Chapter 6

Frank was a decent guy, on the whole. He wanted the best for everyone. But he had another imperative: to father children. Lots of them. And his notions of justice and fairness had a tendency to get rationalized away when there were women he could likely impregnate.

So when Alison and Abigail emerged from the woods, helping them get pregnant was his top priority.

When he heard their stories about One True Religion, he thought it sounded like a terrible idea. He mused about how he could liberate all the women and girls trapped in such an unfair system, where they accepted this repulsive (and largely outdated) concept of women as second-class citizens whose role was to serve men. And yet it seemed there was little he would be able to do given their entire entrenched belief system.

It was only the prospect of fathering a great many children that led him to seriously consider going there and trying to take over. That plan had succeeded brilliantly, and he had dozens of children and a fair number of bulging female bellies to prove it. The truth was, his inner male never thought it had fathered enough children. More were always desirable, so he was reluctant to do anything that would cut off his opportunities for fucking more babies up into the tummies of his wives. But still, as it became apparent how successfully he was siring offspring, the virtues of justice and fairness occupied him more and more.

What about freeing the women and girls from their servitude? With his animalistic goal of fathering children largely achieved, what could be done?

The most important change Frank could make was to have the revelation that there were other ways to salvation than One True Religion. That would allow those who were happy with their current situation to continue on as before, while allowing those with doubts to explore other options.

While the old dogma had been that Reverend Adam was God’s representative on earth and his group the One True Religion, they didn’t in practice act that way. Reverend Adam and his predecessors may have warped reality to allow the creation of a religion like One True Religion in the first place, but they didn’t go so far as to do away with the prohibition on father-daughter incest. Adam’s daughters had been married off to other groups whose leaders also claimed to be God’s one true representative on earth, and in turn Adam got his new wives from them.

Frank set about putting an end to that. Adam’s daughters, who had been due to be traded away, could now be kept within the community as Frank’s new wives, since there was no danger of incest. And Frank did take a few as they came of age if they made it clear they were actively enthusiastic about the prospect, but he tried to discourage them. And he traded away a few girls who were enthusiastic about joining their older sisters as new wives to some other patriarch. But mostly, he wanted them to have the same choices as all the other free women in America. He set up halfway houses where girls and women from One True Religion could go to try out life in the wider world while still retaining within the household some comfort of the traditions of the community of their birth.

He learned more about the work camp where the big boys and grown men from One True Religion had been sent. He let it be known there too that there were other paths to salvation than the One True Religion church. He made separate halfway houses for men and boys. There had always been a certain attrition from the male work camps, as a life without sex and marriage is a hard sell to the male psyche. With spiritual permission, more and more took that route.

Frank did not force any boys to leave for the work camps when they turned 7, as had been the policy under Adam. Women who had had only sons were prime candidates to leave, retrieve their sons from the work camps, and set up life as a family on the outside. But the women in the community did feel it would be wrong for any other adult men to live with them on the premises of One True Religion itself. At heart, it was a community with only one adult man in it. So most of the boys as they approached puberty whose mothers wanted to remain went to halfway houses or directly to live with others who had left the community.

Even after the passage of years, many of Frank’s wives chose to stay with him and continued to have his babies. But One True Religion gradually shrank and became a much more pragmatic and laid-back place.

Frank was aware of one looming problem. With the work camps shrinking, the income that supported One True Religion was also drying up. Before long they would run out of money.

Frank had heard nothing from over the state line in Nevada, and had trusted that nothing of the happenings at One True Religion had gotten back to Alison, Abigail, or Jason. In this he was wrong. News had filtered back over the years. When refugees from the main community shared their stories about the new man who had taken over from Reverend Adam, physical description and mannerisms left no doubt that it was Frank. But Alison and Abigail kept their distance, primarily to keep their career situation known to their mothers, Ruth and Rachel.