...Night Bird Canyon
_____________________
Dear Grandchildren:
I've set out to chronicle some of the most important events in my life. You older children will think the story quaint and silly; some of you will think it's just another of Grandpa's silly stories meant to amuse you. That's fine, because the day will come that you'll appreciate it. Let me just tell you that this story is true; every word. And let me also remind you that there are more strange things in the world than any of us will ever know.
Great-Uncle Morey will be adding his comments as there are parts of the story he knows better.
With Love,
Grandpa Jacob
______________________
When my grandparents left Italy for America they were determined not to stay in some ethnic enclave in any city – instead, they set out for farm country. With a son who was six years old (my father), a four-year-old daughter, and a year-old son, they carried what little they brought with them and walked out of New York in search of their dream. They spoke no English, and America outside of New York didn't seem to speak Italian. But Grandfather was good at pantomime and somehow made himself understood. No one wanted to hire the determined young Italian, but they'd offer shelter and food for the night with food to carry away with them in the morning, and, often they found rides for their western exodus.
In Ohio they buried their youngest child, a kind farmer offering a place in his family plot on his farm, his whole family reverently standing with my Grandparents as the burial was performed. Two days later, heartbroken over their loss, they sat down in a grove of trees on the side of the road, ready to give up on their dream. They prayed to Jesus, the Blessed Virgin, and Saint Christopher, the protector of travelers, for a sign as to what they should do, and as they crossed themselves following the prayer a young farmer the same age as Grandfather stopped to ask them if they needed help. One spoke no Italian and the other spoke no English, but the farmer offered them the old one-room cabin behind his own house for the night, and his wife brought them dinner and bedding and other things she thought they might need.
My grandparents took the kindness of the farmer's wife as a sign from Jesus and the Virgin and Saint Christopher that they were finally home. So, the next morning Grandfather was standing on the porch of the main house, ready to begin working for the farmer. Fortunately the farm was an apple orchard, because Grandfather knew apple trees. The farmer, knowing he couldn't tell the man he didn't need help, simply nodded for him to come with him, and by the end of the day the farmer had concluded that he wouldn't let this strange foreigner who knew apple trees like a mother knows her children ever leave his farm. A year later my grandparents moved into their own newly-built home a short distance from the main house, and five years later the sign over the farm entrance was changed from “Larrabee Apples” to “Larrabee & Caporalli Apples”. Grandfather, who did not yet have a good understanding of English, didn't understand all the talk behind the new sign and the papers my father, now a bold eleven-year-old who'd become very fluent in English, patiently explained he needed to sign – papers called 'deed' and 'title'. What my Grandfather did understand was that he was now officially part of something in this, the Promised Land. Something had his name on it and it was his, for Mister Larrabee had made my grandparents full partners and owners of the farm.
Like many new emigrants of the time, my grandparents taught little of their old-world heritage to their children – after all, they were Americans! My father and aunt and the children born after settling on the farm learned English from the farmers' children and at school, and the farmers' children learned Italian, and he parents learned from the children and the two families slowly became one in spirit if not in fact.
One part of Italy that remained and was taught was their religion. Once the Larrabees understood their new tenants were Catholic, they wrote to the Bishop of Columbus, who added them to the list of families visited by priests who rode circuit to say Mass, perform ordinances, and hear confessions. Even though they were as Protestant as could be, the Larrabees were perfect hosts for each and every visiting priest, even attending each mass conducted on the farm – Missus Larrabee wore a shawl over her head for Mass like good Catholic women used to do so Grandmother would have a friend on the women's side of the service. After all, according to the American Dream we shared in each others individualities as well as in our commonalities. In that spirit of sharing, my grandparents attended church every Sunday with the Larrabees (except when a circuit priest was in town), learning English by singing the grand protestant hymns of the day. In fact, it was out of the Methodist hymnal that my good Catholic Grandmother learned to read English, Missus Larrabee patiently teaching her word by word.
My father went to college in Saint Louis where he began to learn something of his Italian heritage - and where he also met the woman he would eventually marry. She was also a child of Italian emigrants - so yes, I'm full-blooded Italian who knows no Italian and has black, curly hair and a natural Mediterranean tan that betrays my heritage. And, I also have the attitude when needed.
The Great Depression began just as I moved to New York to follow my dream of being an actor, writer, and playwright – which turned out to be like trying to be a baker without owning any wheat or even an oven – the hope, the dream, and the drive was there, but there was no market in which to nurture the dream and bring it to fruition. For every theater there were two-dozen aspiring writers and several-hundred actors, and most of those theaters were closed until the economy improved.
That's where Jonathon Littleton, attorney for my late uncle on my mother's side, caught up with me.
I was lucky enough to be holding down a job at a third-rate hotel in a Jewish neighborhood as a night-time bellboy when a man in a very expensive suit walked in with a briefcase and no luggage.
“May I help you, Sir?” I asked, standing right up.
“I'm looking for a Mister Jacobo Caporalli,” the man said, pronouncing the first name with a silent-'J' and looking down his nose at me as if I were sidewalk scum.
“Call me Jacob, please,” I replied with all the desperate courtesy of someone who hasn't received a tip in weeks and rent is coming due.
“Mister Caporalli,” the man continued. “My name is Jonathon Littleton, attorney for your Uncle Lorenz. Is there a place where we can talk?”
“Yes, Sir.”
We found a quiet corner in the cramped little lobby and sat. “You are aware of the demise of your uncle Lorenz?”
“Yes, Sir; died two years ago.”
“Are you aware of just how wealthy he was?”
I shrugged. “I know he invested well. Railroads, steel, oil.” I paused. “All the good stuff.”
“Are you also aware of the difficulty in settling his estate?”
I shrugged again. “He's got one kid; my cousin Vinny; what's here to settle?”
Mister Littleton took two big breaths before answering. “Mister Vincent the Junior did not pass the single qualification test to inherent his father's estate. He's going to have to make it through life on the stipend his father left for him.”
“Which is probably more than I'll make in a lifetime.”
“That would depend on you.”
There was a pregnant pause.
“So, what's this got to do with me?” I finally asked.
“Your uncle's will listed only two other candidates for his estate; you and your father. If one of the two of you do not qualify then it all goes to previously-assigned charities.”
“That's a lot of charity.”
“Your father has declined, and he refused to disclose your location; I had to literally hunt you down.”
“So what's the hitch?”
“Very simple, really. The estate includes a small but comfortable mansion in northern Utah. To inherent the estate one must spend one year there; sleeping every night in the house for one full year. One year to the day.”
“Utah? Where the Mormons live?”
“Yes.”
“So, what's it worth to live with the Mormons for one year?”
Mister Littleton showed me a paper that told me how much it was worth to live with the Mormons for one year, and I choked.
“Mormons don't seem to be such bad people all of a sudden,” I whispered through my choke.
“Your cousin actually enjoyed their association,” Mister Littleton replied, scowling. “He said there were 'other things' that drove him back to civilization.”
“What? Is the house haunted? This isn't one of those classic...”
“He broke down when I asked him for details. Has been recovering in a sanatorium in Denver since his time among the Mormons.”
Vinny always was a wimp. Always a nose in a book; probably never even been skinny-dipping. If Mormons broke him down, then I knew I'd like them.
“So,” I replied, looking around the small lobby and seeing for the first time just how shabby my life really was, “Which way to the train station?”
_____
Getting to the train station, however, didn't happen for several weeks. As a prospective millionaire, Mister Littleton saw the need to take charge of my life in order to orient me into this new phase of life, and I didn't argue. After a good haircut and shave, he sent me to Macy's with a blank check and a letter addressed to the supervisor of Men's Clothing and Supplies, describing down to a sock and a shaving bowl exactly how they were to clothe and outfit me and then deliver it all to his house, where he was putting me up until I left for my year among the Mormons. I was given lectures at Macy's about not mixing stripes with dots and not to wear brown shoes with black slacks. I was given etiquette lessons and then taken to the finest restaurants, where Mister Littleton left tips larger than what my salary had been at the hotel. I was shown all the sights – driven everywhere by limousine.
I could really get used to this life!
I left New York City in early March in my own private railroad car (with an attendant!) that had three bedrooms and a bath and a sitting room. Switched to another train in Chicago, I was met at the station in Columbus by old Grandpa Larrabee, who drove me back to the farm he and Grandpa Caporalli, both now widowers, still shared.
I have many happy childhood memories of that farm. Grandpa Caporalli and I spent several days just walking the farm and sharing many of those memories as I walked slow enough that he and his cane could hobble along with me. We rode his carriage down the road to see the grove of trees where he'd built a small shrine to Jesus, the Virgin, and Saint Christopher for sending Grandpa Larrabee to find them, and then we went further down the road to the farm where Grandpa had buried his child, and he cried as he told me about my little uncle. Those were the only tears I'd ever seen that man shed.
Later that day we visited Grandma's grave back on the Larrabee-Caporalli farm, where we both laid a small bunch of flowers next to her simple headstone.
“Come; I have something for you,” Grandpa Caporalli said as we turned back to the house. The main house was now occupied by one of Grandpa Larrabee's grandsons who worked the orchard, so the two old men shared the Caporalli house. He led me to the clean, plain bedroom on the main floor that he and Grandma had shared for so many years and, opening up a jewelry case, pulled up a small but elegant silver chain holding both an equally elegant crucifix and a Saint Christopher medal. “I wear this when we come to America,” he explained. “It was my grandfather's. I offer it to your papa when he continue west to Saint Louis, but he say it too much a treasure.” Grandpa smiled an old man's smile as he pulled my hand to him and put the treasure in my open hand. “It yours now. Protect you in to the Wild West.”
I could have told him the West wasn't wild anymore, but my only reply was a hug between grandfather and grandson as something very sacred was passed on to the next generation.
“Always pray for help, no matter what,” Grandpa told me as I put the chain over my head and tucked the crucifix into my shirt, and I remembered his words as I was back on the train and headed for Saint Louis. “He not too busy for anyone, even for a newly-rich boy like you. Pray to Jesus and the Holy Mother. If you are traveling, pray to Saint Christopher.” Grandpa paused. “They brought us here, to a new home. Let them bring you to your new home. Let Him tell you how to use all that money.”
I would only see Grandpa Caporalli in mortality one more time – on my honeymoon - but this was the last time we were able to share words and an embrace, and I cherish the memory of the man who set out to walk America to find his dream, leading his wife and carrying his children into the Promised Land.
Saint Louis was not so pleasant. My three days there were spent with book after book containing first-hand accounts of life among the Mormons being forced in front of me. And they were not good accounts! Mama wept in fear that I was going to my doom. Papa tried to make me swear by everything he held sacred - which wasn't too much as he believed his success was due to his own power and he gave God far less credit than he ought to have – to swear by everything he held sacred to not fall prey to the Mormon Lie, whatever that was.
It was a joy to finally be on a train for Salt Lake City! Mama came to the station and wept as if I were going off to war against Mongol hordes. Papa, angry that I was accepting money I hadn't earned, left for work before any of us were out of bed that morning, so there was no goodbye from him.
It was a long train ride to Salt Lake City, and it was during this part of my journey that I discovered I was allowed out of my private car to mingle with the rest of the passengers, which I promptly did, thus passing the time in a far more pleasurable way than confined to my gilded cage. The first day out from Saint Louis I met a woman traveling with four little children, struggling to keep them in line and not disturb the rest of the passengers. I invited her to use my car, where she got rest in one of the bedrooms while her children had room to run and play and not bother anyone. I found it fun to play with the kids, and I was surprised that I felt as good as I did by using something I'd been given to help someone else.
_____
Mister Littleton had arranged for a local Ford dealer to meet me at Union Station in Salt Lake City with a shiny new automobile, bought for my use and large enough to carry the trunks holding the 'minimum goods' Mister Littleton believed I'd need to survive 'out west' – which meant it was one of those new, sensible 'station wagons' and not the roadster I'd have preferred. It was one of those cars that the passenger compartment and storage area was all made of wood – hence the classic nickname 'Woody'.
A room was waiting for me in the Hotel Utah, and I spent two days walking the streets of this new town, hoping to get my first glimpse of Mormons. None were forthcoming; everyone just looked and acted like normal folk. Friendly; far more friendly than New York! But otherwise normal. I'd have to wait for my first view of a Mormon.
I was having my rail car hitched to the back of a freight train that visits Logan once or twice a week, but I didn't want to wait, so I struck out on my own, the rail car to follow. It was a full day's drive north through Ogden, Brigham City, and then because Strawberry Canyon was still closed due to snow, I had to go further north to Tremonton and then over the Valley View highway to Cache Valley.
Everywhere I stopped to eat or ask directions, perfectly-normal people were polite and helpful. No one had horns sprouting out of their foreheads or appeared to have a tail tucked skillfully down pant legs as even the latest edition of Encyclopedia Britannia clearly stated Mormons were so burdened. I saw no men with more than one woman of comparable age holding on to him. Oh, and all the women wore shoes and dressed in regular styles I'd have recognized anywhere.
Where were the Mormons?
Logan, civilization's only real outpost in Cache Valley, was a sleepy-looking town compared to anywhere I'd ever lived. One long main street, but with plenty of residential streets on either side of it, this town had more churches than I'd ever seen in one small town, and up on the eastern bench stood a cathedral-like fortress of a building that seemed to be the focus of the valley's attention. I even saw a small Catholic church and made a mental note to go Sunday and thank God for this change in my life.
“Yo!” I shouted at a young man walking down the sidewalk as I came to a stop beside him. “Yeah, you!” I continued as the boy turned and pointed at himself as if asking 'me?' “I'm looking for an address.”
The kid came off the curb and around to the driver's window as I pushed the instruction paper out towards him.
“That's about a mile from my house,” the kid whom I figured was about eighteen exclaimed as he pointed south of where we were. “I could take you right there.”
“Get in, then.”
“You must be Jacobo Caporalli,” the kid began, pronouncing my name with that silent-”J”, as he slid in the passenger side and closed the door.
“'Jacob' if you like your teeth,” I suggested.
“At least your name isn't Moriancumer,” the kid countered with a whiff of gloom.
“Ouch!” I exclaimed. “But folks with teeth left in their head call you Morey, right?”
The kid grinned as if I'd given him an idea.
“Okay, then, Morey: where to?”
While we headed south Morey explained that Mister Littleton had written and hired his Ma to clean the house up before I arrived (which is why he rightly guessed who I was) and to act as a housekeeper for three to four hours a day. “Mom 'n Dad are glad for the extra money,” Morey explained. “It's tight up here right now.” Come to find out, his whole family had pitched in and cleaned the house – scrubbed walls and windows; the works. They'd even brought furniture up from the basement that had been covered and stored down their since my grandfather on my mother's side had abandoned the house. His Ma had dutifully listed all their individual hours and sent the bill accordingly - to include the huge pile of firewood the kid and his father had split and stacked.
Oh, and I was right – Morey was a kid – he was barely eighteen. I was a mature twenty-one.
Morey chose to take me home with him instead of to my new home, explaining that the sun was down and no one entered the property in the dark. Once I smelled his mother's dinner, he had no arguments from me - it was worth sleeping on a lumpy old couch to eat that woman's cooking. And, the fact that he was the only boy in a family of five children made me think they'd be right good neighbors as I fell right in the middle of his sister's ages. They were such normal folk that I was immediately glad they weren't Mormon – yeah, you could tell they weren't Catholic in the way they prayed, but they were good folk.
Morey and his Ma, Missus Harris, rode with me to the house the following morning.
“Your grandfather built this house,” Missus Harris explained. “He'd made money in railroad and other things, and he visited here when Union Pacific built the spur between Tremonton and Logan. Bought fifty of the prettiest acres in the valley and built this house for his bride.”
“I know this story,” I cut in; “She died here; childbirth...?”
“Not from childbirth, she didn't! At least according to local story. She survived childbirth fine. But afterwards she took to roaming the foothills. She went missing one night, and her body was found up Night Bird Canyon; it's on one end of the property. That's when your grandfather moved back to Saint Louis.”
“What she die of?”
“No one really knows. No wounds; no cuts. Only thing showing was a pin prick on her neck; probably from a dress fitting.”
There was a pause as we pulled up to the front of the house and got out, all three of us staring up at the house. It wasn't exactly a mansion, but it was the biggest house I'd ever seen in a farming town. Eight bedrooms upstairs, Missus Harris told me, and downstairs there was two parlors, a formal dining room, and a private study. There was a porch all the way around the main floor and a balcony-porch that circled the front and two sides of the second floor but not the back. The kitchen was built as an addition in the back on the first floor. She'd never been in the basement and couldn't tell me much about it.
“Probably where the ghosts live,” I mumbled.
The property had a spacious lawn on the side facing the mountains to the west (and Night Bird Canyon), and beyond that a large pond which Morey said was good for swimming; I didn't ask how he knew.
“Only two others have tried to live here since your grandfather left.”
“Vinny...” I noted.
“A nice boy,” Missus Harris remarked, but Morey's face held another opinion. Missus Harris handed me the keys to the house. “Also his father, who spent a year here when I was a young woman.” She smiled that really pretty smile women get when they remember something nice. “He was a marvelous dancer.” She paused and the smile came back to the present. “Now, come choose your bedroom before Morey brings your things in.” Despite her protestations, I helped Morey bring my things in after choosing a north-side bedroom that had a remarkable view of the cathedral, some eight or nine miles away and perched solemnly on its bench.
In the main parlor of the house there was a package from Mister Littleton waiting for me. It was the old family Bible that had been my uncle's, and it contained a note written in his hand:
“Read this book and believe. Let it guide and comfort. In this is the greatest wealth.
“Do not go out at night for any reason until the Evil has passed.
"Stay out of Night Bird Canyon.”
I remembered that before we'd left the Harris house that morning, and before Mister Harris headed off to work, he was absolute in one single instruction: “Don't go out at night. Things have a way of dying on that property at night. That's when... when your grandmother had been out.”
And not going out at night was going to be difficult, because there was no indoor plumbing – only an outhouse. Yeah, and no electricity, either.
“How did Vinny handle the nights?” I asked Missus Harris. She nodded towards an elegant chamber pot now being used to hold a floral arrangement. “You didn't...?”
“He handled it himself, believe me!”
The Harris' car was parked until they could afford luxuries such as gasoline, so the next day, a Sunday, I packed as many of them as I could into my station wagon and drove them to their church – horror or horrors! It was a Mormon chapel!
“You folks are Mormons?” I asked, and I'm afraid they saw my surprise.
Missus Harris just smiled. “Don't believe everything you read in encyclopedias, young man.”
I'm afraid I didn't hear a thing the priest said that Sunday as I sat through Mass. I did manage to thank Jesus, the Virgin, and Saint Christopher for a safe journey and for the change in life, but the rest of the time was spend trying to figure out how the Harris family could be good people and be Mormons.
After church Morey brought a couple horses to my house and took me for a ride around my property, he riding bareback while my horse was saddled. We paused on the far west end of the property, looking up a steep, narrow canyon.
“Night Bird Canyon,” Morey announced.
“It is nice?”
“Don't know. No one goes there.” And before I could ask further, he was riding away, so I followed.
It took about a week to unpack the trunks Mister Littleton sent with me and then to rearrange the house the way I wanted it. Missus Harris went with me into town to buy a wardrobe cabinet and a few extra chest of drawers, and I quickly discovered she had an eye that balanced good taste with smart pricing. Of course, in rearranging the house I didn't touch the kitchen – that was Missus Harris' domain. She supplied a cupboard near the kitchen door with things for me to snack on and that would be a simple fix, but the rest of the room was hers.
Even before the unpacking and rearranging was done, Missus Harris rode into town with me again to introduce me to plumbers and electricians and carpenters – if I was going to be there a year then I had work for them! Missus Harris knew the right men, and they came out to the house to make estimates, which I reported to Mister Littleton, who then drew checks above my monthly allowance and mailed them directly to the contractors. By the end of April I had an electrical light and at least one additional plug in every room. You've seen the old pictures with wires running on the outside of the wall and up the ceiling to the ceiling light? Yes, that's what it looked like, and it was very modern way back then.
And, above the kitchen that stuck out the back of the house there was a new bathing and toilet room serving the needs of the second-floor bedrooms. A second toilet room and a mud room were added to the first floor next to the kitchen, which now had it's own piped-in water. And since we were modernizing the place, I even added one of those new electric range-ovens and a refrigerator. And, to Missus Harris' delight, a clothes washing machine - I told her to bring her family's wash and use it, and she kissed me.
I had brought with me all the discarded scripts and stories I had written in hopes of becoming a writer and a playwright, and now, in the office on the main floor, I certainly had room to spread them all out, and I had time to pick and choose what to work on. Yeah; I had a whole year! And, I had a new typewriter – no more longhand!
____________________
Uncle Morey here,
adding a few words to this well-winded narration:
What Grandpa Jacobo hasn't said yet is that he loved my mother almost from the start. His own mother was one of those who was into Society, so he was raised mostly by maids as she was always busy. A mother whose life centered on her family was a new and intriguing concept for him. Mother discovered just as quickly that Jacob was a boy in need of a mother figure, and she chose to fulfill her role as housekeeper accordingly. And he wasn't complaining. Whenever she needed to go shopping, he drove her and helped with the shopping. Not like he had to be holding down a job like the rest of us, right, Jacobo? He even learned how to hang up the laundry and wash dishes correctly.
Anyway, he and I became friends in short order. I had Sunday and Monday off from work, so I usually went with for the Monday shopping so I could tote and carry our goods into our house while Jacob toted and carried the goods bought for his house.
It only took a few Sundays for Jacob to realize that Mother was serious about a standing invitation to Sunday dinner, and once he started coming he never missed a week. After my sisters got done entertaining him (he loved Maria's chocolate-colored eyes almost as much as he loved Mom's chocolate cake), he and I would walk to his house, but I'd have to leave before sundown for obvious reasons (which weren't so obvious back then except that facing my Mother's wrath was not a pleasant thing.) Jacob finally invited me to stay the night as he had eight furnished bedrooms and was only using one.
So Sunday nights became our 'talk night.' One of the first things that happened was clearing up the fact that Logan did not have a cathedral. Jacob swore there were two, but I explained that the one on Main Street was actually a Tabernacle – a large assembly hall used for most any large gatherings – concerts, church conferences, town meetings; that sort of thing.
“The big one up on the bench, though,” I explained, “That's the temple.”
“Temple; cathedral; what's the difference?” Jacob asked me.
“A temple is where our highest, most sacred ordinances and covenants are performed.”
“Like what?”
So, I explained to him about temple stuff and he seemed mostly satisfied with the simple answers I gave him.
___________________
Okay, Uncle Moriancumer; you still think I was satisfied with those dumb, disjointed answers you gave me about the temple? I pretended to be satisfied only because I knew I could have your Ma clear up the confusion when she came to work, and when your Ma came I asked her to do exactly that. Her answers sounded like someone who'd actually been inside a Mormon temple. She even knew where that scripture in First Corinthians was that shows proxy baptism for those who died without it was part of early Christianity. I'm glad you studied the scriptures a lot more before you left on a mission!
The idea that a marriage could last the Eternities was really strange to me. But then, I hadn't seen many marriages worth lasting that long until I met Mister and Missus Harris. And even though I didn't believe Mormon teachings, I was impressed with the determination Mormons had in building a marriage that could last past the birth of their last child.
______
As stated before, I was free to leave the property and roam the countryside all day, but the legal qualification was that I had to sleep in the house every night for a year. And, as the Harris' so firmly insisted, I had to be indoors before sundown.
Missus Harris insisted they were not superstitious, but she was equally insistent that there were more things in existence than we knew. She said this was the reason I had to be in by nightfall – because there was something out there but they just didn't know what it was. And, it only affected my property and they didn't know why.
“My property and Night Bird Canyon?” I asked, pretending to do so casually.
“Who've you been talking to?” she asked, not at all fooled.
“Morey pointed it out when I arrived but didn't answer any questions.”
“Some things and some places just don't feel right, and we avoid them. Night Bird Canyon is one of them.” And she would say no more.
I wondered how much more Mister Littleton really knew. I wrote him but he insisted he learned very little from my cousin Vinny Junior, who was still in the sanatorium in Denver.
I grilled Morey about ghost stories in the Mormon world, and he told me that there were a few but rarely repeated and probably never even written down. He knew that their founder Joseph Smith had recorded that he'd seen Satan once. Morey also said he had a cousin from north of Preston who'd told him a story about a story in some place called Mink Creek and said that when pressed those who'd witnessed the event would only tell you how true or false the version you heard was but would never actually tell you what they'd seen or heard.
“We believe in angels,” Morey said, “and if there's angels there has to be demons. Don't now much about them. What we do is try to live lives that would exclude them from being here.”
“What if they're really determined demons?” I pressed.
“Trust in God to fight our battles, I guess.”
“Yeah, well, from my reading in the Bible that means He expects us to join His army and fight with Him leading us,” I retorted.
_____
Morey and I were both from brother-less families, and we found a brother of sorts in each other – it was a friendship waiting to happen. I kidded him at first about being a farmboy-turned librarian, but he just smiled and didn't take the bait – something those of us with nothing but sisters get good at as sisters know how to bait a brother. He said he was lucky the library position opened when it did because at least he had a job. He even claimed that working with books was practically a sacred thing. Remind me not to return a book late to his library!
Like Morey wrote, I had a standing invitation to Sunday Dinner at the Harris house, and once I took them up on it, Morey seemed to always find a reason to walk me home – I think he was making sure I was getting home before dark. I'd have rather been walked home by his twenty-year-old sister Maria, whose looks took my breath away, but, hey, can't have everything in his life! She was a Mormon, I was a Catholic – just wouldn't have worked.
So not only was Morey a friend, but he was an assistant mother hen to his Ma. What his Ma doesn't know is that once he started staying the night I was teaching him to play poker (Did he really write that it was our 'talk night'?) while he was answering my questions about Mormons... only to find out that they considered card playing a forbidden evil, which was good for me, because Morey had a brain for numbers and knew how to use it with cards in his hands! Lucky for me he refused to play for money – he said that was the real sin.
In exchange for the poker lessons, we spent several hours every Monday, after shopping, with Morey teaching me how to ride a horse bareback. He even loaned me a pair of Levi's until I could get to the store for my own pair.
Once the noise and confusion of adding plumbing and electricity and a mud room to the house was done, life got a little too dull. Yes, Missus Harris was a great person, but that was only four hours in a day, and the nights were long. Morey spent most of Sunday and Monday at my house, and even started sleeping over Monday night and leaving from there to work Tuesday morning, but that left a lot of long hours alone in a big house. I found myself going to the library for reference books for my writing, and the human interaction was looked forward to. Morey actually did know his stuff in running a library – no matter what kind of book I was after, he knew right where it was, and it wasn't a small library like I thought it would be in a little town like this! These Mormons were actually literate and enjoyed all kinds of reading. All the latest authors who were worth reading were found there along with all the classics. Allan Quatermain and Tarzan were there, along with Melville and Natti Bumpo. And Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley. Yeah, Shakespeare was there, too, but why torture yourself?
Logan wasn't the dreary outpost I was afraid it was going to be. They had two movie houses and several theaters – all open at night, thank you very much. Dances and parties at every church in town ... all at night. I can assure you, girls aren't interested in a guy who can't stay out past sundown! Except the Harris girls; they understood. But they only wanted to be friends... after all, they were intent on marrying within their faith (a good thing!) and in their temple, and I didn't qualify for either. But I have to admit, they were good friends. And Maria's eyes made the man in me feel – well, like a man. They arranged parties at my house on Saturday afternoons, and a lot of people our age came ... only to leave before sundown to head off to the real parties.
After the first of these parties Missus Harris suggested I write Mister Littleton and get funding over my monthly allowance for a piano, which I did. The one Missus Harris picked out from the Steinway catalog Mister Littleton sent back was a baby grand. Was I ever impressed with the musical talent of the kids my age once that thing arrived! And the girls were so appreciative of the piano - hey, anything to make the girls appreciate you!
But I also found out Missus Harris played the piano, and really good, too. When she'd finished her work every afternoon she'd play a few pieces, her eyes closed and really feeling the music. It was magic
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
One morning two weeks after the remodeling was over, I found two dead rabbits on the kitchen doorstep. They didn't die there; they were set there and laid out very much on purpose. I looked around and saw no one. I shrugged and took them inside, laying them on the counter next to the sink to examine them – they both had a single bite out of their neck, which is probably how they'd been drained as there wasn't any blood in them when Missus Harris arrived and started carving them up for a stew. She saved the skins, saying I could find something to do with the furs.
I haven't mentioned that this little estate I was living on had a stable (where I parked the car at night) and several out-buildings like a chicken coop. Missus Harris and Morey both insisted I not try to stock them as “things die there at night”. Well, the day the two rabbits showed up dead on the doorstep, begging to be turned into a stew, I went out and bought a dozen hens and a rooster for the chicken coop and yard. Three mornings later two of the chickens were carefully laid out on the same kitchen doorstep, as bloodless as the rabbits and just as dead. Not a feather out of place, but their throats were opened and the carcasses empty of blood. I walked to the chicken coop in my underwear (a sleeveless, mid-thigh 'union suit' that everyone wore back then) and couldn't find any holes in the fence. There wasn't any hole a dog could've dug to get at them. The gate was still locked, and the only key had been in the kitchen, hanging on a peg next to the refrigerator.
Two days later the rooster and another of the hens were on the doorstep dead, and that afternoon Missus Harris took the rest of them home with her to add to their chicken coop. I had assured her I hadn't heard anything, and I'm a very light sleeper.
That Sunday afternoon Morey and I had gone swimming in the pond past the big, formal lawn. It sits, as you all know, over a small rise, and what's done there can't be seen from the house or from the Harris house; the closest neighbors, so we enjoyed ourselves as two young men were bound to do in those days by skinny-dipping. The water was cold but the air was warm and a good swim was had by all except for the fact that we lost track of time, and when Morey realized the sun was nearly down he grabbed his clothes and ran for the house, me following and somewhat exasperated with this fixation with the sun going down on my property. If the Harris' had been watching with Morey's binoculars they would have had a sight to remember, I'm sure, watching their tall, blond son, buck naked, and me wearing only my black-haired chest, Mediterranean tan, and my grandfather's crucifix that hung to the bottom of my breastbone – two well-formed young men turning their dash to 'safety' from the evils of the night into a race to see who could reach the house first.
Let me say something about friendship: You boys today do not know what friendship is like we did. Most of you are grossed out that Morey and I went skinny-dipping. But there was something called 'Trust' back then. Being unclothed around a brother or a father or a friend didn't mean you were immoral – it meant you trusted who you were with. The world is a far worse place because this trust among men is gone. Morey and I would never have thought anything you boys today would think – we were just two friends having a good swim and trusting each other.
Anyway, when we got back to the house and into our underwear (Morey's had sleeves), for that's all either of us slept in, we decided one of us would stay up to watch the kitchen door from one of the upstairs bedrooms – it had been three days since the last batch of dead offerings and we figured tonight whomever was doing it might come again. Morey offered to take the first watch – till Two A.M., so he pulled the bedroom's wingback chair up to the window that looked down at the target door and began his vigil and I went to bed early, figuring I'd need the sleep.
My alarm went off at Two and I found Morey asleep in the chair – but the doorstep was also empty, so he hadn't missed anything. Embarrassed, he went off to bed while I took over the chair. Nothing happened until about Four A.M.
There was a bright moon that night, and in the moonlight I could see a figure approach the door. An Indian! Barefoot and dressed only in a leather breechcloth, long black hair that shined in the moonlight, and a fair set of muscles, he walked right up to the doorstep and laid something, I couldn't tell what, on the doorstep. Then he turned and looked up at me – and I was in the shadows; he couldn't have seen me! - and smiled before turning to leave. I remember his eyes – they were red and almost glowing.
I flew from the chair and raced down the stairs as fast as I could, waking Morey in the process, and flung the kitchen door open, but the Indian was gone like a mist. And to add to my solitude, it was a skunk carcass that had been left at the kitchen door and that I stepped on, forcing a lot of the wrong fluids out. Morey moved back home and his Ma didn't come for two weeks after that – she'd cook at her house and send someone to leave it at my front door.
_____
“Indians around here don't dress in loincloths,” Missus Harris explained on the Wednesday that she'd finally come back to work; “They dress white-fashioned.” She dished the usual helping of potatoes on to my lunch plate – lunch was the main meal as she was only here four hours of the day. “And they certainly don't go sneaking around at night leaving dead animals on peoples' doorsteps.” She poured me some milk. “I think you were dreaming. Sleepwalking.”
“He doesn't sneak!” I exclaimed. “He walks right up like he owns the place. Then he waves at me like he knows I'm there and watching.”
“You've seen this thing more than once?”
“Three times now.” I paused but she said nothing. “Think he could be the ghost or whatever of Night Bird Canyon?”
“If he is, then leave him be.”
“But it's my property he's on; how can I?”
But the subject was closed, and one wilting look told me so.
Skinny-dipping up at the pond became a regular part of Sunday afternoon, and, after confessing something to me, I began to teach Morey the basics of wrestling during our swimming time. Seems the annual county fair includes a carny who brings in a big, burley wrestler that challenges anyone, and a few years previous Morey tried wrestling him because the prize is a horse, and he wants a horse of his own. Morey lost pitifully and had to go to the doctor to get a shoulder put back in place, and the carny has humiliated him at the fair ever since. So I started him easy with the greco-roman style – no holding your opponent below the waist, no tripping, and no using the legs to pin your opponent. I knew this wasn't the sort of wrestling Morey was after – fairs sponsored catch-wrestling, which is a much rougher sport with the single rule of 'Win!'– but he needed to learn the basics of what he could do with his arms before we started rolling around in the dirt, wrestling with legs as well as arms.
After a few Sundays of wrestling practices we both agreed this wasn't really a Sunday sport, so swimming at the pond and a wrestling session became a Monday sport and bareback riding took over the Sunday afternoon time.
As June turned into July, Morey was learning the moves I was teaching him and was executing them very well for such a beginner. But there was something that wasn't coming through – that final push and drive he'd need to win. His attitude was one of such that he was thinking of wrestling as more of a sportsmanship thing than the semi-brawl so many fair carnys turned it into. No matter what I did, that final push just wasn't in him.
Finally an evil thought occurred to me. “Stand straight up a minute,” I told Morey.
“Huh?” he asked as he did so.
I grinned one of those macho-insult sneers as I lowered my eyes from Morey's face to his nether regions. “Three inches; that's it?”
Morey looked down and blushed. “Not even!”
“Yeah, you're right,” I replied rudely; “not even three inches.”
Anger blossomed all over Morey's face – and all over his chest and stomach and probably his nether regions as well but I wouldn't know because I was looking at his face again. Mission accomplished!
“Take me down, Three-Inch!” I said, wiggling the fingers of my upraised hands to challenge him to come close as I went into a wrestling pose.
Needless to say, Morey found the motivation I was looking for and proceeded to pin me rather forcefully in five out of five quick matches.
I had found the secret weapon for Morey to win his horse!
Also as June turned into July, I gave up on trying to talk to the mystery Indian as he was gone as soon as he laid down whatever dead animal he brought. I even stood at the kitchen window one whole night, only to find two dead partridges at the main doors on the opposite side of the house the next day.
I didn't tell the Harris', not even Morey, but I started to go out at night – just for a few minutes at a time and just on the porch. I mean, the house had really become a prison! When nothing happened, I began to venture out further. I kept telling Missus Harris' I was staying in the house, nice and safe, but about nine or ten at night I'd venture out. I don't think it was rebellion – I just did it. Heard no voices in my head making suggestions like in the horror novels (or so I thought at the time); I just had to find out for myself how safe it was.
One night I went all the way to the pond and went swimming. When I got back to the house, there was two dead, bloodless raccoons at the kitchen door. He'd come and gone and I hadn't heard a thing. I stayed inside at night for about a week after that.
Finally one night, a Thursday, the Indian came earlier than usual. I had just got out of the bath and had toweled myself off and pulled up my union suit but hadn't replaced my grandfather's crucifix – I hated wearing an heirloom in the bath as I didn't think it did anything good for the antique workmanship. He had something bulky over his shoulders, and when he turned and dropped it at the door I saw it was a deer – a buck with seven points on each antler. He turned and smiled up at me and then waved for me to come with him. I didn't know what made me do it but I stood up and followed. It was as if he was in control. But he wasn't in complete control – I wanted to go; to find out who he was and why he was bringing me food like this.
I used the outside door to the office room to step into the area where he was waiting for me. “Who are you?” I asked; “You got a name? Do you speak English?”
He motioned for me to follow him, and I felt as if my feet were being moved for me – but, I have to admit my curiosity was moving me as much as whatever else was moving me.
He never once turned to see if I was following, so I got more than a good look at his back. Muscular, well-browned, with deep black hair that shined and glimmered all the way to his waist. His shoulders moved little as his arms barely swung at his side – arms as muscular as his back and hands that were strong and fingers that were longer than any I'd seen – and even they looked powerful, as I would soon find out.
We reached the pond without him answering any of my questions. There he turned to face me and I saw that his front was as muscular and powerful as his back. He had a strong but narrow face that looked like it had seen many, many years although the body barely looked my age. He had the high cheekbones of the Great Plains race and not the local Shoshone. About as tall as me, his eyes bored into mine as if collecting every thought I had.
He stepped up to me, smiling as he took my face in one of his hands and in those long, powerful fingers – I pulled back, but he grabbed again and pulled me towards him. I could see him make a pulling motion with his other hand, and I heard his loincloth fall and hit the ground, covering both our feet. I really tried to get away now, but he held on to me all the harder as he said something in an almost whisper. I couldn't understand him, but it was soothing; almost mesmerizing. He continued the soft speech and against my will my body relaxed. He continued whispering as with his free hand he pushed the top of my union suit off both my shoulders and then pulled on the front of it to pop the buttons down the front of the undergarment, which then fell to the ground as had his loincloth. He leaned forward and I could smell his breath – if was as if a century of rotten meat was breathing on me, and I gagged. He whispered into my ear – I still didn't understand but it was relaxing my body almost against my will; taking away my will to fight.
I wanted to fight! God in Heaven knows I wanted to fight, but his words and his eyes, which had begun to glow with a red hue, sapped it out of me as he slowly and with a powerful gentleness led me down into the water until we were both knee-deep and still on the loose, sandy gravel that lined the edge of the pond.
The Indian let go of me as he could feel I'd lost the will to flee. Scooping up a handful of the tiny, clean gravel, he began to scrub my body; an old way Indians used to scrub loose skin and cleanse the skin. I stood, frozen in fear, but as he reached one part of me I managed to pull back - but was pulled right back towards him so he could even scrub there.
When he was done, this thing of the night pulled me down to my knees as he too knelt. My last memory of that incident is of that putrid, stinking breath coming closer and closer as his fingers traveled up my arms like spiders and took hold of my shoulders, his breath becoming a ragged, animalistic pant ...
______________________
Uncle Morey here,
jumping into the story again:
I had walked as far as Jacob's house with my mother the following morning, pushing the bicycle I used to get to work so we could talk.
My mother was a woman who was very sensitive to the whisperings of the Spirit. Christians who don't think the Holy Spirit still whispers to willing listeners never knew my mother. Anyway, she kissed me at the gate to Jacob's house and I climbed on my bicycle, but as she stepped through the gate she gasped.
“Something's wrong!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Something's wrong. I felt it last night but didn't think...” She looked at me and all I could see was a Mother's concern rising up and taking over her face. “Come with me.” And she literally ran for the house.
I was to the house and through the door before her. Not finding Jacob in the downstairs I sprinted up the stairs, checking his room and the bathroom and then all the other rooms. Then we were out the kitchen door, Mom tripping on the prone buck.
“Go check the pond,” she ordered as I tried to help her up; “If that fool boy went out...”
But I was already sprinting across the lawn.
Jacob looked dead, laying prone on his stomach at the edge of water, his face half-submerged. I turned and screamed “GET HELP!” at the house and then rolled Jacob over.
“Don't be dead! Jacob; don't be dead! Heavenly Father; Please...!”
Much of the next few minutes was a blur, but I know my mother arrived and screamed and then knelt, feeling the forehead and putting her ear to his chest.
“He's breathing,” she said, “You stay with him; I'm getting someone!” And she was gone like lightening.
I remember I prayed, and I prayed the most sincere prayer I could ever remember praying up to that time. I remember wishing I'd been ordained an Elder already so I could give him a blessing...
The only thing I'll record from that prayer is that I remember telling the Lord I would give my life for my brother. And I realized that he was my brother; we'd been brothers since about the first month he'd been here in Logan.
I had a brother!
I remember two men arrived – Bishop Conner, who lived just past our house, and my father – Mom had caught them as they were riding past on their bicycles – even the bishop couldn't afford gasoline in those years, and he ran a store. I remember they gave him a blessing right there and then we carried him to the house; my mother gathering up his underclothes and what buttons she could find.
I also remember that for the first time ever I wasn't shoo'ed away from a room when a doctor arrived and grown-ups were doing their best to doctor someone. I remember my mother having the presence of mind to make me call the library and tell them I wouldn't be in because Jacob had been in an accident.
Mom kept me busy by bringing me things to clean Jacob's up while the she and the doctor and the other men fretted about his pale color, the moaning he was starting to do and the lethargy he was in, and the pricks on his neck. The doctor said he needed blood, and my father sat right down, rolling up a sleeve, and the transfusion was down right there in the bedroom.
I remember Jacob screaming when he regained consciousness. Not just a scream like a girl, but a scream that carried all the anguish of Hell.
_____________________
I remember a woman jumping from the bed as I screamed and tried to sit up and then thrashed about as I didn't have the energy to do more. I remember that woman started calling my my name and telling me I was safe – over and over but I didn't believe her and I continued thrashing. I remember someone else in the room lunging from the foot of the bed, calling my name, but he came too near my face and throat and I knew 'It' was attacking me again and I screamed again, and the thing lunging at me screamed back and was pulled away by someone else in the room, who held him at the end of the bed and didn't let him go.
I remember the woman knelt by the side of the bed where I couldn't hit her and thrust a hand out and placed it where my chest and stomach meet as she called my name out over and over again. I recognized the voice and turned to see who it was - I couldn't see who it was, but a little boy inside of me said “Mama!”, and I think it came out my mouth too because then she started to edge her way up the bed until her hand, now being held in both my hands, was on my shoulder and her cheek was against mine, still telling me I was safe.
That other voice I was remembering from before my screaming hadn't said anything about being safe ...
And then I remember that I cried like a little boy and that the woman cried with me.
Sometime later I recognized it was Missus Harris who was on the bed with me and that I had rolled over to lean against her as she cradled my head in a way that was both comforting and sacred and that my arms were around her middle and holding her close to me. When I finally turned my head I could see it was Morey at the end of the bed, his father holding him in a strong, manly hold. Missus Harris motioned, and Morey nearly crawled up the bed to get to me when his father let go of him.
Mister Harris left the room silently, returning a moment later and, sitting on the opposite side of the bed from his wife, gently put the antique silver chain over my head so that the crucified Jesus and Saint Christopher fell onto my chest and buried themselves in the dark, curly hair.
“Promise me you will never, never take it off again,” Mister Harris whispered, alligator tears streaming down his face – a face doing it's best to not betray the tempestuous emotions raging inside a man raised in a generation when men didn't cry.
Mister Harris nodded at each of us and left the room again. We heard a downstairs door open and close and then a deep-throated scream. Missus Harris grabbed Morey to keep him from the window as the scream turned into sobs and then got softer and softer as Mister Harris went to find a place to let his emotions have their way.
A week later, when Missus Harris finally allowed me to be up and about, I met Mister Harris out on the road where I thought I could talk to him privately. I tried to apologize for how I had touched his wife; for where I'd put my head and all, but the man smiled and put a huge arm around my shoulder.
“My boy, that was an act of love and compassion and mercy.” He smiled even bigger. “When Heavenly Fathers wants a hurting man to feel Heaven's love, he sends a woman who'll pull him close and just hold him.”
I smiled back, understanding the spoken and the unspoken. The man gave me a fierce, protective bear hug of the sort he gave Morey and continued down the road on his way home.
But let's backup a little bit. Once the tears were done over my having survived the incident at the pond, and by that time I was sure all the Indian stuff was just a dream from something bad I had eaten, do not think in any way that life was a bed of roses! Oh, no! I had to account to Morey, his father, and to Missus Harris as to why I had been out at the pond at night. In my weakened state I confessed everything I wouldn't have confessed if I'd have had my senses. Missus Harris pretty much turned from being the Loving Earth Mother and into one of Hades' own Furies as she explained to me the consequences of not only lying to her but in putting myself in so much danger. Tears of joy pretty well sizzled away in the heat of her anger, and I'll leave it at that.
When I was able to tell them what had happened, I was already convinced that everything that had happened had been a dream, and so I told them I had probably been sleepwalking (which they didn't believe) and cut myself on a rock while slipping in the water, and all the blood had to have dissipated in the pond.
Some time during my convalescence from what I was convinced was a sleepwalking incident, I wandered down to my study to sit and stare at some of my writing notes. I hadn't worked much on all my writing dreams as I'd been busy – once I'd become an accepted member of the community I found myself busy helping others; a common feature in Mormon communities I've been told. Morey had introduced me to passages in the Book of Mormon – like King Benjamin's teachings of how Service to others is how we prove ourselves worthy of God's grace. (Oh, and I'd discovered Morey's name in that book.) And this Service stuff I was reading must have made sense to me because that's what I'd started doing with my time and monthly allowance – helping other people. Since I was one of the few who could afford gasoline, I found myself more than willing to drive widows and other older women on their weekly shopping trips. I'd learned to split wood and was helping to keep more than one household's wood bin from emptying. Missus Harris also had me taking her here and there on acts of mercy. That woman was amazing; there wasn't a home she wouldn't enter to help someone in need, and it was a privilege to tag along and assist. And Primary children! I was picking up most of the kids in the neighborhood and driving them to Primary on Wednesday afternoons when the weather was bad. Do you know how many times you can sing "Give, Said the Little Stream" in one drive to the chapel?!
Anyway, this one night I sat down at my desk and found a book I'd not brought home from the library - 'The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania', by Emily Gerard - seems the woman compiled it from the time she spent there as a military officer's wife. But what was more interesting was the handwritten notes laying on top of the open book, all in Missus Harris' handwriting:
- GOOD offers its blood willingly to give life to others,
giving his own life to save others;
EVIL takes blood & lives to give itself life
- GOOD conquered the tomb to rescue us from death
and leads us into eternal life;
EVIL drags us into its tomb,
where it also remains trapped
- GOOD is gentle and humble;
EVIL forces itself by any means
- GOOD bows to a greater Will;
EVIL thinks only of its own lusts
- GOOD purifies (see 'garlic');
EVIL only corrupts
- GOOD is unchangable; it has no reason to masquerade;
EVIL takes whatever form it can to lure us in
- GOOD leads;
EVIL lures
- NEITHER can enter a home uninvited,
but one will trick its way in
Good – god
evil – devil
friend – fiend
one letter difference
Isn't English is an amazing language?
I was still a good Catholic kid; even here among Mormons I still attended Mass and even sang in the choir. But there was something I'd never done before that I did after reading Missus Harris' notes – I lifted that antique figure of Jesus giving himself for me that was around my neck and kissed it. It was in that moment I understood why we wore it – it was to show we'd chosen Good over Evil.
That day I wrote my parents one of those letters all parents pray to receive some day – the 'thank you for the good upbringing' letter.
_____
Two weeks before the start of the County Fair I received a letter from my parents, announcing when their train would arrive in Ogden as they were coming to visit. A week later Morey and his sister Maria with the beautiful eyes and smile greeted them as they stepped off the train, kept them overnight in the nicest hotel in town, and then made the long drive home the next day.
“We haven't seen a single Mormon,” my mother commented about the time they'd reached Brigham City. “When are we going to see Mormons?”
“Jacob said we're not to point them out,” Maria explained, her smile just as sweet and feminine as she could make it. “It spoils it when you finally do see them.”
Because they were only coming from Ogden, they made it to the house well before dark, my parents still on the lookout for demons in sheep's clothing. Missus Harris had rooms ready and a cold dinner waiting for them, which I served and cleaned up, my mother impressed I could tend the table and clean the kitchen. But then, she was so busy with Society she probably thought anyone who could do so was remarkable.
Missus Harris arrived early the next morning to prepare a welcoming breakfast for my parents. She was as charming as she normally was and within an hour had my parents as impressed as I've ever seen them with a stranger.
The next day there was an afternoon piano recital at the Tabernacle, and my parents were impressed with the level or artistry from the young musicians. “That girl could play on any stage in Saint Louis!” my mother exclaimed over one child's interpretation of Chopin. I checked the program – Betty Mae Taylor; a fifteen-year-old farmgirl who rode her bicycle twelve miles to Preston for school and still found time to practice her piano.
It was a week of driving about town and seeing the sights and witnessing even more culture (a matinee at the theatre, where MacBeth was being performed) before my parents found out that ninety-five percent of the folks they were seeing were Mormons. Missus Harris performed the most incredible apology I've ever witnessed, letting them know that if they'd have asked she would of course told them she was one and was perfectly willing to answer any questions they might have. But it was too late – they'd been impressed. But, it wasn't too late for me to have to explain why I'd carried on such a deception.
Before the Great Discovery, however, my mother had been on a drive about town with Missus Harris to show her the university up on the east bench of town, and she had commented that the Mormons don't even have crosses on their churches – further proof they weren't Christians.
“Mormons think that using that as a single symbol of their faith leaves out the final great act of Jesus' mission,” was her tactful reply.
“Final act?” my mother questioned; “What could have possibly happened after His death?”
“His resurrection. He rose from the tomb on the third day, breaking the bands of Death and opening the way for us to follow Him out from the grave and into Eternal Life.”
Missus Harris told me that my mother thought for quite a long time. “I have never been taught this quite as you've presented it,” my mother finally said slowly. “I will think about it.” And then she asked: “Does my son wear a cross?”
“Yes,” my mother answered very honestly; “Mister Harris made him promise to always wear it.”
My parents didn't even ask about my still slightly pale condition, and I didn't offer anything. After all, it was a dream; nothing more. But meat kept being left, and one night I caught a glimpse of an Indian staring up at the windows of the room where my parents were sleeping.
The county fair happened while my parents were in town. What can I say? It was a county fair. My parents didn't care to partake of too much of the fun, but they did take in the handicrafts and cooking contests, of which Missus Harris took a blue ribbon for a chocolate cake that any man would sell his soul for.
Maria – black-haired and the prettiest eyes God ever made for a woman – won the women's archery (five bull's eyes out of five shoots) and took second place in women's barrel racing.
The real attraction for Morey and me was the carny booth with the big burly wrestler. When he saw Morey he smiled and began to taunt him – the man had an awfully good memory. I'd let go of my parents long enough to go behind the wrestling booth and whisper to the wrestler, who looked more like a gorilla in tights than a human: “Call him 'Three Inches' and the match is yours.” And the man believed me.
Purely out of courtesy my parents joined the Harris family and I while Morey waited for his courage to build up enough to take to the ring and challenge the gorilla. He stripped his shirt off and threw it at me while the carny gave all the instructions he was going to give: “Best two out of three rounds and no choke holds.” Other than that, it was to be the usual carnival free-for-all.
It was then that I could see the gorilla's mouth move, forming the words 'Three Inch'.
I had taught Morey to to fight – I mean 'wrestle' – like a snake: strike fast and don't let the other guy lay a finger on you. And that's pretty much what he did. The gorilla didn't know what hit him, and Morey took two rounds out of two. While the carny was trying to hold Morey's arm up as the winner, however, Morey was scanning the crowd for me, and when he found me he launched himself from the stage like a cat and took me down; right off my mother's arm.
“Don't – ever – call – me – that – again,” he shouted as he pretty well wrapped me up like a pretzel. And then, still shirtless, he rode his new horse all the way home without looking back. He probably even slept in the barn with it that night. Oh, and he named the horse 'Trinity' – it had to do with the number 'three' and not with his religious feelings.
My parents spent three weeks in Logan, and we managed to have them home every evening before dark with the excuse that I had to be in before dark as part of the stipulation of inheriting Uncle Vinny Senior's fortune - we never once had to admit we were thinking like a bunch of superstitious peasants. And they didn't once see the Indian! By this time I'd quit watching for him as well, convinced it was a dream. I'd even stopped noticing if there was offerings left at the kitchen door, and if there was Missus Harris was dealing with them without comment. I don't know why I stopped; it was like the thought to watch had left my head. As I was to find out, someone or some thing had helped that thought along.
Morey and Maria returned them to the Ogden train depot on the First of September, and they were sure I was in good hands with the Harris family – 'even though they're Mormons,' as my mother whispered to my father. But it didn't carry the same sting they would have when they'd first arrived – her view had been softened by meeting and associating with them and she was honest enough to know she'd met good people.
_____
Logan city's fiscal year ran from September to September. And within a month of the county fair the new budget didn't have money to pay for a librarian assistant. Morey could stay on as a volunteer, but there was no money in the new budget to pay him. So, I hired him as a handy-man and he moved into his 'guest room' as a permanent resident. Missus Harris saw through this and delivered a forceful parental lecture on how he would earn his pay or face her anger.
Morey kept the woodpile stacked high. He mended the outbuildings that were in very poor repair. He shoveled snow when it fell two weeks later, and then he and I went from house to house within the ward (a Mormon congregation) shoveling snow and filling wood bins wherever our help was needed. In the evenings after his mother was gone we played poker and then read from the Bible and the Book of Mormon, both of us learning from both books.
I wrote my parents and told them that all one had to do was read the Book of Mormon to see how Mormons revered Jesus. I even sent them a Book of Mormon. Their reply was short and to the point:
"Remember who you are and what your traditions are."
Traditions? Was that what religion was to them – a tradition? 'Tradition' isn't what saves a soul or effects one's salvation! It doesn't warm a widow's house or nurse a new mother or feed little children in a barren kitchen! Bishop Conner had trusted me to help the deacons collect Fast Offerings for a couple months by this time (still the only car with gasoline), and I saw religion in action when someone poor gave to help someone poorer. And my parents called it 'tradition'?
I learned Morey was preparing to become an Elder in his church. It seems all qualified men are ordained to the priesthood in their church - that way they preside over their homes even in a religious sense and conduct blessings and ordinances for their own family – under the direction of their local bishop. Right now Morey belonged to what they called the 'lesser priesthood', but as he turned nineteen he'd be prepared for the 'higher priesthood'; a very, very serious step in a Mormon boy's life. So, I stashed the poker cards away so the kid could concentrate on important things. Besides, I never won anymore, anyway.
_____
Memory of the Indian and the dream at the pond were pretty well faded by the time October came around. Six months I'd been here! The Harris' came for a party to mark my half-way point, for which Missus Harris made that chocolate cake of hers. Maria sat across from me and smiled most of the time, and when she smiled the big old house didn't feel near as empty and lonely. But I knew she would only marry in her temple, so I kept my feelings at bay.
After the family had left Morey and I went upstairs, where we were using one of the rooms as our reading room. We changed into our winter pajamas before finding our places at the reading table.
Out of the blue, Morey asks without looking up from his Bible: “Seen the Indian recently?”
“Gave up on that,” I replied as I was trying to find where I was reading.
“Why?”
“Was just a dream...”
“Dream? You forget – I saw him too.”
I smiled. “Haven't been finding any more meat, have you?”
“Yeah. I've been getting to the kitchen door before you and throwing it in the burn barrel.”
“Huh?”
“He's still leaving animals. But I'm throwing them away.”
I got upset. “There's folks here who could use the meat...”
“Not from him.” And Morey refused to discuss it further.
I spent the rest of our reading time trying to remember if the Indian was for real or not. My memory was too vague and I couldn't even remember a face.
I sat up that night in the bedroom were we'd watched for the Indian before, and I saw him that night. And when I did, memories flooded back of other nights I'd seen him; memories that had somehow been blocked. But the night I hurt myself slipping on the rocks at the pond continued to be a blur.
The Indian dropped something on the doorstep and looked up at me and smiled as he motioned for me to come to him. But as I was standing up to do so, the bedroom door opened.
“Don't,” Morey whispered. “Sit back down. Don't - let - him - get - control - again.”
I sat back down and the Indian disappeared. Literally disappeared. He turned into a mist and was gone.
I stood back up, dumbfounded, as Morey joined me at the window. Not knowing what else to say or do, I put a playful choke hold around his neck and kissed his forehead.
“What's that for?” he asked with a pretended disgust.
“Italians kiss their brothers.”
I didn't sleep at all that night.
_____
December came and Morey caught a cold which turned into pneumonia because he was doing the manly thing and trying to get his outside work done when he was already sick. I played nursemaid under the strict supervision of his Ma, which meant there was a period of several weeks that I'd sit up at night in a rocker in his bedroom, reading the Bible and Book of Mormon while making sure he was sleeping and drinking fluids and breathing. And did she ever add the garlic to the broth I fed the kid! The doctor had brought medicines, but I think the garlic is what did he trick. God knew what he was doing when He made garlic!
“He considers you a brother, you know,” Missus Harris told me one day after she checked on her son before leaving for her own house.
That made me feel good. Real good. “So Missus Harris,” I asked as I walked her down the stairs and to the door, “how does a blond kid like Morey fit in with a family of nothing but raven-haired beauties?”
She smiled. “Do you have a particular raven-haired beauty in mind?”
"You, of course." She gave me that 'thank you for flattery I can see right through' look and smiled. “He's the only one without black hair in your family," I continued, "Even Mister Harris...”
“It's because he's adopted.”
That stunned me. “Adopted?”
“His folks both died when he was six. Influenza. We don't build orphanages – we open our homes and take them in.”
“Take him in like in having him... what's the word? 'Sealed' to you in your temple?”
“No; his parents were married in the temple and he's theirs for the eternities. But we opened our home to him and as far as mortality is concerned, he's our boy. Legally adopted.”
Wow! A far different story than all those orphanages where I'm from.
“He needs a brother, you know.”
“He's got one,” I replied, smiling.
“Does he know that?”
I gave her that masculine 'of course' look. “I kissed his forehead and everything.”
Missus Harris smiled as she stood on her tiptoes and kissed my forehead. “Good night, Son.”
“Good night, Ma,” I whispered as I closed the door behind her.
_____
January came and went and in early February - a week before Morey's nineteenth birthday - he was officially, according to his Ma, well. But not completely recovered. He was still weak and dizzy if he got up too fast. They brought his horse Trinity to the house to see him and let him come out on the porch to talk to the horse – naturally, it didn't stay the night but I couldn't remember why; things were being blocked from my memory again. And she was still stuffing that garlic down him just to make sure he stayed well.
One night I was sitting in bed reading alone as Morey was still going to bed earlier than normal when I heard a horse whinny. It sounded like ...
“Trinity?” I whispered. The horse whinnied again – it was Trinity! Had he got loose and come after Morey?
“No, no, no...” I said as I got out of bed and pulled pants, boots, and a heavy winter jacket on over my pajamas, buttoning the coat tight around my neck as I rushed to the kitchen and, grabbing one of the rifles we kept there, stepped out.
I saw a dark figure stalking towards the stable, where another whinny sounded. “No; no; no!” I raised the rifle to my shoulder and shot but missed, the dark figure I could now tell was a wolf leaping through the open stable door. “Get outta there!” I shouted as I ran for the stable door. Something was nagging at me that I shouldn't go, but nothing was going to kill my brother's horse - nothing!
I reached the stable and turned in the door – Empty! No horse; no wolf. Then a powerful arm reached out from the side where I'd have never seen it and knocked the rifle out of my hands and grabbed me, throwing me to the straw floor of the stable and dragging me further into the darkness. And that's when memories of the accident at the pond rushed back to me with hellish, horrifying clarity.
The thing that was dragging me let go and let my face hit the straw and then kicked me over on to my back. First straddling me, it then laid itself on top of me, its putrid, rotting breath gagging me. It pinned my arms so quickly and thoroughly that I couldn't reach inside my clothes for my crucifix as the monster dropped his mouth to my neck and, pushing my coat collar aside with its chin, bit savagely at my artery. I arched my back and tried to throw my legs around it with the same wrestling moves I'd taught Morey, but it was far more powerful than I and it pinned me and held me fast. No trance this time, I screamed, the beast gurgling a laugh as it continued to rhythmically work its jaws to increase the flow of my life into its mouth.
When it was done feeding, it raised itself on one arm high enough to drag one of its fingernails across its chest, opening the skin deep enough to bleed. Then it reached one of those awful hands behind my head and forced my face into the open wound that even took in one of its nipples, the blood from the wound seeping down and dripping from the nipple like some nightmarish nourishment. It forced my face harder and harder against the unholy filth until I had to gasp for breath, and in doing so took in the deathly liquids. If Satan himself nursed demons, this was how it was done. Then it sat up straighter so it could use both hands to push my head against the wound, leaving me freedom to use both my arms to resist – but it had a devil's strength, and although my struggle was in vain I seriously hoped I was doing damage in the attempt! No matter my struggle, it continued to force my face harder and harder against its breast until I was forced to suck the bloody nipple.
Don't tell me prayers must be spoken for God to hear them! Although my mouth was filled with corruption and desecration, my prayers were heard as a rifle fired six times from the stable door, knocking the Filth of Night Bird Canyon off me. But it stood, all six bullet wounds visible on its neck and the side of the chest that my head had not been pressed against, and it laughed as it dropped me and lunged at Morey, who was standing in the doorway and still posed to shoot. Three more bullets hit the beast before it swung a hand and knocked the rifle from Morey's hand and grabbed him. Unbelievably, Morey laughed almost hysterically as he reached up and pulled the Thing towards himself, actually pulling its face to his own neck!
The beast roared as it pushed away from the kid and dissipated into a mist that reformed as a bat and flew into the rafters. Another hellish screech and it flew out the door and disappeared into the night.
"You're a helluva good shot," I said shakily as Morey helped me to my feet.
"Yeah, I am."
"You do know that was me you were gettin' awful close to?"
"I hit what I was aimin' for."
"And what's with this pulling that 'thing' to yourself...?"
“Garlic. Mom's broths have filled me with so much garlic that I'm sweating the stuff. There ain't a vampire willing to take the risk.”
“Vampire?!”
“Yeah. There ain't no other word for it.”
_____
We got each other back to the house and Morey telephoned his parents, telling them to come and to bring Bishop Conner. They arrived in minutes, knowing that if their son asked them to come where no one went out at night, it must be serious. Bishop Conner and the Harris' priesthood quorum leader following a few minutes later. Morey stood between me and his mother while he finished cleaning me up and briefly explained what had happened. After a pause in the story, Missus Harris came across the room and took both her boys in her arms. I've called her Ma ever since.
“Do you realize what you're expecting us to believe?” Bishop Conner asked quietly.
“Yes, Sir, I do,” I whispered.
“This is insane!” Brother Taylor, the High Priest group leader said, shaking his head. “This isn't Medieval Europe; this is America; nineteen-thirties last time I checked!” He shook his head again. “This is ... insane!” And he stood up as it to leave.
I pulled the collar of my pajamas down and pulled off the bandage. “Is this insane?”
“A dog; a large cat – there's mountain lions...”
“Mountain lions don't turn into bats and fly away,” Morey retorted. “A full-sized Indian did this; I saw him. A Sioux or Cheyenne by the face structure.”
“No...”
“Brother Taylor,” I began, standing – I'd never called a Mormon 'Brother' or 'Sister' until now. I went slightly dizzy and Ma pulled me back down to sit. “We're telling you the truth. This is the second time I've been fed off of; I was memorized - hypnotized - by him the first time...”
“No!” Brother Taylor shouted, bringing a palm up, motioning 'Stop!' “Bishop, you got me out of bed for this... this nonsense?”
“Brother Taylor!” I nearly shouted as I stood, and I soon had everyone's attention. “Do you belong to a church that believes in revelation?”
“What's that got to do with...?”
“If the Holy Spirit told you we ain't lying would you believe us?”
Brother Taylor came to a full stop and stared deep into my eyes. “Yes,” he said quietly; “If I felt the Holy Spirit I'd believe you. I would hope without reservation.”
I turned to face Ma and she nodded as she pulled me back down to sit. I faced Bishop Conner and Brother Taylor and took a deep breath. “You both know I'm Catholic. I pray differently than you, but I pray just as sincerely. Will you pray a sincere prayer with me?” I waited for them to nod. “Then we'll tell you our story and see if this Holy Spirit whispers.”
“Catholics don't believe in this sort of revelation,” Bishop Conner said softly.
“If God makes you two believe us by the time we're done telling our story, then yeah, this is one Catholic who will.”
We knelt, Ma and Morey on either side of me. I reached up and took a handful of pajama in my hand where my crucifix was, but Ma whispered: “Pull it out; nothing to be ashamed of for a good Catholic to hold on to them when they pray.” So I pulled the crucifix and Saint Christopher out and kissed the the crucifix before I started to pray. Morey took one of my hands and smiled, nodding for me to pray. When I was done I kissed the crucifix again and crossed myself and started to stand, but Ma stopped me.
“Sometimes it's a good thing to go around the circle and give each person the chance to be the mouthpiece for the group,” she whispered. We did so, and each prayer was more fervent and tender than the one before.
I think God planned for Brother Taylor's prayer to be the last one. His heart had been touched and he was open to listen. His words to his 'Father in Heaven', as Mormons call God, weren't a bunch of phrases learned as a child but a son talking carefully and reverently to a Father, honestly seeking help.
As we seated ourselves I got dizzy again and Ma made me lay down, and protesting didn't help. Morey and I told the story about the mysterious Indian from the first time he'd been seen by either one of us. Ma and Brother Harris and the bishop added comments from when I was carried back from the pond, Brother Harris' hand coming to his mouth in horror as he realized what had truly happened that night.
When we finished no one spoke for what seemed like hours. I felt a power in the room I'd never felt before – halfway through the story I'd felt this power build in me and give me strength to finish - bringing details to my mind I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. I didn't understand it until I remembered reading in the scriptures when the Spirit came upon Peter at Pentecost and upon Nephi to stand against his brothers. And I remembered the Bible said He would give you the words to speak when they were needed, not knowing beforehand what you were going to say.
Could this be the Holy Spirit I was feeling?
“I believe you,” Brother Taylor finally whispered. And we all turned to look at the man as he lifted his head to look at Morey and me. “I know when the Spirit is speaking; I've had too many experiences. I don't want to believe either of you; I don't want to believe any of this! But the Spirit...”
“Oh, Brother Taylor...” Ma began.
“When I get home,” the bishop whispered, “I'm throwing all my Bram Stoker novels away.”
“Jacob,” Ma said, “When a... a... well a vampire,” and we all winced at the word, “forces someone to... to do what you did tonight ...”
“To drink its blood?”
Ma visibly shivered. “According to the legends I've been reading...”
“You have?” Brother Harris asked.
“The legends say taking in its blood creates a mental connection.”
“Oh yeah; it has!” And so I told the true story of Night Bird Canyon as I saw it in the mind of the Night Bird:
A white missionary, probably one of the earliest to come to Canada and then into Sioux territory, was a vampire that took a boy to be his servant. When it was found out he was a demon he was forced from the camp and given many gifts as an enticement to not come back, including a small herd of horses. The boy was forced to go with the demon as it was believed he was already tainted. His ma and pa openly wept but could do nothing.
But the boy wasn't tainted and had no idea of the white man's real nature until he woke one night and saw him feeing off one of the horse's throats.
They traveled far and were driven from many villages until they settled in a cave in a narrow, dark canyon. The boy, now a warrior of twenty summers, was overpowered by the white vampire and became another of his victims. But, as he rose into un-life and un-death, hungry for his first feeding, he turned and slew the white man by forcing him out of the cave in broad daylight; the creature who had created him falling to earth as dust when the sunlight touched him.
“And that cave is up Night Bird Canyon?” Brother Taylor asked and I nodded. “Why hasn't he touched any of the rest of us? Why only this property?” Brother Taylor's eyes suddenly opened wide. “Good Heavens! Do you realize every one of us entered this property in the middle of the night?”
“Believe me, he's fed for the night,” I said with a shred of sarcasm. “There are times he sleeps for decades at a time. I think, though, that it's left all the other properties alone because... well, in his mind I see the other properties around this one glow – like, filled with a light that it's afraid of.”
“Dedicated properties?” Ma asked quietly.
“Something else for me to learn about?”
“We dedicate our properties for God's use...”
“So how do we go after it?" asked Brother Harris; "When...?”
“Not till after Morey's birthday,” I replied absolutely.
“Why wait?”
“Because he's got to have this higher priesthood of yours and have been initiated or whatever you call it in the temple.”
“What are you talking about?” Morey asked, confusion on his face.
“None of you are going to go up a dark canyon chasing a demon from Hell unless you've been initiated...”
“'Endowed',” Ma corrected.
“...and are wearing that temple garment thing that protects you.”
“How do you know about that?” Morey asked.
“I spent the summer helping your Ma hang your family's laundry up to dry; we talked about the laundry.” I chuckled. “Even doin' laundry there's things to learn about you people. Anyway, you believe that wearing this garment gives you protection, right? Spiritual protection? Like the 'whole armor' talked about in the Bible?” I paused, knowing Ma would correct any mistaken views I had when she and I had some quiet time together. “None of you are going to be vampire hunters on my account unless you've got everything your God offers you.”
“What about you?!” Morey asked.
“I'll stand in the middle of the rest of you. Let you be my shield.”
“Can you read his mind enough to tell us where in the canyon this cave is at?” Ma asked.
I closed my eyes and could faintly read the other mind. “About halfway up the canyon; hundred or so feet up ... Ahhh!”
A blinding pain seared through my mind – 'it' wasn't happy I could read its thoughts!
“Stop! Stop trying!” Ma shouted as he held me down to the couch. “We'll find another way!”
_____
That morning the doctor came and insisted on another blood transfusion. Morey sat right down on the side of the bed, pulling his shirt off, before anyone could even ask.
“Lay down, Morey,” Ma insisted, but Morey shook his head as he closed his eyes tightly.
“What's the matter?” I teased weakly; “Little Morey afraid of needles?” Of course, the needle coming at my arm was the last thing I remember before passing out. I woke some time later, the doctor gone and Morey also passed out on top of the blankets next to me on the bed. He'd earned another kiss on the forehead, and he got it.
So, after two blood transfusions, I guess I'm not full-blooded Italian any more; got some Brit and some Swede in me now. Hope it doesn't make the chest hair fall out.
Ma told me that after the two of us had passed out and the doctor had seen to the punctures on my neck, he made a joke about vampires. Her face told me she hadn't found it funny.
Ma Harris began feeding me the same garlic-laced broths she was feeding Morey as she figured I was more prone to sickness with the loss of blood and having taken in that thing's blood. I didn't tell her I was throwing the broths up when she left the room – my body was rejecting the garlic, and I was scared.
_____
Morey turned nineteen a week later and relatives came from everywhere. Blond relatives of his natural family and dark-haired relatives of his adopted family. It seems that there'd been enough natural family to have raised him when his parents died, but his parents had specifically asked the Harris' to take him so they could have a son to raise – but made them promise the boy would know his natural family.
I don't think my house had ever had so many people in it! Before the ordination was performed on Sunday I was beginning to suspect that half the valley had shown up just because there was a party.
The ordination was a sacred thing and even I shed a few tears, and I was waiting outside the temple the next day so I could be there when he came out, a fully-initiated – excuse me; 'endowed' - Son of God according to teachings of his faith.
The kid glowed; just like I heard Mormons say about someone coming out of the temple. I know today that it was the Holy Spirit, but back then all I knew was that he glowed.
Morey came over and hugged me when he saw me waiting.
“Your armor's really, really bright, kid.”
“Armor?”
“Yeah. That 'whole armor' thing. Your armor's really bright.”
_____
“We have to go after him soon,” I found myself telling Ma later that afternoon, as the Harris family had come back to my house for an early supper. “He can hear my mind better than I can hear his. And he's calling me; trying to make me come. He wants a companion in his work.” I paused. “He's wants me to join him and it's getting harder and harder to resist.”
“That's not friendship,” Brother Harris murmured behind us; I didn't even know he was there.
“Yeah, but it's all he's known.” I looked over at Morey, who was sharing a quiet joke with Maria. “We got to go after him soon.”
____________________
Uncle Morey jumping in again:
The next morning my mother arrived at the house early to finish cleaning up from all the visiting relatives – she had eight bedrooms of sheets to wash. She woke me up, but Jacob's bedroom door was already open and his bed was empty. And he was nowhere to be found.
“He's been talking in his sleep,” I told her; “repeating 'no; no' over and over. But he's been doing that since the attack in the stable.”
“He told us last night that it was becoming a siren's call; that he couldn't resist much longer,” my mother said almost to herself. She then turned to me. “Get your father; I'll call the bishop. We have to go now.”
Before Seven O-Clock chimed on the Grandfather clock in the downstairs entry the bishop and Brother Taylor and my father had gathered. And, so had my sister Maria, wearing a pair of our father's work jeans and looking almost bloated in the extra bulk. This was my sister with all the archery trophies, and she arrived with her best bow in one hand and a full quiver of arrows in the other.
“What are you doing, young lady?” my father challenged her.
“I've spent the winter hand-making arrows from ash and oak. Did you think it was for the fun of it?”
“How do you know these things?” Mother demanded.
“You're not the only one who reads library books, Mother!”
“How did you know about any of this?”
“Your bedroom walls are paper thin! I've heard every conversation you've have about Jacob and had this figured out months ago.”
“Do you really realize what we're going up against?” Father bellowed – he always bellowed when he wasn't being obeyed by a defiant daughter, and he had four of them.
“Enough to have prepared the right kind of weapons!” He didn't have anything to say to that. “Where is everyone's oak stakes? Hammer to drive it home? Garlic paste to stuff in the mouth? You aren't all going to depend on dragging him out of his lair and laying him out in the sunshine, are you? I doubt he'll be very cooperative, and 'They' have the strength of ten men.” She looked around at the rest of us. “When we call on Heavenly Father to fight our battles, what He's expecting us to do is join His army; not sit at home and do nothing. Prayer time is over.”
Maria paused and her face went soft for a moment.
“It may have escaped everyone's notice, but Jacob and I have done a lot of staring at each other across crowded rooms and supper tables since he arrived. I love him - I love him as much as any of you. But the rest of you can show your love. Good Mormon girls and good Catholic boys don't show the friendship Morey and Jacob are allowed to show every Sunday when he comes for dinner.” Her jaw went tight. “Silence is a terrible prison.”
She paused while we all took it in.
“But this I can do.” She said with a quiet, determined calm to her voice. “And I'm going to.”
Pulling two winter coats and a knit cap back on, she opened the door. “Coming?” We men scrambled to follow while Mother mumbled to Father: “I had no clue!”
We didn't catch up with her until we reached the pond, currently frozen over, where Father took her by the arm and made her kneel. “I'm not going back!” she hissed, jerking her arm out of his grasp.
“We didn't have prayer before you so rudely stomped off, young lady,” Father retorted. “And I for one have no intention of hunting vampires without a prayer first.”
We knelt in the snow as Father offered a prayer each one of us felt in our very being, a fierce father's arm wrapped around his now-willing daughter and holding her close to him. He even called upon the priesthood power to be with us as went to rescue a lamb loved by God and by every one of us.
Then we entered the canyon; the first to voluntarily do so since Jacob's grandmother had been carried out of it and to her grave.
______________________
The Journey in the Canyon -
gathered from the accounts of all involved:
But first, understand this, Grandchildren: the use of the holy priesthood in what the world calls 'miracles' is a very sacred thing to us Latter-day Saints. We're very strict in following the scriptural teaching of sharing such experiences within the community of believers but not with the world, as the world would look past the sacred and only see the sensational. Many men who hold the priesthood will deny the experience before allowing it to become a sensationalized event - hence the participants in the rest of this story have requested that their parts in the unfolding drama be told as vaguely as possible as they have no desire for the world to come knocking at their doors, demanding details or offering book and movie deals.
____________
Jacob woke in the middle of the night, the siren song so deep and strong that he could no longer ignore it – as when he'd been lured to the pond, the voice mesmerized him, dulling his thought process and leaving him helpless to the enticer's call. He rose from bed as if in a trance and, not even pausing to step into his slippers, walked down the stairs and out into the frozen February night with nothing but his grey flannel pajamas. There was no one waiting outside for him, but the voice called him through the winter storm and he walked on without misstep, heading for the canyon.
_____
As soon as the men and Maria left for Night Bird Canyon, Rachel Harris stood by the telephone, torn between the men asking her to not tell their wives what they were doing and telling the wives what their men were doing. She reached for the phone but pulled back six times before the phone finally rang – it was Lorna Conner, telling her that she and Ruth Taylor were on their way over.
Rachel had hot cocoa waiting as the two other women joined her at the kitchen work table and waited to be told whatever Rachel was going to tell them – even if they had to pry it out of her.
“My husband hasn't kept a secret from me in thirty-five years of marriage, Ruth Taylor began.
“He had good reason to,” Rachel began. “Until an hour ago it was a confidentiality issue with a member of the flock."
“What changed it?” Lorna Conner asked.
“The fact that they're risking their lives and some of them may not come back. You have a right to know.” It was time for Rachel Harris to cry, and she did.
The two women's reactions the word 'vampire' were as unbelieving as their husbands' reactions. But the more Rachel talked, outlining all that had happened with Night Bird Canyon, racing to Jacob's office and retrieving the book of Eastern European legends to read passages to them, the more things fit into place. The women accepted the story more readily than the men, but it still took the same amount of faith.
_____
There was no doubt Maria had prepared the best of any of the rescue party. She had pulled on her warmest winter clothing and had even worn several extra layers – the reason for which the others would later learn.
The men, armed with what we had come to realize were pretty useless rifles, formed a circle around her as men were prone to do back in the days when women at least appreciated the gesture – what we didn't realize was that this gave her, the sharpest eyes in the group, the ability to concentrate more on the path than on what might been coming down the canyon at us.
The trail Jacob had broken through the fresh, wet snow hours earlier was easy to follow across the lawn, past the pond, and on across his fifty acres to the mouth of the canyon, where Maria notched an arrow into place, ready to shoot as they continued on, the men pulling their rifles from their back and holding the weapons comfortably in hands that had hunted since they were old enough to hold and use this basic tool of Western farm life.
Trudging uphill in the wet, messy white wasn't easy, and they moved slowly up the sloped canyon floor. They had all experienced wet snow before, but this snow seemed as if it were designed to slow them and hinder them as it clung to them and weighed them down with icy-cold fingers that chilled their feet while soaking though even their most waterproof boots.
About Noon the wind picked up and brought fresh snow, slowly erasing Jacob's footsteps, and no matter how hard they tried to speed their climb, it was unknown and dangerous territory even without the wet near-mushy snow. The tops of the lofty ridges on either side of them looked ripe for avalanche, so they were forced to not even talk as did their best to follow the remains of the solitary set of tracks before them.
None of the Harris girls were silly, giggly socialites – they all knew how to hunt and fish as well as their brother. But even Maria was panting hard as the grade became steeper and steeper and the snow wetter and deeper.
Mister Harris had assigned Bishop Cooper and Morey to watch the southern wall of the canyon for any sign of a cave, while he and Brother Taylor watched the northern wall and Maria concentrated on following the diminishing tracks.
“I don't want to say it,” Brother Harris began slowly as they made a short halt to catch their breath, “but last night's storm is returning. We're going to be trapped...”
“He playing with us,” Maria announced.
“How so?”
“When Morey and the bishop concentrate real hard on the canyon side you've assigned them, the clouds darken and thicken. When they look away they lighten.”
“You're imagining...” Brother Taylor began, but every one of them had turned to search the southern wall as she spoke and the clouds visibly darkened as they did so.
“This can't be,” Brother Taylor said, shaking his head.
“And yet it is,” Morey said, shaking his head.
“What do those library books you and your mother read say about this?”
“Evil has the ability to control weather to stop Good from getting to it,” Maria replied. “At least that's what the legends say.”
“But it's daytime; the vamp...” None of the men liked using the word; “'It' should be asleep, shouldn't it?” Bishop Conner asked.
“A vampire as old as this one can have the ability to be awake indefinite. Some even develop the ability to withstand minor sunlight.”
“Any good news for us, daughter?” her father asked.
Having been raised and taught by one of the wisest women in Cache Valley, Maria knew that force and reason and logic was not the way to spur a man on in his spiritual duties – as the Lord had instructed Joseph's wife Emma in the Mormon scriptures, a gentle voice and hand were a woman's most powerful tools. She looked at her father and smiled an amazingly gentle smile as she rested a hand on his shoulder; much the same as her mother would have done had she been on this particular hunt. “Yes. All four of you hold the priesthood of God. You've been endowed with power from on High to be His servants. You've prayed and called on that power to guide you.” She paused as she took her father's brawny hand in hers. “You've taught me all my life that God created the earth and everything upon it. That means His control of the weather trumps Evil's control of it.” She paused. “Does Evil really have a chance against you?”
“But this climb!” the bishop pointed ahead of us; “The weather! Unknown territory! A vampire...!”
“'I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded',” Maria quoted the prophet Nephi to the men, “'for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.'”
“Did the Lord command this?” Morey asked with a fearful voice, but Maria knew it was only a question as Morey had stood from where he'd sat down to rest and was starting up the canyon floor.
“If this was a rescue party of Sisters, we'd have sung a hymn.”
“I can't imagine...”
“'And when they had sung an hymn, they went out,'” Maria quoted from the Bible; from the account of Jesus facing the Agony of the Garden. “Even Jesus found strength with a hymn.” She turned and lifted her face towards the southern wall of the canyon and sang with an Ethel Merman-like volume and heedless of the snow drifts building above them into an ideal avalanche condition -
Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid...
The men joined in -
I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.
The echo carried on and on, reverberating long after the hymn had ended. No avalanche came, and most of them felt as if the clouds had lightened. At least, their mood lightened.
“Wish we sang it like that at church,” Morey said, squeezing his sister's arm.
“If we saw Satan and his minions on a daily basis we probably would,” Bishop Conner remarked dryly.
Maria was right – a hymn gave them more courage and power to continue.
Unknown to the men, their voices echoed far. No one knew Night Bird Canyon was a natural echo chamber as no one had ever traversed it and returned, able to tell anyone about it. Standing at the frozen pond, however, coat and scarf and kitted cap keeping her warm, Rachel Harris recognized her daughter's voice and the voices of the men and smiled. God was with them. She turned back to the house, thinking that if she made one of her chocolate cakes Jacob loved so much it just might not go wasted. And she prayed hard through mother's tears that she would be proved right. She tried to smile – at least making it would keep her busy; keep her sane.
The storm returned as the group trudged on, the storm picking up in furiousity as they continued to scan the southern slopes exclusively, realizing that there lie what they were after. And as the storm grew darker and swirled around them, whipping at their clothes and driving them back to where they'd come, Maria took her father's hand again.
“The weather's His to command; not that creature's.” She paused. “Faith, Dad. Faith.”
Every man in the group gathered around Jared Harris, laying an arm on one of his shoulders in support and fellowship as the man nodded at his girl and then looked up.
“Father,” He spoke upward, his heart beating wildly as he asked Father in Heaven for something he'd never imagined himself asking. “As thy sons and in the name of Thy Son Jesus,” and he paused. “And by the power of Thy priesthood, let us pass through this storm. Not for ourselves. For Jacob. We love him. Like a Son.”
The storm continued to rage, but four men and a woman walked in an envelope of calm through the storm which intensified its anger at being thwarted. Stray hairs that had been blown loose from Maria's knit cap fell limp as the storm ceased around them. the weather no longer hindered them. No one spoke; no one analyzed the miracle; no one had the need to explore their feelings with the person next to them – they were busy silently thanking their Father for His aide.
Bishop Conner, leading the rest of the group at the moment, held up an arm suddenly as a terrifying howl and then a scream sounded above them, freezing each one of them in their tracks.
As soon as he could process what he'd heard, Morey slung his rifle onto his back and began to climb the canyon wall, using the strong trunks of bushes and small trees growing out from the rock as footholds and praying the snow wouldn't stop him. Maria was beside him in a second, using the same footholds as her brother.
“Children!” Jared Harris began, the only reply being a wilting stare from his son and daughter as the two of them looked for more footholds to gain the cave they could not yet see somewhere above them in the storm.
“No children here, Jared,” Brother Taylor whispered while slinging his own rifle on to his back. “The boy's an Elder. The girl - well, she's everything good a mother can pass down.”
The howl and the scream sounded again above them.
“Da-ad!” Maria shouted, looking down.
He nodded and grabbed at the base of a bush to start his climb.
“'They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength,'” Bishop Conner quoted Isaiah.
“Yeah,” Jared nodded; “He also wrote about the righteous being borne up on eagle's wings.”
Thirty feet into the climb Brother Taylor lost his grip on a small pine tree and slid, unable to stop himself until he came to a very sudden stop as he hit ground, letting out a yelp of pain.
“Ankle!” he shouted up in answer to everyone else's shouts. “Twisted it pretty bad.”
“Prayer,” Bishop Conner shouted down; “Come as soon as you can.”
Brother Taylor nodded, praying already in his heart. And he knew the power of prayer. “Help them, Father; please help them. Jared's scared of heights. Give him strength to save his boy...”
Jared felt a calm come over his shattered nerves. He'd also been praying to overcome his fear of heights; his love for Jacob overriding most of it. He knew where the calm came from and closed his eyes as he literally felt unseen hands steady him, and he thanked his Father for climbing the wall with him. And then, to show his thanks and faith, he continued on.
_____
Morey was the first to reach over the nearly-nonexistent ledge and peer through the narrow cave opening they'd have never seen from the canyon floor, and what he saw made him gag.
“Don't look,” he whispered as Maria's arms came over the ledge. She pushed his hand away as she peered in and stifled a gasp.
The chamber went back only about thirty feet and narrowed down into nothing. There were several pillars that might once have been stalagmites, and against one of them Jacob was being held, despite what little struggle he was still trying to make. The Indian - no; the beast – was sitting on Jacob's legs and straddling him in an unholy embrace, pinning him to the floor and pillar. Holding one of his victim's arms against the stone pillar in a viselike grip, the beast's head was buried against Jacob's neck while its other arm held Jacob's face against its own chest as before, having slit its own skin again to force the human to feed off him. Both heads were slowly moving; both feeding – one willingly and one being forced into the unspeakable horror; one whimpering; sobbing – the sound escaping as a gurgle through the blood ... while the other was making a low, satisfied growl-like purr as it fed, its whole torso writhing with the sucking motion of the mouth. Scattered around them were several animal carcasses as if they'd been fed on first so this second feeding could occur.
With catlike silence brother and sister crawled over the lip of the ledge and stepped as lightly as they could into the mouth of Hell itself, arrow being drawn and rifle aimed. The beast was so occupied that it didn't hear them, and Jacob was in such horror he was probably out of his mind.
The first arrow pierced the beast below the armpit of the arm pinning Jacob's arm, pointed toward the heart but missing it mark. The beast threw its head back and howled an inhuman howl as it leapt to its feet and faced the archer. The second arrow entered its chest but also missed its mark. Howling again, it ripped the arrows from its body and stepped towards the brother and sister.
Morey fired, knowing all he could do was slow it down.
“Do you hear that?!” Jared Harris shouted at Bishop Conner, both still clinging to he cliff. “Maria! Morey!”
The third arrow grazed the beast's heart and made it stop twenty feet from the pair that had come for their friend.
“Talk to it,” Jacob murmured as he let blood not his own dribble out of his mouth and down his front, still held against the stone and not moving. “It'll understand through me.”
In a second Morey realized what he had to do. He had no power of his own to stop this thing; such was out of his hands. Just as quickly he prayed as he stepped between this abomination and his sister and his brother, and he felt the answer come in the form of power – an energy he'd never felt before, filling his whole being – his body, his mind, his very soul, with untold power waiting to be channeled.
Morey raised his quivering right arm as a sign of command while dropping his rifle out of his left hand and holding it in front of him, palm towards the beast as if to stop it, and spoke boldly but softly: “In the name of Jesus Messiah and through His priesthood...”
The abomination roared as if to stop the boy...
“...I command you in the name of God to STOP!”
It roared again and fell to its knees.
“You will leave Jacob alone. Release him.”
Jacob gasped as he fell forward, released from the stone behind him. Maria was kneeling by him in a second, pulling his shaking body to her.
The beast looked up at Morey, its eyes no longer red but dark as its roar died into a whine; an animalistic plea.
“Release - the - weather,” Morey continued quietly, and Maria watched through the cave mouth as the storm began to die. “Whatever thing holds this body captive,” Morey continued, the words being whispered to his mind and heart with the command to say them aloud, “Leave it. Let him go... go to where he's waited for.”
Morey kept himself between the thing and those behind him as it struggled to stand. Yowling as the evil thing in the stolen body fought for control over the child who'd lost control of his own body a century or more before, Morey could sense that whatever had turned it into a demon was finally being challenged as it crawled and rolled and screamed and moaned its way towards the mouth of its lair.
Maria had her bow back up in an instant as the thing reached the cave opening and, leaning against the cave wall, pulled itself to its feet and stood, the light from without the cave slowly growing as the storm dissipated and the afternoon light began to claim its place.
'Send me home,' Maria heard in her head, startling her, making her lower the bow. It - he - nodded at Maria, a human smile almost claiming the face. 'Send me home to my mother and father...' But the beast took over again and it screamed as two huge, human-sized leathery wings formed out from its back. The animal screeched at Maria and stepped one foot towards her as she brought the bow back up and an arrow pierced its heart and it fell backwards from the cave as the sun broke through the disappearing clouds.
As it fell back into the sunlight a look of peace fell across its face.
“You came for me,” Jacob stuttered as Maria knelt beside him again and he grabbed at her hand; “You came for me.”
Morey knelt in front of Jacob, in the very place the beast had been kneeling. “Me, too,” Morey said, smiling, as he pulled Jacob forward to his own chest and held him. In a moment both boys felt other hands on their shoulders and smiled as Brother Harris and Bishop Conner joined them.
"Your armor's shining like an angel," Jacob said, trying to smile at his brother. "Soon's you called on God you just started shinin'. Rays of light like wings..."
Jared knelt and put a hand on Jacob's cheek, who smiled at him. “I need one of those blessings like you give sick kids,” Jacob stuttered. “I'm a sick kid.”
“Do you...” Brother Harris began.
“I got faith. Scriptures say I just need faith.”
“Didn't think to bring consecrated oil,” Bishop Conner whispered in Jared Harris' ear; “We'll have to...”
But Maria was smiling as she opened one coat and pulled her father's vial of consecrated oil out of the inner coat.
They helped Jacob sit up further, and he put an arm around Maria to help hold himself up as the men knelt around him and she held a handkerchief against the wound on his neck.
“You do the blessing,” Jacob still shuttered, his body shaking, as he tapped Morey's knee.
“I've not...” stammered Morey; “Just barely ordained...”
“Day for firsts, isn't it?” Jacob smiled weakly at the one person he wouldn't ever call 'kid' again. “Spoke for God to stop a vampire; blessing should be easy.”
__________________
Grandchildren – I won't write out all the blessing given here. But I'll tell you this: Morey's Pa anointed me and then coached Morey in beginning the blessing. You who are Morey's grandchildren and reading this: God spoke though him that day! I don't remember it all, but I remember the peace that filled my soul – it was as cleansing as the rising sun. I'd been through Hell, and the Savior reached out from Heaven and wrapped me in his arms as Morey spoke for the Father.
I remember the words “Be healed” and “regain your strength” and “Be ye clean.” I remember my heart embracing every word and calling upon God to fulfill the blessing upon a willing son. As I did a feeling of divine power physically came through the arms of those men blessing me - it filled my body and then my soul. I felt a cleansing in my heart; I felt energy restoring itself to my body.
I felt Peace.
As soon as the blessing was over and 'Amen' was said by all, I coughed twice and Maria, bless her! - she leaned me forward like a mother and held my shoulders as I vomited. As you young ones would say in your modern vocabulary, I heaved and hurled. I gagged and puked. My toes curled all the way up to the back of my knees and my fingers curled to the elbows and my navel met my arched backbone time and again as my stomach retched over and over again, my whole body rejecting the filth and clearing itself of blood that didn't belong to me.
The Grace of God - garlic for the weary soul.
When my head finally drooped, vomiting done, someone gently put the shirt they'd taken off to my face and gently rubbed the blood and gore away while other hands helped me away from the pool of blood and vomit and sat me near the entrance of the cave where the fresh air would do all of us some good.
That's when we found out why Maria was looking so danged bulky. While the men were dotting over me, she sat down and removed her boots then dropped off her father's Levi's she was wearing, only to still be perfectly modest as her own pair of jeans were underneath. She passed the big pair over to the men to help me into them once they had the bloodied clothes off me. She then pealed off one of the two sweaters she was wearing and handed over one of the two coats she'd worn. I didn't even notice the sweater was pastel pink.
“It was easier to wear them than to carry them,” she explained quietly as she peeled a layer of socks off and handed them over as well.
We gained the canyon floor as safely as we could and found Brother Taylor sitting by a pile of ash, sobbing into his hands.
“His body 'poof'ed' into a fireball as the sun hit it,” the man explained. “By the time it neared the ground it was nothing but dust and ash.” He paused. “But there was still a body! I saw his spirit body!
“Then, like a curtain being drawn, a new light came and people stepped through. Other Indians knelt and shook the body laying in front of me! They woke him and he rolled over and knew them and smiled. He stood and went with them and the curtain closed.” The man choked and would say no more except: “It's true! Family is waiting for us!”
We descended the canyon as quickly as we could, my feet numb from cold as they were only clad in socks in the wet, freezing snow. About an hour into our descent we took a short break - Maria all of a sudden gasped and started asking “What have I done?!” Brother Taylor grabbed Morey and me and whispered something about us going ahead while Brother Harris dealt with his daughter along with Bishop Conner. Sometime later they caught up with us, faces looking as if they'd been freshly washed with snow to hide evidence of tear trails – we weren't fooled but we were also respectfully silent. After all, we knew our tears would have their time and I for one was hoping my time would be when Missus – I mean Sister Harris - Ma - was available.
When we broke into the meadow at the mouth of the canyon and stepped foot on my property we all breathed the air of open land and were – well, we were really, really glad. Morey and Maria and I kept moving, leaving the men behind as they needed to rest. Me need a rest? That blessing told me to regain my strength, and I had. And all I could see was one of Sister Harris' – I mean Ma's chocolate cakes waiting for me. Supper tonight was going to be a chocolate cake if I knew my housekeeper.
“Hey, Morey,” I finally said.
“Yeah?”
I put my friendly choke hold on him and kissed his forehead like an Italian who hadn't needed Swedish blood to save him. “Run ahead and tell Ma that a chocolate cake for supper sounds really good.”
He looked at me and he looked at his sister and then he smiled and kissed my forehead like a real Italian – maybe some blood backwashed during the transfusion. “You two remember what we're taught in church?”
“What's that?”
He squeezed my face, making my lips pucker. “No kissin' on the first date!” And then he took off running so I couldn't kick his behind.
“And tell her I want my chickens back, too!” I shouted.
Maria shifted as if to remind me that my other hand was around her waist and that she was pressed up against me. I turned to face her, her face looking up at me like a whole new sun.
“I don't know how to thank you; if I can ever thank you. You came for me. You all came for me.”
Maria's face made it plain that she knew how I could thank her. But instead of taking her suggestion we looked into each other's eyes for a very long time.
“I heard you sing.”
“When?”
I smiled. “In the canyon. We both heard you. Threw him into a rage and gave me hope. Hope is an anchor to the soul. He went to the mouth of the cave, and I saw in his mind what he saw.” I paused and she waited for me to continue. “Five 'Shining Ones'.”
“Shining ones?”
I nodded. “That's what Bunyan called them.”
“'Pilgrim's Progress'?”
I nodded.
“Those were angels.”
“So were the five of you. Shining like torches. And to my eyes, one was shining brighter that the other four.”
“Morey?”
I shook my head, chuckling. “You.”
Her mouth silently formed he word 'me?'
“God's – Heavenly Father's - power was radiating from all of you as you came up the canyon.” I choked; there was nothing more I could say. We started walking again as the three men who'd been resting were getting up to follow us. “You left the most important verse out, you know.”
___________
“Are they goin' to shut up and get down to business?” Bishop Conner asked himself loud enough for the other two men to hear.
“He's shy about the religious thing,” Jared Harris replied. “But it's comin'. Sure as chocolate cake for supper tonight, it's comin'.”
“And you're okay with it?”
“Rachel's been having talks with him about the Gospel.” He paused and the other men waited like a pair of bitty old gossips. “We're both okay with it because we see where his path is already leading him,” and he nodded to the north, where the fortress-like temple presided solemnly over the valley. And even though it was five years before the first floodlights were installed on Temple Hill, the men could see the grand old stonework glowing in the late afternoon light. After all, shouldn't the Armory shine as bright as the 'whole armor'?
___________
“I understand if you don't want to kiss me,” Maria whispered, steering the conversation back to where she'd started it.
“Understand what?” Boy, did she have it wrong!
“I'm a good Mormon girl and you're a good Catholic boy, and...”
“Who says?”
“Who says what?”
“I've been going to church with your family for three months now; didn't even go to Mass at Christmas. I've had a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the mission of Joseph Smith since a month after Morey and I started reading it and the Bible together. Good Catholic boys don't to that.”
Maria thought for at least a full moment. “Then why haven't you been baptized?”
“Fear. It's a big step. Life-changing. You were born in the Gospel covenant; I'm outside looking in; a view you've never had.” I looked into her eyes and saw Eternity. “But,” and I looked back at Night Bird Canyon, “I've recently had some life-changing experiences that have taught me it's time to face Fear head-on.”
I put both my arms around her shoulders. “Have you ever kissed a bad Catholic boy?”
“I'm hoping to,” she whispered. "But this isn't a date."
"Huh?"
"I don't date outside my faith."
I silently gave her the chance to kiss a bad Catholic boy, and she took the chance.
Brother Harris gave us about ten minutes before he and the bishop and Brother Taylor joined us with some polite catcalling bouncing back and forth to let us know we'd exceeded the kissing limit for a first date. Pa (and I thought of him as 'Pa' for the first time) stepped between us as we smiled and blushed, putting a huge, protecting arm around both of us, and we laughed and found our way back to the house.
___________________
Rachel Harris' account of the party's return:
The vigil that Lorna, Ruth, and myself held through the day was the longest time of my life. I don't think I ceased to pray even though I tried my best to busy myself, thinking I would occupy my mind and think of other things. Lorna and Ruth – pillars of love and fellowship! I wouldn't have lasted without them. But what were the two of them thinking? I'd had days to prepare my mind for the horrific tasks our husbands had set out to perform, but they were thrown into it suddenly and without the chance to whisper a final goodbye or hold him one last time.
We cleaned the house twice and shoveled fresh snow off the covered porch. We baked two chocolate cakes plus all the cookies and pastries we knew our husbands and Morey and Maria and Jacob love - hoping this act in itself would bring them home. “Nothing red,” was my only instruction on the desserts we were baking.
In desperation I found myself at the seat of the piano I'd enjoyed playing so much since it had arrived. What a gift is music! To comfort and console; to give hope where there is none. My fingers went automatically to the hymns, Ruth and Lorna bringing chairs and singing with me. I cannot remember which hymns we sang or if I'd even opened the hymnbook. But a Spirit of comfort joined us in that room and brought Peace.
My fingers went to 'Farewell My Kind and Faithful Friend', Elder Pratt's hymn of a husband leaving on a mission, but both sisters begged my fingers to stop so I did, smiling and blushing at such an indisgression.
“They're coming home, Rachel,” Lorna said quietly. “I know it.”
“Do you, Sister?”
“I do.” She smiled broadly. “Doesn't that sounds like Morey screaming out there right now, doesn't it?”
Morey burst through the kitchen door, his voice nearly hysterical. “He's safe, Mama! He's safe! Everyone's safe. 'Cept Brother Taylor.” Lorna stopped breathing as we took her hands in ours. “Oh, no; no; he twisted his ankle, that's all.” We sisters began breathing again. “Mom, Jacob's nearly frozen... And he had me give him a blessing and it's being fulfilled right in front of our eyes... O Mama...”
We three sisters rose like Relief Society Women on a mission and acting as if it were all prearranged. Morey was sent upstairs to draw a hot bath. Ruth grabbed the blankets that had been set out in the North Parlor hours and hours ago, and I slid two chocolate cakes and plates of cookies and pastries onto the dining table.
“Mom!” Morey yelled from the upstairs landing. “Jacob wants chocolate cake for supper!” and a moment later: “Mom! I can see them this side of the pond!”
“Stay with the bath!” I yelled back up the stairs as we sisters grabbed our coats and several blankets each and ran for our men.
Lorna and Ruth ran for their husbands and were not disappointed with the tender but fierce passions displayed. Jacob saw me and let go of Jared and literally ran to me like a little boy – how well I could picture a little boy running for Mommy instead of the tall young man yelling “Ma! Ma!” and who fell to his knees and wrapped himself around me as he began to cry. “I'm home, Mama...!”
The relief of making it home had dropped Jacob's mental defenses, and with this drop the shock and horror of the events he'd survived began to have their way with him. “Jared!” I shouted as my Beloved knelt in front of me and kissed me with a most tender kiss. “He's going in shock...”
“And Maria's going to be very soon,” Jared replied; “She's the one who killed it.” Deep, haunted eyes stared into mine. “I know what 'first kill' is like.”
“Take the boy; Morey's drawing a bath for him.” Jared lifted the boy as if he were a child and made for the house as I took my daughter in my arms.
“I killed, Mama. I killed!” And Maria began shaking in my arms.
Morey met us at the kitchen door. “Papa's taking care of Jacob by himself; he told me: 'Go hug your mother and talk to her.' I told him I already hugged you...”
“But you didn't talk to me yet. Let's go to the mattresses.” So I would have two in shock to deal with.
Somewhere during the long, long vigil we had kept, we had dragged two mattresses down to the parlor, where we would be able to lay out anyone who needed to huddle by the fire after a day in the freezing February weather. There I took my son and daughter, and as Morey saw how his sister was crying he told me what had happened in the cave, and I was able to add in my mind the parts the suddenly-modest boy was leaving out about himself – it was obvious he'd had a crash course in listening to the Spirit when acting in the role of a holder of the priesthood.
“Are either of you old enough to remember when your father came home from the Great War?”
“Vaguely,” Maria answered.
“He had to kill in the war, and it haunted him for years.” I paused and let them think. “I can't tell you all the right words to ease the pain of killing – I've never had to kill and and am an outsider, but your father can. This is a time for you to talk to him and to listen to his heart.
"I can tell you, though, that you were being guided by Heavenly Father. You had to take a life to safe a life, just like Nephi...”
“It wanted to be killed,” Maria told Mama.
“And the Spirit didn't stop you?”
“The Spirit said to. Oh, Mama - was I listening to the right spirit?”
We sat in each other's arms until Jared came back downstairs, still carrying Jacob like a little child – a freshly-warmed and scrubbed little child in a fresh pair of pajamas and wrapped in a blanket that was allowing his feet to stick out for the fire. We moved so Jared could lay him out, feet towards the fire, and the little boy smiled.
“Hair washed; clean ears,” Jacob whispered innocently as Jared put a pillow under the boy's head. His hair was indeed very clean (my husband has long fingers) and I took his word about the ears.
I finally had the chance to welcome my husband home, and I did so almost calmly but otherwise with all the passion and tenderness with which the other two women had greeted their men. And when we were satisfied with the greeting we both turned back to the fire. “Chocolate cake for...” I began, but Jacob was already asleep, his head to one side and nearly drooling. Morey had curled up in one of his brother's arms and was also asleep, and Maria was being held in the other arm, also asleep. Both had a hand on Jacob's chest, and his face looked as if it were saying - "I'm safe."
“We didn't kiss that long, did we?” Jared whispered.
“If we didn't, we could try again,” I suggested.
So while Lorna and Ruth took their husbands upstairs (having first fed them their favorites from the table) to sleep the night in one of the several spare rooms, Jared and I telephoned our house to let the other children know everything was okay, and then we curled up on a sofa to hold each other through the night – and, to chaperone the tender scene warming before the fire.
The next morning the entire parlor was woke by Maria screaming – Jacob was gone!
“Out here!” Jacob shouted from the direction of the kitchen. He was standing just outside the door, his face bathed in the first sunbeams of the new morning – what was going to be a bright Sunday morning. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with white tie, his shoes polished to perfection with white spats over them. Every hair on his head in place and his face shaved. He was also wearing white gloves and holding a top hat in one hand. I don't think I'd ever seen a man dressed this formal!
“I read once that the Japanese celebrate the New Year by dressing in their finest clothes and greeting the sun as it rises.” The boy never turned his face from the sun as he continued – a face lit with God's light and warmth – and hope. “It just seemed a good thing to do today.”
We stood with him and watched the sun complete its rising before we returned to the house and to our breakfast of chocolate cake and pastries.
___________________
April First. A Friday. My last night without a night out was the night before!
Jonathon Littleton, attorney for my late uncle on my mother's side, had arrived the day before my last required night in the house with a briefcase full of papers for me to sign to become the official inheritor of my uncle's fortune. He slept overnight in a guest room and we spent all of the next morning signing papers. I was presented with an address and telephone book of not only his firm but the various financial houses that handled my money and made it grow as well as a schedule of stockholder meetings at which my attendance and vote would be expected. Railroads, Steel and Oil conglomerates - all the good stuff.
“Last of all,” Mister Littleton said, smiling as he handed me a small ring of keys. “A personal present from me for surviving the past year.” He paused, smiling. “It wasn't really all that difficult, was it?”
I chose to smile instead of answering.
“This is to replace the automobile I bought you a year ago. I'm afraid that one was a bit too practical for a young man your age.”
Mister Littleton had pulled up to my house the night before in a cherry red Duesenberg SJ Roadster with a disappearing white top and a rumble seat, and now he was handing me the keys to said vehicle.
I tried to picture myself driving the Harris family to church and helping widows with their shopping and collecting Fast Offerings with the Deacons in a car with a V-8 engine so sweet that strong men fainted by the side of the road, but the picture just wouldn't come together. Not to mention all the children I drove to Primary on Wednesdays!
I decided it would be good to hold on to the old car – as nice as the new car was, I could serve the Lord better with the station wagon. When I told this to Maria, she smiled and started referring to the station wagon as the 'service wagon'.
Mister Littleton attended the baptism that afternoon, at which Morey, dressed in white, led me, also dressed in white, down into the waters of Baptism and raised me up a new creature. As I stepped down into the baptism font I think I felt a lot like Grandpa Caporalli had to have felt, leaving the old world behind for the Promised Land, and I wore his old crucifix to my baptism to honor the faith and courage he passed down to this grandchild as I took my first steps into my Promised Land.
Mister Littleton also came to the dance that night with the Harris family – Maria rode with me in the cherry red Duesenberg SJ Roadster with a disappearing white top and a rumble seat, and Morey chaperoned us from the rumble seat, so the folks drove the station wagon.
Three dance bands had been hired as this dance was going all they way to the morning light - just because I finally could! And the dance band that Maria sang for was to start the night.
Maria's incredible volume belted out a fast-paced, snappy song as everyone took to the floor except me - I stood across the floor just watching her come alive as she sang.
"Anyone home?" I heard Ma whisper in my ear, but I was busy watching Maria and couldn't be bothered to answer. And, she was watching me.
"This next song is for a very special friend," I heard Maria say into the microphone - when did the song end?
"Anyone we know?" someone teased and nearly every girl there giggled while the boys whistled.
Maria smiled at me and began my favorite Gershwin tune, singing it slow like a ballad -
There's a saying old says that love is blind,
Still we're often told "seek and ye shall find".
So I'm going to seek a certain lad I've had in mind -
Looking everywhere, haven't found him yet;
He's the big affair I cannot forget -
Only man I ever think of with regret.
I'd like to add his initials to my monogram.
Tell me - where is the shepherd for this lost lamb?
Ma had pushed me gently as the song began, but it didn't take too much prodding to make my feet move, the crowd making a path until I stood right in front of her with just the microphone between us.
The music continued but Maria and I were so busy looking at each other that she was forgetting to sing. Or she was forgetting the words. I forget. But I'll not forget the look on her face.
Someone pulled the microphone stand out from between us - it was Ma. "You two go dance." She nodded at the band and they started the music from where Maria had forgotten to sing. So we danced as Ma sang with the same smooth voice as her daughter but with a bit more maturity behind the words -
There's a somebody I'm longing to see,
I hope that he turns out to be
Someone to watch over me.
I'm a little lamb who's lost in a wood,
I know I could always be good
To one who'll watch over me.
Although he may not be the man some girls think of
As handsome, to my heart He carries the key
Won't you tell him please to put on some speed,
Follow my lead, oh how I need
Someone to watch over me.
Of course we kissed as the song came to an end! Would I have made you sit through this story if we hadn't? And we did it with about three-hundred chaperones looking on and cheering.
The lost lamb in me had found a shepherd in Jesus and I had proved my willingness to follow Him earlier in the day in the waters of baptism. And now, looking into this woman's eyes as we danced through the night and on until Dawn, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I'd found a shepherdess who was up to the challenge of shepherding me.
_____
“So,” Mister Littleton asked at Supper the next evening, “before I leave in the morning I'd like to know: What are you going to do now?”
I smiled. “As soon as school's out we're hitching up the rail car and heading to Denver. The Harris' and I need to go see Vinny Junior. Teach him about priesthood blessings.” He nodded, not really knowing what I was talking about. “Then I'm going to college here in Logan so I can earn my own way through life so I can do important things with my uncle's money.”
The man's eyebrows raised significantly.
I smiled. “Things like helping people who need it more than me.”
Mister Littleton smiled. “If this is what you've learned living among the Mormons, perhaps your father will be proud of you after all.”
So, Grandchildren, there's the story. That's how I came to live in Logan and how I became a Latter-day Saint and how your Great-Uncle Vinny came to live in the house next to the university so he could pursue a life of education.
What do you mean, 'what became of the raven-haired beauty who helped save my life?' Ask Grandma Maria if you don't have that figured out!
Read this story well because I will soon file it away lest you try to make something too sensational out it.
The thing I want you to learn from this story is contained in the verse they forgot to sing when they came for me up Night Bird Canyon:
The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all Hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.
______________________
Grandma Maria has the final word:
This is hardly the end of the story!
Morey left on a proselyting mission to Scotland a few months after my Beloved's baptism. Jacob and I married in the Logan temple a year after his baptism, he already a student at Utah State University. The estate lawyer, Mister Littleton, convinced Jacob to transfer to Princeton as the school's name on a diploma would be an advantage to future career moves. So, our honeymoon consisted of moving across the country to a new school and new adventures.
We stopped to visit Grandfather Jacobo Caporalli, for whom my husband was named, only to find him on his deathbed, having suffered a stroke a few days before. He recognized his grandson and smiled his understanding that I was his new granddaughter, and then he held our hands through the last night he spent in mortality.
Grandfather Caporalli was buried holding the antique crucifix in his hands, Jacob insisting that he ought not be moving on to a new land without the symbol of his faith and courage firmly in place. "I was just its caretaker," Jacob insisted.
Once at Princeton, we bought a comfortable home in a quiet neighborhood which turned out to be next-door to one of the professors of archeology, with whom we became very good friends. We were often at each other's home for dinner, and he attended church socials with us when invited, moving comfortably through a Latter-day Saint crowd as he had spent some of his teenage years living in Southern Utah.
Morey stopped to visit for several weeks upon his return from his mission and a friendship was sparked between him and the professor as well. One particular evening, over a game of no-money poker in which Morey could have come away a very rich man, the conversation turned to myth and legend and particularly the vampire lore of Eastern Europe and how one became a vampire. The three of us listened carefully as Doctor Jones explained most of what we already knew and which we figured was nothing but theory for the good doctor.
“I don't know about those who die and then become a vampire,” Jacob began slowly, “but those who become one while still living – I think it's an infection. Like germs or bacteria. Or, perhaps demonic possession - I mean, the opposing parallels between Christ and vampires...”
“Your basis for that, Mister First-Year Student?” Doctor Jones asked as he laid down his only winning hand of the night. “Author? Title?”
“Caporalli & Harris,” Morey spoke up, “Volume One.”
Doctor Jones' eyebrows narrowed, questioningly.
“I think you can trust him,” I whispered to my husband, who nodded. “Brace yourself, Doctor Jones,” I said to our friend, and the man gave us another questioning look as we never addressed each other formally; we always just called him by his nickname 'Indy'; most people didn't even know his first name.
My husband's eyes never left the Indy's as he untied his bow tie and unbuttoned his top button and pulled his collar back to show the remaining physical scars from the events of this story.
Indy leaned forward, his eyes taking in everything while filling with questions. “You survived this? Well, I mean obviously...”
Jacob nodded. “Thanks to my own champion archer,” and he squeezed my hand gently, “and to a young man who listens to his Heavenly Father.”
Indy peered at me. “Oak or ash?”
“Oak was introduced by Bram Stoker – part of his British superiority, I'm sure.”
“And your story?” Indy asked Morey.
Morey blushed. “'I will go and do the things the the Lord has comm...'”
“'For I know that he prepareth a way',” Indy countered; “Yeah, I've read that book, too. I still want to know your story. I understand the Mormon belief about the priesthood...”
Morey remained silent - it would be a long time before he ever spoke about the events of that day.
“I respect that this is a private thing between you and God,” Indy finally said, and he and Morey nodded in mutual understanding. Indy turned to face all three of us. “However, I might be going on a dig to Romania this summer...”
“NO!” the three of us yelped together.
“It's one thing, Indy,” Morey whispered, “It's one thing to meet the devil head-on when he's attacking your neighborhood. It's quite another to walk through the Gates of Hell just to take his picture.”
Morey did finally tell Doctor Jones about that day up Night Bird Canyon – it was ten years later, just after the two of them staked a Nazi SS commander into his coffin. But that's a whole different story!
___________________
NOTES:
One of the reasons I love classic horror literature (and not the modern stuff) is because of the underlying themes. Vampires are the classic opposite of Christ and His Atonement, whereas werewolf themes have to do with putting off the animalistic, 'natural man' and gaining a more-divine, noble nature - and, they are all about Redemption. Is it any wonder that the great horror writers were also ministers and missionaries? We all know the great missionary Sabine Baring-Gould for his hymns 'Onward Christian Soldiers' and 'Now the Day Is Over', but what most of us don't know is that he was the most famous writer of vampire stories in his day. Of course, that was before the vampire was the hero/sex object ... just how low can we go?
___________________
"Someone to Watch Over Me", by George & Ira Gershwin, is best sung in a slow torch-ballad style as Julie Andrews did in the motion picture STAR!
Emily Gerard's 'The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania' is one of the main reference books used by Bram Stoker in writing his immortal DRACULA. 'Transylvania' means 'land beyond the forest'.
The remark about a 'situation' taking place in Mink Creek, Idaho is a fact. Those who trace our roots back to that humble community know the story, and I have yet to find an accurate version in writing or even on the internet, thus reinforcing the fact that such stories are shared with reserve in an LDS community.
Concerning the 'temple garment' Latter-day Saints wear once they have been 'endowed' in the temple, I quote the LDS Church website: "Like members of many religious faiths, Latter-day Saints wear religious clothing. But members of other faiths — typically those involved in permanent pastoral ministries or religious services — usually wear religious garments as outer ceremonial vestments or symbols of recognition. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, garments are worn beneath street clothing as a personal and private reminder of commitments to God... Garments are considered sacred by Church members and are not regarded as a topic for casual conversation." See also this article by Elder Carlos Asay of the Seventy on how a Latter-day Saint should respect and honor this garment.