The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary

340 Pages·2015·2.33 MB·English

by  William Shunn

Copyright © 2015 by William Shunn
All rights reserved
Electronic Edition
ISBN-13: 978-1-941-92854-7
ISBN-10: 1-941-92854-4
Cover photograph by Tim Bishop
Cover illustration by Everett Historical/Shutterstock
Author photograph by Colin Poellot
Sinister Regard
New York
Table of Contents
Note
Epigraph
Prelude
Book I. The Missionary Imposition
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Book II. Elder Skelter
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Book III. The Occidental Terrorist
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Postlude
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Glossary
About the Author
Also by William Shunn
For my podcast listeners,
who made this book seem possible.
But especially for Laura,
who makes everything seem possible.
Note
This book is not a work of fiction. It is a memoir, a chronicle of a specific
period in my life as I recall it. In some instances I’ve made small changes to the
chronology of events for the sake of narrative clarity. Dialogue is intended not as
a transcription but as a representative amalgam of real
conversations. Otherwise, I’ve attempted to reconstruct these events as
accurately as possible, as I experienced them. I’ve been aided by church papers,
legal documents, newspaper articles, e-mail exchanges, maps, calendars, weather
reports, and my own earlier written or recorded versions of this story, but for the
most part my own slippery memory has served as my most important resource.
Some of the participants in these events behaved in ways
that, while innocuous enough to outsiders, might cause them some measure of
embarrassment within the Mormon community today. I’ve tried to conceal their
identities as best I can without distorting the story. The only contemporary
characters who appear under their own names are the members of my immediate
family and one classmate from a university summer writing program.
A man’s memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and
the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.
—Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History
Prelude
2/23/1987
The detective unlocks my tiny room and drags a plastic chair in from the
hallway.
“Mister Shunn,” she says, “I’d like to ask you some questions now, if you
have a few minutes.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, narrowing my eyes. My stinging eyes.
There’s no one but the detective and me in this consultation booth, no knob
on the inside of the door. The detective locks us in, sits down, crosses her legs,
and smooths her short, short skirt.
I squirm in my chair. She’s disconcertingly blond, mid-thirties. I’m nineteen
years old, and I haven’t been alone so close to a woman in five months. With no
table between us, our knees nearly touch. This is against mission rules in so
many ways, I can’t even count. She arranges a steno pad atop her bare thigh,
pencil sharpened and poised.
“Should I call you, what is it, ‘Elder’ instead?”
I try to breathe easy and keep my eyes above her neck. “Either way.”
“Your name, please, Elder?”
I’m confused. “You used it a minute ago.”
“For the record.” Her green eyes don’t blink. “Full name.”
I touch the spot on my sweater where the black name tag should have been.
“Donald William Shunn. The Second.”
“Age?”
“Nineteen.”
“Are you a Canadian citizen?”
“No, I’m American.”
“And you’ve been in Canada for how long?”
“Five months, about.”
“Any previous criminal record?”
“No.”
She takes sharp, efficient notes in shorthand, a skill I didn’t know still
existed.
“Okay, Elder,” she says, crossing her legs the other way. “Let’s talk about
“Okay, Elder,” she says, crossing her legs the other way. “Let’s talk about
your activities today.”
I keep my eyes up, up. “I’ve been through this already, with the constable at
the airport.”
She shrugs. “Now you’re going through it with me, and you’ll probably go
through it with someone else after that. That’s how these things go.”
“I’d like to talk to my mission president.”
“So would we, Elder. We take terrorism very seriously.”
The word knocks the wind out of me. “What?”
“Terrorism, conspiracy . . .”
“Conspiracy? There’s no conspiracy.”
She taps her pencil against the pad. “Imagine what it looks like from here.”
I’m going to prison. I’m going to prison, and I’m going to die there.
“I’m not a terrorist.” The words grate in my throat. “I already explained what
happened.”
“Explain it to me. Help me out here. We can’t get any of your people on the
phone. All we have is you. All you have is you.”
I close my eyes, trying to work my frozen lungs. How many times was
Joseph Smith in scrapes like this? Plenty, and he got through it.
Well, no. Actually, they shot him in the end. But I try not to think about that.
I can get through this.
“Elder Shunn, tell me,” says the detective. “Tell me how you ended up here.”
My impulse is to blurt out everything. I take a deep breath. I choose my
details with care.