Vonn Brecht loaded inside his office-on-wheels to warm up. A four-door purple Chevy Crew Cab long box, Brecht Family Auctions decaled across the tailgate, as well his contact info: (208) 795-YEPP, and website: www.thebrechtfamilywesternauctioneers.biz. Parked in The Driftwood lot, on the west bank of the Snake River Greenbelt, the November drizzle like a million fish surfacing to feed, Vonn looked to the east bank at the bone-white Idaho Falls Temple, where in 1977, he knelt across the altar from his thin nubile wife and agreed to the covenants that came along with her; Shad, his only son, did similarly with his wife thirteen years ago, in November 2003, almost to the day; and soon—as long as Vonn recovered from what Bishop Justin defined as Vonn’s “disgusting use of illicit sexual relations”—Vonn would be allowed inside its golden doors by January. Vonn was addicted to internet porn. So, under Bishop Justin's counsel, he exchanged his smart phone for a dumb one, moved the desktop computer into the living room, and hummed hymns in moments of personal trial.

So far it had been a week and Vonn hadn’t pulled on himself—his father's term. Dad; dead, but still relevant.

And yet, even while staring over the brackish water to that sacred building full of promise and blessing, Vonn felt the urge. He thought to reach under the seat for his secret panic stash but stopped himself. That would all have to wait. Today was not some back-forty old-timer shindig; this was a hotel auction on Black Friday! The masses rejected the box stores and instead arrived here in droves! Hundred fifty folks at least! This was an event! Dad never called one like this. Look at me now, Dad, turning new turf!

Then God sent rain and screwed it all up.

Vonn bowed his head, gripped his hands and weaved his fingers, and silently asked what the heck the rain was all about. Was it for the farmers? Come on—the farmers! They already had everything, growing taters and barley, making french fries and beer, turning the world fatter, stupider, and gassier. But then again, Vonn knew, the farmers gave the biggest tithes.

Vonn said Amen, started the truck, and put hands to two different vents. All morning, he’d been outside erecting an extra long banquet-style enclosed tent, arranging metal chairs in straight rows inside, routing cords from the generator for the external speakers, sound-checking, test-running, slide-clicking. Vonn wasn’t alone in this. His wife set up the registration/payment station, and his two teenage girls—the last of his brood—stocked the concessions trailer.

12:48 PM, according to the dash, his hands still frozen. Lately, he’d been lizard-blooded.

Vonn opened his phone, squinted at the tiny screen, shut it, and tossed it in the passenger seat. He removed a menthol lozenge from the economy-sized bag in the consul, popped it in his mouth, chomped it to bits, swallowed, and cleared his throat.

“mi mI Mi MI Mi mI mi.”

Vonn and his vocal exercises, something for which the six songbirds in the family always teased him. Singing came so naturally to the Brecht women. Not for Vonn and Shad, no way. Daddy’s boy, dyed in the wool through and through, just like Vonn had been with Dad. Shad sidled up to Vonn and practiced practiced practiced. The gospel, auctioneering, melody, everything: it was all in the blood.

Vonn learned basic technique at Idaho State in Pocatello, an hour commute south. His Associate’s Degree was in Business but he took elective music and performance classes too. Vonn still felt he was talented enough to sing in a madrigal choir or land a bit part in the annually produced Fiddler on the Roof, but he never had time to audition let alone perform. Not while working for Dad every weekend hosting auctions from Weiser to Laramie for farm retirements, bankruptcy liquidations, estate sales; and modernizing the business from typewriters and shoebox-file-storage to one single yellowed computer, now out in the shed, at nights after class. Vonn was blessed to work alongside his wife, evenly yoked, and the kids had earned enough money working concessions to pay for missions, weddings, degrees, kids. The biz blessed them.

Vonn stretched his mouth into an O and held it five count. He folded his tongue and pushed it back towards his uvula. From the Bag Balm tin, he dabbed ointment onto his finger and applied it evenly across his top front teeth, massaging the remnant slick into his lips.

“PACK my box with five dozen liquor jugs. Pack MY BOX with five dozen liquor jugs. Pack my box with FIVE DOZEN LIQUOR JUGS.”

Vonn stopped attending the Poplar Ward three years ago, in 2011, once Shad and Jenn’s divorce finalized and they changed their statuses on Facebook. Vonn deactivated his account. He’d admitted to Bishop that’s when he really toppled head-first into the porno abyss. He cried a lot, triggered by decks of cards, denim quilts, and any chocolate morsel. When Shad was on his mission, Jenn came out to the house almost every weekend and brought a desert from town to share—molten lava cake, gigantic brownies, caramel cheesecake—and they’d read Shad’s letters, the updated mission photo album passed carefully lap-to-lap.

Sure, there were no kids to show after eight years of marriage, but then, maybe kids would have been better. A remainder of Shad, and a line to stay connected to Jenn.

During Shad’s funeral service, while sitting on the stand waiting for his turn to speak over Shad’s white-pine coffin, Vonn realized he felt comfortable in front of the congregation, slightly raised above them, able to see who was crying or nodding off or playing on the phone. Everyone was a thumbnail. He felt comfortable on this side of strangers. During the intermediary hymn, Vonn’s eyes met Jenn’s. She sat with her new husband, a Tongan from Ogden, not able to put both hands around his massive bicep. Her eyes: ten-below blue. Not one tear. What did that mean? He planned to ask her after the service, but when he asked his wife where Jenn was, she reported flatly that the happy couple was southbound to Utahr, headed for home.

“The quick brown fox JUMPS over the lazy dog.”

Vonn recited this five more times, tweaking it slightly, regulating his breath and sound. His right hand, preemptive as a border collie, snuck into action: with both index and middle finger extended and in cadence with his recitations, Vonn shot out the rear-view mirror, the hat-can, singular drops of rain.

After the funeral, Vonn went out for the ward choir, which was not talented but dedicated, and also got to sit on the stand behind the bishopric during Sacrament Meeting. Then Justin asked Vonn to teach Priesthood. He wanted the friendship of the ward brethren now more than ever before. His wife consoled him, saying that Shad was up in Paradise with Dad. Lots of souls still wanted the gospel. What a sweet thought, a Brecht companionship, doing the Lord’s work. So Vonn changed his heart. He desired to join Dad and Shad once his turn on earth ended. He’d cleanse his vessel; he’d be ready.

Vonn reached for a hanky—hankies a staple family stocking-stuffer, all the Brecht women gift-hanky connoisseurs—and lazered a loogie into it, pitching and catching. Vonn could spit with the precision and force of a seventh-generation tobacco farmer.

He scanned folks hurrying from their cars to the tent, trying to dodge the rain. Vonn took in a great big inhalation through his nose and held it. He zeroed in, exhaled slowly, and began:

“Aaaaaaaannnnd here she comes now busty woman curly hair big bangs Cash Only all ones Singles! Singles! Singles! hood up wet sweatshirt wetsweatshirt sweat wetshirrrtttt.”

Vonn stopped and shook out his face. Again, from the top:

“Aaaaaaaaannnnd here she comes now pocket full of pesos good looking senorita pretty kiddy crappy shoes Gonna buy a couch Gonna buy a TV Gonna buy a bed Gonna buy some mirrors Gonna bling some ears Gonna filch a razor Gonna pimp a Blazer.”

He liked that, the rhythm, that snow-shovel rhyme. Push scrape push scrape.

(Here, Dad would’ve announced: Watch out—Junior’s loose like a lasso! He’s spurring out the gate! Six seconds, seven seconds—Eight!)

The clock read 12:53 PM. Vonn put his head down and timed it out on his watch. He was a bull; he was a stud. At 12:54 PM, he started fresh:

“Aaaaaaaaaaannnnd what the hell…? BJ Fowler? BJ FOWLER?! WE NEED TO TALK! Lot of nerve texting me about Shad’s funeral when I know you didn’t attend. I could see to the overflow, and, jeez louise, I was sitting right next to your brother! JUSTIN WAS A PALLBEARER! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE ONE TOO! I attended your parents’ funeral! And with you and Shad I set up tents in the front room, the garage, the Tetons! We hiked, camped, prayed, sang! We shared forks and spoons and water bottles and TP! I asked Justin: Hey, where’s the sidekick? O’Boise blah blah blah. Not likely. Who was it this time, BJ, lady, man, or two of each? Remember that Family Home Evening lesson ‘Sleep with Dogs, Get Fleas’? Did you forget the trails? The white barn? Skiing? Carpooling? I was at the airport with all my daughters when you stepped foot off the plane from your mission. You could’ve married any of them, you dope, including my own wife for all I know! These Latter-days, BJ, so sad sad crummy sad. Which reminds me: SHAD, I’VE PRAYED THREE WEEKS STRAIGHT FOR YOU TO COME VISIT ME—WHAT’S THE FLIPPIN DEAL?”

Vonn, out of breath, hands clammy, cold, soothed by long deep breaths.

(Dad in the passenger seat, shaking his head. You can’t take it personal, Vonn, but no one cares to hear your belly-aches. Look at the folks—they’re too busy waiting to bid.)

12:58 PM, time ticking, and BJ inside the tent! Vonn unclasped the hat-can’s latches. Dad be damned, BJ needed to own up. Vonn would make him squeal. Vonn cupped the bowl of his lucky charcoal Stetson, adorned by Dad’s horsehair stampede string, slicked back his hair, and paused. Staring at his boots, Vonn closed his eyes and prayed again for his family, the weather, a bountiful harvest, strength to resist. At amen he slid on the hat, checking its brim in the mirror he’d shot to pieces. He shut off the truck and pocketed the keys. He lingered across his plain river rock eyes before moving to his mouth:

“WALTZ, BAD NYMPH, FOR QUICK JIGS VEX!”

He locked the door twice with the clicker and hustled inside, murmuring the whole way.

<>

By two, Vonn understood the auction was only spectacular in how badly it was going. He’d set his expectations too high, a problem his wife had pointed out, one that most often left him underwhelmed and disappointed. He expected a circus instead of a livestock sale. Her words.

Vonn considered his best expectations from yesterday, Thanksgiving, when the sun was still shining. Instead of being suffocated in the humid, muffled, cramped banquet tent, he’d imagined himself placed dead-center on the second floor of Building 1 so the buyers could gather below, basked in the hot light of the overhead sun. Sixty-five degrees, t-shirt weather. He considered using a bull horn, a prop he’d never featured, or a wireless mic, which he’d demoed once, and pop in and out of rooms 1-6 on the bottom floor, and 7-12 on the top, and wring every copper cent out of the bargain-hunters that had come to him instead of the Teton Peaks Mall, or Wally-World, or, worst, Salt Lake City! Sales in such demand that he’d dole out separate shingles and reclaimed nails; copper tubing and wire for the Long Hairs, TVs and remotes for the Lazies, dressers and mirrors for children in need, telephones—something like thirty, all counted, and multi-function, two typewriters too—and the faux-oak conference table and mauve-tweed luxury rolling chairs and door knobs and artificial plants and what looked like an exercise bike from the Reagan Administration, all skinny and brown, moveable arms, and an industrial-grade coffeemaker for the Jack Mormons… Jacks, No-Mos, Mormons who tore out their own roots.

(Dad: Folks can leave the Church, but they can’t leave the Church alone.)

No. Instead, here Vonn was calling out toilets, the auction so bad that he chose to sell by category—right now, bathrooms—and the winner could claim up to ten of the lot at the winning bid. Behind him, a slide photo of a yellow two-piece American Standard. His mic was on the fritz, so he rattled in alta voz to the back of the tent, “Now who’ll gimme one dollar. One dollar? Alright! There we go. Now who’ll gimme two? Two two two two two? Yepp! Now two now three gimme three three three…”

Plenty of No-Mos in the crowd. Women wore spaghetti-strap blouses under snowmachine jackets. Men with long beards and wrist tattoos. There might be one or two active members out there—the few white families with the well-behaved kids. Who knows, maybe even some of the Mexicans were members. A Spanish congregation met in Ryree.

And of course BJ standing in the back, black jacket, aviators, and a Raiders beanie. A beard best described as calico pubical. He’d gotten fat. This was a man who wanted to hide his face, Vonn thought, a man who’d rather carry forty extra pounds of baggage then deal with it.

Vonn put Lucy on BJ’s left shoulder. To challenge and mess with him. Lucifer, another of Dad’s tactical concepts, a being who in the end could never win, but a troublemaker all the way to the end. Lucy, the invisible bidder, had toilets up to three dollars. Now Vonn pressed hard: “Fourdollars Fourdollars Fourdollars Fourdollars Four.”

“Three-fifty,” declared BJ. “That’s my top.”

Vonn didn’t hesitate. “SOLD to Fowler Family Farms! How many?”

“Ten. But I’ll take all of them if you let me.”

Gasps. Everyone turned around to get a glimpse of the glutton.

(Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.)

“What rooms you want?” Vonn asked, locking into the aviators.

“The first ten sounds easy.”

Vonn looked away, back at Lucy. Couldn’t even out-stare him when he wore shades.

“Folks, don’t panic, we still got two of them in Building 1, and another twelve in Building 2, so who’ll gimme a dollar a dollar a measly crumpled buck…”

The rest of the toilets sold individually, the highest going for eighteen dollars.

After that, every time BJ so much as coughed, someone upped the bid a dollar more. BJ yawned during the sale of a steel picnic table, and a man jumped to his feet and offered three hundred dollars. BJ left the tent. The crowd and Vonn, synchronized, decompressed, slouched, and breathed easy. Folks joked about carpet and threw out low-ball offers that Vonn accepted. BJ returned with a Dynamo Monster Dawg heaped with fixins. Everyone bristled, sat up straight.

It galled Vonn. He’d seen it too many times. BJ, dumb like a fox. BJ, who’d eat chickens, roosters, and eggs. He’d been this way since he was fifteen years old.

Here was why Vonn hated BJ so much:

One June night in 1992, Vonn walked down the dead-end road and crossed Fowler Bridge and knocked on Justin Fowler’s door and asked him for a loan. Sixty thousand dollars to keep Brecht Family Auctions afloat while Dad’s estate settled. Vonn had fowled up, yes. He’d purchased a top-of-the-line Ford F-350 diesel on the promise of a few auctions that never panned out, as well as a chrome Air Stream fifth-wheel camp trailer for the road. Vonn needed Justin to float him. Justin was Vonn’s friend, younger than him but wiser, a very successful farmer and Second Counselor in Poplar Ward Bishopric. By then, Justin had two of his own girls then, along with playing dad to BJ. If anyone could understand Vonn’s dilemma, it was Justin. At the end, Justin took out his checkbook and wrote it out, just like that, $60,000 smackers like an accidental fart. Vonn stood teary eyed and fed the check into his wallet. Then he really clamped arms with Justin. Brother helping brother. The Lord’s will and way.

Vonn left Justin’s big bright porch like a child after his baptism: cleansed, forgiven, afforded a fresh start. Vonn stared up into the black firmament, taking in the many worlds of the night sky. Kolob was out there somewhere. So was Dad. Vonn delayed on Fowler Bridge, spitting casually into the fast dark murmur of Burnside Canal. Mud swallows whistled around him. The irrigation sprinklers clicked in Justin’s bountiful alfalfa fields, and the fat black cows bellowed pleasantly somewhere out there. Up ahead was Vonn’s gleaming trailer hooked to the handsome Ford, parked in the circular gravel driveway, safe from the repo man.

The flickering of a fire ahead, among the ditch-bank cottonwoods, caught his attention. Not good. In a desert, no fire was. He jumped down into the empty canal bottom that ran parallel to the road and moved quickly toward the orange licks of flame. It looked unattended.

What Vonn found was BJ sitting on the bank beyond the fire ring, and then he saw Shad—his own flesh and blood, his only son, sole heir to the still-breathing Brecht Family Auctions—his arms wrapped around BJ, kissing him.

Vonn shouted. The boys rolled and hollered. Shad would not make eye contact. Vonn collared them both, stomped the fire into dust, and hauled them back to Justin’s garage. He sat BJ on the chest freezer and Shad in a collapsible fishing chair and told them both to shut up. Justin came out in a bathrobe that allowed his garment bottoms to be seen below his knees. He was barefoot. Justin kept his arms around his belly, keeping the robe tight, and listened as Vonn told him what he’d seen.

“Should we call the Stake President?” Vonn asked.

“We can handle this in-house,” Justin said. “Right, Brother Brecht? That’s how we do it out here. We don’t need to bother anyone with this.” Justin turned to BJ. “You got anything to say for yourself?”

“To be honest,” BJ said, “it was Shad’s idea. I was just helping out a friend.”

Who did BJ think he was, to lie so blasphemously? To force words and his, his dirty disgusting thing into his son’s mouth?

(I can stomach anyone but a liar.)

All three looked to Shad.

“He’s right,” Shad said, after much deliberation. “I kept dreaming of carrots and hot dogs without buns and skinned cucumber, about putting them in my mouth. I didn’t know why. I told BJ and he said ‘Sounds phallic.’ So I asked him what that meant. He said, ‘Like a dick.’ That got me thinking about it, and he was right. That’s what I wanted. He finally agreed to be my, uh, crash test dummy. This was the first time, honest. We hadn’t even been going that long.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Vonn said. “How does it feel, Shad, to see how upset I am? To see how disgusted I am?”

Shad nodded and closed his eyes. “I feel like shit.”

“PG, mister,” Vonn warned.

BJ broke in. “I recently read in the Encyclopedia of Mammalian Reproduction that situational homosexuality is prevalent in many species, including Idaho’s own Big Horn Sheep. The rams often go months without encountering females and instead make due with their traveling companions. So I don’t know what to tell you. We’re stuck out here in the middle of nowhere and no one tells us anything and poor Shad is ready to punch out all of his teeth and...”

“But we’re not beasts,” Justin pleaded. “We’re better than mountain goats! We’re sons and daughters of Heavenly Father. We’re Gods and Goddesses, if we want to be.”

“I don’t agree.”

“You’re kicking against the pricks, BJ!” Justin paced the concrete. “You know the difference between right and wrong. Mom and Dad taught you, and now Sherrie and I are teaching you. You’re just playing stupid. You just want to push buttons. You know what the scriptures say, BJ, that the devil will lead you carefully down to hell. Carefully.”

“You okay, Shad?”

“Don’t you dare talk to my son,” Vonn said.

“Dad, I’m pretty sure I’m gay,” Shad said. His face turned radish, and he cried.

Now just who the flip did this BJ really think he was? Tweaking God’s Law. Trapping his naïve son into him out in the woods on the dirt and rocks, forcing him to grow up, removing that virginal innocence, and launching Shad mouth-first into the dick-filled world?

“We should call the Stake President,” Vonn said.

Justin didn’t look Vonn’s way. He addressed BJ first, levying on him a six-month punishment that barred him from public prayers, teaching Sunday School, and anything Sacrament-related. He assigned BJ to reread the pamphlet “For the Strength of the Youth” and prepare thoughts for a Brecht/Fowler Priesthood Only Fireside Chat, date to be determined.

“That’s not fair,” BJ said.

“That’s the gospel,” Justin said.

“What about forgiveness? What about let him sin-free cast the first stone?”

“You earn that.”

When Justin gave Shad the same, Shad really started sobbing. Vonn folded his arms.

“I just really wanted to bless the sacrament next month,” Shad explained, through gulps. “I wanted to kneel behind that table clocked in white and say O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee, in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this water to the souls of all those who drink of it, that they may do it in remembrance of the blood of thy Son, which was shed for them; that they may witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they do always remember him, that they may have his Spirit to be with them. Amen. Jesus sweated blood for each of us in Gethsemane! Dad, I just really wanted to be part of the Army of Helaman! I just really wanted to be like Nephi, born of a sound mind and goodly parents! I just really wanted to go on a mission like you, Dad, and Parley P. Pratt, and Porter Rockwell—I’d go to any corner of the world to tell the story of the restoration of the gospel—but now I can’t because of what I did, and what am I supposed to do now, move to Salt Lake with Uncle Vance? AIDS already killed him! I don’t want to leave Rigby. I want to stay here and work with you.”

“Alright,” Vonn said. “Come on now, Shadrack. Rein it in.”

“It’s just six months,” Justin explained. “And Vonn and I are here to help. Let’s talk every week, right here in the garage, or, on a nice night, out around a fire. Hm. Or maybe not. Let’s keep this to ourselves and figure it out. No need to tell the wives—right, Vonn?—or the Stake President. We can put our heads together and deal with this. Vonn, do you still have a copy of that Kimball book, The Miracle of Forgiveness?”

BJ groaned and dismissed himself. He was going to bed. Justin led Vonn and Shad back out into the night, boots squishy on the gravel, and issued handshakes to Vonn then Shad before saying: “If Jesus can hang in there, so can you.”

Vonn and Shad walked home, saying nothing.

And ever since, Vonn had to tolerate BJ in priesthood meeting and stake functions. He watched how easily positions fell to him, quite possibly deferred to him. Teacher’s Quorum President. Priest Group Leader. Rigby High Spartan Editor-In-Chief. And always, always, the young women of Poplar Ward teemed around him, smiling, holding their little award necklace medallions between their colorless lips, his very daughters among them.

(With a son you gotta worry about one dick. With a daughter, you gotta worry about every dick in town.)

In 2001, Elder Fowler to Indianapolis, Indiana Spanish-speaking. Two months later, Shad was called to serve in the Minot, North Dakota Mission. Shad only made it seven months before being sent home for inappropriate contact with a non-member. His companion found him on his knees in the back of a Lamanite boy’s Festiva, going to town.

Vonn cared for Shad those two months when he was back early from his mission, what he imagined to be the strangest time in his son’s life. To want to serve so badly and to be kept from that…because of his own choice. It was heartbreaking.

Meanwhile, Vonn had to stomach BJ coming back and forth after his mission. When he asked BJ what his plans were, he’d say, “Not sure, but I’m not worried.” Such ego. So much of his easy life predetermined. Then off he went to Princeton like a peacock but came back no better than a three-legged dog, that lost leg his soul, and now he was back sniffing around Justin and the farm and Justin allowed it, and Shad, meanwhile, was wet in the ground, having left his wife for the 21^st Century quackery of self-discovery but instead found solace on the wrong side of a shotgun, cracking his head open in his old basement bedroom, no note.

All the while, BJ, the instigator to all of Shad’s problems, stepped freely among the Saints, not sorry or ashamed or suicidal at all.

“Okay, folks, we’re to a fan favorite,” Vonn said. “Many of you inquired about TVs.”

Someone yelled: “How many flat-screens you got?”

“TVs are varying makes, function with remote, twenty-two inches, tubed.”

Groaning, pamphlet-tossing, other forms of unabashed disgust. TUBED?!

Vonn started the bidding at ten dollars, knocked it down five, then four, then two quick bids came in at five and six, and Lucy kicked it up to seven, and action stalled. It looked like fake seven would be the winner. Then it broke, the crowd restless, thinking creatively, wanting a set for the laundry room. Bids flat-lined at ten. From the back, BJ offered fifteen dollars.

“Going once…going twice…seriously?... SOLD! Which ones?”

“Rooms 1 though 10.”

From the back: “Aye cabron!”

“God dang! Got me again!” shouted another.

The rest of the TV’s each sold for over twenty-five dollars, rendered golden by BJ’s purchase. Vonn loathed every moment of it. BJ landed nine full-sized mattresses, six dresser sets, and all the mirrors and pillows out of the first ten rooms. The feeling inside the tent grew oppressive and heavy. This was a massacre.

But then, after the pillows, BJ rarely looked up from his phone. The crowd relaxed. Buying moved quickly in terrorized and pragmatic acquisition: Sold! Sold! Sold!

Once over, Vonn bee-lined for the back, sure he’d ask BJ about the funeral but also now press him about what perverted act he now needed these mattresses and pillows for—some forest orgy at Fowler Ranch, where no one but God could see? Or was he setting up a webcam operation in some abandoned warehouse? WHY SO MANY TOILETS? Vonn put nothing past BJ, that rich ratfink sodomite.

With Vonn just five long steps away, BJ put his phone to his ear and walked out of the tent. Vonn followed the flow but lost track of the target. Which turned out to be okay, for the moment, as Vonn realized it was no longer storming but beheld the dead gray sky and black bulges building along the Ammon Foothills. Folks better Speedy Gonzalez their stuff p-r-o-n-t-o.

Vonn joined his wife back inside the tent at the table, where the two of them could gangbang the transactions, then Vonn could send the girls to unlock all the hotel rooms. Then all could break off whatever chunk of the hotel was theirs.

<>

Now it was dark shiny night, Vonn was back in the parking lot of the hotel, eating a bag of burgers and enough french fries to fill the cup of his large Diet Mountain Dew, his headlights facing Building One. The temperature had dropped to forty degrees. 1:03 am. The heater air pushed around the foods’ greasy steam. “Oh Holy Night” crescendo-ed across the pickup’s speakers, and MoTab sounded more celestial and angelic than ever—which depressed him. He turned it off. Two old pickups loaded with lamps brake-checked onto River Road and cut north for the interstate connector. A Cadillac with a pink loveseat wedged into the open trunk bottomed out making the road, scraping and sparking, dragging a muffler towards Broadway.

Vonn was in the doghouse with his wife. Vonn and the girls tore down in record time while she charged credit cards and counted the till. The girls went home together in the van; he and she hauled everything out to the storage strip in Rigby. She turned on a Mormon podcast. A female therapist discussed the trauma of dead offspring. It made him sick. Vonn pulled into his lot and showed his lights on the unit’s padlock. The therapist talked closure. He turned off the truck. The talk stop. This did not please her, though she said nothing.

He was thinking about Dad, the day they bought the shotgun in Montana.

(The Wisdom Auction. Beat that, Junior.)

They unloaded, synchronized and silent, and locked up. Not two words between them. This, their best attribute, the ability to put shoulders to wheels and push along. To yoke up and trudge forward, right foot first, then left.

Vonn broke the silence halfway home: “Today I remembered something about the shotgun. We got it at that Wisdom ranch foreclosure where Justin’s dad bought his first plane. Guy said it belonged to Hank Williams the Second.”

“Please, not now. We’re both hungry. I don’t feel like thinking.”

“I thought of this joke today. A comeback. I felt BJ might be up to something.”

“BJ’s a family friend!”

“This would have been perfect. I was waiting for BJ to something about how crazy Shad redecorated the basement. And I was going to say ‘Well, BJ, I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy—finally had good reason to renovate!’ And—”

“Vonn, shut up right now.”

“Then I’d a said: ‘Hey BJ: Mental illness is a lot like diarrhea, it runs in the jeans!’”

“STOP. LET ME OUT. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.”

They were at their driveway anyways, so he put it in park and got out to check the mailbox. She crunched off towards the house. He followed her.

“Go find your own supper, Vonn. Your brain’s warped.” She was crying. “That was our only son, Vonn. Have some respect.”

So Vonn drove back to I.F. and got Tom’s Burgers like he and Shad loved to do. He’d meandered through town until he ended up here. The new owner of the parcel had contracted the demo team to come knock down The Driftwood as he planned to construct Southeastern Idaho’s first five-star ten-story Executive Tower and Conference Center. Maybe watching all that destruction would make him feel better.

Instead of the crane or wrecking ball or dump trucks, Vonn saw a moat of broken glass between his front bumper and the first floor of Building 1. Bits of wire, loose screws, blinds on hangers, ironing boards—items folks paid for—skittered along, blowing towards the Snake.

No windows anywhere. The hotel’s Golgathic face looked like so many glory holes.

Vonn had inhaled his food, having bought enough for him and Shad, and now felt bloated, or worse. Twelve hours had passed since he’d started the auction. 1:17 am on a Saturday morning. Vonn shut off his truck, reached under the seat for his big industrial flashlight, and got out to find somewhere to puke, or do worse.

The glass popped underfoot. He started in 1 looking for a toilet. He had more dignity to vomit outside, and the building would be torn down by Sunday noon anyhow. Then he remembered that BJ bought them all. He’d check anyways. Nothing remained in Rooms 1 through 6 except shreds of paints chips, hairballs, suspicious stains, violent lesions in the drywall left from the scrap-ing of outlets, plumbing, yards of insulated wire.

Careful and urgent, Vonn went to the stairs, stepped over loose bricks sledged from the stairwell wall, and started for the second floor. The guard rail to the outdoor walkway had been torched loose and hauled away. In room 7, he found a Penthouse from 1982. Shad’s birth-year. He folded it long-ways and tucked it into his back pocket. He skipped 8 and walked to 9. Burgers fries and pop surged up and down his esophagus. Butcher shop belches erupted wily nily, and his gut gurgled nonstop. 9 still had its door, closed, and number, but no knob. Vonn pushed.

The flashlight’s beam landed on a man asleep in the full-sized bed, sunglasses off and folded beside him, covers up to his chin, Raiders beanie.

The Lord works in mysterious ways. Just as He had delivered Laban to Nephi, so too had He led Vonn to BJ. Vonn stepped in and quietly closed the door. Vonn hacked up a hail-sized nugget of meat, rolled it in his saliva, and spat at BJ’s illuminated face.

BJ opened his eyes mid-shot, and the meatwad punched BJ in his bare eyeball.

BJ shouted, holding his face. “Whoever you are, I got a gun!”

“You got some questions to answer, maggot.”

“Brother Brecht! What the fuck ... ”

“PG,” Vonn said. He kept the light there as BJ used the duvet corner to sop out his eye. BJ pulled a pump-action .22 from under the covers and leveled it at Vonn’s chest. Vonn flashed the light in BJ’s eyes. He blinked but didn’t falter.

“I make no apologies.” Vonn burped and a little DMD and some orange cheese burbled up. “Shoot me. I dare you. Do it. Come on. Pump it, aim it, pull the trigger, do it twice now, three times, four, see if I care. What do I have to live for?”

“I’m getting out of bed.”

“I’ll call the police.”

“Don’t talk crazy. I own this room. I have a right to protect it.”

“You got a hooker in the can? A tranny in the closet? What are you really up to?”

“Man, you’re nuts. I’m waiting on an empty trailer. My gun’s not loaded. I keep it around for affect, mostly. The hatchet too.”

BJ reached under the covers and pulled that out.

“I don’t believe you,” Vonn said.

“Check it,” BJ said, handing over the gun. “I’d never shoot a human being. Even you.”

Vonn did—empty—and laid it on the floor. His adrenaline so sky high that Vonn tore BJ’s RCA wood-paneled 22” TV off the dresser and stumbled through the room and defenestrated it, heaving it into the night. It thunked and smashed below. Vonn, hanging out the hotel room through the window, puked all over a frameless painting that someone had forgot on the walkway. A vaquero dancing his horse, side to side, for a crowd.

“Been drinking, Vonn?”

Vonn wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Why weren’t you at the funeral?”

“Because seeing you makes me angry. I can’t look at you.”

“You can’t look at me? YOU CAN’T LOOK AT ME!”

“I think of all those EFYs and Temple Trips. Worthiness! Cleanliness! Perfection! I told Shad to forget it years ago. Before our Missions. I told him I was going because it’s what my family did, and that meant something to me, but not because I believed it. I wrote letters to Shad from Indiana, warning him the mission would not be kind to him. He had it set up so high that one tremor and the whole thing would topple.”

“You don’t know anything about Shad.”

“Who filled out his paperwork, Vonn? Who physically put pen to paper?”

“We did it together.”

“Horseshit. You and Justin did it. Shad signed. He wrote me all about it. You set him up, Vonn, the same with Jenn. You were controlling that from the beginning. You worshipped her, man. It was creepy. Couldn’t you see how miserable that made Shad?”

“It was your fault, BJ, you filthy, disgusting—”

“You’re still playing deaf? Shad’s gay. He told us twenty years ago.”

“People get confused, BJ, because sometimes worldly men like yourself, men with silver tongues who quote scripture to their own benefit, are so forceful in their delivery that these young men get caught up, distracted, titillated into pandemonium, and they forget who they are and where they came from. Do you remember who you are? Where you came from?”

BJ’s phone dinged; he read the screen. He picked up the rifle and positioned the hammer to safety, stuck the hatchet through his belt.

“You owe me fifteen bucks. That TV was research, you troglodyte.”

“Why don’t you suffer like Shad suffered?” Vonn asked. “You’re the one that gave him permission to kiss your lips, to get divorced. Why don’t you hurt? Why aren’t you guilty? Every time I taught Lehi’s Vision, The Great and Spacious Building was all you’d ever talk about. You asked: where was the adventure in holding tight to the rod? Wicked then and wicked now, you’re beyond feeling, BJ, numb to the core—”

“Dropped this.” BJ spied the magazine cover before passing it back. “Vintage. Nice.”

Vonn shoved it back into his pocket and watched BJ go out to the edge of the platform and hang the toes of his boots over the edge. No guardrail. He guided the pickup below, whistling and hollering to his man. Vonn thought to rush him. Hit him square in his broken back, send him sprawling into space, let him crash through the trailer’s roof. Instead, he watched.

“Hey, Dick, walk back here and take this.” The big man lumbered back and reached up and BJ leaned down and handed off the little rifle and ax.

“Hey, Vonn, get on the end of the mattress there.”

Vonn did without hesitation. Moving? That was where his Christianity shined. He and BJ wrestled with that broken-down, bowed, stained mattress across the threshold, and Vonn remembered all the things he and Shad had moved together. Dressers. Trunks. Bales of hay. Mattresses over a thousand times, of all sizes, for the girls and relatives and ward members. Snow, piles and piles, from the chapel’s sidewalks, and the driveways of widows and single moms. Once they carried BJ, who nearly broke his ankle while the three hiked to the Wind Cave, and Vonn and Shad lugged him two miles back to the Ford diesel. The Ford paid for and running on Justin’s money. Vonn didn’t remember it being hard, porting BJ back to the truck. No, he’d felt connected, his elbows shaking hands with BJ’s sweaty pits, his back to the trail, leading blind, and Shad calling out instructions and calling for breaks and handing out PBJs and singing Garth Brooks off-key, impossible to do in Vonn’s mind.

They maneuvered the mattress out of the room and tilted it off the edge to the man down below. Dick bear-hugged the mattress and walked backwards, catching some balance, before plopping it down in some broken glass. He folded it like a taco and shoved it inside the trailer.

“Where’s that last turlet, BJ?”

“Room 9. Hey Dick, grab that TV before you come up.”

“Hey Dick! Hey BJ! You guys should open a tire store, or a sex shop.”

“Grow up,” Dick shouted, “or I’ll kick your ass up around your ears. BJ, you sure you want this piece of shit? I’ll give you an old one if you want. I got a shed-full.”

“It’s research.”

“Jesus Harley Christ. It’s in four pieces!”

Vonn helped BJ with the dresser, the box spring, the mirror, and bedding. Dick came up with one wrench, walked into the bathroom, and came out in three minutes time, lugging the yellowed throne.

BJ made one last trip upstairs. Vonn watched him take out his pocketknife and pry the brass 9 off the door. Vonn asked why; BJ never said. Dick left with the trailer. Vonn and BJ walked out to their pickups together, BJ cradling the rifle in the crook of his arm and swinging the hatchet like a lunch pail.

“When did you last sleep?” BJ asked. “You look like hell.”

“Don’t tell me what I look like.”

“Just being honest.”

“Every time I close my eyes inside the house, I hear that gun. I’ve been sleeping in the truck.”

“Justin told me you found him.”

“Pieces of him. Some, somehow, on the inside closet ceiling.”

BJ took a small bottle from his jacket pocket and shook out pills. He took Vonn’s hand in his, turned it over, and pressed them into his palm.

“Klonopin, 1 mg, take one once a day to relax. Five little greenies. Don’t lose them.”

“Now you expect me to take your drugs?”

“I can barely stand you, Vonn, but I really do care about your family. You need to get right for them.”

“Are these poison?”

“Take them or don’t take them. I don’t care. Just don’t kill yourself.”

“I don’t deserve to go out that easy…”

“Now you’re wallowing.”

“…I never deserved Shad...”

“Don’t say that.”

“…how am I expected to carry on?”

“Fake it till you make it. That’s what you always told us. Look, I’m going. Thanks for the hand. Be good.”

“Pushing pharmaceuticals. Driving under the influence. I’m calling highway patrol. You’ll be in County for a month.”

BJ said nothing and got in his pickup. Vonn watched the truck creep onto the quiet road and head for the highway, taillights like Lucy’s eyes.

Vonn got inside his Ford. Fired it. Heater on high. Maybe he’d never feel warmth again.

He turned on the overhead light and opened the Penthouse to the center spread. An African princess splayed and arched. He reached underneath the seat for the two Victoria’s Secret mailers he tucked into the springs. With all the gloss and flesh, it didn’t take him long to feel the pressure, so Vonn wedged off his boot and took his sock and finished in that, like he’d been doing since he was thirteen.

He washed down one of BJ’s pills. He put the rest in the consul, at the bottom of the cough-drop bag. After ten minutes, Vonn felt exhaustion like never before. He tipped his seat back, kicked off his other boot, put his hat over his face, locked the doors, and slept.

Pounding on the window awoke him. He removed his hat. The bright morning sun temporary blinded him. He rolled down the window. It was a thick-necked man in a hard hat and a neon green vest, under which he wore a purple, oil-stained Utah Jazz hoodie.

“This is a closed. You can’t be here.”

“I’m the auctioneer. I sold the place yesterday.”

“Better hit the road.” The man looked past Vonn to the stack of jerk-material. The Penthouse was open to a page with gigantic cocks surrounding a small Russian woman. “You one of them candy-asses that used to bang here? The owner warned me about your type.”

“Watch your mouth. I have a gay son.”

“You rent these rooms by the hour?”

“He killed himself.”

“Put it in drive, buddy. We’re razing this stink hole.”

Vonn flipped open his phone. “Give me your boss’s number.”

The man did.

Vonn shook as he dialed.

The man’s phone rang. He answered it.

“Ken’s Demo. Ken here. Get off the property, bud, and go fuck yourself.”

Vonn went for his door but the man held it shut with his forearm. Vonn relented, put it in gear, and peeled out.

Vonn drove across the bridge to get to the east side of the river, speeding straight to the temple parking lot. First he gathered all the magazines and food garbage and he walked it down the bank and launched it into the river. Then he watched the crane dip its maw into the hip of the hotel’s roof, and it all started coming down.

Vonn strode to his pickup feeling better. That idiot deserved every bad thing he got. But he didn’t stop there. He crossed the empty parking lot, made his way to the temple’s front door. Maybe one of the ushers could reassure him that this sacrifice was worth it. Maybe he’d see a church friend who could bolster his soul.

A piece of paper was taped inside the door across the window.

TEMPLE CLOSED FOR RENOVATION

REDEDICATION SCHEDULED

MARCH 2015

Vonn boiled reading this. March! That was four months away—he could be dead! He kicked the alabaster cement wall and jammed his big toe. These Fowlers: narrow-minded, unkind, selfish. Why didn’t Justin tell him?

Exasperated, Vonn looked up and beheld the beauty of golden Moroni on top of the tall white slender spire, in his flowing folds of robes, balanced on the tip, trumpeting to the east. For the first time, Vonn heard something new above the river’s gentle purling, the crash of the rolling falls, the demolition happening on the far bank. The horn beckoned faintly in the distance. Moroni sounded for him, and for that, Vonn decided he must keep trying. He must keep faking. He must not backslide one jot or tittle.

Oh God!

He must move forward, upward, onward—

he must,

he must,

he must.