CHAPTER 11

JAN AND CHUCK BLACK left the Northern Hotel and walked north along 28^th Street, the warm air brushing their cheeks.  The evening traffic was light, still too early for the Saturday night crowds.  Jan glanced across the street to where he used to play poker.  The card room was closed, and he wondered why.  Chuck saw him looking and said, “They closed it last week—prostitution.”

They walked to Second Avenue where Cadillacs and Audis discharged passengers at the Alberta Bair Theater for the Performing Arts.  A signboard advertised hors d’oeuvres and fine wines at 6:00 p.m., celebrating the 20th anniversary of the theater.  Jan had heard the announcement on the radio in the rental car coming from the airport.  The musical Chicago was playing.  For $125 you could get hors d’oeuvres, wine, the show, and dinner and dancing at the Billings Sheraton afterward.  They turned and headed east toward the train depot.

“I hope you have a big appetite, my friend,” Chuck said.  “Lizard Leo’s is run by a compatriot, Jose Del Toro.  No relation to the movie actor.  But Jose was trained by Stephen Piles of the Star Canyon in Dallas and also by Robert Del Grande at Café Annie in Houston.  He’s famous for his yellow-tomato salsa.”

“My mouth is watering.”

Inside the old sandstone building they were greeted by a Mexican in full gentleman-rancho attire.  “Señor Del Negro!  What a pleasant surprise that you visit us on this early Saturday evening.  Are you in town for the show, Chicago?”

“No, Antonio, no.  I am entertaining mi amigo, Jan Kucera.  Treat us well, my friend.  Señor Kucera comes a hundred miles just for Jose’s salsa and pollo con mole.”

“We shall warm the peanut butter!”

Antonio led them through the dining room.  Cacti stood in planters and hung from the twelve-foot ceilings.  A huge barrel cactus marked the center of the dining room, and two giant saguaros touched the ceiling at the rear of the room.  Cages of colorful birds hung from the ceiling.  Antonio showed the two men to a small table against the east wall so both of them could observe the door.  Starched white cloths covered a table adorned with linen napkins and crystal wine goblets.  Antonio took their drink orders, cleared the goblets, and then left them with menus.

“OK,” Jan said at last, “Tell me about blood atonement.”

Chuck hesitated.  He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.  Finally he leaned forward and said, “How much do you know about the Mormon Priesthood?”

“Not much, I’m afraid.”

“Well, let’s start there.  In Mormonism there is a power—what they call the Priesthood—which is sort of like electricity.  It is passed on, as they say, through the laying on of hands.  The head of the church—in this case Ronald Hansen—holds what they call The Keys of the Priesthood.  This allows the Prophet to institute any doctrinal practice—and no one can challenge him.

“Back during Brigham Young’s time,” Chuck continued, “the Mormon Church went through a period known as The Reformation.  During this time, Young and other Priesthood leaders whipped the Saints into a fearsome lather.  People were coming forward publicly confessing their sins.  One old woman confessed she had stolen a radish and asked to be rebaptized.  The rhetoric in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City grew more and more gruesome.

“It was at this time that Young laid a theological foundation for blood atonement.  Addressing the Saints in the Tabernacle, he preached what he had been practicing.  He told the faithful that, while it was true that Jesus Christ shed His blood for sins, nevertheless some sins require the shedding of a man’s own blood.  And he was serious.  That same day another leader, Jedediah Grant, suggested that some of the congregation should go to Young and have him appoint a committee to shed their blood so they could go to heaven.”

Jan shuddered.  “Can you imagine sitting in the pew listening to that stuff?  But Chuck is there any evidence, any hard evidence that this practice actually occurred?  I mean really.”

“Yes, of course they practiced blood atonement.  Not only did they, but they still do.  Not the mainline Mormon Church, but many of the polygamous sects still teach and practice the doctrine.  But did Brigham Young practice it?  Certainly, no question about it.  Lots of deathbed confessions and witnesses document the crimes of the Priesthood in Utah Territory.  John D. Lee, for example, told the grisly story of his part in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

“I’m familiar with that event.”

“Yeah, The Mountain Meadows Massacre stood as the greatest massacre of Americans by Americans in the history of the United States.  That is, until Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  The Massacre was our first 9-11 tragedy.  On September 11, 1857, at least 127 men, women, and children, traveling in a wagon train from Arkansas, were massacred by order of Brigham Young.  McVeigh killed only thirty-nine more in Oklahoma City.

“Is it really true,” Jan asked, “that at Mountain Meadows, the Mormon militia gunned down women and children?”

“Yes, it is.  Lee had enlisted American Indians—or Mormons dressed as Indians, which is up for debate—to surround the train.  Then Lee rode in under a flag of truce and convinced the settlers to lay down their arms and said that he would escort them through the Indians.  Of course, instead, he and his men executed all of them.”

Jan shook his head.

Chuck smiled thinly.  “Lee had been a personal bodyguard of Brigham Young.  He was eventually tried and executed for the Mountain Meadows Massacre.  Of course he elected to be Blood Atoned.  He was shot as he sat on the edge of his coffin at Mountain Meadows itself.  In his memoirs, written in the weeks before his execution, he said Young had made him the scapegoat.

“Other Mormon hitmen, whom Joseph Smith and Brigham Young called Destroying Angels or Danites, wrote of similar crimes.  Wild Bill Hickman, for example.  Hickman told of murders he carried out under the direct orders of Brigham Young.  These henchmen first did the bidding of Joseph Smith when the church was embattled in Missouri.  One of the most notable of these guys was Orrin Porter Rockwell, who allegedly shot Governor Boggs of Missouri on Joseph Smith’s orders.  People eventually were Blood Atoned for crimes of adultery, incest, and speaking against church leadership.”

Just then Antonio returned with their drinks, tortilla chips, and yellow-tomato salsa.

“Antonio, we really do want to have two orders of pollo con mole.”

“Señor Del Negro, the order is already in.”

“Thank you, Antonio.”

“Will there be anything else just now?”

“No, sir.  These refreshments will make us very happy until the main course arrives.  Thank you very much.”

“My pleasure.  Gentlemen.”

Antonio bowed.  He vanished almost as unobtrusively as he had arrived.  Jan thought he moved like a shadow, almost teletransporting through the room.

Jan selected a triangle of tortilla, fried thin, crisp and golden brown.  He scooped some salsa.  Chuck’s blue eyes followed his movements.  With the first bite the flavor seemed to rise like smoke from Jan’s palate into his nose.  His eyes watered and he inhaled deeply.

“Well, Jan?” Chuck asked.

Jan shook his head, searching for words.

“It’s wonderful!  If my father were alive he would say, ‘This is so good it would make you slap your mother.’  I never figured out what it meant, but he always said that about good food.”

“Your father, was he born in this country?”

“No, he came here as a boy at the age of ten, just before World War I.  His family emigrated from what was Bohemia then, Czechoslovakia now.  From near Prague.”

“So he brought some of the Czech idioms into English.  My father did that as well.  They never seem to work.”

Jan laughed.  “You got that right.  My dad, if he got irritated with you would say, ‘You talk like a man with a paper hat!’  I never got that either!”

They ate in silence for a few minutes.  Jan’s sinuses opened up and his eyes watered.  He sipped his diet Coke.

After a while Chuck said, “Here comes Antonio and our chicken with a hint of peanut butter sauce.  If you like what you’ve tasted so far, hang on to your paper hat!”

They both laughed, and Antonio set the plates before them.  Jan again was struck by the fresh pungency of the food.

Jan was so absorbed in the meal that his mind drifted from their conversation.  He found himself thinking about Mexico.  He and Emma often traveled there from Los Angeles.  Now he was remembering their first trip to Mexico.  They had gone to Ensenada for a weekend, where they ate wonderful lobster thermadors for seven dollars a plate.  He remembered how they had sat on a balcony overlooking the Pacific.  It had been a warm summer evening, the sun just setting.  He could still see little brown children running on the beach.  He could still smell the acrid aroma of the bay floating up to the balcony.  He could still taste the tequila and salt and lemon.  He saw the highlights in Emma’s soft hair, heard her hoarse chuckle, saw the setting sun reflecting from her sunglasses.  She didn’t remove them—even during dinner—until the sun was completely set.  Though he never said it to her, Jan thought she believed the sunglasses made her look mysterious.

“Did I interrupt you?” Chuck was saying.

“What?”

“I asked you if you knew that every person who serves on a jury in a capital case in Utah is voir dired on his beliefs on the doctrine of blood atonement.”

“Amazing!”

“Yes, every juror will be questioned about blood atonement and asked how he feels about that doctrine.  I know that’s true because I testified in a death penalty appeal case in Utah where a killer was told by his bishop that he ought to plead guilty to a murder so he could save his soul by having his blood shed by a firing squad.”

“You’re kidding! Well, Chuck, as I said, it all sounds pretty evil to me.”

“I agree, but I repeat, the evil is in the ideas.  Every Fundamentalist who participates in blood atonement is a product of the madness initiated by Joseph Smith.  Smith’s lust, his traumatic youth, his charismatic personality, all came together in the twin doctrines of polygamy and blood atonement.  He doubtless possessed, like all serial killers, a psychotic personality—more specifically what we call a dissociated personality.  His imagination became his law.

“And then Brigham Young.  I believe he was a stony killer.  Obviously he had a great sexual appetite.  Who can say about the others who followed him?  They were generally eclipsed by Smith and Young.  But they had this in common with them: They believed—with all their hearts—that they heard directly from God on these matters.”

Chuck stopped speaking, speared a piece of chicken breast in mole sauce, put it in his mouth, and chewed.  Swallowing, he touched his napkin to his lips and continued.  “Smith gave us polygamy and blood atonement; Young amplified those practices.  John Taylor saw the handwriting on the wall—that the United States was going to hold the church’s feet to the fire on polygamy.  He got a visit from God telling him to secretly commission men to continue polygamy after the public renunciation.  In time Ervil LeBaron, Ronald Hansen, and numerous others came forth with their own visions about restoration.  Each of them believes that he was God’s chosen-one.  Each received a commission from God to save the church.”

Jan interrupted.  “And these guys all refer to the Smith prophecy about the One Mighty and Strong—the restorer of polygamy.”

“Exactly.”

Jan leaned back and rubbed his eyes with his fist.  Chuck continued.

“So, my friend, to the conclusion: I don’t really care where the evil originated.  The bottom line is that polygamy—enforced by violence—keeps women in bondage and murders those who try to fight it.  In places like Colorado City, Arizona, young girls are married to their elderly uncles.  Child abuse reigns.  Autism and Tarot’s Syndrome and a host of other chromosome diseases run rampant because the gene pool is so limited.  Young men are booted out of the community during adolescence so they will not be competition for the old men.  Many of them wind up as male prostitutes on the streets of Las Vegas in order to make a living.  Polygamy has killed hundreds and emotionally destroyed thousands.”

“Actually,” Jan said, “polygamy indirectly killed my Emma.  Because when I wrote about it, Hansen came after me to murder me, but murdered her.”

“I’m afraid so,” Chuck said.

They sat in silence for a few moments.  Jan stared at his food; suddenly it held little interest for him.

“So,” he said, “Hansen can’t stop himself?”

Chuck spread his hands.

“Then who will stop him?” Jan asked.  “Will you stop him?”

“Jan,” Chuck said slowly, “look, I’m a lawman.  A retired lawman, true, but still a lawman.  I can’t ride into Hansen’s domain and blow him away.  I’m bound by the law.”

“I’m not a lawman,” Jan said.

“I know.”

They looked at each other for a few moments.  Those blue eyes becoming a veil.  Jan had no idea what was behind them.

“Oh,” Chuck said.  “There’s one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“One of Hansen’s relay stations is on the Crow Indian Reservation just a few miles from my house.”

“How did you know about that?”

Old blue eyes didn’t blink.

“When and if you need more information on that, give me a call,” Chuck said.  “And one more thing.”

Jan waited.

 “Are you planning to drive the 310 tonight?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Is that wise?”

“Well, Chuck, I’m armed.”

“Not well enough.”