He read swiftly, glancing up from time to time at Melissa. When he was through, he lowered the paper, folded it back up again, then walked over beside her. He let the paper slip from his fingers, then knelt down and took her into his arms. She turned her head to him and wept silently against his shoulder.
“You want to go home again, don’t you?”
It was past nine o’clock, and the children were all asleep. They sat in the kitchen of Carl’s mother’s house, where they had stayed since returning to Kirtland in March. Marian Rogers had watched them quietly during supper, saying nothing, her eyes saying everything. It was very much like her that she had gone upstairs to read, leaving them alone to sort this out.
As Melissa watched Carl now, she could see the gentleness of his mother in his features, along with the hardheaded practicality of his father. Finally, a shadow of a smile touched her mouth. “Do you realize what you just asked me?” she queried.
“I asked you if you want to go—” He stopped. Then, softly, he finished his sentence. “Home.”
She didn’t push him further on it. “I can’t imagine what it must be like,” she murmured. “Joseph and Hyrum gone. I can hardly make myself believe it.”
“I know. Your family must be in a state of terrible shock.”
There were sudden tears. “I was thinking back as I came to see you today. Joseph and Hyrum came to our farm to help clear the land. I was just sixteen. One night we all went out to the barn. Joseph and Nathan pulled sticks.” She reached up and brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Joseph was much more than just the Prophet to us.”
“I know.”
“What will happen now?” It was as much a plea as a question.
He considered that, and finally just shook his head.
For a long time they sat there. The only sound in the house was the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. Finally, he reached out and took her hand. “I’ve been a little concerned about the brickyards.”
Her eyes widened slightly, but she said nothing.
“We couldn’t leave until the baby is born.”
Now she squeezed his hand back. “Carl, I won’t ask you to take me back. If you feel like we should stay here, I’ll not be saying anything more.”
“I know.” He was looking past her now, and though his face showed nothing, she knew he was thinking about his mother. The other Rogers sons were here in Kirtland with their children. She wouldn’t be alone. But Carl—or Carlton, as she always called him—was Marian Rogers’s favorite son. She tried to hide that, but they all knew it. Their return to Kirtland had meant a great deal to her. Having all of her grandchildren with her also meant a great deal to her.
“I’m not saying we’d stay there, Melissa.”
“I understand.”
“On the other hand, I’ve felt pretty useless here. Except for Mother, of course.” There was an ironic smile. “I’m not sure they need another brickyard here in Kirtland.”
“Probably not.” It was a wonderful understatement. The Kirtland they knew from years past—bustling, growing rapidly with the torrent of Latter-day Saints pouring in—was no more. It was a quiet town again of two or three thousand. It was certainly not dying, but another brickyard? Hardly. She knew Carl had been somewhat frustrated since their return. He was just an added hand at the livery stable. David and William, his two younger brothers, had done a good job with the family business and it was growing, but it didn’t need another family to support. And running the most prosperous brickyards in Nauvoo had been exhilarating as well as highly profitable for him.
He pulled his hand away and leaned back, his face thoughtful. “I’ll go up and tell Mother. She knows that’s what we’re talking about.”
“Are you sure, Carl? Really sure?”
“Are you?”
She looked at him for several seconds and then her eyes dropped. “Yes.”
“And what about the plural marriage thing?”
She didn’t look up. “I’m not going back for the Church, Carl. I’m going back for the family.”
That seemed to satisfy him, and he stood up. He turned and looked toward the hall where the stairs began. There was a soft sigh; then his shoulders squared and he moved toward the doorway.
“Thank you, Carl,” she said softly.
He turned back and smiled at her. “Are you sure that it’s not me who should be thanking you?”
Her chin lifted and there was a sudden happiness in her eyes. She was remembering a spring day in 1831. She was on the banks of the Chagrin River, just behind the Newel K. Whitney store, when a redheaded young man had introduced himself to her and offered to carry her groceries home in his cart. “If it weren’t for Joseph Smith, I would never have come to Kirtland,” she murmured.
His smile was immediate and filled with the same memories. “Yes, we do owe him that, don’t we?”
“And more,” she said sadly.
“Yes, and more,” he agreed. He then turned and went through the doorway, and she heard his steps going slowly up the stairs.
“I’ll get it.” Will rose from the table and went into the hallway. Through the glass of the front door he could make out two dark shapes, one tall and broad, the other smaller and more slender. Above him, he heard the floor creak, and knew that his mother was moving toward the head of the stairs where she could listen to find out who it was.
He opened the door. There was no lamp lit in the hallway and the light from the sitting room was faint. For a moment he didn’t recognize the two figures standing in the darkness. Then, as their faces registered, his mouth opened in stunned amazement. “Mr. Samuelson!”
“Hello, Will,” Walter Samuelson said gravely.
“Hello, Mr. Will Steed,” Alice said, clearly amused at the expression on his face.
“Alice? Hello. What are you—” Then he remembered his manners. He stepped back, opening the door wider. “Won’t you come in?”
They came through the door and stopped. “Is your father in?” Samuelson said.
But before Will could answer, there was the sound of hobbling footsteps coming down the stairs, and then Caroline was there in the hall behind them. “Walter? Is that really you?”
“Hello, Caroline.” He moved to her and took both of her hands. “We came the moment we heard the news. I’m so sorry, Caroline.”
Alice was nodding, looking at Will. “Yes, we only learned of Olivia’s accident a week or ten days ago. Papa wanted to come immediately. I insisted on coming with him.”
“Thank you,” said Will. “It’s good to see you again.”
Caroline came awkwardly forward and took Alice’s hands. “How kind of you to come, Alice.”
From behind her, Samuelson spoke. “As you know, Judith has been in poor health for some time now. She wanted to come as well, but . . .”
“We understand. You convey our best wishes to her. Your coming all the way from St. Louis is more than was required.” She turned to Will. “Go fetch your father while the Samuelsons freshen up a little.” Back to Samuelson. “Do you have luggage?”
Alice answered for her father. “We left it with a man at the steamer dock. He directed us how to find your house.”
Will didn’t wait for the command from his mother. “Father and I will pick it up and bring it here.”
He touched Alice’s arm. “It really is good to see you again, Alice. Perhaps tomorrow I can show you around Nauvoo.”
“I would like that,” she said warmly. “I’ve heard so much about it.”
He bowed slightly, then moved around her and went out the door.
“So,” Joshua began, once he and Walter Samuelson were comfortably seated in his office. “How bad is the flood damage?”
“Not terrible. We’ll have to do some repairs on the warehouses.” He shook his head. “The high-water mark was eight feet above flood level.”
Joshua blew out his breath in a soft whistle. “Eight feet! We got some flooding here, but not anything like that.”
“Fortunately, we had plenty of warning. I moved all of the cotton to some sheds up on the hill. We lost maybe a ton or so of wheat that we couldn’t get out in time, but all in all, it wasn’t bad.”
“Thank you for taking care of things. I wanted to come but . . .”
Samuelson waved it away. “Your place was here with Caroline.” He paused a moment, then asked, “Can I be honest with you, Joshua?”
They were sitting in Joshua’s office at the freight yard east of town. Samuelson had suggested they go for a walk after breakfast, and sensing that there was more on Samuelson’s mind than just offering condolences for Livvy’s death, Joshua had brought him here, where they could speak privately without interruption.
Joshua’s sharp look brought a quick grunt of apology from his business partner. “Of course I can be honest with you. We’ve always been honest with each other.”
“That’s why this partnership has lasted as long as it has, Walter. And I didn’t think you had come all this way just to report on the flood damage.”
The businessman from St. Louis reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out two cigars. He started to offer one to Joshua, then remembered. “That’s right,” he said. “I keep forgetting you’ve quit these things.”
Joshua pulled a face. “It’s done wonders for my marriage.”
As he put one of the cigars back in his pocket, Samuelson’s mouth twisted into a rueful expression. “Judith keeps reminding me that it would do the same in my house should I ever decide to quit,” he said. And then, as though in direct defiance of his wife’s wishes, he pulled a small penknife out of his vest pocket and carefully cut one end off the cigar. He took out a match. Suddenly his hand froze in midair. He looked around guiltily. “I’m not going to get arrested or something for smoking in Nauvoo, am I?”
Joshua chortled. “Oh, you may get some strange looks, but other than that, I think you’re safe.”
“Good.” He struck the match, held it to the tip of the cigar, and puffed until it glowed an orange red. He tipped back in his chair, blowing the smoke into the air, savoring the moment, his eyes narrowing as the smoke billowed around his face.
“So?” Joshua asked after a moment.
“What?”
“You were going to be honest with me, remember?”
“Oh, yes. That.”
“So what is it?”
Samuelson took another deep draw on the cigar, then turned his head and blew the smoke to one side. To his surprise, Joshua found the smell of the smoke annoying. It had once been something he enjoyed, even just the smell of a cigar or pipe. But it had been several years now since he had last smoked one, and he didn’t miss it anymore.
“You remember Clemson Harwood from Quincy?”
“Of course.” Clemson was one of their jobbers and served as an important link in their shipping back and forth between Nauvoo and St. Louis.
“He was the one who brought the news of Olivia’s death to St. Louis. It was a real shock.”
“Yes.” It came out more abruptly than he intended. They had gone over that at supper last night. He didn’t want to talk about Olivia anymore.
“He told us how it all happened, why you were in Warsaw in the first place.”
“Yes, so?”
Samuelson let the chair come down again, then took the cigar out of his mouth and set it on the ashtray that Joshua kept on one corner of his desk for his foreman. “Joshua, Alice and I would have been here four days sooner, but I stopped in Quincy and Warsaw and made some inquiries.”
“Inquiries? About me?”
“No. About the situation.”
“Oh.”
“You’re the one who’s always saying a man needs to get the lay of the land before he sounds the call either to charge or to retreat.”
“Yes.” Joshua was trying not to show any irritation. This was a chapter in his life which he was not ready to discuss, and he particularly did not feel like having it analyzed for him.
His partner seemed to sense this and so began cautiously. “What is your assessment of what is going to happen here, now that Joe Smith is dead?”
“Joseph Smith,” Joshua corrected him without thinking. “I think you’ll see the Church gradually break up and fall apart.” At Samuelson’s dubious look, he pressed on earnestly, using some of the same arguments he had used with his family. “Joseph was the force that held this people together. Oh, they’ve got other leaders, all right, but no one with Joseph’s vision, no one with his leadership ability or appeal.”
“So what does that mean for Nauvoo? For you?”
He shrugged. “Nauvoo is a thriving city. I expect the Church will collapse of its own weight in a year or two, just kind of fade away. But the people will stay on and do whatever they’re doing now. I think Nauvoo has real potential for the river trade.”
“And you think the people who killed Joseph will be satisfied with that?”
“Why shouldn’t they be?” He thought of Robert Foster and the Higbee brothers and John C. Bennett. The depth of their hatred for Joseph was substantial, but they had their wish now. Joseph was dead. He smiled, half to himself. What was it that Joseph had called them? Dough heads. That about summed it up. Full of hate and not two ounces of intelligence between the lot of them. “Joseph’s gone,” he concluded. “That’s all they were after.”
Samuelson shook his head gravely. “Joshua, I think you ought to give serious thought to moving your family to St. Louis.”
Joshua hooted. “You’re not serious!”
“I’m not just talking about Caroline and the children, Joshua. I mean your whole family. Your parents. Your brothers and sisters and their families.” He was leaning forward, his eyes earnest, almost pleading. “The mills and the warehouses are doing well. We can find employment for all of them, houses for them. I’ve even been thinking about some new opportunities you and I might consider. I remember you said your brother Nathan has got some good business sense.”
Joshua was shaking his head before Samuelson had finished the last sentence. “My family will never leave. Not now, anyway. There’s a great feeling among the Mormons that now, of all times, they have to stick together.”
“Will you just listen for a few minutes? I didn’t just spend my time in the saloons in Quincy and Warsaw listening to the rabble. I have been questioning men that you and I know and trust. I’ve talked with the civic leaders, newspaper editors—”
“Like Thomas Sharp?” Joshua exploded in disgust.
“Among others,” Samuelson admitted evenly.