Chapter50 --With these rings
In daylight, Salt Lake City’s most obvious flaws showed.
For a city that boasted of so many angels, it was also
heavily endowed with sin. Taverns and bars, many of the advertising exotic
dancers, lined many of the blocks within sight of the famous tabernacle. Although
signs also said none of these were allowed open until
I later learned that sin barely paid in this city except for
the wealthy tavern owners. Bartenders and go go girls tended to make minimum
wage and had to turn over their tips.
Even in the morning, sunlight brutalized the city, painting
everything with an orange or sandy haze – against reminding me of the sea shore
where my family went when I was young. The harsh light also emphasized just how
flat a city it was, and this tended to give emphasize to the huge steeple of
the tabernacle.
This was so pervasive it seemed like an ever watchful eye
and made us nervous each time we turned in its direction, an intimidating icon
no double designed to help instill inspiration and fear in the general populous.
Louise keep looking back at it and at the wall that surround
its base. No fortress could have better testified to the embattled history of
this faith or shown so powerful its traumatic triumph over its oppressors.
While the bars were closed, the coffee shops were open and
we soon slipped into one whose stained windows looked towards the temple. The
smell of cigarette smoke and cooking grease struck me like a blow. Truck
drivers from cross country rigs filled each booth with their sweat and obscenities,
and many of them looked up at us as we searched for a place to sit,
particularly looking at Louise.
I ordered my coffee to go, but Louise insisted we stay.
“In here?” I asked. “But it stinks in here.”
“I’m tired, Kenny. Please let’s just sit,” she said.
But Louise didn’t look tired; she looked smug, and seemed to
bask in the attention she received as we made our way to a booth and sat.
The coffee steamed in my face, helping to dilute the other
smells, although also making me hot.
Louise looked everywhere, especially at the men who looked
at her.
I tried not to notice yet scalded the top of my mouth trying
to drink my coffee too quickly.
When I choked out the scalding liquid, Louise frowned.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“No, but I’ll get over it,” I said, staring into my cup. “I
think someone might have mixed sulfuric acid in with the coffee grounds.”
Louise didn’t emit the laugh I expected. She stared passed
me. I turned to see a tall cowboy leaning against the wall there with a
telephone wedged between his shoulder and his ear. He stared straight at her
and grinned. He clearly didn’t care about my noticing him
“Let’s get out of here,” I told Louise, rising from the
table to take her hand.
She didn’t move, still staring passed me at the cowboy.
“Not now, Kenny,” she said.
I sat down hard and glanced again as the cowboy, whose grin
broadened as he hung up the phone – he apparently guessing something about what
had gone on and decided to come to investigate.
“I’m not up for company,” I told Louise.
“Let’s just see what he wants,” Louise said, watching his
long strikes.
“I know what he wants. The question is how do I stop him
from getting it?”
The cowboy halted at the end of our table.
“Well, sweetie. Don’t you look pretty this morning,” he
said, in a drawl I knew couldn’t be completely real. “Ain’t it a little early
for you to be working this place – after all this is Mormon County, and the
Mormons don’t like the girls working this beat this early.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, rising to
face the larger man.
The big man’s hand settled on my shoulder and pushed me
firmly back into my seat.
“Don’t you go getting riled, son,” he said. “This has
nothing to do with you. It’s the little lady I’m talking to.”
“The little lady you’re talking to happens to be with me,” I
said, rising again. “So why don’t you just get lost?”
The cowboy’s grin faded. For the first time, his dark eyes
took on a mean look.
“I don’t care who’s she’s with, I’m talking to her anyway,”
he said. “Unless, you want real trouble with me, you’d better keep quiet until
I’m through.”
“You’re through now,” I said, although I felt far less
confident than I sounded, especially when the cowboy stepped back and took up
what was clearly a fighting stance. Other people nearby moved out of the way.
My s
“You got a couple of choices, son,” the cowboy said. “You
can go hide out in the men’s room until I’m done here. Or you can leave through
the front door. Or we can settle the whole thing here and now and see who gets
to walk out with the little lady and who gets mopped up off the floor.”
I didn’t have time to answer. Another, deeper voice sounded
from behind the counter, as an older man about my size appeared, his voice
calling the name “Saul” drawing the cowboy’s attention off of me.
“What the devil are you up to anyway?” the older man
growled. “You’re here to work, not cause trouble.”
“I was just having a little fun, Mr. Wheatson.,” the cowbody
said, his heavy tones lost in the clatter of the diner.
“Have fun on your own time. I got a delivery in back for you
to handle, and dishes for you to wash that are piling up in the kitchen sink.
Now get there or you won’t have a job here any more.”
The cowboy glanced once at me meanly, and then once at
Louise with regret, finally slinking off the way a beaten dog might have.
“You folks all right?” Mr. Wheatson asked us.
“Right now we are,” I said. “Although I can’t say what might
have happened if you hadn’t come up front like you did.”
“Saul’s a real gumball. He’s got all of his brains in his
pants. One day he’s going to tangle with the wrong honcho and get his brains
cut off. Sorry for the trouble. Eat up. Breakfast is on me.”
Then Wheatson vanished back the way he’d come and the diner
settled back into it’s previous quiet madness, with only a few of the patrons
glancing our way.
“Let’s get out of here,” I told Louise, pulling her up
firmly by the arm.
The diner murmured at our retreat, the brief conflict giving
them subject for conversation that might last a day or a week.
Outside, I lit up a cigarette and sucked the smoke deeply
into my lungs.
My hands shook. Louise noticed. We moved on, wandering up
and down the flat and dusty streets.
Fear surged inside of me, as if everything I had risked so
much for was being yanked away from me even before I fully grasped what I had.
We wandered on, trying to make sense of one of the oddest
cities in
The buildings in this part of town were squat, one and two story
structures with some older, slightly taller buildings to the north. But
everything seemed dwarfed by the spires of the huge temple, an over arching
power that seemed to silently watch all that went on around it.
“Let’s get inside somewhere,” I said. “I don’t feel
comfortable out there.”
Years later, passing through this city again on our way
east, we would get a better idea of why we needed to fear this place. Our kind
of people had no position in this society, and if we did not conform, we would
be arrested. Years later, we would get dropped off along the highway and nearly
arrested for loitering and told that if we intended to leave down, we had
better buy a bus ticket or walk. If we wanted to hitch hike, we would spend
several weeks in jail.
At this moment, walking the streets with Louise I simply
felt vulnerable, as if the power here had not yet focused on me as potential
target, but was looking and if we did not get out of sight, would find us.
Louise eyed me, and asked me what I was afraid of.
“Are you worried about your uncles finding you here, too?”
she asked.
“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m worried about standing out in
the crowd. We’re a man and woman traveling together.”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
“Any place else, it wouldn’t seem so obvious. But for some
reason this place makes me feel bad about it.”
“We could always tell people we’re married if they ask.”
“And how would we prove that? We don’t even have rings.”
“Not all married couples have rings.”
“Men don’t. Women do. And since we want to stand out as
little as possible, maybe we should get some rings.”
“Where would we get rings now?”
“I saw several places a couple of blocks back.”
She shrugged. I took her arm and led her back the way we had
come, and within a few minutes, we gazed into the confusing world of ring
displays posted in the windows of a store advertising to purchase gold (along
with a host of other valuable items such as pocket watches, old coins and
valuable family heirlooms.).
“These rings look good,” Louise said, standing in front of
the window display like a child staring at toys in a toy store, although these
toys cost significantly more.
These glittered in the harsh sunlight with the rich
significance history had given to the metal from which they were made.
All through human history people had struggled for
possession of this rare commodity, killing and ruining nations in its pursuit.
Hunger for it possessed some people to the point of madness,
and I saw that hunger in Louise’s eyes as she stared through the dusty glass –
the gold’s glitter glinting on her face putting her into some hypnotic trance.
I seen the look too often among members of my family, not
over gold, but over green, and I felt a deep tug of guilt knowing that some of
that look must have shown on my face that night when I made off with some of
their cash.
But I didn’t possess that look now. My reflection in the
glass seemed sad and impatient, as if I had finally come to realize how little
any of it mattered.
“Let’s go in,” Louise pleaded.
I studied her.
Her blonde hair had turned golden with the stream of direct
sunlight. She seemed to be turning into gold, and I felt helpless to halt the
process that would eventually turn her rigid and inhuman.
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