Truly Like Lightning Read online

  “Why would you? How’s your arm?” Yalulah asked. “It shouldn’t have gotten infected; that boy may not bathe, but he keeps his arrows clean.”

  “Good to know.” Maya tried to make light. It landed soundlessly.

  Bronson, who’d been hanging back under the shadow of the roof, stepped forward and said, “We figured you’d be back. Come on inside out of the heat.” And then he raised his voice: “Does the ranger wanna come in, too?”

  “I’m good!” came his overquick reply.

  The kids were drifting toward the stranger in uniform, fascinated, like drivers who slow down at an accident scene. Bronson stopped them. “Hey, Beautiful, Deuce, Pearl—help me out here, wrangle the young ones. All of you—you got work to do. Leave the man alone. Don’t touch him.” Maya became aware that she was afraid, and wished the ranger and his holstered gun would come inside with them, but he was being a chump, and, to be fair, she’d only hired him for transportation, not protection.

  Once inside the house, Bronson led Maya, Yalulah, and the dark-haired woman into what she figured was a huge classroom. Books everywhere, chemistry sets, paintings and instruments, none of it familiar to Maya from that night. Yalulah was intensely watchful and Maya was aware that she was clocking everywhere Maya touched and that she would scour the area clean of pathogens as soon as she left. Bronson began, “You met Yalulah, this is Mary, you can speak in front of all of us. We are one.”

  “Would you like some water?” Mary asked. “It’s hot as the devil’s cunt today.”

  Bronson barked a laugh and then admonished his wife, “Mary…”

  “Thank you, and thank you for taking care of me that night,” Maya said, as Yalulah left for the water. Maya continued, “And I’m sorry for the unwanted attention that my visit has brought to your family. But here we are.”

  “Yes, here we are. At home. My home. Where are you?” Bronson asked.

  Maya noticed his forearms as he leaned forward in his chair, the strongest she’d ever seen, as sinewy as the roots of a small tree. She’d dated muscle-heads and gym rats before, but had never seen anything as naturally and functionally powerful as this man’s forearms. Maya handed them each a card that identified her as a vice president of Praetorian Capital. They each looked at the card in the same contemptuous fashion, exactly as if she’d handed them a shiny, laminated turd.

  As succinctly as she could, Maya laid out the scenarios that now seemed to be facing the Powers family. She said that the new awareness of this family off the grid by the government was a cat out of the bag, a Pandora’s box that, try as she might, she could not close once it had opened. She apologized for that, as she knew she was the reason for this exposure. She showed them clippings of the Turpins and the Angulos. “I’m not saying you guys are at all like the Turpins, but the law can be a blunt instrument if you involve it and none of us could control where it ends.”

  Mary looked at the photocopy of the newspaper article. “It’s 2018?” she asked, looking at Bronson, too.

  “It’s 2019,” Maya said. “That case was last year.”

  “My God. Time. Wow. Oh. So you’re accusing us of child abuse?” Mary asked.

  “I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I’m not a cop, or a lawyer, or the state of California. In fact, I’m trying to keep the cops, lawyers, and state out of this.”

  “We’re listening,” Mary said.

  Bronson looked at his wife and said, “You’re listening. Not me.”

  Good, Maya thought, cracks already in a unified front. This Mary could be her wedge in. She focused in on her. Now Maya floated the first scenario, where her company would buy a portion of the land, which would enable the Powerses to stay where they were while giving them the money they would need to play ball with the government—to pay their land taxes, or to relocate fully or partly or to use the money to engage in lawsuits if they saw fit. “No way,” Bronson said. “This is our land in full. Or not at all.”

  “That’s right!” Yalulah yelled from the kitchen.

  She felt no warmth at all from any member of the throuple for that option. And as she was talking, she was also thinking of the logistics of this arrangement in front of her. They were not one, they were three. Who had sex with whom and how often? Did they do it all together all the time or kind of alternate? Was he more into one than the other? Maya couldn’t help herself. It’s silly, but it’s human nature to wonder, she thought. The Mary one seemed gay to her; the way she looked at Maya was intense. Or maybe that was hatred. Hatred looks a lot like sexual attraction. Plus, there were definitely some wires crossed and soap opera shit among these three. Did Mormons go to throuples therapy? Did they have quadruples retreats?

  She had to stop this line of thinking. She was joking in her head and these folks could be the Manson Family for all she knew. Anyway, she was no expert. She knew plenty of monogamous parents who fucked their kids up royally. And after her dad died, her mom was with Bill, her stepdad, forever, and still they were shitty parents despite the traditional configuration, so whatever … who the fuck knows … whatever floats your boat … rock on, Mormons.

  “That’s bullshit,” Yalulah said, as she returned with a mason jar of water. “Once we sell a little, it’s a slippery slope. You’ll keep wanting more and more, governments will change and change laws, and we will have to sell more and more, and before you know it, my kids will be living like zombies in the suburbs.”

  “I can see where you might feel that,” Maya said, and feeling her mouth dry, took a sip of water. “What about mineral rights?” she asked.

  “I’m not selling mineral rights so you can drill and tear the ground from beneath our feet,” Bronson said.

  “That’s another slippery slope you’re trying to get us on,” Yalulah added.

  Maya watched Yalulah note exactly where her lips touched the rim of the glass jar, a nexus between the outside world and hers to be sanitized as soon as possible. Maya was secretly pleased that the Bronson family wasn’t biting at the first option; she was made to go for broke. She started with some swift business school platitudes. “There’s four types of deals in life—the i-deal, the or-deal, the no deal, and the real deal. This is not ideal. Unfortunately, you don’t have the legal option for no deal, and I don’t want this to be an ordeal for your family—so the deal I’m looking for is the real deal, and here’s what the real deal might look like. Because I disagree with Janet Bergram and the state of California, who would very possibly remove your children from here.”

  Thus positioning herself on their side, and betraying her promise to Janet that she would not use her name like that, Maya launched into the idea for the grand wager—they would have a secret test in good faith, comparing the learning of the kids who stayed at home versus the kids who studied away in town. If the kids did better at home, Praetorian would walk away. If the kids did better in town, then the Powerses could either make a deal and sell a good bit of land to Praetorian with a promise that the company would be as noninvasive as possible or Janet Bergram would make this family known to the authorities, and hell could very well break loose.

  When she had finished, she drained the rest of her water. Yalulah took the empty jar away and disappeared into the kitchen. Nobody said a word. But Mary’s aspect had changed. She was no longer looking at Maya like she wanted to strangle her. That look had changed to one resembling a person who is lost getting directions back home. Maya heard a glass shattering in the trash.

  Bronson stared at his boots quizzically like he wasn’t sure why they didn’t just walk on their own and get him the fuck out of here. “That’s the most bullshit cockamamie thing I ever heard of. That’s like out of a bad movie.” Still without looking up, he said, “To your deal I say no fucking way. You stand to make a lot of money out here?”

  “Yes, yes I do.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “I don’t see that you have much of a choice.”

  “Seems like,” Mary interjected, “we can trust
her or the government. I’d rather trust her.”

  Surprised, Bronson looked up at Mary, like he was trying to see through her. Maya knew longtime couples spoke in code, and she was alert to decipher this throuple code, but unsure. Yalulah walked back into the room, drying her hands.

  “We can wait them out,” Yalulah said. “They’ll get bored. Something else will catch their eye. I say we do nothing.”

  Maya tried to shoot that down, lying again about Janet’s involvement precisely the way she’d promised she wouldn’t. “You could try, but I wouldn’t bet on it. This woman that works for the state, Janet Bergram, is a terrier—I don’t see her going away and forgetting about the kids. Statute 48293, subsection C—the court may order any person convicted of subdivision A (the provision to send your kid to school or do the appropriate paperwork and proof to show they are being educated) to immediately enroll the pupil in the appropriate school.” Normal folks would be intimidated by a woman naming and numbering statutes at them, but this family didn’t scare easily.

  “I doubt that,” Yalulah said. “That lady seemed very impressed by our school, how we teach. And besides, that’s just paperwork.” Mary and Bronson both looked at Yalulah to see if she wanted to keep that fight going.

  Bronson eventually looked away, but Mary held her gaze on Yalulah as something deep and difficult passed between them. Mary said, “Yaya.” And that’s all she said. Yalulah looked down and shook her head for a good long while. Nothing had happened, but something momentous had been decided. Maya somehow felt the weight of the room shift toward where Mary was sitting.

  Yalulah exhaled deeply. She looked pained. She took Bronson’s hand and said, “This could be a test of our faith.”

  “That it surely is,” Bronson said.

  “The strength of our faith and what we’ve taught our children. What is our faith if it can’t survive a challenge from the outside?” Yalulah probed.

  “What are you doing, Yaya?” Bronson asked.

  “It’s not that simple anymore, Bro’,” Mary added cryptically.

  Yalulah continued, “Don’t the Amish have their Rumspringa where the teenagers leave for a year or so and if they come back, they come back into the faith with renewed vigor because they’ve chosen this world over that one of their own free will?”

  “We’ve given them no free will, Bro’,” Mary stated.

  “Not free?” Bronson was incredulous. “They are as free in their lives as natural savages.”

  “Not that type of freedom. In the mind. Of the will. Against temptation. Like we had before we came here,” Mary said.

  “And how did that work out for you?” Bronson demanded, now standing right between Mary and Yalulah, as if trying to keep them from joining. “The children are free from the thought control and groupthink and despair of that diseased world and culture out there.” Maya sat back, fascinated, clever enough not to get in the way of this unit as it fought and processed; they no longer seemed like one three-headed being from Greek mythology.

  “In Kirtland,” Yalulah said, “where Joseph Smith himself did not want to go, they doubled the Church in one day.”

  “You’re talking about a mission?” Bronson sought clarification. “The mission is for age nineteen.”

  Mary was nodding. She took Yalulah’s hand and said, “It’s a test of faith and a mission. Maybe it’s for the older kids, so maybe it’s a couple years early, they’re gonna go to college soon anyway, right?”

  “I don’t know about that. That’s a couple years away, no.”

  “Yes, Bro’,” Yalulah agreed, calming him and pushing at once. “You say yourself, we cannot pick and choose like from a ‘menu’ what we believe of the faith. How can we withhold our children from a mission if a mission is part of their faith?”

  Mary piled on, “Maybe this is the sign you were waiting on. The sign you kept riding into the desert to see. The sign to tell you when to send them back into the world.”

  Bronson watched in horror as his women seemed to be siding with this other woman, this stranger, and the dominoes underpinning his life began to fall—all the thoughts and fears that kept him up at night, that troubled his sleep, were being incarnated and voiced in front of him today. Each tumbling and toppling the next. He had to stop it. He pointed at Maya. “How do you know she’s not a temptation? An obstacle to be overcome?” he demanded. Usually it was Bronson’s domain to interpret omens and translate the unseen will of God in things that could be seen. Mary had usurped that place and seemed unwilling to relinquish it.

  “Where the path is bad,” she preached his own words back at him, “the obstacle is good.”

  “You think this capitalist emissary, this errand girl, is sent by our God?”

  “God works in mysterious ways,” Mary said. Maya thought she heard something approaching contempt in Mary’s voice.

  Trapped between them, Bronson stared into Yalulah’s eyes and then into Mary’s. He seemed defeated for a moment, like he’d heard his own words fashioned into clubs by the women he loved and then turned on him, seemed less the cowboy superman of Maya’s estimation and more like a beleaguered sitcom husband, and almost mortal, even old. He shook his head and looked down at his boots again, wondering at the speed at which worlds, which for years orbit in peaceful ellipses, can suddenly collide and destroy each other. Bronson’s was a full solar system, and there was much to track, too much at the moment.

  Maya sensed this was her moment to strike, to play the card up her bloodied sleeve. “That night,” she said, “when your son shot an arrow at me. I don’t remember much of it, but it has come back to me over time in dribs and drabs. And I’ve remembered some of your speeches by your bonfire, something about bonobo monkeys?” Bronson squinted at her, and Maya continued, “And I also remember two graves, maybe three. Two small headstones and a larger one, or markers, for something very small, like a pet, or something.” She knew those were not pet graves. She let them know it, too. This was a serious threat, plain and simple.

  No one moved. No one spoke. Maya swallowed and it sounded as loud as a gunshot to her. She watched as Bronson’s breathing grew faster and shallower. He jumped to his feet.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “Fuck it to hell.”

  Bronson strode quickly out of his house, his wives followed him, and Maya followed them. When they all got outside, Bronson was pacing toward the horse corral and calling the kids, all the kids. The young ones, alerted by an uneasy tone in Bronson’s voice, were dropping whatever chores or work they were up to and jogging to the corral. Three beautiful horses were flicking their tails at the flies on their rumps. A pretty teenager, whom Maya assumed was the eldest daughter, straddled one. Bronson lined the children up against the wooden fence. “Which one of these kids you want me to send to a public school in San Bernardino and which ones you want me to keep?”

  His voice was so full of barely controlled anger, Maya instinctively took a step backward and her back brushed a horse, so she took a step forward again. It was a huge animal.

  Maya tried to remain calm. “Well, I think that’s really up to you.”

  “I haven’t said I’m gonna do it, or anything, but if I did, which kids you wanna take away from their family for their own so-called good?”

  “I don’t know.” Maya was starting to feel anxious, her mouth getting dry. She felt close to achieving her goal, but also far away to the side from it. She felt she might be duped, or hurt. She heard the ranger start up his ATV and slowly roll closer.

  “Well, I sure as shit am not gonna choose.” Bronson spat. “What was that movie? Sophie? Sophie something? She had to choose. I ain’t choosing. You know why?”

  “No.”

  “’Cause I am gonna win. Doesn’t matter who you choose. My kids are better off here, and after a year, they will come back here, and you will see that I am right.”

  “There’s a good chance of that.”

  “Oh, is there? A good chance? Go ahead, Sophie. Make the choice.”
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  Maya looked at the kids, and at the mothers, and at Bronson. A couple of the very young ones were crying as it dawned on the children what might be happening. Maya felt like shit, but this was business, she had to be cold-blooded, like some sort of desert lizard.

  “You okay, ma’am?” the ranger called from his safe distance.

  “Yes, thanks,” Maya called out, and turned her attention back to the group of kids lined up as in front of a firing squad.

  “Well…” She bought time, thinking: Janet Bergram and she had decided on a couple older kids, high schoolers, and one younger kid—middle school, perhaps—as the best test group. And Mary, the mother, had just said that the older kids were probably going to college soon, so that seemed the way to go; those kids would be leaving home soon, anyway. No big deal. Time to grow up and leave the nest. That’s the way it goes. She spotted the oldest-looking boy. “Him.” She pointed. “What’s your name? How old are you?”

  “Deuce,” the young man said.

  “Deuce is the smartest of us all,” Bronson said. “He’ll end up teaching the teachers. He’s sixteen, seventeen, eighteen thereabouts, we don’t really keep track of ages like that.”

  “Okay, Deuce.” Maya was relieved. “He’ll be a junior in high school, then.”

  She could see Deuce was not happy, or at least wanted to let his father know he was not happy, maybe didn’t want to betray his dad. Maybe the kid was scared. Sure, it’s scary to leave home for the first time. He’ll be fine. But Maya definitely thought she saw some relief in Mary’s eyes; she started to think of the woman as a potential, secret ally. “So I guess you’ll want to pick a younger one now, too?” Bronson sneered.

  “Okay. One down, two to go,” Maya said.

  Mary spoke up. “Deuce has a twin—Pearl.” She pointed to the pretty girl on the horse. “We don’t separate the twins. And a missionary needs a companion, two by two, that’s the way. Pearl will go, too.”

  Mary looked at Bronson when she said this, not at Maya, and not over at the girl, Pearl, seeming to dare him to contradict her. He held her eyes for a second, a look of incredulity on his face, then shock and embarrassment, before landing on the resigned but comprehending mask of a man who had betrayed and been betrayed in turn. He looked down. Then he glanced up at the sky, as if for backup. Only then did Mary train her eyes on Pearl on the horse. Something passed between them that Maya saw but did not understand, and knew that she could not ever understand perhaps until she became a parent herself. The love, protection, apology, and guidance Mary was sending the girl’s way was returned in equal measure with disappointment, competition, and rage coming back at the mother from the girl. Pearl then looked over at Bronson, but Bronson would not look down from accusing the sky of some unnamed crime.