There wasn't much to be happy about -- two children had already died, and others was deathly ill -- but the singing perked their spirits and reminded them that they were on God's errand. And in the prayer meeting, Brother Corbridge got to his feet and bravely told the company that he regretted nothing about the voyage, and never would. "I chose to follow the Lord, and the devil can rock the boat all he likes, he won't break me." There was anger in Corbridge's voice, and tears in his eyes, but he had drawn the battle lines properly: This wasn't a struggle of men against a cruel God, it was a struggle of Saints against the forces of sin. They saw their afflictions in a different light, then. Those who died were martyrs, not victims of fate, and God was accepting their suffering as sacrifice, for which they would be rewarded in time to come.
That night, Charlie and Dinah took a moment's rest together on the ladderway leading up to the second deck. There were some groans, but things were quieter than they had been in some time.
"The Lord's a harsh teacher," Dinah said.
"With sometimes a vague lesson at best."
"For me it isn't vague," Dinah said. "Tonight my children are alive and warm and safe. They have all their lives ahead of them, while little John Corbridge lies at the bottom of the sea. I have nothing to complain of."
Charlie wondered if she really believed that. But he would not argue. Whatever comfort could be taken in a difficult time was welcome. And sometimes it did not matter if the comfort was a lie or an illusion -- it was true because it had to be true, and to hell with anyone who insisted on facts or logic.
"Charlie," Dinah said, closing her eyes and leaning back on the ladder, "do you remember the Tennyson? 'The Lotus-Eaters'?"
He did.
"The very beginning, before the choric song."
He began to recite, from memory, with few hesitations -- he had lost none of that gift. And finally he came to the end of the part she had asked for, and realized why she had wanted to hear it.
They sat them down upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then someone said, "We will return no more"; And all at once they sang, "Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.
Dinah sighed deeply when he finished. "Have no doubt of it, Charlie. We're going home now. And no one will ever bar the door and turn us away."
"Zion," Charlie said, and it was a question.
"Worth every cost," Dinah said, and it was the answer.
BOOK FIVE
In which people think they understand each other.
First Word
People get used to things. Good or bad, if they go on long enough, people just don't notice them anymore. I don't mean that they forget. Nobody on the North America said, "Hey, you know? This isn't so bad after all." They knew it was terrible. They just stopped being surprised about it.
It was the same thing when they got to Nauvoo. Charlie had heard all the glowing reports of Zion being built, the city of God, Nauvoo the beautiful. So what was he to think of row after row of miserable mud-chinked cabins? Weeds wherever there weren't wheel tracks? He wasn't used to so much sunlight all in the same day, especially getting on into fall. The first day there his eyes were full of tears all day, usually because of the dust in the air. A horse riding by would raise more of a cloud than a steam locomotive. And then next day it rained. No dignified shower, either, it was what the old-time Mormons were calling a frog-strangler. Main Street was so wet that you could have got to the end of it and walked right on into the Mississippi and never known the difference. And everybody dressed poorer than even the poorest people of Manchester. Even men who should have known better would come out in public in shirt-sleeves, like factory hands; he even saw a few men stripped right to the waist, chopping wood or wrestling stumps, and people would talk to them like normal. He didn't know that here in the West people weren't so picky about wearing coats all the time.
But it was only the surprise of it, really, that had him worried. Within a week he stopped caring that the four of them had to live in a mud hut. After all, everyone lived in mud huts, or almost everyone, or at least all the newcomers, of whom there were plenty. He still noticed the weather was disgusting and the air was as wet as fog even when the sun shone, and he even complained about it, but he complained like a native, not like a stranger. He stopped comparing. He made friends, even if they had accents like slow-witted Yorkshiremen. Heber Kimball had talked that way, after all; it was part of his charm. He found some people who could read, and had a taste for his kind of humor. And one close friend: the prophet's own brother, Don Carlos Smith.
It began with Charlie stopping by the editorial office of the Times and Seasons to offer to correct spelling errors for them. Young Don Carlos was the editor, and he laughingly confessed that the spelling errors were his own. "I think of my spelling as an interesting reorganization of the English language." There would be no income in working for the Nauvoo newspaper -- it barely supported Don Carlos. But the two young men liked each other immediately, and Don Carlos saw to it that they were together often after that. He made Charlie teach him stanza after stanza of Wordsworth while Don Carlos taught Charlie how to milk a cow, how to watch for chuckholes in meadows because the horses were too dumb to notice, and how to chop efficiently through a thick log without losing a foot. Charlie would get along fine in this frontier town. He decided, in fact, to forgive Nauvoo's shortcomings. As he told Anna and john, it was a new city, wasn't it? Just springing up out of nothing. They shouldn't expect too much of it. Things would be fine.
But Dinah -- hers was a different story. She hadn't been so starry-eyed as Charlie. Dinah had listened closely to the Brethren, noticed that they talked a bit vaguely whenever they described what Nauvoo was actually like now rather than what it would be in ten, twenty years. The mud huts, the vile roads, the mosquitoes, the filth -- that didn't faze her. She settled down to her work, and in the process helped all her fellow immigrants cope with the shock of it all. Of course the houses are only huts, she said, of course the fields are rough and weedy. What did you think we were coming for, if it wasn't to build Zion? And why would God need you to build Zion, if it was already done up in brick and clapboard with cobbled roads? She was a great comfort to them all, without particularly noticing herself doing it. But it wasn't that she had no expectations. It's just that all her expectations were tied up in the Prophet, in Joseph Smith, and it took a while before she got to know him. Took a while before she could be disappointed.
Which is why I'm not going to tell you any more about the voyage and the overland trip and the first few weeks at Nauvoo than I already have. A better writer would have made you feel every roll of the ship, every miserable moment of rail and lake steamer and log raft getting across America, and probably would have broken your heart with disappointment over Nauvoo. But I can't bring it off. I tried. There are a hundred pages of Getting To Nauvoo that you'll never see -- because it bored me. It was dull. Frightening things happened, there was enough angst for Henry James to write a thousand commas -- but everybody took it in stride. It didn't change anybody. So I'm telling you it happened and then skipping it. And picking up where life gets interesting again. And, as many people found out in Nauvoo, everything interesting happened near Joseph Smith, or because of Joseph Smith, or whenever his back was turned.
-- O. Kirkham, Salt Lake City, 1981
26
Joseph Smith Nauvoo, 1840
Joseph watched from the window as Don Carlos capered in the store yard, swinging an ax above his head. He charged like a bloodthirsty soldier and savagely embedded the steel head in a thick log, spattering wood chips in all directions. Then Don Carlos turned, pretending to be exhausted. His friend, a young new convert from England, applauded. Suddenly, as if he had heard a noise from the log behind him, Don Carlos whirled and let loose a flurry of chops at t
he log. At last, satisfied that the thing would pose no further threat, he stood in triumph on the log, whirling the ax over his head, holloing. Through the window Joseph could faintly hear his shout. And he caught himself being jealous.
"What are you watching?" Emma asked.
"Don Carlos."
"Mm." Emma came and stood beside him. "If he spent more time selling advertising, maybe the paper would earn his little family a decent living."
"He's so young," Joseph said.
"Don Carlos forgets he has a wife and three daughters. He plays like a boy." Emma looked at him piercingly. "You love him too much. We should never have named the baby after him. You think they're both your sons."
Joseph's laugh was half a sigh, but he felt neither amused nor sad. He was really a little afraid. Emma read his emotions so easily sometimes -- how much, then, did she know about the secrets he kept from her? But mostly he was afraid because he wasn't as young as Don Carlos anymore.
"You're only thirty-five yourself," Emma said. So Emma understood that, too.
"Halfway through my three-score and ten."
"You'll live forever."
"So will everyone.
She touched the hair that curled a little at the nape of his neck.
"Emma," he said. "Will anything stand to say that I once lived?"
"You are the greatest man in a thousand years."
It touched him, and so he teased. "Why only a thousand?"
She did not laugh. She had a disconcerting way of knowing when his jokes were not jokes. "Don't wish for Don Carlos's youth and beauty, Joseph. Everyone gives a smile to him -- but they'd give their lives for you."
"Sometimes I'd rather have the smiles."
"Then stay home more with me and the children." She laughed, but she could not hide from him behind humor, either.
"Abraham's wife Sarah became a sharp-tongued woman in her loneliness," Joseph said. "I'm glad that you have not."
"I was born a sharp-tongued woman," Emma said.
Well, it was true; Joseph had no argument. "Why else do you think I enlisted your sword on my side?"
Outside, Don Carlos had seen Joseph in the window. He waved. Joseph beckoned him inside. Don Carlos glanced at his Englishman, and Joseph beckoned again.
"They're up to their knees in mud," Emma observed.
"Tell them to take their boots off."
"May I tell them to take their pants off, too?"
Joseph laughed. "If you like. But that Englishman looks like he might just think you mean it."
"I do mean it." And Emma retired to the kitchen to receive their visitors.
Joseph watched the two boys as they came in. Boys, he thought, though at that same age Joseph had fancied himself a man. How did he ever expect anyone to take him seriously at such an age? And yet they had taken him seriously. They even let him ruin their lives, some of them. What is it like to be young, without the weight of prophecy on your back? For ten years I've dragged a church behind me, like an over-full sledge. Would I have a spring in my step like Don Carlos's, if I had been free at his age? No. Never like that. For if I hadn't had responsibility, I would have had the worse burden of not knowing what to do. I was too serious at heart, like that English fellow. Except that I didn't let it show, the way he does.
Emma really didn't want them in the kitchen, so Joseph quickly maneuvered them into the drawing room while she prepared the dinner. Don Carlos stood with his backside toward the fire, telling some extravagant story that Joseph knew would end nowhere -- Don Carlos always forgot where he was going with a tale. Usually it didn't matter -- Don Carlos loved to hear himself talk, and everyone else loved to hear him, too. But this time Joseph hadn't the time. "Introduce me to your friend," Joseph said, interrupting.
"Was I being dull?"
"Dull as a rock in the road. I don't know how your friends can bear having you around."
"This is Charlie Kirkham. He's the worst woodcutter in Nauvoo."
"I'm pleased to meet you, sir," Charlie said. He gave a slight bow.
Joseph, by main strength, didn't laugh. Instead, he bowed back. Why make the lad ashamed of his dignity? And yet Joseph couldn't stop himself from putting on his best back-country manners in response. "Howdy-do." he said. "Right proud to have your acquaintance."
"I'm sorry to be so ill-dressed for a meeting I've -- hoped for -- "
"I'd rather meet a man with mud on his pants than any high-toned hypocrites, I can tell you. The only thing I can see wrong with you is that you have no judgment about the company you keep."
The Englishman's eyes went wide, as if he were searching his memory for some unfit acquaintance.
"He meant me," Don Carlos said. "Charlie can read and write, Joseph."
"A scholar?"
Charlie demurred. "A bookkeeper."
"Around here that makes you a mathematician. I should hire you to run my business affairs, maybe."
Don Carlos whooped. "Change all the minuses to pluses and you'd look right prosperous."
Annoyed at his brother's indiscretion about his finances, Joseph turned his back on Don Carlos and excluded him from the conversation. "Brother Charlie, there's things for a man good with figures to do." He smiled. "We're all here to build up the kingdom of God. If God has given you talents, it's not to keep them to yourself. So don't be modest, lad. Tell me what you can do when you're not stunting around with the village idiot."
"I -- I read and write, that's all. I write a fair hand, and spell rather well."
"He's been helping a bit at the paper, in his spare time," Don Carlos said.
"And no doubt being underpaid for it," Joseph said. One barb about finances certainly deserved another.
"I enjoy it," Charlie said.
"What else could you do, if you weren't doing Don Carlos's work for him?"
"I can do correspondence. I'm best at financial matters. I can figure in my head faster than -- " He paused, aware that he was being immodest.
"Faster than me, no doubt," Joseph said.
"I meant to say, faster than most bookkeepers can do it on paper. I think it's my only real gift."
Joseph looked him in the eye and felt something, some unease. Was it in the boy, or in himself?
Behind him, Don Carlos softly said, "He's more than he looks."
Joseph ignored him. "Do I know you, Charlie?"
"I -- don't think so, sir -- we've never met -- I would have remembered."
"You say 'figure' and I say it 'figger.' Is yours the right way?"
"I'm English, sir, and you're -- "
"I know what I am." Joseph watched how the boy struggled to say the right thing, tried not to offend. "You don't like the sort of work you're doing for a living, do you?"
"I have no complaint," Charlie said, glancing at Don Carlos.
So he doesn't like it, but doesn't want to say so, Joseph thought. It's unnatural, how good he is at being careful. And with that Joseph decided to push him, to see when he would forget how much he wanted to be liked and speak his mind. "Come on, now," Joseph said, letting a taunting tone into his voice. "You're meant for better things than we have to offer in Nauvoo. How could you possibly like sweaty work when you're used to working in a nice clean suit?"
"I don't think it matters much whether I like it, does it?"
To Joseph's delight, behind his dignity Charlie was getting a little angry. "Not to me, anyway. I have enough to worry about without wondering whether everyone is content with his lot. Do you have any strength in you at all?"
Charlie flushed, then looked desperately at Don Carlos. Joseph did not have to look to know that his brother was wearing a simpleton's grin. Don Carlos knew from experience what was happening, and knew to keep silence till it was over.
"Come on," Joseph said. "What kind of man are you? I'll bet I can throw you in three seconds. Can you stand against me?"
Joseph reached for Charlie, to grip his arms. Of course there'd be no honor in wrestling this slightly built young man, but J
oseph had long used wrestling as a way of finding what a man was made of. Few men refused him; no man had ever beaten him. Joseph didn't expect the Englishman to be a challenge; he only hoped for the boy to show his courage.
Charlie did not back away, but he did not make a move to join in a contest, either. "I didn't come to stand against you, sir. I came to work beside you."
Don Carlos laughed quietly.
"I've heard all kinds of excuses," Joseph said. "Don't want to muss the furniture, these are my best clothes, it isn't seemly, I hurt my wrist yesterday -- but you're the first man I've met who out and out admitted he was a coward."