Elders Read online

  McLeod prompted him. “What do you want to know?”

  Passos ignored the hubris in the question. “What I wanted to ask was where the anti-Mormons got the Jesus-as-sexually-active lie. That one was new. I hadn’t heard that one before. What sources did they wrench? What quotes did they twist?”

  “They didn’t wrench or twist anything,” McLeod said. “That’s what the church believes. Brigham Young said it. Others have said it.”

  “That Jesus was sexually active?”

  “That he was married, yes.”

  Elder Passos felt his face go hot and compressed. His companion said, “Uh-oh, the eyebrows.”

  “Where is that written?” Passos said. “Show it to me.”

  “I can if you want me to. You really want me to?”

  “Show me in the scriptures where it says that Jesus was married, that he was sexually active.”

  McLeod leaned away, said, “Calm down, calm down,” which of course had the opposite effect on Elder Passos. He said he wanted McLeod to show him, right now, chapter and verse.

  “Well, look,” McLeod said, “it’s not that simple. It’s not in the scriptures, or it’s not obvious anyway. I could show you—I will, right now—but you have to take off your senior-companion hat, your zone-leader hat, for just a minute. I only brought one piece of contraband from home, and it’s nothing bad, but I need a guarantee all the same. Do I have one?”

  “Just show me what you’ve got,” Passos said.

  “I’ll take that as a yes?”

  “Just show me already.”

  “That’s a yes, then,” McLeod said, and he reached his hand deep into his desk drawer and pulled out a small, black paperback volume called From Adam-ondi-Ahman to Zion’s Camp: A Dictionary of Mormon Arcana. Before Passos could even lay hands on it his companion had launched into an explanation, starting with the title: how Adam-ondi-Ahman was what Joseph Smith called the Garden of Eden, how Zion’s Camp was a ragtag military expedition charged with taking back land the church had lost to—

  “I already knew all that,” Elder Passos said, though he hadn’t known any of it. “Get to the point.”

  McLeod nodded for Passos to bring his chair closer to his desk as he flipped to the index, scanning aloud until he found “Jesus Christ, marriage of.” He turned to the first of several page numbers, then pressed the book flat with his hand so that Passos could check his translation, he said.

  “Just go,” Passos said.

  “ ‘The church does not have an official position on the question of Jesus’s marriage,’ ” McLeod began, “ ‘though many early church leaders suggested from the pulpit that the marriage at Cana, as recorded in the New Testament, was Jesus’s own marriage to Mary and Martha. Some leaders further believed that Jesus bore children. To quote Brigham Young: “The Scripture says that He, the Lord, came walking in the Temple, with His train. I do not know who they were, unless His wives and children.” ’ ”

  McLeod broke off. “That’s sourced from the Journal of Discourses, which is a collection of—”

  “I know about the Journal of Discourses, Elder!”

  “Okay, sorry, sorry.” McLeod continued. “ ‘Orson Hyde, one of Young’s fellow apostles, went even further, speaking on the nascent church’s behalf: “We say it was Jesus Christ who was married, to be brought into the relation whereby He could see His seed before He was crucified.” Hyde’s literal reading of Isaiah 53:10 was not uncommon among the early brethren. In July of 1899, in a solemn assembly in the Salt Lake City Temple, Apostle George Q. Cannon proclaimed: “There are those in this audience who are descendants of the Lord’s Twelve Apostles—and, shall I say it?—yes, descendants of the Savior Himself. His seed is represented in the body of these men.” ’ ”

  McLeod looked up from the page and said, “You want me to keep going? There’s more.”

  “Let me see that.” Elder Passos pulled the book closer and read the entry again, understanding most of the words, and all of the operative ones. He turned to the copyright page: the book was published by a press called the Zion Underground. “This isn’t even published by the church. I’ve never heard of this publisher. And the entry says it isn’t even the church’s position.”

  “Not officially,” McLeod said.

  “You’re not even supposed to have this, you know.”

  “Passos,” McLeod said, his voice low with warning.

  “I know, I know. I won’t report this … this garbage—though I probably should.” He held the book out over McLeod’s desk with his thumb and forefinger, as if to show what a reeking thing it was. Then he dropped it. “I don’t know why you read that crap anyway. I guess if you’re not talking filth with Sweeney and Kimball, then you’re reading it, is that right?”

  “Me and Brigham Young,” McLeod said. “Filth peddlers.”

  “I’m serious,” Passos said.

  “I know you are.”

  “Good.”

  For the rest of companionship study the elders ran through the lesson they had designed for Josefina and Leandro for that night. Their discussions now centered around specific gospel topics that the missionaries felt, after prayer and pondering, might suit the couple’s needs. Tonight’s lesson took up obedience and sacrifice, and enduring to the end. The essentials, Passos thought. At one point during the run-through, Elder Passos looked up a supporting passage in the Book of Mormon and readied himself to read it aloud. “The real gospel,” he muttered into the page.

  By the time the elders arrived that night at Josefina’s, Brazil had already beaten Venezuela and most of the attendant postgame revelry had quieted or moved indoors. Josefina came to her door in a white flowing blouse and black pants, both modest, her hair done up in a bun. Her look fell closer to the formality of her Sunday dress than the casualness of her usual attire. Why the change? McLeod wondered—worried. Has she seen me … seeing? Is that the reason for her modesty?

  “Elders,” Josefina said. “You’re early.”

  “Do you need us to come back? We can come back,” McLeod said.

  “No, no. Nonsense, nonsense. No, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.” She led them quickly into the house, where Maurilho and Rômulo, to McLeod’s surprise, sat on the love seat in the entryway/living room. He watched Josefina disappear into the kitchen, noticed Rose at the kitchen counter, facing away from them, her hands fast and furtive. Rose came into the front room a moment later and squeezed down beside her husband.

  “Well, hello,” McLeod finally said to the group, his voice questioning.

  Maurilho and Rômulo and Rose looked up as Josefina re-emerged from the back room carrying what looked like a camping chair. She forced a tight smile. “Please, Elders, please have a seat. Rose and her family were kind enough to accompany our lesson tonight.”

  The three of them smiled for the elders as if they’d been waiting for Josefina’s permission. McLeod and Passos sat down in their usual spots on the couch as Josefina settled into the camping chair. Behind Josefina the bookshelf had filled out—a new volume of the World Book Encyclopedia, A–B, caught McLeod’s eye among the other books, the faded gold lettering on the spine like light off the river—and in front of Josefina the coffee table featured a new centerpiece, a bowl of polished stones. Fanned out around the bowl were the several preview pamphlets that the elders had left after their first lesson, and also Josefina’s well-read copy of the Book of Mormon. Leandro’s copy too, Elder McLeod thought, though the thought felt dutiful.

  Passos looked to the kitchen doorway with expectation on his face.

  “He isn’t here,” Josefina said. “Leandro’s not coming tonight.”

  “Oh,” Passos said.

  McLeod spoke up after a long silence. “We heard people going crazy earlier. Sounds like Brazil won today.”

  “Four to one,” Maurilho said softly. “Final’s on Sunday. Against Argentina.”

  “He’s out celebrating with friends,” Josefina said.

  “At the bar?” Pas
sos said.

  Josefina turned her face aside at the question, her cheeks gathered into a pained, apologetic wince. The look seemed well-worn to McLeod, slipping easily, too easily, into the ruts of her features. He wondered how much occasion Leandro had given Josefina for such a pained expression. And why their gospel hadn’t changed that.

  “Oh,” Passos said.

  “You know what?” McLeod said, after another silence. “You can’t control him, right? You can’t be responsible for him. He has his own agency, his own mind.”

  “Right. Right,” Josefina said, lighting up the word. She straightened in her chair, seemed to take courage. “I was going to say that, Elder. Just that. I prayed about it, and I felt the Lord give me that answer. If Leandro doesn’t want it, I can’t force him, right? If he doesn’t want to quit smoking, if he doesn’t want to quit drinking—”

  “He said he had quit drinking,” Passos said.

  Josefina flushed red. Her eyes watered, brimmed over. “That’s what I mean. That’s what I mean. If he’s going to sit here and lie to you … Oh Elders, I hate it so much when he lies to you. You’re dedicating two years of your lives to God and the least you deserve … the least is honesty. And Elder McLeod, it’s your birthday, and Leandro promised he’d bring the cake. Tonight was going to be a surprise and—” She lost her next words in a choking, almost animal sound, something dredged from the bottom of her chest, a low, pitiful, scraped-out moan. It made McLeod’s own chest hurt, made his own eyes sting. Josefina put her hand to her sternum as if to restart the airflow. The stinging in Elder McLeod’s eyes turned to burning and he rushed to the kitchen. A bowl of nachos sat on the kitchen table. A few balloons bobbed slowly under the low-hung ceiling. He found a stack of napkins on the counter and ran one across his face—hard. He went back into the front room and handed a napkin to Josefina. She took it and dabbed her eyes. She tried to laugh. “You guys must think I’m crazy, huh? The thing is, though, I’m not even sad anymore. We were going to be baptized on Sunday, both of us—that was going to be another surprise. Then late last night he comes home drunk as ever and this morning he leaves for the bar without a word, and all this when I’m … when we’re …” She looked down at what McLeod first thought was her lap, but then her hands formed around her stomach, delicately, and he understood. Tears slid down her cheeks in silence, and Rose reached over from the love seat and laid a hand on her forearm, like she’d known about it beforehand. Josefina smiled at Rose. “You’re not supposed to tell people until you’re sure it’s safe. Not for three months, they say. Another ruined surprise.”

  “It’s safe,” Rose whispered. “It’s safe.”

  McLeod studied Josefina’s stomach, irresistibly, and he couldn’t tell. She was in a flowing blouse, but even still: he felt he should be able to tell, and he couldn’t.

  He was on the verge of saying something. He felt he should say something. He began to form congratulations, but Josefina faced the elders again with sudden, startling purpose. Her face was gleaming, her voice soft yet resolute. “I want to be baptized, Elders. I prayed to the Lord, like you taught me, and He told me what to do. He wants me to join His church as soon as possible. Then maybe Leandro will follow my example, right? Maybe he’ll want to follow me into the waters?” Her eyes sought approval from the elders, confirmation—mostly they sought it from McLeod. Maurilho and Rose and Rômulo studied the floor at the exact same angle, an inert choreography. McLeod felt lifeless—his face felt lifeless—empty of movement, empty of all expression. Josefina’s lips flattened into a determined line. “Anyway, I prayed about it. The Lord told me what to do. I’m going to be baptized this Sunday.”

  Passos stirred in his seat. “Listen, Josefina …” He paused. “I know you’re trying to—”

  “I remember what you said. You prefer to wait until the spouse is ready. But I prayed about it, Elder. The Lord told me.”

  Passos opened his mouth to speak again, then stopped.

  “Maybe what my companion is trying to say,” McLeod came in, “is that there’s some paperwork we’ll need to put in process. There’s a baptismal interview, a few other things, and it might take longer than a few days.”

  “As soon as possible then,” Josefina said. “As soon as possible.”

  Early the next morning, in bed. The red numbers on McLeod’s bedside clock resolving unsteadily into 5:58, and in the time it took to blink, 5:59. More than half an hour before he needed to be up. He felt an unfamiliar heaviness in his body—the leaden feeling not of too little sleep but of too much, though he knew he hadn’t rested well. He remembered rousing hours earlier, around one o’clock, and then again at three thirty. Turning over each time, squinting, trying to make the red numbers come clear of their blur. He blinked again now, wiped the sleep from his eyes, and the numbers resolved for good: 6:00.

  The rest of the world came clear on its own time, and no amount of squinting on McLeod’s part could preempt it, or delay it, or change it at all, really. Josefina believed; Leandro simply did not. Perhaps in some offset time and space it had always been this way. Perhaps the ranks of believers and doubters had already been determined, split along an eternal binary. The heart swells with belief, like a child inside you—or it doesn’t. The ground is fertile, or it isn’t.

  McLeod’s eyes had adjusted to the light in the room—blue-green, shading clearer—and now they moved from the pale rectangle of light in the middle of the floor to the foot of Passos’s bed. Only then did he see that the bed was empty, the faint-glowing sheets cast loosely over the mattress.

  McLeod padded out into the entryway/living room, shielding his eyes from the bare bulb overhead. Through his squinting he thought he saw—then he knew he did, rubbing his eyes again—his senior companion, in full missionary dress, sitting at his, McLeod’s, desk. Elder Passos half turned at the sound of his approach. McLeod noticed his book, A Dictionary of Mormon Arcana, balancing facedown on the desk like a lean-to, and beside it, an open book of scripture.

  “What’s going on?” McLeod said.

  Passos pulled the chair from his own desk over to where he sat. “I want to show you something, Elder. Have a seat.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Sit down and I’ll show you.”

  McLeod went to the bathroom and came back and stood behind the chair, his hands gripping the back of it like a high railing.

  “Will you please sit down?” Passos said.

  “If I do, are you going to tell me how you possibly thought going through my private things was okay?” He pulled the chair away from Passos and dropped down into the seat.

  “Elder, I have been pondering,” Passos said. McLeod noticed the cadence in his voice already. “I have been reasoning with the Lord.”

  “And how was rea-son-ing with the Lord?” McLeod said.

  Passos’s eyebrows did their familiar knitting—the dark V, the face’s instinctual flinch. After a moment the hard line softened, relaxed, and Passos said, “Don’t you see, Elder? That right there is part of the problem.”

  Elder Passos reached for the slim paperback and flipped it over and flattened the pages against the desk. He pointed to an entry that said “Jesus Christ as polygamist, early Mormon speculations about.”

  “Let me guess,” McLeod said. “You’ve come around to the idea.”

  The hand pointing to the page made a fist, suddenly, and pounded the book against the desk. McLeod flinched at the crack of the volume’s binding on the wood. “Don’t you see, Elder McLeod? This sarcasm, and this—” He waved the book in the air, nailed it to the desk again. “This is part of the problem!”

  Elder McLeod met his senior companion’s stare, dead-on, for a long, still moment, silent but for the sounds of their quickened breathing, still but for the tiny flarings of their nostrils. He met the stare long enough to show he wasn’t afraid to meet it. Senior companion, district leader, zone leader, assistant to the president—none of it mattered. All the titles in the world didn’t matter t
o McLeod.

  “Elder McLeod,” Passos said, and now his voice had changed, his eyes too. They beseeched. “I’ve been pondering about last night, pondering and praying about what we can do, what we need to do, to help Leandro. I woke up very early this morning. I arose in the Lord. I arose in His grace and His Spirit, Elder McLeod, and I asked Him what to do, and He told me.”

  Passos turned the open book of scripture to him. “Will you read verse nine, Elder? Aloud?” He preempted the look that McLeod could feel half twisting the corners of his mouth. “Please, companion. Please.”

  McLeod cleared his throat and read quickly. “ ‘My brethren, all you that have assembled yourselves together, you that can hear my words which I shall speak unto you this day; for I have not commanded you to come up hither to trifle with the words which I shall speak, but that you should hearken unto me, and open your eyes that ye may hear, and your hearts that ye may understand, and your minds that the mysteries of God may be unfolded to your view.’ ”

  He looked up from the verse to see Passos’s face trembling with soberness—big, funereal eyes. “Our sin,” he said, “has been to trifle with the words of God. We show up to Josefina and Leandro’s and what do we talk about? Football. Or work. Or how hot it is outside, how tasty the cookies are. We do too much chitchatting, too much joking around.”

  “People like it,” McLeod said. “It’s friendly.”

  Passos pursed his lips. “Elder McLeod, last night we had a birthday party, a ruined birthday party, instead of a missionary lesson. When we found out Leandro wasn’t coming to the discussion, isn’t living the truths we’ve taught him, doesn’t want to be baptized with his wife—the woman he’s about to start a family with, the woman he’s supposed to be with in the eternities—you take it all in stride. It doesn’t even faze you. Either of us! We’re too busy eating chips and cookies—it’d be a shame to let them go to waste, right? Eating and drinking and making merry. That’s all we do lately! We play that stupid church-names game all day, and on P-Days we listen to that filth from your friends. Then we come home and we read this filth!” Passos picked up the slim volume. “How Jesus was married! Jesus was a polygamist! Jesus and all the rest of us will be polygamists in the afterlife!”