These words echoed in my head. I’d heard other students talk about their grants, and I’d recoiled from them. I would leave school before I would allow myself to be purchased.
“I don’t believe in Government grants,” I said.
“Why not?”
I told him what my father said. He sighed and looked heavenward. “How much will it cost to fix the tooth?”
“Fourteen hundred,” I said. “I’ll find the money.”
“The church will pay,” he said quietly. “I have a discretionary fund.”
“That money is sacred.”
The bishop threw his hands in the air. We sat in silence, then he opened his desk drawer and withdrew a checkbook. I looked at the heading. It was for his personal account. He filled out a check, to me, for fifteen hundred dollars.
“I will not allow you to leave school over this,” he said.
The check was in my hand. I was so tempted, the pain in my jaw so savage, that I must have held it for ten seconds before passing it back.
—
I HAD A JOB at the campus creamery, flipping burgers and scooping ice cream. I got by between paydays by neglecting overdue bills and borrowing money from Robin, so twice a month, when a few hundred dollars went into my account, it was gone within hours. I was broke when I turned nineteen at the end of September. I had given up on fixing the tooth; I knew I would never have fourteen hundred dollars. Besides, the pain had lessened: either the nerve had died or my brain had adjusted to its shocks.
Still, I had other bills, so I decided to sell the only thing I had of any value—my horse, Bud. I called Shawn and asked how much I could get. Shawn said a mixed breed wasn’t worth much, but that I could send him to auction like Grandpa’s dog-food horses. I imagined Bud in a meat grinder, then said, “Try to find a buyer first.” A few weeks later Shawn sent me a check for a few hundred dollars. When I called Shawn and asked who he’d sold Bud to, he mumbled something vague about a guy passing through from Tooele.
I was an incurious student that semester. Curiosity is a luxury reserved for the financially secure: my mind was absorbed with more immediate concerns, such as the exact balance of my bank account, who I owed how much, and whether there was anything in my room I could sell for ten or twenty dollars. I submitted my homework and studied for my exams, but I did so out of terror—of losing my scholarship should my GPA fall a single decimal—not from real interest in my classes.
In December, after my last paycheck of the month, I had sixty dollars in my account. Rent was $110, due January 7. I needed quick cash. I’d heard there was a clinic near the mall that paid people for plasma. A clinic sounded like a part of the Medical Establishment, but I reasoned that as long as they were taking things out, not putting anything in, I’d be okay. The nurse stabbed at my veins for twenty minutes, then said they were too small.
I bought a tank of gas with my last thirty dollars and drove home for Christmas. On Christmas morning, Dad gave me a rifle—I didn’t take it out of the box, so I have no idea what kind. I asked Shawn if he wanted to buy it off me, but Dad gathered it up and said he’d keep it safe.
That was it, then. There was nothing left to sell, no more childhood friends or Christmas presents. It was time to quit school and get a job. I accepted that. My brother Tony was living in Las Vegas, working as a long-haul trucker, so on Christmas Day I called him. He said I could live with him for a few months and work at the In-N-Out Burger across the street.
I hung up and was walking down the hall, wishing I’d asked Tony if he could lend me the money to get to Vegas, when a gruff voice called to me. “Hey, Siddle Lister. Come here a minute.”
Shawn’s bedroom was filthy. Dirty clothes littered the floor, and I could see the butt of a handgun poking out from under a pile of stained T-shirts. The bookshelves strained under boxes of ammo and stacks of Louis L’Amour paperbacks. Shawn was sitting on the bed, his shoulders hunched, his legs bowed outward. He looked as if he’d been holding that posture for some time, contemplating the squalor. He let out a sigh, then stood and walked toward me, lifting his right arm. I took an involuntary step back, but he had only reached into his pocket. He pulled out his wallet, opened it and extracted a crisp hundred-dollar bill.
“Merry Christmas,” he said. “You won’t waste this like I will.”
—
I BELIEVED THAT HUNDRED dollars was a sign from God. I was supposed to stay in school. I drove back to BYU and paid my rent. Then, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to pay it in February, I took a second job as a domestic cleaner, driving twenty minutes north three days a week to scrub expensive homes in Draper.
The bishop and I were still meeting every Sunday. Robin had told him that I hadn’t bought my textbooks for the semester. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “Apply for the grant! You’re poor! That’s why these grants exist!”
My opposition was beyond rational, it was visceral.
“I make a lot of money,” the bishop said. “I pay a lot of taxes. Just think of it as my money.” He had printed out the application forms, which he gave to me. “Think about it. You need to learn to accept help, even from the Government.”
I took the forms. Robin filled them out. I refused to send them.
“Just get the paperwork together,” she said. “See how it feels.”
I needed my parents’ tax returns. I wasn’t even sure my parents filed taxes, but if they did, I knew Dad wouldn’t give them to me if he knew why I wanted them. I thought up a dozen fake reasons for why I might need them, but none were believable. I pictured the returns sitting in the large gray filing cabinet in the kitchen. Then I decided to steal them.
I left for Idaho just before midnight, hoping I would arrive at around three in the morning and the house would be quiet. When I reached the peak, I crept up the driveway, wincing each time a bit of gravel snapped beneath my tires. I eased the car door open noiselessly, then padded across the grass and slipped through the back door, moving silently through the house, reaching my hand out to feel my way to the filing cabinet.
I had only made it a few steps when I heard a familiar clink.
“Don’t shoot!” I shouted. “It’s me!”
“Who?”
I flipped the light switch and saw Shawn sitting across the room, pointing a pistol at me. He lowered it. “I thought you were…someone else.”
“Obviously,” I said.
We stood awkwardly for a moment, then I went to bed.
The next morning, after Dad left for the junkyard, I told Mother one of my fake stories about BYU needing her tax returns. She knew I was lying—I could tell because when Dad came in unexpectedly and asked why she was copying the returns, she said the duplicates were for her records.
I took the copies and returned to BYU. Shawn and I exchanged no words before I left. He never asked why I’d been sneaking into my own house at three in the morning, and I never asked who he’d been waiting for, sitting up in the middle of the night, with a loaded pistol.
—
THE FORMS SAT ON my desk for a week before Robin walked with me to the post office and watched me hand them to the postal worker. It didn’t take long, a week, maybe two. I was cleaning houses in Draper when the mail came, so Robin left the letter on my bed with a note that I was a Commie now.
I tore open the envelope and a check fell onto my bed. For four thousand dollars. I felt greedy, then afraid of my greed. There was a contact number. I dialed it.
