She slapped angrily at the covers of the bed. “Peter, stop being so nice. Why don’t you just tell me that I acted like a spoiled brat, that I treated you abominably, and that I ought to have my bottom spanked?”
He was gaping at her, and then a strange look stole into his eyes. “Well,” he started very slowly, “sometimes I do think you ought to have your bottom spanked.”
She blinked, then blinked again. “I beg your pardon,” she said, not in protest, but in complete shock.
“Well,” he grinned sheepishly, “you asked.” He reached up and pushed back the lock of hair again.
Leaning back against the pillows, eyeing him as though he were a complete stranger, she spoke slowly. “Say that again. I’m not sure I heard you right.”
“I said I think there are times that you ought to have your bottom spanked.” Pleased by the new respect he saw in her eyes, he decided to go further. “Not that it would do any good.”
“Peter Ingalls!” she cried in dismay, but smiling broadly as she did so.
“Well,” he said, “you act like I don’t know one thing about what’s going on here. Well, you’re wrong. I do understand. I think I know how you feel about me, and I think I know why you keep pushing me away.”
Now it was her that was starting to squirm. This was pushing in too close to her vulnerability. And as usual, her defense was anger. “I’m not sure you do,” she snapped.
He bristled right back. “Well, if I don’t, it sure isn’t your fault. You’ve been so honest and open with me, sharing everything about how you feel.”
She felt her face burning. “I think you’d better go, Peter.”
“Oh no. No you don’t. Not this time.” He stood, too agitated to remain seated anymore. “I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon. I should be overjoyed that I didn’t get a call to be a missionary today. I should be happy that I get to stay where I can see you, be close to you. Instead, I’ve never been more disappointed.”
He swung around, then swung instantly back. “Do you know why I came tonight? To tell you that I’m going to John Taylor tomorrow and telling him I don’t care about the paper anymore. I’m going to beg him to let me go with Derek and Matthew.”
She was staring at him now, half in horror, half in numbed shock. “You don’t mean that,” she whispered.
“I do mean it, Kathryn!” He started pacing back and forth; then, on impulse, he spun around and stalked to her armoire. Jerking the doors open, he reached inside. When he turned, he was holding one of her crutches. “You think I care one minute that you have to use these?”
She turned her face toward the wall. “I can’t use those, Peter. I can’t even stand up on them.”
He jammed it back in the armoire. “I don’t care! But what I can’t bear are those other crutches you keep using.” He tapped his head. “The ones up here, Kathryn. Those are the crutches you use all the time—self-pity, anger, rejection of me.”
She was without a response. His words lashed at her like cords; but that he was saying them to her, that he felt such anger of his own, struck her dumb. Was this what she had done to her quiet, gentle Peter?
“Do you remember that poem I once wrote for you, right after the accident?”
She still held her journal in her hands. She opened it to the back and withdrew a folded piece of paper and waved it at him. She nodded, not trusting her voice.
He came back across the room. The anger was gone now. All that was left was pleading. “Do you remember the last few stanzas?”
Remember them?
She had memorized them long ago, and hardly a day passed without her reciting them in her mind. She put the paper back in her journal and set it on the bed. Her head came up. There were no tears, only a firm determination to get through it without breaking.
“‘What bars of earthly form—,’” she began softly, “‘Steel or iron, wind or storm—Can bind to earth my boundless heart; Stopping me from pushing back the night? My freedom lies within—Only sorrow, only sin—’” She had to stop and take a breath before she could go on. “‘Only sorrow, only sin—Can clip my inner wings; And bind me tight.’”
There was a long silence, and then, in a bare whisper, “‘Shackles of my own are all that stay my flight.’”
He came back over and sat down, heavily, wearily, resignedly. “I’m sorry, Kathryn. I didn’t come here to say all that.”
She nodded, her face calm now. She turned her head, looking at the small table. “You brought a book?”
There was a short, mirthless laugh. “Yes.”
“Read it to me.”
His head came up slightly. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
She nodded again, her eyes misting now.
Looking a little befuddled, he turned and got the book and opened it. “It’s a book of poetry by an English poet, Robert Browning. It’s called
Pippa Passes.
” He looked up again. “It’s a long narrative poem.”
“Read it to me.”
And then as he opened the book and turned to the first page, she spoke quietly. “Peter. I don’t want you to get your hopes up. I don’t know if I can ever change how I feel about—” She faltered momentarily. “About the future. But I would like you to read to me again.”
For a long, long time—what almost seemed like five minutes to her—he scanned her face, probed her eyes, searched her soul, and then he finally nodded slowly. “I would like that too,” he said. And then with a smile, he flipped some pages. “I’ll come back and read from the first in a minute, but there’s one line here that I’ve got to read to you.”
“All right.”
She watched him, loving how his brow puckered ever so slightly as he concentrated. And then he had it. He looked up. “Just two lines, but I think they are particularly appropriate right now.”
“Read them to me.”
He didn’t look down. Like her, he had these committed to memory. “‘God’s in his heaven,’” he said, very softly, “‘All’s right with the world!’”
Ten days later, on the afternoon of October seventeenth, over thirty weeping family members gathered at the boat dock at the south end of Main Street. With heavy hearts, the Steeds watched their father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, walk up the gangplank onto the
Golden Dawn,
a medium-sized riverboat out of Memphis, Tennessee. Benjamin and Mary Ann would travel by boat down to where the Ohio River joined the Mississippi at Cairo (which the locals pronounced “Karo”), Illinois. They were accompanied by Derek and Matthew, who would continue downriver as far as Memphis, then strike off by land for Little Rock.
As the great whistle blew and the boat backed away from the dock, Jenny and Rebecca stood side by side, both showing their coming motherhood, both holding the hands of young children who would now be without their fathers for the next four months. Only when the boat finally disappeared around a bend in the river did they and the children stop waving and turn to go back to their homes.
Chapter Notes
A good summary of this period of time in the Church’s history is found in
CHFT,
pp. 293–307, and in
American Moses,
pp. 117–24.
The remarks of Wilford Woodruff concerning the March 1844 meeting with Joseph are quoted exactly as given (cited in
CHFT,
p. 294).
Amasa Lyman was re-sustained to the apostleship on 12 August 1844. He had been called as an Apostle in 1842 when Orson Pratt became embittered and was dropped from the Quorum. When Elder Pratt repented and was reinstated, Elder Lyman dropped out of the Quorum, and Joseph Smith took him into the First Presidency, though he was not considered a counselor in the same sense as were Hyrum Smith and Sidney Rigdon. At Joseph’s death, the First Presidency was dissolved. Brigham then presented Elder Lyman’s name to the Church to become an Apostle again. However, since that would make thirteen Apostles, Elder Lyman was not made a member of the Quorum of the Twelve until there was a later vacancy. (See
HC
7:295;
Deseret News 1993–1994 Church Almanac
[Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1992], p. 51;
CHFT,
p. 292.)
After his excommunication in September, Sidney Rigdon moved back to Pittsburgh and in the spring of 1845 started a “Church of Christ” with apostles, prophets, priests, and kings. He published a newspaper for a time and drew a small group of supporters. By 1847, his organization had mostly disintegrated. Sidney held on to a few followers for the next thirty years and finally died in obscurity in New York State.
William Marks continued to support Sidney’s claims of leadership after the 8 August meeting. At the October 1844 conference, the Saints refused to sustain him as president of the Nauvoo Stake any longer and he was released from that position. (See
HC
7:296.) He aligned himself with Rigdon’s movement for a time, but later became disillusioned and followed the Strangite movement. Finally, he became part of the group that formed the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
James J. Strang, a man of strong and persuasive personality, eventually won over three former Apostles: William E. McLellin, John E. Page, and William Smith. McLellin had been excommunicated in 1838; Smith, in 1845; and Page, in 1846. For a time Strang was also supported by Martin Harris and William Marks, former president of the Nauvoo Stake. In 1849, Strang located his colony on an island in Lake Michigan and pronounced himself as “king of the kingdom.” In 1856, Strang was murdered by a disaffected member of his group and the Strangite movement collapsed. (See
CHFT,
pp. 294–95.)
William Smith was sustained as Patriarch to the Church in October 1844, but for a variety of reasons his ordination was delayed until May 1845. Still a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, he gave some patriarchal blessings but then began to put forth his own claims to be Church leader. He was excommunicated in October 1845. He followed James Strang for a brief time, then began to put forth the idea that Joseph Smith III, the oldest son of Joseph, was the rightful successor to his father. Since Joseph III was still but a boy, William offered to be “guardian and president pro tem” until young Joseph was of age. (See
CHFT,
p. 295.) For a number of years William vacillated between the Church in Utah and the Reorganized Church, eventually joining the latter organization in 1878.
Chapter 11
Rebecca Ingalls was bundled up tightly in coat, muffler, rubber galoshes—a recent innovation from the East that had become very popular in Nauvoo—and mittens. The galoshes proved more helpful for warmth than for wet, as the temperature was barely in the mid-twenties this morning and the streets and sidewalks were frozen hard. It was only the tenth day of December, 1844, but already they had had several major snowstorms and severe cold. It was starting off to be a hard winter. A wind was blowing straight out of the north and cut through even the thickest layer of clothing. She shivered, watching the wind snatch the vapor of her breath away, and she walked more quickly along.
As she approached the small house of Mary Fielding Smith and Mercy Fielding Thompson, she shook her head. What a sad change for these two widowed sisters! When Joseph and Emma moved from the Homestead into the Mansion House in the fall of 1843, Hyrum moved his family into the Homestead. By then his family included Mercy Thompson and her one child as well as Mary and their own children. After the death of his brother-in-law Robert Thompson, and under a direct commandment from the Lord through Joseph, Hyrum had taken Mercy Thompson as his second wife.
The Homestead, quite roomy now with the additions Joseph had added over the past several years, was a wonderful blessing to the family, especially when Hyrum was killed and left the two sisters widowed. Then, just a few weeks ago, Emma, facing her own financial problems, decided to rent out the Mansion House to President Marks and move back into the Homestead. So the two sisters and their children had to go. Now they lived in this small house with barely enough room to turn around in.
Rebecca remembered clearly the day that the two Fielding sisters came to Kirtland with their brother Joseph Fielding. Since Nathan had been with Parley Pratt in Toronto and had been instrumental in helping bring the family into the Church, along with John and Leonora Taylor, the Canadians came to visit the Steeds. Though Mary was almost seventeen years Rebecca’s senior, the two had almost instantly become close friends, and that friendship had endured until now.
Rebecca went through the gate and up to the door and knocked, pulling off her mittens after doing so. Almost immediately the door opened and Mary was smiling warmly at her. “Oh, Rebecca, how good to see you! Come in, come in.”
They sat near the small metal stove in one corner of the only sitting room, sipping warm herbal tea. Off in the back room, Rebecca could hear the children playing some sort of game. She smiled. The house might be small and the firewood barely adequate to keep it heated, but there was plenty of warmth and happiness in this house.
“So,” Mary asked, “have you heard from Derek yet?”
“Yes, just two days ago. They wrote about two weeks before that. They have arrived in Little Rock and found a small shed behind the home of a member of the Church where they can stay rent free. He said they will have to work for a week or two to get sufficient funds to see them through the winter, but they have already started holding meetings.” She sipped her tea. “It’s still too early to tell what kind of success they will have.”
“Are you doing all right?” Mercy asked.
Rebecca nodded. How like these two good women. Here they were, widowed on a permanent basis, not just for four months, living in a home a third the size of Rebecca’s, and they were asking if
she
was getting along all right. She put the cup back in the saucer and looked at the two of them. “The children are still struggling a little. Last night, after we had said prayers, I noticed that little Benjamin was crying. When I asked him why, he asked two questions. ‘Where is Papa?’ was the first. When I explained that Papa was a missionary in Arkansas, that seemed to satisfy him. His next question was, ‘When can I see Grandma Steed?’ I’m afraid that then I started to cry too because I had to tell him that we didn’t know for sure how soon Grandma would return.”