Before Us Like a Land of Dreams by Karin Anderson

Author:Karin Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Published: 2019-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

AGAIN WITH IGNATIUS

No, really, I’ve got this.

Choose.

Come on. I’ve been thinking about this one since I was a child. My father loved his uncle, Steven Porter—no one else would speak of him, except in the breathy tones of hushing a terrible tale. Dad said Steve was his favorite relative—charismatic and irreverent, made his solemn mother and sisters laugh despite themselves. Taught him to fish.

You have considered emulation. Do not approach this portal alone.

He was a man, back when the world belonged—even more than now—to men. He lived a life I couldn’t begin to comprehend. Finished it in a way I couldn’t possibly consider, let alone accomplish. Don’t worry. I’m hearkening after the women he abandoned. His mother. His sisters. His wife. But none of them will take me there.

One of the little sons, then.

They don’t know us. Don’t want to. They owe me nothing.

Light a candle by an open window. Leave an offering. Set your boundaries to ink and paper or they will not depart, even once you want it finished. These lives, even gone, are turbulent and compelling.

I hesitate, but now the saint commands: You’ve brought me here. This is not the end. Now set the scene.

What’s to set? We’re back in Fremont County, Idaho, this time on the Mormon side. The old Lutherans are over there to the east, unobtrusive in this rendition. Also, we’re in Essex, England, way back when it was a hotbed of religious mayhem in the name of Henry VIII. We’re in New Zealand, between. And still some Arizona, where my grandparents Clyde and Connie are engrossed in raising small children. Remember? We’ve been driving through this territory for a very long time.

The Porters are my father’s people—his mother’s folks. Steven can tell the backstory, once you let me get in there. The Porters came from Essex via New Zealand, not convicts but certainly not the displaced royals they invented themselves to be. I trooped out to see their old “family” castle that day I left my husband to True Art in London. The swan pond. Remember?

I’m not accountable for your story. I stick with scripture. Remember? Your preoccupations border on travesty.

Just walk me to the gate and I’ll point them out: Fred and Stella Porter, my poor but overelegant great-grandparents. Their oldest daughter is my grandma Connie, a sort of conduit of personal nostalgia. Her youngest sibling is Steven, really just a few years older than my father—a sort of big-brother figure to him in a season I now understand as a brink for them both. Steven married a woman who made a living by reading palms, prophesying through a crystal ball. He didn’t survive.

Have you read up on the history of Essex since you so blithely wandered through in your twenties? This is not the stuff of casual tourism.

Yeah. Sure. Anne Boleyn’s home ground. Country resort for the wealthy and dangerous. Richard Rich. I know. That castle I hiked to—his place. One of his places, anyway. The guy cashed in on his

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