CAUTION Men in Trees

It's a Lot Scarier If You Take Jesus Out

IT'S A LOT SCARIER IF YOU TAKE JESUS OUT uicide, the Mormons teach you, is only a change ofscenery, and it doesn't mean you can't go to heaven,just that according to their plan of salvation you spend eternity in a third-rather-than-first degree of glory, a telestial not a celestial kingdom, the celestial being the glory of the sun, even the glory of God.There was a time when Ibelieved what the Mormons said. 1 was one of the youth of Zion, a standard-bearer. Friends called me Nephi, and I was good a LDS,a Latter-daySaint. No longer. Not for years now, and not on your life. Not since I was seventeen, when a girl named Caroline Fontstep determined in a physical way that Nephi Woods from Alpine , Utah, would be known as Woods and only Woods and in passing taught me the x's and o's of a snuffling post-pubescent boarding-school nihilism. "Neeil ism" was how she said it. One day, at the tag end of one of our chinfests, her eloquence run dry, all our ideas and big talk kicked around and worn thin, Caroline said, "It's a lot scarier if you takeJesus out." "People'd find a substitute," I said. She said, "Let them." S I said, "Youcan't stop people." It was one of our last powwows, our final tete-a-tetes. Shewent off to Berkeley, and 1headed east to Princeton. We were impudent and smoking Marlboros. Our clothes were rags. I wore my hair long, up, rubberbanded, like sprouts. Hers was short as a boy's and nicked to show scalp. We were the smart kids, and our small town felt betrayed. Now I'm thirty-one, living again in Alpine, Utah, and if the Mormons are right I can't abide the law of either the celestial or terrestrial glory. I'm bound for the telestial. So is an ex-girlfriend,Jill, who took her own life yesterday. To do so is to break the law. My sin? I denied mybirthright, my God.I said no-thanks to the Mormons and their ways and broke my family's heart. The two ofus,Jill and I, we chose, in different ways, to become a law unto ourselves. We shall not, when the resurrection of the dead comes,dwell in God'spresence. Wewill notbe ofthe Church of the Firstborn, and our hell will be in knowing what we could have had. Still, all is not lost. Even the glory of the telestial is a glory that surpasses in its beauty all understanding. Stuart, who lived in the same house in the studio apartment across from Jill, phoned me about her. "I have the worst news," he began. When he hung up, I speed-dialed Jill and her machine answered. "Hello," her recording said. "It's almost eight o'clock, and I'm going out for the evening. Goodbye." That was the lie to end all lies, wasn't it? "Goodbye" could mean a hundred different things. Jill killed herself sometime in the hours of stubborn thought that comejust before the sun rises. Shedrove into Lambs Canyon east of Salt Lake City, ran a hose from her exhaust into her car, and rolled up the windows. 156 CAUTION Men in Trees I begged off when Stuart said friends were getting together to talk. Jill and I once lived together for three years in Salt Lake. I held her hand while she aborted one child. We kept birds. Chin Up and Chin Down, we called them. One summer in Yellowstone, canoeing in country even God has forgotten he created, we saw a moose fight another moose. So one night I slept, Jill died, and I woke and drove to my office not knowing she had. Utah's economy is off the charts, and 1 broker whatever you want brokered and make good money. On the way home I stopped at the market, picked up Honey Wheat bread, and bought Coca-Colamagnets I stuck to my refrigerator. I opened the windows at the rear of my third-floor apartment, turned on the TV,and read the mail, all as if I could stop what I was doing at any minute, phone Jill, and say, "What's up?" She lived in Park City, forty minutes away. Then it was 3 A.M., and sitting on the...