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Show in my father's house/ 98 felt secure from anyone who would try to break up our life. My father stood before a large boulder, seeming as permanent and indestructible as his backdrop. He stood taller, somehow -- apart from the others, though they clustered around him. I remembered he had said in the Last Days the people of God would flee into the mountains and be saved. I believed him. In that moment, I felt they would never take him, never put him behind bars again. After lunch we went exploring. The older children soon outstripped me, climbing the face of the mountain. My mother called me back. "Don't go up there," she told me. "Someone could start a landslide and then you'd get hurt. Or you might fall." I whined that Saul and Jake and Danny got to climb the mountain and why couldn't I, when a shout echoed off the cliffs and Saul came sidestepping downhill, huge puffs covering his good shoes and Sunday slacks. "Daddy! Jake's been hurt!" he gasped. "A big rock knocked him out." Saul's voice shuddered. My father jumped up. "I told you boys not to hike above each other." "We didn't, Daddy! It must have been someone else." Jake's head dripped blood when they brought him off the mountain. I thought for a minute he must be dead, his face pasty-white as a fish floating upside-down. |