Sister, Shhh . . .

Elizabeth Ma.s.sie.

Charity did not look back. She did not slow down. Her thin white sneakers, meant for sandy pathways and wooden floors, were savaged on the rock-strewn, hard-packed earth. Her yellow dress caught at her legs and threatened to throw her on to her face.

The heat of the desert was cooling quickly, the sun reduced to an orange smear atop the mountains to the west. The sky was starless and the colour of water in a deep well. Charity did her best to keep pace with her sister-wife, who was several yards ahead, but Fawn was older by a year and taller by nearly a foot.

Though she could not hear anything but her own footfalls and raspy, desperate breaths, she was sure the Prophet had roused a posse and they were thundering along behind in the darkness, truck tyres biting the ground, dogs and correction rods at the ready.

Heavenly Father, help me! G.o.d, please do not curse me!

"Fawn!"

Fawn did not look back. She did not answer.

The Prophet and his men would catch them and take them to task, dragging them by their hair to show others what happened to backsliders, claiming any punishments they received at the hands of the elders were mild compared to their punishments in h.e.l.l were they to escape to live among the Outsiders.

Charity's foot caught a stone and she fell, wailing, and came up with her mouth and hands embedded with grit. She scrambled up a cactus-covered slope and skidded down the other side. The small Bible she'd pocketed before running thumped her hip, reminding her it was there, reminding her of the vows she was breaking, the chance she was taking, and the hope she might be protected anyway. Up ahead, Fawn's pink dress flapped like the wings of a terrified bird.

It was forbidden for girls to leave Gloryville. Females were to remain at home in the protection of G.o.d and the Fellowship. They were not to travel, nor even to speculate as to what lay beyond the borders of their holy, isolated town. They were to be submissive daughters and brides and mothers. They were to do as they were told, to surrender their bodies and souls to the men in their lives their shepherds who had spiritual and bodily charge over them.

"Fawn!"

Fawn called back, "Come on!"

An engine revved far behind in the blackness. They were coming. Charity glanced over her shoulder and saw nothing but the outlines of boulders and brambles and the quarter moon, hovering like a cat's eye in the near-black sky.

The engine sound faded, disappeared. Maybe it was thunder, Charity thought. A storm coming in over the desert.

Baring her teeth, she pushed on. Her heart hammered, her lungs drew in and out like bellows against a fire.

Then Fawn slowed. She bent over, clutching her knees, wheezing, spitting blood. Charity reached her and grabbed her arm.

"Are you all right?"

Fawn nodded.

"No, really!"

"I bit my tongue."

"Oh!"

Fawn glanced up; her eyes were creased at the edges, terrified, flashing white in the faint moonlight. But she nodded again. "I'm all right."

"We should rest. Somewhere. We can hide."

"They'll catch us, certainly. But Flinton isn't too far, I don't think. Just a mile, maybe."

Mile? I can't run another mile!

"Can you run with me? Can you be free with me?"

Can I, G.o.d? Will You hate me for leaving Gloryville? Will You punish me forever?

Charity whispered, "Yes." Fawn took her hand and they ran, into the blackness, zigzagging across the Arizona desert, heading for Flinton. Heading for freedom.

Flinton had a reputation for sin. Whoring. Gambling. Murders. Loud music, televisions, and a movie theatre that showed films glorifying violence and s.e.x. People dressed in clothes that revealed shoulders, midriffs, and bare thighs. Children running without supervision. Women out of their homes unescorted, drinking with each other and with men into the wee hours of the nights. Charity had heard all these things in pa.s.sing, whispered stories that skittered through the sanctified compound of Gloryville like th.o.r.n.y tumbleweeds on a foul breeze.

The men of Gloryville went to Flinton to trade, sell, and buy. It was the closest Outsider town. It had stores and banks. And so they went. But they always stamped their boots clean of Flinton's foul dirt before they re-entered their own town.

And though Charity had dreamed of escape as she lay trembling on her cot at night, she could not reconcile her longing with the fact that the only place to run to would be Flinton.

It was Fawn who first spoke the dangerous words. She had sneaked to Charity's bedside one morning before the rest of the household was awake, kneeled down and whispered, "I'm going to run away, dearest. Come with me."

Charity had pulled her pillow over her head, pretending to be asleep. Fawn had poked her in the shoulder and whispered again, "Friday. After prayer meeting. We can pretend to go looking for Pips."

Charity whispered into the pillow, "Why would we look for Pips? He's a faithful dog. He would never leave Rufus."

"We can hide him, tie him up so he looks to be missing. That will give us the time we need before anyone wonders where we are."

Charity was silent, though her heart pounded so hard the cot shook beneath her.

"All right? Charity? Please? I don't want to go alone. We'll be safer together. And I don't want to leave you behind. You're the only person who loves me."

Charity felt herself nod. Fawn slipped away, back to her room, a whisper of slippers on bare floor. And Charity slept not at all until dawn, trying to breathe, staring at the wall, thinking of the dangers in Flinton, seeing images of Satan and the Prophet glaring at her, one with eyes of blazing orange, the other with eyes of ice-cold blue, wrangling over her soul.

But she wanted to leave as much as she wanted to live. And life in Gloryville had become unbearable.

Over the days that followed, Charity fought hard to keep from letting the rest of the family notice her nervousness. She was certain the fear of the impending escape was obvious, etched on her cheeks and mouth like the scars cut into Fawn's shoulders from the beating Rufus gave her when she resisted him on their wedding night. Yet, as the fourth and youngest wife of Elder Rufus Via, Charity was overlooked most of the time, her ranking in the expansive family just a little higher than that of Pips.

Charity had married Rufus, a smelly fifty-eight-year-old goat farmer, brother to the Prophet though a lesser church elder himself, thirteen months before on her fourteenth birthday. She had looked forward to the marriage and the a.s.surance of a place in the highest realm of heaven for obeying the expectations of her s.e.x. She thought she knew what would be expected of her, having grown up in a family with three sister-wives and nineteen children. But her own father, a carpenter who worked hard and said little, was quite different from Rufus Via, who didn't work very hard and said quite a bit. Rufus stomped and yelled, then would disappear for several days, expecting not only the housework to be done but all the farm work, as well. If it wasn't done, and done to his liking, there was h.e.l.l to pay.

The first two sister-wives, Prudence and Faith, were humble women, busy with their babies, and with little time to help Charity adjust. They a.s.signed the youngest sister-wife the most tedious ch.o.r.es, as was to be expected. Laundry. Scrubbing the floors. Mucking goat pens. Gathering eggs. Cleaning the dishes. Changing the diapers of their growing brood eleven and counting, as all of the other sister-wives, including Fawn now, were expecting. Fawn, however, had taken Charity under her wing. The two girls had known each other before the marriages, had lived in adjacent homes. They'd played together when there was time to play. They'd sat near each other during the long church services that all Gloryville residents were required to attend in the windowless chapel in the centre of town. Occasionally they dared pa.s.s notes back and forth, snickering silently over which boys were cute or which woman had a hole in her stocking or a bug in her hair.

So when Charity wed Rufus, Fawn was quick to give her advice on how best to submit to him when he wanted her and how best to stay out of his way when he didn't.

"He wants to make you scream when he takes you," she said. "If you are silent, he thinks you aren't paying attention. If you lie still, he thinks you are in contempt of him. It's best to writhe and scream and call out to G.o.d. He may spank you with a belt, or make you do things with your mouth. Oh, Charity, just say yes to it all. Then he will be done with his business more quickly and will leave you alone."

And so Charity screamed. She writhed. She prayed she would never have his child. She prayed he would die, then she prayed she would die. Then she prayed G.o.d would forgive her for her prayers. She didn't really want to die. She wanted to be gone, gone far from the man and his brutal hands and body.

She peeled carrots and potatoes. She washed. She minded the others' babies. She bent over in the shed when Rufus found her there. She bore his beatings when he came to her and found she was in the midst of her unclean days. She endured his curses when she did not conceive.

And she cried on her cot in the pantry behind the kitchen. How could she stand this for another sixty years? If this was G.o.d's plan, then G.o.d was as cold and cruel as Rufus. Maybe Satan would be kinder. He certainly couldn't be much worse.

According to the whispered rumours, Satan lived in Flinton. The road to Flinton was likely the road to h.e.l.l.

And it was also the road to freedom.

They reached the outskirts of Flinton and stumbled along the shoulder of the road, at a walk now, panting, sweating. Charity's hair had long since fallen free from its pins and lay like a tangled brown shawl about her shoulders. Each time a vehicle whizzed past, they shuddered and prayed it was not the Prophet. Each set of receding tail lights looked like glowing devil's eyes, daring them to follow. Along the roadside were flat-roofed houses, tangled chain-link fences behind which dogs snarled and howled. They pa.s.sed an abandoned building with rusted gas pumps, and trailers set like litter carelessly tossed, their porch lights winking. Inside, there was loud and rowdy laughter. Charity could not help but weep. Her feet were hot with blood, her face hot with dread. There was nothing left in her body but the agony of the escape, nothing left in her heart but the fear of what lay ahead.

"Sister, shhh," said Fawn. She leaned close and nuzzled Charity's cheek. "It will be all right. We just get into town, find a telephone, and call the authorities. We tell them we are runaways from Gloryville and that we need help."

"How do you know they'll help us? How do you know they won't just send us back to Rufus?"

"I've heard tell that laws of the Outsiders forbid men to marry girls our age. They believe it's criminal for men to beat their wives."

"Whose laws? Not G.o.d's laws, surely! G.o.d's laws are above the laws of man!"

"No, no! G.o.d doesn't want us beaten . . ."

"But if we disobey we should be beaten!"

"You're tired, Charity. Shhh, now. You want to be away as I want to. Trust me. We'll be all right. I have some coins in my pocket that I took from Rufus's dresser. We just need to find a phone, we just need to . . ."

And in that moment, there was a rumbling on the road, a roaring from behind, a dark growl bearing down on them, and Charity turned just in time to see a truck without its headlights on aiming for them, swelling in the darkness like an enraged monster. She felt the heat of the machine before it struck her, knocking her up from the shoulder and out into the sand. And then darkness covered darkness and everything flew away.

"Careless, Rufus," said a man's voice. The sound cut through Charity's brain and she flinched. "Knew you took chances but never thought you'd be so careless."

Even with her face pressed into a mattress, she knew the men who were with her. Her husband. The Prophet. She could feel the sticky crust of the sheet, could smell stale s.e.x in the fabric. In a room next door, there was m.u.f.fled music, talking, laughter.

Fawn, where are you?!

"d.a.m.n women," said Rufus. He huffed and hawked, and it sounded like he spat on the floor. "What gets into them, you know? What makes them think they can run?"

There was a moment of silence. The Prophet was likely pondering the question. Then he said, "Satan grabs a few of them and off they go. Think something's better out here."

"Out here? In Flinton? Hah!"

"Seems so."

"b.i.t.c.hes."

"I won't have those words, Rufus. You're an elder and ..."

"I am who I am and have always been that. Don't get high and mighty with me, Walter. I know you and I've heard your babblings ever since I was born."

"The past is past, brother. I've put up with your shenanigans for much too long. Coming to Flinton once a month for your floozies and your drink! Staying away for days, leaving your wives and children while you do G.o.d knows what with unholy women! I should have corrected you earlier, should have not allowed you to take four wives, should have . . ."

"Should have what, Walter? Used the law of placing against me? Or hauled me to the front of the body during worship to dress me down? Or would you have my blood atonement? Oh, I have shenanigans, all right. I come to Flinton for my fun, but I keep it away from Gloryville. I never sully our holy town. I never sully your holy name."

"Rufus! Enough."

"Enough? For who? For me? For you? Let me tell you, Prophet, should you share what I do on my own time with the flock, I will tell them of your sins. I will tell them of the boys you have sent away from Gloryville when they reached the age. You claimed they were listening to rock music, or were caught smoking. Off they went, banished! And I have no problem with that. We've not enough girls as it is for all the men to marry their required three. Yet what no one knows but you, me, and G.o.d is that you had your way with all the boys before you set them adrift. You blessed them with your l.u.s.t, rammed them into the wall of your private prayer closet, left them limping, b.l.o.o.d.y, and torn."

"Rufus!"

"I tell the truth, brother. Shall I share that truth with the body of believers? Shall I tell the congregation?"

There was a sharp slapping sound and a grunt. Then a tussle and thud. Charity tried to turn over but her body screamed with the attempt.

"Hold! I think she's awake."

"You're no prophet, Prophet! You're as full of sin as the rest of the world!"

"I said hold! Stop it! She's awake, Rufus. Take care now."

"More care than your driving?"

"Not another word from you."

The bed sank and squealed. A beefy hand took hold of Charity's chin, and turned it around. "Open your eyes!" It was Rufus. Charity tried to look but could not find the energy. Though the mattress was no longer sinking, she felt herself continuing on without it, spinning, floating downward towards a soft sound of crying. A faint sound of scratching ...

"I said, open your eyes! You're going to listen to me, and listen well. You got yourself in trouble, girl. You're hurt and we've got a doctor coming to look at you. He'll . . . I said, open your eyes. Now!" A flattened palm slammed against her cheek, though she only knew it from the sound. There was no feeling of pain. Something warm spread out around the base of her gown. She thought she had wet herself, but couldn't be sure and didn't really care because ...

"d.a.m.n it, Walter, help me get her to sit up."

. . . because her body was fading away, draining like water down into hot sand, down towards the piteous crying, the scratching- "Listen to me!"

. . . and all was going soft, softer ...

"Sit up!"

. . . until all was calm.

All was dark.

She opened her eyes to the dark, musty confines of a closet. A slice of light pooled through the crack beneath the door. Scents of pine shavings, cigarette b.u.t.ts, and body odour stung her nose. She worked her shoulders, her neck, stretching against a stiffness that didn't want to be loosened.

"Uh," she grunted, and then snapped her jaws shut. If they knew she was awake again, they would . . .

What? What will they do?

She tipped her head, listening through the door.

Are they still here? Did they tell the doctor not to come? Did they leave me to suffer alone?

There was no sound beyond the closet door.

Slowly she looked around. Against the back wall was a folded ironing board with the words, "Property of West End Motel, Flinton, Arizona" stencilled into the grimy fabric. A handful of wire hangers dangled from the rod above. Dead flies lay on the floor beside the dried husk of a scorpion. Little spatters of sand sparkled dimly in the carpeting.

She waited.

She closed her eyes.