Alpheus Cutler set down his mason’s hammer and looked out west over the river to where the sun hung low in the sky. He reached in the vest pocket of his leather apron and pulled out a watch. Flipping the lid of it open, he saw that it was nearly six o’clock.
He turned and looked around with satisfaction. They had made good progress today. Ten more blocks, maybe twelve, and the next course of the basement level would be done. Yes, Cutler thought, they were making good progress, and the Lord’s commandments would be fulfilled.
In January, Joseph Smith had received a revelation concerning work for the dead and the importance of the temple. It had been published in the Church newspaper, the
Times and Seasons,
just last month. The Lord had been most specific. The building committee, chaired by Cutler, Elias Higbee, and Reynolds Cahoon, had committed one particular passage to memory and referred to it often so as to motivate them continually to make their best efforts. He half closed his eyes, letting the words sweep through his mind once again:
Build a house to my name, for the Most High to dwell therein; for there is not place found on earth, that he may come and restore again that which was lost unto you, or, which he hath taken away, even the fulness of the priesthood; for a baptismal font there is not upon the earth; that they, my saints, may be baptized for those who are dead.
It would be many months before the temple was completed, but Joseph had asked William Weeks, the temple architect, to draw up plans for the font, which would go in the basement. Brother Weeks had now presented that draft to the Prophet and the Twelve. Joseph was pleased, and Cutler and the others who led the building committee knew that there was a very good chance that within a few days the formal approval would be given and work on the font would begin. That meant the building committee had to have the basement ready or there would be no place for the font to go.
But he was no longer worried. Today was the twenty-sixth day of July. He guessed it would take a month or two to build the font, once it was approved. With the cellar walls within a few feet of ground level around the whole perimeter of the temple and a third of the basement floor now laid with brick, Cutler knew that they could be ready for the font in another three or four weeks, maybe five at the most.
Glancing at his watch again, Cutler saw that it was now six o’clock straight up. He turned and looked across the work site. He tipped his head back. “Brethren!” he shouted. “It’s six o’clock. That’s all for today. Thank you, one and all.”
As the men laid aside their tools and started for home, Nathan walked over to the well, filled the dipper from the bucket, removed his hat, and dumped the water squarely on top of his head. He got another dipperful and did it again. A little shudder of pleasure ran through him as the water cascaded down his neck and across his face. Sunset was only a couple of hours away now, but the afternoon heat was still fierce and draining.
Suddenly he felt a hand clapped on his shoulder. “Hot enough for you, Brother Nathan?”
“It sure is.” Nathan turned, wiping the water from his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. It was Joseph. He had his hat off as well. His normally fair hair was plastered to his forehead. He had been assigned to work with the stonemasons today, and his clothes, face, arms, and hands were covered with gray dust. Sweat had trickled down his face, leaving him with streaks through the layers of dirt.
Nathan turned and got a fresh dipper of water. He held it out with a mischievous look. “You ready for a drink?” Without waiting for an answer, Nathan drank it down.
Joseph’s eyes narrowed. “Ah,” he said softly, “now there’s a real Christian for you. Thank you, Brother Nathan.”
“Most assuredly,” Nathan said, handing him the empty dipper.
Joseph’s head came up a bit. “Well,” he said, looking on past Nathan, “here comes your father.”
Nathan swung around. To his surprise, Benjamin was still bent over, holding a plumb line against the side of the stone for one of the masons. Nathan turned back, about to make a comment about Joseph’s eyesight, just in time to catch a blur out of the corner of his eye. He ducked, but Joseph had anticipated it. The full force of the bucket of water caught Nathan squarely in the face, knocking him back a step and leaving him gasping.
Joseph dropped the bucket back. “There you go,” he said with satisfaction. “One good Christian turn deserves another, don’t you think?”
Chapter Notes
The stone quarry, which became the primary source of building material for the Nauvoo Temple, was located near the river on the northwest end of the city, a few blocks north of the current LDS visitors’ center. It yielded a fine whitish-gray to light tan limestone that was easily worked by stonemasons. After being blasted off, the blocks were usually shaped to a uniform size at the quarry and then were taken by wagon to the temple site, where they were given their final chiseling and polishing. Working in the quarry was the most grueling and dangerous work done in connection with the building of the temple, but also the most interesting. Often townspeople and visitors would come to watch the blasting and the other work there. At the height of the construction project about a hundred men were employed at the quarry, and in a period of three and a half years over a hundred casks of blasting powder were used. (See
Encyclopedia of Mormonism,
s.v. “Nauvoo Temple”;
In Old Nauvoo,
pp. 150–51.)
The scripture recalled by Alpheus Cutler is now D&C 124:27–29. It was received by Joseph on 19 January 1841.
Chapter 2
Come, old friends,” Joseph said as Benjamin finished drinking deeply from the dipper, “I’ll walk with you back down the hill.”
Other than Alpheus Cutler and Reynolds Cahoon, who were still over in the stonecutting yard, the two Steeds and the Prophet Joseph were the last men at the site.
They moved off slowly, feeling the weariness of a day’s hard labor. They had gone only half a block before they reached the edge of the bluff that overlooked the city proper. Joseph stopped and his two companions followed suit. Nathan often did the same thing whenever he was at this spot. It provided one of the loveliest of views in all of Hancock County. The main part of Nauvoo lay below them in a grand panorama. The Mississippi River encircled the city on three sides like some vast, protective arm. Across it, the green plains of Iowa stretched to the horizon. Through the summer’s haze they could make out the buildings that marked the site of Zarahemla on the other side of the river. Near to Montrose, the Saints had named it after the great capital city of the Nephites, mentioned so often in the Book of Mormon.
Nathan let his eyes drop slightly. The land below them was marked off into squares by the neat pattern of streets. To the south, just coming into view, a riverboat was churning the water behind it white. To the southwest, the ferry, carrying a wagon and team and several standing passengers, was in midriver, coming back from the Iowa side. They could see the tiny figures of two men, pulling mightily on the rope to move the ferry against the current.
“Nauvoo the Beautiful,” Joseph said softly.
They both looked at him, then Benjamin nodded. “You were inspired to call it that, Joseph.” He chuckled. “Though at the time, I must admit, I had some questions about the appropriateness of the name.”
Nathan laughed too.
Nauvoo
was a Hebrew word, according to Joseph. It meant a “beautiful location or place of rest.” At that point back in the summer of 1839, Commerce hardly seemed up to the name. Now no one denied the prophetic nature of the title.
Nathan let his mind go back. He remembered the almost impassable swampland, the hordes of mosquitoes, the unseen chiggers in the grass that always managed to work their way above a man’s boot line and dig in under the skin, driving any normal person insane with the itching. There was the “Nauvoo fly,” as the Saints now called it, which was a particularly troublesome mothlike insect peculiar to this place and which plagued the city every summer. There were snakes and muskrats and gophers and mice and all sorts of creeping things that left the men frustrated trying to control them and the women squeamish about their presence.
Two years ago, there hadn’t been much that was beautiful. Now, the changes were dramatic. The swamps, with few exceptions, were now neat checkerboards of corn and rye, sorghum and barley, tomatoes, beans, melons, squash, and half a dozen other crops. The land below them was crisscrossed with streets running straight as an arrow north and south, and east and west. Houses, barns, stores, shops, and sheds were going up everywhere. There were still the cabins and a few shanties down by the river, but there were also the spacious frame homes, handsome cottages with picket fences and richly colored flower gardens, two-story brick houses that would hold their own nicely in New York City or Philadelphia. There were three thriving brickyards, at least half a dozen stores in addition to the Steeds’, two blacksmith shops, a gunsmith shop, two printing establishments, and several woodworking shops, including the recent one begun in partnership between Brigham Young and Matthew Steed.
Joseph stirred, as if ready to move on, but Benjamin, seeing it, spoke quickly. “May I ask you a question, Joseph?”
“Of course.”
Benjamin looked out across the panorama before them. “Is this to be our permanent home?”
That brought the Prophet’s head around. The blue eyes were level and calm. “Why do you ask that?”
“Because I remember something you once said back in Kirtland, about the destiny of the Church.” He paused, trying to remember the exact words.
Joseph knew exactly what he meant. “I said that someday the Church would fill North and South America, and eventually it would fill the world.” He stopped, sobering, realizing now why Benjamin had asked what he did. “And I prophesied that someday there will be tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints gathered in the Rocky Mountains.”
Nathan didn’t move. He had not thought of that meeting for a long time, but he could clearly remember the little shiver of—what? excitement, anticipation, dread?—that ran through all who were present that night. It was one of those times they had come to recognize, when the spirit of prophecy lay heavily on Joseph. His face would almost transform itself. His skin would seem to glow. His eyes would get a faraway look in them, as though they were gazing on the very breadth of eternity.
“So this isn’t to be our final stop?” Benjamin asked softly.
Joseph looked at him for several long seconds; then he just smiled, and started off down the hill. Benjamin gave Nathan a quizzical look, then shrugged, and they moved off to fall into step beside the Prophet. They walked for nearly five minutes in silence before Joseph moved closer to Benjamin and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Benjamin, my friend.”
“Yes, Joseph?”
“There’s a favorite passage of mine in one of the revelations. It says simply, ‘Let your hearts be comforted concerning Zion; for all flesh is in my hands. Therefore . . .’” He let it hang, inviting Benjamin to finish it for him.
Benjamin looked puzzled, but Nathan knew it well. “‘Therefore,’” he said for his father, “‘be still, and know that I am God.’”
“Exactly,” Joseph said soberly. He was still looking at Benjamin. “I don’t know how long we shall be allowed to stay here in this beautiful place. I do have a strong feeling that this is not our final destiny. But in the meantime?” He smiled, and now any discernible worry in his countenance had disappeared. “It’s a beautiful place. Let’s enjoy it to the fullest.”
Jenny Pottsworth was busy in the back room of the store, taking inventory of two wagonloads of barrels and boxes brought in from Springfield earlier in the day. She enjoyed being out front behind the counter, visiting with the people and helping them find what they needed, but she found satisfaction in the more menial things as well. Perhaps that was a legacy from being brought up in the slums of Preston, England, the only daughter of a widow who grubbed out a living in the great cotton factories there. There was something innately pleasing to her in the process of tallying things and then organizing them neatly on the shelves and in the bins, having a place for each thing and each thing in its place. That kind of order made it easier to satisfy the needs of the customers, and Jenny took pride in the fact that in this store the needs of their customers were met with efficient and cheerful regularity.
She reached up and brushed a damp lock of hair back from her forehead. Jenny would turn sixteen in another month. That surprised most people, for she seemed much older than that. Perhaps her maturity was a product of her early life as well. English childhood labor laws allowed children to work in the cotton mills once they turned nine, and Jenny had begun two days after her birthday. Jenny was a woman now, both in body and in mind. She knew that men considered her attractive. Even those with absolutely no romantic interest in her seemed to enjoy being around her and talking with her. She accepted that fact simply and without pride, viewing it as one of the many gifts with which God had blessed her. Her long golden hair, the wide-set eyes, her clear features, and the smile that flashed so quickly and so naturally were no better in her mind than what others were given. But she was also honest enough to know that some men didn’t agree with that assessment.
She was humming softly to herself as she counted the spools of twine packed neatly in a long, narrow box and then marked the number in her ledger book. Then she smiled. In a way, it was fortunate that she did like this part of the store work. She was the only one who felt this way. Lydia and Caroline didn’t mind it, and would do it simply because they felt guilty if they always left it to Jenny. But Nathan made no bones about it: taking inventory drove him to distraction, and he was constantly and profusely thanking Jenny for taking care of things back here. He didn’t particularly enjoy being behind the counter out front either, but that at least was bearable to him.