She led the way, lapsing into
the power walk that was her normal stride, an analog to Jasons, she
realized. The missionaries struggled to keep up. She supposed they
had become used to ambling, presenting themselves as a target, smiling at everybody, trolling for any sort of reaction at all. She slowed her
pace and continued to grill them about themselves. They answered
her in quick bursts, eyes darting to see if anybody would meet their
gaze, smiles wide. She supposed she pitied them. Yes, she had served
in an urban area, but San Francisco had to be so much tougher than
Manila.
When they arrived at the hotel entrance, the two missionaries hesitated. She chuckled under her breath. They must have realized that
on one level it really was like she was taking them back to her house.
What was a hotel, after all, but a bunch of bedrooms?
Its okay, she said. Its a Marriott.
The Elders didnt seem to get the joke. Luckily, the bar on the
mezzanine level had a lounge feel to it and was mostly empty. She
selected the area that looked most like a living room, settled into an
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Morris: Conference

overstuffed, leather armchair and gestured for the Elders to sit on

theadjacent couch. They discreetly tucked their backpacks under the
glass coffee table.
Would you like something to drink? she asked. They were both noncommittal. Oh, come on, she said. Im buying. And while you wouldnt
think so, a place like this generally has wonderful non-alcoholic drinks.
They acquiesced with nods, and she waved the waiter over. Whats your
best non-alcoholic drink? she asked.
We have Shirley Temples and Rob Roys, of course, he said. And
virgin margaritas. But Im quite fond of the lemonade. Its very yummy.
Well take three, she said and gave him her room number.
While they waited, she continued to probe them with questions.
Do you have any siblings? What did you do before your mission?
How do you like California? How do you like the city? Their answers
were animated, but cautious.
The lemonade came in highball glasses. There was a thick layer of
sugary foam on the top, garnished with a mint leaf. The Elders eyed
them suspiciously as the waiter set them on the coffee table. She picked
hers up and made a show of smelling it and then took a sip from the
narrow straw. Its okay, she said. Its definitely just fancy lemonade.
Elder Mickelson picked his up and took a sip. Oh, wow, he said.
Thats really good.
Elder Brown quickly followed suit and agreed. A few more sips
and soon they were peppering her with questions. And as she began
to open up, so did they, and the conversation streamed forth, and then
a quiet calm settled in. She found herself telling them about those
she had baptized, and those she hadnt baptized, and those she had
baptized and lost, and they were jealous of her baptisms, and she was
jealous of their ability to physically baptize. They felt flushed with
the warmth of the work and their intense feelings flickered over the
worth of souls. When the emotion lessened a bit, as it always does,
she found herself thinking of Megan and the Mendoza family, of five
children with scrubbed faces, and a father reading haltingly in Tagalog, and a mother whose eyes were always tired, whose mouth always
smiled, whose hands were always in motion.
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Irreantum

Megan had been so patient, yet insistent, with them. Sara had been
uncomfortable with her approach at first. Dropping by every other
day to read from the Book of Mormon, often arriving with small
giftsa couple of large star fruits, a can of condensed milk, a packet
of macaroonsthat obligated the family to let them in the door. And
yet somehow it had all worked in the end and worked in the right way.
Megan had worn down their resistance until it was thin enough that
they somehow began to understand. The plan of salvation became
exciting to them. The Spirit began whispering to them. And before
long, and, as it always seems to happen, right before the two sister
missionaries were transferred, the Mendozas themselves began driving the relationship and the conversion. Turning up at every sacrament meeting and for every activity during the week. Asking for
appointments. Asking to be baptized. Megan and Sara both received
permission to leave their areas and attend the baptism. And it was
there, while they watched from the wings, waiting with towels for Sister Mendoza and her two daughters, that they promised in whispers
to become roommates when they both got back to BYU.
For the second round, they switched to virgin margaritas. The
Elders found the salted rims intriguing so she talked them into ordering the strawberry flavor as well, and, while they waited, she listed all
of the fruit drinks available on the streets of Manila. They told her
about the best places in the Mission to get burritos and horchata.
After the third round of drinks were gone, the Elders made some
noise about leaving. She began to object, to see how much further
their good-natured patience and her charms and hospitality could
take things, but then she glanced at her watch, saw that it was 9:40pm
and demurred no more. The Elders thanked her for the drinks and
said how great it was that you can find brothers and sisters of Christ
almost anywhere you go. She mumbled something about admiring
their optimism and perseverance in such a barren area of the Lords
vineyard and how she was so glad she had served in the Philippines.
Their handshakes were firm and brief.
Once the Elders were gone, Sara sat back down at the table and
began to read, her mind buzzing from the sugar and conversation
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Morris: Conference

and, she realized, the Spirit. About ten pages into her reading, Jason
appeared with his troop of medievalists stumbling in tow.
He said, I managed to convince them that it would be easier to
finish the evening here. He noticed the empty cocktail glasses, rims
smeared, table littered with salt and cocked an eyebrow. Looks like
you had quite the evening yourself, he said. You okay, Sara?
She felt the color rising to her cheeks, but managed to diffuse
it with a cavalier wave over the table. Ah, but these arent all mine,
Brother Johnson, she said. I had company.
Oh, cool, he said and turned to check on his brood, who had piled
themselves onto couches and were furiously debating whose turn it
was to buy. You should have come with us, though. The food was
amazing. The chef actually came out and...
The Elders, she said.
He turned to her again. Whats that?
I had a pair of Elders here with me. Met them at the Golden
Arches. But they had to get back to their apartment. I kept them out a
bit too late. So yes, Im fine, Jason. The Elders were perfect gentlemen
and good company. Shouldnt you go call your wife?
His eyes narrowed, and his mouth dropped open, but she cut him
off. Sorry about that, Jason. Im a little tired and cranky. And Ive
probably had too much sugar. I should get to bed. I have four interviews tomorrow. She rose and strode to the elevator, flush with indignation and embarrassment. If the roles had been switched, Megan
would have handled that situation very differently. And that realization made her even more embarrassed and indignant.
Up in her room, she checked her phone. There was a text from
Gloria: dont expect me back tonight. see you in the morning.
The text reminded Sara it was barely 10:00 pm on the opening
night of the MLA conference, which was being held in downtown San
Francisco, and she was on her way to bed. It made her feel pathetic.
But no, she didnt really feel pathetic. She had plenty of friends, both
LDS and not. She had a great family, with loving parents and cool sisters
and brothers. She was in a top PhD program and was eighty-five percent done with an awesome dissertation. She had four job interviews
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Irreantum

tomorrow. The only thing she didnt have right at the moment was a
room full of chattering people. Even though she had had a lovely evening with the Elders, part of her still felt like she had to be out there.
Out there in the haze of alcohol and fatigue and sexual energy and
stomachs digesting rich food. Jason was still out therearguing some
fine point, taking advantage of his comrades drunkenness to bludgeon
them with his sober opinions. He loved nothing more than to bring a
room to silence with his brilliance.
She wondered if she had shamed him in to calling Megan. Likely
not. She had a wicked thought. It was only 11:00 p.m. in Provo. She
could call Megan and indirectly rat on Jason. It had been weeks since
they had been able to actually talk on the phone. Megan was always
busy with the twins. Why shouldnt she sweep in and take Jasons
spot? He clearly didnt want it. She pictured Megan up late reading.
Waiting for her husband to check in.
She pulled out her phone and flicked through her contacts. She still
had Megan listed with her maiden name. She paused for a moment
and then swiped the edit button, added Johnson to the last name field,
saved the edit, and clicked the call button.
Hi, Megan. Its Sara.
Yes, Im in San Francisco at the conference.
The presentation went very well.
Yes, he came and said hello right after I presented, but then had to
rush off to sit in on an interview.
Oh, I think hes just wrapped up in conversation. You know how
he is.
Hey, listen. Do you remember that first time we met with the
Mendoza family?
Forty minutes later, Sara plugged her phone in to the charger and
undressed. No Gloria tonightno pajamas. She prayed and then
slipped into her bed. The sheets were cool against her bare skin, slippery
against her garments. She felt calm. Tomorrow she would land a tenuretrack position. Tomorrow night she would go out with Gloria.

20

The Marriage Bed

Shelah Miner

When my sister got married three years ago, I took my sisterly duties seriously. I bought her a nice gift. I listened to my mom
vent so Jilly didnt have to. I hauled my seven-months-pregnant self to
the bridal shop to try on a shiny brown dress and wore it at the reception with a smile on my face. As an older, long-married, experienced
sister, I gave counsel: My best advice about how to keep the spark in
your sex life can be boiled down to three words: Dont have kids.
If my advice to my sister sounds too misanthropic, maybe I should
rephrase: Dont have kids in bed with you. Im all for the family bed,
but if anyone who tells you that it doesnt take a toll on the sex life
either has kids who sleep far more deeply than mine do, or else theyre
lying. For most of the last ten years, weve woken up in the morning
with at least one additional person our bed, and it doesnt feel like a
sexy, fun zone when its invaded each night by rogue agents wearing
overflowing Pull-Ups and Dora the Explorer pajamas.
Earlier this summer, I sat at the desk in my bedroom late one
afternoon, trying to write. It was hard to pinpoint what was derailing
my train of thought. Was it the Super Mario Super Show playing in
the background, or Isaac and Maren chasing each other around the
room? Eventually I sat, not typing, and pinpointed the source of my
irritation: Bryce, stop jumping on the bed. I cant concentrate with all
of that squeaking.
I know. Its loud, ten-year-old Bryce said. Its always hard for me to
fall asleep when you and dad have sex. He giggled and looked me in the
eye, then glanced at his little brother and sister, now engrossed in Mario
and Luigi. I knew he was challenging me. I looked around to see if the
Honorable Mention, 2011 Charlotte and Eugene England Personal Essay Contest

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Irreantum

other kids had heard, but they seemed oblivious. Seasoned by a decade
of motherhood, I thought fast: How do you know were not in here
jumping on the bed? I played it cool, but my face burned and I couldnt
talk without stuttering. He started jumping again. He wanted to talk
about it, but I most certainly did not.
Bryce is ten. Not a particularly self-aware ten. I spent the last year
as his Cub Scout leader, and I know hes not the kind of kid who
leads the playground discussions about boobs, or even participates in
them. While the other kids his age explore going together and holding hands, hes by himself on the swings, imagining how hell defeat
the next boss on Donkey Kong. Yet even he knew that his dad and I
didnt tuck him in, lock our door, and start jumping on the bed.
As parents, Eddie and I have never shied away from telling our kids
how babies are made. Eddies a doctor and, if anything, weve probably
erred on the side of telling them too much about the mechanics. But
weve always talked about sex in generic terms: When two people
love each other, they get married. Once theyre married they want to
have babies. In order to make a baby a man puts his... Replace those
abstract parents with Mom and Dad, with us, and I start to squirm.
I dont mind Bryce knowing that mommies and daddies have sex to
make babies, but I do find it hard to get in the mood when I know hes
lying awake across the hall, listening to us.
I never anticipated that motherhood and inhibition would arrive
hand in hand. I was the paradoxical Mormon exhibitionist who
streaked for the crowd at my eleventh birthday party, who got called
in to talk with church leaders after mooning the boys minivan as we
caravanned to a teen youth conference, who never gave skinny dipping a
second thought, even in mixed company. When Eddie and I got married,
after four years of dating and agonizing delayed gratification, having sex
became our favorite pastime. We soon realized that homework, making dinner, going to church, reading, picking up my mom at the airport,
and watching NBA finals games could all wait half an hour, or even five
minutes. The honeymoon ended when Bryce arrived three years into
our marriage, and suddenly we couldnt just drop everything and have
sex. He wasnt the kind of baby who would be content in his bouncy
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Miner: The Marriage Bed

chair while his parents snuck off to the bedroom. Once Bryce was finally
asleep, I became aware of my flabby stomach and dripping breasts, and
we were both so tired. I started making excuses, wearing flannel nightgowns and reading myself to sleep before Eddie got to bed. We still had
sex with predictable frequency, but it was mentally penciled in at the end
of the day, after the counters were wiped and the house alarm set.
Eddie and I have owned three houses. We bought our first,
in Rochester, Minnesota, when Bryce was two and Annie was a newborn. In Minnesota, the kinds of houses medical interns with children
and student loans can afford are split-levels and raised ranches. I didnt
want to move to a house where Id have to exile one of my babies to
the basement. How could I choose which one to send to sleep with
the monsters living behind the furnace? After a long morning with the
realtor, rejecting everything in our price range, we found our house:
dark brown exterior, brown walls, brown kitchen cabinets and countertops, a brown wood-paneled basement, brown carpet, a dangerously
sloping back yard, and three miniature bedrooms all squashed together
on the upper level.
When the timing worked out, when Eddie was home and still
awake by the time the kids fell asleep, we had sex without worrying
whether or not they could hear useven if they could, theyd forget by morning, we reasoned. Or wed just blame the sounds on the
woodpecker that lived in our bedroom wall. When Eddie was gone, I
sat on the bed, grading papers and watching Grays Anatomy, where
the doctors were always horny, even after a 36-hour shift. In February, when Eddie was rotating in the outpatient clinic and was home
most nights, we conceived Isaac. Isaac was a baby when residency
ended, and my mom and I took him to Houston that spring to shop
for another house. Ed stayed in Minnesota and prescribed Viagra for
the patients on his geriatrics service.
True to the adage, everything was bigger in Texas, most especially
the houses, and I quickly learned the preferred regional floor plan of
the budget home: master bedroom downstairs, three bedrooms and
a game room up. I cant imagine climbing up a flight of stairs to get
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Irreantum

Isaac every time he wants to nurse, I said to my mom, and Annie

stumbles into our bed almost every night. What if she falls down the
stairs when shes looking for us?
While I knew that nearly everyone in our price range slept at night
knowing that their kids were a whole flight of stairs away, I didnt stop
looking until I found a house with all of the bedrooms upstairs. I fretted as I weighed my optionsThe kids rooms are close to each other,
but theres this big hallway between their rooms and ours. What if
they trip on their way to me?
Shelah, its twenty feet. Maybe a little bit of privacy isnt such a bad
thing, my mom said.
It was true that I was eager for a break from Annie using my neck
as her transitional object, stroking my wattles until she fell asleep. But
I feared that putting some physical distance between the kids and me
would show, on a symbolic level, that I was getting tired of the sacrifices that went into being their mother.
Despite the fact that I slept less than twenty feet from
my parents for most of my childhood, I can never remember hearing unusual squeaks, sighs, or (God forbid) moans coming from their
bedroom. I certainly never walked in on them in the act. Evenings at
my childhood home usually ended with my dad falling asleep on the
loveseat in the living room while watching The Cosby Show. Eventually my mom would poke him, Rick, come on up to bed. They rarely
kissed or cuddled; I dont think Ive ever seen him pinch her butt or
grab her for a quick fondle while they did the dishes. I like to think of
my parents as essentially friendly roommates who enjoy one anothers
company; I know they must have had sex at least three times, but I
dont want to think about their sex life. It disturbs me to know that
our squeaky bed and our own inability to keep it down, has forced my
ten-year-old to confront the reality that his parents have sex and like
sex, when I can still live under a haze of innocence because my parents
have been more circumspect.
Although my dad fell asleep most nights in the living room, my
parents did share a bed. My best friend Lizs didnt. The first time
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Miner: The Marriage Bed

I passed through their dark bedroom, on an expedition up to the

attic, Inoticed that the beds were unmade. Yes, beds. I was five at the
time, so I asked without hesitation, Why dont your parents sleep in
the same bed? They do, Liz answered. And while it was true that
the beds were pushed together and had matching sheets and blankets, they were still, in fact, two separate beds. At five, I didnt know
anything about sex, didnt understand why mommies and daddies
shared beds, but it felt instinctively wrong that Mr. and Mrs. Bond
each had their own mattresses, sheets, and blankets. When we were
about twelve, we went into their bedroom to scrounge for dimes and
quarters to buy candy bars, and Liz saw me glance a little too long
in the direction of the beds. She volunteered that her dad had a bad
back. But by then the beds were no longer pushed together. The two
youngest kids in Lizs family were adopted, and once I got old enough,
I always associated the adoptions with the image of Bob and Joy Bond,
sleeping chaste and celibate in their twin beds.
My parents did a relatively good job of providing us with a sexual
education that was consistent with their undemonstrative manner.
One day when I was nine or ten, Peter Mayles Where Did I Come
From? mysteriously appeared on my bookshelf. I read it and was horrified. Then I read it again and couldnt stop laughing at the illustrations of the tuxedoed sperm saying, Who can resist a sperm like
this? and the naked, rotund mom and dad smooching in a bed with
the caption, Here is where babies are made and the description of
orgasm as similar to a tickle in your nose and a big sneeze. I wasnt
sure what I was supposed to do with this information. Should I talk
to my mom about the book? Inconceivable.
Instead, I went down the hall to my little brothers room, and
showed it to him. He may have been too little to understand the
mechanics, but he was old enough to know it was funny. We hid it on
his bookshelf (where it would be less likely to be intercepted, just in
case I had received it by accident), but we sat together on his bedroom
floor on many winter afternoons and giggled. It was gross, and funny,
and we would certainly never want to experience the gigantic, disgusting, boogery sneeze Mayle described, would we? Even if it felt really
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Irreantum

good? My brother must have decided it sounded intriguinghe went

on to have five children before his eighth wedding anniversary. My
pace was a little slower. Eddie and I had four kids in the first nine
years of our marriage.
Though I crave privacy as a parent, there are times when I
also want my children to share the intimacy of my bed. When Isaac
was three, he woke up one morning, feverish and unable to walk. I
called the doctor, who told me to take him directly to the childrens
hospital downtown. Isaac spent several weeks in the hospital with
osteomyelitis, a life-threatening infection in his femur, and had multiple surgeries. After he came home, we had to wake up to give him
IV antibiotics in the night, so we put him in bed with us. He could
have slept in a sleeping bag on the floor, but I wanted to hold him
close, to let the heavens know that I wasnt ready for them to take him.
After six weeks off his feet, he slowly started walking again, and his
femur spontaneously crumbled in the spot where it had been drained
of infection. He spent the next two months in a cast from his chest to
his toes, and he was afraid to sleep in his room, where he was anxious
we might not hear him if he called out in the night.
During those months, with his body heat absorbed by the cast,
his spot in our bed stayed eerily cold. Once he was freed from his
prison and sent back to his bedroom, I didnt miss his fecal stink
or the mountain of his cast separating Eddie and me, but I missed
being Isaacs protector. I lay in bed, arms and legs outstretched, clean,
crisp sheets surrounding me, and resisted the urge to climb into his
twin bed down the hall and curl myself around him. I stayed in bed
and Eddie and I reclaimed our private spaces, with all the rights and
privileges.
Last summer, with Eddies medical training finished, the
children in our family made, born, and weaned, we moved to Salt
Lake City. One of the first things we discovered was that our master
bedroom door didnt lock. Three of the four kids walked in on us
having sex during the first month we lived here. I flew under the
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Miner: The Marriage Bed

sheets when Isaac opened the door, and made Eddie put him back
in bed. Bryce closed the door silently and knowingly and went back
to his room without a word. Annie just knocked and knocked, stopping only when I got up and answered her question. Also, it was a
new house, so it had no shades or window treatments. The five large
windows in our bedroom look out over the pool of our neighbor, a
single guy who has pool parties at his house three or four nights a
week. We spent the summer getting to know the bedroom by feel,
afraid to turn on the lights. As a transplant unschooled in the ways
of Utah culture, I wasnt sure if it would be more scandalous for the
boys next door to see me naked or parading around in my garments.
Long gone was the girl who mooned the van full of boys on our way
to youth conference.
We fixed the lock and saved up for shades. After years of sleeping in the least-likely-to-be-pretty space in the house, I overhauled
the bedroom. We got new dressers, new nightstands, a big fancy
TV, Egyptian-cotton sheets, and a mattress without thirteen years
of his-and-hers indentations. The room looked perfect, but the new
bed, which sits right over the family room, squeaked. We stopped
having quickies in the middle of the day when the kids were awake
and hoped nobody noticed at night. When we had adult houseguests,
Eddie and I experimented with using the closet, but I ended up with
carpet burns. We thought about trying out the back seat of the minivan, but were 35, not 15. It felt wrong to be sneaking around.
A visitor to this essay from another time, or even a reader
from 2012 living in a different part of the world, probably wouldnt
understand the way that, in my mind, married sex and privacy are
inextricably bound. Last summer I visited an old dugout cabin on the
Minnesota prairie, where a family of eight shared a room smaller than
my current bedroom, a space that served as kitchen, living room, and
bedroom for the whole clan. Extended families in India, Malaysia and
sub-Saharan Africa share sleeping spaces, and they manage to engage
in marital recreation and still look their children in the eyes over
breakfast. They dont need a locked door, a space set apart. Why do I?
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Linda Sillitoes 1979 poem Song of Creation shows our Heavenly

Parents engaged in the act of creating the world. Mormon feminists
praise the imagery of Heavenly Father and Mother working in partnership with one another. Yet the closing lines read:
And if you live long, my child,
youll see snow burst
from thunderclouds
and lightning in the snow;
listen to Mother and Father laughing,
listen to Mother and Father laughing
behind the locked door.

I guess if Ive come to adulthood in a culture where even

gods engage in creation behind locked doors, then its also one that
values privacy. There are many things that a guy and a girl unwittingly give up when they make a baby, but the lack of privacy was
one of the biggest surprises. As a teenager, I could strip naked and
run around the beach, then retreat to my own bedroom to read and
think and sleep. Even as a newlywed, I could find private space in our
small apartment. If I headed into the bedroom to read a book, Eddie
wouldnt follow me begging for grape juice or co-opt the bedroom TV
to watch cartoons. After Ive nursed, bounced, carried, cuddled, and
cajoled all day long, its often hard to want more touching, even if its
the good kind. Add a squeaky bed, a door that doesnt lock, or a curious preadolescent to the mix and it can become a recipe for married
celibacy.
Weve been together long enough by now that we know the freckles, wrinkles, and lumps of each others bodies as well as we know
our own. Were not having babies any more. So if were not having
sex for novelty or procreation, why not surrender to celibacy? Why
do we find ourselves at it, whispering our love to each other with the
TV turned up and the door barricaded? He still thrills me, but in a
different way than he did when we were 18-year-olds making out, or
clueless 22-year-old newlyweds figuring out the mechanics of making ourselves as one. Our twenty-two-year-old selves might have been
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Miner: The Marriage Bed

horrified to know that in little more than a decade theyd be reduced to

whispering behind a locked bedroom door. And then only on nights
when calls at the hospital, science fair projects, and Utah Jazz games
dont claim our attention instead. They also might not appreciate how
happy I am to hear Eddies car pull in the driveway on a Wednesday
morning when the kids are in school, when we can slough off our
roles as Mom and Dad along with our clothes.
Three years into their marriage, Jilly and her husband havent
started their family yet. I hope its not because of my advice. Im not
quite as jaded as I was three years ago; Im getting more sleep now
than I was back then, even if Im usually spooning Maren instead of
Eddie. If my sister asked for advice today, I probably wouldnt tell her
Dont have kids, but rather, Dont give up. We didnt; when Eddie
got home from work on the day of my little chat with Bryce, we pulled
the mattress off its frame and spent the evening screwing, or rather
tightening the screws.

29

Sweetwater
Javen Tanner

It has taken me a long time to get here. The circumstances

are less than ideal: a believer in the age of reason.
I have driven from New York. Filthy and bloodshot,
I begin to cry before I reach the bank. A bluebird
dips in front of me and laughs, and I scold myself
for immediately turning him into my heart.
When I was a child I heard the story of a man
who walked a thousand miles. He crossed
the Mississippi, the Missouri, and others.
But when he came to this riverthis small river
exhausted and starving, the thought of crossing
broke his will, and he sat on the bank and wept.
The Sweetwater got its name because of its potability
in contrast with the many alkaline water sources
along the Oregon Trail in Wyoming.

1st place, 2011 Irreantum Poetry Contest

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Tanner: Poems

There are stories of travelers beating their animals

away from poisonous waters, trying to keep them alive
until they reached the Sweetwater.
It has taken me a long time to get here.
Beaten from other waters, I want to drink;
I want to cross. Instead, I kneel and throw my sobs up
where they mix with the bluebirds song,
where my weeping joins the weeping of generations, saying:
we follow the heart no matter how unreasonable
the journey. And for each of us there comes a time
when we cannot cross the water, no matter how sweet it is.
But the heart flies over.

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Genesis
In the beginning there was a dark pool. A warm
pool of darkness. In the beginning it was dark.
And this is how it was: the dark pool had no form.
And God said, Let us take a swim in the beginning.
And they did. And God parted the darkness from water.
In darkness, God parted the water with his swimming.
And the water he called blood. And the darkness, night.
The warm night of darkness was parted from the blood.
And this is how it was: the darkness bled out light.
And God saw that it was good. And he mused, and faced
the bleeding light. And the greater light he called heartbeat,
and the lesser, blackbird. And then the heartbeat raced
as the startled blackbird burst out of the torso.
And God called the torso earth. And the earth began
to turn. (This was about six thousand years ago.)
And God flipped his wet bangs out of his face, and heard
the turning earth and its heartbeat. And then he noticed
the heartbeat sounded like the rushing of his word
in the wind. God noticed the wind smelled of slurry
and rot, wet leaves and distant rain. And then he paused.
And God noticed the rain felt just like Memory
and her daughter. And he remembered well the cost
of all that had been lost. And he wept. This is how
it was in the beginning: everything was lost.

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Tanner: Poems

In the River

Otaua, New Zealand

Hold your breath. Imagine sin

smoldering on your skin, and dissipating
like ink in the current. Come up for air.
Feel the weight and suction of wet linen.
Its cold. But sometimes we are reborn
in winterlate winter, with its slabs of ice
floating face down, like holy spirits drowned.
Sometimes we are reborn in the night
eyes wide open, praying for dawn.
Poor thing, shivering on the bank.
You have been taught to analyze what I mean
when I say, salvation is a trace of blood
in the mouth, a lung full of air,
a darkness with a crown of thorns.
But you already know.

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The End of Happy Endings

Courtney Miller Santo

I shouldve stopped. If my kids had been in the car, I wouldve

stopped. They still believe in happily ever afters, and despite my own
pragmatism, Ive yet to explain the impracticality of such a belief. But
I was alone when I hit the dog, and as Ive said, I didnt stop. It was
a nothing dog, chasing two of its kind across the highway. In certain
parts of Memphis, these dogs, with their heavy, low chests and square
jaws, outnumber the people. In those parts of town, the missionaries carry bear mace and a heavy walking stick when they tract. I told
myself the dog was nothing more than a menace, that thered been no
collar, and that he was probably fine and had made it to the grassy hill
on the other side of the road with no more than a bruised leg.
Still, I felt unsettled. As I pulled into the church parking lot, I promised myself that if there were any sort of measurable dent in my bumper Id go back and see if I could find the dog. I was late for the baptism,
but before I went inside, I set down my things and inspected the front
of our minivan. There was no visible damageno evidence of the yelp
Id heard just before the dog disappeared under my drivers side tire. I
sighed out a prayer, and gave the fiberglass bumper one more pass with
my trembling hand. The tip of my index finger caught in a small crack,
and when I pushed at it, a tuft of beige hair floated out. I watched the
wind carry the fur away and knew I had killed that dog.
Sister Appleton opened the heavy glass door that guarded the
churchs entrance and called to me. Theyve started the opening hymn.
I picked my scriptures and purse off the sidewalk and hurried
toward her. The wind whipped my skirt around my ankles and blew
dust in my eyes. Saturdays are just so hard, I said to her as we walked
3rd place, 2011 Irreantum Fiction Contest

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Irreantum

in together. Theres the boys and their soccer games, and Lilys guitar lessons, and Brians spent all day fixing Sister Gundersons front
porch.
We were never quite so busy when I had young children, Sister
Appleton said. Before going into the Relief Society room, she leaned
in close and pulled at the collar of my blouse until it covered my garment top. Your religion is showing, dear.
The Black family sat on the front roweach looking more uncomfortable than the next in the ill-fitting white, polyester jumpsuits. One
of the teenage sons had a pattern of waves shaved into the hair on
the back of his head, and Michelle, who was the reason I was there,
had replaced the multi-colored beads she usually wore at the ends of
her braids with white ones. The hymn ended abruptly, leaving only
Michelle and the conductor holding the last note of Come Follow Me
for its full three counts.
In my childhood, convert baptisms were a rarity, but since moving
to Memphis a few years earlier, theyd become part of the tedium of
church. At the first testimony meeting our family attended, a large
black man in a purple suit came forward before the first counselor
could close the meeting. After calling the city to repentance, he told
the congregation that hed seen a vision. Our ward would have to be
split seven times seven to receive all of those in the African American
community who would be baptized in the coming years. That man,
Brother Bench, was our bishop now. I often thought that if wed been
able to retain all of the converts over the years, or if so many of the
white families hadnt moved out of our boundaries, that there might
have been a chance of his prophecy coming true.
Instead, we were where we always were. Every other week, the four
pairs of missionaries who served in our ward made pleading calls to
on-the-fence investigators, begging them to take the plunge into the
waters of baptism. If there were Primary-aged children involved, I
received a call on Friday night, letting me know I needed to be there
to welcome the child or children to Primary. More often than not, Id
never met those being baptized, even though the missionaries swore
the whole family had been to church at least twice. Where do the
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Santo: End of Happy Endings

children go? I would ask. This time, it was different though, the Black
family had been regularly attending church for the past several weeks.
Theyd wanted to be baptized earlier, but had to wait for the Bishop
to marry the parents.
Bishop Bench dismissed us all to the baptismal font. I chatted with
the few members in attendance and then slipped away to the Primary
closet to find a CTR ring, Faith in God booklet and some other trinket
I could give Michelle. As I was rummaging around the closet, Sister
Appleton came up to me again. Youll miss the baptism, she said.
Im here, I said too sharply.
Undeterred by my tone, she put her hand on the small of my
back and guided me toward the font. The Lord needs his witnesses,
shesaid.
Only if theyre men, I said under my breath.
I looked up at the mirror as we entered the room and saw that
Elder Perkins had just baptized Michelles older sister, who was pregnant. I hadnt been sure about this, but as she stepped from the water,
the wet material clung to her belly.
Can you see? Sister Appleton whispered to me. She had a feathery
voice that constricted at the ends of her sentences. I imagined she
liked to kneel on hardwood to say her nightly prayers.
I can see fine, I said, bowing my head as the next ordinance began.
Michelle had to be baptized twice because her toe came up the first
time, but the others were buried in the water with relative ease, even
their mother, who said, Oh, Jesus, when she stepped into the font.
Coming up, she wore the same look a rabbit has bounding out of the
underbrush to find humans in its field.
After the service, I tried to strike up a conversation with Michelles
mother. She held her two-year old on her lap while the rest of her
family circled around the cupcakes Sister Appleton had made.
Michelle is just great, I said, holding my finger out to her child.
Yes, maam, she said, looking at the floor.
Smart as can be. And such a beautiful voice. Do you sing?
She shrugged her shoulders and bounced her son. He squirmed
and blew a split bubble.
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How olds this one? I rubbed the toddlers hair, which was soft
and springy.
She looked away from me and called to Michelle, who licked icing
off her fingers. Come take your brother, she said, leaving me with
her children.
By this time, my face was heated from embarrassment. If my husband had been there, he would have known what questions to ask to
keep the conversation going. I heard it said once that you knew you
were ready for the celestial kingdom when you acted out of love, not
out of duty. I hoped Id live long enough to figure out how to be sincere. It was easier with the Primary-aged children. Michelle smiled at
me and I winked at her. She wore the CTR ring on her thumb.
Quite a day, I said.
Its something, she said, struggling to hold onto her brother, who
was half her size.
Hes a cutie, I said.
He okay, said Michelle, setting him down as soon as her mothers
back was turned.
I bet youre a great help to your mother, I said, reaching for the
boy. He turned away, but I enticed him back by offering a brightly patterned board book pulled from my purse. He settled himself on my
feet, intent on tracing his fingers across the different animal textures
on each page.
Thats nice, Michelle said, picking up my scripture case.
I told her it had been my graduation present and that it was older
than she was. Leather ages well. I wish Id known that when I was
your age. I bought so many worthless itemspurses that fell apart,
shoes that came unglued. Its better to save your money and buy quality. Michelle nodded. I wasnt sure she understood.
My sister says that about shoes, the girl said. Gets mad at Mama
when she buy us stuff from Payless. Says she throwing her money
away.
Sometimes you have to buy what you can afford, I said. Not sure
if Michelle was old enough to know how much her own parents
couldnt afford.
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Santo: End of Happy Endings

I wanna get some of these, she said, indicating the scriptures

inside my case.
She didnt protest when I pushed them into her hands. Children
amaze me with their ability to accept what is given to them. Adults
play games with each othersome never asking for help, even as
theyre drowning, and others refusing gifts when they are most needed.
Children havent learned such falsity. I took one of Sister Appletons
cupcakes for the road and slipped out the door, realizing as I walked
how much lighter I felt not carrying that heavy triple combination.
Later that night, after Id told my husband all about the baptisms
and as I was falling asleep, I remembered the dog. I started to tell him
about hitting it, but a rush of shame stopped me. I didnt want him to
know I had it in me to take a life without so much as pausing. It was
a confession for a stranger.
I should tell you right off, that Im not exactly a role
model for race relations. I grew up in Washington, which is just about
as white as Utah County. Ive made most of the classic white person,
well-intentioned mistakes, like urging my own kids to play with the
black children at the park so no one thinks were racist, or smiling at
every interracial couple I meet and making approving head nodsas
if they could read my mind and know Im proud of them for falling in
love. Mostly what Im embarrassed about is that I still consider race
at all. I want to achieve that cum bi ya color blindness that seemed
possible when I was a kid in the seventies.
It seems impossible now, though, so mostly I look for opportunities for people to upend my own expectations. Like the other day,
when I saw a young black man walking a pair of Boston terriers. Up
until then, Id almost always seen young black men walking pit bulls,
which is one of those stereotypes, like fried chicken or watermelon.
So I made a note of it. I thought theres proof right there. Were
all as different as we are alike. I work at the problem in other ways
too. For instance, Ive taken to explaining the color difference to my
children in terms of pigment. It feels like a neutral way to explain
racessome people have more pigment. That makes me feel like Im
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Irreantum

making progress, until my daughter comes home from a field trip to

a house that had been a stop on the underground railroad and asks
me if someone would ever chop her hands off for running away if she
gets more pigment in her.
There are struggles too. For a few years, my oldest son didnt like
any of the black boys in his class. He echoed all the generalizations
Id ever heardhow theyre loud and pushy and talk about guns all
the time on the playground. That was tough on me. I couldnt figure
an answer to it. I tried praying, but it was my husband who found the
solution. He started coaching a basketball team in another churchs
league and brought our son along to help. Southern children know
their manners, and it wasnt too long until my son was responding to
all my requests with, Yes, maam and talking about the boys on the
team as individuals. Instead of hearing they all the time, I heard him
talk about Terry or LaShaun.
The worst racial misstep I did happened when the Black family first
started coming to church. Wed just called a young mother who was
new to the ward to be a Primary teacher and I was trying to explain to
her about the Black family, how they were set to be baptized the next
week and how they had a little girl who would be in her class. Only
it didnt come out like that. I said, Have you met the little Black girl?
Shes quiet, but all the Blacks are.
Of course, Michelle entered the Primary room before I finished
the sentence. Here she is now, I said, smiling at Michelle and then at
our new Variants teacher. Her eyes got real wide, and I could see that
she thought I was entirely another type of person.
It might have been an incident I couldve laughed off had she been
from the South, but shed moved to Memphis with her husband from
California to attend the optometry school. Well, he was the only one
going, but that is how they always said it, as if both the husband and
the wife were enrolled. I stumbled to try to explain about Michelle,
how her last name was Blackonly Michelle has to take that moment
to set me straight and say that she isnt a Black, that her father is different than her step-dad, Reggie, and her last name is Wilson.

40

Santo: End of Happy Endings

Like I said, Im not perfect.

I should say that most of the Mormons Ive met in the South arent
racists. But I think they have some of the same problems I do, which
is why we messed up so badly with the Black family. There a few
older folks, mostly in their late sixties, who are absolutely racist and
are vocal about how giving them the priesthood was a mistake. But
mostly people want desperately for black people to join the church
and become just like all the other Mormons they know. The hard
part is that most of the black people who are baptized arent like any
of the Mormons they know. Honestly, I think it is about economics.
Anyoneblack, white, you name itwith money hasnt got enough
motivation to make them seek out a new church. We get a lot of single
mothers, and grandmothers who are taking care of their childrens
children. The single men are rare, but, strangely, theres no shortage
of teenage boysa lot of parents seem to want to avoid church for
themselves, but send their kids. Its more difficult with the teenage
girls because most of the ones who attend church already have children themselves, even though they are still teenagers.
Thats one reason I got so involved with Michelle. The Bishop and
ward mission leader got it into their heads that we had to get to the
girls in Primary. That was how they phrased it in ward council. It was
not said, but we all knew they meant keep the girls from having sex.
Michelle was eleven, and, by the Bishops estimation, on the brink of
chastity disaster. He asked me to make sure she didnt follow in her
older sisters footsteps. The other reason is what I said earlier, that
I wanted to find a way to act out of love, and so that year, Michelle
became my special project.
Picking up Michelle after school became part of our routine. She
did homework, chores and cheered at my kids tee-ball and soccer
games, just like she was one of my own. Id take her home around
eight, when my children were tucked into their beds. As we drove
shed tell me about her teachers or the girls in her apartment complex
who she played with on Saturdays. She fit into our lives easily, which
made it hard to explain when she left. My kids still ask about her,

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Irreantum

although now my littlest one routinely mixes her in with his rendition of Goldilocksas if she were nothing more than a gift from the
Brothers Grimm.
A few weeks after Michelle was baptized, just down the
road from where Id hit the dog, I saw another dog. This time it
was collared and huddling against the concrete wall of the overpass.
Michelle, along with my three kids, was in the car. I explained to them
what Id seen as I pulled off and circled around to the huddled dog.
Hes so sad, said my six-year-old, peering out the back of the van
window.
I put the flashers on and pulled alongside the dog. I opened the van
door and called to the puppy from the drivers seat. The dog walked
warily toward the open door. From the back, I heard a sniffling sound.
I looked back and saw that Michelle had great tears rolling down her
round cheeks.
My two-year-old was yelling, Puppy, puppy, puppy.
Michelle, honey, whats wrong?
Hes got a tag, Mom, said my six-year-old, so hes owned.
Michelle screamed as the dog put a paw on the runner of the van.
Are you afraid of dogs? Is that it?
Michelle had unbuckled herself and stood on the back bench seat.
I looked at her and then at the dog, who seemed like the sort of dog
that people took care of. He was a beagle with warm, wet brown eyes.
I pushed the button to close the van door and waited until the puppy
backed to the concrete wall.
Michelles sobs had slowed and she worked to buckle herself back
in the seat. My eight-year-old and my six-year-old were protesting
loudly. Hell die. Hell run out in front of a car.
I couldnt think what to do. I told the children to say a prayer.
Ireminded them how Heavenly Father helped them find their lost
possessions and said surely hed help save the dog, and then I drove
homeall the while saying my own prayers.
I didnt tell my husband about the dog, but that night, when I took
Michelle home, I told her the next time I saw a stray dog I might have
to stop, even if she were in the car.
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Santo: End of Happy Endings

Thats dumb, she said.

Its the right thing to do, I said, thinking Id use this moment to
reinforce our sharing time, which had been about service.
You people always doing stuff and not thinking about getting hurt.
I got a mean dog that lives next door. Hes on a chain and I just know
that as soon as he gets off that chain hes going to bite every person
that he sees. And its not just mean dogs. My cousin got bit by a tiny
dogit had bows in its hair, but it didnt matter, bit her all the same.
I was stunned into silence. Michelle rarely spoke so much without
prompting and there was an edge to her voice that made her seem
closer to eighteen than eleven.
I went inside with Michelle that night. I didnt usually do this. The
house was small and the living room was overflowing with furniture
three mismatched recliners and two loveseats. This was where the
teenagers in the house slept. The parents had one bedroom and the
children, which I took to mean anyone who wasnt old enough to have
a job, slept in the other bedroom.
A few of the older siblings had already claimed their spots in the
living room and only one loveseat was open. Michelles stepfather
greeted me at the door.
She doing okay for you? he asked.
Michelles great, I said, not sure why Id felt it necessary to walk
her to the door. Then, out of habit from all my through-the-screendoor visiting teaching appointments, I asked him if his family needed
anything.
What would we need? he asked, rubbing his hand with his face.
Oh, I dont know
Now that I got this job, we got what we need. Its good work, comes
with benefits and everything, he said. Are you sure Michelles not
causing you trouble? We told her to help you with the kids and stuff.
There was this dog, I started to say. I could see inside the house
that Michelle had curled up on the open loveseat with a grey blanket
and was staring blankly at the television.
She dont like dogs, he said to me.
Yes. But shes fine now. My voice rose at the end, as if it were a
question.
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Irreantum

Her grades are up, he said. In the background, I heard Michelles

mother ask her if shed eaten yet. She didnt reply. Her stepfather
turned from the door and yelled at her to answer her mother.
I should go, I said, stepping back.
Safe in my vehicle, I wasnt sure what to think about the half conversation Id had with Michelles family. I idled the van and considered
going back to the door to try to speak with her mother, but I didnt
know what to say. As I backed slowly out of the driveway, a neighbor
came down off her front porch and called to me.
You lost? the woman asked.
I smiled broadly and explained that Id just dropped Michelle off.
The streetlights came on suddenly, like fireworks, and the dogs on the
street started barking.
How do you know them? the woman asked, gesturing to the
house.
Church, I said.
Must be some kind of church, the woman said. She reached up
and straightened her wig, which had started to slipped down over
her eyes. Ive lived here all my life and Ive never had such neighbors.
What do you know about them?
Not enough, I said, stepping gently on the gas pedal.
A few Sundays before the Black family disappeared,
Michelle sang a solo as part of the childrens program. I expect someday Ill see her on a televised amateur talent show. There shell stand,
with her wide smile, making the judges think she isnt serious, but then
shell look at her shoes and open her mouth and they wont believe
how beautiful the sound is that comes out. I dont let the Primary
children sing that song anymore. I did, once, afterward, but when I
heard the opening line I like to look for rainbows, I got so choked up
I couldnt do sharing time. That day I put the older ones in charge of
playing scripture hangman.
At first I wanted to blame the missionaries for what happened with
the Black family. I dont know where they send the smart ones, the
ones whove seen a bit of the world, but most of the elders we get in
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Santo: End of Happy Endings

Memphis arrive still dusty from their family ranches. Too many of
them are from the southwest corner of Utah. I guess someone must
think that growing cotton in Utah is the same as growing cotton in
the South. Its not. These boys have their good points; they do come
prepared to work, but their calluses are in all the wrong places and
theyve only ever known white people. White Mormons. Memphis,
with its Baptists and black majority, is quite a shock. I dont know if
they see what they want to, or if they just dont understand enough
about people to look for the bad, the potential trouble.
Now I can see how pushing Michelles mother and Reggie Black
into marriage so they could get baptized created a new layer of tension in their house. They werent ready, and it is hard to trust a nineteen-year-old kid to see thatto make the call and say this family
doesnt need the gospel right now. It took us a few weeks to notice
theyd stopped coming to church. It was during Christmas break so
I hadnt been picking up Michelle after school, but at ward council
in January, the Young Men president said hed been by twice to try to
pick up the older boys for Wednesday night activities. He thought the
house was deserted.
Is the Christmas basket still there? asked the Relief Society
president.
I think so, said our Young Men president.
It was agreed that the Bishop and the Elders Quorum president
would try to speak with the neighbors to find out what they knew,
and then we moved on to other issues. The truth was, their disappearance wasnt uncommon. Many of the converts, especially those in
poor financial situations, often moved without notice. Their phones
got cut off, they got evicted. Relatives moved into their house whod
never heard of them. Children went to stay with aunts in Chicago or
grandmothers in Mississippi.
We only got the full story of what happened with the Black family
when we found Reggie, Michelles stepfather, in the Med. Hed been
shot in the stomach and had been in a medically induced coma for
three weeks. When he woke up, he called our bishop. The story that
he told was that his wife had hired her brother-in-law to kill him.
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Irreantum

Shed discovered that his new job came with a life insurance policy
and, as his wife, she was the sole beneficiary. Three days before Christmas, she took her kids to visit relatives in Mississippi and then, while
Reggie was sleeping, her brother-in-law crept through their unlocked
bedroom window and shot him.
It took him many years to recover from the bullet wound. Hes
still in our stake and last year, he bore his testimony before one of the
General Authorities spoke at Stake Conference. He credits God and
a priesthood blessing with saving his life, but he doesnt talk about
his wife or how he got shot. In the end, everyone pleaded out and the
children were put into the foster care system. I asked Reggie, after he
spoke, if he ever heard from Michelle.
Naw. She wouldnt call me. I was never her father, he said.
I must have looked worried because he sought me out later, as I
was trying to get my children buckled into their car seats.
Im sure Michelles fine. She wasnt like her sister. Or heck, even
like her mother. The church thing, it was her idea, at first. Shes the
one who let the missionaries into the house. She said they looked
lonely.
She had a real testimony, I said, easing my littlest one into his
infant seat. I just dont think I did enough. If I just knew
We do what we can, he said. I think her mom had a sister near
Baton Rouge who was a good woman. Im sure shes got the kids, or
some of them at least. I hear the older ones are back with their mom
in Orange Mound, but I dont want to mess with that. He leaned in
and hugged me then.
We shouldnt have messed with your family, I said.
Reggie shrugged. Michelle knows Jesus and thatll save her as
much as anything.
In the month after Michelle disappeared, I rescued fourteen dogs. I kept waiting for someone to ask me what I thought I was
doing, but no one ever did. The first dog I rescued was the same one
Id seen that day in the van with Michelle. It turns out he was some
sort of escape artist and his owner was an elderly man who had a
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Santo: End of Happy Endings

house full of pianos. There were five in the living room and he said he
had a collection in the basement too.
She just gets out on me, he said. Thats why I got her microchipped
and put all my information on her collar. He held the dog like a man
carrying a football, and when he gave me the tour of his home, it
sounded more like he was talking to the dog than to me. Every sentence
ended with right girl?
Some of the dogs were injured and one died before I could get
to the vet hospital. I spent forty-five minutes trying to coax a collarless dog in our neighborhood inside our house. The older children
complained that we were going to be late to school, but my youngest
brought down a butterfly net and insisted he could catch the puppy.
Once we lured him into the van, he started a vicious cycle of throwing up, eating his own throw up, throwing up again and then eating
it upagain.
I got into a fight with the school receptionist when I dropped my
children off that day. She told me we were at risk of academic suspension because of the increased number of tardies.
We were saving a dogs life, I said.
Stop yelling, said my oldest son.
This is important. You just cant penalize someone for trying to do
right. Surely, you understand that, I said to the receptionist.
Its policy, she said.
Let me speak to the principal, I said, thumping myself down into
one of the waiting room chairs.
My two-year old climbed up into my lap and waved goodbye to his
older brothers and sisters, and they headed to their classrooms.
We dont have to save all the doggies, he said, patting my face.
I started crying. I was still crying when the principal came out of
her office. I should have stopped, I said.
The principal took my hand in hers and said as gently as she could,
You can stop now.

47

Bridge to Elysium
Melissa Dalton-Bradford

Only a brief walk over a bridge spanning a river, and you are
in Elysium.
If the performance in the Thtre des Champs-lyses, (the Thea
ter of the Elysian Fields), begins at 8:00 p.m., I can still slurp my last
spoonful of soup at 7:35 while repeating last minute bedtime instructions to Parker, our oldest son, and while Claire, our daughter, shoves
a crayon and a crumpled parental consent form into my one free hand,
just as Luc, our youngest, a dripping escapee from bathland, races wet
and naked through the kitchen, and Dalton, our nine-year-old, recites
Victor Hugos Demain ds laube as I whisper to Randall, my husband, to check his pockets for change to give to the theater ushers and
I check my own pockets for tickets, two of them, which I then wave
through the air with a flourish as we blow kisses and shut behind us
the doors to that whole wonderfully ordinary world.
Crossing from our place on the left bank of the Seine over the
Pont de lAlma to the theater on the right bank, we talk in quick clips,
our conversation shedding the world behind us and anticipating the
world ahead. Those conversations go something like this:
So Hndel really conducted the Messiah in English? Randall asks
me. In Covent Garden? Just months before he died?
Im pretty sure, uh-huh. You put detergent in the dishwasher?
Mu-uhm. We lose each others hands in the crowd as we cross at
the light. I catch up:
You sure these are tonights tickets? I hold them to my eyes, checking the print under the lamplight.
Gotta be. Can you walk a teeny bit faster in those heels?
3rd place, 2012 Charlotte and Eugene England Personal Essay Contest

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Irreantum

Try-ing ... You did turn on the dishwasher, right?

At 7:50 sharp we pass through the crowded theater lobby
and take the stairs two-at-a-time so that by 7:55 we slide into our
crimson velvet seats with time enough to gaze up at the art dco ceiling and frescoes. My breathing slows down and stretches wider. My
pulse settles. The house lights recede. The surrounding murmurs
muffle then ebb to complete silence. This suspended moment is a
time-lapse blossoming, and I sink deep into its heat-filled whorl, lush
petals of the sublime unfolding right against my skin.
There was a time when my husband and I made many treks like
that to sample Elysiums netherworld. Salient among them all is one
particular evening. On the program was Beethovens Ninth Symphony
and the stage was crowded with more than 300 performers from
virtually the entire world. The final chorus of Schillers text of An
Die Freude (Ode to Joy) began musically as it does textually, with a
beautiful spark of Freude! Freude! (Joy! Joy!), igniting a surge that
flamed into full-blown musical fireworks:
Freude, schner Gtterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium
Wir betreten feuertrunken
Himmlische, Dein Heiligtum


Joy, beautiful spark of the Gods

Daughter of Elysium,
We enter, fire-imbibed
Heavenly, thy sanctuary.
(Schiller 115)

The entire theater rang with full orchestra and choir and with something else that went beyond sound waves, and on the final note, the
otherwise urbane Parisian audience shot to its feet, roaring, stomping
stilettos in ecstasy. Folks threw flowers onto the stage and arms and
tickets and programs into the air while ovations thundered, flooding
the hall like an ocean of joy itself.
During the walk home that night, our conversation was neither
chirpy nor exuberant. In fact, we didnt carry on a conversation at all.
We carried, rather, a silent, resonant heft held tightly in our hand-inhand stagger over the Seine. In place of a long, grinning sigh, there

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was a kind of humming dumbfoundedness rippled with awe and reverence. A sense, even, of urgency and import.
We paused in the shadows between the glow of street lamps lining
the bridge. There we stood, speechless on the Pont de lAlma, the river
flowing beneath us, its inky course pulsing with a glinting pelt of silver.
Its flow teased that beauty from our grip, and we felt it slipping. This,
toothe thought came unbiddenwill end. How many more times,
we asked each other, would we be able to stand just like this; together,
safe, watching the river glide noiselessly under our feet, the sublime
still pearling on our spirits the way sweat beads on the upper lip?
We tiptoed across the darkened threshold of our apartment. All
was well: food in fridge, water in pipes, heat in radiators. Beethoven
still rang in our ears, peace hung in the air, and no detergent was in
the dishwasher, which, incidentally, had never been turned on. But
whos checking?
The three younger children were long since in bed. The one in
charge, eighteen-year-old Parker, was still working, facing the bluish
light of the computer screen, hunched over a psychology class research
project.
Freud, he grunted, acknowledging our parental checking-in.
I gave half a chuckle. Know what his names means?
Right palm spread against his brow, Parker propped up his
exhausted head.
Uh, lets see. Boring?
Joy. Joy boy Sigmund Freud! Freude means joy. You drop the eh at
the end.
Okay. And oxymoron is what that means. (At this late hour he
was visibly unimpressed with Freud.) You drop the oxy at the start.
Snickering, I kissed the back of my big sons head, and whistled
Beethoven as I kicked off my heels. Randall loosened his tie. We hung
our coats, tossed the tickets, and went to sleep in a world that felt
part Elysian Field perfection, part garden variety quotidian, but both
parts a completion; a whole, overflowing with abundance. And what
abundance: all six of us under one roof. All of us together. All of us.

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Irreantum

Together. In the moment, that reality felt self-evident, more the standard mental checklist than the miraculous. But as I pulled the blanket
over my shoulder, that knowledge returned: This, too, will end.
Ode to Joy and the following months for which Beethoven seemed
the soundtrack, made for a benevolent though grievous prefiguring.
So heightened was that time, in fact, that I wrote about it to family
and friends. Part of our familys 2006 Christmas letter:
What stirs me most about this years journey with its countless goingsout and comings-back, is that every last one of us has actually come back.
Dressed in his schools sports warm-ups, Parker lugged himself and his
carry-on suitcase through our apartment door just a few days ago and,
recognizing as never before his safe return from another away game as the
marvel it was, I took this man-sized son in my arms and held him there a
nice long while. Hed just been gone a couple of days, but wed missed him
more than usual. Why? Because while he was gone, our family had been
jarred by the news that a young man, the son of our good friendsa boy
with whom our own son had played basketballhad been killed. Only
months into his service as a missionary for our church, hed been dragged
under the wheels of a train.
Parker takes trains. Every day of his life he takes them, hopping casually from one Metro line to the other, or loading himself and his teammates
onto high speed commuters heading out of France for international sports
competitions.
And now, by some quirk of fate I cannot fathom and will not accept,
I have my son. And my friend does not have hers. How one step can
change everything.
For months my focus was opened from pesky minutiae to the big
picture, tightened, too, from billowing bellowing distractions to the
small. A young mans fatal step had changed me. Or so I thought. During that year, our last year in Paris, I was reflective, deeply in tune with
leavings and losses of every kind. But my friends loss was only vicarious for me. Soon enough, I was back to the surface of surfacey things.
Our last year in Paris. Sounds like a chick flick, no way befitting
of the stark reality that lay in store for our family. We would never
again know our family as intact, life as whole. We would never again
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Dalton-Bradford: Bridge to Elysium

experience the world as continual, the next hour as a given. And we

would never again refer to that year as our last year in Paris. In one
split second, it would become The Last Year.
We would bury Parker.
Watching through the chapel window, I tried to follow a
single snowflake as it wafted to earth. A makeshift quartet of young
men was beaming, eyebrows raised, attempting the prelude, Joy to the
World. I hunched into my heart, trying to disappear into a nautilus of
isolation and nausea. There was, evenand sometimes especiallyat
church, no escape from words that sailed white-hot skewers through
my chest. Fewer than five months from implosion, and we were still
very much the walking dead. We were, nonetheless, faithfully holding
on, all five of us. (Five of us. The words felt blasphemous, even when I
only thought them. Heaven knows I could not speak them.)
And I could not sing the word joy. It seemed a mockery to me. Joy
to this world? This world whose crust is, as writes Eleanor Stump,
soaked with the tears of the suffering? (qtd. in Morris 236). Where
there are trap doors and booby traps, out-of-the-clear-blue-sky terminal diagnoses, crushing train wheels, hidden whirlpools? This perilous, unpredictably violent minefield of a world where, with one step
(like the fatal step of my friends son; like the fatal step of my own
son), that which we rely onthe solid, foreseeablevanishes right
out from under our feet? No wonder C.S. Lewis wrote that grief feels
so much like fear. There is a decidedly vertiginous sensation that overtakes you when grief is most acute. It is like standing in an elevator on
the 58th floor when, without warning, all the cables snap. That free
falling, falling, falling.
Falling against an inert sky, the snow outside the window kept its
perfunctory rhythm, dispassionate as a player piano scroll. I tried to
count flakes through a glaze of tears as the congregation prepared for
the sacrament with the hymn, He Died, The Great Redeemer Died
(Watts 192). The text at any other previous time in my life would have
felt exclamatory, hopeful. Now, I couldnt even make it through the
first two shocking syllables.
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In the air around me, voices swirled listlessly, And Israels Daughters wept around. At once, I am elsewhere. In front of my minds eye
is my daughter, collapsed on her knees at the side of an ICU gurney.
A battered animal bray gurgles out of her throat as her brothers life
support is turned off, its swoosh silenced.
A thousand drops of precious blood. I see myself shivering, nose to
my comatose sons ear, whispering, then kissing the seven ugly gashes
on his head. My husbands eyes are unrecognizably stark as he carefully folds a new white tissue and dabs the blood that leaks from his
childs swollen eyes.
Heres love and grief beyond degree. An ICU nurseyoung, maybe
six months pregnantis bracing herself against a corner wall as we
emerge from those last moments in that room. Stumbling into the
hallway, we droop into the arms of waiting family and friends, then
over someones shoulder I notice this nurse and see she is wearing
royal blue scrubs, the same color as the curtains that hung in Parkers
bedroom. I also see she is crying.
The Lord of glory died for men. Back in my chapel pew. A sprightly
soprano, our ward chorister, was audible above the congregations
plodding drone, and especially when she came to the word I could
not speak; died. I winced, then raised my eyes only to see that she
was smiling. Broadly. In a jerk that surprised me as much as Randall,
Iwas up and moving. Scooted first past him, then past my questioning children, out of the pew and straight to the door as voices sang,
But lo! What sudden joys were heard!
Out of the chapel. Out of the building. Onto the street. Into the
cold. I needed air. I needed answers. How joy? After the razor-sharp
edge of experience, how would there ever again be something as
floppy as joy? The snowflakes caught in my eyelashes and my shoes
skidded on ice, but all I felt was hot sorrow surging through me like
lava, clearing the landscape of my body. Life, I felt my viscera insisting, would herewith be void of joy. Let the nave and the unscathed do
joy. Let them have their jaunty, jocular joy. Their joking, lighter-thanair joy. Their back-slapping, mint-julep-sipping, broadly-smiling joy.
But the experienced, the bereaved? We others who know better and
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Dalton-Bradford: Bridge to Elysium

see the world as it really is: reeling in personal and widespread terror,
seething in wickedness, spinning off its axis?
Joy?
Seriously?
No. I could notwould notbring myself to it.
Which made it hard for me to understand why, looking back at
the earliest and most chaotic days of grief, I had still felt a profound
securitya hint of joyalongside the searing, crippling agony. I felt
this at the funeral, for instance. Several of Parkers friends had traveled from their different countries of origin to the site of his services.
At one point during the viewing, I noticed that these friends were
clustered in a corner. There was the Jewish French-Portuguese musician, the red-headed New England atheist, the non-denominational
Iranian, the staunch Philadelphian Catholic, the Italian Buddhist, the
German-American brother-sister duo from New York City whose
mother had come too. They were draped on each other, holding each
other up, weeping, shoulders shaking.
I broke from the reception line and, in one spontaneous gesture, took
them into a circle where, with our arms around one anothers shoulders,
we bowed our heads. Then I prayed. I prayed out loud that our Father
in Heaven and their friend Parker would calm and guide each of them,
and that Gods presence would surround them and hold them up. Just
like our circle. I cannot recall in detail all that poured out of me along
with my tears, but when I endedand this I do recall in every detail
I looked them each in the eye and said, No fear. Nofear.
A strange thing to say. Better on a skateboarders T-shirt than
on the lips of a grief-stricken mother. But the point is this. In that
moment, I clearly saw the risk of them choking with fear, of them
panicking at the prospect of living in a frightening world where random things like Parkers death happen. I saw how any one of them
could easily curl up in bitterness or despair and end up like Freud
himself, who grumbled, What good to us is a long life, if it is difficult
and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer? (50). Did I want them to end up like that?
Did I, for that matter, want to end up like that? So I repeated to them
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(and to myself ) the same message Parkers spirit and certainly other
encircling spirits had been repeating to me from the first minutes of
terror: No fear. No fear.
Now, some months later, as snow continued to bury the world out
there, I was suffocating under the weight of heartache so anvil-heavy,
it was crushing any resolve I had to be fearless, to allow for joy, to
engage in life. I was learning that its one thing to feel fearlessness
and resolve when held up, arm around shoulder, in a huddle of loving friends or when encircled by angelic attendants. Its quite another
thing to grope after resolve when you are isolated and you only have
one place to turn to: the icy tiles of your kitchen floor, say, where you
crawl on your hands and knees in the middle of many a blue-black
winter predawn.
Those unsympathetic kitchen tiles. The farthest point I could find
from where everyone else might be sleeping. This was where I would
often stumble and close myself off. I would give vent. I would wrestle,
in my chilly nighttime isolation, with God and with all those angels
who felt (I had to admit it) like theyd up and abandoned us altogether.
Kneeling in my pajamas, I sometimes railed. This is enough, I heard
myself hiss through gritted teeth. We cannot do this much longer. Look
at these children, so confused, so alone. Look at my husband, down thirtyfive pounds, gaunt, broken. As I pled, and in case heaven could not
hear me or doubted my cause, I sometimes (always) pounded my fists.
Pummeled those impassive tiles.
Angels heard me. Or better, I heard them. When my knees and fists
grew sore, I took the family scriptures from the kitchen counter, sat
cross-legged, and began searching in the darkness and with my pen
light for answers in those pages. The angels I found there visited the
appallingly destitute in the loneliest crevices of isolation, desperation,
and darkness. When they visited, they often chanted the same salutation: Fear not. As I imagine it, they sang in muted harmonies, their
warm light rippling through frozen hearts. With that simple twosyllable reassurance, things would start vibrating. Sheep would stop
chewing their cud. Cattle would stop lowing. Folks would be sore
amazed. A cold kitchen floor would become a heat-filled sanctuary.
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Dalton-Bradford: Bridge to Elysium

Why, of all the things angels could choose to sayof all the things
Parker could say to his grieving motherwhy these two words, Fear
not? I learned, over weeks and months of intense spiritual tutorial,
that they say them for reasons that go far beyond some vague encouragement. Heavenly emissaries are more than mere cheerleaders who
urge with, Cmon guys, you can do it. And their words go far beyond
mere placation, as in, There, there. We come in peace. Dont worry.
Be happy.
Fear not is, as I have gradually begun to understand it, a divine
injunction straight from God. The angels are directed, before anything else, to drive out fear in this trembling, sufferingand by all
mortal measurements justifiably frightenedworld. God Himself,
whose sufferings outstrip all the accumulated sufferings of the infinitude of creation, greets us with the same words. Fear not, he says to
Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Joshua, Daniel, Joseph, Zacharias, Simon, and
scores of others (Genesis 15:1; Genesis 26:24; Genesis 46:3; Joshua 8:1;
Daniel 10:12; Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:13; Luke 5:10). Fear not, whole
house of Israel. Fear not, all humankind. More than a pep talk, more
than a pat on the head, fear not is a warning directed at fearan
exorcism, even, as writer Kathleen Norris suggests (144). Fear not is
Gods steely, conquering command: Fear, be not! Fear, be gone!
To exorcise fear, God flushes the darkness of this world with His
blazing presence. And wherever His presence is, not only can fear not
remain, but confidence, peace, contentment, wholeness, strength, and
lightall cousins of joycan flourish. Does the pain of loss necessarily disappear? No. Does my yearning for my son cease? No. Not
in the least. But what does happen is that alongsideor better, from
withinthe pain and yearning comes a sense of being lovingly upheld
by God. The terrifying free fall of fear lands, just in time, in His hands.
It is then, eyes squeezed tightly shut in preparation for impact, when
we realize with a gasp that those hands have been only a few inches
ahead of our whole, dizzying descent. Indeed, those hands have
descended below all things. They bear the marks to prove it. And so,
still splayed flat and panting, we slowly open our view to this pellucid
truth: Yes, we really can trust God with our lives.
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And what is joy for me now, nearly five years from my zero point?
It is still, for me, a lurching, to-and-fro thing. This, because as soon
as joy softens my heart, I am most sharply aware of my sons absence.
Surprised by joy in that Wordsworthian sense, I find myself mourning anew, straining my eyes through the unfurling shadowiness of
years ahead where, over and over again, I see only the echoing presence of his absence. And it is immense. For that immense absence, the
most powerful antidote I have experienced is seeking Gods increased
presence; for in the Fathers presence, I find both the peace that passeth all understanding (Phil 4:7) as well as my sons presence. Both
that Father and this son have been clearly manifested to me by evermultiplying proofs in ever-multiplying instances where prayers have
been answered in precise detail. Guidance in its jot-and-tittle specificity has been given. Strengthemotional, mental, and physicalhas
come from hidden wells I never could have imagined existed. As a
result, I can say, as does Job, that, now mine eye seeth thee (42:5).
Although loss was initially blindingfor so very long I could see
nothing but losswith experiences that solidified my trust in God,
the same loss cleared my sight for sacred subtleties I heretofore had
not perceived. I morti verze i oci ai vivi, the ancient Romans recited
as part of their burial rites: The dead open the eyes of the living.
With newly-opened eyes, the living are able to see, as does DeAnna
Edwards, that Joy is not the absence of pain. Joy is the presence of
God. Tragedy can increase our joy and increase our faith (70). This
verity sheds new light on the often-quoted passage from Doctrine and
Covenants 121:45, which reads, Then shall thy confidence wax strong
in the presence of God. With a simple reslanting in emphasis and a
slight reordering of words, the verse holds a rather different meaning: Then shall thy confidence in the presence of God wax strong. This
sort of muscular confidence in the fact that God is presentand not
passively, but passionately and personallyin our lives, banishes fear,
limits pain, and enlarges our capacity to receive and radiate joy. This is
presence bigger than absence. This is the nature of intimate knowing,
the fount of fearlessness. This is the atonement at work. This is life
after death. This is the wellspring of my evolving joy.
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The younger Alma typifies the most highly evolved sort of joy:
There could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains,
he writes. Yet ... on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite
and sweet as was my joy (Alma 36:2021). These words point to a
joy that is not the unfettered, sparkling joie de vivre that has something in common with carbonated giddiness and the caffeine-jolt of
temporal amusements or artificial stimuli. Deep joy, in fact, has little
if nothing to do with bubbles that dance to the surface. Joy like that
of which Alma writes and of the sort I sense now, is best described
as profound reverence mixed with sweeping gratitude. It is, I would
suggest, synonymous with worship. It has height, depth, timbre, and
texture unlike anything I knew before I knew sorrow of similar proportions. This joy is accompanied not by laughter, but often by tears,
although genuine joy is not merely emotion. One could say that genuine joy eclipses and goes beyondbelow and abovemere emotion,
connecting with a timeless, cosmic, teeming chorus of creation that is
constantly worshipping God.
How appropriate, then, that Beethovens Ode to Joy reaches its
highest note, its musical summit, when the lyric reaches its highest
philosophical truth: Above the starry canopy / A loving Father must
dwell (116). It is Gods presence that stimulates divine joy; it is our
faith in His presence that sustains such joy.
The last year was not my last time in Paris. I have since
returned. While there, I have stopped with my husband on the Pont
de lAlmaat about the fifth lamppost, which marks mid-bridge.
There, the two of us mid-lifers scan the panorama from the left bank
and then to the right, trying to take in the expanse around us, the
magnificence of where we stand in the moment. There has been so
much. There will be much more. Standing in what I call the present tension, everything seems to melt into one eternal round. My
husband checks his watch. We pick up our speed and make it to the
Thtre des Champs-lyses in time to take the stairs thoughtfully,
one-by-one, to our seats. There, I sink in, look up, and wait for ... for
whatever comes next.
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As house lights fade, my mind illumines. I am newly aware of

where I am sitting: the Elysian Fields. Greek mythologys underworld.
Here, I recall, Hades, in a cruel sleight-of-hand, kidnapped and kept
Demeters daughter Persephone, and throughout a full year, the grieftormented mother searched wildlyall the while undergroundfor
her child. In symbiotic mourning, all nature shut down. Then came
the exhilarating moment of mother-child reunion where all creation,
like mother, exulted in joy. Daughter and mother ascended to the
surface; daughter, mother, and earth returned instantaneously to life.
Of all rites in ancient Greece, those of the cult of Demeter, annual
rituals called the Mysteries, are considered the most important and
sacred. They mark the mothers descent in loss and grief, her search,
and her eventual ascent into a new existence. Historians claim the
Greeks concluded these initiatory rites with tremendous, music-filled,
joy-drenched festivities.
One foot in imagined Elysium and the other leaving its Parisian
counterpart, I cross over the Seine toward the left bank with my husband. We climb the stairs to the apartment (which now belongs to
another family of six; their oldest son sleeps behind the same royal
blue curtain as did ours), and I stand wordlessly outside the very
entryway that his full-grown body filled with squared shoulders, burgeoning presence. Through that all I hear Alma again (this time the
youngers father) advising, This life is the time to prepare to meet
God (Alma 34:32). It seems both of the Almas and the Pont de
lAlma express that one leveling truth: Its only a bridge span over a
river. Soon enough, you will be sitting in Elysium.
The sounds of this city recede so that I think I hear something else.
A faint descant, warm but lofty, comes to my hearts listening ear. It is
angels. Fear not.
I think I know those lyrics.
Walking back into the calm of late evening, I pause below my sons
window, waiting for the next word. It is coming. Slowly.
Joy.
I know that voice. It has deepened and taken on a burnish since the
days it came from behind that royal blue curtain.
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Joy, he repeats, as if inviting harmony.

To the world.
With him, I might just be able to hum along.

Works Cited
DeAnna, Edwards. Grieving: The Pain and the Promise. American
Fork (UT): Covenant Communications, 1989. Print.
Morris, Thomas V. God and the Philosophers: The Reconciliation of
Faith and Reason. New York: Oxford, 1994. Print.
Norris, Kathleen. Amazing Grace. New York: Riverhead, 1999. Print.
Schiller, Friedrich. An Die Freude. Schiller Gedichte. Stuttgart: Phaidon
Verlag, 1982. Print.
The Holy Bible. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, 1979. King James Vers. Print.
Watts, Isaac. He Died! The Great Redeemer Died. Hymns of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City: The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1985. Print.
Woodward, Kathleen M. Aging and Its Discontents: Freud and Other
Fictions. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991. Print.

61

Honeymoon at Thirty-Something
Elizabeth Garcia

His: For years, weve spandexed our nudes. Corralled our bodies.
Sandbagged the river. Now? Drought. The horse ignores the
open gate. So you flick him, remind him whos master, and
he eyes you back, Ill take my own damn time. And you think,
Wasnt I through with waiting? Theres no rebellion here for
aphrodisiac. No grudges ground out by sawing each other in
half, no superegos floating in the air like dead prophets. No
one is watching. Even God has turned to other business.
Hers: What Ive read evokes only ripping, and Im without a bodice.
Underneath, theyre always angry. And Ive got reason
twenty years of going withoutbut enough friction, too,
from all the sand. With the cobwebs, I could make a veil to
pass through, bring me to the other side of window, the afterbite of apple. It settles on my shoulders like a shawl: old bride,
you are the stone urn on the back of a shelf.

Honorable mention, 2011 Irreantum Poetry Contest

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Garcia: Poems

Fling
He was the only person I ever met who said, Im not interested in celestial glory. Like, I dont like jam, or I dont watch the news. I had nothing
to say back. Just the whine of tires on the road. He thought it would
open me again, reveal the color of my bra, like when we met. But I was
just thirsty, watching the flecks of white lodged in the corners of his
mouth all night, after the tongues, the hands.... We both knew what
came after dinner. Though I had to keep track of those hands, pry
them out of my jeans. I had lines, you know. He probably wondered
why I was so buttoned up. And I wondered why he had shown up
with a rose. Peach colored.

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Eve in the Garden

Adams in the field again, scattering leaves,
hoping for a crop. Twigs didnt work.
Just poked their heads ramrod straight
all day. He envied their inertia,
backs so straight, like Gods bark
from the East. He doesnt know
she visits every afternoon, sneaking back
to gather green, tongue another taste, soak up
the fecund air, and sponge her belly
with epiphany: this one will never grate his beard
against his brother. Every day,
she flits past the burning
like a moth, a hair for every visit
soaked in lightning, each white shaft
a thread of infinity.

64

The Sinkhole
Larry Menlove

Late July, 1932, near Darby, Montana

I had a big long rattlesnake in my rucksack. Id killed it clean with
the blunt end of my ax handle and was sipping on the last of my
cherry soda when the scent reached me. It seemed to be wafting up
from over by the old gravel pit the other side of the ridge. So I veered
off my path down canyon and started uphill to the right, leaning on
my daddys bladeless ax handle that I used like a walking stick. I dug
my booted toes into the rocks and dirt and that yellow cheat-grass
that always reminds me of Doriss hair, which naturally brings me
back around to thinking about Gil Peters, though I wish it didnt. I
gripped the ax handle a little tighter then, and since my day stretched
out with nothing remarkable on the horizon, I let curiosity guide me
and made my way up through the scrub oak to go find out what it was
on the other side of the ridge stinking up the good air of my morning.
My sack was heavy, seeing as along with the rattlesnake, Id found
a half dozen nice fossils, a regular nest beneath my dead rattler. My
buyer, Budge, back at the store, thinks a rattler smells like cucumbers.
I dont know about that but Id sure rather be smelling cucumbers
than this other. The smell compelling me to tramp up this leg of the
Bitterroots reeked of the familiar mark of long dead. Course that
didnt mean it didnt die yesterday forenoon. What with the blistering
summer weve been having and the way the sun and decay can get into
a thing real quick, whatever it was dead over yonder may not have
passed too long ago. Theres really no way to know. Id have to look.
So I trudged up the hillside to make my way across the slope to
the flat overlooking the sinkhole where I had a good idea Id find the
cause of the stink. I looked down at my brown knees poking through
the holes in my dungarees. Knew it would be time soon for a new
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pair and under-britches as well. My mind wanders like that when

Im out huntin up fossils, rattlesnakes, and other truck that helps me
through. Glad I got that rattler this morning. It might allow a splurge
on some new attire before long if I keep saving like I do. Snakes are
good towards that. Not so much blows or kings, but rattlers like this
one are good.
Darn thing had given me a fright though. I was way up in Lost
Horse Creek below the pass past the bend under the Rams Horn
poking at the rocks looking for fossils, and I very nearly picked that
snake up by its rattles. I scuffled back away from the snake faster than
a man stumbling across a naked woman in the woods. Startled and
apologetic, why sure, but Im a man who recognizes an opportunity,
so I raised my ax handle and brought it down hard on the serpents
head. It got out a rattle or two before it was departed.
A rattlesnake fetches me fifty cents from Budge if theyre not too
damaged, the outside of them that is. Budgell skin it out and toss the
meat to his birdin dogs and tan and oil the hide. He makes belts and
hat bands out of them and sells his wares at his roadside attraction:
Souvenirs, Fossils and Trinkets. Sometimes hell sell the rattles and
the fangs, too. He sells the fossils I bring in. Gives me a penny apiece
for them. But hes always pleased to see me pull a rattlesnake out of
my sack for him. Fifty cents is more than enough to buy me a hunk
of bacon and some pop, maybe a little box of crackers next door at
the Spruce Grouse General Store. And Im still in the habit of laying
aside ten percent for my tithe. Havent paid it in to the bishop in a
long while though. That canning jars getting full and heavy with the
Fathers money. Someday I might turn it in and reap the blessings,
though really I havent seen much difference in my lot from when I
was tithing regular and now. Still have the same old holes in my socks
and desires of the worldly nature Ive always had.
I think about that gal Doris a lot. The shy way she smiles
with her leaning bottom teeth. Her hair curls, blonde, but a little wild.
Doris and I had Sunday school together when we were young and
we went to regular school together too. I dropped out when I was
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Menlove: The Sinkhole

fifteen. Doris went on, even spent a year learning steno in Kalispell
after high school. Shes back now. I talk to her over her fence once in a
while when her mamas not around. Dont know how she hasnt gotten
herself married, adorable as she is. Ive always thought so, especially
now since shes blossomed from the cute little bud shes always been.
Back in Grade 5 at the new school over by the little pond, Doris
and I would walk down south into the cottonwoods off the hill at
recess and chase grasshoppers. Once we slipped into the willows
along the road and found a nice little cool clearing. I kicked around
with my boot and found a broken off piece of knife blade. I picked it
up and spit on it and shined it on my trouser leg. I held it up to Doris.
You want it?
Sure I do, she said.
And I was holding it out to her when Gil pushed through the willows making them flap and swish in the nice air.
What you got, Barney? Gil looked at Doris though he was talking
to me.
Gil was older than us, in Grade 6, though he was even a year heldback from what he should have been. He was tall, part Chippewa, and
all the girls thought he was handsome, what with his chin like a mallet,
a mans body and hunk of black hair like what youd find between the
ears of a well-bred stallion.
I held the blade out to him.
Oh thats mine, he said. He took it from my hand. Found that last
week. Its from the gypsies that stayed here last summer.
He shined it more on his thigh, his eyes under that hunk of hair on
Doris. You want it?
Doriss ears turned red, and then her cheeks blushed. She looked at
the ground and held her hand out.
Careful you dont cut yourself.
Gil pushed me down into the dirt, and then turned and like a pirate
ship in the surf parted his way through the willows and was gone.
I think about that a lot too. Think about what I should have done
then. Ive had many opportunities since to do like a man should, but
still I dont.
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Gil is courting Doris again. Hes served a mission, got himself that
greater priesthood. Im not filled with the worthiness. And that puts
kind of a wet gunny sack on eternal marriage to someone like Doris.
I think about the soles of my boots a lot too. All the land theyve
tramped back and forth, here and there, over the same ground for a
million miles or more but never really going anywhere, and theyve
held up. Kind of like that story about the soles of Jesus sandals never
wearing out, though He walked over there in the Promised Land. I
just walk and walk, and walk again, covering this land under my feet.
Dont know that theres much promise here. Mostly theres just hope.
Hope and rocks and earth. Thats how I get through my days at any
rate, one step following the other in what seems the most natural
headway with detours taken into account when they come. Seems
like there is scripture along those lines to back up the way I make my
way through this world and the things I come across.
I remember the first time my daddy showed me the sinkhole at the gravel pit. It was just a few years before he sent me out
into the world at eighteen. Before he moved off over the range and
across the border to Grangeville with his girlfriend, Marne, she with
the muscled calves and bosoms like overripe cantaloupes. Thats been
three years ago he left with her and didnt even tell me while I was out
living under the old flatbed at the far-end of the Searles land. Heard
it from Budge. He and Daddy were buddies. Hurt Budge, too, my
daddy running off with that lady. Budge said my mother would have
rolled over in her grave knowing how Daddy done that, leaving his
church calling, his raspberry patch and the goats and me.
Id been out on my own under the flatbed for a full year of seasons
by then. I was getting along. But then I suddenly had the house to
myself and the raspberry patch and the goats. They tried hefting a
church calling on me too. Not my daddys calling. He was ward clerk.
Me they just tried to get to come to church and sing, pass the sacrament bread and water, gather up the hymnals after meeting. I went
a while. Then just slowed down to where I wasnt going anymore.
Found myself more times than not of a Sunday up in one of the Lost
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Menlove: The Sinkhole

Horse Creek drainages, on Cove Peak, or under the pines on the far
side looking out over the Goat Heavens rather than down there listening to the testimonies and praise be Joseph Smith for his restoration of the gospel.
My daddy had taken me back to the far south end of the gravel
pit up against the east ridge of Silcox Canyon to see the sinkhole.
From above, it looked like one of those ant lion holes only a lot bigger. Daddy said that it had been there forever, before the gravel pit
operations even began. Not too many folks know about it. When
he showed it to me all those years ago we trudged up around and
above through the brush to the flat where you could look down in
and see the cone shape of it. Daddy picked up a rock the size of my
head and tossed it in the hole. It hit the gravel and rolled around a bit
and then settled down at the bottom. Nothing happened except for
some of the gravel settling, so he threw in another rock. This one hit
right on top of the other and the whole mess sucked down under the
smaller rocks and disappeared. Gone. Daddy figured there must be a
cave under there where all the gravel goes. He said hed seen cows go
down in there like that, bleating to the devil until they went under. He
claimed a gentile or two had found their way back to perdition that
way as well. Shoot, he said there must have been a whole zoo down in
there. Leastwise thats why he said we didnt go to the circus when it
came to town when I was ten.
Still a few hundred yards away, over the curve of the
ridge from the flat overlooking the sinkhole, I rested. The weight of a
snake and some fossils can slow a man down some. I finished off the
cherry soda and put the empty bottle in the outside pocket of my rucksack to take back to Budge at the Spruce Grouse Store for exchange.
I turned and leaned there on my ax handle, sighed and looked out
over the fields of the valley bordered by the irrigation canal at the
base of the mountain I was on, the canal that ribboned the south
side of civilization here with muddy water. I could see the chimney
of Doriss house over the trees out there near the church. Knew right
where to look. She lives with her mom and dad and her little brothers
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and sisters. When I was living under the flatbed I could watch that
house all day if I wanted to. But that was the year Doris was living in
Kalispell learning the steno craft, so I didnt see her much.
That was the year I worked with Gil in the springtime, clearing
out the canal and flues between the Como Dam and Bitterroot Valley.
We were on a crew of ten. The canal was mostly empty in the spring.
It would be flooded with irrigation water come June, and it filled up
with lots of debris every year. The job was all lifting rocks and logs
out and shoveling sand into buckets. Sometimes wed come across a
carcass: cat, cow, sheep and like that. We had to clear those out too.
I tried to work as far away from Gil as I could but one day we were
paired up. We pitched logs up out of the canal. It was a good eightfeet or so deep in places, and we worked together on the big things.
Gil kept saying, Come on, Barn, lift a little, would ya?
Gil was still bigger than most men. He had his swell hair cut short
and sharp then. His chin still looked like you could crack walnuts on
it. I was feeling pretty good about us working together actually, felt
like we were getting along fine. Its not like I would care to go fishing
with him out on the Lick Creek or anything. He just seemed civil, like
hed matured some. But then we came across a dead mule deer. It was
a little buck with a handful of antlers sticking out of its rotting skull.
Now like I said, I was feeling pretty good about Gil, had nearly forgiven all his bullying, thinking to myself, he sure has changed, grown up
some. But then he reached down and took hold of the antlers to pull the
buck carcass from out of the sand bunched up under an old Christmas
tree someone must have thrown in the canal the summer before, and
that deers head just tore in a squishy rip from the rest of its body.
Gil kind of fell back with surprise and looked at the severed head
left in his hands, and then he looked at me and said, Come ere, Barn.
I took the few steps to him, and Gil plopped that gory bucks head
on top of mine. I could feel the oily slime of skin and decayed innards
down my neck.
Gil says then, There, Barney, now youre a stud. Why dont ya go
get Doris, huh?
The other guys in the crew nearby, boys from over in Grantsdale and
out to Hamilton, thought that was right funny and laughed. Ireckon
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Menlove: The Sinkhole

they most were just glad it werent them with the crown of antlers on
his head. It was embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as that time Gil
was blessing the sacrament and I was passing it and I reached for the
water tray over the blessing table and he pretended to slip and dumped
all that blessed water down the front of my Sunday shirt. Those deacon
boys around me snickered then too. Again, happy it werent them.
I followed the game trail headed north along the gentle
rise of the mountain. It was easier walking here where the incline
wasnt so abrupt. I didnt need to use the ax handle so much as a leanon here. This was my daddys ax handle, and he used it just the way I
do. Kind of a walking stick, a piece of something solid that feels good
in the hand after a while, something like an extra limb. Daddy left
it leaning against the wall near the front door of the house when he
let out with Marne. Funny name that. She claimed she was named
after the river in France, said her parents were so impressed by the
allied victory over the Germans in the war there they named her that.
Although my reckoning puts her born well before the war. Daddy
never made that connection, least not in front of Marne.
Its a good piece of hickory, the ax handle. I remember Mama gave
it to Daddy for Christmas when I was seven. The handle all wrapped
in old butcher paper. Daddy acting like he didnt know what it could
possibly be. The big smile over Mamas chin. The white paper torn
back, Daddys gasp. Mama said then the blade would come for his
birthday in June. She died May 12 that year from an infection of her
motherly parts. Daddy dunked me in the baptismal font a few weeks
later. I remember I was still dripping when my old home teacher with
the harelip and hairs bursting out of his odd nose looked down at me
and said, Nere. Now nu nan see nur mama anin.
I dont know but I go anywhere without the ax handle anymore.
Knew Daddy meant to leave it for me. His idea of an offering, something he thought I might come to depend on I suppose.
There in the grass in front of me I saw some dried up scat. I hunkered down to see what it might have come out of. It looked like gray
marshmallows all squished together. There was fur in it. Bobcat, I
figured. Wish I could get me another bobcat. That last one set me up
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Irreantum

flush for a while. Besides the critters and fossils, I make my humble
living off the raspberries and goat milk. Do a lot of trading with folks.
Get my eggs from the Hawksteads and beef sometimes from Uncle
Sil. I plant out the garden with all the rest, potatoes and corn. Beets.
Put it all up in the cellar against winter.
Wish I had a wife, thats all.
The dead scent was still hanging in the air, coming with
the little breeze out of the north from over the Beaverhead Forest.
The little breeze was doing nothing to hold back the heat coming on
the day, the sun lurking over my shoulder, staring right down nearly
straight on this old earth. My daddy was always saying the sun gives
life, and it takes life. You got to love it and hate it, but mostly love it.
I guess, but all I know is it turns my knees brown through the holes
in my pants and makes my nose peel. I do like the way it feels when I
pull myself up out of the little pond after a swim.
Thats what I was thinking when I heard the ruckus that brought
me up out of my revelry. A man was cursing and hollering as though
he knew there werent any decent folk around. Sounded like it was
coming from over near the sinkhole, so I ran. At the flat above I looked
down at what was in there. In the bottom going slow under the gravel
in the cone was a shiny bridle and bit on somebodys real pretty black
horse. Thats what the dead smell was. But above the horse was a man
doing his damndest scrabbling in the gravel trying to climb out. He
wasnt getting anywhere. The gravel gave him no hold as he crawled,
and he stopped and rolled over to his back, put his boot on the horses
dead snout and spread his arms and legs out as if he were trying to
stop the earth. And it did for a moment, but then the horse slipped
under another inch, maybe more.
Seems fated I suppose. It was Gil. His great dark hair was long and
sweaty, draped down over his forehead, playing in his eyes. His chest
was rising and falling like a rabbits. I could hear what he was saying
on his quick breath: Oh shit, shit, shit, shit.
Youd thought he might of thought to pray rather than swear like
that, but I shouted down to him, Gil! Hold on there!
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Menlove: The Sinkhole

I crashed down the side of the mountain through the brush and
over the rocks. I knew what Gil was going for. Who wouldnt if theyd
come across that bridle shining in the summer sun. Might have even
been a real nice saddle on that horse for taking, though I couldnt say
for sure with most of the horse under the gravel.
The tip of the horses nose with its black whiskers scrunched under
Gils toes was all that was visible above the funneling rocks when I
reached the edge of the sinkhole. Gils limbs were still stretched out
away from him in some desperate Christ on the cross fix-in-place.
The sinkhole seemed to be done eating for the moment, choking on
the horses rear-side.
Barney, you gotta help me.
Gils eyes seemed to hold much more than this basic need. I reckoned all those push-downs in the dirt and the consideration he had
that he was better than me and that maybe I knew that fact and that I
would never be better than him and he wondered what it was I would
do given the chance, and all this crossed his dark eyes then. And I saw
it all. I saw Doris. Like an angel, her. I did see the possibilities. And so
did Gil. And maybe he had some fear of that then.
There was a maple branch with its dark green leaves arching over the
edge of the hole. I took a good hold on that branch and leaned down and
offered the ax handle. It was just in Gils reach and he grabbed it, the end
that killed. I pulled, and Gil paddled his feet in the gravel, and he was
coming up out of that hole, but the little ledge of rocks I was hunkered
on gave way, and I feel real terrible about it but I let go of the ax handle.
Gil lost his grip on the handle too, and it slid out of reach, disappearing into the funnel with the horse that was gone. Gil looked up
at me. He reached out his hand, that hand that pushed me down so
many times. And all I could do was watch his slow slide into the hole,
his feet going under, the feet Id so many times hoped would walk
straight away from this town and not return. And then he rolled his
eyes up at me again there above him.
Barney, he said.
I reached into my rucksack and brought out the rattler. I took a
strong grip on the branch and lowered myself in as far as I could. Gil
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Irreantum

took a grip on that long snake right above the rattles, and then there
was nothing between Gil and me, no grudge, no hard feelings, no love
for the same woman. There was only an hour-dead rattlesnake and
the will to hold on to it long enough for some manner of ill-levied
salvation to come.
But I really wasnt thinking like that then. I just hoped that the snakes
backbone would hold. Thats all. That that which spoke in the garden
and brought the two of us here together on our Fathers fallen world was
of good worth and strong. Because I wasnt going to let go this time. Gil
was going to come up out of that hole and stand beside me.
And so maybe I prayed. The way I knew how, and I pulled. I gave it
everything I had, felt the strain through my body, every muscle giving,
from my legs up through my sides and down my arm shaking, taut.
And that snake shifted into some better arrangement between Gil and
my hand, the head fitting perfectly in my palm like a worry stone or
a token. Gil didnt say anything, but our eyes locked. No encouragement, just fear. He knew this was hard for me, knew it was his only
hope. The snake did not break. I pulled and up and out he came.
We stood looking down into the hole, little trickles of gravel rolling
in, our heavy breath slowing, sweat dripping from both our foreheads.
I was tired.
Thanks, Barney.
I thought I heard him say it.
The snake was there beside the hole, stretched and ruined. I lifted
my hand. I could feel the ghost of a skull, like I was still holding it, and
also see the two small pricks of red in my wrist, drizzle from them like
dew drops there, like the ones that used to weight the grass by the
flatbed those mornings I watched vigil over Doriss house.
Wanting something to lean on, I reached down for my fathers ax
handle, but it was gone, and I fell against Gil. He was sturdy and chiseled like a rock. I didnt know it then. I know it now.
He held me up.

74

Coals
Lisa Madsen Rubilar

From the boat,

the campfire on the beach
barely jewels the dark.
Someones hands,
as they turn the fish,
briefly block the light,
transluce a marbled pink
whiter at the palms, the wrists.
Peter leaps into the surf.

3rd place, 2011 Irreantum Poetry Contest

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Irreantum

Just Telling It Like It Is

Hes lost his mind.
Taken up with lackeys,
criminals,
the worst sort of boors.
Invite him to dinner, and a dozen more
expect to be fed.
He smiles, asks for more chairs.
Outside, the groupies crouch
in the dust or peer
through the panes.
Wheres the quiet, unassuming boy we knew?
This flotsam who pant at his heels,
feeding his fantasy:
all they want is a handout.
Bread. Wine.
Freeloaders!

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Rubilar: Poems

Theyd sell him down the river

for a better deal,
but he has no sense
of self-preservation,
says the worst possible things
to the press.
Makes enemies. Intentionally offends
his superiors.
Doesnt care.
But the worst are the sycophants,
smearing his toes with their snot
and their tears;
wiping his feet
with their hair.

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Irreantum

A Day in the Life of Jesus

You learn that your cousin John is dead,
dismembered in the service of an old mans lust.
Your grief matches your capacity for love. In other words, infinite.
You walk into the desert to spare the peoplethe paparazzi,
the usual clutching crowdsthe sound of your cries.
You wish to burrow into sand and rock.
The peoples sullen and ecstatic persistence trudges behind.
Turning, you see them, and feel (did you?) one flash of despair,
then the usual thunderclap of compassion.
You spend hours wrist-deep in their unwashed hair
and putrefactions. They grumble. They are hungry.
So you set to work rearranging molecules into bread.
You have not slept. You have not wept, yet, for John.
At last you send the throngs home, your friends to sea,
and you climb a mountain to pray (that this mortal flesh might be equal
to the test?)
but as you drop to your knees, a wind kicks up. Miles away, you taste
the fear
that swamps the boat. So you descend. Your legs tremble with weariness.
You set off afoot across the waves. You have not slept, or wept,
and your heart surges, like the very sea, with the strength
to save Peter from sinking
like a stone.

78

A Broader Geography of Mormonness:

Making Space and Extending Boundaries in
Todd Robert Petersens Rift
Scott Hales

Boundaries have been central to Mormonisms understanding of itself since its beginnings in the 1830s. In the summer of
1831, Joseph Smith and his followers made plans to build Ziona
New Jerusalemin Independence, Missouri, as a physical dwelling
place for Gods elect people (see D&C 57:12). Significantly, these
plans imagined boundaries that could adapt and expand to the size of
its population. According to Richard Lyman Bushman, Smith imagined Zion as a sacred city where holiness [was concentrated] in one
place [] where religion absorbed everything. At its very center was
a temple, a place where the people of God could go to acquire [the]
knowledge and power they would need to [preach] the Gospel and
gather converts within the boundaries of their city (22021).
The Mormon Zion, therefore, was never meant to be limited to a
small tract of land in western Missouri. Smiths plan was to establish
an initial square mile of sacred urban space, then add to it when the
boundaries proved inadequate for the gathered Saints. When this
square is thus laid off and supplied, Smith instructed, lay off another
in the same way, and so fill up the world in these last days; and let
every man live in the city, for this is the city of Zion (Smith 357-59).
If carried to fruition, Smiths plan would extend Zions boundaries to
the limits of the land itself: the world, in a sense, would become one
vast sacred space.
Due to resistance and persecution from the local non-Mormon
population, Joseph Smiths New Jerusalem in western Missouri
never materialized. Mormons, nevertheless, continued to think of the
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kingdom of God as a literal, boundaried space. After being forcibly

expelled from Missouri in late 1838, they established Nauvoo, a Zionlike city across the Mississippi River in Illinois. Later, after they were
driven from Nauvoo following Joseph Smiths assassination, they
famously settled in the Intermountain West, where they were finally
able to establish not one city, but many. As with Zion, early Mormons conceptualized these cities and boundaries in ways that allowed
for growth and expansion. Zions gates, in a sense, were to remain
open for all those who wished to gather with the Saints. Nevertheless, in establishing these physical boundaries for themselves, they
also established boundaries for those who rejected their message and
refused to gather. Indeed, as Jan Shipps argues, Mormonisms penchant for gathering the elect led its members to [acquire] a sense of
themselves as categorically different from other folks, which led them,
in turn, to erect substantial barriers between those who [joined] the
movement and those who [did] not (125). Stephen Taysom, likewise,
notes that Nineteenth-century Mormons understood that a line
existed between the righteous and the wicked, between those who
had embraced the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and those who had
not. As Taysom understands it, in fact, Mormonisms pursuit of elastic boundaries was less a gesture of inclusion than one of exclusion.
Gathering converts to Zion, he argues, was essentially an effort to
move as many souls as possible away from the hopelessly lost and
wicked world; their sacred space, in other words, was to act as a safe
havens where the saints could live in peace as the calamities of the
coming apocalypse rained down on the unconverted (51).
No doubt such thinking contributed to their frequent problems
with non-Mormonsor Gentiles as they were then calledwho
came to resent the very real boundariesboth geographic and politicalthat Mormons established around their cities. Still, Mormons
continued to establish boundaries and mark Mormon space even in
the face of persecution and constant displacements. Indeed, RobertR.
and Kay Atkinson King read the Mormon westward migration as a
dramatic and symbolic act of renunciation and abandonment of the
old social order for Church members. It not only separated them
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physically from the Gentiles, the ostensible cause of their tribulations

and displacements, but it also further contributed to group cohesion
because it forced Mormons to work together to survive in the relative
isolation of the Rocky Mountains (66).
At the same time, however, Mormon formulations of space and
boundaries began to change in Utah. Taysom argues, for example, that
Mormons came to believe that the safety and security Zion promised
could not be realized through the physical boundary of a city or web
of cities; rather, they could only be achieved through more abstract
spaces, such as the ceremonies they practiced in their temples. Over
the course of the nineteenth century, he argues, Mormons moved
from an attachment to a particular physical location as the center of
sacred space and protection to a view in which the notion of sacred
space and physical enclosure was associated with the temple and the
covenants they made with God behind temple walls (5354). Interestingly, Taysom points to the fortress-like architecture of nineteenthcentury Mormon temples in Utah as evidence of this shift (99).
While Taysoms argument correctly identifies an overall shift in
the nineteenth century away from the physical boundaries laid out
in Joseph Smiths Zion plan, it is worth noting that Mormons in the
Great Basin nevertheless attempted to secure the boundaries of their
new mountain home quickly. Within their first years in the Salt Lake
Valley, Mormons did much to stake their legal claim on the land. By
1848, for example, they were taking steps to establish Deseret, a Mormon super-state in the Great Basin that would be large enough to
accommodate intended expansion and act as a protective buffer zone
from their enemies in the East (Leonard 118119). While these efforts
also failed, they were able to secure a kind of political boundary in
1850 with the much smaller Utah Territory, which they governed
fairly autonomously until the Utah War of 185758 brought a nonMormon territorial governor.
By then, though, Mormon space was becoming less about physical boundariesalthough they continued to matterthan doctrinal and moral ones. Indeed, King and King note that as Mormons
transitioned away from Joseph Smiths Zion model of sacred space,
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such things as Church ritual including temple ceremonies, unique

doctrines and beliefs, a strong sense of community, conflict with other
groups, the practice of polygamy, and the dietary restrictions of the
Word of Wisdom [Mormonisms health code] began to define Mormon spaces and boundaries (62).
With the exception of polygamy, these boundaries continue to
define mainstream Mormon boundaries and spaces today. The Mormon temple and its ceremonies certainly form a Mormon space, as
do Mormon meeting houses, congregations, doctrines, and moral
expectations and practices. Moreover, in communities that are predominately Mormon, the influence of Mormonism can render the
traditionally secular sphere of the state into a kind of Mormon space
with noticeable, but often unspoken boundaries that non-Mormons
cross warily. Indeed, as a December 2001 poll in the Salt Lake Tribune
pointed out, 86% of non-Mormons and 63% of Mormons in Utah recognized a social, political and cultural divide between Mormons and
non-Mormons in the state (3-in-5 Utahns). More recently, Putnam
and Campbell have noted in their book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us that this divide extends to wherever Mormons are found. According to their study, Mormons cohere so tightly
because their shared history, legacy of persecution, mass migration,
and geographic concentration has made them behave as an ethnicity
based on belief, not blood (504).
If anything, the Tribune report, along with the data from American Grace, show that Mormon spaces and boundaries have remained
palpable, particularly in Utah where the Mormon influence is felt
in schools, in neighborhoods, in local and state laws, in speech, in
behavior, and in countless other ways. Interestingly, over the last three
decades, several works of Mormon fiction have attempted to explore,
explain, and evaluate these boundaries. Most recently, for instance, the
work of Todd Robert Petersen, a Mormon writer based in Cedar City,
Utah, has taken as its subject not only the boundaries that separate
Mormons from non-Mormons, but also the boundaries Mormons
erect among themselves, particularly those who dont quite fit the
mold. His works, like those of several other Mormon writers, explore
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the possibilities of inclusion. For the sake of space, Ill be limiting my

analysis to his recent novel Rift, although the stories from his collection Long After Dark could likewise serve.

Making Space
Rift is set in a fictional rural Utah town called Sanpete.
Sanpete, of course, is predominately Mormon, and much about the
town suggests that it is an old bastion of Mormon isolationism. Not
only does its one police officer, Spencer Kimball, share his name with
a former Mormon Church president, but its landscape is pocked with
the brick remnants of old pioneer homes and barns that [have] slowly
crumbled and blown away (20). Sanpetes natural landscape also suggests isolation: it is ringed on all sides by the mountains and has no
interstate and no quick way to get to one. Its population and built
environment, likewise, are stuck in a state of intellectual, civic, and
economic paralysis. Other towns in the valley had junior colleges or
BLM offices, we learn, but the town of Sanpete was frozen in time
somewhere between 1965 and 1972. It was [also] unclear whether the
shops on Main Street were open or closed (6).
Amazingly, though, despite its backwards ways, Sanpetes nonMormon population is increasing. In fact, two non-Mormon characters have significant roles in the novel: Dr. Seth Wizenberg, the towns
newly arrived Jewish doctor, and Phyllis Ramke, a long-time resident
of Sanpete, who is married to a lapsed Mormon, but extremely bitter
about her Mormon neighbors. With these characters, Petersen is able
to introduce and address directly many of the issues surrounding traditional Mormon boundaries and spaces. Phyllis, for example, is very
aware of the many boundariesseen and unseenthat separate her
from her community. Indeed, her feelings of alienation are expressed
almost every time she opens her mouth. You all have a lot of nerve,
she says at one point. Got yourselves packed into this state like sardines [.] Youve got your own look and your own vans full of brats,
and then youre off to the Cub Scouts or to the temple, and you think
that everyone else is along for the ride (6869). For Seth Wizenberg,
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Irreantum

on the other hand, the boundaries arent as obvious. As a newcomer,

he lacks Phylliss bitternessalthough much in the novel suggests
that he is becoming more aware of his new communitys unspoken
boundariesespecially when he discovers that his newcomer status,
along with his New Yorkers ignorance of Utahs landscape, has left
him susceptible to a hypocritical Mormon, Bill Everly, who has sold
him property along a flood-prone wash.
In Rift Petersen seeks to resolve Sanpetes boundary problem
through Jens Thorsen, his main character, an aging, cantankerous
Mormon who has devoted his retirement to serving his neighbors,
irrespective of religious affiliation. Although Thorsen takes no small
pleasure in criticizing the hypocrite sons a bitches who do the kind
of crap [that] dirties [their] religion, Thorsen remains committed to
his Mormonism, the church, and his community, even though, at times,
he seems two steps away from excommunication (55; 92). In a sense,
he occupies a liminal space in the novel, poised between the Mormons
and their neighbors, which makes him an ideal mediator between the
two parties. When Seth Wizenbergs house becomes imperiled by rising waters, for example, Thorsen skips church and steals his bishops
backhoe to dig a trench to redirect the flood. When his local congregation refuses to join him, despite his plea for help, Thorsen condemns
their narrow-mindedness, asserting that the Jew down the road is
more Christian than anyone in the meeting house (61). His rebuke,
leveled mainly at Darrell Bunker, the local Mormon bishop, has an
effect: reminded of their religions teachings, the men in Thorsens congregation arrive en masse at the Wizenberg home later in the week to
lend a hand and install an underground drainage system. Such belated
willingness, on the Mormons part, to secure the Wizenberg home
against the threat of flooding is an instance of Petersens Mormon
community making literal space for their non-Mormon neighbors.
Thorsens outreach to Wizenberg, in a sense, builds a bridge between
the Mormon congregation and their Jewish neighbors (112).
At the same time, the Mormons of Sanpete are less successful with
Phyllis, who rebuffs all efforts, except Thorsens, to reach out to her. In
a sense, Phylliss presence in the novel reminds readers that Mormons
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are not the only ones who maintain rigid boundaries. Her cynicism
and obvious disregard for Mormonism, not the apparent actions or
inactions of her neighbors, are what set her apart from the community. Rather than seeking common space with her Mormon neighbors,
she clings tenaciously to the boundaries established long ago to keep
her out.

Extending Boundaries
Petersen challenges other boundaries in the novel as well.
Indeed, as its title suggests, Rift is also about Mormonisms internal
fissures. An obvious generation gap exists in Sanpete, so the younger
generation tends to associate the church with old people and obsolete
ideas. Angie Bunker, for example, the daughter of the towns bishop,
has left the church not only because she doesnt believe all this stuff
about angels and Joseph Smith and Indians from Israel, but also
because of the outmoded gender boundaries that she sees within
the community and the church. She complains about the standard
church line that perceives everything between men and women [as]
sexual, which strains even casual, non-sexual adult interactions. When
Thorsen excuses the perception as being less about the church and more
about geriatrics in general, Angie responds that she sees no difference
between the two. The church is geriatrics, she says. Joseph Smith was
the last young man to run things (98). She also seems to understand
the church and communitys boundaries as unfairly weighted against
women. Why dont you just put us in Burkas? she asks.
Sanpetes strong generational and gender divides, indivisible as
they seem with its religious and moral boundaries, create a space that
is, for Angie, irrefutably Mormon. And, in many ways, Angie Bunker
is the antithesis of this space: unmarried, pregnant, irreligious, and
rebellious, Angie even breaches Sanpetes apparent gender line to work
in the local barber shop where Thorsen and the rest of the towns old
men gather. Later, after her father kicks her out of the housenot for
being unmarried and pregnant, but for refusing to go to churchshe
further shocks the town by moving in with Thorsen, a recent widower,
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who takes her in because hes got the space, sees an opportunity
to help, and, perhaps, because he wants to piss off [her] dad, with
whom he has been feuding for years (183). While Thorsen and Angies
relationship is transparently non-sexual, the locals, true to their ways,
read sex into it, especially the local polygamist Bill Chamberlain, who
wonders if Thorsen has joined up with the cause (199).
While Petersens fiction does much to show Mormonisms potential for making space for non-Mormons within traditional Mormon
boundaries, it is especially interested in the place of Mormons, like
Angie, who are outsiders in their own community. The primary plot
of the novel, after all, centers on Angies place within the community;
in fact, Petersen uses the communitys objections to Angies difference as a way to bring attention to and challenge the boundaries that
narrowly define the space that seems to have no place for her. Indeed,
when he finally allows the conflict in Sanpete to come to a head, he
does so in a way that borders on satire: the community divides evenly
along gender lines, and it seems like the men and women of [the]
town have switched places (286). Rather than being stern, unsympathetic patriarchs, Sanpetes men, who take the lead in both the church
and the community, are those who are open and accepting of Angie;
at one point, even, their desire to maintain her place in the community leads them to construct a literal boundary around hera wall
of RVsto keep the women from packing [her] off to Salt Lake or
Denver or wherever it is unwanted pregnant girls go (274, see 270
80). Likewise significant is the response to Angie from the younger
generation, particularly the free thinking teenage girls in church,
who see Angie as a kind of heroand her return as a step toward
honesty, franker dialogue about sex, and the end of the towns hypocrisy problem (273). While these efforts are not enough to keep Angie
in townshe leaves after she learns she has a molar pregnancyor
to cause a drastic shift in Sanpetes established boundaries, they do
show that the boundaries are not immovable or impenetrable. Indeed,
the ferocity of Sanpetes communal rift is what ultimately suggests
that its boundaries are not as rigid as they seem, that they have the
potentialsomedayto extend.
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Conclusion
Although the fiction of Todd Robert Petersen does much
to challenge the existing boundaries of Mormon spaceand advocate for their extensionit does not call for their removal. Indeed,
in his foreword to Long After Dark, Brian EvensonPetersens writing mentorobserves that Petersen writes about Mormons as one
who still believes in the churchs ability to heal itself, who is convinced
of the basic soundness of the organization. Spaces and boundaries,
after all, are important to Mormons and their sense of identity. While
Petersens fiction understands and affirms this (his novella Family History is a good example), it is also aware of the perils of rigid boundaries and tightly closed spaces. In many ways, his fiction echoes the
words Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard
historian and Mormon feminist, whose personal essay Border Crossings argues that
there is a need for boundaries [in Mormonism], for rigorous defense
of ideas and ideals that matter, but defenders of every faith too often
violate their own ideals in the very act of defending them. The gospel
of Jesus Christ teaches us that light falls across borders, that the sun
in its revolutions brightens both sides of a wall, spilling through the
spaces in our fences. (6)

Petersens fiction is full of misguided defenders of the faith who,

in their zeal to maintain the boundaries so vital to Mormonism, violate their own ideals in the very act of defending them. Nevertheless,
Petersens fiction strives to offer a glimpse of a more excellent way to
imagine Mormon space.
In his book Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, Thomas A.
Tweed suggests that [r]eligions are flows, confluences of currents that
give and make meaning, and that find places and move across spaces
to create non-static religious geographies independent of fixed landscapes and built environments. In many ways, this concept of religion as a sacroscape where various currentssome orthodox, some
notcongregate to create meaning suits the vision of Mormonism in
Petersens fiction, which imagines the geography of Mormonness not
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as a well-laid urban plan, with definable boundaries, but as a [confluence] of organic channels and cultural currents that creates a space
in constant flux, ever changing and ever in the process of adaptation
(5962; 69). Indeed, it is its interest in the process of adaptation and
change, perhaps, as well as in its negotiation between the individual
and the boundary, that Petersens fiction becomes most important for
Mormons and their neighbors.

Works Cited
3-in-5 Utahns See Divide Between LDS, Others. Salt Lake Tribune.
Salt Lake Tribune. 9 Dec. 2001. Web. 9 Mar. 2011.
Bushman, Richard Lyman. Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.
The Doctrine and Covenants. Salt Lake City: Intellectual Reserve, Inc.,
1981. Print.
Evenson, Brian. Foreword. Long After Dark. By Todd Robert Petersen.
Provo: Zarahemla Books, 2007. N.p. Print.
King, Robert R. and Kay Atkinson King. The Effect of Mormon
Organizational Boundaries on Group Cohesion. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 17.1 (1984): 6275. Print.
Leonard, Glen M. The Mormon Boundary Question in the 184950
Statehood Debates. Journal of Mormon History 18.1 (1992): 114136.
Print.
Moorman, Donald R. with Gene A. Sessions. Camp Floyd and the
Mormons The Utah War. Salt Lake City: The U of Utah P, 1992.
Print.
Petersen, Todd Robert. Rift. Provo: Zarahemla Books, 2009 Print.
Putnam, Robert D. and David E. Campbell. American Grace: How
Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
Print.
Shipps, Jan. Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years among the
Mormons. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2000. Print.
Smith, Joseph. History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Vol. 1. Ed. B. H. Robets, 2nd edition, 1978. Print.
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Hales: A Broader Geography of Mormonness

Taysom, Stephen C. Shakers, Mormons, and Religious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested Boundaries. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2011.
Print.
Tweed, Thomas A. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2006. Print.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Border Crossings. Dialogue: A Journal of
Mormon Thought 27:2 (1994): 17. Print.
Yorgason, Ethan R. Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region.
Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2003. Print.

89

The Divine Individual

A Belief Shared by the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints and Walt Whitman
Megan Sessions

Latter-day Saint theology asserts that individuals have

the potential to become gods, and that God himself was once like
man: God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man,
and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! (Smith). This idea is unheard
of in other religions, but was embraced by arguably one of Americas
greatest poetsWalt Whitman. As a contemporary to Joseph Smith,
it is possible that Walt Whitman was exposed to this idea through
those of the LDS faith, but a more likely assumption is that Whitmans transcendentalist philosophy drew him to understanding the
divinity of the individual, and to discover truths about individuals
becoming as God. Very few people understand the power of the individual as well as the Good Gray Poet.1 And though the lifestyles of
Latter-day Saints and Walt Whitman may differ, it is evident that
Whitman understood and agreed with the LDS belief that individuals can undergo divine evolution.
Because poetry is arguably subjective to the novice reader and
therefore not positively evident of an authors intent, it is necessary
to discuss Whitmans views on individuality to see that his poetry is
a reflection of the belief in the individuals ability to become divine.
According to David Kuebrich, Whitman suggests (in his notebooks)
that there is no transcendent deity, but godlike characteristics, or
divinity, are inherent in the human spirit (43). While this statement
disregards the idea that there is one true God, it does suggest that any
1. In 1865, William Douglas OConnor wrote an essay praising and defending
Walt Whitman, not only as a poet, but as a man.

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individual may have inherent godlike characteristics. If this is the case,

there must be potential for an individual to become like God.
In Horace Traubels famous conversations with Whitman in the
latter years of Whitmans life, Whitman, on the subject of immortality states, When I say immortality I say identity (Traubel 149).
Immortality is a divine quality. We can infer from this statement
that Whitman believed that as we come to know the sacredness of
the individual, our true identity, we become so powerful that we are
immortal. This coincides with Whitmans poetic message. His poetry
is lathered with ideas and observations of ordinary individuals: laborers, Americans, farmerscommon people who are not famous nor
have attained power over othersyet these individuals can attain
divinity. Similarly, Spencer W. Kimball once said, Every normal
soul has its free agency and the power to row against the current and
to lift itself to new planes of activity and thought and development.
Man can transform himself. Man must transform himself. While it is
obvious we are not born as gods, Kimball suggests, just as Whitman,
that each individual has the power to transform into something more
spiritual and divine.
Malcolm Cowley, a notable literary critic who worked with authors
such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald, also believed this to be Whitmans understanding of individuals. He says, Whitman believed
that the Self is of the same essence as the universal spirit ... that true
knowledge is to be acquired through union with the Self (266). To
have a union with the self, one must embrace a true knowledge and
understanding of human nature, emotions, and our reactions to challenges, heartbreak, fear, love, and even joy. This is an intellectual and
spiritual progression. According to LDS theology, this process is
not only part of divine progression, but is something God himself
engaged in. James E. Talmage states:
We believe in a God who is Himself progressive, whose majesty is
intelligence; whose perfection consists in eternal advancementa
Being who has attained His exalted state by a path which now His
children are permitted to follow, whose glory it is their heritage to
share. In spite of the opposition of the sects, in the face of direct
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charges of blasphemy, the Church proclaims the eternal truth: As man
is, God once was; as God is, man may be.

As we delve into Whitmans poetry, it must be understood that one

of Whitmans intentions was to create a new Bible, new scripture
(Whitman 150th 86). People whose worship centers on the Bible turn
to it for answers about the self. They turn to it in times of need, for
spiritual growth and for healing. Because Whitman called his Leaves
the new Bible, we may assume he wanted it to heal people and show
them the way to salvation. In his preface to Leaves of Grass he states,
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your
life (Poetry 11). Just as pastors tell congregations to read scriptures
daily so they may come to know God, Whitman tells his readers to
read the Leaves daily so they can come to a knowledge of the self and
become divine.
Some argue that his reason for calling the Leaves the new Bible
was to establish a new religion. But Whitmans Leaves do not attempt
this. They do not talk about the Godhead or eternal judgment, or
even a Savior. Rather, they celebrate the body and the soul, not as
separate entities but as a coalescing entitythey celebrate a divine
individual. Henry S. Canby, Yale professor and editor of the Literary
Review, suggests that in all of Whitmans work Whitman was dealing
neither with creeds nor schools nor with the primitive gods, but with
common men and women (111). It was the individual Whitman was
concerned withthe success of the individual, the progression of the
individual, and the individual coming to understand the self. I ask, is
this not the desire of the LDS God? Is he not a Heavenly Father who
desires to see each of his children successfully return to him and partake the same joy he knows? Furthermore, Whitman despised materialism. Therefore, we might assume he does not desire man to progress
in wealth or status, but he desires a metaphysical progression which
opens the doors to knowledge and power, not a power to rule others,
but a power to walk confidently, love others, live for passions, and
dismiss whatever insults your own soul (Whitman Poetry 11). Is not
that which insults our own soul the cause of suffering? SpencerW.
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Kimball states, There are many causes of human sufferingwar, disease, and povertybut the most persistent cause of human suffering,
that suffering which causes the deepest pain, is sinthe violation of
the commandments given to us by God (Abundant). It appears that
both Whitman and Kimball believe that in order to transcend this
life and evolve into a divine individual we must throw off that which
insults our souls.
It seems apparent from his poetry that Whitman has undergone
a spiritual transformation, and while it may or may not be rooted in
Christ, we can trust that he has discovered a universal truth about
the divinity of individuals, a truth proclaimed by LDS prophets and
scholars. Cowleys analysis of Song of Myself suggests that this
great poem reveals a distinguishing feature about Whitman, that he
has been granted a vision and found his deeper soul, which establishes a union between God and individual (262263). It is possible
that Whitmans proclamation about the individual is rooted in his
personal evolution from natural man to divine individual. It must be
noted, however, that this union is not a literal union with God; it
is a situation in which the individual has becomes so knowledgeable
about the self that he takes on qualities often associated with God, i.e.,
knowledge, mercy, justice, charity, etc.
Edmund Stedman, a renowned critic and poet once wrote this
about Whitman: he has positive genius, and seems to me to present his strongest claims (120). In nearly all of Whitmans poetry, the
divine claim about individuals can be found. But there are those who
would argue that arrogance makes Whitman believe himself to be
divine. However, when looking at his poetry we see that his ideas are
not rooted in elitism, but in respect for the individual. This, perhaps,
is the reason his ideas correlate with an LDS view that individuals
can become gods.
To expand on this, it is necessary to look at Whitmans loyalty to
his readers. If he has begun to achieve a falsely divine state, he might
easily desert the reader; but he doesnt. He reaches out in his poetry
and asks people to understand that they can also become divine by
celebrating work, nature, love, and everyday experiences. In essence,
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he celebrates individuality. And while he presents a poetic gallery

revealing snapshots of life, in Song of the Open Road he presents
himself as one of us and invites us to take a journey with him: Will
you give me yourself? / will you come travel with me? (Poetry 305).
His invitation invites the reader to trust him, because where the
reader goes, he to will go, and has probably already been. He wants to
share in his knowledge.
Whitmans desire to share in his knowledge illustrates his comprehension of spiritual evolution, as does his understanding of others. In
the poem To You, the speaker claims to understand everything about
the ubiquitous you: None has understood you, but I understand
you (Poetry 376). Harold Bloom, renowned literary critic, believes
that Whitman has a divine knowledge about others. About Song of
Myself he states, This sublime antithetical flight ... makes him a new
kind of god, ever-dying and ever-living, a god whose touchstone is
of course voice (134). Not only has Whitman taken the journey, but
his voice is the voice we can follow if we desire to take the same journey and become divine. Just like a God, he knows and understands
human nature and, therefore, we are to trust him.
While critical interpretation and primary sources establish that
Whitman has engaged in a spiritual evolution, it is necessary to delve
into his work to see if his poetic message supports these claims. While
many poets use imagery to make statements about God, religion, and
salvation, Whitman uses the imagery of God to present the individual as divine. In Salute Au Monde! he writes, Each of us inevitable,
/ Each of us limitless ... / Each of us here as divinely as any is here
(Poetry 296). Limitless, divinely, and inevitable describe characteristics commonly associated with deity. In the poem, each of us is said
to having these characteristics. But who is the us?
In the context of the poem we see that the us is a representation
of every individual. In the preceding lines, Whitman generates an all
encompassing list of people throughout the world. Jews, neighbors
of the Danube, Romans, Greeks, are all part of the us that Whitman deems divine. But the list does not merely include nations. It
also includes men, women, people of different occupations, and you
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each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the same!
(Poetry 295). There is no doubt that when Whitman discusses the
individual he is talking about every being who is living, who has lived,
and who will live. He does not favor those with special talents or capabilities because, as we have seen, he believes there is something inheritably divine in each of us. This correlates with the LDS doctrine that
God does not esteem one person above another: Then Peter opened
his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of
persons (Acts 10:34).
The evidence suggests that Whitman has discovered Latter-day
Saint truths about divine individuals. One of the most powerful
examples of this is found in A Song of Joys: O to struggle against
great odds, to meet enemies undaunted! / To be entirely alone with
them, to find how much one can / stand! / To look strife, torture,
prison, popular odium, face to face! / To mount the scaffold, to
advance to the muzzles of guns / with perfect nonchalance! / To be
indeed a God! (Poetry 330)
The lines proceeding To be indeed a God! provide us with a definition of what Whitman believes a god to be, a position which harmonizes with LDS theology. In the LDS view, Christ struggled and
met his enemies undaunted in the Garden of Eden. He was entirely
alone and stood face to face with torture during the crucifixion. And
through this process he indeed became a God. Just as this is the
process for Christ, to struggle and overcome in order to become a
God, it is so with all individuals. According to LDS Apostle BruceR.
McConkie,
It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, the inspired word continues, and to know that we may
converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He
was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all,
dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did. The Father
is a glorified, perfected, resurrected, exalted man who worked out his
salvation by obedience to the same laws he has given to us so that we
may do the same.

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In LDS thought, a pure knowledge of the self grants one power to

become divine. Describing Whitman, Edward Dowden has stated, In
his self-assertion there is a manner of powerful nonchalantness which
is not assumed; he does not peep timidly from behind his works to
glean out suffrages, but seems to say, Take me or leave me, hear I am,
a solid and not an inconsiderable fact of the universe (99).
Just as Dowden writes about the confidence of Whitman, and his
nonchalance, Whitman writes about the power individuals can have
when they possess absolute knowledge about who they are. Therefore, nonchalantness is not an I dont care what happens attitude.
But rather, an individual is nonchalant because his divinity allows him
to be so. If we were to assume nonchalant means careless, it would
conflict with the intended messagethat individuals are divine and
therefore possess godlike characteristics. We know Whitman believed
this divinity stems from a pure knowledge of self. In Song of the
Open Road, the efflux of the soul comes from within ... through ever
provoking questions (Poetry 301). If we are to understand ourselves,
we become divine and because we are divine, we can be nonchalant.
While other phrasing in the passage supports the idea that when
we understand ourselves we become divine, the words popular odium
suggest Whitman was using God as a metaphor for the individual.
In many religions, particularly Christianity, God ( Jesus) is hated
by the masses. This biblical motif symbolizes the struggle between
that which is divine and that which is worldly. Whitman associates
divinity with facing popular odium. Is this to assume that no matter
where we are or who we are with, when we discover who we truly
are and become divine, we will be hated by some? I suggest that if
this is so, it is not because of who we are, but because our confidence
becomes so unshakable, others interpret it as arrogance; and arrogance inviteshate.
Though these lines allude to the a general understanding of deity, I
believe God in this passage is symbolic of the individual Whitman
believed in. When we take the journey Whitman eludes to in Song
of the Open Road, we will be able to become divine. Even though

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Whitman believes getting to this divine state is possible, it does not

seem realistic, particularly to those of us living in the twenty-first century where individuality can be seen selfishness. However, if we are in
touch with ourselves and have discovered our divinity, we would not
be fighting battles in fear because we would have a pure knowledge,
an unshakable confidence. We could face enemies undaunted because
the truth would reside within us. This truth is what makes the individual divine.
While it appears that LDS theology and Whitmans idea of the
divine individual are the same on many levels, they do disagree on the
means. While many deem God as the catalyst to progression, Whitman believes it is primarily the nature and the responsibility of individuals to progress for themselvesa fundamental American belief.
If he did not, he would not use his poetry to ask us to begin recognizing the power of the self or ask us to read the Leaves daily. While
LDS theology teaches that it is our goal to become like God, and that
this can be accomplished with Gods help, Latter-day Saints are also
taught that there is a great responsibility for an individual to make
a significant effort: Man can transform himself and he must. Man
has in himself the seeds of godhood, which can germinate and grow.
As the acorn becomes the oak, the mortal man becomes a god. It is
within his power to lift himself to the plane on which he should be
(Kimball).
From Whitmans perspective, it seems obvious that we cannot rely
on a community or a political figure to help us progress or to save
us. Just as in LDS theology, we have to know ourselves ... we have to
search. For many of us, it is highly unlikely we will ever face a situation where we must move mountains or raise the dead by the laying
on of hands, but there will be a time when we will have to face our
enemies, the muzzles of guns, and the popular odium. If Whitman
is correct about his belief in inherent divinity, then it is necessary for
us to come to know ourselves and the human soul in order to combat
the enemy, this not only according to Whitman, but to LDS theology
as well.

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Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. Whitmans Image of Voice: To the Tally of My Soul.
Walt Whitman. Ed. Harold Bloom: New York: Chelsea House,
1985. 127142. Print.
Canby, Henry Seidel. Walt Whitman: An American. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1943. Print.
Cowley, Malcolm. An Analysis of Song of Myself. Critical Essays
on Walt Whitman. Ed. James Woodress: Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983.
258270. Print.
Dowden, Edward. The Poet of Democracy: Walt Whitman. Critical
Essays on Walt Whitman. Ed. James Woodress: Boston: G.K. Hall,
1983. 99108. Print.
Kimball, Spencer W. The Abundant Life, Tambuli, June 1979, 3. Print.
Kuebrich, David. Minor Prophesy. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989.
Print.
McConkie, Bruce R. A New Witness for the Articles of Faith, LDS
Collectors Library, 1997. CD-ROM.
Smith, Joseph. King Follett Sermon. Ensign. May 1971. 13+. The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 7 July 2012. Web.
Stedman, Edmund C. An Important American Critic Views Whitman. Critical Essays on Walt Whitman. Ed. James Woodress. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983. 116127. Print.
Talmage, James E. Articles of Faith. LDS Collectors Library, 1997
CD-ROM.
Traubel, Horace. With Walt Whitman in Camden: March 28July 14,
1888. New York, Kennerly. 1915. Print.
Whitman, W. Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grass: 150th Anniversary Edition. Ed. David S. Reynolds: New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.
. Whitman Poetry and Prose. Ed. Justin Kaplan: New York: Literary Classics, 1982. Print.

99

Borges in the Wilderness:

Turning a Critical Eye to an Author Hitherto
Neglected in Mormon Studies
Bradford Tuckfield

In his book People of Paradox, Mormon scholar Terryl

Givens interprets a passage from the Book of Revelation as a paradigm for a Mormon understanding of the Great Apostasy (340). In it,
Truth is withdrawn from the world into a dark wilderness (the world
without the gospel), and yet is nourished and protected there until
such time as it is ready to emerge again in its splendor (in the Restoration). The truth is not obliterated or completely lost, but merely
withdrawn from the forefront of events and mainstream thought, still
accessible in some form to individuals who diligently seek it. Because
of this idea, Mormons can confidently understand and accept the
truths of other ages and cultures as portions of the light that we now
possess, or as slightly misunderstood versions of the reality we now
understand, or simply as unequivocally good ideas.
Using this critical paradigm, I present here a short analysis of a
one of the works of Jorge Luis Borges. Borges (18991986) was an
author and poet from Argentina whose works are known for their
metaphysical explorations and profound insights on the nature of
reality and the mysteries underlying our experience of the universe.
I believe that in the work of Borges we can see literary versions of
many great but highly controversial truths that are part of the LDS
Restoration. Borges did not learn these truths from Mormonism, and
from the point of view of non-LDS Borges readers everywhere, he,
not Joseph Smith, was the one responsible for bringing these truths
out of the wilderness and into the modern dialogue of ideas. I suggest
that Mormon scholars rather view Borges (and others like him) as an
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unwitting part or agent of the Restoration, putting important truths

into literary form and thus making them more palatable to scholars
who would otherwise scorn them as strictly Mormon, and therefore
untenable, ideas. Indirectly, Borges made Mormonism more reasonable to the intellectual world. I believe that Borges great success in
presenting truths of the Restoration to the worldbringing the
infant Truth out of the wilderness as it wereshould make his work
the object of our deep study and enthusiastic emulation.
Rather than taking on the entire corpus of Borges work, I will
focus here on one short story, The Circular Ruins, that contains in
its few pages many of the most essential, yet controversial, ideas we
also find in Mormon theology, mostly about apotheosis and preexistence. Many of Borges other stories have strong affinity with Mormon ideas without having the densely-packed, striking parallels we
see in Ruins.

Examining The Circular Ruins

The story The Circular Ruins is quite shortless than
six pages in my edition of Ficciones (3944). It is told without dialogue
or significant interaction between characters. It is unevenly paced and
peppered with imponderable phrases, as if from a Zen koan. It refers
to events known to the protagonist that are probably not meant to
be understood by readers at all. The plot is the creation of a man
by a sort of god, as told through the experiences and reflections of
the unnamed creator. The storys details, from beginning to end, echo
with uncanny accuracy many of the aspects of creation and godhood
according to Mormon theology.
The first Mormon-esque features of the story can be found in
examining the character and personality of the storys protagonist, a
creator who is not a distant, part-less, passion-less god, but rather
is a supernaturally-advanced human subject to the rules and forces
of his universe. We know that he is susceptible to ordinary human
feelings: he is described as feeling fear, misgivings, anger, emotional
attachment, and bitterness at various times in the story, and at the end
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of his life, simultaneous relief, humiliation, and terror. He performs

temple worship to deities we do not know, even as he is given a sort of
worshipful tribute from others. He has a vulnerability to and mystical
regard for outside forces (in this case, usually fire).
As for what is referred to as his former life, we know he has
endured great tribulations: his act of creation is immediately preceded
by pulling blades out of his flesh and crawling, nauseated and bloodstained, into a temple. We also find that he is highly educated, or at
least enough to teach some preexistent spirits anatomy, cosmography,
and magic, and later to create each minute anatomical detail of a man.
In these regards, we see that this creator is as far from the traditional Christian conception of the Creator that Borges would have
grown up with as he is close to a creator that Mormons could easily imagine and understand. He is simply a highly developed human,
who has passed from a former life, and maybe even one who has performed an atonement (could this explain the mysterious blades in his
flesh?). He is not omnipotent and possesses a place, lower than that
of an absolute monarch, in some sort of cosmic hierarchy. He finds
fulfillment in teaching preexistent spirits to learn what he knows and
do what he does. We even find that he is capable of mistakes: after the
bulk of the creative labor is done, he decides to remake his creations
right shoulder, which he finds defective. In all of these regards he is
arguably a Mormon God rather than a traditional Christian God.
As mentioned earlier, the story alludes to the preexistence of spirits,
and specifically to those whom the creator takes under his wing as his
pupils to prepare for mortal life. As in Abrahams account of preexistence in the LDS canon, this God finds some individuals more intelligent and excellent than others. Mirroring the story of the one-third
part not given the privilege of mortality, Borges creator believes that
only some could ascend to the level of [mortal] individuals and that, in
fact, only one would be worthy to participate in the universe. Borges
here seems to imply a belief that mortal life is a privilege for spirits
who have proved their worth, a very Mormon idea. And paralleling
the Mormon understanding of the veil and the preexistence, we have
this from Borges about the moment just before bringing the created
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man into the world: he destroyed in him all memory of his years of
apprenticeship.
The creator does not create with his hands or during his waking
hours, but rather with his mind and exclusively in dreams (dreams
fascinated Borges). Nevertheless, it seems that his creation is able to
take on physical form, and that even before he does so, the creator
feels a personal affection for him, as if he is a person with a spirit. We
see here a sort of spiritual creation and education preceding the physical one. The idea that something created in the mind of a human and
without a physical manifestation can have a spirit that is worthy of
real love is a radical one, though one that is not far from a Mormon
view of human life that encompasses preexistence, spirit creation, and
apotheosis.
Just like many Borges stories, this one ends with an epiphany. In
this case it is the creatorshe realizes that just as he has created
a man, so too he is a creation, the product of another creator who
endowed him with the same power that he gave to his own son. Like
many LDS thinkers all the way back to Joseph Smith, Borges flirts
with the idea of an infinite genealogy of gods. He has, all the way to
the end, created a work rich in parallels with Mormon theology.

A Note on the Parallels

The Circular Ruins, though extraordinary in the degree
of its affinity with unique Mormon ideas, is by no means unique in
Borges written corpus. The Other, for example, deals with the possibility of creating a person in ones mind (Collected Fictions 411417).
Inferno, I, 32 expresses the idea (also advanced by Joseph Smith) that
animals have spirits and are cared for by God (Collected Fictions 323).
The incident at the beginning of The Rose of Paracelsus of a master
praying for and receiving a divinely guided disciple (Collected Fictions
504507) is almost comically similar to the story of Joseph Smith
meeting Newell K. Whitney (you have prayed me here, now what do
you want of me?), just to take three examples.

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The degree and level of detail to which this extremely short Borges
story parallels the Mormon theology of apotheosis cannot be merely
a coincidence or a critical overreach. On the other hand, nor is it evidence that Borges was a crypto-Mormon. Rather, the theologies, as
it were, of Borges and Joseph Smith have such affinity because they
sprang from similar imaginative heresies. Both theologies incorporate elements of what must be called a pagan sensibility, eschewing
pious monotheism and Christian-Hellenistic immaterialism, and
viewing the universe as a great and substantive mystery rather than
an entirely comprehensible reality. The setting of The Circular Ruins
is one in which the Zend language has not been contaminated by
Greek (Ficciones 39), just as Joseph Smiths revelations seem uncontaminated by the Hellenism and Neo-Platonism that have accompanied mainstream Christianity since the early Church Fathers.

Borges as a Subject of Mormon Studies

and an Example to Mormon Artists
Since the affinities between the work of Borges and Mormon theology are significant, what does this mean for Mormon thinkers and writers? For one thing, it means that Borges should be studied.
Young, curious Mormons should pick up Borges early and often in
order to understand and explore his thoughtsthose similar to LDS
thoughts especially. Secondly, Borges should be emulated. His profundity and mature toleration of uncertainty could be welcome additions
to our Mormon literature, which too often lacks both. Mormonism has
so many more remarkable metaphysical ideas than todays mainstream
Christianity, and our literature should present and vigorously explore
these ideas. They could be such fertile sources of literary inspiration,
but so far a timid Argentine librarian of the last century has done much
better than our rising global generation at employing them.
To conclude, Id like to compare Borges and another thinker outside of Mormonism whose work also seemed to have great affinity
with LDS thought: the British author and favorite among many

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Mormons, C.S. Lewis. We can see Borges and C.S. Lewis as presenting visions of the universe that were at two ends of a spectrum:
Borges was an unreligious freethinking Gnostic neo-pagan of sorts,
while Lewis was a devout, traditional Christian. Joseph Smith and
the early Mormon theologians carved out a set of ideas that veered
between the extremes represented by these thinkers. On the one hand,
Mormonism advocates ideas of eternal questing and progression, a
fundamental similarity and uncreated nature of all spirits, including
God, and other radical ideas that have parallels in unorthodox mystical spiritual traditions like Kabbalah. On the other hand, Mormons
affirm the reality of core Christian concepts like the Atonement, Resurrection, and other claims of the Bible.
To quote Terryl Givens once again, Mormonism constantly negotiates powerful tensions between opposites, like the rhetoric and
promise of theological certainty ... [and its] opposite and salutary
temptation in ... the boundlessness of eternal progress and learning
(344). The searching/certainty paradox is not the only one that is
apparent in comparisons between Lewis and Borges, but it is one of
the more prominent. It can be comforting to read C.S. Lewis and to
feel certainty in a faithful answer to everything, to feel that our destinies are sewn-up by a God who controls and optimizes even the most
insignificant parts of our lives. At the same time, it can be thrilling
to read Borges and thereby peer into the abyss, to imagine the possibilities of an open-ended, uncertain universe and a primarily selfdirected climb to godhood. The beauty and strength of Mormonism
lies in its ability to fully embrace both searching and certainty, both
Borges and Lewis, and the multitude of believers who find one more
appealing or compelling than the other as they strive to resolve the
tension between them. As thinking Mormons, let us not entirely forget the wonder of Borges in our eagerness to enjoy the orthodoxies
of Lewis.
Indeed, I believe that Borges could become a C.S. Lewis-like
figure to intellectual Mormons, a sort of honorary Mormon, who
flirted productively with LDS ideas without quite fully accepting the
doctrine, providing for us on the way a rich and imaginative body of
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profound thought. An examination of Borges work, even at a cursory level, provides proof that Truth has been nourished even in the
wilderness of disbelief. It will be up to Mormon thinkers and writers
of the future to examine his work more fully, and to give his work
the treatment and integration into Mormon thought that has been
afforded to the work of other thinkers like Lewis. As Mormons do so,
they will enrich both themselves and the Mormon literature they seek
to produce and perfect.

Works Cited
Borges, Jorge Luis. Ficciones. New York: Knopf, 1993. Print.
Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print.
Givens, Terryl. People of Paradox. New York: Oxford University Press,
2007. Print.

107

A New Harvest:
An Interview with Tyler Chadwick,
Editor of Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century
Mormon Poets (Peculiar Pages, 2011)

It has been twenty-two years since Eugene England and Dennis Clark
published Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems. How did that
book, and the years since that books publication, shape your decision to
edit and publish Fire in the Pasture?
Since 1989 Harvest has been the standard for Mormon poetry.
And it should hold an honored place in Mormon letters: England
and Clark gathered hundreds of poems from 58 poets whose writing
careers spanned the half-century before the book was published. But
that was over two decades ago. And poetry didnt die in or around
the 1980s, contrary to what some critics have written on the matter. Neither did Mormon poetry retire nor drift into apostasy after
Harvest hit bookshelves. In fact, it may have just been breaking into
stride.
Eric W Jepson, owner of Peculiar Pages, acknowledged as much
in April 2009 when he asked me if Id like to edit a new anthology of
Mormon poetry. People are always talking about how we need a new
volume of poetry, he said, that Harvest, great as it is, was long ago
and needs to be supplemented. But, to the best of my knowledge, no
one is actually putting anything together. Its all talk. No action. And
he wanted to take action. Heres what I have in mind, he continued:
A survey of the best stuff published [from] the dawn of the millennium ... through the end of 2010. I jumped at the chance to update
Harvest and, before Id even closed out of my email inbox, Id started
the marathon effort of gathering poems and contacting poets.
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Irreantum

Whats the significance of the books title?

Fire in the Pasture is meant to honor the standard set by the poets
included in Harvest while revising Harvests basic conceit. The scriptural notion of a harvest suggests an eleventh-hour reaping completed
in preparation for the Lords return; thus the title, Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems, suggests, advertently or not, that the editors
gathering was such an eleventh-hour act, meant to be undertaken
once and for all. But farmers sometimes burn their fields post-harvest
in preparation for another planting. This is where Fire in the Pasture
picks up the metaphor.
The phrase comes from Doug Talleys poem, Finding Place, which
opens the anthology and which I believe speaks to the intersection
of religious, spiritual, and moral experience with the aesthetic experience inherent in well-crafted poetry. Through metaphors we often
use to describe and to connect with Gods kingdom (fire and light,
the serpent, wind, gardens, planting, reaping, etc.) the poet takes up
language as a form of worshipby which I mean that he uses it, yes,
to praise God, but also to emulate God, whose words make worlds out
of chaotic matter. If we think of poetry in etymological termspoesis
being the Greek term for the process of makingGod, then, is the
first Poet. His words and His worlds are constantly inviting us to
reconsider our relationship to Him, to language, to the universe. Talley echoes this in Finding Place as he drops words like live coals on
our tongues and invites us to [s]imply consider. The title Fire in the
Pasture is intended to invoke these associationsand more.
Are the poems in Fire in the Pasture different than the poems found in
other gatherings of twenty-first century poetry? In other words, is there
anything unique that Mormon authorship adds to these poems?
Susan Howe asks similar questions in her introduction to Fire: It
is useful to ask, she says, what about this poetry is Mormon? Are
there qualities in these poems that distinguish them from the rest of
contemporary American poetry, or are the poems substantially the
same as the poetry of the greater American culture? Her answer to
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Interview with Tyler Chadwick

the last question is both yes and no. Ill elaborate and hopefully in
doing so Ill touch upon both of your questions. Many of the poems
in the anthology could have beenand were originallypublished
in some of Americas most prestigious and selective literary journals, a
fact Susan points out in her commentary. Much of the poetry readers
find in Fire has been vetted, so to speak, by the mainstream American
poetry community. Its really accomplished work.
Eugene England saw this kind of movement toward broad acceptance of Mormon poets when he and Dennis Clark put together
Harvest. In his editorial commentary on the book, he calls this the
new Mormon tradition of poetry. As England had it, those working
within this tradition tend toward an unusually healthy integration
of skillful form and significant content, toward the marriage of formal poetic training and the moral ideas and values [...] they claim to
know through religious experience. Its a union, England concluded,
that leads them to act with energy to communicate those ideas in
confidence that they will be understood and accepted by both their
peers within Mormonism and within the field of mainstream American poetry. So even though the work of many Mormon poets is on par
with their contemporaries work, the Mormon poets speak from their
unique religious and moral experience.
Ill give an example from the anthology: The experience of Adam
and Eve is a recurrent motif in Fire. But none of the poets who engage
that experience fully take it at face value. Instead, each engages Adam
and Eve in revisionary terms, expounding upon their story as told in
the Bible, and in the process deepening its implications as an archetype for human relationships with one another, with the earth, and
with God. Because, as Latter-day Saints are taught in the temple and
elsewhere, Adam is every man and Eve every woman. Their story is
our story and, as such, its context and implications can be productively likened unto and revised through the lens of our own life experience and relationships.
As you compiled Fire in the Pasture, what kind of reader did you imagine
for the text?
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Im not sure I imagined an ideal reader (singular) for Fire in the

Pasture, but I wanted it to include a range of work that might appeal
to readers (plural) from diverse backgrounds. If I were to imagine an
ideal reader, though, he or she would be a lover of all kinds of poetry.
If a reader of another faith picked up a copy of Fire in the Pasture, what
might surprise him or her about its content?
I suppose that depends in part on what experience the reader has
had with contemporary Mormonism. I know two things that surprise most people who pick up the book are its heftit contains over
500pages of poetry!and the range and quality of voices it includes.
I imagine this also goes for readers who come to the book from different cultural and religious backgrounds, though I cant be certain.
I imagine that some peopleeven within Mormonismsee the
book and think, There are Mormon poets? Yes, yes there areand
some really excellent ones at that.
How might someone unfamiliar with literary poetry react to Fire in the
Pasture?
Well, Id like to think that even those unfamiliar or disenchanted
with literary poetry could find poems and poets to enjoy in Fire in the
Pasture. For instance, my best friend isnt a big reader in general, let
alone a reader of poetry. But after he attended one of the group poetry
readings I organized to promote the book, he said he so enjoyed the
experience that he went home, rooted around in the anthology, and
found some poems he really liked. Ive also heard from/about several
other readers who arent fans of poetry, but who really took pleasure
in at least one or two of the poems published in Fire. Even though
these observations are anecdotal, my hope is that the pleasure readers
find in these one or two poems might make inroads for them into the
work of other poets and spark a deeper engagement with poetry. If
not, at least theyve found pleasure in one or two poems.
How would you describe the range of poetry in Fire in the Pasture?
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Interview with Tyler Chadwick

As I mention in my preface to the anthology, readers will find a

range of published and unpublished work in Fire in the Pasture, including new poems from eight of the younger Harvest poets: Susan Elizabeth Howe, Patricia Karamesines, John W. Schouten, Laura Hamblin,
Lance Larsen, Philip White, Danielle Beazer Dubrasky, and Timothy
Liu. This vanguard joins seventy-four established and up-and-coming
poets to provide an expansive look at 21st-century Mormon poetry.
The poems range from artfully crafted traditional formsincluding
sonnets, sestinas, and villanellesto free verse to prose poems to
light verse to dramatic monologues to translations to cowboy poetry.
All of these represent the varieties of the contemporary lyric voice;
and the range of poets speaking here represents the varieties of the
contemporary Mormon experiencea chorus of voices that calls
again and again for us to reconsider our relationship to poetry, to the
modern world, and to 21st-century Mormonism.
Based on what youve experienced in the editing of Fire in the Pasture,
what do you think is in store for the future of Mormon poetry?
I think the future of Mormon poetry is promising, for at least two
reasons: First off, even though I could showcase a large number of
poets in Fire in the Pasture (eighty-two, to be exact), there are many,
many more Mormon poets out there who are actively writing and
publishing excellent work. I tried to give a nod to these other poets
in the anthology by including an index at the end of the book that
includes the names of well over a hundred people associated with
Mormonism who have published poems in various places since 2000.
Its by no means a comprehensive list; but, when taken in conjunction
with the names of the poets published in Fire and with the names
of Mormon poets who arent even on the list (I discover more every
week), it represents an expansive index of published Mormon poets.
So if we look at sheer numbers, the field is thriving.
But the numbers only tell part of the story. Which brings me to my
second reason for believing in the promise of Mormon poetry: The
quality of work being produced by many contemporary Mormon poets
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is such that theyre receiving national attention. This list of nationallyrecognized poets who claim Mormon religious backgrounds includes,
among others: Neil Aitken, winner of the 2007 Philip Levine Prize;
Kimberly Johnson, recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National
Endowment for the Arts in 2005; Lance Larsen, Utahs Poet Laureate, recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment
for the Arts in 2007, and winner of the 2005 Tampa Review Prize for
Poetry; and Timothy Liu, who is a member of the core faculty in the
Bennington College graduate writing seminars and whose list of eight
poetry collections includes several award winning books. As I see it,
mainstream validation such as that received by these and other poets
suggests to emerging Mormon poets that it is possible to write skillfully and deeply about, from, and in response to Mormon religious
experience.

114

Destiny, Demons, and Freewill

in Dan Wellss John Wayne Cleaver Books
Jonathan Langford

Review of DanWellss John Wayne Cleaver trilogy: I Am Not a Serial

Killer (New York: Tor, 2010), Mr.Monster (New York: Tor, 2010), and
IDont Want to Kill You (New York: Tor, 2011)

John Wayne Cleaver, the main character of I Am Not a

Serial Killer, is kind of a weird kid. Fifteen years old. Helps out in
the family mortuary. Obsessed with serial killers. And then a real-life
serial killer comes to his small town. Only it turns out to be a demon,
and it becomes Cleavers job to kill it. And then the same thing happens again (Mr.Monster). And again (I Dont Want to Kill You).
It sounds likeand isa clever premise for an ongoing series, one
that combines a half-cockeyed look at teen life with a ration of suspense, violence, and gruesomeness. But its also a lot more. Even for
people like me who dont usually care for horror, this series has a lot
to offer. And for Mormon readers, its an illustration of how a work
of fiction written for a national audience, without much in the way of
religion, can nonetheless provide a powerful frame for communicating some distinctly (though not uniquely) Mormon ideas.
Perhaps the best part of the books is Cleaver himself, a sympathetic boy who is surprisingly easy to like. In a lot of ways, hes a fairly
normal teenager: socially awkward, more than a bit geeky, at least a
touch neurotic, beset by bullies in school, attracted to girls and unsure
of how to deal with that attraction, saddled with a dysfunctional family past and a mother who loves him but whose attempts to help often
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drive him up the wall. To a great degree, what he wants are normal
things, and what he wants to be is a normal person.
Alas, the last seems unlikely. Cleavers recitation of symptoms displayed by serial killers and how well he matches them is all too convincing. Attraction to pretty girls doesnt translate, for normal boys,
into thoughts about (unspecified) acts of torture. Cleavers mindscape and behavior are genuinely over the top, though much of it represents potential he hasnt yet acted upon, as in the following quote
from Mr.Monster:
Brooke Watson was the most beautiful girl in school, and she was my
age, and she lived two houses down from me, and I could pick out her
scent in a massive crowd. She had long blond hair, and braces, and a
smile so bright it made me wonder why other girls bothered smiling
at all. I knew her class schedule, her birthday, her Gmail password,
and her social security numbernone of which I had any business
knowing. (25)

But the critical defining element of Cleavers character isnt his

sociopathic personality type, but rather his strong desire not to be a
serial killer and the vast self-discipline he applies to that effort. Cleaver
is both a strong and a moral characterall the more so since for him,
acting morally is so clearly an act of will, as opposed to natural inclination. Hes memorable, and hes real, and hes someone I wouldnt
mind getting to know and spend time with, though Id be more than
a little nervous if he were dating my daughter.
The stories are helped along by frequent touches of humor, many
of them arising out of the juxtaposition between the normal realities
of teenage life and Cleavers specific challenges. Heres an example of a
paragraph that I cant stop snickering over, though it may be that you
need to spend some time with Cleaver before it will seem funny. Hes
just baked a cake for Mothers Day, and theyre waiting for his sister
to show up:
The cake was already done and cooling on the counter, so I was browsing through the paper. I noted with pleasure that Karla Soder had
been admitted to the hospital for extended care; she was one of the
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Langford: Demons, Destiny, and Freewill

oldest people in Clayton, and Id been waiting for her to die for a while
now. We hadnt embalmed anybody in more than a month. (Mr.Monster 47)

To some degree, this is funny because weve been pulled into Cleavers
world, where a death means more business and a chance for Cleaver to
satisfy his desire to cut up bodies in a harmless and socially acceptable
way. Unlike many stories that feature violence as a dominant theme,
however, Wellss books dont invite us to put our conscience on hold
and just accept the blood and gore. Even when Cleaver is forced to
killbecause how else are you going to deal with a serial killer demon
who takes out police officers without any apparent difficulty?were
all too aware of the cost.
Which brings me to the supernatural element, which at first seems
like an unnecessary gesture toward the current market reality: books
about teenagers fighting demons do better than stories about those
facing ordinary opponents. But theres more to it than that. Many
years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien, writing about the supernatural monsters
in Beowulf, declared: It is the strength of the northern mythological
imagination that it ... put the monsters in the centre, gave them victory but no honour, and found a potent but terrible solution in naked
will and courage (25-26). Cleaver isnt a doomed northern hero. But
there are elements of his situation that work better, both thematically
and by way of plot, with demons who must be fought if innocents are
to survive, who cannot be countered by regular law enforcement.
Some might argue that this makes things too easy, giving Cleaver a
clear moral justification for his actions. But thats not the point. This
isnt a story about a Hamlet who must decide whether or not violence is justified. Rather, its the story of a warrior like the biblical
David who must somehow learn how to fight without staining his
soul with the blood hes spilled. A moody teenage David, who has to
worry about whether hes becoming a psychopath. And who knows
how close that may or may not be to the original?
On reading I Am Not a Serial Killer, I worried that the premise
might get stale. Part of the attractiveness of the first book is its novelty.
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More of the same could get old very fast. That doesnt happen, not just
because Wells comes up with clever new plot twists and variations on
the theme, but primarily because of the development in Cleaver as a
characterand the successively broader lenses each story occupies.
The first book is largely private, focusing on what happens when the
imaginings of Cleavers inner life confront him outside the confines of
his own mind. The second book shows us where Cleaver comes from,
his family and his intense desire to protect and strike back against
those who threaten what is precious to him. The third book shows
him coming to understand love and sacrifice for others, ultimately at
a great cost.
Its a devastating progression. Wells says this is the last in the series,
and Im glad, because I dont know where he could go from here that
wouldnt diminish the story hes told so far. The first book is clever
and fun; the second well-written and thought-provoking; the third ...
astonishing and sad and deeply moving. The best of the threebut
also undoubtedly the hardest to read. Youve got to be willing to face
some tough stuff to get through this book.
John Wayne Cleaver isnt Mormon, and I think thats a good thing.
The book is already chock-full of issues and plot twists and life realities. Working in Mormonism would have been like pouring chocolate syrup and butterscotch over baklava: overkill, if youll pardon the
expression. Despite this, these are also intensely Mormon books on a
thematic leveland books that appeal to Mormon readers, based on
the evidence of the Whitney Awards1, despite what might seem like
an excessive focus on violence for Mormon tastes.
A critical question the books persistently raise is this: do Cleavers
acts of propitiation toward his inner demonhis research on serial
killers, helping in the family mortuary, minor acts of controlled arson
in an abandoned warehouserepresent necessary compromises or a
fascinated dalliance with evil, making it likely that hell be sucked in
1. I Am Not a Serial Killer tied for the 2009 Best Novel by a New Author award
(based on publication in the U.K. prior to U.S. publication). Mr.Monster tied for the
2010 Best Novel of the Year award. I Dont Want to Kill You I Dont Want to Kill You
won the Whitney 2011 Best Novel of the Year award.

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Langford: Demons, Destiny, and Freewill

fully. His white-knuckled adherence to rules intended to keep him

away from dangerous behaviorsfor example, complimenting those
he desires to strike out againstseems ultimately doomed to failure.
Certainly the circumstances that keep forcing him into violent confrontations with demons do nothing for his self-control. Cleaver is
the Natural Manthe Natural Teenagerwell-meaning but incapable of redemption through his own unassisted efforts.
Some of his rules seem disastrously bad. Not looking at a pretty
girl more than three times in the day (even when she comes up and
starts talking to him) seems doomed to make Cleavers social isolation even worse. At the same time, we readers understand the reason
for his attempts. Even though his issues arent ours, Cleavers struggle
reminds us of the hell that is adolescence, when self-control often
seems like an elusive holy grail.
Below is a brief selection that I think captures Wellss skills in
depicting Cleavers character ... and the knife edge he walks. Its the
night after Mothers Day and Cleaver has decided to go burn something to relieve stress after a disastrous family dinner (the same one
for which hed baked a cake earlier). After saying The fire was calling
to me, he tells us,
The warehouse reflected bright gray moonlight from its cinder block
walls, shining dully in the clearing. I was grinning now. This was the
time when the lines inside of me blurred, and Mr.Monster became
simply John Cleaver: not a killer but a boy; not a monster but a human
being. Fire was my great catharsis, but this prelude moment was my
purest freedomthe one brief respite when I didnt have to worry
about what Mr. Monster wanted to do, because he and I wanted
the same thing. Once Id made my decision to light a fire, I wasnt at
war with myself anymore; I was just me, and everything made sense.
(Mr.Monster 61)

Wells gives an unflinching look at the darkness that threatens us all.

Cleaver fights the good fight, but we sense that he doesnt have it in
him to escape his own nature. Not, at least, without help from othershelp that, for most of the books, no one seems capable of giving.
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In the end, he is redeemed (or at least we sense he can be) through

the deliberate self-sacrifice of an Otherbut in a way that doesnt feel
forced or allegorical because it makes sense in terms of characters we
have come to know and believe in.
So should you read these books? Yes, if you can stand to do so. If
you can put up with a little teen humor, embarrassment, and gruesomeness, with an undertone of genuine feeling leading to some real
emotional gut punches in the final bookthen yes, its well worth
the ride. And if you care about Mormon literature and want to know
what an LDS writer can do with Mormon themes in a series without
a single LDS character, then you should probably read these books
too. They are, quite honestly, some of the best Mormon fiction Ive
read in a long time.

Works Cited
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Ed. by
Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Print.

120

Connecting the Generations through Disco

Theric Jepson

Review of David Clarks The Death of a Disco Dancer (Zarahemla Books,

2011)

I was lucky I started reading David Clarks The Death of a

Disco Dancer the same day my classes had to take a mandated test,
thus freeing me from teaching responsibilities. Before I was a quarter
of the way through its pages, I had disturbed my students with merry
snortsand had had to hide my teary eyesas I tore through the
pages in utter glee, trying to read as much as I could before collecting their work. In the end, I finished the book in two calendar days.
Which is just not something I do anymore, not since becoming an
adult anyway. As an adult I read twenty books at once and take weeks
(or months) (or years) to finish each one. But maybe my childlike
speed in reading this book suggests something of its magic, like slipping through a wormhole to that liminal space called eleven years old.
Todd Whitman, the novels hero, was born earlier than mehes
eleven the summer I turned five, and a middle child to bootbut the
representation of his Mormon family (richer than mine) and his town
(Scottsdale, Arizona, and thus hotter than mine) and his friends (too
much like mine) could not feel more real had he written about my own
family and town. (Although this should perhaps lead me to another personal admission: my family moved from Montpelier, Idaho, to Clovis,
California, when I was ten, and Disco Dancers Todd strikes me as 50%
me at age eleven, and 50% who I would have become had we not moved.)
Todds family has just taken in his mothers mother, who is suffering from a dementia that is moving beyond the abilities of her
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husband to manage. The presence of the difficulties experienced by

this aged character (including a return to her own adolescence) immediately pushes Disco Dancer beyond the summer of 1981 with its Indiana Jones references and throwing rotten oranges at cars and campfire
stories and unobtainably beautiful girls, and into a meditation on life
and the passage of time through generations. Todds relationship with
his grandmother and his relationship with his mother and his mothers relationship with her mother make for a complex dance between
all three generations (and, by implication, those before and hence),
which Clark accomplishes with admirable ease. The novel plays constant games with time (both flashbacks and flashforwards) that make
most chronologically creative books stutter. That Clark plays and
wins speaks to his skills as a stylist.
Speaking of style, how about that title? Disco is dismissed now as frivolityas nothing but (now dismissed) stylebut wasnt it always about
joy? And what does it say that joy, in the form of a huge pile of records,
was literally detonated in 1979 before an angry mob of 90,000cheering
spectators? In fact, disco does not play a big role in Disco Dancer, except
symbolically; for instance, 1981 was not only, as Clark said in an interview with William Morris on A Motley Vision, the peak and really the
beginning of the end of the disco era, it is also the peak and beginning
of the end of Todds relationship with his grandmother.
Continuing on the theme of ends, Clark has the fortitude to end
the story where he should, with Todd convinced hes just ruined his
teenage years and perhaps his relationship with his grandmother, and
not ten steps later when the readers questions and Todds angst could
have reached tidier resolution. And while some readers may long to
have those questions answered, the nature of a generation-spanning
story is that it neither begins at the beginning nor ends at the end. But
that eternal scope, from a Mormon perspective, demands hope. Clark
hints at this with the spattering of scenes that take place in the present day. But in the end every life is its own small thing, one small summer. And being part of something larger does not necessarily remove
our myopia. No matter how much we feel the eternal, today is today
and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, et cetera.
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Jepson: Connecting the Generations through Disco

The Death of the Disco Dancer captures a time and place so perfectly it feels like documentary footage of 1981 Scarsdale, Arizona. Its
funny. It draws tears without being the least bit sentimental. Both
the laughs and the tears are fully earned by real characters engaging
in real life. Clark knows the power and the value of a good tangent
(with the exception of the bear story, every digression is just the right
length and helps us understand who, what, and why with elegance).
He engages with the ambiguity of all things stereotypically good (religion) and bad (darn teenagers!). He never drives a joke into the brick
wall of no-longer-funny. He deals with topics heavy (with lightness,
but not undue lightnessfor instance the pathos of dementia with
its uncomfortable but inherent humor) and light (without ignoring
their own little gravities).
Which brings us back to disco. Sure, we dismiss it now, but lets
remember: those were real musicians playing real instruments and
making music so fun the world danced despite itself ... until it realized how ridiculous it looked and slunk back into a dark corner. Just
like the budding teenager who has just proved his older brothers
assurance that his first dance move, the deacon shuffle, will come to
him instinctively.
What I, as an adult, am most curious about is what a 2012 teenager reading this book will think. Because in some ways I feel unfairly
primed for this book. My mother is currently caring for her mother, I
work with teenagers, and Im old enough to have children that resemble those in this novel. And I was once a boy myself. Which gets to
why I intend to buy a copy for my mother (even though it says nuts
and balls far too often for her taste): This book made me recognize
my love for my mother in a way I too rarely do. So while I cant say
for sure that the book will work as well with a teenager as it does on
me, perhaps mothers should buy copies for their sons, just to find out.

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A Dominant Collection
Lisa Torcasso Downing

Review of Eric Freezes Dominant Traits (Dufour Editions, 2012)

In American politics these days, its common for politicians

to cast themselves as the Washington outsider, insisting they are no different from Mr. and Mrs. Main Street back home. Their constituents
seem to admire this attitude as an ideal, always hoping for someone
who is rooted beside them in worldview and who will have the integrity
to, as they say, stay above the fray, or not succumb to a political climate
rife with the temptation to compromise, or much worse, sell out.
Many in the Mormon literary community have an interest in seeing writers with a Mormon background succeed outside our community, while remaining a fair representative of their worldview, someone
who is, essentially, an insider. I know of people who have purported
that it is impossible to write honestly about the Mormon life without
being excommunicated, a thought that seems bizarre to me. And yet,
we who have been watching the MoLit community have seen talented
people leave the Church in pursuit of their art, among these is novelist
Brian Evenson. In a 2006 online interview with Angela Stubbs, Evenson remarked, Theres a lot of talk in Mormon artistic circles about
The great Mormon novel as being something on the horizon, but I
tend to think that as long as Mormonism controls the dissemination
of information about it so tightly, the so-called great Mormon novel
will have to be an act of heresy. He seems to argue that no insider (no
faithful Latter-day Saint) can be a writer of great literature.
Enter Eric Freeze, a writer who describes himself as a practicing, temple-recommend-toting, EQ president-serving, FHE-holding
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Latter-day Saint. Granted, Freeze is not a novelistat least, he hasnt

produced a novel yetbut he is both an outsider, one who has never
published in the Mormon venues, and an insider. And he writes
great, heresy-free fiction. His first collection of short fiction, Dominant Traits, is comprised of twelve stories, most having previously
appeared in literary journals like The Boston Review and The Fiddlehead, an impressive literary journal out of Freezes native Canada.
Four of the twelve short stories in Dominant Traits have characters,
main or otherwise, who are identified as Mormon (Wrong Time for
Caution,Poachers,Goths, and Shoot the Moon, while a fifth story,
The Beet Farmer, gives us a family coded as Mormon via a reference
to how the boy carried his lunch box the way that the twelve-yearold deacons in his church carried the sacrament trays (24). Freezes
Mormon characters are not stereotypical, but deep, complex human
beings. Some are believing Mormons, like the youth leader who acts
as gatekeeper at a Stake dance in the story Goths. Some are Mormon in name only, like Benny in Wrong Time for Caution, a man
who attends the Mormon church because it will cover his rent if he
swears off smoking. Other characters range in between and, like us all,
are imperfect in their faith.
But such imperfections provide the texture of Freezes fiction. Perhaps my favorite story in Dominant Traits is Poachers. The setting is
a small Mormon community in southern Alberta. The family is troubled by an infidelity that produced a child, a rambunctious son who,
at age twelve, has learned about dominant and recessive traits. He
then openly questions why he has blue eyes when the rest of the family is brown-eyed. His parents feel he has the right to know the reality
of his paternity, so they take their son on a camping trip where they
plan to break the news that he is the product of his mothers adultery.
The story, while serious in topic, also pokes fun at Mormon problem-
solving techniques, though Freezes humor is subtle. For instance,
Freeze classically delivers a self-help book (written by Dr.Laura of
course) into the mothers hands via the nosey neighbor across the
street. Later in the story, he literally sends in the Boy Scouts to keep
the problem child distracted and busy. The storys humor is both
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Mormon-quirky and Mormon-deprecating without being condescending or pejorative. Originally published in The Antigonish Review,
Poachers is not only a story of redemption, but clear evidence that
fiction about Mormon life and values, when well-written, can stand
on its own outside our niche market.
The seven stories in Dominant Traits that do not identify Mormon characters still carry a decidedly Mormon flavor. In Writing
on Stone, Freeze introduces us to a young man whose family was
rejected from the Hutterite community. The death (and possible suicide) of a female cousin whom he loved in childhood drives him back
to the strange Anabaptist community even though he believes he
will not be welcome. The thematic exploration of excommunication
and patriarchy are uncomfortably familiar, but each is balanced by an
overarching sense of love and forgiveness.
In A Prayer for the Cosmos, we meet a basketball coach who knows
right from wrong like he knows black from white, and yet the shades
of gray tempt him when the team faces a championship run. His star
player is failing the coachs math class, a fact that should render the
student ineligible to play, but no one outside the coaching circle knows
this. He wrestles with this moral dilemma: Should he follows the rules,
sit the player out, and unfairly punish the entire team and community
because of one students one failure? Or should he wait to enact a punishment for the grade, thereby ensuring only the guilty suffers? And
how culpable is he, as a teacher, for his students lack of learning?
Interestingly, in this same story, Freeze runs a tangential plotline
that portrays another moral dilemma. The coach and his wife live next
door to her former brother-in-law and his lonely mastiff, Otis, an animal that has already injured their own small dog. However, an obligation has been established: The neighbor expects Otis to be invited
to the other side of the fence for play-dates with little Zeke, a much
smaller dog. Embedded in this nearly silly second plot are the shadows
of important Christian doctrine: Our neighbor is our brother; We are
our brothers keeper; Do for him as youd want him to do for you; Forgive.
These doctrines, though seemingly simply, become complex, especially when applied to his coaching dilemma. Who does he forgive?
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The failing student? Himself, the inept teacher? If he is his brothers

keeper, doesnt that mean he has responsibilities to the failing student,
but also the team and community? How would he want to be treated
. . . if he were the student? Or if he were another member of the team?
Suddenly even the most obvious, rule-based moral decision is fraught
with traps. The coach takes the high road in making one ethical decision and the low road for the other. In the end, he reaps regret.
The other stories in Dominant Traits are equally sophisticated,
equally complex and thought-provoking. All are brutallyand playfullyhonest. He turns staid scenarios upside down. Clichs fall by
the wayside. The underdog abounds, but doesnt necessarily win and
doesnt necessarily lose. In Dummy, a young man who is part of a
theater company witnesses a mutiny among the company of actors
and resigns himself to playing the fool in order to keep his job. In
Shoot the Moon, a college student deceives an aged friend to save
the old man from a painful truth, but the price the student pays is
high. In Francis the Giant, a science teacher pairs a top high school
athlete with an unpopular, unintelligent classmate. Instead of helping
his peer complete their project, the athlete ridicules him into an act of
vengeance. Freeze also tackles stories about mental illness, intimidation, and even sexual maturation and infertility.
Yes, sex exists in Dominant Traits, though certainly not gratuitously.
Yes, some of his characters swearand not just with words found in
the Bible. Yes, moral consequences are explored rather than defined.
And yes, Freeze is a practicing Latter-day Saint who passes his temple
recommend interviews. Be assured that readers will face Freezes characters head-on, hear them unfiltered, and see into their hearts, their
minds, and, in one story, into the bedroom.
Seven Little Stories about Sex, the last story in the collection, possesses a level of intimacy that might make some practicing Latter-day
Saints squirm. His seven little stories are vignettes which chronicle
the burgeoning sexual awareness of a character who is referred to only
as the boy, even though the reader follows him into his adulthood.
The character, however, is no Peter Pan, no man-child locked in his
own myopic quest for groping self-fulfillment. Instead, Freeze cops
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a narrative voice that sounds as God-like as a limited, third person

point of view can: We see the raw, intimate details of his sexual awakening, but understand his journey as bewildering. We watch as his
innocent desire grows up and grows into a deep longing to do what
he cannot, to procreate with the woman he loves. The culminating
act of marital love is written with tenderness and affection and is as
essential to the story as the page itself.
Some Mormon readers will still likely call foul, claim the very existence of the story is needless, voyeuristic, inappropriate. However,
what I see in the story is a tender revelation of the struggle and the
pleasure the human male encounters as he comes to understand the
body God gave him and, ultimately, the highest purpose for which
it is created. Seven Little Stories about Sex is art in the same way
Michelangelos David is art. Experiencing each, I believe, is intended
to be a discovery of the divine design of man. Fortunately, literature
can move beyond the limitations of visual art; Freezes final story is
not static in the way a statue must be. Instead, it highlights mans
God-given freedom to choose, to be tempted, and to ultimately gain a
perspective that broadens understanding and improves the soul. The
scriptures teach that Gods followers are to be in the world, but not of
the world. Freeze has placed this story squarely in the world, but the
soul of the story is clearly somewhere far removed.
However, I dont want to give the impression that Dominant Traits
is a moral treatise or some sort of Message Fiction. It isnt, but it
isnt iconoclastic either, and it certainly isnt heresy. While any given
reader may be less than enamored with one story or another, taken
on the whole, Dominant Traits, has the potential to become one of the
dominant short fiction collections in the Mormon canon, provided, of
course, Mormon fiction neednt be defined as stories solely about Mormon characters. Of course, Freezes collection has appeal well beyond
the niche Mormon literary market and may serve as a primer for Mormon writers who aspire to cross-over with their short fiction.

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About the Artist

Darren Clark grew up in Southeastern Idaho and has

strong feelings about the landscape and inhabitants of the region. He
earned an MFA in photography from Louisiana State University in
Baton Rouge, LA, where he investigated the relationship between the
natural and cultural geography of the region. He is currently photo
graphing the landscape of The Snake River Plain of Idaho and is particularly interested in the structures and landscape associated with
irrigation and agriculture. He divides his time between photographing, birding, fly-fishing, teaching, and his family. Darren, his wife
Susan, and their three sons currently live in Rexburg, Idaho, where he
teaches photography at Brigham Young UniversityIdaho.

Artist Statement:
Irrigation in the Upper Snake River Valley of Idaho
The Upper Snake River Valley is a dry, cold, and seemingly
inhospitable place. There are extensive mountain ranges to the north
and east of the valley. In the winter it snows in those mountains. It
snows a lot. In the summer that snow melts and drains into two main
arteries, the Henrys Fork and the South Fork of the Snake River
(which eventually join to become the main stem of the Snake River).
These substantial waterways and their subsequent alterations allow
residents to prosper in this high desert.
The waterways of the upper valley barely resemble the natural
landscape from which theyve evolved. Pristine sections of rivers, with
clear water and unaltered flow, are still possible to find (they are, in
fact, a major source of recreation and refuge for locals and visitors
alike), but they are no longer characteristic. The inhabitants of the
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Irreantum

region have been altering the waterways since their arrival. Rivers are
dammed for power production, to divert water for irrigation, and to
enhance or provide recreation. I support responsible stewardship
of these resources. When rivers run dry in favor of irrigation canals,
though, I think priorities need to shift.
My motivation to photograph the irrigated landscape of this region
stems from my desire to understand the place. These photographs
document my encounters with the geography of my homeland, the
irrigated landscape of the upper Snake River valley.

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Contributors

Melissa Dalton-Bradford is a writer and independent scholar.

She holds a BA in German and an MA in Comparative Literature,
both from Brigham Young University; speaks, reads and writes fluent
German, French, and Norwegian and is conversant in Mandarin; and
has taught language, humanities and writing on the university level.
As a young adult, she studied in Vienna, Austria, and later returned
there to serve a full-time mission for the LDS church and later taught
German at the MTC. She has published award-winning poetry and
prose and has recently finished her first book, a copious grief anthology. Aside from her background in languages and literature, she has
led a parallel life as a stage actress and soprano soloist, performing
professionally in the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia. With her husband Randall, she has lived in Hong Kong and Vienna, and the two
have raised their four children in Oslo, Paris, Munich, and Singapore.
At the time of this writing, the family is moving to Geneva, Switzerland. Above all, Melissas greatest joys are found in her Savior, her
husband, and her four beautiful children, who are the light of her life.
Tyler Chadwick lives in Pocatello, Idaho, with his wife, Jessica, and
their four little girls. Hes a doctoral candidate in English at Idaho
State University and he teaches freshman composition at ISU and
online for BYUIdaho. Hes the editor of Fire in the Pasture: Twentyfirst Century Mormon Poets and he blogs at MotleyVision.org and
FireinthePasture.org.
Lisa Torcasso Downing has served as Irreantums fiction editor
for the past three years. Her own short fiction and creative non-fiction
has appeared in various Mormon venues, including the anthologies
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Irreantum

Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction and Best of Mormonism. In 2007, she

received an AML award for short fiction Award. She holds degrees
from Brigham Young University and Texas A&MCommerce. Presently, she resides in Heath, Texas with her husband and one still-athome son. Now and then she blogs about the craft of writing and
Mormon literature at lisatorcassodowning.com.
Elizabeth Cranford Garcia received an MA in English Literature, taught for seven years, and now divides her time between preparing for her first child and writing poetry. Her poems have appeared or
are forthcoming in Boxcar Poetry Review, Blue Lake Review, Segullah
Literary Journal, Borderline, Eudaimonia Poetry Review, Irreantum, and
Poets and Artists, as well as in a recent anthology, Fire in the Pasture:
21st Century Mormon Poets.
Scott Hales is a PhD student in the Department of English and
Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati. His literary
criticism and book reviews have been published in War, Literature,
and the Arts, The Edgar Allan Poe Review, Irreantum, and BYU Studies
Quarterly. He also writes about Mormon literature and other subjects
online at The Low-Tech World (www.low-techworld.org), Modern
Mormon Men (www.modernmormonmen.com), and Dawning of a
Brighter Day (www.blog.mormonletters.org).
Theric Jepson writes regularly about Mormon literature and comics
and other arts for A Motley Vision. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Dialogue; Irreantum; Arkham Tales; The Fob Bible; Windmills;
and Children, Churches and Daddies. He recently co-edited Monsters &
Mormons with Wm. Morris. Find him online at thmazing.com.
Jonathan Langfordis a long-time critic and reviewer of Mormon
literature. His novel No Going Back about a same-sex attracted LDS
youth was a finalist for the 2009 Whitney Award. He currently moderates Dawning of a Brighter Day, the Association for Mormon Letters blog.
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Contributors

Larry Menloves stories have appeared in Dialogue, Sunstone, and

other literary venues. His story The Path of Antelope, Pelican, and
Moon, originally published in Irreantum, received the 2009 AML
Award for the short story.
Shelah Mastny Miner recently completed an MFA in Creative
Writing from BYU. She works as the features editor for Segullah, writes
for the Mormon Women Project and Feminist Mormon Housewives,
and keeps a book review blog, Shelah Books It. While Shelah and Ed
thought they were done having kids when she wrote this essay, they
welcomed their fifth child this spring.
William Morrislives in the Minneapolis suburbs with his wife and
daughter and works in higher education public relations and marketing. He is co-editor of the anthology Monsters & Mormons and the
founder of the AML-award winning Mormon arts and culture blog
AMotley Vision: Mormon Arts and Culture. Liner notes for Conference as well as a full catalog of his work can be found at his personal
literary blog: williamhenrymorris.com.
Lisa Madsen Rubilar won first place Irreantums fiction contest
in 2010, and her story Obbligato was included in Zarahemla Books
anthology Dispensation: Latter-Day Fiction. In 2011 she moved with
her family to Lynchburg, Virginia, where she recently completed a
novel. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College.
Courtney Miller Santoteaches creative writing at the University
of Memphis, where she received her MFA. She has a BA in journalism from Washington and Lee University, and although born and
raised in Portland, Oregon, shes spent most of her adult life in the
South. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Los Angeles
Review, Irreantum, Sunstone and Segullah. Her debut novel The Roots
of the Olive Tree will be published this year by William Morrow. For
more information please visit www.courtneysanto.com.

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Irreantum

Megan Sessionsreceived her Bachelors degree in English from the

University of Utah and her Masters in English, with an emphasis
in American Literature, from Weber State University. She currently
resides in Layton, Utah, with her spouse and two children.
Javen Tanners poems have appeared in Roanoke Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Southwestern American Literature, Dialogue, Irreantum,
The Raintown Review, and several other journals and magazines. His
chapbook Curses for Your Sake was published in 2006 by the Mormon
Artists Group Press in New York City. In Manhattan, Javen worked as
Associate Artistic Director of Handcart Ensemble, and co-produced
and/or acted in Two Yeats Plays (The Cat and the Moon and The Only
Jealousy of Emer) and the New York premiere of Seamus Heaneys
The Burial at Thebes, Ted Hughes translation of Alcestis, and Simon
Armitages adaptation of The Odyssey. He is currently the Artistic
Director of The Sting & Honey Company in Salt Lake City. With
Sting & Honey, Javen recently directed and acted in Waiting for Godot.
Bradford Tuckfield is a PhD candidate at The Wharton School
of the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a BS in Mathematics
from BYU. He can be reached at brt@wharton.upenn.edu.

130

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129

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