She looked up. Her cheeks were wet now and her vision blurred by the tears. “I’ll try,” she finally whispered.
“Good.” He stepped through the door, shut it softly behind him, and walked away.
“Carl?”
He was seated on the chair by their bed, pulling off his boots. He looked up.
“They’re dedicating the temple tomorrow.”
He stopped and his foot lowered back to the floor. “Oh?”
She nodded. She sat in bed, the covers pulled across her waist, leaning back against her pillow. She began tracing some of the stitching on the quilt with her little finger.
“I thought they already dedicated it last fall.”
“Only the part of it that was finished. This will be the whole building.”
“Oh.” He waited, and when it became obvious she wasn’t going to say more, he went on undressing. He washed his face in the basin, toweled it off, then blew out the lamp. When he was in bed, he too sat up against his pillow. “Are you saying you want to go?” he asked.
She wanted to hesitate, make it sound like she was still struggling. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t be dishonest with him. “Yes,” she said simply.
“Why?”
“I . . . I’m not sure.”
“Not that I object,” he said evenly. “If that’s what you want, do it. It just surprises me.”
“It surprises me too, Carl. But the temple has meant so much to my family. Papa and Nathan and Matthew and Derek all worked so long on it. I remember those nights when Mama and the rest of us sat around sewing, making curtains and chair cushions and other things for the endowment rooms.”
“It’s fine, Melissa. If you want to go, go.”
She thought she could detect disappointment, but no anger. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” He burrowed down beneath the sheets, pulling the pillow down with him.
“What about the children?”
He thought about that for a moment. “If they want to, fine. But I wouldn’t like you forcing them, Melissa.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Carl.”
He reached out and touched her. “I know. I just wanted to say it.”
“I guess that you—”
“No,” he said flatly.
“You hauled a lot of rock up there, Carl.”
“I’ve got a big day at the yard tomorrow.”
“All right.” She too lay down now, staying on her back, looking up at the ceiling. They hadn’t had a big day at the brickyard now for six months. Almost a full minute went by before she spoke. “Thank you, Carl.”
“You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”
“No, I’m not. But . . .”
“You don’t have to explain, Melissa. I said it’s fine, and I meant it.”
Chapter Notes
The details of life on the trail as given in Rachel’s diary come from the various journal accounts for this time period (see CN, 20 April 1996, p. 12; 27 April 1996, p. 12; 4 May 1996, p. 10).
With Wilford Woodruff back from England and the main body of the Saints preparing to flee Nauvoo, final work on the temple went forward at a frantic pace. Finally, on the evening of 30 April 1846, the temple was dedicated in a private ceremony for a small group of Church leaders. Brother Joseph Young—senior president of the Seventy, brother to Brigham Young, and the one who had been left in Nauvoo to preside over the people there—gave the dedicatory prayer. The following day, 1 May, the public was invited and a second dedicatory service was held. Elder Orson Hyde of the Twelve offered that dedicatory prayer. In his journal entry for 30 April 1846, Wilford Woodruff recorded: “Notwithstanding the many false prophesies of Sidney Rigdon and others that the roof should not go on nor the house be finished and the threats of the mob that we should not dedicate it, yet we have done both.” (See Church History in the Fulness of Times [Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1989], p. 317.)
Chapter 15
Joshua poked his head inside the tent. “Caroline?”
A muffled voice called from outside. “I’m back here.”
He withdrew his head and walked around back of the tent. Caroline and Savannah were there but had their backs to him. They were bent over, and he could hear a wailing and knew it was coming from Livvy.
When he came around enough to see what was going on, he smiled. Caroline had borrowed a small tub from Nathan, and Livvy was being given a bath. Not yet two, Livvy was small for her age, but she still filled up the tub, and her boney knees were jammed right up under her chin. Her mother was scrubbing at her neck and down her back, rubbing the flat bar of rough lye soap carefully across the skin.
The wailing stopped as Livvy looked up and saw her father. Then there was a horrified howl. “Daddy! Not dressed!”
“Oh!” Properly chagrined, he turned away and stared pointedly at the empty sky. “Sorry.”
Caroline laughed at her daughter. “Don’t you think that your father has seen you without clothes before, Livvy?”
“Not dressed, Mama.”
“Oh, all right.” Caroline handed the soap to Savannah. “Here, you finish, and I’ll talk with your father so he doesn’t have to turn around.”
Savannah took the soap. “Hold still, Livvy,” she said in exasperation. “You’re only making it last longer.”
Caroline came over, wiping her hands on her apron. “That child,” she said, not without some pride. “Talk about a mind of her own.”
“Just like her namesake,” Joshua said, grinning.
Caroline tossed her head. “Olivia was never like this, not when she was this young, anyway. This one knows exactly what she wants and doesn’t want and you’d better not cross her.”
“Maybe the Lord sent us a strong-minded one because of what she’s going to have to do in the next few years.”
That brought Caroline up short, as much for the fact that he had said it as for what he had said. She gave him a long, searching look. “I suppose you’re right. I’d not thought of it like that before.”
The thought had just popped into his head and he hadn’t meant it to be something profound. He got on with what had brought him in search of her. “Brother Ezra Benson came by a few minutes ago.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Word has come in that there is a family mired down somewhere on the trail. They don’t have anyone to help them get out, so Nathan, Derek, and I are going to go out with Brother Benson to give them a hand.”
“All right. Do you know how far back they are?” She was thinking about supper, which was still a few hours away.
“Four or five miles is all, but they say they’re mired in deep. Don’t wait supper for us, we’ll probably be late.”
“All right.” She reached out and touched his arm. “Thank you for being willing to help.”
He looked surprised. “Do you think that only Mormons help their brethren?”
A slow smile stole across her face. “No, but I thought it was only Mormons who called each other ‘brother.’ ” She went up and gave him a quick kiss. “Be careful.”
“I will.” He turned. “Livvy, Papa has got to go out and help some people. Can I come kiss you good-bye?”
There was a cry of horror. “No, Daddy. Not dressed.”
“Can I blow you a kiss?” he chuckled, looking at Caroline.
“Eyes closed?”
He shook his head at Caroline. “I promise.” He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, turned around, and blew a kiss in Livvy’s general direction. Then he opened his eyes and looked squarely at her. “I think you’re kind of cute, actually.”
“Daddy!”
Laughing, he gave Caroline a quick hug, then walked away.
They rode along at a leisurely pace. It had rained again for several days and was threatening even now, and the roads were still a mess, but the days were warmer and the air pleasant. Also, they were not anxious to tire the teams before they reached the stranded wagon. Ezra Benson and Nathan were on saddle horses and led two big workhorses on tethers behind them. Joshua and Derek drove a light wagon pulled by two other draft horses. In the wagon was the harnessing that would be used for the teams once they got there. They moved steadily but not briskly.
For a time they talked about conditions in Garden Grove and about how slowly the work was going, what with all the rain. Then Nathan decided he wanted to learn more about this man whom he knew only casually. It was evident that Brigham Young held him in high regard and was relying on him more and more in various leadership capacities. Nathan was curious for himself, but he also had another purpose in asking. He wanted Joshua to hear stories about how others had come into the Church.
“Ezra,” he began, “what was it that brought you out west? Aren’t you from Massachusetts originally?”
Ezra nodded. He knew that his accent, with its flat nasal A’s and the adding of an r sound to words that ended in A, gave away where he was from, but he didn’t mind. He was proud of his New England heritage. Massachusetts was one of the original thirteen colonies and had been instrumental in the founding of the country. The independence, industry, and thrift that were all part of that heritage were nothing to be ashamed of, and Ezra knew they were qualities that had made him what he was. He was a man solidly built, with bold features and a direct manner. He was two years younger than Nathan’s thirty-seven years, and four years younger than Joshua.
“So tell us how you came to Illinois,” Nathan persisted. “Unlike most of us, you weren’t a member then, were you?”
“No, I knew nothing about the Church when I first arrived. That was in ’37. I just had a yearning to come out west. I had tried my hand at several things before then—farming, I owned a hotel for a time, my brother-in-law and I tried a cotton mill. I was even postmaster in one town. But I had this restlessness, this desire to go west. I see now that it was the hand of the Lord working on me, but back then I just had itchy feet. Pamelia and I finally came out to St. Louis, bought a small stock of goods, then started up the Illinois River, not sure where we wanted to go or what we wanted to do.”
“By a stock of goods, do you mean for a store?” Joshua asked.
“No, more for our own use, something to live on until we got settled.”
“So where did you go?” Derek asked.
“Well, I bounced around here and there, but finally in the fall of ’38 I heard that Quincy was an up-and-coming town, so I moved there and started looking for a home.”
“Fall of ’38,” Nathan broke in. “So that was just when the first of our people started coming to Quincy out of Missouri.”
“That’s right. I had heard about the Mormons by then, about what a strange people they were, but I didn’t find them that way at all. In fact, as I listened to some of their teachers, and learned about their being driven out of Missouri, I was quite impressed. That winter I boarded with a Latter-day Saint family, and my opinion of them as a people only rose the higher. When they moved north and started turning that swampland into a city, that really impressed me. Then one day, in the summer of ’40, there was a debate held in town. A Mr. Nelson had challenged the Mormons to debate their beliefs with him. He was a minister in the area, as I remember. Anyway, I was curious, and so I went to hear it. Joseph Smith was also there, but others were appointed to speak for the Mormons. I can still remember how much I was impressed with him, though—with his humility, his plainness.”
“Impressed but not converted?” Joshua inquired, interested now in the story the man was telling.
“Nope, not then. I thought the Latter-day Saints won the debate handily—as did most of the town—and made Mr. Nelson look foolish. I was convinced that the Mormons were believers in and committed to the principles of the Bible, unlike what their enemies were saying.”
“So?” Derek prodded as Ezra seemed to retreat into his own thoughts.
“Well, my wife and I commenced attending the Mormon meetings. Then one day after we had returned from one of those meetings, Pamelia sat me down. I remember this very clearly. She got down the Bible, turned to the book of First Corinthians, and read me a passage from chapter twelve, verse twenty-eight.”
“Which says?” Derek asked.
“That God has set apostles and prophets in his church. Pamelia told me she firmly believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I could tell that she was convinced of the truth of the doctrines, and the word went forth that we were believers in Mormonism.
“And that’s when things got interesting, I’ll tell you. Some of our friends thought that we were about to ‘sell out to the devil,’ as they called it, and they worked like the devil to get me to join another church in hopes that that would persuade us not to become Mormons. Their efforts were to no avail, however.”
“So that’s when you decided to join the Church?” Derek said.
“Not quite. I still wasn’t ready. But before long, Pamelia told me that she was going to be baptized.”
Joshua thought back to those days in Nauvoo when he and Caroline had struggled over the same kind of disparity in their beliefs. “And what did you say?” he finally asked.
Ezra looked thoughtful. “Well, I was a bit taken aback. But I was not opposed to the idea. I finally told her if she would give me a week, then I thought I could be ready.”
“And you were?” Nathan said.
“I prayed a lot and thought about it a lot, and yes, on the following Sunday my wife and I were baptized. That was July nineteenth, eighteen hundred and forty. There was a big gathering that day down on the riverbank. People had come to try and talk us out of it. When we came up out of the water, some of the people started shouting, ‘The Mormons have got them now.’ ” There was a deep, infectious chuckle. “Couldn’t argue with that. We just had different opinions about what being got by the Mormons meant for our eternal salvation.”
“No regrets?” Nathan asked, glancing at Joshua, who seemed to have lost interest now.
“No regrets,” came the firm reply. “I always wanted to come west.” Now he laughed aloud. “And look at me now.”
The family—a father and a mother and three young children—had mired in almost to the wagon box. Their two yoke of oxen were up to their bellies and could only swing their heads back and forth and bellow mournfully. Throughout the day others had passed and given the family their sympathy, but no one had stopped to help. Most of those still out on the trail were desperately short on supplies and already had exhausted their teams. They would tell others when they got to Garden Grove, they promised, but if they stopped, all it would mean was that more families would be stranded.