Daredevils Read Free

does not know. Her father does not go to his brother’s ranch, to care for the livestock they raise for the United Order. They do not go to church. Her father comes to put a lock on her bedroom door, a toolbox in his left hand and the lock in the other. He doesn’t look at her, canting his head away as if from light of punishing brightness. He mutters and fumbles. Her mother comes in with toast and eggs on a tray, red eyed and pale in her housecoat. Loretta wonders if they have forgotten it is Fast Sunday.
    She should have gone with Bradshaw. Should she have gone with Bradshaw? Which unknown path should she choose, and how should she choose it? All she knows is that while she waited for an answer, the paths closed down. Bradshaw won’t even know why she will stop showing up.
    Her father finishes and leaves. Then she hears him outside her bedroom window, doing something to the slider. Hours pass. Loretta, still clothed in her jeans and work blouse, lies on the bed. Everything has a thickened feel, as if all of life will be reduced now to this: a room, some food, and time. She falls asleep hard, and when she awakens to the clicking of the lock on her door, she is groggy and disoriented. She sits up to see her mother entering.
    As she sits on the bed, Loretta notes that she is still in her housecoat, the pilled flannel plaid. Loretta doesn’t speak. She has not said one word to them since climbing back in that window. Shewonders if she will ever say another word to them. Her mother’s face looks older than Loretta has ever seen it, collapsing like fruit that’s turned. She speaks tentatively, tearfully.
    â€œYour father has made a decision,” she says.
    The words come at Loretta as if through water.
    â€œWhat you’ve done—” Her mother stops. “He feels—”
    She smooths her trembling hands outward along her legs, as though brushing crumbs to the floor.
    â€œWe feel that you are in peril. That your soul is in peril.”
    Neither she nor her mother has anything to do with this. Neither has any part in it but to obey. Her father has agreed to place her with Brother Harder, with Dean Harder, the man who runs Zion’s Harvest, the food supply, a righteous man, a faithful member of the Order, who is ready to add to his heavenly family.
    â€œPlace me?” Loretta asks.
    â€œYou know,” her mother says, so quietly that Loretta can barely hear her over the sound of a sprinkler fanning the lawn outside. “You’veknown.”

September 8, 1974
T WIN F ALLS, I DAHO
    A little mischief is good for the soul,” Grandpa tells Jason, leveling a thick, crooked finger toward the road ahead, as if that were mischief right there, fat and smiling on Highway 10.
    He says, “There’s nothing so wrong with this.”
    The highway plunges as straight as a pipe through the desert and into the horizon. Inside the old Ford pickup, warm air flaps loudly past the open windows, drowning Grandpa’s low growl.
    He says, “Your dad never was much of a listener.” Chuckles. Bits of whirling hay prickle Jason’s ears. It’s Grandpa’s work truck—floor mats worn through, seats split and stained. A mess of empty parts boxes, hand tools, and baling twine is pressed into the cove where the dashboard meets the windshield. He is telling stories, and in the blast of the truck cab, Jason can hear only scraps of them, disconnected pieces.
    Grandpa says, “By the time we got there, that Packard was all but sunk in the canal.”
    He is telling stories about Jason’s father. The time five-year-old Dad was caught shoplifting butterscotch candies. How wildly he fought with his older brother, Dean, when they were teenagers. How he took the family car without permission once and drove it into the canal.
    Jason doesn’t understand this unloading of family lore. It seems significant. Announced. He looks at his grandfather—face and neck