slackened, as if he were listening to seraphic voices. “I’ve been praying,” he
said. His voice was soft, a loving voice. “I’ve been praying about your
decision to go to college.”
His eyes opened. His pupils had dilated in the lamplight, absorbing the
hazel of the iris. I’d never seen eyes so given over to blackness; they seemed
unearthly, tokens of spiritual power.
“The Lord has called me to testify,” he said. “He is displeased. You have
cast aside His blessings to whore after man’s knowledge. His wrath is stirred
against you. It will not be long in coming.”
I don’t remember my father standing to leave but he must have, while I sat,
gripped by fear. God’s wrath had laid waste to cities, it had flooded the whole
earth. I felt weak, then wholly powerless. I remembered that my life was not
mine. I could be taken out of my body at any moment, dragged heavenward
to reckon with a furious Father.
The next morning I found Mother mixing oils in the kitchen. “I’ve decided
not to go to BYU,” I said.
She looked up, fixing her eyes on the wall behind me, and whispered,
“Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear that.”
I didn’t understand. I’d thought she would be glad to see me yield to God.
Her gaze shifted to me. I hadn’t felt its strength in years and I was stunned
by it. “Of all my children,” she said, “you were the one I thought would burst
out of here in a blaze. I didn’t expect it from Tyler—that was a surprise—but
you. Don’t you stay. Go. Don’t let anything stop you from going.”
I heard Dad’s step on the stairwell. Mother sighed and her eyes fluttered,
as if she were coming out of a trance.
Dad took his seat at the kitchen table and Mother stood to fix his breakfast.
He began a lecture about liberal professors, and Mother mixed batter for
pancakes, periodically murmuring in agreement.
Without Shawn as foreman, Dad’s construction business dwindled. I’d quit
my job at Randy’s to look after Shawn. Now I needed money, so when Dad
went back to scrapping that winter, so did I.
It was an icy morning, much like the first, when I returned to the junkyard.
It had changed. There were still pillars of mangled cars but they no longer
dominated the landscape. A few years before, Dad had been hired by Utah
Power to dismantle hundreds of utility towers. He had been allowed to keep