David Ebershoff - The 19th Wife

CONTENTS

for my parents
DAVE and BECKY EBERSHOFF

and for
DAVID BROWNSTEIN

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

SAINT AUGUSTINE

Like all the other arts, the Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men.

The Book of Mormon, translated by JOSEPH SMITH, JR.

THE 19TH WIFE

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

In the one year since I renounced my Mormon faith, and set out to tell the nation the truth about American polygamy, many people have wondered why I ever agreed to become a plural wife. Everyone I meet, whether farmer, miner, railman, professor, cleric, or the long-faced Senator, and most especially the wives of theseeveryone wants to know why I would submit to a marital practice so filled with subjugation and sorrow. When I tell them my father has five wives, and I was raised to believe plural marriage is the will of God, these sincere people often ask, But Mrs. Younghow could you believe such a claim?

Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain.

Now, with the publication of this autobiography, my enemies will no doubt suspect my motives. Having survived attempts on both my life and character, however, I stand unconcerned by their assaults. I have chosen to commit my memories to the page neither for fame, the trough from which I have drunk and would be happy never to return to, nor fortune, although it is true I am without home and have two small boys to care for. Simply, I wish to expose the tragic state of polygamys women, who must live in a bondage not seen in this country since the abolishment of slavery a decade ago; and to reveal the lamentable situation of its children, lonely as they are.

I promise my Dear Reader I shall recount my story truthfully, even when it distresses me to do so. In these pages you will come to know my mother, who by religious duty welcomed four wives into her husbands bed. You will encounter the old woman forced to share her husband with a girl one-fifth her age. And you shall meet the gentleman with so many wives that when one approaches him on the street, he answers, Madame, do I know you?

I can, and will, go on.

Under what circumstances does such outrage thrive? The Territory of Utah, glorious as it may be, spiked by granite peaks and red jasper rocks, cut by echoing canyons and ravines, spread upon a wide basin of gamma grass and wandering streams, this land of blowing snow and sand, of iron, copper, and the great salten seaUtah, whose scarlet-golden beauty marks the best of Gods handiworkthe Territory of Utah stands defiant as a Theocracy within the borders of our beloved Democracy, imperium in imperio.

I write not for sensation, but for Truth. I leave judgment to the hearts of my good Readers everywhere. I am but one, yet to this day countless others lead lives even more destitute and enslaved than mine ever was. Perhaps my story is the exception because I escaped, at great risk, polygamys conjugal chains; and that my husband is the Mormon Churchs Prophet and Leader, Brigham Young, and I am his 19th, and final, wife.

Sincerely Yours,
ANN ELIZA YOUNG
Summer 1874

WIFE #19: A DESERT MYSTERY

By Jordan Scott

PROLOGUE

Her Big Boy

According to the St. George Register, on a clear night last June, at some time between eleven and half-past, my momwho isnt anything like thistiptoed down to the basement of the house I grew up in with a Big Boy .44 Magnum in her hands. At the foot of the stairs she knocked on the door to my dads den. From inside he called, Who is it? She answered, Me, BeckyLyn. He saidor mustve saidCome in. What happened next? Nearly everyone in southwest Utah can tell you. She nailed an ace shot and blew his heart clean from his chest. The paper says he was in his computer chair, and from the way the blood splattered the drywall theyre pretty sure the blast spun him three times around.

At the time of his death my dad was online playing Texas hold em and chatting with three people, including someone named DesertMissy. He spent the final seconds of his life in this exchange:

Manofthehouse2004: hang on

DesertMissy: phone?

Manofthehouse2004: no my wife

DesertMissy: which one?

Manofthehouse2004: #19

Sometime latera few seconds? minutes?DesertMissy wrote: u there??

Later she tried again: u there????

Eventually she gave up. They always do.

When my mom pulled the trigger my dad had a full house, three fives and a pair of ducks. He was all in. The paper says although dead, he ended up winning seven grand.

I once heard someone on tv say we die as we lived. That sounds about right. After my dad was shot the blood seeped across his gunsandammo.com t-shirt in a heavy stain. He was sixty-seven, his face pre-cancerously red. Everything about him was thick and worn from a life boiled by the sun. When I was a kid I used to dream he was a cowboy. I would imagine him out in the barn saddling his roan with the white socks, readying himself for a ride of justice. But my dad never rode anywhere for justice. He was a religious con man, a higher-up in a church of lies, the kind of schemer who goes around saying God meant for man to have many women and children and they shall be judged on how they obey. I know people dont really talk like that, but he did and so do a lot of the men where I come from, which islets just sayway the fuck out in the desert. You mightve heard of us. The First Latter-day Saints, but everyone knows us as the Firsts. I should tell you right off we werent Mormons. We were something elsea cult, a cowboy theocracy, a little slice of Saudi America. Weve been called everything. I know all that because I left six years ago. That was the last time I saw my dad. My mom too. I know you know this but just in case: she was wife #19.

His first wife was more than willing to put the rap on my mom. For someone who wasnt supposed to talk to nonbelievers, Sister Rita had no trouble telling the Register everything. I was up in the keeping room with the girls hose, she blabbed to the paper. Thats when I saw her come upstairs. She had one of those facesit looked funny, all squished up and red, like shed seen something. I thought about asking but I didnt, I dont know why. I found him about twenty minutes after that when I went down myself. I shouldve gone down the minute I saw that face of hers, but how was I supposed to know? When I saw him in his chair like that, with his head, you know, just hanging in his chest like that, and all that bloodit was everywhere, I mean all over him, everything so, so