Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [16]
As the years went along, the Brown children were left to raise themselves much of the time. In addition to working his mother’s farm, Will had taken on a job as the janitor at the local school, and he also became the Grandview Hills Watermaster, in charge of the water flow for the area’s irrigation canals. Plus, he did blacksmith work whenever there was a call for it. Meantime, Melissa became more and more flustered by having so many children to look after. In addition, after the twins’ birth, Melissa’s hearing began to fade. In short, there was too much family, too many obligations, and too little time. Will and Melissa had given birth to so many children because, as Mormons, they were obliged to. However, they weren’t prepared to give the children a lot of individual time. They made it understood: The children had to work hard and help take care of each other. And if anybody strayed too far from an acceptable range of behavior, if anybody became too defiant or rebellious or violated the values of their community or church, they would be thrown out. That was how it had to be.
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I USED TO FIND IT ENCHANTING that my mother had grown up on a farm. Apparently my mother did not feel the same. “I hated working on the farm, getting my hands dirty,” she said. “I had pretty hands. I couldn’t see mining them, picking cucumbers and bush beans, just to keep mean old Grandma Brown happy. She wouldn’t even say thank you.” As much as she could, my mother skipped out on the farm jobs, under one ruse or another. She had a hiding place on Grandma Brown’s farm, where she had found a small quicksand pit. She would spend hours there, sinking twigs and stones, and sometimes her sisters’ dolls. The pit seemed to be bottomless.
Other times, Bessie would take off across Jordan Lane, down the hill into the valley, where some Gypsies kept a seasonal encampment. Nobody would follow her down there. “The Gypsies steal children,” her mother warned her. “But don’t worry: They only steal beautiful children.” Most of the time, though, Bessie tried to stick close to her father, playing around him, watching him as he would hammer horseshoes on his anvil and then nail the shoes to the animal’s hooves. She liked to watch his big hands and his steady concentration as he worked. Bessie decided that she must be Will Brown’s favorite daughter and that he would give her anything she wanted. One day she tested this belief. The first thing Bessie saw every morning, as she looked out the Browns’ front door, was the line of the Wasatch Mountains—a long, towering ridge that looked like it had been lifted from the earth to protect God’s people from the land outside. One mountain in particular stood out from the rest. This was the mountain where Brigham Young University eventually built a large Y, made of bright white stones; on nights when the school’s football team was victorious, the players would climb the mountain and plant lighted torches into the stones, making a fiery Y that could be seen throughout the valley. Bessie loved that mountain more than anything else about Utah. She spent hours staring at it, talking to it, giving it her secrets. Truth be told, she probably prayed more ardently to that mountain than she ever did to her people’s God. Finally, she decided that, like her father’s love, the mountain was a prize that belonged solely to her heart.
“Dad,” she said one afternoon, watching her father work at his anvil, “can I have that mountain?