Benjamin shook his head. “A few weeks ago, all of us made an agreement.” He shook his head quickly. “It was more than an agreement. It was a covenant. A solemn and sacred covenant.”
Joshua looked suddenly suspicious. “What kind of a cove-nant?”
Benjamin looked to Nathan, who stepped forward. “We agreed that we would all join together and pool our resources. We promised that we would not leave anyone behind just because they are too poor to make it on their own.”
Carl looked up at Nathan. “Pool your resources? What does that mean exactly?”
Nathan went on doggedly. “It means that we share whatever we have so that no one will suffer more than another. All will have equally or none will have.”
Joshua shot forward, half coming out of his chair. “Do you mean . . . ?” He sat back, shaking his head. “We didn’t bring all this to give it away, Pa.”
Benjamin looked very sad. “I know that, and they are your goods. They are yours to do with as you choose. But if you choose to give them to us, then we are bound to share with others.”
Carl, far more reserved than Joshua, looked disturbed, but held his peace. Joshua exploded. “Are you crazy? We have—what?” His head swung around, counting quickly. “Fourteen of us? Fifteen with Mrs. McIntire. Fifteen people to feed and two hundred miles of frozen prairie to cover. And that’s not counting Jessica and her family when we get to Quincy. Good heavens, Pa, be realistic.”
Mary Ann spoke quietly now. “Joshua, we have lived realistic since last November. We have people here who don’t even have tents. They sleep under a bedsheet or a single blanket. There are children who are getting only half a bowl of cornmeal porridge a day, sometimes not even that. We have widows whose husbands were shot down or beaten to death and who have no one to provide for them. That’s realistic. We can’t just turn our backs on them because you and Carl have been so wonderfully generous and so marvelously kind to us.”
Joshua looked to Lydia for support. She smiled faintly. “It was the family heads who signed their names to the covenant, Joshua. But we as women consider the covenant just as binding on us as them. These are our brothers and sisters. We can’t simply ignore them.”
He turned to Rebecca and Derek. They were nodding their assent to what had been said. Matthew, Peter, Mrs. McIntire—it was a united front.
“So you starve so that others may live?” Joshua asked.
“No,” Nathan answered. “The covenant says that we are allowed to meet our needs first. All Pa is saying is that three wagonloads of food are a little more than we need.”
“And three wagons,” Benjamin came in. “We don’t need three wagons. We can make it with one.”
“For fifteen people?” Joshua was incredulous.
“All right,” Nathan agreed, “two would be more like it. But we don’t need three. Do you know what even one wagon and team will mean here? Four or five families will get out now. Then it will come back, and four or five more will be helped.”
“I can walk,” Benjamin said stubbornly. “All of the men can walk. We can do with one wagon.”
Joshua hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I can’t believe it.” He turned on his mother. “Do you think Pa can walk, Mother?”
She turned to her husband and slowly shook her head. “No.”
Joshua pounced on that. “Look at you, Pa. You’re very sick. Even with a mattress and plenty of blankets in the back of the wagon, I worry about you. If we’re not careful, you’re not going to make it through that trip alive . . . Well, he’s not,” he cried, when he saw the shocked looks around him. “Somebody’s got to face the truth.”
Benjamin straightened slowly. “May I speak, please?” When there was no one to disagree with that, he went on. He spoke mostly to Joshua, but to Carl as well. “First let me say, as your mother did, that we are deeply touched. What you two have done is the highest expression of Christian love. You have left your homes, spent your resources, undertaken a difficult journey—and all because you care for us. I hope with all my heart that what we are saying now does not in any way make you think we are not grateful. We are, more than any meager words could possibly express.”
He took a breath, his voice growing stronger now. “But let me see if I can help you understand. In some ways, our lives are like circles, circles in which we move and live and act. Some of us live longer and so we make wider circles than others. Some people are great and noble and famous. Their circles can become very large. We believe Joseph Smith is one of those. We believe his circle will embrace all of eternity.”
Joshua had started fidgeting as his father began, looking for an opening, but he quieted, caught up in the intensity of Benjamin’s words.
“George Washington, Columbus, the Apostle Paul—I could name hundreds of others who we know by name because their circles spread wide and touched many people. But for every one of those big circles there are a thousand unnamed and unknown people whose circles seem very small and insignificant by comparison. And yet, to God, they are not insignificant. To God, it is not how large our circle becomes, or how well known we are to the world. All that matters is how we—you, me, each and every one of us—fills that circle.
“Are we like our Savior and Redeemer? Are we following the example of the Master? Or do we care only about ourselves?” He stopped and peered into Joshua’s eyes. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Joshua? If you and Carl can’t bear the thought of seeing all that stuff you brought given away, I understand perfectly. And I will condemn you not, not in the tiniest way.
“
But
”—he lifted a finger for emphasis—“if you do decide to bring that food inside my tiny little circle, then I will keep the covenant I have made and I will share it with others in need.”
Now he turned to his wife. Mary Ann was nodding as he spoke, her eyes shining with pride and love. “Otherwise,” he continued, “my circle disappears, and I become nothing.”
He sat back. The room was completely silent. Even the children seemed to hold their breath. There was a quick, fleeting smile. “That’s all I have to say.”
Joshua stared at his father for a long time. Then he slowly turned and looked at Carl. Something passed between them, though neither showed any expression on his face. Only their eyes spoke. Finally, Joshua turned back around. “Suppose Carl and I say, all right . . .” He turned and looked at Carl again. Carl nodded. “Suppose we say that all we will keep is two wagons and enough food and goods to get us back to Quincy and to get you established there.”
He stopped, and there was a mixture of admiration and frustration in his eyes as he looked at his father. “Then will you ride in the back of that stupid wagon the whole way and not complain about it one time?”
Benjamin flinched as though he had been stung by a horsefly. “I . . .” He blinked a couple of times. “I’m not that sick. I can—”
“Benjamin!” Mary Ann said sharply.
“Mother, I’m fine. I—”
She cut him off again. “That’s a definite yes,” she said to Joshua.
Now Joshua turned to Nathan, ignoring the pained cry from their father. It was nearly lost anyway as the room rippled with laughter. “Derek told us that Pa plans to stay here until the last people are gone. If we agree, Carl and I, to participate in this covenant of yours, will you help me load this stubborn old man into the wagon tomorrow morning, hog-tie him to his bed, and then head out?”
“I will!” Nathan said without hesitation. Then, as Benjamin started to harrumph behind him, he added, “But I suspect it might take Matthew and Derek and Peter and Carl as well as you and me to do the job.”
“And maybe Mrs. McIntire and me too,” Lydia cried out, clapping her hands in delight.
Nathan quickly sobered, and now as he looked at his father, his eyes were misty. “I will do so, because I think our father’s circle is far wider and has touched many more lives than he will admit, or even believes. And it won’t diminish the size of that circle one tiny bit if he rides every foot of the way to Illinois.”
He went to his mother and knelt in front of her, taking her hands. “Am I wrong, Mama? Can we take this hardheaded, wonderful old fool that you married and go see Melissa and Caroline and Jessica without displeasing the Lord?”
The tears welled up and spilled over as Mary Ann nodded vigorously. “I don’t think there is much that this hardheaded, wonderful, glorious old fool can do that would displease the Lord.”
Nathan stood up and swung around to face the family. “Then it’s settled. All in favor?”
A thunderous “aye” shook the rafters.
“Any opposed?”
Benjamin started to lift his hand, but Mary Ann’s hand shot out and pushed it back down again.
“Motion carried!” Nathan cried. “We leave in the morning.”
* * *
Mary Ann pulled the canvas at the back of the wagon closed, then, stepping carefully over Emily’s and young Nathan’s sleeping forms, sat down beside her husband. She shivered slightly as she removed her coat and then quickly ducked under the big quilt Caroline had purchased in St. Louis.
They were in Tenny’s Grove, the first stop on their journey to the Mississippi. They had gotten a late start by the time they got what few things they would be taking from their homes loaded on the wagons, but they made good time. It hadn’t rained or snowed for two or three days now, and the roads were in reasonable condition.
As she snuggled up against Benjamin, he sniffed diffidently. “I thought only stubborn, old, hardheaded fools were allowed in this bed.”
“They are,” she said cheerfully. “My children said I qualify.”
He wasn’t in much of a mood for banter. “Well, I don’t. I’m not going to ride in here for eight or nine days while everyone else takes their turn walking.”
She reached out and found his hand. “Benjamin, I want to say something. And I want you to listen for a minute.”
There was no answer.
“Will you?”
“I’m listening,” he growled.
She lay back, putting her hands behind her head and staring up at the canvas.
“I said I’m listening,” he finally said when she didn’t speak. This time there was more softness in his voice. “Say it.”
“I know,” she said in a small voice suddenly tight with emotions. “I’m trying to.”
She turned her head and wiped at her eyes with the corner of the quilt. Finally, she turned back. “Do you remember that night? Back in Palmyra?” She swallowed hard. “The night you and Joshua . . .”
There was a long silence, then, “Yes, of course.”
“When was that?”
“September of ’27,” he said without hesitation.
“Eleven years ago now, coming up on twelve.”
He nodded. That night had been relived so many times in his memory, it was still as vivid as if it had been the previous evening.
“Almost twelve years without having all of our children together.” She came up on one elbow to look at him. “Have you thought about that? That we haven’t had all of them together in that time?”
Actually Benjamin had thought about his children a lot, but he hadn’t thought about it in those terms, that with Melissa staying behind in Ohio, even with Joshua’s return there had been no having them together. Not all at the same time. He shook his head. “No, I guess I haven’t.”
“Do you know what this means to—” She had to stop, and her hand came up to her mouth. He could hear the tremor in her voice as she finally went on. “Do you know what this means to me? To see Melissa again? To see the baby? To have every one of my children . . .”
He reached out and took her hand and pulled it down against his chest. “Yes, I think I can understand that.”
“Well, I want you there!” she exploded in a fierce whisper. “I want Melissa to see her father. I want Caroline to be able to know that you don’t hold any feelings against her.”
“I’m going to be there,” he said, surprised by her passion, and strangely moved by her concern for him. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Ben,” she said, in a voice that was now as small and hopeless as it had previously been filled with intensity. “I watch you get weaker and weaker. I watch you hunch over in pain whenever you cough. And I get sick to my stomach. You are not fine.”
She pulled her hand free from his and folded her arms on her chest. “And that’s why, stubborn old fool or not, you are going to stay right here in this bed all the way across Missouri and onto the ferry and into Illinois. Do you hear me, Ben? That’s the way it’s going to be.”
He didn’t answer. He
was
a stubborn old fool. He had admitted that to himself long ago. And in these past months since his arrest and contracting the sickness in his lungs, he had also become honest enough with himself to admit that he was frightened. He could feel down in his bones what Mary Ann had only seen with her eyes. He
was
tired. He
was
weak. Something had gone out of him, and he sensed it was more than just the sickness. It was as if the cough had opened the floodgates for old age to come pouring in.
Down deep, he was secretly relieved that his sons had forced his hand, had carried him out to the wagon bed, not even letting him walk from the house, had covered him with quilts and blankets up to his chin. It galled him that it had to be so. It was a bitter blow, and he was finding it difficult to accept it. But he also knew that if they had let him have his way, had let him walk along with the others, he wouldn’t make it. He was as sure of that as he was that his children loved him.
And now, after only one day on the trail, he wasn’t even sure the bed would be enough. The pounding of the wagon had been brutal. It had sapped his reserves to dangerously low levels. And they were through only one day.
“Mary Ann?”
She turned her head.
“If I . . .” He shook his head and tried again. “If for some reason . . .” He couldn’t finish it. “Will you tell Melissa for me? How much I loved her?”
Mary Ann was up instantly. “Stop it, Benjamin!”
“Will you?” he repeated quietly. “And Caroline?”
She leaned over and kissed him hard on the mouth. He tasted the saltiness of her tears on his tongue. “You tell them yourself, Benjamin Steed,” she whispered with that same ferocity she had had in her voice earlier. “I won’t do it.” Her voice caught, and she fell back against the straw mattress. “I won’t!”