Chapter 2

Alison and Abigail had run away from home. Home was miles away, up the road, past where the dirt road ended -- over hills with no trail. It was very isolated, a compound serving as the home of the religious sect One True Religion. One major splinter group of Mormonism is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the major branch that never renounced polygamy, or ‘plural marriage’, as they put it. One True Religion was an offshoot of an offshoot of that group, and they had taken plural marriage to an extreme. There was only one adult male, Reverend Adam, God’s one true representative here on earth, whose word was unquestioned. He had dozens of wives, and they all agreed that having as many children as they could was part of God’s plan.

All the other males lived in a separate facility miles away that was essentially a labor camp, working long hours running businesses that supported One True Religion. Reverend Adam had decreed that such a life was their one and only path to eternal salvation, so that was how they lived. Boys left their mothers for the labor camp at the age of six.

But now there was a serious problem within the fabric of their most cherished beliefs. No babies had been born in four years. Adam still took each of his wives to his bed on a regular and rotating basis, but there were no babies.

The two girls were both 18 years old, and just half-sisters, having different mothers but the same father, not Reverend Adam but the late Reverend Joseph, who had been God’s sole representative on earth until the mantle passed to Adam upon his demise. Both girls were recent wives of Reverend Adam’s. While Adam did take them to his bed now and then, all he did was say a few words and prayers and send them away again. When they described to their mothers how little Adam had done, they confirmed that there was more needed to make a girl pregnant, though in accord with Adam’s strict prohibition on discussing such things, their mothers had refused to reveal what it was. Neither of them had known how babies were made. Before they left the compound, Alison and Abigail had known that whatever the secret procedure was, it was not working any more. Now Frank had shown them. Now they knew.

Then they went on to disclose how they had come to run away.

Alison very much wanted to be a mother. She had complained to her own mother how it just felt wrong to be in a place without any new babies being born. Her mother said the same reassuring words about God’s will that Reverend Adam often repeated, but Alison could tell her mother was worried too.

Alison had confided her concerns to Abigail, and convinced her that something needed to change. After much prayer, God spoke to Alison and told her that her destiny was to run away -- and Abigail too. They gathered some food and water in makeshift containers and set out in the middle of a moonlit night. Their first goal was a gap between two hills to the southeast, but as they entered the forest they soon lost sight of that.

Frank interrupted to ask if there wasn’t a road that led to the outside world.

There was, the girls replied, but it was guarded and watched all the time, so they needed to go through the woods. When the sun rose the next morning, they used its position to go southeast as best they were able. There had never been a trail, but at first it had been easy to walk through the forest. By the middle of their first day out they were scrambling through dense thicket, then up and down rocky slopes. They found a stream and headed downhill, but they had to cross back and forth when one bank or the other got too steep. They had no clothes but the dresses they wore -- all the women and girls at One True Religion wore dresses like that all the time. Their shoes were not meant for hiking. They had finally arrived at a dirt road and followed it for miles downhill until they met Frank just where the pavement started.

Frank said, “Do you have some place you’re headed? Any people to go to?”

The girls shook their heads.

“Any plans for what to do next?”

“No,” said Alison, bowing her head. “We trusted that God would show us the way.”

Frank thought he could see how a couple dots connected to make a line. If they were Reverend Adam’s wives, and knew a man was involved somehow in making a girl pregnant, they knew it would be a grave sin if some man other than Reverend Adam was involved. After running away, they might have had some temptation to go back and hope to be forgiven, but having tried to have a baby with some other man meant that would be much harder. Their interludes with Frank in the bedroom committed them to their new course.

Frank went to make supper, but the girls were eager that he just show them how, since cooking was surely woman’s work. He had in mind spaghetti and butter, and they found a dusty can of tomatoes high up in a cabinet and added that. After supper, Frank said it was time to wash their dresses. They watched attentively as Frank showed them how a washing machine and dryer worked. In their experience thus far in life, clothes were rubbed on a washboard and air-dried.

The girls were also tired, having slept uneasily on the forest floor, curled up together to conserve heat, for the past two nights. Frank’s other bedroom had mostly been accumulating junk, but he quickly cleaned it up enough to make it usable. They said sharing a bed would be not only no problem but comforting to them. After both had a turn in the bathroom and put on what would pass for nightclothes, they promptly fell to their knees by the bed, praying softly. Frank sat in the living room, waiting, but the praying went on and on. He leafed through a magazine, and finally Abigail appeared in the doorway, said “One True Religion”, curtseyed, and went back into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Frank set about cleaning the place up, both removing the clutter and actually sweeping floors and washing kitchen surfaces. As he worked, he thought. After the work was done and he went to bed, he thought some more, and didn’t fall asleep for several hours.

What he wanted more than anything was to make Alison and Abigail pregnant. His cock started growing hard every time he considered the idea. Once that was accomplished, he would figure out what to do next. But for now, his thought was entirely as to how to let nothing stand in the way of achieving that one goal.