Saints

  Writing to Sally depressed him. He set down the pencil and watched the orchestra forming on a makeshift stand nearer the White House. Sally was right -- she at least would never fit in here. In Nauvoo she was the perfect wife, bright, businesslike, hardworking, fertile, strong, healthy, all that it took to do well in the rough life of the frontier. But here in Washington her movements would be too large, her emotions too obvious, her voice too loud, her words all inappropriate. A frog at a ball, that's what she'd be. With his choice of wives, Charlie had made his choice of career as well. He could visit Washington, but he could never belong here.

  "And there is a true correspondent, lost in letters even at a concert."

  Charlie looked up. Daniel Webster had decked himself out in his dashing blue swallowtail coat and buff trousers, the Whig colors, so that he would have looked like Whig Party bunting had he not also been an outrageously handsome man. His black hair recommended him from a distance; closer to, his voice required everyone to listen. Charlie noticed that already the inevitable crowd was forming around the Secretary of State and, therefore, around Charlie. In a way, Washington was as small as Nauvoo -- it was possible to know everyone.

  "Good morning, sir," Charlie said, getting up.

  "But it's afternoon, my friend. What an engrossing letter you're writing, that it has held you so enthralled right through the dinner hour! I'm Daniel Webster, Mr. Kirkham -- you may remember that we met at Mrs. Woodbury's soiree, an unfortunately Democratic affair at which I provided the only Whig of fresh air."

  A man standing nearby -- Charlie recognized him as an obscure new Congressman from Massachusetts or Georgia or some such foreign place -- spoke up and said, "But the President himself was there."

  "And you yourself, Mr. Colquitt, have been quoted as saying that poor President Tyler has no party, even when he attends one."

  So the political wars continued on the White House lawn. Finding Charlie a good neutral foil, Webster stayed there some time, conversing with him for the entertainment and enlightenment of the onlookers. Charlie knew that his role was not to compete but to complement, and so he designed his answers and his questions to make him sound like a naive but fascinated foreigner. His Lancashire accent was indispensible at times like this.

  Because Charlie was so good at conversation, it was still going strong after a quarter hour; Charlie wished it could last forever. But Webster began to break away, to move on -- the concert was nearly over, and he had to make his appearance at the front before the affair broke up. "A pleasure talking with you, Mr. Kirkham."

  Charlie had already learned how the famous love to be reminded of their fame. "A man of my age rarely gets to talk with men of fame."

  "Fame!" Webster cried. "What is fame! Let me give you a striking illustration of how valuable a thing fame is. I was traveling in a railroad car a short time ago, and it so happened that I was seated by the side of a very old man. I soon found that this old man was from my native town in New Hampshire. I asked him if he was acquainted with the Webster family there. He answered that he and old Mr. Webster, in his lifetime, were great friends. He then went on to speak of the children. He said Ezekiel was the most eminent lawyer in New Hampshire, and his sisters, calling each by her Christian name, were married to most excellent men." Webster paused. "I then inquired if there was not another member of the family."

  The crowd laughed. Charlie smiled.

  "He said he thought not." At this Webster made a slightly woeful face, which drew more laughter. "Was there not one, I asked him, by the name of Daniel? Here the old man put on his thinking-cap for a few moments, and then he replied, 'Oh, I recollect now. There was one by the name of Daniel, but he went down to Boston, and I haven't heard of him since.'" The crowd roared with laughter. "There's your fame, Mr. Kirkham!"

  Charlie thought then that Webster would move away, but Webster put his arm around Charlie's shoulders and brought him along as he walked toward Mrs. Tyler at the front of the gathering.

  "A most delightful conversation," Webster said.

  "I think I learned more from half an hour with you than in all these months in Washington," Charlie said.

  Webster chuckled. "You don't have very much to learn from anyone. If I were either more or less vain, I'd hire you to walk around with me, to converse with me so cleverly. It would enhance my reputation."

  "Not to mention mine."

  "You looked forlorn as you wrote. I cannot resist a sad story."

  "My wife," Charlie said.

  "A wife," Webster said sadly. "No wonder you're morose. There are ladies who quite openly set their caps for you, and you must ignore them most heartlessly. Of course, if word got around that you're married, as many as two or three of them might get discouraged. But don't worry -- I'll tell no one your dark secret. How would I dare? The bearer of such news would be unwelcome in every Washington house that contains an unmarried lady."

  Charlie laughed. "They never give me a second glance, sir, as you well know."

  "Not while you're glancing at them, you may be sure. How can they give you a second glance, anyway, when the first glance lingers infinitely?"

  The flattery was coming far too thickly. Charlie laughed, but he was becoming wary, though in fact he could not think what Webster might hope to gain by flattering someone as powerless as Charlie.

  "You may have heard," said Webster, "that John Calhoun and I have had our differences."

  Charlie wondered what Webster was getting at. "It's a rumor that I was not in a position to evaluate."

  "It isn't a rumor, Mr. Kirkham. I'm telling you that it's plain fact. If I didn't hold the man's mother in such high regard I'd suppose him a son-of-a-bitch in the grand tradition; as it is, I can only think him a horse's ass. But both he and his moral twin, Henry Clay, may they share an appointment as ambassadors to Turkestan, have mentioned you favorably to me. Don't you think that odd?"

  "I've met them both. I hope they remembered me pleasantly."

  "I've never met this man you serve, your Joseph Smith. Is he really a prophet?"

  "I wish you could meet him and judge for yourself, sir."

  "I don't know. I'm not an expert on prophets, and I doubt he's ever met such a shameless demagogue as myself. It has been suggested to me that you might make an admirable secretary."

  Charlie almost laughed. In a city swarming with office-seekers, Charlie was one of the few there who was not angling for an appointment. And now Daniel Webster himself was hinting at one. It tempted him sorely, but he was the Prophet's representative. "I'm a businessman in Illinois, when I'm not here on President Smith's affairs. I've been secretary to a law firm in England and to a prophet in Illinois, but I don't know that I long for a career at it."

  Webster looked bemused. "At least they measured you fairly accurately. You really aren't looking for a position. I had thought there was not such a man in the world. Come see me, Mr. Kirkham. I want to have you about the house, if only so I can point you out as a curiosity. There is a man who is good enough to do well in office, and doesn't want one." Then Webster took his leave, and returned to being the center of a swarm of admirers as he went to greet the First Lady.

  They said Webster wanted to be President. Well, thought Charlie, that was an easy disease to catch in this city. Every politician Charlie met was infected with it, or once had been, which meant that they were accustomed to making no clear statement of policy on anything. It made Charlie's official mission, to secure redress of grievances for the Saints' losses in Missouri, hopeless. Henry Clay had put him off with vague talk of waiting for an improved political climate. John Quincy Adams bluntly said that he was busy collecting citizen petitions on matters that had at least a bit of hope of success. But it was John C. Calhoun who explained things most plainly, though in his careful Southern drawl it sounded milder than it was. "Son," the Senator said, "I'd sooner see an enemy put Savannah to the torch than hear of a single federal officer interfering with a private matter in a sovereign state." That had been
the enlightenment for Charlie. The Saints were asking the federal government to either guarantee private property within the states -- anathema to anti-slavery Northerners -- or forcefully enter a state to enforce the Constitution -- an unspeakable idea to a Southerner.

  But the redress of grievances was not Charlie's main purpose in Washington. Charlie's real reason for staying in Washington was to size up the men who were the most likely candidates for President, to see which of them was worth supporting. Because the Church was concentrated in one county of one state, the Mormon vote could conceivably swing a whole bloc of electoral votes; that potential power might be traded for future protection, if the right man won. So as Charlie made his rounds, petition in hand, from one Congressman and Senator to another, he would casually mention that Mormons tended to vote as a bloc, and how many they were, and where they all lived.

  Within a month of beginning this ploy, Charlie found himself invited everywhere. Only Henry Clay was frank about it. "You're a charming fellow, Mr. Kirkham, but you got my attention the way you got everyone else's, by making me wonder whether Joseph Smith was a Whig or a Democrat. It's a clever game, and if you strike the right bargain you may do well for yourselves. But let me warn your prophet of something he may not know. After the next election, your influence will be gone. Once you decide to be Whigs, the Democrats will hound you until you drop; once you decide to be Democrats, the Whigs will drive you from the state at gunpoint. And if you don't deliver your votes solidly one way or the other, they'll figure you have no power at all, and despise you."

  "So you won't help us?"

  "Unbelievable as it may sound to you, Mr. Kirkham, there are still many men in Congress who put the public welfare above their individual good. But you Mormons are only a small part of the public. There are far greater issues than punishing the state of Missouri for crimes committed by a mob three years ago."

  Charlie nodded and stood to leave. "Thank you for the interview, Mr. Clay."

  But Clay stopped him. "That Smith fellow, your prophet. I met him when he was here, a couple of years ago. I didn't like him much. That sort of religion doesn't much appeal to me. But he has it, whatever it is that makes people lie down and die for a man. Has more of it than Webster, and Webster has more than anybody. But why are you taken in by it? It's still all humbuggery."

  "You're getting politics confused with religion," Charlie said.

  Clay grinned. "I suppose it's always easier to spot flim flam in the other man's argument. You tell Joe Smith he could have been President, if he'd only got himself an education or killed enough Indians, or if he'd kept out of religion. But as for getting the government on his side, he hasn't got a chance. Pleasure knowing you, Mr. Kirkham."

  Charlie ate his last meal in Washington like a condemned man. He knew he wouldn't eat so well again once he crossed the Appalachians. The train would be fast, but that would only make the change to frontier living all the more abrupt. Sitting at the table, thumbing through the volumes of Herrick and Pope that he needed to return to Adams before he left, Charlie wondered if he really wanted to go back. Couldn't he make his report to Joseph by letter? Couldn't he send for Sally and Alexandra, and set himself up as a permanent, unofficial delegate of the Church in Washington? He could monitor the legislation, try to influence things, and in the meantime pursue a career that might bring him real power.

  As he finished the meal, however, with his future mapped a dozen times over, he knew it would not be so simple. Sally would come if he told her to, but she wouldn't be happy here where the ladies would all despise her. And Joseph -- he'd see through Charlie quickly, he wouldn't be fooled by any talk of being unofficial delegate. It was another temptation from the world, just like the one his firm had offered him in Manchester. It was Nauvoo where his home was, and so he would go back.

  He had little time left when he reached Adams's house; he meant to leave off the books, thank the old man, and be on his way. But Adams wanted to talk a moment. "Tell me, was your stay in Washington a success?"

  "My greatest success was in working my way through your library, sir. You were very kind."

  "So your petition has accomplished nothing. Well, neither have mine. But that isn't all you were here for, was it?"

  Adams had been President once, and now was back in the House of Representatives, finishing out his life as a sort of people's advocate -- having once had the highest office, he was the only man in Washington who could say he had no ambition and hope to be believed. And he had been kind to Charlie without any hope of gaining from it. So Charlie to[d him his main purpose in Washington.

  "Ah." Adams reached up and touched the bushy white fringe around his bald head, as if to make sure some hair still remained. "Like Socrates, searching for a wise man. Did you find one?"

  "Many clever ones," Charlie said.

  "Some men come here to this whore of a city, seduced by power or money or fame. But you and I, we are seduced by the undying faith that we alone, of all the men in the world, we will be the ones to accomplish something truly good."

  "Does that make us fools?"

  "It makes us unpleasant company. No one will ever meet your standards. Here, Charlie. Keep this collection of Pope. Whenever you start feeling that other men are too wicked or hypocritical to bear, read a little of his rhyming. 'The glory, jest, and riddle of the world,' that's all you are, especially when you're most certain that you're right. I'm making you late for your train."

  "No -- I have time. Thank you for the book."

  "I hear you were wise enough to turn down all the offers that were made to you."

  Charlie shrugged self-deprecatingly. "They overestimated my abilities."

  "Don't pretend to be humble, Charles. You're as vain as anyone, and with much better reason than most. I don't care what reason you gave yourself for going home -- I'm just glad you did it. Because you aren't strong enough for this place."

  After all the flattery, Charlie was ill-equipped to enjoy this. "No, I suppose not."

  "You don't like hearing it now, but I'm old enough that I can say it. You'd be a good teacher, but never a good politician or lawyer. Not really a top-flight businessman, either."

  Not that Charlie believed him -- but he wanted to know. "Why not?"

  "Because you don't know how to kill, Charles. In the end, that's what it comes down to. You have to love the kill. It's life that you love. Never change. And never come back here as long as you live." Adams held out his age-knotted hand. "I like you. I'll miss having you ransack my shelves."

  "Thank you sir. You've been kind."

  Charlie walked to the railroad station through the cold and muddy January streets, feeling as dismal as the weather was now. Like the brief warm spell the week before, all Washington was a lie. Slaves everywhere in the capital of a free country; cowards in almost every office; animals in the streets; bitter old poverty and cruel new wealth competing for attention in the architecture, in the faces of the people. The monuments, the great documents, the rhetoric of democracy and justice -- they were only a shared dream, not the truth of the place.

  But that's the way it is in Nauvoo, too, Charlie realized. We call it Zion, the Kingdom of God, but it's a jealousy-ridden, poverty-stricken shanty town. And yet that wasn't the truth either. The temple rising on the hill wasn't hypocrisy, it was hope. The Saints weren't pretending to be perfect, only intending to be. Like Washington, they just couldn't catch up to their own dreams. Yet if it weren't for the dream, neither Nauvoo nor Washington would exist at all.

  And me, he thought on the train northward into Pennsylvania. I am no different from these places. I intend to be great, I dream of it, and yet I know that I'm not, and I think that I probably never will be. Is it so terrible, as long as the dream I try for is a good dream, is it so terrible if my life doesn't bring the dream to pass?

  No, not terrible at all, he decided. I'll be perfectly content, as long as I tried my best.

  Liar, whispered something inside him. Liar.

/>   As the apostles had done when they returned from England, Charlie went to Brother Joseph's house before seeing anyone else in Nauvoo. Joseph wasn't there. No one was living there at the moment, in fact, for Joseph was in hiding and Emma was staying with Hyrum's wife while she recovered from the birth of a dead baby a few days before. William Clayton, who used to be their branch president back in Manchester, was caring for the house. Charlie glanced at the writing instruments and papers spread over the desk that used to be Charlie's. "I'm scribing and clerking for him now," Clayton said. "Brother Joseph knew you'd want to be with your family at a time like this. He'll be touched that you came here anyway."

  "A time like this?" The tone of consolation in Clayton's voice made it plain that something must be wrong at Charlie's house.