PART ONE - ZARAHEMLA

Chapter One

Buff speaking into tape recorder June 4, 1978

Testing one…two…three. This is Buffington Journeycake PhD., former professor of anthropology at Mountain State University, La Plata, New Mexico.

I slept under a bridge last night and walked into Sante Fe to get a bite to eat and see if someone I
knew was around the plaza. There usually is every time I come through here. I’m hitching on my way
to see Bishop Louie and his wife Liz to record their memories of how he became leader of the church
in Zarahemla Valley and how the movement of the Circle began.

Today about two in the afternoon I was standing in the plaza with my bedroll on my back. All of a
sudden a shadow fell across from the northwest to the southeast corner of the plaza with a wavy
outline, like between yin and yang. I was standing just inside the brilliant sunlight of the yang half –
the southwest. I looked up and saw a huge cloud with a black belly and white fluff clinging to its
purple back. The line between yin and yang began to quiver. In a few seconds I would be in the deep
yin shadow. Then I saw on the north side of the plaza, well inside yin, someone I knew well was
walking along under the porch that shades the sidewalk of the old Spanish Governor’s palace, l
ooking at the jewelry the old Indian women sitting on the sidewalk were selling.

“Hey, Nephi!” I hollered, waving my hand high.

“Buff!” he called back. In a couple of seconds we were dancing around with our arms on each other’s shoulders in the yin that now covered the plaza.

I’m a mixture = Cherokee and Delaware Indian and some mysterious nationality people call Black
Dutch where I come from – apparently meaning people of northwestern European ancestry who
happen to be dark brunet. I’ve also got some Black Irish thrown in – more of the same dark ancestry.

But Nephi looks more Indian than I do, although he was born Bill Altdorf – his father’s parents were
from Germany and his mother’s were from Norway. He’s five foot eight, about four inches shorter t
han I am. His skin is several shades browner than mine. He has straight, dark brown hair that hangs
down his back. Where I am thin, Nephi is gaunt with deep-sunk eyes.

More than his nose or ears, his smell is distinctive. If you put a piece of old leather in the back
pocket of your jeans and never take it out, and you travel across a thousand miles of desert and
sleep in your jeans every night and never take a bath – then, at the end of your journey, pull that
piece of leather out and smell it you will know what Nephi smells like. Not bad, but a strong smell for
a strong personality, something of his very selfhood.

At once the rain started and we ran under the porch of the Governor’s Palace.

“Would you like something to eat?” I asked.

“Sure, Buff,” he said. “But we’ll have to get away from the plaza. It’ll cost you too much in these high
class places.”

So we started running hard. I didn’t want the rain to soak through my bedroll because I keep my
tape recorder rolled up inside my sleeping bag. My bedroll kept bouncing against my back as we
hurried along a couple of blocks and ran into a little café that smelled like chili powder and onions.

Nephi took a look at the menu and said, “They’ve got menudo for only a dollar. Let’s get two bowls
of menudo and some coffee.”

So that’s what I ordered when the waitress came.

Menudo is a soup of tripe and posole – in other words cow guts and what most people call hominy.

But back in the state of Sequoyah where I come from, my kinfolk around Tahlequah say, “That stuff
you buy in cans ain’t no hominy. That’s what you call skinned corn. You got to beat the grain down
and break it up before it’s properly hominy/”

Cow guts and skinned corn, it’s still a great tasting soup. It warmed us up quick, so we forgot the
splash of cold rain water we had just run through.

Right then I had an idea.

“Say, Nephi,” I said, “You’ve been around the Circle from the very beginning.”

“Almost seven years now,” he answered. “Since I was fourteen years old.”

“I’m on my way to see Bishop Louie and Liz before we make the Circle again,” I said. “I want to
interview them about the history of the Circle and write a book about it. So I’ve got a tape recorder
in my bedroll and I was wondering if I could record you. I’ve heard you tell a lot of stories around the
fire when we were out in the open and I was hoping…”

“Buff, I’ve got a whole story I’ve been waiting for years to tell,” Nephi said. “This whole one-third of
my life. Just get your recorder and let’s get a refill of coffee.”

I untied the twine around my rolled-up sleeping bag and blanket. I reached in and got my little tape recorder out with the little plastic baggie containing some cassettes. And as I turned the recorder
on, Nephi put his arms on the table, clasped his hands together and stared straight at me, like he
was looking into the lens of a camera.

He talked for eight hours, pausing only for my questions and occasional drinks of coffee (we had
seven refills each.) We filled a lot of tape and I jotted down notes in a spiral notebook. Part of what
Nephi said is here, but the spirit will be on every page of the book I am writing.

Nephi Speaking

I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents…Those are the opening words of the Book of Mormon,
where I got my name. I was Bill Altdoraf first. I said I would tell you the story of the last third of my
life, but to make things clear, I have to begin before my parents with my grandfather, Nils Lindquist.
He died before I was born, so all I know of him is what my mother told me. He grew up on a farm in
Norway – the main crop was rocks. I couldn’t support him and his brothers and sisters, so somebody
had to leave. He come to this country in 1892 when he was seventeen. He traveled in what they
called steerage, the hold of the ship, the cheapest place to travel. Everyone was crowded together,
no separate rooms, everybody getting sick and throwing up.

When he got to this country, he was big and strong enough where he could tell the immigration
people that he was 21 and they believed him. He traveled across the country as a farmhand and a
logger. He worked his way up, went into business, made a lot of money. He was elected mayor of
Portland, Oregon, in 1916.

Then all the Socialists and Communists and Wobblies started making strikes and demonstrations.
My grandfather had them rounded up – filled the jails with them, a couple of thousand. They all
called theirselves by the name of the People’s Party, but my grandfather said they was nothing but
Red Radicals.

They all said how much they wanted to do for poor people, but he said that was just bullshit. He had
been poor, but he had made his way up. He made everything he had his own self and he didn’t need nobody to help him – especially not the Red Radicals.

Then he come down to Southern California and made a million dollars around LA selling real estate
in the twenties. He put his money in the stock market. He got wiped out completely when the stock
market crashed in the fall of 1929. Right after that his youngest child, Elsa – my mom – was born in
January, 1930. Here he was 55 years old and broke with two daughters to support. He got so
stressed out, he died of a heart attack when my mom was 10 years old.

My mom went to work as a waitress when she was 16, but really she depended on her mom and then
when her mom died, she depended on her older sister in the suburbs north of Los Angeles.

I’m not very political, but you know how it was when Robert Taft got elected president in 1952 and
he died. Vice President Nixon became president. Youngest president we ever had, but he made life
hard for people who worked – especially women.

My mom was making three dollars an hour as a waitress so she became a stripper = that was six
dollars an hour. My dad was a guy named Frank Altdorf who was a drummer in the band where she stripped. I believe he’s alive somewhere.

As soon as I was born, 1957, me and my mom started spending most of our time staying with her
older sister. We rented a room by ourselves sometimes, but we always ended up back with my aunt
and her husband. We spent our lives on couches in their living room.

I always knew that somebody didn’t want me around, though I didn’t know where else to be. From
when I was a little kid, I was pissed off at the world. I was in fights on the playground at grade
school. There are mountains to the north and east of LA. On bright clear days when the sun was
going down I’d stand in my aunt’s back yard and see the gold evening light on the mountains and I’d
wish I was on the other side.

The first time I ran away from home was 1970. I was twelve years old. Actually I didn’t run like on my
feet. I swiped a dollar from my mom’s purse and took the inter urban train to downtown LA and
transferred to a streetcar. I took it to the end of the line, as far east as it would go. By then the sun
was going down and the shadows was getting long. I walked along until it got dark. There was
orange groves here and there, but there was still a lot of houses.

“Hell, I’m not running away from home, I’m walking away.” I grumbled to myself. My feet was sore. I
had heard from other kids that the Peoples Party youth group had houses where runaway kids could
stay. I supposed I could look them up in the phone book, but I didn’t want to. My mom had warned
me about them people. I didn’t want to stay with a bunch of Red Radicals.

I sat down under a telephone pole which had the last light on the road. Up ahead it was all orange
groves and darkness. I was sitting there in that little circle of light. My eyes started closing now and
then and my head was nodding. A voice up above me said, “Hey, fellow, whatcha doin’? Need a place
to stay?”

I looked up. A big, broad-shouldered red-headed guy about 16 was standing over me. I stood up as
best I could. I was a little creaky in the knees.

“You one of them Red Radicals?” I says back.

“Hell, no!”

“What’s the deal, then?” I asked.

“Nationalist Youth Corps. The Ku Klux Kan started us. My uncle’s the Grand Dragon. We hate them
People’s Party ass holes.”

I was a bit suspicious. I didn’t know what this was, but I was tired and hungry and it wasn’t Red
Radicals, so I said “OK, I’ll go with you.”

“The name’s Clark Forrest,” he said, stretching out his hand and shaking mine.

“I’m Bill Altdorf,” I said, which was my name then.

We walked down a street away from the road until we come to a little white frame house in front of
an orange grove. Light was streaming out the windows into the yard. Clark knocked at the door. A
man about 40 opened the door. His eyes seemed froze up in a squint and he looked me over.

“This kid looks awful young, Clark,” the man said.

“Oh, let him stay for the night and have something to eat, Jim,” Clark said. “We can figure out what
to do with him tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, sure,” the man called Jim said. He got a big grin, but I noticed he was squinting all the time, like
he didn’t want to look straight at anyone. He was shorter than Clark and his hair was a dark reddish brown.

“Jim Einkorn,” he said, sticking out his hand and shaking mine. His hand was red and thick like a
sausage.

He led me to a table and went into the next room, which was a kitchen. He opened up the
refrigerator and got out a plate which he brought in and set in front of me – spaghetti and meatballs
and onions. It was cold and greasy, but I was hungry. As soon as he gave me a fork I stuffed myself.

When I’d had enough to eat, I noticed there was a painting hanging on the wall overlooking the
table. It was a man with thick dark hair that hung down over half his brow. Under his nose was a
little square mustache. His lips had this expression – kind of nobly sad, I’d say.”

“Who’s that, Jim?” I asked.

“That’s Adolph Hitler,” Jim said. “Ever hear of him?”

“Nope,” I says.

“He was the leader of the National Socialists movement in Germany,” Jim said. “It wasn’t bullshit
socialist like the Communists in Germany or the People’s Party in this country, but real socialists. He
could have been the great leader of the whole German people, but the Jews and Communists
cheated him out of the election in 1932 and he sacrificed himself – shot himself in the head. He was a martyr – a victim of the International Jews and the International Communists.”

“You mean like the Red Radicals?” I asked.

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Jim Said. “He’s still got millions of followers in Germany and there’s a l
ot of us in this country too. I made the pilgrimage to his grave, a marble shaft 20 feet high,
thousands and thousands of people there to lay flowers on the anniversary of his death. Oh, just
think how the world could have been if he had lived!” Jim shook his head, still squinting as much as
ever. “Maybe, Clark can go over there to Germany to see it some day.” Jim went on. “Maybe you can.”

“I guess I’d like that,” I said and I put my hand in front of my mouth and yawned.

“Clark go get this kid something to sleep on,” Jim said. Clark come back with a quilt which he spread
in a corner of the living room. Over that was a thin fuzzy blanket. I curled up under it and conked out.

Late that night a bunch of other young guys come into the house making a lot of noise. I woke up for
a minute. Then they went to the room where they slept and I passed out in a deep sleep.

Chapter Two - Nephi Speaking

Next morning when I woke up I could see Clark in the kitchen at the stove fixing scrambled eggs in a
big skillet. These young guys was waiting in line with plates and Clark loaded each of their plates
with a big load of scrambled eggs. All of them who could set around the table. Some were in chairs
with plates of scrambled eggs in their laps, but some had to sit on the floor. I noticed that every one
of them set up stiff and straight like soldiers do in the movies.

Their clothes was like a uniform too – khaki trousers, khaki shirts and ties. Their hair was cut almost
 to the scalp like soldiers except some of them had a lock in front that they let dangle over their
forehead like that Hitler guy in the picture above the table.

But I noticed Clark didn’t dress like them. He had on blue jeans and a red and green cowboy-type
shirt. His hair was short – shorter than mine is now, of course, but it was a regular haircut, not
shaved down close like the others.

Jim walked over, still squinting away, and handed me a plate of scrambled eggs. He had khaki pants
like the young guys, but just a sweaty old T-shirt instead of the rest of the khaki outfit.

“We pay these young men 75 dollars a week to spread the truth,” Jim said, sweeping his hand
around to include all these fellows eating scrambled eggs.

“I regret we can’t pay them more,” he went on. “We pay them only half the wages our Communistic government pays the kids in its shitty little government jobs – like the Conservation Crops. But some
day these young ones will make what they are worth – many times more than they would get paid in
the government busy-work jobs for unemployed youth.”

There were smiles on all the young pink faces around the room. Jim pointed his left forefinger in the general direction of the picture on the wall. The man with the little mustache. He swept his right arm backwards with his right fist doubled up. It was a grand statue-like posture.

“The mayor in LA is named Gonzalez!” he bellowed. “Can you imagine a Mexican mayor of Los
Angeles” And worse than that, the President of the United States is a Jew – Sidney Lens! And the
Vice President is a nigger woman, Ella Little! How low can a white man go?” It was clear Jim enjoyed making speeches. All around the room these young guys was going, “Yeah! Yeah!” from deep in their throats. “Let’s give it to ‘em!” All the time Jim was still squinting.

“OK, fellows, that’s enough of a pep talk for today!” Jim said with a smile. “And get your dishes
cleaned up and get out there and give them Jews what’s coming to them!”

In a couple of seconds they got lined up into the kitchen, taking turns washing their plates at the
sink and stacking them. Then they went back in the living room-dinging room to a big stack of
leaflets. Each one grabbed some leaflets under their arms. They then fell into formation and Jim
opened the door and they ran out in formation shouting “Hut-two-three-four!” They sounded proud
– and like they was having fun. They ran out and got in a little yellow but in the front yard and drove
off.

I could see why they was only getting paid 75 dollars a week if they wasn’t getting anything from the government. One of those little busses was expensive to run with gas costing #3.12 a gallon. Jim
couldn’t afford to spend too much with the kids and the bus both.

After the young guys was gone, Jim plopped down in a chair. He leaned forward. His squint opened
up a bit. He had dark, glittery eyes that stared at me.

“Now, young fellow,” he said, “how old are you?”

“Sixteen,” I said.

“I’ll bet,” Jim answered. “You look about eleven.”

“I’m twelve!” I spoke up, kind of huffy.

“Be that as it may,” he said. “We’ve got friends in the police departments around here, but if your
mother makes too much of a fuss, they won’t be able to do very much to help us. We’ll be in trouble
and we don’t want trouble – not now, at least.”

“Clark!” he said loud.

Clark lifted his head from washing the skillet in the sink. He blinked and said, “huh?”

“You take my car and take the kid to the nearest streetcar stop. Do you have any money?”

“A dollar fifty,” Clark says.

“Give it to the kid so he can get home. Get his address. It’ll be good to have a contact who can reach
other kids in the grade school. You got to catch them young.” I didn’t bother to tell Jim that I wasn’t
very popular in grade school. I probably couldn’t spread his ideas or anybody else’s.

Clark led me out to a garage and we got in a shiny new car.

“I don’t think Jim wants you around here,” he said as we was backing out.” And it’s not the cop
problem. There’s only 2,000 cops in all of Los Angeles and these little piss-ant suburban police f
orces only have about 15 or 20 cops each. Hell, there ain’t enough cops to bother much about all the runaway kids. The kids go to the People’s Party or the labor unions or the government programs or
the missions – or us. It’s just that, uh…”

“What?” I asked.

“Jim’s good at sizing people up,” Clark said. “And there’s something about you – and he don’t want it around.”

“How about you?” I asked.

“I was glad to see you,” Clark said. “It’s good to have somebody new to talk to. You see, after they’ve
been around Jim a month they all sound just the same – like recordings of him. Jim may be right
about the Jews and the coloreds and the Communists, but I like to hear something different now and
then. So I’d like your address. When I first ran away from home, I was almost as young as you are. My parents are in the Klan, so they think it’s all right for me to be with Jim. But look in that glove
compartment – there’s pen and paper.”

I opened the glove compartment and got out a pen and paper and wrote down my aunt’s address.
We drove to the streetcar stop, talking all the way. He was telling me about deer hunting, which I
had never done, and we both agreed about TV shows – what a crock of shit they was. We had a good
laugh about TV. He let me off and we shook hands and soon I was on the streetcar and then inner
urban train back to my aunt’s place.

I got a pretty hard talking-to from my mother and my aunt and her husband, but after that I
didn’t go to school no more that spring. I ran away again.

This time I hitched into LA. I got as far as a mission in the Main Street area of LA. There was a bunch of old winos in long, dirty coats singing hymns in their off-key voices, but there was a bunch
of runaway kids like me. I read some of the Bible there, and it was beautiful. I felt something like it
again when I fell in love with a girl for the first time. It’s the feeling of wanting to believe – one of the deepest feelings I know.

The preacher at the mission told me I could only stay there three days and then I would have
to call home or leave. I begged him to baptize me before my stay was up. Me and my mom sometimes
went with my aunt to the Christian Science Church and they don’t have baptism. Christian Science
was the only kind of church I had known about before.

The preacher had me put on a white robe and we waded out in this tank full of water, up to
my armpits. He grabbed me by the back of my head and plunged me under that cold water and I felt
a shock run all through my body when I stood up again with my head out of the water. I closed my
eyes and I seen a bright flash of light. I shouted, Oh God! Amen!”

Then I called my mom and the preacher let me have some money to take the inter urban train
back to my aunt’s place. This time I got less hassle about running away.

On the living room couch at night, I thought a lot about the baptism. I would close my eyes
and see the light again, but as days went on, it got fainter and farther away. Still I felt that real
intensive wish to believe in God. I wondered if that was what Jim could see in me so that he didn’t
want me in his Nationalist Youth Corps.

That fall I started to school again, but I stayed away a lot. I ran away again to another mission
and I begged the preacher there to baptize me – I wanted that feeling back so bad. And he did.

Pretty soon I was simply wandering all over the LA area and staying with friends or in the
missions and coming back to my aunt’s house. I would be gone a week at a time. No one was
complaining. My aunt’s husband kept getting temporary layoffs form his job, so there wasn’t much
money in the house. My aunt must have figured that the less I was around, the less of her food I’d
eat up I got where I knew every alley in LA, all the places where they gave away food and old clothes
and blankets and what stores leave the best day-old food out in the back.

Then one evening I was standing in my aunt’s back yard, looking at the gold light form the
sunset touching the eastern mountain range. All of a sudden I heard this high, shrill whistle behind
me. I whirled around and I seen Clark jumping over my aunt’s back fence into the yard. He had this
big shit-eating grin on his face.

“Howdy,” he says. “Thought I’d come by and see how you’re doing.”

“What are you doing around here?” I asked.

“I’m on an intelligence mission,” he said. “That’s what I like to do for Jim. I like to run around
free. I couldn’t wear a khaki uniform and stand with my back stiff as a board like them kids at Jim’s
place – and they couldn’t do intelligence missions looking the way they do. Besides, the way gasoline
costs, I’m the only one Jim could trust to drive around in his car and not waste money.”

“What about the bus?” I says. “Don’t them kids waste money driving around giving out
leaflets?”

“Well-uh-take my word for it. We get money for that. Enough said about it,” Clark answered
quick.

We both stopped talking a few seconds and looked east at the last light touching the tips of
the mountains from the sun going down into the ocean west of us.

“I want to go over to the other side of them mountains soon,” I says. “See the rest of the
world.”

“Me too,” Clark says. “I’m gonna try to get Jim to send me on intelligence missions way off
there in other places. There are Nationalist groups scattered all over the desert country and the
Rocky Mountains who hate the People’s Party President – that Jew, Sidney Lens. I could make
contact with them for Jim and see what the rest of the country looks like. It would be great to climb a mountain some day.”

Then he looked at his watch and added real quick, “I gotta go now. He swung hisself back
over the fence and ran down the alley before I could say goodbye. I heard his car starting and taking
off.

The spring and summer of that next year, 1971, I spent a lot more time on the street, a lot of
nights away from my aunt’s house. School was already out of my life. I got baptized a couple more
times. I always wanted to talk to Clark again, see if he felt as much interest in spiritual things as I
did. I think he always wanted to sit down and have a good talk with me. But I didn’t see him again as
long as I was in LA.

My fourteenth birthday I was hitching on the freeway. That’s a big four=lane highway all
around the edge of LA to keep the traffic from clogging up the streets in the middle of town. They’ve
built freeways around the edges of big cities all over the country now to give jobs to the unemployed,
but in LA we had the first one. It was built in 1969, so it was just two years old then and the glare
from the sunlight hurt my eyes. I closed them for a second and put my hand over my eyes.

When I opened my eyes again, I seen this skinny blonde girl up ahead of me walking along the freeway carrying a bedroll with a knapsack on her back. It was Twyla, a girl I knew from around the missions. She was a year older than me and a little bit taller.

“Hey, Twyla!” I hollered. “Wait up!” She stopped and I ran up to her.

“Your name is Bill, isn’t it?” Twyla says. “I think I seen you get baptized twice. You know you shouldn’t ought to do that, Bill.”

“Aw, Twyla,” I said. “I just wanted to have the feeling, to know I’m right with the Lord.”

“It would be good to have a guy to walk with me for protection,” Twyla says, “Even if you are
kind of little.”

“Where are you going, Twyla?” I says.

“New Mexico – the valley of Zarahemla, way back in the mountains,” Twyla says.

“What’s supposed to be there?” I asked.

“Another kid I met around the missions told me they got a new prophet there named Bishop
Louie,” Twyla says.

“God spoke to Bishop Louie about everybody coming together and having a new home,”
Twyla went on. “He’s supposed to be some kind of Mormon. I don’t know a thing about Mormons,
but I’m ready to get out of LA anyways.”

“But Twyla,” I says, “I was just on the way to Lakewood to see a friend. I didn’t bring a
bedroll.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ve got enough covers for both of us.”

So I was ready to go to Zarahemla. It sounded like the name of another planet. We caught our

Chapter Three - Nephi Speaking

An old lady took us where the freeway joined Highway 99 and there we got a ride in a truck east all
the way to Phoenix. The truck driver talked with us for a while, but it was hard for him to hear us.
Besides, after you get east of San Bernardino, Highway 99 turns from four lane to two lane. You
cross some mountains and the road curves a lot, so the truck driver had to keep his eyes on the road.
He couldn’t talk to us, so mostly it was just me and Twyla talking to each other.

Twyla’s mom and Dad come out to California from their farm in Texas as back in the Thirties when it
got too dry and dusty to farm. She had some of that accent like they did, like all these people who
come out to California from Texas and Oklahoma and Arkansas. In Los Angeles we call them folks
cornballs. A lot of us kids around the missions used to tease Twyla about the way she talked.

“My daddy was a big man in a Pentecostal church,” she started, but then she looked to see if the
truck driver still had his eyes on the road and wasn’t listening to us. Then she put her hand to my
ear and whispered, “He was in the church, but sometimes since I was twelve, he’d come home drunk
 and smooch around on me and put his hand in the wrong places and stuff, I’d tell him that it was
sick and we’d pray about it together, and we went to church a lot – I really like singing hymns loud
and speaking in tongues. But then it would happen again and I started leaving home and hanging
out in the missions. The preachers know me. They let me stay around longer than they let the other
kids and I’d help them sweep the place up and cook meals for the people coming in. And I’d try to
forgive my daddy and go back home again and things would be OK for a while – then he’d be like
that again.

“Why didn’t you tell the cops?” I asked.

“What?” she says, “and have my daddy in jail? Look, he’s got a good auto mechanic job. Who would
support my mama and my two little sisters if he went to jail? My mama don’t want to go on welfare.
She don’t trust these People’s Party Communists and their youth programs to take care of my little
sisters. She heard the People’s Party don’t believe in God and she don’t want my little sisters where
they would have to hear all that Communist stuff.”

“Could you just stay at the missions all the time?” I asked.

“I thought about it,” Twyla said, “But I found out the preacher at one of the missions where I hung
out is the same way my daddy is. So I decided to get out of LA when I heard about a lot of people
getting together at Zarahemla. Like I told you, it’s Mormon. I have a Book of Mormon in my knapsack
now. I want to read it as soon as I can to see if it agrees with the Bible.”

The truck driver let us off on the freeway around Phoenix. We had a long, hot dusty walk on the
freeway. With gas costing as much as it does, mostly there’s just rich people and truck drivers on the highways. Most of the rich people won’t give you a ride and a lot of the truck driver’s companies
won’t let them give rides.

Finally it was dark. Twyla unwrapped her sleeping bag and she handed me a blanket.

“Look,” she said, “Don’t try to do anything. I’m a Christian girl and I’m bigger than you.”

I’d never been in this kind of situation with a girl before in my life. I was real curious.

A lot of people say Twyla is bucktoothed and homely but to me she will always be beautiful from
when I first seen her lugging her gear along the freeway. But she was right. We didn’t hardly know
one another except for seeing each other in church. Still it was kind of awkward, me trying to go to
sleep three-legged, if you know what I mean.

“Twyla got in her sleeping bag and I wrapped myself up in the blanket she gave me a few feet away
from her. We got up at day break. We was pretty lucky. We only waited a couple of hours before a
salesman picked us up.

“How far are you going?” Twyla asked.

“To El Paso,” the salesman says.

“Then let us off in La Plata,” Twyla told him.

So we got out in La Plata, a little town in the bottom of a deep, bowl shaped valley surrounded by
pointed hills. The weather was a good deal cooler than Phoenix.

Twyla started walking fast, away from the main highway, following a smaller road that led northwest.
I practically had to run to keep up with her.

“Come on!” she hollered at me. “We gotta get to Zarahemla.”

We followed the road up to the top of the ridge overlooking the valley where the town was. We only
had to wait an hour before a pickup stopped for us and we got in. An old man in a cowboy hat was
driving. His face was all wrinkled and red-brown from years out in the sun and wind.

“Ain’t you kids awful young to be a-hitch-hikin?” he says.

“Just take us to Zarahemla,” Twyla says back.

“Zarahemla?” the old man says, “Hell, the bus driver’s too scared to stop his bus there anymore.”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“People been a-shootin’ at each other up there,” the old man says. “They got two churches fightin’
it out.”

“But I thought there was just one church there,” Twyla said. Her mouth was open and the corners
turned down, kind of surprised and disappointed. “I mean, the only church I heard of there was the Mormons.”

“Well, they got two kinds of Mormons there now,” the old man answered. “This new guy Bishop
Louie said God was a man and a woman both and the other church started shootin’ at him.”

“Man and woman both?” Twyla said, and her mouth and eyes got even wider. “I never seen that in
the Bible.”

“Well, actually the Mormons have always believed God was male and female,” the old man said back,
“Only they always worshipped the man and didn’t talk much about the woman. Then Bishop Louie
split his church away from the other and said they should give equal honor to both the male and
female. He made his wife Bishop along with him. Then about a month ago, she run away with this
other man. She went to Santa Fe and her and this other man got their own church up there. She’s
lucky she got out when she did, because after she left, the other Mormon church up the valley
started shootin’ at Louie and his friends. A couple folks been hurt, but ain’t nobody been killed as I
know of yet. But still it’s got folks plumb scared, like I told you, and the bus won’t stop at Zarahemla.

The old man looked us over and chewed on his tobacco kind of thoughtful. “Funny thing is,” he went
on, “the more dangerous it gets, the more of you young folks there is showin’ up to see Bishop Louie
 at his church.”

Twyla cleared her throat- “Hmm!”

“I just want to see it,” she says, “to see if it’s God’s work or not.”

“How would a young thing like you know?” the old man asked.

“I’ll know,” Twyla said, and she pulled her lips together tight.

The road curved around the side of one mountain after another. Finally we come to where a
small gravel road led away from the pavement and down into the valley of a little river. From way up
on the ridge where our road was, you could see it was a shallow brown river running over a rocky
bed, every now and then flashing in the sun. Along the river was grove of cottonwood trees and
meadows and cornfields with light brown adobe houses here and there among the green.

“That’s the Pobre Clara River and the Zarahemla Valley,” the old man says. “You kids are
lucky. The first houses you’ll get to if you walk that road are Louie’s people, so I guess you’re safe
still – no telling what them folks from the other church further on up the river will do.”

He let us out – I says “Thank you” and Twyla says “God bless you” and we started along the
gravel road down a steep slope into the valley. All the way down the river, Twyla had her head bent
down and she was muttering under her breath, “A man and a woman both.”

Pretty soon we could hear the Pobre Clara River rushing over the rocks. It’s a peaceful sound
and it fills the whole day and night wherever you are in the valley.

When we got to the first houses, we could see lots of tents in their yards. Some of them
wasn’t regular tents, but blankets over frameworks of branches. There was campfires burning and
lots of people standing around them. They was cooking up food and coffee. Then I really stopped and stared – A lot of the people – men and women both – was naked as the day they was born.

“Don’t stare at that,” Twyla says. “That’s only the flesh. That’s not important. What we’ve got
to find out about is the teaching.”

“But Twyla,” I says. “It’s kind of chilly up here after Phoenix. I want to know what kind of
teaching can make them folks run around bare-assed when it ain’t even warm.”

“We’re not yet at the place to find out anything,” Twyla says, touching my wrist with her
fingertips. “Come on, let’s keep going.”

We come to a place where there had been a big frame building – but it was burnt down in
ruins, nothing but black planks. A bunch of people was standing around, looking pretty sad. And
that’s where I seen Bishop Louie for the first time. He was a short, scrawny guy about 26, barefoot, bow-legged, wearing a leather loincloth and a leather vest and he had a cowboy hat on his head. He
was shaking his fist at this blond guy about a foot taller than him and he was raging at that big guy,
going on like Donald Duck, “Wak-wak-wak!” And the big guy, who could have broke Louie in two was
just hanging his head kind of sheepish. I supposed he must be one of Bishop Louie’s assistants.

And right then Twyla called out clear and strong and calm, “Bishop Louie!”

He forgot that big guy and wheeled around and started walking over the gravel road towards
 us. He had two or three days growth of scraggly fuzz on his face and a big pair of glasses on, but a
spark went out from him that hit me right between the eyes. You could tell no one would ever dare
ask him by what authority he did things.

“What is it, sister?” he says. He had a rough, gravelly voice, not very deep.

“I’m here to ask you about your doctrine,” Twyla says like he had nothing to do but talk to her.

“The doctrine I speak is not my doctrine,” Louie says. “To understand it you must live among
the people who are gathered here until you feel the leading of the Spirit. However I do intend to say
some words tonight to the people to give them some encouragement, now that our church has been burned down. Meanwhile, I suggest that you two go over to that campfire on the other side of the
church and have some food and coffee.”

Then he turned away from us and went striding right back up to that big guy and started
shaking his fist and yelling at him again.

We walked around to the other side of the ruins. A woman with long light=blond hair was
there. She was naked to the waist, but she wore a skirt that reached to her ankles. She was dishing
food out of a kettle on a fire to a bunch of little kids – all of them naked.

“Excuse me,” I says,, “We’re kind of hungry.”

She turned around and looked hard at us and says, “Why didn’t you bring your own bowls?”

“We just got here,” I says back.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, looking a little softer and kinder, “It’s just that so many people come
who have been here a while and should know better.”

She turned back to the kids and says, “Have any of you finished your dinner?”

“Me!” “Me!”

She picked up a couple of battered old tin cans the kids held up. They was both still about
half full. She poured what was in them into a bucket that must have been meant for trash. Then she
took a ladle and got food out of the kettle and poured it in the cups and handed them to us.

“Now keep these cups,” she said.

The food was boiled squash and rice – no salt, no pepper and no more taste than a mouthful
of boiled cardboard. But we gobbled down every bit of it. Then the half-naked woman said, “Do you
want some coffee and me and Twyla both said “Yes!”

She got a big black coffee pot from beside the kettle and poured our cups full. The surface of
the coffee was speckled with ashes and it tasted like it had been strained through an old sock five
or six times, but I drank all mine down.

“Now wash your cups,” the woman said.

I looked around. Twyla had unwrapped her bedroll and was curled up sound asleep on top of
her sleeping bag. I took Twyla’s cup and mine and went where the woman pointed, to a bucket full of gray-brown, greasy lukewarm water. A rag was on the edge of the bucket and I washed and wiped
the cups – really the cans, I mean.

“Remember the rinse water,” I heard the woman say from behind me.

I went over to another bucket full of water that was just as gray-brown and greasy and
lukewarm as the first bucket. I dipped the ‘cups’ in and sloshed them around. Sure enough there
was a rag on the edge of this bucket too. I wiped off the cups. Then I took Twyla’s cup and left it next
to her. I found the blanket she had let me use by the side of the Phoenix freeway the night before. I wrapped myself up and started to go to sleep.

Then I heard a little kid pipe up in a high voice, “Why did you let that guy have my cup?”

“Shh, don’t worry,” the woman’s voice said, “He didn’t bring one. He’s just learning how we
do things here. I’ll get you another cup tomorrow.”

Then I was out like a light.

When I woke up, it was dark. I looked over and I seen Twyla was gone. Then I could hear
singing. I looked back and seen a red glow on the other side of the ruins of the church.

I walked around what was left of the church. I found a big circle of people standing singing
and half-dancing but not moving from their places. In the middle of the circle was a great big bonfire.
The stars looked like sparks form the bonfire going up into the sky. I could see Twyla by the light of
the fire on the opposite side of the bonfire from me. She had pulled her blouse off and now she was half-naked too.

Everyone was singing a song I used to hear in the missions in LA:

“I’ve got a joy, joy, joy deep down in my heart

deep down in my heart

deep down in my heart

I’ve got a joy, joy, joy deep down in my heart

Deep down in my heart to stay.”

Then Bishop Louie, still bare legged in his leather loin cloth stepped to the center of the
circle with his knees sticking out in his kind of bow-legged walk. He held out an open book in his
hand and started to give his message.

“Let him who has ears hear what the Spirit says to the churches!” Louie shouted in his harsh
 voice and the singing died away. All I could hear was the firewood crackling.

“We are being persecuted,” Louie started. “Our church building has been burned because
some of us come to church in the only clothing God gave them – not the clothing for sale in human
stores.”

All around the circle I could hear “Yipee!” “Yahoo!” I looked around and I could see some of
the people was still naked, though most of the naked ones had blankets around their shoulders.

“The people up the valley,” Louie went on, “they burned our church building down because
they don’t like the color of the clothing that God gave some of us. Some of us here are Lamanites. To
those who have not read the Book of Mormon, Lamanites are Indians! God gave them a red clothing!
The s0-called church up the valley will tell you that the Book says that this red clothing, this dark
skin is a curse from God. They say it is a shame to those who have it. Our new message from God is
that the days of punishment are over! The red skin is not a punishment anymore, but an honor to
the Lamanites!”

Everybody cheered again.

“We have a brother here who got a black suit of clothing from God,” Louie said.

A tall black man in the circle, naked and no blanket, raised his face to heaven and smiled with
his eyes closed and his fists in the air.

Then Louie started up again.

“The people up the valley,” he said, “will tell you no black man can be a priest. But we have ordained Brother Maceo here as a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek! And our sisters can be
ordained priestesses forever after the order of Melchizedek!”

The circle started cheering so much that it took five minutes for Bishop Louie to get them to calm
down. He held his empty hand up and held the hand with the book forward as he went into a kind of crouch. Then he bounced up all of a sudden. The fire reflected whirls of flame in his glasses.

“They say we break the Word of Wisdom,” Louie said, “the Word that was given to Brother Joseph
the Prophet long ago. It is true the Word of Wisdom says it is wrong to drink coffee and smoke
tobacco. It is true it is harmful.”

A few boos.

“Yes,” Bishop Louie said louder, “It is indeed harmful. But we have brothers and sisters who have
just joined and have not yet learned all that the Spirit has to tell them. These brothers and sisters
are harming their flesh – but not their soul.

“What goes into the mouth does not defile! What comes out of the mouth, that does defile!” Applause
all around the circle and cheers.

“We want to say to the red Lamanites – and to this dark child of Egypt who is with us!”

Brother Maceo, the black man ducked his head and grinned, kind of shy. Then Bishop Louie started
up again.

“We want to say! They have destroyed only the church building, not the church in our hearts! God-
our father in heaven above and our mother in the earth below…” and Louie reached down and
grabbed a handful of dust from near the fire and let it sift through his fingers. “God is protecting us!”

Another five minutes of noise.

Then Bishop Louie said, “And now I will read some words of comfort from the Book of Mormon.
Remember when the first followers of the Prophet Joseph came here, they named this valley
Zarahemla for a city in the Book. Well, in Third Nephi, chapter eight, verse eight, we read, ‘And the
city of Zarahemla did take fire – and so it has.” He waved his hand in a tired limp way towards the
ruins of his church. Louie continued:

“Now I want to read Fourth Nephi, the first chapter, starting at verse two and I’ll kind of skim over,
but you’ll get the gist.

“And it came to pass…that the people were all converted unto the Lord…both Nephites and
Lamanites and there were no contentions and disputations among them…And they had all things in common among them: therefore there were not rich or poor, bond and free, but they were all made
free and partakers of the heavenly gift.”

People started to whoop so loud that Bishop Louie couldn’t keep going. He stopped a few minutes.
Then he started reading and I could hear laughter in his voice that kind of softened it so it didn’t
grate so much.

“And there still continued to be peace in the land. And there were great and marvelous works
wrought by the disciples of Jesus…and all manner of miracles…Yea, even that great city Zarahemla
they did cause to be built again!”

At that point the cheering got totally wild.

I heard a “Bonk! Bonk! Bonk”. I seen the black man was squatting on the ground beating on a drum
made out of a section of hollow log. Everybody was singing, but I couldn’t catch the words and we all started dancing around the fire. People put their arms around my shoulders and we was racing
faster and faster and my feet seemed to go off the ground. But I looked out of the corner of my eye
and I could see Bishop Louie wasn’t dancing. He was just standing there by the fire with his head
hanging down and a tired, sad expression on his face.

Seemed like we just flew around the fire in a blur forever. Then I started getting dizzy. I suppose
everybody else did, because the circle started breaking up. People was plopping on the ground. I
plopped too. I felt warm inside and I knew what was keeping the naked people warm. I gasped,
catching my breath and smiled.

Just then I felt a finger tapping on my shoulder. I looked up. It was Clark from the Nationalist Youth
bunch back in LA!

“Surprise,” he says and started to get that big grin for a second. Then he set down beside me and
the grin faded and he looked troubled.

“I don’t know what to think of this place yet,” he said. “I was on an intelligence mission for Jim. There
re a bunch of Nationalist churches that have split off from the big Mormon church in Salt Lake City.
We heard about one in Zarahemla Valley and Jim wanted me to make contact. So I drove here. I was
at the other church up the valley.”

“What are they like?” I asked.

“Oh, really they ain’t bad folks,” Clark said. “But I didn’t know anything about Bishop Louie’s church
till I got to La Plata. The whole town is talking about all the naked people here.”

Clark grinned again for a second only.

“Well,” he went on, “I drove by Bishop Louie’s people on my way up the valley to that Nationalist
Mormon church. All I seen of Louie’s folks was kids, kids who had even littler kids. And when I got to
that church in the upper valley, they was going crazy because all that was going on down here – the nakedness and the coffee drinking and tobacco smoking and that nigger beating a drum. Fuck man,
I like to drink coffee and smoke tobacco! Then they said they was gonna burn down this church, so I t
ook off in the middle of the night to warn the people here. Say – you know it’s trickier to get through
this country than it looks.”

Clark rolled up his pants leg and I could see cuts and scrapes and bruises all over his calf.

“I had some good falls,” he says. “By the time I got here, the church was burning. But I talked all this morning to Bishop Louie about what they’re doing back at that other church up the valley. It seems
like now I’m doing intelligence for Bishop Louie instead of for Jim. And that’s weird, because they got
a nigger here and now I’m on these people’s side.” And Clark started shaking his head.

“Man,” he went on. “I don’t know what I believe no more. Up the valley they believe all the things Jim
says are right – except I wish they’d let me have coffee and cigarettes. They believe white people are
the true Israel and the Jews are from the Devil. They believe the niggers are cursed by God and now
here I am on the side of a nigger,” He said the word in a long, loud whisper.

“I just learned about this place,” I says. “It’ll be several days before I can tell you what I think of it. All
I can tell you is Bishop Louie has some kind of power.”

“He sure does, man,” Clark nodded. “When he talked to me I wanted to do anything he wanted me to
– even to save that nigger’s life.”

All of a sudden Clark threw his head back and growled from down in his throat- “Owwh! What am I supposed to tell my parents and my uncle with all of them in the Klan?”

“I don’t know,” I says. “I don’t know where my dad’s at and I have an aunt that I kind of stay away
from. I kind of miss my mom, but it’s better to be on the road now. I don’t know much about family
stuff.”

We both just sat there quiet by the fire for a few minutes. There was a good smell of sweat and wood smoke in the air around the circle. My sweat was part of it. I breathed it in deep. I could see specks
of light from the fire weaving over little groups of people sitting on the ground in the shadows
talking in low voices like Clark and me. I didn’t see Bishop Louie no place. He might have some kind
of power, but I seen in his face earlier that he could be sad and lonely. I worried a little about how he
was getting along.

All of a sudden I felt a big wave of tiredness flow from the bottom of my feet all the way up into my
brain where it beat against the inside of my skull. I tried standing up and staggered a little.

“Excuse me, Clark,” I says, “I just gotta go to sleep. Do you have bedding?”

“Oh I had bedding, a down sleeping bag,” Clark answered. “I left the bag in Jim’s car near the church
up the valley – the Nationalist church. When I got here, Bishop Louie made sure that they gave me a blanket. No one does without here. You may not get the best, but you get something. But shit – I left everything I own back up the valley and everything of Jim’s that was with me, to be down here with a
bunch of naked kids and a nigger. It’s like I gave up my whole life. I got a blanket but I can’t go to
sleep.”

I grabbed both of Clark’s hands in mine – the first time I ever done that in my whole life to anyone. I
held them for a minute or two. Then I said, “Good night,” and headed back around the ruins of the
church, weaving like I was drunk. I found Twyla still awake, sitting on her sleeping bag, looking up
at the crescent moon. She had her blouse back on and a wind breaker over that.

“What do you think now, Twyla?” I asked.

“Oh,” she says, “I think they’ve got some kind of righteous power, so they must have the right
doctrine even if they don’t express it in the correct way always.”

“You know, Twyla,” I says, “I never thought I’d see you bare chested like that.”

“I didn’t think about it at the time,” Twyla said. “The fire was too hot and a lot of people had all their clothes off, so I took my blouse off. I didn’t feel lust of the flesh from any of the guys. I think Bishop
Louie has a problem with lust of the flesh, but he wasn’t throwing it at me. I took off my blouse
because that was just the way it was. Now that you brought it up, I like being free like that.”

By then I was wrapped up in the blanket and the sound of the Pobre Clara River was sending me off
to sleep.

Next day when we got up there was oatmeal for breakfast. It tasted just like the boiled squash and
rice the night before – that is, it didn’t taste. A bunch of us sat in a circle eating the oatmeal around
the heap of ashes where the bonfire had been the night before. Some guy in the circle stood up and
said the trench where people went to shit was about full up. He said we should cover the shit with
dirt and ashes and dig a new trench.

So some of us got together, mostly guys, but some girls. We got a shovel and a coffee can full of
ashes from the bonfire place. We went and filled in the old shit trench and put ashes in it. Then we
went over and started digging on new shit trenches. The ground was real rocky. We was lucky Clark
 was there. He was strong as an ox and he could dig into that rocky ground like a knife into hot
butter. Then all of a sudden Bishop Louie showed up – said he wanted to talk to Clark and I didn’t
see Clark again that day. The rest of us had to work pretty hard without him. I got blisters all over
my hands. When I got back to my blanket around supper time, Twyla told me she had been out all
day long dragging in big dead firewood branches and cutting them up with a hatchet.

That’s how our life went for the rest of the week, all of us in the camp working together to feed
ourselves wit more and more people coming in all the time. I lost the can I had been using for a cup.
I went to see Ivy, the woman with the long blond hair who had fed me and Twyla when we first got
there.

“Can I have a new cup?” I asked.

Ivy gave me a big talking-to about being careless, but another woman said, “Calm down, Ivy,” and ran
to her tent and got me a bowl with a big ship out of it – but still good enough to eat out of.

One day Bishop Louie baptized three people in the river. I t was such a shallow stream he had to get
Clark to dig a little hole in the gravel of the river bed. The people would take turns getting baptized.
Each one would kneel in the hole Clark dug out with just their head and shoulders sticking above the water. Then Bishop Louie would duck their head in the river. Each person told Bishop Louie a new
name they wanted when they got baptized. Like a boy named Henry, about my age, got down in the
river and whispered the name he wanted in Bishop Louie’s ear.

“Brother!” Louie shouted, “I baptize you Eagle!” and ducked him under. The boy walked back on
shore grinning proud and happy like he had just become a man.

Then I felt that wish again like I had long ago at the mission in LA. I turned to Bishop Louie with
tears in my eyes and said, “Please baptize me!”

“What name do you want?” Bishop Louie asked.

Now all these days in Zarahemla I had been reading Twyla’s Book of Mormon. Nephi was the first
hero in the Book of Mormon. He had a father who loved him the way I wished I had. Nephi’s father
told him a wonderful dream – that he had led his whole family to the tree to eat this wonderful fruit
like no one had ever ate before. And it was the greatest tasting, most nourishing fruit in the world.
They ate it, including Nephi, even though the people who didn’t eat the fruit made fun of him. And
Nephi stood up to his older brothers when they tried to push him around – the way I always wished
I could stand up to my mother’s older sister. Then Nephi took his whole family in a little wooden ship
across the dangerous ocean to America, to the wilderness.

So I cried out, “Nephi!”

“Come on in the river,” Bishop Louie said.

I walked out and got down on my knees in the spot Clark had hollowed out. I was naked. By that time
I was running around naked all day. The river was cold to my bones. It meant more to me than being baptized in a robe.

Bishop Louie said, “I baptize you Nephi in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – and
the Mother – which is all one God,” and splash! He put me under. I stood up and walked back to the
shore dripping icy cold water with a fire inside me. I was holding my hands over my head hollering “Hallelujah! “I'm Nephi! I’m Nephi!”

I knew that was the last time I would ever get baptized. I didn’t know it was the last time Bishop

Chapter Five – Buff Speaking

This is Buffington Journeycake PhD again. Nephi had stopped talking in my tape recorder. He took a
drink of his coffee. Outside the rain was pouring down on Sante Fe.

“Didn’t Twyla get baptized?” I asked.

“No,” Nephi said. “She told me, ‘I was baptized once and that was enough; I have faith in my baptism’.
Then she pointed at me and said, ‘What you need more than baptism is faith – not just in God, but in yourself.’”

“What about Clark?” I said.

“Oh, I says ‘Come on Clark, get baptized with me’, but he shook his head. Here he was, this big,
strong guy and he was shaking and stuttering. He just says, ‘I dug out a hole for other people to get baptized in. I done them some good and that’s enough. I-I-I just ain’t sure of what I believe. I want to
be with this think but don’t know if I want to be part of it yet.’ – That’s what Clark told me. So I got
the last of Bishop Louie’s baptizing before he quit doing it.”

Nephi went on telling me his story long into the night. I intend to use some of the rest of his account
later in this book, but I also want you to hear the voices of some others.

When I finished taping and writing notes of Nephi’s memories, the little restaurant was ready to
close. We walked outside. A strong chilly breeze was blowing, tearing the clouds to pieces so that
the stars showed through again, like bright fruit hanging almost low enough to pick. Still the ground
in Santa Fe was cold and damp and there were pools of water under the bridges and culverts.

“Where did you stash your gear, Nephi?” I asked.

“At the Maria Russell Mission, where else?” he answered.

“But they lock the door at eight. How can we get in?” I said.

“Ph, they’ll open for me,” Nephi said with a firm nod of his head. Twyla might think Nephi didn’t have enough faith in himself, but about some things he was absolutely sure.

We walked a few more blocks – Sante Fe is a big small town and nothing is very far from anything
else. We came to a one-story red-brick house, maybe almost a hundred years old. The porch was
white painted wood, with a lot of Victorian gingerbread carvings. We walked up on the porch and
Nephi
started banging the door with all his might.

Finally a sleepy young man in underwear opened the door and said, “Look, you can’t come in. Come
back tomorrow morning before eight o’clock.”

“Go back to Taze and Rivka, whichever one is easiest to get up. Tell them Nephi and Buff are here,”
Nephi said with calm arrogance.

The young man disappeared down the dark hallway. About 15 minutes later a tall woman about 30
was coming out of the dark towards us, putting a red imitation satin house coat over her yellow
night gown. She had long wavy, glossy black hair, uncombed and flowing down her back and down
the
front of her housecoat.

“Buff, it’s good to see you,” she said, attempting a smile.

“Nephi, you should know not to come so late. You should have brought Buff earlier.”

“It’s my fault, Rivka,” I said. “I kept Nephi up till midnight recording what he has to say about the
history of the Circle. Hey – you know, I’d like to record what you have to say.”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, we’ll think about it tomorrow.” Rivka had a noticeable New York accent, but
her voice was soft and lilting. “We won’t think about doing anything tonight,” she added.

She hurried back down the hall to her room and I followed Nephi to one of the dim rooms that
opened off the hall. We could hear the soft whistle of breathing an occasional snore from the
sleeping bodies that covered the floor around us.

I followed Nephi around the edge of the room to the corner where he had his bedroll. We unwrapped
our sleeping bags and soon I drifted off. I woke up out of a complete blank to the noise of people,
mostly young, talking to each other as they lined up in the hall in front of the bathrooms where they
would pee if they had to and wash their hands and arms – which in the Maria Russell Mission they definitely had to. There was a men’s line and a women’s line. Nephi and I got at the end of the men’s
line and went through the routine. Then we joined the line going into the dining hall, showing our
hands to a young woman who stood at the door, examining for cleanliness. She only sent a couple of
people from the line back to the bathroom to do their washing over.

We stood at the table and a tall young man with big ears said a brief prayer. Then we sat down and
other young people brought in breakfast – bowls of yogurt with strawberries in it – big, juicy bits of strawberry. The tall young man who had said the prayer mounted a high stool and announced, “I’m
Brother Malachi. I shall read from Studies in the Scriptures by Charles Taze Russell. He began to
read in a high, clear monotone.

Because I have studied anthropology and psychology, almost any book interests me – to learn how
the author’s mind works or to figure out his unconscious assumptions about society. However I have
tried reading Studies in the Scriptures several times and I have had it read at me at Maria Russell
Missions around the US, and it never fails to bore me. So I was doing what everybody else did –
eating my breakfast and talking in a low voice to my neighbors. It was no disrespect to the young
man. He had already had his yogurt, so he had enough energy to plow through plenty of old Russell’s endless pages.

Just then Taze and Rivka walked in. Rivka had her hair combed and brushed smoothly down her back
now like an ebony waterfall. She had a strong face with a proud, sweeping high nose.

Taze was originally Thomas Tazewell, PhD. I was in his seminars on the Anthropology of Religion at
the University of New Mexico when I was getting my doctorate there. I had always wanted to pull my
shoe off and throw it at him.

Taze was 40 years old, about as tall as Rivka. He was bald-headed and with glasses over a pair of the sharpest little eyes I have ever seen. He had shortened his last name from Tazewell to Taze to be like
the prophet Charles Taze Russell who had written Studies in the Scriptures. Taze was all anybody
ever called him anymore. He had the same crackle of authority around him that Bishop Louie did,
only not as much. Nobody will ever be like Louie.

“Buff! Glad to have you back with us!” Taze boomed out over the reading of Studies in the Scriptures, which continued unabated. He came over and pumped it. He was wearing a turtleneck sweater and
slacks – he looked like he was still a professor.

Taze and Rivka found empty folding chairs at one of the tables and scooted in next to me.

“I shall now read from the Commentary on Studies in the Scriptures by Taze,” Brother Malachi
announced. One thing you could say about Russell. His Studies in the Scriptures was more i
nteresting than Taze’s commentary on it. But I had a purpose in being here now.

“Say, Taze,” I said. “I’m starting a history of the Circle. I was thinking at first of just interviewing
Louie, but Nephi here told me such interesting material last night, I want to record the memories of
a bunch of different people. I was thinking about interviewing you and Rivka.”

“Taze’s face started flickering back and forth between a smile and a frown. He settled on the smile. “Uh-yes,” he said. “come back to my bedroom after breakfast and we’ll talk into your tape recorder.
But we’ll have to make it brief – no more than an hour. And Nephi, you can’t be there!”

“Ok,” Nephi said and turned to me. “buff, he said, “I’ll go around town and see if I can get together
enough money to buy some cigarettes. I’ll be back by the time you finish with Taze and Rivka.”

In a little more than an hour, I thought Taze and Rivka had said all they were going to say. I went out
in the front yard of the mission and found Nephi there smoking a cigarette. We walked with our
bedrolls on our backs under the cottonwood and sycamore trees in the park along the Acequla
Madre – the old Spanish irrigation ditch. All of a sudden I heard a voice behind us calling “Buff!
Nephi!” I turned around. Rivka was running after us in her long purple skirt.

“Taze just got a call,” Rivka said. She took a few deep breaths. Then Rivka continued:

“Taze had to go right away to meet with some politician at our ranch outside of town. I’ve got all the
day’s plans made for the Mission – Brother Antonio will read from the Spanish translation of Taze’s Commentary on Studies in the Scriptures at the noon meal.”

She gave a little laugh with an admixture of tiredness and bitterness. Then she sat down on the
thick green grass under a tree and looked up at us with a real smile.

“Go ahead, sit down!” she said. “So record me! I can take a couple of hours off. I might as well say a
few things. It may make Taze mad, it may make Louie mad, but isn’t this a time of revolution
everywhere?”

We sad down and I switched on my recorder. In what follows, I have tried to splice together things
that Rivka told me there in the park with what she said back at the mission. I am also including
Taze’s remarks. The explanations he taped for me on the beliefs of the Maria Russell Missions are
briefer, clearer and more to the point than those he gives in his monumental Commentary on Studies
in the Scriptures.

Rivka Speaking

In my family Social Consciousness was our religion. My parents were such good people I could
scream. We went to a Reform Jewish temple twice a year, but we had Social Consciousness for
breakfast, lunch and dinner 365 days a year.

My father was a bureaucrat from the New York City Public Housing Authority. Hell, he lived the
Public Housing Authority. And really, I can’t blame him. They have replaced most of the worst slum firetraps with good, sturdy brick buildings. It’s true the rooms are small and over crowded, but for
only a hundred and fifty a month in New York, most poor people can have a good sanitary room – no
rats, it won’t burn down. I’m sounding like my father now.

In the fifties when Nixon was President, he cut the funding for public housing. It meant more
homeless people sleeping in alleys, more crime. Nixon talked like he wanted to do away with public
housing completely. Fortunately, some of his advisors must have explained to him how crazy that
would be. He kept funding public housing or we’d really have a mess on our hands now.

And my father went to bat for every one of the people in his public housing that were in danger of
being kicked out because of the cuts. He bled for them, man. He would stay in his office on the phone
for them any night till midnight. He wasn’t home for me. And if they had a place to stay, he was on
the phone to make sure their heating worked and there were flowers planted around their buildings.
And God forbid anybody should find a rat in his public housing. He never got overtime for most of this.

My mother was a social worker the same way = always bringing home some complicated soap opera
her clients were going through. She put herself through the mill for them.

Then when Nixon got impeached for all those corruption scandals and Robert Kennedy got elected
the first People’s Party President in 1964, my mom and dad danced around our apartment. I tell you
every day was Hannukah. And when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1965, my dad flung himself
on the bed crying – big heaving sobs.

The doctor kept him home from work for a month – too much danger of a heart attack. Most white
collar workers, you know, voted Republican, not People’s Party. When you find office workers like my parents who are strong People’s Party, very often they’re Jewish. And it’s not just because Jews are idealistic. Out here in New Mexico people think all Jews are rich, but in New York you see Jewish
beggars all the time. I have a bunch of relatives living in public housing. My father would take me to
visit my old great-aunts in these little cramped apartments and he’d talk Yiddish with them. I can’t understand Yiddish very well, but I could gather my aunts were full of praise for public housing after
the dumps they had rented in the slums.

My father would work some nights till midnight; when my mother got home from work, she would go
off to meetings of all sorts of causes and movements. When I was a kid I was left with baby sitters.
Later when I became a teenager I was left alone a lot of nights. I became interested in religion, which
my parents talked about very, very little. It was my way of youthful rebellion and besides, in my
loneliness I wanted the companionship of spiritual beings.

I told my father, “Dan, I think there might be a God.”

And he said, “Yah yes, often in history religion has played a progressive role in organizing the
oppressed to struggle for their rights.”

And I just went “Aaagh!” and went to my bedroom. He called after me, “What did I say, honey?”

By the time I was the age to go to college, I was reading a lot of library books on American Indian
Spiritual beliefs – especially the Pueblo and Navajo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona. I was really interested in the Navajo goddess Changing Woman.

So I decided I wanted to major in anthropology and study Southwestern Indian religion. The
University of New Mexico at Albuquerque had a good anthropology department; it was out there
close to the Indians and what’s more it was just as cheap for me as most of the colleges in the New
York City area..

When I told my college plans to my parents, they said what I expected – ‘We think it’s a good idea for
you to study anthropology, honey. It’s good for you to learn about the culture of oppressed peoples.
It might help in organizing them and…”

Once more I went “Aaagh!”

So I came out to the University in Albuquerque in 1968 and that’s how I met Taze – and Louie.

Chapter Six – Rivka speaking

Buff, when you were in a graduate seminar with Taze I was taking an undergraduate course from
him. A lot of people get one look at Taze and he doesn’t seem that attractive. They read what he has written and that leaves them cold. But it’s when you actually hear him speak – he can even make
Studies in the Scriptures sound interesting! And he’s so convincing. I never met anyone so
convincing in my life – until I met Louie in the spring of 1969.

The first time I ever met Louie, I was sitting in a student hangout in the university area, drinking a
cup of coffee and studying my lessons. Louie came walking up to me with a glass of orange juice on
a tray.

Of course he wasn’t wearing that leather loincloth. He had jeans on and an old Future Farmers of
America jacket. But he was wearing that battered old felt cowboy hat.

“Excuse me,” he said. “All the other tables are taken. Do you mind if I sit here with you awhile and
put the make on you?”

I really believe he said that. I tried to laugh and said “OK.” Now that I think about it,, I had seen
Louie in different coffee shops in the university area, putting the make on various women.

I’m fairly sure that if Louie took his glasses off, he would walk straight into a wall two feet in front of
him. But the way those blue eyes sparkle! He has a real prophet’s eyes.

He sat there across the table from me grinning with those sharp teeth. I had to let him sit there to
show him – and myself – that he didn’t spook me. I picked up my cup and gulped down my coffee.

“You shouldn’t drink that stuff,” he said. “It’s against the Word of Wisdom.”

“The what?” I said.

The word God gave to Joseph Smith,” Louie answered. “He’s the prophet of our faith – the Mormons.”

Since I moved out west I had already heard a good deal about the Mormons, who are big in this part
of the world. I knew that they were a very American religion – they followed a prophet named Joe
Smith who taught that the Garden of Eden was located near Independence, Missouri, and the United States Constitution was written under divine inspiration. And most Mormons believed that God was physically a male Caucasian. No thanks. I preferred the Changing Woman of the Navajos.

“But isn’t the Mormon church awfully patriarchal?” I asked. “Everything’s so oriented to males.”

I could see Louie’s eyes narrow behind his glasses and get little thoughtful crinkles at the corners.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” he said, “at least that’s the way they teach it now. But the early Mormon
teaching says there is a divine Father and Mother. They are-quote-alike in glory–unquote. An early
Mormon named Eliza Snow – the rumors I hear say she was one of the wives of the Prophet Joseph –
she wrote a hymn to the Mother. It goes like this.”

And he began to sing tunelessly:

“In the heavens are parents single?

No! The thought makes reason stare.

Truth is reason! Truth eternal

Tells me I’ve a mother there.”

“By the way,” he said, “My name is Louie McGowan.” His face broke into this big natural smile and
he reached his hand across the table and shook mine. It was one of the few times I have ever seen
Louie when he wasn’t on stage and it impressed me more than any of the wonderful things I have
seen and heard from him since then. Louie can tell the most fascinating stories I have ever heard. He
is one of the wittiest people I know. But he’s always putting the make on everybody he meets – if not
for sex, it’s to use them in the plans he always has in his head. Just to see him with his guard let
down, not playing an act – that’s a very rare and precious gift.

Comment by Nephi

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized there’s a big sex competition between Louie and Taze. They both
always have big crowds of females following them with their tongues hanging out. There’s been lots
of times I’ve heard Louie preaching to the females and all he’s saying is “Follow my whanger!” But I’ll
say this for Louie – he’s got a heart as well.

Now Taze, he preaches for hours, he writes books, he builds communities, he gives away huge
amounts of stuff to the poor – but all Taze has got is whanger.

Rivka Speaking

I asked Louie, “What do you come to town for?”

“I come to town a lot to buy supplies for our United Order in Zarahemla Valley,” he answered. “We
have community fields of crops, a community herd of cattle. We broke with the main Mormon Church
in Salt Lake City like a lot of Mormons up in the mountains have in the last 30 years. We’re trying to
get back to the way the Mormons were in the early days – communal enterprises, what we call the
United Order. I want to keep in mind what you said about women,” and he looked me straight in the
eye and went on. “I hope that someday we can introduce the worship of the female side of God like
they really talked about doing in the old Mormon times.”

He finished his orange juice in a few gulps, gave one last grin and said, “See you soon.” Then he was
lost in the crowds pouring out the restaurant door.

I didn’t think about Louie any more for a month. Then I saw a big photo of him on the front page of
the Albuquerque Journal – in a hospital bed in La Plata. He had bandages wrapped around the top of
his head and his arm in a sling. He’d been in a big fight – about 50 people on each side, some of them swinging fence posts. The barn of the Zarahemla United Order had been dynamited. It all started
because Louie had a revelation that baptism should be in the name of the Mother as well as the
Father and also that Louie’s two wives and some other women should be ordained as Mormon
priests. The Zarahemla community had split wide open over that – and so almost did Louie’s skull.

At the end of the story there was a big denial by the Mormon church in Salt Lake City that they had anything to do with anybody in Zarahemla Valley or any of the other Mormon splinter groups that
still practiced polygamy. The Salt Lake City church insisted that they had banned polygamy many
years ago.

I have seen Louie since then when he has a revelation. He does go into a trance. I believe him when
he says he sees a light and hears a voice. I’m sure that happened when he had his revelation about
women. But I like to think that I started the whole process, that the Mother was speaking to Louie
through me that day in the restaurant.

Also I was kind of disappointed to find out that Louie already had two wives.

As soon as the news of the religious war in Zarahemla broke, Taze talked about it in our class. He
said he was taking some of his graduate students in Anthropology of Religion and he wanted some undergraduate volunteers. I was one of two in our class that held up our hands. The state police had
been to Zarahemla and made some arrests on both sides, but there was still a lot of fear that it might
be dangerous down there.

Taze was anxious to get down to Zarahemla, danger or no danger. I was just beginning to realize the jealousy and competition of those days between a lot of anthropologists. Taze had a reputation for a
good book-knowledge of anthropology. He knew the already existing literature well and was able to develop some very interesting theories, but he hadn’t done much in the field since his doctoral
dissertation from Berkeley for his work at Santo Toribo Pueblo. Some of the professors who had been around the pueblo whispered behind Taze’s back that the Indians at Santo Toribo wouldn’t talk to
Taze, so he had to make up a bunch of stuff for his dissertation.

Taze was eager to prove he was as good as anybody at field research. I was pretty eager to see what
the field was like too. But I didn’t tell Taze about my conversation with Louie at the restaurant. I
never have told him.

As soon as Louie got out of the hospital, Taze called him asking for permission to come down and
interview him. As always when it was a question of publicity, Louie said yes.

Taze says he invited you to come along, Buff. It’s a shame you didn’t. There were three carloads of us,
and with the way gasoline costs, we were glad the university was paying the bill. We had a big picnic basket full of sandwiches. We stopped to eat by the roadside, looking up at the mountains. The
branches of the pine trees near us were singing a chorus in the breeze. I gave my heart to that whole Southwest New Mexico country then.

When we got to Zarahemla Valley, we found Louie and his two wives standing in front of the
framework for his new church building. The faction further up the valley who wouldn’t accept
Louie’s teaching on women had seized the old church. Louie’s new church which was under
construction is the one that was burned down by the upper valley people shortly after I left Louie in
1971.

But on this bright clear day, the church framework stood against a deep blue sky with huge drifts of
white fluffy clouds. Louie’s two wives stood behind him, along with another woman with a worried
look on her face who kept shifting from one foot to another.

All around Louie – as usual – there was a big crowd applauding him. On this day he was to be
ordained Bishop of the new church – the ward as Mormons call it.

Taze told all us students to take notes of the procedures. What’s to say? There were some prayers,
some hymns, some words said – not really too different from the sort of stuff you read in Studies in
the Scriptures, only these words were supposed to be Mormon. Louie, as he often does, tried hard to
look modest and as always, it was difficult for him. I was standing straight in front of Louie, but he g
ave not a single flicker of recognition to indicate that we had ever met before. Louie always was able
to keep a good poker face.

As soon as Louie was installed as Bishop, we were bracing ourselves for the ceremony to ordain his
wives and free other women as priestesses. We all knew that this might be a long, tedious one, since
the women were to be given the two grades of the Mormon priesthood in the same day, the Aaronic
 – which most Mormon males get at puberty = the Melchizedek, which males get upon reaching
adulthood and preparing for marriage.

We hadn’t even gotten through the Aaronic, and it was already getting pretty wearisome for me,
when the women were kneeling before Louie and he was supposed to put his hands on their heads
in blessing. All of a sudden, the fidgety nervous-looking woman who had been with Louie and his
wives when he got there, stoop up and ran away from the others like a frightened sheep.

Louie ran after her, but he called instructions back over his shoulder to his elders, who began
leading us in the hymn, “We’re Marching Upwards to Zion.” Louie always did have a good sense that
the show must go on.

He caught up with her when she stopped to lean against a big cottonwood tree and gasp for breath.

Then Louie actually got down on his knees in front of her and begged her to come back. This is
another time I have seen Louie when I believed he was not putting on an act.

Finally she followed Louie back to the ceremony. Louie raised his hand and we stopped singing in
the middle of the fourth chorus of “Marching Upwards to Zion.”

“Folks!” Louie said. “Sister Zerena here” – he indicated with his hand the woman who had run away
– “she tells me there are some special circumstances that might make it difficult for her to become a priestess. So there will be a private ceremony to prepare her for the priesthood and then we will
give her the full ordination – as we will now proceed to do with these sisters here.”

Then he laid his hands in blessing on the heads of the other six women and we got to the end of the Aaronic ceremony. Then we waded through the Melchizedek ceremony – while Zerena stood all the
time off to one side. She was still looking as uncomfortable as ever.

Taze was busy taking notes as all this was going on. I think one thing he learned from Louie was how
to conduct a religious ceremony in grand style and not sweat the small shit. For me though, religion
has mostly been a personal thing of my relationship to the deity.

From my first introduction at Zarahemla, I have found I don’t care much personally for ceremonies, although I have conducted a lot of them since then.

At night fall we of the anthropology tribe set up tents and built a fire, which we sat around and
conducted our own tribal ceremonies – a seminar out here in the mountains. Taze was at his best. He
was drawing people out. So many were telling him how the fervent singing of these old hymns
produced a warm, folksy feeling and they envied the sense of community these Mormons seemed to
have. I put my hand up. Taze called “Rivka!”

“I agree to an extent,” I said. “There were times I got a little bored. Let’s be honest. There were a lot
of times I got a lot bored. But sometimes during the hymns I had a sense of what I was looking for in religion. In New York all my amusements were alone – reading, listening to records, going to movies.
In a movie theater you’re alone in the dark with a crowd. This was the first time I’ve ever come close
to feeling what it might be to have a link with people”

“I hope you do find out some day,” a rough, grainy voice – by now familiar – said from behind me.
 Louie, who was now His Holiness the Bishop came and sat down by me at the fire. I didn’t know that Mormon Bishops are just plain Brother. But Louie will always be Bishop Louie.

“My dad,” Louie began, “and his brothers, they went from ranch to ranch on foot carrying their
saddles on their shoulders. They broke horses, built fence, fed cattle, but to do cowboying and not
own your own horse? That’s poor. They was what you call Jack Mormons. They got baptized in it,
even went to church a few times, but it was so people would accept them as fellow human beings. A
lot of places in the Rockies, if you’re not a Mormon you’re plumb froze out.

“They did like a lot of Jack Mormons, obeyed some of the rules – like you couldn’t pay them to touch
coffee. But they’d get out behind the barn and really get after that moonshine.

“I was the first male in my family to graduate from high school. But I found myself like my dad and his brothers, throwin’ the houlihan – that’s going from ranch to ranch looking for work. I was alone. But
then I found this community in Zarahemla Valley that had broke away from the main Mormon church
in Salt Lake City.

“The Zarahemla Community was trying to find the true United Order of the time of the Prophet
Joseph – a community like a big family raising crops and cattle together. It was the first place I could
hang my hat. Then I had the revelation that women should be as much a part of the community as us
men – and you see what happened.”

When Louie finished, Taze began to talk about the political and social background of break away
Mormon communities like Zarahemla. I could almost see Louie’s ears prick up like a coyote’s ears in
the firelight. I could fee; it in the firelight at a distance.

“The General Authorities,” Taze said, “that’s the leaders of the Mormon Church – they ran their
flocks to vote Republican like putting them through a sheep dip. That was OK from the Civil War to
the Depression when the Republicans almost always had the Presidency. Then in 1932 the
Democrats with 80% of the vote and the People’s Party with 30% of the vote made a coalition and
elected Franklin Roosevelt president.”

Taze looked around the fire with a grin. He wiggled his eyebrows with an unspoken “Aha!”

“Ever since then,” he continued, “Mormon churches have been breaking loose from control of the
General Authorities, because the Depression has never really ended. First young, low-income urban Mormons started voting Democrat and People’s Party. When the General Authorities insisted on the Republicans, these young urban people broke away.

“And up here in the mountains there are lots of little Mormon communities that are horrified if the
General Authorities even try to get along with the People’s Party. All these small ranchers and
farmers are afraid the People’s Party will communize their little bits of property. So they do their own communization – only they control it, not the government. They bring polygamy back in the open.
And they have fifty dozen splits – often with violence – like you’ve had, Louie – only your split is the
first one I’ve heard of that tries to give more rights to women.”

Then Taze stood up and yawned. Everybody else started getting ready to go bed down in their tents.
And I was left alone at the dying fire with Louie.

Chapter Seven

Rivka Speaking

I looked at the outline of Louie’s face in the light from the glowing ashes.

“Hey,” I said, “you didn’t explain why that woman named Zerena ran away from the ceremony.”

“You promise you won’t tell?” Louie asked.

“OK,” I answered.

“Keep your word. Remember that life’s not an assignment in anthropology. Zerena is the wife of one of the elders up the valley that we had split from. She ran away from her husband and joined me.”

“As one of your wives?” I asked.

“Not quite,” he answered.

“Well, can’t you marry her?” I said.

“Not exactly,” Louie said. “See, Zerena is not just married to Brother Bob – she’s sealed to him for all eternity. There’s this little Mormon temple in Arizona not far from here that broke away form the General Authorities in Salt Lake City. It does services for a lot of us folks in what Taze calls the breakaway Mormon groups. That’s where I got sealed to my two wives. Regular marriage is only for this world like the Aaronic Priesthood you’re supposed to get when you’re a teenager. When you get sealed it lasts forever like the Melchizedek Priesthood. So Zerena’s pretty anxious.”

Louie paused and stared at the fire.

“Let’s say she spends her life with me,” Louie continued. “At the resurrection Brother Bob is supposed to say her secret sealing name and call her from her grave to spend eternity with him. He can either leave her in her grave – or he might give her a pretty rough eternity.”

“And you believe this, Louie?” I asked.

“In some ways I do,” Louie answered, picking his words slowly and carefully. His hands were imitating the motions of feet stepping on a path.

“Are you having sex with her?” I said.

“Yes.”

“And all these women I see you flirting with in Albuquerque?” I asked.

“With them too.”

“Louie,” I said, “how the hell do you justify it?”

“I always said it was like courtship,” Louie answered. “I thought I might get sealed to them some day. But with Zerena it’s sort of different. The Prophet Joseph was married to women who were sealed to other men. And the men were his friends and they had passed away. But Zerena’s husband, Brother Bob up in the valley, he’s alive and you better believe he’s not my friend. And there’s something even worse.” Louie’s head hung down.

“What’s worse?” I asked.

“Since I performed the priestess ceremony today,” Louie said, “I know that temple in Arizona will never let me or my wives in again. Oh man, I just gotta have a revelation of what to do about all this mess!”

Louie’s predicament sounded just as exotic as anything I had ever heard in class that occurred among some tribe on a Pacific island.

Now I understood for the first time that people in a culture different from mine really felt those things. Louie was crying a little. I put my hand on his shoulder. I will give him credit as everlasting as the Melchizedek Priesthood that he didn’t try to do anything else. It was a beautiful moment.

“Say, I never did get your name,” he said.

“Rivka – that’s Hebrew for Rebecca.”

“Hebrew?”

“Yeah, Rivka a Kaplan. I’m Jewish.”

“I think you’re the first Jewish person I’ve ever met,” Louie said. “A lot of these mountain Mormons don’t like Jews. They say us Mormons are the True Israel and the Jews are Gentiles like everybody else who’s not a Mormon. And they’re afraid of the People’s Party. They say it’s all full of Jewish Communists like President Lens.”

“I hope you’re not afraid of me, Louie,” I said. “My parents back in New York are the most People’s Party Jews you’ll ever meet. I’m not so political myself.”

“Me neither,” Louie said. “I learned more about politics from Taze in a few minutes tonight than I learned before in my life.”

I noticed Louie’s voice actually sounded softer. It didn’t rasp as much.

“I’ve got to get back to my wives,” Louie said. “And Zerena.”

“They don’t know about what you do?” I asked.

“They figure,” he said. “But they don’t like it when they have to know.”

I clasped his hand briefly, then headed for my tent and Louie walked off in the dark. The Pobre Clara River was low that year, but there was a steady melodious gurgling as I went to sleep.

I promised Louie that night not to tell that conversation and now I have, but a lot of things have changed since then and there’s enough stuff Louie has done…

The next day Louie showed us the community fields of corn and beans. Louie’s church had one tractor which ran on a corn alcohol/gasoline mixture. The rival church up the valley had two tractors. Louie’s church had another tractor which had been smashed up in the fight. The other church had kept most of the cattle.

“There’s a dirt road from their end of the valley,” Louie said, “that leads to the highway that goes to Arizona. They’ve got people with guns coming down that way to join them. That’s why we need you all here to witness for us.”

On the third day we went back to the university in Albuquerque. We wrote up papers in Taze’s class on what we had seen in Zarahemla. I was thinking less about Louie as days went on and I was having to study for my exams.

I wasn’t in Zarahemla when Louie’s second cousin Aries John arrived there in June. I was taking summer courses. During finals week I got a letter from Louie care of Taze at the Anthropology Department. He wrote that Aries John had come in an old pickup with a tipi and a stack of books on spiritual subjects. John’s books were a real inspiration to Louie. IN the month after John arrived, Louie had 20 new revelations. In one of these revelations, Louie was told to re-seal his wives and Zerena over to Aries John, who had just been baptized and given the priesthood. This remarkable piece of celestial repair work had been approved by both God the Father and God the Mother. Louie had given John the secret names of his wives so John could call them out of their graves at the resurrection. The Father and Mother had given Louie a new secret resurrection name for Zerena, which he had whispered in Aries John’s ear. Louie, John and the women involved were all enthusiastic about these changes and Louie wanted me to hurry down to Zarahemla. I wrote him what day I would be there.

As I have said, Louie was persuasive. I tried to tell Taze that I was going down there to get material for a term paper in anthropology that fall. For that matter, I tried to tell myself that I was going back to school that fall. But I knew better. There was no place as interesting as Zarahemla.

I loaded up all the stuff I could take in my suitcases and stashed the rest with friends. I took the bus from Albuquerque for La Plata. Thank God for government subsidies to buses and passenger trains, when you consider what the price of gasoline is. The trip to La Plata cost only eight dollars. Then I took the Rural Service to Zarahemla. As a big city person, I had never been on one of these before. To go one way, no matter how long or short, the distance is a flat rate of $10 – unless you have a season ticket. At each little village or group of farms and ranches or gyppo logging operation, every household pays five dollars a month to have the Rural Bus Service stop at their settlement. It’s worth it. There are large empty areas with maybe only one or two gas stations which are often closed unpredictably. And in back country areas, gas can cost four dollars a gallon. It’s not as far from La Plata to Zarahemla as from Albuquerque to La Plata, but it costs more.

The Rural Bus service vehicle was painted in multicolored designs like a lot of them are in this border country. The driver was an elderly Mexican man. On his bumper was painted CON EL FAVOR DE DIOS, meaning BY THE GRACE OF GOD.

As GRACE OF GOD rolled along, I could see people along the road traveling free – hitching. Not only the young men you usually expect to hitch but women – even one woman over 60 years old.

Finally we stopped where the gravel road forked off the highway and plunged into Zarahemla Valley. The driver let me off with my suitcases. There was a battered old red pickup at the side of the road. A man was leaning against it. He looked like Louie stretched out to maybe a head taller than Louie, and older – over 30. His face and hair and beard were all variations of the same reddish-brown shade – the color of the cliffs on the other side of the valley. Above his high cheekbones, his eyes were bright blue=green and good-humored. He walked over to me and stuck out a big, red-brown weathered hand and shook mine.

“Good to meet you,” he said. “I’m John Miles. They call me Aries John.”

“Uh - I’m Rivka Kaplan.”

“Well,” he said, “let’s load your stuff in back and you can hop in the pickup.”

His voice was low-pitched and much softer than Louie’s. Everything about this man seemed to indicate someone who wanted to blend quietly into the background – even his soft, faded blue jeans jacket and pants.

As we drove down into the valley, I noticed some tents in the yards of the houses where the original settlers lived. There were new inhabitants walking around, most of them young.

“What are all these new people doing here?” I asked.

“OH,” he said, “it started when Bishop Louie had the revelation that he could unseal his wives and unseal Zerena from Brother Bob and seal ‘em all to me. A bunch of young Mormon folks showed up. They wanted to know if Bishop Louie could have a revelation that could unseal them from somebody so they could get together with somebody else.”

“Did he have the revelations they wanted?” I asked.

“Usually,” Aries John answered. “Then they seen this was a nice place and they told their friends and their friends told their friends – so more people been comin’ in here all the time. And a lot of women want the priesthood. We got priestesses runnin’ around all over the place.”

“Who did you get the name Aries John?” I asked.

“Born in April, the month of the ram jumping forth, the leader.” He took one hand from the steering wheel and made gentle, waving gestures, imitating an animal leaping along. I couldn’t see this man with his soft voice and his easy-flowing gestures as a leader.

“How do you lead” I asked.

“The books, the knowledge,” he said. “I only have an eighth grade education, but I’ve traveled all over, met many spiritual teachers and the books started coming to me. Louie comes to my tipi and talks to me and then he knows what to ask God for.”

“Why don’t you ask God?” I said.

“Louie is the one,” John answered. “He’s the one the people will listen to and trust. I don’t follow him. I don’t follow no man. But I kind of walk along by his side and give help. That’s a leader, ain’t it?”

“Mmm,” was the best answer I could make, but John didn’t notice as the gravel roared under the pickup wheels. We drove up to Louie’s church, which was more than half built. Next door stood a large white tipi. We went in and Aries John introduced me to his three wives – I had not spoken to them when I visited Zarahemla before. There was Emma, tall, gaunt and red-haired,’ Cassie, short and dark-aired with obviously Indian features and Zerena, blonde and starting to show a pregnancy. Cassie offered me some of her green corn tamales.

But Aries John couldn’t lie back and relax as lord of the harem. We had only been there for a few minutes when Emma stuck her head out the tipi entrance and then said in a low voice, “John, you better go out and put tarps over the corn that’s hung out to dry. I don’t like the looks of the clouds that are blowing in.”

John got up and went out to do just that while Emma went on boiling coffee. “I don’t drink it myself,” she told me, “but John only got baptized and received the priesthood a short time ago, so he’s not used to the way we do things here.”

Within an hour John was off on half a dozen more errands from his other wives, all requested in the same low voices. After all, they were his seniors in the Melchizedek Priesthood.

At last Louie came into the tent with a tall, well-built very dark black man, about 40 with graying hair. Louie introduced him as “Brother Maceo, the latest person here to receive the priesthood.” I know that blacks had been traditionally forbidden the Mormon priesthood. Brother Maceo shook my hand and said, “Pleased to meet you.” I realized he was the first black person I had seen in New Mexico outside of Albuquerque.

“Brother Maceo’s a skilled carpenter,” Louie said. “He came here to help us finish the church. Thanks to him we’ll have it done before the weather gets cold.”

“I am indeed rejoicing in God,” Brother Maceo said with a smile showing that his upper front teeth were missing.

There was some take with Brother Maceo about the technical aspects of building and then the feeling fell over us all like shadows getting longer- outside it was getting dark.

Aries John came back from another errand and went outside abruptly and brought back some long sticks which he broke up into a little pyramid on the tipi fire. Then he sad back and drank the coffee Emma had made. Although his only sound was the sipping of coffee, his intense enjoyment could be felt – somehow it was a part of the flames going upward.

Finally a troublesome little thought became clear in my mind.

“Un, where do I sleep tonight?”

“Oh, you can stay in here with Emma and Zerena,” John said. “I’ll be in back in my little pup tent with Cassie.”

I let out a breath of relief. I had a pretty good idea of what Louie wanted when he wrote me such an enthusiastic letter, but at least his desires were long range. I would have a chance to look things over and make up my mind.

If only Louie had always been so reasonable.

Chapter Eight

Rivka Speaking

That night two more people showed up from off the road and went to sleep near me. Aries John’s tipi was apparently one of the main temporary shelters for pilgrims and new inhabitants of the Zarahemla community. Emmy and Zerena had a pile of extra blankets ready.

Next morning I found myself involved in the whole business of getting firewood and cooking breakfast. Still more new people were coming in. Aries John and Bishop Louie had both gone off early for reconnaissance along the frontier between their territory and the rival church up the valley.

I found myself with plenty of time on my hands, so I began looking through Aries John’s spiritual books, which were stacked neatly on a Navajo rug on the side of the tipi opposite the entrance. I was struck most by the covers of three large volumes. They were bound in thick leather, gilt and elaborately carved. One of the volumes had at the bottom of the front cover a small circle containing – oh, what do you call a cross with lines sticking out of the ends? A swastika.

All three volumes were by the same author, William Dudley Pelley. I started leafing through the volume with the swastika. This volume and the others consisted largely of the travels of Pelley’s soul in the astral plane and his conversations with the spirits of the departed about the world beyond death and what should be done in this world. I remember one spirit of a Cherokee Indian princess who expressed herself in a very flowery way, something of a bore=Taze gets on my nerves now when he starts going on and on in the same sugary way the princess in this volume did.

Then I turned to a long, rambling discourse by another departed spirit. The spirit’s name at the top of the page startled me a second- Adolf Hitler. I remember hearing my parents tell about him – the nut right-wing politician in Germany who got millions of votes by screaming that the Depression was all the fault of the Jews. Then he shot himself in the head when he couldn’t get elected Prime Minister. My parents started talking about him when we first got a TV in April 1968, shortly before I went to college in New Mexico. There was a report on the news about the pilgrimage on Hitler’s birthday to his grave, which was a big, tall marble monument. All around the monument, shrieking mobs from rival right-wing youth groups were trying to get through police lines to battle each other. The youth wanted to fight each other over which organization was the real heir of Adolf Hitler.

My mother turned the TV off.

“Hey!” my father said, “I want to see the rest of the news!”

“I wish we hadn’t gotten the TV,” my mother said. “It gives me the creeps to see things like that.” Then she turned and stared at me with her large, dark eyes. “Rivka, did you see the hatred in those young people’s faces?” she asked. “If that man under the monument hadn’t killed himself, that hatred would have turned against you and your father and me.”

Tears showed in her eyes. That’s when she and my father told me about Hitler. Now I was reading what William Dudley Pelley claimed that Hitler’s ghost told him.

“I was not only a political leader of men,” the late Hitler told Pelley. “My movement was also a spiritual movement and the spirit is confined to no one land. It flames wherever there are folk of noble race. Someday the spirit of my cause will bloom in the great Rocky Mountains of your country and grow into a great spiritual civilization which will replace the materialism that has cursed our century.”

There were a good deal more of the same sort of messages from Hitler in the volume with the gilt swastika carved on it. The other two volumes, which had been printed earlier, were accounts of experiences of the spirit world with less famous ghosts. I found myself breathing deeply. Hitler stayed on my mind and I could barely taste the bean tacos we had when Aries John showed up for lunch.

“Did you ever hear of a man named Adolf Hitler?’ I asked John.

“No,” he said, “can’t say as I have.”

“Well, “ I said, “Hitler’s in one of the volumes you have by someone named William Dudley Pelley.”

“Oh yeah, Pelley,” Aries John said nodding. “I got them three books by Pelley from this old man I took care of.. It was last fall in this little village in a valley on the west slope of the Rockies – beautiful place, too,” Aries John smiled showing that about half his teeth were gone.

“Cliffs all around there,” he went on, “sharp and steep like a knife cut through the granite, snow on the top peaks all year and the whole village under the aspen trees with silver leaves shivering every time there’s the slightest breeze. Oh man, it was a beautiful place.”

“What about the old man?” I asked.

“He was real, real sickly.” John said. “He had wanted to set up a spiritual community there in the mountains. He had some younger folks there around him, his followers, but they had to go away to Denver and places to get jobs – wasn’t nothing for them in that valley. They sent me money to take care of the old man. I stayed there with him, hunted deer so we both ate venison. I hauled in firewood from the slopes where there was juniper. I called the old man Dad. He told me he had been a follower of this guy Pelley in an organization called the Silver Shirts. He had a photo of hisself and Pelley in their Silver Shirt uniforms. Then Pelley went to prison for fraud. Old Dad said it was a big frame up. Anyways Dad said, “I know I’m gonna die, John. You could be the one who sets up the great spiritual movement. These mountains where we are will be the center of the movement. When I’m gone, I want you to have my books by Pelley.’ That’s what he told me. I stayed with him all through the winter and the spring. Then I come here to be wi