Deaver didn’t know what to say about that.
“You never talk about your folks,” said Lehi. “I always remember my dad, but you never talk about your folks.” Deaver shrugged.
“He doesn’t remember em,” Rain said quietly. “They found him out on the plains somewhere. The mobbers got his family, however many there was, he must’ve hid or something, that’s all they can figure.”
“Well what was it?” asked Lehi. “Did you hide?”
Deaver didn’t feel comfortable talking about it, since he didn’t remember anything except what people told him. He knew that other people remembered their childhood, and he didn’t like how they always acted so surprised that he didn’t. But Lehi was asking, and Deaver knew that you don’t keep stuff back from friends. “I guess I did. Or maybe I looked too dumb to kill or somethin.” He laughed. “I must’ve been a real dumb little kid, I didn’t even remember my own name. They figure I was five or six years old, most kids know their names, but not me. So the two guys that found me, their names were Teague and Deaver.”
“You gotta remember somethin.”
“Lehi, I didn’t even know how to talk. They tell me I didn’t even say a word till I was nine years old. We’re talkin’ about a slow learner here.”
“Wow.” Lehi was silent for a while. “How come you didn’t say anything?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Rain. “He makes up for it now, Deaver the talker. Champion talker.”
They coasted the island till they got past Magna. Lehi led them to a storage shed that Underwater Salvage had put up at the north end of Oquirrh Island. It was unlocked and full of diving equipment. Lehi’s friends had filled some tanks with air. They got two diving outfits and underwater flashlights. Rain wasn’t going underwater, so she didn’t need anything.
They pulled away from the island, out into the regular shipping lane from Wendover. In that direction, at least, people had sense enough not to travel at night, so there wasn’t much traffic. After a little while they were out into open water. That was when Rain stopped the little outboard motor Deaver had scrounged for her and Lehi had fixed. “Time to sweat and slave,” said Rain.
Deaver sat on the middle bench, settled the oars into the locks, and began to row.
“Not too fast,” Rain said. “You’ll give yourself blisters.”
A boat that might have been Lake Patrol went by once, but otherwise nobody came near them as they crossed the open stretch. Then the skyscrapers rose up and blocked off large sections of the starry night.
“They say there’s people who was never rescued still livin’ in there,” Lehi whispered.
Rain was disdainful. “You think there’s anything left in there to keep anybody alive? And the water’s still too salty to drink for long.”
“Who says they’re alive?” whispered Deaver in his most mysterious voice. A couple of years ago, he could have spooked Lehi and made his eyes go wide. Now Lehi just looked disgusted.
“Come on, Deaver, I’m not a kid.”
It was Deaver who got spooked a little. The big holes where pieces of glass and plastic had fallen off looked like mouths, waiting to suck him in and carry him down under the water, into the city of the drowned. He sometimes dreamed about thousands and thousands of people living under water. Still driving their cars around, going about their business, shopping in stores, going to movies. In his dreams they never did anything bad, just went about their business. But he always woke up sweating and frightened. No reason. Just spooked him. “I think they should blow up these things before they fall down and hurt somebody,” said Deaver.
“Maybe it’s better to leave em standing,” said Rain. “Maybe there’s a lot of folks like to remember how tall we once stood.”
“What’s to remember? They built tall buildings and then they let em take a bath, what’s to brag for?”
Deaver was trying to get her not to talk about the old days, but Lehi seemed to like wallowing in it. “You ever here before the water came?”
Rain nodded. “Saw a parade go right down this street. I can’t remember if it was Third South or Fourth South. Third I guess. I saw twenty-five horses all riding together. I remember that I thought that was really something. You didn’t see many horses in those days.”
“I seen too many myself,” said Lehi.
“It’s the ones I don’t see that I hate,” said Deaver. “They ought to make em wear diapers.”
They rounded a building and looked up a north-south passage between towers. Rain was sitting in the stern and saw it first. “There it is. You can see it. Just the tall spires now.”
Deaver rowed them up the passage. There were six spires sticking up out of the water, but the four short ones were under so far that only the pointed roofs were dry. The two tall ones had windows in them, not covered at all. Deaver was disappointed. Wide open like that meant that anybody might have come here. It was all so much less dangerous than he had expected. Maybe Rain was right, and there was nothing there.
They tied the boat to the north side and waited for daylight. “If I knew it’d be so easy,” said Deaver, “I could’ve slept another hour.”
“Sleep now,” said Rain.
“Maybe I will,” said Deaver.
He slid off his bench and sprawled in the bottom of the boat.
He didn’t sleep, though. The open window of the steeple was only a few yards away, a deep black surrounded by the starlit grey of the temple granite. It was down there, waiting for him; the future, a chance to get something better for himself and his two friends. Maybe a plot of ground in the south where it was warmer and the snow didn’t pile up five feet deep every winter, where it wasn’t rain in the sky and lake everywhere else you looked. A place where he could live for a very long time and look back and remember good times with his friends, that was all waiting down under the water.
Of course they hadn’t told him about the gold. It was on the road, a little place in Parowan where truckers knew they could stop in because the iron mine kept such crazy shifts that the diners never closed. They even had some coffee there, hot and bitter, because there weren’t so many Mormons there and the miners didn’t let the Bishop push them around. In fact they even called him Judge there instead of Bishop. The other drivers didn’t talk to Deaver, of course, they were talking to each other when the one fellow told the story about how the Mormons back in the gold rush days hoarded up all the gold they could get and hid it in the upper rooms of the temple where nobody but the prophet and the twelve apostles could ever go. At first Deaver didn’t believe him, except that Bill Home nodded like he knew it was true, and Cal Silber said you’d never catch him messin’ with the Mormon temple, that’s a good way to get yourself dead. The way they were talking, scared and quiet, told Deaver that they believed it, that it was true, and he knew something else, too: if anyone was going to get that gold, it was him.
Even if it was easy to get here, that didn’t mean anything. He knew how Mormons were about the temple. He’d asked around a little, but nobody’d talk about it. And nobody ever went there, either, he asked a lot of people if they ever sailed on out and looked at it, and they all got quiet and shook their heads no or changed the subject. Why should the Lake Patrol guard it, then, if everybody was too scared to go? Everybody but Deaver Teague and his two friends.
“Real pretty,” said Rain.
Deaver woke up. The sun was just topping the mountains; it must’ve been light for some time. He looked where Rain was looking. It was the Moroni tower on top of the mountain above the old capitol, where they’d put the temple statue a few years back. It was bright and shiny, the old guy and his trumpet. But when the Mormons wanted that trumpet to blow, it had just stayed silent and their faith got drowned. Now Deaver knew they only hung on to it for old times’ sake. Well, Deaver lived for new times.
Lehi showed him how to use the underwater gear, and they practiced going over the side into the water a couple of times, once without the weight belts and once with. Deaver and Lehi swam like fish, of course-swimming was the main recreation that everybody could do for free. It was different with the mask and the air hose, though.
“Hose tastes like a horse’s hoof,” Deaver said between dives.
Lehi made sure Deaver’s weight belt was on tight. “You’re the only guy on Oquirrh Island who knows.” Then he tumbled forward off the boat. Deaver went down too straight and the air tank bumped the back of his head a little, but it didn’t hurt too much and he didn’t drop his light, either.
He swam along the outside of the temple, shining his light on the stones. Lots of underwater plants were rising up the sides of the temple, but it wasn’t covered much yet. There was a big metal plaque right in the front of
