Alaska (68 page)

town lights, but only another hill, and this one larger than the last, he merely adjusted his heavy pack, squared his frail shoulders, and said aloud: 'Well, God, You must have it hiding on the other side of this one,' and down into the light but swirling snow he marched, stopping now and then to clear his steel-rimmed glasses.

The dip was quite deep, but he interpreted this as a protection God had placed around this town, and his enthusiasm flagged not one bit as he reached the bottom and started the upward climb, for it was inconceivable to him that Deadhorse would not lie just beyond the ridge. On his way to the top the snow increased noticeably, but this gave him little concern, for he thought: It's good that I'm almost there, because this storm could get bad, and upward he struggled, as secure in his faith as he had been when doing his missionary work in the mountains of Colorado or the flatlands of Arizona.

As he neared the top of the hill he was hit by a blast of snow borne by a strong wind that came howling over the crest, and for just a moment his little feet lost their hold and he slipped backward, but he quickly caught himself, struggled to the top, and saw below him, as he had known he would, the flickering lights of Deadhorse.

But now a more serious problem arose, for instead of a town of 381, there stood before, him a village of eight houses, well scattered. He had been grossly deceived by the Presbyterians at his last stop, but since they were Presbyterians, he could not think ill of them: Perhaps they never made the trip here themselves.

He had in his pocket the name of the man to whom he was being sent, Otto Trumbauer: Sounds more like a Lutheran than a Presbyterian. But when he stopped at the first house and asked for the Trumbauers, he was told: 'You must be that missionary fellow they said was comin'. Trumbauer's expectin' you. He's two houses along,' and when he knocked on the Trumbauer door, it was flung open with a hearty cry: 'Reverend, we've been holdin' supper for you,' and he was pulled into the warm room.

Mrs. Trumbauer, a hefty woman in her forties, said as she closed the door: 'You got here just in time. Take off that pack and your coat.' A son in his twenties and a thin young woman who was apparently his wife helped Jackson get rid of his heavy garments and found a place for him at the waiting table.

At supper he learned the bad news, for the elder Trumbauer said: 'There has to be some mistake. We got only eight families here, two of them are Catholic, two are atheist, and

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of the other four, only three of us have any interest in starting a Presbyterian church.'

Jackson heard the dismal report with only a slight wince: 'Jesus didn't start out with twelve disciples. The church marches forward with what soldiers it has, and you two men look like stout ones.' He insisted that the two other Presbyterian families be invited in that very night, so that the first meeting of the Deadhorse Presbyterian Church was held while a small blizzard piled snow outside.

The adult men, on whom the labor of building even a small church would fall, were not eager to commit themselves to such a task, but Jackson was adamant; he had been sent to Deadhorse to start a Presbyterian church and he was determined to do so: 'I do believe I've organized more than sixty congregations and helped build at least thirty-six church .buildings west of the Mississippi, and my commission now is all the Northern states starting west from Iowa. Your fine town is in an ideal spot for a church which will bind this whole area together.'

In succeeding weeks the two male Trumbauers were astonished by the physical and moral energy of this little man who had come on foot over the mountains to live with them during the building of their church. He worked like the strongest man present, and on Sundays he preached inspired sermons that ran for more than an hour, even though his entire congregation consisted of only three families. However, this changed when he visited the two atheist families and was informed that they were agnostic rather than atheist. 'Join with us on Sunday,' he pleaded. 'You don't have to believe, just hear the message.' Then, in what was supposed to be humor, he added in his awkward way: 'We won't take up a collection,' and he was so sincere in his invitation that one of the families did stop by the Trumbauer house to hear the next Sunday's sermon.

It dealt with missionary work, and during the communal dinner that followed he revealed the sources of his surprising energy: 'In my freshman year at Union College back east I heard a call: ”Sheldon, there are people overseas who do not know the Word of God. Go to them, take them My Holy Word.”'

'You didn't go overseas. You said you worked in Arizona and Colorado.'

'When I graduated from Princeton Theological, I went before an examining board for the foreign missions, and their doctors said: ”You're too frail and weak for service in foreign countries,”so they sent me to Colorado and Wyoming and Utah, where I helped build church after church, and now I'm 417

in one of the most demanding regions of all, Montana and Idaho.'

'What do you mean,' a young man asked, 'when you say ”I heard a call”?' and Jackson replied with startling vigor: 'Sometimes to some people you're standing alone in a room or you've been praying, and Jesus Christ himself comes into that room and says in a voice so plain it sounds like a bell: ”Sheldon, I want you for my work,”and ever after your feet are headed in that direction and you are powerless to turn aside.'

No one spoke, so he ended: 'That voice called me to Deadhorse where Jesus Christ wanted one of His churches to be built, and with your help, not mine, it will be built.'

He was being too modest, for his contribution to the small log building was tremendous; he worked nine and ten hours a day at the most difficult jobs of construction, and sometimes the women laughed when they saw him coming down the road carrying one end of a log while some huge young fellow struggled with the other end. He was good with a hammer if he could have the help of one of the homemade ladders, but always on Sunday he was prepared for his sermon, and had the ones he delivered at Deadhorse been collected in a small booklet, they would have provided a logical exposition of the philosophy that underlay the missionary effort.

But what staggered the three local families was that in addition to his day's labor and his Sunday sermons, the little man spent most of his nights after supper writing voluminous copy for a popular religious journal he had started in Denver and for which he still felt responsible. As the work on the log church neared completion, the Trumbauers and their Presbyterian friends recognized Jackson as a true man of God, a Christian without a flaw, and they were pleased to have known him. Mrs. Trumbauer said, as the time approached for his departure for some town in Idaho that needed a church: 'I've never had a man in the house, not even my own father or Otto's, who caused me less trouble. Sheldon Jackson is a saint.' And then she added: 'Hadn't we better tell him? It might break his heart to find out later.'

The families held private discussions in another home and concluded that if one balanced the honorable with the practical, the best course would be to finish the church, have a big dedication ceremony, and then tell him, and that was the plan that was followed.

When the time approached for committing this church to the service of Jesus Christ, Jackson went humbly to the nonreligious families and pleaded with them to help in the dedication: 'It's for the good of the whole community, not just a few Presbyterians,'

and then, stifling his pride and his convic-418

tions, for he waged unceasing war against Catholics and Mormons, he went to the Catholic families and invited them also to the celebration, using much the same arguments: 'I will be dedicating a church. You will be helping the community to take a step forward.' He was so persuasive that on the Thursday, a day of the week that he specifically chose so that the agnostics and the Catholics would feel free to participate, which they did, he preached a sermon that was a marvel of friendliness and devotion. All his customary exhortation was muted, and to listen to him, the Presbyterian church had not an enemy in the world nor was there any other Christian denomination with which it was at odds. Most earnestly he wanted this church to be a force for good in a community which he was sure would be a growing one.

And at the feasting he moved from family to family, all eight of them, assuring them that with the opening of this church, a new day was dawning in Deadhorse, and he was so convinced by his own rhetoric that when he saw tears in the eyes of the Presbyterian women, he assumed that they were the joyous tears of Christian triumph.

They were not, but it had been agreed by the three families that they would wait till Jackson was packed for his move into Idaho before telling him the painful news, but one night when he was busy in the Trumbauer dining room finishing a report for his Denver publication it dealt with the triumph of Jesus Christ's message in the town of Deadhorse, Montana, a settlement he refused to call a village Otto Trumbauer coughed and said: 'Reverend Jackson,' and when the little fellow looked up he saw the entire Trumbauer family ranged before him. Obviously, something of moment had agitated these good people, but what it was he could never have guessed.

'Reverend Jackson, we've tried every way on earth to avoid this, but there's no way out. Us and the Lamberts, we're movin' back to Iowa. Our families have farms for us to work there, and we can earn a livin', somethin' we can't do here.'

Jackson dropped his pencil, looked up, wiped his glasses meticulously, and asked for confirmation of the astounding news: 'Iowa? You're leaving here?'

'We got to. No future for our children here. Nor for us.'

For the first time since he was trapped in the growing blizzard, Sheldon Jackson allowed his shoulders to sag, but then he tensed them for the Lord's work: 'Why, if you knew you were leaving . . . ?'

'Did we stay to help build the church?' Mr. Trumbauer finished the question, but he was not allowed to give the answer; his wife did: 'We discussed that, all the families, and

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we decided that you were a true man of God sent to us on a special mission.”She burst into tears, and it was up to her husband to add: 'We agreed that we would build the church and leave it as a beacon in the wilderness.'

Jackson squared his shoulders, rose, and grasped in turn the hands of all the Trumbauers: 'You were right in your decision! God always directs us in the right path! I started six, maybe eight churches in the Colorado mountains that never took hold, but there they stand, as you say, beacons in the mountains to remind those who will come later that Christians once labored here.' But then his indomitable optimism manifested itself: 'But this town will never become a wilderness! I see expansion, families moving here from the Dakotas, and when they arrive, there'll be your church waiting for them, for no collection of houses is ever a town without a church at its center.'

He left Deadhorse in a state of positive euphoria, a little man with a big pack, eyeglasses that collected mist and dust, and a conviction rooted in rock that the work he was doing was ordained by God and supervised by His Son Jesus Christ, but the judgment which Mrs. Trumbauer voiced as he departed' Reverend Jackson, you're a saint without a flaw' was far from true, for he had another side to his nature which had not had an opportunity to reveal itself during his constructive visit to Deadhorse.

ON THE SNOWY DAY THAT SHELDON JACKSON LEFT DEAD-horse, Montana, to push westward, an informal gathering of the board which governed Presbyterian missions convened during a retreat in a rural setting overlooking the Hudson River in New York. A tall, worried clergyman, who obviously wanted to be fair, started the afternoon's discussion with an announcement which brought discomfort to all who heard it: 'As your chairman it's my duty to be scrupulously just in what I say, but I must advise you that our dear and respected friend Sheldon Jackson has done it again. We don't know where he is or what he's up to. After we took him out of Colorado, where he, as you know, was pursuing his own ways, he obeyed our orders for a while, taking proper steps to develop the area we assigned him.'

'Which was?' a minister asked.

'The Northern states and territories west of the Mississippi, but not including Dakota, the state of Oregon or the territory of Washington.'

'That's a vast area, even for Jackson. Where's he supposed to be?'

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'We directed him to work in Montana. Where he actually is, who can guess.'

'Isn't it about time,' an impatient clergyman in his sixties asked, 'that we discipline this young man?'

'He's not so young, you know. Must be in his forties.'

'Old enough to behave himself

'That he will never do,' the chairman said as he produced a single sheet of notes.

'But before we take any action regarding this little hurricane, I want to bring before you eight aspects of his behavior, for he is consistent, and the first three refer to the finest attributes any missionary could exhibit.

First,

he is a born missionary. From his earliest days at Union College he had a specific calling to Christ, and whereas he is not loath to challenge the veracity of your calling or mine, he never doubts the authenticity of his. He is therefore by his definition a better missionary than you or I, and he is not afraid to point this out.

Second,

he has, from early childhood, been a committed Presbyterian. He believes without question that ours is the world's superior religion, and the doubts that assail the rest of us from time to time, the great debates about the nature of God and the paths to salvation never touch him. The two Johns, Knox and Calvin in that order, settled it for him!'

The clergymen discussed this second point for some time, and one man spoke for several: 'To have a faith as solid as that. . . maybe I envy him,' but another minister from New York cautioned: 'You may have used the wrong word, Charles. Not as solid as that, as simple. He knows what he's for and what he's against.'

'For example?' Charles asked, and the speaker ticked off his response: 'He's for Jesus Christ and against Catholics, Mormons and Democrats.' Charles did not laugh: 'I wish I knew even ten things for sure ... no questions, no doubts. Jackson knows ten thousand.' And the second speaker said: 'And he's convinced that you and I don't know even three.'