Death Train to Boston (9 page)

"We do not spend all that much time in our cabins, which is why they're so small," Sarah said somewhat apologetically. She set the basket carefully on the floor and resettled the pile of cloth in her lap with her hands on both sides, holding it like some sort of precious gift.
"Our cabins are primarily for sleeping. That is, when we sleep alone."

Tabitha chimed in hastily, "There are lovely rooms in the main house for all of us to use during the day, and of course there's the big dining room."

Um-hm,
I thought, /
am beginning to perceive the order of things.

"Who does the cooking?" I inquired, interested in the arrangement. I could actually rather see the point, division of labor, many hands make light work, and all that.

"Verla and Norma take turns. They're teaching Selene, but she's not a very apt pupil," Tabitha replied.

"Too dreamy," Sarah commented.

Her sister nodded. "She forgets things all the time. And she's always in a hurry. Her creamed potatoes and mashed turnips always have lumps."

I reflected that my creamed potatoes and mashed turnips would have lumps too if I were forced into this duty, and feeling like a kindred soul, I leapt to the youngest wife's defense. "Selene is still a child. I'm sure she'll learn."

At the same time the sisters both said the same thing: "Perhaps." Then they looked at each other and laughed. Laughing, they blushed, and I had an impression that would later prove to be accurate: Laughter was not a common occurrence in the Pratt household.

As if to make up for the frivolity and merriment, Sarah straightened both her face and her backbone, and proceeded to show me one by one the articles she had folded on her lap. After she had displayed each one and told me about it, Tabitha—who by now had also sobered up—took each in turn and carefully refolded it, then placed it back in the basket, which now sat on the floor between their chairs. They handled these clothes reverently, as I supposed was befitting since they called them "temple garments." The final two temple garments were not yet completed, and so remained on the sisters' laps while they threaded their needles, adjusted their chairs so as to make maximum use of the light from the window, and set themselves to sewing.

"I don't like to betray my ignorance," I admitted, "but I have never seen, or heard of, a temple garment before. I suppose from the name there is some religious significance?"

"Your instruction has not gone that far yet?" Sarah asked. She cocked her head to one side, in the same motion I'd seen from her sister an hour or so earlier.

"If you mean the instruction Father, I mean Mr. Pratt, has been giving me"—they both nodded, paying rapt attention to my every word without missing a stitch—"so far he has been telling me the extraordinary story of how Joseph Smith was given the Tablets of Gold by the Angel Moroni, and how the tablets were all covered with writing purported to be hieroglyphics. How Mr. Smith could not read them, because the hieroglyphics were not in any known system of language decipherable by any means, including the Rosetta Stone. And so on." I dismissed the rest with a wave of my hand that I hoped was not too cavalier.

But Tabitha said, greatly excited, "Did you get to the part yet about Urim and Thummim?"

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Only the previous evening, Melancthon Pratt had told me a story I'd thought preposterous, about how, along with the Tablets of Gold, the Angel Moroni had given Joseph Smith two magical stones called the Urim and the Thummim. Hebrew words, supposedly. And supposedly these stones had enabled Smith to translate the tablets— which after the translation the angel most conveniently took away again, so that the truth of all this could never be either proved or disproved. I wondered what had become of the stones, for Pratt had not said that
the angel took them away too . . . but I certainly was not going to ask him. Nor these two sisters.

Cautiously I replied, "He told me last night about the magical stones."

Not looking at me, concentrating on the symbol she was embroidering with thread that exactly matched the cloth, Sarah muttered a significant remark: "I wonder if it could possibly be that Carrie finds that whole business about Joseph Smith doing his translations with his face in his hat as ridiculous as I do."

Hmm,
I thought. Another observation to file for later.

But Tabitha did not ignore it. "Sarah!" she chided. "It's just as well for you to say such things to me, since I've known you my whole life, you are my big sister, and I'd die for you. But what will Carrie think?"

"I think," I said, smiling, "that a good deal of the Christian Bible seems equally ridiculous to me. A prophet is a prophet, no matter how he arrives at his prophecies, whether that may be on top of a mountain or with his—what was that you said, Sarah?"

She looked at me levelly, with clear, calm eyes. "His face in a hat."

"Mr. Pratt's recounting did not go into that detail," I said.

"Well, I think Carrie has just exactly the right attitude," Tabitha said, nodding her head decisively and taking up her own sewing. "She understands that you just have to take it on faith. And really, Sarah, even if you are my sister and I'd never tell on you, I do think you could have more faith!"

I smiled across at Sarah. "I won't tell on you either."

"If I'd thought you would, I'd have kept my thoughts to myself," Sarah said, returning my smile. I felt like a conspirator, and so decided to return to a safer subject.

"I'd still like to know about these temple garments.
Are they worn in the Temple?" I was getting a very odd mental picture of men and women walking around in rather scanty outfits. Perhaps they performed their worship around a large fire. That would fit with another thing Pratt had told me: that the Mormons of today and the American Indians had common ancestors who had been the brothers Nephi and Lamaan. These brothers fought; Nephi was the "good" one and Lamaan was the "bad" one. In addition to being somewhat unscrupulous, Lamaan was a better fighter, so he won and wiped out the Nephites. The last survivor of the Nephites was Moroni—yes, that very same Moroni who came as an angel to Joseph Smith—whose last act had been to bury the golden tablets on which the good Nephites had recorded their beliefs. Today's Indians were supposed to be descended from the Lamaanites.

Sarah and Tabitha both giggled. Tabitha said, "Yes, temple garments are worn in the Temple. Also for shopping, and for travel—not that we get to do much traveling—for gardening, for . . . hmm, for sleeping—"

"And don't forget bathing," Sarah interrupted. Then they both broke out in polite peals of laughter.

"You mean—" I began, but suddenly I too was laughing, though it was not really quite so funny as all that.

"Yes," Tabitha gasped between peals, "we never take them off. Never!"

"Not even, not even—" Sarah began, but she was laughing too hard to finish.

She didn't have to. I knew what she was going to say, so I said it aloud myself: "For sex."

"Carrieeeee!" Tabitha squealed, beside herself with laughter. Sarah and I were not much better.

At that inopportune moment the door was pushed inward with such force that it hit the wall, and I feared for the safety of the hinges. Then Melancthon Pratt's
glowering face appeared, and I feared for the safety of us three.

I am not much concerned about what people think," Meiling said. "If we need to speak privately, then it makes no difference to me whether we do so in your space or in mine."

That was what Michael had expected her to say, but somehow being alone with Meiling in her train compartment seemed much different from being alone with her in her small house. Different too from being with her in the apartment house where she had lived when she'd first moved from San Francisco to Palo Alto. He was uncomfortable, and supposed the train's compactness had something to do with his discomfort. So he did not venture farther into the little room, nor did he close the door. Instead he stood leaning in the entry, knee and hip holding the door open, and said, "If we hold our discussion in my compartment, you'll have the assurance of knowing you can leave any time you like. Whereas if I stay here and you become uncomfortable, you'll have to ask me to leave. You might be concerned that I would refuse."

Meiling's long, straight hair swayed with the motion of the train. The clackety-clack of the wheels on the track was both soothing and a constant reminder of where they were, what they had to do.

With that perfect seriousness Chinese and Japanese people seem able to achieve, while Europeans can only hope for something approximate, Meiling said, "There will be no reason for me to ask you to leave. You are wasting time. I know there is much you have not yet told me, so come in and sit down, and let us begin."

Michael took a deep breath, stepped forward into the compartment, and allowed the door to close behind him. She had burned a stick of incense; the air had that
clean, spicy fragrance he remembered from her house a couple of days earlier.

"Do sit down," Meiling said. She was smiling slightly. Perhaps his nervousness amused her. That wouldn't be too surprising, considering that he had known her since her infancy: Meiling's father, before he was killed in the Tong Wars, had been Michael's good friend.

"Thank you." Michael sat on the bench seat opposite Meiling. He looked for a moment through the small window, set off by sharply pleated curtains of starched lace. Intrigued, he reached out a finger and touched one of the pleats, as if to see whether or not its sharp edge might cut his fingertip.

"If you took them down and put them on the floor, do you think they would stand up by themselves?" Meiling asked, tipping her head to one side.

"What?"

"The curtains. They are so heavily starched I thought they might stand alone. It was a nonsensical question." Meiling leaned back against the cushion and crossed her legs at the knee. She was wearing a split skirt, and for an instant as she moved, Michael saw a pale flash of skin. "But then I can see that you are not ready to talk about whatever it is we must begin with. And so"—she shrugged—"one bit of nonsense is as good as another to pass the time."

"How did you become so wise?" Michael placed one ankle atop the other knee, unbuttoned his suit coat, and breathed out through his nose, a long breath, in an attempt to relax.

"My grandmother. The things in the trunk."

The question had been rhetorical, yet she'd answered him. "Tell me more about that. No, first tell me"—he gestured with one hand—"how you arrived at the sort of costume you are wearing. It seems to be, well, a sort of compromise."

"Very astute, for a male of the species," said Meiling with a little bow of acknowledgment.

"I'm nothing if not observant, including of women's clothes." His traveling companion wore a long duster coat. Her divided skirt was of silk in a weave that had the heaviness of cotton twill, yet a luxuriousness that cotton could not match; a glow that came perhaps from the depth of color the fabric could absorb—in this case the shade of autumn leaves. Michael knew the silk must feel like heaven to the skin. The duster was loosely fitted and the whole outfit appeared to have been put together more for comfort and ease of movement than for fashion, yet it was so striking that Michael would not have been surprised to see Meiling start a whole new fashion. That is, if she had not been Chinese.

"My clothing is related to my grandmother's teachings," Meiling said, dipping her head in respect as she mentioned her grandmother. "It is of my own design. The skirt is divided, as some women now wear for riding horses astride, which is most sensible. Yet it looks much like the usual kind of skirt when one is not moving about, and so it is, as you said, a compromise. The coat"—she extended her arms in demonstration—"is cut loosely enough that I have freedom of movement throughout my upper body, and at the waist. This is very important, so as not to restrict the movement of
chi."

"And what is
chi?"

"You are not a good pupil, Michael." Meiling wagged her finger, smiling.

"No, wait, I remember.
Chi
is the life force that moves through all living things."

"That is correct. Our friend Fremont Jones is wise to refuse to wear a corset. Likewise—but in a converse manner—when the not-so-honorable ancestors of my people wished to subjugate and to enslave their wives, they bound up their feet. Any kind of tight, restrictive,
binding clothing is not healthy. What may be equally important to our purposes on this journey, I could not defend myself if the necessity should arise, dressed the way American women dress. Yet I should call far too much attention to myself if I were to walk through the train in the silk trousers and tunic I prefer to wear. Does this answer your question?"

"Yes. Thank you." Michael looked out of the window. It was nighttime, their first night out, a clear night by whose bright moonlight he could see the tall black shapes of trees flash by. The train tracks wound their way up onto the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, following a path slashed into primeval forest lands. He said a silent prayer and turned back to Meiling.

"What," he asked, "does your
chi
tell you about our main task?"

"You mean finding Fremont?"

"Yes."

"She is alive," Meiling said, "that is all I can tell you. I feel her energy here, in this dimension of our existence. She has not migrated to another plane."

Michael frowned. "You talk like a Spiritualist." He'd had enough of Spiritualism a few months back, though Fremont had deplored his negative attitude.

"Taoism is a spiritual practice. It is a kind of religion. I was taught as a child to follow the way of the Tao. All that I'm learning from my grandmother's notebooks simply enlarges upon those spiritual principles."

"And the magic?"

Meiling smiled enigmatically. "Perhaps the magic is a joke."

Michael said, "Or perhaps not."

She bowed her head. "Precisely."