We drove with a fuming silence between us till we got to Ogden, Utah, where I had to ask her for money to put gas in the car, and tell her about paying off the police officer. I don't know what offended her worse, that I had given him money, or that he accepted. It is an awful terrible thing to have your paradigms broken, especially several in the same day. How sorry I felt for my wife, she has always put such trust in her husband, and in church, and civil authorities, and in a single day, she was shown that all are corrupt, and not what they pretend to be. And how sorry I felt for myself, and for my son, cause I had every intention of translating the golden plates, even if it meant that my wife would leave me, and my son would have to grow up without a father, yet I would do it, being God's will that the sealed plates of the Book of Mormon get translated.
When we got to Brigham City, I stopped at the Flying J to get a phone book to look up the address of the Brigham City Rock Shop. My wife was again full of questions and hostility. I told her that if she wasn't going to help me do what the angel had shown me, that at least she could be quiet while I did it myself. She let off, but returned to her fuming silence. The rock shop was right on main street, a few blocks from the tabernacle, but is was closed and nobody was around. Since it seemed to be attached to a house, I went around to the back and knocked on the door. Then I felt silly. You don't just walk up to people's houses and tell them God sent to you ask them a favor. Before I could talk myself out of the rashness of my actions, a young lady opened the door and I asked to speak to her grandfather. She said that her grandfather was dead, and it was awfully late, and wouldn't I please go away. So I slunk quietly away, feeling really stupid, and lower than dirt, especially since I had to face a gloating wife when I got back to the car.
I tried to tell her what I was doing, but she wouldn't listen to me. It was too frightening for her and she was totally convinced that the whole thing was a major deception that someone was playing on me. I tried to tell her that God had spoken to me through the voice of an Indian angel, and that the things he had given me were real, but she wouldn't listen. She took my failure to find grandfather as a sign from God that it was all a hoax.
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