Suddenly, just as he was about to reach out and touch her, out of the corner of his eye Joshua saw Will standing next to Nathan and Lydia. He wasn’t even looking in this direction, but it was enough. Slowly Joshua straightened; then he walked down the line, as if faced with a great decision. Savannah and Elizabeth Mary, Lydia’s younger daughter, were right on his heels, begging him to look in their direction. But he kept moving. When he came to Jessica and her family, the boys shot up their hands. “Me, Uncle Joshua! Please!”
Rachel stood behind them, patient as usual, smiling at their excitement, not even assuming she would be considered.
Joshua hesitated for only a moment; then he reached over the boys and laid a hand on her shoulder. “I say that we let Rachel be first, how’s that?”
There was a collective wail behind him, but Rachel’s eyes widened and she stiffened in surprise. “Me, Uncle Joshua?”
“Yes, Rachel.” He looked up at Jessica. “Is that all right?”
Jessica’s eyes were shining, something very rare for her. “That would be wonderful,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
They were gathered in the backyard at Caroline’s house, all come to supper to talk about the miraculous gift Joshua had brought the family from St. Louis. It was fully dark now, and kerosene lamps hung from hooks on the porch. The supper of roast duck, boiled potatoes and gravy, and Mary Ann’s hot cherry pie had long since settled in their stomachs. The dishes were long since done. The two babies—Caroline’s and Lydia’s—were in cribs and settled for the night. It felt good to have the family together on a pleasant and leisurely summer’s night.
Benjamin was content to listen as the family turned their attention to Peter and pumped him for details about his work at the
Times and Seasons
office. For some time, though he hadn’t said anything to anyone but Mary Ann, Benjamin had worried about Peter. Matthew and Brigham had tried to persuade him to help them in the woodworking business. This was done more to help Peter than because he was needed there. He had thanked them, but respectfully, and wisely, declined. He could help Jessica at the school, but what little she could pay him wouldn’t be much of a living for a young man who was, at seventeen, at an age where some men were already on their own or were apprenticed out to a craftsman of one kind or another. Caroline and Lydia had both tried to persuade him to do the books at the store with them. But mathematics was not his favorite thing either.
Thus Benjamin’s concerns had grown. Peter was a fine young man, and a hard worker, but his strongest assets were in his head, not in his hands. He loved books, had a gift for poetry, and was an excellent teacher. In mechanical things he was barely adequate and often frustrated, able to learn but with little natural aptitude. So when Don Carlos Smith, who was the editor of the Church’s newspaper, became quite ill, John Taylor recommended Peter to come in and help out. He was interviewed and immediately hired.
“Well,” Joshua spoke up, “I was going to offer Peter an opportunity to go up to Wisconsin with us this winter.”
“You were?” Nathan asked in surprise. The others looked at him with interest too. They all knew that Joshua was hiring crew to head north to cut timber in the pineries of Wisconsin, as they were called. Nathan, Joshua, Will, and Carl had gone north the previous winter to investigate the possibilities. Nauvoo and the surrounding settlements were in desperate need of cheap lumber, and the pineries held an almost inexhaustible supply. It was a new business venture. There was money to be made in it. That was normally all it took to get Joshua going. But he had never once said anything about taking Peter up with him.
“I was,” Joshua said with a nod. “And as a matter of fact, the offer is still good. I’ll pay double what they’re giving you at the press.”
“No thanks,” Peter said, hoping that Joshua wasn’t hinting that he was worried about the loan on the building lot they had talked about.
“Well, I didn’t think I could tempt you,” Joshua said with a smile, relieving Peter’s concerns that he might be upset with him.
“Speaking of the pineries,” Carl broke in, “when are you going north, Joshua?”
“About mid-September. We need to get up there and get everything ready so we can start cutting trees once the first snow flies.”
“Joseph’s group will be leaving about that same time,” Nathan said.
“And Nathan will be going up with them,” Lydia said quietly.
That brought an exclamation of surprise from nearly everyone. “You didn’t tell me that, Nathan,” Joshua said, with just a touch of rebuke in his voice.
“Joseph just asked me yesterday. I guess they figure that since I was up there last winter with you I might be of help.”
“So,” Joshua said lightly, but not completely covering his hurt, “you won’t go up and work for me for money, but you will go up and work for Joseph for nothing.” He shook his head. “That’s some church you belong to.”
“It’s like a mission call,” Lydia said, wishing now she hadn’t brought it up before Nathan had had a chance to tell Joshua. “We’re going to miss him, but they need lumber so badly for the temple and for the Nauvoo House.”
“Will you be gone all winter?” Mary Ann asked, speaking to both of her sons.
“Joseph has given me permission to come home for a couple of weeks at Christmas,” Nathan said.
Joshua was also shaking his head. “I’ll go up and get the crew started, and maybe once or twice more, but then I’m going to leave Will in charge.”
If his comment about Peter had caught people by surprise, this really caused a stir. Will had told everyone that he would be taking charge of the freight yard while his father was gone. He stared at his father in dismay, then shot his mother a beseeching look.
Joshua, who was looking toward his father and Nathan, didn’t see the response his comment had drawn from Will. And he misread the surprise on his father’s face for something else. He scowled a little. “Well, what’s wrong with that? Will will be eighteen come March. It wasn’t much past that that I was making my own way in life and running things at the warehouse in Palmyra. There’ll be some good men to help him, but he’s going to be in charge.”
“It’s not that,” Nathan started, but when Lydia gave him a warning look, he backed off and let it die.
Joshua went on, warming to the topic quickly. “I figure if we can get a crew of fifteen or twenty men, we can float a hundred thousand board feet downriver come spring.”
“Pa.”
Joshua turned toward Will, responding absently. “Yes, son.”
“I don’t want to spend the winter in Wisconsin.”
Joshua looked startled for a moment, then laughed, waving him off. “Don’t be ridiculous. Come spring, you can be one of the most prosperous young men in Nauvoo. Then maybe that Jenny Pottsworth will pay you the attention you deserve.”
Will’s face instantly flamed and Caroline’s mouth dropped. “Joshua!”
“Well?” he said, bristling a little. “She just sees Will as some young kid barely old enough to shave. You’ve got to remember, this ‘boy’ was nearly running my freight yard by the time he was fifteen. He was an officer on an ocean ship directing crew members twice his age. Will’s a man, and it irritates me that she won’t treat him like one.” Looking at Will, he had a sudden thought. “You been down to show her your wounds? That’ll end any question about you being a man or not.”
Caroline looked away. Will was staring at his hands, his face bright red now. The silence was heavy and awkward to the point that even Joshua began to look a little taken aback.
Suddenly, Benjamin cleared his throat and stood abruptly. He walked over to the long table set up on the back porch of the house. There, laid out in neat order, were all the daguerreotypes taken by William Pickerell earlier that day. He picked up the one of Rachel. “This is still my favorite,” he said, holding it up.
That did the trick. Caroline got up and came over to stand beside him. Nathan and Lydia and Matthew and Jennifer Jo did the same. The Wisconsin pineries and Jenny Pottsworth were not forgotten, but there was a reason now to talk about something else.
“Do you really think so?” Caroline asked, picking up another one. “I love this one of you and Mother Steed.”
“G’wan,” he said in disgust. “The man in that picture looks like an old grandpa. Look at the wrinkles around his eyes. And his hair is almost completely gray now.”
Caroline laid the picture back down, laughing. She slipped an arm around Benjamin’s waist. “Well, we love that old grandpa just the way he is. We hope he never changes.”
While they all leaned forward, looking more closely at Benjamin and Mary Ann, Will quietly got up and slipped out the gate. Joshua watched him go but said nothing.
Benjamin’s fingers stopped unbuttoning his shirt as he looked down at the daguerreotype picture of himself and Mary Ann sitting together stiffly on the two stools. He turned it so as to catch the lamplight better. His brow furrowed slightly and the corners of his mouth pulled down. When one had to hold a pose with perfect stillness for almost a minute, it was only natural that there was a certain grimness to the face. But he looked as though the goddess of tragedy were sitting between his shoulder blades. The details of both their faces were sharp and distinct, plain enough for anyone to read, and that was why he winced a little. Benjamin Steed didn’t much care for what he saw. For nearly six decades now—he would be fifty-seven next May—life had been writing its history upon his face. He could see the effects of years spent behind a plow or wielding a scythe beneath a hot sun. There were lines that represented the loss of children and grandchildren, the long years of alienation from Joshua, the worry of a father and grandfather over his offspring. How deeply had the siege of Far West etched his face? Which lines represented those weeks of imprisonment in the unheated hellhole of a Missouri jail?
He gazed at the picture, strangely saddened. It was not his appearance that was bothering him. He cared not a fig for that. In fact, he had to admit, age had left him looking just a bit more distinguished than when he was younger. No, it was that this Mr. Pickerell and his “dagger-oh-type” had presented Benjamin with the irrefutable proof of his own mortality. How many years were left to him now?
Twice he had escaped the final nod from the angel of death—once in a Richmond jail, and once two years ago when the ague brought him close enough that he had even made his last farewells to his family. Both times only a prophet of God was able to pull him back from the brink. Those brushes with death had taken their toll, along with the years. He could feel the weariness permeate his body when he worked in the quarry or even when he and Mary Ann walked up to the temple site. He could feel the ache in his shoulders and knees at night if he lay too long without changing position. The knuckles in his hands took a while in the morning to limber up enough to do what he commanded his fingers to do. Would the next bout with the ague or pneumonia or yellow fever be the one to take him?
The frown deepened a little. He was finding himself doing this too much lately, giving in to what Mary Ann teasingly called his “walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” He reached out, the tip of his right forefinger brushing lightly across Mary Ann’s face in the picture. The years had been kinder to her. She had a grandmotherly look—there was no disputing that—but the wrinkles were no more than light touches around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. If anything, they only heightened the gentleness and the warmth that lay within her.
Now his brow smoothed and his lips softened as he picked up the picture. How he loved this woman! Every day now he thanked God for leading him to her those thirty-seven years ago. More so, for it was more the miracle, he thanked God for softening her heart and blinding her eyes enough that she saw something attractive in the big-boned, rough-cut New England farmer named Benjamin Steed.
“It’s like a miracle, isn’t it?”
He turned. Mary Ann was already in bed. She always chided him about how much he puttered around as he got ready for bed. She could be in bed and asleep while he was still taking his boots off. But now she was looking at the picture in his hands.
He nodded. “It is. If someone had tried to tell me such a thing was possible, I would have said he was daft.”
“I know.”
He set the picture down and finished unbuttoning his shirt. In another moment he blew out the lamp and was in bed beside her. He reached out and clasped her hand as he always did if she was still awake. “I’m not sure I’m ready for it.”
“Ready for what?”
“This new age were coming into.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It’s a new age, Mary Ann. A new age. Imagine, pictures from a box. Now some man named Morse is claiming he can send messages over a piece of wire. The papers are saying they have demonstrated street lamps in France that are lit by electricity—like taking a little piece of lightning from the sky and holding it there forever. What’s next, do you suppose?”
“Something wonderful, I’m sure. Does that worry you?”
“What?”
“Living in a new age.”
“I’m getting too old for new things.”
She laughed, squeezing his hand. “You certainly are.”
He looked hurt. “You could disagree with me, you know.”
“Why? Your mind is already made up.”
Now he chuckled too. “Since when did that ever stop you?”
“Well,” she mused, “I remember a man who once strongly believed that if you plowed the earth with metal, it would pollute the soil forever. But as I remember, you were one of the first to try one of those John Deere steel plows. And, if my recollection is right, it was that same man who had the first McCormick reaper in northern Missouri. Such a man as that would surely never be afraid of change.”
He grinned at her. She always did this to him. He’d try to take off on one line of conversation, which he had worked out carefully in his mind, and she’d turn it inside out and upside down and head him in a whole different direction. “So you’re saying maybe this old dog can handle a new bone every now and then?”
There was a long pause. “Well, maybe not a new bone. Maybe just a biscuit or two. ”