Desert Shadows Inn

WHEN ONE IS NOT ENOUGH An Excerpt from Secrets and Wives

It’s a low overcast day as I leave Salt Lake City. Splatterings of showers from a dirty sky. I’m heading for Manti, the home of a polygamous group called the True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days (TLC), led by the prophet James D. Harmston. Now in his 60s, Harmston is said to have in the region of 14 wives and, according to former followers, he considers himself the reincarnation of Joseph Smith, a living messiah. In 1998, he was sued by a couple of women who claim he’d swindled them out of $287,000, a case summarized by the headline: “Two Women Sue Church When Christ Fails to Appear.” (The lawsuit fizzled out in the end, with no clear guilt established on Harmston’s part.) And by several accounts, he has a prophet’s penchant for young girls. In 2006, the book Polygamy’s Rape of Rachael Strong So I drive south down I-15 to what locals call “real Utah”—the farm-raised, fetus-friendly state that dismisses Salt Lake as a Gentile-infested Gomorrah. As the miles clock up, the clusters of box-fresh homes beside the freeways peter out and give way to the occasional Home Depot or Comfort Inn until eventually there’s nothing but a bereft-looking barn every seven miles or so. The magnificent desert skies are interrupted by signs that pop up like spam, the signs that blight all American freeways—Denny’s, Chevron, McDonald’s, La Quinta, Motel 6. They herald the approach of a small town that has been colonized by corporations. Freeways have become as sterile, anonymous, and spatially dislocated as airports. The small towns have become the food courts. Manti, however, is an exception. A picturesque hamlet, quaint and rustic, with a large white temple perched high up on a mound, keeping a matronly watch over the town. Mormons flock here every year for the Miracle Pageant, which celebrates the pioneer trek—but that’s not for a couple of months yet, so the town is eerily quiet. When I check into the Manti House Inn across the street from the temple, the receptionist tells me I’m her only guest. We chat for a while, Trish and I. Small towns can be lonely places for a stranger, given that everyone knows everyone else already and, this being Utah, there’s no bar to break the ice. So I tell Trish my plans, sparing none of the details. I tell her that I’m here to try to meet the prophet, but the only contact name I have is Merrill Jensen [not his real name]—he’s the guy that answers the e-mails on the website (which has since been taken down). Merrill said he would introduce me to Jim if he felt comfortable. So tonight, I’ve got an appointment at the Jensen house. Quite excited about it, actually. She introduces me to the girl doing the washing up and the girl doing the laundry. A couple of guests have popped in for tea and she says, “Meet Sanchez, he’s doing a book about polygamy!” It’s all very chummy. And by the time I’m in my bedroom, I’m beaming. I like Manti. I like small towns in Utah. I’ve got a pocket full of toffee and a new friend called Trish. Time for a nap I think, before dinner. When I first spoke to Merrill on the phone, he gave me the usual spiel—“we don’t like to talk to outsiders, we’re very private.” But then we chatted for an hour. And by the end, he told me, “We haven’t done any interviews in eight years, so you would actually be the first in the new millennium.” And he sounded positively excited about the prospect. Certainly his eagerness is apparent from the moment we meet on his front porch. A large man in jeans and a flannel shirt, he ushers me in and tells his kids to run along. Would I like water? Would I like to talk at the table or on the sofa? And immediately Merrill sets about a rudimentary history lesson—the origins of Mormonism, the birth of fundamentalism. He has a didactic way about him, schoolmasterly and punctilious. “We’re just doing a bit of background here,” Merrill says, filling the silence. “So . . . how are the kids?” Natalie’s frozen, speechless. “Well you can stay or you can go,” he says, releasing her with a shrug. She leaves at once. “So anyway, four angels came and instructed him that they were to be referred to as Moses, Enoch, Abraham, and Noah—four of the grand patriarchs of the Old Testament. This was in November 1990, here in Manti. He was taken into a room which was totally light everywhere, but there was no light source. And he could see all the way around—which, by the way, is what happens in near-death experiences. And then these four men laid their hands on his head.” They seem a little old for such a radical change of lifestyle, but this is often the way with converts. They emerge wounded from Mormon marriages and turn to their religion for consolation. But there they find that the Church has hidden whole chapters of doctrine and the discovery inflames them—these missing chapters must be the answer. Within less than a year, he dismantled his whole life—he left the Church, quit his job, left California, and divorced his wife. Then he moved to Manti, to the court of the new messiah, Jim Harmston, and even persuaded his mother to join him—“my brothers have never forgiven me.” It was a harrowing time. His sister died that year, and his ex-wife threatened him with never seeing his children again. He still has strained relationships with the children from his first marriage. But the upheaval and trauma only fortified his faith. It’s a typical convert story—for men at least—but accelerated. First the disillusion with the Church, then the intense zeal for the new doctrine, the sense of scripture as a vortex of dogma sucking him in, closing off all exits, slamming all the doors behind him. The old life is disassembled by excommunication, divorce, the sale of a home, and the estrangement of family. Then the rebuilding, brick by fundamentalist brick, the sense of resolve only stiffened by the economic hardship and the social alienation that comes with the cult life, until finally the convert looks back over his previous life and revises his past to suit the narratives of the present—committing the same sin as the Mormon Church, the discovery of which began the whole cycle in the first place. It makes sense that Merrill would “realize” that the man for whom he’d given up his life was the Savior. But I’m impressed that Harmston would make his followers believe that this was their idea and not his. There’s something messianic about that alone. When 150 people insist that you have special powers, then by some definition, clearly you do. “He’s not a dynamic speaker with all the oratory tricks,” Merrill says. “But he does make actual prophecies, unlike some other so-called prophets! When my mother came here for the first time, she committed to baptism, so I said to him, ‘My mother will be here next Saturday to get baptized.’ And he said, ‘No, she’ll chicken out.’ And she did!” “You have to know how this calling came about to fully understand. Before he was visited by angels, Jim had several very important spiritual experiences.” Merrill stops and adjusts himself in his seat. “These are very sacred special things right here, but I’m just telling you in order to give you some perspective,” he says, all sotto voce. “One time, Jim was given the gift to know the inner thoughts of the people around him. And he couldn’t pick and choose or tune it out. So he’d go near somebody and he’d know immediately what they were thinking and feeling.” “I don’t think so. This was before I knew him. He was working as a businessman at the time. He was a very successful developer—we’re talking millions of dollars. But when he went to work he knew what his business partner was thinking. He’d pull up next to people at traffic lights—same thing. And the private thoughts of men are a terrible thing. So he prayed to God that this thing be taken from him, and after three days it was. However from time to time he still has this gift given to him in times of appropriate need. I can see it reflected in his eyes.” The trig students watch me stand up and grab my bag. But I can’t just walk out. I need some sort of an exit. “You tell me that your prophet can read hearts and minds,” I say, a little louder than expected. “Well, if that’s the case, why doesn’t he read mine? I’ll tell you why—because if he sat there and told me I had a conversation with Angie, then I would know for sure that he was a false prophet. He’d understand that I’m telling the truth, goddammit.” Five hours to kill in Manti. I try watching TV in my room, but I keep pacing around, replaying the scene in my head. I try driving around town and traipsing around the shops, but it’s no good. I’m a duck moving across a still pond—apparently calm on the surface, but paddling away furiously below the water. Why would Angie lie about me? Why didn’t Trish tell me about Angie before? How can I salvage this? So I give her the pitch. A book about polygamy as it’s lived today, an investigation of several groups and stories in the culture. And at every step, she questions my motives, my honesty, my credentials. “What makes you different than other journalists?” “How can you write about this if you haven’t got any faith yourself?” “Why do you care? What’s your agenda?” And she rejects my every answer. It’s exhausting. I’m doing a backfoot jig here, doing all the talking while she bats back everything I say with a skeptical spin. The portcullis is up. The crocodiles in the moat are snapping. “I do not intend on staying in the situation I am in,” she writes. “So I am feeling extremely insecure about my circumstances at the moment. You see, I am only 25— 26 in September. According to law I was a ‘child bride.’ I have spent 50 percent of my life living this way. I risk a tremendous amount just by speaking with you over the e-mail.