The Purveyor, page 6
part #2 of Ivers & Wilson Series
“Helen…” There was so much she wanted to say, to beg. She felt Cecelia watching her.
“The girls live in a rather isolated community in Utah,” Helen continued. “I suspect they think Pittock is beneath them. I don’t know a lot about them, but I know you’re an exceptional recruiter.”
“Ms. Ivers,” Cecelia murmured into the phone. “I suspect Miss Wilson is tired.”
Helen’s voice was perfectly modulated. “It would be a great honor for Pittock College to employ you in this capacity. Given the events at Pittock College…”
“No,” Cecelia cut her off.
Helen tried again. “I hope it will be a quick and enjoyable trip.”
Adair felt like her throat had squeezed shut. Helen’s polite appeal was even more final than her absence. She doesn’t want you broken, Merrill.
“If you say yes, your friend, Ms. Beaucharnel, has agreed to make all the arrangements through our Admissions Office.”
Adair wanted to cast the phone to the floor and run out across the Versailles gardens, through the forest, up to Wyatt’s Bluff, and over. Nothing, but the split second of impact, would match the pain in her heart. But she could barely stand without growing dizzy, and Helen was still talking, even as Cecelia moved her finger to the base of the landline to hang up.
“Please say yes,” Helen said.
Then the line went dead.
aaAA
At dinner that night, Monty and Cyrus sat at each end of the table, like tarot card opposites. Monty was as graceful as a crane. Cyrus had removed his jacket to reveal sweat stains beneath his massive arms and a holster strapped to his chest. The women—Monty’s wife Belinda, Cecelia, and Adair—had taken their usual places at intervals along the table, all beyond touching distance, like the points of an irregular pentagram. Without the head butler, they would have had to stand to pass the silver terrines. Someone poured a Chateau la Tour.
Cyrus’s eyes fixed on Adair. “I am worried about you, Merrill.”
Belinda laughed nervously. “What have you heard from the doctor?”
“Merrill.” Cyrus did not take his eyes off Adair. “Is it worse?”
“The doctor has decided to take her off the IV for a few weeks,” Cecelia answered. “He has to cycle the drug, so she doesn’t build up a tolerance. He’ll put her on a lower dose she takes by mouth.”
Adair felt as though a weighted band had been placed on her head, squeezing her temples until the pain ran down her spine. It did not matter if Helen loved her or not; she had to leave. She had to leave forever. She was broken, and she had sinned, and she could not risk the chance that the pain would drive her back into Cecelia’s arms. No, not her arms, her whip. “I’m going on a trip,” she said.
“You’re not well enough,” Cyrus growled.
“It will be good for her.” Cecelia sipped her wine. “It’s only for a day or two. The drug takes a toll. It will be good for her to move about while she’s on a lower dosage.”
Adair wanted out of the room. She needed to fall into a deep, death-like sleep. She needed to put days and then weeks between her and Cecelia, so that she could look at her brother again.
Cyrus turned to Cecelia. “Is this your idea?”
“No.” She smiled. “Merrill’s little friend from Pittock asked her for a favor.”
“I don’t like it.” Cyrus scrapped at the immaculate tablecloth with his thumbnail. “If Merrill isn’t here with us, she should be in a hospital. There’s a beautiful facility in Zermatt.”
“You’d put her under a bell jar,” Cecelia said.
“She’s not your concern,” Cyrus snapped back.
“She’s my family.”
“Not by blood.”
An electric chill ran through the room as though every particle coming through the central air had been ionized.
“That’s enough.” Monty had inherited the same pale blue eyes that Adair had, only his eyes had grayed over the years, until the blue had disappeared entirely. In the fading light of the west window, they looked fiery white.
“Merrill isn’t your property, Cy.” Cecelia’s smile curved into a knife. “You don’t own her.”
“Neither do you.” With that, Cyrus stood, threw his Damask napkin on the table, and left without a word.
aaAA
A few days later, Adair eyed the clerk at the car rental in the Salt Lake City airport. He was clean shaved, with rosy cheeks, and a blond crew cut. “Yes ma’am! Welcome to Express Rent-a-Car where we serve our customers like family.” He was already pulling out a stack of rental agreements.
Something about his bright smile and cheerful “Yes ma’am” made Adair want to reach across the counter, grab him by the lapel, and say, “Do you understand that you are going to die?” but she didn’t have the energy.
“I’d like a BMW. Whatever you’ve got.”
Rosy Cheeks ran though the paperwork, his professionalism in overdrive. Then he retrieved a set of keys.
“Where will you be going, ma’am?”
“Oquat.”
He shook his head. “Never heard of it.”
“I guess it’s a commune or something, east of here. Near something called King’s Peak. Almost at the Wyoming border.”
“Up in the mountains? You’ll want a truck then. I got a Dodge Ram outback. You don’t want to take a city car way up there.”
Adair had already picked up her key and turned her back on the boy. He had probably never driven a BMW in his life, unless it was to move it from one side of the rental lot to the other. She, on the other hand, had spent much of her adolescence—at least those days when she was home from boarding school—careening around the curves of the Monteith Speedway, speeding past senators’ sons and NASCAR retirees.
aaAA
Adair followed her GPS for what felt like hours. She exited off Interstate 80, to Route 189, to Route 150. From there she took a state highway and finally turned onto something called West Old Highway. West Old climbed and climbed, until Adair’s ears popped, and the temperature in the car dropped. Fir trees encroached on the road, brushing the car with their branches. About a mile farther, the cracked concrete gave way to gravel and then to a rutted dirt road.
“Continue on foot when safe to proceed,” the GPS told her in a soothing woman’s voice.
Adair turned off the GPS and consulted the instructions Helen had emailed her. They said nothing about the forest she saw before her, uniform and dark, each tree rising above its neighbor, as the land clawed upward. The ground beneath the trees was bare, except for a few large rocks that jutted out of the earth.
A few meters farther on, the BMW tilted on the rutted road, then stopped, its wheels spinning. Adair rocked the car gently as she would on New Hampshire ice. Pull forward. Rock back. On the third try she felt a rock dislodge. The car dropped another inch. She heard the axle grind against stone.
She got out. The air was surprisingly cold. She looked behind her. True to its reputation the BMW had given her the smoothest ride possible. She could now see that the road was much rougher than she had guessed. Deep ruts scarred its surface as though the last travelers had been pioneers in covered wagons. Pioneers, Adair thought, who had probably died from drinking poisoned water, whose bodies were buried under lonely wooden crosses.
Laying down on the ground to look under the carriage, she could see radiator fluid leaking into the dust and a rock wedged beneath one axle. She pulled out her phone, but there was no reception. She sank down in the driver’s seat again, hugging her arms to her chest. The sun was almost directly overhead, but when she released her breath she could see a hint of mist. She was wearing only a silk T-shirt. The summer in New Hampshire had been oppressively humid, and nothing in the dry heat of Salt Lake City suggested she would need a winter coat in Oquat.
She wondered what Cyrus would do. He carried himself like a man who could handle any physical challenge. He had tried to give her that knowledge over the years, always in blunt, monosyllabic lectures. He had taught her how to shoot, how to handle a car, how to break a horse. But what was Cyrus when stripped of his toys? What was she? For a panicked instant, Adair wondered if Cyrus had discovered her secret and planned this. Had he sent her out here to die? But, no. It was Helen who had asked her to go. It was Cecelia who had made going inescapable.
She huddled inside the car for what felt like a very long time. When she finally looked up and squinted into the trees, she thought she saw a movement in the distance. She blinked. A shadow moved, darting from one tree to another. For a second, she thought she saw two faces peering around a pine trunk. A minute later, she was certain she caught a glimpse of two women. Then they coalesced into one. Then broke apart again, two young women with white bonnets tied over their hair, the brown of their clothing perfectly blended with the tree bark. A mirage. Two pioneer women dead these past 200 years, now making their way toward Adair to claim her bones for their grave.
She rubbed her eyes. When she opened them again, the figure was standing beside the car. First she noticed the white apron and the tip of a rifle pointed at the dirt. She looked down and saw two ugly boots planted in a wide stance, braced to shoot. Her eyes followed the front of an apron to a wide waist, a torso, and then two faces. One leaned slightly to the right and one leaned slightly to the left. Both bore the same face, sun-browned and rough, but beautiful, like a modern rendition of the Virgin Mary painted in duplicate.
She opened the door and stared. “I’m dreaming,” Adair said to the vision.
Chapter Nine
“Are you all right?” one of the Virgin Marys asked. The two-headed figure moved closer to Adair and stared at her with four dark eyes.
“She is suffering apoplexy,” one of the faces said.
“She has been struck by the Lord,” its companion answered.
Adair closed her eyes again.
“Let’s get her back to the trailer.”
“But she is from the outside.” The voice was breathless and quiet, as though even the words might conjure some anticipated evil.
The other voice said, “But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.”
Like a school girl reciting a lesson reluctantly learned, the other voice said, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
“And Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’”
Adair felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Who are you?” She reached out and touched the hem of the figure’s skirt. It felt real. It looked like denim.
“I’m Charity,” the louder head said.
“I’m Prudence.” The head on the left looked down shyly.
Adair stared. The figure had two arms, two hands clasped in front of a dingy apron. For a second she thought it was a costume, two girls in a large dress. When she looked down, she saw that there were only two boots. The girls’ cheeks were pressed together, and Adair could see the place where their necks met in a single U-shaped curve.
“What…?”
“It’s God’s gift,” the one named Prudence said quietly. “So we’re never alone.”
“Dicephalic parapagus twins,” Charity pronounced each syllable carefully.
“I…” Adair stammered. “Charity and Prudence Kimball?”
“Yes. What are you doing here?” Charity asked.
Adair swallowed. “I’m looking for you.”
Prudence shook her head. “No. That can’t be. The Apostles are invisible because we are blessed.”
“I don’t know…” Adair began.
“Shh,” Charity said. She scanned the distance, near a craggy rock formation. “Over there.”
Slowly, but in perfect coordination, they picked up the rifle.
For a second, Adair thought they were going to shoot her, point blank, without an expression on either face. But they turned away before balancing the rifle between their heads. Prudence leaned away so Charity could rest her chin against the stock. The hand on Prudence’s side held the barrel. Charity’s hand release the safety and squeezed the trigger slowly. The sight was only a metal wedge mounted above the muzzle. A second later the shot echoed off the distant mountains. Adair saw a puff of dust where the bullet hit.
Without a word, the girls set down the rifle and the leather sack they had been carrying and walked over to the settled dust. When they returned, they carried a dead rabbit. They knelt, an odd, heavy motion, like a camel dropping to its knees, and opened the sack. Inside, were three other rabbits, identical to the one they had just shot. Adair gagged at the sight, for each rabbit had been shot through the eye. The one they carried was the best preserved. In the bag, one had lost the top of its skull, one the front of its face. Adair turned away as the girls scrabbled around in the bag.
“It’s not our rabbit,” Prudence murmured.
“Not ours, not this time.”
Adair had the sense that they had spoken these words before. It was a liturgy, but she did not understand the meaning. When they closed the satchel, Adair turned back to them. “I’ve been sent to personally invite you to attend Pittock College,” she had said those words before, to hundreds of prospective freshman at magnet schools and theater camps across the country. Now they came out of her mouth like a refrain from a past life. “You don’t have to say anything. You’re probably not interested.”
“We can never leave,” Prudence said. “Our family is here. We are waiting for the True Reckoning. We live in faith, and God has chosen this place for us to meet Him.”
Prudence and Charity had the same face, a closer match than any identical twins Adair had ever met. Still, there was a difference. Prudence’s eyes were wide and guileless. Charity squinted, appraising her.
“We have heard of Pittock College,” Charity said. “There was a letter.”
“Shh,” Prudence cautioned. “Father Apostle destroyed it.”
Adair shrugged. “I’m following up. I don’t know what to say.”
“Beware. For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light,” Prudence said.
At this Charity turned her head and shoulder away from her sister, quickly. Prudence let out a little gasp as though she had been stung.
aaAA
“When is the True Reckoning,” Adair was finally alone with the twins, sitting in a small trailer. Their father, a snake-thin man with large watery eyes, had come and gone, promising to find someone at the prayer meeting who would help lift Adair’s car off the rocks. Their mother had gone with him, trailing two young boys, and toting a baby wrapped in gray swaddling clothes. The twins stayed to take care of Dorothia, a child who lay on the sofa in a fever, occasionally rising to cough desperately into a pail.
Everything about the trailer was meager, but carefully tended. The rag rug was worn thin, but the linoleum floor around it was swept clean. The furniture was faded, but each arm chair wore a lace doily on its back and two more on the arms. The enamel on the white two-burner stove was chipped, but the stove was clean. An ancient metal pot simmered beneath an ill-fitting lid, releasing the smell of rosemary. On the kitchen table rested an enormous leather-bound Bible.
“The True Reckoning will occur in God’s time.” Prudence held her head high but cast her eyes modestly down as she spoke.
“It was supposed to be June 16, last year,” Charity said.
Adair thought she heard irritation in her voice.
“It was a test of our faith.” Prudence spoke with utter sincerity. “The weak in faith turn away in their disappointment, but the true apostles understand that God separates the wheat from the chaff. Our joy will be tenfold because our faith was strong.”
On the sofa, Dorothia moaned. Adair rose from her seat at the table and placed a hand on the girl’s forehead. Her skin was hot and damp, and Adair felt a shiver run through the child’s body. “She needs a doctor.”
“The Lord will provide for her. She knows her prayers.” Prudence did not sound as certain as she had been about the Reckoning.
“Our aunt sent for a doctor once,” Charity said. “He gave her some pills, and she was better. It was a miracle.” The bitterness in her voice was undisguised.
“It was the devil’s work,” Prudence said.
Adair looked in the bucket. The sides were splattered with blood. “It could be tuberculosis.” She pulled her hand away instinctively and wiped it on her pants. “You can’t pray that away.”
“Jesus lifted Lazarus from the tomb,” Prudence offered.
“Are you Jesus?” Adair said.
Prudence looked away.
Adair checked her cell phone for the hundredth time. She did not get enough reception to send a text. She sat back down.
After several minutes, Charity spoke again. “Father Apostle Eldon does not approve of apostles mixing with the wicked world.” Charity sounded mournful. “That is why we can never go with you.”
“Wicked, eh?” Adair leaned her chin on her hand.
“The world is steeped in sin,” Prudence added.
It was cool in the trailer and colder outside, but suddenly Adair wanted to see the stars. “How long is the prayer meeting?”
The girls shrugged in unison.
“I’m going outside.”
“Can we come with you?” the girls asked together.
Surprised, Adair nodded.
Outside, the sky had faded to navy. The Kimball’s trailer was located in a small valley between craggy peaks. In the darkness, Adair could make out a vegetable garden and beyond that a meadow. Higher up in the mountain she could see patches of snow. The air smelled of juniper.
The twins retrieved two rusted lawn chairs.
“Tell us about where you come from,” Charity said when they were seated.
“You mean how wicked it is?”
“Is it really that wicked?” Charity seemed intrigued.
“No.” Adair looked up at the sky. The whole arm of the Milky Way was visible like a powder of diamonds. “It’s not wicked. I come from…I used to come from Pittock. It’s a town and a college.”
