For Time and Eternity (11 page)

The knock at the door was soft but insistent, and I found myself powerless to rise up against it.

“Camilla?”

That unmistakable voice pulled me from my depths, and I sat straight up.

“Evangeline!”

Seconds later my dear friend was in my arms, or I was in hers. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and I buried my face in that scratchy sea of red curls and sobbed as I hadn’t yet.

“There, there, sister . . .” When she whispered, the normally hard edge of her words softened, and she rocked me like she would a child weeping against her. “Rachel came too. She’s talking with Nathan now, but she’ll be here in a minute. It’ll be just like old times.”

I pulled myself away and looked deep into the face of my friend. The intervening years had not been particularly kind. The freckles remained, numerous as ever, but they sat on a canvas of sallow skin. The girl who had been petite and quick and lithe was now merely small and gaunt, her arms like sticks within her sleeves. All in all, she had the effect of a woman not so much growing up, but drying up. I feared she might crackle when she moved.

“How—how is your father?”

A shadow flickered behind her green eyes. “He passed. Finally.”

A new wave of sadness hit me, one we shared. “Oh, sister. I’m so sorry. When?”

“A week ago.” She looked up, calculating. “No, nearly two weeks now. Two weeks on Tuesday.”

“You should have sent word. We would have come.”

“I knew you were near your time. I didn’t want to be a bother.”

“But Nathan? He would have—”

“There really wasn’t much of a funeral.” She patted me, reassuring. “Only our closest neighbors even knew he was still alive. When we posted the notice in the paper, most people either had no idea who he was or thought he’d died years ago. To think I’ve been living all these years with a ghost.” The corner of her mouth had its same quirky turn, almost bringing her back to the girl she’d been. “Now it seems I’m to become one myself.”

“Evangeline Moss!” The doorway filled with the silhouette of Rachel, her figure perfectly displayed in black silk. “Now is not the time to burden poor Camilla with our problems.”

“No, really, I don’t mind,” I said. And I didn’t. “Sometimes the best way to lighten the burdens of your own heart is to carry the weight of somebody else’s.” I patted the space next to me on the bed, inviting Rachel to join us.

“That’s beautiful,” Evangeline said. “What book is that in?”

“My own.”

“Still, my problems seem so insignificant compared to . . .” Her words trailed off as her eyes turned toward the empty cradle in the corner. “It must be the worst pain ever.”

“It’s the worst so far,” I agreed. “For me, anyway. But you, dear friend, your loss is no less significant. You’ve now lost both of your parents.”

Evangeline gave a sad, tight-lipped smile.

Rachel reached across me to grab Evangeline’s hand. “Now you can finally get on with your life.”

“Taking care of Father was my life.”

“And now he’s gone.”

I both marveled and trembled at the strength and finality of Rachel’s tone.

“I received a visit from Brigham Young the other day,” Evangeline said.

“Himself?” I could only imagine such a thing.

“No, that might have made the news easier to take.”

“What news?” Rachel’s brow furrowed, creating the only lines in her otherwise-smooth face.

“They—the church, I guess—have been allowing us to live in that house without any sort of contribution. On their charity, you might say. Our home and all our needs. Because of Father’s incapacity to work and my mother gone and the brothers so young.”

“But they worked in the mill, didn’t they?” I remembered a visit years ago; though twelve and thirteen, they looked like such little boys heading off in the early morning hours.

“Yes, but now they’re on mission in England. From there, who knows? And I can’t just keep the house.”

“Who says you can’t?”

“Brigham Young, of course.” Rachel made the name sound like a conviction.

“And he’s right to do so.” Evangeline was quick to the prophet’s defense. “I can’t expect to have food and shelter for the rest of my life at the Saints’ expense. I have to do something. Go somewhere. They’ll give me the winter, but after that . . .”

“Well, it’s terrible timing on your father’s part,” Rachel said, smoothing her silk. “A few months ago and I could’ve had Tillman marry you and bring you into our little household. But he’s not due for another wife for at least two years. That’s how long it takes for the novelty to wear off.”

Her words couldn’t have shocked me more if she’d shouted them through a blare horn. Evangeline recoiled from an unseen physical blow. “Sister Rachel! You mustn’t be so flippant about something as sacred as the celestial bond of marriage.”

“I’ll take it seriously when my husband does. Let’s see . . .” She ticked off the numbers with her fingers. “I was eighteen when Tillman married me. He was thirty. Wife number two, Joanna, was twenty—a bit old for his taste, but I’ll admit there wasn’t much choice in the early days. Then three years later, Marion, seventeen. And now sweet Tabatha, just sixteen. On second thought, if this one can keep her looks, he might be occupied for quite a while.”

“That’s blasphemous.” Evangeline hissed the word. “You’re taking a holy sacrament and turning it into something vile.”

Rachel’s reply was equally venomous. “What else do you call a man’s continuous rotation of women in his bed?”

“It’s the desire of Heavenly Father. The divine revelation of our prophet. The very basis for the Celestial Kingdom. Just last month the prophet stood behind the pulpit and urged us to recognize our duty to build large, strong families in this world to bring blessings to Heavenly Father in the next.”

“And my Tillman proudly obliged him by bringing home Miss Tabatha the very next week. Come to think of it, our Nathan was in that service too.”

I’d been sitting between the two, my head bouncing back and forth with the debate. Rachel’s question couldn’t have been clearer if she’d asked it, but it was one I was not prepared to answer, so I asked my own. “Do you think Tillman loves his other wives as much as he loves you?”

She threw her head back and let out a mirthless laugh. “That’s one question I never bother to ask him or myself. Remember, even though he married me first, I came into his life second. We’d only spent a few weeks together before he came out here and married Joanna. He had a whole year with her before I arrived. I never had a choice but to accept it.”

“Nor should you,” Evangeline snapped. “You don’t have any choice but to accept the teachings of the church. Baptism. Tithing. Why should marriage be any different?”

“Nathan and I love each other so much. I can’t imagine any other life.”

“And you don’t have to.” Rachel put her arms around me from behind and nestled her head on my shoulder. I could smell her perfumed lotion. Roses. “My brother is content. More than that. You make him happier than I ever thought he could be.”

“But he’ll never reach—”

“You hush with all of that!” Rachel squeezed me closer even as she scolded Evangeline.

“He so wanted a son,” I said, my eyes burning anew.

“Yes,” Rachel comforted, “and he’ll have one. You’ll give him one.”

Evangeline opened her mouth to speak; instead she crumpled under Rachel’s glare. But her words, though unspoken, were as present in the room as the three of us and the empty cradle.

Or another wife would.

Chapter 12

What can I say about the months that followed? In some ways they were much like any other winter. Kimana and the girls and I spent evenings sitting by the fire, carding wool. We didn’t have sheep of our own, but a few of our neighbors did, and sometimes we’d gather two or three families in a home to pass the time telling stories and singing, all underscored by the rhythmic combing. Snowflakes tumbled through the dark winter sky as our baskets filled with soft tufts of white wool. I never have developed a deft hand for spinning, so when the women gathered for those afternoons, I busied myself frying doughnuts and pouring cider. Anything to keep busy. Both of the girls had been born in the spring, so I never had the joy of a newborn in the winter. I’d been looking forward to long, dark, cold nights sitting by the fire. The muffled winter air made our house seem all the more quiet. Try as we might, we could not fill the void left by the life that ended all too soon.

For the first time in our marriage, Nathan was lost to me. He left our bed in the wee hours of the morning to tend to the livestock—chores that had been mine until the final days of my pregnancy. When I protested and offered to at least join him in the work, he’d touch me lightly on my cheek and say, “No, love. It’s cold outside. Stay here and sleep a little longer.”

But it haunted me, that room. It seemed the cold of winter seeped through the very walls. The moment Nathan and I stepped through the door, we ceased to speak, and the bed that had once been an island of warm refuge now gave all the comfort of a hard frost. We hadn’t been together as man and wife since before the baby was born, when we laughed at the awkward intrusion of my pregnant belly. A month after Arlen’s birth, when I knew my body had fully healed, I turned to him in the night, but he turned away. And the next night. And the next.

I found myself daily carrying the helplessness I’d felt when I held little Arlen in my arms. The love Nathan and I shared was dying every day, and I was powerless to breathe new life into it.

Whatever brightness and love we had in our home during those early winter months came from Melissa and Lottie, who simply refused to succumb to the sadness that gripped their father. Oh, Melissa, always the more solemn of the two, crept about the house for a while, burdened with the strain of trying not to be a bother to anyone, but little Lottie simply refused to be sad.

“Baby Arlen’s in heaven with Jesus,” she’d say whenever the thought of him crossed her mind. She made such assertions without a hint of mourning—just a matter-of-factness that I envied.

Once, when she left her new doll in the baby’s cradle, I gave her a solid scolding. I gripped her arms and yanked her clear off the floor, screaming, “That bed is for the baby!”

Calmly, her big green eyes looking straight into mine, she said, “The baby’s sleeping in the arms of Jesus. He doesn’t need the bed.”

That very night Nathan took the cradle out to the barn, and I packed away the stack of tiny shirts and socks and blankets I’d made in the months of preparation. And for the life of me, I don’t remember ever talking about baby Arlen again.

* * *

One evening in early February, Nathan came to the table with the usual layer of sweet-smelling sawdust on his shirtsleeves.

“Elder Justus is coming to dinner tomorrow night.”

“Oh?” I ignored the shiver at the base of my neck and spooned boiled potatoes onto Melissa’s plate. “That’ll be fine. Kimana trapped a rabbit this morning. We’ll make stew.”

“He wants to talk to you, Camilla.”

“Really? I was just in their home last week cutting quilt blocks with Sister June. Surely he could have talked with me then.”

“Now, stop it.” I can recall very few times before this when Nathan had ever spoken to me in any kind of a harsh tone, and never had he done so in front of the children. When he said this, the words barely escaping his lips through his clenched jaw, I was startled to the point that I nearly dropped the bowl to the table, and my cheeks burned so that I was certain they were steaming along with the food. “You know very well why he’s coming. You haven’t been to a church meeting since—”

“That’s not true.” And it wasn’t. Right after the funeral I went to Sabbath services, where I’d had to endure all those long, pitying looks from women whose children trailed like ducklings behind them. “I couldn’t bear the sound of all those babies. . . .”

Melissa was staring at her plate, listlessly moving her food around its surface.

“How do you think it makes me look,” Nathan said, his voice eerily calm, “not to have my wife and children at my side for the church service?”

“We attended all through Advent,” I offered, “and the New Year.”

“I won’t stand for this.”

“Then Lottie had a sore throat, remember? And I . . .”

“You what?”

What could I say? This wasn’t the time to air my misgivings. I’d been thinking that perhaps my doubts were somehow wrapped up with my grief, and I’d allowed myself to remain mired in mourning, leaving all thoughts beyond my own heavy heart largely unnoticed.

“I’ll go tomorrow,” I said finally. “We all will. Kimana can cook while we’re gone.”

He smiled, revealing a hint of the boy who had met me on the road all those years ago, and reached for my hand.

“You need the healing of Heavenly Father. We all do.”

That evening Kimana and I bathed the girls, washing their hair and combing out the tangles by the warmth of the firelight. The wind blew cold outside, bringing in a frigid rush when Nathan came in from tending the stock.

On nights like this, Kimana would spend the evening sitting with us until it was time for her to go to bed in her own small cabin behind our house. She busied herself braiding rags into what would someday be a thick, warm rug just like the one the girls sat on now. As I sat knitting in the rocking chair in the corner, they clutched their dolls and listened with rapt attention while Nathan told the story of the angel Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith. It was not a new story to the girls; they piped up with details every time Nathan paused for breath.

“And a light filled the room!”

“And he was as tall as the ceiling!”

“Yes,” Nathan said, restoring solemnity, “and his robe was exceedingly white, and his whole person glorious beyond description.”

“And his countenance truly like lightning,” Melissa said, quoting the text she’d heard so many times.

“That’s right,” Nathan said, leaning forward in his chair and holding our older daughter’s face in his hands. “Like lightning. And Moroni told Joseph that God had work for him to do. That his name would be had for both good and evil in all the nations.”

“Who would think he was evil?” By this time Lottie was in her father’s lap.

“Many people,” Nathan said. I could feel his eyes upon me, but I continued to focus on the reflection of the firelight on my knitting needles, knowing we were both envisioning the same thing—a group of riders illuminated by torches on the bank of the Missouri River. “You know the stories of our people. Not everybody is ready to believe the truth, especially if it’s different from what they’ve been taught all their lives.”

“But Joseph Smith believed the angel,” Lottie prompted.

“About the golden plates,” Melissa added.

“Indeed.” Nathan picked up the story. “Moroni said there was a book, written on gold plates, and that book told the truth of the everlasting gospel of the savior.”

“Jesus!” Lottie bounced on her father’s knee.

“How he came to America,” Melissa said with the authority of an older girl who had the experience of going to Sunday school. “And he began to quote the Bible, from the book of Malachi.”

“Although not exactly,” I said, not as quietly as I intended.

“What was that, darling?”

I looked up to see Nathan holding a contented Lottie against his broad, strong chest, Melissa sitting at his feet. A quick glance at Kimana showed the woman bent lower over her work, her face its usual placid mask.

“That’s part of the story.” I returned to my knitting. The clicking of the needles echoed in the room, competing with the crackling of the fire.

“She’s right,” Melissa said. “He said the angel changed some of the words. We learned it in Sunday school. Do you want to hear?”

“Of course,” Nathan said, and I paused midstitch.

Melissa stood up and handed her doll to her little sister before assuming a very poised posture, hands clasped before her. “‘And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.’”

“Marvelous!” Nathan reached around Lottie to clap his hands.

“And did you ever study the true Scripture?”

As much as I hated how my question crushed her triumphant spirit, I feared the increasingly familiar tugging on my spirit that caused me to ask it.

“That
is
the truth, Mama. That’s what the angel said.”

“But that’s not what the Bible says,” I insisted. “I was just wondering if you were taught both.”

“What are you saying, Camilla?” For the second time that evening, there it was—that tone of chastisement and distrust. “Do you know the
true
version? You grew up reading your Bible. Every day, you told me. Can you quote those verses from the fourth chapter of Malachi?”

The three of them stared at me, waiting, and it broke my heart to see Melissa now looking smaller than her younger sister.

“No,” I said. “I can’t.” I looked straight at Melissa. “I suppose I wasn’t taught as well as you have been.”

That brought back my girl’s smile—or at least a shadow of it. She took her doll back into her arms and sat again at her father’s feet. Moving noiselessly, Kimana rose from her seat and, wrapping a length of towel around the handle, lifted the bed warmer from the hearth and disappeared into the girls’ room to run it along their blankets.

“And the golden plates?” Lottie demanded, tugging on Nathan’s sleeve. But the magic of the tale had disappeared. He gathered her close and kissed her good night, promising to finish the story the next evening. I set my work aside and held out my arms, gathering each little girl to me, breathing in the scent of soap and damp hair. Lottie crumbled warm against me, but I couldn’t ignore Melissa’s stick-straight posture, identical to the one she held as she recited from Smith’s story.

“I love you, Missy.” Perhaps the familiar name would warm her.

As an answer, she kissed my cheek—a quick, dry peck—before waiting patiently for me to drop my embrace.

“I’m afraid I hurt her feelings,” I said once Kimana ushered the girls to their room.

“You need to be careful, Camilla.” Undeniable warning in his voice. “Your salvation rests in your belief. In your faith.”

“I know.”

“And your eternity rests with me.”

That’s when I realized I’d been pressing the knitting needle into my palm. I concentrated on the pain there, pushing it harder against the flesh.

He rose from his chair and came to kneel beside me. “I can understand your grief. But don’t let that turn into doubt.”

“I love you, Nathan.” It was all I could think to say.

“And I love you. And I thank God that he’s given you to me.”

“Lately . . .” I couldn’t finish, but I didn’t have to.

“I know,” he said, pushing my work aside and burying his head in my lap. “I know.”

I ran my fingers through his hair. Short and coarse it was, still bearing the dust of his workshop. We didn’t speak, and I realized he was weeping. These were the first tears he’d shed since the day he held his son, and I sat perfectly still, allowing them to seep into my skirt. When his body finally became still, I reached down, prompting him to look at me. His tear-streaked face took on a particular shine in the firelight, and I thought of the words of Joseph Smith describing the angel. A countenance like lightning. There was no lightning here, just a soft, warm glow, and in his eyes everything I loved in this world.

“Do you still love me, Nathan? as much as you did when I was just an ignorant, Gentile girl?”

He stood and, in that motion, lifted me out of the chair. From the corner of my eye I saw the figure of Kimana, wrapping her bright wool shawl around her shoulders. There was a tiny shock of cold air as the door opened and closed behind her, but by the time I heard the click of the latch, my husband had carried me into our bedroom. Soon the frigid cold disappeared, powerless against the warmth of rekindled love. Later, in the dark, I folded myself against him, my ear to his heart, forcing myself to think of nothing else.

At least not until the morning.

* * *

“A mighty fortress is our God,

A tower of strength ne’er failing.

A helper mighty is our God,

O’er ills of life prevailing.