The rain is heavy, but I stand in it watching plants take a beating from the source of their lives. “A Flower Speaks the Impossible,” I say into my phone, and my wife laughs. “A Flower for the Scrapper, maybe,” she says. She’s always been inscrutable like that.
She reminds me of a recent foyer conversation and suggests a Mental Health Pain Scale: When Your Psychiatrist is LDS might, in fact, be somehow more true, as more aligned with my base reality, even when Coming Down from a high or, you know, Even in Hell—a place I know well, even if I do not believe in it.
“You know what I say When Someone Asks Me if Mormons Celebrate Pioneer Day Outside of Utah?” she asks.
I’m passing a bus stop and step under the awning. “No. Does that happen a lot?”
She laughs. “I say, ‘La amistad del Salvador.'”
“What’s that mean?”
“If they ask, they don’t speak Spanish, so I can say anything I like—but, really, it means The Savior’s Friendship. Do you know why I say that?”
I draw a line through water adhering to the plastic wall. “Atlantic City.”
“Exactly.”
At her college roommate’s ‘destination wedding,’ we had bumped into a pair of slot machines, exiled near a staff exit—one was pioneer-themed and one featured Jesus holding his arms out, coins dripping from his stigmata. The tackiest thing I’ve seen in my life. But there was something in his face that stuck with us. We’d joked that he was promising those pioneers excellent shopping for their mountain-valley descendants, but it never quite felt like a joke. It felt like that time, At Someone Else’s Baptism, when we’d seen them rise from the water, cataracts streaming from face and hair, and together been forced to recognize The Miracle of Priceless Bodies, all around us, born again.
“Where are you?”
“I’m Standing at this Bus Stop on Promontory Summit Boulevard—maybe halfway home.”
“A Scripture and Prayer away.”
“Exactly.”
I reentered the rain and kept walking. She didn’t beg off the phone. Whatever she was doing, she was content to just be with me, dry, in the rain. Like Helaman’s Warriors, quietly assuming God would save. Or, as in Alma Twenty-two, giving up all her sins—only this time to save another’s soul, one so broken and wandering as mine.
The rain had flooded the next intersection. The credit union at my corner had decorated its property with river rocks. I found a flattish one and skipped it across the road. Three skips, then it sunk. I threw a couple more just for the splashes. Then I left those Baptismal Stones to await the sun and resurrection.
A plane roared overhead. I briefly saw its flashing lights through the clouds and imagined stars coming out. I quoted Psalm 23:1–6 to one I dubbed Kolob. I asked it about Repentance. It told me about The Miracle of Worldly Appetite. I asked for Untold Stories of the Cross. It suggested that, with a little effort, I could be my own Urim and Thummim.
I turned onto the road we live on. A streetlight flickered off then on then off again. I thought I saw Trees Growing Upside Down. I walked closer. A Green Man stood at the end of our drive. I walked closer. And there she was. Half a smile upon her lips, her phone to her ear. She held out her free hand. I walked closer. And I took it.
Irreantum acknowledges the assistance of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts in advising and securing visual art for this issue.