Favorite Wife

  Copyright © 2006 by Susan Ray Schmidt

  First Lyons Press edition, 2009

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to The Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

  The Lyons Press is an imprint of The Globe Pequot Press.

  Text design by Sheryl P. Kober

  All photographs courtesy of the author

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN 978-0-7627-9607-6

  “And it shall come to pass that I, the Lord God will send one mighty and strong, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words; while his bowels shall be a fountain of truth, to set in order the house of God.”

  DOCTRINE AND COVENANTS

  SECTION 85:7

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In telling this story, my wish was not to offend. Although I’ve chosen to no longer live the lifestyle depicted in Favorite Wife, I do understand and in some instances respect the reasons why the fundamentalist Mormon people cling to the practices of early Mormonism.

  While the events related here are factual, for brevity’s sake and for story flow I’ve taken the liberty of compiling, on rare occasions, two separate events into one. In a couple of minor instances, I’ve placed myself as present during an incident when in reality I heard the details from eyewitnesses. My reason for this was to present my readers with a “bird’s-eye view” of something I deemed important to the story.

  The conversations I’ve recorded are not verbatim, but are as close as my memory allows. I’ve endeavored to relate the facts as best I can.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the following people, who in various ways had a hand in the successful completion of this book. First of all, thank you, Pat Kaes, for your initial belief in my story and for your tutorship and patience with my inept efforts when I began this book so many years ago. To my friends and fellow authors, Dean Shapiro and Dean Pettinger, thank you for the amazing faith you displayed in my story and for patiently coaching me in my search for a publisher. To fellow author Cliff Johnson, bless you for your cheerful guidance and for your altruistic assistance in seeing that the publishing of my book became a reality. I couldn’t have done it without you.

  To my Aunt Susanne Morley, a talented writer and poet, to Connie Woebke, to fellow author, Lowell Gard, and his wife Mary Carol, and to my friends Barbara Kelly and Daryl Hunt, words are not adequate thanks for the many hours you selflessly gave in editing the manuscript. God love you all! I’ll never forget your goodness to me.

  My appreciation goes to the following people for reading Favorite Wife and for cheering me on. First of all, to Darren Belin and his wife, Leslie, for challenging me to blow the dust off the pages sitting so long on the shelf and get the darn thing finished; then for reading the completed manuscript and assuring me it was wonderful. To Ellenore Burkhart, retired English teacher, who after reading several chapters called to assure me I had an innate writing talent. She would have laughed to see my frantic scrambling through the dictionary to look up the word, innate. Thank you, Ellenore, for spurring me on.

  Many thanks to my friends Kathy Nielsen, Victoria Ray, Stuart Bearup, Bill Studebaker, Flo Harper, Cindi Schmidt, Kay Wilson, Shirley White, Betty Veeh, Jody Wright, Bob Erickson, Marlene DeWiese, and Lisa Gauger, for giving me rave reviews. But most of all, to my daughter, Melanie, who upon completing chapter 28, dashed out to purchase and send me a beautiful new guitar. I love you, honey.

  Lastly to my darling, late husband, Dennis, who for many years put up with my hours in front of the computer, who brought me food and drink night after night, and who selflessly allowed me to tell the story of my “other life.” During the twenty-nine years I was blessed to be his only wife, I considered myself to be the luckiest woman in the world.

  Fading Footsteps

  By Verlan M. LeBaron

  You inspire a glow within me that sets my heart aflame

  In the lonely hours of darkness, I softly call your name.

  In dreams I feel you hold me in your sweet and tender way,

  Sweetheart, I am so lonely as your footsteps fade away.

  You say that if I love you I will somehow let you go,

  If to love you is to lose you and if what you say is so—

  I want you to be happy, don’t mind the tears I shed,

  You’re free to go my darling, and forget the vows we said.

  In dreams please always hold me in your sweet and tender way,

  Awake I am so lonely, as your footsteps fade away,

  As your footsteps fade away…

  PROLOGUE

  “Run! Run!” I gasped, pushing at Melanie’s back. I clutched James’s hand and half-dragged his small body across the uneven ground. At the back of Dad’s lot I pulled the barbwire fence apart, shoved the kids through and dropped the bundle I carried over the fence. Then Mona and I climbed through after them. We dashed into the orchard—they wouldn’t find us deep in the trees. Mona raced next to me, my baby bouncing up and down in her arms.

  Our rushing steps through the frozen underbrush crashed in my ears, and I cringed and darted a quick look behind us. The hazy, early morning silence around Colonia LeBaron seemed ominous. Not even a dog barked. Halfway through the orchard, I found a large tree with a deep ditch bank around it. We spread one blanket and hunkered down under the low, frost-covered branches, then covered up with the heavy quilt.

  “What’s happening, Mama?”

  The terror in my eldest daughter’s eyes mirrored my own fear. She was so innocent, so helpless. How could she ever comprehend that her uncle, her own daddy’s brother, desired to murder us?

  Mona’s gaze met mine for an instant. With a shudder, she buried her chalk-white face against the baby’s blanket-wrapped body and slumped against the tree trunk. I pulled James closer to me and zipped up his coat. My voice quivering, I whispered, “All of you be very, very quiet. We have to stay here for a while, so let’s just get comfortable and take a little rest . . .”

  Anguished thoughts of the Los Molinos colony, of my husband’s families, and the others there—bloody and dying—God, please, let them be okay, just let them be okay, my heart chanted. Please Lord, please! Don’t let them be dead or hurt!

  I couldn’t begin to imagine the terror all those poor people had gone through . . . just last night . . . while we, here in their sister colony of Colonia LeBaron, had been sleeping snug and warm in our beds. There were so many children in Los Molinos, women and little children . . . What would happen to us? Were we truly next, were the Ervilites actually headed here, to our beautiful Chihuahua colony?

  Thank God I had decided to leave Los Molinos . . . And, oh! Thank God that Verlan and some of his wives were safe in Nicaragua! Verlan would have been the Ervilites’ prime target . . .

  Los Molinos was burned! My house, with its rose-colored windowsills that I’d painted so carefully, was it was still standing? Well, it didn’t matter. Who of Ervil LeBaron’s people had done this dastardly act? Ervil himself wouldn’t dirty his hands . . .

  CHAPTER ONE

  Estela Stubbs’s dark, Mexican features scowled at me from her seat halfway down the aisle of our adobe church.
I grimaced with frustration, then returned my gaze to the open hymnbook perched on the piano in front of me. While my fingers automatically roamed over the keys, my attention stubbornly remained on the Stubbs couple seated among the small congregation. The woman was so possessive! All I’d done was grin at Lane, Estela’s husband, and that was because he’d winked one of those flirtatious, sage-green eyes at me. Estela was sure out to make our romance difficult.

  Even though I was only fourteen years old, I envisioned myself possibly becoming Lane’s second wife. Once we were married I certainly wouldn’t be jealous or possessive. Unlike Estela, I would willingly share my husband with any other wives he might take, as our faith commanded.

  I wiggled around on the piano bench and tried to concentrate on the prelude music before me. But suddenly the special, rare comment my mother made coming to church this morning flashed through my mind. I pursed my lips to hide another grin and allowed my mind to wander back . . .

  Colonia LeBaron, the central gathering place for the members of our church, nestled against the hills at the north end of a cacti-covered desert two hundred miles south of El Paso. It was mid-April 1968, and the Mexican sun felt warm and delicious as my family strolled up the dusty road toward the whitewashed adobe building where we held Sunday services. The colony’s dirt roads were lined with cottonwood and black walnut trees. Shiny new leaves sparkled, and the heady aroma from the fresh-cut alfalfa fields wafted toward us. I slowed my steps and looked around, delight and excitement bursting inside me.

  The colony’s scattered adobe dwellings, with their gardens and barns and water towers, reflected prosperity to me today. The desert valley felt alive and pulsed with color; the hills above us were covered with prickly pear cacti in full, wine-colored bloom. Everything was in readiness for the Lord’s Sabbath, made special because of the Prophet Joel LeBaron, leader of our church. He had returned after a lengthy absence, and he would speak to his people today. The soft morning air held an attitude of expectancy.

  I glanced down at my new Sunday dress and carefully smoothed the pale pink material. Undoubtedly the most beautiful dress I had ever owned, the polished cotton sleeves were puffed and trimmed with white lace. The wide sash accented the smallness of my waist, while a white, lace-trimmed collar adorned the neck and dipped daringly low over the swell of my chest—so low that I had anxiously watched Mama’s face, expecting her disapproval. She smiled though, and told me that I looked very pretty. Even now her unusual compliment sang through my mind. “You look lovely today, Susan, you really do. Pretty as a flower.”

  I skipped a step and grinned, the knowledge heady and powerful. I was pretty as the desert blossoms around me. Of course, any girl would look good in this dress—it was almost brand-new. No one would guess that it came from the sack of Salvation Army discards my father had brought from the States. The dress had to be a mistake. Someone at the Salvation Army store had goofed.

  I chuckled, delighted at my good fortune, and then glanced at Dad, noting how his short legs stretched wide with each step and how his sharp blue eyes blazed with purpose. Bald, other than a fringe of graying hair circling his head, at fifty-seven Vern Ray was robust and energetic. He clung firmly to his faith and championed our prophet, Joel LeBaron, with every ounce of his vigor.

  I was only six when Dad moved my mother and the five youngest of their nine children (the ones still living at home) away from Utah and the traditional Mormon Church. Without a backward glance, Vern Ray’s family joined Joel LeBaron’s fledgling Church of the Firstborn in a small colony named Colonia LeBaron, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. We became part of a group of fundamentalist pioneers who, contrary to the mainstream Mormons, weren’t afraid to live the teachings of Joseph Smith to their fullness.

  Like most of the men of the Church of the Firstborn, Dad had heartily embraced the doctrine of polygamy. My mother was past the childbearing age, but Dad’s plural wife, Maria, thirty years younger, had given him four more children. I foresaw more before she was through. Her dusky-colored daughters flocked around her, their black braids and dark eyes in sharp contrast to my mother’s blond, blue-eyed family. My older brother Jay sauntered along next to Dad. Fara and Mona, my two younger sisters, walked on either side of Mom. My father’s two wives and thirteen children were his greatest joy and his chief triumph. We would be jewels in his crown in heaven.

  I noticed the Prophet as he walked from his first wife Magdalena’s yard. His long, lean frame swayed with the peculiar lumbering gait common to all five LeBaron men—the brothers who had united to be our leaders. Joel’s reddish blond hair rebelliously stuck up in the back. His dark green suit hung limp; his thin shoulders bowed with the weight of his claim of being the only true, living prophet of God on Earth. He claimed to be carrying the unparalleled responsibility of readying the world for Christ’s Second Coming, and we accepted his claims to such divine inspiration.

  But as Joel rounded the corner, walked over the cattle guard, and entered the churchyard, I thought that he lacked the majestic, commanding qualities a prophet should possess. He didn’t look like the Moses from the movie The Ten Commandments. I’d seen it twice, and I was secretly disappointed in the homely appearance of our prophet. He didn’t seem like a religious leader, but more like a sunburned, poverty-stricken farmer.

  Throughout the colony, people were coming for the meeting, the men in their Sunday suits, the women in long, ankle-length dresses, and the abundant numbers of children scrubbed and polished. I waved at the Leanys, who noisily hurried ahead of us. The two Leany boys just older than I ran ahead like wild goats, and I eyed them with secret contempt. They still acted like small, rowdy children. No wonder the young ladies of the church were attracted to our older men.

  Shading my eyes from the bright sun, I dawdled at the crossroads and peered south toward “Stubbsville” where Brother Stubbs had settled with his two large families. My eldest sister Rose Ann had married the eldest Stubbs boy, Harv, who had built her a house close to his father’s clan. But it wasn’t Rose Ann I’d been anxious to see. Fara, my thirteen-year-old sister had stopped and whispered, “I’ll bet I know who you’re looking for, but Estela’ll be with him today, and she won’t let you near him. Poor Sue, it’s so sad!”

  I made a face, knowing she was right. Lane Stubbs’s wife, Estela, was a newcomer to the church, and she still balked against our belief that husbands had the right to date and marry other women, and that as men of the Church of the Firstborn, they were commanded by God to have more than one wife. We believed that plural marriage was one of the most sacred revelations God gave to Joseph Smith. It was a test of our faith and a requirement for our ascent into Celestial Glory, the highest of the three degrees of glory in heaven that our church believed in. Estela didn’t understand this.

  Although polygamy was practiced among Utah’s Latter-day Saints Mormons for more than fifty years, it was made illegal in the late nineteenth century, and discarded as a precondition for Utah becoming a state. But the practice secretly went on, and a number of “fundamentalist Mormon” churches were founded to accommodate those who refused to abandon what they considered the “true faith.”

  Our Mormon doctrine also taught that we were the literal, spirit-offspring of God, born first in heaven to heavenly Mothers who were the wives of God the Father. In order for our spirits to obtain bodies of flesh, we must be born again, here on earth. Thus, we members of God’s True Church needed to save as many as possible of his spirit-children from being born into worldly homes, to parents who didn’t live the fullness of the gospel. Therefore, plural marriage not only was a test for the righteous; it also provided a way for each man to create fleshly bodies for large numbers of God’s spirit-children. It was the gospel’s continuing revelations, from the teachings of God’s martyred prophet, Joseph Smith, and from the mouth of the man we believed to be his true successor, Joel LeBaron.

  “Susan, dear.” My mother interr
upted my thoughts. “Take Thelma’s hand and watch her for your Mama Maria during church. She’s got her hands full with the baby.”

  Oh, no! I groaned inwardly, my excitement and anticipation about the day’s possibilities coming to an abrupt halt. Why did it always have to be me? Angrily, I grabbed my three-year-old half-sister’s chubby hand. Her mischievous black eyes twinkled at me, and I groaned aloud.

  “Gracias, Susana.” Maria smiled her gratitude, then added, “Thelma will be a good girl today, won’t you Thelmita?”

  Fat chance of that, I thought, yanking Thelma’s hand and pulling her into the dark interior of the church. I loved my sisters, but I was weary of being the built-in babysitter. Soon I would be married and someone else could have the pleasure. Fara was only a year younger than I was, and it seemed she should also help. But she was such a scatterbrain, and at fourteen I was the oldest girl at home, so I was expected to babysit.

  Francisca Widmar, my closest friend, was in our usual spot. I scooted down the bench, and lifting Thelma up, I plopped her little behind firmly on the seat between Franny and me. “Now, don’t you dare move!” I hissed. Her black eyes, shaped just like my blue ones, looked innocently back at me.

  “Oh, great. I see you have the little terror again,” Franny muttered. “And I guess I’m supposed to hang on to her while you play the hymns. I guess it won’t kill me.”

  I whispered my thanks and walked toward the piano in my most ladylike fashion, sitting carefully on the edge of the bench, just as Grandma Maud LeBaron, my piano teacher and mother of the five LeBaron brothers, had taught me. I made sure my back was straight and my knees were together; then, arranging the skirt of my new dress to billow perfectly around me, I opened the hymnal and began to play. The people standing around the room visiting in little groups took their seats.