“I don’t want to fight you on this.”
“Really?” Joshua said, the sarcasm like a grindstone against a knife blade.
Will just blew out his breath and looked away. Then he stood abruptly. “Come on, Livvy. Pa knows how we feel now. He and Mama need to talk.”
Olivia stood and moved to Will’s side, but she was giving her father a beseeching look. “Please, Papa?” she whispered.
“We’ll talk about it, Livvy,” Caroline said softly. “Let Papa and me have some time.”
Olivia nodded, looking stricken, and followed Will out. When the door shut, Caroline turned to him. “I really am sorry, Joshua. I didn’t mean for it to be like this your first night back. If you’d rather wait until tomorrow, that’s fine.”
“No, let’s settle it once and for all.”
She met the coldness of his gaze with equanimity. “All right, let’s do.”
“Nathan said you know everything.”
“Yes.”
“And that doesn’t bother you at all? It doesn’t bother you that we have men in this town now who are living with more than one woman and supposedly doing so in the name of the Lord?”
“Why is it you always ask questions that leave only one answer? Of course it bothers me. This comes as much a shock to me as it does to Melissa or Lydia. So why don’t you ask me the real question? ‘Caroline, knowing it all now, do you still want to be baptized?’ ”
He met her gaze but he wouldn’t ask it. “I already know the answer to that.”
“Not from me, you don’t!” she cried. “Why won’t you ask me?”
“Because I already know the answer.”
“Thank you, Joshua,” she said in soft mockery. “Thank you for caring enough to ask me.”
“Then that’s it,” he said shortly. “I made a bargain with you. Clearly I have lost. Go ahead and be baptized. Take your children with you. You keep reminding me that they are
your
children, after all.”
She shook her head. “So it was all empty words, after all.”
“What?” he asked suspiciously.
“Your so-called bargain.”
He flared angrily at that. “I just told you. Go ahead and be baptized. If you still are fool enough to want to join that church after what you’ve heard, then I’m not going to stop you.”
“No, Joshua!” she flung back at him. “That’s not what you said. You said I wouldn’t just have your permission, I would have your blessing.”
She dropped her head and he thought she was going to cry. But when she looked up again it was flint-hard coldness he saw in her eyes. “You were so sure it would change my mind, weren’t you? That’s the only reason you made the bargain in the first place. You were sure you would win.”
“That’s not true,” he said lamely, knowing even as he said it that it was exactly true.
She stood, thoroughly weary now. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out as neatly as you planned, Joshua.” She moved toward the door.
He watched her, feeling a curious pull of conflicting emotions—anger, guilt, sorrow, they all stumbled over one another inside him.
At the door she stopped and looked back. “Is there anything else you want to say?”
He just looked at her, not knowing what words could possibly bridge the gulf that had opened up between them now.
She watched him for a moment, her eyes unreadable; then she turned and started out.
“So?” he blurted.
She paused. “So what?”
“Are you going to be baptized?”
She turned back slowly. “I don’t know, Joshua.”
“You don’t know?” he echoed in surprise.
Her head moved up and down slowly. “Everyone in Hancock County keeps telling me that Joshua Steed is a man of principle, a man of his word. ‘If he says it,’ they say, ‘then it’s as good as a contract.’ I guess I was making my plans based on that assumption. Now that I’ve learned that this is not the case—at least where his family is concerned—I’m going to have to rethink things. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
For the next five days, an uneasy truce prevailed in the Steed family. On the surface there was a cheerful amiability and life went on as usual. Below the surface there was a dark pall. At Joshua’s home, the subject of baptism did not come up again, at least not while he was there. Unbeknownst to him, two days after his return, Will announced that he was going ahead, whether or not his mother could join him. When Will asked her if she was going to be baptized, Caroline just shook her head sadly and said, “Not yet, Will.”
Adding to the overall strain in the family was the turn that Melissa had taken. She flatly refused to discuss the Church, her feelings, or anything to do with Joseph Smith. Carl was almost embarrassed by the depth of her alienation and tried valiantly to keep their family conversations steered away from any dangerous shoals. This was particularly puzzling for those family members who did not know any of the story behind Melissa’s sudden turn.
Fortunately, on the Monday following Joshua’s return, Jennifer Jo called everyone to her home just before sundown and took them into Kathryn’s room. To lusty cheers and jubilant yells, Kathryn proceeded to demonstrate that she could lift one hand an inch or two off the bed without help and could now grasp a book in the other hand without aid. There was no question about it. It had been a little over five weeks since the accident and she was getting back some use of her limbs.
Almost as if in celebration of that piece of good news, that same night Jennifer Jo McIntire Steed went into labor, two weeks sooner than expected. At 9:37 the next morning, May twenty-fourth, 1842, she gave birth to a small but robustly healthy girl. The parents immediately announced that they would name her Betsy Jo Steed.
Those two events, one on top of the other, did much to restore some joy to the family circle and also to provide much-welcomed safe topics of conversation. But in a certain respect these happenings were only a diversion, for they did nothing to solve what was simmering in the family of Joshua and Caroline Steed.
To Joshua’s surprise, on Friday morning Benjamin was waiting for him on the narrow porch of the freight office, even though it was not yet six-thirty. Joshua’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he grunted a greeting.
“Good morning, son,” said Benjamin.
Joshua stopped short of the porch step, leaving Benjamin looking down on him. “You’re up early,” he commented.
“Got some things that need saying,” Benjamin said shortly, not willing to ease into this.
Joshua showed no surprise. He had guessed that such was the case the moment he saw his father there. “I’ve heard it all, Pa,” he said, not really in a mood to go through this again, particularly with his father, who was primed to call him to task for what was happening.
“Are you telling me to leave?” Benjamin asked evenly.
There was a long sigh. “No, of course not.” He stepped up on the porch. “Come in.”
“If it’s all right, I’d like to stay out here. It’s a beautiful morning.” There was a wry smile. “Maybe the fresh air will keep things cooler between us.”
Joshua laughed shortly. “I doubt it.” He moved up to stand beside his father on the porch. He waited a moment, then sent up a warning flag. “Pa, if you’re going to try and convince me that what Joseph’s doing is right, we may as well end this conversation right now.”
“I’m not. Wasn’t even going to bring it up.”
“Good.”
“Don’t imagine Caroline has tried to do that either, not if I know her.”
“No, she hasn’t,” Joshua admitted, somewhat grudgingly. He waited; then when his father said nothing, he went on. “So, what is it? Are you gonna remind me of the promise I made to Caroline and talk to me about being a man of my word?”
Benjamin chuckled softly. “You’ve sure got a lot on your mind about what you think I’ve got on my mind.”
There was an answering laugh in spite of himself. “All right, Pa. What
do
you want to say?”
Benjamin’s smile slowly faded. “Just one thing, Joshua.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve been thinking about that night in Palmyra.”
Joshua nodded slowly. He didn’t have to ask what night. Fifteen years before. Raining. Black. Joshua and the Murdock boys had tried to jump Joseph in the forest and steal the gold plates. Then his father had come to the saloon. Harsh words. A slap across the face. A drawn pistol.
“That man back then, that Benjamin Steed or whatever his name was, was absolutely dead sure he was right. There was no way that he was going to back down and let his son get away with something as foolish and just plain stupid as what he’d done. And so—” His voice caught and he suddenly looked away.
Joshua was staring at him, frightened all of a sudden. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this. Not now. Not with everything else.
Finally Benjamin turned back. His eyes were like two great pools of pain. “Eleven years,” he whispered. “That’s what being right cost me, Joshua. Eleven years when you and I could have been having what we have now. Eleven years of your mother crying herself to sleep and wearing holes in the rug from kneeling there and pleading with God to bring you home again.”
One hand came out and started to reach for Joshua’s arm, but Joshua was not looking at him now. He was staring at his hands, his head low, his eyes half-closed. The hand drew back again.
“I almost hit him, Pa.”
Benjamin started a little. “Who?”
“Will. Up in Wisconsin. I almost hit him. He dared me too. Taunted me by reminding me how I had struck Jessica and let Nathan be whipped.” Now at last his head came up. There was a haunted look around his eyes and mouth. “He still thinks that’s what stopped me. But it wasn’t.”
“What did?”
“I had my fist pulled back, blind with anger and hurt. Then suddenly I remembered that night too.”
Benjamin nodded, strangely satisfied by that. “I understand.”
They sat quietly for over a minute, each deep in the recesses of his own mind, counting costs, longing for a chance to relive those few moments over again in order to change them and make things turn out differently. Finally Joshua looked at his father. “You think I ought to let them be baptized, don’t you?”
Benjamin shook his head without hesitation. “I know what you’re feeling inside—misunderstood, angry, like you’re the outcast.”
“Frustrated, betrayed,” Joshua added with a touch of bitterness.
“I don’t know what is best to do, Joshua. Somehow you’ve got to find a way through this. I only know this. If you refuse to bend, it won’t stop Will from being baptized. It may Caroline, but it won’t Will. And then it will be Palmyra all over again. He’ll leave you. He’ll go back to sea.”
“That’s just talk,” Joshua started, but then he shook his head. Down deep he had this gnawing fear that it was more than just talk. Will wasn’t a boy anymore. He could leave and make his own way now. Hadn’t Joshua at about that same age?
“That’s exactly what I told myself about you,” Benjamin said forlornly. “ ‘It’s just talk,’ I said. But I was wrong, Joshua. I was eleven years wrong.”
“So I just push aside my feelings and let them all be baptized?” Joshua cried softly. “What about what matters to me?”
“You do what you have to do,” came the answer. “All I’m saying is, maybe there’s some value in sitting down by yourself for a while and counting the cost of doing what you think you have to do. Maybe after that, you’ll decide that living with a house full of Mormons is not the worst possible thing that could happen to your family.”
Joshua had gone to the freight office early that morning because he had a wagonload of cotton goods come in from St. Louis that needed transport to Plymouth, a small settlement about thirty-five miles southeast of Nauvoo. To the astonishment of his foreman, about ten o’clock that morning Joshua appeared in the stable and abruptly announced that he would be driving the wagon. He borrowed a coat and a bedroll from the previously designated driver, sent the man for some bread, cheese, and dried fruit, sent a hastily scrawled note to Caroline, and was off half an hour later.
He did not return until the following Tuesday, just at dark. Weary, stubbled, dirty, he left the team with the stable hand to unhitch and feed, and headed up the street for home.
He stood facing them. Will sat beside Olivia, holding her hand lightly. Caroline sat on the sofa. Their eyes were wide with curiosity. Above them, he could hear Savannah and Charles thumping around playing “bear” or some such thing that Savannah had engineered.
“There’s no sense making this harder than it is,” he started, then stopped, realizing that his voice sounded forced and clipped. He took a breath and started again. “I’m sorry I ran off like that to Plymouth, without warning. But I needed some time to myself, to think things through.”
They nodded, not daring to ask what things he was talking about.
There was a fleeting smile. His father was right. No matter who was right here, it was costing them dearly. He could see it in their eyes and on their faces.
“My feelings about the Church and Joseph Smith haven’t changed,” he continued, “and I suppose they never will. But—” As he stopped, he saw the first flicker of hope flash across Caroline’s eyes. “But no one’s asking me to be baptized. If they were, I guess I’d have cause to balk a little.”
Now Will had caught it. His eyes were round and filled with wonder. “What are you saying, Pa?” he asked softly.
“I think you know what I’m saying.”
“Thank you,” Will breathed softly.
Olivia leaned forward eagerly now. “What about me, Papa?”
He turned to her, wanting to reach out and touch her so she would know how much he loved her. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” It was all he could do to keep his voice even.
Great tears welled up and spilled over. “I’m sure,” she whispered.
He nodded, feeling as if a knife had just sliced through him when he saw the joy infuse her face.
Now he turned to his wife. Caroline’s eyes were like two green emeralds, glowing in soft sunlight. She was staring at him in great wonder. “I gave my word,” he said simply. “And Joshua Steed is a man of his word.”
She started to speak, then couldn’t. Her head dropped and her hands began to twist in her lap. Will went to her quickly and put an arm around her shoulder. With that, her head came up again.