Johnny and I were on our way to Kanab. It was at that point late in the afternoon when it’s so hot you think the car will spontaneously ignite. As we got closer to Mesadale we passed a truck with three old Firsts in the cab, guys with yellow white hair greased back and one eye squinted up. Between them they probably had forty or fifty wives and a hundred and fifty kids, maybe two hundred. The truck was worth fifty thousand bucks, pimped out with smoked windows and a roof rack. If you got twenty wives at home but the government recognizes only one as your legal spouse, the other nineteen can receive assistance. The more wives and kids, the more welfare checks. That’s how a man with seventy mouths to feed and no job can afford a truck like that. And kickbacks from the church for pledging your life to defend the Prophet when the whole thing blows up. We passed a billboard that said, ON YOUR OWN? NEED HELP? It showed a blond girl walking down a lonely road that didn’t look like anywhere near here.
